The Supreme Court’s Second Chamber, which reviews criminal cases, has issued contradictory rulings on petitions for protection of personal liberty filed by convicted sex offenders seeking sentence reductions for good behavior. These petitions are a legal action to protect personal liberty. The rulings, reviewed by T13, show that the chamber’s justices do not share a common position.
At issue is Law 21,421, enacted in 2022 during former President Sebastián Piñera’s administration. That law excluded convicted sex offenders from the sentence reductions for good behavior governed by Law 19,856. The question is whether it also applies to those sentenced before its publication.
According to T13, Justice Leopoldo Llanos has favored granting the benefit to those convicted before the reform. Justices Manuel Valderrama and María Cristina Gajardo have opposed it. Gajardo initially shared Llanos’s position.
Gajardo’s change in position was recorded on February 24, 2026. That day, the chamber rejected the petition filed by Floridor Campos Silva, 53, who was sentenced in 2014 by the Colina Oral Trial Court to 15 years in prison for the rape and sexual abuse of two children under 14, for acts committed between 2007 and 2010. The ruling was signed by Valderrama, Juan Cristóbal Mera, Gajardo and substitute judges Juan Carlos Ferrada and Carlos Urquieta.
In a concurring opinion, a note in which a judge explains their vote, Gajardo acknowledged that she had previously considered the rules in force when the crime was committed to be applicable. She added that a new analysis had led her to change her position, because Law 19,856 establishes "an administrative and procedural benefit for the enforcement of a sentence already imposed".
On March 25, the chamber upheld a Santiago Court of Appeals ruling granting Juan Carlos Aros Palma’s petition. The San Bernardo Guarantee Court had sentenced him in 2019 to five years for rape and three for the sexual abuse of an adolescent girl. The Ministry of Justice appealed on March 28 and lost in a split ruling.
In that case, Llanos, Jorge Zepeda and substitute judge Eduardo Gandulfo held that the law could not be applied retroactively. Valderrama and Gajardo voted to overturn the ruling.
On March 31, with a different composition, the chamber reached the opposite result. It upheld the rejection of the petition filed by Fidel Alejandro Jaramillo Espinoza, sentenced in 2022 by the Temuco Guarantee Court to five years for repeated sexual abuse of a person under 14 in 2015. Valderrama, Gajardo and substitute judge Andrea Ruiz voted in favor. Llanos and substitute judge Pía Tavolari voted against. The sources do not report the case numbers (RIT or RUC).
These rulings are at the center of the crisis facing Justice Minister Fernando Rabat. The news outlet Interferencia revealed that his ministry had decreed 56 sentence reductions on its own initiative: 29 for people convicted of rape and 27 for people convicted of child sexual abuse.
Rabat initially said that the Supreme Court had established a uniform position in favor of the reductions. Rulings from February that contradicted him subsequently came to light. On Duna radio, the minister said that they had initially rejected the applications and changed their position "around May 2026".
Rabat announced the suspension of the processing of sentence reduction decrees and his support for bills to prevent these benefits from continuing to be granted to those convicted before 2022. Regarding a possible constitutional impeachment motion by the opposition, he said it "has no basis", because the ministry acted in accordance with the Constitution, the law and international treaties.
