There is mail for Nordio. On his desk at the ministry he found a letter sent Tuesday by all the Italian attorneys general, after an assembly, to inform him of the entry into force, in less than a week, of the Cartabia reform of the criminal trial.
The document of the attorneys general (top and supervisory figures), although steeped in the “spirit of institutional collaboration”, raises the alarm on the “main problems” that entail “the immediate effect of a significant part of the new discipline”, with various ” fulfilments that are objectively impossible or in any case problematic without adequate support “.
Harder words are heard these days in the meetings between the prosecutors of the prosecutors, engaged in the investigative trench: “hell”, “disaster”, “tsunami”, “precipice”. Yet the most radical reform of the criminal process for over thirty years is passing on the sly. No mention in the parliamentary debate, nor in the statements that accompanied the inauguration of the new minister, who is also a former prosecutor.
The reform setting, defined with the delegated decrees shortly before the new government takes office, is guaranteed: more controls on the activity of prosecutors, more limits to investigations, more information to the suspect, more filters to the exercise of the action criminal.
The organizational burden on public prosecutors is affected by four general problems: the prosecutors are the only offices not strengthened within the NRP; the computer system has not been updated to the new rules; the introduction of the new rules falls like a cleaver, without the provision of a transitory and gradual regime; it is not clear whether the old rules (in force when they were initiated) or the new ones apply to ongoing proceedings.
The changes with the greatest impact are the modification of the terms of the investigations, with more difficult extensions; the imposition of a peremptory term of three months, at the end of the investigations, to deposit all the documents to the suspects; the obligation to videotape investigative acts; checks by the judge on the date of registration of the suspects in the register of crime reports.
In practice, prosecutors have three complaints. The first is the interpretative fog, which will force them to apply the new rules assuming the risk of errors with damage to the investigations. The second is the absence of operational tools to make the new rules work (a new filter hearing before the trial, the so-called restorative justice). The third is the irrationality of a very strict rule on the closure of investigations, even when there are no fundamental acts (letters rogatory, final information of the judicial police, appraisals, interrogation of new witnesses, documents sent by other prosecutors) and regardless of the inertia of the same pm, with the effect of nullifying years of work, especially in complex cases such as those of mafia organizations.
The letter from the attorneys general, also sent to the Supreme Court and Csm, calls for a regulatory intervention; failing that, the implementation of the reform will be “limited”. According to the investigating magistrates, a decree law would even be needed to postpone the entry into force of the reform and specify the transitional regime. In the meantime, guidelines and “survival techniques” are being studied in all prosecutors. The prosecutor of Bologna Giuseppe Amato went ahead, issuing a circular to establish “reasonable solutions”.
Few days left. The issue will be at the top of the agenda of Nordio’s staff, who appointed two former colleagues in the cabinet office: chief Alberto Rizzo, president of the court of Venice, and deputy Sicilian judge Giusi Bartolozzi, in the last legislature deputy of Forza Italia from which it had come out in dissent both on the Zan law and on the reform of justice.