He had paid his debt to justice, serving part of his sentence in Buoncammino, in crowded cells beyond the permitted capacity: among rats, cockroaches and cockroaches. Now, for those five years, nine months and eleven days spent in prison (he was sentenced to 10 years), the Court has awarded Stefano Marini compensation of 15,348 euros for "inhuman and degrading treatment". For the judge it was a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, a pity that the ex-convict has been dead for over a year and a half: his lifeless body was found on 26 October 2021 in the garden of a house in via Riva di Ponente. Released from prison he had become homeless, domiciled at Caritas. He was 57 years old.

A sad story

The body was found by the owner of the building who granted access to that house to the homeless to shelter from the cold. The coroner had finally closed the story with a death following a sudden illness. Collapsed in the garden, he had perhaps died from the low temperatures of those autumn nights. Once his sentence had been served, Stefano Marini – assisted by the lawyer Pier Andrea Setzu – had sued the Ministry of Justice for that period of imprisonment, spent in non-human conditions from 6 June 2009 to 17 March 2015.

The process

The decision of the Civil Court of Cagliari arrived in recent days, signed by judge Riccardo Ariu. «After the preliminary investigation», reads the motivations, «it must be assumed that out of 2110 days of confinement, Stefano Marini had spent most of the time in cells in which, due to the presence of fixed furnishings to be deducted from the total , he had not been guaranteed the minimum space of three square meters». During the hearings, the former prisoner had reported to the judge "the presence of mice, cockroaches and cockroaches in the prison premises, but also the lack of hot water in the common showers". In the end, the judge clarified that the ex-convict had only been guaranteed the minimum per capita space for 139 days, in addition to the 65 days of leave received and removed from the count.

The sentence

The judge clarified that it is up to the prison administration to answer for the "violation of protection obligations and rules of conduct, to prove compliance with the principles of the Convention". The report filed in the records by the penitentiary department is incomplete, while that of the prison management "appears to be completely generic on the point, limiting itself to indicating the abstract capacity of the cells occupied by the prisoner during their stay in prison". Hence the condemnation of the Ministry to reimburse Stefano Marini the sum of 15,248 euros, in addition to the legal interest accrued over the years, just as it will be up to the State to pay the costs of the trial, set at 1,900 euros.

The compensation

The sentence, however, came more than a year and a half after the disappearance of the 57-year-old, who died in absolute poverty. Now it will be up to the lawyer Pier Andrea Setzu to look for the family members to communicate the outcome. «If this compensation had arrived earlier», the lawyer clarifies, «my client would not have died abandoned and in a condition of absolute poverty. A plague common to many people who leave prison after long periods of detention".

Francesco Pinna

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