Friday, February 17, 2023 | 5:14 p.m.
Magdalena Espósito Valenti, the mother of Lucio Dupuy, and Abigail Páez, his partner, were sentenced this Friday by a court in the city of Santa Rosa to life imprisonment for having murdered the 5-year-old boy in that pampas city in November of 2021.
Both women had already been convicted of the child’s homicide and now the Santa Rosa Court of Hearing, made up of judges Alejandra Ongaro, Andrés Olié and Daniel Sáez Zamora, announced the amount of the sentence and denied the request for the family of the victim who had requested that “indefinite time” be applied to them as an accessory to life imprisonment.
The sentence was announced on February 2, but as indicated by the La Pampa justice system, the sentence will be announced at a later date. Both women, at that time, had been found guilty of the child’s death.
The main arguments of the judges in the sentence
– “In addition to the existence of physical, psychological and sexual violence, exerted on Lucio Dupuy -at least- during the last months of his life; On November 26, both defendants exercised acts of physical violence that caused her death.”
– “In this violent evolution, it is possible to notice a crescendo of violence, in light of the chats held between the two defendants, starting in mid-October 2021, from which time the irritation that the child evidently caused in both and at the risk that this would break their sentimental relationship, something that neither of them seemed willing to bear. This appears in an extremely graphic way in the conversation held on October 18, in which Magdalena Espósito Valenti states that she would not allow Lucio to prevent “our relationship from flowing” ”.
– “It is corroborated -also- in the severe injuries that Lucio Dupuy suffered a few days before (6 or 7 days) on November 26, described in the autopsy, consisting of large bruises in the right groin area and on the right buttock , so serious that, according to the forensic doctor, “it must have made it difficult for him to walk.”
– “The death of the child was declared at 9:45 p.m. by Dr. Argüello, although we know that he already arrived dead at Hospital Evita, at approximately 9:30 p.m., according to the statements of the doctor Argüello himself and the nurses Aldama and Howes. All of them reported that the child was unconscious, had no pulse and was not breathing.
– “But even before, when Abigail Páez left the home with Lucio Dupuy in her arms, the child was already dead, as reported by Edgardo Mourino and the retired nurse Elsa Quintín, who indicated that he did not have a pulse. The vomit expelled in circumstances that was being attended to by this last witness, was explained by the forensic doctor as a vagal reflex of the person when she is already dead.
– “Expertly, the time of death of Lucio Dupuy was defined between 7 and 9 pm. on November 26”
– “But the data that is most interesting is that related to the production of the injuries that later led to the death of Lucio Dupuy, which was determined between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. and, more precisely, the forensic doctor maintained that the most serious ones can be located 15 or 20 minutes before 7:00 p.m., a period of time in which -as has already been said- the defendants were alone with the child in Your domicile”.
– “This makes it possible to rule out the defense attempted by Abigail Páez, which places her in a better procedural situation and -fundamentally- Magdalena Espósito Valenti, whom she directly excludes from the scene at the time of the physical attack that took place on November 26 ”.
– “Abigail Páez’s statement is mendacious. As stated, by the time she returned to the apartment, Lucio Dupuy had died as a result of injuries that occurred previously. But her falsehood is even more evident if we consider that, like every allusion to the mark stamped on the child’s shoulder blade, she maintains that “she touched it with her foot to see if she would react”; puerile argument that totally clashes with the intensity that it must have had not only to leave that imprint on the skin, but to cause the tearing of internal organs”.
– “The cause of death was cerebral edema as a result of polytrauma, a circumstance that Dr. Toulouse expanded upon during the debate, explaining that this edema, since the skull could not swell, as would happen with any other part of the body, causes the seizure of the cerebellar tonsils leading to cardiac arrest. But he also explained that other internal injuries indicated in the autopsy would have caused death due to hypovolemia, if the cardiac arrest that stopped -naturally- the blood flow had not occurred.
– “The multiple injuries caused in that period have a very different etiology. On the one hand, there are bites on the glans penis and on the left arm (which can be interpreted as defensive); bruises on the head, on the right and left side, some made with/against a flat object and others from a fist bump; nummular bruises on the chest, caused by a broomstick with a rounded tip; bruises on the inner side of the left thigh, caused by a scratch and others in the inguinal area that exceed the scratch and look like dragging and, finally, multiple injuries to the back and specifically a “stomp” on the shoulder blade strong enough to cause internal injuries in the abdominal area, among other tears of the liver.
– “The perpetrator of this last injury could be determined with total precision, since the mark on the skin of the shoulder blade corresponds perfectly to the footwear that Abigail Páez was wearing at that time; This is not the case for the rest, mainly due to the characteristics of this type of intramural events, to which reference has already been made and which entail difficulties –although not the impossibility- when it comes to the historical reissue of the events”.
– “It deals with multiple injuries, of different etiology, carried out in a relatively short time, in a small area, within the walls, all of which determines the actions of both defendants exerting violence on the child, without being able to specify if this was carried out properly. joint or alternative.
