The Constitutional Court opens the possibility of discounting the sentence to the anarchist Cospito, declaring thearticle 69, paragraph IV, penal codewhich would have conditioned the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin to issue a life sentence for the attack on the Carabinieri School of Fossano committed in 2006.
The censored rule
With the note dated April 18, the Communication and Press Office of the Constitutional Court, pending the filing of the sentence, announced that the Consulta has accepted the incidental question of constitutional legitimacy raised by the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin on the article 69, fourth paragraph, of the penal code.
The text
Article 69 of the penal code, entitled “Combination of aggravating and mitigating circumstances”in paragraph IV reads:
“The provisions of this article also apply to the circumstances relating to the person of the offender, excluding the cases provided for by article 99, fourth paragraph, as well as by articles 111 and 112, first paragraph, number 4), for which there is a prohibition of prevalence of the mitigating circumstances on the considered aggravating circumstances, and to any other circumstance for which the law establishes a penalty of a different kind or determines the measure of the penalty independently from the ordinary one of the offence”.
The reading given by the Consulta
In continuity with its multiple and compliant precedents on the contested provision, the Constitutional Court, reads on Press release 18 April 2023 (text below), “has deemed this provision constitutionally illegitimate in the part in which it prohibits the judge from considering any extenuating circumstances as prevailing over the aggravating circumstance of recidivism pursuant to art. 99, fourth paragraph, code pen., in cases where the crime is punished with the statutory penalty of life imprisonment”.
In relation to life imprisonment
For the Court, the fixed nature of the life sentence requires that the judge be able to operate the ordinary balance between aggravating and mitigating circumstances envisaged by the first three paragraphs of the same article 69 of the penal code. As a result, the judge will be called to evaluate, case by case, whether to apply the sentence of life imprisonment or, where he deems the extenuating circumstances prevailing, a different prison sentence.
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Constitutional Court, Press release 18 April 2023