The defence appears to have pleaded, that the original arrest was illegal, and that, by this fact, the whole trial was vitiated.

On both sides it was admitted that the prisoner was arrested without a warrant, and not in "flagrante delicto," and that therefore the arrest was, strictly speaking, illegal.
The court, however, decides, that though the prisoner was not taken in the act, yet his guilt was so manifest, that the gendarmes were justified in acting as if they had caught him perpetrating the crime, while in offences of great atrocity the police have also a discretionary power to arrest offenders, even without warrants.

Though in this particular instance the result is not much to be regretted, yet it is obvious, that the admission of such a principle, and such an interpretation of the law, gives the police unlimited power of arrest, subject to the approval of their superiors: whether right or wrong, therefore, the appeal is dismissed, and the final sentence of death pronounced.
It seems that this verdict was submitted on the 24th of May by the President of the Supreme Court to the consideration of his Holiness the Pope, who offered no objection to its execution.

The prisoner's last chance was now gone, but, with a cruel mercy, he was left to linger on for eight months more in uncertainty.

It was only on the 3rd of January, 1860, that orders were sent from Rome to Perugia, for the execution to take place there instead of at Cannara, on the 13th.