Valencia (EFE) individuals to apply the reviewable permanent prison.
This confirms the sentence for Jorge Ignacio Palma as responsible for three murders and another six attempted homicides on six other women in the course of sexual encounters with cocaine use, among other crimes, between June 2018 and November 2019.
The magistrates have dismissed the appeal made by the defense, understanding that the defendant was sentenced “with proof of charge, indicative but enough.” “It was not arbitrary or irrational for the members of the jury to consider the facts accredited based on those privileged and coincident testimonies, on the different expertise performed and other evidence provided to the case,” they conclude.
The magistrate who presided over this trial by jury in the Provincial Court ruled that it was not applicable when interpreting that article 140.2 of the Criminal Code requires that other sentences have been handed down previously for crimes against life in one or several different procedures.
Before Marta Calvo, he did not murder “more than two people”
The Civil and Criminal Chamber of the TSJCV reaches the same conclusion after reading the literal content of the legal precept, but in a different way: not by the tense (“would have been sentenced”) contained in the norm but by the requirement of a “quantitative nature” that includes.
Thus, article 140.2 establishes that permanent prison will be imposed on the murder defendant “convicted of the death of more than two people.”
In this case, the crime to which this penalty could be applied, in the opinion of the TSJCV, is the murder of the third of the victims, Marta Calvo, and before that crime, the defendant did not murder “more than two people”, but exactly two.
“Basically, and since the expression used was not “two or more” but “more than two”, the legislator seems to direct us to condition the hyper-aggravation to sentences for at least three consummated crimes against life, and in our case there are only two”, those related to Arliene Ramos and Lady Marcela”, reasons the Court.
The magistrates admit that there is another doctrinal interpretation that authorizes the last of those imposed to be included in these three sentences required by the Penal Code, but they are inclined towards the one they carry out by virtue of the “in dubio pro reo” principle, as it is the most favorable to the prisoner
In the same way, the Chamber rejects that permanent imprisonment can be applied in this case in accordance with another section of the same article of the Criminal Code, 140.1.2º, which contemplates it when the murder is “subsequent” to a crime against sexual freedom on the victim.
The Valencian High Court reaches this conclusion, as the High Court did, because based on the facts declared and proven, both crimes were committed “in unity of act and sequentially linked”.
Confirmed the acquittal for the crime against moral integrity in the concealment of mortal remains
On the other hand, the Civil and Criminal Chamber has also confirmed the acquittal of Jorge Ignacio Palma for the crime against moral integrity, in relation to the concealment of the mortal remains of Marta Calvo.
At this point, according to the appeal judgment, the justification included in the jury’s verdict “does not finish confirming the presence of an intentional act”, a proven intention to cause added pain to the parents of this young woman.
Despite this, the Chamber then specifies, “one thing is that the conduct constituting the type of article 173.1 of the Penal Code is not recorded as accredited and quite another that the concealment of the body has caused anguish in the parents of Marta Calvo added to that already caused by his death”.
For this reason, the court partially upholds the prosecution’s appeal on this point and increases the joint compensation that the convict must pay to the parents of this victim for civil liability from 70,000 to 90,000 euros. The judgment of the TSJCV can now be appealed in cassation before the Supreme Court.
Marta Calvo’s mother will ask the Supreme Court for permanent prison
Marta Calvo’s mother, Marisol Burón, has regretted the rejection of the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV) of her request to apply permanent reviewable prison to Jorge Ignacio Palma for the murder of her daughter and two other women, and has announced that it will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court (TS).
Burón, in statements to EFE, considers that “there has not been enough time” for the court to have studied all the documentation of the appeal and his impression is that “they have decided that the Supreme Court be the one to finally decide.”