THE women who worked as a civil servant in Prison nurses and what was sentenced has 21 years in prison for poisoning seven colleagues in the prison health service with methadone and other drugs. Huelva Between July and November 2018, he presented a appeal to the Supreme Court (TS) considering that their right to presumption of innocence and claims that “it has nothing to do with what happened in prison” and that he “carries a guilt” that “is not his.”
The woman defended her innocence and said she “does not understand” that her companions “sided over with the person who named her as guilty without proof“, since he assured that “it has nothing to do with what happened” and believes that “someone had to do it” because “he never believed that what his companions said was false.”
The nurse was found guilty of Third Chamber of the Provincial Court of Huelva in November 2022 – the trial was held in September of the same year – which considered her as “criminally responsible author” of four crimes of injuries for which he was sentenced to two years and three months in prison for each of them, in addition to six other crimes for injuries to the rest of the victims, with two years in prison for each of them – which makes a total of twelve additional years in prison. The sentence was then ratified by the Civil and criminal chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA).
However, his Provincial court established that the effective maximum duration of the sentence cannot exceed six years and nine months in prison. Likewise, the Huelva Provincial Court imposed on this nurse the ban on exercising the said profession for the duration of the sentence, as well as the ban on communicating and approaching within 300 meters of the victims for a period of eleven years and nine months.
The payment of compensation to those affected was also imposed, for a total amount of 61,840 eurosdeclaring the subsidiary civil liability of the Ministry of the Interior – General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions – concerning the compensation established.
He TSJA He emphasized in his decision that the Audience He considered as “fully proven” facts the possibility for the accused to have access to methadone and other drugs “the consumption of which determined the poisoning suffered by the persons concerned”; the accessibility of the refrigerator of the breakfast group located in the rest area by the appellant, “for which it was easy for her to take advantage of the intermediate time slot between the departure of her shift and the entry of the next to introduce methadone and other substances contained in foods stored in the frozen refrigerator or adjoining cabinets.
He also considered it proven that between the months of July and November 2018, the accused “had taken undetermined quantities of methadone, diazepam and pregabalin» of the aforementioned pharmacy “with the intention of mixing these substances with the food that, for their own consumption, their colleagues kept in a refrigerator for common use which was located in the rest room located in the said rooms of the pharmacy and of the care area”.
In her statements during the interview, the condemned assured that “all officials had access to methadone» and that the pharmacy “She even stayed completely alone while they were having breakfast.”
After that, the defendant’s defense appealed the sentence, alleging a violation of the constitutional principle of presumption of innocence; error in evaluating evidence; break in the chain of traceability and violation of the principle in dubio pro reorequesting the issuance of a sentence of acquittal, while the private prosecution also appealed, demonstrating its disagreement with the compensation set in the sentence, which was entirely rejected by the TSJA.
Thus, the TSJA noted that the evidence was “validly” collected and presented to the court “with the formal guarantees” inherent in a fair and just trial; and that the evaluation of this evidence by the first instance court was “rational, adapted to the rules of logic and consistent with the experience projected on this type of evidence”.
Despite this, the condemned insists on the fact that “the reports mentioned in the sentence do not exist” and that her companions “knew” that she was “leaving later” but that “no one said it at the trial” and that “they didn’t “understand anything” because “he got along well with everyone.” companions“, while asserting “his innocence”.
proven facts
He TSJA considered that the sentence of Audience He proved that “there was clear antagonism and competitiveness on the part of the accused with prejudices of a toxic nature towards” one of the injured, who was the prison supervising nurse and who “ was by far the most affected” by the administration of methadone and benzodiazepines, “in their efforts to achieve” this position.
THE Audience It also took into account the chronological coincidence between the poisonings and the movements and the absence of a reasonable alternative explanation for what happened, since, according to the TSJA“it is excluded both self-intoxication on the part of the injured affected by the ingestion of methadone and other drugs as well as the realization of a kind of suspicion by the members of the police investigation to the previous ones which induced to declare himself in a way unfavorable to the accused.
“No significant objective reason has been found for this higher court to depart from the evaluation of the evidence reflected by the trial court in its decision,” he noted.
Furthermore, he stressed that it had been “found that the incriminating evidence on which the judicial conviction is based had been correctly evaluated and valid in law” and was not “contradicted by the exculpatory evidence presented and significant importance”. unequivocally incriminating“, therefore “it meets all the guarantees required by the constitutional protection of the fundamental right to the presumption of innocence of the accused”, declared the TSJA.
