Pavia investigating judge Daniela Garlaschelli has rejected the defense's request for an evidentiary hearing to conduct tests on the victim's computers, as well as Andrea Sempio , who has been definitively convicted of the crime and is under investigation for the second time for the 2007 murder of Chiara Poggi in Garlasco. In the ruling, from what has been learned, the judge noted that those analyses—requested by the 37-year-old's lawyers under the form of an evidentiary hearing to be entrusted to a third-party expert—are already the subject of a consultancy in the Pavia Prosecutor's Office's investigation, including tests on Stasi's computer, particularly on the evening of August 12, the day before the murder. Analyses by the prosecutor's consultants were also ordered on Chiara's computer.
The judge rejected the motion, explaining that it lacks the requirement that a potential "third-party" expert assessment of the PCs, if conducted during the trial, would require more than 60 days for analysis. This is a procedural technical requirement that allows for evidentiary incidents to be ordered during the investigation phase. The order explains that on January 20, the Pavia Prosecutor's Office instructed its consultant to conduct computer tests on the forensic copy of Stasi's PC, in relation to the evening of August 12, 2007, as well as on Chiara's PC. The prosecutors' technical consultant also stated that the analysis of the two forensic copies would not exceed 60 days. The investigating judge has decided to reject the defense's motion due to the lack of the requirement that such an expert assessment would stall a trial for more than two months.
In recent days, the Poggi family's lawyers, Gian Luigi Tizzoni and Francesco Compagna, had shared their analysis of Stasi's computer, "which revealed that the evening before her murder, Chiara," when her boyfriend was away for about ten minutes, "had accessed the folder" where the former Bocconi graduate had "catalogued, by genre, the numerous pornographic files already examined at the time." This was an unprecedented finding, according to the lawyers, and one they believe tied to the motive for the murder. "What can certainly be stated is that, from the initial investigations, the information provided by the Poggi defense is not at all confirmed, as already established in an expert report," Stasi's lawyers, Giada Bocellari and Antonio De Rensis, responded. They explained that they intend to extend the "forensic analysis," i.e., their analysis, "to Chiara Poggi's computer, for anything of interest."
If an evidentiary hearing "must be initiated in light of the new investigations" into Sempio, they continued, "it is precisely on this computer" that it should be conducted, "and certainly not on Stasi's." The hypothesis being explored in the new investigation is that someone may have viewed an intimate video of the two young people on the student's computer. Sempio's defense, for its part, with lawyers Liborio Cataliotti and Angela Taccia, is interested in whether the computer tests might reveal evidence of Stasi's motive or reinforce the 37-year-old's lack of responsibility. The preliminary investigations judge's ruling states that prosecutors have ordered analyses of both computers.
(Unioneonline)