ROME - Italian President Sergio Mattarella has signed three decrees granting pardon to three elderly men who murdered family members in despair. Franco Antonio Dri, Giancarlo Vergelli and Vitangelo Bini, murdered their drug addict son and wives suffering from Alzheimer's respectively.

 The individual acts of clemency concerned the remainder of the sentences still to be served (about three years and six months for Dri, five years and six months for Vergelli and five years and eight months for Bini). In assessing the requests for pardon, the Quirinal took into account the age of the condemned and their precarious health conditions.

 The favorable opinions expressed by judicial authorities and the exceptional circumstances in which the crimes occurred, highlighted in the sentences of condemnation, were also taken into consideration.

 The legal case of Franco Drì, opened in 2015 when the man shot his son, a 47-year-old drug addict, has been concluded. Citizens of Fiume Veneto had started a petition to support the request for pardon to the president, collecting over 1,000 signatures.

 Giancarlo Vergelli, 88, was convicted on Feb. 22, 2016 by the Court of Appeal of Florence for the murder of his wife on March 22, 2014, after he could no longer cope with a sudden aggravation of her illness.

 A similar story is that of Vitangelo Bini, 89, who was to serve a sentence for the murder of his wife on 1 Dec. 1, 2007, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The man claimed that he killed his wife so as not to see her suffer anymore.

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