Panama. The Superior Court unanimously decided not to admit the expert evidence of an on-site inspection, planimetry, and forensic photography taken in the cell of Gilberto Ventura Ceballos, after he was captured in 2020 following a second escape from La Nueva Joya. The evidence, which recorded the state of Ventura's cell bars, which were vandalized, was rejected because 'they were carried out without the presence of a competent lawyer,' stated Roiz Navarro, from Ventura's defense team. After a constitutional guarantee amparo presented by the Public Ministry in August 2025, the Supreme Court of Justice had admitted the evidence to be presented during the oral trial for this case on February 24, but today the Court denied them. On February 3, 2020, Ventura fled for the second time from the La Nueva Joya prison, where he was serving a 50-year sentence imposed in July 2018, which was reduced to 30 years in November 2020 for the kidnapping and multiple homicide of five young people of Asian descent in La Chorrera, West Panama, perpetrated between 2010 and 2011. The convicted man was recaptured ten days later in the El Salao de Remedios area, in the western province of ChiriquÃ, bordering Costa Rica. The victims of this atrocious case, which shocked Panama at the time, were identified as: Yessenia Argelis Loo Kam (18 years old), Young Jian Wu (27), Sammy Zeng Chen (19), Joel Maurio Liu Wong (19), and Georgina del Carmen Lee Chen (18).
