Erba massacre, why the Court of Cassation rejected the review of Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi's conviction

The confession of the two defendants, although retracted, the testimony of theeyewitness, a trace of blood of the murdered neighbour in the car ofOlindo Romano. Evidence of considerable solidity and with an independent consistency, which theelements brought by thedefence of Rosa Bazzi and Olindo Romano,  are unable to undermine. TheCassazione (Italian Supreme Court) entrusts to a53-page ruling the reasons with which the judges of legitimacy rejected, on 25 March, the appeal for a review of the verdict on the Erba massacre, which took place on 11 December 2006, for which the two convicts are serving a prison sentence. The Supreme Court - before branding as mere and abstract conjectures the new evidence brought by the defenders - clarifies that, according to domestic and supranational law, an exception to the respect of final sentences is only justified by a revision aimed at correcting a judicial error, an unjust conviction. And for the Supreme Court this is not the case.

According to the judges, a different technical-scientific evaluation of already known factual elements can only be considered'new evidence' if it is based onnew scientific acquisitions, such as to provide results that could not be achieved with the previously available methods, and provided that it is based on technical applications that are accredited and shared in the scientific community of reference. Specifically, the request for a revision based on a different Bpa method (Blood pattern analysis) developed by Dr. Roberta Bruzzone, consultant for the defence, for the judges is based only on a different assessment of the photographs taken at the time by the Ris, in relation to the traces of blood. A reductive and unscientific examination - recalls the Court of Cassation - also according to former Ris commander Luciano Garofalo.

The thesis of the extorted confession does not pass either, nor that of the unreliability of the eyewitness Mario Frigerio, such as the alternative track of a crime that had matured in a narcotics trafficking context, which has not been validly confirmed. Rosa and Olindo had made a full confession to the investigators, denying that they had been induced to give a culpable version by psychological pressure. And they provided information that could only be known to those who had participated in the crime.

For the judges, the 'spontaneous handing over by Romano of his 'feelings' to handwritten notes on the Bible and a letter to the parish priest' also weighs in. There is a motive, confirmed by more documentary evidence, which lies in the alleged harassment and humiliation suffered by the Marzouk Castagna family. The consultants had then emphasised the fact that Frigerio did not know Olindo Romano at the beginning. For the experts supporting the defence, in fact, according to 'the most recent achievements of the neurosciences' it would not be possible to go from an unknown face to the subsequent recognition of a known face. A theory that, specifically, does not hold water. It was, in fact, the witness himself who stated that he had immediately recognised Olindo Romano, but had not overcome his own difficulty in believing that his neighbour was the author of such a heinous crime, to the point of having to wilfully admit it. Finally, the interviews gathered by the defence were not suitable to integrate 'new elements of evidence'. However examined by the Court of Appeal, but not suitable to undermine the conclusions reached.

The Supreme Court recalls that the usability of new evidence in support of the application for review also depends in each case on compliance with the prescriptions, in their collection, established on the subject of documentation of defence investigations. The interviews as "documents" - explains the Supreme Court - "are only capable of representing the historical fact that a person gave that interview, but the content of the statements remains devoid of any value".