That smoking kills is already warned by tobacco packets. But for a woman from Zaragoza, the cigarette habit was about to cost her a stay in prison for a year after she was tried and convicted of a robbery perpetrated in a house in Zaragoza. In the end, the Provincial Court of Zaragoza reviewed the ruling and accepted the arguments of the defense lawyer, who assured that the cigarette butt with DNA remains from her client could have reached the place of the robbery through different routes.
The assault on the house, which was uninhabited, took place during the night of November 4 to 5, 2020. Inside, the agents found the remains of a cigarette next to a sofa despite the fact that the owner of the property declared that did not smoke After the DNA analysis of that butt, the laboratory extracted the genetic profile of the woman who finally ended up accused. This evidence was enough for the head of Criminal Court number 3 to issue a conviction against her.
However, the defense always argued that there were many other ways in which that butt would have ended up at the scene of the crime and appealed the ruling. For example, they argued that it could have been introduced by the wind or on the sole of a shoe belonging to the owners, the locksmith or the police officers who entered the property after the events.
During the trial, another possibility that the lawyer raised is that the real perpetrator of the robbery had deliberately picked up the cigarette butt from the ground to leave it later in the house and thus confuse the investigators.
Judge Milagro Rubio began by invalidating the proven facts of the previous ruling to clarify that the perpetrator of the theft remains unclear. Nothing changes regarding the time when the assault took place, at night and “through the access that was to the house on the roof.” But instead of identifying the defendant as responsible for the crime, the new opinion indicates that it was perpetrated by “person or persons of unknown identity.”
Regarding the butt, although he acknowledges that an expert DNA test “is very useful”, he considers that “it is not the same” that these remains are located on a mobile or a fixed object. “It is not the same that they are in a glass, furniture or property of the house. Or, as is the case in this case, on an object that does not belong to the house or its residents, ”he pointed out.
In this sense, he describes as “feasible” the possibility that the remains of the cigarette reached the house through the sole of a third person, for which reason the in dubio pro reo is applicable and the defendant is acquitted, who Thus, he frees himself from spending time in a cell in the Zuera jail.
