13 Jan fake alibi

With sentence no. 21241 of the 17 March 2022 (dep. 31 May 2022), the first criminal section of the Court of Cassation has offered important indications regarding the rules for evaluating circumstantial evidence, with particular reference to the so-called. "False alibi" and the mendacious of the accused

L’art. 192 c.p.p. This evidentiary rules that contribute to defining the scope of the logical tools available to the judge in the formulation of the judgment of criminal liability; non -compliance with the aforementioned rule, therefore, can only detect as a defect in motivation within the limits indicated by art. 606, comma 1, became. e), c.p.p., that is, as a lack, contradictory or manifest illogicality of the motivation, when the defect is from the text of the contested provision or by other acts of the process specifically indicated in the reasons for appealing (Cass. pen., sez. III, 17 October 2012, n. 44901).

The evaluation of the test, whether it is circumstantial or direct, He then must lead to an assessment of the fact and the attribution of it to the accused in terms of procedural certainty, achieved if a different assessment is not conceivable or it is only as a completely exceptional event, foreign to the ordinary unfolding of human facts.

With specific reference to the rules for evaluating the circumstantial test, in art. 192, comma 2, c.p.p., the orientation according to which, Once ascertained and therefore known the relevant factual data, a dual operation must be proceeded, first, functional to evaluate each data individually to establish whether or not to present the requirement of precision and to examine its demonstration attitude, and therefore in an overall perspective to verify whether the unitary consideration of the available data allows to overcome the evidentiary ambiguity of each and therefore to consider the Thema ProBandum tried.

The regulatory requirements of gravity and precision focus on the logical relationship between the well -known and unknown fact, which is all the more significant as minors are the alternative hypotheses also logically connected to the well -known fact, while the concordance ensures that the circumstantial data are not mutually in logical contrast.

Each circumstantial data must therefore be subjected to verification about the intensity of the relationship of logical necessity with the fact to prove and therefore the circumstantial framework, that it is concordant, It must be assessed overall to verify whether it allows you to consider the unknown fact in terms of procedural certainty, which exists when no alternative hypotheses are formulated or if the alternative hypotheses, although abstractly formulated, are devoid of any concrete feedback in the procedural results and foreign to the natural order of things and normal human rationality (Cass. pen., sez. and., 12 July 2005, n. 33748).

The jurisprudence recognizes the cd. fake alibi – which occurs if the falsehood of the declarations made by the accused in order to the (different) place where he had found himself at the time of the fact – Accidential value of accusation because this behavior reveals an awareness of the illicitity of the conduct that aims to hide from justice (Cass. pen., sez. and., 4 February 1992, n. 6682).

It has been added that called circumstantial value must be subjected to scrutiny to check if, in relation to the particularities of the concrete case, significant elements of an alternative explanation of the defendant's false declaration emerge emerge.

Finally, The attachment of the accused assumes an accusation of accusation only if the expression of the specific interest to hide the truth and therefore any other alternative explanation should be examined.