He disposed of the corpse and gave his skull to a friend in a box, making her believe that there were sex toys inside.
The Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Cantabria has confirmed the sentence of 15 years in prison for Carmen Merinosentenced last December for killing her boyfriend in 2019 in Castro Urdiales, and make his body disappear except for the skull, which he gave to a friend.
The sentence, which is not final and can be appealed for cassation before the Supreme Court, dismisses the appeal filed by the woman’s defense, who requested her acquittal on the understanding, among other issues, that the cause of death could not be proven of the victim.
Merino, who remains in the prison of El Dueso Since her arrest in 2019, she was convicted of killing her partner, a 67-year-old from Biscay, “with the intention of financially taking advantage of his assets and money,” “having been named universal heir by him.”
According to the sentence that sentenced her and as confirmed by the TSJC, after killing her boyfriend, Carmen Merino disposed of the corpse and gave her skull to a friend in a box, making her believe that there were sex toys inside, until the woman opened the package months later. After hearing the arguments of the parties in a public hearing held on March 14, the court rules out that the right to the presumption of innocence has been violated, as the defense maintained.
Contrary to what was defended by this party, the Chamber believes that the sentence is not “erroneous, arbitrary or illogical” despite the fact that the forensics did not prove the cause of death of the victimwhich led the woman’s lawyer to argue that it could not be proven that the death was violent.
“All the indications point in the same direction: it is a violent death, a hypothesis that is endowed with a prevailing degree of confirmation with respect to the hypothesis raised by the appeal,” says the sentence, which adds that “there can be no room for than a speculative idea such as the one raised in the appeal” because “it is not based on reason”. “There is no logical or rational explanation that if death were the result of natural or accidental causes, someone would take the trouble to cut off the head of the trunk.subject her to the action of heat so that the soft parts detach and store her, getting rid of the rest of her body, her mobile phones, etc., eliminating any possibility of proving that the death was not homicidal”, highlights the TSJC.
It does not agree with the defense, which questioned the change of the purpose of the verdict made by the jury in one of the points, the Chamber already understands that the meaning was not altered. Merino’s lawyer also alleged in his appeal that prosecution evidence was missing to affirm that his client participated in the death of the victim.
However, the court considers that the jury’s verdict was “sufficiently explicit and reasoned” and that the assessment of the evidence that was carried out to reach the conviction “does not deviate from the rules of logic, from the maxims of experience and of scientific knowledge”. “Innumerable indicative data were given, all confluent, which unequivocally point to the fact that the accused is not a person unrelated to the death of the victim,” he points out.
Regarding the possibility of sentencing Merino as an accomplice and not as the author of the crime, which the defense raised on the last day of the trial, the court ruled that “does not fit” in the account of the facts. “A participation of a secondary or inferior nature cannot be attributed to someone who intends to end the life of their partner, raises it, organizes it and, ultimately, executes their plan, alone or with the help of another, it doesn’t matter to us, because the penalty would remain the same”, concludes the Chamber.