Trento Court Acquits Nurse in Extortion Case of Riva Garda Doctor
“Unfortunate” but purely provocative expressions that would have meant nothing more than “certain” behaviors should not have been performed in a public facility and that the defendant would not have engaged in them unless it was in a private setting related to the doctor and in exchange for compensation. But essentially, there is no evidence of an intent to extort money.
This is one of the key passages in the reasoning of the sentence with which the Corte d’Appello di Trento (Court of Appeal of Trento) “acquitted the nurse Giorgio Cristofoletti rivano from the serious charge of attempted extortion” against a doctor from the Riva del Garda Emergency Department, Dr. Antonios Vassiliadis, now working in the surgery department at the Rovereto hospital.
A case that stirred much discussion at the time, especially after the first-degree conviction handed down by the Tribunale di Rovereto (Court of Rovereto) against the nurse, who was now fully acquitted by the judges of the Corte d’Appello. The initial defense argument (presented in court by the defendant’s lawyer, Mario Murgo) is considered by the second-degree judges “not entirely unfounded and instead seems to find some support in the written text of the recorded conversation, where Cristofoletti appears worried about seeming ‘a negligent nurse who doesn’t want to work, when that is not true’ and annoyed by ‘people who exploit their profession for private interests.’
Furthermore, the judges add that the interlocutor (Dr. Vassiliadis) would have had nothing to fear if he had “behaved well” and “respected people.” These aspects, far from being secondary, are complemented by two additional “objective doubt profiles” that remained unresolved even after the evidentiary integration: namely, the existence of numerous anomalous events in the recording made by Dr. Vassiliadis (whose authenticity was questioned both by the expert appointed by the party and especially by the one appointed by the Court, Professor Giampiero Benedetti) and the “contradictory doubt” about Dr. Manzi’s testimony.
He stated in court that he had listened to part of the recording after his spontaneous and worried return to the hospital around midnight, while Dr. Vassiliadis had previously declared that he had handed over the tape to his wife around 9:30 pm. Not to mention that Cristofoletti had reported the triggering fact to the health management, that is, the practice of carrying out outpatient interventions in the emergency room.
The facts date back to the end of June 1994, when, after an intervention in the Emergency Department, Dr. Vassiliadis reported to the health management (which then alerted the Carabinieri and the Prosecutor’s Office) that Giorgio Cristofoletti had threatened him to give him one million lire per month for 12 months, to keep quiet. The Riva del Garda nurse was brought to trial and sentenced in first instance to one year and two months in prison, conditionally and with no mention.
But he did not give up. And in the appellate court, after the tense expert reports on the tape, which were never carried out at the first instance, he was acquitted “because the act does not constitute a crime.”
