With the magistrates – he assures – there is no conflict (“there are no clashes”). But even Carlo Nordio cannot deny that in recent days the climate on the subject of justice has heated up. And the heat waves that are afflicting our country have absolutely nothing to do with it. The frictions with the robes began with the issue linked to the abolition of the abuse of office which the Minister of Justice considers “a sort of residual crime” (“out of over 5,000 proceedings every year – he clarifies – 8 or 10 sentences end up arriving, above all for related crimes”).
For the Anm, however, “Italy exposes itself to the risk of infringement proceedings“because the cancellation or resizing of article 323 of the penal code “is in contrast with international charters”. But abuse of office aside, the robes, who believe they have only “expressed critical reservations” on the justice reform and not of having exercised “undue interference”, they felt under fire after those two press releases issued by the via Arenula dicastery on 7 July last, one on the Santanché case (for the news of the bankruptcy and false accounting investigation launched in Milan paid by the Minister of Tourism), the other on the affair of Undersecretary Delmastro, under investigation in Rome for disclosure of official secrecy.
With reference to the former, ministerial sources, who expressed “bewilderment and unease at the umpteenth press release of an act that should remain confidential”, defined the reform of the registration of suspects and information as “urgent” warranty. A reform that aims to eliminate “this anomaly by protecting the honor of every presumed innocent citizen until definitive conviction”.
Speaking of Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove, for whom the Rome prosecutor’s office has expressed itself for the dismissal in relation to the Cospito case, from via Arenula the forced indictment ordered by the investigating judge has been branded as an example of “irrationality” of the system our home court.
“In the process that follows – ministerial sources argued – the prosecution will only insist on the request for acquittal in line with the request for dismissal. Where, on the contrary, it will ask for a conviction, it will only contradict itself. In the process prosecution the prosecutor, who is not and should not be subject to the executive power and is absolutely independent, is the monopolist of the prosecution and therefore rationally cannot be denied by a judge on the basis of elements which the accuser himself does not believe. part of the forced charges ends, in fact, with acquittals after long and painful and useless trials, with great waste of human and economic resources also for the necessary defensive activities. This requires a radical reform that fully implements the prosecution system“.
On this last point, Nordio reiterated the concept, recalling that “the Vassalli code has not taken the principle of the accusatory process to the extreme consequences, which the prosecutor wants to monopolize criminal action. And it has left the judge the possibility of what it is called ‘forced indictment’. This is in contrast with the principles of the accusatory process and in our opinion it needs to be reformed. Of course, as long as the law exists, it must be applied. So there is no strangeness in the fact that there is a forced indictment, as it was done. It is not an anomaly. The anomaly is in the legal system. Either we take the Vassalli code to the extreme consequences, and we take the principles of the Anglo-Saxon procedure, or we go back to the Rocco code which worked with dignity until 1989”.
The external competition in mafia association
Another delicate topic, which aroused the indignation of the robes and the ‘froze’ of some exponents of the majority (“it’s not on the agenda and it’s not a priority”), concerns the external competition in the mafia association. “External competition does not exist as a crime, it is a jurisprudential creation – explained Nordio, who also ruled out any yielding on the fight against the mafia -. Because either you are inside or you are outside and competing from the Latin means staying inside. The concept itself is contradictory, it is an oxymoron. We do not want to eliminate the external competition in mafia association. We know you can be an enabler from outside the organization. But then the crime must be reformulated, which does not exist at the moment. The criminal case at the moment is not structured”.
Separation of careers
The last issue, which has greatly alarmed the robes, is the one on the separation of careers. It will be done for Nordio, even if at the moment there is no precise date for the implementation of the reform. “Currently we have not scheduled the proposal for the separation of careers – explained the Minister of Justice -. We will probably bring it to the next majority meeting, which will be before the summer holidays, to define the timing, because a government proposal that affects a constitutional reform must ‘be linked to other types of reforms which also depend on political considerations”.
The very worried reply of the ANM was immediate, through its president, Giuseppe Santalucia: “Making prosecution a discretionary action, and then certainly sooner or later under political control, we see it as a dangerous thing for democracy. The separation of careers is a reform that opens up to others, because the separation should then follow the discretion of criminal prosecution. A prosecutor separated from the jurisdiction and therefore outside those compensation and control mechanisms that the Constitution provides for, will we leave him alone or – Santalucia asks himself – will there be someone else who will aspire to control the criminal action? And that can only be political control.”
And again Santalucia: “The separation of careers has always been motivated by the need to break the flattening of the judge on the prosecutor, why propose it again precisely when a judge does not flatten on the prosecutor?. In my experience, compulsory indictment is not frequent, but not rare either, and in any case for thirty years no one has complained about this institution. It only becomes an anomaly today, because it is exercised on a political exponent”.