Italy: Reduced sentences for US men in police slaying

Two US men had their life sentences for murder reduced by a court in Rome on Thursday. Defendants Finnegan Lee E., 22, and Gabriel N.-H., 21, had already been convicted of killing a police officer in 2019.

After three hours of deliberations, the appeals court reduced Lee E.'s sentence to 24 years and N.-H.'s to 22 years.

What happened? 

The two tourists and friends from northern California had tried to purchase cocaine in a Rome nightlife hotspot, but were swindled and did not receive any drugs. They said they grabbed the backpack of the drug dealer's alleged middle man, hoping to use it to bargain for their €80 ($88) back.

When they were approached by Carabinieri Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega and his partner, both in plainclothes, the defendants said they thought the two officers were thugs hired by the drug dealer to retrieve the backpack and began fighting with them. Rega, 35, died of 11 stab wounds, including some to his vital organs. Lee E. has claimed that Rega was strangling him.

N.-H. told the court that he was grappling with Rega's partner and did not know the man was being stabbed. However, he admitted that he helped hide the knife that was eventually found in the ceiling of the pair's hotel room.

The defendants have both denied that the officers identified themselves as police. Rega's partner Andrea Varriale has disputed this claim. 

Besides murder, the pair were also convicted of possessing an attack-style knife without cause. 

Defense lawyer vows to appeal

Massimo Ferranino, a lawyer representing the Rega family, said: "We are satisfied... No sentence will be able to alleviate the pain of Cerciello Rega's widow, but the sacrifice of a state official was not made in vain."

"The sentence is a compromise that we do not like," defense lawyer Renato Borzone told reporters, saying the prosecution has never proven that the officers identified themselves as such. He vowed to appeal the verdict to Italy's highest court as well as the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The Italian legal system does not have a double jeopardy statute and cases can be retried and verdicts overturned multiple times, as was famously the case when exchange student Amanda Knox was accused of killing her roommate Meredith Kercher in Perugia in 2007.

es/wd (AP, Reuters)