The Madrid court begins this Monday the trial of Jesus Pradales for the death of his partner Juana Canal 21 years ago, in 2003for which he risks a request for 15 years in prison based on the accusations. Pradales will be in the dock as the alleged perpetrator of the murder of the Ciudad Lineal resident whose crime was solved 19 years later.
The trial is expected to begin this Monday in the seventh section of the Madrid courthouse with the selection of the popular jury that will rule on the events that occurred on February 23, 2003, when, according to Pradales, He had a fight with his wife, killed her and dismembered her body. to hide it in a town in Avila.
The key is whether he did it intentionally or not.. The case was then closed because the body had not appeared and investigators could not exclude that it was a voluntary disappearance. But in September 2019, some hikers discovered some bones that were eventually compromisedwhich belonged to Juana Canal, the investigation was reactivated and her partner was arrested.
According to the scenario provided by the Court, which is likely to change during the hearing, The accused will testify on Tuesday and from Wednesday they will testify until September 25about twenty police officers and civil guards, as well as a dozen experts and forensic doctors and relatives of Juana Canal and Jesús Pradales.
End of sessions on the 30th
The sessions would end on September 30. and the jury would be given the subject of the verdict, which is the list of questions that the jurors must answer to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. The prosecution and the private prosecution led by Juana Canal’s family are seeking 15 years in prison against Pradales for voluntary manslaughter.
The Public Ministry considers that this crime involves the aggravating circumstance of kinship and, in addition to prison, requests that the accused compensate the victim’s relatives for a total of 350,000 euros. The Prosecutor’s Office reports that in the early morning of February 22, 2003 and after an argument, Jesús Pradales “with the intention of causing death or being aware that his act “this result could happen”, he violently hit Juana Canal in the neck and thus made her fall, causing her death.
He then dismembered the body and buried the remains near Navarredondilla (Ávila). For his part, Juana’s family lawyer, Juan Manuel Medina, requests that the crime of homicide include the aggravating circumstance of sex and that the accused compensate the family members with 640,000 euros. On the other hand, Pradales’ defense maintains that it is an involuntary or reckless homicide, since the accused admitted the facts but clarified that he did not intend to kill her and that he got rid of the body out of fear. The accused has been in pretrial detention since October 28, 2022.
