Romanian Med Students Sentenced To 16 Yrs In Prison Each In Brutal Murder Case

The ruling can be challenged within ten days at the Timisoara Court of Appeals.

Judge Mircea Cretu, who tried the case and issued the sentence, found the two students, Sergiu Florea and Carmen Bejan, guilty of murder and desecration.

Cretu said the requests to add harsher charges, submitted by the lawyer representing the victim's family, were all overruled.

Florea and Bejan, both aged 20, students at the University of Medicine in Timisoara, western Romania, were arrested on August 2, 2009, on charges of murder, after a man's body was found dismembered in the trunk of a car parked in front of a student dormitory.

Florea was arrested on murder charges and Bejan for accessory to murder. Following hearings at the time, Bejan was also charged with murder. The two were also subject to psychological tests to establish their discernment when they committed the crime.

Florea and Bejan were indicted in November 2009 on aggravated murder and desecration charges.

At the trial on March 5, 2010, Bejan pleaded not guilty, saying Florea committed the crime and cut the victim's body into pieces.

Prosecutor Simona Vandici-Dobra requested Tuesday in court that, based on the evidence in this case, the two should get the maximum law-stipulated penalty both for murder charges, which trigger 20 years in prison, and desecration charges, which trigger three years in prison.

She also requested the defendants should be forced to pay the victim's family material damages, namely, funeral costs of 35,000 lei (EUR1=RON4.1756), moral damages of EUR120,000, as well as trial costs.

Florea's lawyer, Camelia Taranu, said her client agrees to pay all material damages requested by the victim's family, whereas Bejan's lawyer, Daniel Sabou, asked the court to clear his client of all charges, arguing she neither partook in the murder, not cut the victim's body.

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