The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) is of the opinion that the illegal smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons can be configured with the realization of only one of the conducts that configure and describe this criminal offense.
This crime is described in Articles 1, literal f and 2 of Law No. 137-03. 137-03, which consists of the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or reception of persons, using threats, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power, or situations of vulnerability or the granting or receipt of payments or benefits to obtain the consent of a person having authority over another, for the purpose of exploitation, to exercise any form of sexual exploitation, pornography, debt bondage, forced labor or services, servile marriage, irregular adoption, slavery and/or practices analogous to this, or the removal of organs.
The jurisprudential criteria contained in Judgment No. SCJ-SS-22-0182, dated February 28, 2022, highlights that, in the case under appeal, it was determined that the appellant was charged and convicted for the fact of having transferred 13 undocumented Haitian nationals illegally to the national territory, being the action of transferring undocumented persons a conduct that typifies the trafficking of migrants.
"All this unfailingly demonstrates that the conduct of the accused is in line with the criminal type indicated, not only because his actions are included in one of the verbs described in the norm in question, but also because the introduction into the country of the Haitian nationals occurred without complying with the legal requirements established by the norm governing the matter," the decision explains.
To read in full the judgment of the Second Chamber signed by Justices Francisco Jerez Mena (presiding), Nancy I. Salcedo Fernández, Fran Soto Sánchez, María G. Garabito Ramírez and Francisco Ortega Polanco, click on the following link: https://poderjudicial.gob.do/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/SCJ-SS-22-0182.pdf
