Pifferi case, for the first time media hype weighs on sanction

For the first time, the media clamour raised by a court case finds reverberation in the determination of the sentence, helping to lower it through the recognition of general extenuating circumstances. It happens in the judicial case that has seen the Court of Appeal of Milan review the penalty imposed on Alessia Pifferi, who in 2022 left her 18-month-old daughter to die of hardship, from life imprisonment to 24 years. Crucial on a legal level was the balance decided by the second-degree judges between mitigating circumstances and the only surviving aggravating circumstance, that of the filiation relationship.

Among the elements underlying the Court of Appeal's ruling on this point, No. 26 of the First Criminal Section filed on 7 January, was the media clamour raised by the affair, which convinced the judges to grant the defence's request, a request that "in a different trial context, it would be a request that would be, to say the least, singular and atypical. In the sense and for the effects specified so far it is, on the contrary, even well-founded and therefore it is accepted as one of the reasons to be put forward in support of the elision of the only aggravating circumstance that survived the trial examination".

In fact, in assessing Pifferi's conduct relevant to the balancing of circumstances, the judges identify a before and an after. Where the after is heavily conditioned by the explosion in the media of a case treated in a manner totally exorbitant with respect to the criteria of judicial journalism, which the Court recognises as an 'essential public service', or of enquiry.

Rather, underlines the judgement, 'the "case-Alessia-Diana-Pifferi" has mostly become the subject of that contemporary malice, which has reached paroxysmal heights with the modern means of communication, called media trial, which has turned the criminal trial into a television genre of entertainment and amusement, where - understandably caring more for the needs of the palimpsests than for the respect of the rules and rights (of the victims mainly but not only) - exhibiting a legal 'wisdom' and investigative 'insights' of a quality easy to imagine - one is accustomed to condemn or acquit, according to prejudice and according to script, discussing innocence and guilt".

And woe, continues the Court of Appeal, to that jurisdictional measure that dares to replace precautionary measures with others that are less sharp. Anathema on that sentence that has the audacity not to impose life sentences or, if inflicted in the first instance, to reform them, excluding aggravating circumstances or recognising mitigating circumstances, thus putting itself in conflict with "the expected justice", i.e. that which conforms to "common feeling".