By Marco Carta
ROME (Reuters) -An Italian appeals court on Thursday reduced the prison terms imposed on two American tourists who were originally given life sentences for the 2019 murder of a policeman in a case that shook Italy.
The court ruled that Finnegan Lee Elder, who was 19 at the time, should serve 24 years in jail for stabbing Mario Cerciello Rega to death in central Rome.
His friend, Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth, then 18, was handed a 22-year term. He did not handle the murder weapon during the attack but was tussling with another police officer.
Elder admitted the killing but both he and Natale-Hjorth said they had acted in self-defence because they thought the two policemen, who were not in uniform at the time, were thugs out to get them after a botched attempt to buy drugs.
The two Americans, who both came from California, say Rega and his colleague, Andrea Varriale, did not identify themselves as police. Varriale denied this.
The appeals court did not immediately explain why it had decided to reduce the prison terms.
However, one of Elder’s lawyers said he would appeal against the verdict to Italy’s supreme court as well as the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
“The sentence is a compromise that we do not like,” Renato Borzone told reporters after the ruling was delivered, saying there was no solid evidence to prove that the police had identified themselves before seeking to stop the two Americans.
Elder and Natale-Hjorth had come to Rome on holiday and tried to buy drugs from a local dealer in a tourist hotspot. They told the court that they were cheated, but managed to snatch a bag off an intermediary as he tried to get away.
They subsequently agreed to meet the dealer again to get their money back in exchange for the bag, but instead the two policemen showed up. Elder said the pair attacked them.
Police say Cerciello Rega, who had only recently got married, was not armed and was stabbed 11 times by Elder with an 18-cm (7-inch) blade that he had brought with him from the United States.
A lawyer representing Cerciello Rega’s wife welcomed Thursday’s ruling.
“We are satisfied… No sentence will be able to alleviate the pain of Cerciello Rega’s widow, but the sacrifice of a state official was not made in vain,” Massimo Ferrandino said.
(Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Nick Macfie)
