The 43-year-old man was sentenced to 10 years in prison at the Court of Appeal for the murder of Kleios

The sentence of the 43-year-old man for the murder of his 31-year-old partner, in November 2019 in Heraklion, was overturned by the Mixed Sworn Court of Appeal of Eastern Crete, as it changed the charge of intentional homicide with possible malice to fatal bodily harm.

The 43-year-old, as reported by cretalive.gr, insisted on the claim that he loved Cleo and in no case, as he claimed, had any homicidal intent. Finally, the Court of Appeal sentenced him to 10 years in prison, while at first instance he had been sentenced to 13 years in prison for manslaughter.

In the appellate court, at the request of the defense, the medical examiner Mrs. Elena Kranioti, director of the Medical Forensic Unit of PAGNI, was called to testify, whose testimony was enlightening so that the court could form a more secure picture of the circumstances under which she lost her life. life of the unfortunate Cleo.

It should be noted that the trial court decision was by majority as three jurors were of the opinion that the defendant should be found guilty of the offense of causing death. An opinion that was to ultimately prevail in the decision of the appellate court.

What did the 43-year-old support?

The 43-year-old in both the first and the second court argued that he loved Cleo and that he had no intention of harming her. According to him, they had jointly decided to fight seriously to get rid of drugs. On that day when he realised, as he claimed, that the 31-year-old had used secretly, he got angry, grabbed her by the top and violently shook her. But Cleo was a troubled creature, in shaky health and quite vulnerable. She had suffered a stroke, lost her speech, developed mobility problems. The defendant was very supportive, while Cleo had to go to a rehabilitation center.

In the statements of the victim’s relatives, it has been mentioned that the 31-year-old loved the accused too much and slept with his photo on her headrest. He again had fluctuations in his behavior. He is described as sometimes loving and protective and sometimes lashing out at her.

The 43-year-old man’s defense attorney, Mr. Manos Christofakakis, spoke of overturning the first-trial decision as the appellate court “changed the charge from manslaughter with possible malice to fatal bodily harm without intending to seriously injure the victim. The court accepted that my principal neither wanted, nor sought, nor accepted the death of the victim. I believe that the examination of the medical examiner who prepared the medical report, which came at our request to the Prosecutor’s Office of Appeals, was of pivotal importance since she made it clear that the death was caused by a strong shaking of the head and not by punches. This was what my client argued from the very beginning, as he never admitted that he punched the victim, as the Joint Jury had wrongly accepted.”