A ruling from the Supreme Court has opened the door for a local police officer from Jerez de la Frontera, convicted of illegally detaining a man with a false assault setup, to avoid jail. The judges have replaced with a fine the three-year prison sentence that the Andalusian courts imposed on the agent for illegal detention, understanding that the victim immediately went to testify before a judge and that this allows a mitigated version of the crime to be applied. The Supreme Court also confirms his one-year prison sentence for false reporting.
The Supreme Court resolution, to which elDiario.es has had access, explains that this Jerez de la Frontera Local Police agent with a criminal record was removing a car from public roads with a tow truck driven by another man. At that moment the victim, who was leaving breakfast at a nearby bar, warned the police officer that the car that was being towed by the tow truck was suffering damage and losing its bumper.
The policeman’s response was to blurt out: “I shit on your dead people.” He then went after the victim, threw him to the ground, placed his knees on his back and detained him, stating to other police officers that he had been attacked and that he was arresting him for the crime of attack. The victim was taken to the cells and underwent a quick trial in which the Prosecutor’s Office, based on the police officer’s false testimony, even requested nine months in prison for him. The court finally chose to acquit the bystander: the police officer maintained the lie during the trial, but numerous witnesses explained that his version was false.
The Court of Cádiz and the Superior Court of Andalusia They understood that the Jerez police officer had committed a crime of false testimony in conjunction with another of false reporting, in addition to another of illegal detention. For the first crime, he was sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 1,620 euros. For the second, three years in prison, in addition to the obligation to compensate the victim with almost 10,500 euros.
The Supreme Court has confirmed that the local Jerez police officer committed all these crimes, but has modified the sentence imposed on him to illegal detention: from three years in prison to a fine of 1,080 euros, in addition to eight years of absolute disqualification. . The reason: the judges understand that a mitigated version of the crime must be applied, reserved for when the author of the illegal detention places the victim “immediately” at the disposal of the “authority.”
The account of proven facts, which the Supreme Court does not modify, describes how the agent took the victim to the cells until he was “presented before the judicial authority” to later be tried with the police lie as evidence against him. The high court, which recognizes that the police officer was not “on one of his best days” and concedes that once arrested on the street he was taken “without interruption to the police stations” of the city. It is not the same, he explains, as when a police officer perpetrates an illegal arrest to keep the victim “out of the institutional control circuits.” In this case, the detention was clearly illegal, but his deprivation of liberty was quickly “institutionalized,” leaving him beyond the control of the police officer.
For this reason, the Supreme Court understands, article 163.4 of the Penal Code must be applied, which punishes this type of illegal detention with fines of between three and six months, considering within this attenuated version its most serious possibility. A fine of 1,080 euros that replaces his initial sentence of three years in prison for that crime, which would have implied his mandatory entry into prison.
The new final sentence in the case, with the fines and a one-year prison sentence for false reporting, opens the door for the agent not to have to go to prison to serve his sentence because he has a criminal record but is considered not countable by the Superior Court of Andalusia. That will be decided later in the sentence execution phase.
“None of that happened.”
The Supreme Court rejects the rest of the convicted police officer’s arguments. He confirms his sentence of one year in prison for false reporting, for having maintained his story even when at trial he was obliged to tell the truth, and rejects that the victim’s attitude towards the tow truck could, in any way, have been minimally aggressive. to cause arrest. “None of that actually happened, nor could it have been perceived that way by the defendant.”
What happened, the judges explain, is that the agent “certainly not on one of his best days, got upset because a citizen, who was not even the owner of the vehicle and was there by chance, interfered in his work, making it appear that it was not being done correctly (whether this was true or not).” “Once an arrest was made without any objective cause, the accused himself tried to justify it, alleging some facts, which were notoriously false, which subsequently gave rise to the existence of the aforementioned criminal case, obedient only to the agent’s artificial story.”
In previous instances, the judges of the Andalusian courts also rejected that the agent could have made a mistake, instead of committing a crime. “Neither can we accept the existence of a reckless act, nor the occurrence of a viable error, since both possibilities are antagonistic to the deliberate falsification of what really happened,” he said. the TSJ of Andalusia.
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