The doctor and anesthetist Juan Maeso has achieved parole after spending 15 years in prison out of the 1,933 to which he was sentenced by the Court of Valencia in 2005 for having infected 275 people with Hepatitis C between 1988 and 1997 in hospitals Valencians, according to the newspaper El Español and confirmed by the Valencian Supreme Court. The Court of Valencia admits an appeal against a recent order in which his freedom was denied and finally agrees to this regime for Maeso, who had already enjoyed the third degree for a year, and even slept at his home.
According to the conviction, it was considered proven that Maeso, addicted to drugs and suffering from Hepatitis C, injected part of the anesthetics that he later applied to patients with the same syringe. The Supreme Court confirmed the sentence in 2009, more than 20 years after the first infections were registered and after a trial that lasted about a year and a half, in which more than 600 witnesses testified.
Maeso already requested his release for health reasons before the declaration of the pandemic, but a Penitentiary Surveillance court rejected it. This refusal was later confirmed on appeal by the Second Section of the Court of Valencia itself, which ruled that there was no apparent risk to the life of the inmate.
The Court recalls that the age of the prisoner, 81 years, the time of the sentence that he has already served, almost 16 of the 20 years in prison of maximum compliance, and his vital circumstances “seem to make it difficult, if not to prevent, that he can resume the activity professional on the occasion of which he committed the crimes for which he is serving a sentence”. In short, there is no data “that allows us to question whether the prisoner is in a condition for his reinsertion” or that allows “to maintain that he is not in a condition to live respecting criminal law,” the Chamber concludes.
