Judicial twist in the story of the maxi cannabis plantation discovered in the summer of 2022 in Gizzeria Lido. The Third Criminal Section of the Supreme Court of Cassation has annulled the conviction issued against four men from Lamezia Terme (GG, VI, GM and AG), fully accepting the appeals presented by their defender, the lawyer Antonio Larussa.
The case, which at the time had attracted strong media coverage due to the size of the seizure, will now have to be re-discussed in a new trial before the Court of Appeal.
The 2022 raid and the sentences of merit
The operation began on 13 July 2022, when the Carabinieri of the Gizzeria Lido station, going up the Zinnavo stream, had identified a large cultivation of Cannabis Indica spread across multiple pitches. The soldiers, after having overcome the “stumbling blocks” and obstacles placed by the farmers as alarm systems, had positioned themselves for covert observation duty.
The raid led to the flagrant arrest of the four Lametini people, caught tending 400 marijuana plants between 150 and 200 centimeters tall. A bivouac equipped for drying and an irrigation system connected to the watercourse had also been discovered on site.
After the initial granting of house arrest (with the exclusion of the aggravating circumstance of the large amount already being investigated), the defendants were tried by the Collegiate Court of Lamezia Terme, which sentenced them to sentences of between 2 and 3 years in prison. The sentence was then fully confirmed, in October 2025, by the First Criminal Section of the Court of Appeal of Catanzaro.
The verdict of the Supreme Court: everything to be redone
The legitimacy judges of the Supreme Court, however, overturned the scenario, accepting the defense’s findings linked, among other things, to the exact legal qualification of the facts and the recognition of the repeat offense.
According to the Court of Cassation, the appeal sentence has obvious motivational gaps and did not adequately take into consideration the defense complaints. The ermine judges therefore canceled the verdict, ordering a new trial which will be celebrated with full freedom of outcome.