Crime on the Llucmajor motorway: the Supreme Court declares one of the accused guilty of killing a tourist

PalmThe Supreme Court has upheld the 12-year prison sentence for one of the two men convicted in the Llucmajor highway murder case, in which a young German tourist was thrown from a moving van onto the road. The Criminal Chamber, in a ruling obtained by Europa Press, dismissed the appeal filed by the convicted man against the sentence handed down by the High Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands (TSJIB), which had already confirmed the conviction. in the first instance issued by the Jury Court of the Provincial Court of PalmaThe Supreme Court has upheld the 12-year prison sentence for homicide against one of the two defendants, a sentence that becomes final as no further appeals have been filed. The other defendant, on whose case the High Court did not rule, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The judges rejected the claims of the convicted killer's defense, which argued, among other things, that the rights to effective judicial protection and the presumption of innocence had been violated during the trial. Furthermore, the defense argued that insufficient evidence was presented at trial to prove that their client had been an accomplice in the homicide, which, according to their version of events, was committed by the other man in a "sudden and unexpected" manner, leaving the defendant, who was driving, powerless to intervene. At most, he added, he could have been convicted of failure to render aid, since he witnessed the events and left the victim in a dangerous situation.

The judges, however, maintain that the mere fact that the accused was aware of the risk of what ultimately occurred is sufficient to consider him a co-perpetrator. They emphasize that this is proven by the fact that he did not stop the van despite knowing the victim was under the influence of alcohol. Another issue that reached the Supreme Court—and which was already debated in lower courts—was the alleged impartiality of the presiding judge, which, according to the defense, affected the impartiality of the jury members. The defense also argued that the judge allowed the private prosecution and the public prosecutor to include in the recorded transcript the questions they would have asked the defendants had they agreed to answer them. The Supreme Court considers that the TSJIB's ruling makes it clear that, without assessing the appropriateness of the judge's decision, she acted with bias by reminding the defendants that they were not obligated to answer the questions, and rules out any influence she had on the decision of the jury members. The facts

On the day of the incident, the two defendants put the young man, who was under the influence of alcohol, into the van. Moments later, at kilometer 10.9 of the Llucmajor highway (Ma-19) heading towards Palma, the defendants, who had previously agreed to do so, threw the young man out of the left side of the vehicle. The victim lay on the road and was run over by a passing vehicle that could do nothing to prevent the accident and the young man's death. During the investigation, the National Police tracked nearly 100,000 vans and compared license plates with more than ten million vehicle records from Mallorca to find the registration of the individuals involved in the crime and clarify what was initially presented as an accident.