Recent investigations on Garlasco confirm it: the revision of a process is a difficult and tortuous road. Even when new tests emerge, in favor of a condemned, justice turns into a rubber wall. The statistics show it. And many cases, from Bruno contrada the massacre of Erba.
The assassination dates back to August 13, 2007. The definitive sentence is of 12 December 2015. Yet we are still here to talk about the “Garlasco case”. 6,500 days from the death of Chiara Poggi, the Pavia prosecutor has opened up new investigations. A trace of DNA compatible with the genetic profile of Andrea Semplio, a friend of Chiara’s brother, was identified under the nails of the victim, and now he is also attributed the imprint of a hand on the stairs of the Poggi house, where the girl’s body had been thrown. Then, in a channel, an iron hammer was recovered, perhaps the weapon of the crime never identified so far.
This is how a case has started again that at the time had already filled the chronicles, and for which there is also a culprit official: Alberto Stasi, Chiara’s boyfriend, who has been in prison since 13 December 2015. The trial against him had been long and contradictory. The first and second degree ended with two full acquittals, for not having committed the fact, followed by a sudden cancellation in the Court of Cassation and then by a definitive sentence that had punished a voluntary murder with just 16 years of imprisonment.
So much so that at the time it was insinuated that the judges were not convinced of the accused’s guilt, and had decided in spite of the principle of the “reasonable doubt”.
It must be said that Italian criminal justice, unfortunately, has accustomed us to all types of distortion and that the same certainty of the law, in our courts, is not exactly a goal to which it should be noted a spasmodic ideal tension. This was testified by the incredible number of compensation for unjust detention.
The Errorigiudiziari.com website calculates 31,727 between 1992 and 2024, a thousand per year. It should be considered, however, that the data describes the requests for compensation accepted, but as many are rejected, often with pretentious reasons. So the real number of unmotivated arrests is much higher.
The fact remains that the cost for the state is formidable: 901 million in the thirty years, over 27 per year. And the figure does not explode only because the code of procedure in Article 315 establishes that the repair for unjust detention, regardless of the duration, can never exceed the roof of 516,456.90 euros.
Infinitely lower is the number of judicial errors in the strict sense, those concerning a defendant condemned with a definitive sentence which is then recognized innocent thanks to a revision process.
Errorigiudiziari.com hypothesizes were 222 from 1991 to 2022, less than seven per year. The number is negligible because the way to evaluate the judicial error is a real nightmare. No, not for the magistrates or judges, who in Italy are in fact irresponsible of conduct and decisions. It is a nightmare for the victims of justice: the innocent condemned.
Because to evaluate the existence of a judicial error, the “revision” of the process is needed, which is a bit like climbing Everest barefoot. And who tries are treated every time by the courts, paradoxically, as “guilty of being innocent”. Governed by articles 629 and following of the procedure code, the review is the only hope for questioning a res judicata sentence. But it is also an obstacle course, which takes place in very long, exasperating times, and almost always clashes with the inevitable opposition of the judiciary: as happens to every institution, moreover, the judicial corporation tends to inertia – if not to an authentic resistance – in front of those who question its decisions. This is demonstrated by the troubles suffered by Cuno Tarfusser, the former substitute deputy general Milanese attorney, known for the independence of judgment, who in March 2023 had asked for the revision for Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi, sentenced in 2008 to life imprisonment for the massacre of grass. Tarfusser had denounced serious irregularities in the collection of tests, including “incorrect interrogation techniques”. A year later, the Court of Appeal of Brescia rejected the request, and in the end Tarfusser was also censored by the Superior Council of the judiciary because he would have acted “with excess of autonomy”. At that point, he retired.
Each definitive sentenced person can ask for the revision of his trial of the competent Court of Appeal. The reasons for doing so are few and taxation.
We can start from a “contrast of judges”, that is, two or more definitive sentences concerning the same facts or the same person, but they come to irreconcilable conclusions. It can also be based on a sentence that has established the falsity of decisive evidence. Since 2011, the Constitutional Court has decided that even a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights can reopen the case.
But that’s not always the case: In April 2015, the judges of Strasbourg had established that Bruno Contrada, the former head of the Palermo mobile team, had been unjustly sentenced eight years earlier for external competition in mafia association, but in November 2015 one of his attempt to review was rejected by the Court of Appeal of Caltanissetta (and it was the fourth failed attempt). Fortunately, in 2017, the Cassation still revoked the sentence.
The most frequent reason to redo a process, however, is the emergence of “new evidence” which – as it is now for Alberto Stasi – could demonstrate the innocence of the condemned. And it is here that the greatest criticality lurks.
Because every “new test”, as is obvious, must be evaluated by the magistrates, and their discretion on the matter is full, so much so that they touch the arbitrariness. Thus, often, it happens that even unpublished facts, or never evaluated in full, are rejected with the argument that “are not new” or “are not decisive”. It happened in the same case of Garlasco: Stasi’s defense had submitted two requests for revision, in May 2017 and June 2020, both rejected. “The road of revisions is very difficult, it requires intuition and an infinite commitment,” says Pardo Cellini, the Florentine lawyer who since 2002 has a record of 13 successes.
The main was the cancellation of the life imprisonment that in 1990 had walled the Sicilian bricklayer Giuseppe Gulotta alive (box on the page on the left), arrested in 1976 for the murder of two carabinieri and sentenced thanks to confessions extorted with atrocious torture. Cellini obtained the review in 2012, after 36 years that Gulotta fought against injustice.
The disconcerting thesis of the judges, in the first rejection of the revision requests, was that the confessions of Gulotta, although portrayed in the process, had had “a role in forming the accusatory framework” and that the portraits had not seemed “credible”. Indeed, they came to argue that the discrepancy of confessions suggested the “unquestionable spontaneity”.
Faced with this rubber wall, it is not surprising that the revision processes are drops in the ocean of justice.
The aversion of the judicial system is also perceived in the absence of statistics: It does not provide the Ministry of Justice, nor the Courts of Appeal.
Only the Cassation publishes an annual, and the revisions that arrive at the court were 165 in 2020, 176 in 2021, 193 in 2022, 199 in 2023 and 169 in 2024. It is a share of less than 0.5 percent of the total processes that land in the Court of Cassation.
But for the “guilty of being innocent” the vast majority ends badly.
