ROME (AP) — An Italian appeals court has reduced the sentences of two young American men who had been hoping for leniency after being convicted last year of murdering a Carabinieri police officer. The court on Thursday upheld the previous convictions of Finnegan Lee Elder, 22, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 21. But instead of the life sentences the lower court gave them last year, the appeals court ordered Elder to serve 24 years and Natale-Hjorth, 22 years. Carabinieri Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, 35, was hailed as a national hero after he was fatally stabbed 11 times with a knife in the street near the Rome hotel where the Americans were vacationing in July 2019.
AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia
In this photo taken on May 5, 2021, Finnegan Lee Elder and his co-defendant Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, right, listen as the verdict is read, in the trial for the slaying of an Italian plainclothes police officer in Rome in summer 2019. The defense for two young men from California convicted last year of murdering an Italian police office have begun arguments to seek leniency at their appeals trial in Rome. Finnegan Lee Elder, now 22, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, now 21, are serving life sentences in Italian prisons for the 2019 slaying. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
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