Abstract

This paper conducts an evidentiary discursive analysis of a Chilean judicial sentence of high public impact. It is a propositional and exploratory research that links evidential reasoning with discourse analysis to examine the different arguments and, ultimately, the various representations of the world in dispute at the time of proving a fact. Based on this, the research focuses on three aspects of the judicial sentence that were decisive and conflictive in the accreditation of a fact: the discordant statements of the victim, the contradictory expert evidence and the disagreement between the judges that made up the court. Regarding the first aspect, the way in which the court takes into account the bonding and affective relationship that the victim had with the accused is analyzed. On the second aspect, we delineate how expert evidence (and science) can provide explanations to confirm a version of the facts that specialists explain in court. On the third aspect, the existence of divergent decisions among judges themselves and their possible damage to the legitimacy of the justice system is analyzed. All these issues are striking because, although empirical analysis is an essential component in that the truth of the facts proven guarantees a correct application of the law, it must be reconciled with an approach that also rescues the interests in dispute, the discursive organization of the judges, and the discursive organization of the judges.