Lorena Quaranta murder in Furci Siculo, 24 years requested for ex: no life sentence due to Covid stress.
The General Prosecutor of Reggio Calabria has requested a 24-year prison sentence for nurse Antonio De Pace, the young man from Vibonese who on March 21, 2020 in Furci Siculo (Messina) killed his girlfriend, Lorena Quaranta, who was about to graduate in medicine. After the discussions during today’s hearing, the trial was postponed to November 28 when the Court of Appeal will retire to the council chamber for the verdict.
Following the annulment ordered last July by the Cassation Court “limited to the denial of generic mitigating circumstances”, not recognized by the Court of Appeal of Messina that had sentenced De Pace to life imprisonment, the trial ended up in front of the Reggio Calabria Court of Appeal chaired by Angelina Bandiera (with judge Caterina Asciutto on the side).
The Supreme Court’s postponement did not concern the criminal responsibility of the defendant, declared “final” by the Cassation. Rather, the judges annulled the sentence to proceed with a new examination “which, free in the outcome, is free from the detected flaws”. In essence, the second instance judges would not have taken into account the fact that the murderer would have been “stressed” due to Covid. “It must be considered that the lower courts – it is in fact read in the Cassation sentence – did not fully verify whether, given the specificity of the context, it can, and to what extent, be ascribed to the defendant not having “effectively tried to combat” the state of anguish which he was prey to” and if the source of discomfort were “clearly represented by the onset of the pandemic emergency, with all that it has determined on the life of each and, therefore, also of the protagonists of the events”. Agreeing with this reasoning, the deputy prosecutor general Domenico Galletta in his intervention requested that the generic mitigating circumstances be recognized as equivalent to the aggravating circumstance that Antonio De Pace killed a person with whom he had a stable emotional relationship and was living with. Hence the request for 24 years in prison which is the maximum penalty for this type of homicide.
According to the defendant’s defense team, composed of lawyers Salvatore Staiano, Bruno Ganino, and Marta Staiano, this is a crime that “cannot be considered gender-related” because it is “an apparently causeless homicide except for the state of anguish” that De Pace failed to control, attempting, among other things, suicide twice. After mentioning “some studies on dissociative disorders”, prosecutor Galletta stated that “we must ask ourselves whether the subject could have restrained that anguish”. This was excluded by the lawyer for the civil party, Giuseppe Barba, according to whom “the state of anguish leads me to kick or slam a person against a wall, in some cases accidentally killing them. Here the defendant – says the lawyer – never apologized to Lorena’s parents and siblings.”
And to the civil parties who invoked a “fair” sentence, lawyer Salvatore Staiano, De Pace’s defense attorney, responded in court that “the penalty should not be fair or unfair. It should be proportionate.”
Omicidio Lorena Quaranta a Furci Siculo, chiesti 24 anni per l’ex: niente ergastolo per stress da Covid
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