Rome 12 Mar. (LaPresse) – A new trial before the Court of Assizes of Appeal in Rome has been ordered by the judges of the fifth criminal section of the Court of Cassation for Gabriel Natale Hjorth, the American citizen accused of stabbing to death, in July 2019 in the Prati district, Carabinieri deputy brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, who was involved with a fellow soldier, in a police operation. The judgement that has been handed down will be used to recalculate the sentence and to recognise the aggravating circumstances that had been applied in the two previous degrees of judgement. In addition to the Attorney General, the new appeal trial had also been requested by Hjorth's defence lawyers, Francesco Petrelli and Fabio Alonzi, who in their closing speech supported the defence argument that there was not even a case of complicity in the murder, due to the ‘non-existence of the complicity of Natale Hjorth in the murderous conduct’ of his compatriot Finnegan Lee Elder, considered the perpetrator of the crime. Hjorth, who received a sentence of 11 years and 4 months, is under house arrest at his grandmother's home in the town of Fregene. Elder, on the other hand, has already been definitively sentenced to 15 years and 2 months.