The female judge who kissed an inmate in a video that went round the world has joined Facebook and already has 5,000 followers.
Mariel Suarez is being investigated for engaging in inappropriate behaviour after she was filmed visiting and kissing a convict she had earlier tried to get a reduced sentence instead of life for murdering a police officer.
She has now reportedly created a Facebook account, which has been active since Saturday, 19th January, and where she speaks about the progress she is making on a book she is writing about the life of the prisoner she was seen kissing and his siblings.
Suarez, 49, who is from the city of Comodoro Rivadavia in the Argentine province of Chubut, was filmed visiting the cop killer after he was jailed at the Provincial Penitentiary Institute of Trelew near the city of the same name.
She was caught on camera drinking mate, a tea-like beverage drunk in South America, and even sharing a kiss with Cristian ‘Mai’ Bustos, whom she had been involved in sentencing when he eventually got life for the murder of the policeman.
Bustos was convicted of killing his stepson, a nine-month-old baby, and murdering a police officer in a shootout years later while on the run.
The Superior Court of Justice of Chubut has now opened administrative proceedings into the judge’s behaviour, alleging that she engaged in inappropriate behaviour with the recently-convicted man.
The judge has reportedly accumulated three dismissal requests, which are currently being studied by the Judicial Council.
A court whose sentencing team included Suarez had handed Bustos a life term on 22nd December for the murder of police officer ‘Tito’ Roberts in the village of Corcovado in 2009.
But the female judge was reported to have voted against the life term and to have requested a lesser punishment for the defendant.
The intimate moment seen in this video footage, and for which the judge is now being probed, took place on 29th December, a mere week after the life sentence was handed down.
The Superior Court of Justice released a statement regarding the incident in which it described the inmate as “highly dangerous”.
The court will now determine whether the judge violated the Public Ethics Law or the Judiciary’s internal regulations.
