The Supreme Court has reduced "to a maximum period of 10 years" the time of internment in a psychiatric hospital for the accused of stabbing her children in Arrieta in 2015 by partially upholding an appeal from her defense, thus reducing the penalty imposed by the Provincial Court by five years "as a security measure" after acquitting her of the two crimes of attempted homicide.
Specifically, the high court has valued "that the accused ceased the homicidal action that she had initiated by exclusive will". And it is that, although it considers that "the homicidal intention in the attacks against the victims is clearly concurrent with the evidence presented", it takes into account that if the accused "did not manage to end the lives of the minors" it was due to "voluntary withdrawal". In fact, the court recalls that, after the aggression against her children, the accused "self-harmed" and that there was "not a single action functional to the neutralization of the action, not even of the capacity, of aggressive reiteration of the accused with the minors".
"Therefore, being evident that she could execute new and repeated attempts to stab the minors and that her option was to use that harmful capacity only in self-harm, it must also be evident that the cessation in the action of killing has as its only cause her voluntary withdrawal", points out the Supreme Court, which considers that "coherently, if the capacity for the will to kill is recognized, that same capacity of will to withdraw must be recognized" and thus decides to add it to the declaration of proven facts.
Rejects the family foster care measure
Among other issues, the accused also showed her "disagreement" with the measure of internment in a penitentiary psychiatric center "for being depriving of liberty and for failing to comply with the purposes of the measures of reinsertion and rehabilitation" requesting that "the measure of family foster care" be adopted. However, the court has rejected this reason due to "the serious effects that the pathology attributed to the accused can generate, when regarding how unexpected and precipitated the irruption of its eventual consequences can be".
Thus, the Supreme Court considers that the accused must continue to be interned in a psychiatric center, pointing out that it will be the "specific monitoring" of the accused "that will lead to the correlative consideration of the measure to be implemented or continued". However, by partially upholding her appeal, it rules that "the maximum duration of the imposed measure must be reduced to 10 years of internment" compared to the 15 that the Provincial Court had set.
Accounts of the events
It must be remembered that the events took place in the early morning of June 24, when the accused was in her home in Arrieta with her children, who were then 3 and 5 years old. Using "a kitchen knife of about 17 centimeters", the woman "inflicted several stab wounds in the neck and arms" to one of the children and "in the neck and chest" to the other minor, while shouting 'we have to end him, he is the devil, we have to kill him'.
Subsequently, the accused "inflicted several stab wounds on herself with the same knife in various parts of her body and lay down on the bed", until "the arrival of the agents of the Civil Guard". In the floor of the home was also the mother of the accused who, "after hearing noises" went down "to the room" and "proceeded to assist the minors", who as a result of the aggression suffered various injuries.
The woman had previously been, that same day, "under observation for psychiatric reasons in the Emergency Room of the Hospital of Lanzarote for seven hours" being discharged one hour before the aggression occurred.
At the time of the events, the accused had "absolutely annulled her volitional and intellectual capacities " by "suffering a psychotic outbreak concretized in a delirium that conditioned her acts and that caused the absolute absence of judgment", which led the Justice to acquit the woman of the two crimes of attempted homicide of which she was accused, by applying the "complete exemption" contemplated by the Penal Code when acting under a "psychic alteration". However, it was decided to impose a measure of internment in a psychiatric center, which the Supreme Court has now reduced from 15 to 10 years.
