Decision of the Court of Cassation, I Criminal Section, No. 43112 of 20 September 2017

Through decision No. 43112/2017, the Court of Cassation (I Criminal Section) annulled the remaining effects of the final decision by which Bruno Contrada had been convicted for the offense of ‘concorso esterno in associazione mafiosa’ (i.e. supporting mafia association from outside, without participating in it), which results from Articles 110 and 416 bis of the criminal code. This, in application of the ECHR Court’s decision on the case Contrada v. Italy (2015), which found Italy guilty of violating Article 7 of the ECHR. For the European Court, the Italian courts convicted Contrada for acts done before the offense of ‘concorso esterno’ had become clear in all its constituents elements trough developments in Italian jurisprudence (most in particular, the judgment of the Court of Cassation of 1994 on the Demitry case) and, thus, in breach of the legality principle. Decision No. 4312 of the Court of Cassation completely reverted the situation resulting from a previous judgment, issued by the Appeal Court of Caltanissetta in 2015, which denied the revision of the final judgment against Contrada because of a disputable interpretation of the ECHR Court ruling.