The Provincial Court of Huelva has sentenced a journalist who published a series of information with the content of the proceedings opened for the murder of the teacher Laura Luelmo in El Campillo (Huelva) to two years in prison for the crime of revealing secrets in December 2018.
Two journalists from the Huelva Información newspaper were denounced by Laura Luelmo’s family for considering that they committed a crime against privacy by revealing details that appeared in the summary of the case that was being investigated by a Huelva court.
In the sentence of the Provincial Court, advanced by the Diario de Sevilla and to which EFE has had access, the journalist is sentenced as the author of a crime of revealing secrets of article 197.3 of the Penal Code to two years in prison, to one a fine of 18 months with a quota of six euros per day and disqualification from practicing the journalistic profession during the time of the sentence, in addition to compensation of 30,000 euros to the relatives of the murdered young woman.
The sentence considers that some data that was published as details of the autopsy violate “the right to personal and family privacy of the deceased”, and that, although the case was reported in the media and the information about events “is of general interest and has public relevance”, is not protected by the freedom of information “the disclosure of data” that “exceed what may have informative relevance or may be classified as irrelevant, free or unnecessary”.
The sentence, which according to Diario de Sevilla and Huelva Información, both from the Joly Group, is the first in Spain to condemn a journalist for the crime of revealing secrets for publishing summary information.
On the other hand, the text acquits the second accused journalist considering that the article he published did not commit this crime.
Bernardo Montoya was sentenced to a reviewable permanent prison sentence for the sexual assault and murder of Laura Luelmo, a 26-year-old teacher from Zamora who had recently been transferred to Nerva (Huelva) and lived in the nearby town of El Campillo.
The sentence indicates that the journalist “had access to the plural content of the judicial proceedings of the Summary that was being investigated, of a confidential nature, and made them known with literal annotations through various articles.”
These articles reported on the different versions that the defendant of the murder had given before the judge, gave details of the injuries that Laura Luelmo had suffered according to the autopsy, the toxicology reports, and an image of the young woman shopping in a store was published. a supermarket, just before she was kidnapped by Bernardo Montoya.
The magistrates who sign the sentence allude to the doctrine of the Constitutional Court on freedom of information and point out: “The justification for the protection of freedom of information in the social relevance of what is communicated makes it necessary to verify that social interest of the information , derived from the public nature of the person to whom it refers or from the fact in which that person has been involved”.
But he adds that, although the information about events “is of general interest and has public relevance”, it is not protected by the freedom of information “the disclosure of data that affects privacy is entirely unrelated to what is ‘newsworthy’, exceeds what may have informative relevance or may be classified as irrelevant, gratuitous or unnecessary”.
In the case of the Huelva crime, it points out that “the profusion of data on the injuries and violence suffered by the victim, as well as the technical foundations and the details provided, exceed the necessary information work that the community in general needs about the course of the investigation of the death and the circumstances in which the sad event occurred” and compromise “the right to personal and family privacy of the deceased”.
On the other hand, the ruling states that the defendant “had access to documentation restricted to the strict scope of the criminal investigation of the case” that was taking place in the Valverde del Camino Investigating Court, and “disseminated this data in a public means of communication.
“The lack of authorization for the knowledge of that information was also necessarily known by the defendant,” adds the sentence, which recalls that the journalist relied on professional secrecy to not reveal how she accessed the content of the summary.
The defendant was “knowing through her profession in the court chronicle of the confidential nature of the summary data, that its content affected the sphere of privacy of the victim and her family, and of the damage that could be caused by this, she proceeded to disclosure”, conclude the magistrates.
