The Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic prohibits law enforcement in the Caribbean from publishing nicknames relating to police operations or court litigation, which are common practices in the region.
San Juan, Puerto Rico – The Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic prohibits law enforcement in the Caribbean from publicly awarding nicknames relating to police operations or court cases, a common practice in the region.
Until recently, Dominican officials used colorful arrays of words to describe such cases in public places, such as larvae, medusa, falcon, chameleon, and anti-octopus.
The name of the so-called “anti-octopus” case came after prosecutors investigating government corruption suggested that the former president's brother had tentacles reaching out to all government agencies.
The so-called “larva” and “falcon” operations were primarily drug trafficking, but the cases known as “chameleons” were an investigation into allegations of fraud, embezzlement, identity theft, and more.
Meanwhile, the operation called “Medusa” focused on officials accused of corruption, including the country's former Attorney General Jean Alain Rodriguez.
Rodriguez's lawyers recently sought a court to ban the public use of the nickname in cases and police operations, which violated his dignity.
The Constitutional Court agreed in its ruling Wednesday that such nicknames should be used solely as a secret strategy and could violate the suspect's presumption of innocence and affect the fairness of the judge, not for public knowledge.
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