LECCE – They have always professed their innocence, but the trial established the guilt of the crime of aiding and abetting prostitution of Giuseppe Caracciolo, a 63-year-old from Lecce, a Supreme Court magistrate at the time of the events, and of Pasqua Biondi, 56, from Brindisi, retired policewoman, accused of having rented, in 2016, their home in the center of Lecce to young foreigners, who would have used it as a place to meet clients.
Yesterday, the panel chaired by judge Fabrizio Malagnino sentenced both to two years of imprisonment, with the benefit of a suspended sentence, and to the payment of a fine of two thousand euros, against a decidedly higher request, of 4 years , invoked by the deputy prosecutor Maria Vallefuoco.
Thus ended, for the moment, the long and complicated legal case that started from some reports from residents in the area, according to whom there would have been a continuous coming and going of men from the apartment of which the owner was judge.
The investigations of the capital’s flying squad ascertained how the “services” of the young tenants (mostly Romanian) were advertised on some sites specialized in meetings and paid sex.
For the same crime, the couple had already been sentenced in the first instance, in summary, by the preliminary hearing judge Carlo Cazzella, to one year of imprisonment with the benefit of a suspended sentence, but the verdict was later annulled by the Court of Appeal on 19 December 2020, because the accusation had never been contested by the prosecutor. In fact, the two ended up in the dock for the first time on a different charge, exploitation of prostitution, deemed unfounded by the first judge.
The documents were thus sent back to the investigating magistrate and a new preliminary hearing was held before the preliminary hearing judge Marcello Rizzo who ordered the committal to trial.
As anticipated, from the beginning of the investigation, Caracciolo rejected all accusations, highlighting, before the investigating judge who issued the decree to seize the property, that he had been the victim of a sensational and serious misunderstanding. And this is what he will continue to argue in the appeal which will be presented as soon as the defense lawyer Ladislao Massari sees the reasons for the decision (which will be filed within ninety days).
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