The Mills of Justice

Back in the Mussolini era, Carlo Corbisiero, part-time barber, brawler and bully boy of the village of Marzano di Nola, near Naples, was pretty proud of his nickname--"Crackshot." For years the local carabinieri had tried to nail him for bootlegging, petty theft and antiFascism, without success. Then one day in 1934, word reached the village that Crackshot Carlo was wanted on a highway robbery and murder rap. Carlo left his dark-eyed mistress and their two illegitimate children behind and took to the hills. Two weeks later he decided to give himself up for trial. "I am innocent!" he shouted in court; he had been miles away at the time of the murder, loading a wagon with bootleg booze. But a trio of confessed holdup men swore that he had been their accomplice. Carlo's nickname was against him; so was the law, which in Italy holds that the accused is guilty until he proves his innocence. Carlo went to prison for life.

The Third Man. A year later one of the three holdup men who had gone to jail with Carlo confessed to the prison chaplain that Carlo had been framed. By doing this, one of the three had got a lighter sentence. "Why haven't you said so before?" asked the chaplain. "I was afraid I would be shot," the man said. Under the seal of the confessional, the priest could not repeat the information, but when the man died the priest wrote to Rome about it. Six months later an official from the public prosecutor's called on the priest, who swore to the truth of the confession. That was in 1937, but the wheels of Fascist justice ground slowly, if at all. Carlo remained in jail. The guilty man serving the shorter sentence was released; he died under German machine guns in the massacre of the Ardeatine Caves, near Rome, in 1944. The third holdup man died in jail. Only Carlo was left.

In prison he learned to write, and in 1948 sent a letter to famed Attorney Giacomo Augenti, pleading with him to take up his case. It took Lawyer Augenti five years of briefs, depositions and oral arguments to overcome the reluctance of Italian judges to upset the verdicts of their colleagues. Last February a new trial was ordered. Carlo, now 46, grey, and suffering from tuberculosis, was brought from jail. Squinting in the bright sunlight, he marveled to see that Vesuvius no longer wore the pennant of smoke he had known until his imprisonment; nobody had told him it stopped smoking nine years ago. A panel of ten judges listened to the impassioned pleading of Lawyer Augenti, the evidence of 35 witnesses. A fortnight ago they acquitted him.

Black Memories. Prison officials gave Carlo a new suit, shoes, shirt, and a tie which he found he had forgotten how to knot. For his labor during his 19 years, one month and 28 days of imprisonment, the warden handed him 10,360 lire (about $16). Italian law gave him no other claim against the government. "I'm as poor as Job," said Carlo. "I must find work." Back in Marzano di Nola last week, Carlo greeted his relatives but refused to stay. "I want to get away from these black memories," he said.

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