Judgment no. 5225 of the Sixth Criminal Section was decided on 6 November 2019 and filed on 7 February 2020. These details appear in the later judgment no. 9828/2024 of the Second Criminal Section of the Court of Cassation, which cites it on the foreseeability of reclassifying an offence.

The principle cited by the Court

On page 15 of judgment no. 9828/2024, the Court explains that assigning a different legal classification to the alleged conduct on appeal does not, in itself, breach Article 521 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure. The new classification must be known or foreseeable to the defendant and must not cause an actual impairment of defence rights through the new issues it introduces.

Judgment no. 5225/2020, Rv. 278340-01, is cited specifically on foreseeability. The requirement of correspondence between the charge and the judgment therefore does not mean that the offence named in the charge must always remain unchanged: the substance of the accusation and the effective opportunity to defend against it must be assessed.

The practical limit

A relationship between two offences does not automatically make every reclassification lawful. The assessment concerns the actual proceedings and the consequences of the different classification for the defence.

Source and scope of this note

This note addresses the reference to the earlier decision in Court of Cassation, Second Criminal Section, judgment no. 9828/2024, page 15; it does not reconstruct the facts of the proceedings concluded by judgment no. 5225/2020. The source judgment is in Italian.