Marco Cappato – one of the leaders of Associazione Luca Coscioni, which is a member of the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights (CILD) – has been prosecuted in Italy for helping Fabiano Antoniani, also known as DJ Fabo, travel to Switzerland to end his own life.

In 2016, DJ Fabo, who was paralysed and blinded in a 2014 car accident, asked Marco Cappato to help him go through with assisted suicide in Switzerland. On 27 February 2017, Cappato drove DJ Fabo to a Swiss clinic where the procedure was carried out. The trial against Cappato started on 8 November 2017.

Prosecutors call for acquittal

Under article 580 of the Italian penal code, helping someone take their own life is a crime punishable by five to twelve years in prison. Cappato was aware of the criminal implications of his actions and reported himself to police once back in Milan, the day after DJ Fabo’s assisted suicide. Cappato requested immediate judgement after the judge mandated that prosecutors indict him for having reinforced DJ Fabo’s will to kill himself.

On 17 January 2018, prosecutors made a request for acquittal because the act did not constitute a crime. The Court of Milan set a hearing for 14 February 2018 to issue the final sentence. Both prosecutors and the defence council presented memos submitting questions of constitutional legitimacy relating to Article 580 of the Penal Code.

The Court may now either decide to accept the question of constitutional legitimacy of the provision, thus interrupting the proceeding and turning the matter to the Constitutional Court, or reject it and issue the sentence on the date of the court hearing.

Constitutional Court ruling still in the balance

The Italian Constitutional Court met on 23 October 2018 to discuss the issue of the constitutionality of article 580. The following day, the court decided to suspend the proceedings against Marco Cappato and to reconvene on 24 September 2019, inviting Parliament to intervene by that date, offering “the respect of certain situations deserving protection and to balance them with other constitutionally relevant goods”.

In the absence of legislative action, the court will meet in 2019 to reopen the judgement on constitutionality. Until then, the main trial before the Milan Court has been suspended.