The investigation carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office of North Naples in the case for voluntary homicide opened on the death of Tiziana Cantone.
The 31-year-old was found lifeless, with a scarf around her neck, on September 13, 2016, in her mother's home in Mugnano, and her death was linked to the unknowing dissemination online of personal videos of her.
Gianluca Condrò, lawyer for Teresa Giglio, Tiziana's mother, wrote this in his motion to oppose the request for archiving of the investigation presented by the prosecutor Giovanni Corona, the second in the space of a few months.
Corona wanted to close the case last November, because following the results of the autopsy carried out on the remains of Tiziana's body after the exhumation, it emerged that the most plausible hypothesis for the 31-year-old's death was suicide.
Giglio had opposed and the investigating judge of the Naples North court Raffaele Coppola, last February, had ordered further investigations by the Prosecutor's Office. About three months have passed and the Prosecutor's Office, at the beginning of May, reiterated the request for archiving to the investigating judge.
And once again Giglio's lawyer opposed, believing that the Prosecutor's Office, in this short period of time, has remained "incomprehensibly inert".
The investigating judge had given value to the reports on the dynamics of death signed on behalf of the defence by forensic doctors Vittorio Fineschi and Aniello Maiese, who had cast doubt on the suicide hypothesis, so much so that, the investigating judge wrote in February, "one can hypothesise an asphyxial method attributable to strangulation on a par with a suffocation resulting from suicide".
In these three months, the only investigative activity carried out by the prosecutor Corona was to listen again to Tiziana's aunt, the one who found the girl dead with her neck tied with a pashmina tied to a bench.
In the opposition filed yesterday, the lawyer Condrò reiterates what was already highlighted in the first request for opposition, in which he gave an account of what was asserted by the forensic doctors appointed by the defense, that is, the criticisms of the work of the Prosecutor's Office regarding the lack of tests and investigations on the so-called "vitality of the furrow".
Who can say whether the death was caused "by a hanging or strangulation mechanism", and on the suitability of the gym bench to "cause the death" of Cantone. But if the examination on the "vitality of the groove" is now impossible to carry out, on the bench instead, which, Condrò writes, is still there in the tavern of Mugnano where it was in September 2016, the investigations are still possible.
In February, the investigating judge wrote that the only further investigation needed to determine the reasons for the death would be to appoint an expert who, by analyzing the gymnastic equipment, the scarf used and the position in which Cantone was found, could, through a judicial experiment, ascertain their compatibility with a death by asphyxiation or hanging.
The investigating judge gave the prosecutor ninety days, but the experiment was not done. In the request for archiving, the prosecutor says that the activity would have been “superfluous” and “useless” after having heard Tiziana’s aunt, who reiterated that she found her hanged on the bench, therefore, the prosecutor says, there is no point in carrying out the experiment, which can only confirm what was reported by Tiziana’s aunt, who, the prosecutor points out, has never been reported or suspected for her niece’s death.
For the defense, the prosecutor's arguments would only be "a dialectical exercise aimed at not following up on the Court's instructions".
In his opposition to the archiving, the lawyer Condrò also attaches what was ascertained by his technical consultant, the Roman engineer Mario Scipione, that "the position in which Cantone was found meant that a considerably lower weight force acted on the girl's neck (incomplete hanging) compared to that which would have been determined by hanging herself vertically (complete hanging).
Therefore, according to the consultant, it was difficult for Cantone to hang herself in that way, and furthermore "the suffocation process was easily reversible, that is, during the suffocation Cantone could at any time grab the back of the bench in front of her to be able to eliminate the tension that the scarf was causing on her neck".
And finally, Scipione writes, “the kneeling position on the bench with the ankles crossed is an unstable position, meaning that with the slightest movement the body would have assumed a different one”, so it is unlikely that the body would have been found in that position in the event of hanging.
Article published on 3 June 2023 - 15:03
