Founded in 1973, the Judicial Investigation Department is a dependency of the Supreme Court of Justice of Costa Rica. Since October 2015, its director has been Walter Espinoza Espinoza. The Judicial Investigation Department is a subsidiary body of the Criminal Courts of Public Prosecutions and serves as an auxiliary entity of the Criminal Courts and the Public Ministry, to guarantee the impartiality, honesty and objectivity of criminal investigations. Its Organic Law stipulates that the OIJ will act on their own initiative–by denunciation or by order of competent authority in the investigation of crimes of public action–in the identification and preventive apprehension of the alleged offenders. It also aims to collect, secure and scientifically manage the evidence and other background information necessary for the investigation. Likewise, the OIJ will act in the crimes of private action by order of competent authority after receiving the claim or accusation of the affected party.
Structure
General Directorate
The General Directorate is responsible for directing and coordinating all the overall activities of the OIJ.
General Secretariat
The General Secretariat coordinates everything related to the budgetary system of transport and radio in addition to assigning the distribution of researchers in different sections.
Criminal Investigations Department
The Criminal Investigation Department is responsible for searching and collecting the necessary set of tests and evidence, as well as making the pertinent inquiries in the correct clarification of each case. It is composed of the following:
Museum Criminology, which is located in the building of the OIJ in the First Judicial Circuit of San Jose.
Department of Legal Medicine
Its primary function is to carry out the autopsies, reconnaissance, and other examinations in respective cases that require them. Evacuate medical consultations forensics applied to the Agency. It is composed of several different sections:
The Forensic Science Laboratory, located at the Forensic Complex in San Joaquín de Flores, Heredia, technically analyzes each of the evidence gathered during investigations, including the following:
The OIJ was criticized for its illegal surveillance of Diario ExtrajournalistManuel Estrada, who had written an article critical of the OIJ. In a victory for press freedom and citizen journalists, Judge Ernesto Jinesta Lobo of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court censured the OIJ for conducting illegal wiretaps to identify his sources for the article. In addition to “traditional” journalists, Judge Lobo indicated that citizen journalists also deserve to be shielded from prosecutorial abuses of surveillance. Further criticism includes automatic dismissal of investigations related to intellectual property crimes up to 2011.
