The Supreme Court confirms the conviction of a man for killing an old man who hit his wife on the street | Spain

The Supreme Court has imposed compensation of 48,120 euros to a man who killed an old man from a punch, whom he saw in the street hitting his wife in Valdemoro (Madrid), in 2017. The magistrates of the Criminal Chamber of the High Court have adopted this decision after estimating the appeal presented by the relatives of the deceased against the decision of the Provincial Court of Madrid set by a Getafe court.

The events occurred on the afternoon of September 4, 2017 when the sentenced, 38, walked along Estrella de Elola street of the municipality with his wife and saw a 91 -year -old man, lending blows with his cane to his partner in various parts of the body. Then, the convicted person approached the old man to recriminate his attitude and he raised the cane towards him, “in the gesture of threatening him,” the sentence reports. Given this, the man gave him a punch on the face that caused the old man to lose his balance and fell collapsed with his back, hitting his head against the sidewalk. As a consequence of this fall, the old man suffered a head trauma that caused death.

Getafe Criminal Court number 2 sentenced the man to two years in prison for a crime of homicide for serious recklessness and to the payment of 24,060 euros to each of the children of the old man, although he suspended the penalty of jail on the condition that he did not commit crimes in three years and paid compensation. The sentence considered that the man hit the old man “with the intention of causing a impairment in his physical integrity, and not anticipating the possibility that, as a result of the aggression, he could cause death.”

After that, the Madrid Court reduced the sentence to 450 euros of a fine and the payment of compensation of 10,000 euros to each, so the children appealed the sentence before the Supreme. And now the Criminal Chamber partially estimates its appeal and sets compensation at the 24,060 euros collected by the first sentence.

The High Court considers “proven” that the man “did not foresee the possibility that the aggression could cause death”, which has excluded the responsibility of the accused as the author of a crime of homicide. And he points out that the story of proven facts evidences that there was “the duty to anticipate the inherent risk” of the fact that the old man was hitting his wife with a cane and “the social demand that the accused acts in line to deactivate such danger.”

The magistrates insist that it was a “random and complex situation” that “hindered” the accused to make an “intellectual evaluation” of the risk that could lead to punching the old man. And they argue that in this case the “normally required precautionary duties” deminulate because the “norms of social coexistence” invited him to “end the situation of abuse she observed.”