The Theater of Guilt: Garlasco as Milan in 1630

Garlasco as Milan in 1630: Piazza, Mora, Stasi, Sempio and the justice that constructs its culprits

In 1630, Guglielmo Piazza and Gian Giacomo Mora were sentenced to death in Milan for a non-existent crime: the spread of the plague through "anointing". The judges, moved by a climate of collective panic, sacrificed them on the altar of a pre-packaged truth. History, thanks to the lucidity of Pietro Verri and Alessandro Manzoni, has returned that trial to us as an archetype of judicial error (errore giudiziario), born of arbitrariness and social pressure.

Almost four centuries later, the names have changed, but the pattern seems to repeat itself. First Alberto Stasi, today Andrea Sempio: figures transformed into scapegoats by a judicial-media system that, due to its dynamics and distortions, ominously recalls that theater of guilt which was the "colonna infame" (infamous column).

1. The context: the plague and fear, yesterday and today

In the seventeenth century, it was the plague that unleashed the collective need for an explanation, for a culprit, for a face to point at. In the Garlasco case, it is the void of justice left by a heinous, unsolved murder, which has produced almost twenty years of trials, acquittals, convictions, and parallel theories.

• Yesterday: suspicion arose from two women at the window, from gestures interpreted as "suspicious" for a wet coat.
• Today: suspicion arises from an incomplete DNA analysis, from a bicycle, from a switched-off computer.

The media climate – first print media, today talk shows, social media, and podcasts – has fueled a public desire for guilt, often stronger than procedural doubt (dubbio processuale).

2. Stasi and Sempio: the new Piazza and Mora?

Alberto Stasi, convicted after two acquittals, with a trial that Minister Nordio defined as "irrational", represents the prototype of the "necessary culprit" of the 21st century. Andrea Sempio, today at the center of new investigations, is hit by a wave of suspicions, esoteric theories, suicides, alleged secrets about ecclesiastical circles, and urban legends — just as happened in 1630 with Mora and his ointment, the "feraiolo" and the accusations extorted under torture.

In both cases:

• objective evidence is scarce, but subjective convictions are consolidated;
• the culprit is constructed by social deduction, rather than by factual reconstruction;
• every detail of private life is reinterpreted in an evidentiary key, even when there is no probative coherence.

3. The power of narrative and the deformation of the process

In the trial of the "untori", torture was a tool to bend reality to prejudice. In the Garlasco case, media pressure today acts as modern torture: it insinuates, suggests, guides.

The "alternative theories" (hitmen, parties, ecclesiastical abuses, hidden files) multiply. But as in the seventeenth century, every deviation from the official track is treated as heresy. Even when nothing has been truly proven, the collective narrative is already constructed.

4. The judge between law and power

Manzoni warned:

«The ignorance of the times can generate errors. But injustice is always a human choice.»

So in 1630, so today. The problem is not only normative or probative, but ethical.

If the judge allows himself to be conditioned by the public – the real one of Porta Ticinese yesterday, the digital and television one today – the risk is not only judicial error (errore giudiziario), but the death of law as a science of measure.

5. Conclusion: the duty to resist suspicion

Piazza and Mora were not victims of the law, but of the distorted use of the law for public order purposes. Stasi and Sempio today seem trapped in the same logic: not to demonstrate the truth, but to maintain social balance through conviction.

This is why the "colonna infame" (infamous column) is not just a historical monument. It is a current warning.

Every time one condemns out of necessity, convenience, or social pressure, it rises again – silent, but ruthless – in the heart of our judicial system.

Legal Aid – Avv. Roberto Antonio Catanzariti "In defense of your rights, without hesitation"