On February 25th the hearing for Sempio for the murder of Chiara Poggi

In just over three months, when two years have passed since the start of the new investigation into the Garlasco crime, Andrea Sempio will find himself before a judge for the first time to defend himself against the accusation, formulated by the Pavia Prosecutor's Office, of having killed Chiara Poggi with hatred and cruelty. The Pavia magistrate Luigi Riganti has set the start of the preliminary hearing for February 25th at the end of which he will have to decide whether or not to send the 38-year-old clerk, who has always reiterated his innocence, to trial in the Court of Assizes.

The judge, however, before addressing the evidentiary issues, the discussions on the merits and expressing his opinion on the request of the Prosecutor's Office directed by Fabio Napoleone made on November 3, will have to resolve a fundamental issue. It will have to establish whether, in the absence of a review of the final 16-year prison sentence imposed on Alberto Stasi for the murder of 13 August 2007, it is possible or not to proceed with the Sempio case. In fact, as clarified by the lawyer Liborio Cataliotti, who assists him together with his colleague Angela Taccia, "the exception of unconstitutionality is already "ready", aimed at avoiding two concurrent judgements, one for review and the other against the new defendant". The defense believes that, also from a logical as well as legal point of view, it is not possible to proceed with Sempio, with a decision on the indictment, for the same "offence" for which Stasi (obviously excluded, at present, from the preliminary hearing as an offended party) has already been deemed, definitively, the one and only culprit.

And for this reason the lawyers will ask for the hearing to be suspended pending a judgment on the review request that the defenders of the former Bocconian and accountant will soon present in Brescia (it is not yet known whether the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office will do the same) and alternatively they will ask the judge to raise a question of constitutional legitimacy. It seems obvious, at the moment, given the timing, that at the end of February the request for review will not yet have been evaluated. Chiara's parents and brother, through their lawyers, have already made it known that they will not take civil action, because for the Poggi family the only clear fact remains that definitive verdict on Stasi in 2015. The prosecutors, with the addition of Stefano Civardi, and the carabinieri of the Milan investigative unit, however, brought before the preliminary hearing judge a completely alternative reconstruction: the friend of the 26-year-old's brother would have "acted with cruelty" to "the number and extent of the wounds inflicted", of which "at least 12 lesions on the skull and face". And he would have killed the young woman "for abject reasons, attributable to hatred" due to a "rejection" of his approach. The records contain wiretaps, a DNA analysis on the nails, as well as a barrage of consultancy, but also counter-reports from the Sempio defence.

The 38-year-old's defensive team already met yesterday in Rome. "Obviously - Cataliotti clarified - we are ready to face the accusation both from an evidentiary point of view, both from a legal point of view and from a more strictly scientific point of view. We have divided the relevant topics of competence between the various consultants". When we get into the matter, the lawyers could ask the preliminary hearing judge to have expert reports, as on the now well-known palm trace 33, but also on the shoe print with a dot sole. Meanwhile, the investigations into the Garlasco case in Pavia are not over. On the one hand, the prosecutors hypothesize that the Sempio family, including Andrea, paid money, through their lawyers at the time, to facilitate, upon input from some carabinieri of the judicial police team, the dismissal of the first investigation of 2016-2017. Finally, another file concerns the work of the RIS in the investigations into Stasi almost twenty years ago.