Before the curtain falls on the trials, the accused have the right to say their last word. And this is what the five defendants did this Friday for the collective crime which ended the life of Samuel Luiz in La Coruña in the early hours of July 3, 2021. And Diego Montaña, surely the most cornered by the obviously, was “very sorry”.
“I still wanted to ask Samuel’s parents for forgiveness. If today I could give my life to Samuel and he was here, I would give it to him without thinking about it”, declared Montaña in tears during the last session of the trial which took place for a month before the Tribunal provincial of La Coruña He risks 25 years in prison, because the prosecution adds to the crime of murder with cruelty and treason the aggravating circumstance of discrimination based on sexual orientation.
It was Montaña who launched the attack on Samuel, he himself recognizes this, although he also claims that he only hit the victim at the beginning. That’s why he pleads innocent. Alejandro Freire, alias “Llumba”, quickly joined the attack on the Riazor promenade. Llumba, for whom 22 years in prison are requested, does not deny that it was he who knocked down Samuel Luiz by grabbing him by the neck from behind.
During this Friday’s session, Llumba spoke after Montaña: “I want to ask for forgiveness again and show my regrets, just that, thank you very much.” Regardless, his defense insists Llumba’s only involvement in the attack was throwing him to the ground.
Other young people quickly joined in the attack. Among them, Kaio Amaral. This young man is the one who is asking for the longest prison sentence, 25 years in prison, because he is also attributed with the theft of Samuel’s phone. In tears, she turned across the living room to where her family was, telling them, “Mom, Dad, I didn’t hit him at any time.”
And Kaio Amaral also mentioned the harsh argument of the prosecutor the day before, who had compared them to a pack: “Yesterday, here, they said that we were a pack, that we wanted blood, but that is not the case . I left work, wanting to have a good time with my friends, and it ended very badly. “I didn’t hit Samuel at any time.”
Alejandro Míguez and Catherine Silva, the only two of the five defendants on preventive release, also paraded in front of the microphone. The first of them said: “Gentlemen and ladies of the jury, I sincerely believe that you are not going to believe me. I am deeply sorry for what happened to Samuel Luiz on that tragic night of July 3. I am truly sorry for what your family and loved ones are going through. I only ask that you do justice, that you be fair to me. I am completely innocent of this. Thank you very much.” The charges call for Míguez 22 years in prison for this crime.
Catherine Silva was Diego Montana’s girlfriend at the time. He risks 25 years in prison, the same sentence as him, because the accusations consider that he shared his ex’s homophobia. She is not accused of hitting Samuel but, it seems, of preventing a friend from helping him.
But she denied it, like the others, in tears: “I didn’t do anything wrong, I just tried to push my boyfriend away, I didn’t succeed, I couldn’t do anything else . “I have nothing more to say.”
The right to the last word came during the session preceded by the presentation of the final reports from their respective lawyers. After the prosecutor’s harsh plea during the previous session, in which Olga Serrano accused the five accused of the murder of Samuel Luiz of forming a “human pack” which ended the young man’s life for fun, the lawyers tried this Friday to stand on the wall to defend the innocence of his clients. And to a large extent, they have done this by attacking the reports reporting the accusations, which they accuse of not having “played fair.”
The first to speak was David Freire, lawyer for Alejandro Freire, alias “Llumba”. And before delving into the reasons that, according to him, would prove that his client is innocent of the murder, he defended all the accused by trying to discredit the qualifiers used by the prosecutor in his argument.
This is why he asked the nine members of the court to distance themselves “from the tone and content of the allegations of the accusations”, in reference to the prosecution, but also to popular and private accusations. “We must do a rational analysis, and not based on emotions. “They appealed to emotion, I appeal to their intelligence,” said the lawyer, looking at the nine members of the jury in front of him.
Manuel Ferreiro, Alejandro Míguez’s lawyer, for his part, also criticized the tone and content of the allegations of the accusations: “It is not a pack – as the prosecutor said – nor a court of The school – an allusion to the popular accusation – is a judicial process and they are people.
The lawyer, second to intervene during the last session of the trial, tried to mark the distance between this group of friends, accused of the murder of Samuel Luiz in the early morning of July 3, 2021 in La Coruña, with “La Manada” , the adjective that was used to define the group of young people found guilty of abusing a young woman during the Sanfermines festivities in Pamplona in 2016.
José Ramón Sierra, Kaio Amaral’s lawyer, the third lawyer to intervene, expressed the same meaning: “Some will be guilty or not, we will see, but these children are neither a pack nor a herd.”
(in development)
