Acquittal can also be granted for specific cases of resisting a public official. The Constitutional Court established this in a ruling last October, cited in court recently in Sassari. The ruling was invoked by lawyer Nicola Ribichesu, representing a 30-year-old Nigerian man on trial for an incident in July 2021 on Via Rizzeddu, in the capital of Sassari .
On that occasion, the non-EU citizen, suffering from emotional distress, was seeking companionship in alcohol, but he consumed too much. So much so that, at a certain point, he went berserk and the police were called. He first let off steam by attacking the front door of a building, rendering it almost completely unusable. When the state police arrived , he punched and kicked the patrol car. Two officers managed to handcuff him, and once inside the patrol car, the 30-year-old smashed the window , ultimately being arrested for criminal damage and resisting arrest.
A case of no particular gravity which, among other things, saw the defendant apologize in court and compensate for the damages caused to the condominium and the police headquarters . And, as Ribichesu recalls, neither of the two officers had sustained any injuries . But the legal crux of the matter revolved around Article 131 bis, which provides for "the exclusion of punishment for particularly trivial acts." This, however, is not applicable, according to the Code, in the case of Article 336, violence or threats against a public official, and Article 337, resisting a public official, as in the case discussed in Sassari. This provision, however, was deemed unconstitutional three months ago by the Constitutional Court in the aforementioned ruling, in response to a question from the Florence court, and which Judge Marta Guadalupi must have taken into account in the ruling that acquitted the man precisely because of the particularly trivial nature of the act .