The defense of Pau Rigo, the old man from Porreres (Mallorca) who killed a thief who broke into his housefiled a new brief addressed to the Provincial Court in which he reiterates the request for acquittal, focusing on self-defense, given the repetition of the popular jury trial scheduled for early November.
The lawyer Eduardo Valdivia He now defends the octogenarian and in his writings he places particular emphasis on the fact that after the two hooded men entered his house armed with goat legs and tried to attack the old man when they were caught in mid-flight, the latter, while avoiding the attack, shot in a gesture of defense, but without any intention of ending the life of the thief, whom, not wearing his glasses, he could not even distinguish.
It should be recalled that the High Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands (TSJIB) ordered the retrial, declaring null and void the sentence that acquitted the pensioner, confirming the appeal of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The events under trial took place in February 2018 in a country house in Porreres. Pau Rigo, then aged 78, He faces a murder charge in the death of one of the robbers.
During the attack (the second suffered by the elderly couple in a few months, in an isolated country house), Rigo managed to grab a hunting rifle and shoot one of them, who died.
The trial ended with a verdict initially interpreted as condemnatory, but after finding that a sufficient majority had not been reached, a series of appeals was initiated by which the judge finally pronounced the acquittal.
The controversy arose from the wording of one of the proposed verdicts that were given to the jury. Its members unanimously ruled out that Rigo had fired with the intent to cause the robber’s death.
The problem was that, at another point later in the verdict, the jury held by five votes to four (not sufficient for a conviction) that Rigo was guilty of murdering the robber “while under a real, serious and imminent threat that produced a serious impairment of his understanding and deficient control of his will.
Rigo’s defense had then understood that this formulation was intended to consider mitigating circumstances in the event that the homicide had been previously declared proven, but in any case, given that the number of votes necessary for a conviction had not been reached, it indicated that the consequence would be an acquittal. The subsequent sentence accepted this argument and the prosecution appealed.
The Chamber allowed the appeal lodged by the prosecutor who stressed that the right of defence had been violated and that the verdict did not comply with legal requirements.
The TSJIB thus rejected the arguments of Pau Rigo’s lawyer. who opposed a new trial, arguing that the jury had leaned toward acquitting his client after the verdict failed to reach a sufficient majority. After a series of appeals, The magistrate acquitted the old man.
Rigo’s defence argued that this wording of the propositions was intended to consider mitigating circumstances in the event that the homicide had previously been declared proven, an aspect that was included in the sentence and has now been appealed by the prosecution.
“In reviewing the trial, we are convinced, in accordance with the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, that it is appropriate to cancel the trial and the trial that took place, without it being possible to do so partially while preserving the accused’s conviction for theft,” the magistrates maintained in their resolution.
In this way, the court referred to the doctrine of the Constitutional Court regarding the nullity of an acquittal sentence pronounced by the Jury and annulled by the TSJ for lack of motivation of the verdict. Finally, the TSJIB ordered the rehearing of the trial next December.
