The Provincial Law Courts in Sevilla revoked a lower court's sentence over the suspect's way of walking.

The accused had allegedly mugged a man who had just withdrawn a sum of cash from an ATM in the town of Olvares.

The suspect had received a condemnatory sentence of three years’ imprisonment but his defence lawyer lodged an appeal.

The appeal court considered that the gait of the accused, who is a repeat offender, (with his toes pointing inwards or pigeon toed), which was used by the Guardia Civil and an eyewitness to identify the assailtant was insufficient evidence.

The original court sentence considered it established that the suspect at 08.00h on the 25th of October, 2022, had entered an ATM cubical belonging to the BBVA bank in the Plaza de España in Olivares. He had most of his face covered with a surgical mask and a hood and armed with a 31cm screwdriver.

He forced the victim to handover the cash he had just withdrawn, threatening him with the screwdriver (allegedly). The victim refused and a struggle began. Owing to the shouts etc, the thief ran off without obtaining the cash.

In the appeals court the defence lawyer claimed that there was insufficient evidence to establish his client as the mugger in question, despite being positively identified by an eyewitness and the whole thing being recorded on a security camera.

The eyewitness said that when she passed by the bank she saw two men struggling and saw the mugger wearing a tracksuit and immediately recognised him by his gait; walking with this toes pointing inwards; she also recognised his voice, saying, “he’s from my town and lives virtually next to my mother.”

There was also a Guardia Civil officer, who even before getting him to identify himself, recognised him by his way of walking.

The defence lawyer provided medical documents to support that he had no “defective” gait and neither was it proven in court that he walked that way as he remained sat during both court sessions. For this reason the appeal court considered that this form of identification was insufficent to establish, without reasonable doubt, the idendity of the assailant as that of the accused.

Lastly, the judge considered that the witnesses’s recognition of the man’s voice was not permissible as to “recognise somebody’s voice it is necessary to have some ‘degree of relation,’which does not exist.”

(News: City & Metropolitan Area, Sevilla, Andalucia)