The American John Poulos was sentenced to 42 years in prison for the aggravated femicide of Valentina Trespalacios and for concealment or destruction of evidentiary material. The sentence was imposed on Tuesday, June 4, 2023 in Bogotá.
According to the court, the judge rejected the possibility of manslaughter and declared Poulos guilty of aggravated femicide in heterogeneous competition with concealment or destruction of evidence. The sentence translates into a sentence of 512 months in prison, as confirmed by judicial sources.
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Additionally, Poulos will not be able to approach the victim’s family for 20 years and He will be expelled from Colombia after serving his sentence. The defendant’s defense announced the intention to appeal the sentence in the coming days. Inpec will be in charge of deciding the place of confinement where Poulos will serve his sentence.
Poulos’ behavior during the hearing also attracted attention. While the Prosecutor’s Office presented the evidence of the case, the convicted man maintained a nervous attitudealways staring at the ground or at the magistrate and moving from one side to the other in his position.
Later, at the end of the hearing, Poulos made a gesture that has been strongly criticized. The condemned man picked up his objects from the table and put them in a backpack. Subsequently, an Inpec uniformed man approached to handcuff him and it was just at that moment when he visibly rejected an extended hand from the judge who went to his place to say goodbye to him. In a video broadcast on various digital platforms, you can see how Poulos laughs and shakes his head while the judge who sentenced him offered him his hand in a cordial manner and he left him with his hand outstretched. For a second the magistrate insisted, but Poulos continued to refuse.
As expected, this act has generated controversy on social networks, where various users expressed their rejection of both Poulos’s attitude and that of the judge. Some Internet users wondered why the judge tried to greet the convicted man, while others defended the judge’s gesture as a common act of courtesy in court. It should be noted that the judge in charge of the case said goodbye to everyone present in the room at the end of the hearing.
“Not a hint of regret”; “Why does the judge shake his hand?”; “It is an act of cordiality. When a hearing ends regardless of the outcome, the robed officer (if he or she so considers it) may approach the parties and greet them. It is not an obligation, there are judges who simply close the proceedings, say goodbye verbally and leave.”
Giovanni Trespalacios, father of the victim, spoke in Snail Radio after the sentence was announced and stated that he met Poulos only during the court hearings. According to her story, it was a relative of hers who informed her of her murder: “Valentina’s uncle on her mother’s side called me to tell me that her boyfriend had killed her,” she mentioned.
Valentina’s father explained that he had no knowledge of the relationship between his daughter and the foreigner: “They hid the relationship between Valentina and the guy from me,” Giovanni said. Furthermore, he expressed his displeasure when he learned that Poulos had invited his daughter to travel to Mexico. During the interview, Giovanni also expressed his disagreement with his daughter’s profession, stating that he did not like her to be a DJ because of the nightlife it involved. “I talked little with Valentina, I didn’t agree with her being a DJ,” he said.
