American Expatriate Costa Rica

Court withdraws trial following arrest of attorney on charges of bribing witness

Abogada detenida de apellido Bedoya. Foto cortesía OIJ.

An attorney with the surname Bedoya, was arrested Tuesday on charges of bribing a victim in an aggravated robbery case in exchange for changing his testimony. Bedoya, a Colombian national was representing the accused in the case who remains in preventative detention.

Bedoya herself is now before a special Flagrancy court, which is an abbreviated process reserved for suspects caught in the act or “red handed”. This is because, according to judicial investigators she was arrested minutes after delivering a payment of 150,000 colones to the witness in the case. The witness contacted authorities and cooperated in a sting operation to arrest Bedoya.

The suspect in the original case is also a Colombian national, who is accused of stealing a cell phone and 90,000 colones from a Costa Rican citzien in an area of San Jose known as “Tierra Colombiana”.

Bedoya is a naturalized Costa Rican citizen, and represented one of the accused in the high profile murder of Parmenio Medina. Her client was acquitted in that trial, which ended in 2007. Bedoya also represented those those accused of in the rapes and murders of workers from the White House Casino in 2010.

Source crhoy.com