🇮🇹 Italy → 🇺🇸 United States

The United States sought the extradition from Italy of Lee Gilley, charged in Texas with capital murder, an offence punishable by death or, alternatively, mandatory life imprisonment without parole. Although the U.S. Embassy had assured the Italian Government that the death penalty would not be imposed, the Court considered that an email from the competent prosecuting authority raised uncertainty as to whether the prosecution had definitively waived capital punishment and therefore found that the absolute level of protection required under Italian constitutional principles had not yet been established. The Court also applied the two-stage approach developed by the ECtHR in Sanchez-Sanchez v. the United Kingdom and held that, since a real risk of life imprisonment without parole had been established, further information was required on mechanisms capable of providing a genuine prospect of release or sentence review. It therefore requested supplementary information from the U.S. Department of Justice under Article XI of the Italy–U.S. Extradition Treaty, while rejecting the requested person’s application for release because of flight risk.