Diego Novella, the Guatemalan man jailed for killing his girlfriend at a Camps Bay hotel in 2015, has been granted leave to appeal his sentence.
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Diego, dubbed the Camps Bay Killer, was sentenced to 20 years in 2018 for the murder of his US girlfriend, Gabriela Kabrins Alban, in July 2015.
As per a statement by Diego, he had been in a relationship with Alban since 2013, and the pair had come to South Africa in 2015 seeking medical treatment for Alban, who had Lyme disease.
Alban was found unresponsive by hotel staff in the room she shared with Diego. Her lifeless body was covered in excrement. A curling iron was found between her legs, with which she had been sexually assaulted and a note written in lipstick on paper read ‘cerote’ in Spanish, which translates to ‘piece of sh*t’ in English.
According to TimesLIVE, Novella’s lawyer, William Booth, said the Supreme Court of Appeal had granted Novella’s appeal against both conviction and sentence.
Based on court papers submitted by Novella’s legal team along with his appeal petition, Novella said that the sentence was too harsh and that his cognitive function was impaired due to the intake of certain substances.
His affidavit read: ‘I humbly submit that I have a reasonable prospect of success in that another court may come to another decision with regard to whether the state proved its case against me on the charge of murder beyond reasonable doubt and in addition, in that the sentence is harsh and severe.’
‘This appeal deals with the issue of my criminal capacity at the time I allegedly caused the death of the deceased.’
‘It is my defence that my conative ability was impaired by the intake of certain substances. These substances inhibited my criminal capacity to the extent that I was unable to distinguish between right and wrong, and act in accordance with appreciation.’
Novella pleaded not guilty to Alban’s murder. ‘I deny that I had the intention to murder the deceased, Gabriela Alban,’ he told Judge Vincent Saldanha during his high court trial.
He said that he was sent to Valkenberg Hospital for observation after his arrest, claiming it was a ‘unanimous decision of the panel that, at the time of the incident, [he] had diminished responsibility.’
He further stated there is no available information to offer an accurate assessment of his level of intoxication before and after the murder and a blood test to determine his intoxication was not conducted.
‘I submit that in [this] regard, the State did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that both my cognitive and cognitive mental facilities were fully functional at the time of the said offence,’ he said.
Novella is currently serving his sentence at Brandvlei Prison in Worcester, Western Cape.
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Picture: Alderman JP Smith / Facebook