The High Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJ) quashed a reviewable permanent prison sentence handed to a married couple convicted last year for the murder of a 57-year-old disabled woman in Benidorm in June 2020. The court ordered a retrial after diagnosing defects in the object of the decision that was presented to the popular jury, noting that the judge had linked negative facts to the central questions posed to jurors and had mixed facts that should have been raised separately for each defendant in the questions presented to the jury.
In its ruling, the TSJ considered appeals lodged by the defense lawyers for the convicted couple, Magdalena Soler and Maria Lourdes Picazo. The decision to annul both the sentence and the Alicante Court hearing held in July of the previous year was affirmed. A new jury and a different judge must be selected to conduct a fresh oral hearing in the months ahead.
The pictured day shows the moment the accused were found guilty by a jury in Alicante. The caption references a manual report from the courtroom.
The couple, who now face retrial, were previously found guilty of murdering a wheelchair-bound woman in Benidorm to steal money she had kept in a safe at her residence. The court found it proven that the man was the primary perpetrator of the murder, as determined by the popular verdict, but ruled that the crime was carried out as a consequence and found no proof that the wife was at home at the time. The joint verdict attributed responsibility to both defendants. According to the facts established in the sentence that has now been annulled, the couple traveled from their home in Benidorm to Adrall, near Seu d’Urgell, with the aim of breaking into the residence, seizing the cash, and escaping.
While the wife waited nearby, the husband entered the home and executed the plan by striking the victim on the head with a blunt object. The victim was knocked to the floor in her wheelchair, and the accused allegedly dragged her lifeless body, applying pressure until life ended, as stated in the sentence now canceled by the TSJ.
Source
The defendants sought abolition of the sentence and the trial, appealing to the TSJ, arguing procedural violations and guarantees were breached, among other issues. In the TSJ decision, despite the complexity of the verdict and the trial judge’s attempts to facilitate proceedings, jurors responded to questions that focused almost entirely on unfavorable facts, without offering alternatives aligned with the defendants’ statements.
Defenders contended during and after the trial that certain statements should be revised, but the overall purpose of the verdict remained unchanged. The TSJ noted that the questions contained a few facts and intentions that the jurors themselves assessed, but they were not adequately separated to prevent confusion.
According to the TSJ, proper compliance with the relevant statute was not achieved. The Law on the Jury states that the court should present the facts in separate, numbered paragraphs, and the jury must declare whether each fact has been proven, favoring the accused as appropriate. The verdict cannot mix proven and unproven facts in the same paragraph.
The Supreme Court of Justice did not address additional issues raised by the defense in the sentence due to the annulment decision.
The deceased woman suffered from phocomelia, a deformity of arms and legs requiring an electric wheelchair to move. She had been affected by thalidomide, a drug associated with fetal malformations in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which contributed to a high pension of nearly 7,000 euros per month. The accused Fernando José AG had worked as a caregiver for her and had begun forming an emotional relationship with the victim.