News & Analysis L’Aquila scientists appeal conviction Formal appeals are to be made by the seven researchers who were charged with manslaughter for advice they gave prior to the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, as Edwin Cartlidge reports Lawyers representing the seven scientists and engineers convicted of manslaughter for advice they gave ahead of the deadly L’Aquila earthquake in 2009 are expected to have lodged formal appeals against the verdict in the first few days of March. The researchers’ conviction last October – and the six-year jail sentences handed down to each of the accused – shocked many in the scientific world and beyond, triggering warnings that many experts would now be scared to give advice for fear of prosecution. Francesco Petrelli – lawyer for convicted volcanologist Franco Barberi – said that the verdict will be “subject to a crossfire of criticisms”. The start of the appeals process comes some six weeks after the trial judge, Marco Billi, released a 943-page document explaining his reasoning for the conviction and the sentences. Largely following the argument put forward by L’Aquila’s public prosecutor, Billi states that the defendants’ “level of guilt is particularly high” and that this guilt is accentuated by their “conscious and uncritical” participation in a “media operation” ordered by the then head of Italy’s Civil Protection Department Guido Bertolaso. The six-year prison terms imposed by Billi, which would not come into effect until the appeals process has been completed, are two years longer than those requested by the prosecutor. The seven experts all took part in a meeting of a government advisory panel called the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks that was held in L’Aquila on 31 March 2009 – six days before the quake. The meeting had been convened by Bertolaso in the wake of an ongoing “swarm” of small and medium-sized tremors over the previous few months. But Billi says he does not condemn the scientists for failing to predict the earthquake, which he adds is not possible with existing scientific knowledge. Instead, he takes <strong>issue</strong> with them for having carried out a “superficial, approximate and generic” risk analysis in the light of the swarm. That inadequate analysis, he says, had an “unequivocal reassuring effect” on 16 Big impact Building damage in the village of Onna, near L’Aquila in Italy, caused by the April 2009 earthquake. How can a trial against scientists’ knowledge be decided without recourse to the shared canons of international science? the local population, leading some residents to stay indoors on the night of the quake when otherwise they would have sought refuge outside, leading to 29 deaths. Billi explains that the experts were not tried on the basis of the scientific content of their statements but instead on whether they acted with due “diligence, prudence and skill”. “This is not a trial against science,” he writes, “but a trial against seven public officials...who carried out an evaluation of the seismic risk that violated the rules of analysis, forecast and prevention regulated by the law.” During the trial Marcello Melandri – the legal representative of geophysicist Enzo Boschi, who was another of those convicted – argued that the prosecution had not properly distinguished the responsibilities of each of the seven individuals, pointing out that many of the most controversial comments were made before the meeting by just one of the indicted – hydraulic engineer Bernardo De Bernardinis, who was then deputy head of the Civil Protection Department. Those comments included the notion that the swarm was positive because it discharged energy from the fault, which many witnesses in court said persuaded their relatives to stay inside on the night of the earthquake. But Billi backs the view of prosecutor Fabio Picuti, saying that De Bernardinis’ comments amounted to the commission’s “manifesto”, given, he claims, their close match with other statements made during the meeting. Alessandra Stefano, representing seismic engineer Gian Michele Calvi, says that Billi’s reasoning is “very Shutterstock/Franco Volpato physicsworld.com disappointing”, arguing that it “does nothing but repeat the prosecution’s mistaken interpretation of the facts and of the law”. Petrelli, meanwhile, argues that Billi has confused the duties of the politicians and administrators with those of the scientific consultants, and failed to evaluate the “substantial difference” between the scientists’ statements on seismic risk and what was said by the local television stations and newspapers. Petrelli also maintains that Billi, in trying to show that he had not been involved in a “trial against science”, has actually ended up conducting a “trial without science”, in which he (wrongly in Petrelli’s eyes) insisted on not examining the scientific content of the defendants’ statements. “How can a trial against scientists’ knowledge be decided without recourse to the shared canons of international science?” asks Petrelli. The appeals will be heard by three judges, who, says Stefano, might reach a verdict by the end of the autumn but whose decision, she adds, is sure to be challenged in the Supreme Court by whoever loses at the appeals stage. Petrelli says that the Supreme Court is not likely to rule on the case before the end of 2015. Meanwhile, it appears that a parallel trial against Bertolaso and Daniela Stati, who was regional councillor for civil protection at the time of the quake, will not now take place. The two had been under investigation by the prosecutors for an intercepted phone call that Bertolaso made to Stati the day before the scientists met in March 2009, in which Bertolaso referred to the “media operation” with which he wanted “to reassure the public”. Picuti and fellow prosecutor Roberta D’Avolio have now requested that the investigation against the pair be terminated. Bertolaso had claimed, when giving evidence in last year’s trial, that his term “media operation” simply referred to his wish to have the scientists’ deliberations made known to the media, rather than spinning the science in a pre-meditated way to reassure the public. Picuti and D’Avolio say this interpretation cannot be shown to be false beyond reasonable doubt as neither Bertolaso nor Stati offered “any causally relevant contribution to the formation of the content and outcome of the meeting”. A judge must now decide whether to accept the prosecution’s request, which looks set to be opposed by quake victims’ relatives. Physics World March 2013
Y O UR UR SINGLE SIN SINGL GL GLE S O URC UR URC E S O L UTION UT UTIO IO ION 575 McCorkle Boulevard Westerville OH 43082 Phone: (614) 891-2244 Fax: (614) 818-1600 info@lakeshore.com www.lakeshore.com
Change language