by Luigi Ferrarella
Alessia Pifferi is accused of leaving her 18-month-old daughter Diana to die of starvation. In October the defense psychiatrist had suggested “a cognitive deficit”. The expert: the spectacularization has polluted the consultancy
Alessia Pifferi’s complicated psychiatric condition is not such as to significantly diminish her ability to understand and will nor to undermine her ability to consciously stand trial: it is the result of the official psychiatric assessment ordered four months ago by the Court of Justice. Assizes in Milan on the 38-year-old accused of multi-aggravated voluntary homicide for having left her 18-month-old daughter, Diana, alone at home, with just «two bottles of milk, two bottles of water and one of “teuccio”», from 14th to 20th July 2022, when she was found dead from dehydration. The fact that you are fully capable of understanding and will therefore deprives you of the possibility of being able to count on this specific reduction of sentence in the event of conviction for a crime which, as currently contested by the Prosecutor’s Office (aggravated voluntary homicide) can lead to ‘life sentence.
Cognitive deficit
Last October, the psychiatrist Marco Garbarini, consultant to the defender Alessia Pontenani (in this article the lawyer’s words: «The climate is spoiled, the investigation into me and the psychologists intimidates everyone»), had proposed (on the basis of tests psychologists on the low IQ and previous reports from the psychologists of San Vittore, both contested in their scientific reliability by the prosecutor Francesco De Tommasi) that Pifferi was suffering from a “moderate intellectual development deficit” which according to the defense would not have made her feel empathy and realize of the needs and suffering of others; that she would not have made her foresee and place in time the consequences of her actions; and that she would make her suggestible if pressed by her questions.
This psychological picture seemed to fit in with Pifferi’s interrogation in the courtroom, especially where she addressed the prosecutor with “I kindly ask you not to scold me”, immediately after having said that she had “left Diana alone on other occasions, and usually I would return immediately the next day. I thought her milk was enough for her.” «I’m not here to be made fun of – prosecutor De Tommasi reacted in the courtroom – the lady doesn’t have any mental problems and had an unholy attitude towards her daughter»: for the prosecutor, «with an IQ of 40 she should not have been able to tell us anything, nor to make accusations against the police personnel”, and instead in the trial she gave “clear answers” and appeared aware of what she did “when she said that sometimes she left drink to the little girl for her survival.” The Court of Assizes, presided over by Ilio Mannucci Pacini, had deemed the psychiatric assessment “necessary” to verify the “existence at the time of the crime of the capacity to understand and want, as well as the possible social danger” of the woman, and the they had entrusted it to Elvezio Pirfo, a professional years ago already among the experts on the Cogne case, who carried out his work completely ignoring the reports of the psychologists of San Vittore.
Also for this reason the outcome of this official expert opinion has no direct reverberation on the different question (both in substance and in form) of the investigation “parallel” to the debate on the meetings between the two psychologists who worked in San Vittore and the inmate Pifferi, Paola Guerzoni and Letizia Marazzi. With a controversial initiative that caused tensions in the Prosecutor’s Office where the co-owner of the hearing Rosaria Stagnaro and the deputy prosecutors Mannella and Dolci remained unaware of it, which led the Milanese criminal lawyers to proclaim a day of abstention from the hearings on March 4, and which pushed around a hundred operators in the penitentiary world to sign a letter of solidarity with their colleagues and of protest against the methods of the investigation, the prosecutor De Tommasi a month ago in fact investigated the two psychologists together with the lawyer Pontenani: he intercepted them and searched for the hypothesis of false ideology and aiding and abetting, recognizing in them an attitude not of “clinical description”, but of “deductive extrapolation of a real defensive thesis”, indeed “a real defensive consultancy activity not included in the skills of psychologists”, aimed at “creating, with false declarations on the prisoner’s mental state, the conditions to attempt to justify the administration of the Wais psychodiagnostic test” outside of “good reference practices” and with “results incompatible with the actual characteristics mental health of the prisoner”.
The prosecutor will however be able to valorise the fact that the judges’ expert observes how “the textual evaluations from which the hypothesis of an intellectual disability arose” of Alessia Pifferi were not “carried out according to a correct methodology and are unreliable”, because the study on the his cognitive abilities in prison, «including the monitoring and interviews that preceded the administration of the Wais test» to measure his IQ, «is not entirely compliant with the reference protocols and good practices regarding the administration of psychodiagnostic tests and therefore the outcome of the aforementioned assessment cannot be considered reliable and compatible with the mental and personality characteristics of the accused as they emerge from the further documents of the proceedings and from the expert observation”.
Moreover, the expert adds more generally that the “media sensationalization suffered by this dramatic and very sad event could have constituted indirect psychological pressure on the expert and the party’s consultants”, but “this risk did not materialize because the expert activity was carried out in a professionally serene manner thanks to the collaborative attitude held by the consultants towards the office consultant, despite the differences in their clinical and forensic assessments, thus allowing the expert observation to be carried out in absolute “technical” normality “». The danger of “pressure” on the experts could have existed, explains Pirfo, “especially because in this type of event the risk is that a vicious circle is created between the type of crime and the ways in which it was committed by one party and another ‘automatic or psychiatrization of motivations or moralistic evaluation on the other’.
The risk of life imprisonment
All to provide her with a documentary basis that would allow her to request and obtain the “coveted psychiatric evaluation”. Which in the meantime has however now given a different outcome from that hoped for by the defense, from the beginning of the hearing grappling with the evident risk that the charge of voluntary homicide, burdened by the three aggravating circumstances of having acted within the scope of the parental relationship , for trivial and base reasons, and with premeditation, can result in a life sentence. The official expert opinion in itself does not bind the Court’s next decisions, but, with the deterioration of the prospect of a total or at least partial inability to understand and will, the difficult objective remains for the defense to persuade the judges to go down to the crime of mistreatment in the form of the death of the mistreated as a consequence of an event unwanted by the mistreater, with a sentence of 12 to 24 years: a solution which, recently recognized by the Court of Appeal in Milan in the controversial case of a two-year-old Roma child who died due to his father’s prolonged beatings, but was just rejected by the Supreme Court. But in the meantime what the lawyer Pontenani fears is that the trial will still be subject to media coverage: «With this report it is a safe life sentence. But I trust in the Court of Assizes. I think the climate
is now spoiled by the fact that the prosecutor investigated me and the psychologists, which frightened everyone.” The technical advice of the judges’ expert will be discussed in the cross-examination between the parties in the next hearing on 4 March.
lferrarella@corriere.it
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February 26, 2024 (changed February 27, 2024 | 07:38)
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