Derek Rocco Barnabei died by lethal injection in Greensville...

Derek Rocco Barnabei died by lethal injection in Greensville prison after the Supreme Court rejected the last appeals presented by the lawyers of the Italo-American convict. Hopes for a last minute stay of execution faded away during the course of a day which had increasingly gloomy prospects. The previous morning the Supreme Court had already rejected a first appeal made some time previously in light of a few irregularities during the 1995 trial. There was still the option of appealing a second time for a stay of execution, which the lawyers presented early in the day after the rejection by the Appeals Court in Richmond. The appeal focused around the miss-handling of evidence by the attorney's office. The answer form the Court arrived at six in the evening, midnight Italian time, just three hours from the time set for execution. Barnabei's legal advisors even appealed to the Governor of Virginia, James Gilmore, the only person capable of putting a halt to the execution. However, in light of the of the disagreements there had been in the previous days between the defence and the Governor's office, an act of clemency had been considered unlikely. (Sources: La Stampa, 15/09/2000)September 16, 2000: the State Department issued a statement on September 14th warning American citizens in Italy of the danger of revenge attacks due to the execution of Rocco Barnabei. The Prime Minister's under-secretary, Micheli, gave a decisive reply to the warning: "Its an act of surprising and extraordinary bad taste. We are a civilised country". The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lamberto Dini, said that Italy shouldn't blame itself, but in the future it should be more aggressive on an international level when pushing for a moratorium on executions, so as to find consensus or agree to a compromise.