Subscribe The appeals court hearing is scheduled for this autumn and meanwhile the two men convicted of
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The appeals court hearing is scheduled for this autumn, and meanwhile, the two men convicted of causing Marta Russo's death are free to go to the beach for the summer.. The impression in the early stages was that academics at one of Italy's most prestigious institutions were more concerned about damage to their career prospects or the university's reputation than finding a murderer. "If I had done, I would have said so immediately and avoided a year and a half in jail. It was the first thing they proposed to me after my arrest.""The investigating magistrates depicted us as monsters," said Ferraro after his sentence.
"There are still people who believe in a non-existent diary of mine in which I supposedly wrote `the blonde passes by and off goes her head.'"The court acquitted other defendants, star witness Gabriella Alletto and usher Francesco Liparota, of aiding and abetting, on the grounds that they had been threatened. For murder you need a motive and there wasn't one.""I did not commit any murder, voluntary or involuntary," said Scattone in his highly paid television interview. "The fact is that we have not managed to understand the motive of this thing. Commentators and public figures also expressed perplexity about what looked suspiciously like a compromise, "a Pontius Pilate sentence".One of the jurors, in an interview, defended their decision.
"We live in a system where only the accused has his rights guaranteed," added Marta's mother Aureliana.Scattone's defence lawyer, Manfredo Rossi, slammed the verdict as "a sordid compromise". As the trial drew to a close, the public was divided between vocal "innocent" and "guilty" camps.Giovanni Scattone and Salvatore Ferraro were convicted of Marta's killing by an eight-member jury. But in reducing the charge from murder to involuntary manslaughter for Scattone, and aiding and abetting for Ferraro, the jury has thrown out the perfect crime theory. A panel of independent experts appointed by the court ruled that the particles found on the reading room window ledge were "probably incompatible with gunpowder".All that remained was the theory of the perfect crime. Several of Ms Alletto's friends, called as defence witnesses, said she had told them she was being pressured to accuse. The magistrates' governing body has opened disciplinary proceedings to see whether the two public prosecutors abused their powers.Then earlier this year the scientific evidence incriminating Scattone and Ferraro was called into question.
That was until the court was last year shown a video tape from a hidden police camera: in a break during a tough interrogation, Gabriella Alletto is shown despairing and in tears, swearing that she was not in the reading room at the time of the killing.The video was shot three days before she signed a full declaration saying she had seen Scattone and Ferraro. The presence of the two junior lecturers was confirmed by two other witnesses. However some weeks after the crime, one said her recollections were "subliminal", another's account was punctuated with the phrase "don't remember" and the third retracted his statement, claiming he'd been threatened. Much of the case depended on the credibility of Gabriella Alletto who held her own well in face to face encounters with the two young academics.