Van der Sloot pleads guilty, says he is ‘really sorry’ for murder of woman in Peru - This Just In Blogs
Joran van der Sloot’s lawyer is asking the court to take into account all of what his client has “suffered” the day of the events in question and leading up to it.
“Joran van der Sloot on May 30, 2010 was 21-years-old and he was in fact persecuted, he was [pitted] against the entire world for the last five years because prior to the events of what happened now, because of an occurance of which he never committed and for which there is no existing evidence,” lawyer Jose Luis Jimenez argued. “I refer to the disappearance of an American cicitzen in Aruba.”
He added that van der Sloot was dealing with a lot of “baggage” and suffered from post traumatic because of the attention paid to him in the case of missing Alabama teen Natalee Holloway and other incidents in his life.
“It was 5 years after the disappearance of this American citizen and all media pointed out my client without having any evidence that hew as in fact a monster,” Jimenez said.
So the court is being asked to consider that van der Sloot was under so much pressure from having been accused of Natalie Holloway’s murder that he felt compelled to go out and murder the Peruvian woman. Not a great moment for the criminal defense bar. Such a shame that Natalie’s parents will likely never have closure on the presumed killing of their daughter.