“The fact does not constitute a crime”: with this formula the single judge of the Court of Brindisi Raffaella Lopane acquitted all the occupants of the school in via Sele (in the Perrino district), recognizing that the property was used by the defendants as their home in consideration of the “state of necessity” determined by the particular economic and housing need of the same (pursuant to article 54 of the penal code “Anyone who has committed the act because he was forced to do so by the need to save himself or others from the current danger of serious personal injury”).
The sentence, the reasons for which will be filed within ninety days, was pronounced yesterday, 18 April, after a long trial, which began during the pandemic, which saw several magistrates take turns.
The defendants, twenty-two in total, were responsible for invading a building with the aim of occupying it and for defacing and soiling other people’s property, for having settled in the former primary school with the impossibility of finding other accommodation, following evictions due to non-payment which they had become recipients: in the school in via Sele there were men who lived alone, entire families, even a woman who faced pregnancy and the first years of her daughter’s life in the dilapidated building. After the eviction ordered by the Court, some people were beneficiaries of social housing by the Municipality of Brindisi (which was not a civil party), others sought and found autonomous solutions.
Yesterday, the conclusion of their legal case, with the recognition that the occupation occurred due to the particular state of need that could not otherwise be resolved.
The defense team included the lawyers Ilaria Baldassarre, Giacomo Serio, Ilario Manco, Valentina Demitri, Maurizio Fisiola, Cinzia Cavallo, Marcello Tamburini, Anton Giulio Leuzzi.
Marina Poci
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