For the prosecutors involved in the trial for the crime of Fernando Báez Sosa and for the lawyers for the family of the murdered young man, the evidence that the eight defendants devised and carried out a plan to kill him was clear before the first hearing in the city of Dolores, and the thirteen days of testimonials developed until last Wednesday reinforced that idea, which according to sources close to the cause will be the axis of the final arguments that will be presented on January 25with the request of life imprisonment for all of them.
The defense of the accusedMeanwhile, he maintained from the opening of the process that the prosecution would not be able to prove the imputed facts, and after having completed the stage of receiving evidence, he will insist on that point when it is his turn to argue next Thursday the 26th.
Promptly, the defense will try to convince the judges of the Oral Criminal Court 1 that the existence of a murder pact could not be proventhat treachery was not proven either and that not all of the defendants intervened in the assault suffered by the young law student in the early morning of January 18, 2020 at the door of the “Le Brique” nightclub in Villa Gesell.
The Prosecutors Juan Manuel Dávila and Gustavo García will be the first to present their plea and then the lawyers Fernando Burlando, Fabián Améndola and Facundo Améndola will do so, as individual victims.and in both cases they will insist with the original accusation against the eight defendants for the crime of “aggravated homicide due to treachery and the premeditated cooperation of two or more people”, which provides for a life sentence.
It is expected that they coincide in the imputation of the rugbiers as “functional co-authors”, and in the event that this is not the case, they must determine who were the authors and the eventual degree of participation of the rest.
Thursday will be the turn of Hugo Tomei, in charge of defending the accused from the beginning of the case, whose objective will be the acquittal of all of them and in a subsidiary way to refute the accusation and point towards a scenario of “homicide in a fight or assault”, as is clear from their actions throughout the trial.
After the pleadings instance, the defendants Máximo Thomsen (23), Enzo Comelli (22), Matías Benicelli (23), Blas Cinalli (21), Ayrton Viollaz (23), and Luciano (21), Ciro (22) and Lucas Pertossi (23) will have the possibility of say his last words in court.
Then, the judges María Claudia Castro, Christian Rabaia and Emiliano Lazzari will announce the date on which they will announce the sentence, which could be January 30 or 31.
The strategies of the parties emerged from the beginning of the trial on January 2, and as the hearings progressed, more elements became visible.
The prosecutors pointed out at the opening of the debate that it would be possible to prove the doubly aggravated homicide and, after 13 days in which 87 witnesses testified, they considered that without “any doubt” the materiality of the fact was proven along with the qualification “.
Along the same lines, the lawyers representing Silvino Báez and Graciela Sosa, the victim’s parents, considered it proven that “the defendants made the decision to kill and they killed.”
The lawyers representing Silvino Báez and Graciela Sosa, the victim’s parents, considered it proven that “the defendants made the decision to kill and killed.”
The Prosecutor’s Office and the individual victim agree with the prosecutor Verónica Zamboni, who carried out the investigation, in that between 4:41 and 5 on January 18, 2020, the defendants “agreed to kill Fernando Báez Sosa, for which they previously functionally distributed their roles”, after an incident previously held with the victim and his friends inside the nightclub “Le Brique”, in the heart of Gesell.
Although the defender did not advance what the axis of his allegation will be, his strategy appeared above all in the statements of the accused during the last week of hearings: in their own way, all of them denied that there had been a plan and the intention to kill someone and they talked about a fight in which some of them would have intervened once started, and drunk.
Statements of the defendants
“I never in my life had the intention of killing anyone, because I have been hearing every day that I organized, that I am a leader,” Thomsen declared in that sense, and also said that he only reacted “by kicking” before a “pineapple in the face ” that he claimed to have received after his expulsion from the bowling alley.
Ciro Pertossi declared in the same vein, who said that he avoided kicking Fernando when he warned that he was unconscious, while his cousin Lucas Pertossi assured that at “at no time” did he “intend to kill anyone”, that he did not hit the victim and that he saw that a friend of his “was being grabbed by the foot and thrown to the ground,” for which he kicked another person “two times.”
Cinalli, the last to testify, said that “there was no plan, there was no planning, there was no role.”
From these elements, Tomei could request that the fact be configured as a “homicide in a fight or assault”which according to Article 95 of the Criminal Code applies to an attack by two or more people on someone who dies, without stating who caused the death, therefore “all those who exerted violence on the person will be considered as perpetrators “.
This crime foresees a sentence of two to six years in prison for those identified as aggressors, a position in which, according to the testimonies provided during the trial, the videos shown and the DNA tests carried out, Thomsen, Comelli, Cinalli, Benicelli and Luciano and Ciro Pertossi.
Tomei could request that the act be configured as a “homicide in a fight or assault” that provides for a sentence of two to six years
The defense attorney could argue in this sense that it was not possible to accurately prove that any of the blows was the one that killed Fernando, in line with the two forensic doctors who closed the list of trial witnesses and questioned the work of the doctor who did the autopsy.
Alternatively, Tomei could ask for “intentional homicide” to be considered.which applies to anyone “with the purpose of causing harm to the body or health, causes the death of any person, when the means used should not reasonably cause the death”, and provides for a penalty of 1 to 3 years in prison.
Another option could be to consider the “simple homicide with eventual intent”which according to judicial sources applies to an aggressor who “should have represented that his action could cause death”, and despite that “he continued with his actions and did nothing to prevent it.”
This offense provides for penalty of 8 to 25 years, the same as “simple homicide”although in this case, if any of the aggravating factors are considered proven, the sentence would be life sentence for all those affected.
Both in the case of minor sentences and in the event that they are convicted of “minor injuries” for which they are also charged, which provide for between one month and one year in prison, it must be taken into account that the defendants have been in pretrial detention from on February 14, 2020.
