With the assistance of the lawyer prof. Mario Esposito (full professor of constitutional law) and the lawyer prof. Carmelo Leotta (associate professor of criminal law), four seriously ill patients will request intervention at the hearing on the end of life of 26 March 2025 in the Cappato ter trial before the Constitutional Court. Two are from Turin, one from Milan, one from Palermo. These are people who are asking that the current criminal protection against assisted suicide behavior be maintained and that the hypotheses of non-punishability, introduced by the Court in 2019, not be extended. The four patients believe that, if the Constitutional Court were to accept the pending question of the constitutional legitimacy of art. 580 of the penal code, raised by the Court of Milan, their right to life and their right to dignity would be less protected than they are today. The interveners intend to give notice of their initiative, confident that it is possible to turn to the Constitutional Court not only to have more freedom to ask for death, but also and above all to ask, as they will do if they are admitted to the trial, that the protection of life be preserved.
Hearing 26 March 2025, before the Italian Constitutional Court, on assisted suicide
Request for intervention in the trial by four patients opposed to assisted suicide
On 26 March 2025 the Constitutional Court will return to express its opinion on assisted suicide. The question of legitimacy concerns art. 580 of the penal code in the part in which it punishes assisted suicide of a person capable of making free and conscious decisions, affected by an irreversible pathology and intolerable suffering, but not subjected to life-sustaining treatment.
They have asked to be allowed to intervene in the trial, with the assistance of the lawyer prof. Mario Esposito (Rome Bar Association) and the lawyer prof. Carmelo Leotta (Turin Bar Association), four Italian citizens, suffering from incurable diseases, not subject to life-sustaining treatments, who express the will to continue living by facing, as they have done until now, the moments in which suffering appears intolerable.
The four interveners ask the Court to reject the question of constitutionality and to maintain, among the requirements for non-punishability of the conduct of assisted suicide, life-sustaining treatment. If, in fact, this requirement were to cease, they, if they asked for it, could access assisted suicide and the third party who helped them would not be punishable. Accepting the question of legitimacy would therefore lead to a weakening of the protection of their right to life which would remain solely entrusted to the preservation of their will to live, regardless of an objective judgment of the severity of their conditions, inherent in the need for life-sustaining treatment.
Likewise, their right to personal dignity would be compromised because, if their life were to become available to them, this would mean that the Italian legal system would consider it a good deserving of less protection than the life of healthy people, who cannot dispose of life. In fact, the unavailability of a good is an indication of the value that the legal system recognizes in that good.
Rome, March 14, 2025
Attorney Professor Mario Esposito
Attorney Professor Carmelo Leotta
