ROME (AP) – Court-appointed psychiatrists testified Wednesday that a 20-year-old California boy accused of murdering an Italian policeman suffered from anxiety and depression and lives with “chronic anger,” but it’s a competent trial.
An evaluation requested through defense lawyers from Finnegan Lee Elder, who has been tried in Rome since February for the murder of a Carabinieri officer dressed as a civilian.
Also charged with the murder of Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello is the comrade of the California elder and beyond his schoolmate Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 19 years ago, a year ago.
Both denied wrongdoing and told investigators they thought they were defending themselves from criminals when they encountered Cerciello and another Carabinieri during a planned rendezvous over a drug deal gone bad in the early hours of July 26, 2019.
Cerciello, who sent the street assembly with his patrol wife sometime after returning from his honeymoon, stabbed him 11 times. He was hailed as a national hero at his funeral.
Prosecutors alleged that the old fat friend stabbed Cerciello and that Natale-Hjorth hid the gun.
Psychiatrist Vittorio Fineschi said that at the time of the murder, Elder “had a great friend who learned what he was doing; He told us himself.”
But psychiatrist Stefano Ferracuti said Elder had also told them that he thought he was protecting himself from a “mafia,” some way of describing a con man from an American perspective.
In the Italian judicial system, defendants could be excused from trial if they are found incapable of “sub-expression and wanting” to dedicate the crime they accused.
Ferracuti told the court that cognitive tests showed that the elder was “very intelligent.” But when he was pressured through a lawyer for the relatives of the murdered officer, the psychiatrist said that “lack of prestige is one thing. Wanting (doing it) is another.”
Ferracuti also stated that the concept of self-protecting elder opposes a criminal, not a policeman, and “realizes that he ruined his life and regrets it.”
While psychiatrists described a hitale of anxiety, depression and, as Ferracuti put it, “a sense of chronic anger,” a defense attorney told the court that Elder felt worried and sick and asked to be taken back to his dungeon.
Prosecutors accused Natale-Hjorth of concealing the murder weapon, a military-flavored attack knife that the elder allegedly brought in an American suitcase. According to Italian law, defendants who have a role in a murder case accused of murder.
The defense plans to call its own psychiatric representative as a witness in a subsequent trial.
The confrontation between the young tourists and Cerciello and his wife follows an alleged attempt by the Americans to buy cocaine in Rome beyond the night.
After allegedly paying for the drugs, the two men knew they hadn’t won cocaine. Irritated by the alleged scam, they seized the drug dealer’s intermediary’s backpack, according to the indictment. When the owner of the backpack called his cell phone, which was related to the broken bag, the tourists responded and asked for coins and cocaine on display for the bag and phone, prosecutors alleged.
Cerciello and his wife showed up to pick up the backpack instead of the alleged intermediary.
The officer’s partner, Andrea Varriale, testified last week that he and Cerciello knew themselves as police officers and showed their badges. The defendant told investigators that they did not see large apple badges and believed they were being attacked by thugs.
Psychiatrist Ferracuti stated that the elder “admitted to losing control” of the confrontation with Cerciello. He added that the young man had told him that “if he knew they were police officers, he would not have had” the reaction he made.
Ferracuti also told the court that the elder “has a personality on the edge.”
Borderline personality disorder is an intellectual disease whose symptoms come with intense and proper emotional reaction disorders.
After Wednesday’s session, the trial was recessed for a summer break until Sept 9.