Garlasco, Sempio trial risks stalling: the conflict between the new defendant and convicted Stasi
The defence of Andrea Sempio is seeking to freeze the preliminary hearing into the murder of Chiara Poggi, contesting the possibility of prosecuting two different people for the same crime. The path towards a review of the sentence against Alberto Stasi is also open.
The legal issue of the Garlasco case
According to ANSA Cronaca, the indictment of Andrea Sempio for the murder of Chiara Poggi opens a complex and potentially blocked trial process, even as the request for review of the sentence that condemned Alberto Stasi, then the girl's boyfriend, to 16 years in prison proceeds.
Sempio's defence, represented by Liborio Cataliotti and Angela Taccia, argues that the proceedings should halt: there is already a final convicted person for the same crime, and prosecuting two separate defendants for the same "offence-fact" would create an unprecedented legal conflict. The lawyers describe it as a "legal monstrosity".
The clash between legal positions
The central question concerns the compatibility between the indictment of a new defendant and the existence of an already final sentence. The rule on "incompatibility between judgements" theoretically leaves this possibility open, Milanese judicial circles explained, but Cataliotti and Taccia contest that a judge can order referral to trial on the basis of a "reasonable prediction of conviction" when there is already a convicted person.
Sempio's defenders will present to judge Luigi Riganti a motion to suspend the preliminary hearing, requesting to await the outcome of Stasi's review. Should they consider the rejection unjust, they will raise an exception of unconstitutionality to the Constitutional Court, so that it may resolve the regulatory conflict between the possibility of prosecuting two different people for the same murder.
The path to review for Stasi
The review of Stasi's sentence is now imminent. His defenders will file the request between 10 and 20 November, with a mountain of attachments: expert opinions, assessments and reports. The General Prosecutor's Office of Milan, headed by Francesca Nanni, has not yet communicated whether it will support reopening the case, as it already did when Nanni was general prosecutor in Cagliari for the case of Beniamino Zuncheddu, the Sardinian shepherd acquitted after 33 years in prison.
The application will be examined by the Court of Appeal of Brescia. The request will be evaluated by the incumbent Domenico Chiaro, since general prosecutor Guido Rispoli has been appointed to lead the Prosecutor's Office of Verona. The timing will not be swift: the judges should rule on admissibility within three or four months from filing.
Uncertain prospects
Some people who frequent the offices of the Pavia Court of Justice believe that the judge could of his own initiative freeze Sempio's proceedings, without needing to involve the Constitutional Court. Should the review be declared admissible, a substantive trial would follow that could open to appeals in the Court of Cassation and to a possible annulment with referral to a new section of the Brescia Court of Appeal.
Meanwhile, Stasi remains in the ambiguous position of a convicted person awaiting review whilst a second proceeding for the same crime proceeds. Judicial experts agree that the case has become a test of the compatibility of Italian justice with situations that the regulations had not explicitly contemplated.
Source: ANSA Cronaca