Why Aquiles Alvarez’s two convictions do not automatically add up

A mathematical addition would give Aquiles Alvarez nine years and eight months in prison. Legally, however, that is not his current sentence, because the Guayaquil mayor received the penalties in two separate first-instance proceedings.

One ruling imposed three years in the Grillete case. The other, in the Triple A case, imposed six years and eight months after a tribunal found him guilty by majority of illegally storing, transporting, packaging, marketing or distributing hydrocarbons. The two decisions do not automatically become a single combined term.

Criminal lawyer José Cárdenas Llerena said the key distinction lies between convictions from independent proceedings and penalties imposed for a real concurrence of offenses within one criminal case. “They are not automatically combined,” he said of sentences arising from separate proceedings.

Lawyer Lenin Guerra said that the judges responsible for penitentiary guarantees have jurisdiction over the unification of sentences under Article 230, paragraph 5, of Ecuador’s Organic Code of the Judiciary. In Alvarez’s case, it is therefore legally inaccurate to say he currently faces nine years and eight months simply by adding the two terms.

There is another reason for caution: both rulings remain at first instance. Alvarez’s defense teams have announced appeals, and Cárdenas said an appealed sentence can be upheld, changed or overturned. The definitive position will only be clear once the decisions become final.

Ecuador’s Organic Comprehensive Criminal Code does expressly regulate sentence aggregation. Article 20 covers a real concurrence of offenses, when several autonomous and independent crimes are attributed to one person. In that situation, penalties can be combined up to twice the most serious sentence, but may not exceed 40 years. Article 55 also sets a 40-year maximum for the aggregation of custodial sentences.

“

They are not automatically combined.