Inconstitucionalidad de la cadena perpetua en Colombia

On July 22, 2020, Legislative Act 1 of 2020 was approved “By means of which article 34 of the Political Constitution is modified, eliminating the prohibition of life imprisonment and establishing reviewable life imprisonment.” Considering that this rule replaces the 1991 Political Constitution, some members of the Penitentiary Law Group of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, presented a claim of unconstitutionality, which was admitted by order of September 28, 2020 (file D-13839). This article contains the arguments of our claim, where we point out that the Legislator incurred in a substitution of the founding principles on which our Constitution built, such as human dignity (Article 1 of the Constitution) and the possibility of re-socialization (Articles 10-3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and 5-6 of the American Convention on Human Rights), equality (Article 13 of the Constitution), freedom and the prohibition of the imprescriptibility of penalties (Article 28 of the Constitution).