The court ignores the fact that his mouth was already in poor condition because it is unknown to what extent “he could accelerate” the loss of teeth
MADRID, 13 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a man who suffered the loss of up to eight teeth after a co-worker punched him, and increases the sentence of the aggressor from one to three years in prison, understanding that this aggression caused him a deformity.
The sentence, a presentation by magistrate Andrés Martínez Arrieta, explains that the account of the facts includes that in January 2019 both work colleagues discussed in the middle of the scaffolding of a building that they were reforming in the Castellón town of Alcora. The situation got worse and one of them, Moha C., hit the other, Abdelghani E.H., in the mouth, causing injuries that consisted of a 2-centimeter sharp wound on the upper lip, the loss of the upper left central incisor and the loss of Partial lower left lateral incisor. It also caused a dislocation in six other teeth that had to be extracted.
According to the sentence, the cure for these injuries left sequelae and also meant the carving (partial loss) for the prosthesis of another five pieces. And the account of the facts of the first instance sentence included that “the injured party had a mouth in very bad condition.”
The resolution indicates that in a first sentence, Moha C. was sentenced to one year in prison as the criminally responsible perpetrator of a crime of injury, and to compensate Abdelghani E.H. with 1,944 euros for the days he took to heal and was incapacitated plus the amount of 700 euros for the damages caused.
The Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Valencia confirmed that ruling, dismissing appeals from both the aggressor and the victim, and after that, both raised the matter to the Supreme Court.
According to the ruling of the High Court, the man convicted of punching formalized a single reason in his appeal, he denounced a factual error in the evaluation of the evidence because, he argued, he did not hit anyone “being the reality that the victim he fell”.
The Chamber explains that they must reject the reason because the way to challenge a sentence “requires that it designate a document that results (…) an error in the facts declared proven, or a fact with criminal relevance that must be included in the proven fact , to reduce the factual effectiveness of the application of the substantive criminal precept”. But he says that Moha C. “is limited to reiterating what he already said in the appeal, that the victim fell and he merely attended to her.”
On the other hand, regarding the appeal of the victim, the court explains that he understood that an error had been made by not applying article 150 of the Penal Code and not 147.1 in the first sentence. He understood that it would have been the right thing to do given that “the deformity” after the coup was declared proven. The man pointed out that the loss of teeth was “a proven fact that reflects the author’s special aggressiveness”, which through his action affected the physical integrity of the victim.
The Chamber recalls that the Public Prosecutor supports this argument by pointing out certain jurisprudence on the concept of deformity and its application to cases of loss of teeth. It understands that the facts must be corrected in the typical deformity of article 150 of the Penal Code, without this legal qualification appearing contradicted in the fact proven by the expression that the victim “had a mouth in very bad condition”.
The prosecutor maintains that this expression, “mouth in very bad condition”, by itself, without further indications, “does not authorize the hypothesis of imminent loss of teeth nor does it interfere, decisively, in the causal relationship, without another part appears described in the factual account of what that mouth in poor condition consists of”.
The court, after presenting the Prosecutor’s position, reviews the jurisprudence and points out that in the non-jurisdictional plenary session of April 19, 2002, it already established that “the loss of incisors or other teeth, caused by direct or eventual intent, is ordinarily subsumable in article 150 of the Penal Code”.
It adds that according to judgments of 2006 and 2007 “case law has defined deformity as a physical, visible and permanent irregularity that involves disfigurement or ugliness that is visible to the naked eye”, and also “as any permanent physical irregularity, which entails a bodily modification of which negative social or coexistence effects can be derived”.
And going into the specific case, he explains that “in the case examined, the procedure and the methods of aggression were especially intensive and generated high risks, since the defendant attacked the victim, who he dealt a strong blow to the mouth, causing her to die.” affectation of 13 dental pieces”.
“The forcefulness of the determining blow of this result and the concretion of the result in the loss of such a number of dental pieces, as well as their position, allows him to prove the concurrence of the typical assumption of the deformity”, he concludes.
On the possible objection that the victim’s mouth was already in a bad condition when he received the blow, the court says that the proven fact of the trial judgment does not refer to “what the bad state declared consisted of and to what extent was able to speed up the production of the result or even produce it.”
“Consequently, it is appropriate to uphold the appeal filed by the private prosecution and condemn the defendant as the perpetrator responsible for a crime of injury under article 150 of the Penal Code to a sentence of 3 years in prison,” the sentence.
