Italian court reduces sentences of US men convicted of killing police officer | Italy

An Italian appeals court has reduced the sentences of two young American men serving life terms over the multiple stabbing death of a Carabinieri police officer while they were on vacation in Rome in 2019.

After just over three hours of deliberations, the court in the Italian capital handed down sentences of 24 years to Finnegan Lee Elder and 22 years to Gabriel Natale-Hjorth. It upheld the convictions of the two men, both from northern California for the murder of Carabinieri vice-brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega on a street near their hotel.

After the first trial last year, the two friends had begun serving the earlier life sentences, Italy’s harshest punishment, in separate Rome prisons.

Judge Andrea Calabria kept media out of the courtroom for pandemic concerns, and it wasn’t clear how the defendants reacted to the decision.

Cerciello Rega, 35, had just returned to duty from his honeymoon when he was slain and was hailed as a national hero. Coroners said he bled to death after being stabbed 11 times, including in vital organs.

In May 2021, the lower court had convicted Elder, now 22, and Natale-Hjorth, now 21, of the slaying as well as of attempted extortion in connection with a botched attempt to buy cocaine in a Rome nightlife district. The two native San Franciscans were also convicted of resisting a public officer and carrying an attack-style knife without just cause.

On Thursday, Elder addressed the court just before deliberations began.

“At 22 years of age and with three years in prison, I had a long time to reflect,” Elder said, speaking in heavily accented, recently acquired Italian. He expressed “remorse for the pain I caused” and for the “endless mourning” suffered by Cerciello Rega’s family.

The officer was on a plainclothes mission with his patrol partner when he confronted Elder and Natale-Hjorth in the pre-dawn hours of 26 July 2019.

Both Elder and Natale-Hjorth testified in their first trial that they thought the officers were thugs out to retaliate after the thwarted deal to buy cocaine hours earlier in another part of Rome.

Elder has insisted he stabbed Cerciello Rega in self-defense because he feared the heavyset officer was trying to strangle him.

Prosecutor Vincenzo Saveriano asked the court to uphold both defendants’ convictions and confirm Elder’s life sentence. The prosecutor argued for Natale-Hjorth’s convictions also to be upheld, but said his sentence should be reduced to 24 years.

“Elder doesn’t deserve forgiveness,” Saveriano said in his final argument Thursday. As for the co-defendant, Saveriano noted that Natale-Hjorth’s fingerprints were found by police on a panel of a false ceiling in the American’s hotel room, where he hid the knife after it was cleaned of blood.

Natale-Hjorth testified at the first trial that he grappled with the slain officer’s plainclothes partner, Carabinieri officer Andrea Varriale. He insisted that he was unaware of the stabbing but that he later hid the knife.

The defense has argued that the American vacationers had no way of knowing that the victim and his partner, each wearing summer shorts and casual shirts, were plainclothes officers.

Prosecutors alleged Natale-Hjorth devised a scheme to get back 80 euros ($88) the Americans paid for the cocaine they didn’t receive. Angered by the swindle, the tourists snatched the knapsack of the deal’s alleged go-between and demanded their money back in exchange for returning the bag, with the go-between’s cell phone inside, the prosecution has alleged.