Andrea Sempio, request for indictment for the Garlasco crime: what happens now

"The Pavia Prosecutor's Office, having also evaluated the documents most recently filed by the suspect's defence, has requested the indictment of Andrea Sempio before the Court of Pavia", the Pavia prosecutor, Fabio Napoleone, said in a note.

Now it's up to the judge for the preliminary hearing who will have to decide whether to send Sempio to trial. In the request for committal to trial, the Prosecutor's Office reiterated the reconstruction of the murder of Chiara Poggi, underlining the presence of the aggravating circumstances "of having acted with cruelty towards the victim in consideration of the brutality of the murder due to the number and extent of the wounds inflicted on the victim, of which at least 12 lesions on the skull and face" and "of having committed the act for abject reasons, attributable to hatred for the victim following the rejection of his sexual approach".

During the preliminary hearing, the preliminary hearing judge will have to decide whether to accept or reject the Prosecutor's request, or whether to request new investigations. The date for the preliminary hearing has not yet been announced. The law provides that the judge sets it within five days of filing the request and that "between the filing date of the request and the date of the hearing there cannot be a period exceeding 30 days". Although, according to the lawyer Liborio Cataliotti, who defends Sempio together with Angela Taccia, it could be postponed "to next year".

Even the lawyers defending Sempio can ask the preliminary hearing judge for further information. The lawyers explained that they intend to raise a question of legitimacy before the Constitutional Court and request the suspension of the proceedings, based on the presence of a definitively convicted person, namely Stasi, for the same fact for which Sempio would be sent to trial. The objective would therefore be to stop the preliminary hearing while waiting for the Court of Appeal of Brescia to evaluate and rule on the request for review of Stasi's defence. An application that will apparently be filed in the next few days.

The request to freeze the preliminary hearing will, therefore, be the first procedural step, the first move of the Sempio defence, which will then also have to decide whether to request an abbreviated trial before the same preliminary hearing judge or proceed with the ordinary trial, aiming for acquittal by the judge or, if anything, ending up in trial before the Court of Assizes. With the new rules, introduced in recent years, with that charge and the aggravating life sentences it is not possible to ask for an abbreviated sentence, but in this case the fact dates back to 2007 and therefore occurred before the introduction of the legislation which no longer allows abbreviated sentences under certain conditions (trials behind closed doors and with a discount of one third on the sentence).