Maxi Trial

The Maxi Trial was a criminal trial that took place in Sicily during the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of defendents on trial for a multitude of crimes relating to Mafia activities.

Appeals

The Maxi Trial was largely regarded as a success. However, the appeals process soon began, which resulted in a shocking number of successful appeals on minor technicalities. Most of this was thanks to Corrado Carnevale, a judge in the pay of the Mafia who was handed control over most of the appeals by the corrupt politician Salvatore Lima.

Related Topics:
Corrado Carnevale - Salvatore Lima

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Carnevale was eventually nicknamed l'ammazza-sentenze - "The Sentence Killer" - because of his tendency to overturn Mafia convictions for trivial reasons. He threw out some drug-trafficking convictions, for example, because wiretapped conversations presented as evidence referred to the moving of "shirts" and "suits" instead of narcotics, even though it was well known that these were the codenames the members of that particular drug-ring employed for narcotics. He also released one Mafiosi, who had been convicted of murder, on the grounds of ill-health. Despite being supposedly at death's door, the mobster immediately fled to Brazil with his illicit fortune and his family.

Related Topics:
Wiretapped - Narcotics

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By 1989, only 60 defendants remained behind bars, and many were not exactly doing hard-time, with several residing in prison hospitals and taking it easy whilst malingering with phantom illnesses. One convicted Mafiosi had a private hospital ward to himself and had several common (non-Mafiosi) criminals as his servants, supposedly whilst suffering from a brain tumor that, suspiciously, did not show any symptoms whatsoever.

Related Topics:
1989 - Malingering - Brain tumor

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Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino complained about these events but found it hard to be taken seriously as, so it seemed, the state's anti-Mafia crusade lost momentum and their opinions went largely unheard. One informer later said that the Mafia tolerated the Maxi Trials because they assumed those convicted would soon be quietly released once the public had lost interest, and the Mafia could continue with business as usual. It seemed, for a while, that they were correct in this assumption.

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