The Provincial Court of Las Palmas has confirmed a ruling by the Criminal Court number 3 of Arrecife that warns about the "proliferation" of false witnesses in criminal proceedings in Lanzarote, emphasizing that this type of perjury is "becoming a very common practice in recent times".
Specifically, the First Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas dismissed on March 1 the appeal filed by a resident of Arrecife de Lanzarote against a sentence that on September 10, 2018, condemned him to pay a fine of 3,600 euros, four years of deprivation of the right to drive motor vehicles and the loss of the validity of the license as the author of a crime against traffic safety in its modality of driving under the influence of alcoholic beverages in ideal competition with another crime against road safety in the modality of driving without a permit with the aggravating circumstance of recidivism.
In this sentence, now declared final, the presiding magistrate of the Criminal Court number 3 of Arrecife, Aitziber Oleaga, ordered the deduction of testimony against two witnesses presented by the accused in the trial, as she appreciated clear indications that both had lied blatantly in the plenary to favor the accused: an employee of his who claimed that he was the one who was actually driving the vehicle and the owner of the car (a taxi) against which the accused crashed.
The latter, despite the fact that at the time of the accident he had taken a photo with his mobile phone of the accused sitting at the wheel, appeared in court assuring under oath that he had been confused, and subsequently recognizing the accused's employee as the driver.
He had two previous convictions and has two subsequent ones
In her ruling, the magistrate warns that lying about the authorship in driving in crimes against road safety not only by the defendants, but also by the witnesses, "in addition to the proliferation of false witnesses who appear in other types of criminal proceedings", is becoming "a very common practice in recent times" and cites as an example another ruling issued by the same Court "for a similar crime" and which was also ratified by the Court, in which testimony was deducted "against no less than three false witnesses".
Likewise, in her ruling, the judge highlights that she is not the only one who perceives this phenomenon in Lanzarote and details that, when asked about it, one of the local police officers of Arrecife who had intervened in the case stated "that this has been happening constantly for some time".
According to the sentence now declared final, the cases in which the defendant and the witnesses lie in this type of crime "corresponds to people who already have several criminal records to their credit, so with this undesirable and contrary maneuver to the Administration of Justice what they are trying to do is to avoid what ultimately happens, the imprisonment of repeat offenders who, let's not forget, are a danger to other road users".
Precisely, in the present case, the accused, with two previous convictions for drunk driving and two subsequent ones, was driving without a license at midnight on July 31, 2016, on Alegranza street in Arrecife, where he crashed into a taxi driver's car for failing to respect a stop sign. When the Police arrived and performed alcohol detection tests, he showed a positive result of 0.95 mg/l and 0.94 mg/l.
According to the sentence, the owner of the damaged taxi even took a photograph with his mobile phone in which he could be seen sitting at the wheel but, despite this evidence, in the trial, the accused presented as a witness an employee of his company who took the blame himself, asserting that he was the one driving and not his boss, and the affected taxi driver himself, who then did not identify him as the driver and did identify the self-imputed.
At least six cases with "false" witnesses in recent months
However, the ruling of the Criminal Court number 3 of Arrecife, like the appeal ruling, dismantles the theses of the accused taking as the main basis the police statements and the defendant's own statements to the Police and deducts testimony against the two witnesses before the Judicial Dean's Office so that an investigation for false testimony can be opened.
The Court confirms the full validity of the assessment of the evidence carried out by Magistrate Aiztiber Oleaga in the first instance. "The probative conclusion reached in the appealed resolution regarding the fact that the accused was the one driving the vehicle is irrefutable", it establishes, "it is nothing more than the logical consequence that derives from a detailed analysis of the personal evidence practiced in the act of the trial", he points out.
The TSJC also indicates that, in recent months, the Criminal Court number 3 of Arrecife has ordered the investigation of at least six cases - counting the present one - in which there were "serious indications of perjury or false testimony to favor the accused of various crimes".
In this sense, it should also be remembered that in the Los Rostros piece of the Unión case, the Criminal Court number 1 of Arrecife sentenced a witness friend of Dimas Martín to one year in prison for lying in the trial to "favor him".
