The Supreme Court has revoked the acquittal of a police officer who, in March 2018, shot and killed a prisoner who escaped during a transfer to the Cáceres courts. The Provincial Court of Cáceres convicted the agent, a member of the National Police Corps, of reckless homicide, but the Superior Court of Justice of Extremadura corrected that decision and acquitted him, considering that it was a minor recklessness, decriminalized since 2015. The victim’s family appealed to the high court, which has now agreed with them and has sentenced the police officer, as the author of a less serious crime of reckless homicide, to a fine. of 2,700 euros and to compensate the parents and brother of the victim with a total of 162,595 euros.
The events for which the Supreme Court has condemned the agent occurred on March 2, 2018, when the victim, who was 24 years old, had a history of robbery with force and was imprisoned preventively, was transferred to the Cáceres courts for some judicial procedures. He arrived at 9:48, guarded in a police vehicle and not handcuffed. When the officers who were carrying him went to open the door, he violently pushed it and threw a police officer to the ground, according to the proven facts contained in the sentence. The prisoner, who was carrying two crutches, attacked another agent with one of them and fled down the access ramp to the parking lot. Then a chase began through the city that lasted almost three and a half hours and in which nearly 50 agents from the Civil Guard, National Police and Local Police participated.
The escapee was located around 1:20 p.m. in a house located on the side of a mountain, from where he fled again, this time across the countryside. The accused agent and another colleague managed to follow him and fired several shots into the air with their service weapons. At one point during the chase, the fleeing man threw a rock into the hands of one of the police officers, which caused the service pistol to fall, to which the officer took out a private personal weapon and continued running and shooting into the air. The judges consider it proven that, while trying to save a dirt slope on wet and slippery terrain, the agent slipped and a shot entered directly into the fleeing man’s back. The prisoner fell and, although he was treated and taken to the hospital, he died hours later.
The Supreme Court, in a ruling for which Judge Andrés Palomo was the rapporteur, considers that the agent was authorized to carry a weapon, “even for its intimidating use, shooting into the air” in circumstances such as those that occurred on March 2. However, contrary to what the Extremadura TSJ ruled, the high court concludes that the police officer did not act correctly by running with the unlocked pistol. “It was absolutely unnecessary, running in pursuit of the escaped person, through terrain about six or seven meters away from him and on wet, slippery ground, for him to carry the pistol, with the voluntary safety removed and with his finger on the trigger, facing a busy street,” warns the Criminal Court.
According to the Supreme Court, having your finger on the trigger in these conditions “generated a certain risk that in the event of any incident, such as the one that occurred, the weapon would fire.” “Risk of very special gravity, given the potentially harmful and even lethal potential, as happened, of the weapon. When in addition, for its use, the fact that the finger was not on the trigger was not at all necessary to be able to react in time, in the event of any eventual circumstance,” the magistrates add. The court admits that the probability that an inadvertent shot would hit the escapee or any other person, although not insignificant, was not highly probable either. “But no matter how scarce it was, given that the danger it caused had potentially lethal consequences, extreme care had to be taken in carrying it,” the judges emphasize.
