News Supreme Court rulings November 2013

Husband cannot break into ex-wife’s home
The Supreme Court in ruling no. 6377 of Feb. 16, 2010, ruled that the conduct engaged in by an ex-husband who breaks into his ex-wife’s home to steal, photocopy and then return documents to be produced in the marriage dissolution hearing constitutes the crime of trespassing. This offense, the Supreme Court points out, is incontestable because in order to gain possession of the copies, the ex-husband had certainly entered the house even though he had no title to do so.

Text message revealing husband’s infidelityintegrates the crime of harassment
Integrates the crime of harassment the conduct engaged in by the person who by making someone aware, by text message, of his or her spouse’s infidelities by also making judgments regarding the fact brought to his or her attention(Supreme Court: ruling 2597/2013). The legitimacy judges point out that the content of the aforementioned text messages sent was likely to cause harassment and disturbance. In fact, according to the Supreme Court, the offense punished by Article 660 of the Criminal Code protects the tranquility of the offended person.

Supreme Court: no extenuating circumstances for anyone who shoots his neighbor’s cat.
It has been ruled by the Supreme Court (Judgment No. 44422, Nov. 4, 2013) that anyone who shoots his neighbor’s pet animal is committing the crime provided for in Article 544 of the Criminal Code, namely, mistreatment of animals. The Supreme Court Justices, while taking into consideration the hypothesis of “a reaction of the defendant to a situation of annoyance,” point out that this offense is aggravated by the fact that the conduct engaged in by the offender was unnecessary.