Court sentences Elche girl to 40 years for murdering her two newborn babies

A court in Alicante sentenced a young woman from Elche to 40 years in prison for murdering her two newborn babies

A young woman from Elche, in Alicante province, who murdered her two newborn babies, was sentenced on Friday, January 14. She received a term of 40 years in prison, from the Seventh Section of the Alicante Provincial Court, after a jury cast a guilty verdict.
The court informed the guilty party that the sentence can be appealed before the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV).
As the court heard, this incident occurred January 30, 2020, when the defendant, then 18 years old, locked herself in the bathroom of the Elche home which she shared with her mother, stepfather, and younger brother. According to the judicial resolution, she subsequently gave birth to two babies in the bathroom, without requesting any kind of help.
She first gave birth to a baby “with the intention of ending her life, or at least representing the possibility that this would happen, and assuming said result, she immediately placed it in a plastic bag”.
Then, she gave birth to the second baby, which she put in the same bag with the first one. Both infants died from suffocation, as they were also covered with towels.
Sentencing the mother to twenty years for each of her crimes of murder for treachery, the judge stated that, “the medical members of the Histopathology Service of the National Institute of Toxicology declared that the newborns did not present congenital malformations”.
He added that “they had a degree of maturity according to the age included in the autopsy report, and without signs of fetal distress. Therefore, it is considered proven that the accused, by placing the newborns in a bag and covering it with towels, caused their death”.
“The conduct of the young woman does not concur with extenuating or extenuating circumstances of criminal responsibility, as the Jury has declared that the accused suffered from an intellectual disability that would lead her to not know the consequences of her actions”.
Regarding the penalty to be imposed, the Alicante Court took into account not only the age of the accused, but also the fact that she had to handle the pregnancy, and the birth of the babies, alone. She did this without the support of her partner, who, although he had agreed with her to continue with the pregnancy, she had abandoned him in the weeks leading up to the delivery.
This is coupled with the fact that the young woman’s family, as noted by the court, “had insistently warned her that it was crazy that she had a baby with her boyfriend, since they had no way of maintaining an independent life”.
“These circumstances must be taken into account to establish the prison sentence at the minimum possible of twenty years in prison for each murder, plus absolute disqualification for the time of the sentence”, said the ruling, as reported by 20minutos.es.
For more news on the Valencian Community: https://www.euroweeklynews.com/news/spain/valencia-news

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