“Yesterday I felt offended again and the memory of Giulia humiliated” he writes on Facebook Gino Cecchettin in relation to yesterday’s hearing of murder trial to her daughter’s ex-boyfriend, Filippo Turettain which the defendant’s lawyers spoke. “The defense of an accused is an inviolable right” writes Giulia’s father in the post, adding “I believe it is important to keep within a limit, which is dictated by common sense and human respect”. “Going beyond this limit – adds Gino Cecchettin – risks increasing the pain of the victim’s family and of arouse indignation in those who witness it”. The reference is to the words of the defense, which contested the aggravating circumstances advanced by the prosecutors against Turetta.
Filippo’s defense: “Life imprisonment is an inhuman and degrading punishment”
“Life imprisonment has long been considered an inhuman and degrading punishment, the punishments must aim at the re-education of the convicted person. Life imprisonment is the tribute that the rule of law pays to the vindictive punishment”: this is one of the passages of the speech by Giovanni Caruso, Turetta’s defender who yesterday reconstructed the story of Giulia’s murder, defending the position of his client .
After the request for a life sentence, formulated yesterday by prosecutor Andrea Petroni, yesterday in the Court of Assizes in Venice it was the turn of the defense speech for Filippo Turetta, the self-confessed murderer of Giulia Cecchettin. The 23-year-old from Torreglia was present in the courtroom. However, Giulia’s father was not there. The next hearing, as per the program drawn up by the judging panel, will be that of the sentence, on 3 December.
Filippo Turetta in the classroom (Ansa)
Before starting his speech before the Court of Assizes of Venice, the defender of the self-confessed murderer wanted to clarify: “Turetta doesn’t care if he gets a life sentence” he tells journalists, but he, a professor of criminal law at the University of Padua, and her colleague Monica Cornaviera, try with all the skills of eloquence and law to convince the Court of Assizes not to nail the life of a twenty-three-year-old boy to the most implacable sentence years.
And they do it in two ways: trying to crumble the three aggravating circumstances of cruelty, of premeditation e of ‘persecutory acts’on which the public prosecutor insisted on the harshest of sentencing requests, and asking that they be recognized generic mitigating factors “at least equivalent” to the aggravating circumstances.
“Today I have a difficult task: to defend a defendant who confesses to a brutal, very serious murder and other crimes. I assist a young boy who killed a wonderful girl, depriving her of life, of memories, dreams, hopes, projects and all the ties that united her to the people who loved her and had placed in her expectations of a radiant future. You must not issue a just sentence but according to the principle of legality, as required by the civilization of law and not with the law of retaliation.”
Turetta in the courtroom (RaiNews)
“No to aggravating circumstances that lead to life imprisonment”
“Filippo Turetta deserves generic extenuating circumstances and the alleged aggravating circumstances should not be recognised in the charge”: this is the request formulated, at the end of a speech lasting approximately three hours, by the lawyer Monica Cornaviera. The defense did not quantify the penalty request. Alternatively, if the judges of the assize were to recognize the aggravating circumstances, for which Turetta risks life imprisonment, “the court should carry out a comparative judgment”.
“Heinous murder but there is no cruelty”
“A brutal murder but there is no aggravating circumstance of cruelty” claims the lawyer Caruso.
According to the prosecutor, Turetta tore the girl’s body with 75 stab wounds, including on the face, and the defense injuries demonstrate how brutally he acted. “A murder committed with many stab wounds is not necessarily cruel in the sense provided by law. Turetta strikes blindlyanyone who is not a professional killer is unlikely to go for the jugular on the first shot. Indeed, those who have never used a bladed weapon begin with ‘tasting’, cutting and thrusting shots. Homicide “is incompatible with the emotional alterations of conduct” which at times exclude premeditation. The lawyer then reiterated that “Turetta acted emotionally in the alteration of an emotional situation in which he acted with excitement.”
Giulia Cecchettin (Tg3)
“Turetta was obsessed with Giulia, but she wasn’t afraid”
Even stalkingtaken for granted by the Prosecutor’s Office already a year before the murder, for Caruso must be questioned. “The law requires the reiteration of conducted and there is no doubt that those of Turetta were obsessive, almost on the autistic spectrumas can be seen from his notes, petulant and unbearable, but it is also necessary for the victim to generate persistent states of anxiety and fear which in this case I do not see”. Giulia “was not afraid of him, so much so that she went to the last appointment. She didn’t change her lifestyle, she took exams, she was about to graduate, she went to concerts with him and one of these was also scheduled for a date after the murder. Giulia goes to the psychologist but it doesn’t appear that she tells him that she is afraid of Filippo, she goes for other reasons. When she says Philip, you scare me, she means she’s afraid he’ll get hurt.”
The 23-year-old’s lawyer claims that ”Filippo he was literally obsessed with Giuliaan obsession that led him to fear an obsessive accounting of Giulia’s behaviors, habits and relationships. That the accused had petulant, I would say unbearable, behavior is beyond question”, he explains. According to the lawyer, this does not entail the aggravating circumstance of persecutory acts (stalking) which requires ”a persistent and serious state of anxiety and fear”.
In reconstructing the relationship of over a year, the lawyer recounts what turns, after a few months, into a ‘‘toxic love’‘ where Giulia ”intelligent and cheerful, with an enormous human depth” realizes that that ”shy, insecure boy who marks the territory does not have the characteristics she wants” and leaves him.
“Possessiveness depends on the inability of the emotional relationship”
The defense, in the long analysis of the tragic event, continues by stating in another of the passages: “I am certain that the possessiveness depends on the inability of the emotional relationship. There is a lot of talk about affective education, Turetta doesn’t know what it is: he has one narcissistic conception of love, if the other cuts me off, the effects are despairing.”
“Turetta was literally obsessed with Giulia, I think no one can deny it. He had a petulant and insistent, I would say unbearable, behavior in the last part of their relationship,” said the lawyer. “Filippo was obsessed, we understood it, but there is no aggravating circumstance. He has felt what everyone has felt since the dawn of time, the suffering of relationships, and he experiences it in an almost pathological way: it is a boy not capable of managing his emotions”.
“Turetta is not Pablo Escobar”
“There is no premeditation on an ideological level, in the sense that in Turetta the persistence of a constant desire to kill is not observed. For it to exist, the criminal intent must be firmly maintained, from the moment of its inception to its realization.” AND Turetta, according to him, he just wouldn’t have been able to set a goal, any goal: “He’s not Pablo Escobar. Anyone can perceive that if there is a personification of insecurity and lack of personality, it is Philip.”
The lawyer then added: “Filippo doesn’t hold it against me but, unless he is the most experienced of actors, he is insecure: he’s unsure about taking the exams, he doesn’t know whether to start playing volleyball again, he doesn’t know if Giulia is still in love with him.” Then responding to prosecutor Petroni who “yesterday, in his indictment, said that this is a case of the school of premeditation”, the lawyer Caruso firmly rejected this thesis.
The arguments of Turetta’s lawyers
After the defenders’ speeches, the hypothesis that Turetta will make brief statements on December 3 when the Court of Assizes will retire to the council chamber to decide the sentence cannot be ruled out. In the indictment, the prosecutor stated that he felt “mocked” after the interrogations in the Montorio prison, where the engineering student is imprisoned, and the recent one in the courtroom.
According to the magistrate, his reconstructions were marked by omissions and lies and the young man did not fully collaborate with the investigators to outline the dynamics of the facts, hiding, for example, the ‘to do list’ in view of the crime, an element considered decisive by the Prosecutor’s Office to dispute premeditation. The prosecutor also has no doubts about the aggravating circumstance of cruelty.
Yesterday the prosecutor’s request for a life sentence
In his indictment before the Assize Court of Venice, prosecutor Andrea Petroni yesterday he had asked for a life sentence for Filippo Turetta, accused of multi-aggravated voluntary homicide, kidnapping and concealment of the body of ex-girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin. In the front row, next to the defenders, was the accused.
