Life imprisonment. Not the twenty years decided in the first instance. That ruling needs to be reviewed. There was premeditation. Constantine planned everything.
It was the day of the accusation at the appeal trial on the double murder of Camaro San Luigi, the second episode of a still unclear story on the background of a perhaps unpaid drug shipment, which left the dried blood of two victims on the asphalt of via Morabito on January 1, 2022, when the festive glow of the Christmas just ended was still vivid with bangs and lights.
At the dock of this trial, the panel is presided over by judge Carmelo Blatti, there is the 39-year-old Claudio Costantino, who that day killed 31-year-old Giovanni Portugal in front of his house, who fell to the ground trying to escape still with his helmet on his head, and the 35-year-old Giuseppe Cannavò, who later died after a day of agony in hospital. The gun, a 9×21, which he used to shoot, was never found.
Yesterday morning, Deputy Attorney General Giuseppe Costa asked to change the first degree sentence, when the judges sentenced Costantino to twenty years, excluding the aggravating circumstance of premeditation and the abject and futile motives which contested the accusation. Who, speaking at length in the courtroom, practically reconstructed the main lines of the appeal presented at the time by the Prosecutor’s Office.
And, it must be taken into account, it was both the prosecution and the defense that appealed the first degree sentence. The prosecutors were clear in their appeal. Here are just some key passages: the conclusions of the first instance sentence, with the exclusion of premeditation, are “illogical and contradictory”; according to the prosecutors «… the time, place and means of execution were planned and the meeting was certainly not occasional, but was set by Costantino, who gave an appointment to the victims, destroying them as soon as they arrived, without any previous interlocution, without saying a word, when instead Cannavò (although armed) and Portugal had gone “to talk”». And for the prosecutors there was no margin for the admissibility of the summary judgment, granted at first instance.
The aggravating circumstance of premeditation should have been taken into account, and its exclusion is also in stark contrast to the reconstruction of the Assize Court itself.
The request for life imprisonment formulated by PC Costa was joined yesterday morning in their subsequent interventions, as happened in the first instance, by the civil lawyers for the families of the two victims, the lawyers Cinzia Panebianco (here is what she said in the first instance: «the initial evidence withstood the trial… the defense’s statements are illogical and incompatible with the historical reality with which we were confronted… there were 4 shots fired in Giovanni Portugal’s back… unhealthy desire to kill of the accused… it was only Costantino who shot, even when they were running away…”) and Angela Martelli (here’s what she said at first instance: «… Costantino didn’t even let Portugal get off the scooter… Cannavò had fragments of glass in his jacket, what did he do before going out, did he “kindly” close the door?”).
The other key day of the trial will be November 18th, when the defense interventions of the professor are scheduled for Costantino. Carlo Taormina and the lawyer Filippo Pagano. Already in the first instance, they undoubtedly obtained a great result by “saving” their client from life imprisonment, enucleating among other things the concept of “legitimate home defense”. They too appealed a sentence deemed “wrong, unjust and, today even more, disproportionate compared to the appeal proposed by the Prosecutor’s Office”, with the need to “clarify some essential points that emerge from the documents of the trial and which were underestimated not only by the Court but also ignored by the appellant Prosecutor’s Office”.
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