ROMA (ITALPRESS) – There are no constitutionally illegitimate penalties for the crime of death or injury as a result of crimes in the matter of illegal immigration, introduced in 2023 by the so-called “Centre Decree”. It was established by the Constitutional Court with the judgment number 120, filed today, ruling on the questions raised by the Judge of the preliminary hearing of the Tribunal of Syracuse in a criminal proceedings concerning the sea transport of thirty-four migrants. Following the collision of the boat with a motor vehicle that intervened to rescue, three people were deceased and ten others were injured.
The resigning judge doubted the proportionality of the penalties provided for in Article 12-bis of the single text on immigration, as amended in 2023 by the so-called “Decreto Cutro”. The article punishes with the imprisonment from twenty to thirty years the favorment of irregular entry when from the fact comes, as an unintended consequence, the death of more people or the death of a person and serious or very serious injuries to others. The judgment recognised that the legislator provided for a “punishment response marked by exceptional harshness”; however, it excluded that it is manifestly disproportionate to the gravity of the facts contemplated by the norm.
The crime presupposes, in fact, that the transport is carried out by exposing people to danger for their life or safety or subjecting them to inhuman or degrading treatments and resulting in the death or serious injury of more people. The provision – it has specified the pronunciation – then selects “only conduits of considerable gravity”, lesives of goods of primary importance. The case protects not only the ordinary management of migration flows, but “even, and above all, the life and physical integrity of migrants” involved in illicit traffic.
The measure of the penalty is therefore “a signal of the particular gravity of the fact that the legislator has intended to counter”, characterized by “a very significant devalue”. The pronunciation has also focused on the figure of the so-called “migrant-scafista” not trafficker, that is, of the migrant, foreign to the criminal organization, to which the task of conducting the means of transport or to carry out other logistic functions is occasionally entrusted. And it has been found that the order already contains norms aimed at excluding or graduating the criminal responsibility of the migrant-scafista, mitigating the sanctioned treatment in relation to the conduct of the author of the illegal.
In particular, when the migrant is forced to assume the role of “scafista” due to violence or threats, to escape the degrading conditions of detention centers or to face an emergency situation during the crossing, the severe state of need is highlighted. If the state of need is not configurable, however, the attenuants provided for the contribution of minimal importance or the condition of psychological subjugation towards traffickers can be applied. Forecasts that allow the penalty to be adjusted to the actual invalidity of the contribution provided by the individual and its concrete reproach, in accordance with the principles of proportionality and individualization of the penalty.
The decision also considered that no complaints were based on the comparison of the offence with other cases, including voluntary murder. The term of reference has not been considered relevant, since the penalty of twenty years provided for by the censored rule concerns the death of several persons or the death of a person accompanied by the serious or very serious injuries of others. The comparison should therefore be made, if ever, with the multi-voluntary murder or the voluntary murder in competition with injuries. Finally, it was declared inadmissible, because of the lack of motivation on their relevance in the main process, the issues relating to the prohibition of balancing between circumstances and the lack of anticipation of a attenuating incident.
– Photo Ipa Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
