FRANCESCO AND LEONARDANTONIO HAD TWO DEFENSE LAWYERS who were the most celebrated lawyers of their day in Basilicata. Their names were Nicola Branca and Giovanni de Bonis.
When I asked how that was possible, how such poor farmers would end up with such fantastic lawyers, Professor Tataranno shrugged, took a drag from his cigarette, and said that many successful lawyers, like now, did pro bono work for those who couldn’t afford a decent attorney. Especially if it was a high-profile case.
We had given Tataranno an electronic copy of the criminal file to help us decipher what was inside. Some things I could read for myself, like the basic plot of the murder and the list of jurors and alternates who were chosen for the case.
The twelve jurors were not exactly Francesco’s peers: no farmers or day laborers, no stable hands or blacksmiths. No women, of course. Twelve men were chosen from a pool of business owners, lawyers, doctors, land surveyors, veterinarians, pharmacists, and notaries—respectable citizens from as far away as Bella, Laurenzana, Maratea, and Lavello, towns all closer to Potenza than to Bernalda. None of the men were from Bernalda, Pisticci, Matera, or Ferrandina, to avoid a conflict of interest. Their accents were different than Francesco’s, as were their customs and even some of the food they ate.
The subtle intricacies of the case I left up to Professor Tataranno. We visited him at his home in Bernalda on Via Karl Marx, which was fitting, since Tataranno had belonged to the Communist Party. His house was in the more modern part of town, his living room and dining room as neat as his memory. We sat at his long, polished dining room table and discussed what he had found.
Francesco had no property, according to the case documents. He had once been in the army, like all young men in Italy from 1865 on, but had been discharged. This was the first time he was ever arrested.
Miraldi, the bricklayer and third man involved in the crime, was not charged with murder, but with being an accomplice to the robbery. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
Two witnesses, Donato Mentessano and Bernardino Chiruzzi, testified that Camardo had attacked Francesco and Leonardantonio first, and that only after he tried to reload his shotgun did they run toward him to attack him. Francesco said that he never even hit the boy, that Camardo’s gun backfired and he hit himself in the head. When he got to him, Camardo was already on the ground, bleeding.
An autopsy revealed that Camardo died from being hit in the head with a hard object. The defense argued during the trial that Camardo was not beaten to death, as was charged, but that the gun had recoiled. Since he was so young and inexperienced, he had been holding it wrong, on his neck rather than his shoulder. When it recoiled it slipped and hit the back of his skull, the fatal blow.
Tataranno said one of his teachers taught him to shoot one of those shotguns when he was young. It was entirely plausible, he said, that if you didn’t hold it correctly you could really hurt yourself. With his cigarette still between his fingers he pretended to hold a shotgun up to his eye, lifting his right shoulder to show where the butt of the gun should be placed. With his other hand, he showed how the gun could have slipped off and hit the back of the boy’s head. “The defense’s claim was not so outrageous,” he said, sticking his bottom lip out, the imaginary gun gone, both his palms turned up, cigarette still burning.
I was skeptical. Maybe Camardo died from a combination of hitting himself in the head with his own gun and a few blows from my great-great-grandfather. Francesco wasn’t getting off the hook that easily.