Marco Cappato and Mina Welby were acquitted for facilitating assisted suicide

The case concerned the death of Davide Trentini, multiple sclerosis patient who in 2017 had decided to resort to assisted suicide in Basel, Switzerland. The Assize court ruled that the offense does not constitute a crime, pending a law on euthanasia

(Photo: Simona Granati / Corbis / Getty Images) The Assize Court of Massa acquitted Marco Cappato and Mina Welby, respectively treasurer and co-president of the Luca Coscioni association, from the accusation of instigation and suicide aid for the death of Davide Trentini, multiple sclerosis patient who in 2017 had decided to resort to assisted suicide in Basel, Switzerland. The reasons have yet to be filed and will only be available in the coming months, but the court explained that "the fact does not constitute a crime" because there is no crime of incitement to commit suicide. Cappato commented on the sentence saying that "it does justice to Davide's mother" and that, after this acquittal, "the law on euthanasia is still down urgent because it serves to guarantee a right to all citizens and serves to eliminate potential discrimination" .

The legal proceedings on the matter had been initiated by Cappato and Welby themselves who, after traveling to Switzerland alongside Trentini, had declared themselves to the carabinieri of Massa, the man's hometown.

What would change now

This for the case of Trentino is the second acquittal for Marco Cappato : in 2019, the constitutional Court had issued a judgment similar to the case of Fabio Antonines , known as dj Fabo. And it is just the same treasurer to recall this circumstance to the court of Assizes of Mass, explaining that in both cases had been provided to “help undeniable in the absence of any parameter of the law. We have helped in the Trentino on the basis of a moral duty and would do it again in exactly the same way.” In addition, he also stressed that “from the death of dj Fabo and of the Trentino, the other dozens of people went to Switzerland for assisted suicide and the Italian authorities have been informed by the swiss. Those people have not had need of us, because they had the money to do it. But this may not be the discrimination between sick people who are suffering” .

Despite the fact the cases are so similar, the two judgments addressing the issue of assisted suicide by setting various assumptions in order that this not constitute a crime. In the case of dj Fabo, the Constitutional Court had ruled that in Italy, a similar practice is eligible if the person who makes the appeal is affected by a disease fatal that causes physical suffering or psychological intolerable, if it is able to decide, freely and consciously and, especially, if to keep her alive are the medical treatments support . The judgment of the Trentino revises this last point: are not to be considered treatments to support only those of ventilation, hydration, or artificial nutrition, but also of those to which he was subjected Davide Trentini (i.e. pharmacological treatments to alleviate pain and spasms, or the mechanism that allowed the evacuation of the faeces. According to the technicians of the defence, even if they are not related to the classical treatment of the life support, his break would have caused the death of the patient.

As pointed out by Marco Cappato, it is “an important precedent because it opens the space of freedom for the end-of-life” . The same warning also Filomena Gallo, a lawyer of Cappato and Welby, and national secretary of the association Luca Coscioni: “ it Is an important decision because it clarifies that the requirement, for the sick, of the presence of life-sustaining treatments is not limited to only machinery but also includes the pharmacological treatments” .

For the second time, then, spoke of the courts to settle a dispute on the issue, despite more than a year, the constitutional Court has asked the parliament to intervene with a law that clarifies what constitutes the crime . In Italy, in fact, are prohibited euthanasia (where the doctor acts to help the patient to die) and assisted suicide (the person affected takes their own medication which leads to death). From 2018, is in force, the so-called law on the living will , which stipulates that in order to start or continue any type of medical treatment requires the consent of the person concerned that, in an informed manner, and free, they can also decide to refuse to sottoporvisi.