The Milan Court of Appeal reduces Alessia Pifferi’s sentence from life imprisonment to 24 years: mitigating circumstances recognized due to cognitive fragility, but her capacity for understanding and will is confirmed
No life sentence, but twenty-four years in prison. The Court of Assizes of Appeal of Milan reduced the sentence of Alessia Pifferithe little girl’s mother Dianawho died of starvation in the summer of 2022 after being left alone for six days in her apartment in via Parea.
A verdict that does not deny guilt, but changes the perspective: Pifferi remains capable of understanding and wantingbut the Court recognizes her as one cognitive and emotional fragility which is worth the generic mitigating circumstances equivalent to the aggravating ones. A legal balance that cancels the maximum sentence imposed in first instance, and replaces it with the highest measure foreseen for simple homicide: 24 years in prison.
Six days of solitude and silence
It was July 2022. The 38-year-old woman left Milan to join a man with whom she was spending a short holiday. At home, she left her 18-month-old daughter with two bottles of milk, two bottles of water and one of tea. The little girl died of thirst and hungerin a closed apartment without air conditioning, in the midst of a torrid summer.
The Court of First Instance had considered that decision an act of direct malice: not an abandonment, but a voluntary homicide aggravated by the filiation relationshippunished with life imprisonment.
The appraisal and the turning point of the appeal
What overturned the perspective was the official appraisal ordered by the Court of Appeal, signed by the experts Giacomo Francesco Filippini, Stefano Benzoni And Nadia Bolognini.
In the report, specialists describe a woman from the sectoral cognitive fragilityunited with emotional immaturity and to neurodevelopmental disorders dating back to childhood, “evolving for the better” but still present.
The deficit, they write, “does not significantly invalidate his psycho-social functioning”, but affects his decision-making processes and his ability to evaluate the consequences of his actions. A form of vulnerability that the Court has decided to take into accountwithout absolving her but recognizing a form of partial impairment.
The Prosecutor’s Office: «Inhuman conduct»
The Attorney General Lucilla Tontodonati he had asked for confirmation of the life sentence, speaking of “conduct that was horrifying and difficult to accept, because it was omissive”. «She is not a mother who throws her daughter out the window – he said in court – but one who leaves her to die slowly, for five and a half days, in the heat of July, without air and without help. It is a surprising gesture because it contradicts our cultural heritage: we think that a mother cannot do it. But it happens, and it’s part of human nature.”
The defense: «She’s not crazy, but she’s not like us»
The lawyer Alessia PontenaniPifferi’s defender, spoke of a sentence that “requires courage, because it goes against public opinion”. «Maybe Alessia is a monster, but are we sure that she wanted to kill Diana voluntarily? I don’t think so,” he said. «She’s not crazy, but she has significant cognitive deficits. He is capable of speaking, but when you try to delve deeper into a concept he can’t do it: he is an empty vessel. He doesn’t think like us, he doesn’t have counterfactual tools, he can’t predict. And this emerges clearly from the tests.”
In the courtroom, also Alessia’s mother, Maria Assandrichose silence: “She’s my daughter too, I don’t feel like commenting.” The sister, Vivianahad instead hoped for confirmation of the life sentence: «I don’t forgive her. Diana will never return.”
A case that remains open in the collective consciousness
The story of Alessia Pifferi is now one distorted mirror of society: the mother who doesn’t behave like a mother, the pain that defies logic, the fragile boundary between guilt and infirmity. With the appeal ruling, Italian justice tries to heal the fracture: no justification, but recognition of a vulnerable mind. However, the most difficult image to erase remains: that of a little girl alone, in the heat of Milan, waiting for someone who would never return.
