Guilt, Responsibility and Madness

The trial of Violet Gibson, the woman who attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926 (see introduction), was perhaps the first process in which the politicopenal ratio analysed in the previous chapter was clearly stated. Judged by a court ad hoc, the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State, its sentence of 10 May 1927 judged her guilty. Yet she was also declared as alienated and, on this basis, sent over to England, where this evaluation was reinstated by the English experts. Commenting on this case, Enrico Ferri considered that by virtue of these measures the court had accepted his point of view against that of the public prosecutor. However, Ferri implied that this did not go without a systemic contradiction. How could an alienated person be considered guilty of something? Guilty and alienated. Just as any follower of the classical school, Ferri saw an insurmountable contradiction between the two terms of Gibson's sentence, and observed justly that a similar concept informed the treatment of responsibility in the penal code then in project. Overtly resorting to Gibson's case to pinpoint the flaws of the penal code project – as if Gibson had been tried under its aegis – Ferri quoted its article 81: