Maradona medical team retrial opens in negligent homicide case in Argentina

Seven members of Diego Maradona’s medical team returned to court in San Isidro, near Buenos Aires, in a retrial that puts both alleged medical negligence and courtroom procedure under the same harsh spotlight.

The case centers on the final days of Maradona, who died on November 25, 2020, at age 60 after a heart attack and acute pulmonary edema while recovering from brain surgery to remove a subdural hematoma. Prosecutors have said the former football star’s convalescence at a private residence in Tigre, a Buenos Aires suburb, was grossly negligent, and the new proceeding again asks whether the care he received after leaving hospital met even basic standards.

The defendants face negligent homicide charges. The retrial opened nearly five years after Maradona’s death and after the first case ran for about two and a half months before collapsing in May 2025. That earlier proceeding heard testimony that at times turned tearful, including from Maradona’s children, before judges annulled it and sent the case back to the starting line.

The collapse did not come from a verdict on the medical evidence but from a judicial ethics scandal. One of the three judges, Julieta Makintach, was revealed to have secretly participated in a documentary about the case and to have used cameras inside the courthouse and her office. The disclosure destroyed confidence in the original trial and left the prosecution of Maradona’s medical team tangled up with questions about the conduct of the court itself.

That procedural breakdown matters because this retrial is not just about what happened in Tigre after surgery. It is also about whether Argentina can deliver a fair judgment in the death of one of its most famous figures without the process itself becoming part of the controversy. Prosecutors and defense lawyers are expected to revisit the evidence, the testimony and the circumstances of Maradona’s discharge and home treatment, all under the weight of a case that has already exposed how fragile public trust can be when media scrutiny, celebrity and criminal justice collide.