He had been stopped by a patrol with a percentage of alcohol in his blood above the permitted threshold, but when he was subjected to the breathalyzer test, the trusted lawyer he had asked for had not yet arrived and he had not been asked to be accompanied by a court-appointed lawyer. For this reason, the Court of Cassation annulled the conviction and additional punishment inflicted on a forty-five-year-old motorist from Cagliari.
At first instance he had been convicted and then the Court of Appeal had ruled in his favour: in the report that had been given to him he had expressly written that he had not been assisted by the lawyer he had requested nor by another court-appointed lawyer.
In the end, the Court of Cassation, rejecting the appeal, also clarified that - if a motorist does not expressly declare that he renounces it - the alcohol test remains an unrepeatable technical assessment and, for this reason, must be carried out with the so-called guarantees.
