Viareggio massacre, the reasons of the Supreme Court: "Contribution of all the defendants to the event"

"All the defendants" involved in the Viareggio massacre - which in June 2009 caused the death of 32 people and the wounding of another 100 - "each with a different causal contribution and each with a different degree of guilt, contributed to the occurrence of exceptionally serious events". The judges of the Court of Cassation wrote this in the reasons with which on 25 June they made the five-year sentences definitive for the former CEO of FS and RFI Mauro Moretti and for the other 10 defendants.

In reference to the sentence imposed on the manager - who after the sentence went to prison -, the stoats write that "it is neither illegal nor illegitimate as the principle of the prohibition of reformatio in peius is respected" which indicates the "pejorative" modification of a first degree sentence by the appellate judge. "But there is more: the sentence imposed - write the supreme judges - for each of the satellite crimes, compared to that referred to in the first appeal sentence, is reduced by more than a ninth, hence it must be concluded that, in essence, also with respect to the crimes of injuries and negligent fire, the judges, in determining the sentence, took into account the recognition of the generic mitigating circumstances" In the 54-page document the Fourth Criminal Section states that the judges of second instance have "valued...not the gravity of the individual conduct, but rather the 'extraordinary gravity' of the consequences resulting from those conduct".

The reasons cite the first appeal process and state how the defendants "made imprudent choices, limiting or excluding investments in a sector characterized by particular danger, despite being aware, given their experience and competence, of the conflict of such choices with safety duties and of the greater risk that they brought to the entire rail transport system, but in the same time period they increased or did not limit the protections in the passenger transport sector and improved the service for users overall". In the June ruling, the Supreme Judges essentially accepted the request of the General Prosecutor's Office, which had requested the rejection of all the appeals presented by the defendants and the full confirmation of the sentences established in the appeal judgment held in Florence.