The Seville jury that must decide on the guilt or innocence of Rafael V. P., accused of the death of his girlfriend, Ana Buza, when they were both driving on the A-4 highway, faces a difficult dilemma. Did the young Philosophy student commit suicide by jumping from the vehicle she was traveling in or, on the contrary, was her boyfriend the cause of her death?
Until now, only the defense lawyer raised the innocence of his client, but this Friday the Prosecutor's Office has also pointed out that possibility. In an unexpected twist, the representative of the Public Ministry has indicated that Rafael could be innocent because "the evidence categorically concludes that Ana was not run over," as maintained by the private accusation brought by the parents of the young woman who died at just 19 years old on September 7 in Carmona (Seville). The family demands a sentence of twenty years in prison for an alleged crime of murder or intentional manslaughter on a subsidiary basis.
In her final report to the jury, the prosecutor has maintained her initial accusation against the young woman's boyfriend of reckless homicide, for which she requested three years in prison, but at the same time she has introduced acquittal as an alternative. In fact, he has dedicated a good part of his presentation to justifying the innocence of the accused, despite "a lot of pain" that this cause generated. "On my conscience," said the prosecutor, who reminded the jury that she has "Rafael's life in her hands."
"It is very easy in a trial like this to side with the victim, but I ask you to put yourself in Rafael's place. What would happen if any of us were at the wrong time and ended up in the dock with a request for twenty years in prison? What jury would you expect? A fair jury that would not be carried away by emotions, that would make decisions in their conscience and based only on the evidence. If you are convinced that Rafael killed Ana, give a guilty verdict. If you are not sure, don't do it," he said. summarized the prosecutor at the end of her intervention.
Ana Buza's family maintains that the young woman died after being run over by her boyfriend. In the middle of a fight when both were driving, the girl got out of the vehicle and was then run over. However, neither the Civil Guard reports nor the autopsy results say that. The prosecution hired experts who do defend the hypothesis of the accident.
"We cannot know exactly what happened in the vehicle," acknowledged the representative of the Public Ministry, who has defended the objectivity of the tests carried out by the judicial experts. Among them is the Traffic Accident Reconstruction Team (ERAT) of the Civil Guard, which the prosecutor has defined as "an elite body", and the forensic experts of the Institute of Legal Medicine (IML), who carried out the autopsy and a complementary report. "These tests are judicial, carried out by highly prestigious professionals. They do not have to favor anyone, they have not been paid by anyone," he said.
Precisely this evidence caused the case to be filed in record time, finding no evidence of a crime and confirming the hypothesis that Ana jumped out of the car when it was moving, as her boyfriend claims. However, the family of the deceased appealed and managed to reopen the case and put Rafael on the bench.
The prosecutor has been very harsh with the reports made by the experts hired by the family of the deceased. "The events cannot occur as the experts say. If Ana had been run over, the car would have crashed into the right side of the car and the girl's legs would have been destroyed," he summarized.
The "private" expert reports presented by the private prosecution are not "coherent" because the outrage they defend is due to a "strange hypothesis" that "seems more like a horror movie script than reality," warned the prosecutor, who recalled that in this case there was no history of sexist violence.
As in the trial several witnesses have accused Rafael of being jealous and controlling, the prosecutor has replied that this "does not make him the criminal, nor does it prove that he killed her."
"If you are a criminal because you are jealous, the jail would be full of people," said the prosecutor, who considered the testimony of the accused to be "sincere", who stated this Tuesday that his partner "jumped" from the vehicle, from which he saw the young woman fall after noticing "a gasp of air", and that he acknowledged a "feeling of guilt" for not having been able to catch her in time.
"We cannot know if Ana wanted to end her life or did not know how to measure the consequences of an impulsive act. The objective fact is that the door opened and she got out of the car," the prosecutor added.
The family insists on the abuse.
