The Court of Instruction number 4 of Arrecife sentenced last March 3 to an Australian tourist of 59 years for sexually assaulting two young women, one of them a minor, during the celebration of the Carnival of Costa Teguise this year.
After reaching an agreement between the parties and in accordance with the Public Prosecutor's Office, before reaching the oral trial, the accused accepted the prison sentence of one year and four months for two crimes of sexual assault, one against a minor under 16 years of age. Now he has filed an appeal for protection with the Constitutional Court and is preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court to try to revoke the judicial sentence that condemned him.
With the acceptance of the facts, he was also sentenced to special disqualification for the right of passive suffrage during the term of the sentence and the prohibition of approaching less than 500 meters from the victims, their place of work and any other place frequented by them for three years and four months. Both injured parties waived the financial compensation that the law grants them.
The events date back to March 3 when the accused was at the fair in the municipality of Teguise during the Carnival celebration. The judicial sentence states that the confessed author went to a minor of 13 years and touched her buttocks without her consent. The same situation was repeated later with another young woman of 23 years, to whom he also touched without her consent.
The defense of the confessed author, led by the lawyer Pedro Sobrino, has assured La Voz that his client, who prefers to remain anonymous, did not have an interpreter during the celebration of the hearing of conformity, although he did in the dungeons, since his mother tongue is English and has denounced "irregularities" in the case.
For the lawyer this generated a "situation of defenselessness" in the accused. During the celebration of the quick trial he has recognized that he was asked "if he understood the facts that were imputed to him, if he was in a position to testify and if he wanted to testify before the National Police or before the judicial authority".
"He was arrested without ever knowing why he was being arrested" and the hearing was held without him "understanding what was happening", Sobrino defended. He also added that his representative "agreed exclusively for fear of spending more time in the dungeons".
In this line, he has indicated that "copies [of the judicial sentence] were never delivered to him in his language and that in the hearing he was not assisted by any interpreter to give his conformity", although he added that he did have a translator in the dungeons. "My client never understood the consequences of a conformity, which is nothing more than pleading guilty. He never understood that he had pleaded guilty," he added.
The defense of the now convicted bases its appeal on the doctrine of the Constitutional Court, "which is none other than the delivery of a copy of the sentence in his mother tongue. Foreigners have the right to the translation of judicial proceedings", he added.
According to his version, the convicted person did not discover the imputed crimes until he was able to translate the documentation that was delivered to him after the sentence. Now, he has threatened to "exhaust the last judicial channel" to revoke the ruling that condemned him and that the actions return to the judicial body to issue a new resolution.