MIAMI, United States. — The Supreme People’s Court of Cuba (TSP) ratified the sentences of life imprisonment issued against the citizens Yadier Delvá Simón and Alexander Nápoles Téllez, responsible for two femicide that occurred last year in Havana and Ciego de Ávila, respectively.
Through a Press release Published this Tuesday, that body reported on the holding at the TSP headquarters “of the hearings of the appeals established by the defendants against the sentences handed down in different judicial processes by the popular provincial courts of both provinces” in cases 366 and 77 of 2022.
“In these processes, both individuals were sentenced to life imprisonment, as perpetrators of two crimes of murder, by depriving of life, using bladed weapons and blunt instruments, to what had been his wife and mother of his only child, in the case of the first of the defendants and, the second, a previous partner, once she decided to separate from him,” the statement said.
In the case of Yadier Delvá Simón, during the appeal “he requested to be exonerated from criminal responsibility, assuring that his actions were conditioned by a profound state of mental disorder,” which was denied after analysis of “the testimonial, documentary, and expert evidence practiced at trial.”
For his part, Nápoles Téllez “stated that he was sorry,” which was not enough to evade his guilt in the facts.
The TSP assured that it had taken into account “the magnitude of the actions committed by Delvá Simón and Nápoles Téllez, which caused the death of two women, violating the fundamental human right to life, as well as what is regulated in the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba on equal rights between men and women, and the protection that must be provided against violence in any of its manifestations and spaces”.
“The Chamber also took into account that these events inevitably mark the future of the minor children of the victims and arouse the total revulsion and absolute rejection by society, which defends inclusion, equality and non-violence”, adds the note.
Yadier Delvá Simón was ratified not only the sentence of life deprivation of liberty, but also “the decision to deprive him of parental-child rights and guardianship over the child he had in common with the deceased.”
The People’s Supreme Court recalled that “the current Penal Code establishes, in its Article 345 section 2, the crime of murder, for which it establishes sanctions of 20 to 30 years, perpetual deprivation of liberty or death, to those who deprive the life of a woman as a consequence of gender violence, which demonstrates the will of the Cuban State to guarantee protection and legal attention to these, severely punishing those declared responsible for these acts.”