Luís García de Santiago, 39, has spent half of his life in prison for various crimes of blood and violent robberies. He entered in 2003 for multiple assaults. When he came out, he killed his uncle in 2012 over an argument and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. In March 2020 he killed again. This time to a prisoner convicted of prostitution of minors. In the courtyard of the Brians 2 prison, the defendant approached the other inmate from behind and stabbed him 23 times. The man died on the spot. With the knife still in hand, the jail officials tried to restrain him but the defendant yelled at them: “Don't come near. He is not going with you. This is a child rapist." The Prosecutor's Office requests for the defendant a sentence of 28 years in prison for a crime of murder with treachery and cruelty. Instead, his defense claims acquittal because he suffers from a personality disorder and accumulates various personal traumas exacerbated by his stay in jail for so many years.
In the trial that began this Friday, the accused has acknowledged the facts. "They told me if he could do the job because I had nothing to lose," he recounted without specifying who commissioned him. He has also acknowledged that he neither knew nor had ever spoken to the victim. The strategy of his defense lawyer, Tania Farreras, is to show that the defendant is a vigilante who wants to put an end to pedophiles and pedophiles and thus settle debts with his stormy past. "I have not harmed anyone who is innocent," explained the defendant. To reinforce this line of argument, she has recalled that her daughter was raped and that her niece was sexually abused when she was 9 years old. “I had nothing to lose. I am sentenced to death in jail."
The defendant has wanted to derive the trial for murder in a debate on reintegration and the dignity of prison life. “I have been in an isolation module for three years. Twenty-two hours a day locked in a cell without talking to anyone, ”he said. For this reason, he claims to be sent to a maximum security prison to enjoy more hours outside of his confinement. “I am a danger to society. What do I do in a module? I have been in isolation for 3 years. I will keep killing. If they don't transfer me to a maximum security prison, the wheel will continue. I can't be loose in a yard."
The Prosecutor's Office has asked the members of the jury not to be carried away by the law of an eye for an eye and limit themselves to judging the events in which a person has died violently. “The acts committed by the victim do not have to matter to us. We do not care about his goodness, we care that he is dead and we are going to punish a person for an unjust death ”. The Generalitat has declared itself responsible for not having prevented a knife from entering the prison and has paid 300,000 euros as civil liability to the victim's relatives.
The deceased, Marín A., 32 years old and a Romanian national, was serving a sentence in Brians 2 after being sentenced to 15 years in prison for forcing a minor to prostitute herself in a Raval apartment. The convict along with another woman picked up a minor in Romania and forced her to practice prostitution in Rome and Zaragoza until they were arrested by the National Police in Barcelona.
