ITALY’S NEW PENAL CODE

Taranaki Daily News, 27 December 1929, Page 7

ITALY’S NEW PENAL CODE

DEATH PENALTY REVIVED. • The definite text of the New Italian Penal Code was handed to the Presidents of .the Senate and the Chamber of Rome in October. In the report accompanying the Code, Signor Rocco says that Italy, is about to free herself from the institution of juries, which, like many other- institutions of the liberalism of a past .day, has lost its original meaning as a guarantee of individual liberty, and has become, only too often, a blind instrument of acquittal or even of apologetic exaltation of crime. ■

Tlie most significant change in the Code is. the reinsertion of the death penalty (through shooting) for those found guilty of the following crimes:— . (a) Acts calculated to place the State or part of it under the sovereignty' of a foreign Power, or to- minimise in. any wav the independence of the State. (b) Armed insurrection against the Constitution of- the State.

(c) Attempts on the life or personal liberty of the King, Queen, Regent, HeirApparent, or Prime Minister. Attempts on the life or personal liberty of other members of the Royal Family are punishable by death only in case of fatal results; otherwise, by 20 years’ imprisonment.

(di Attempts within Italian territory on the life or personal liberty of the head of a foreign State, if attended by fatal results; otherwise imprisonment with hard -labour.

The new Code contemplates severe measures against duelling, which may extend to five years’ imprisonment. Other crimes which it is intended to repress with great severity are fraudulent manipulation of prices on the public market or nf values on-the "Stock Exchange; th* poisoning of wells and water-springs, and of foodstuffs in;bulk; infanticide; adultery,' either in husband or wife; and public insults against the symbols of the'State religion. .