My client’s story was-how can I put this?-slightly different. Nicola Costantino was no terrorist; he was just a scrawny young man, mentally disturbed and irremediably prone to failure. He had decided to kill himself, and he’d failed at that, too. This proved mostly that his ineptitude extended to the field of self-destructive behavior.
There is no doubt that by doing something as stupid as turning on the gas, he had endangered everyone else in his apartment building; there is likewise no doubt that his idiotic actions were not a reflection of his intent to kill anyone except himself.
This was the very basic argument I had tried to make to the prosecuting attorney and the special arraignment court in an attempt to persuade them that the crime of mass murder wasn’t justified in this case, and that there was therefore no legal basis for holding my client in prison.
I hadn’t persuaded them. In rejecting the appeal, the judges wrote that “all that is required to justify a charge of mass murder is that someone should have had the intention of killing anyone, which would, of course, include the intention of killing only himself.”
That argument was powerfully paradoxical.
Hadn’t Costantino in fact threatened the public safety with his attempt-unsuccessful only because of the timely intervention of the authorities-to kill himself? If so, then he was clearly guilty of the crime of mass murder, which in his case rose to the required threshold with respect to all factors, both objective and subjective.
And since the nature of the defendant’s acts and his evidently unstable personality (this was the one point on which I tended to agree with the judges) could reasonably suggest the likelihood of a recidivistic repetition of the same kind of behavior-in other words, he was liable to do it again-the court was bound to confirm the order of preventive detention, in its most trenchant form: prison.
I was preparing my Court of Cassation appeal of this half-baked interpretation of Italian criminal law when my clients’ parents came to see me. They seemed slightly embarrassed, but after some initial hesitation, they managed to convey, with much hemming and hawing, that they didn’t want me to appeal the court’s verdict.
“Why not?” I asked, nonplussed.
The man and woman looked at one another, as if trying to decide which of the two should answer.
“If it’s a matter of my fee,” I said, trying to remember how much I’d told them the appeal would cost, “don’t worry about it, you can pay me when you have the money.”
The father answered.
“No, thank you, counselor. It’s not about the money. It’s just that Nicola seems to be doing so much better in prison. Both the guards and the other inmates treat him well. He’s socializing. He’s made friends, and when we go to visit him, he seems almost happy. Honestly, we haven’t seen him in such good spirits in years.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard them right. The father shrugged.
“Let’s leave him in jail for a few more months,” added the mother, with an expression that seemed to blend a sense of guilt with a sense of relief, and even a touch of cheerfulness.
“When they finally bring him to trial, we’re sure you’ll manage to win an acquittal. They’ll release him from prison, and we can help him rebuild his life. But for now, maybe we should leave him in jail for a while, since he seems to be doing so well. It’s as if he were in a treatment facility,” the father concluded, with the relieved expression of someone who has just completed a challenging task.
I was about to say that Nicola was legally an adult and therefore, for reasons of professional ethics, I would have to ask how he felt about this novel solution.
Instead, I thought it over for a few seconds and, in a decision I would prefer the ethics committee of the bar association not know about, said nothing. I only held out both hands, palms up, in a gesture of surrender to the inevitable.
Now, months later, it was time for the preliminary hearing.
That morning, prior to my hearing, there was a social security fraud trial with dozens of defendants. The hall-the largest hearing room in the building-was teeming with defendants and their lawyers, and it had all the dignified sobriety of the Marrakech souk. There was every reason to suppose that this would take some time. Since I didn’t know how else to pass the time, I pulled my iPod out of my briefcase and set it on shuffle.
Suddenly, as if by magic, the scene was transformed into a spectacle of deranged, mythical, senseless beauty.
Unbeknownst to them, lawyers, defendants, the judge, court clerks, and police officers were all dancing to the syncopated rhythm of rock ‘n’ roll, in an extravaganza staged just for me.
Lawyers standing up and declaiming, saying things I couldn’t hear, defendants conferring amongst themselves, the judge dictating a statement: a sort of collective movement that, thanks to the music, seemed to take on meaning and necessity.
The best part of my private musical came when a colleague of mine whose most distinctive professional quality has always been his implacable scorn for the proper use of the subjunctive, stood up and addressed the judge, gesticulating vigorously, in perfect time-at least, that’s how it appeared to me-to the voice of Freddie Mercury singing “Don’t Stop Me Now.”
Sometimes being a lawyer isn’t bad at all, I thought, as I settled back, stretched out my legs under the bench in front of me, and enjoyed the show.
After the initial hearing in the social security fraud trial, the courtroom emptied out and I put away my earbuds. It was our turn. The only people left in the room were the judge, the court clerk, me, Consuelo-who had arrived after making the rounds of the various clerks’ offices-the prosecuting attorney, my client, and the two prison guards who had brought him to court and who continued to keep a close eye on him. You never knew-he might take it into his head to turn on the gas and murder an entire courtroom full of people.
After briskly dispensing with the initial formalities, the judge asked if there were any requests. I stood up and said that Signore Costantino wished to be questioned. The defendant had only been questioned once, when he was arraigned, two days after his arrest, I reasoned. At that time he hadn’t been perfectly lucid, to put it mildly.
The judge dictated a brief order for the stenographer to enter into the record, and then ordered the two prison guards to bring the defendant before him. Then, he asked the prosecutor to begin.
“Have you read the charges in the indictment?” the prosecutor asked Nicola. Nicola looked at him in bewilderment, as if he couldn’t understand the purpose of such an idiotic question. Then he saw me nod my head and got that he was expected to answer.
“Yes, of course.”
“Did you do the things that are written in the formal charges?”
“I turned on the gas because I wanted to end it all. But I certainly didn’t want to kill people. Later, when I got my head on straight, I realized I could have caused a disaster.”
“Do you mean to say that you realized you had put into effect a chain of events capable of threatening public safety?”
I was about to object, but I thought better of it. An objection would be pointless, since the question was pointless. My client, who was not, as I have mentioned, the sharpest tool in the shed, sounded fairly reasonable as he responded. The prosecutor asked a few more questions, then said he was finished.
“Would you care to proceed, Counselor Guerrieri?” the judge asked.
“Thank you, your honor. I have very few questions to ask because, as you know perfectly well, the key to this trial has more to do with the law than the facts.” I paused, and I thought I detected an almost imperceptible nod of approval from the judge. This isn’t always a good thing, but the judge that day was well-informed and also intelligent, so that slight tilt of his head struck me as a promising sign.