Charles A. Pittman will not have to return to the United States if he does not wish to. You won’t have to go to prison either, so you can continue your nomadic life, in Barcelona or elsewhere. A judge has acquitted this North American citizen whom the prosecution accused of trying to burn a container and a wastebasket during the protests against the judgment of the procés, in October 2019. The sentence considers that the accusations of the police and the prosecution – who requested for him a sentence of six years in prison and his expulsion from Spain – “have not been duly accredited.”
At noon on October 18, 2019, Charles, a man with no known address who recycles materials that he finds, approached the Plaza de Cataluña. A protest demonstration was being held there for the condemnation of the pro-independence leaders. The march was then peaceful and only later would the serious incidents that characterized, for a week, that wave of protests take place. At the trial, the man declared that he did not even know what had motivated that gathering of people and that he was not aware of the political reality in Catalonia.
At one point, Charles stuffed half the body into a waste container. According to the policemen who saw him and detained him, he burned some rolls of toilet paper to burn the container. He explained in court that he was looking for materials to recycle. For that episode, Charles was arrested the same day and spent five months in provisional prison until he was released. The trial was held last October and, now, the head of the criminal court number 2 of Barcelona, María del Carmen Hernández, has agreed with him.
The prosecution accused Charles of a crime of public disorder. But the judge replies that this crime is committed in a group (or with the protection of a group) and the man was alone, as recognized by the three agents of the Urban Guard who participated in his arrest. The policemen intervened several lighters in his fanny pack and some products, such as a gel. The magistrate considers that it has not been proven that these products can be considered “flammable substances”.
The judge, who has annulled the obligation that this wanderer had to appear periodically in court, also acquits him of the crime of damages. None of the agents, according to the sentence, could see Charles in the action of burning the toilet paper rolls. It is true that this container had to be replaced a day later, but it could well be, the text concludes, a consequence of the serious incidents that took place in Barcelona that same night.
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