Laughter is sometimes heard in the halls of the court. They come from the salons of lawyers and officials, that day may be celebrating a birthday or a retirement. The solemnity of the Spanish judicial system is often put on hold by the daily routine. The operation of the VAR is discussed in the room where the togas are stored. Security guards yawn after watching hundreds of bags and backpacks pass through the X-ray scanner. Law students arrive in the morning very ceremonial, as if they were entering a church, but throughout the morning they relax and end up flirting with each other. The hormones spread throughout the room. The ingenious intervention of a lawyer or the absurd explanations of a detainee arouse laughter. But not today, today there is nothing like that. No one dares to make a bad joke. On the bench sits a woman accused of killing a baby during her first hours of life.
The prosecutor who takes the case on Tuesday made a detailed account of what happened two years ago in an old apartment in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). The members of the popular jury turned nervously in their seats. In front of them they had Sonia Bedoui, tearful, dwarfed in her chair, as if she wanted to become invisible. In February 2018, when she had just turned 18, the woman broke waters at dawn. She was alone on the floor where she lived with her boyfriend and his family. They knew nothing about pregnancy because she had hidden it. The girl was born alive, measured 48 centimeters and weighed almost 3 kilos. According to doctors, he breathed spontaneously out of his mother's womb, clinging to his newly released life.
The woman cut the umbilical cord, and surely with the same scissors, stabbed the newborn nine times. On three occasions the heart pierced him, in one the diaphragm and in another the left lung. When the baby stopped breathing, according to the prosecutor's account, the mother cleaned the blood with paper towels and wet wipes. Then he introduced the stained papers, the placenta and the corpse in plastic bags. All that he kept in a backpack that he hung on a chair in his room.
At this point in the story, a more detailed explanation was left over. Each word seemed an unnecessary stain. The prosecutor, who asks for 22 years in prison for the murder, reminded the jury that it is not known who the biological father of the murdered baby was and that the grandparents, the parents of the accused, have not wanted to exercise the popular accusation. No one was there to defend his memory. Except for her, the State in capital letters:
"Think that I am the lawyer of that girl who has not had a life, that did not even have a name because her mother prevented her."
The reflection left the room, crowned by a portrait of Philip VI of Spain. It was the turn of the defense lawyer. Jaime Sanz de Bremond, long gray hair, a robe that falls to his waist, arrived emboldened: two weeks ago he got the 22 years in prison that a member of a Latin band was going to fall for killing his brother to stay only in three, reduced the sentence to reckless homicide. "I'm going to surprise you," he started addressing the jury, "here we are not going to argue that Sonia was the cause of her daughter's death."
The popular jury opened his eyes with surprise. Law students sitting in the front rows looked at each other. Has this man gone crazy? Sanz de Bremond, who walks the halls of the court with a brimmed hat and a scarf, as an adventurer of the rope of De la Quadra-Salcedo, revealed his procedural strategy: "The doctors consulted and forensics certify that there is a cause why Sonia is not fully responsible for her actions. "
The lawyer acknowledged that anyone is struck by this crime. How is it possible that "an 18 year old baby" gets to do something like that? "That baby," he continued, "already has a two-year-old son, whom he loves and he loves her." How is that possible? He asked rhetorically. "That is the crux of the matter". No one is justifying anything, he warned. I just wanted an explanation, a why, that specialists can give answers to these questions that overwhelmed those present in the room.
Then the lawyer took out all the artillery: "Do you know what a depression is? Do you know people who have a depression? It may be something mild, but also that it is something more serious and requires income. If that expression also has characteristics psychopathic cocktails are explosive, that is what happened in the case of Sonia, she suffered a severe depression with psychotic characteristics and dissociative amnesia, some witnesses will tell us that she was living a normal life, but perhaps that is the serious thing. Depression doesn't have a luminous sign announcing it. "
Beside him, Sonia continued with the same dull and absent expression. His lawyer explained that he has erratic and strange behaviors since high school. He slept on the floor, talked with his image in front of the mirror and said he noticed the presence of shadows. He took pictures of those empty spots to prove to his acquaintances that he was not lying. At the time of the crime he worked at the Magna nightclub, in Torrejón de Ardoz. He lived with his political family.
Two days after giving birth, Sonia was admitted to the hospital suffering from vaginal bleeding. The family of her boyfriend, when checking their belongings to take them to the room in which she was admitted, says she discovered the backpack with the body. He was taken to the hospital, where he had an autopsy. DNA shows that the father was not his current partner. Sonia has not revealed who she is. She was admitted to the psychiatric unit and later sent to the Alcalá Meco prison.
Sanz de Bremond took advantage of these disjointed parts of the story to sow doubt: "Obviously, here is something that does not work. A dead baby hanging on a chair for two days. In the same room where she sleeps with her boyfriend and sister-in-law. Do you believe? that that is normal behavior? By telling them that detail you will see that there is something that does not fit, that is not going well. That is why the law establishes, as we request, that it be condemned to be admitted to a center where it takes care of itself " .
The first day of the trial did not give for more. The parties may reach an agreement on Wednesday, but in the meantime they must continue with the witness statement. When finished, two policemen took Sonia's arm, who slept in prison. The jury went to the bar opposite, where they had reserved a table for lunch on the menu of the day. There he began his deliberation.
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