Murder of Giulia Cecchettin, the judges: abject motives of archaic overpowering by Turetta

Filippo Turetta, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin, does not deserve general extenuating circumstances 'in light of the cruelty of the action, the decisiveness of the gesture and the abject motives of archaic oppression that generated it: vile and despicable motives, dictated by intolerance for the young woman's freedom of self-determination, whose autonomy of even the most trivial life choices the defendant did not accept'. This is what the judges of the Venice Court of Assizes wrote in their motivations, which emerged in the motivations of the judges of the Venice Court of Assizes who handed down the first-degree sentence on 3 December.

Examining the video recording of the stages of the murder, the panel emphasised that close, rapid and 'almost blind' blows emerged, and therefore 'such dynamics, certainly heinous', were not 'dictated, in those particular ways, by a deliberate choice of the defendant'. Turetta, for the judges, 'did not have the competence and experience to inflict more effective blows on the victim, suitable for causing the girl's death more quickly and cleanly', so he continued to strike until he realised that Giulia 'was no longer there'. He stated that he stopped 'when he realised he had hit the eye: 'it made too much impression on me', he said. Well, considering the overall dynamics ... it is not believed that the stab wound to the eye was made with the intention of causing injury or additional suffering'. Even the points of the wounds caused by the stab wounds 'appear to be the result of an agitated action, linked to the urgency of carrying out the murder', so they would not be a 'significant element of the existence, in the defendant's mind, of a will to inflict additional and gratuitous suffering on the victim, which is necessary in order to be able to consider the aggravating circumstance of cruelty'.

Among the reasons why Filippo Turetta, who was sentenced to life imprisonment at first instance for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin, was sentenced to life imprisonment, was also 'the absence of any restorative gesture by the defendant towards the victim's relatives', the motivations read. Turetta, according to the court, planned and premeditated Giulia Cecchettin's murder for days, arrived at the rendezvous armed, killed and hid the body, and went on the run for a whole week. He maintained 'lucidity' even in the later stages: when he covered the body with black rubbish bags and left it far off the beaten track, or when he ran out of petrol, money and food and handed himself over to the German police.

Against the granting of extenuating circumstances also the fact 'that in the hours immediately prior to his arrest he took care to delete all the contents of his device gives evidence of the conservative attitude of the defendant who, rather than driven by remorse or the intention to surrender himself to the authorities, was evidently aiming to contain and minimise the consequences of his abhorrent actions. A goal that he continued to pursue even during interrogation' when he did not mention the contents or provide passwords.