{
  "id": "nexus-ext-1-0034-247771",
  "citation": "Res. 00912-2018 Tribunal de Apelación de Sentencia Penal II Circuito Judicial de San José",
  "section": "nexus_decisions",
  "doc_type": "court_decision",
  "title_es": "Apelación rechazada por aplicación de la teoría del hallazgo inevitable en acceso a teléfono de la víctima",
  "title_en": "Appeal denied on inevitable discovery doctrine for unauthorized access to victim’s phone",
  "summary_es": "El Tribunal de Apelación de Sentencia Penal confirmó la sentencia de primera instancia, rechazando los reclamos de la defensa sobre supuestos vicios procesales. En primer lugar, determinó que las entrevistas a las encartadas y el secuestro de sus teléfonos no vulneraron sus derechos, pues al momento de la diligencia no existían sospechas fundadas que las señalaran como imputadas, por lo que no era exigible la advertencia de garantías procesales. En segundo lugar, aunque el tribunal calificó como ilegal la extracción de información del teléfono de la víctima inconsciente sin orden jurisdiccional, por lesionar su derecho a la intimidad, rechazó la exclusión probatoria. Aplicó la teoría del descubrimiento inevitable: la información habría sido obtenida de todos modos mediante el curso normal de la investigación, especialmente porque el mismo contenido se encontraba en los teléfonos de las imputadas, válidamente secuestrados, y porque era necesaria e inminente una autorización judicial. El fallo valida la prueba ilícita bajo esta excepción, declarando sin lugar los recursos.",
  "summary_en": "The Criminal Appeals Court upheld the trial court’s ruling, denying defense motions regarding alleged procedural defects. First, it found that the interviews of the defendants and the seizure of their phones did not violate their fundamental rights, because at that stage there were no grounded suspicions to treat them as accused; thus, police were not required to inform them of their rights. Second, although the court deemed illegal the extraction of data from the unconscious victim’s phone without a warrant—as it breached his privacy—it rejected the request to exclude the evidence. It applied the inevitable discovery doctrine: the same information would have inevitably been obtained through the normal course of investigation, particularly because the same data existed on the defendants’ lawfully seized phones and judicial authorization was imminent. Consequently, the illegally obtained evidence remained valid and the appeals were dismissed.",
  "court_or_agency": "Tribunal de Apelación de Sentencia Penal II Circuito Judicial de San José",
  "date": "12/07/2018",
  "year": "2018",
  "topic_ids": [
    "_off-topic"
  ],
  "primary_topic_id": "_off-topic",
  "es_concept_hints": [
    "Teoría del hallazgo inevitable",
    "Prueba ilícita",
    "Actividad procesal defectuosa",
    "Intimidad",
    "Cadena de custodia",
    "Ley 7425",
    "Secuestro de documentos privados",
    "Código Procesal Penal"
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  "keywords_es": [
    "Teoría del hallazgo inevitable",
    "Prueba ilícita",
    "Secuestro de evidencia",
    "Derecho a la intimidad",
    "Actividad procesal defectuosa",
    "Artículo 181 CPP",
    "Cadena de custodia",
    "Registro de documentos privados",
    "Ley 7425",
    "Homicidio calificado"
  ],
  "keywords_en": [
    "Inevitable discovery",
    "Illegal evidence",
    "Evidence seizure",
    "Right to privacy",
    "Defective procedural activity",
    "Article 181 CPP",
    "Chain of custody",
    "Search of private documents",
    "Law 7425",
    "Aggravated homicide"
  ],
  "excerpt_es": "\"Así, conviene recordar que la regla de exclusión de la prueba ilícita por lesión de los derechos fundamentales no es de aplicación automática, ni se debe entender de forma absoluta o rígida, como lo pretende la recurrente, ya que existen excepciones que han tornado su aplicación más racional y proporcional en función de las circunstancias que concurran en el caso específico, como sucede con la teoría del hallazgo o descubrimiento inevitable, que permite otorgar eficacia a la prueba obtenida ilícitamente, siempre y cuando al resultado probatorio se haya podido llegar inevitablemente por el curso normal de la investigación. … Por consiguiente, en estos supuesto lo que debe privar es que las investigaciones que se estaban llevando a cabo hubieran conducido inexorablemente a la obtención independiente de la prueba. Esto, sin duda alguna fue lo que ocurrió en la especie, ya que, aún suprimiendo hipotéticamente esta actuación irregular, siempre persistiría el decomiso del teléfono celular de la víctima, por cuanto se efectuó conforme a las atribuciones que la ley le concede a los investigadores judiciales y en apego al procedimiento descrito por la norma (artículo 198 del Código Procesal Penal).\"",
  "excerpt_en": "\"It should be recalled that the exclusionary rule for illegally obtained evidence due to violation of fundamental rights is not automatic nor absolute or rigid, as the appellant claims, since exceptions have made its application more rational and proportionate according to the specific circumstances, such as the inevitable discovery doctrine, which allows giving validity to illegally obtained evidence, provided the same result would have inevitably been reached through the normal course of the investigation. … Therefore, in such cases what must prevail is that the ongoing investigations would have inexorably led to the independent obtaining of the evidence. This undoubtedly occurred here, since even hypothetically suppressing this irregular action, the seizure of the victim’s cell phone would still persist, because it was carried out in accordance with the powers granted by law to judicial investigators and in compliance with the procedure described in the norm (article 198 of the Criminal Procedure Code).\"",
  "outcome": {
    "label_en": "Denied",
    "label_es": "Sin lugar",
    "summary_en": "The Criminal Appeals Court dismissed the defense appeals, upholding the lower court’s decision. It rejected claims of defective procedural activity and validated the evidence obtained by applying the inevitable discovery doctrine.",
    "summary_es": "El Tribunal de Apelación de Sentencia Penal declaró sin lugar los recursos planteados por la defensa, confirmando la decisión de primera instancia. Rechazó los alegatos de actividad procesal defectuosa y validó la prueba obtenida mediante la teoría del hallazgo inevitable."
  },
  "pull_quotes": [
    {
      "context": "Cita del artículo 81 del Código Procesal Penal",
      "quote_en": "A person shall be designated as accused when, through any act of the investigation or proceeding, they are pointed out as the possible perpetrator of a punishable act or participant in it.",
      "quote_es": "Se denominará imputado a quien, mediante cualquier acto de la investigación o del procedimiento, sea señalado como posible autor de un hecho punible o partícipe en él."
    },
    {
      "context": "Razonamiento sobre la aplicación de la teoría del hallazgo inevitable",
      "quote_en": "The exclusionary rule for illegally obtained evidence due to violation of fundamental rights is not automatic nor absolute or rigid... as occurs with the inevitable discovery doctrine, which allows giving validity to illegally obtained evidence, provided the same result would have inevitably been reached through the normal course of the investigation.",
      "quote_es": "La regla de exclusión de la prueba ilícita por lesión de los derechos fundamentales no es de aplicación automática, ni se debe entender de forma absoluta o rígida... como sucede con la teoría del hallazgo o descubrimiento inevitable, que permite otorgar eficacia a la prueba obtenida ilícitamente, siempre y cuando al resultado probatorio se haya podido llegar inevitablemente por el curso normal de la investigación."
    },
    {
      "context": "Cita de jurisprudencia de la Sala Tercera",
      "quote_en": "…if it were shown that the evidence excluded for deriving from a constitutional violation would have been discovered or obtained inevitably or certainly through the lawful investigations already being conducted at that time, it shall be valid.",
      "quote_es": "…si se llegase a demostrar que la evidencia excluida por derivar de un quebrantamiento constitucional se habría descubierto u obtenido en forma inevitable o segura a partir de las investigaciones legítimas que ya se estaban llevando a cabo en ese momento, aquella será válida."
    }
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  "body_es_text": "\"II. - […] Los vicios resultan inexistentes. Así, una vez examinada la sentencia apelada, la cual consta en formato escrito (cfr. folios 1910 a 2113) y los registros del debate que la precedieron, puede esta cámara verificar que, aunque se presentaron procedimientos poco sui generis en la obtención de la prueba, ninguno de estos métodos lesionó derechos fundamentales de las encartadas [[Nombre1] ] y [[Nombre2] ], o incurrió en defectos que hayan ocasionado un agravio a los intereses en el ejercicio de su derecho de defensa. Así, A. En cuanto a la entrevista de las [Nombre [Nombre3]] y [Nombre [Nombre4]], el decomiso de sus dispositivos móviles y la obtención de la información en ellos contenida. En el sub judice, tal y como lo estableció el tribunal de instancia cuando resolvió las actividades procesales defectuosas que presentaron los abogados defensores (cfr. folios 1914 a 1923), se pueden tener por ciertos los siguientes hechos y antecedentes procesales: i. A [Nombre [Nombre5]] lo agredieron al ser aproximadamente las 19:24 horas del día 07 de octubre del año 2015, en el sector de San Sebastián, desde donde fue trasladado en condición delicada hasta el Hospital Calderón Guardia, lugar al cual fue ingresado con un reporte de herida por arma blanca a nivel de tórax izquierdo; ii. En dicho nosocomio se presentaron oficiales de la Sección de Investigaciones de Turno Extraordinario (SITE), dentro de los cuales estaba el testigo [Nombre6] , a recabar información general sobre el incidente, empero, al verificar el estado de salud del agraviado no pudieron entrevistarlo, razón por la que procedieron a conversar con sus familiares y, en especial, según lo describe el informe policial número 628–IP–SITE–2015, con [[Nombre7] ], quien sostuvo dentro de su declaración que [[Nombre8] ] había sido amenazado por una mujer conocida como “[[Nombre1] ]”, quien aparentemente mantuvo una relación sentimental con el ofendido; iii. De la declaración de [Nombre9] se logró inferir que el 08 de octubre de 2015 le fue asignado por su jefatura el caso de la agresión de [[Nombre8] ] y, por tal razón, se reunió con los compañeros del SITE de quienes recibió el informe inicial y se enteró que existían tres líneas de investigación, la primera de ellas relacionada con la grabación que realizó el ofendido días antes de los hechos y que fue publicada en Facebook de un sujeto realizando actos de acoso callejero, dicho sujeto se llamaba [Nombre10] y se tenía como sospechoso de la agresión de [[Nombre8] ]; la segunda trataba sobre un posible asalto en el que el ofendido fue elegido como víctima al azar; y la tercera línea de investigación o móvil estaba relacionado con una posible relación amorosa y lío pasional con una mujer conocida como “[[Nombre1] ]”: iv. Que mientras el oficial [Nombre11] analizaba el informe y se reunió con los investigadores de la Sección de Turno Extraordinario, de manera independiente su jefatura, a cargo de la licenciada [Nombre12] , dispuso que otros compañeros realizaran entrevistas; v. Los oficiales [Nombre13] y [Nombre14] , tal y como el primero lo depuso, sin conocer mayores detalles sobre la investigación fueron asignados por su jefatura –no por [Nombre15] – para realizar la victimología de [[Nombre8] ], que consistía en ahondar en detalles sobre su vida, por lo que se trasladaron al lugar de trabajo de éste en la Panadería Santa Clara, con la intención de conversar con el dueño del local y además decomisar el “DVR” o video del comercio para analizar si aportaba algún elemento, siendo que en el sitio conversaron con varias personas, entre ellas, una que estaba cerca de la panadería que les informó que la víctima tenía una relación con una mujer de nombre “[[Nombre1] ]”, quien era de la zona e incluso les mostró la vivienda donde aquella habitaba; vi. Ese mismo día dichos investigadores judiciales se presentaron a la casa de habitación de [[Nombre1] ], donde ingresaron con el consentimiento de aquella y procedieron a entrevistarla en relación con la agresión que se había perpetrado en perjuicio de [[Nombre8] ], asegurando [Nombre16] que para ese momento no tenían conocimiento de que ella había dispuesto el plan para darle muerte a la víctima, sino todo lo contrario, que era una persona cercana al ofendido con quien mantuvo una relación sentimental en los últimos tres meses, de quien sospechaba, según indicó la encartada [[Nombre1] ], estaba embarazada; vii. En dicha entrevista, cuando [Nombre [Nombre3]] estaba advirtiendo al investigador [Nombre16] que había recibido amenazas en su teléfono por motivo de su relación con [[Nombre8] ] y que éstas eran de una mujer que era novia del agraviado, al igual de la existencia de llamadas desde números privados que le consultaban por su relación con la víctima; la encartada [Nombre [Nombre4]], quien se encontraba en el mismo sitio, interrumpía constantemente manifestando que también a ella le habían enviado mensajes de amenazas relacionadas con el ofendido; viii. Los investigadores judiciales [Nombre17] y [Nombre18], a raíz de la información que suministró [[Nombre1] ] y su hija [[Nombre2] ] , sobre las amenazas que ambas habían recibido en sus teléfonos, procedieron al decomiso de los dispositivos móviles de dichas endilgadas mediante las actas de secuestro número 718758 y 718757, visibles a folios 97 y 98. Así, en cuanto a la acreditación de estas diligencias policiales –y no sobre la legalidad de las mismas, ya que este aspecto se tratará más adelante–, cuestiona la defensora pública como “burdo” y contrario a las reglas de la sana crítica el que se tenga por demostrado que los oficiales [Nombre17] y [Nombre18] desconocían que las personas entrevistadas durante la visita de los oficiales del SITE al Hospital Calderón Guardia, precisamente el día en que ingresaron al agraviado [[Nombre8] ] a dicho lugar –07 de octubre de 2015–, conocían que la justiciable [[Nombre1] ] había amenazado de muerte vía telefónica al agraviado, por cuanto, en su criterio, el oficial [Nombre9] , en un primer momento de su deposición, arguyó que él había acompañado a [Nombre17] y [Nombre18] en esas diligencias, y aceptó que conocía de la investigación previa que efectuaron los investigadores del SITE. No obstante, examinada la sentencia recurrida, en especial la fundamentación descriptiva de las declaraciones de los oficiales [Nombre11] y [Nombre17], y la valoración intelectiva que el tribunal de instancia hizo de tales medios de prueba, puede esta cámara verificar que la conclusión a la que arriba la defensa pública resulta antojadiza y arbitraria, en tanto no presenta sustento alguno en la declaración de dichos oficiales y, menos aún, en las reglas de la experiencia o la lógica que estima se quebrantaron. Nótese que se puede partir de que [Nombre9] depuso en un primer momento –lo que la recurrente denomina como una exposición espontánea– que: “Ese mismo día 08 de octubre abordamos la panadería y no habían cámaras, pero localizamos a una informante y manifestó que si conocía a [Nombre [Nombre5]] , que lo conocía a él y a [Nombre [Nombre3]], por eso consideré importante localizar a esta mujer conocida como [Nombre [Nombre3]], esta diligencia la realizaron otros dos oficiales, localizaron la vivienda cerca de la escuela en San Sebastián, identificaron a esta persona con el nombre de [Nombre [Nombre3]] , la entrevistaron como parte de una investigación que apenas se iniciaba, en su vivienda indicó que si conocía que [Nombre [Nombre5]] lo iba a entrevistar un medio, indicó que [Nombre [Nombre5]] le escribió a la hija de [Nombre [Nombre3]] quien se identificó como [Nombre [Nombre4]] , que se iban a ver en la casa pero que después se dieron cuenta que [Nombre [Nombre5]] fue atacado. Indicaron que para ese momento del hecho [Nombre [Nombre3]] se sentía mal de salud y se tuvo que trasladar a la Clínica Bíblica mostrando un comprobante de las atenciones en la Clínica Bíblica, el comprobante indicaba que fue valorada antes de las ocho de la noche. Se decidió decomisar los teléfonos de ambas mujeres , se les entregó un acta de secuestro” (cfr. folio 1931. Copia literal. El resaltado no es de su original). Sin embargo, resulta evidente que de dicha exposición no se puede inferir, como lo pretende la quejosa, que [Nombre19] fue quien dio la orden de que se entrevistara a [[Nombre1] ] , o que fuera él quien dispuso el decomiso del teléfono celular de aquella y del aparato de comunicación de [[Nombre2] ]. Esto por cuanto se desprende de dicha declaración que, en esas primeras manifestaciones, lo que estaba realizando el deponente era otorgando una explicación general sobre las actuaciones policiales que se efectuaron por parte del grupo de oficiales que atendía el asunto, y no aseverando que él haya participado en todos y cada uno de los procedimientos que describió. Esto resulta congruente con el informe policial N° 01–DCIFTT–IP–2015 (cfr. folios 1 a 14) en donde se dejó constancia que para el día 08 de octubre de 2015 se recibió el informe número 628–IP–SITE–2015, y si bien en un inicio se mencionó en tal documento que ese día los investigadores [Nombre20] , [Nombre21] , [Nombre13] , [Nombre22] y [Nombre9] visitaron el lugar de los hechos, procedieron a ubicar cámaras de vigilancia y entrevistaron posibles testigos, de una lectura pormenorizada de dicho informe se puede corroborar cuáles fueron las actuaciones que cada uno de ellos efectuó y como lo hacían en forma separada. Así, fue [Nombre21] quien los ubicó en la escena de la agresión, mientras todos se dieron a la tarea de entrevistar –en forma individual– a posibles testigos, entre estos a [Nombre23] , [Nombre24] y [Nombre25] . Además, fue [Nombre9] quien ubicó en la escena una cámara de video que le pertenecía a la Municipalidad de San José, y coordinó lo necesario para conocer si podría obtenerse información de ésta; al igual que lo hizo con cámaras de vigilancia que estaban en el sector de [Dirección1] y en el comercio [Dirección2] . Seguidamente, [Nombre22] y [Nombre19] fueron quienes se trasladaron al Hospital Dr. Calderón Guardia para entrevistar a [Nombre [Nombre26]] . Esto mientras [Nombre13] y [Nombre27] visitaban la Panadería de nombre Santa Clara, en donde se localizó un video de seguridad que fue decomisado y, posteriormente, procedieron a indagar sobre la mujer conocida como “[[Nombre1] ]”, a quien entrevistaron en su casa de habitación gracias a la ubicación que les suministró un informante y que les permitió el decomiso del teléfono celular de ésta y el de su hija [[Nombre2] ]. Consecuentemente, no resulta contrario a la lógica ni a las reglas de experiencia, que explican que en las labores realizadas en equipo es factible que se distribuyan las labores para completar el trabajo asignado, sobre todo en actos iniciales de investigación policial en donde el recurso humano es escaso, la aseveración que efectuó [Nombre19] sobre que: “En relación a los investigadores [Nombre28] y [Nombre29] , fue la jefatura [Nombre12] que les indicó que entrevistaran a [Nombre [Nombre3]] y la hija. En relación al decomiso de los celulares, no hubo una orden, fueron ellos que lo decomisaron, esos celulares me los entregaron embalados, etiquetados, con firmas y cadenas de custodia, actas original y copia, se incorporó en el libro de control y ellos me entregaron las evidencias decomisadas debidamente embaladas, esa evidencia estaban embalados en bolsa plástica con cinta y la cadena de custodia; las actas de decomiso de esos celulares se hicieron en la casa de [[Nombre1] ] y [[Nombre2] ]. Las actas de decomiso de folio 97 y 98, no recuerdo que se anotó en las actas de secuestro, pero cuando se corrobora alguna información, siempre se les indica el número de causa de referencia, esa información se las facilitó la licenciada [Nombre12] ” (cfr. folio 1940). Sobre todo, cuando tal deposición también se corroboró del testimonio de [Nombre13] , quien al efecto reconoció que: “Paúl [Nombre11] no nos encomendó ubicar a [[Nombre1] ], sino que fue [Nombre30] la jefa para hacer victimología. No visite el lugar en compañía del [Nombre31] ni compañeros del SITE. No revise informes iniciales de [Nombre32] . […] Esa persona [Nombre30] que me designó la investigación, es la jefa de la Unidad de Delitos Contra la Integridad Física, ella asigna las investigaciones y nos dice que hacer. No conocí el informe del SITE. El número único es el número del expediente, era un número de expediente para hacer decomisos y rastreos de ese caso” (cfr. folio 1979). Lo anterior permite colegir, que la conclusión a la que arriba el tribunal de instancia, sobre que el oficial [Nombre16] desconocía que los familiares de [[Nombre8] ] habían referido que [[Nombre1] ] había amenazado a la víctima de muerte, esto para antes de que aquella fuera entrevistada y se le decomisara su teléfono celular, no resulta infundada, ni lesiona el principio lógico de razón suficiente como se reclama. Ello debido a que no puede exigírsele a los oficiales de policía que participan en una investigación que se impongan y conozcan de toda la información que obtienen otros investigadores durante las pesquisas, más aún cuando, como en el sub judice, quienes entrevistaron a la familia del victimado eran policías de una sección diferente –SITE– a la que pertenecían [Nombre16] y [Nombre33] –Delitos contra la Vida–; y si bien se remitió el informe preliminar de cita a la sección donde estos últimos son parte, nunca se acreditó que [Nombre17] y [Nombre18] se reunieran con los oficiales de Turno Extraordinario, o que en dicha sección se discutiera sobre el informe rendido por quienes entrevistaron a la familia del occiso y que en ésta participaran [Nombre28] y [Nombre34]. Así las cosas, el que la defensa técnica asevere que los oficiales de la policía judicial que entrevistaron a [[Nombre1] ] y [[Nombre2] ] lo hicieron con el afán de inducirlas a error, para así obtener información privilegiada y relacionarlas con el delito investigado, y el que se afirme que la declaración de [Nombre35] fue acomodada para que coincidiera con la suministrada por el investigador [Nombre9] en cuanto a quién decidió que se entrevistara a las justiciables, no son más que especulaciones que no tienen sustento alguno en la prueba recibida, y como tales resultan insuficientes para modificar lo resuelto. Nótese que, de la entrevista de [[Nombre1] ] únicamente se obtuvo que: “fue pareja sentimental del ofendido [[Nombre8] ] , eso desde hace tres meses, siendo que lo conoció en la panadería de nombre Santa Clara, ya que dicho masculino trabaja allí. […] [Nombre [Nombre5]] le decía que no estaba casado y que tenía una hija y que tenía una muchacha embarazada y dudaba de la paternidad; indicó que la madre del ofendido de nombre [[Nombre36] ] la llamó y le dijo que la única nuera era [[Nombre7] ] […] pero la entrevistada […] dijo que el ofendido le juró en algún momento que ya no estaba con esa mujer. Agregó que [Nombre [Nombre26]] le mandaba mensajes amenazantes a su número de teléfono, propiamente del 6114–9732 y muchas veces recibía mensajes amenazantes de la hermana de [[Nombre7] ] quien no identifica nombre, pero eran mensajes que llegaban del número de teléfono 7013–7419, esos mensajes se los mandaba por medio de WhatsApp o por fuera de él. Además, acotó que desconocía del video publicado en Facebook por parte del ofendido. […] que en fecha 07 de octubre del 2015 su hija de nombre [[Nombre2] ], había recibido un mensaje y una llamada diciéndole el ofendido [[Nombre8] ] que le iban a realizar una entrevista en un canal de televisión y si la podía realizar en su vivienda, pero el ofendido nunca llegó, posteriormente se supo que a [Nombre [Nombre5]] lo habían herido. […] que ella por sentirse con la presión baja, se trasladó a la Clínica Bíblica en San José Centro para efectuarse una revisión y controlar la presión y la había acompañado su hija [[Nombre2] ]” (cfr. informe policial N° 001–DCIFTT–2015 de folio 8 y la declaración de [Nombre13] ). Lo expuesto evidencia que, [[Nombre1] ] realmente fue consultada sobre la vida de [[Nombre8] ], como refirieron los investigadores citados –a efectos de realizar las pesquisas victimológicas– y que nunca se le interrogó sobre las amenazas de muerte que [[Nombre7] ] y [Nombre37] indicaron le había realizado ésta al agraviado, lo que resulta un elemento de prueba más de que en esa etapa de la investigación a la endilgada [[Nombre1] ] no se le interrogó en calidad de sospechosa o imputada, sino en razón de ser una persona que había mantenido una relación sentimental con el ofendido –independientemente de que no se haya realizado un informe escrito en forma individual por parte de [Nombre13] –, lo cual, sin duda alguna, descarta el vicio aludido por la quejosa y confirma que la conclusión a la que arribó el a quo, sobre la inexistencia de defectos absolutos en la entrevista de las encartadas y el decomiso de los teléfonos celulares, está debidamente fundamentada. No obstante, aún partiendo hipotéticamente de que los mencionados oficiales de la policía conocían que la familia de [Nombre [Nombre5]] había manifestado que [[Nombre1] ] amenazó de muerte al perjudicado, ello resultaba irrelevante a efectos de catalogarla –para ese momento– como una persona señalada de la agresión de la víctima y, menos aún, de endilgarle a su hija [[Nombre2] ] tal conducta ilícita, debido a que a ésta nadie la había mencionado para el día 07 de octubre de 2015. Así, a efectos de una correcta solución del reproche planteado, resulta esencial el que se delimite quién es imputado y cómo se adquiere tal condición, ya que a partir de ese momento se le procederá a conceder todos los derechos de defensa que prescribe el artículo 82 del Código de Rito, incluyendo la posibilidad de abstenerse de declarar, de no ofrecer prueba que lo auto incrimine y de contar con un defensor técnico que le asesore desde ese primer estadio de investigación (artículo 13 ibídem). En este sentido, conviene recordar que el artículo 81 del Código Procesal Penal dispone que: \"Se denominará imputado a quien, mediante cualquier acto de la investigación o del procedimiento, sea señalado como posible autor de un hecho punible o partícipe en él\". Esto significa que, no es cualquier señalamiento de una persona dentro de una investigación o proceso el que tiene la capacidad de definir si una persona es imputada o no, sino sólo aquel que la relacione como posible autor de un hecho punible o partícipe en él. De ahí que, exceptuando los casos de flagrancia en donde el autor del hecho punible es sorprendido en el momento de cometerlo o inmediatamente después, o mientras es perseguido, o se encuentre con objetos o rastros que hacen presumir, vehementemente, que acaba de participar en un delito (artículo 237 ibíd.), o en aquellos asuntos en donde la formulación de la denuncia o querella por delito de acción pública ya trae inmersa una imputación directa contra quien se atribuye es el autor de los hechos (artículos 76 y 280 ibíd.), en los restantes casos tal acto procesal o de investigación no se encuentra expresamente definido, sino que será en cada situación particular en la cual se deberá individualizar por parte de los operadores del sistema de justicia penal, en especial, por la policía judicial, el Ministerio Público y las personas juzgadoras que participan en la etapa preparatoria. Esto por cuanto, de incurrirse en una equivocada precisión de tal acto, podría afectarse derechos fundamentales que tornarían la obtención de la prueba en ilegítima, debido a la obligación que tienen tales autoridades de hacer saber al endilgado los derechos que lo cobijan (artículo 82 ibíd.) y su deber de adecuar sus actuaciones conforme a las garantías procesales que exigen los instrumentos internacionales vigentes en el país, la Constitución Política y las disposiciones legales. En el caso concreto, conforme se desprende del informe N° 628–IP–SITE–2015 (cfr. folio 89 a 92), los investigadores de turno extraordinario dialogaron con los oficiales de la Fuerza Pública [Nombre38] y [Nombre39] , quienes advirtieron que la versión que lograron obtener de las personas que estaban en el sitio fue que: “[…] llegó un vehículo marca Honda, color negro del cual se bajaron dos sujetos y uno de ellos sacó un puñal y agredió al joven [[Nombre8] ]”. Asimismo, interrogaron a [Nombre [Nombre26]] , compañera sentimental del perjudicado, quien les indicó, entre otras cosas, que a [Nombre [Nombre5]] “[…] lo iban a entrevistar la gente de canal 6, ello a que se hizo famoso en Facebook por grabar a un sujeto que iba grabando a una mujer, esto se lo comentó la compañera de trabajo de [[Nombre8] ] de nombre [Nombre40], desconoce si el problema radica o proviene por dicha fama que adquirió o más bien piensa que puede ser a que [Nombre [Nombre5]] , tenía una aventura amorosa con una mujer de las cercanías de la panadería, [Nombre41]. [Nombre [Nombre3]] la cual es mucho mayor que él y ésta al terminar dicha relación lo amenazó de muerte pero le dijo que ella no se iba a ensuciar las manos de sangre, desconoce donde vive esta mujer o en que paró el problema”. A su vez, entrevistaron a [Nombre42] , compañera de trabajo de la víctima, quien mencionó: “[Nombre [Nombre5]] le comentó que dicha entrevista sería donde [[Nombre1] ] (mujer con la que [[Nombre8] ] tenía un romance) no obstante eran casi las 19:00 horas y la panadería estaba cerrada y [[Nombre8] ] aún estaba afuera, se despidió de él y se fue para la casa” . Finalmente, según menciona dicho informe policial, también se dialogó con [Nombre37] quien mencionó “que su sobrino tenía una amante, por los alrededores de la panadería donde él laboraba y al parecer su sobrino decide dejar a esa mujer, por lo que ella llama a la casa y amenazada a su esposa y la amenaza diciéndole que se iba a vengar (compañera de [[Nombre8] ]) ”. De este modo, queda claro que para el momento en que los oficiales del SITE realizaron las entrevistas iniciales a los posibles testigos – en horas de la noche del 07 de octubre de 2015–, lo que existía dentro de la investigación era la hipótesis de que una mujer conocida como “[[Nombre1] ]”, de quien no se tenía mayores datos, más que era vecina de las cercanías de la panadería donde laboraba [[Nombre8] ], le había enviado a éste mensajes telefónicos en donde lo amenazaba de muerte. Empero, dicha hipótesis siquiera tenía, para esos instantes de la investigación, un respaldo probatorio o indiciario sólido que justificara el señalar a [[Nombre1] ] como posible autora de la agresión que había sufrido [[Nombre8] ], por cuanto desde la misma fuente que suministró dicha hipótesis nacía también su antítesis, al aclarar [Nombre [Nombre26]] que ella desconocía si el ataque se había perpetrado en razón de esa relación sentimental o de la fama que la víctima había obtenido debido a la denuncia que realizó por un acoso callejero. Precisamente, esta falta de indicios que permitieran tener una sospecha fundada o señalar a [[Nombre1] ] como posible autora de la agresión de [[Nombre8] ] subsistía para el día 08 de octubre de 2015, por cuanto [Nombre9] ratificó que recibió el informe policial de los compañeros del SITE y se reunió con ellos en horas de la mañana, lapso en el que todavía permanecían las tres línea de investigación que aquellos habían determinado, la primera relacionada con la grabación que realizó el ofendido días antes de los hechos y que fue publicada en Facebook de un sujeto realizando actos de acoso callejero, dentro de la cual se tenía como sospechoso a un sujeto conocido como [Nombre10] ; otra sobre un posible asalto en el que el ofendido fue elegido como víctima al azar y la última ligada a una posible relación amorosa y lío pasional con una mujer conocida como “[Nombre [Nombre3]] ”. Además, se puede advertir del testimonio del oficial [Nombre43] que la información indicada había variado para el momento en que [Nombre16] y [Nombre33] deciden identificar a [[Nombre1] ], ya que lo único nuevo que existía era que “ Ese mismo día 08 de octubre abordamos la panadería y no había cámaras, pero localizamos a un informante y manifestó que sí conocía a [Nombre [Nombre5]] , que lo conocía a él y a [Nombre [Nombre3]]” (cfr. folio 1931), mientras [Nombre16] agregó que: “[…] estando en ese lugar, una persona se nos acercó, no quiso ser identificado, la victimología es abundar en la vida del ofendido, familiares, amigos, ver que era lo que hacía, un señor nos dijo que [Nombre [Nombre5]] acostumbraba a visitar una amiga, con quien tenía una relación, nos llevó a la casa de una mujer de nombre [Nombre [Nombre3]], nos señaló la casa ” (cfr. folio 1979). Es decir, se mantenía la información de que [Nombre [Nombre3]], conocida como [Nombre [Nombre3]], tenía una relación amorosa con el ofendido y que en ésta habían existido mensajes amenazantes de la primera hacia al agraviado, lo cual, se insiste, en ese momento de la investigación ni siquiera podía catalogarse como un indicio –juicio lógico crítico por medio del cual se aplica una regla de experiencia a un hecho conocido, para poder inferir otro hecho hasta entonces desconocido (cfr. Sala Tercera de la Corte Suprema de Justicia, resolución N° 2003–1050 de las 10:10 horas del 21 de noviembre de 2003)–, en tanto, el primero de los hechos, el indicador –las amenazas de muerte–, todavía no se habían constatado fehacientemente, debido a que lo único que existía eran referencias de lo que la víctima había manifestado a sus familiares respecto de su relación sentimental con [Nombre [Nombre3]], sin omitir que, para ese momento, incluso la información que se tenía era que los atacantes del ofendido habían sido dos personas de género masculino, por lo que lógica y objetivamente se puede establecer que [Nombre [Nombre3]] no tenía siquiera la condición de sospechosa. Esto resulta concordante con el informe policial número 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 (cfr. folios 1 a 14), donde se constata que para cuando se realizó la entrevista a la encartada [[Nombre1] ], antes de las 13:00 horas del 08 de octubre de 2015 (según se desprende de la hora en que se efectuó el decomiso de su teléfono celular de acuerdo con el acta N° 718758 de folio 97) no existían otros elementos de prueba que cambiaran la condición de aquella a imputada o sospechosa de los hechos, más aún cuando, entrevistada nuevamente [[Nombre7] ] lo único que agregó a la información previamente suministrada fue el número telefónico [Telf1] como perteneciente a “[Nombre [Nombre3]]”. En consecuencia, conforme con el panorama de la investigación que se realizaba, no existían sospechas fundadas de que [Nombre [Nombre3]] , y menos su hija [Nombre [Nombre4]], estuvieran relacionadas con la agresión que había sufrido [[Nombre8] ] y, con base en ello, no podía exigírsele a los investigadores que las trataran como personas señaladas de haber cometido un delito, se les advirtiera de su derecho a abstenerse de declarar o se les brindara asesoría técnica para su defensa, tal y como lo pretende la recurrente. Por otro lado, se reclama que el decomiso que la policía judicial realizó de los teléfonos celulares de las ahora encartadas resultó ilegítimo, porque pese a conocer los investigadores que aquellas eran imputadas, nunca se les previno que tenían derecho a no aportar prueba en su contra. Sin embargo, tal alegato resulta improcedente, no sólo porque, como supra se expuso, para cuando se decomisó los aparatos móviles no existía todavía indicio alguno que generara una sospecha fundada de la participación de las encartadas en la agresión con arma que había sufrido la víctima, lo que impedía que los oficiales de policía las trataran como imputadas o sospechosas y les advirtieran sus derechos como tales, sino porque la diligencia de secuestro no requiere de la autorización del titular o poseedor del artículo para legitimar su decomiso (artículo 198 del Código Procesal Penal), por lo que resulta irrelevante si [[Nombre1] ] y [[Nombre2] ] dieron o no su consentimiento para que se llevara a cabo tal diligencia. Nótese que, aún partiendo de la tesis de la impugnante, sobre que la policía entrevistó a [[Nombre1] ] pese a que conocía que aquella era una persona señalada de haber cometido los hechos en perjuicio de la víctima, y que la razón por la se le ocultó tal condición fue para obtener, de forma ilegítima, la información de que ella había sido amenazada telefónicamente por su relación con [[Nombre8] ] y que, conforme a este método inválido, se logró el secuestro del teléfono de la encartada por estimar que ahí podían haber rastros del delito investigado –la cual, se insiste, es una tesis que no quedó demostrada–, siempre persistiría la legitimidad del secuestro del dispositivo de comunicación de la encartada, puesto que, aún suprimiendo hipotéticamente la entrevista de ésta siempre persistiría una fuente independiente que señalaba que en el teléfono de aquella podría haber información de interés para la investigación, en tanto se contaba ya para ese momento con la entrevista de [[Nombre7] ] , quien había indicado, como lo reitera en su reclamo la impugnante, que [Nombre [Nombre3]] había esgrimido amenazas hacia su compañero sentimental. De ahí que resultaba razonable y proporcional a los fines de la investigación, que los investigadores [Nombre17] y [Nombre18] decomisaran ese aparato telefónico para efectos de conservar la información pertinente a las pesquisas que se llevaban a cabo, independientemente de que las ahora endilgadas estuviera o no de acuerdo. En el caso del secuestro del teléfono celular de la encartada [[Nombre2] ], si bien no existía una fuente independiente a sus manifestaciones ante la policía, que mencionara que dicho dispositivo fuera un objeto relacionado con el delito investigado o que pudiera servir como medio de prueba, no puede soslayarse que para cuando se entrevistó a su madre [Nombre [Nombre3]], [Nombre [Nombre4]] no estaba señalada como alguien que tuviera relación con [Nombre [Nombre5]], menos aún como sospechosa o partícipe en la agresión con arma blanca que aquel sufrió, incluso, el oficial [Nombre16] fue enfático en señalar que ella no era la persona entrevistada, sino que la información que se obtuvo de ésta fue porque interrumpía el dialogo que ellos sostenían con su madre. Así lo expuso al referir: “Durante el tiempo que estuvimos dialogando, hablamos con [Nombre [Nombre3]], pero la hija [Nombre [Nombre4]] se metía mucho, ella respondía mucho y respondía ciertas conversaciones. Tenía una hija menor y le pedimos que se retirara con [Nombre [Nombre4]], pero ella no quiso, [Nombre [Nombre3]] nos dijo que ella había recibido mensajes amenazantes hacia ella, eso nos resultó provechoso el indicio, nos dijo que no recordaba cuanto la llamaron para amenazarla, conocíamos superficialmente el caso, no conocíamos el trasfondo más allá del video del señor de hacienda. SE comentaba que era un asalto y una venganza por el video. […] [Nombre [Nombre4]] interrumpía mucho, ella mencionó que ella también había recibido mensajes relacionadas con [Nombre [Nombre5]] . No recuerdo si se consignó porque se decomisaron los teléfonos. La actitud de [Nombre [Nombre4]] en ese momento no era sospechosa” (cfr. folios 1979 y 1980. Copia literal). Consecuentemente, la información que la justiciable [[Nombre2] ] brindó a los investigadores judiciales, como lo sostuvo el a quo, no fue precedida por la violación de ninguno de sus derechos fundamentales, ni se le coaccionó o engañó para que aquella suministrara datos que perjudicaran a su madre, o a ella misma, sino que sus manifestaciones fueron espontáneas y consentidas y, por ende, válidas para que la policía determinara que el teléfono de ésta podría servir como medio de prueba, y existiera así la legitimación para que aquellos procedieran al decomiso de tal aparato electrónico. Aunado a esto, tampoco se advierte que durante la entrevista a las endilgadas se haya dado manifestaciones que hicieran presumir que aquellas debían ser tratadas como imputadas o, al menos, como sospechosas de los eventos acaecidos, y que en razón de ello los investigadores [Nombre16] y [Nombre33] tuvieran que haber puesto en conocimiento de éstas las garantías procesales que las cobijaban, en tanto, de un simple examen de las manifestaciones que [Nombre [Nombre3]] y [Nombre [Nombre4]] suministraron a las autoridades judiciales, se puede notar que nunca refirieron haber tenido algún tipo de participación o vinculación alguna en los hechos, por el contrario, lo que adujeron las endilgadas fue haber sido víctimas de amenazas por tener una relación –sentimental [Nombre [Nombre3]] y de amistad [Nombre [Nombre4]]– con [Nombre [Nombre5]] . De ahí el interés que imperó en la policía judicial, según lo informó el oficial [Nombre44] , en recoger y conservar dichos dispositivos para obtener información que permitiera esclarecer la muerte de la víctima y evitar que se perdieran los rastros del delito. En este sentido, si bien se coincide con la defensa de las imputadas en cuanto a que, los agentes policiales deben realizar sus labores bajo “la dirección y control del fiscal encargado de la investigación” (artículo 283 del Código Procesal Penal), la cual, en el caso del decomiso de los aparatos electrónicos no existió, debido a que la decisión de secuestrar tales teléfonos surgió de los propios oficiales que dirigían la diligencia y no por orden del representante del Ministerio Público, ello no significa, como lo parece entender la recurrente, que la ausencia de dicha dirección funcional para el acto específico sea suficiente para tornar ilegítima la recolección de dichos objetos, por cuanto, no se puede olvidar que el Organismo de Investigación Judicial, por iniciativa propia, por denuncia o por orden de autoridad competente, tienen la competencia para proceder a investigar los delitos de acción pública, a impedir que los hechos cometidos sean llevados a consecuencias ulteriores, a identificar y aprehender preventivamente a los presuntos culpables, y a reunir, asegurar y ordenar científicamente las pruebas y demás antecedentes necesarios para la investigación. De ahí que dentro de sus atribuciones esté el disponer que sean recogidos y conservados los objetos relacionados con el delito, los sujetos a confiscación y aquellos que puedan servir como medio de prueba, sin que se requiera orden judicial previa o autorización del Ministerio Público para su secuestro (artículos 3 y 4 incisos 5 y 10 de la Ley Orgánica del Organismo de Investigación Judicial y artículos 198 y 285 del Código de rito). Aunado a esto, no puede confundirse tampoco el secuestro del teléfono móvil con el registro o examen de la información privada que está contenida dentro de aquel. Esto por cuanto la ley N° 7425 denominada Registro y secuestro de documentos privados e intervención de las comunicaciones, en su artículo primero, dispone que: “…se consideran documentos privados: la correspondencia epistolar, por fax, te´lex, telema´tica o cualquier otro medio; los videos, los casetes, las cintas magnetofo´nicas, los discos, los disquetes, los escritos, los libros, los memoriales, los registros, los planos, los dibujos, los cuadros, las radiografías, las fotografías y cualquier otra forma de registrar informacio´n de carácter privado, utilizados con carácter representativo o declarativo, para ilustrar o comprobar algo ” (el resaltado no es de su original), dentro de los cuales, si bien se pueden incluir los mensajes de texto, los registros de llamadas, las imágenes, los archivos de audio, documentos, listas de contactos, etc., como documentos digitales que están contenidos en la memoria del soporte electrónico, no puede otorgársele al aparato físico la calidad de documento privado, sino sólo a la información digital que aquel contiene y que, por su activó inmaterial, resulta imposible secuestrar u obtener sino se somete a su captura a través de métodos igualmente digitales. Por ende, si bien para el secuestro, registro y examen de la información digital se requiere de resolución jurisdiccional debidamente fundada, que autorice restringir en forma legítima el derecho a la intimidad de las personas involucradas (artículo 3 de la Ley n° 7425), esto no resulta necesario a efectos del secuestro del aparato telefónico, ya que como simple objeto puede ser decomisado por disposición policial dentro de una investigación criminal, siempre y cuando se acredite que la información privada contenida en éste se encuentra custodiada y protegida de intromisiones ilegítimas, sea por ausencia de orden jurisdiccional o por no contarse con el consentimiento expreso del titular del derecho a la intimidad que se protege. En el caso concreto, no sólo queda acreditado que la policía judicial decomisó los teléfonos celulares de [Nombre [Nombre3]] y [Nombre [Nombre4]] mediante las actas de secuestros números 718758 y 718757 (cfr. folios 97 y 98), sino que estos fueron entregados a [Nombre32] , según así éste oficial lo manifestó, debidamente embalados en bolsas plásticas con cinta, etiquetados, con firmas y cadenas de custodia, junto con el acta de secuestro original y una copia (cfr. folio 1940), lo cual también se verificó cuando previa autorización jurisdiccional –resolución de las 13:20 horas del 08 de diciembre de 2015 del Juzgado Penal de Hatillo visible de folios 30 a 34– se efectuó la apertura de tales evidencias con la descripción de que fueron entregadas por [Nombre9] en “una bolsa plástica transparente debidamente embalado y sellado, identificados con el número de causa y las partes. Así mismo boleta única de Cadena de Custodia de indicios” (cfr. folio 44). De este modo, se verifica que desde el decomiso de los aparatos telefónicos hasta la extracción de la información por parte de los técnicos informáticos de la policía judicial, en presencia de Juez Penal de Garantías, el representante del Ministerio Público y el licenciado [Nombre45] en calidad de defensor público asignado a [[Nombre1] ] y [[Nombre2] ], estos dispositivos se mantuvieron sellados y la información libre accesos ilegítimos, por lo que no se afectó el derecho a la intimidad de las justiciables con el decomiso de los aparatos telefónicos que realizaron los investigadores judiciales. Así las cosas, se descarta que en la especie haya existido el quebranto a los artículos 36 de la Constitución Política y 205 del Código Procesal Penal, en tanto los oficiales de policía nunca interrogaron a [Nombre [Nombre3]] y a [Nombre [Nombre4]] en calidad de sospechosas o imputadas de la agresión sufrida por [[Nombre8] ], ya que para el momento en que lo hicieron no existía sospecha fundada de su participación en los hechos, y su entrevista se debió a efectos de realizar un estudio victimológico y conocer si podían ser testigos de los eventos ocurridos, antes los cuales, incluso, éstas se colocaron como supuestas víctimas de otras amenazas de muerte dirigidas hacia ellas, lo que descartaba que la policía judicial siquiera presumiera de su participación directa en los hechos, más aún cuando la noticia criminis daba cuenta de que quienes atacaron a [[Nombre8] ] eran personas masculinas y no féminas. Asimismo, tal y como lo sostuvo el a quo, no existe indicio alguno que haga suponer que los oficiales [Nombre17] y [Nombre18] ingresaron, en forma ilegítima y en contra de la voluntad de las justiciables [Nombre [Nombre3]] y [Nombre [Nombre4]], a la morada de éstas, por cuanto, no sólo dichos oficiales concuerdan en que fueron las endilgadas quienes les autorizaron ingresar como parte de una entrevista que les efectuarían como posibles testigos –lo que resulta congruente con las reglas de la experiencia–, sino que además ninguna de las imputadas ha manifestado lo contrario, ya que éstas lo único que alegaron en cuanto a este aspecto fue que a ellas los oficiales las obligaron a entregar sus teléfonos celulares, lo cual, desde la naturaleza jurídica del secuestro de objetos (artículo 198 del Código Procesal Penal) no resulta ilegítimo al no requerirse del consentimiento de aquellas para tal actuación policial, independientemente de que en dichos aparatos existiera, como aduce la defensa técnica, elementos de importancia para la investigación que las perjudicaba. Ahora, otro aspecto procesal incontrovertido es que las encartadas no estuvieron presentes para el momento en que se realizó la apertura de sus teléfonos celulares (cfr. 44 a 46); no obstante, resulta improcedente el reclamo de la defensa técnica al señalar que tal ausencia se debió a una actuación deliberada e ilegítima de los investigadores judiciales. Nótese que el Juzgado Penal de Hatillo al autorizar el registro y examen de la información contenida en los soportes electrónicos de los aparatos telefónicos –resolución de las 13:20 horas del 08 de diciembre de 2015– dispuso que, aunque a [Nombre [Nombre3]] y [Nombre [Nombre4]] no se les tenía aún como imputadas formalmente, sí se les debía asignar un defensor público para que las representara en calidad de “sospechosas”. De ahí que, desde ese momento, como lo arguye la defensa técnica, aquellas tenían el derecho a participar en los actos que practicara el Ministerio Público o las autoridades judiciales, tendientes a la incorporación al proceso de elementos de prueba, como resultaba la apertura de los teléfonos celulares supra citada. Sin embargo, queda claro que su ausencia a la diligencia señalada no se debió a la inercia policial o a un afán de los investigadores judiciales por evitar que aquellas revelaran ante la autoridad jurisdiccional o su abogado defensor la forma en la que se decomisaron los dispositivos electrónicos, como lo aduce la defensa, sino debido a que [[Nombre1] ] y [[Nombre2] ] desde el 01 de diciembre de 2015 ya no eran localizables en el domicilio reportado a las autoridades de policía –San José, San Sebastián, de la Escuela Central [Dirección3] , vivienda a mano derecha color rosada con portones de color negro– y, pese a que se entrevistó a los vecinos, entre ellos a [Nombre46] para intentar ubicarlas, no se logró establecer su nueva morada porque se desconocía su paradero –ampliación del informe policial número 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 de folio 17 a 23–. Esto se corrobora del hecho de que luego se ubicó a las justiciables [[Nombre1] ] y [[Nombre2] ] residiendo en un sitio distinto al que habían señalado, sea en San José, Guadalupe, Mata de Plátano, [Dirección4] , del [Dirección5] (ampliación IV del informe número 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 a folio 609). Por consiguiente, el que las endilgadas no hayan estado presentes durante la apertura de sus teléfonos celulares no se debió a una actuación ilegítima de las autoridades policiales o del Ministerio Público, sino a la decisión libre y voluntaria de las endilgadas de modificar su domicilio sin reportarlo a las autoridades de policía –lo que impidió su localización–, pese a que, como lo declaró [Nombre43] , ya se les había informado que para tener acceso a la información que contenían los aparatos telefónicos se diligenciaría la orden jurisdiccional (cfr. folio 1932). Aunado a ello, no ha demostrado la defensa técnica de ninguno de los implicados (ni advertido esta cámara) cuál fue el agravio que se ocasionó con la no presencia de [Nombre47] y [[Nombre2] ] en tal diligencia, en tanto, como supra se explicó, el decomiso de los aparatos electrónicos resultó legítimo, el registro y examen de la información contenida en ellos estaba autorizado por orden jurisdiccional debidamente fundada y durante la diligencia siempre estuvo un defensor público que representó los intereses de las justiciables, sin que hasta este momento se haya indicado cuáles aspectos –distintos a la forma en que se entrevistó y decomisaron tales objetos– se hubieren alegado de haber estado aquellas presentes en tal diligencia, así como tampoco se ha precisado alguna incorrección o error en el ejercicio de la defensa técnica que participó en tal acto procesal, lo que descarta el agravio que se alega. De este modo, se verifica que con la entrevista de [[Nombre1] ] y [[Nombre2] ], el decomiso de sus dispositivos móviles y la apertura de dicha evidencia, no se lesionó los derechos fundamentales de las encartadas y, con ello, se descartan los vicios alegados por los defensores. B. En lo que respecta a la extracción de la información del teléfono del ofendido. Resulta ser un hecho incontrovertido el procedimiento empleado por las autoridades de policía y el Ministerio Público para acceder a la información privada contenida en el teléfono del ofendido [Nombre [Nombre5]], ya que sobre este aspecto del fallo no se realizó ningún reclamo, y las declaraciones de [Nombre32] , [Nombre48] y [[Nombre36] ] son contestes en cuanto al método utilizado para superar la contraseña del aparato electrónico. Así se estableció en la sentencia recurrida al indicarse: “[…] al respecto no existió controversia sobre el procedimiento llevado a cabo; el teléfono de [Nombre [Nombre5]] fue decomisado mediante acta de secuestro número 708829 en fecha 08 de octubre del 2015 a las 01:35 en el Hospital Calderón Guardia, según el informe 001-DCIFTT-IP-2015 se describe que es mediante coordinación con la fiscal [Nombre49] , y es precisamente esta representación fiscal quien dispuso realizar la apertura del teléfono por lo que así fue realizado en la Sección de Delitos Informáticos; tampoco fue controvertido que no existió una orden jurisdiccional que autorizara la apertura de dicho teléfono sino únicamente la disposición de la fiscal a cargo de la investigación; no existió controversia que al momento de la apertura del dispositivo móvil, el ofendido se encontraba hospitalizado, inconsciente, por lo que el perito de informática se hizo presente al centro médico y mediante al huella digital del ofendido, sin su consentimiento por su estado de salud, además que una vez que se tuvo acceso a la información, la misma fue respaldada y utilizada como prueba” (cfr. folio 1924). Consecuentemente, en síntesis, el alegato de impugnación radica en que el tribunal de instancia rechazó la actividad procesal defectuosa reclamada con una fundamentación ilegítima, por cuanto, pese a reconocer que se obtuvo la información del teléfono de la víctima sin su consentimiento y sin orden jurisdiccional que lo autorizara, siempre mantuvo la validez del acto a partir de que estimó, en forma equivocada, que no se lesionó el derecho a la intimidad del ofendido, ni se causó agravio a los encartados. De este modo, examinado el fallo emitido en cuanto a este extremo se puede advertir que, en un primer abordaje del tema, se indicó: “[…] esto lleva a valorar al Tribunal cual fue la verdadera afectación a la intimidad del ofendido, tomando en consideración que para ese momento se encontraba inconsciente, en un muy grave estado de salud que finalmente desencadeno en su muerte, es decir la intromisión a su intimidad no existió tal y como lo quiere hacer ver la defensa; podríamos hablar incluso de un consentimiento presunto al analizar que si la víctima estuviera con la posibilidad de dar el consentimiento, efectivamente lo hubiese dado porque era precisamente la persona afectada en este proceso y esa información eventualmente era útil para averiguar y determinar quien fue la persona que lo agredió. El Tribunal también ha analizado que no se trató de la intimidad del imputado o la intervención y representación del imputado ante determinado acto como lo establece el artículo 178 del Código Procesal Penal, sino que se trató de la víctima, víctima cuya representación la asume el Ministerio Publico como ente que tiene a cargo la búsqueda de lo que le ocurrió a esa víctima. El Tribunal considera que por tratarse de una víctima no se le ocasionó perjuicio por la actuación llevada a cabo por el Ministerio Público que se señala como ilícita […] el procedimiento que realizó el Ministerio Público aunque se considere temerario no representa un perjuicio para la víctima ni su intimidad, sino todo lo contrario, se trató de un trámite expedito para salvaguardar otro interés del ofendido como es reparación del daño provocado mediante la determinación de los autores de la agresión, agresión que al final desencadenó en la muerte del ofendido por lo tanto no se le afectó al final su privacidad puesto ya no tiene ese derecho” (cfr. folio 1925 a 1927). En este sentido, tal y como se argumenta por la quejosa, existe un yerro en la fundamentación que se otorgó para rechazar la actividad procesal defectuosa interpuesta por la defensa técnica, en tanto, parte el tribunal de juicio en forma errada de que la averiguación de la verdad real sobre la muerte de [Nombre [Nombre5]] y la determinación de sus autores justificaba al Ministerio Público para lesionar la intimidad de la víctima, olvidando que en el respeto a las garantías procesales mínimas que como derechos fundamentales tienen las personas sometidas a un proceso penal (artículo 8 de la Convención Americana sobre Derechos Humanos) se tiene implícito el principio del debido proceso, dentro del cual se dispone que los elementos de prueba sólo tendrán valor si han sido obtenidos por un medio lícito e incorporados al procedimiento conforme a las disposiciones legales correspondiente (artículo 181 del Código Procesal Penal. Así, resulta evidente que conforme con los principios de transcendencia e instrumentalidad que informan la actividad procesal defectuosa, el vicio advertido por el a quo es uno que causa un defecto en la forma en que se obtuvieron los documentos privados del teléfono de la víctima, por cuanto se realizó lesionado el derecho fundamental a la intimidad que cobijaba a [Nombre [Nombre5]]. En este orden, y tal y como se citó anteriormente, de conformidad con los artículos 1, 3 y 29 de la Ley N° 7425, sólo por orden jurisdiccional o contando con la autorización del titular del derecho se puede secuestrar, registras y examinar los documentos privados de una persona, independientemente de la calidad de parte que ostente dentro del proceso penal –imputado, víctima, testigo, etc.-, por lo que, si la policía judicial y el Ministerio Público requerían dentro de sus pesquisas tener acceso a la información que contenía el teléfono del perjudicado, debieron necesariamente solicitar al juez de la etapa preparatoria que lo autorizara, ya que resultaba notorio que el ofendido no podía extender su autorización debido a que se encontraba inconsciente. Asimismo, resulta ilegítimo el argumentar que dicha actividad de investigación es válida por cuanto el agraviado –con vida– hubiese autorizado el acceso a la información para que se esclarecieran los hechos cometidos en su perjuicio, por cuanto esto no es más que una especulación del órgano de sentencia que no tiene asidero probatorio alguno, debido a que si bien se puede establecer, aplicando las reglas de la experiencia, que las víctimas generalmente colaboran con las investigaciones de los hechos cometidos en su perjuicio, en el caso de estudio y tratándose de derechos fundamentales –el de la intimidad de las personas–, el consentimiento del titular simplemente no puede presumirse a efectos de justificar la actuación del ente acusador –extraer información privada del teléfono del ofendido–, más aún a sabiendas de que la prueba permitía inferir que [Nombre [Nombre5]] guardaba con recelo tal información, al punto que tenía asignada una clave –alfanumérica y biométrica– para acceder a esos archivos, lo cual impedía que cualquier persona –incluida la policía– pudiera observar y enterarse de lo que éste almacenaba electrónicamente. Véase que, si bien los oficiales de policía pueden tomar impresiones dactilares del imputado o cualquier persona para compararlas con rastros lofoscópicos localizados en el escenario del crimen –o para identificar a las personas– y así esclarecer los hechos relacionados con una causa penal en investigación, en el presente asunto la toma de la muestra dactilar se utilizó para tener acceso a la información que contenía el dispositivo móvil de la víctima, mientras se encontraba inconsciente en una cama de hospital sin poder expresar si estaba, o no, de acuerdo con el proceder judicial, y sin contarse con la autorización jurisdiccional que permitiera el acceder a tales documentos privados. No cabe duda entonces que la actuación de la policía judicial con dirección funcional del Ministerio Público resultó ser ilegal, lo que llevó a que se obtuviera en forma irregular información de importancia para la investigación (cfr. ampliación I del informe policial número 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 de folio 17 a 22) como lo fue: i. la amenaza que se esgrimió en contra de [Nombre [Nombre5]], según mensajes números 328 y 329, del teléfono 8397–8270 perteneciente a [Nombre [Nombre3]]; ii. la relación de mensajes entre [Nombre [Nombre5]] y [Nombre [Nombre4]], en especial, que el día anterior de los hechos se envió un mensaje de aquella en la que citaba a la víctima en el parque donde fue herido y otro en el que le reclama la forma en que actuó en la relación sentimental con su madre; iii. el contacto de [Nombre [Nombre4]] aparecía como “[Nombre [Nombre4]] hija”; iv. la existencia de mensajes entre [Nombre [Nombre4]] y [Nombre [Nombre5]] en donde aquella lo cita al parque donde aquel fue agredido, a sabiendas de que no iba a llegar porque ella y su madre se encontraban en la Clínica Bíblica y; v. fotografías entre [Nombre [Nombre5]] y [Nombre [Nombre3]] que revelan la relación sentimental que tenían ambos. Por lo que tampoco es cierta la afirmación que realizó el cuerpo deliberativo cuando indicó que el único elemento de prueba que se extrajo de dicho elemento probatorio lo fue los mensajes entre [Nombre [Nombre5]] y [Nombre [Nombre4]], ya que aunque esta información sí se pudo extraer en forma autónoma del aparato electrónico de aquella –es decir, por fuente independiente que la tornaría válida–, esto no ocurrió así con el resto de la información antes citada la cual sólo se extrajo del teléfono del agraviado y, que si bien no se utilizó para fundamentar el fallo recurrido, sí sirvió de base a la policía judicial para continuar con la investigación que llevaban a cabo. No obstante, pese a la ilegalidad de la obtención de la prueba mencionada, resulta improcedente la petición que realiza la defensa técnica, para que se excluya del caudal probatorio los elementos recabados de forma inapropiada y, con ello, el resto de los medios de prueba incorporados al contradictorio (doctrina de “los frutos del árbol envenenado”). Esto por cuanto, independientemente de lo espurio del actuar del Ministerio Público y la policía judicial, resultaba inevitable que tal información se obtuviera para efectos de continuar con las pesquisas que se desarrollaban. Así, conviene recordar que la regla de exclusión de la prueba ilícita por lesión de los derechos fundamentales no es de aplicación automática, ni se debe entender de forma absoluta o rígida, como lo pretende la recurrente, ya que existen excepciones que han tornado su aplicación más racional y proporcional en función de las circunstancias que concurran en el caso específico, como sucede con la teoría del hallazgo o descubrimiento inevitable, que permite otorgar eficacia a la prueba obtenida ilícitamente, siempre y cuando al resultado probatorio se haya podido llegar inevitablemente por el curso normal de la investigación. Esto no es extraño en nuestra jurisprudencia, en tanto se ha reiterado que: “…si se llegase a demostrar que la evidencia excluida por derivar de un quebrantamiento constitucional se habría descubierto u obtenido en forma inevitable o segura a partir de las investigaciones legítimas que ya se estaban llevando a cabo en ese momento, aquella será válida. Tal es la situación que se nos presenta en el caso de marras, donde… la maleta como tal, incluyendo obviamente su contenido, ya había sido secuestrada por las autoridades de policía con la debida fiscalización del juez penal (e incluso con la presencia del representantes del Ministerio Público y de la Defensa Pública), de modo que la acción desplegada por el coencartado… quien la abrió mediante el uso de la respectiva llave, en nada alteró el resultado de la investigación ya en curso”. (Sala Tercera de la Corte Suprema de Justicia, resolución 125-2000, de las 10:36 horas del 2 de febrero de 2000). Por consiguiente, en estos supuesto lo que debe privar es que las investigaciones que se estaban llevando a cabo hubieran conducido inexorablemente a la obtención independiente de la prueba. Esto, sin duda alguna fue lo que ocurrió en la especie, ya que, aún suprimiendo hipotéticamente esta actuación irregular, siempre persistiría el decomiso del teléfono celular de la víctima, por cuanto se efectuó conforme a las atribuciones que la ley le concede a los investigadores judiciales y en apego al procedimiento descrito por la norma (artículo 198 del Código Procesal Penal). Sin omitir que además se contaba con la entrevista de [Nombre [Nombre26]] quien advertía que a [Nombre [Nombre5]] lo había amenazado de muerte una persona conocida como “[[Nombre50] ] con la que éste había mantenido una relación sentimental. En este orden, la necesidad de obtener los mensajes e información que contenía el aparato telefónico era notoria y la intervención judicial en este sentido era inminente, por lo que no existía otra forma de continuar con la investigación, sino era con la apertura de la evidencia decomisada. De ahí que de haberse solicitado como correspondía y debía hacerlo el Ministerio Público, al juez penal competente el registro y examen de los documentos privados que estaban contenidos dentro del dispositivo móvil del ofendido, el órgano acusador y los investigadores judiciales siempre hubiesen entrado en conocimiento de la misma información, lo que demuestra que en el particular la prueba obtenida de forma ilícita conservó su validez y, por ende, resultaba improcedente su exclusión. En consecuencia, lo procedente es declarar sin lugar los reclamos planteados sobre estos extremos.\"",
  "body_en_text": "\"II. - [...] The defects are non-existent. Thus, having examined the appealed judgment, which is in written format (cf. folios 1910 to 2113) and the records of the trial that preceded it, this chamber can verify that, although somewhat sui generis procedures were presented in obtaining the evidence, none of these methods violated the fundamental rights of the accused [[Nombre1] ] and [[Nombre2] ], or incurred in defects that have caused harm to their interests in the exercise of their right of defense. Thus, A. Regarding the interview of [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]], the seizure of their mobile devices and the obtaining of the information contained therein. In the sub judice case, as established by the trial court when it resolved the defective procedural activities presented by defense counsel (cf. folios 1914 to 1923), the following facts and procedural background can be taken as true: i. [Nombre [Nombre5]] was attacked at approximately 7:24 p.m. on October 7, 2015, in the San Sebastián sector, from where he was transferred in delicate condition to the Calderón Guardia Hospital, a place where he was admitted with a report of a stab wound at the level of the left thorax; ii. Officers from the Special Duty Investigations Section (Sección de Investigaciones de Turno Extraordinario, SITE) appeared at said hospital, including witness [Nombre6], to gather general information about the incident, however, upon verifying the health status of the aggrieved party, they could not interview him, which is why they proceeded to speak with his relatives and, especially, as described in police report number 628–IP–SITE–2015, with [[Nombre7] ], who stated in her declaration that [[Nombre8] ] had been threatened by a woman known as “[[Nombre1] ]”, who apparently maintained a romantic relationship with the victim; iii. From the declaration of [Nombre9] it could be inferred that on October 8, 2015, he was assigned the case of the attack on [[Nombre8] ] by his superiors and, for this reason, he met with colleagues from the SITE from whom he received the initial report and learned that there were three lines of investigation, the first related to a recording made by the victim days before the events and that was published on Facebook of a subject engaging in street harassment, said subject's name was [Nombre10] and he was considered a suspect in the attack on [[Nombre8] ]; the second concerned a possible assault in which the victim was chosen at random; and the third line of investigation or motive was related to a possible love affair and passionate entanglement with a woman known as “[[Nombre1] ]”: iv. That while officer [Nombre11] analyzed the report and met with the investigators of the Special Duty Section, his superior, independently, in the person of Lic. [Nombre12] , arranged for other colleagues to conduct interviews; v. Officers [Nombre13] and [Nombre14] , as the former testified, without knowing many details about the investigation, were assigned by their superior –not by [Nombre15]– to perform the victimology of [[Nombre8] ], which consisted of delving into details about his life, so they went to his workplace at the Santa Clara Bakery, with the intention of speaking with the owner of the establishment and also seizing the “DVR” or video from the business to analyze if it provided any evidence, and at the site they spoke with several people, including one who was near the bakery who informed them that the victim had a relationship with a woman named “[[Nombre1] ]”, who was from the area and even showed them the house where she lived; vi. That same day, said judicial investigators appeared at the residence of [[Nombre1] ], where they entered with her consent and proceeded to interview her regarding the attack perpetrated against [[Nombre8] ], [Nombre16] asserting that at that time they had no knowledge that she had arranged the plan to kill the victim, but quite the opposite, that she was a person close to the victim with whom he had maintained a romantic relationship for the last three months, and by whom the accused [[Nombre1] ], she indicated, suspected she was pregnant; vii. In said interview, when [Nombre [Nombre3]] was advising investigator [Nombre16] that she had received threats on her phone because of her relationship with [[Nombre8] ] and that these were from a woman who was the victim's girlfriend, as well as the existence of calls from private numbers asking about her relationship with the victim; the accused [Nombre [Nombre4]], who was at the same place, constantly interrupted stating that she had also been sent threat messages related to the victim; viii. The judicial investigators [Nombre17] and [Nombre18], as a result of the information provided by [[Nombre1] ] and her daughter [[Nombre2] ] , regarding the threats that both had received on their phones, proceeded to seize the mobile devices of said defendants through seizure reports number 718758 and 718757, visible on folios 97 and 98. Thus, regarding the accreditation of these police procedures –and not about their legality, as this aspect will be discussed later–, the public defender questions as “crude” and contrary to the rules of sound criticism that it be considered demonstrated that officers [Nombre17] and [Nombre18] did not know that the people interviewed during the visit of the SITE officers to the Calderón Guardia Hospital, precisely on the day the aggrieved party [[Nombre8] ] was admitted to said place –October 7, 2015–, knew that the defendant [[Nombre1] ] had threatened the aggrieved party with death via telephone, because, in her opinion, officer [Nombre9] , initially in his deposition, argued that he had accompanied [Nombre17] and [Nombre18] in those procedures, and accepted that he knew of the previous investigation carried out by the SITE investigators. However, having examined the appealed judgment, especially the descriptive foundation of the declarations of officers [Nombre11] and [Nombre17], and the intellectual assessment that the trial court made of such evidence, this chamber can verify that the conclusion reached by the public defense is capricious and arbitrary, as it presents no support whatsoever in the declaration of said officers and, even less so, in the rules of experience or logic that she claims were violated. Note that it can be started from that [Nombre9] testified initially –what the appellant calls a spontaneous statement– that: “That same day, October 8, we approached the bakery and there were no cameras, but we located an informant who stated that she did know [Nombre [Nombre5]] , that she knew him and [Nombre [Nombre3]], for that reason I considered it important to locate this woman known as [Nombre [Nombre3]], this procedure was carried out by two other officers, they located the house near the school in San Sebastián, they identified this person with the name [Nombre [Nombre3]] , they interviewed her as part of an investigation that was just beginning, at her home she indicated that she did know that [Nombre [Nombre5]] was going to be interviewed by a media outlet, indicated that [Nombre [Nombre5]] wrote to the daughter of [Nombre [Nombre3]] who identified herself as [Nombre [Nombre4]] , that they were going to see each other at the house but that later they found out that [Nombre [Nombre5]] had been attacked. They indicated that at the time of the event [Nombre [Nombre3]] felt unwell and had to be transferred to the Clínica Bíblica showing a receipt for the care at the Clínica Bíblica, the receipt indicated that she was assessed before eight at night. It was decided to seize the phones of both women, a seizure report was given to them” (cf. folio 1931. Verbatim copy. The highlighting is not from the original). However, it is evident that from this statement it cannot be inferred, as the complainant intends, that [Nombre19] was the one who ordered that [[Nombre1] ] be interviewed, or that he was the one who ordered the seizure of her cell phone and the communication device of [[Nombre2] ]. This is because it is clear from said declaration that, in those first manifestations, the deponent was providing a general explanation of the police actions carried out by the group of officers handling the matter, and not asserting that he participated in each and every one of the procedures he described. This is consistent with police report No. 01–DCIFTT–IP–2015 (cf. folios 1 to 14) where it was recorded that on October 8, 2015, report number 628–IP–SITE–2015 was received, and although it was initially mentioned in that document that on that day investigators [Nombre20] , [Nombre21] , [Nombre13] , [Nombre22] and [Nombre9] visited the scene of the events, proceeded to locate surveillance cameras and interviewed possible witnesses, a detailed reading of said report can corroborate which actions each of them carried out and how they did so separately. Thus, it was [Nombre21] who located them at the scene of the attack, while everyone undertook the task of interviewing –individually– possible witnesses, among them [Nombre23] , [Nombre24] and [Nombre25] . Furthermore, it was [Nombre9] who located at the scene a video camera that belonged to the Municipality of San José, and coordinated what was necessary to find out if information could be obtained from it; as well as with surveillance cameras that were in the [Dirección1] sector and at the [Dirección2] business. Subsequently, [Nombre22] and [Nombre19] were the ones who went to the Dr. Calderón Guardia Hospital to interview [Nombre [Nombre26]] . This while [Nombre13] and [Nombre27] visited the Bakery named Santa Clara, where a security video was located that was seized and, later, they proceeded to investigate the woman known as “[[Nombre1] ]”, whom they interviewed at her residence thanks to the location provided by an informant and which allowed them to seize her cell phone and that of her daughter [[Nombre2] ]. Consequently, the assertion made by [Nombre19] that: “Regarding investigators [Nombre28] and [Nombre29] , it was the superior [Nombre12] who instructed them to interview [Nombre [Nombre3]] and her daughter. Regarding the seizure of the cell phones, there was no order, they were the ones who seized them, those cell phones were delivered to me sealed, labeled, with signatures and chains of custody, original and copy reports, it was entered into the control book and they delivered the seized evidence duly sealed, that evidence was sealed in a plastic bag with tape and the chain of custody; the seizure reports for those cell phones were made at the house of [[Nombre1] ] and [[Nombre2] ]. The seizure reports on folio 97 and 98, I don't remember what was noted in the seizure reports, but when information is corroborated, they are always given the reference case number, that information was provided to them by Lic. [Nombre12] ” (cf. folio 1940), is not contrary to logic or the rules of experience, which explain that in team-performed tasks it is feasible for tasks to be distributed to complete the assigned work, especially in initial police investigation acts where human resources are scarce. Above all, when such deposition was also corroborated by the testimony of [Nombre13] , who in effect acknowledged that: “Paul [Nombre11] did not instruct us to locate [[Nombre1] ], rather it was [Nombre30] the boss to do victimology. I did not visit the place in the company of [Nombre31] or SITE colleagues. I did not review initial reports from [Nombre32] . [...] That person [Nombre30] who assigned me the investigation, is the head of the Unit for Crimes Against Physical Integrity, she assigns investigations and tells us what to do. I did not know the SITE report. The unique number is the case file number, it was a case file number to carry out seizures and traces for that case” (cf. folio 1979). The foregoing allows one to infer that the conclusion reached by the trial court, that officer [Nombre16] did not know that the relatives of [[Nombre8] ] had reported that [[Nombre1] ] had threatened the victim with death, this before she was interviewed and her cell phone was seized, is not unfounded, nor does it violate the logical principle of sufficient reason as claimed. This is because police officers participating in an investigation cannot be required to impose upon themselves and know all the information that other investigators obtain during inquiries, even more so when, as in the sub judice case, those who interviewed the family of the victim were police officers from a different section –SITE– than the one to which [Nombre16] and [Nombre33] belonged –Crimes Against Life–; and although the preliminary report cited was sent to the section where the latter are part, it was never accredited that [Nombre17] and [Nombre18] met with the officers of the Special Duty Unit, or that in said section there was a discussion about the report rendered by those who interviewed the family of the deceased and that [Nombre28] and [Nombre34] participated in it. As things stand, the fact that the defense asserts that the judicial police officers who interviewed [[Nombre1] ] and [[Nombre2] ] did so with the intent to mislead them, in order to obtain privileged information and connect them with the crime under investigation, and the assertion that the declaration of [Nombre35] was accommodated to coincide with that provided by investigator [Nombre9] regarding who decided that the defendants be interviewed, are nothing more than speculations that have no support whatsoever in the evidence received, and as such are insufficient to modify what was resolved. Note that, from the interview of [[Nombre1] ] it was only obtained that: “she was the romantic partner of the victim [[Nombre8] ] , for three months, having met him at the bakery named Santa Clara, since said male works there. [...] [Nombre [Nombre5]] told her that he was not married and that he had a daughter and that he had a pregnant girl and doubted the paternity; she indicated that the victim's mother, named [[Nombre36] ] called her and told her that the only daughter-in-law was [[Nombre7] ] [...] but the interviewee [...] said that the victim swore to her at some point that he was no longer with that woman. She added that [Nombre [Nombre26]] sent threatening messages to her phone number, specifically to 6114–9732 and she often received threatening messages from the sister of [[Nombre7] ] whose name she does not identify, but messages came from phone number 7013–7419, those messages were sent to her via WhatsApp or outside of it. In addition, she noted that she was unaware of the video published on Facebook by the victim. [...] that on October 7, 2015, her daughter named [[Nombre2] ] had received a message and a call from the victim [[Nombre8] ] telling her that they were going to interview him on a television channel and if it could be done at her home, but the victim never arrived, later it was learned that [Nombre [Nombre5]] had been wounded. [...] that she, feeling her blood pressure low, went to the Clínica Bíblica in downtown San José to have a check-up and control her pressure and her daughter [[Nombre2] ] had accompanied her” (cf. police report No. 001–DCIFTT–2015 on folio 8 and the declaration of [Nombre13] ). The foregoing shows that [[Nombre1] ] was really consulted about the life of [[Nombre8] ], as the cited investigators referred –for purposes of conducting victimology inquiries– and that she was never questioned about the death threats that [[Nombre7] ] and [Nombre37] indicated she had made to the aggrieved party, which is a further piece of evidence that at that stage of the investigation, the accused [[Nombre1] ] was not questioned as a suspect or imputed person, but rather because she was a person who had maintained a romantic relationship with the victim –regardless of whether an individual written report was made by [Nombre13]–, which, without a doubt, rules out the defect alluded to by the complainant and confirms that the conclusion reached by the a quo, regarding the non-existence of absolute defects in the interview of the accused and the seizure of the cell phones, is duly substantiated. However, even hypothetically assuming that the mentioned police officers knew that the family of [Nombre [Nombre5]] had stated that [[Nombre1] ] threatened the victim with death, this was irrelevant for the purpose of classifying her –at that moment– as a person suspected in the victim's attack and, even less so, of attributing such illicit conduct to her daughter [[Nombre2] ], because no one had mentioned her as of October 7, 2015. Thus, for a correct solution to the reproach raised, it is essential to define who is an imputed person and how such condition is acquired, since from that moment onward, all defense rights prescribed by article 82 of the Code of Rite will be granted, including the possibility of abstaining from declaring, of not offering self-incriminating evidence, and of having a technical defender to advise them from that first stage of investigation (article 13 ibid.). In this sense, it is worth remembering that article 81 of the Criminal Procedure Code provides that: \"A person shall be called imputed who, through any act of investigation or procedure, is singled out as a possible perpetrator of a punishable act or participant in it\". This means that not just any singling out of a person within an investigation or process has the capacity to define whether a person is imputed or not, but only that which relates them as a possible perpetrator of a punishable act or participant in it. Hence, except for cases of flagrancy where the perpetrator of the punishable act is caught in the act of committing it or immediately thereafter, or while being pursued, or is found with objects or traces that strongly presume they have just participated in a crime (article 237 ibid.), or in those matters where the filing of the complaint or accusation for a public action crime already includes a direct accusation against the person to whom the authorship of the acts is attributed (articles 76 and 280 ibid.), in the remaining cases such procedural or investigative act is not expressly defined, but rather it will be in each particular situation that it must be individualized by the operators of the criminal justice system, especially by the judicial police, the Public Prosecutor's Office, and the judging persons who participate in the preparatory stage. This is because, if a mistaken precision of such act is incurred, fundamental rights could be affected that would make the obtaining of the evidence illegitimate, due to the obligation such authorities have to make the accused aware of the rights that protect them (article 82 ibid.) and their duty to adapt their actions in accordance with the procedural guarantees required by the international instruments in force in the country, the Political Constitution, and legal provisions. In the specific case, as is clear from report No. 628–IP–SITE–2015 (cf. folio 89 to 92), the investigators of the Special Duty Unit spoke with Public Force officers [Nombre38] and [Nombre39] , who advised that the version they managed to obtain from the people at the site was that: “[...] a black Honda vehicle arrived, from which two subjects got out and one of them pulled out a dagger and attacked the young man [[Nombre8] ]”. They also questioned [Nombre [Nombre26]] , the victim's romantic partner, who told them, among other things, that Channel 6 people were going to interview [Nombre [Nombre5]] , due to him having become famous on Facebook for recording a subject who was recording a woman, this was told to him by [[Nombre8] ]'s co-worker named [Nombre40], she does not know if the problem stems or comes from the fame he acquired or rather thinks it may be because [Nombre [Nombre5]] had a love affair with a woman from the bakery vicinity, [Nombre41]. [Nombre [Nombre3]] who is much older than him and when this relationship ended she threatened him with death but told him that she was not going to get her hands bloody, she does not know where this woman lives or how the problem ended”. In turn, they interviewed [Nombre42] , the victim's co-worker, who mentioned: “[Nombre [Nombre5]] told her that said interview would be at [[Nombre1] ]'s (woman with whom [[Nombre8] ] had an affair) however it was almost 7:00 p.m. and the bakery was closed and [[Nombre8] ] was still outside, she said goodbye to him and went home” . Finally, as said police report mentions, they also spoke with [Nombre37] who mentioned “that her nephew had a lover, around the bakery where he worked and apparently her nephew decided to leave that woman, so she calls the house and threatened his wife and the threat saying she was going to get revenge ([[Nombre8] ]'s partner)”. In this way, it is clear that at the time the SITE officers conducted the initial interviews with possible witnesses – in the evening hours of October 7, 2015–, what existed within the investigation was the hypothesis that a woman known as “[[Nombre1] ]”, about whom no further details were known, other than she was a neighbor near the bakery where [[Nombre8] ] worked, had sent him telephone messages threatening him with death. However, said hypothesis did not even have, at those moments of the investigation, solid evidentiary or circumstantial support that would justify singling out [[Nombre1] ] as the possible perpetrator of the attack that [[Nombre8] ] had suffered, since from the same source that provided said hypothesis also arose its antithesis, as [Nombre [Nombre26]] clarified that she did not know if the attack had been perpetrated because of that romantic relationship or the fame the victim had gained due to a street harassment complaint he made. Precisely, this lack of evidence that would allow a well-founded suspicion or to single out [[Nombre1] ] as the possible perpetrator of the attack on [[Nombre8] ] persisted for the day of October 8, 2015, because [Nombre9] confirmed that he received the police report from his SITE colleagues and met with them in the morning hours, a period in which the three lines of investigation they had determined still remained, the first related to the recording the victim made days before the events and which was published on Facebook of a subject engaging in street harassment, within which a subject known as [Nombre10] was suspected; another about a possible assault in which the victim was chosen at random; and the last linked to a possible love affair and passionate entanglement with a woman known as “[Nombre [Nombre3]] ”. Furthermore, it can be noted from the testimony of officer [Nombre43] that the information indicated had changed by the time [Nombre16] and [Nombre33] decided to identify [[Nombre1] ], since the only new thing that existed was that “ That same day, October 8, we approached the bakery and there were no cameras, but we located an informant who stated that she did know [Nombre [Nombre5]] , that she knew him and [Nombre [Nombre3]]” (cf. folio 1931), while [Nombre16] added that: “[...] being in that place, a person approached us, he did not want to be identified, victimology is to delve into the life of the victim, relatives, friends, see what he did, a man told us that [Nombre [Nombre5]] used to visit a friend, with whom he had a relationship, he took us to the house of a woman named [Nombre [Nombre3]], he pointed out the house to us” (cf. folio 1979). That is, the information that [Nombre [Nombre3]], known as [Nombre [Nombre3]], had a love affair with the victim and that there had been threatening messages from the former to the aggrieved party was maintained, which, it is insisted, at that moment in the investigation could not even be classified as an indication –critical logical judgment by means of which a rule of experience is applied to a known fact, in order to infer another fact until then unknown (cf. Third Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, resolution No. 2003–1050 of 10:10 a.m. on November 21, 2003)–, insofar as the first of the facts, the indicator –the death threats–, had not yet been reliably verified, because all that existed were references to what the victim had stated to his relatives regarding his romantic relationship with [Nombre [Nombre3]], without omitting that, at that time, even the information available was that the attackers of the victim had been two males, so logically and objectively it can be established that [Nombre [Nombre3]] did not even have the status of a suspect. This is consistent with police report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 (cf. folios 1 to 14), where it is verified that by the time the interview of the accused [[Nombre1] ] was conducted, before 1:00 p.m. on October 8, 2015 (as is clear from the time at which her cell phone was seized according to report No. 718758 on folio 97), there were no other pieces of evidence that would change her status to imputed or suspect in the events, even more so when, upon interviewing [[Nombre7] ] again, all she added to the previously provided information was the telephone number [Telf1] as belonging to “[Nombre [Nombre3]]”. Consequently, in accordance with the landscape of the investigation being conducted, there were no well-founded suspicions that [Nombre [Nombre3]] , and even less her daughter [Nombre [Nombre4]], were related to the attack that [[Nombre8] ] had suffered and, on that basis, the investigators could not be required to treat them as persons suspected of having committed a crime, to warn them of their right to abstain from declaring, or to be provided with technical advice for their defense, as the appellant intends. On the other hand, it is claimed that the seizure that the judicial police carried out of the cell phones of the now accused was illegitimate, because despite the investigators knowing that they were imputed, they were never warned that they had the right not to provide evidence against themselves. However, such claim is inadmissible, not only because, as stated supra, when the mobile devices were seized there did not yet exist any indication that would generate a well-founded suspicion of the participation of the accused in the armed attack that the victim had suffered, which prevented the police officers from treating them as imputed or suspects and warning them of their rights as such, but because the seizure procedure does not require the authorization of the owner or possessor of the article to legitimize its confiscation (article 198 of the Criminal Procedure Code), so it is irrelevant whether [[Nombre1] ] and [[Nombre2] ] gave their consent or not for such procedure to be carried out. Note that, even starting from the appellant's thesis, that the police interviewed [[Nombre1] ] despite knowing that she was a person suspected of having committed the acts against the victim, and that the reason for concealing such status from her was to illegitimately obtain information that she had been threatened by phone because of her relationship with [[Nombre8] ] and that, in accordance with this invalid method, the seizure of the accused's phone was achieved by estimating that there could be traces of the crime investigated there –which, it is insisted, is a thesis that was not demonstrated–, the legitimacy of seizing the accused's communication device would still persist, since, even hypothetically suppressing her interview, an independent source would still persist indicating that there could be information of interest for the investigation on her phone, as the interview of [[Nombre7] ] was already available at that time, who had indicated, as the appellant reiterates in her claim, that [Nombre [Nombre3]] had brandished threats toward her romantic partner.\n\nHence, it was reasonable and proportionate to the purposes of the investigation for investigators [Nombre17] and [Nombre18] to seize that telephone device in order to preserve the information pertinent to the inquiries being carried out, regardless of whether the now accused agreed or not. In the case of the seizure of the cell phone of the accused [[Nombre2]], although there was no independent source, aside from her statements to the police, that mentioned that said device was an object related to the crime under investigation or that it could serve as a means of proof, it cannot be overlooked that when her mother [Nombre [Nombre3]] was interviewed, [Nombre [Nombre4]] was not identified as someone who had a relationship with [Nombre [Nombre5]], much less as a suspect or participant in the bladed-weapon aggression that he suffered; indeed, officer [Nombre16] was emphatic in pointing out that she was not the person being interviewed, but rather that the information obtained from her was because she interrupted the dialogue they were having with her mother. He stated this when he reported: “During the time we were talking, we spoke with [Nombre [Nombre3]], but the daughter [Nombre [Nombre4]] kept butting in, she answered a lot and answered certain conversations. She had a younger daughter and we asked her to leave with [Nombre [Nombre4]], but she did not want to; [Nombre [Nombre3]] told us that she had received threatening messages directed at her; we found that lead useful; she told us she did not remember when they called to threaten her; we knew the case superficially, we did not know the background beyond the video of the man from the Treasury. It was said that it was an assault and revenge for the video. […] [Nombre [Nombre4]] interrupted a lot, she mentioned that she had also received messages related to [Nombre [Nombre5]]. I do not remember if it was recorded because the phones were seized. [Nombre [Nombre4]]'s attitude at that moment was not suspicious” (cf. folios 1979 and 1980. Verbatim copy). Consequently, the information that the defendant [[Nombre2]] provided to the judicial investigators, as the lower court held, was not preceded by the violation of any of her fundamental rights, nor was she coerced or deceived into providing data that would harm her mother, or herself; rather, her statements were spontaneous and consented to and, therefore, valid for the police to determine that her phone could serve as a means of proof, and thus there was legitimacy for them to proceed with the seizure of such an electronic device. In addition to this, it is also not observed that during the interview of the accused, statements were made that would lead one to presume that they had to be treated as formally accused or, at least, as suspects of the events that occurred, and that for that reason, investigators [Nombre16] and [Nombre33] should have informed them of the procedural guarantees that protected them, since, from a simple examination of the statements that [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] provided to the judicial authorities, it can be noted that they never claimed to have had any kind of participation or link in the events; on the contrary, what the accused argued was that they had been victims of threats for having a relationship –sentimental for [Nombre [Nombre3]] and friendship for [Nombre [Nombre4]]– with [Nombre [Nombre5]]. Hence the interest that prevailed in the Judicial Police, as officer [Nombre44] reported, in collecting and preserving said devices to obtain information that would allow the clarification of the victim's death and prevent the traces of the crime from being lost. In this sense, while we agree with the defense of the accused in that police agents must carry out their work under “the direction and control of the prosecutor in charge of the investigation” (article 283 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), which, in the case of the seizure of the electronic devices, did not exist, because the decision to seize such phones arose from the officers directing the proceeding themselves and not by order of the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office, this does not mean, as the appellant seems to understand, that the absence of said functional direction for the specific act is sufficient to render the collection of said objects illegitimate, since one cannot forget that the Judicial Investigation Agency, on its own initiative, by complaint, or by order of the competent authority, has the jurisdiction to proceed to investigate crimes subject to public prosecution, to prevent the committed acts from leading to further consequences, to identify and preventively apprehend the presumed culprits, and to gather, secure, and scientifically order the evidence and other necessary records for the investigation. Hence, among its powers is ordering that objects related to the crime, those subject to confiscation, and those that may serve as a means of proof be collected and preserved, without requiring a prior judicial order or authorization from the Public Prosecutor's Office for their seizure (articles 3 and 4, subsections 5 and 10, of the Organic Law of the Judicial Investigation Agency and articles 198 and 285 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). In addition to this, the seizure of the mobile phone should not be confused with the search or examination of the private information contained within it. This is because Law No. 7425, entitled Registration and seizure of private documents and intervention of communications, in its first article, provides that: “…private documents are considered to be: epistolary correspondence, by fax, telex, telematics or any other means; videos, cassettes, magnetic tapes, disks, diskettes, writings, books, memorials, records, plans, drawings, charts, x-rays, photographs and any other form of recording information of a private nature, used for representative or declarative purposes, to illustrate or prove something” (highlighting is not from the original), within which, although text messages, call logs, images, audio files, documents, contact lists, etc., can be included as digital documents contained in the memory of the electronic storage medium, the physical device cannot be granted the status of a private document, but only the digital information that it contains and which, due to its intangible nature, is impossible to seize or obtain unless it is captured through equally digital methods. Therefore, while the seizure, search, and examination of digital information requires a duly substantiated jurisdictional order that authorizes legitimately restricting the right to privacy of the persons involved (article 3 of Law No. 7425), this is not necessary for the seizure of the telephone device, since as a simple object it can be seized by police disposition within a criminal investigation, as long as it is proven that the private information contained therein is kept in custody and protected from illegitimate intrusions, either due to the absence of a jurisdictional order or the lack of express consent from the holder of the right to privacy being protected. In this specific case, it is not only proven that the Judicial Police seized the cell phones of [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] through seizure records numbers 718758 and 718757 (cf. folios 97 and 98), but that these were delivered to [Nombre32], as said officer stated, duly packaged in plastic bags with tape, labeled, with signatures and chain of custody, along with the original seizure record and a copy (cf. folio 1940), which was also verified when, with prior jurisdictional authorization –court order of 1:20 p.m. on December 8, 2015, from the Criminal Court of Hatillo, visible on folios 30 to 34– the opening of such evidence was carried out, with the description that they were delivered by [Nombre9] in “a transparent plastic bag duly packaged and sealed, identified with the case number and the parties. Likewise, a single chain of custody slip for the evidence” (cf. folio 44). In this way, it is verified that from the seizure of the telephone devices until the extraction of the information by the computer technicians of the Judicial Police, in the presence of the Criminal Guarantees Judge, the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office, and licensed attorney [Nombre45] in the capacity of public defender assigned to [[Nombre1]] and [[Nombre2]], these devices remained sealed and the information free from illegitimate access, so the right to privacy of the defendants was not affected by the seizure of the telephone devices carried out by the judicial investigators. This being the case, it is ruled out that in this instance there was a violation of articles 36 of the Political Constitution and 205 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, since the police officers never interrogated [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] as suspects or formally accused of the aggression suffered by [[Nombre8]], given that at the time they did so, there was no reasonable suspicion of their participation in the events, and their interview was conducted for the purpose of carrying out a victimological study and to ascertain if they could be witnesses of the events that occurred, before which, they even positioned themselves as alleged victims of other death threats directed at them, which precluded the Judicial Police from even presuming their direct participation in the events, especially when the crime report indicated that those who attacked [[Nombre8]] were male persons and not females. Likewise, as the lower court held, there is no indication whatsoever to suggest that officers [Nombre17] and [Nombre18] entered the dwelling of the defendants [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] illegitimately and against their will, since not only do said officers agree that it was the accused who authorized them to enter as part of an interview they would conduct with them as possible witnesses –which is consistent with the rules of experience– but also none of the accused has stated otherwise, given that the only thing they alleged regarding this aspect was that the officers forced them to hand over their cell phones, which, by the legal nature of the seizure of objects (article 198 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), is not illegitimate since the consent of those persons is not required for such police action, regardless of whether, as the technical defense argues, those devices contained elements of importance for the investigation that harmed them. Now, another undisputed procedural aspect is that the accused were not present at the time the opening of their cell phones was carried out (cf. 44 to 46); however, the claim of the technical defense that such absence was due to a deliberate and illegitimate action by the judicial investigators is unfounded. Note that the Criminal Court of Hatillo, when authorizing the search and examination of the information contained in the electronic storage media of the telephone devices –court order of 1:20 p.m. on December 8, 2015– ordered that, although [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] were not yet formally deemed accused, a public defender should be assigned to represent them as “suspects.” Hence, from that moment, as the technical defense argues, they had the right to participate in the acts carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office or the judicial authorities, aimed at incorporating elements of proof into the process, such as the aforementioned opening of the cell phones. However, it is clear that their absence from the indicated proceeding was not due to police inaction or a desire by the judicial investigators to prevent them from revealing to the jurisdictional authority or their defense attorney the manner in which the electronic devices were seized, as the defense argues, but because [[Nombre1]] and [[Nombre2]], as of December 1, 2015, could no longer be located at the address reported to the police authorities –San José, San Sebastián, from the Central School [Dirección3], a pink house on the right-hand side with black gates– and, despite interviewing neighbors, among them [Nombre46], in an attempt to locate them, their new dwelling could not be established because their whereabouts were unknown –supplement to police report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 from folio 17 to 23–. This is corroborated by the fact that the defendants [[Nombre1]] and [[Nombre2]] were later located residing at a different site from the one they had indicated, namely in San José, Guadalupe, Mata de Plátano, [Dirección4], from [Dirección5] (supplement IV to report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 on folio 609). Consequently, the fact that the accused were not present during the opening of their cell phones was not due to an illegitimate action by the police authorities or the Public Prosecutor's Office, but rather to the free and voluntary decision of the accused to change their address without reporting it to the police authorities –which prevented their location–, despite the fact that, as [Nombre43] declared, they had already been informed that to access the information contained in the telephone devices, a jurisdictional order would be processed (cf. folio 1932). In addition to this, the technical defense of any of the implicated parties has not demonstrated (nor has this chamber observed) what the grievance was that was caused by the non-presence of [Nombre47] and [[Nombre2]] in that proceeding, given that, as explained above, the seizure of the electronic devices was legitimate, the search and examination of the information contained in them was authorized by a duly substantiated jurisdictional order, and during the proceeding a public defender was always present representing the interests of the defendants, and until now it has not been indicated which aspects –different from the manner in which such objects were interviewed and seized– would have been alleged had they been present at that proceeding, nor has any inaccuracy or error been specified in the exercise of the technical defense that participated in that procedural act, which rules out the alleged grievance. In this way, it is verified that with the interview of [[Nombre1]] and [[Nombre2]], the seizure of their mobile devices, and the opening of said evidence, the fundamental rights of the accused were not harmed and, consequently, the defects alleged by the defenders are dismissed. B. Regarding the extraction of information from the victim's phone. The procedure employed by the police authorities and the Public Prosecutor's Office to access the private information contained in the phone of the victim [Nombre [Nombre5]] is an undisputed fact, since no claim was made regarding this aspect of the ruling, and the statements of [Nombre32], [Nombre48], and [[Nombre36]] are consistent regarding the method used to bypass the electronic device's password. This was established in the appealed judgment by stating: “[…] in this regard, there was no controversy about the procedure carried out; the phone of [Nombre [Nombre5]] was seized through seizure record number 708829 on October 8, 2015, at 1:35 a.m. at the Calderón Guardia Hospital; according to report 001-DCIFTT-IP-2015, it is described as being through coordination with prosecutor [Nombre49], and it is precisely this prosecutorial representative who ordered the opening of the phone, which was thus carried out in the Computer Crimes Section; it was also not disputed that there was no jurisdictional order authorizing the opening of said phone, but only the disposition of the prosecutor in charge of the investigation; there was no controversy that at the time of the opening of the mobile device, the victim was hospitalized, unconscious, so the computer forensic expert appeared at the medical center and using the victim's fingerprint, without his consent due to his state of health; furthermore, once access to the information was obtained, it was backed up and used as evidence” (cf. folio 1924). Consequently, in summary, the challenge argument lies in the fact that the trial court rejected the claimed defective procedural activity with illegitimate reasoning, because, despite recognizing that the information from the victim's phone was obtained without his consent and without a jurisdictional order authorizing it, it upheld the validity of the act on the basis that it erroneously considered that the victim's right to privacy was not harmed, nor was any grievance caused to the accused. In this way, upon examining the ruling issued on this point, it can be observed that, in a first approach to the issue, it was stated: “[…] this leads the Court to assess what the true affectation to the victim's privacy was, taking into consideration that at that moment he was unconscious, in a very serious state of health that finally triggered his death; that is, there was no intrusion into his privacy as the defense tries to portray; we could even speak of presumed consent when analyzing that if the victim were able to give consent, he would indeed have given it because he was precisely the person affected in this process and that information was eventually useful to investigate and determine who the person was who attacked him. The Court has also analyzed that it was not the privacy of the accused or the intervention and representation of the accused in a given act as established in article 178 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, but rather it concerned the victim, a victim whose representation is assumed by the Public Prosecutor's Office as the entity in charge of investigating what happened to that victim. The Court considers that, because it concerns a victim, no harm was caused to him by the action carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office that is pointed out as illicit […] the procedure carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office, even if considered reckless, does not represent harm to the victim or his privacy, but quite the opposite; it was an expeditious procedure to safeguard another interest of the victim, such as reparation for the damage caused by determining the perpetrators of the aggression, an aggression that ultimately triggered the victim's death; therefore, his privacy was not ultimately affected since he no longer has that right” (cf. folio 1925 to 1927). In this sense, as argued by the complainant, there is an error in the reasoning provided to reject the defective procedural activity raised by the technical defense, since the trial court erroneously proceeds from the premise that the investigation of the real truth about the death of [Nombre [Nombre5]] and the determination of its perpetrators justified the Public Prosecutor's Office in harming the victim's privacy, forgetting that respect for the minimum procedural guarantees that, as fundamental rights, persons subjected to criminal proceedings have (article 8 of the American Convention on Human Rights) implicitly contains the principle of due process, within which it is established that elements of proof will only have value if they have been obtained by lawful means and incorporated into the procedure in accordance with the corresponding legal provisions (article 181 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). Thus, it is evident that in accordance with the principles of transcendence and instrumentality that inform defective procedural activity, the defect observed by the lower court is one that causes a flaw in the manner in which the private documents from the victim's phone were obtained, because it was carried out in violation of the fundamental right to privacy that protected [Nombre [Nombre5]]. In this regard, and as cited above, in accordance with articles 1, 3, and 29 of Law No. 7425, only by jurisdictional order or with the authorization of the right holder can a person's private documents be seized, searched, and examined, regardless of the party status they hold within the criminal process –accused, victim, witness, etc.–, so that if the Judicial Police and the Public Prosecutor's Office required access to the information contained in the affected person's phone as part of their inquiries, they necessarily had to request the judge of the preparatory stage to authorize it, since it was obvious that the victim could not grant his authorization because he was unconscious. Likewise, arguing that such investigative activity is valid because the aggrieved person –had he been alive– would have authorized access to the information to clarify the events committed against him is illegitimate, since this is nothing more than speculation by the sentencing body that has no evidentiary basis whatsoever, because although it can be established, by applying the rules of experience, that victims generally collaborate with investigations of the events committed against them, in the case under study and dealing with fundamental rights –the privacy of individuals–, the consent of the holder simply cannot be presumed in order to justify the action of the accusing body –extracting private information from the victim's phone–, even more so knowing that the evidence allowed inferring that [Nombre [Nombre5]] jealously guarded such information, to the point that he had assigned a password –alphanumeric and biometric– to access those files, which prevented any person –including the police– from being able to observe and learn what he stored electronically. Note that, although police officers can take fingerprints from the accused or any person to compare them with friction ridge traces located at the crime scene –or to identify individuals– and thus clarify the events related to a criminal case under investigation, in the present matter, the taking of the fingerprint sample was used to gain access to the information contained in the victim's mobile device while he was unconscious in a hospital bed, unable to express whether or not he agreed with the judicial proceeding, and without having the jurisdictional authorization that would permit accessing such private documents. There is no doubt, then, that the action of the Judicial Police under the functional direction of the Public Prosecutor's Office turned out to be illegal, which led to irregularly obtaining information important for the investigation (cf. supplement I of police report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015, folios 17 to 22), such as: i. the threat that was made against [Nombre [Nombre5]], according to messages numbers 328 and 329, from phone 8397–8270 belonging to [Nombre [Nombre3]]; ii. the exchange of messages between [Nombre [Nombre5]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]], especially that the day before the events, a message was sent by her summoning the victim to the park where he was wounded, and another in which she reproached him for the way he acted in the sentimental relationship with her mother; iii. the contact for [Nombre [Nombre4]] appeared as “[Nombre [Nombre4]] daughter”; iv. the existence of messages between [Nombre [Nombre4]] and [Nombre [Nombre5]] in which she summons him to the park where he was attacked, knowing that she would not arrive because she and her mother were at the Clínica Bíblica; and v. photographs between [Nombre [Nombre5]] and [Nombre [Nombre3]] that reveal the sentimental relationship they both had. Therefore, the statement made by the deliberative body when it indicated that the only element of proof extracted from said evidentiary item were the messages between [Nombre [Nombre5]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] is also false, because although this information could indeed be extracted autonomously from her electronic device –that is, from an independent source that would make it valid–, this was not the case for the rest of the aforementioned information, which was only extracted from the victim's phone and, although it was not used to support the appealed judgment, did serve as a basis for the Judicial Police to continue with the investigation they were carrying out. However, despite the illegality of obtaining the mentioned evidence, the request made by the technical defense to exclude from the body of evidence the elements gathered inappropriately, and with them, the rest of the means of proof incorporated into the adversary proceeding (doctrine of the “fruits of the poisonous tree”), is unfounded. This is because, regardless of the spuriousness of the actions of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Judicial Police, obtaining such information was inevitable for the purposes of continuing with the inquiries being conducted. Thus, it is worth remembering that the rule of exclusion of illegal evidence due to violation of fundamental rights is not applied automatically, nor should it be understood in an absolute or rigid manner, as the appellant intends, since there are exceptions that have made its application more rational and proportionate depending on the circumstances present in the specific case, such as the theory of inevitable discovery, which allows efficacy to be granted to illegally obtained evidence, provided that the evidentiary result could have inevitably been reached through the normal course of the investigation. This is not unusual in our jurisprudence, as it has been reiterated that: “…if it should be demonstrated that the evidence excluded for deriving from a constitutional violation would have been inevitably or surely discovered or obtained from the legitimate investigations already being carried out at that time, it will be valid. Such is the situation presented to us in the case at hand, where… the suitcase as such, obviously including its contents, had already been seized by the police authorities with proper oversight from the criminal judge (and even with the presence of representatives from the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Public Defense), so that the action carried out by the co-accused… who opened it using the respective key, in no way altered the result of the investigation already underway.” (Third Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, judgment 125-2000, at 10:36 a.m. on February 2, 2000). Therefore, in such cases, what must prevail is that the investigations being carried out would have inexorably led to the independent obtaining of the evidence. This, without a doubt, is what happened in this instance, since, even hypothetically suppressing this irregular action, the seizure of the victim's cell phone would always persist, because it was carried out in accordance with the powers that the law grants to judicial investigators and in compliance with the procedure described by the regulation (article 198 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). Without omitting that there was also the interview with [Nombre [Nombre26]] who warned that [Nombre [Nombre5]] had been threatened with death by a person known as “[Nombre50]” with whom he had had a sentimental relationship. In this context, the need to obtain the messages and information contained in the telephone device was evident, and judicial intervention in this regard was imminent, so there was no other way to continue with the investigation than to open the seized evidence. Hence, had the Public Prosecutor's Office requested, as was proper and as it should have done, from the competent criminal judge the search and examination of the private documents contained within the victim's mobile device, the accusing body and the judicial investigators would always have become aware of the same information, which demonstrates that, in this particular case, the illegally obtained evidence retained its validity and, therefore, its exclusion was unfounded. Consequently, the proper course is to declare the claims raised on these points without merit.\\\"\",\n\nRegarding the interview of [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]], the seizure of their mobile devices, and the obtaining of the information contained therein. In the case at hand, as established by the trial court when it resolved the defective procedural actions presented by the defense attorneys (cf. pages 1914 to 1923), the following facts and procedural background can be taken as true: i. [Nombre [Nombre5]] was attacked at approximately 7:24 p.m. on October 7, 2015, in the San Sebastián area, from where he was transported in delicate condition to the Calderón Guardia Hospital, a place to which he was admitted with a report of a wound from a sharp weapon to the left thorax; ii. At said hospital, officers from the Sección de Investigaciones de Turno Extraordinario (SITE) appeared, among whom was witness [Nombre6], to gather general information about the incident, however, upon verifying the health status of the aggrieved party, they were unable to interview him, which is why they proceeded to speak with his relatives and, especially, as described in police report number 628–IP–SITE–2015, with [Nombre7], who stated within her declaration that [Nombre8] had been threatened by a woman known as “[Nombre1]”, who apparently had a romantic relationship with the victim; iii. From the declaration of [Nombre9], it could be inferred that on October 8, 2015, he was assigned by his superiors the case of the aggression against [Nombre8] and, for that reason, he met with the SITE colleagues from whom he received the initial report and learned that there were three lines of investigation, the first of which related to a recording made by the victim days before the events, which was published on Facebook, of a subject committing acts of street harassment; said subject was named [Nombre10] and was considered a suspect in the aggression of [Nombre8]; the second concerned a possible assault in which the victim was chosen at random; and the third line of investigation or motive was related to a possible love affair and romantic entanglement with a woman known as “[Nombre1]”: iv. That while officer [Nombre11] was analyzing the report and met with the investigators from the Sección de Turno Extraordinario, his superiors, headed by Lic. [Nombre12], independently ordered other colleagues to conduct interviews; v. Officers [Nombre13] and [Nombre14], as the former testified, without knowing greater details about the investigation, were assigned by their superiors –not by [Nombre15]– to perform a victimology assessment of [Nombre8], which consisted of delving into details about his life, for which they went to his place of work at the Santa Clara Bakery, with the intention of speaking with the owner of the premises and also seizing the “DVR” or video from the business to analyze if it provided any element, being that at the site they spoke with several people, among them, one who was near the bakery who informed them that the victim had a relationship with a woman named “[Nombre1]”, who was from the area and even showed them the dwelling where she lived; vi. That same day, said judicial investigators showed up at the dwelling of [Nombre1], where they entered with her consent and proceeded to interview her in relation to the aggression that had been perpetrated against [Nombre8], with [Nombre16] stating that at that time they had no knowledge that she had arranged the plan to kill the victim, but quite the contrary, that she was a person close to the victim with whom he had maintained a romantic relationship in the last three months, and by whom she suspected, as indicated by the accused [Nombre1], she was pregnant; vii. In said interview, when [Nombre [Nombre3]] was advising investigator [Nombre16] that she had received threats on her phone because of her relationship with [Nombre8] and that these were from a woman who was the victim's girlfriend, as well as the existence of calls from private numbers asking about her relationship with the victim; the accused [Nombre [Nombre4]], who was at the same site, constantly interrupted stating that she also had been sent threatening messages related to the victim; viii. Judicial investigators [Nombre17] and [Nombre18], as a result of the information provided by [Nombre1] and her daughter [Nombre2], regarding the threats that both had received on their phones, proceeded to seize the mobile devices of said accused through seizure records (actas de secuestro) number 718758 and 718757, visible on pages 97 and 98. Thus, regarding the substantiation of these police proceedings –and not their legality, as this aspect will be dealt with later–, the public defender questions as “crude” and contrary to the rules of sound criticism that it be taken as proven that officers [Nombre17] and [Nombre18] were unaware that the people interviewed during the SITE officers' visit to the Calderón Guardia Hospital, precisely on the day the aggrieved party [Nombre8] was admitted to that place –October 7, 2015–, knew that the defendant [Nombre1] had threatened the aggrieved party with death by telephone, since, in her view, officer [Nombre9], in a first moment of his testimony, argued that he had accompanied [Nombre17] and [Nombre18] in those proceedings, and accepted that he knew of the prior investigation carried out by the SITE investigators. However, upon examining the appealed judgment, especially the descriptive basis of the declarations of officers [Nombre11] and [Nombre17], and the intellectual assessment that the trial court made of such means of proof, this chamber can verify that the conclusion reached by the public defender is capricious and arbitrary, as it presents no support whatsoever in the declaration of said officers and, even less so, in the rules of experience or logic that she estimates were breached. Note that one can start from the fact that [Nombre9] testified in a first moment –what the appellant calls a spontaneous statement– that: “That same day, October 8, we approached the bakery and there were no cameras, but we located an informant who stated that she did know [Nombre [Nombre5]], that she knew him and [Nombre [Nombre3]], for that reason I considered it important to locate this woman known as [Nombre [Nombre3]], this proceeding was carried out by two other officers, they located the dwelling near the school in San Sebastián, they identified this person with the name of [Nombre [Nombre3]], they interviewed her as part of an investigation that was just beginning, at her dwelling she indicated that she did know that [Nombre [Nombre5]] was going to be interviewed by a media outlet, she indicated that [Nombre [Nombre5]] wrote to the daughter of [Nombre [Nombre3]] who identified herself as [Nombre [Nombre4]], that they were going to meet at the house but that later they found out that [Nombre [Nombre5]] was attacked. They indicated that at that moment of the event, [Nombre [Nombre3]] felt ill and had to go to the Clínica Bíblica, showing a receipt for the care at the Clínica Bíblica, the receipt indicated that she was evaluated before eight at night. It was decided to seize the phones of both women, they were given a seizure record” (cf. page 1931. Verbatim copy. The highlighting is not from the original). However, it is evident that from said statement it cannot be inferred, as the complainant intends, that [Nombre19] was the one who gave the order to interview [Nombre1], or that it was he who ordered the seizure of her cell phone and the communication device of [Nombre2]. This is because it is clear from said declaration that, in those first statements, the deponent was providing a general explanation of the police actions carried out by the group of officers attending the matter, and not asserting that he participated in each and every one of the procedures he described. This is congruent with police report No. 01–DCIFTT–IP–2015 (cf. pages 1 to 14) where it was recorded that on October 8, 2015, report number 628–IP–SITE–2015 was received, and although it was initially mentioned in said document that on that day investigators [Nombre20], [Nombre21], [Nombre13], [Nombre22], and [Nombre9] visited the scene of the events, proceeded to locate surveillance cameras, and interviewed possible witnesses, from a detailed reading of said report it can be corroborated what actions each of them carried out and how they did so separately. Thus, it was [Nombre21] who located them at the scene of the aggression, while everyone undertook the task of interviewing –individually– possible witnesses, among them [Nombre23], [Nombre24], and [Nombre25]. Furthermore, it was [Nombre9] who located a video camera at the scene belonging to the Municipality of San José, and coordinated what was necessary to find out if information could be obtained from it; just as he did with surveillance cameras that were in the [Dirección1] sector and in the [Dirección2] business. Next, [Nombre22] and [Nombre19] were the ones who went to the Dr. Calderón Guardia Hospital to interview [Nombre [Nombre26]]. Meanwhile, [Nombre13] and [Nombre27] visited the Bakery named Santa Clara, where a security video was located that was seized and, subsequently, they proceeded to investigate the woman known as “[Nombre1]”, whom they interviewed at her dwelling thanks to the location provided by an informant and which allowed them to seize her cell phone and that of her daughter [Nombre2]. Consequently, it is not contrary to logic or the rules of experience, which explain that in team-based tasks it is feasible to distribute the work to complete the assigned task, especially in initial acts of a police investigation where human resources are scarce, the assertion made by [Nombre19] that: “Regarding investigators [Nombre28] and [Nombre29], it was the superior [Nombre12] who instructed them to interview [Nombre [Nombre3]] and the daughter. Regarding the seizure of the cell phones, there was no order, it was they who seized them, those cell phones were given to me packed, labeled, with signatures and chains of custody, original acts and copies, it was entered into the control book and they gave me the seized evidence duly packaged, that evidence was packaged in a plastic bag with tape and the chain of custody; the seizure records for those cell phones were made at the house of [Nombre1] and [Nombre2]. The seizure records on pages 97 and 98, I don't remember what was written in the seizure records, but when any information is corroborated, they are always given the reference case number, that information was provided to them by Lic. [Nombre12]” (cf. page 1940). Above all, when such testimony was also corroborated by the testimony of [Nombre13], who in that regard acknowledged that: “Paúl [Nombre11] did not entrust us to locate [Nombre1], but rather it was [Nombre30] the chief to do victimology. I did not visit the place in the company of Mr. [Nombre31] nor SITE colleagues. I did not review initial reports from [Nombre32]. [...] That person [Nombre30] who assigned me the investigation, is the head of the Unit for Crimes Against Physical Integrity, she assigns the investigations and tells us what to do. I did not see the SITE report. The unique number is the case file number, it was a case file number for carrying out seizures and tracing for that case” (cf. page 1979). The above allows one to deduce that the conclusion reached by the trial court, that officer [Nombre16] was unaware that the relatives of [Nombre8] had reported that [Nombre1] had threatened the victim with death, this before she was interviewed and her cell phone was seized, is not unfounded, nor does it harm the logical principle of sufficient reason as claimed. This is because police officers participating in an investigation cannot be required to be informed of and know all the information that other investigators obtain during the inquiries, even more so when, as in the case at hand, those who interviewed the victim's family were police officers from a different section –SITE– than the one to which [Nombre16] and [Nombre33] belonged –Crimes against Life–; and although the preliminary report cited was sent to the section where the latter are part, it was never proven that [Nombre17] and [Nombre18] met with the officers from Turno Extraordinario, or that in said section the report rendered by those who interviewed the family of the deceased was discussed and that [Nombre28] and [Nombre34] participated in it. Thus, the fact that the defense counsel asserts that the judicial police officers who interviewed [Nombre1] and [Nombre2] did so in an effort to mislead them, in order to obtain privileged information and link them to the crime under investigation, and the affirmation that the declaration of [Nombre35] was accommodated so that it coincided with that provided by investigator [Nombre9] as to who decided that the defendants should be interviewed, are nothing more than speculations that have no basis whatsoever in the evidence received, and as such are insufficient to modify the decision. Note that, from the interview of [Nombre1], it was only obtained that: “she was the romantic partner of the victim [Nombre8], that for about three months, having met him at the bakery named Santa Clara, since said male works there. […] [Nombre [Nombre5]] told her that he was not married and that he had a daughter and that he had a pregnant girl and doubted the paternity; she indicated that the victim's mother named [Nombre36] called her and told her that the only daughter-in-law was [Nombre7] […] but the interviewee […] said that the victim swore to her at some point that he was no longer with that woman. She added that [Nombre [Nombre26]] sent her threatening messages to her phone number, specifically to 6114–9732 and many times she received threatening messages from [Nombre7]'s sister, whose name she does not identify, but they were messages that came from phone number 7013–7419, those messages were sent to her via WhatsApp or outside of it. In addition, she noted that she was unaware of the video published on Facebook by the victim. […] that on October 7, 2015, her daughter named [Nombre2] had received a message and a call from the victim [Nombre8] telling her that they were going to interview him on a television channel and if it could be done at her dwelling, but the victim never arrived, later it was found out that [Nombre [Nombre5]] had been wounded. […] that she, feeling low blood pressure, went to the Clínica Bíblica in San José Centro for a checkup and to control her pressure, and her daughter [Nombre2] had accompanied her” (cf. police report No. 001–DCIFTT–2015 on page 8 and the declaration of [Nombre13]). The above demonstrates that [Nombre1] was actually consulted about the life of [Nombre8], as the cited investigators stated –for the purpose of carrying out victimology inquiries– and that she was never questioned about the death threats that [Nombre7] and [Nombre37] indicated she had made to the aggrieved party, which is a further element of proof that at that stage of the investigation, the accused [Nombre1] was not questioned as a suspect or defendant, but by reason of being a person who had maintained a romantic relationship with the victim –regardless of the fact that a written report was not made individually by [Nombre13]–, which, without a doubt, rules out the defect alluded to by the complainant and confirms that the conclusion reached by the lower court, regarding the nonexistence of absolute defects in the interview of the accused and the seizure of the cell phones, is duly founded. However, even hypothetically assuming that the mentioned police officers knew that the family of [Nombre [Nombre5]] had stated that [Nombre1] threatened to kill the injured party, that was irrelevant for the purpose of classifying her –at that moment– as a person implicated in the aggression of the victim and, even less so, of attributing such illicit conduct to her daughter [Nombre2], since no one had mentioned her as of October 7, 2015. Thus, for a correct resolution of the reproach raised, it is essential to define who is a defendant (imputado) and how such condition is acquired, since from that moment on, all the defense rights prescribed by Article 82 of the Code of Procedure will be granted, including the possibility of abstaining from testifying, of not offering self-incriminating evidence, and of having a defense attorney to advise them from that first stage of the investigation (Article 13 ibidem). In this sense, it is worth remembering that Article 81 of the Criminal Procedure Code provides that: \"The person who, by any act of the investigation or proceeding, is identified as a possible perpetrator of a punishable act or participant therein shall be called a defendant.\" This means that it is not any identification of a person within an investigation or proceeding that has the capacity to define whether a person is a defendant or not, but only that which relates them as a possible perpetrator of a punishable act or participant therein. Hence, with the exception of cases of flagrante delicto (flagrancia) where the perpetrator of the punishable act is caught in the act or immediately thereafter, or while being pursued, or is found with objects or traces that presumptively, vehemently, indicate that they have just participated in a crime (Article 237 ibid.), or in those matters where the filing of the complaint or indictment for a public-action crime already entails a direct accusation against whoever is attributed as the perpetrator of the acts (Articles 76 and 280 ibid.), in the remaining cases such procedural or investigative act is not expressly defined, but rather it will be in each particular situation that it must be individualized by the operators of the criminal justice system, especially by the judicial police, the Public Prosecutor's Office, and the judging persons who participate in the preparatory stage. This is because, if an erroneous specification of said act is incurred, fundamental rights could be affected that would render the obtaining of evidence illegitimate, due to the obligation that such authorities have to inform the accused of the rights that protect them (Article 82 ibid.) and their duty to adapt their actions in accordance with the procedural guarantees required by the international instruments in force in the country, the Political Constitution, and the legal provisions. In the specific case, as can be deduced from report No. 628–IP–SITE–2015 (cf. pages 89 to 92), the extraordinary shift investigators spoke with Public Force officers [Nombre38] and [Nombre39], who warned that the version they managed to obtain from the people who were at the scene was that: “[…] a black Honda brand vehicle arrived from which two subjects got out and one of them pulled out a dagger and attacked the young man [Nombre8]”. Likewise, they questioned [Nombre [Nombre26]], the sentimental partner of the injured party, who told them, among other things, that [Nombre [Nombre5]] “[…] was going to be interviewed by the people from Channel 6, due to the fact that he became famous on Facebook for recording a subject who was recording a woman, this was told to him by [Nombre8]'s coworker named [Nombre40], she does not know if the problem stems or comes from said fame he acquired or rather thinks it may be due to the fact that [Nombre [Nombre5]] had a romantic adventure with a woman from the vicinity of the bakery, wait… [Nombre [Nombre3]] who is much older than him and when this relationship ended, she threatened him with death but told him that she would not get her hands dirty with blood, she does not know where this woman lives or how the problem ended up”. In turn, they interviewed [Nombre42], a coworker of the victim, who mentioned: “[Nombre [Nombre5]] told her that said interview would be at [Nombre1]'s place (the woman with whom [Nombre8] had a romance) however it was almost 7:00 p.m. and the bakery was closed and [Nombre8] was still outside, she said goodbye to him and went home”. Finally, as said police report mentions, they also spoke with [Nombre37] who mentioned “that her nephew had a lover, around the bakery where he worked and apparently her nephew decided to leave that woman, so she calls the house and threatened his wife and threatens her saying she was going to take revenge ([Nombre8]'s partner)”. In this way, it is clear that at the moment when the SITE officers conducted the initial interviews of possible witnesses –in the evening hours of October 7, 2015–, what existed within the investigation was the hypothesis that a woman known as “[Nombre1]”, about whom they had no further details other than that she was a neighbor from the vicinity of the bakery where [Nombre8] worked, had sent him telephone messages threatening him with death. However, that hypothesis did not even have, at those moments of the investigation, solid evidentiary or indiciary backing that would justify identifying [Nombre1] as a possible perpetrator of the aggression that [Nombre8] had suffered, since from the very source that provided that hypothesis, its antithesis was also born, as [Nombre [Nombre26]] clarified that she did not know if the attack had been perpetrated by reason of that romantic relationship or because of the fame that the victim had obtained due to the complaint he filed for street harassment. Precisely, this lack of evidence that would allow for a founded suspicion or for identifying [Nombre1] as a possible perpetrator of the aggression of [Nombre8] persisted on October 8, 2015, since [Nombre9] confirmed that he received the police report from the SITE colleagues and met with them in the morning hours, a period in which the three lines of investigation that they had determined still remained, the first related to the recording made by the victim days before the events and that was published on Facebook of a subject committing acts of street harassment, within which a subject known as [Nombre10] was considered a suspect; another regarding a possible assault in which the victim was chosen as a victim at random and the last linked to a possible love affair and romantic entanglement with a woman known as “[Nombre [Nombre3]]”. Furthermore, it can be seen from the testimony of officer [Nombre43] that the information indicated had changed by the moment when [Nombre16] and [Nombre33] decided to identify [Nombre1], since the only new thing that existed was that “That same day, October 8, we approached the bakery and there were no cameras, but we located an informant who stated that she did know [Nombre [Nombre5]], that she knew him and [Nombre [Nombre3]]” (cf.\n\nfolio 1931), while [Name16]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0;&#xa0; </span><span>added that: “[…] being in that place, a person approached us, he did not want to be identified, victimology involves delving into the life of the victim, family, friends, seeing what he did, a man told us that [Name [Name5]] used to visit a friend, with whom he had a relationship, he took us to the house of a woman named [Name [Name3]], he pointed out the house to us” (cf. folio 1979). That is, the information was maintained that [Name [Name3]], known as [Name [Name3]], had a romantic relationship with the victim and that in this relationship there had been threatening messages from the former towards the aggrieved party, which, it is insisted, at that moment in the investigation could not even be classified as an indication –a critical logical judgment by which a rule of experience is applied to a known fact, in order to infer another fact until then unknown (cf. Third Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, resolution No. 2003–1050 of 10:10 hours on November 21, 2003)–, insofar as the first of the facts, the indicator –the death threats–, had not yet been reliably verified, because the only thing that existed were references to what the victim had told his relatives regarding his sentimental relationship with [Name [Name3]], without omitting that, at that time, even the information available was that the attackers of the victim had been two male persons, so logically and objectively it can be established that [Name [Name3]] did not even have the status of a suspect. This is consistent with police report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 (cf. folios 1 to 14), where it is verified that when the interview with the defendant [[Name1]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] was conducted, before 1:00 p.m. on October 8, 2015 (as inferred from the time the seizure of her cell phone was carried out according to record No. 718758 on folio 97), there were no other evidentiary elements that would change her condition to that of an accused or a suspect in the events, even more so when, interviewed again [[Name7]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] the only thing she added to the previously supplied information was the telephone number [Telf1] as belonging to “[Name [Name3]]”. Consequently, in accordance with the investigative landscape that was unfolding, there were no founded suspicions that [Name [Name3]], and even less her daughter [Name [Name4]], were related to the aggression that [[Name8]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] had suffered and, based on this, the investigators could not be required to treat them as persons accused of having committed a crime, to warn them of their right to abstain from testifying, or to provide them with technical advice for their defense, as the appellant intends. On the other hand, it is claimed that the seizure that the judicial police carried out of the cell phones of the now defendants was illegitimate, because despite the investigators knowing that they were accused, they were never warned that they had the right not to provide evidence against themselves. However, such an allegation is inadmissible, not only because, as stated above, when the mobile devices were seized there was still no indication whatsoever that generated a founded suspicion of the defendants' participation in the armed aggression that the victim had suffered, which prevented the police officers from treating them as accused or suspects and warning them of their rights as such, but also because the seizure diligence does not require the authorization of the owner or possessor of the article to legitimize its confiscation (article 198 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), so it is irrelevant whether [[Name1]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] and [[Name2]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] gave their consent or not for such diligence to be carried out. Note that, even starting from the appellant's thesis, that the police interviewed [[Name1]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] despite knowing that she was a person accused of having committed the acts to the detriment of the victim, and that the reason her condition was concealed from her was to obtain, illegitimately, the information that she had been threatened by phone because of her relationship with [[Name8]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] and that, according to this invalid method, the seizure of the defendant's phone was achieved, considering that there might be traces of the investigated crime there –which, it is insisted, is a thesis that was not demonstrated–, the legitimacy of the seizure of the defendant's communication device would always persist, since, even hypothetically suppressing her interview, an independent source would always persist indicating that the defendant's phone could contain information of interest for the investigation, as the interview with [[Name7]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] was already available at that time, who had indicated, as the appellant reiterates in her claim, that [Name [Name3]] had brandished threats towards her sentimental partner. Hence, it was reasonable and proportional to the purposes of the investigation for investigators [Name17] and [Name18] to seize that telephone device for the purposes of preserving the information pertinent to the ongoing inquiries, regardless of whether the now defendants agreed or not. In the case of the seizure of the cell phone of the defendant [[Name2]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>], although there was no independent source apart from her statements to the police that mentioned that said device was an object related to the investigated crime or that it could serve as a means of proof, it cannot be overlooked that when her mother [Name [Name3]] was interviewed, [Name [Name4]] was not identified as someone who had a relationship with [Name [Name5]], even less as a suspect or participant in the aggression with a sharp weapon that he suffered; indeed, officer [Name16]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0;&#xa0; </span><span>was emphatic in pointing out that she was not the person being interviewed, but that the information obtained from her was because she interrupted the dialogue they were having with her mother. He stated this when he said: “During the time we were talking, we spoke with [Name [Name3]], but her daughter [Name [Name4]] kept interrupting a lot, she answered a lot and answered certain conversations. She had a younger daughter and we asked her to leave with [Name [Name4]], but she did not want to, [Name [Name3]] told us that she had received threatening messages directed at her, we found the indication useful, she told us she did not remember when they called to threaten her, we knew the case superficially, we did not know the background beyond the video of the gentleman from finance. It was rumored that it was an assault and revenge for the video. […] [Name [Name4]] interrupted a lot, she mentioned that she had also received messages related to [Name [Name5]]. I do not remember if it was recorded because the phones were seized. [Name [Name4]]'s attitude at that time was not suspicious” (cf. folios 1979 and 1980. Verbatim copy). Consequently, the information that the defendant [[Name2]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] provided to the judicial investigators, as the trial court held, was not preceded by the violation of any of her fundamental rights, nor was she coerced or deceived into providing data that would harm her mother, or herself, but rather her statements were spontaneous and consented to, and therefore valid for the police to determine that her phone could serve as a means of proof, and thus the legitimacy existed for them to proceed with the seizure of such an electronic device. In addition to this, it is also not evident that during the interview with the defendants, statements were given that would lead to the presumption that they had to be treated as accused or, at least, as suspects in the events that occurred, and that because of this, investigators [Name16]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0;&#xa0; </span><span>and [Name33]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>had to inform them of the procedural guarantees that protected them, insofar as, from a simple examination of the statements that [Name [Name3]] and [Name [Name4]] provided to the judicial authorities, it can be noted that they never claimed to have had any type of participation or any connection whatsoever in the events; on the contrary, what the defendants claimed was to have been victims of threats for having a relationship –sentimental [Name [Name3]] and friendship [Name [Name4]]– with [Name [Name5]]. Hence the interest that prevailed in the judicial police, as reported by officer [Name44], in collecting and preserving said devices to obtain information that would allow clarifying the victim's death and prevent the traces of the crime from being lost. In this sense, while we agree with the defense of the accused to the extent that police agents must carry out their duties under “the direction and control of the prosecutor in charge of the investigation” (article 283 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), which, in the case of the seizure of the electronic devices, did not exist, because the decision to seize such phones arose from the officers directing the diligence themselves and not by order of the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office, this does not mean, as the appellant seems to understand, that the absence of said functional direction for the specific act is sufficient to make the collection of said objects illegitimate, because one cannot forget that the Judicial Investigation Agency, on its own initiative, by complaint, or by order of a competent authority, has the competence to proceed to investigate crimes subject to public prosecution, to prevent the acts committed from leading to further consequences, to identify and provisionally apprehend the presumed guilty parties, and to gather, secure, and scientifically order the evidence and other necessary antecedents for the investigation. Hence, among its attributions is ordering that objects related to the crime, those subject to confiscation, and those that may serve as means of proof be collected and preserved, without requiring a prior judicial order or authorization from the Public Prosecutor's Office for their seizure (articles 3 and 4, paragraphs 5 and 10 of the Organic Law of the Judicial Investigation Agency and articles 198 and 285 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). In addition to this, the seizure of the mobile phone cannot be confused with the search and seizure of, or examination of, the private information contained within it. This is because Law No. 7425, called “Registro y secuestro de documentos privados e intervención de las comunicaciones,” in its first article, provides that: “…private documents are considered to be: correspondence by letter, fax, telex, telematics, or any other means; videos, cassettes, magnetic tapes, disks, diskettes, writings, books, memorials, records, plans, drawings, charts, radiographs, photographs, and any other form of recording information of a private nature, used in a representative or declaratory manner, to illustrate or prove something” (the highlighting is not from the original), within which, although text messages, call logs, images, audio files, documents, contact lists, etc., can be included as digital documents that are contained in the memory of the electronic medium, the physical device cannot be granted the quality of a private document, only the digital information it contains and which, due to its intangible nature, is impossible to seize or obtain unless it is subjected to capture through equally digital methods. Therefore, although a duly founded jurisdictional resolution is required for the search and seizure of, and examination of, digital information, authorizing the legitimate restriction of the right to privacy of the persons involved (article 3 of Law No. 7425), this is not necessary for the seizure of the telephone device, since as a simple object it can be seized by police disposition within a criminal investigation, provided it is accredited that the private information contained therein is guarded and protected from illegitimate intrusions, whether due to the absence of a jurisdictional order or the lack of the express consent of the holder of the privacy right being protected. In the specific case, it is not only accredited that the judicial police seized the cell phones of [Name [Name3]] and [Name [Name4]] through seizure records numbers 718758 and 718757 (cf. folios 97 and 98), but also that these were delivered to [Name32]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>, as this officer stated, duly packaged in plastic bags with tape, labeled, with signatures and chains of custody, together with the original seizure record and a copy (cf. folio 1940), which was also verified when, with prior jurisdictional authorization –resolution of 1:20 p.m. on December 8, 2015, from the Criminal Court of Hatillo, visible on folios 30 to 34– the opening of said evidence was carried out with the description that they were delivered by [Name9]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0;&#xa0; </span><span>in “a transparent plastic bag duly packaged and sealed, identified with the case number and the parties. Likewise, a single Chain of Custody form for indications” (cf. folio 44). In this way, it is verified that from the seizure of the telephone devices until the extraction of the information by the computer technicians of the judicial police, in the presence of the Criminal Guarantees Judge, the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office, and licensed attorney [Name45]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0; </span><span>as the public defender assigned to [[Name1]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] and [[Name2]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>], these devices remained sealed and the information free from illegitimate access, so the right to privacy of the defendants was not affected by the seizure of the telephone devices carried out by the judicial investigators. This being the case, it is ruled out that in this instance there was a violation of articles 36 of the Political Constitution and 205 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, as the police officers never interrogated [Name [Name3]] and [Name [Name4]] as suspects or accused of the aggression suffered by [[Name8]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>], since at the time they did so there was no founded suspicion of their participation in the events, and their interview was conducted for the purposes of carrying out a victimological study and to find out if they could be witnesses to the events that occurred, before which, even, they positioned themselves as alleged victims of other death threats directed at them, which ruled out that the judicial police even presumed their direct participation in the events, even more so when the notitia criminis reported that those who attacked [[Name8]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] were male persons and not females. Likewise, as the trial court held, there is no indication whatsoever to suggest that officers [Name17] and [Name18] entered the dwelling of the defendants [Name [Name3]] and [Name [Name4]] illegitimately and against their will, because not only do these officers agree that it was the defendants who authorized them to enter as part of an interview they were conducting with them as potential witnesses –which is consistent with the rules of experience–, but also none of the accused has stated otherwise, since the only thing they alleged regarding this aspect was that the officers forced them to hand over their cell phones, which, given the legal nature of the seizure of objects (article 198 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), is not illegitimate as their consent is not required for such police action, regardless of whether on said devices there existed, as the technical defense argues, elements of importance for the investigation that harmed them. Now, another uncontroverted procedural aspect is that the defendants were not present at the time the opening of their cell phones was carried out (cf. 44 to 46); however, the claim of the technical defense in pointing out that this absence was due to a deliberate and illegitimate action by the judicial investigators is inadmissible. Note that the Criminal Court of Hatillo, when authorizing the search and seizure of, and examination of, the information contained in the electronic media of the telephone devices –resolution of 1:20 p.m. on December 8, 2015– ordered that, although [Name [Name3]] and [Name [Name4]] were not yet formally considered as accused, a public defender should be assigned to them to represent them as “suspects.” Hence, from that moment, as the technical defense argues, they had the right to participate in the acts carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office or the judicial authorities aimed at incorporating evidentiary elements into the process, such as the opening of the cell phones cited above. However, it is clear that their absence from the indicated diligence was not due to police inertia or a desire by the judicial investigators to prevent them from revealing to the jurisdictional authority or their defense attorney the manner in which the electronic devices were seized, as the defense argues, but because [[Name1]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] and [[Name2]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] as of December 1, 2015, were no longer locatable at the address reported to the police authorities –San José, San Sebastián, from the Central School [Address3]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0;&#xa0; </span><span>, house on the right-hand side, pink color with black gates– and, although neighbors were interviewed, among them [Name46]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0;&#xa0; </span><span>to try to locate them, their new dwelling could not be established because their whereabouts were unknown –extension of police report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 from folio 17 to 23–. This is corroborated by the fact that the defendants [[Name1]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] and [[Name2]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] were later located residing in a different place from the one they had indicated, that is, in San José, Guadalupe, Mata de Plátano, [Address4], from [Address5]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0; </span><span>(extension IV of report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 on folio 609). Consequently, the fact that the defendants were not present during the opening of their cell phones was not due to illegitimate action by the police authorities or the Public Prosecutor's Office, but to the free and voluntary decision of the defendants to change their address without reporting it to the police authorities –which prevented their location–, despite the fact that, as declared by [Name43], they had already been informed that to have access to the information contained in the telephone devices, the jurisdictional order would be processed (cf. folio 1932). Added to this, the technical defense of none of the implicated parties has demonstrated (nor has this Chamber noticed) what the grievance was that was caused by the non-presence of [Name47] and [[Name2]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] in such diligence, insofar as, as explained above, the seizure of the electronic devices was legitimate, the search and seizure of, and examination of, the information contained in them was authorized by a duly founded jurisdictional order, and during the diligence there was always a public defender present who represented the interests of the defendants, without it having been indicated up to this point which aspects –other than the manner in which such objects were seized and the interview conducted– would have been alleged had they been present in such diligence, just as no inaccuracy or error has been specified in the exercise of the technical defense that participated in that procedural act, which rules out the alleged grievance. In this way, it is verified that with the interview of [[Name1]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] and [[Name2]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>], the seizure of their mobile devices, and the opening of said evidence, the fundamental rights of the defendants were not violated and, with this, the defects alleged by the defenders are ruled out. B. Regarding the extraction of information from the victim's phone. The procedure used by the police authorities and the Public Prosecutor's Office to access the private information contained in the phone of the victim [Name [Name5]] is an uncontroverted fact, since no claim was made regarding this aspect of the ruling, and the statements of [Name32]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>, [Name48]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0;&#xa0;&#xa0; </span><span>and [[Name36]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>] are consistent regarding the method used to bypass the password of the electronic device. This was established in the appealed judgment when it stated: “[…] in this regard there was no controversy about the procedure carried out; [Name [Name5]]’s phone was seized through seizure record number 708829 on October 8, 2015, at 01:35 at the Calderón Guardia Hospital, according to report 001-DCIFTT-IP-2015 it is described that it is through coordination with prosecutor [Name49]</span><span style=\"-aw-import:spaces\">&#xa0; </span><span>, and it is precisely this prosecutorial representation that ordered the opening of the phone, so it was carried out in the Computer Crimes Section; it was also not controverted that there was no jurisdictional order authorizing the opening of said phone, only the disposition of the prosecutor in charge of the investigation; there was no controversy that at the time of opening the mobile device, the victim was hospitalized, unconscious, so the computer forensics expert went to the medical center and through the victim's fingerprint, without his consent due to his state of health, and furthermore, once access to the information was gained, it was backed up and used as evidence” (cf. folio 1924). Consequently, in summary, the challenge argument lies in that the trial court rejected the claimed defective procedural activity with an illegitimate reasoning, because, despite recognizing that the information from the victim's phone was obtained without his consent and without a jurisdictional order authorizing it, it still upheld the validity of the act based on the mistaken estimation that the victim's right to privacy was not violated, nor was any grievance caused to the defendants. Thus, upon examining the issued ruling on this point, it can be noted that, in a first approach to the issue, it was stated: “[…] this leads the Court to assess what the true affectation of the victim's intimacy was, taking into consideration that at that time he was unconscious, in a very serious state of health that ultimately led to his death; that is, the intrusion into his intimacy did not exist as the defense tries to make it seem; we could even speak of presumed consent when analyzing that if the victim were able to give consent, he would indeed have given it because he was precisely the person affected in this process and that information was potentially useful to find out and determine who the person who attacked him was. The Court has also analyzed that it was not about the intimacy of the accused or the intervention and representation of the accused in a certain act as established in article 178 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, but rather it concerned the victim, a victim whose representation is assumed by the Public Prosecutor's Office as the entity in charge of seeking what happened to that victim. The Court considers that because it concerned a victim, no harm was caused to him by the action carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office that is indicated as illicit […] the procedure carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office, although considered reckless, does not represent a harm to the victim or his intimacy, but quite the opposite; it was an expeditious procedure to safeguard another interest of the victim, such as the reparation of the harm caused by determining the perpetrators of the aggression, an aggression that ultimately led to the victim's death, therefore his privacy was not affected in the end since he no longer has that right” (cf. folios 1925 to 1927). In this sense, as argued by the complainant, there is an error in the reasoning provided to reject the defective procedural activity raised by the technical defense, insofar as the trial court erroneously starts from the premise that the investigation of the material truth about the death of [Name [Name5]] and the determination of its perpetrators justified the Public Prosecutor's Office in violating the victim's privacy, forgetting that in the respect for the minimum procedural guarantees that as fundamental rights persons subjected to criminal proceedings have (article 8 of the American Convention on Human Rights), the principle of due process is implicit, within which it is provided that evidentiary elements will only have value if they have been obtained by a lawful means and incorporated into the procedure in accordance with the corresponding legal provisions (article 181 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). Thus, it is evident that in accordance with the principles of transcendence and instrumentality that inform the concept of defective procedural activity, the defect noted by the trial court is one that causes a flaw in the manner in which the private documents from the victim's phone were obtained, as it was carried out by violating the fundamental right to privacy that protected [Name [Name5]]. In this order, and as cited previously, in accordance with articles 1, 3 and 29 of Law No. 7425, only by jurisdictional order or with the authorization of the holder of the right can a person's private documents be seized, searched, and examined, regardless of the status of the party they hold within the criminal process –accused, victim, witness, etc.–; therefore, if the judicial police and the Public Prosecutor's Office required, within their investigations, to have access to the information contained in the victim's phone, they necessarily had to request the judge of the preparatory phase to authorize it, since it was notorious that the victim could not grant his authorization because he was unconscious. Likewise, it is illegitimate to argue that such an investigative activity is valid because the aggrieved party –if alive– would have authorized access to the information so that the acts committed to his detriment could be clarified, since this is nothing more than speculation by the sentencing body that has no evidentiary basis whatsoever, because although it can be established, applying the rules of experience, that victims generally collaborate with the investigations of acts committed to their detriment, in the case under study and dealing with fundamental rights –the right to personal privacy–, the consent of the holder simply cannot be presumed for the purpose of justifying the action of the prosecuting body –extracting private information from the victim's phone–, even more so knowing that the evidence allowed inferring that [Name [Name5]] guarded such information jealously, to the point that he had assigned a password –alphanumeric and biometric– to access those files, which prevented anyone –including the police– from being able to observe and find out what he stored electronically.\n\nSee that, while police officers may take fingerprints of the accused or any person to compare them with friction ridge evidence (rastros lofoscópicos) located at the crime scene—or to identify persons—and thus clarify the facts related to a criminal case under investigation, in the present matter the taking of the fingerprint sample was used to gain access to the information contained in the victim's mobile device, while he was unconscious in a hospital bed unable to express whether or not he agreed with the judicial procedure, and without having the jurisdictional authorization that would permit access to such private documents. There is no doubt, then, that the action of the judicial police under the functional direction of the Public Prosecutor's Office (Ministerio Público) proved to be illegal, which led to irregularly obtaining information of importance for the investigation (cf. amplification I of police report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 from folio 17 to 22) such as: i. the threat that was wielded against [Name [Name5]], according to messages number 328 and 329, from telephone 8397–8270 belonging to [Name [Name3]]; ii. the list of messages between [Name [Name5]] and [Name [Name4]], especially that the day before the events, a message was sent by the former summoning the victim to the park where he was wounded and another in which she reproaches him for the way he acted in the romantic relationship with her mother; iii. the contact for [Name [Name4]] appeared as “[Name [Name4]] daughter”; iv. the existence of messages between [Name [Name4]] and [Name [Name5]] in which the former summons him to the park where he was assaulted, knowing that she was not going to arrive because she and her mother were at the Clínica Bíblica; and v. photographs between [Name [Name5]] and [Name [Name3]] that reveal the romantic relationship they both had. Therefore, the statement made by the deliberative body when it indicated that the only piece of evidence extracted from said evidentiary element was the messages between [Name [Name5]] and [Name [Name4]] is also not true, since although this information could indeed be extracted autonomously from the electronic device of the former—that is, by an independent source that would make it valid—, this did not happen with the rest of the aforementioned information, which was only extracted from the victim's telephone and, although it was not used to support the appealed judgment, it did serve as a basis for the judicial police to continue with the investigation they were carrying out. Nevertheless, despite the illegality of obtaining the mentioned evidence, the request made by the technical defense, to exclude from the body of evidence the elements improperly collected and, with it, the rest of the evidentiary materials admitted to the adversarial proceedings (doctrine of “the fruits of the poisonous tree”), is improper. This is because, regardless of the spurious nature of the actions of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the judicial police, it was inevitable that such information would be obtained for the purposes of continuing with the inquiries being developed. Thus, it is worth remembering that the exclusionary rule for illegal evidence due to violation of fundamental rights is not applied automatically, nor should it be understood in an absolute or rigid manner, as the appellant intends, since there are exceptions that have made its application more rational and proportional depending on the circumstances present in the specific case, as occurs with the theory of inevitable discovery (hallazgo inevitable), which allows granting efficacy to illegally obtained evidence, provided that the evidentiary result could have been inevitably reached through the normal course of the investigation. This is not unusual in our jurisprudence, as it has been reiterated that: “…if it were demonstrated that the evidence excluded for deriving from a constitutional violation would have been inevitably or surely discovered or obtained from the legitimate investigations that were already being carried out at that time, it will be valid. Such is the situation presented to us in the case at bar, where… the suitcase itself, obviously including its contents, had already been seized (secuestrada) by the police authorities with the proper supervision of the criminal judge (and even with the presence of representatives of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Public Defense), so the action carried out by the co-defendant… who opened it by using the respective key, in no way altered the result of the investigation already underway.” (Third Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, resolution 125-2000, of 10:36 hours on February 2, 2000). Consequently, in these scenarios, what must prevail is that the investigations being carried out would have inexorably led to the independent obtaining of the evidence. This, without a doubt, was what occurred in the instant case, since, even hypothetically suppressing this irregular action, the seizure (decomiso) of the victim's cell phone would always persist, because it was carried out in accordance with the powers that the law grants to judicial investigators and in compliance with the procedure described by the rule (article 198 of the Criminal Procedure Code, Código Procesal Penal). Without omitting that there was also the interview of [Name [Name26]] who warned that [Name [Name5]] had been threatened with death by a person known as “[[Name50] ]” with whom the latter had maintained a romantic relationship. In this order, the need to obtain the messages and information contained in the telephone device was notorious, and judicial intervention in this sense was imminent, so there was no other way to continue the investigation except by opening the seized evidence. Hence, had the Public Prosecutor's Office requested, as it corresponded and should have done, from the competent criminal judge the search (registro) and examination of the private documents that were contained within the victim's mobile device, the prosecuting body and the judicial investigators would always have become aware of the same information, which demonstrates that in this particular case, the illegally obtained evidence retained its validity and, therefore, its exclusion was improper. Consequently, the appropriate action is to declare the claims raised on these points without merit.\"\n\nNote that it can be taken as a starting point that [Name9] initially testified—what the appellant describes as a spontaneous statement—that: “That same October 8th we approached the bakery and there were no cameras, but we located a female informant and she stated that she did know [Name [Name5]], that she knew him and [Name [Name3]], which is why I considered it important to locate this woman known as [Name [Name3]]; this procedure was carried out by two other officers; they located the house near the school in San Sebastián, identified this person by the name of [Name [Name3]], interviewed her as part of an investigation that was just beginning; at her home she indicated that she did know that [Name [Name5]] was going to be interviewed by a media outlet, she indicated that [Name [Name5]] wrote to the daughter of [Name [Name3]], who identified herself as [Name [Name4]], that they were going to meet at the house but later they found out that [Name [Name5]] was attacked. They indicated that at that moment of the event [Name [Name3]] was feeling unwell health-wise and had to be transferred to the Clínica Bíblica, showing a receipt for the treatments at the Clínica Bíblica; the receipt indicated that she was assessed before eight o'clock at night. It was decided to seize the telephones of both women; a seizure record was given to them” (cf. folio 1931. Literal copy. The highlighting is not from the original). However, it is evident that from such statement one cannot infer, as the complainant intends, that [Name19] was the one who gave the order to interview [[Name1]], or that it was he who ordered the seizure of her cellular telephone and the communication device belonging to [[Name2]]. This is because it can be deduced from that statement that, in those initial declarations, the deponent was providing a general explanation of the police actions carried out by the team of officers handling the matter, and not asserting that he participated in each and every one of the procedures he described. This is consistent with police report No. 01–DCIFTT–IP–2015 (cf. folios 1 to 14), which records that on October 8, 2015, report number 628–IP–SITE–2015 was received, and although initially that document mentioned that that day the investigators [Name20], [Name21], [Name13], [Name22], and [Name9] visited the scene of the events, proceeded to locate security cameras, and interviewed possible witnesses, a detailed reading of said report allows corroboration of which actions each of them carried out and how they did so separately. Thus, it was [Name21] who placed them at the scene of the assault, while all of them undertook the task of interviewing—individually—possible witnesses, among them [Name23], [Name24], and [Name25]. Furthermore, it was [Name9] who located at the scene a video camera belonging to the Municipalidad de San José, and coordinated what was necessary to find out if information could be obtained from it; just as he did with security cameras located in the area of [Address1] and at the [Address2] business. Subsequently, [Name22] and [Name19] were the ones who went to the Hospital Dr. Calderón Guardia to interview [Name [Name26]]. This while [Name13] and [Name27] visited the Panadería named Santa Clara, where a security video was located, which was seized, and subsequently, they proceeded to investigate the woman known as “[[Name1]]”, whom they interviewed at her residence thanks to the location provided by an informant, which allowed them to seize her cellular telephone and that of her daughter [[Name2]]. Consequently, it is not contrary to logic or the rules of experience, which explain that in team-performed tasks it is feasible to distribute the work to complete the assigned job, especially in initial acts of a police investigation where human resources are scarce, the assertion made by [Name19] that: “Regarding the investigators [Name28] and [Name29], it was the chief [Name12] who told them to interview [Name [Name3]] and her daughter. Regarding the seizure of the cell phones, there was no order; it was they who seized them; those cell phones were delivered to me packaged, labeled, with signatures and chains of custody, original and copy records; it was entered into the control book and they delivered the seized evidence duly packaged; that evidence was packaged in a plastic bag with tape and the chain of custody; the seizure records for those cell phones were made at the house of [[Name1]] and [[Name2]]. The seizure records on folios 97 and 98, I don't remember what was noted in the seizure records, but when any information is corroborated, they are always told the reference case number; that information was provided to them by the attorney [Name12]” (cf. folio 1940). Above all, when such a deposition was also corroborated by the testimony of [Name13], who in this regard acknowledged that: “Paúl [Name11] did not charge us with locating [[Name1]], rather it was [Name30], the chief, to carry out victimology. I did not visit the place in the company of the [Name31] or SITE colleagues. I did not review initial reports by [Name32]. […] That person [Name30] who assigned me the investigation is the chief of the Unidad de Delitos Contra la Integridad Física; she assigns the investigations and tells us what to do. I did not become familiar with the SITE report. The unique number is the case file number; it was a case file number to conduct seizures and tracebacks of that case” (cf. folio 1979). The foregoing allows one to infer that the conclusion reached by the trial court, that the officer [Name16] was unaware that the relatives of [[Name8]] had stated that [[Name1]] had threatened the victim with death, which was before she was interviewed and her cellular telephone was seized, is not unfounded, nor does it violate the logical principle of sufficient reason as claimed. This is due to the fact that police officers participating in an investigation cannot be required to be aware of and know all the information that other investigators obtain during the inquiries, even more so when, as in the sub judice case, those who interviewed the family of the victim were police officers from a different section—SITE—than the one to which [Name16] and [Name33] belonged—Delitos contra la Vida—; and although the referenced preliminary report was sent to the section where the latter are members, it was never proven that [Name17] and [Name18] met with the officers of the Extraordinary Shift, or that in that section the report issued by those who interviewed the family of the deceased was discussed, and that [Name28] and [Name34] participated in it. Thus, the assertion by the defense counsel that the judicial police officers who interviewed [[Name1]] and [[Name2]] did so with the intent of inducing them to error, in order to obtain privileged information and link them to the crime under investigation, and the claim that the statement of [Name35] was tailored to coincide with the one provided by investigator [Name9] regarding who decided that the defendants should be interviewed, are nothing more than speculation that has no support whatsoever in the evidence received, and as such are insufficient to modify the decision. Note that from the interview of [[Name1]] it was only obtained that: “she was the romantic partner of the victim [[Name8]], that for the past three months, having met him at the Panadería named Santa Clara, since said male works there. […] [Name [Name5]] told her that he was not married and that he had a daughter and that he had a girl pregnant and he doubted the paternity; she indicated that the victim’s mother, named [[Name36]], called her and told her that the only daughter-in-law was [[Name7]] […] but the interviewee […] said that the victim swore to her at some point that he was no longer with that woman. She added that [Name [Name26]] sent threatening messages to her telephone number, specifically to 6114–9732, and many times she received threatening messages from the sister of [[Name7]], whose name she does not identify, but they were messages that came from telephone number 7013–7419; these messages were sent to her via WhatsApp or outside of it. Furthermore, she noted that she was unaware of the video published on Facebook by the victim. […] that on October 7, 2015, her daughter named [[Name2]], had received a message and a call from the victim [[Name8]] telling her that they were going to interview him on a television channel and asking if it could be done at her home, but the victim never arrived; later it was learned that [Name [Name5]] had been injured. […] that because she felt her blood pressure was low, she went to the Clínica Bíblica in San José Centro for a check-up and to control her blood pressure, and her daughter [[Name2]] accompanied her” (cf. police report No. 001–DCIFTT–2015 on folio 8 and the statement of [Name13]). The above shows that [[Name1]] was indeed consulted about the life of [[Name8]], as the cited investigators stated—for the purpose of carrying out victimological inquiries—and that she was never questioned about the death threats that [[Name7]] and [Name37] indicated she had made to the aggrieved party, which constitutes further evidence that at that stage of the investigation, the accused [[Name1]] was not questioned as a suspect or defendant, but rather because she had maintained a romantic relationship with the victim—regardless of whether an individual written report was made by [Name13]—which, without a doubt, discards the defect alleged by the complainant and confirms that the conclusion reached by the lower court, regarding the non-existence of absolute defects in the interview of the accused and the seizure of the cellular telephones, is duly grounded. Nevertheless, even hypothetically assuming that the aforementioned police officers knew that the family of [Name [Name5]] had stated that [[Name1]] threatened the victim with death, this was irrelevant for the purpose of classifying her—at that moment—as a person accused of the victim’s assault and, even less, of attributing such unlawful conduct to her daughter [[Name2]], since no one had mentioned her as of October 7, 2015. Thus, for a correct solution to the grievance raised, it is essential to define who is a defendant and how such status is acquired, since from that moment on, all the defense rights prescribed by Article 82 of the Code of Criminal Procedure will be granted, including the possibility of abstaining from testifying, of not offering self-incriminating evidence, and of having a defense attorney to advise them from that first stage of the investigation (Article 13 ibid.). In this sense, it is worth remembering that Article 81 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that: “Any person who, through any act of the investigation or proceeding, is identified as the possible perpetrator of a punishable act or participant in it shall be called a defendant.” This means that it is not any identification of a person within an investigation or proceeding that has the capacity to define whether a person is a defendant or not, but only that which links them as a possible perpetrator of a punishable act or participant in it. Hence, except for cases of flagrancy where the perpetrator of the punishable act is caught in the act of committing it or immediately thereafter, or while being pursued, or is found with objects or traces that strongly suggest they have just participated in a crime (Article 237 ibid.), or in those matters where the filing of the complaint or criminal complaint for a public action crime already entails a direct accusation against the person attributed as the perpetrator of the acts (Articles 76 and 280 ibid.), in the remaining cases, such procedural or investigative act is not expressly defined; rather, it must be individualized in each particular situation by the operators of the criminal justice system, especially by the judicial police, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the judges participating in the preparatory stage. This is because if such an act is incorrectly specified, fundamental rights could be affected, rendering the obtaining of evidence illegitimate, due to the obligation of such authorities to inform the accused of the rights that protect them (Article 82 ibid.) and their duty to adapt their actions in accordance with the procedural guarantees required by international instruments in force in the country, the Political Constitution, and legal provisions. In the specific case, as deduced from report No. 628–IP–SITE–2015 (cf. folio 89 to 92), the investigators of the extraordinary shift spoke with the Fuerza Pública officers [Name38] and [Name39], who warned that the version they managed to obtain from the people present at the site was that: “[…] a black Honda vehicle arrived, from which two subjects got out and one of them pulled out a knife and assaulted the young man [[Name8]]”. Likewise, they questioned [Name [Name26]], the victim’s romantic partner, who indicated to them, among other things, that [Name [Name5]] “[…] was going to be interviewed by the people from channel 6, due to the fact that he became famous on Facebook for recording a subject who was recording a woman; his co-worker named [Name40] told him this; she does not know if the problem stems from said fame he acquired or if she thinks it might be because [Name [Name5]] was having a love affair with a woman from the vicinity of the bakery, [Name41]. [Name [Name3]], who is much older than him, and upon ending said relationship, she threatened him with death but told him she would not get her hands dirty with blood; she does not know where this woman lives or how the problem ended.” In turn, they interviewed [Name42], the victim’s co-worker, who mentioned: “[Name [Name5]] told him that said interview would be at [[Name1]]’s place (the woman with whom [[Name8]] was having an affair), however it was almost 7:00 p.m. and the bakery was closed and [[Name8]] was still outside; he said goodbye to him and went home.” Finally, according to said police report, they also spoke with [Name37], who mentioned “that her nephew had a lover from around the bakery where he worked, and apparently her nephew decided to leave that woman, so she called the house and threatened his wife, threatening her by saying she would get revenge (partner of [[Name8]])”. In this way, it is clear that at the time the SITE officers conducted the initial interviews with possible witnesses—during the night hours of October 7, 2015—what existed within the investigation was the hypothesis that a woman known as “[[Name1]]”, about whom no further details were known other than that she was a neighbor near the bakery where [[Name8]] worked, had sent him telephone messages threatening him with death. However, at that point in the investigation, said hypothesis did not even have solid evidentiary or circumstantial support to justify identifying [[Name1]] as the possible perpetrator of the assault that [[Name8]] had suffered, since from the very source that provided said hypothesis, its antithesis also arose, as [Name [Name26]] clarified that she did not know if the attack had been perpetrated due to that romantic relationship or the fame the victim had acquired because of a complaint he filed for street harassment. Precisely, this lack of evidence that would allow for a founded suspicion or to identify [[Name1]] as the possible perpetrator of the assault on [[Name8]] persisted as of October 8, 2015, given that [Name9] confirmed that he received the police report from his SITE colleagues and met with them in the morning, a period during which the three lines of investigation that they had determined still remained: the first related to the recording the victim made days before the events and which was published on Facebook of a subject committing acts of street harassment, within which a subject known as [Name10] was considered a suspect; another regarding a possible assault in which the victim was chosen at random; and the last linked to a possible romantic relationship and passionate affair with a woman known as “[Name [Name3]]”. Furthermore, it can be seen from the testimony of officer [Name43] that the indicated information had changed by the time [Name16] and [Name33] decided to identify [[Name1]], since the only new information was that “That same October 8th we approached the bakery and there were no cameras, but we located an informant and he stated that he did know [Name [Name5]], that he knew him and [Name [Name3]]” (cf. folio 1931), while [Name16] added that: “[…] being at that place, a person approached us, he did not want to be identified; victimology is to delve into the life of the victim, family, friends, to see what he did; a man told us that [Name [Name5]] used to visit a female friend, with whom he had a relationship; he led us to the house of a woman named [Name [Name3]], he pointed out the house to us” (cf. folio 1979). That is to say, the information that [Name [Name3]], known as [Name [Name3]], had a romantic relationship with the victim and that in this there had been threatening messages from the former toward the aggrieved party was maintained, which, it is reiterated, at that moment in the investigation could not even be classified as an indication—a critical logical judgment by which a rule of experience is applied to a known fact, in order to infer another fact previously unknown (cf. Sala Tercera de la Corte Suprema de Justicia, resolution No. 2003–1050 of 10:10 a.m. on November 21, 2003)—inasmuch as the first of the facts, the indicator—the death threats—had not yet been reliably verified, since all that existed were references to what the victim had told his relatives regarding his romantic relationship with [Name [Name3]], without omitting that, at that moment, even the information available was that the attackers of the victim had been two male individuals, so logically and objectively it can be established that [Name [Name3]] did not even have the status of a suspect. This is consistent with police report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 (cf. folios 1 to 14), where it is verified that when the interview of the accused [[Name1]] was conducted, before 1:00 p.m. on October 8, 2015 (as can be deduced from the time the seizure of her cellular telephone was carried out according to record No. 718758 on folio 97), no other evidentiary elements existed that would change her status to that of a defendant or suspect in the events, even more so when, upon being interviewed again, [[Name7]] added nothing more to the previously provided information than the telephone number [Tel1] as belonging to “[Name [Name3]]”. Consequently, in accordance with the investigative landscape being conducted, no founded suspicions existed that [Name [Name3]], much less her daughter [Name [Name4]], were connected to the assault that [[Name8]] had suffered, and based on this, the investigators could not be required to treat them as persons accused of having committed a crime, to warn them of their right to abstain from testifying, or to provide them with legal advice for their defense, as the appellant intends. On the other hand, the claim is made that the seizure of the current defendants' cellular telephones carried out by the judicial police was illegitimate, because despite the investigators knowing that they were defendants, they were never warned that they had the right not to provide evidence against themselves. However, such an argument is unfounded, not only because, as stated above, when the mobile devices were seized, there was still no indication whatsoever that would generate a founded suspicion of the accused's participation in the armed assault that the victim had suffered, which prevented the police officers from treating them as defendants or suspects and warning them of their rights as such, but also because the seizure procedure does not require the authorization of the owner or holder of the item to legitimize its seizure (Article 198 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), making it irrelevant whether [[Name1]] and [[Name2]] gave their consent or not for such procedure to be carried out. Note that, even assuming the challenger’s thesis, that the police interviewed [[Name1]] even though they knew she was a person accused of having committed the acts to the detriment of the victim, and that the reason her status was concealed was to illegitimately obtain the information that she had been threatened by telephone because of her relationship with [[Name8]], and that, in accordance with this invalid method, the seizure of the accused's telephone was achieved on the grounds that it might contain traces of the crime under investigation—which, it is reiterated, is a thesis that was not proven—the legitimacy of the seizure of the accused's communication device would still persist, since, even hypothetically suppressing her interview, an independent source would still persist indicating that the telephone of the former might contain information of interest to the investigation, given that the interview of [[Name7]] was already available at that time, who had indicated, as the challenger reiterates in her claim, that [Name [Name3]] had brandished threats toward her romantic partner. Hence, it was reasonable and proportionate to the purposes of the investigation for investigators [Name17] and [Name18] to seize that telephone device to preserve information pertinent to the inquiries being conducted, regardless of whether the now accused agreed or not. In the case of the seizure of the cellular telephone of the accused [[Name2]], although no independent source existed apart from her statements to the police that mentioned that said device was an object related to the crime under investigation or that it could serve as evidence, it cannot be overlooked that when her mother [Name [Name3]] was interviewed, [Name [Name4]] was not identified as someone who had a relationship with [Name [Name5]], much less as a suspect or participant in the bladed weapon assault that he suffered; indeed, officer [Name16] was emphatic in pointing out that she was not the person interviewed, but rather that the information obtained from her was because she kept interrupting the dialogue they were having with her mother. He explained this by stating: “During the time we were talking, we spoke with [Name [Name3]], but the daughter [Name [Name4]] butted in a lot; she answered a lot and answered certain conversations. She had a minor daughter and we asked her to leave with [Name [Name4]], but she did not want to; [Name [Name3]] told us that she had received threatening messages directed at her; we found that clue beneficial; she told us she didn’t remember when they called her to threaten her; we were superficially familiar with the case; we didn’t know the background beyond the video of the man from the treasury department. It was rumored to be an assault and revenge for the video. […] [Name [Name4]] interrupted a lot; she mentioned that she had also received messages related to [Name [Name5]]. I don’t remember if it was recorded because the telephones were seized. [Name [Name4]]’s attitude at that moment was not suspicious” (cf. folios 1979 and 1980. Literal copy).\n\nConsequently, the information that the accused [[Nombre2] provided to the judicial investigators, as the lower court held, was not preceded by the violation of any of her fundamental rights, nor was she coerced or deceived into providing data that would harm her mother, or herself, but rather her statements were spontaneous and consensual and, therefore, valid for the police to determine that her telephone could serve as a means of proof, and thus there was legitimacy for them to proceed with the seizure of such electronic apparatus. In addition to this, it is also not evident that during the interview of the accused, statements were made that would lead one to presume that they should be treated as charged parties or, at least, as suspects of the events that occurred, and that for this reason the investigators [Nombre16] and [Nombre33] had to have informed them of the procedural guarantees that protected them, since, from a simple examination of the statements that [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] provided to the judicial authorities, it can be noted that they never mentioned having had any type of participation or any connection whatsoever in the events; on the contrary, what the accused claimed was having been victims of threats for having a relationship –sentimental [Nombre [Nombre3]] and friendship [Nombre [Nombre4]]– with [Nombre [Nombre5]]. Hence the interest that prevailed in the judicial police, as reported by officer [Nombre44], in collecting and preserving said devices to obtain information that would allow clarifying the victim's death and prevent the traces of the crime from being lost. In this sense, while we agree with the defense of the accused that police agents must carry out their work under \"the direction and control of the prosecutor in charge of the investigation\" (Article 283 of the Criminal Procedure Code), which, in the case of the seizure of the electronic apparatuses, did not exist, because the decision to seize such telephones arose from the officers themselves who were directing the procedure and not by order of the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office, this does not mean, as the appellant seems to understand, that the absence of said functional direction for the specific act is sufficient to render the collection of said objects illegitimate, since it cannot be forgotten that the Judicial Investigation Agency, on its own initiative, by report, or by order of a competent authority, has the competence to proceed to investigate crimes of public action, to prevent the acts committed from being carried to further consequences, to identify and preventively apprehend the presumed culprits, and to gather, secure, and scientifically order the evidence and other necessary background for the investigation. Hence, within its powers is to order that objects related to the crime, those subject to confiscation, and those that may serve as means of proof be collected and preserved, without requiring a prior judicial order or authorization from the Public Prosecutor's Office for their seizure (Articles 3 and 4, subsections 5 and 10 of the Organic Law of the Judicial Investigation Agency and Articles 198 and 285 of the procedural code). In addition to this, the seizure of the mobile telephone cannot be confused with the search or examination of the private information contained within it. This is because Law No. 7425, called Registration and Seizure of Private Documents and Intervention of Communications, in its first article, provides that: \"…the following are considered private documents: epistolary correspondence, by fax, telex, telematics, or any other means; videos, cassettes, magnetic tapes, disks, diskettes, writings, books, memorials, records, plans, drawings, charts, x-rays, photographs, and any other form of recording information of a private nature, used with a representative or declarative character, to illustrate or prove something\" (the highlighting is not from its original), within which, while text messages, call logs, images, audio files, documents, contact lists, etc., can be included as digital documents that are contained in the memory of the electronic support, the physical apparatus cannot be granted the quality of a private document, but only the digital information that it contains and which, due to its immaterial asset, is impossible to seize or obtain unless its capture is undertaken through equally digital methods. Therefore, while for the seizure, search, and examination of digital information a duly founded jurisdictional resolution is required, which authorizes legitimately restricting the right to privacy of the persons involved (Article 3 of Law No. 7425), this is not necessary for the purposes of seizing the telephone apparatus, since as a simple object it can be seized by police disposition within a criminal investigation, as long as it is proven that the private information contained therein is guarded and protected from illegitimate intrusions, whether due to the absence of a jurisdictional order or due to not having the express consent of the holder of the right to privacy that is protected. In the specific case, it is not only proven that the judicial police seized the cellular telephones of [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] through seizure records numbers 718758 and 718757 (cf. folios 97 and 98), but that these were delivered to [Nombre32], as this officer stated, duly packaged in plastic bags with tape, labeled, with signatures and chains of custody, along with the original seizure record and a copy (cf. folio 1940), which was also verified when, with prior jurisdictional authorization –resolution at 1:20 p.m. on December 8, 2015, of the Criminal Court of Hatillo visible on folios 30 to 34– the opening of such evidence was carried out with the description that they were delivered by [Nombre9] in \"a transparent plastic bag duly packaged and sealed, identified with the case number and the parties. Likewise, a unique Chain of Custody form for evidence\" (cf. folio 44). In this way, it is verified that from the seizure of the telephone apparatuses until the extraction of the information by the computer technicians of the judicial police, in the presence of the Criminal Guarantee Judge, the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office, and the attorney [Nombre45] as the public defender assigned to [[Nombre1] and [[Nombre2], these devices remained sealed and the information free from illegitimate access, so the right to privacy of the accused was not affected by the seizure of the telephone apparatuses carried out by the judicial investigators. This being the case, it is ruled out that in the instance there was a violation of Articles 36 of the Political Constitution and 205 of the Criminal Procedure Code, since the police officers never interrogated [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] as suspects or charged parties in the aggression suffered by [[Nombre8], given that at the time they did so, there was no founded suspicion of their participation in the events, and their interview was for the purpose of conducting a victimological study and ascertaining whether they could be witnesses to the events that occurred, before which, even, they positioned themselves as supposed victims of other death threats directed at them, which ruled out that the judicial police even presumed their direct participation in the events, even more so when the criminis news reported that those who attacked [[Nombre8] were male persons and not females. Likewise, as the lower court held, there is no indication whatsoever to suggest that officers [Nombre17] and [Nombre18] entered, illegitimately and against the will of the accused [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]], into their dwelling, since not only do said officers agree that it was the accused who authorized them to enter as part of an interview they would conduct as possible witnesses –which is consistent with the rules of experience–, but also none of the accused has stated otherwise, since the only thing they alleged regarding this aspect was that the officers forced them to hand over their cellular telephones, which, from the legal nature of the seizure of objects (Article 198 of the Criminal Procedure Code), is not illegitimate since the consent of those persons is not required for such police action, regardless of whether on said apparatuses there existed, as the technical defense argues, elements of importance for the investigation that prejudiced them. Now, another uncontroverted procedural aspect is that the defendants were not present at the time the opening of their cellular telephones was carried out (cf. 44 to 46); however, the claim of the technical defense in pointing out that such absence was due to a deliberate and illegitimate action by the judicial investigators is improper. Note that the Criminal Court of Hatillo, when authorizing the search and examination of the information contained in the electronic supports of the telephone apparatuses –resolution at 1:20 p.m. on December 8, 2015– ordered that, although [Nombre [Nombre3]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] were not yet formally considered as charged parties, a public defender should be assigned to represent them as \"suspects.\" Hence, from that moment on, as the technical defense argues, they had the right to participate in the acts carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office or the judicial authorities, aimed at incorporating evidentiary elements into the process, such as the opening of the aforementioned cellular telephones. However, it is clear that their absence from the indicated proceeding was not due to police inaction or a desire by the judicial investigators to prevent them from revealing to the jurisdictional authority or their defense attorney the manner in which the electronic devices were seized, as the defense argues, but because [[Nombre1] and [[Nombre2] were no longer locatable since December 1, 2015, at the domicile reported to the police authorities –San José, San Sebastián, from the Central School [Dirección3], house on the right-hand side, pink color with black gates– and, despite interviewing neighbors, among them [Nombre46], to try to locate them, their new dwelling could not be established because their whereabouts were unknown –extension of police report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 from folio 17 to 23–. This is corroborated by the fact that the accused [[Nombre1] and [[Nombre2] were later located residing in a different place than the one they had indicated, that is, in San José, Guadalupe, Mata de Plátano, [Dirección4], of the [Dirección5] (extension IV of report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 at folio 609). Consequently, the fact that the accused were not present during the opening of their cellular telephones was not due to illegitimate action by the police authorities or the Public Prosecutor's Office, but to the free and voluntary decision of the accused to change their domicile without reporting it to the police authorities –which prevented their location–, despite the fact that, as [Nombre43] declared, they had already been informed that to gain access to the information contained in the telephone apparatuses, the jurisdictional order would be processed (cf. folio 1932). In addition to this, the technical defense of any of the involved parties has not demonstrated (nor has this Chamber noticed) what the grievance was that was caused by the non-presence of [Nombre47] and [[Nombre2] in such proceeding, since, as explained above, the seizure of the electronic apparatuses was legitimate, the search and examination of the information contained in them was authorized by a duly founded jurisdictional order, and during the proceeding, a public defender was always present who represented the interests of the accused, without it having been indicated to this point which aspects –other than the manner in which they were interviewed and such objects seized– would have been alleged had they been present at such proceeding, just as no inaccuracy or error in the exercise of the technical defense that participated in such procedural act has been specified, which rules out the alleged grievance. In this way, it is verified that with the interview of [[Nombre1] and [[Nombre2], the seizure of their mobile devices, and the opening of said evidence, the fundamental rights of the defendants were not harmed, and, with this, the defects alleged by the defenders are ruled out. B. With respect to the extraction of the information from the victim's telephone. The procedure employed by the police authorities and the Public Prosecutor's Office to access the private information contained in the telephone of the victim [Nombre [Nombre5]] is an uncontroverted fact, since no claim was made regarding this aspect of the judgment, and the statements of [Nombre32], [Nombre48], and [[Nombre36] are in agreement as to the method used to overcome the password of the electronic apparatus. This was established in the appealed judgment by indicating: “[…] in this regard, there was no controversy about the procedure carried out; the telephone of [Nombre [Nombre5]] was seized via seizure record number 708829 on October 8, 2015, at 01:35 at the Calderón Guardia Hospital, according to report 001-DCIFTT-IP-2015 it is described that it is through coordination with prosecutor [Nombre49], and it is precisely this prosecutorial representation who ordered the opening of the telephone, which is why it was carried out in the Computer Crimes Section; nor was it controverted that there was no jurisdictional order authorizing the opening of said telephone but only the order of the prosecutor in charge of the investigation; there was no controversy that at the time of opening the mobile device, the victim was hospitalized, unconscious, so the computer expert appeared at the medical center and, using the victim's fingerprint, without his consent due to his state of health, moreover, once the information was accessed, it was backed up and used as evidence” (cf. folio 1924). Consequently, in summary, the challenge argument lies in the fact that the trial court rejected the claimed defective procedural activity with an illegitimate reasoning, since, despite recognizing that the information from the victim's telephone was obtained without his consent and without a jurisdictional order authorizing it, it still maintained the validity of the act based on the fact that it considered, erroneously, that the victim's right to privacy was not harmed, nor was any grievance caused to the defendants. Thus, examining the judgment issued regarding this point, it can be noted that, in a first approach to the issue, it was indicated: “[…] this leads the Court to assess what the true affectation of the victim's privacy was, taking into consideration that at that moment he was unconscious, in a very serious state of health that finally led to his death, that is, the intrusion into his privacy did not exist as the defense would have it believed; we could even speak of a presumed consent when analyzing that if the victim were able to give consent, he would have effectively given it because he was precisely the affected person in this process and that information was eventually useful to investigate and determine who the person was who attacked him. The Court has also analyzed that this did not involve the privacy of the accused or the intervention and representation of the accused before a certain act as established by Article 178 of the Criminal Procedure Code, but rather it involved the victim, a victim whose representation is assumed by the Public Prosecutor's Office as the entity responsible for seeking what happened to that victim. The Court considers that because it involves a victim, no harm was caused to him by the action carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office which is pointed out as illicit […] the procedure that the Public Prosecutor's Office carried out, although it may be considered reckless, does not represent harm to the victim or his privacy, but quite the contrary, it was an expeditious procedure to safeguard another interest of the victim, such as reparation for the damage caused through the determination of the perpetrators of the aggression, an aggression that ultimately led to the victim's death; therefore, his privacy was not ultimately affected since he no longer has that right” (cf. folio 1925 to 1927). In this sense, as argued by the complainant, there is an error in the reasoning provided to reject the defective procedural activity raised by the technical defense, since the trial court erroneously assumes that the investigation of the real truth about the death of [Nombre [Nombre5]] and the determination of its perpetrators justified the Public Prosecutor's Office in harming the victim's privacy, forgetting that in the respect for the minimum procedural guarantees that as fundamental rights persons subjected to a criminal process have (Article 8 of the American Convention on Human Rights), the principle of due process is implicit, within which it is provided that evidentiary elements will only have value if they have been obtained by a lawful means and incorporated into the procedure in accordance with the corresponding legal provisions (Article 181 of the Criminal Procedure Code). Thus, it is evident that in accordance with the principles of transcendence and instrumentality that inform defective procedural activity, the defect noticed by the lower court is one that causes a defect in the way in which the private documents from the victim's telephone were obtained, since it was carried out harming the fundamental right to privacy that protected [Nombre [Nombre5]]. In this order, and as cited previously, in accordance with Articles 1, 3, and 29 of Law No. 7425, only by jurisdictional order or with the authorization of the right holder can the private documents of a person be seized, searched, and examined, regardless of the status of party they hold within the criminal process –accused, victim, witness, etc.–, therefore, if the judicial police and the Public Prosecutor's Office needed, within their investigations, to have access to the information contained in the injured party's telephone, they necessarily had to request the judge of the preparatory stage to authorize it, since it was notorious that the victim could not extend his authorization because he was unconscious. Likewise, it is illegitimate to argue that said investigation activity is valid because the aggrieved party –if alive– would have authorized access to the information so that the acts committed to his detriment could be clarified, since this is nothing more than speculation by the sentencing body that has no probative basis whatsoever, because while it can be established, applying the rules of experience, that victims generally collaborate with the investigations of acts committed to their detriment, in the case under study, and dealing with fundamental rights –that of the privacy of persons–, the consent of the holder simply cannot be presumed for the purposes of justifying the action of the accusing body –extracting private information from the victim's telephone–, even more so knowing that the evidence allowed inferring that [Nombre [Nombre5]] guarded such information jealously, to the point that he had assigned a password –alphanumeric and biometric– to access those files, which prevented any person –including the police– from being able to observe and learn what he stored electronically. See that, while police officers can take fingerprints from the accused or any person to compare them with lophoscopic traces located at the crime scene –or to identify persons– and thus clarify the events related to a criminal case under investigation, in the present matter, the taking of the fingerprint sample was used to gain access to the information contained in the victim's mobile device, while he was unconscious in a hospital bed unable to express whether or not he agreed with the judicial procedure, and without having the jurisdictional authorization to access such private documents. There is no doubt then that the action of the judicial police under the functional direction of the Public Prosecutor's Office turned out to be illegal, which led to obtaining information of importance for the investigation irregularly (cf. extension I of police report number 001–DCIFTT–IP–2015 from folio 17 to 22), such as: i. the threat that was made against [Nombre [Nombre5]], according to messages numbers 328 and 329, from telephone 8397–8270 belonging to [Nombre [Nombre3]]; ii. the list of messages between [Nombre [Nombre5]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]], especially that the day before the events, a message was sent from her in which she summoned the victim to the park where he was wounded and another in which she reproached him for the way he acted in the sentimental relationship with her mother; iii. the contact for [Nombre [Nombre4]] appeared as “[Nombre [Nombre4]] daughter”; iv. the existence of messages between [Nombre [Nombre4]] and [Nombre [Nombre5]] in which she summons him to the park where he was attacked, knowing that she was not going to arrive because she and her mother were at the Clínica Bíblica and; v. photographs of [Nombre [Nombre5]] and [Nombre [Nombre3]] that reveal the sentimental relationship they both had. Therefore, the affirmation made by the deliberative body when it indicated that the only evidentiary element extracted from said probative element was the messages between [Nombre [Nombre5]] and [Nombre [Nombre4]] is also not true, since although this information could indeed be extracted autonomously from the electronic apparatus of the latter –that is, by an independent source that would make it valid–, this was not the case with the rest of the aforementioned information which was only extracted from the aggrieved party's telephone and, while it was not used to support the appealed judgment, it did serve as a basis for the judicial police to continue with the investigation they were carrying out. However, despite the illegality of obtaining the mentioned evidence, the request made by the technical defense is improper, that the elements gathered inappropriately be excluded from the body of evidence, and with it, the rest of the means of evidence incorporated into the adversarial process (doctrine of “the fruits of the poisonous tree”). This is because, regardless of the spurious nature of the actions of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the judicial police, it was inevitable that such information would be obtained for the purpose of continuing with the investigations being carried out. Thus, it is worth remembering that the exclusionary rule for illicit evidence due to violation of fundamental rights is not automatically applied, nor should it be understood in an absolute or rigid manner, as the appellant intends, since there are exceptions that have made its application more rational and proportional depending on the circumstances that concur in the specific case, as occurs with the theory of inevitable discovery, which allows granting efficacy to evidence obtained illicitly, as long as the probative result could have inevitably been reached by the normal course of the investigation. This is not unusual in our jurisprudence, as it has been reiterated that: “…if it were to be demonstrated that the evidence excluded for deriving from a constitutional violation would have inevitably or surely been discovered or obtained from the legitimate investigations that were already being carried out at that time, it will be valid. Such is the situation presented to us in the case at hand, where… the suitcase as such, including obviously its content, had already been seized by the police authorities with the proper supervision of the criminal judge (and even with the presence of the representatives of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Public Defense), so the action deployed by the co-defendant… who opened it using the respective key, in no way altered the result of the investigation already underway.” (Third Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, resolution 125-2000, at 10:36 a.m. on February 2, 2000). Consequently, in these cases, what must prevail is that the investigations being carried out would have inexorably led to the independent obtaining of the evidence. This, without any doubt, is what occurred in the instance, since, even hypothetically suppressing this irregular action, the seizure of the victim's cellular telephone would always persist, because it was carried out in accordance with the powers that the law grants to judicial investigators and in compliance with the procedure described by the rule (Article 198 of the Criminal Procedure Code). Without omitting that there was also the interview of [Nombre [Nombre26]] who warned that [Nombre [Nombre5]] had been threatened with death by a person known as “[[Nombre50]” with whom he had maintained a sentimental relationship. In this order, the need to obtain the messages and information contained in the telephone apparatus was notorious, and judicial intervention in this sense was imminent, so there was no other way to continue with the investigation except by opening the seized evidence. Hence, had the search and examination of the private documents that were contained within the victim's mobile device been requested, as appropriate and as the Public Prosecutor's Office should have done, from the competent criminal judge, the accusing body and the judicial investigators would always have become aware of the same information, which demonstrates that in this particular case, the evidence obtained illicitly retained its validity and, therefore, its exclusion was improper. Consequently, the appropriate course is to declare the claims raised on these points without merit.\""
}