In a 9-6 decision, Italy’s Constitutional Court ruled that the statute, passed last year, violated a clause of the constitution granting all Italians equality under the law. According to a statement the court released late Wednesday, the court also ruled that Italy’s Parliament overstepped its powers by passing the law in the first place, rather than seeking a constitutional amendment.
The decision marks the second time since 2003 that the court has struck down a law protecting Berlusconi. Last year’s law, widely criticized by Italy’s fractured left-wing opposition, relieved Berlusconi of facing two cases pending against him – one for corruption and another for fraud. Â
Berlusconi Denies Charges
Berlusconi has consistently denied all the charges, saying they are the result of a left-wing plot. This week he said he would not step down. Â
“The two trials against me are false, laughable, absurd, and I will show this to Italians by going on television and I will defend myself in the courtroom and make my accusers look ridiculous and show everyone what stuff they are made of and what stuff I am made of,” he told local radio Thursday.
Italy’s statutes of limitations may be on Berlusconi’s side. The immunity law, for example, had exempted him from a Milan case in which he was accused of paying his British lawyer $600,000 to lie to another court about Berlusconi’s business deals. The lawyer, David Mills, was convicted of corruption in absentia earlier this year and sentenced to more than four years in prison. Mills’s appeal begins this week. But the statute of limitations on the case runs out in 2011, which may not be enough time for Italy’s notoriously slow court system to begin a new case against Berlusconi. Another Milan court had charged Berlusconi with tax fraud over one of his companies, Mediaset, buying film rights in the US. The statute of limitations on that case runs out in 2014, perhaps not long enough to accommodate layers of appeals.
--Beth Kampschror
