The Assize Court of Appeal of Catania sentenced Emilio Coveri to three years and four months imprisonment for incitement to suicide in the case of Alessandra Giordano, who suffered from depression and Eagle syndrome. She died in Switzerland with assisted suicide at the age of 47 in 2019.
Eagle syndrome is a disorder of the ligaments that connect the skull to the hyoid
bone of the neck, which following calcification cause painful symptoms in the mouth, head, neck, throat and forehead, with limitation of neck movements and other serious limitations. Ms. Giordano was a member of the Exit Italy association.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Mr. Coveri “provided a causal contribution suitable
for strengthening a previously uncertain and hesitant suicidal intention on a person suffering
from pathologies that are not irreversible although painful, also because they are not well treated, exploiting the influenceability of the woman to inculcate her questionable ideas of assisted suicide as a solution to the physical and moral suffering of life”. For the prosecutor, “the individual choice, taken in full autonomy must be respected”, but it is necessary to evaluate whether “we believe that it is licit to propose suicide to people who are not in conditions of irreversible pathology, perhaps only depressed, as the only remedy for their suffering”.
Below you find an article of Corriere della Sera of June 28, 2023, translated by Johannes Agterberg
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