The couple suspected of having neglected to provide health care, food and hygiene to a 98-year-old woman was sentenced today by the Setúbal Court to 22 and 20 years in prison.
The victim’s son was sentenced to a prison sentence of 22 years and his partner to a slightly shorter sentence of 20 years in prison, in accordance with the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which requested a minimum of 20 years for each of the two defendants.
At the hearing that took place this Tuesday, April 14, at the Setúbal Court, the judge who read the ruling highlighted the “lack of empathy and coldness” of the two defendants, who, from 2022 to December 12, 2024, the date on which Maria da Nazareth died, not only neglected monitoring and providing hygiene care to the victim, but also denied her the provision of health care. what I needed.
“From 2022 until the date of his death, [Maria da Nazareth] he never received medical care again”, said the judge after remembering that, during 2023, the victim fractured the neck of his femur in a fall and that even then the two defendants, son and daughter-in-law, did not request medical help.
During the trial, the expert from the Legal Medical Institute heard by the Court stated that, according to the results of the autopsy, Maria da Nazareth died due to a lung infection that occurred from the untreated fracture of the femoral neck.
He also highlighted that the injury in question was “quite painful – between six and seven on a scale of zero to seven” -, which prevented the victim from moving independently, contrary to what the two accused stated in court.
Speaking to journalists after reading the ruling, the defense lawyer for the two accused, Pedro Pestana, admitted filing an appeal because he did not agree with the classification of the crime as qualified homicide, considering that it was a “crime of domestic violence aggravated by the result of death”.
“In the defense’s view, what is at stake is not homicide, it is not an intention to kill, to shorten life, to hasten the woman’s death. In the appeal we will discuss the legal classification of the crime, we do not agree with qualified homicide, because the defense’s view is that what happened was a case of domestic violence aggravated by the result of death”, he said.
“No one says they are innocent. What we say is that the crime is not qualified homicide”, highlighted the lawyer for the two defendants who were sentenced today by the Setúbal Court.
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