The murmur of the crowd shakes the Stranger's insides, who watches the spectacle in disgust. The people demand the blood of the guilty, while power proceeds with the slaughter. Panem et circenses.
Damiens had been condemned, it was March 2, 1757, to “make a public confession in front of the main door of the Church of Paris”, where he was to be “taken and placed in a two-wheeled cart, naked, in a shirt, holding a burning wax torch weighing two pounds”; then “in the said cart, at the Grève square, and on a scaffold that will be erected there, pinched at the nipples, arms, thighs, and calves, the right hand holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burned with fire of sulfur and, on the places where he will be pinched, molten lead will be thrown, boiling oil, boiling pitch, wax, and sulfur mixed together and then his body dragged and dismembered by four horses and his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the wind” [Editor’s note: as the sentence declares]. In the end, he was quartered, reports the Gazette of Amsterdam. This last operation was very long, because the horses used were not accustomed to pulling; so that instead of four, six had to be used; and this still not being enough, they had to sever his nerves and smash his joints with an axe to dismember the unfortunate fellow's thighs."
M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Einaudi, Turin, 2014, p. 5 (original ed. Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison, 1975).
Ecce homo. The ‘pleasure of making violence’ and its political instrumentalization.
However, rules are opposed to such dynamics, rules born from the opposition to centuries-old injustices. The bitter necessity of punishment knows limits. The power of Leviathan, hungry for consent, knows limits. Here’s the perspective in which to read the statute of limitations.
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Italy. Anno domini 2019. Article 1, paragraph I lett. e), of Law 3/2019 (commonly known as Spazzacorrotti) establishes that, starting from 01.01.2020, “the course of the statute of limitations remains […] suspended from the pronouncement of the first instance judgment or the sentencing decree until the date the judgment that defines the case becomes enforceable or the sentencing decree becomes irrefutable”.
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First of all, what does the statute of limitations entail? It is a mechanism that determines the extinction of the state’s power to punish the crime, due to the passage of a period of time proportional to the gravity of the crime.
For the calculation, one looks at the maximum penalty provided by the law (however, not less than 6 years for crimes). If the sanction is life imprisonment, the crime is not subject to a statute of limitations. For some cases, the term is doubled (e.g. sexual violence, road homicide, or culpable homicide with violation of safety regulations; for tax offenses the terms are increased by 1/3).
The time is calculated from the commission of the criminal act.
The activation of judicial authority involves, in any case, the increase of the terms (known as interruption), which generally cannot extend beyond 1/4 of the total (1/2 for corruption crimes).
Upon the occurrence of certain events, the passage of time is also frozen to begin counting again later (e.g. if the lawyer or the defendant cannot attend the trial; in the case of appeals, for a total of 3 years).
In simple terms, net of circumstances that can suspend the calculation:
- Our Damiens is accused of committing a theft on 11/18/2018 (Art. 624 CP), a conduct the Judicial Authority became interested in on 12/12/2019, the crime becomes statute-barred on 05/18/2027. After almost 9 years from the fact;
- Our Damiens is accused of bribing a public official (Art. 319 CP) on 11/18/2019, a conduct the Judicial Authority became interested in on 12/12/2019, the crime becomes statute-barred on 05/18/2034. After 15 years from the fact.
Now, the statute of limitations does not allow individuals to be left in the hands of Leviathan for an indefinite period. The criminal trial is painful and costly: the gaze of the inquisitor burns, suspicion nullifies, the media circus multiplies sufferings, even striking the innocent (the defendant is not considered guilty until the final conviction, Art. 27, paragraph II Constitution) who vainly awaits judgment.
Moreover, over the years, social alarm fades, and the danger that others might be induced to commit similar crimes by imitative suggestion diminishes; over time, the offender may have become another person, so it would not make sense to apply a punishment that, one reminds, should reeducate (Art. 27, paragraph III Constitution).
Furthermore, the further away the fact, the more difficult it is to prove it.
For these reasons, the legislator has set a limit to punitive fury: inquisitor, aren’t 10, 15, or 20 years enough for you?
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The Law n. 3/2019 ignores these reasons. After the first-instance sentence, even if of acquittal, the trial can develop without any time limit. It is hypocritically stated that the term remains suspended, however, it is destined to remain blocked sine die.
Let the bureaucratic machinery loom over the innocent. Does the crowd want to witness the splendor of the tortures? Let the stage be set in the public square. Let the blood flow. Power is hungry for consent.
The Stranger watches Leviathan tremble in its chains, a shiver runs through him as he walks away. His steps echo in the darkness.
Post scriptum. The President of the Tribunal of Turin recently affirmed: “on average, we have put on trial at least 3,000 people with ordinary proceedings who, at an average distance of no less than 4 years from the alleged crime, we have then recognized as not guilty at the end of the first instance. Which means 30,000 in ten years; 150,000 in 50 years, equal to 1/9 of the population of the basin and to 1/5 of the active population. If we project these numbers nationwide (and I have no reason to doubt that they are statistically a significant sample) every year we have at least 150,000 investigated then defendants who wait at least 4 years from the notice of the crime to be acquitted at the end of the first instance; 1,500,000 every 10 years. With this trend we send to trial in 50 years over 7 million who will be acquitted at the end of the first instance”.
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