Brescia. He kills his wife, acquitted "for delirium jealousy". The sentence causes discussion

• Brescia.

  Kills wife, acquitted.

  Unable to understand and want due to "a delusion of jealousy"

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December 10, 2020The sentence with which Antonio Gozzini was acquitted for inability to understand and want Antonio Gozzini, in a process in which some psychiatric consultations reported a "delirium of jealousy". 

"It leaves us astonished", comments the president of the DiRe Network Antonella Veltri, who, in relation to the Brescia sentence, speaks of "sexist prejudices and a patriarchal vision of gender roles, whereby the husband-master can 'punish' his wife, in the Italian judicial system ". The Senator Pd Valeria Valente promises to investigate the decision of the Brescia judges in the Femicide Commission, while the senator Pd Mauro Laus "horrifies like a man". The sentence "raises many perplexities", observes Fabio Roia, vicar president of the Court of Milan and Ambrogino d'Oro in 2018 for his commitment to combating violence against women

That of Brescia is a sentence destined to cause discussion like the one pronounced last year by the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Bologna, which reduced the sentence for Michele Castaldo from 30 to 16 years for the murder of Olga Matei, linked to him by a relationship of a few weeks.

For the judges, an "overwhelming emotional and passionate storm", determined by jealousy, helped to mitigate the responsibility of femicide.

For the prosecutor Antonio Gozzini was to be sentenced to life imprisonment because he had "acted for revenge".

For the defense, however, the accused was to be acquitted for incapacity to understand and want.

In between these two extremes, the similar thesis of the consultant of the Public Prosecutor's Office and the part expert, who speak of "delirium of jealousy".

It is on the basis of these opinions that the Court of Assists of Brescia, chaired by Roberto Spanò, yesterday acquitted the man, an 80-year-old retired teacher who a year ago, in an apartment from the accusation of murder aggravated by premeditation in the north of Brescia, he killed his wife Cristina Maioli, a 62-year-old high school teacher.

After two hours in the Council Chamber, the judges agreed that the old man "has a total mental defect".

The crime a year ago in early October.

The man stunned the victim with three hammer blows to the head while he slept;

then he stabbed her in the throat and, after watching her for hours, even tried to commit suicide.

"There was no particular reason why I decided to kill my wife. I just know that I was terribly ill: in depression these things can happen", said the man during the interrogation in which he confessed to the murder.

Depression had accompanied Gozzini's life for years who, according to psychiatric investigations carried out during his detention in prison, had recently expressed strong jealousy towards his wife.

The old man was convinced that he had been betrayed, which was never verified;

a "real delusion of jealousy", writes the consultant of the Prosecutor in the report in which he claimed that Gozzini would have been able to participate in the trial, but that at the time of the murder he was suffering from a delusional disorder "such as to totally exclude the ability to understand and want ".

For prosecutor Claudia Passalacqua, who has already announced an appeal, the 80-year-old committed the murder "in revenge because his wife wanted him to be hospitalized for her depression. It is dangerous to pass on the message that at that moment was not able to understand and want because jealous "said the magistrate in the courtroom.

"The recent decision of the Court of Assizes of Brescia which substantially does not punish yet another femicide raises many perplexities even if for a correct assessment of the facts it is necessary to read the reasons for the sentence".

Thus Fabio Roia, vicar president of the Court of Milan and Ambrogino d'Oro in 2018 for his commitment in combating violence against women, speaks of yesterday's sentence with which he was acquitted for inability to understand and want Antonio Gozzini, in a process in which some psychiatric consultants reported a "delusion of jealousy". 

Meanwhile, in the absence of the reasons and only with the device of the sentence, Roia clarifies, "a frustrating feeling is created and perhaps an incorrect message. So why not adopt, for such cases that are obviously of great public interest due to the sensitivity of the issues dealt with - adds the magistrate, president of the autonomous section of preventive measures - provisional information on the reasoning that led the judges to the decision? It is a method that is already adopted by the Constitutional Court and by that of Cassation and which serves a lot to make everyone understand public opinion the decision ".

Certainly, explains Roia, "reading the little news, it seems that the man has been declared unable to understand and want because the defense consultants have found a total defect of mind that certainly cannot reside in emotional and passionate states (and the jealousy is the classic example) which by law (art. 90 of the criminal code) cannot affect the imputability ".

For Roia "then some basic perplexities can be raised. When there is a femicide, one always tries to follow the path of the absence of imputability by transforming a cultural motive (I kill because I do not accept to lose the thing-woman) into a delirium of madness with a dangerous medicalization of the process that tends to transfer the decision to partisan consultants, as it would seem in this case, or to expert experts ".

In the absence of certain evidence of a pre-existing psychiatric disorder, concludes the Milanese magistrate, "the use of investigations into imputability should in fact be seen as an exceptional fact and not as a normality of the process. This happens because in the presence of a gesture perceived as highly abnormal and brutal, one clings to the labile category of madness with consequences on the cultural and sometimes irrational level of justice ".

"The sentence of the court of Brescia leaves us astonished. We will wait to read the reasons, but it seems to us that with this sentence jealousy and depression become legal conditions to carry out a femicide with impunity, a sentence that basically says that if you are depressed and jealous you can also kill your companions, hit them in their sleep with a hammer and then finish them with stabbings, so then you are acquitted ".

This is the comment of the president of the DiRe Network Antonella Veltri.

"This sentence confirms, if still needed, the remarks made to Italy by Grevio, who noted the serious persistence, in the Italian judicial system, of sexist prejudices and a patriarchal vision of gender roles, for which the husband- master can 'punish' his wife who, in his view, contravenes what he ordered. And it does not matter that the motive for the murder is the man's 'delirium of jealousy', as we read in this sentence, indeed . The 'delirium of jealousy' becomes a reason to be acquitted. The Istanbul Convention clearly defines what is meant by gender violence, but it is evidently not known or taken into account. For this reason, now more than ever, we ask the Government - he concludes Veltri - an urgent commitment for the training of those who work in justice, which the Red Code has foreseen but without resources, therefore not implemented ".