Garlasco, this is how the trial review mechanism works

He is serving a final sentence of 16 years in prison for the murder of Chiara Poggi. Alberto Stasi is the only man definitively convicted on the charge of killing his ex-girlfriend on 13 August 2007. Yet, in light of the notice of conclusion of the investigation by the Pavia Public Prosecutor's Office to Andrea Sempio, Stasi "has a growing hope, but also a balance that makes him remain with his feet on the ground, aware of his current situation as a detainee, aware as well that this is a serious investigation and that perhaps it will allow us to work intensively and as quickly as possible, compatibly with the volume of the acts, to prepare a request for revision,' his lawyer Antonio De Rensis said on Thursday, speaking on the programme 'Ignoto X' on La7. But what scenarios could be envisaged if there really is a revision of the trial and even an annulment of the conviction?

"That of the revision is a very complex mechanism," says lawyer Giuseppe Ledda, a member of the Council of the Union of Italian Criminal Chambers (Ucpi) and referent of the Observatory on Judicial Error of the Ucpi. 'New elements have to be brought in and I imagine that, with the discovery of the dossier, Stasi's lawyers will try to extract new elements that collide with what is stated in the convictions,' he explains. In the event that a possible review of the trial should really overturn the final conviction, Ledda explains, the roads to possible compensation may be different. 'One can ask for compensation for wrongful imprisonment and, in the abstract, the compensation is calculated for each day one has unjustly suffered the sentence, with a daily value of up to EUR 235 per day for a maximum of more than EUR 515,000,' he reports. Higher sums could be claimed if compensation is sought from the state. "If it is considered that there are the prerequisites, a civil suit can be filed to ask for moral or existential damage and that, in proportion to the damage suffered, can be much higher, even reaching millions of euros," concludes lawyer Ledda.

He was definitively convicted on the basis of 'incomprehensible', 'paradoxical' and 'contradictory' elements due to 'a suggestion created during the trial phase and ridden by the media for 18 years'. An entire chapter of the final report by the Carabinieri of the Milan Investigative Unit filed with the closure of the new investigation on Andrea Sempio, considered by the Pavia prosecutors to be the real culprit of Chiara Poggi's murder, is dedicated to Alberto Stasi. Pages that, together with legal consultations, such as the medical-legal one by Cristina Cattaneo, are now at the disposal of the ex-Bossoniano's lawyers, who aim to get him out of prison as soon as possible and to rehabilitate him after a 16-year sentence that has been largely served. In the meantime, the Pavia Public Prosecutor's Office has forwarded the papers to the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office to solicit an application for a review of the trial. Which will obviously arrive, on a different track, at the Brescia Court of Appeal in the coming weeks after Stasi's lawyers, Giada Bocellari and Antonio de Rensis, have studied all the documents.

For Pg Francesca Nanni and Attorney General Lucilla Tontodonati the analysis will be 'neither easy nor brief', as already anticipated. They will have to assess whether there really is one or more new pieces of evidence to ask for a review of the conviction, or else they will be able to file an opinion to the request made by Stasi. The 42-year-old, when those allegedly self-incriminating audios of Sempio surfaced in recent days, was first 'interdicted and then moved' and his hope 'increased'. The proceedings on the ex-friend of Chiara's brother, on the other hand, while waiting for all the steps of the revision that will end with a decision of the Cassation, could be blocked probably even before the request for trial. Alternatively, a gup will be faced with an alleged perpetrator of a murder at the same time as a final judgement on another perpetrator of the same crime. A legal knot never seen before.