Jeweler Guido Gianni, 66, is among the three people pardoned by President Sergio Mattarella. He was sentenced to 12 years and 4 months in prison for killing two bandits and wounding a third in 2008 who were attempting to rob his jewelry store in Nicolosi, in the province of Catania.
President Sergio Mattarella granted a partial pardon, expiring three years and two months of prison time, after serving a sentence of five years and three months. Gianni will now have to serve a remainder of his prison sentence, less than four years, which allows the Supervisory Court to potentially apply probation to community service.
Originally from Turin, he had lived in the Catania area for 30 years. That day, he shot three bandits who had broken into his shop, killing two of them, both 21 years old, and wounding the third, a 30-year-old with a criminal record. At the beginning of the investigation, the jeweler was charged with self-defense homicide, a crime that does not carry a prison sentence. Throughout the trial, experts reconstructed that the man, after engaging in a fight with the bandits, had wounded them, but the fatal shots were fired as they fled. The prosecutor had requested a 17-year prison sentence.
Gianni, a goldsmith known locally for his professional skill, explained that he hadn't realized the attackers' weapon, a perfect replica of a 9mm, was a toy. He confirmed that he had fired two shots into the air to intimidate , as he had done in December 1999, foiling a similar robbery. This time, however, instead of fleeing, the bandits held a gun to his throat. A struggle ensued, during which the jeweler fired several shots, wounding the three robbers, two of them fatally. In 2022, Maria Angela Distefano, Guido Gianni's wife, launched a petition on Change.org asking the President of the Republic for a pardon. "He defended me, his life, and that of a client," she said.
The other individual clemency decrees were issued in favor of AA, born in 1972, sentenced to a total of seven years in prison for drug-related and other crimes. And then GB, born in 1981, sentenced to ten years in prison for drug-related crimes committed between 2002 and 2009.
(Unioneonline)
