By Marco Carta
ROME (Reuters) – An Italian appeals court on Wednesday once again reduced the prison terms imposed on two American tourists who were originally given life sentences for the 2019 murder of a police officer in a case that shook Italy.
The court ruled that Finnegan Lee Elder, who was 19 at the time, should serve 15 years and two months in jail for stabbing Mario Cerciello Rega to death in central Rome following a botched drug deal.
His friend, Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, then 18, was given an 11-year, 4-month term. He did not handle the knife during the attack but was tussling with another police officer.
Their case has been bouncing around various Italian courts. After receiving life terms in 2021, Elder and Natale-Hjorth’s sentences were reduced to 24 and 22 years respectively in 2022.
However, in 2023 Italy’s highest court ordered a new trial, saying some of the allegations in the case had not been sufficiently corroborated.
Prosecutors had called for tougher sentencing than the court handed down on Wednesday, and they can contest this latest verdict thanks to Italy’s multi-tiered appeals process, which can drag out cases for years.
The defence lawyers welcomed the new ruling.
“This sentence is fairer than the previous ones,” said Renato Borzone, Elder’s lawyer. “It took five years, but we finally have a court that can sleep easily because it has made the right decision in good conscience.”
The two Americans, both from California, were in Italy on holiday in 2019 and tried to buy drugs from a local dealer in a Rome tourist hotspot.
They have said they were cheated, but managed to grab a bag off an intermediary as he tried to escape.
They subsequently agreed to meet the dealer again to get their money back in exchange for the bag, but instead the two policemen showed up in plain clothes.
Elder has admitted killing Cerciello Rega, but both he and Natale-Hjorth said they had acted in self defence because they thought the two policemen were thugs out to get them.
Police say Cerciello Rega, 35, was unarmed at the time and was stabbed 11 times by Elder with an 18-centimetre (7-inch) blade.
Italian media reported that the dealer was an informer who had reported the theft of his bag and asked the police to intervene.
(Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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