A Brescia court on Thursday
defended its controversial acquittal of an 80-year-old man whose
"delirium of jealousy" allegedly made him mentally incapacitated
when murdering his 75-year-old wife in the northern city last
year.
The jealous fit of the man, Antonio Gozzini, was so intense that
it constituted a "pathological situation producing a radical
disconnect from reality, such as to bring a state of infirmity
which excludes, as an elementary principle of judicial culture,
all guilt", the court said after widespread condemnation of the
verdict amid a spate of COVID lockdown-related femicides.
The prosecution in the case had requested that Gozzini be handed
a life sentence for killing high-school teacher Cristina Maioli.
Consultants for both the defence and the prosecution concurred
during the trial that the man "was prey to an evident delirium
of jealousy that destroyed his relationship with reality and
determined an irresistible homicidal urge".
Maioli was first knocked unconscious with a rolling pin in her
sleep and then stabbed in the throat.
Gozzini's lawyer said "we are satisfied because the sentence
reflects what emerged in the debate and that is that my client
was mentally incapacitated".
Centre-left Democratic Party (PD) Senator Valeria Valente, chair
of the parliamentary Femicide Commission, called the sentence
"extremely serious and deplorable".
PD rights pointwoman Senator Monica Cirinna' called the verdict
a "terrible return to the past".
In July another Italian man's 30-year sentence for strangling
his ex was upheld after the supreme
court struck down the controversial reduction of the term to 16
years because he had been hit by an "overpowering emotional
storm".
Michele Castaldo was again found guilty of murdering Olga Matei
in Riccione in 2016.
The case was closely followed after the controversy unleashed by
the "emotional storm" ruling, which was subsequently voided by
the Cassation Court.
The Cassation ordered a new appeals trial, which has confirmed
the first-instance term of 30 years.
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