The first trial held against
Pablo Ibar
for the triple murder of Miramar (Miami) ended declared void in 1998. In a second trial (2014) he was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Two years later, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the sentence and ordered the trial to be repeated: the new one concluded a few months ago with a life sentence.
Pending the appeal announced by the defense, the convoluted case of the Spaniard who has been in prison for 22 years,
16 of them on death row
, now faces a new verdict ... but this time with the audience in the role of jury.
“I am convinced that there is going to be a lot of debate at home about Pablo's innocence or guilt, and also about the American judicial system.
The viewer will understand what the concept of reasonable doubt means, "says
Olmo Figueredo
, director and producer of the documentary series 'El Estado contra Pablo Ibar,' which has just premiered HBO.
"What I wanted with this series is to turn the viewer into one more jury of Pablo's trial and for them to pass judgment," he sums up.
HBO
'The State against Pablo Ibar' consists of six 55-minute episodes and has the testimony of more than
50 implicated in the case
, a multitude of archive recordings and exclusive access to the last trial against Ibar held between October 1, 2018 and on January 19, 2019. Figueredo's team has worked on this project
for more than seven years
;
even before the defense got the death sentence overturned.
“In this documentary, Pablo, the Ibar family, the lawyers, the Prosecutor's Office, the victims, the judge, the police speak ... Everyone has a voice and has the right to explain themselves to see why this case is so complex and
full of contradictions
», summarizes Figueredo.
According to the director, one of the greatest difficulties of this production was having the participation of the families of the victims and the Florida judicial authorities.
It took months of work to convince them that the spirit of this documentary was not to take part, but to try to show all the voices of the case.
"It
has been very difficult to break that barrier
and make them understand that we were not just going to defend the flag that Pablo is innocent," says the director.
But in the end, Figueredo and his team obtained all the testimony they sought and managed to get seven cameras into the courtroom.
"We were able to mike the lawyers and even the judge himself
,
"
emphasizes the director.
"That level of access has never been seen," he warns: "They will see and listen, for example, the 15 minutes in which Pablo is waiting for the verdict, talking to his lawyers about his doubts and dreams, with he sitting handcuffed, while his wife, Tania, prays a Hail Mary to see if her husband is released.
The case of Pablo Ibar has recently starred in another foray into television, although on that occasion in the field of fiction: the series 'En el calle de la muerte', produced by
Bambú
for
Movistar +
and starring
Miguel Ángel Silvestre
.
«There they offered a very personal vision of the whole process lived by Pablo and Tania.
It was very focused on the emotional part of the Ibar family ", highlights Figueredo, marking distances with his production, although qualifying them as" compatible ":" We wanted to make a
journalistic approach
,
giving voice to one party and another, presenting all the arguments in a very scrupulous and rigorous way, but
without taking any side
.
"Here we focus on the evidence, the evidence, the testimonies, the contradictions and above all the reasonable doubt," insists Figueredo.
"We don't take anything for granted," he continues:
"We don't want to tell anything;
because we can show it all ”
, he sums up.
"The stories tend to simplify and the reality is that this case is not as easy as the prosecution has painted it, nor as the defense has painted it," concludes the producer.
"This is not a series about Pablo, but about all the people who have been dragged into this judicial odyssey for 25 years," he clarifies.
Despite this vocation for neutrality with which 'The State against Pablo Ibar'
arrives
,
Andrés Krakenberger
, spokesman for the platform
'Pablo Ibar Justo Judgment'
, considers that this series will be very revealing.
"I think that most of the people who see the documentary will leave with the conviction of Pablo's innocence, or at least with the impression that he
did not have a fair trial
," he points out in conversation with this newspaper after watching the almost six hours of footage.
«The victims of that savage murder have every right to justice, but justice implies condemning the person who committed the acts and the doubts that existed before about Pablo's guilt are kept exactly the same after the last trial, or if possible more, because
there was a lot of foul play
", emphasizes Krakenberger.
"Pablo has always said that he was not a little angel but he was not a murderer," he says.
The events for which Ibar has been convicted on two occasions occurred on June 26, 1994 when
Casimir 'Butch Casey' Sucharski
,
Marie Rogers
and
Sharon Anderson
were murdered in a Miami house, in a brutal crime that shocked American society that he could see the cruelty of the murderers with the victims in the recording of a security camera that recorded everything that happened.
A blurry image of that poorly defined videotape is the main evidence against Pablo Ibar, the nephew of Spanish boxer
José Manuel Urtain
.
Pablo Ibar, 46, has spent almost half his life in prison at this point, while the case has followed a tortuous judicial path of sentences, appeals and annulments.
Krakenberger affects various peculiarities of the US judicial system that, in his opinion, have played against the accused.
«In Spain the judges, police and prosecutors are civil servants, but in the US the judge is elected, the prosecutor is elected and the chief of police is elected.
And
that has a perverse effect
, "says this legal advisor, who recalls that convictions and harshness against crime are often used as campaign arguments to run for reelection in the US.
"That influences how the case is handled", he assures: "In the documentary it is clearly seen how
the judge sweeps for the Prosecutor's Office
on many occasions."
The North American justice has
not yet pronounced the last word
, but for now, the deliberation is now in the hands of the audience.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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