The Provincial Court of A Coruña has imposed sentences ranging from 24 to 10 years in prison for the four young people convicted of the murder of Samuel Luiz in July 2021. The longest sentence is that of Diego MM, who initiated the attack that morning . Justice considers him guilty of murder with the aggravating circumstance of discrimination based on sexual orientation. At the trial, the witnesses agreed that before starting to hit the victim, he told him: “Stop recording, let’s see if I’m going to kill you, faggot.”
For Alejandro FG, known as Yumba, the penalty is 20 years in prison for murder. The judge imposes 20 and a half years in prison on Kaio ASC, of which 17 are for murder and three and a half for the violent theft of the victim’s cell phone. Alejandro MR is sentenced to 10 years in prison as an accessory to murder.
The only woman who sat in the dock for the murder, Catherine SB, has been exonerated, in accordance with the decision of the jury that was in charge of judging the case and which was announced in November, after five days of deliberation. Now, the presiding judge, Elena Fernanda Pastor, has written the sentence, in which she specifies the penalties.
The events occurred in the early morning of July 3, 2021, on the first weekend in which nightlife reopened after the pandemic. The victim and some of his attackers had gone to the same place in A Coruña, the Andén pub, located on the seafront, but they neither knew each other nor interacted inside. When leaving the bar, Samuel Luiz and the friend he was with climbed a bench in the area and made a video call to another friend. From below, Diego MM, who was accompanied by his then partner, Catherine SB, thought he was being recorded and scolded the victim.
The videos from a traffic camera show him going up to where Samuel and his friend were and starting an attack in which Alejandro FG immediately joined and, in a matter of seconds, several other people, including the other two convicts. The brutal group beating caused the death of the young man, who was 24 years old at the time.
The presiding judge imposes 24 years in prison on Diego MM, a sentence that is close to the legal maximum, which is 25 years. It does not reach the limit because the jury did not appreciate the aggravating circumstance of cruelty. The judge takes into account the special gravity of what happened, the direct intervention of Diego MM, his presence from the beginning to the end of the attack and “his subsequent attitude towards the victim and his family, showing an absolute lack of empathy and a cruelty that deserve greater criminal reproach.” Neither he nor the rest of the aggressors, he points out, helped Samuel Luiz and left him seriously injured on the ground.
The 20-year sentence for Alejandro FG is based on the fact that there were no aggravating or mitigating circumstances, so a punishment in the lower half was chosen – that is, in the range between 15 and 20 years. The sentence states that this convict was a “prominent participant” in the attack. He immediately joins Diego MM and grabs Samuel Luiz from behind and by the neck, knocking him down. The magistrate indicates that she is also present throughout the attack, during which she inflicts blows and prevents the attacked person from defending and escaping.
As for Kaio ASC, the jury also did not appreciate aggravating or mitigating circumstances and the sentence is also imposed in the lower half: in this case it is 17 years for murder. Three and a half years are added to him for robbery with violence because, in the midst of the tumult, he took the victim’s cell phone. The sentence considers that he kicked Samuel Luiz at least once, but that his intervention “does not reach the magnitude” of the other two convicted of murder.
Alejandro MR has been sentenced to 10 years in prison as an accessory to murder. It is appropriate, says the sentence, to impose the lowest sentence in degree which, in this case, covers a punitive range of 7 and a half to 15 years in prison. The jury considered that this defendant stood at the initial point of the attack, but that he did not hit the victim.
Finally, the magistrate states that the jurors did not consider it proven that Catherine SB participated in the brutal beating. They attributed to him, he highlights, “an absolutely passive attitude.” In their reasoning they considered that he is not guilty and that “first, he tried to contain Diego MM; Later, he tried to separate him and, although he continued the path of the aggression, he did not do so with acts that were absolutely necessary or auxiliary to the fatal outcome.” The sentence can be appealed before the Superior Court of Xustiza de Galicia (TSXG).
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