Chiose a margine del caso Scoppola: la Corte costituzionale sulla limitata riapertura dei termini per accedere al giudizio abbreviato

In the order under examination, the Constitutional Court declared manifestly ill-founded the issue concerning the conformity with the Fundamental Chart of the temporal application regime set forth in article 4-ter of Law Decree 7 April 2000, no. 82, with respect to the possibility to access summary trial (‘giudizio abbreviato’), according to the new regulation introduced by Law 16 December 1999, no. 479 and amended by article 7 of the same Law Decree no. 82/2000. The Constitutional Court held unequivocally that the above provision, being strictly procedural in its nature, is not subject to the criminal statute on the succession of law provided for by article 2 of the Criminal Code. The Court escaped the demand for adaptation by the referring Judge of the enforcement phase, who reported an inequality of treatment for those defendants not entitled to request to have access to the ‘new’ special procedure, due to the exhaustion of the remedies in the merit of the case. This although they could claim a similar - but not identical at all – position to the one which has been the object the previous ruling of the ECHR in the case Scoppola v. Italy.