Mario Iorgulescu, retried for manslaughter and driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol and drugs, will not be examined in Italy, as his lawyers had requested.
Mario Iorgulescu is retried for killing a man in the 2019 accident. Archive photo
On Tuesday, the Bucharest Court of Appeal rejected the request of Mario Iorgulescu’s lawyers that the son of the LPF president be subjected to a medico-legal examination in Italy, in connection with the car accident caused by him in 2019, resulting in the death of a man, Agerpres informs.
At the previous term of the trial, the lawyers submitted several requests to the court, including the one that the trial be suspended and that a medico-legal examination be carried out to establish whether Mario Iorgulescu was of full mental capacity when the accident occurred . They also requested that the INML team examine Gino Iorgulescu’s son in Italy, at the clinic where he is admitted, with all travel expenses to be borne by their client.
However, the court rejected this request on Tuesday, specifying that the medical examination can be carried out on the territory of another state only in exceptional situations, i.e. if the defendant is unable to travel to Romania, as a result of his physical condition or of the fact that the judicial authorities of the foreign state do not allow him to leave the country, by instituting a privative or restrictive measure of freedom.
However, the judges reasoned, in this case there is no good reason to justify the movement of the commission from INML to Italy.
“Thus, none of the medical documents submitted to the case file show that the defendant is physically unable to travel to Romania or that such travel would endanger his health or life. The court assesses that the ailments from which the defendant shows that he suffers are not of a nature to prevent him from moving from Italy to Romania”, the Romanian magistrates justify their decision.
The judges also rejected the re-hearing of all the witnesses, as requested by the lawyers of Mario Iorgulescu, reasoning that the mentioned witnesses were heard by the trial court and the parties involved in the trial had the opportunity to ask them questions.
Regarding the request to identify the driver of the black car that made Mario Iorgulescu pull the wheel, the Bucharest Court of Appeal finds that the evidence in question is impossible to obtain, because the driver of that car could not be identified even in on the basis of the statements of the witnesses heard during the criminal investigation and the trial in the first instance, nor on the basis of the recordings of the surveillance cameras taken from the area where the accident occurred.
Regarding the revocation of preventive arrest, the Bucharest Court of Appeal established that the mandate of preventive arrest in absentia ceased by law in October 2023, so the request was rejected as having no object.
The next trial date has been set for November 8.
The trial is in the retrial phase, after Mario Iorgulescu initially received, at the first instance court (Bucharest Court), in February 2023, a sentence of 15 years and 8 months, a reduced sentence, in October 2023, by the Court of Appeal Bucharest, after 13 years and 8 months in prison.
In June 2024, a panel of the Supreme Court annulled the conviction, following the admission of an appeal in cassation (an extraordinary appeal), and the file was sent for retrial to the Bucharest Court of Appeal. In essence, the Supreme Court maintains that Mario Iorgulescu should not be tried for murder, but for manslaughter, the crime that has lower punishment limits.
We remind you that, on September 8, 2019, under the influence of alcoholic beverages and cocaine, Mario Iordănescu drove at over 140 km/h on the streets of the Capital, finally entering a car head-on, whose driver died on place.
A few days after the accident, Mario Iorgulescu was transferred by his family to Italy, on a private plane, and hospitalized in a clinic. He was not heard by prosecutors or magistrates during the criminal prosecution or the court proceedings.
