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and Jay Brodell of the A.M. Costa Rica staff Roger Crouse, the Canadian bar owner who languished in prison for more than a year, went free Tuesday when judges found he was not guilty of murder. This was the news telephoned to San José by his lawyers, Frank Paniagua and Marilyn Jiménez, minutes after the 1 p.m. decision in the Tribunals in Liberia. In addition to being freed on the murder charge, Crouse also does not have to pay an indemnification to the family of the victim, Miguel Antonio Villegas Salguera, 36. Crouse said he shot the man Aug. 19, 2001, because the man came at him with a knife in Crouse´s Gaby´s Bar in Playas del Coco. The three judges found that sufficient doubt existed that Crouse had done what the prosecution tried to show: kill the man in cold blood due to a falling out among crooks. A series of three public prosecutors believed in the murder theory enough to keep the case going and keep Crouse in jail in Liberia in what is know as "prisión preventiva." The case began when the victim acted disorderly in Crouse´s bar. Crouse called police, and police took the man away. But officers of the Fuerza Pública inexplicably released the man two hours later, and the man, still drunk and affected by drugs, returned to the bar and confronted the Canadian. Police told reporters they released the man because Crouse failed to file a formal complaint because he was still working at the bar. Others in Coco suggested that police were deferential to the man because he was a well-known local troublemaker and police feared him and his extended family. Crouse also has reason to fear friends and relatives of the dead man. He has received death threats, and his waitress, who witnessed the crime, also said she had been threatened. The lawyers said that Crouse probably would not return to the Pacific beach town. In addition to the bar, Crouse owned a limo
A.M. Costa Rica photo
Municipal employees are spiffing up the downtown boulevard in time for
Christmas. Juan Carlos Pérez sands an ornate street lamp that eventually
will be painted gold. |
service. The bar has been burglarized
multiple times, and the two vehicles he used have been vandalized. One
was towed away.
Acting in Crouse´s favor, the lawyers said, was the testimony of two persons from Coco who attested to his standing in the community and also the fact that he had a clean police record. The key element that kept the public prosecutors interested in the case was that the dead man´s hand gripped the knife in death. Crouse said the man used the knife to threaten him. The prosecutors thought that the knife was placed in the hand by Crouse after the shooting, even though the man fell face forward and the knife was under the body. However, Aug. 15 a pathologist for the Judicial Investigating Organization testified in what observers considered a favorable development for Crouse. The man said that body spasms due to violent death sometimes cause a person to grip and hold an object in the hand even though their body falls to the floor. The judges presumably agreed. The pathologist was Jorge Aguilar Peréz of the Heredia forensic lab. The Crouse case was watched closely by other foreign residents of Costa Rica because neither in Canada nor in the United States would he have been incarcerated, much less threatened with 8 to 12 years in prison upon conviction. The waitress and two Canadian tourists were present when the shooting took place. They supported Crouse´s account. In addition, the victim told police when he was let go that he was going to return and kill Crouse. An autopsy showed that the man was drunk and had ingested drugs. The man also has a record of violence. Crouse had bad luck choosing lawyers, which may have contributed to his continual imprisonment. He went through about five advocates before finding Paniagua and Ms. Jiménez. As is allowed under Costa Rica law, the family of the dead man was seeking compensation in the six-figure range. At one time Crouse was offered bail for about $60,000, but he did not accept the offer that probably would have allowed him to flee the country. Crouse returned to the Liberia jail to pick up his possessions after the decision, then he and his lawyers traveled to their office where they toasted the successful outcome of the case, said an aide. Crouse was believed to be staying with friends but not in Coco for the night. Did he get a bum deal? Was Roger Crouse treated badly because he was a North American? Yes and no, Costa Rican judicial observers say. Because he was a foreigner, judges did not want him to go free on bail because he might flee, said these observers. But they would have done the same to any foreigner, they contended. And the natural conservatism of Costa Rican society is why the judicial process dragged on for a year, these same observers said. Murder is a serious crime and the legal process had to run its course, they said. Curiously, the Crouse case was not followed by any other news outlet, Spanish or English. However, A.M. Costa Rica closely followed events, and directed the attention of judicial officials in San José to the case to insure Crouse would not be lost in the shuffle. |
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editor of A.M. Costa Rica Costa Rica’s legislators have to decide if the country will accept a new international police academy promoted by the United States. U.S. officials are providing the technical help and most of the money. The theory is that more training will improve the quality of police protection all over Latin America. Some Costa Ricans and U.S. expats here worry that the school is a cover for the U.S. Army School of the Americas that critics say trained foreign soldiers to violate human rights. That is a naive view because troops in authoritarian regimes need no instructions on how to violate human rights. The police academy should be approved for Costa Rica because police training is a valuable commodity. Yet the theory that such training will enhance police work may be faulty. Being a policeman is a state of mind. All the training in the world cannot compensate for the lack of the creative, investigative spark. Consider the well-trained and highly compensated Boulder, Colo., Police Department which so messed up the investigation of the JonBenét Ramsey murder case that only a contrite murderer with a typed full confession and videotapes of the crime can bring the case to a close. The Boulder police was involved in community policing, which basically means lots of public relations and not a lot of law enforcement. Officials fumbled the ball in the first minutes of investigation into the death of the little beauty queen on or just after Christmas Day, 1996. They did so because they treated the wealthy, connected parents with deference. Where was Colombo or Dirty Harry when we needed him? The Boulder police are among the best-trained
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in a classroom. But the force could
only muster a single detective for hours after the crime was reported.
And the investigation went downhill from there.
Police work in Latin America has been a cover for smuggling, extortion and crime for centuries. The United States isn’t so pure, either. How do those drugs get from the border to the consumer, anyway? Even the highly trained U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has its Russian moles. Simply putting the academy in Costa Rica will not stop Fuerza Pública
members from extroting 5,000 colons (almost $14) from Gingos who walk across
Parque Morazán. But the academy is a step in the correct direction.
Yet many of the same techniques police use also are used by soldiers in investigating, inflitrating and interrogating. In some Latin countries the police ARE the military. But the technical aspects taught by any school can be misused. The excesses of alumni from the U.S. School of the Americas were the excesses of decades of misdirected U.S. foreign policy. What was taught at the school was trivial compared to what was decided in Washington. The bulk of the courses at the proposed police academy are from two to six weeks. This is hardly enough time to brainwash visiting police. And most instructors will not be from the United States. The Asemblea Nacional should quit politicking and quickly approve the plan. But they should be prepared to revisit the academy in two to three years when a track record is available. |
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How to live, invest or find romance in Costa Rica 
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