PISTOIA. In the end, no life sentence, as the penal code would provide in cases of murder against a parent. The 61 year old accountant from Pistoia Patrizio Ruscio – still in precautionary custody in prison – was sentenced yesterday by the Court of Assizes of Florence to 23 years in prison. For killing his 90-year-old mother on the morning of June 1, 2023 Ottavina Maestripieri, suffocating her in her bed after an argument, as well as for escaping from house arrest (which she was serving for other reasons) and for improper use of credit cards, minor crimes whose punishment was quantified at two years (in addition to the 21 for murder) .
The reconstruction
Around 6.30 that morning, escaping from the house arrest to which he was subjected, Ruscio went to his mother, who lived in via Monteverdi, the only person who had helped him deal with the many debts accumulated over the years, giving funds to all its resources. Even the apartment in which she lived was no longer hers, it had been sold at auction and the new owner expected her to pay one year’s rent in advance. He had come to tell her that he hadn’t found the money for her rent. She, desperate for an eviction that she already saw as inevitable, had begun to accuse him of being the cause of his ruin. So her son had lost his mind and had covered her mouth, giving up (and then calling 118) too late, when the mother who had tried in vain to cover herself with her sheet had stopped struggling and was breathing more and more with difficulty. .
The confession
The timely confession by the man – albeit not immediately after the fact, at least before the outcome of the autopsy and genetic tests – and collaborative procedural behavior with the green light for the acquisition of the investigation documents in the trial file preliminaries, meant that the mitigating circumstances were considered equivalent to the aggravating ones (therefore sufficient to neutralize their effectiveness), thus excluding life imprisonment.
The prosecutor had asked for it directly Leonardo De Gaudio, in concluding for a total sentence of 22 years, later increased by the court. The aggravating factors for the murder were different: in addition to the kinship and the repeated recidivism for previous convictions, also having taken advantage of the conditions of the mother’s impaired defense and having violated the home detention measure.
The defense lawyer
Ruscio’s defense lawyer, Francesco Stefani, will appeal anyway, because “I believe that there are all the conditions for the generic mitigating circumstances to be granted in terms of prevalence over the contested aggravating circumstances, further lowering the sentence”. Perhaps also trying to leverage that condition of dissociation from reality which, according to the defense consultant, the psychiatrist Massimo Marchi, accompanied Ruscio at the moment of his murderous fit. A short-circuit reaction which, as explained by the specialist in the only preliminary hearing of the very short trial in the Assizes, would have extinguished the light of reason for the 61-year-old for a few minutes, who was being hunted by creditors at that time. Thesis, that on an alleged “waned” ability to understand and will, which however does not seem to have made inroads. The sentence did not establish compensation, but the defense lawyer’s objective would be to find a financial agreement with Ruscio’s nephews, the children of his missing sister, the only other relatives of the 90-year-old killed.
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