One of the witnesses who testified in the Los Rostros piece of the Unión case has been sentenced to one year in prison and to pay a fine of 1,440 euros for lying during the trial to try to "favor" Dimas Martín, with whom he himself acknowledged that he had a friendship. In that hearing, David Gutiérrez Marichal starred in a more than tense interrogation in which both the prosecutor, Javier Ródenas, and the magistrate Margarita Gómez warned him that giving false testimony was a crime punishable by imprisonment, but even so his alleged memory lapses, his evasive answers and his "mockery" of the Court persisted.
This was pointed out at the end of the trial by the prosecutor, who asked that testimony be deduced from what happened, and so agreed the magistrate when dictating the Los Rostros ruling. In the ruling, by which Dimas Martín was sentenced to two years in prison for a continued crime against land planning, for the illegal works he carried out in his house, it was also ordered to open proceedings against this witness, which are what have now led to this conviction.
"One thing is not to remember a specific fact or several, and not to know whether that is possible or not because it belongs to the internal forum of the person, but not to remember that you have spoken with a person about some works when those audio recordings are put in front of you, is a behavior that borders on the absurd and hence supposes a real joke for the Court that was in charge of judging the facts", says the ruling issued by the Criminal Court Number 1 of Arrecife, which concludes that he gave "a meager, partial and deliberately incomplete testimony that is in no way credible, despite being warned of the possibility of incurring a crime of false testimony by the magistrate".
"He tried to confuse the judge" but "he didn't succeed"
Gutiérrez Marichal was called to testify in the trial as responsible for the execution of the works in the family home of Dimas Martín, but during the visit he repeated again and again that he did not remember anything. Not having gone to the farm, nor what he had gone for, nor with whom he was going to meet. He did not even recognize his voice in the telephone conversations that were heard during the trial, and that were intercepted by the UCO within the investigation of the Unión case.
"He tried to favor him and try to confuse the judge, which he did not succeed", the ruling now concludes, which recalls that the ruling of that piece of the Unión case considered it proven that this witness did carry out construction work in that house of Dimas.
In fact, this is proven by the conversations he had with Dimas and also by the report drawn up by an agent of the Civil Guard, who when he went to carry out an inspection of the works of Los Rostros in 2009, who he found there was David Gutiérrez Marichal, who "identified himself as the person in charge of the works". However, in the trial, after having said first that he did not remember having gone on that date, he ended up pointing out that "he was not on the farm, but arriving at it", "that the agent stopped him without further ado when he was walking, asking him who he was", that he "did not know how to put a block", that "he did not remember if he was on the farm", "that he was there two days" and "that he was there because he was a friend of the accused or had some dogs".
"I have never had such a long conversation"
Regarding the conversations that the prosecutor made him listen to during the trial in the face of his "memory problems", Gutiérrez Marichal also said that he did not remember them and did not confirm if it was his voice. "I have never had such a long conversation", he replied. "Do you usually have memory problems?", the prosecutor then asked him, to which the witness replied yes. However, when he asked him if he was taking any type of medication, he also answered affirmatively, but added that he did not remember which one either.
Later, when facing these criminal proceedings that were opened against him, David Gutiérrez Marichal insisted that "he forgets things very easily" and stated that he has received "on numerous occasions treatments with antidepressants, anxiolytics and antipsychotics for issues of depression and that he has also been a drug addict for many years, with what that entails for memory". However, as the ruling points out, the forensic report carried out within the framework of that case "shows that he does not present any mental disorder that causes alterations of his cognitive and volitional capacities, being aware of his acts and their consequences".
For this reason, the judge concludes that "it is not credible" that he did not remember the conversations held with the defendant Dimas Martín, "being that it is more than evident that what this witness tried is to favor with his testimony his friend or acquaintance and person of great fame on the island of Lanzarote, the facts object of accusation are considered proven".
"The statement seems to approach a mockery towards the administration of Justice, being his intervention as a relevant witness in the trial", insists the ruling, which recalls all the criminal history of Dimas Martín. Regarding Gutiérrez Marichal, he points out that he already has a criminal record for a crime of gender violence, although "they are not computable for the purposes of recidivism" for this conviction.
