Italy’s highest court started deliberations Wednesday in what should be the final appeal of two U.S. citizens convicted in the stabbing death of a police officer during a plainclothes operation in Rome in the summer of 2019.
Finnegan Lee Elder, now 23, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, now 22, were convicted in May 2021 of slaying the 35-year-old officer, as well as of attempted extortion, resisting a public official and carrying an attack-style knife without just cause.
The two men, who were friends in northern California before they traveled to Italy together, initially received life sentences, Italy’s most severe penalty. An appeals court last year upheld their convictions, but reduced the