A little over a year after the femicide of Giulia Cecchettin , the day of judgment has arrived for Filippo Turetta. Today, in the Assize Court of Venice, the 23-year-old will find out if he is facing life imprisonment - as requested by the Prosecutor's Office - or if the judges will consider that even a man like him, a self-confessed murderer of a girl with 75 stab wounds, can be granted mitigating circumstances that would save him from life in prison.
Turetta's defense is focusing on this objective, aware that Filippo will receive a guilty verdict in any case. The prosecutor Andrea Petroni, in his closing speech, had already underlined that life imprisonment in our country is no longer technically an " end of sentence ", because there are institutions for mitigating the perpetuity of the sentence, semi-liberty and conditional release. But life imprisonment, was the reply of Turetta's lawyer, Giovanni Caruso, is in any case a tribute paid "to the ideology of vengeful punishment". Thus, in the hearing of November 26, the defense had tried to dismantle the points on which the aggravating circumstances brought against Turetta are based: premeditation - for Caruso, the to-do lists and Turetta's modus operandi would have been proof of his "indecision" regarding the will to kill - Cruelty: Filippo's, he maintained, would have been an aggression "from a short circuit, in the grip of an emotional alteration". The persecutory acts, the stalking: Giulia, Caruso claimed, was constantly controlled by the boy, but "she wasn't afraid of Filippo, she didn't change her habits" despite the young man's obsessive attitude; "if she had been afraid she wouldn't have agreed to go out with him that evening".
On the other side of the scale is a public accusation that Filippo "cruelly premeditated the killing of Giulia", a detail that could lead to a life sentence. Turetta has been locked up in Verona prison since November 25, 2023. The trial will begin with the parties' counter-replies - a step that should be brief - then the Court will meet in the Council Chamber to deliberate. The sentence could arrive this afternoon.
