Logroño, Mar 28 (EFE).- The jury trial of Francisco Javier Almeida for the sexual assault and crime of Álex, a 9-year-old boy who on October 28, 2021 was playing in a park in Lardero (La Rioja), enters its final stretch this Tuesday with the celebration of its eighth day.
The parties will defend their final requests for sentences and the right to the last word will be granted to the defendant, who was on probation since April 2020, after being sentenced to 30 years in prison for the murder and sexual assault of a real estate agent in Logroño. in 1998.
In their provisional petitions, the public, private, by the minor’s family, and popular accusations, on behalf of the Clara Campoamor Association, request for the defendant the sentences of reviewable permanent imprisonment for the crime of murder and 15 years in prison for that of sexual assault. The defense opts for free acquittal.
On Wednesday, March 29, the judge is expected to agree with the parties on the object of the jury’s verdict, which he will deliver to the nine members that compose it to begin deliberation.
During the trial, which began in the Provincial Court of Logroño on the 20th, the different experts who have testified, such as psychiatrists, forensic experts and psychologists, have agreed in stating that Almeida does not suffer from a mental illness.
“His cognitive and volitional conditions were not affected: he knew what he was doing and wanted to do it”; “He is capable of drawing up a plan and executing it” and “he knows the illegality of the act and is moved by his desires, his will and his conviction” are some of the phrases that experts have said about Almeida these days.
Álex’s death, according to the autopsy, was caused by suffocation, after an attack carried out with extreme violence and brutality, in which the minor “had no possibility of defense”, are other statements defended by several witnesses, such as police, civil guards and experts from the National Institute of Toxicology and the Benemérita Crime Laboratory.
The victim’s family has attended the trial every day because “Álex is not alone” and his father, in his testimony, explained that, after the crime, they are “living dead”; while experts have declared that both he and his wife will suffer permanent sequelae throughout their lives.
Almedia, 55, testified on the first day of the trial, in which he stressed that “the person who has done that” is not him, “it is a different person”; and she said that she doesn’t know how to explain how the little one got to his house because he remembers it that day “in a haze”.
