Man accused of murder in Montemor o Novo freed from trial

A man accused of killing another man with a saber almost a year ago in the municipality of Montemor o Novo, Évora district, will not face trial after the court found that he acted in self-defense.

In accordance with the ruling of the 13th of this month, consulted on Tuesday by the Lusa Agency, Judge Pedro Barambana Santos decided not to prosecute the accused for the crime of qualified murder with which he was accused by the Office of the Prosecutor (MP). .

The magistrate replacing the criminal court of Évora also ordered the cessation of the coercive measures imposed on the accused, namely preventive detention, and ordered his immediate release.

In a conversation with Lusa, a source in the Prosecutor General’s Office limited himself to adding that the deputy was “analyzing the decision for a possible appeal.”

The case dates back to August 30, 2023, when the victim, a 41-year-old man, went to a farm where there was an eco-retreat run by the defendant, also a 48-year-old man, near Cortisadas de Laurel. , in Montemor-au-New to stay.

According to the investigation, in the morning of the same day the defendant was lying in the room when the victim opened the door and, having exchanged words, approached him with a knife.

The man made several attempts to attack the owner of the premises with a knife, but he evaded them and managed to arm himself with a saber, you should read.

Then the owner asked the man to leave the farm, but the victim ran up to him with a knife in his hand and was hit in the stomach with a saber, removing the weapon from his own body with his left hand.

Among other incidents, near the house the accused took several photographs on his mobile phone of the victim, who was “looking with wide eyes” and throwing objects in his direction.

Coming out of the bathroom, they were approached by the victim without a knife and the accused. The farm owner hit the man with a saber on the body, head and arms, and he fell “lifeless and without visible signs of life.”

It is also emphasized that the victim had not booked accommodation, had been diagnosed with psychosis the day before at the García de Orta Hospital in Almada (Setubal) and had not taken prescribed medications.

In the preliminary ruling, the stage requested by the accused, the judge justified the inadmissibility of the trial because he believed that the accused was in a dangerous situation that threatened his life, and that, despite the trial (he called the PNP and 112), he was unable avoid this.

The defendant, the judge emphasized, “was not required in this particular context to engage in any other conduct aimed at saving his own life, which he was able to achieve through the sacrifice” of the victim.

Noting that it was not established whether the defendant knew that the victim no longer had a knife, the judge emphasized that “between death and murder, the defendant chose to preserve his life in conditions that excluded guilt for actions he committed intentionally.” .

In this sense, the court came to the conclusion that the defendant acted on the basis of the grounds for excluding guilt, namely in a state of exculpatory necessity.