Involuntary Witness - Страница 21

The associate judge was a grey, bald, short-sighted man with a shiny complexion. He came from the civil courts and it was the first time I had come across him at a trial. He hugged his gown around him in front, as if protecting himself from something. I didn’t manage to get a good look at his eyes, shielded as they were behind thick lenses.

The jury was composed of four women and two men. They all had the lost air typical of jurors at their first hearing. Two women of about fifty or sixty were seated at opposite ends of the bench. One of them reminded me obsessively of a great-aunt of mine, a cousin of my mother. I expected her at any moment to call me up to the bench and offer me sugared almonds made by the nuns.

The two men sat on the associate judge’s side. One was about sixty or a bit over, with very short white hair, an old-fashioned jacket with two buttons, a black tie, slits for eyes and the look of a retired military man. He didn’t look like good news. The other was a youngster, thirty at the outside. He was gazing around him with an intelligent air.

Beside the judge were the two other women. One of them – I thought at that moment – looked like a headmistress and the other, by chance seated next to the judge, was suntanned, heavily made-up, with garish lips, fresh from the hairdresser’s.

I broke off my scrutiny when I realized that the public prosecutor was rounding off with the applications for evidence.

“… I therefore request the admission of the witnesses indicated in the list, the acquisition of the documents previously indicated and the questioning of the accused, if he consents. Should the accused not intend to submit to questioning, I herewith request the attachment of the statement rendered by him in the course of the preliminary inquiries. Furthermore, since the two witnesses of Senegalese nationality are nowhere to be found, and it is therefore impossible to have them here present as witnesses, I herewith – in accordance with Article 512b – request the attachment of the statements made by them in the course of the preliminary inquiries.”

The judge then called on Cotugno, who spoke briefly. The civil party, he said, was not involved in this trial for revenge but for justice alone. And justice is done when, responsibility having been rigorously ascertained, a penalty commensurate with the gravity of the offence is inflicted with equal rigour. He had no applications for evidence and associated himself with all the requests of the public prosecutor, whose position he fully shared.

It was my turn.

“Your Honour, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the public prosecutor has just spoken as if he were reading out the grounds for a verdict of guilty. In the course of the proceedings, by cross-examining the witnesses, the witnesses called by the public prosecutor himself, we intend to show that the verdict of guilty, already pronounced in the mind of the representative of the public prosecution, is nothing more than a house of cards. We will demonstrate that from the first moment on, the investigations were directed not towards finding the culprit responsible for this horrible crime, but towards finding a culprit. We will show that the urgency – the justifiable urgency – of satisfying the demand for justice of the family of poor Francesco Rubino, and of the community as a whole, has led to an objective manipulation of the probative material. I wish to be clear on this point. We do not intend to maintain that the evidence has been deliberately manipulated – either by the carabinieri or still less by the public prosecutor – to the damage of my client, Signor Abdou Thiam. We do, however, intend to maintain that the desperate need to find a guilty party as soon as possible, in order to satisfy that demand for justice, gave rise in the investigations to short-sightedness, mistaken perspective, errors of method-”

The judge interrupted me.

“Avvocato Guerrieri, you have to make your applications for evidence, if you have any. Do not anticipate your harangue.”

“With respect, Your Honour, I point out that I am confining myself to indicating the facts which I intend to prove, in accordance with Article 493 of the code of criminal procedure. In particular I intend to prove that a defective approach to the inquiries – arising certainly from the best intentions – has affected the quality and reliability of the probative material assembled. In any case, I have nearly finished, so, with your permission, I would like to continue.”

“Avvocato, you may proceed, but stay within the limits.”

“Thank you, Your Honour. I was saying, then, that the almost immediate singling out of a possible suspect, by a series of coincidences, has led the investigators to transform suspicions into conjectures and conjectures into alleged proofs in a kind of involuntary chain. The objective which we shall pursue in the course of the hearing will be to reveal this mechanism, to reverse it, to identify the defective links, the incorrect deductions, and show the substantial and grave, even though involuntary, iniquity of it.

“I have no applications for evidence to put forward at the present time, though I state in advance that in the course of some of my cross-examination I shall make use of a number of documents. Documents of which I shall subsequently request the attachment by the court. I wish to conclude by reminding the ladies and gentlemen of the jury that, in a civilized country, the defendant does not have to prove a thing. Let me repeat that: the defendant does not have to prove a thing. It is up to the prosecution to prove the responsibility of the defendant beyond all reasonable doubt. I ask you to bear this in mind at all times during this trial. Thank you.”

I had improvised, but when I sat down I was almost pleased. I liked the brainwave about working backwards, from presumptive proofs to conjectures to mere suspicions. And in speaking in order to convince others – the court – I had begun to convince myself. It happens in this job. It has to happen.

Perhaps we might make it. Perhaps the situation was not as desperate as I had thought that morning, and for some days before.

Perhaps.

The judge dictated for the record a brief ruling whereby he admitted the applications for evidence and adjourned the proceedings until the next day, for the beginning of the hearing. That morning, he explained to us off the record, two of the jurors had personal commitments that could not be deferred, so the adjournment was unavoidable.

The court left the room, Abdou was handcuffed again and escorted away, the public dispersed.

I put away my papers. I folded my robe over one arm, picked up my briefcase with the other and was the last to head for the exit.

24

The first witness called by the prosecution was a lieutenant of the carabinieri, the officer commanding the operations unit in Monopoli. He was a young man of twenty-six or -seven, with a pleasing air, not very military.

The judge ordered him to take the oath. The lieutenant accepted the well-thumbed sheet handed to him by the Clerk of the court and read aloud: “Conscious of the moral and juridical responsibility I am assuming with my deposition, I undertake to speak the whole truth and to conceal nothing of which I have knowledge.”

“Give your full particulars.”

“Lieutenant Alfredo Moroni, born in Brescia 12 September 1973, domiciled at the carabinieri station of Monopoli. I am the officer commanding the operations unit and flying squad.”

“Mr Public Prosecutor, you may now proceed with your questioning.”

Cervellati took a sheet of notes from the file in front of him and began.

“Now, Lieutenant, would you care to tell the court what part you played in the investigations concerning the unlawful restraint and killing of little Francesco Rubino?”

“Yes, sir. On 5 August 1999, at about 19.50 hours, the operations centre received a telephone call on the emergency number 112. It reported the disappearance of a nine-year-old boy named Francesco Rubino. The call came from the boy’s grandfather, with whom he was spending the holidays because, if I am not mistaken, the parents are separated.”

“Very well, Lieutenant, but avoid superfluous details. Stick to the relevant facts.”

The lieutenant looked on the point of saying something in reply. He hadn’t cared for that interruption. But he was a carabiniere, he said nothing, and after a brief pause resumed his testimony.

“On receipt of the message by the operations room I was personally informed and dispatched a radio patrol car to the grandparents’ villa-”

“Where was the villa?”

“As I was on the point of saying, the grandparents’ villa was… is in Contrada Capitolo, in proximity to the Duna Beach bathing establishment. Having reached the spot and spoken to the grandparents of the child, the patrolmen realized that the matter might be serious, seeing that the boy had been missing for almost two hours, so they contacted me. At that point I communicated the information to my opposite number in the police, with a view to his collaborating in the search, and then I myself went to the scene, accompanied by the personnel of the flying squad.”

“How was the search organized?”

“As well as the state police I also called upon the municipal police. Of course I also reported the fact to my superiors in Bari. I ought to mention at once that the captain was on sick leave, so that I was in command of the Monopoli detachment. In any case, after the very first phase, personnel from HQ also took part in the search. The next morning we also put the dog-handling units to work.”

“Did anything of relevance emerge from the work with the dogs?”