At the Consulta they won Alfredo Cospito and his lawyer Flavio Rossi Albertini. The Constitutional Court therefore opens the way for a sentence reduction to the anarchist, by dropping the rule that would have bound the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin to necessarily sentence him to life imprisonment for the attack on the Carabinieri School of Fossano del 2006.
The “rigid” sentence of life imprisonment requested by the Court of Cassation from the judges of Turin will instead have to take into account extenuating circumstances. Because, writes the same Court in announcing its decision just taken, “the fixed nature of the sentence of life imprisonment requires that the judge be able to operate the ordinary balance between aggravating and mitigating circumstances” provided for by article 69 of the penal code which governs the gradation of penalties.
The Court, as it writes in its press release after the council meeting, took a decision “in continuity with its numerous and compliant precedents” and therefore rejected the article of the code as “constitutionally illegitimate” in the part in which it prohibits the judge to consider any extenuating circumstances as prevailing over the aggravating circumstance of recidivism in cases in which the crime is punished with the statutory penalty of life imprisonment”.
Cospito’s lawyer: “Finally some good news, dignity restored to legal issues”
Full satisfaction therefore for the lawyer Rossi Albertini who before the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin had proposed the question of constitutionality of the rigid sentence of life imprisonment, not subjected to any extenuating circumstances. Thesis reaffirmed again this morning in the hearing before the constitutional judges. “We finally hear some news
encouraging for all and all those who are called daily to apply the law or to suffer its application – explained the lawyer – Today’s decision of the Constitutional Court finally restores dignity to the legal questions underlying human affairs, not least that of Alfred Cospito”.
Only tomorrow, Wednesday 19 April, the lawyer will see his client. Also to understand what his intentions will be now. “He hasn’t eaten pasta, fish or meat for 180 days. We never thought he would arrive alive on April 18 – the lawyer said in the morning – but he lost the ability to walk, he no longer moves a foot and has lost 50 kilos of weight”.
The defeat of the lawyers, the minister and the Cassation
On the other hand, the defeat for the State Attorney’s Office was clear, which again this morning had supported the absolute rigidity of the code in prohibiting extenuating circumstances, especially for a crime such as that of Cospito. And defeat also for the government and for the Keeper of the Seals, Charles Nordio, which had decided to maintain the 41 bis regime. But the same Court of Cassation was also defeated, which not only in July had asked Cospito to contest the crime of massacre, therefore without extenuating circumstances, but a month ago it also confirmed the 41 bis regime decided by the surveillance court, despite the strike of Cospito’s hunger, and above all despite the national Anti-Mafia prosecutor, John Melillo, had paved the way for the High Surveillance regime, always rigid but not as extreme as the 41bis, a measure designed for mafiosi who send orders from the cell to the outside due to a hierarchical structure that is exactly the opposite of the anarchic one where there are no bosses but everyone is valid for himself. He had been the deputy attorney general of the Cassation, Piero Gaetato ask instead that the 41bis be eliminated for Cospito.
Because the Cospito case ended up in the Consulta
Cospito’s fate had ended up in the hands of the Consulta, invested by the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin. The anarchist is already serving a 20-year prison sentence for the two high-potential bombs placed in rubbish bins at the Carabinieri School on June 2, 2006. But the Cassation has reclassified the crime as a political massacre, punished with life imprisonment, putting the Piedmontese judges in the position of having to re-determine the sentence.
However, the latter had appealed to the Constitutional Court. In Fossano there were neither dead nor wounded, but only damage. For this reason, according to the Court of Appeal of Turin, the extenuating factor of minor offenses could have been recognized, reducing the sentence by a third. In the case of Cospito, convicted with his partner Anna Benjamin for that attack, however, there was an important obstacle: he was declared a repeated recidivist and article 69 of the penal code prevents the reduction of sentence from being applied in a case like yours. Hence the request to the Consulta to pronounce itself on that provision, which according to the magistrates would be contrary to the principle of proportionality of the sentence and its re-educational purpose.
Today’s hearing in the Constitutional Court
“In previous sentences of this Court, the fixed penalty has been declared suspected of being unconstitutional because it does not allow the sanction to be parameterised to the offense actually committed”, recalled Cospito’s lawyer, Rossi Albertini, in the public hearing of the Consulta, the “singularity” of the story concerning his client is highlighted, which would see “the sanction passing from 15 years’ imprisonment to the fixed penalty of life imprisonment” if the constitutional judges responded with a rejection.
Opposite the opinion of the State Attorney who with Paola Zerman ed Hector Figliolia who fully embraced the thesis of the Cassation, namely the “political massacre”, and therefore the most serious crime, the 285 of the penal code which obliges the judges to impose the sentence of life imprisonment. For the two lawyers, accepting the argument of Cospito’s lawyer would cause a “vulnus” to crimes of danger, with the result, according to them, that the extenuating circumstance could even be applied for minor offenses even to crimes such as mafia association . Obviously for the State Attorney’s Office, which represents in the hearing the positions of the government which took an equally tough position on Cospito as the Keeper of the Seals Carlo Nordio confirming the 41 bis, whoever attacks the security of the State commits one “among the most serious crimes in a democracy” and this brings the accounts back with respect to the perpetrators of the attack on the Fossano barracks, i.e. two anarchists convinced that “violence can win”.