Naples, sentenced to 7 years in place of his brother: he was home sick on the day of the robbery.

Naples. - A young man with no criminal record, seriously ill and bedridden, has been sentenced to seven years in prison in place of his brother. This is the argument put forward by lawyer Sergio Pisani, who has requested the Minister of Justice's intervention in the matter, which—according to the lawyer—was brought to the ministry's attention in early August.

The conviction concerns an episode initially indicated as a robbery, but which the injured party later traced back, according to the defense's reconstruction, to a meeting agreed upon after a date via Grindr and to a sexual performance.

“The brother is truly responsible”

"He was wrongfully convicted, despite his brother's confession," Pisani claims. According to the lawyer, the family member admitted to meeting the complainant that day and being present at the time and place the crime allegedly occurred.

The defense's reconstruction also includes phone records. Analysis of the cell towers connected to the brother's cell phone, the lawyer claims, would place the phone near the scene of the incident. These are elements that, according to the defense, were not adequately explored in the proceedings.

The telephone cell node

Geolocation through telephone cells can help reconstruct a user's movements, but its assessment must be entrusted to the procedural documents and any expert reports ordered.

In the case reported by Pisani, the key issue is establishing whether that data was acquired, examined, and evaluated by the judges along with the other evidence.

The defense also argues that the young man was at home at the time of the incident and that his physical condition made him incompatible with his participation in the alleged robbery. This aspect will also need to be verified based on medical records and the trial documents.

The appeal to the minister

"I request the Minister of Justice's immediate intervention," Pisani said, calling the matter "worthy of a Netflix series." The lawyer said he is awaiting a response after reporting the matter in early August and announced he will continue to seek further investigation into the case.

In particular, the content of the sentence, the possible existence of a formal confession by the brother, the value attributed to the telephone records, and the status of the appeals remain to be clarified. Without access to the court documents, the defense's accusations cannot be presented as definitively established truths.

Other cases in the Neapolitan area

The case is part of a context in which, over the years, several cases of wrongful detention, acquittals after convictions, or procedural errors have been documented. Not all of them overlap with the case reported by Pisani: some involve pre-trial detentions, others errors in the transmission or reading of decisions, and still others involve sentences subsequently overturned during the review process.

The sentence read backwards

In February 2024, a 40-year-old Neapolitan worker with no criminal record was arrested after an apparently unfavorable outcome was announced in court. Subsequently, the Supreme Court of Cassation found that the defense's appeal had been upheld and the sentence overturned without remand. The man had, however, already served his sentence, or part of it, in prison.

The case arose from a series of procedural steps contested by the defense: failure to notify the appeal hearing, confirmation of the first-instance sentence, and subsequent arrest. The president of the Naples Court of Appeal later requested clarification from the Supreme Court, which acknowledged the error in its interpretation of the appeal's outcome.

Carabiniere acquitted after 14 years

Another case involves Alfonso Bolognesi, a Carabinieri non-commissioned officer accused of being a mole for the Casalesi clan. Bolognesi was arrested in 2008, stripped of his uniform, and served approximately three and a half years in prison after a conviction for corruption aggravated by mafia facilitation.

The conviction was later overturned in a review trial before the Rome Court of Appeal, after new evidence and an acquittal obtained in a parallel proceeding reopened the case. Bolognesi was thus once again found innocent after five trials.

Eight years in prison as an innocent man

In 2013, Giovanni De Luise was released from prison after spending eight years and eight months for a murder committed in the Naples area. The retrial was made possible by the confession of a cooperating witness, who took responsibility for the murder and claimed that De Luise had been convicted in his place.

This episode bears only a general resemblance to the case reported today: in both proceedings, the defense argues that someone else indicated or admitted responsibility. The crucial difference is that, in the De Luise case, the outcome of the review led to a release and a review of the conviction.

The Tortora case

The most notorious precedent remains that of Enzo Tortora. Arrested in 1983 as part of an investigation by the Naples Prosecutor's Office into the New Organized Camorra, he was sentenced to ten years in prison in the first instance. The Naples Court of Appeal acquitted him in 1986; the acquittal was later upheld by the Supreme Court of Cassation in 1987.

The Tortora case cannot be compared, procedurally, to the case of the young man sentenced to seven years. However, it has become a national symbol of miscarriages of justice and the risks associated with inadequately verified prosecution narratives.

The district framework

According to a survey by Errorigiudiziari.com based on data available for the period 2012-2016, the Naples Court of Appeal district was among the highest in the country for wrongful imprisonment cases: 835 total incidents, with an average of 167 cases per year. In 2016 alone, 145 cases were reported and over €4,4 million in compensation was paid.

The same source, however, distinguishes between unjustified detention and a miscarriage of justice in the technical sense. The former concerns pre-trial detention that turns out to be unjustified; the latter, strictly speaking, presupposes a final conviction that is later overturned through a review process.

This distinction is also important for the case reported by attorney Pisani: until the sentence, the documents of any appeal, and a final decision are available, it is more correct to speak of a presumed wrongful conviction or a case reported by the defense, avoiding the assumption that a miscarriage of justice has already been established.