Getting someone to show up for court in a criminal investigation is a Mickey Mouse game of hide-and-seek in Costa Rica. Good people usually obey the law, whereas bad ones do not. The whole process is another reason criminals get away with their illicit acts in this country. Getting witnesses to show up for a trial is even harder if they want to avoid appearing.
When the criminal court wants a person to show up for a deposition, a prosecutor sends the individual a citation. The citation is prepared on a single half sheet of paper. The document requests the person’s attendance, typically within 24 hours of the date of the citation. The form contains the prosecutor’s name and the court issuing the document.
Often, the legal form letter contains erroneous information because an overburdened assistant fills it in from a template. One individual received a citation in a defamation case, stating it was a homicide investigation. This frightened the accused because he remembered giving the accuser a verbal bashing but not killing him. Calling the prosecutor cleared up the matter. The assistant made a dedazo, Costa Rican slang for something mistyped.
When a person does not go to court per a prosecutor’s request, the prosecutor’s assistant will send out another and another citation. If none of them is successful in bringing the person to court, the prosecutor will decide. He or she will either close the file and drop the case, or send the police to escort the person to court for the deposition.
Some may believe that dropping a case because the people will not show up in a criminal investigation is ridiculous, but one example happened right here in San José last year. An expat couple had all their belongings — including an expensive computer, cash and other very valuable items — stolen in the lobby of the Hotel Presidente in downtown San José. Video cameras show the apparent collusion of hotel staff. The San José prosecutors’ office sent citation after citation to the suspected staff members. They never showed up at court. One of them called the prosecutor’s assistant and told him they were too busy to go. Yes, the court closed the case.
Getting key witnesses to court for a trial is also difficult if they want to avoid showing up because they go into hiding. The Poder Judicial, the name of the judicial authority in Costa Rica, does not look for them very hard either.
A retired couple fighting to get their condominium back had to hire a private investigator to find a key witness. The detective had to look for a month to find the individual. However, that turned out to be the easy part. When he went to the criminal court to request police assistance to bring the person into San José, the Poder Judicial denied his petition. The authorities gave him one of the citations described above and said, “Give this to the witness.”
The Costa Rican detective, with many year experience working as a private investigator, was at his wits end. He went to speak with the attorney of the retired couple. The attorney, an experienced and well-known lawyer, started asking around if anyone knew the witness. One of his acquaintances, a prosecutor in another court, knew the name of the party and said he thought there was another case in which the witness had already received citations and did not show up for a deposition.
