The Turin supervisory court rejects the request for deferred sentence for the jeweler Mario Roggero

The supervisory court of Turin rejected the request to defer the sentence for mercy presented by the defense of Mario Roggero, the 72-year-old jeweler from Cuneo definitively sentenced to 14 years and nine months for having killed two robbers and injured a third who had attacked his jewelery shop in April 2021. The defense had primarily requested the deferral of the execution of the sentence pending the decision of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella on the request for mercy and, alternatively, home detention. The general prosecutor's office had expressed a negative opinion.

Roggero remains in prison

With the rejection of the request - presented by the lawyer Stefano Marcolini - Mario Roggero therefore remains in prison. In the order the judges observe that the deferral in the event of a request for mercy is a residual hypothesis, with very few jurisprudential precedents. To grant it, according to the court, a fumus boni iuris (appearance of good law) would be necessary so evident as to justify an almost disrespectful intrusion of the supervisory judiciary into an area that constitutes the exclusive prerogative of the Head of State. A condition that the judges do not consider present in the Roggero case. The order reminds us that the case remains extremely divisive even at the level of public opinion and that, if on the one hand legitimate defense has been excluded, on the other the reaction of a person unjustly attacked cannot be measured with the precision of a pharmacist's scale, since in similar situations it is possible to hypothesize an emotional shock capable of influencing the conduct of the victim of the attack. But precisely the presence of conflicting reasons leads the court to exclude preventive intervention by the judges, leaving any modification, total, partial or conditional, of the current situation to the decision of the President of the Republic. The court also observes that a deferral could even be unfavorable to Roggero if the head of state decided to grant only a partial pardon: the suspended sentence period would not in fact be served and could thus delay the achievement of the time requirements necessary to access penitentiary benefits.

Salvini: 'sorry for Roggero, a gazebo in Pontida to cover legal expenses'

“I'm sorry, I don't think there is any danger of escape or repetition of the crime and therefore, in respect of mutual roles, I count on him returning to his children and grandchildren, to his work and to his shop as soon as possible”: this is how the Minister of Transport Matteo Salvini commented on the failure to defer Mario Roggero's sentence. On the sidelines of a conference on energy sovereignty at Palazzo Lombardia in Milan, Salvini announced that in Pontida there will be a fundraising gazebo to support the legal expenses of the Cuneo jeweler.