By a split vote of two to one, the Granada Appeals Court on Dec. 14 overturned a guilty murder verdict for U.S. citizen Eric Volz, who is expected to be released from jail today, according to Armando Mejia, secretary of the court's penal chamber.
Mejia told The Nica Times today that the Appeals Court ordered that Volz be freed from jail and that he is now free to leave the country. The plaintiff will now have 10 days to appeal the ruling.
Volz, a 28-year old real estate agent and magazine publisher, was found guilty last February of murdering his Nicaraguan ex-girlfriend, Doris Ivania Jiménez, in San Juan del Sur on Nov. 21, 2006. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison along with another Nicaraguan man, Julio Martín Chamorro, better known as “Rosita.”
The same Granada Appeals Court ruled to uphold the sentence against Chamorro.
Volz, who always maintained his innocence, became the center of an international media storm this year, as his story was covered extensively by more than a dozen major U.S. news outlets.
Read this Friday's print edition of The Nica Times, an eight-page publication of The Tico Times |
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