One of seven defendants sentenced to 10 years and three months in prison for the death of Cape Verdean Luis Giovani.

A Braganza court sentenced this Friday to 10 years and three months in prison for the murder of just one of the seven defendants accused of killing Cape Verdean Luis Giovani.

The panel of judges also ordered the same defendant to pay compensation in the amount of 190,000 euros to the parents of the victim and more than 30,000 euros in hospital expenses, as well as 2,200 euros to another person injured in the process.

In pronouncing the ruling, the presiding judge emphasized the preventive message that justice wanted to convey with this ruling in the face of various news that arose during the night about problems identical to those that led to the death of a young man in the early morning of December 21, 2019.

The conviction of the panel of judges is that there was no “malicious intent” on the part of the convicted defendant, so they decided to condemn him not for murder under aggravating circumstances, as he was accused, but for simple murder.

Although none of the participants or witnesses saw the stick hit the victim, the court believes that “this is the most plausible hypothesis” for the outcome of a nighttime dispute between a group of Cape Verdeans and a group of Portuguese.

Luis Giovani died ten days after the incident due to a head injury, the only injury he sustained, the chief judge emphasized this Friday at the announcement of the verdict.

The convicted defendant had a stick that he used in an argument with another Cape Verdean, and for the court, “it was the only blow” to the head that caused the death of a 21-year-old boy who had recently arrived in Braganza to study. at the polytechnic.

“A stick is a murder weapon,” the magistrate considered, confirming his conviction in listening to the defendants during the investigation and in the conclusions of trauma experts.

Only the defendant who had the stick was found guilty of killing Luis Giovani and also of assaulting another Cape Verdean.

Of the total of seven accused of aggravated murder, the court acquitted three and convicted three more, but for crimes other than the death of a young man.

One was sentenced to five months in prison with a one-year suspended sentence for possession of a prohibited weapon (brass knuckles), the other to seven months of probation per year and a payment of 2,200 euros for assaulting another member of the cable group -Verdeans and from a third to ten months’ imprisonment, suspended for one year and two months, and the payment of a thousand euros to another Cape Verdean.

The lawyer for the defendant convicted of the death of Luis Giovani, Gil Balseman, immediately announced that he would appeal the sentence, which he considers excessive, since it qualifies the crime as murder, although less serious than what he was accused of. .

At stake, he argues, could be a violation of bodily integrity, aggravated by the result, because it was “unintentional”, as the court itself concluded.

“Saying that this was the blow that he delivered, it seems to me that it was completely excessive, because if it existed, it would have been unintentional and would have mattered in the extent of the punishment applied to it,” he said. . argued.

For victims’ lawyer and parents’ aide Giovani Paulo Abreu, “justice has been done”, not least because the decision is in line with what he was defending, that there was no fall down the stairs that could have caused injury, as they argued, of the defense throughout process.

The Court found that in the early hours of December 21, 2019, a Cape Verdean started an argument between the groups by “approaching/harassing” the girlfriends of two Portuguese men in a bar, one of whom was convicted of murder by Luis Giovanni.

Near the bar, the same resident of Cape Verde, according to the decree, started a new fight, hitting the Portuguese with his fist, for which he was convicted in another case.

The court also found that the defendant, convicted of murder, pulled “a baton at least one meter long” from the car in order to confront the people of Cape Verde.

The target was to be a Cape Verdean who started a fight in a bar, but when he turned the stick, he hit Giovano and inflicted a single fatal wound on the young man’s head.

Luis Giovano was found alone “prone on the pavement, drunk, with his shirt open in the front, panting and with a bruise on the left side of his head,” as described in the verdict.

The court was unable to clarify how the young man, who had been walking with three other friends, ended up alone.

The original version of the Cape Verdeans, which was accompanied by a public ministry, was that the young man had been attacked by a group of Portuguese using sticks, belts, punches and kicks.

Initially, eight young men were in pre-trial detention and charged with qualified murder against Luis Giovani and attempted murder against three friends.

During the briefing phase, at the request of some of the defendants, one of the defendants was withdrawn from the trial, while the other seven were still charged with qualified murder, but the charge was reduced due to violations of the physical integrity of three victims. .

In the final indictments, the prosecutor has already contested the Ministry of Public Administration’s original charge, ruling out that “the brutality described in the indictment” took place, and requested a guilty verdict identical to the one confirmed this Friday.