ROME – Amidst the furor of the public response to the two latest femicides of students Sara Campanella and Ilaria Sula, both 22, judges have just ruled that Filippo Turetta, who violently murdered his ex-girlfriend Giulia Cecchettin, 22, in Nov. 2023, did not stab her 75 times on account of ‘cruelty’ but instead ‘inexperience’,. 

 The ruling on Tuesday came as a shock and has received heavy criticism from both the family of Giulia as well as the general public. 

 Who was Giulia Cecchettin? 

 Giulia Cecchettin was a 22-year-old girl born in Padova, 2001. She was a younger sister to Elena and an older sister to Davide, a daughter to Gino, an engineer and her mother Monica, who died of cancer a year prior to her daughter’s murder. She was a biomedical engineering student at the University of Padua and was due to graduate, after years of work, on Nov. 16 2023. 

 On Nov. 11 2023, a Saturday, she left her family home, around 6 p.m. to buy a pair of shoes for her imminent graduation ceremony and was picked up by Filippo Turetta, a fellow student, her former boyfriend, whom she trusted and with whom she had still been in contact with since their August break-up. The last time she contacted her sister was at 10.43 p.m. on WhatsApp. 

 Filippo Turetta stabbed Giulia 75 times in the space of 20 minutes. He mostly stabbed her head and her neck, including one of her eyes. Her body was found covered in plastic bags, lying in a ravine, 7 days later. 

 ‘Healthy sons of patriarchy and rape culture’

 In the days following the discovery of Giulia’s body il Corriere della Sera, one of the largest newspapers in Italy published Elena Cecchettin’s letter in which she denounced her sister’s brutal and violent murder as the result of a society that helps to create, not sick men, but instead pointed out that these men are the completely normal and natural product of a patriarchal society and a culture of rape. 

 Elena placed emphasised that ‘femicide is a state murder, because the State does not keep us safe and it does not protect us.’ She implored at the end that ‘femicide is not a crime of passion, it is a crime of power. We must widespread sexual and emotional education. We must teach that love is not possession. We must fund anti-violence centres and we must give those who need it the opportunity to ask for help. For Giulia, do not have a minute of silence, for Giulia, burn everything.’

  People were moved by the words of Giulia’s sister, who sought not only to bring justice to her sister’s murderer but bring about a real change in society, to change people’s attitude to femicide, to aid those women fleeing male violence. It was something for which Elena and her family, even after the tragic loss of Giulia, received a large amount of bile for online, as recorded in various news outlets and as denounced by their father Gino Cecchettin. 

 The Ruling

 Thus, it is hard for one to imagine how someone stabbing anyone 75 times in the head and neck could not be legally classified as a cruel act, nevertheless this is what the judges at the Court of Assise, Venice ruled on Tuesday. 

 Turetta, was charged and sentenced to life in prison, with judges placing a particular emphasis on ‘the brutality of the action, the determination of the gesture made, the abject motives of archaic oppression, both vile and despicable, the intolerance for the freedom of self-determination of the young woman, whose autonomy in even the most banal choices of life was not accepted by the accused.’ Yet, one of the aggravated murder charges he escaped was that of ‘cruelty’. 

 In Italian law, to murder someone with particular cruelty, is to ‘intentionally make one’s victim suffer by performing actions other than those one performs to take their life,’ as summarised by Fatto Quotidiano. The forensic examination of the case showed that the 75 wounds were the result of a chaotic and ‘inexperienced’ act. In court it ‘could not be shown’ that this act was to inflict suffering outside of the murder itself. 

 The reasons drawn up by the associate judge on the case, Francesca Zancan, underline that the dynamics of Giulia's murder did not allow them to "deduce with certainty" that Turetta wanted to "inflict gratuitous and additional suffering on the victim".

 Few have leapt to the defence of the courts, stating that in this case, while the act may have been cruel in a moral sense, in a legal sense it was not, for the aforementioned reasons.  The public, however, on social media, as well as parliament and Giulia’s family have criticised this ruling, as it appears to be a completely bipartisan issue, not only for the murder itself but the particular cruelty of the 75 stab wounds to Giulia’s face and neck.

 Criticism has come from Lega, Movimento 5 Stelle, Europa Verde, with Luana Zanella, deputy commented that there is “a long night to endure” if 75 stab wounds are not considered cruelty and Licia Ronzulli, vice-president of the senate, accused the judges of “inflicting cruelty” themselves on Gino Cecchettin. Elena Cecchettin herself described the sentence as “dangerous, setting a terrible precedent.”

 President of the femicide commission, Martina Semenzato, then explained what was wrong with the sentence stating that “during numerous hearings it emerged that ‘over-killing’, or rather the disproportionate number of blows, is the typical execution method of femicide [and thus] a rethinking of the current method of judgement is required.”

 Giulia’s family have set up a foundation in her honour, the Fondazione Giulia Cecchettin (fondazionegiulia.org) which “is an initiative born from the will of Gino, Elena and Davide to honour the memory of Giulia, a daughter and a sister, and to transform our grief into an opportunity for society.” While Tuesday’s ruling may not have been what was desired or, in fact, needed, in the face of such an unthinkable horror, perhaps the public outrage might prove to be just enough to bring about a long-awaited and long-needed cultural revolution. 

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