There is no evidence that "allows us to backdate Alessandro Impagnatiello's intention to kill Giulia Tramontano "with respect to the day" he stabbed her. According to the Court of Assizes of Appeal , the administration of the rodenticide in the preceding months was intended to induce a miscarriage , a " drastic 'solution '" to the child the woman was expecting and which he "identified as 'the problem' for his career, for his life." For this reason, while upholding the life sentence , the judges did not recognize premeditation : the poisoning had as its objective "the abortion of the fetus" and not the "murder (...) of the mother."

In the 59 pages, filed well ahead of schedule on the day the ruling was read - last June 25th - the judges, while contesting the cruelty and the cohabitation constraint, explained that in essence there was no "criminal deliberation cultivated over time and never abandoned until reaching the goal (...) "irrevocably matured" only at 3 pm - the Court reconstructs - on May 27th" two years ago. That afternoon the barman would have sensed that he would be "unmasked" by Giulia and the girl with whom he had a parallel relationship (the two had met on the same day and had exchanged confidences): as soon as he learned that his partner was "popping in" at the Armani Hotel where he was working, at 5 pm he left his workplace and returned home to Senago on his motorbike. And around 7 pm, as soon as Giula "set foot in the apartment where she was expected, she was attacked and "killed" with 37 stab wounds, 11 of which were while she was still alive.

This is "too short a time frame to satisfy the chronological requirement" required to challenge premeditation, and furthermore, the "'neutral' actions, such as returning home and waiting for the partner, "fail to establish any significant ambush" to establish the aggravating circumstance. This is something Giulia's sister Chiara had raised a heated controversy about in a social media post. The Court held that "Impagnatiello killed" his girlfriend "because she (...) had exposed him as a liar before those who, in his eyes, represented the 'public' projection of himself," inflicting on him an "intolerable humiliation."