The popular jury has found Sebastián Javier Bermúdez Hernández guilty of homicide, who in July 2010 attacked a resident of La Graciosa with scissors, causing his death. After learning of the verdict, the Sixth Section of the Provincial Court has already issued a sentence, imposing a penalty of 12 years in prison.
The sentence coincides with what was requested by the Prosecutor's Office, which after learning of the jury's verdict reduced the sentence from 15 years that it initially requested to 12. In addition, the sentence establishes compensation to the widow of 105,676.22 euros, plus 44,031.76 euros for each of the victim's two minor children. However, the convicted person declared himself insolvent during the trial, so he will hardly make that payment.
During the hearing, the accused himself acknowledged the facts, although he alleged that they occurred in the middle of a fight, in which the victim had attacked him. In the final conclusions, his defense accepted the Prosecutor's Office's classification, which charged him with homicide "without modifying circumstances".
On the same day that the oral hearing ended, last Tuesday the 28th, the popular jury issued its verdict of guilt, and the following day the Court issued the conviction.
The facts
The sentence establishes as proven facts that the accused, who had a criminal record, met between 10:00 p.m. and 0:00 a.m. on the night of July 28 to 29, 2010 at the Korrikia Pizzeria on the island of La Graciosa with Gerardo Miguel Romero González. "Once they are in the pizzeria, an exchange of words begins between them, initiating a fight in the course of which they hit each other, ending this fight by the intervention of those who were at that time in the Pizzeria", the sentence states.
At that moment, Gerardo left the pizzeria, "while the accused Sebastián remained in it for a few minutes, taking the opportunity to take out some scissors that he was carrying in his backpack and store them in the right pocket of his pants".
A few minutes later, "Sebastian left the bar and went to his house, meeting Gerardo in the vicinity of it. At that moment they begin to argue and get involved in a new fight, in which both grab and struggle with each other using only their hands, in the course of which Sebastián takes the opportunity to take out the scissors that he had stored in his pocket minutes before in the bar, and with the intention of causing Gerardo's death, or with knowledge that he could cause it, he stabs him twice in the chest, Gerardo dying as a result of the hypovolemic shock caused by the laceration of blood vessels and the perforation of the lung parenchyma".
He has already been in prison for three years
Sebastián Javier Bermúdez has already served a good part of the sentence, since he has been in pre-trial detention since his arrest. Specifically, the sentence states that he is "deprived of liberty since July 29, 2010", when pre-trial detention was ordered pending trial.
Thus, the now convicted person would have already served almost a quarter of the imposed sentence.
