Gaetano Pecorella

Gaetano Pecorella (born 1938) is an Italian lawyer and politician. A former member of the PSI, he has been one of the lawyers of Silvio Berlusconi.

Quotes

It’s true, laws were enacted to serve specific trials. We passed the Schifani ruling—later declared unconstitutional, and in fact it was unconstitutional in some respects—to allow Berlusconi to govern (October 9, 2004)

Quoted in L’espresso, October 17, 2008.

This ruling [on the unconstitutionality of the Pecorella Law] could reopen trials already before the Court of Cassation, and the decisive factor will once again be not the oral and public trial in the first instance, but the appeal based on written documents.

Quoted in Corriere della Sera, January 27, 2007.

I say that among the motives cited (for the murder of Don Peppino Diana) in the trial records, there are some of the most diverse. During the trial, some spoke of revenge out of jealousy, others reported that he was killed because they wanted to divert the investigations that were underway regarding another criminal group. And others also reported that he kept the clan’s weapons. No one has ever said why this murder took place, given that there were no precedents to reconstruct the facts. If one is familiar with the trial documents, one knows that various motives are cited by different sources. [...] There are various motives; there is also the one—which did not emerge at first—that he was engaged in anti-Camorra activities. To tell the truth, even this did not emerge very clearly as a motive during the trial. It is pointless for us to build fantasies around hypotheses. His anti-Camorra activism is among the hypotheses. But during the trial, it did not emerge in a striking way; there was never any mention of mass mobilization or people taking to the streets. It’s not as if there had been public demonstrations or documents. Someone also cited this reason. As you can see, there are many motives. Certainly, he was killed by the Camorra. Anyone killed by the Camorra is a victim of the Camorra. Now, if he is a martyr, we must understand that from the motive, which has not been clarified.

Quoted in la Repubblica, August 1, 2009.

A paid sexual encounter not with a 14-year-old but with a girl who was six months shy of being of age. Legally, that’s how it is [a minor]. But she was six months away, and it doesn’t seem to me—allow me the irony regarding my surname—that she was some poor lost lamb. As for me, though this is a personal opinion, I believe that today the age of majority is too high compared to the maturity young people have reached.

Quoted in il Mattino, January 17, 2011.