The Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced Jesus Pradales at 14 in prison for the intentional homicide of Juana Canal, whom he killed in the early hours of February 23, 2003 in an apartment in Ciudad Lineal during an argument.
This is what the sentence indicates, which specifies that the confessed murderer is punished as the author of a crime of homicide, with the aggravating circumstance of kinship. The convicted person must compensate the son of the deceased to the tune of 118,000 euros, and each of his brothers for an amount of 22,000 euros.
The sentence comes after a popular jury declared Jesus on September 26 guilty of intentional homicide of his then partner and ruled out that it was an accidental death.
The members of the jury thus supported the thesis of the prosecutor and the lawyer of SOS Desaparecidos, Juan Manuel Medina, who maintained that the deceased had not died accidentally after the accused pushed her away with his arm to prevent him from attacking him.
The prosecutor and the private prosecutor’s lawyer requested a sentence of 15 years in prison for the crime of intentional homicide with the aggravating circumstance of kinship, while the defense requested acquittal because it involved death. accidental.
In the judgment, the court emphasizes that “it is necessary to take into account the seriousness of the damage suffered by the members of the family, linked to the experience of the sudden loss of a mother and a sister, the trial having proven that the son who lived with her “He had to leave the house because he could not pay the rent, and he even died without having any news of what had happened to his mother.”
The magistrates They refuse to appreciate a mitigating circumstance of confessionsince “the accused does not respond in any way to any of the hypotheses, since he never appeared before the authority to express what he had done, and it was only at the time of his arrest and in the face of irrefutable evidence found regarding the remains of who had been his romantic partner, when he gives a version of what happened, only acknowledging having dismembered Juana Canal.
accidental death
The accused claimed at trial that his partner for five months He died accidentally in the apartment they shared. in Ciudad Lineal in the early hours of February 23, 2003, after he hit the ground after pushing her away with his arm to prevent her from hitting him with her fists. According to her account, that night Juana was more aggressive than usual because she was under the influence of alcohol.
In his final statement, the prosecutor stressed that Juana’s death was not “accidental”, but the “result of a aggressive action in which Jesus assumed the risk” of this outcome.
“In 26 hours he dismembers her, which is not easy, travels 170 kilometers, digs two holes, buries the skeletal remains, returns and leaves the note to Sergio, Juana’s eldest son, in which he writes that her mother took some pills and it went away,” he explained.
