Parma, September 17, 2026 – Chiara Petrolini is not criminally responsible due to incapacity to understand and will at the time of the events and for this reason must be acquitted. This is reiterated, as argued in the first instance trial, by the defense of the student from Traversetolo, appealing the first instance sentence of the Court of Assizes of Parma which sentenced the girl to 24 years and three months for the case of the two newborn children, buried in the garden of the house. By filing the appeal, lawyer Nicola Tria and the new defender, Guglielmo Gulotta, request to renew the trial investigation, with the acquisition of an additional neuropsychological consultation and possibly to order a new psychiatric examination: the one in the Court of Assizes had concluded full capacity of the defendant.
The new expert opinion also benefits from the contribution of professor Giuseppe Sartori, in addition to those of Pietro Pietrini and Alessandra Bramante.
According to the consultants, “the mental operations of Chiara Petrolini are severely deficient and susceptible to further collapse in the exceptionally stressful condition of childbirth”.
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The defense, then, in case it is not considered a total mental defect, after legal requalification of the contested fact in the different case of manslaughter or infanticide, requests a reduction of the sentence.
The Parma Prosecutor’s Office has instead appealed against the acquittal of the girl for the murder of the first child. The young woman from Traversetolo had in fact been convicted for having murdered, with premeditation, the second child, while, for the first instance judges, there is no evidence that the first was born alive. The prosecutors also insisted on requesting the recognition of corpse suppression for both: the sentence had requalified the second episode as the less serious concealment.
