STA, 21 April 2021 - The Ljubljana District Court has sentenced Peter Gaspeti to 30 years in prison for killing three relatives with a knife in the area of Domžale, 15 km north of Ljubljana, last June. He got 12 years for each of the three criminal acts for a combined sentence of 30 years after the court reclassified the charges from murder to manslaughter.
The 25-year-old defendant will go to jail for killing his grandfather, grandmother and uncle, who were aged 74, 81 and 51, respectively.
He injured them with a knife to the point that they bled to death on the spot, and called the police himself.
The prosecution charged him with a triple murder carried out in a horrendous and heinous manner, demanding lifetime imprisonment.
Prosecutor Maša Podlipnik argued at previous hearings there was absolutely no alleviating circumstance for what Gaspeti had done.
Slovenia legislated lifetime imprisonment in 2008, but nobody has received such a sentence so far. This is only the second time the prosecution demanded it.
Judge Marjeta Dvornik said on Wednesday there was no doubt Gaspeti had committed the crimes, which however did not have all the elements to be classified as murders.
The court thus reclassified murder to manslaughter, which carries the highest prison sentence of 15 years.
It took into account Gaspeti's personality disorder, no criminal record, no history of violent behaviour and his doing all his school work regularly as alleviating circumstances, while the fact that he took the lives of his relatives for no reason was an aggravating circumstance.
The judge said he has no mental illness, while a personality disorder had been diagnosed, which led the court to reduce the sentence for each manslaughter from 15 to 12 years.
The court also extended Gaspeti's custody today, while the prosecution announced it will demand the criminal acts be reclassified back to murders.
His defence counsel Anže Mlinarič meanwhile claimed at previous hearings that the prosecution had failed to prove the crimes, and proposed acquittal.
The knife on which Gaspeti's biological traces were found was not compared with the wounds on the victims and the court failed to prove the motive, said Mlinarič, who will decide whether to appeal after studying the verdict.
Gaspeti had not taken the stand during the trial, having talked about what he did only with psychiatrists, so the motive for the crimes remains unclear.
The judge argued it would be good to prove the motive yet it is not vital for sentencing.
One of the psychiatrists diagnosed Gaspeti with a schizoid and partly narcissistic personality disorder, but said he had been aware of his actions.
The other diagnosed him with an unspecified psychotic disorder and mixed personality disorder, which Gaspeti cannot control, while being able to control how it manifests in relations with others.
Under Slovenian law, 30 years is the second highest possible prison sentence after life imprisonment, and has so far been handed down on several occasions.
The last time was in November 2019, when Marko Matić received it for a double murder of an older couple, who were his relatives, following a long property dispute.
