Detainee caught with wooden skewer sentenced to another year in prison

The Court of Appeal of Porto (TRP) has confirmed the one-year prison sentence given to a Pacos de Ferreira prison inmate who was caught with a wooden skewer in his cell.

The ruling, dated May 8, which Lusa read this Thursday, rejected the appeal filed by the 34-year-old defendant, leaving the sentence under appeal in its exact wording.

The events took place on October 11, 2021, in the Pacos de Ferreira prison, where the accused was serving a sentence of 11 years’ imprisonment for crimes such as attempted robbery, qualified bodily harm, aggravated rape, kidnapping and aggravated coercion.

The court found that on that day, prison guards found in the prisoner’s cell a wooden skewer measuring approximately 17 centimeters, a homemade resistor, a piece of sandpaper and a homemade screwdriver, which were seized.

Due to these facts, the accused will be sentenced in November 2023 by the local criminal court of Paços de Ferreira to one year’s imprisonment for the offense of possessing a prohibited weapon.

Dissatisfied with the decision, he appealed to the TRP with a request to reduce the sentence to a term close to the term established by law (seven months).

However, the judges considered the sentence to be justified, calling the behavior of the prisoner who was sent to prison with tools that could be used as weapons of aggression “particularly serious.”

The resolution also states that the convict “has had difficulties with adaptation throughout his institutional career, which is confirmed by improper behavior reflected in the protocol of several disciplinary sanctions.”

The accused has an extensive criminal record: he has already been convicted of numerous thefts and even possession of a prohibited weapon, despite the verdict handed down in 2011.