Naples: Man who failed to assist friend who died after taking drugs has sentence reduced on appeal.

Naples – This case dates back to the night between September 30th and October 1st, 2022, and today, four years later, it has reached a new legal conclusion. At the center of the proceedings is Casic Ikez, also known by the alias Alex Zarov, accused of failing to provide adequate assistance to his friend Vittorio Pironcini after they had both taken narcotics.

According to the investigation and later revealed during the trial, the two spent several hours together, during which they used drugs. At a certain point, Pironcini felt ill. His condition worsened, eventually resulting in his death.

Subsequent forensic and toxicological tests attributed the death to the effects of drug use. But from a judicial perspective, the issue wasn't just the cause of death: the investigation also focused on Casic's behavior when his friend needed assistance.

The rescue and the defense's version

It is precisely on this point that a significant part of the defense strategy was developed. Attorney Guendalina Chiesi, of the Rome Bar Association, had already argued before the first-instance judges a reconstruction different from the one underlying the prosecution.

According to the defense, Casic noticed his friend's condition and attempted to intervene. Specifically, he attempted to revive Pironcini by giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Subsequently, according to the defense's reconstruction, he allegedly took him to the SerD, a facility where he allegedly sought assistance, asking for help from a security guard. It was Casic himself who then alerted the 118 emergency service.

A sequence of behaviors that the defense used to challenge the prosecution's reconstruction and, above all, to question whether the death could be attributed, on a criminal level, to the defendant's conduct.

The first degree conviction

The first instance Court of Assizes, however, did not accept this approach and held Casic Ikez responsible for abandonment of an incapacitated person aggravated by the event of death.
The sentence was set at 3 years and 8 months of imprisonment.
The charge, therefore, was not limited to the conduct of abandoning a person incapacitated or in need of assistance, but also included the aggravating circumstance linked to Pironcini's subsequent death.

The sentence was then appealed by the defense, bringing the case before the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Naples.

The turning point in the second degree

Today's decision by the second-instance judges significantly changes the outcome of the first trial.

The Court of Assizes of Appeal ruled out the aggravating circumstance of death, consequently reimposing the sentence imposed on Casic Ikez. The first-instance sentence was reduced from 3 years and 8 months to one year and 6 months.

Liability for the crime of abandonment of an incapacitated person therefore remains, but the legal connection represented by the aggravating circumstance of the death event is no longer present in the second degree decision.
This is the central point of today's ruling: Pironcini's death remains the tragic epilogue of the affair, but it is no longer placed on the defendant, under the contested aggravating circumstance, within the scope of the liability recognized by the appeal ruling.

«The death event cannot be placed at the expense of the accused»

The defense interprets the sentence as a substantial reform of the previous decision.
"A significant reform of the first-instance decision," commented lawyer Guendalina Chiesi, emphasizing how the Court ruled out "the possibility that the death event could be charged to the defendant as an aggravating circumstance for the crime of abandonment of an incapacitated person."

The second-instance ruling therefore addresses the most serious aspect of the previous conviction, significantly reducing the sentence and separating, in terms of recognized criminal responsibility, the abandonment conduct from the death event that had aggravated the defendant's position in the first-instance trial.

Thus, a judicial affair remains unfolding in which the reconstruction of that September 2022 night remains the central issue: on the one hand, the death of a man after taking drugs, on the other, the conduct of the person who was with him during the hours of his illness, a matter for which differing assessments of criminal liability have been contested at both levels of judgment.