An Italian appeals court has upheld the convictions of two American men for the 2019 killing of an Italian police officer in Rome during a botched drug deal, but reduced their sentences.
Lee Elder Finnegan and Gabriele Natale Hjort were convicted at new trials after an Italian high court overturned their convictions in March. After the convictions were upheld at the new trial, Finnegan was sentenced to 15 years and two months in prison and Natale Hjort was sentenced to 11 years and four months in prison and fined $863.
Finnegan and Natale Hjort were 18 and 19 years old, respectively, at the time of the murder of Carabinieri Vice-General Mario Cercello Lega on July 26, 2019.
Finnegan and Natale Hjort, friends from the San Francisco Bay area, met in Rome and arranged to meet with a small-time drug dealer to collect payment for cocaine they had not received.
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Lee Elder Finnegan, left, and Gabrielle Natale Hjorth sit before the reading of the verdict at the end of an appeals hearing on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
It turned out the drug dealer was a police informant who had called police.
The fatal confrontation occurred after two young men were confronted by two plainclothes police officers.
Rega was stabbed 11 times with a knife that was taken from Finnegan and Natale Hjorth’s hotel room.
Mario Cercello Rega, 35, was stabbed to death in Rome in the early hours of July 26, 2019.
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Rega, who had only returned from a honeymoon with his long-time girlfriend a few days earlier, was mourned as a national hero.
Lee Elder Finnegan (second from left) and Gabriel Natale Hjort (third from left) listen to the reading of the verdict in the murder of Italian Carabinieri police officer Mario Cercello Rega in Rome, Wednesday, July 3. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
In ordering a new trial, the court said it had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants, who had limited Italian language skills, understood that they were dealing with Italian police officers when they went to meet the suspected drug dealers in Rome.
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The defense has argued that the defendants did not know they were facing police when the attack occurred, an argument the defense repeated in the new trial.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
