2 American men are back in Italian court after convictions in officer slaying were thrown out

ROME (AP) — Two American men face a new trial Friday in the slaying of an Italian plainclothes police officer during a botched sting operation after Italy’s highest court threw out their convictions.

Italy’s highest Cassation Court ordered a new trial last year saying that it had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants, with limited Italian language skills, had understood that they were dealing with Italian police officers when they went to meet an alleged drug dealer.

Finnegan Lee Elder and Gabriel Natale-Hjort, who were teens at the time of the July 26, 2019 slaying of Carabinieri Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, will be present in a Rome appeals court for the new trial.

The friends from California were found guilty in the 2021 of murder and four other counts, and handed sentences of life in prison, Italy’s harshest punishment. The sentences were reduced to 24 years for Elder and 22 years for Natale-Hjorth on appeal.

Prosecutors alleged Elder, who was 19 at the time, stabbed Cerciello Rega 11 times with a knife that he brought with him on his trip to Europe and that Natale-Hjorth, then 18, helped him hide the knife in their hotel room. Natale-Hjorth testified that he grappled with Cerciello Rega’s partner and was unaware of the stabbing when he ran back to a hotel.

The two friends had arranged to meet a small-time drug dealer, who turned out to be a police informant, to recover money lost in a bad deal and return a backpack they had snatched in retaliation, when they were confronted by the officers.

Elder and Natale-Hjorth were school friends from Northern California who were meeting up for a few days in Rome, where Natale-Hjorth had family.

The murder of 35-year-old Cerciello Rega shocked Italians, who mourned him as a national hero.