A qualified majority determined Thursday afternoon the guilt of Diego Rodríguez, the man accused of attempting to murder his cousin and end the life of his partner in February 2021 in the parish of Velle in Ourense. The members of the citizen court, composed of five men and four women, presented their decision after three days of trial during which the facts and evidence against the sole accused were presented, a young man suffering from mental illness for which his defense requires a complete defense – or at least incomplete – and his admission “to a specialized center where he can be treated”. While awaiting the sentence that the president of this court will have to assess, the story of that night has become clear to the jurors, that They saw no sign of innocence in the accused’s behavior.
According to his verdict, the young man went to his relative’s house at dawn, located on the same street as his own home, after taking a knife out of his home and telling his mother, with whom he lived, that he was going to “kill rabbits”. At the door of his cousin’s house, he started shouting “open, open”, and as he did so, he lunged at him and started stabbing him repeatedly with the knife in different parts of his body shouting “I’m going to kill you”. “The victim’s girlfriend intervened and told the accused to leave him, but at that point “Far from ceasing his attitude, he attacked her”, stabbing her in the neck and several other stab wounds all over her body. — up to a total of 17, as confirmed by the victim’s autopsy — which caused his death.
The attacker’s cousin, who survived the attack, managed to crawl to the phone and call his father to tell him that his cousin had stabbed them. As an adult, he would write the assailant’s name on the ground in his own blood in case he did not survive to tell the tale. At this stage, neither the prosecution, nor the private accusations, nor even the defense, dispute the paternity of the crime; but the mental state of the accused at the time of the facts is subject to debate, since He had been without medication for nine months and has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since the age of 18.
For the facts, The public prosecutor demands 24 years in prison — 17 for the crime of murder and 7 for the crime of attempted murder. Private charges, meanwhile, seek up to more than 25 years in prison with a proposal for permanent and reviewable prison time. Supported by the explanations of forensic experts, the prosecutor maintains that there was planning of the crime and subsequent concealment, as well as treason because it was a surprise attack. The lawyer for the murdered woman’s family says her mental illness should not be a mitigating factor. “He knew what he was doing, he was planning and trying to escape responsibility”he said at the end of the trial.
