The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Court trims U.S. men’s jail time in officer’s death
ROME » An Italian appeals court on Thursday reduced the sentences of two young American men serving life terms over the multiple stabbing death of a Carabinieri police officer while they were on vacation in Rome in 2019.
After just over three hours of deliberations, the court in the Italian capital handed down sentences of 24 years to Finnegan Lee Elder and 22 years to Gabriel Natale-hjorth. It upheld the convictions of the two men, both from Northern California, for the murder of Carabinieri Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega on a street near their hotel.
After the first trial last year, the two friends had begun serving the earlier, life sentences, Italy’s harshest punishment, in separate Rome prisons.
Judge Andrea Calabria kept media out of the courtroom for pandemic concerns, and it wasn’t clear how the defendants reacted to the decision. Italy has two levels of appeals, and Elder’s lawyers indicated they would seek recourse.
Cerciello Rega, 35, was given a hero’s funeral in the Naples area’ church where he had been married just a few weeks earlier. The officer was stabbed 11 times, including in vital organs.
His widow, Rosa Maria Esilio, told reporters after Thursday’s verdicts that Cerciello Rega’s blood as a servant of the state will symbolically “remain eternally on the street.” Flanked by her lawyer, she praised the “honor and courage” of a man “who died in the happiest moment of his life.”
In May 2021, the lower court had convicted Elder, now 22, and Natale-hjorth, now 21, of the slaying as well as of attempted extortion in connection with a botched attempt to buy cocaine in a Rome nightlife district. The two were also convicted of resisting a public official and carrying an attack-style knife without just cause.
Elder addressed the court just before deliberations began.
“At 22 years of age and with three years in prison, I had much time to reflect,” Elder said, speaking in heavily accented, recently acquired Italian. He expressed “remorse for the pain I caused.”
The officer and his patrol partner, dressed in shorts and casual shirts, were on plainclothes mission when they confronted Elder and Natale-hjorth in the pre-dawn hours of July 26, 2019. For reasons never fully clear, neither officer brought his service gun on the mission.