It was only sixteen days away. The legal limit for adding new grounds to the appeal motion and for formulating requests for the submission of new evidence not submitted at the original trial is fifteen days, so there was no time to prepare. Among other things, new counsel still had to be formally appointed, for which the person concerned would have to make a request directly to the prison administration. All we could do was ask for an extension. In certain situations, you can ask the judge not to insist on a time limit that has 22been missed and to assign a new one. But then you need to show that unforeseen circumstances have made it impossible to observe the time limit previously established. In this case, we would have to show that the death of Avvocato Costamagna was the force majeure on which to base our request. It couldn’t be taken for granted that we’d get our extension. Which meant we had an uphill struggle right from the start. I was just in the middle of these thoughts when Lorenza resumed speaking.

“Guido, Iacopo’s innocent. He’s got into a lot of trouble, he’s a difficult boy, some of which may be my fault, but he didn’t commit that murder.”

They all say that, the parents or friends or lovers. My child, my colleague, my lover can’t have done anything like that. Trust me, I know him. If we always believed the nearest and dearest, the crime of homicide (and many others, to be honest) would vanish from the statistics.

I nodded without commenting. Commenting on certain subjects is inadvisable – especially to the lovers, friends and mothers of defendants. But she must have read my thoughts.

“I’m not saying that because I’m his mother. I’m saying it because when the murder was committed Iacopo was with me, at home. You’ll see it in the file: what I said in my testimony is the truth, even though the judges didn’t believe me.”

Okay, this was a little different from the usual statements, like “My son’s a good boy, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” It remained for me to find out if it was the truth.

A lot of those who are suspected of murder are guilty; many of those who are tried for murder are guilty; very many – the vast majority – of those who are convicted of murder are guilty. That doesn’t mean there aren’t innocent people who are suspected, tried and even convicted. But I can assure you 23there aren’t many of these, not many at all, irrespective of the fact that in many cases they’re acquitted. They’re acquitted because of flaws in the investigations, because of procedural irregularities, even because the defence counsel has been really good. Only in a small number of cases because they’re innocent.