The Supreme Court confirmed the sentences of 20 to 24 years of imprisonment handed down to the three perpetrators of the brutal Paliza that cost the life of Samuel Luiz in the early hours of July 3, 2021 on the A Coruña seafront. The magistrates also ratified the decision of the Superior Court of Xustiza de Galicia to acquit a fourth young man, Alejandro Míguez, sentenced in first instance to 10 years in prison as an accomplice to the crime.
The Criminal Chamber rejected both the appeals of the three convicts, who requested their acquittal, and the one that presented the Fiscalía against the acquittal of the four young people involved in the case. The magistrates further confirm that Samuel Luiz was a homophobic crime and applied aggravating discrimination based on sexual orientation to one of the accused, Diego Montaña, the young man who initiated the attack by shouting “maricón” and who was sentenced to 24 years in prison. His defense had complained about the application of the mitigating circumstance of having acted under the effects of alcohol, but the Supreme Court rejected it.
The sentence also confirms the sentences handed down against other young people: 20 and a half years to Kaio Amaral (for murder and violent theft, for suspension of the victim’s vehicle); y 20 years to Alejandro Freire, alias Yumba. The three convicted will have to pay more than 300,000 euros in compensation to the victim’s family.
According to the proven times for which the sentence was recognized, the aggression began near a pub every 3 a.m., when Diego Montaña, who was then with his sentimental couple, believed that Samuel Luiz was recording them on a cell phone. He addressed him and said, “Deja de grabarnos,” to which Samuel disputed that he was making a video call. According to the magistrates, Montaña said: “Don’t grab him, see if I’m going to kill a maricón”, before starting to give him, “in a surprising and sudden way” punches and kicks, especially to the head and face, “because of your animation there was the homosexual sexual condition that attributed to him”. The other accused were involved in the attack.
Among other arguments, to reject the defense’s appeals, the Chamber affirms that in the present case, they meet all the conditions to appreciate the aggravating circumstance of reparation, key to a crime like murder. Magistrates say the attack on the entity’s coups and the resulting violence was unforeseeable. “It was a surprise attack (the previous interaction was purely anecdotal due to the insignificance of the alleged crime), which from the first moment left the victim defenseless, in an inexplicable lynching,” explains Sala. For them, it was “something more than an abuse of superiority, the imbalance was overwhelming and the defense was canceled from the first moment”. And they emphasize that the “subsequent” assistance of Senegalese citizens to the victim does not mean that assistance cannot be requested, for which the defense of the victim and not that of third parties would be required.
The Supreme Court affirms that “in a collective attack” like the one that killed Samuel Luiz “he could not distinguish individual conduct” and appeals to the “conclusive” medico-legal report which establishes that the cause of death “was caused by multiple blows in the context of an attack in which the most intense damage was in the cranial region”. Regarding Freire, he believes that he believed that “I actively intervened in the aggression, both in its first moments by seizing and slitting the victim’s throat, as well as during the phase of the beatings on the ground and finally during the persecution”. Amaral’s conviction is based on the testimony of several testimonies which stated that this young man, in addition to proposing to the victim a “first attack”, “joined the aggressor group and actively intervened in the persecution”, “hindering and hindering the future”.
The Supreme Court’s judgment also does not take into account the fiscal resources and the private accusation against the acquittal of Alejandro Míguez, when the hearing in La Coruña convicted him as an accomplice. The Chamber considers reasonable and not arbitrary the resolution of the Superior Court of Gallego, which dictates that neither the recordings of the street cameras nor the testimonies of the testigos allow the country to make the situation of the huida of Samuel Luiz easier or more difficult.
Unfortunately, La Coruña, the association for the defense of the rights of LGBTI people which made this accusation, celebrated the sentence of the Supreme Court. According to him, his error “consolidates an unequivocal message: hatred does not exist in a plural and diverse society”. The recognition of the homophobic motivation of Samuel Luiz’s crime has “profound social and legal significance, affirming that violence carried out against LGTBI+ people for reasons of harm is not incidental or incidental violence.” “Highlighting hatred does not divide, but it protects. Identifying and sanctioning it in competition with legal requirements is a way of defending the fundamental rights and dignity of LGTBI+ people,” says the president of Alas A Coruña, Ana G. Fernández.
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