The Audience of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has reduced from six to four years the sentence imposed on a man accused of the crime of sexual assault and illegal detention of a woman in La Gomera in application of the Law of only if yes.
The Sixth Section of this Hearingwhich has reviewed four other cases and has not considered it appropriate to modify other sentences, considers that in this case, it is in accordance with the new organic lawbefore a crime of rape whose penalty would range between 4 and 12 years in prison.
The facts Courts occurred in 2018 when the man held the woman in a tool room where she lived and forced her, under threat and after forcing her to take a pill with a beer, to perform fellatio on her.
The next day, the woman was able to escape and call for help.
The Chamber recalls that the new law entails a modification of the criminal type of violence established up to now in the Penal Code and specifies that when the sexual assault “consists of carnal access through the vaginal, anal or oral route or the introduction of bodily members or objects by one of the first two routes, the person responsible will be punished as a prisoner of rape with a prison sentence of four to twelve years”.
For the Chamber, it is evident that there has been a variation in the Punitive intervals for the crime against sexual freedom for which this man was sentenced, that with the previous legislation the extension of the sentence would be from 6 to 12 years, and according to the current criminal type the sentence to be imposed would be between 4 and 12 years in prison.
Remember that the revised sentence details that the sentence has been imposed to its minimum length given the personal circumstances of the prisoner and without there being adverse elements to impose a longer prison sentence, for which reason the “minimum sentence” of six years is applied.
The Chamber understands that in view of the new legislation it is necessary to review it and to impose the lower limit that will pass in application of the most favorable penalty and the proportionality criterion indicated to that of four years in prison.
There is an appeal against this decision before the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands.
