“I repeat the question I asked a few minutes ago. Does this strike you as the behaviour of someone who has just committed a murder like the one we are dealing with?”

I spoke some more about the forensic evidence, recalled what the technician had explained, and went on to examine Lorenza’s testimony. She was behind me, in the public seats, and I was talking about her testimony, in other words, about her. I had the unreal feeling that she had only reappeared in my life that very morning; that behind me, listening to me, staring at me, was the beautiful, elusive woman I’d known twenty-seven years earlier.

“In the original ruling the testimony of Lorenza Delle Foglie was undervalued. The court at that trial used two arguments to assert the total non-credibility of the witness.

“The first argument, I hope you will concede, is somewhat trivial: the witness is the mother of the accused and so is fundamentally not credible. This is an argument that in its brevity borders on the unmotivated. Taking it to its logical 253conclusions we would have to state that the testimony of a close relative is never credible.

“In reality, where the close relative has decided not to avail himself or herself of the right to refrain from testifying, he or she is to all intents and purposes a witness like any other. Where the legislature has deemed it necessary to introduce a specific criterion of evaluation for a category of testimony, it has done so explicitly. I think for example of the rules on the testimony of those who have turned state’s evidence. In such instances, there has to be corroboration, according to article 192 paragraph 3 of the code of practice.

“Such is not the case with the testimony of close relatives: their testimony is evaluated like that of other witnesses, without any special or lesser status.

“Am I trying to say that it’s not necessary to exercise extreme caution in evaluating the testimony of close relatives? No, of course not. I’m simply saying that the automatic reflex we find in the original ruling – the witness is the mother of the accused, therefore she is not credible – is improper.

“We shall return to this point, but let me now analyse the second argument used against the testimony of which we speak.

“At the original trial the prosecution dusted off a very old case, one dating back to 1987. Do you remember what you were doing on 5 July 1987? Or even what you were doing in the summer of 1987? How many details would you be able to give about such long-ago events if you were asked a question about them out of the blue, especially in a context as highly stressful as that of being a witness in a court of law? Try to put yourself in the witness’s shoes: that is a basic premise for a correct rather than theoretical evaluation of what happened at the original trial.254