A hope for Alex who killed his father, the Consulta says that the sentence can be reduced for murders in the family

The Constitutional Court has ruled that one of the provisions of the Red Code is unconstitutional and this could help Alex Cotoia (surname changed after the murder ed.) who was acquitted in the first instance for killing his violent father, Giuseppe Pompa, who threatened him and his mother, but convicted on appeal. For the appeal judges there was no legitimate defense, but the Court, last spring, also added that 14 years in prison, which the law would provide by not granting extenuating circumstances in cases of murder of a family member, would have been too many and for this reason it sent the case back to the Consulta which has now decided.

Even in trials for murder committed against a family member or cohabitant, the judge must have the possibility of evaluating on a case-by-case basis whether to reduce the sentence in the presence of the mitigating circumstance of provocation and generic mitigating factors. The sentence is n. 197 which declared the last paragraph of the art. unconstitutional. 577 of the penal code, introduced by the Red Code. This rule prohibited, with the aim of giving full punishment to those who commit femicide, from declaring the two mitigating factors prevalent with respect to the aggravating circumstance of the family relationships between the perpetrator and the victim of the murder.

There was not only Alex’s case brought before the Council but also another order from the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Turin and one from the Court of Assizes of Cagliari. The other Turin case is that of Agostina Barbieri, who in 2021 killed her husband after being beaten for the umpteenth time. The case of Cagliari is instead that of a man who killed his wife, an alcoholic and suffering from psychiatric pathologies.

According to the Constitutional Court, the ban included in the law violates the principles of equal treatment before the law, of proportionality and individualization of the sentence enshrined in articles 3 and 27 of the Constitution. It would have carried the same punishment in feminicides and in cases with elements that can reduce the degree of guilt of the accused.

For the Court, this decision does not delegitimize and does not contradict the aims of the red code which aims to combat violence against women. However, not making this correction would have resulted in excessive penalties «situations in which it is the subject who has suffered aggressive behavior for years who carries out the homicidal act, as a result of a sudden loss of self-control caused by the innumerable series of abuses to which he had been subjected». The assize courts will now have the possibility to evaluate on a case-by-case basis whether to apply a more lenient sentence in cases of murder committed against a family member or cohabitant.