They reduce the sentence of a man convicted of insulting his partner on WhatsApp because the insults were not directed at other people

The The Seville Court has reduced the permanent location penalty imposed on a man from 18 to five days for a minor crime of continuous harassment committed by insulting his partner through WhatsApp messages, under the premise that the events date back to 2022 and the insults “were not made before third parties”.

In a ruling issued on September 24 and collected by Europa Pressthe Fourth Section of the Seville Court addresses an appeal by a man against a previous sentence of the Court of Instruction number three of Alcalá de Guadaíra, that condemns him for a minor crime of continuous humiliationimposing the penalty of permanent location of 18 days, in a different address and far from that of the victim.

Specifically, the Court declared as proven facts that the accused “maintained a relationship with the victim, through WhatsApp and with the intention of disparaging her,” He sent her messages in which he insulted her with disqualifications such as “whore, asshole, daughter of a whore or slut”, also using various profane expressions..

THE SCREENSHOTS

Faced with the accused’s appeal against the initial conviction, the Fourth Section of the Court indicates that the contested resolution assesses “the content of the screenshots of WhatsApp messages provided by the complainant in her complaint to the Police Station”, which lead to “the conclusion, that “It is not at all illogical or unreasonable that the accused actually sent, on the day in question, through the WhatsApp application, the messages that are included in the proven facts of the appealed sentence, with objectively humiliating content.”.

The court also recalls that the conviction is based “on the accused’s own statements admitting that The phone number from which the messages were made is his, although he denies being the author of said messages, which is not credible, not offering any alternative logical explanation in this regard that may be accepted, to which is added, as the trial judge points out in the appealed resolution, that the rest of the conversation turns out to be a conversation between a couple of people who know each other and topics that unite them, so it rules out that it was a third party who used the accused’s cell phone to send the reported messages.

“DISPROPORTIONATE” PENALTY

The Fourth Section of the Hearing rejects that main reason for the appeal, but does admit another reason for the challenge, in which the defense of the accused considered “disproportionate the penalty imposed in the extension of 18 days of permanent location.” “Taking into account the time that has elapsed since the events, which date back to 2022 and that these messages were sent through WhatsApp messaging and were therefore not sent to third parties, it is considered appropriate to impose the minimum penalty of permanent location in an extension of five days, as there are no reasons to impose it in a greater extension, so in this sense the partial estimation of the appeal is appropriate, reducing the penalty to be imposed from 18 to five days of permanent location”, explains the Fourth Section of the Seville Court.