Un precursore cinquecentesco del garantismo penale. Argisto Giuffredi

In the sixteenth century, in Sicily, a land of large estates, peasants, and nobility, as well as deep-rooted religiosity intertwined with a rural culture steeped in a pervasive and viscous perception of the family; in short, two centuries before the Italian Enlightenment, in Palermo. Surprisingly, Argisto Giuffredi was nevertheless a precursor to Cesare Beccaria. Two centuries before the Lombard Enlightenment thinker, he hoped that judges would side with the accused, almost anticipating the institution of the presumption of innocence; he spoke out explicitly against the injustice of torture; he pleaded the case for the inadmissibility of the death penalty without exception. This man, rich in sentiment but fraught with distrustful prudence, was also the first voice in the world to speak out against torture and the death penalty," wrote Leonardo Sciascia about him.