I gather indistinctly, that Volpi's defence was that he had not left his father's house at all on the morning of the murder, but that his attempt to prove an "alibi" was unsuccessful.

The chief object indeed of the very lengthy sentence of the court, recapitulating the evidence already stated, is to establish the comparative innocence of Starna, who, for some cause or other, seems to have been favourably regarded.

We are told, that "the confession of Starna is confirmed by a thousand proofs;" that "it is clearly shown" that Starna "in this confession did not deny his own responsibility; a fact which gives his statement the character of an incriminative and not of an exonerative confession; and that though he might possibly have wished, in his statement of the facts, to modify and extenuate his own share in the crime, yet there was no reason to suspect that he wished gratuitously to aggravate the guilt of his comrade;" and that also taking into consideration the villainous character of Volpi, it cannot be doubted, that he was the principal in the crime.

The court at Viterbo had decided that the crime of the prisoners was murder, coupled with robbery and treachery.

The Court of Appeal decides, on what seem sufficient grounds, that there is no proof of treachery, and therefore, the crime not being of so heinous a character, reduces the period of Starna's punishment from twenty to fifteen years, while it simply confirms the sentence of death on Volpi.
Again, as a matter of course, there is an appeal from this sentence to the upper court of the Supreme Tribunal, which appeal comes off after four months' delay, on the 9th of September, 1859.