No to the psychiatric report for Alessia Pifferi, the trial for her daughter Diana’s starvation is ongoing

Last October, the investigating judge described Alessia Pifferi, the woman accused of abandoning and starving her 18-month-old daughter Diana, as “conscious” and with no “psychological history”. Also for the judges of the Milan Assize Court, the woman who confessed to having left the little girl alone for almost a week because she “wanted to have a future with her partner” can face trial. The 37-year-old has to answer for serious intentional homicide. The judges denied the defense’s request for a psychiatric opinion on the defendant’s “trial capacity,” against which prosecutors Francesco De Tommasi and Rosaria Stagnaro had issued negative opinions. explains that the woman was always completely “clear and aware”.. Later in the trial, the defense can still obtain an expert opinion on the ability to understand and want in the moment of facts. He hasn’t done it at this morning’s hearing.

From the only “medical document submitted by the defense”, i.e. a report by a psychiatrist from San Vittore prison, “there is no element – explained the President of the Court Ilio Mannucci Pacini – that could cast doubt on Pifferi’s full capacity to participate in the proceedings, as has evidently happened up to today’s hearing, without such incapacity ever being considered would have been drawn”. In the November 2022 report, “the only element is a hypothetical and possible dcognitive efficiency that even if it were established, it could constitute an element that could preclude Pifferi’s ability to stand the trial”. However, the judges clarified the difference in the assessments of understanding and wanting.