The Public Ministry (MP) requested this Friday, December 19, prison “close to the maximum sentence” of 25 years for the man who killed three people, in October 2024, in a barbershop in Penha de França, in Lisbon.
During the closing arguments, prosecutor Rui Baptista considered that three crimes of qualified murder and one attempted murder “for futile reasons” had been proven during the trial, meaning that the defendant must be convicted of committing these crimes.
The prosecutor highlighted the defendant’s conflicting and aggressive personality and his lack of respect for the lives of others, having committed crimes of “particular censure”, which led him to consider that “the penalty must be within the most serious limits”.
“We will always be close to 25 years. We are talking about a minimum sentence of 16 years for each of the three murder crimes”, he said, also highlighting that the defendant is accused of yet another attempted murder and possession of a prohibited weapon.
The final arguments in the case continue in the afternoon, by defense lawyers.
This morning, at the defense’s request, an expert from the Institute of Legal Medicine (IML) was also heard about the psychiatric evaluation of the defendant, who reiterated that he is responsible for the crimes.
According to IML psychiatry doctor Sérgio Mota Saraiva, “the diagnosis is not schizophrenia, as claimed by the defense, but “toxic psychosis”, with a pattern “consistent with consumption and withdrawal psychosis”.
The defendant, Fernando Silva, is accused by the MP of four crimes of qualified homicide, one of them attempted, and the other of possession of a prohibited weapon.
The defendant was subject to psychiatric evaluation, taking into account his clinical history of psychosis, but it was considered that he acted with awareness of good and evil and did not commit the crimes during an outbreak.