20 years for murdering son and hiding body in suitcase

The defense has spent the trial claiming that Monica Juanatey was not aware of her actions in July, 2008, when she drowned her nine-year-old son in the bath in the apartment in which they were living in Minorca and appealed for a 15-year sentence.

However, the jury were given forensic reports to study as part of their deliberations and the conclusion was that the suspect was coherent and was not suffering from any psychiatric illnesses of amnesia.

Defend
According to the prosecution, which submitted a plea for a 20-year sentence if found guilty right from the start of the case, the suspect knew exactly what she was doing and that she apparently ran the bath to reduce her son's ability to defend himself.

What is more, the accusation maintained that the suspect must have been well aware of what she was doing because of the way she disposed of the body and kept it in a suitcase while pretending for various days that life was continuing as normal.

Apparently, the suspect was examined by five forensic experts and none of them found any traces of mental health problems to support the defense's claims that the mother was not aware of her actions.

The jury found the mother guilty on eight counts against one and Juanatey does have ten days to appeal against the sentence.
In her defense, Juanatey, told the jury that she had no motive to have killed her son and still cannot believe that she had been capable of carrying out such an act.

She told the court that after her son's death “I spent some time with him, two or three days crying before I placed his body into a suitcase with his favourite items.” The defendent still claims that she put her son in the bath and went back to clear up in the kitchen only to return to find him dead.
But the prosecution has been wanting to know all along why she apparently never called the emergency services.