The Supreme Court has ratified the sentence of six and a half years in prison for the accused of sexually assaulting his ex-wife in Arrecife in 2012. The Second Section of the Provincial Court sentenced Jorge Manuel Bethencourt Cravid to that penalty in March 2017 and now, in an order from last May, the high court has rejected the cassation appeal filed by his defense.
Among other reasons, the accused denounced a violation of the right to effective judicial protection, arguing that "the conviction reached by the court of first instance was not duly supported by the evidence presented in the plenary session." However, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court considers that the court of first instance "took into consideration as sufficient evidence to justify the conviction, essentially the testimonial statement of the victim herself and the content of the medical documents proving the injuries suffered" by her.
In this sense, the high court highlights that the victim's account was "firm, coherent and persistent" and highlights the "absence of malicious intent", recalling that the woman tried not to testify in the trial against her ex-husband, considering that the time he had spent in pre-trial detention and the psychiatric treatment he had followed "had been more than enough".
In addition, it points to "the existence of objective peripheral corroborations, consisting of medical reports and plenary ratifications of their conclusions by the doctors who carried them out, in which they affirmed the existence of the injuries suffered by the victim and the compatibility with her account of the facts".
The court considers the facts proven
The accused, who pleaded not guilty during the trial, again "offered an exculpatory version of the facts" before the Supreme Court. However, it considers it proven that Jorge Manuel Bethencourt Cravid waited for his partner on the morning of April 11, 2012, when she was dropping off her son at school, and invited her to accompany her to his home to talk about the divorce, to which she agreed.
When she arrived at the defendant's house, he grabbed her arm "strongly" and "led her into the bedroom", where "he pushed her onto the bed and, in order to satisfy his sexual desires, lowered his pants" and also undressed the victim. As the woman "refused to have sexual relations with the accused", he "hit her in various parts of the body while saying 'you will be my slave' and penetrated her vaginally". As a result of the blows received, the victim suffered various injuries to a part of the abdomen, buttocks and thigh.
Thus, it ratifies the sentence of six and a half years in prison imposed by the Provincial Court. In addition, he is prohibited from approaching the victim within 500 meters and communicating with her for 12 years. Likewise, the convicted man will have to compensate his ex-partner with 10,000 euros. Likewise, it is agreed to impose a supervised release measure to be executed after the completion of the custodial sentence, which will last for five years.
Undue delays
It should be remembered that, initially, the Prosecutor's Office requested 12 years in prison for Jorge Manuel Bethencourt Cravid. However, the Provincial Court considered that the mitigating circumstance of undue delays concurred, having elapsed five years from the commission of the facts to the holding of the trial.
Even so, in his appeal to the Supreme Court, the accused asked that this mitigating circumstance be applied as "very qualified" and not as "simple", which is how it was applied, a circumstance that has also been rejected by the Criminal Chamber. And it is that, although it considers that the period of time elapsed between the commission of the act and the prosecution was excessive", it believes that the application of "mitigating circumstance as very qualified" is not appropriate, given that the accused "should have been put in search and capture for not being able to be found" during the investigation phase and "did not appear at the oral trial on the first of the dates on which it should have been held, without such circumstances being attributable to an abnormal functioning of the administration of Justice".
