Dani Alves' defense introduced a new element in its statement of conclusions in which it requested the "acquittal" of the player, accused of rape, that the Brazilian was drunk, a circumstance that opens the door to the mitigation of drunkenness in the event that Finally, the court that will try him in two weeks will declare him guilty. The lawyer Inés Guardiola has added a new element to the letter that had not appeared in any of the previous versions that the footballer has been making over the last thirteen months. And it is not a trivial circumstance. The defense now alleges that the Brazilian was "drunk" in the early hours of December 31 when he allegedly sexually assaulted a 23-year-old girl in the bathrooms of a private room at the Sutton nightclub in Barcelona, according to what El Periódico and El Periódico reported this Wednesday. Ara.
A state of drunkenness that the lawyer assures in her writing made the accused not fully aware of what he did that morning. Practically at the gates of the trial that will be held starting February 6 at the Barcelona Court, the Brazilian's defense has chosen to try to obtain an extenuating circumstance of drunkenness in the face of a possible conviction for sexual assault.
In this context is framed the request, also from the footballer's defense, to request Alves's wife, Joana Sanz, as a witness to testify at the trial. That morning of December 31, the model was not at the couple's home in Sant Just Desvern. The woman was in the Canary Islands, where she had said goodbye to her mother a few days before at a funeral, but they were able to communicate somehow. The defense wants Sanz to relate in the first person that that morning the player arrived home very injured.
In any case, Guardiola's strategy, as his previous lawyer, Cristóbal Martell, also maintained at the time, is to defend before the court that the sexual relations of the two in that bathroom were "consensual" after a "previous flirtation" in the private room. from the nightclub where Alves was with a friend.
In addition to Sanz's statement, which she will tell in court, how her husband had been involved in some other episode related to alcohol consumption, the defense has provided the cash receipt, the receipt, for the consumption of the drinks they had that time. evening. An element that until now had already been in charge of questioning the accusation, represented by the lawyer Ester García, understanding that this paper does not justify either that it was that of the drinks at Alves' table, nor that everything they paid for had been consumed the player.
Until now, what has always been said, including Alves and his friend Bruno Brasil in the different statements made, is that they ordered a bottle of French champagne that they shared with several people who approached their table throughout the early morning.
The new version of what happened that morning made by Alves, the fifth, joins others made previously by the player, both in court and in statements to the media outside the process and before being arrested. Alves said that he did not know the victim, after that they only saw each other for a moment in the bathroom or that they only had oral sex, all denied by the evidence, such as the remains of DNA on the woman's body, until he finally admitted that they had sexual relations, but they were consensual. The Prosecutor's Office, represented by prosecutor Elisabeth Jiménez, and the private prosecution reject all these versions and consider in their different writings that Alves sexually assaulted the woman against her will, with violence and force, and that is why they request between 9 and 12 years in prison.
