The Court of Cassation, in matters ofComputer crimes, deemed valid the paper proof of an email, as documented by the judicial police, rather than the computer original, never collected, for the purposes of attributing criminal responsibility.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court also established that a paper copy of an email, although it cannot technically be classified as "corpus delicti," can indeed constitute proof of the existence of the same.
In a ruling at the end of August, the Supreme Court confirmed the conviction for the crime of falsification of telematic communications of which to art.617 sexies of the criminal code, against a local authority manager who had falsified a confirmation receipt during a public competition, thus leading to the exclusion of a competitor from the tender.
Article 6 of Law No. 547 of December 23, 1993, introduced Article 617-sexies of the Criminal Code, which covers "falsification, alteration, or suppression of the content of computer or telematic information," which states: "Whoever, with the aim of obtaining an advantage for himself or others or causing harm to others, falsely creates, alters, or suppresses, in whole or in part, the content, even if occasionally intercepted, of any communications relating to a computer or telematic system or between multiple systems, shall be punished, if he uses such communications or allows others to use them, with imprisonment for one to four years. The penalty is imprisonment for one to five years in the cases provided for in the fourth paragraph of Article 617-quater."
THE'’Lawyer of the appellant in the Supreme Court He had requested in vain, on the merits, an expert opinion on the computers capable of resolving the dispute regarding the discrepancy between the paper email and the electronic original, insisting repeatedly on the lack of the "corpus delicti" (which could only have been an electronic document) and on the lack of a technical inspection and expert verification of the personal computers of both the complainant and the accused, without which no certainty could have been drawn regarding the alleged electronic forgery.
In particular, the appellant had criticized the affirmation of the second instance judgment according to which since the false attestation of the reading of the email was an electronic document and therefore immaterial, it was evident that the proof could only be deduced from the paper document (i.e. the printout).
The Court of Cassation, however, endorsed the prosecution's reconstruction, while acknowledging that the paper copy could not be considered evidence of the crime and that the contested decision was "objectively improper.".
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