An appeals court in the Dominican Republic yesterday threw out the criminal defamation conviction of Nagua radio journalist Johnny Alberto Salazar, who in January was sentenced to six months in prison for allegedly libelling a local lawyer.
According to local news reports, justices of the Court of Appeal for San Francisco de Macorís ruled that the original judgment against Salazar, who works for Vida FM and vidadominicana.com, was “unfounded and contradictory.”
The case centred on comments Salazar made on his radio program alleging that the lawyer, Pedro Baldera Gomez of the Nagua Human Rights Commission, had defended a number of thieves in the area.
Salazar – who had remained free while his appeal was pending – would have been the first journalist to be jailed for criminal defamation in the Dominican Republic. Yesterday’s ruling also relieves him of a fine, imposed together with the prison sentence by Nagua judge Salma Bonilla, of 1 million pesos (20,500 euros) – an amount hundreds of times more than what the country’s criminal libel laws allow
The reversal comes as the International Press Institute (IPI) is set to visit the Dominican Republic next week as part of a multi-nation press-freedom mission in the Caribbean to push for the repeal of criminal defamation laws.
IPI Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie, who will lead the mission, said: “We are thrilled to hear that the appeals court has thrown out Mr. Salazar’s sentence. This is truly good news – of which there is not enough in the press freedom world. However, Mr. Salazar should not have been in this position in the first place. Journalists should not face being sent to prison for doing their job.”
She continued: “This case demonstrates that, rather than being legal relics, criminal defamation laws are being actively used to intimidate the media and to suppress information that the public has a right to know about. We urge the Dominican Republic government to recognise the danger these laws pose to democracy and to thereby consider their repeal.”
The Dominican Union of Journalists, which has assisted IPI in preparing the Caribbean mission, is backing a 2010 freedom of expression bill that would modify Law No. 6132 on expression and diffusion of thought, one of two Dominican legal sources that deal with criminal defamation. The bill, which is awaiting executive approval before the Legislature can consider it, would decriminalise defamation. In meetings with Dominican Republic authorities, IPI hopes to spark the political will to modernise the legislation and, by consequence, strengthen democracy.
Dominican criminal defamation law, set forth in both the country’s penal code and in the separate Law No. 6132, provides a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment in certain cases. Both sources include desacato laws, common in Spanish-speaking countries, which stiffen the punishments for criminal defamation when the allegedly defamatory material concerns a public official’s exercise of his or her official functions.
