Judgments | Pori’s murder charge went wrong – according to the court, it was unclear who caused the injuries that led to the woman’s death

Satakunta the district court sentenced a 26-year-old man to 2.5 years in prison for aggravated assault in a case where the prosecutor had demanded a life sentence for murder.

According to the prosecutor, the man murdered the woman in Pori last February using at least three different bladed weapons. However, the court dismissed the murder charge because there was reasonable doubt that the man was guilty of intentional homicide.

According to the court, it is undisputed that the man and the woman had agreed on a barter, where the woman hands over the Playstation game console and headphones to the man and receives three grams of amphetamine in return. According to the verdict, the man went to the woman’s apartment in the morning with amphetamine. From now on, however, the prosecutor’s and the man’s perceptions of the events differ, the verdict says.

According to the prosecutor, the barter had failed for some reason and the man had killed the woman in a rage. According to the man, the woman, on the other hand, had started behaving suicidally after using amphetamines and harmed herself with sharp weapons.

The district court stated in his judgment that the events presented by both the prosecutor and the man in the woman’s apartment are possible. According to the court, the exact course of events remained partly unclear.

According to the court, the prosecutor’s view of the failed barter and the dispute it caused was not supported by the evidence presented. The court considered that the man’s view of the course of events and the woman’s suicidality were supported, among other things, by the things revealed in the cause of death statement.

The district court considered that the evidence presented as a whole supported the man’s account of how the events started, i.e. that the woman started harming herself after taking amphetamine. The district court considered that it remained unclear whether the woman herself or the man had caused the injuries that led to the woman’s death, caused by a sharp weapon.

Instead of murder, the court found the man guilty of aggravated assault. According to the court, among other things, the man strangled the woman unconscious and kicked her hard in the head. The district court considered that the man’s violence against the woman was not necessary self-defense. Overall, the abuse was considered gross.

Timo Juhani Salonen26, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for aggravated assault, theft and drug offences.