Giovanni Di Leo remains at the helm of the Agrigento Prosecutor’s Office. The judges of the first section of the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, chaired by Francesca Petrucciani, rejected the appeal of magistrate Roberta Buzzolani, current prosecutor of Sciacca, with whom she had requested the annulment of Di Leo’s appointment as head of the prosecutors of Agrigento. Roberta Buzzolani, represented by the lawyers Giovanni and Giuseppe Immordino, had challenged the resolution of the plenum of the CSM which had conferred the position of Public Prosecutor of Agrigento last July on Giovanni Di Leo, represented by the lawyer Maria Beatrice Miceli. The two magistrates were the protagonists of a head-to-head battle to succeed Luigi Patronaggio, who in the meantime had become Attorney General in Cagliari. The fifth commission of the CSM last July 26th chose the profile of Di Leo who received 17 favorable votes (including that of vice-president Pinelli) against the 12 of Roberta Buzzolani. The appointment was thus challenged by the current prosecutor of Sciacca who complained about the illegitimacy of the judgment made by the Superior Council of the Judiciary and, in particular, the evaluation of the so-called “specific indicators” such as having already held managerial positions. For the judges of the Lazio TAR called to rule on the merits “the judgment of the CSM is not illogical, it is based on a purely merit-based assessment and cannot be subverted by a different assessment of the administrative judge.”
The administrative judges underlined that “in the assignment of managerial and semi-managerial roles, the CSM enjoys a wide margin of appreciation which can be questioned, in terms of legitimacy, only if invalidated due to unreasonableness, omission or misrepresentation of facts, arbitrariness or lack of motivation” and that in any case the “ specific indicators do not constitute requirements for participation in the tenders for the assignment of individual management offices, in the absence of which it is not possible to access the comparative procedure, but are limited to providing the‘self-governing body of the criteria that guide the‘exercise of discretion”.
In essence, according to what was stated by the Lazio TAR, the CSM chose to entrust the role of Prosecutor to Giovanni Di Leo on a “broad and more varied judicial experience” considering that “boasts experience both in the civil sector and (largely) in the criminal sector, having carried out judging and prosecuting functions in first instance offices and at the Supreme Court of Cassation”. The evaluation – the judges write – was based mainly on the criterion that prescribes “that the experiences gained in judicial work must be considered, taking into account the plurality of sectors and matters dealt with in the jurisdiction, and the results achieved in qualitative and quantitative terms.”
