Experts are dismissing accused murderer Joran van der Sloot's latest strategy of blaming the Peruvian Police investigators for his current situation as he sits in a Lima jail cell. According to msnbc.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37901351
, van der Sloot, best known to many for his alleged role five years ago in the Natalee Holloway case in Aruba, has filed a complaint with the police in Peru claiming the investigators violated his rights during his questioning for the death of 21-year-old Stephanie Flores of Lima. He claimed he was mislead into signing his confession.
“He has entered into the gates of hell and is trying to think of his next move,” said international law expert Michael Griffith who has visited clients in the past in Peruvian prisons. The Dutchman is being housed in Peru’s notorious Miguel Castro Castro maximum-security prison.
Griffith, known for handling high profile international cases including that of Billie Hayes of the Midnight Express movie fame, said that the prisons in Peru make the harsh Turkish prison that housed Billie Hayes “look like the Ritz-Carlton.”
Griffith said that the Peruvian police and courts operate very differently from their U.S. counterparts. “We can’t apply our rules to their system over there. The police, courts, and prisons operate differently.”
Atlanta, GA, criminal defense attorney Raymond V. Giudice, a partner with Hart & Giudice, said that in Peru, as in Europe, the criminal justice system is set up on the Napoleonic model which is run by a judge who’s role is more akin to an investigator. “It’s not an adversarial system like in the United States. There isn't a jury and they are more geared to a fact finding mission.”
Griffith, a senior partner in New York-based International Legal Defense Counsel, explained that in Peru, a premium is placed on the accused cooperating with the police and courts. Such cooperation, confession, and participation in a reenactment goes a long way towards reducing a prison sentence.
“They’re not going to fall for this like what happened in Aruba,” said Giudice of the Peruvian authorities. “The evidence is solid. His back is against is against the wall and, since he is a gambler, he’s rolling the dice on this one."
Griffith said that van der Sloot’s problem was not the police and that he should not take shots at the people whose good will he needs. “The people in those prisons don’t have enough (money) to buy a worm. They get a few bucks and they’ll slice his throat. He’ll be lucky if he makes it a year.”
The legal experts both agreed that van der Sloot needed to cooperate, not cast blame on the police, and hope to cut a deal in order to get transferred to either a United States or a Dutch prison where he has a chance of surviving the length of his sentence.
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