HE High Court of Justice of the Commonwealth of Valencia (TSJ) It quashed the reviewable permanent prison sentence of a married couple convicted last year for murdering a 57-year-old disabled woman for robbing her home in Benidorm in June 2020, and ordered a retrial. shape defects in the object of the decision handed over to the popular jury, where the judge was only involved negative facts It confused the facts that had to be raised separately for the defendants in the questions that the members of the people’s court had to answer, and in some questions for and against the case.
This was reflected in a decision by the TSJ, which considered the appeals made by the convicted couple’s defense lawyers: Magdalena Soler and Maria Lourdes Picazoand both the sentence and the hearing at the Alicante Court in July of last year were cancelled. Now, a new jury and another judge must be chosen to repeat the oral hearing in the coming months.
The couple, who should be tried again, were found guilty of murdering a wheelchair-bound disabled woman in Ankara to steal the money she had kept in a safe at her home. Benidorm. The court considered that it was proven that the man was the material perpetrator of the murder, according to the popular jury’s verdict, but decided that the crime was “a consequence” even though it was not proven that his wife was at home. The joint decision of the two defendants”. According to the facts proved in the sentence now canceled, the defendants traveled from their homes in the town of Benidorm. Adrall, next to Seu d’Urgell (Lleida), with the aim of killing the victim, opening the safe and stealing the money inside.
While his wife was waiting nearby, the husband entered the house to carry out his plan and struck the victim in the head with a blunt object. The landlord fainted and the accused overturned the wheelchair. He then placed her on his back, “pressing hard” until he ended his life, as stated in the sentence, now canceled by TSJ.
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The defendants demanded the abolition of the sentence and the trial, and Appeal before TSJ They alleged violations of rules and procedural guarantees, among other issues. In the TSJ decision, despite the complexity of the subject matter of the verdict and the trial judge’s attempt to facilitate the proceedings, jurors Although only nine questions were included in the statement, the reality is that all questions asked refer to “unfavorable facts, without alternative propositions that coincide with the statements of the defendants.”
Happiness argumentDefenses occurring at trial and on appeal, object of decision encouraged the jurors to give a negative answer. At the trial, both the defenses and the jury requested that some statements be changed, but judgeAlthough the prosecutor did not object, the purpose of the verdict did not change.
The TSJ verdict adds that similarly, the questions contained “a few facts and intentions that the jury members themselves appreciated” and unsuccessfully set them apart to avoid confusion.
For TSJ, “effective compliance” was not given to the provisions of the statute. Jury Law, It states that the subject of the provision “will tell the facts put forward by the parties separately and in numbered paragraphs, and the jury must declare whether it has been proven by discriminating against the accused and in their favour”. It cannot contain positive and negative facts or facts some of which are proven and some unproven in the same paragraph.
The Supreme Court of Justice does not address other issues raised by the defense lawyers in the sentence due to the annulment decision.
The woman who was murdered suffered from a condition called phocomelia, a deformity of her arms and legs that required an electric wheelchair to move around. The victim was affected by thalidomide, a drug that caused fetal malformations in pregnant women between the late 1950s and early 1960s, resulting in a high pension of 7,000 euros a month. The accused Fernando José AG was working as a caregiver for him and had begun to develop an emotional relationship with him.