Saturday April 29, 2023 | 2:00 p.m.
After listening to witnesses and defendants, in addition to analyzing the evidence contained in the file, prosecutor Estela Salguero requested sentences of between 15 and 6 years in prison for the four defendants for the murder of David Anselmo “Napy” Ferreyra (20), completed on the night of May 1, 2021 at Kilometer 28 of the town of Campo Viera.
Pablo Daniel Espíndola (21), Darío Alejandro Pío (23), Laura Viviana Batista (24) and her boyfriend Alexandro Mario Becker (20) are being tried for the crime.
The first is accused of simple homicide and on Thursday he confessed to the responsibility of the act, although he argued that he acted in self-defense.
In any case, the day before the Criminal Court prosecutor dismissed Espíndola’s version and considered that he intentionally attacked him in complicity with the other three defendants.
Consequently, he requested 15 years in prison for the confessed murderer of Napy Ferreyra. For Pío, meanwhile, he requested a sentence of 13 years, since he considered that his participation “was very important and essential because he grabbed him by the neck and prevented him from defending himself.”
Regarding Batista and Becker, in his plea Salguero considered that their role “was not essential for Espíndola to stab him, but they did collaborate so that the act could be carried out”, for which reason he requested 6 years in prison for both.
In return, for the respective defenses, the defendants were first victims of Espíndola, whom they described as “violent” and “seeking lawsuits” who was armed, so all they did was defend themselves from his attacks.
In this context, for Pío, Batista and Becker requested acquittal; while Espíndola’s defender was inclined to change the cover to excess in legitimate defense.
Accusation
At the beginning of her argument, the prosecutor Salguero stated that the event took place in two scenarios: one at the celebration for Labor Day that they held at the house of Batista and Becker, where there were a series of incidents, and the other at the Napy Ferreyra’s house, where he was murdered after the alleged persecution of those involved.
“There was a first stage, there was a second stage and it was the defendants who participated in both. Ferreyra escaped from the place (where they were celebrating) and they all appear running after him. That annuls any possibility of defense,” said the prosecutor.
He remarked that Karina Sandra Pío -Ferreyra’s widow and sister of one of the defendants- was “the only direct witness” to the event.
She indicated that Pío referred to the attackers as “a herd” that “had entered her house violently,” and furthermore, that “after holding and beating her husband, she recounted that Darío (her brother) grabbed his neck and Pablo (Espíndola) injured him.”
He also mentioned the contribution of Isidro Batista (brother of the defendant), who declared in the trial: “He said twice that the entire attack was at Napy’s house, that Pablo stabbed him but Darío grabbed his neck.”
“Espíndola caused the fatal injury to Napy Ferreyra, but if she was as afraid of him as she said, why didn’t she go elsewhere that night. But no, she attacked him helped by Batista, Becker and Pío. They all participated in the crime,” Salguero stressed.
“He was violent”
In his turn, José Bridier, Espíndola’s private defender, insisted on undermining the figure of the victim and opined that that night “he was looking for his death.”
In this sense, he took the statements of the accused regarding the fact that during the celebration for Labor Day Ferreyra was handling a dagger and throwing it against the wall of the house, while saying “today they kill me or I kill someone ”.
In another section, he assured that “he wanted to rape Barboza (Batista’s mother), he asked for forgiveness; he injured Barboza, he hurt Becker, he played with the knife and even wanted to hit her son ”.
Bridier described the victim as “a bully who bothered the entire neighborhood. He was violent, so much so that he even beat his sister and his own mother. On top of that, he never thought that the events he planned to do were going to happen to him. Ferreyra never thought that he was going to be the victim.
Likewise, it dismissed that the event had unfolded in two scenarios, as the prosecutor depicted: “Everything happened at one time, there were not two scenarios.”
He also questioned the police investigation because they did not look for witnesses who have not been wronged by the defendants, such as the victim’s sister and concubine.
At the end of his plea, he remarked that his defendant has no criminal record and is not violent “as the victim was,” while arguing that Ferreyra “attacked him with a saw and that is why he defended himself. She hurt him but with no intention of killing him.”
Request for acquittal
Beatriz Beltrame, co-defendant for Batista and Becker, removed her clients from the crime scene and stressed that they defended themselves against Ferreyra.
“My defendant and her husband in no way collaborated for the homicide to occur because they were at home, one taking care of himself and the other taking care of her mother who needed to be sutured after the attacks by Napy Ferreyra,” she indicated before the Court.
For Beltrame and the co-defender, José Padolski, neither Batista nor Becker ran after Ferreyra.
“They always stayed in the house (…) They called the police, they were in the house and they didn’t come out of there, what’s more, to run at Ferreyra they threw a piece of wood at him but in no way did they run after him, least of all They attacked, they did not collaborate either”, they highlighted.
For this reason, they considered that “the two should be acquitted of all guilt and charges since they had no participation in the murder of Ferreyra, on the contrary, they have been victims of the deceased.”
“There was no fraud”
Closing the round of allegations, Matías Olivera, Pío’s official defender, questioned the investigation of the case and pointed out the contradictions that various witnesses exhibited with respect to those who testified in the investigation and later in the debate.
He also endorsed the defensive theory of the defendants: “Ferreyra gave Batista’s mother a saw on the head and a pineapple on Becker’s nose. What else was there to expect.
We had to hope that Ferreyra would continue breaking noses”.
Then the defender focused on banishing his client’s participation in the crime, since said hypothesis requires that those involved agree in advance.
“They did not agree to kill him. No witness said: ‘I heard they said we are going to kill him.’ There was no intent to cooperate. The participation that (Pío) had was not to leave him defenseless. At no time was there a previous promise to agree to kill Ferreyra.
And he added: “During the attack there was no way to reach a cooperation agreement (…) From
Surprise Ferreyra came out of the bush, hit him with a saw and Pío ran away, not even knowing that Espíndola had plowed into him to defend himself. If he didn’t know what had happened, even less could there be a prior agreement to say I’ll grab him and you’ll stab him”.
He even stated that if his client had supported Ferreyra and another person took advantage of the situation, “that is excessive and then it eliminates the accusation of participation by Becker, Batista and Pío.” Then he requested an acquittal for the benefit of the doubt.
After the arguments of the day before, the Court ordered an intermission room until Wednesday, at 9, when the verdict will be announced.
The role of each of the defendants
After Espíndola himself confessed to the crime, the prosecutor was left to determine what roles the other defendants played. Regarding Pío, she indicated that “she did not push him (to the victim), but it was essential to grab him by the neck, imprison him and prevent him from defending himself. That was taken advantage of by Espíndola, author of the stabbing”.
Regarding Becker and Batista, he opined that “they provided an activity that was not essential for Espíndola to stab the victim, but they collaborated in such a way that they could later carry out the act.
For this reason, he emphasized that “any act of defense to which the defendants refer was distorted, it disappeared at the moment that Ferreyra ran away from Batista’s house. The evidence is in the file.”
