In the locality Brignanoon the outskirts of Salerno, is performed the death sentence of a farm worker, guilty of having robbed and murdered a man with an ax and knife. Abolished in 1889 by the Zanardelli penal code, the death sentence was effectively reintroduced in 1926 by Benito Mussolini as an extreme measure in the event of an attempt on the life of members of the royal family or the head of government. A decision ratified in the summer of 1931 by new Rocco codewhich increases the number of serious common as well as political crimes punishable by death.
The definitive abolition of the death penalty was dated January 1, 1948. as indicated by the new Constitution. The last death sentence for common crimes was imposed on the perpetrators of the Villarbasse massacre, an act committed for the purpose of robbery which took place in the autumn of 1945. The then head of state Enrico De Nicola he rejected the pardon and on 4 March 1947 at 7.45 am the condemned men were shot at Basse di Stura in Turin. The names of the condemned: Francesco La Barbera, Giovanni Puleo, Giovanni D’Ignoti.
The last execution, however, was carried out the following day, 5 March 1947 at around 5 in the morning at Forte Bastia, just outside La Spezia. The condemned are Aurelio Gallo, from Udine, head of a so-called “autonomous investigative service” at the provincial command of the National Republican Guard of La Spezia; the former captain of the GNR and auxiliary police commissioner of La Spezia, Emilio Battisti, from Trento, and the former Marshal of the GNR Aldo Morelli, all already sentenced to death in May 1946, by the local Court of Assizes, for collaboration, torture and responsibility in the deportation of thousands of people to extermination camps. The execution is painful because the platoon has to fire a second time as the first volley kills only Marshal Morelli, while the former police commissioner remains wounded on the ground and Gallo unharmed. After the first volley, Gallo says, addressing the platoon: “You shouldn’t shoot anymore, but do as you like.”
