He killed his sick wife, the judges: "Altruism must be considered, he did it so as not to make her suffer"

In judging the case of Francio Cioni, a 74-year-old who killed his terminally ill wife Laura Amidei on 14 April 2021 in Vignola (Modena) , the gesture cannot be considered in isolation «with respect to all the previous conduct observed by the accused in the dedication, closeness and in the human support guaranteed to his wife throughout her long illness ."

One cannot fail to consider Cioni's "altruism" , as emerged from the testimonies. For this reason, the Court of Assizes of Modena recognized the mitigating circumstances of moral and social reasons for the elderly man, sentencing him to six years and two months .

In the reasons for the sentence sentencing the elderly man, defended by the lawyer Simone Bonfante, the assize court also explains that it took into account that the murder occurred in a "suitable manner for the purpose", that is, with a pillow and while the woman was sleeping .

Cioni's altruism, witnessed by the doctor who was treating the woman, by the victim's sister and by acquaintances, the Court further underlines, «reflects a social feeling that is now increasingly present in large sectors of civil society who have experienced or are called to experience the drama of the end of their lives as a result of irreversible illnesses , increasingly inclined to recognize in the conduct observed by the accused the manifestation of an affective state of compassionate love which finds its internal legitimation in the long and absolute emotional sharing for the suffering of the victim , now deprived of every relational life condition due to the progress of the disease and the now imminent lethal outcome".

From the first moment, Cioni confessed that he had made the gesture driven by a feeling of profound compassion towards the woman, in her final stages: "I could no longer see her like that" , he explained. It was his wife herself, in the past and at the beginning of the illness, who told him that she did not want to be taken to a retirement home. The two had lived together for 45 years and Cioni, they reconstructed the testimonies collected, had assisted Amidei from the first onset of the disease in 2016 "with absolute constancy and inexhaustible dedication", with daily presence in the hospital and then at home, to the limit of his strength .

(Unioneonline/L)