The Constitutional Court has set a hearing for May 20, 2026 to discuss the constitutional legitimacy of the rules that prevent the offended person from challenging the Judge for preliminary investigations. The issue arises from the case of Francesco Chimirri, the pizza chef from Crotone killed on 7 October 2024 in the Lampanaro district by a gunshot fired by the policeman Giuseppe Sortino.
The alleged deficit of impartiality of the investigating judge Elisa Marchetto
At the center of the legal debate, raised by the lawyers of the Chimirri family – Tiziano Saporito and Andrea Filici – is the alleged deficit of impartiality of the investigating judge Elisa Marchetto. The judge, who had already expressed herself in a previous act of the case by defining the murder as an “extreme act of self-defense”, had also been designated to decide on the request for dismissal of the policeman presented by the Prosecutor’s Office. Despite the request for recusal by the civil parties, the Court of Appeal of Catanzaro had declared the appeal inadmissible since, according to the current system, the offended party does not possess the qualification of “party” necessary to recuse itself from a judge.
The lawyers then challenged the decision in Cassation, arguing that in the order of 3 December 2024 the investigating judge “had not limited himself to a summary deliberation of the evidence, but had constructed a complete and legally qualified narrative, unequivocally embracing the defense thesis of the suspect Giuseppe Sortino”. The Court of Cassation then asked for the opinion of the Council. In parallel with the Consulta, the case reached the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, which declared the appeal admissible.
The Court, as the lawyers explain, is called upon to evaluate «an ineffective investigation for which Strasbourg is called upon to sanction the anomalous investigative inertia of the national authorities, who have completely pre-terminated the very first spontaneous declarations made by the suspect regarding the ‘accidental’ nature of the shot, orienting the investigation, in a partial way, towards the pre-established theory of voluntary self-defense». Also under accusation is “the deficit of objective impartiality”. Despite the pending appeals, on 28 July 2025 the investigating judge dismissed the proceedings against Sortino for self-defense. A possible acceptance of the question of legitimacy could annul the dismissal.