The eight rugby players who beat Fernando Báez Sosa to death in 2020 were not illegally deprived of their liberty when they were detained in pre-trial detention after the killing in 2020, Argentina’s supreme court has determined.

In a ruling published on Thursday, the supreme court justices wrote that the defendants’ lawyers’ filing against their clients’ pre-trial detention was “inadmissible”.

The defense lawyers originally petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus in 2020, claiming that their clients’ detention was illegal and “manifestly arbitrary”. After successive Buenos Aires provincial courts rejected the claim, the lawyers turned to the federal courts, and then to the Supreme Court.

The four justices rejected their petition in a one-page ruling. The defense’s petition pertained to the decision to hold the rugby players in pre-trial detention, not to the subsequent murder conviction.

Báez Sosa, an 18-year-old from Buenos Aires, was beaten to death outside a nightclub in the coastal resort city of Villa Gesell in January 2020.

On February 6, Máximo Thomsen, Ciro Pertossi, Matías Benicelli, Luciano Pertossi and Enzo Comelli were handed life sentences for his murder, doubly aggravated on the grounds of premeditation and the involvement of multiple people. Ayrton Viollaz, Blas Cinalli and Lucas Pertossi were condemned to 15 years in prison for taking part in the crime. 

Both the prosecution and the defense are appealing the verdict. Báez Sosa’s family’s lawyers are calling for the three perpetrators who got 15 years to be given life sentences.

At a hearing on Tuesday, defense attorney Horacio Henricot demanded that the “aggravated homicide” charge for the five sentenced to life in prison should be changed to “homicide after a fight,” which carries a sentence of two to six years in prison. Henricot also requested the remaining three be acquitted.

During the hearing, Thomsen, 23, broke the rugby players’ habitual silence to tell the court that he and his teammates did not intend to kill Báez Sosa the night of the attack.