Sworn statement of a witness present at the initial cuts of the trial recordings

When the record of a trial is in question, sources are ranked by their mutual independence. This is the testimonial one.

The document

• A sworn statement signed in Alicante, on 2 April 2024, by a person who attended the initial session of the trial held before the Provincial Court of Bizkaia on 31 January 2019.
• Subject: what was witnessed in the courtroom during the initial phase of the hearing — the one the delivered record does not document in full (A.18).
• The declarant is identified and the signature dated: the document allows his summons as a witness before any body that decides to investigate.

What it adds to the body of evidence

• Independence of medium: were the expert report on the files (A.33) to be disputed, the testimony stands on its own; were the witness's memory to be disputed, the files answer. Each source covers the other's flank.
• Specificity: the statement refers to the session, the phase and the facts that the 10:10 cut left out of the record (A.18).

An observation that needs no adjectives

Article 743 of the Criminal Procedure Act makes the audiovisual recording the record of the hearing. That the reconstruction of a stretch of that record should depend on the sworn memory of an attendee describes, by itself, the state of this trial's record.

How to verify it

Read the statement; note the session, the time and the facts described. Then play the delivered record of that session (A.39.3) and look for those facts. The difference between the two contents is the object of this annex.