The prosecutor-general at the
supreme Court of Cassation on Friday slammed two recent
controversial sentences halving murder terms because of "a
passionate storm" and "disappointment" on the part of the
culprits.
"You must deal with facts and not give moral or aesthetic
judgments in sentences," said Riccardo Fuzio on the two recent
cases of femicide which have spurred probes.
A man got only 16 years for stabbing his wife to death because
a judge recognised the extenuating circumstance that he was
"disappointed" after she failed to keep a promise to leave her
lover in Genoa, judicial sources said Wednesday.
Prosecutors had asked for a 30-year term for the man, who
stabbed Jenny Angela Coello Reyes several times in the chest.
The sentence's explanation said the man stabbed her "because
he was motivated by a mixture of anger and desperation, profound
disappointment and resentment", according to Il Secolo XIX
newspaper.
The victim's lawyer, Giuseppe Maria Gallo, said "honour
killings have been resurrected with this sentence explanation".
He appealed against the sentence.
In the other case, earlier this month, Bologna prosecutors
said they will appeal against a ruling by an appeal court to
almost halve the sentence of man for the homicide of his partner
on the grounds that he was in the grip a "passionate storm" when
he killed the woman.
The appeal court reduced the jail term of Michele Castaldo,
who confessed to killing Olga Matei, a woman with whom he had
been in a relationship for about one month, from 30 to 16 years,
provoking widespread condemnation.
The president of Bologna's appeal court said that "jealousy
was not considered the reason for the mitigation", arguing that
that killer's "unhappy life experiences", his "fear of
abandonment" and the fact he needed psychiatric treatment had
been taken into consideration.
No emotional reaction can justify femicide, Premier Giuseppe
Conte said Thursday commenting on the two sentences.
"We must make clear, strongly, that NO EMOTIONAL REACTION, NO
FEELING, HOWEVER INTENSE, can justify or lessen the gravity of a
femicide," Conte said on Facebook.
He said he felt "duty-bound" to join the public debate about
the controversial sentences.
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