The second appeal process begins on Friday, March 8, for Lee Elder Finnegan and Gabriele Natale Hjorth, the two American citizens accused of the murder of the deputy brigadier of the Carabinieri, Mario Cerciello Rega, which occurred in Rome in July 2019. The Court of Cassation had ordered a new sentence for the two second degree trial.
In particular, the Supreme Judges annulled Elder's 24-year sentence with postponement on the aggravating circumstances and the existence of the crime of resisting a public official.
For Hjorth, sentenced to 22 years, the annulment with postponement concerns the charge of complicity in murder.
The trial will take place before the Assize Court of Appeal "In the new trial the judges will have to re-read the facts on the basis of the indications of the Supreme Court. We hope, therefore, that we can finally arrive at a sentence that correctly photographs what happened - declare the Elder defense lawyers , Renato Borzone and Roberto Capra - The Supreme Court was very clear and established that on the night of 26 July 2019 the two American boys were unable to understand that they were in front of two members of the police force and that the carabinieri Cerciello Rega and Andrea Varriale, in bourgeois, they did not extract and show their identification cards. It is a passage that shifts the reading of the fact as a whole in the direction of the truth."
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