PUBLISHER'S NOTE: "Recently I stumbled on to a Netflix series called 'The Asunta case' - based on an actual case.
As the Netflix web site describes the series: "After two parents report that their 12-year-old daughter is missing, the investigation soon turns against them. Inspired by true events."
Anxious to learn more - especially since I had never published a Spanish case in the more than 15 years since I founded the Charles Smith Blog - I turned to 'Decider' - a Blog which helps people determine whether they should 'Stream it or skip it.'
Sure enough, Joel Keller, the reviewer - a TV critic and entertainment reporter who, I was delighted to learn was born in my home town 'Toronto,' had landed on the 'Asunta case', and and recommended 'streaming,' noting that, "The Asunta Case is worth watching to learn about a case that rocked Spain back in the 2010s."
Around this time, I had the good fortune of receiving an email from an author, novelist, and latin teacher (a fascinating combination) named Julián Peña. who wanted to counter the Spanish journalists who, he says, "made up so many stories (and) are not very keen to acknowledge their mistakes"
This reminded me of the risk of innocent people being wrongly convicted because of intangible factors - such as misleading media influence which arouses the public and taints potential jurors - when there is no DNA or other tangible scientific evidence to clear them in court.
From the material Julián Peña sent me, it was clear that in spite of all of the subterfuge and emotional haze which had pervaded the case, from his intensive study of the evidence, he believed that Alfonso Basterra was the victim of a miscarriage of justice - an innocent man.
I therefore contacted Señor Peña.who graciously agreed to contribute the guest post, which I am offering our readers today - and I am grateful to him for going beyond Netflix and providing us with clarity on the complex case, the verdict and the public reaction to it.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The image of Rosario as a woman submissive to Alfonso is obviously not true. Alfonso, after losing his job, barely earned enough to live on. They were divorced because of her infidelity. He took care of mother and daughter, and she, a rich heiress, helped him financially, but it was not a loving and trusting relationship. There is no testimony that Alfonso directed his wife or dominated her. Quite the contrary. Asunta's crime seems more like an impulsive act than a detailed plan. However, Alfonso, acquitted of direct participation in the murder, was equally convicted of collaborating in a crazy plan that, in reality, never existed."
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GUEST POST: 'The Asunta Case', by Julián Peña; Author "The Alfonso Basterra case: Rereading a judicial error," (link below) publisher of a Spanish language Blog on the case. (Link below); Born in (Bilbao, in 1964), he has lived in Donostia - 12 miles from the France-Spain border - since childhood, is a Latin teacher and writer, mainly in Basque, has translated 'The Apology of Socrates (1999, Jakin), and has three books of fiction.
GIST: "The murder of the girl Asunta Basterra at the hands of her adoptive parents was one of the most notorious criminal cases in recent Spanish history.
Despite the resounding sentence, the crime is still surrounded by discussions, speculations and unfounded theories.
There is no proven motive to explain how a divorced couple with a bad relationship and very different interests came to agree to murder their daughter.
For the media, the sensationalist account of the murderous parents was a big claim, regardless of the inconsistencies and contradictions.
Everything is much better understood if we assume that the mother acted alone.
She was an unbalanced person, depressed, and had declared to a psychiatrist that her daughter exhausted her. It was the mother who took her daughter to a remote place, who told the police that she had left her at home, who was the only one present when her daughter was attacked by an alleged night intruder…
The police suspected Alfonso because he was buying Rosario's lorazepam, a tranquilizer used to render Asunta helpless, but it was shown that he did all the shopping and the mother's errands.
Even more suspicious was that he took Asunta sleepy to class on two occasions, although the daughter told the teachers that her mother gave her "white powder", without mentioning the father. It is incomprehensible that Alfonso would consciously take her to class drugged if he was planning a crime.
The intense police investigation never got beyond the initial suspicions, but Alfonso Basterra appeared in all the media as a murderer, pedophile and depraved monster for two years before the trial.
There was talk of compromising photos of his daughter. False. There was talk of his propensity for pornography with oriental women, like his daughter, also false. An alleged reproach from the mother was leaked that would indicate sexual perversions. Simply invented. All this media story about Alfonso Basterra, composed of hoaxes and sensationalism, was not included in the sentence, but it helped to create a previous image of his guilt with an enormous impact (impossible to measure) on the jury.
The instruction was flawed and biased, with wild assumptions presented as evidence. For example, the jury considered that the girl consumed the tranquilizer at the father's house, before 05:15 p.m., without any proof and against the evidence, since an hour later the girl walked to the car. If she had taken a double overdose of lorazepam there, she would have been sound asleep, unable to walk, according to the statement of the toxicology experts.
Moreover, it makes no sense to sedate someone to kill them a few hours later and let them walk away, unattended. They let their daughter go home alone, she could have talked to anyone, she had a telephone. It would be a unique case in history, something truly absurd.
The mother simply gave the sedative to her daughter fifty or sixty minutes before asphyxiating her.
The jury convicted Alfonso Basterra for going with Rosario and the daughter to the cottage, but there is not a single piece of evidence to prove that he was there.
The jury considered that, if the father did not appear in the cameras, he could have been hiding in the back of the vehicle, but the higher courts rejected this as "not very rational reasoning", which shows that the jury was driven by prejudice.
There are no recordings from the 37 cameras analyzed to prove that Alfonso Basterra left his house that afternoon. The police did not explain how he could have left without being recorded.
The witness who was used to convict the father, could she really see him walking with his daughter through the streets of Santiago on the afternoon of the crime? She saw them just after buying some sneakers. The time of payment (06:23 p.m.) contradicts the moment when a camera recorded the mother's car driving away from the city, at 06:21:24 p.m., with Asunta inside. Shortly after seeing them, another camera captured the witness at 06:24:54 p.m., again contradicting her account. The police, who did not verify the time of purchase, did not communicate that information to the defense either, in contravention of procedural laws.
She saw them far from the house, when the only sensible plan and the only one considered by the investigators for two months was that the girl went straight down from her dwelling to the mother's car. Despite these inconsistencies, this testimony was treated as credible at trial, the possibility that it was a false memory being omitted. The jury, against the evidence, decided that the camera was out of time.
Alfonso made several calls from his home at 08:43, which indisputably proves that he was there when the mother was preparing to throw the corpse far away. Did he go to help her and leave her alone? Are we to believe that Alfonso traveled four kilometers for nothing without being seen and without it being known which vehicle he used?
Rosario was totally incompetent, very scatterbrained, because of her disorder. It is absurd for Alfonso to plan something with Rosario, and even more absurd for her to take care of everything difficult. Alfonso could never trust Rosario's reactions to the cops.
The image of Rosario as a woman submissive to Alfonso is obviously not true. Alfonso, after losing his job, barely earned enough to live on. They were divorced because of her infidelity. He took care of mother and daughter, and she, a rich heiress, helped him financially, but it was not a loving and trusting relationship.
There is no testimony that Alfonso directed his wife or dominated her. Quite the contrary.
Asunta's crime seems more like an impulsive act than a detailed plan. However, Alfonso, acquitted of direct participation in the murder, was equally convicted of collaborating in a crazy plan that, in reality, never existed."
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The Book: The Alfonso Basterra case. Rereading a judicial error. " The Mascarón de Proa label; Almuzara publishing house,.
The Blog: asuntabasterra.com
Decider: https://decider.com/
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
