Well, here’s one to cheer you up. Seems as though these three Italian mopes decided to rob a jewellery store in Grinzane Cavour, a little town about thirty miles outside Turin. All went well, for a while: they waved a (fake) gun around and tied up the owner’s daughter.
Then the 67-year-old owner said “Fuck this shit!” in Italian, pulled his own gun, shot two of the assholes dead and wounded the third.
Some background:
The same jewellery shop in had already suffered a robbery a few years ago on May 22, 2015 when two thieves, one of whom was disguised as a woman, entered the shop and tied up the owner with plastic ties after beating him violently.
No wonder he’d had enough.
Sadly, the tale has not ended well for our hero, because Italy:
Immediately after the events, Roggero was accused of culpable excess of self-defense, but now he will have to answer for murder. According to the public prosecutor’s office, Roggero would have chased the three robbers who, having already left the jewelry store with the stolen goods, were fleeing outside the store and from close range would have shot ‘with the intention of causing their death, thereby voluntarily exceeding the limits of legitimate patrimonial defence’.
Yeah… so?
In any sane society, a jury would pat the guy on the back and say, “Good shooting, Tex!” (once again, in Italian). But this is Italy, which means he’s probably going to jail for doing what I believe 100% of my Readers would have done under the same circumstances.
Does the Italian legal system work off precedents? Then maybe he could go to trial, be found innocent by a jury, and thereby set a precedent?
No. Roman law is statutory. No such thing as precedent — each case is judged on its own merits.
It’s Italy so they’ll bugger him around for a while then the cops and prosecutor will all go have a smoke and a grappa in the back room and forget about him.
Last year in the height of the covid madness we flew from Amsterdam to Italy, and spent a fortune for rush covid PCR tests at the Amsterdam airport because we were told by our airline that the Italians had just imposed rigid covid requirements for entry. We arrived at Florence airport at 10 PM waving and brandishing our certificates of covid purity to find no border guards, no customs inspectors, no cops, no immigration people, no health inspectors, nothing, nobody.
But there were definitely loud and jolly Italian male voices coming from a room marked ‘Ufizia’ or some such behind the counter where all these border protectors and covid sniffers were supposed to be.
500 US dollars gone, pffft.