On May 7, 5 years ago, in a room of the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza hospital, the heart of Donato Monopoli stopped, the young man from Cerignola who died in May 2019 after seven months of agony following a fight that took place in a nightclub in the outskirts of Foggia.
“I never imagined that that would be the last day that I would hold you in my arms and that you would leave me forever”, the parents write on the ‘Justice for Donato’ page. “Thus ended one of the worst chapters of our lives, the seven months spent always at your side in that resuscitation bed hand in hand, with eyes full of pain, but also full of hope, because we hoped that one day we could return to normality, but that wasn’t the case.”
5 years later, their eyes “they are always full of pain, but still full of hope that Donato will get the justice he deserves”, they conclude. For this fact, two 30-year-olds from Foggia are awaiting trial, on appeal, on charges of voluntary homicide. Previously, the Bencivenga judge of the Court of Foggia had sentenced the two defendants – Francesco Stallone and Michele Verderosa – to 15 years and 6 months of imprisonment and 11 years and 4 of imprisonment respectively.
The crime contested is that of voluntary homicide in conspiracy, with the recognition of generic extenuating circumstances prevailing for Verderosa, and equivalent for Stallone. The judgment came at the end of the summary trial (the harmful conduct examined occurred before the entry into force of the law which denies the summary procedure for crimes punishable by life imprisonment).
In the appeal trial, the defense of the two defendants followed the same defensive line held in the first degree trial: that is, they asked for the exclusion of the causal link between the conduct carried out by the defendants and the death event, which occurred in hospital, 7 months after the attack, the death being probably connected to a previous (but unknown) condition of the young victim. On this point, not even the super-partes report requested by the preliminary hearing judge was able to shed full light.
In the last appeal hearing, the Attorney General had asked for the crime to be classified as manslaughter, with requests for sentences of 10 and 7 years in prison respectively. The appeal sentence, after several technical postponements, could be issued at the end of the month.
