The Fugitive (19 page)

Maybe that's why I have a strange dream from time to time. I'm on a plane, flying to Memphis with a group of Sardinian musicians, friends of mine; they have a band called the Nonpartisans. We have a plan. Occupy Elvis Presley's mansion. Later in that same dream, we've occupied Graceland and, while the Nonpartisans “desecrate” the temple of rock 'n' roll with Afro-Sardinian-Caribbean rhythms, my face appears on television (CNN, of course). Staring straight ahead, I threaten to use a sledgehammer to destroy the legendary Elvis Presley's favorite guitar if the government of the United States refuses to release Silvia Baraldini immediately. In the last part of the dream, we're flying back to Italy. My friends are still playing. My gaze shifts away slightly, and meets her big, pale-blue eyes.

It's a nice dream, but when I wake up, I always feel even more depressed than before. I don't know what to do. So I wait.

While waiting, I suppose I could engage in a few séances; I've been wanting to get in touch with Edward Hopper, rest his soul, and ask him to paint me into
Nighthawks
. He's my favorite artist. “Entering into” his paintings over these past difficult years has saved my imagination from extinction.

I'd like to be leaning on the counter in that 1942 diner, between the coffee machine and the redhead.

Silent, sober as a judge, waiting for the night to end.

1994

This appendix provides a chronology

of Massimo Carlotto's legal saga.

 

 

 

 

 

On January 20, 1976, a twenty-five-year-old university student named Margherita Magello was murdered in her home in Padua, with fifty-nine stab wounds.

Massimo Carlotto, age nineteen, a university student and a militant in the left-wing protest group Lotta Continua, happened upon the victim, bloodied and on the verge of death. He went to a Carabiniere station to report what had happened. He was detained, placed under arrest, and charged with murder.

On May 5, 1978, Massimo Carlotto, after over a year of preliminary investigation and following three trials (the first ended in a ruling ordering additional forensic examinations and further investigation, the second was adjourned due to illness of the Chief Judge), he was acquitted for insufficient evidence by the trial court in Padua.

On December 19, 1979 the Venice Court of Appeals overturned the acquittal and sentenced Massimo Carlotto to eighteen years in prison.

On November 19, 1982 the Court of Cassation declined to hear the defense's appeal and upheld the verdict.

On February 2, 1985 Massimo Carlotto returned to Italy from Mexico and turned himself over to the Italian authorities.

During that same year, the Comité International Justice pour Massimo Carlotto was founded, with offices in Padua, Rome, Paris, and London. The committee began a media campaign and circulated a petition in favor of a new trial. Thousands of signatures were gathered. The first signature in Italy was that of Norberto Bobbio, the philosopher and Senator-for-Life. Internationally, the first signature was that of the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado, who issued an international appeal for a new trial in June 1986. The appeal appeared in the pages of
Le Monde
and was endorsed by dozens of other respected intellectuals.

In the meantime, Massimo Carlotto became seriously ill in prison, and a new campaign for his release was initiated.

In February 1987, the International Federation for Human Rights began an investigation of the Carlotto case, and sent a commission to Padua, headed by the federation's secretary general, Patrick Baudoin. Following an examination of the court records and interviews with the various parties, the federation called for a new trial.

On November 12, 1987, following a series of medical examinations and hearings before the Supervisory Court, Massimo Carlotto obtained an order of deferment of sentence due to serious health problems.

On June 20, 1988, Carlotto's defense team, after a series of lengthy interlocutory motions and countermotions before the Court of Appeals in Venice, submitted a petition for a new trial to the Court of Cassation, the highest court of appeal.

On January 30, 1989, the Court of Cassation ruled in favor of a new trial on the strength of three new items of evidence. It thus overturned the lower court's judgment of conviction and sent the case to the Venice Court of Appeals for a new judgment.

On October 20, 1989, four days before a new code of criminal procedure was to go into effect, the trial began before the Venice Court of Appeals. In 1990, for the first time in the history of Italian justice, the International Federation for Human Rights sent a number of experts as observers during the trial, including the chief of staff of the Paris police criminal laboratory, to ascertain the reliability of the forensic examinations. Their report, which found in favor of the defendant, was not admitted into evidence due to procedural restrictions.

On December 22, 1990, after fourteen months of hearings, the court failed to hand down a judgment, issuing instead an interlocutory decree which sent the case to the Constitutional Court. The Venice court had found that one of the three new items of evidence was probative, and sustained, as its final judgment, that the defendant should be acquitted for insufficient evidence, but the court also stated that it could not enter final judgment in that it was unclear which code of criminal procedure should be applied.

On July 5, 1991, with an interpretive ruling published in the Official Gazette, the Constitutional Court decided that the Venice court ought to have applied the new code of criminal procedure and should have issued a full acquittal of Massimo Carlotto on December 22, 1990.

On February 21, 1992, after the Constitutional Court returned the court records, Carlotto's second appellate trial began before a new panel of judges because, in the meantime, the Chief Judge of the Venice Appeals Court had retired. The court decided to omit new evidentiary hearings, opting instead to adopt the previous evidentiary record through a summary reading of the earlier proceedings.

On March 27, 1992 the court confirmed the 1979 judgment of conviction and sentence, overturning the previous judgment on appeal.

On March 28, 1992, the Venice State Attorney's office issued an arrest warrant in compliance with that sentence.

On May 13, 1992, after forty-seven days in prison, Massimo Carlotto was again released due to serious health problems, and his sentence was deferred for one year.

On November 24, 1992, the Court of Cassation upheld the guilty verdict. That same evening, the possibility of a pardon was raised as the “only corrective instrument that could provide an equitable solution, closing this case in a humane and just manner.” A further element in favor of a pardon was Massimo Carlotto's deteriorating state of health.

On November 25, 1992, less than twenty-four hours after the judgment, during a visit of the President of the Italian Republic to Padua, several members of the City Council presented him with a file on the case. During a public meeting with the citizenry, the President was asked about the possibility of a pardon, and he replied that he would examine the case with close attention.

On December 14, 1992, Massimo Carlotto's parents submitted a request for a pardon to the Court of Venice for a formal hearing preparatory to its official presentation to the President of the Republic.

The Solidarity Committees launched a campaign and a petition in support of the request for a pardon. They gathered eighteen thousand signatures in three months. The first person to sign the petition was the former Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, Ettore Gallo. Throughout Italy, events, discussions, and performances were held; the Padua City Council approved a resolution in favor of the pardon.

On April 7, 1993, the President of the Republic, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, granted a pardon to Massimo Carlotto.