The five accused of the crime of Samuel Luiz met this Wednesday for the first time since the early hours of July 3, 2021, during which the nurse from La Coruña died after being brutally beaten. Three years after their arrest, two of them – Katy and Alejandro Míguez – arrived alone at the Provincial Court of A Coruña, taking advantage of the freedom in which they remained under investigation. The three other defendants did not suffer the same fate and were transported in a van to the judicial premises. Sitting on the same bench, each in the company of their lawyer, those accused of death avoided speaking to each other. They didn’t even look at each other despite the proximity of their positions. A preview, perhaps, of the crossfire they’ll start firing, presumably, from now on.
So far, defenses have provided insight into some of their strategies, mostly coinciding. It is striking that with the exception of Catherine (who has more different starting circumstances) and Kaio, all the accused blame what happened on the consumption of alcohol – and other substances, in some cases. The lawyer for Diego Montaña, the defendant whom most witnesses consider a participant at the scene of the death, is the one who has explored this issue the most. He did not hesitate to assert that his client was “sucked in” on the day of the incident and He said Diego had consumed a large amount of alcohol that evening and “wanted to fight.” “He took Samuel like anyone else, don’t look for an explanation,” he explained to the popular jury responsible for rendering the verdict.
With a very harsh speech, the lawyer stressed that Diego “was so upset that he fell and leaned on some stairs.” Furthermore, he revealed that he may have even used other substances, that he had an alcohol addiction and that a doorman had kicked him out of a premises due to the level of aggression he displayed. had demonstrated that night. However, he asked the citizens’ court to release him from his sentence, arguing that “we cannot lose perspective.”
He defended his acquittal because his client, he said, “did not intend to cause Samuel’s death in collusion with another group of people.” “Be fair, not vigilante, because any form of hunting cannot be authorized, not even judicial hunting.” The lawyer settled down by repeating the words that the prosecutor in the case had thrown at him a few minutes before.
“A pile of trash”
The closed-door defense of the accused was the tone of this day during which the lawyers addressed the jury directly. “The fundamental question is who killed him? What did everyone do? said the lawyer responsible for releasing Alejandro Míguez from prison, who went to the end in his intervention. “My client will be a pile of trash to you, but he is not a murderer”he declared, appealing to the responsibility of the court. In the same spirit, although with a different style, the lawyer of Kaio Amaral – who demands 27 years in prison for murder and theft – limited the intervention of the accused in the melee to “trying to separate two of his friends” of the victim. .
“The facts are not at all clear (…) You will see if there is Kaio’s DNA on the victim’s clothes, or not,” he said. “If he had not freely and spontaneously told the police that he had grabbed a phone, no one would have known,” he insisted, telling the jurors that by speaking of “ kicks, plural, on my accused, they will not hear it. . “.
Alejandro Freire’s lawyer, “Llumba”, for his part, described the presentation of the accusations as “broad” and He asked jurors to write “every chapter of this book that must begin blank.” “They cannot anticipate and must be particularly scrupulous in determining what everyone has done. “It’s not a matter of saying that this one hit a lot and that one hit a lot,” he said in an attempt to dismantle the prosecutor’s thesis. In addition, he introduced some important information. The importance of keeping in mind the conviction of the two minors convicted for the murder of Samuel Luiz. Two names which, he addressed the court, “you will now hear a lot”.
The free verse of this presentation of the defenses which marked the first day of the plenary was Catherine. His lawyer began his intervention by reflecting on the role of his client, a “girl” who, that evening, went out with her boyfriend’s gang “for the first time.” “He does absolutely nothing,” said the lawyer, who maintains that contrary to what some witnesses indicate, Katy only tried to “stop the attack”. Regarding his role in the crime, the defense was direct: “I was at the most inappropriate time, with the most inappropriate people.”
