The First Section of the Provincial Court has ratified a sentence of four months and 15 days in prison for a man who was arrested for driving without a license in Arrecife and who has his fourth conviction in two years, one for a crime of reckless driving and three for a crime of driving without a license after it was withdrawn.
Specifically, it was in July 2017 when the accused, in a final judgment of the Court of Instruction number 1 of Arrecife, was sentenced to four months in prison and eight months of deprivation of the right to drive motor vehicles for a crime of reckless driving. Three months later, the same man was convicted of a crime of driving without a license, being imposed a fine of 2,160 euros and in May 2018 he added a new conviction for the same crime, in this case to a fine of 5,760 euros.
After that, at about 5:10 p.m. on March 21, 2019, the man was arrested by agents of the Local Police of Arrecife while driving a vehicle on Juan Quesada Street in the capital "despite having been deprived of his driver's license." Therefore, and given the aggravating circumstance of recidivism, the Criminal Court number 1 of Arrecife sentenced him to four months and 15 days in prison in a judgment dated last April 24. In the ruling, the court also agreed to deduct testimony for an alleged crime of false testimony against a defense witness.
Contradictions in the defendant's speech
This judgment was appealed by the defendant, who alleged "violation of the presumption of innocence" considering that the testimony of the police did not meet "sufficient characteristics" for his conviction. And, the defendant showed his disagreement with the credibility that the judge had granted to the version of the police against that of the defendant and his witness.
However, the First Section of the Provincial Court has dismissed his appeal, considering that his speech "incurs in an obvious contradiction" and that "the judge's criterion of giving credibility to the police and denying it to the defense witness is completely reasonable, to the point of agreeing to deduct testimony for a crime against said witness."
"The prosecution witnesses are police officers, public officials who were limited to acting in the exercise of their functions, without any type of animosity manifested or much less accredited against the accused," the court states in a judgment issued on July 19, in which it is stated that the agents acted after appreciating "an apparent irregularity - circulating with the ITV card expired - to stop the defendant's vehicle, verifying that he lacked a driver's license." And in this regard, he also points out that the agents were "forceful" in the sense that who was driving "was said defendant."
"The appellant intends to make speculation an issue when he focuses his divergence on the improbability that the police would observe a car in motion with the ITV card expired," indicates the Provincial Court, which considers that "regardless of whether the syllogism he raises is difficult to assume in terms of rationality," "his speech
And, the defendant argued that "he was not driving the vehicle, that he was stopped preparing the adjustment of the car so that his neighbor would move it," a question in which the court points out that he also "incurs in contradictions," because in his appeal he pointed out "that it was so that they would take it to the workshop." "Then either he was driving and the police could not see the ITV card or he was stopped and they could see it clearly," adds the First Section of the Provincial Court, which thus ratifies the sentence imposed on the defendant, by the Criminal Court number 1 of Arrecife, to four months and 15 days in prison.
