Jury convicts Antonio Mayo of murdering his father with an axe and rejects that he was under the influence of drugs
A jury court found Antonio Mayo unanimously guilty of parricide of his father in Muros in 2023. The sentence will be between 20 and 25 years in prison.
Unanimous verdict for parricide in Muros: jury rules out intoxication alleged by defence
The jury court of the Provincial Court of A Coruña found Antonio Mayo unanimously guilty on Thursday of killing his father, José Manuel, known as "O Peseta", on the night of 21 April 2023 in the parish of Esteiro, in the municipality of Muros in A Coruña province. According to ABC, the victim had run a bar located in the same building where he was axed to death by his own son following an argument.
The central question of the trial was not who committed the crime—on which there were no doubts—but whether Antonio Mayo, who was then 19 years old, acted with his cognitive and volitional capacities impaired. His defence argued during the proceedings that the accused was "extremely high" that night, an argument intended to obtain a mitigating factor that would reduce the sentence sought by the prosecution: up to 25 years in prison for parricide.
The jury rejected that argument, although on this point the vote was seven to two. The members of the tribunal took as their main basis the expert reports from the forensic pathologists and the toxicological analyses carried out on the accused immediately after the events, which detected no foreign substances in his body beyond the medication he was taking.
No mitigating factors or exempting circumstances
The defence also argued that the father had tried to attack his son first with a knife, and that Antonio Mayo had only tried to repel that assault. The jury likewise dismissed any previous scuffle, with the thesis of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution prevailing. The latter is being pursued by lawyer Luciano Prado on behalf of the victim's mother, who argued that it was a parricide in which Antonio left his father not the slightest possibility of defending himself.
The result is that the court finds neither mitigating factors nor exempting circumstances. The final sentence, which must be set by the court president-magistrate on the basis of the verdict, will be between 20 and 25 years in prison. Antonio Mayo will also have to compensate the victim's mother, that is, his own grandmother.
The axe thrown into the sea
Antonio Mayo had lived in Italy with his mother, but had been living again in Esteiro for some time, where he lived with his father. That night he killed José Manuel with axe blows in the kitchen of the house and then went to the quay to throw the weapon into the sea. The Civil Guard subsequently located the axe. At first, the accused alleged that it was hired killers who had murdered his father, but he eventually confessed to being responsible.
José Manuel, "O Peseta", was a well-known and respected resident of the parish of Esteiro, where he had run the bar in the building where the crime occurred.
Source: ABC