News Supreme Court rulings May 2018

Supreme Court: fighting in front of children is a crime

For the Supreme Court, the crime of family abuse can be committed if minor children are forced to witness fierce quarrels and brutal fights between their parents that take place within the home.

So stated the Supreme Court in ruling no. 18833/2018, ruling on the appeal of a woman charged and convicted in conspiracy with her cohabitant for family abuse against their two minor children.

Mistreatment may include, the Ermellini explain, not only harassing behavior directly carried out against children, but also that which involves them only indirectly, as unwitting spectators of the most violent confrontations between parents, which take place within the domestic walls.

The wooden spoon is also a weapon

The use of a wooden ladle may constitute an improper weapon and constitute an aggravating circumstance under Article 585 of the Criminal Code.

This was established by the Supreme Court in ruling no. 21316/2018, with reference to a robbery committed against a woman by a man who, in addition to the offense under Article 628 of the Criminal Code, was also charged with the aforementioned aggravating circumstance of striking the victim with a 30-centimeter wooden ladle.

The Ermellini also clarified that an “improper weapon” should be understood to mean any object, even one in common use and lacking apparent fitness for offense, that is actually used to procure personal injury, since the carrying of the object ceases to be justified the moment the immediate connection with its function is lost, and the same is used as a weapon.

Keeping dogs in a tight cage is a crime

Keeping dogs in a cramped space and in poor sanitary conditions constitutes the crime of animal mistreatment under Article 544-ter of the Criminal Code.

The Supreme Court (ruling 16042/2018) thus upheld the six-month prison sentence of a man who had forced 11 dogs of various breeds to lie in a cage of limited size, moreover in conditions that caused infection and injury to some of them.