"I am forced to ask for a sentence of 14 years in prison".
Prosecutor Alessandro Aghemo said this during the trial of Alex Pompa, the 20-year-old who a year and a half ago, when he was 18, killed his father to defend his mother during yet another quarrel in the family.
The murder was committed on 30 April 2020 in Collegno, in the Turin area. After years of harassment and vassations, Alex killed his father Giuseppe, aged 52, with stabbings.
Giuseppe Pompa has been described as an "obsessive, aggressive, harassing and problematic person." His wife Maria Caiola said in the courtroom that in the hours preceding the murder she had been called by him "101 times" for jealousy, adding that in the over the months she and her children had registered her constant outbursts "because we thought that sooner or later she would kill us".
On April 30, during yet another quarrel, Alex intervened in defense of his mother and stabbed his father: 34 slashes with six different knives. An appraisal defined the young man as suffering from a post-traumatic syndrome caused by paternal behavior. Self-defense excluded: "The accused misinterpreted reality", at that moment "there was no danger situation".
The prosecutor defined Alex as "a good guy, serious and studious". The father, according to the prosecutor, "behaved in an unjustifiable way, but he paid with his life, a penalty higher than he would have deserved". However, the magistrate added that "he was the architect of his son's suffering" and called into question the generic extenuating circumstances and the provocation "by accumulation".
Despite this, he said he was "forced" to ask for such a high penalty and invited the Court of Assizes to raise a question of constitutional legitimacy on the rule that prevents the prevalence of numerous extenuating circumstances from being granted.
“The code - he concluded - prevents me from asking for the prevalence of extenuating circumstances over the aggravating circumstance of the family relationship and therefore a lower penalty. Judges should evaluate whether this rule is reasonable ".
