Decree of the Court of Palermo, I Criminal Section – preventive measures, 16-29 May 2017

With this decree, the Court of Palermo imposed preventive measures upon a person because of his social dangerousness. The ECHR Court in the case de Tommaso (decision of the Grand Chamber of 23 February 2017) censured the Italian legislation because of its vagueness on this kind of preventive measures. The Court of Palermo observed, however, that the ECHR Court did not deliver a pilot-judgment nor the judgment on the De Tommaso can be regarded as the expression of a principle well established in the ECHR Court’s jurisprudence. The Italian Constitutional Court ruled (in its decisions No. 49/2015 and No. 348 and 349 of 2007) that the Italian judge has a duty to submit possible conflicts between internal norms and the ECHR to the Constitutional Court only if it is impossible to interpret these norms in a manner consistent with the ECHR and the Constitution.  In the case at hand, no possible conflict existed, for the Court of Palermo, between the applicable legislation and the ECHR or the Italian Constitution.