Adnkronos Venice, 3 Dec. (Adnkronos) – Filippo Turetta deserves a life sentence for premeditating the murder of Giulia Cecchettin, but he did not kill her with cruelty and the crime was not the consequence of a climate of fear experienced by the victim. This is the meaning of the sentence handed down to the defendant, after about six hours of deliberation, by the judges of the Assize Court of Venice. A verdict that Turetta, 22, listened to impassively, with his head down, a few steps away from Gino, the father of his ex-girlfriend, who was visibly moved.
"We have all lost as a society. No one will give me Giulia back, I am neither more relieved nor sadder than yesterday. It is clear that justice has been done, but we should do more as human beings. I think that gender violence is not fought with punishment, but with prevention" were the first words spoken to the microphones by someone who has turned her pain into a battle against patriarchy. The femicide of the twenty-two-year-old graduate in Biomedical Engineering, which a year ago shook consciences and brought tens of thousands of people, in and out of the Palace of Justice, seems to make no noise: no crowd or banners to remember the murder of November 11, 2023.
The jury presided over by the judge Stefano Manduzio – supported by the associate judge Francesca Zancan and six lay judges – did not recognize the mitigating circumstances (the young age and the lack of precedents), established a total provisional sum of 760 thousand euros for the civil parties – 500 thousand for the father Gino, 100 thousand each for the siblings Elena and Davide, 30 thousand euros each for the paternal uncle Alessio and the grandmother Carla Gatto – and established the publication of the sentence also in the Municipality of Vigonovo, where the victim lived.
In a courtroom without a cage, with forty reserved accesses for journalists and the public, an immediate trial took place in which the fair play of the defense avoided the preliminary hearing, witnesses and delays allowing to close in little more than two months, and only five hearings, a murder with clear responsibilities. And yet the sentence cancels two of the three aggravating circumstances contested by the prosecutor Andrea Petroni and gives reason to a defense that, on the eve, had few and blunt weapons. We will have to wait for the motivations, in 90 days, to establish the reasons of the judges but the speech offers interesting ideas to understand the verdict.
Filippo Turetta, by his own admission, killed his classmate and ex-girlfriend who at the end of July 2023 had decided to end a relationship of over a year. The anger for that distance becomes a "list" - knives, tape to tie her up and keep her from screaming, road maps for the escape, cash to avoid being tracked, black bags - of a plan from which he does not go back. Faced with the new refusal, after an evening spent together, the obsessed "good boy" springs into action and carries out an aggression, in three acts, lasting twenty minutes.
In a parking lot in Vigonovo (Padua), 150 meters from Cecchettin's house, he grabs a knife and starts to strike. Then he loads his ex-girlfriend into the car and on the way to the industrial area of Fossò (Venice) he continues to strike, and when she runs away from the car, he chases her, pushes her onto the asphalt and finishes her off. The autopsy reports 75 blows, 25 of which are defensive injuries, but these numbers are not indicative of torture or cruelty, the Assize Court ruled. "He strikes blindly", with an inexperienced hand, defense attorney Giovanni Caruso had said in his speech, irritating the victim's family (today there was a handshake in the courtroom), but those blows - difficult to even count or imagine - are only injuries inflicted with the aim of killing (the defendant's goal) not to add unnecessary suffering or pain to the victim. An essential distinction for those who write sentences.
And the aggravating circumstance of stalking falls in the face of the facts. The shy and suffocating defendant, "the loser" who instills feelings of guilt in the victim, who uses suicide as a form of blackmail, who sends dozens and dozens of messages a day to his ex-girlfriend, does not scare Giulia Cecchettin. It is she who calls him on the day of the crime, inviting him to take a walk around the 'Nave de Vero' shopping center in Marghera. She, intolerant and tired of Turetta's attitude, does not change her habits and does not feel anxiety or fear, conditions necessary to establish the presence of stalking.
Save the maxim that "aggravating circumstances are not counted but weighed", the exclusion of the two aggravating circumstances does not change the substance: life imprisonment for the defendant who surrendered after a week on the run. But in view of a possible appeal, after the reasons, the verdict scores a point for the defense.
"Filippo Turetta thanked me, he understood the sentence and is a bit stunned. It is not a game, it is not a competition, the satisfaction is in having brought my drop of contribution to the celebration of a tiring process from every point of view. As the president of the Court of Appeal of Venice recalled on the occasion of the inauguration of the judicial year 'A criminal sentence will be all the more authoritative, the more it follows an adequate defense'” the words of the defense lawyer Giovanni Caruso.
