The Provincial Court of Huelva ha sentenced to 15 years jail the man accused of murdering a man with a shotgun in an orchard on his property located in the town of County Rociana upon “suspecting” that the deceased had entered said place to steal, all after the guilty verdict delivered by a popular jury in relation to events that occurred in May 2020.
In the sentence, the Provincial Court of Huelva condemns the defendant to 15 years in prison for a crime of murder with the analogous mitigation of confession, as well as to compensate the relatives of the victim with a total of of 587,749 euros. In the trial, both the Prosecutor’s Office and the private prosecution requested a sentence of 17 years and 6 months in jail.
In accordance with the terms of the verdict issued by the popular jury, it is declared proven that the events took place at around 2:30 p.m. on May 5, 2020, when the defendant was “hiding and armed with a shotgun” in a area of Rociana del Condado where he has an orchard of his property surrounded by a fence two and a half meters high, which “had previously been subject to theft of fruit and other products”, the purpose of which is to monitor it.
In this sense, the condemned man “had suspicions that the perpetrator of the abductions” was the one who ultimately died and that “some days he would come to the plot around that time”, for which reason “he was hidden and armed with a shotgun in the vicinity of his plot”, according to the sentence, which has been appealed by the defendant’s defense before the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA).
About the aforementioned time, the defendant, with a type E weapons license, verified that the victim had accessed the interior of the plot in the company of another person and that he “teared off some planted bean pods”, in such a way that “he went without being seen from outside the fence” to the deceased and, “after mediating a few words with him, knowing the probability that death could be caused or at least aware that he was endangering his life and accepting that result”, he carried out a shot from the front at a distance of between three and five meters that hit the victim’s face while his companion fled the scene on the run.
The convicted man shot the victim “surprisingly and unexpectedly”
According to the verdict of the popular jury, the defendant fired the shot “surprisingly and unexpectedly, in such a way that it prevented any defensive reaction that could come from” the victim, who died immediately, around 3:00 p.m. on May 5, 2020.
After committing the acts, the convicted person called his son, who told him what had happened, so that the latter in turn transferred it to the Civil Guard, who appeared at the farm and to whom the defendant reported what had happened. and the place where the body was found, “thus favoring the discovery of the facts.”
In its verdict, the jury considered the circumstances exempting criminal responsibility alleged by the defense to be unproven, such as insurmountable fear, mental anomaly or alteration, and self-defense, specifically rejecting that the defendant acted in self-defense in view of the demonstrations. carried out by the Civil Guard agents, none of whom could appreciate the existence of a razor or knife at the scene of the events, as well as in attention to the autopsy forensic medical report, from which it turns out that it was not appreciated in the corpse no injury or indication of attack or defense by the deceased.
When setting the prison sentence, the Court recalls that the crime of murder contemplates a sentence of between 15 and 25 years, but in this case the mitigating factor of confession must be taken into account, which makes the penalty arc oscillate between the ages of 15 and 20, the Court concluding that, “given the defendant’s absence of a criminal record, it is considered appropriate to impose the penalty in its minimum limit of 15 years in prison, since there are no circumstances that justify a greater penalty and that It is considered to be sufficient to fulfill the purposes of prevention, both general and special”.
