The Sevilla Court has sentenced a man to 16 months in prison for domestic violence, a far cry from the 18 years originally requested by the Public Prosecutor, after the victim chose not to testify.
The man was charged with a total of eight crimes, including domestic violence, breach of restraining orders and rape. The initial request by the Public Prosecutor included a ten year sentence for the crime of rape, an incident alleged to have occurred in March 2008.
Two days before the trial, the victim withdrew the private prosecution and elected not to testify. The judge therefore had no choice but to acquit the accused on six of the eight charges, limiting his ruling to the cases where there was physical or corroborating evidence of wrongdoing from external sources.
In reducing the number of charges, the amount of compensation was also reduced from the €15,000 originally requested by the prosecution to €900.