Closing a Criminal File in Colombia: What It Means and How to Reopen It

Juan Antonio Matiz Monroy — Lawyer, Universidad de los Andes · Specialist in Criminal Law, Universidad Sergio Arboleda · Professional licence 294.746 (C.S.J.)

Bogotá D.C. · Updated: September 2026 · Reading time: 12 min

For someone who has reported an offence, few words sound as final as “the file is ordered closed”. They read like a door shutting: the State looked at the case and decided there was nothing there. The paradox is that, under Colombian law, closure is exactly the opposite of what it appears to be.

It is not a judgment, it does not decide the merits and it has no res judicata effect. Of all the ways a criminal proceeding can end, it is the most provisional and the most reversible. That provisional nature is a tool for the victim and a serious warning for the person under investigation.

Let us state from the outset the idea that orders everything that follows, because it explains each step. Closure is neither a caseload-management tool nor a decision the prosecutor takes at will. It is a regulated decision, available only where the facts did not occur or are objectively atypical, and only after investigating.

That is why an improper closure can be challenged, and a reopening is built on what the decision failed to do. The Prosecution Service (Fiscalía General de la Nación) set out that regime in Directive 0002 of 2025, addressed to its own prosecutors. This article explains the rules on closure and places the Directive and the case law inside each step.

1. What closure looks like and what it is

The basis for closure is Article 79 of Law 906 of 2004, the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Prosecution Service closes a file when it finds no facts or circumstances that would allow the event to be characterised as an offence. If new evidence emerges, the inquiry resumes for as long as the criminal action has not lapsed.

The Constitutional Court fixed the scope of that rule in judgment C-1154 of 2005, with one condition. The phrase “characterised as an offence” refers only to objective typicity, not to responsibility. When closing a file, the prosecutor finds that the event did not exist or that an objective element of the offence is missing.

Those elements are the subject, the conduct, the result and the causal link, as the case law lists them. Every judgment on intent, negligence, unlawfulness or grounds excluding responsibility lies outside closure. And the finding is not free: it requires prior investigation and reasons grounded in what was gathered.

Three features follow from that reading, and they define the institution. Closure is decided by the prosecutor, must be reasoned and notified to the complainant and the Public Ministry, and has no res judicata effect. The same judgment added that the prosecutor may not assess subjective elements or grounds excluding responsibility.

The Supreme Court completed the picture in the Full Court order of 5 July 2007. It listed the situations covered by Article 79: the event did not exist, it is objectively atypical, or the perpetrator or the victim cannot be identified. And it set the limit: any discussion beyond those parameters prevents the prosecutor from closing the file directly.

That is the distance between what closure looks like and what it legally is. It looks like a definitive ending and is a suspension of the inquiry with a technical name. It looks like a decision on responsibility and is a finding about facts, nothing more.

2. Closure as a statistical exit: who loses

Closure has an ease that no other way of ending a criminal proceeding has. The prosecutor decides it alone, without a hearing, without a judge and without adversarial debate. That is why it can become the most convenient route to shut a file and show it as “resolved”.

Directive 0002 of 2025 itself acknowledges that risk when it forbids using closure as a caseload-management tool. It describes closure as an exceptional measure that requires rigorous analysis, genuine investigative effort and legality. That an institutional directive has to warn its prosecutors of this reveals the problem it seeks to correct.

That misuse does not harm one party only, although that is the common belief. It harms the victim, and it also harms the person under investigation, for different reasons.

For the victim the harm is obvious and occurs at the very moment of closure. A premature closure ends the case without the hypotheses being explored or the required evidence being gathered. The burden of “proving there was an offence” then falls on the person least meant to bear it, a shift the Directive expressly forbids.

For the person under investigation the harm is less obvious, but just as real and longer lasting. Closure does not acquit them, does not declare that they committed no offence and has no res judicata effect. For someone who is innocent, a hasty closure leaves a dormant investigation that may be reactivated years later.

Here one distinction must be fixed, once, because it orders everything that follows. Closure is an administrative decision of the prosecutor, applies where the event did not exist or is objectively atypical, and is revocable. Preclusión, the judicial dismissal, is requested by the prosecutor from the trial judge, decided at a hearing and produces res judicata.

The practical consequence of that distinction is clear, and the Supreme Court has upheld it since 2011. Where the discussion concerns intent, a justification or the responsibility of an identified perpetrator, judicial dismissal is the proper route. That discussion is resolved by the judge, through dismissal, the principle of opportunity or trial, not by the prosecutor.

For the innocent person, therefore, the exit that truly protects is not always closure. If the investigation was exhausted seriously and there is no basis to charge, judicial dismissal gives a definitive ending. Settling for a closure “for now” can be a short-sighted strategy that merely postpones the problem.

3. The regime: when it applies, when it is barred, how to challenge it and how to reopen

What follows is the manual on closure, ordered in the four steps that decide any case. Each step shows what the law requires, what the Directive specifies and what the Criminal Chamber has decided.

When it applies

The core is Article 79: the event did not exist or the conduct is objectively atypical. The Directive adds the situations the Code regulates separately and which also end in closure. They are anonymous reports without concrete data (Article 69), expired time limits after investigating (Article 175) and settlement in offences requiring a private complaint (Article 522).

The Supreme Court has admitted, with conditions, two further situations that the Directive incorporates. The first is the impossibility of identifying the perpetrator when a genuinely conducted investigation cannot determine who it was. The second is the lack of cooperation of the victim in complaint-based offences, when it prevents the objective elements of the offence from being established.

On the first, judgments SP3270 of 2020 and SP096 of 2023 confirmed the acquittal of prosecutors who closed files on that ground. In both cases the Court verified that no other source of knowledge existed about who had acted. On the second, judgment SP1297 of 2024 upheld the closure of a complaint for breach of trust.

That last case shows the condition the Directive turns into a rule: closure must be preceded by real investigative steps. The prosecutor had summoned the complainant, had looked for a contact number and had left a written record of every attempt. Without that verifiable trail in the file, the ground supports nothing at all.

Because a ground, on its own, never supports a closure; what supports it is the demonstrated diligence that precedes it. The Directive requires it before the order: exploring the reasonable criminal hypotheses, ordering the pertinent activities and gathering the available evidence. Widening the catalogue of grounds did not widen the prosecutor’s discretion, but the burden of justification.

When it is barred

As important as knowing when a file may be closed is knowing when closure is forbidden. The Directive states it: closure is unavailable where the applicable offence, intent or negligence is in dispute. Nor is it available where possible grounds excluding responsibility arise, or where the victim was not contacted without reasonable efforts having been exhausted.

The logic of those prohibitions is that of judgment C-1154 of 2005, and it is worth understanding well. All of those situations require a value judgment about someone’s intent, justification or responsibility. That judgment is not in the prosecutor’s hands when closing a file; it belongs to the judge, at a hearing, with adversarial debate.

The Criminal Chamber has applied this to concrete cases, and one from 2023 illustrates it clearly. In judgment SP230 of 2023 it examined the closure of a traffic-accident inquiry attributed to a downpour, invoked as force majeure. It held that the prosecutor may not assess grounds excluding responsibility when closing a file, although it acquitted because intent was not proved.

The Full Court order of 2007 had already shut the other door with the same logic. Where the status of the perpetrator, a duty of care or a debatable causal link is in dispute, the prosecutor may not close the file. Closing it in those cases is not saving time: it is usurping a power the law reserved to the judge.

How to challenge it

The closure order has no appeal, but it does have control, and control begins with its content. Judgment C-1154 of 2005 required it to be reasoned and notified to the victim and the Public Ministry. The Directive fixes the minimum content: authority, date, case number, relevant facts, activities carried out, evidence gathered and the reasoning behind the ground.

That content is not a formality, because it is the only thing that allows the decision to be verified later. A closure that does not say what was investigated or why it concluded there was no offence cannot be controlled. And what cannot be controlled will hardly survive scrutiny by the judge of guarantees.

The challenge, then, does not consist in insisting vehemently that “there was an offence”. It consists in confronting the order with its own rules: whether the investigation was exhausted, whether the ground is one of closure and whether it is reasoned. That technical reading is what distinguishes suffering a closure from disputing it with real prospects.

There is also a consequence for the official, which the Supreme Court has made effective. In judgment SP3718 of 2022 it convicted a prosecutor for closing files on facts with criminal relevance while disregarding the evidence gathered. Malfeasance requires intent and not every wrong decision is a crime, but the boundary of closure also binds the person who draws it.

How it is reopened: reopening with evidence

Here the paradox of the beginning returns, because closure has no res judicata effect. The investigation may resume, and the Directive recognises two situations for doing so. The first is that new material evidence emerges; the second, that the order was improper because it failed to meet the legal requirements.

The second situation is decisive and is usually overlooked by those who report offences. New evidence is not necessarily needed; it is enough to show that the closure, as issued, did not meet its conditions. The best-built request combines both pillars: what was not investigated and what can now be proved.

If the prosecutor refuses to reopen, the refusal must be reasoned, and that refusal is subject to judicial control. The victim may go before the judge of guarantees, as judgment C-1154 of 2005 recognised and the Supreme Court reiterated in 2007. Keeping an investigation closed is not left to the prosecutor’s will alone.

That is how, in practice, a request to reopen worthy of the name is built. It documents which reasonable investigative steps were omitted, which judgment on responsibility the ground concealed, or which new evidence exists. Reopening does not depend on the insistence of the person asking, but on the strength of that demonstration.

It should be added that the map of exits changed a few months after the Directive, with Law 2477 of 2025. That law rewrote Articles 331 and 332 on judicial dismissal and added Article 78A, extinction of the criminal action through full reparation. Closure remains the only exit adopted without a judge, and therefore the one that most demands verifiable requirements.

4. Conclusions

Closure of the file is not a judgment and has no res judicata effect. It is a regulated decision of the prosecutor, without a judge, available where the event did not exist or is objectively atypical. It also requires prior investigation. Judgment C-1154 of 2005 fixed that limit, and Directive 0002 of 2025 forbids using closure to manage caseloads. Where intent, a justification or an identified perpetrator’s responsibility is disputed, judicial dismissal before the judge applies.

A ground, on its own, does not support a closure: the demonstrated investigation that precedes it does. The order must be reasoned and notified to the victim and the Public Ministry, and those reasons allow it to be controlled. Reopening is available with new evidence or by showing that the order was improper. If the prosecutor refuses, the victim may go before the judge of guarantees. For the person under investigation, a hasty closure is not an acquittal.

Reading the order with technical judgement, before accepting it or settling for it, is the purpose of the initial consultation. In it we review the ground invoked, the investigation that preceded it and the exit that fits your position. From that diagnosis, the firm can take on victim representation in reopening the file, or the criminal defence of someone still under investigation.

Frequently asked questions

What people usually ask us

Legal and bibliographic references

This content is informational and does not constitute legal advice on a specific case. Whether a file can be reopened, and by which route, depends on the circumstances of each investigation and its evidence.