A magistrate who faced power without compromise
Antonino Scopelliti was born in Campo Calabro in 1935. He entered the judiciary at just 24 years old, beginning a career that would lead him to become one of the most important prosecutors in Italy. Over the years, he worked on some of the most significant trials in Italian history, dealing with terrorism and organized crime. He represented the prosecution in major cases such as the Moro trial, the Piazza Fontana bombing, and the Rapid 904 massacre.
At the height of his career, he became Deputy Prosecutor General at the Supreme Court of Cassation, a role of enormous responsibility. In that position, he was preparing to represent the prosecution in the final phase of the Maxi Trial against Cosa Nostra — a decisive moment for the fight against the Mafia.
“The judge is therefore alone, alone with the lies he believed, the truths that escaped him, alone with the faith he often clung to like a castaway, alone with the tears of the innocent and with the arrogance of the wicked. But the good judge, in his solitude, must be free, honest, and courageous.”
— Antonino Scopelliti
On August 9, 1991, while on vacation in Calabria, he was assassinated.
As he was driving back home, two gunmen on a motorcycle intercepted his car and opened fire with shotguns. He was killed instantly. His car, out of control, crashed into a roadside embankment. Scopelliti was killed at a crucial moment: he was preparing to argue in Cassation against the appeals of the most powerful Mafia bosses convicted in the Maxi Trial. His death is believed to have been ordered through a collaboration between Cosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta.
Despite investigations and multiple trials, the full truth behind his murder has remained incomplete, marked by contradictions, acquittals, and unanswered questions.
Scopelliti represents a different kind of figure in the fight against organized crime: not a public symbol, but a magistrate working at the highest level of the judicial system, confronting power directly — and paying the ultimate pric