imputado directo

17:20 Dec 5, 2018 

principal defendant named in the prosecutor's complaint and in the private prosecutor's complaint.

IMO, it is vital that the English speaker know that the defendant has been charged in a criminal case as well as in a quasi-tort case.

Again, the source terms are crimpro, and the English terms, perpetrator and principal (as a noun) are criminal.

15:19 Dec 5, 2018 

My impression is that the prosecution (or perhaps the court?) is characterizing the person as being subject to a private prosecution (querella, and therefore querellado), hence the "defendant," and is being signalled as the "perpetrator" (principal in the first degree) rather than the "abettor" (principal in the second degree) (imputado directo).

So, you would have:

Mario ...., of legal age, married, ... identity card number..., as defendant in this private prosecution and perpetrator (or principal in the first degree).

I don't think "defendant" or "accused" is the implication, as this has already been stated as "querellado" here and would be redundant; rather, it is characterizing the person's degree of criminal culpability.

15:07 Dec 5, 2018 

As Sandro says, "principal" is indeed a criminal-law term, and especially in the US, cf. Bryan Garner (Modern Legal Usage):

"At common law, principal in the first degree = the perpetrator of a crime; principal in the second degree = one who helped at the time of a crime; accessory before the fact = one who successfully incited a felony; and accessory after the fact = one who, knowing a felony had been committed, tried to help the felon escape punishment."

In another entry on "perpetrator," Garner further clarifies the four terms described above:

"Perpetrators are principals in the first degree.
Abettors are principals in the second degree.
Inciters are accessories before the fact.
Criminal protectors are accessories after the fact."

12:39 Dec 5, 2018 

Just read your grading comment and the word you chose, "perpetrator," is a synonym for "principal." They are both criminal-law terms, and what you need is a criminal-procedure-law term.

Charles' suggestion, principal defendant, is applicable to crimpro because principal is being used as an adjective and defendant is the noun.

00:15 Nov 30, 2018 

Thank you, Robert; “prime suspect” was the idea I had in mind when I said “main suspect” (https://definitions.uslegal.com/p/prime-suspect/)

22:03 Nov 29, 2018 

On re-reading this, the context would seem to imply that "querellado" should be translated as "defendant" (or "defendant under private prosecution", if you feel the need to specify that fact) and "imputado directo" as "prime suspect" (per Manuel's idea) or "principal" (per Charles'), thereby qualifying the nature of the defendant here, which seems to be what the source text is doing at this point.

14:12 Nov 29, 2018 

You're welcome, Manuel. Cheers!

10:50 Nov 29, 2018 

Thank you, Sandro, for your well-informed and enriching comments

22:50 Nov 28, 2018 

So sometimes you will see imputado being said at trial or sentencing, which is not technically correct.

Costa Rica has reformed its criminal-procedure laws to an adversarial system. So I would translate imputado as defendant. The only thing I've managed to dig up on "directo," which applies to this context is the following:

Nuestra opinión es que si su familia sabía de donde venía el dinero, debe de pagar ante la justicia ya sea como cómplice o como imputado directo.
http://lanzarotecorrupta.blogspot.com/2010/04/todo-queda-en-...

Here we see that the term is juxtaposed with the term accomplice. Therefore, principal kind of applies, but the term opens up a can of worms in English.

There is no easy way out of this one. I would lean towards just translating as imputado directo as defendant. If it's necessary to be explicit, I would translate the term as principal defendant, as Charles has suggested.

22:37 Nov 28, 2018 

is a bad term to begin with, IMHO. With it, they are trying to take a criminal-law concept (principal) and dress it up in criminal-procedure-law nomenclature (defendant).

The term imputado is, indeed, a suspect under the inquisitorial legal system. However, there is some debate among the doctrinistas from the new adversarial systems as to whether an imputado should be considered as a mere "suspect" or a "defendant." My approach is to translate imputado as "defendant" if the term comes from and adversarial system since this person has legal rights (presumed innocent, right to a bail hearing, etc.) much like one would in a common-law system.

Venezuelan Criminal Procedure Code (adversarial system):
Artículo 124. Imputado. Se denomina imputado a toda persona a quien se le señale como autor o partícipe de un hecho punible, por un acto de procedimiento de las autoridades encargadas de la persecución penal conforme lo establece este Código. Con el auto de apertura a juicio, el imputado adquiere la calidad de acusado.

Even though there is a clear distinction bet. imputado and acusado, not everyone in the Spanish-speaking world (cont.)

12:21 Nov 28, 2018 

I know that "imputado" usually means "accused" or "suspect". It is the "directo" that has given me doubts. To this point, the best answer is "directly implicated"