Carlo Taormina

Carlo Taormina (born 16 December 1940) is an Italian lawyer, politician, jurist, and academic who was the defence lawyer of some of the most controversial trials in modern Italian history, such as that of the Ustica affair, the Nazi Erich Priebke, the Abu Omar case, and the Cogne case. He entered politics in 1996, joining Forza Italia, the political party of Silvio Berlusconi. That same year, he ran for the Chamber of Deputies but was not elected.

Taormina was elected a deputy in 2001 but was not included among the candidates for re-election in 2006, after which he left politics. Taormina was Deputy Group Leader of Forza Italia in the Chamber of Deputies, and was briefly undersecretary of state of the Ministry of the Interior; he had to resign due to defending some mafia defendants. He also extended the law of legitimate suspicion, one of the many Berlusconi's ad personam laws, and headed several parliamentary commissions, such as the inquiry into the death of Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin. In 2009 and 2010, he was the unsuccessful candidate for The Autonomy and Italy League to the European Parliament and the Regional Council of Lazio, respectively.

After the end of his full-time political career in 2006, Taormina became one of the main commentators for the Italian sports talk programme Il processo di Biscardi. In 2008, he founded his own movement, Italy League, which ended in 2011. That same year, he became an independent politician close to Lega Nord, and since 2014 was close to the Five Star Movement (M5S), which he joined in 2016. After leaving the M5S in 2019, he founded Free Italy with New Force and former M5S militants in 2020. In 2022, he also joined South calls North, and was the party's unsuccessful candidate for that year's general election.

In addition to the individuals that he defended as a lawyer, such as a Nazi and former SS captain, mafia defendants, and neo-fascist leaders, Taormina attracted criticism and controversy during his long career, including for his comments about gay people. In 2014, he was convicted of discrimination on the job of homosexual individuals; the sentence was upheld in 2015 and 2020.

Early life and career Born in Rome on 16 December 1940, Taormina graduated in Law from La Sapienza public research university, becoming at first a lawyer and at a later time a magistrate. During his academic career, Taormina dedicated himself to teaching. In 1975, he became a professor of Procedural Law at the University of Macerata; as of 2012, he still taught Procedural Law at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Also in 1975, Taormina became the editorial director for the specialistic magazine La Giustizia Penale.

Lawyer career During his lawyer career, Taormina worked on many famous cases, including among others the Itavia Flight 870 accident, where he defended the officials accused of hiding valuable information that could have defined the causes of the incident; (Within two weeks, Taormina was successful in his appeal for Franzoni's release due to lack of sufficient evidence, before the prosecution successfully appealed to the Supreme Court of Cassation.) In 2004, he said: "After Anna Maria Franzoni, I will deal with Saddam Hussein. His sister called me from Jordan." In 2021, he said that he still believed Fronzoni was innocent.

Taormina was the private lawyer for some of the accused for Tangentopoli, such as Bettino Craxi, Giulio Andreotti, and Vincenzo Muccioli, and accused the Mani pulite judges of being justicialists rather than garantists. He was the plaintiff lawyer for the parents of the children from Rignano Flaminio, who were suspected of pedophilia and were acquitted. Moreover, he defended Mario Placanica, a Carabiniere accused of the murder of Carlo Giuliani during the Group of Eight meetings in Genoa in 2001; he was one of the lawyers of Nicola Di Girolamo during his trial for criminal conspiracy aimed at money laundering on an international level and the infraction of the electoral law with the mafia association aggravation in 2010, which ended with a plea bargain; and he defended Franco Fiorito, who was implicated in a peculation scandal involving the Regional Council of Lazio headed by Renata Polverini in September 2012, and was initially arrested as a result, before Taormina successfully appealed for his release in December 2012.

Taormina was the lawyer of Roberto Fiore and Giuliano Castellino, leaders of New Force. Ex-Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari member Luigi Aronica, Biagio Passaro (leader of the IoApro movement), and Pamela Testa were arrested for the assault on the CGIL headquarters during the No Green Pass demonstration on 9 October 2021. He said: "I am a lawyer, I have defended mafiosi, corrupt white collar workers. Mine is a profession." Also in 2023, he defended the lawyer Alessandra Demichelis, who had been suspended for 15 months by the district disciplinary council of the Order of the Lawyers due to the pics she published on Instagram. Taormina said that "the private sphere is sacred" and commented that "Cicciolina was a member of Parliament, and outside she was a pornstar; Berlusconi was Prime Minister and went bunga bunga in the evening." Taormina described the ethical rules of the bar association as "antiquated and obscurantist, a thousand miles away from social networks and the Republican Constitution", and told Corriere della Sera that "the provision of the district disciplinary council makes a generic standardized reasoning, without saying why it leads to 15 months of suspension." however, the sentence on appeal was changed to a suspended fine and damage claims were excluded in June 2025, and Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation annulled the conviction in March 2026 and remanded the case to a new appeal trial in Reggio Calabria. In July 2026, both Taormina and De Luca issued a statement arguing that the sentence had ruled that "he exercised the right to criticize an objective judicial persecution and by publicizing facts, even personal ones, of Mr. Barbaro, but real and proven." De Luca, who personally thanked Taormina, commented that he did not want to appeal his conviction but was convinced to do so by Taormina. Previously, Taormina had defended De Luca in a tax evasion case (originally also involving criminal conspiracy charges before this part of the prosecution case was dismissed by the preliminary hearing judge in July 2018), claiming in November 2017 that there was a conspiracy against his client. De Luca was ultimately acquitted in January 2022 and Taormina described De Luca as the victim of a "judicial ordeal that led him to prison several times and which always resulted in the exclusion of any responsibility". In July 2025, De Luca was awarded €1,532,83 for 13 days of unjust detention, and Taormina said that the award of damage claims to De Luca was a "veritable indictment" of the prosecution.

Into the 2020s, Taormina continued to be invited on TV shows to explain law and the Italian legal system, such as the plea bargain, and as a pundit on judicial cases where he is not involved as lawyer, such as the Garlasco case, In a 2007 interview, he lamented that football was doing everything wrong. He said that the world of football is "really strange", stating in reference to the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) that it uses its private status when convenient to invoke arbitration clauses so members "cannot sue anyone without permission".

In 2008, Taormina said as a lawyer that the actions of Juventus lawyer Cesare Zaccone, who during the Calciopoli sports proceedings in the summer of 2006 had told the judge Cesare Ruperto that relegation to Serie B was an appropriate sanction, as "very serious". Although in reality Zaccone merely meant to say that Juventus (risking Serie C relegation) did not deserve any stronger sanctions than the other clubs, all of which were eventually saved from relegation, his words and actions came to be seen as if they were a guilty admission or plea deal request. Of Zaccone and the behaviour of the club owners during the disciplinary proceedings, Taormina further stated: "If there had been a malicious act, we would have called it unfaithful patronage." In 2011, Taormina presented a denounce to Rome's Public Prosecution Office, alleging match fixing in association football. In 2014, Taormina had a diatribe with an imitator of Luciano Moggi during the radio programme La Zanzara. (During the broadcast, Taormina had said: "Everyone thinks what they think and takes responsibility for doing so, including me.) Sports justice says that Juve, in football, is not an example to follow, and they did not get to Serie B by chance. Whether you, Moggi, have anything to do with it or not does not matter to me. Indeed, I have always defended you when people talked about you, I consider you a serious and polite person." Reminding Taormina that both sports and ordinary justice deemed the leagues to be regular and that there was no match-fixing, the Moggi imitator said: "I am tired of always hearing and reading the same things that are not true, we always talk about Moggi and Juventus, but Calciopoli is an invention, there are no [criminal] conspiracies, there are no corrupt referees, and I have never fixed matches. The term thief was used and it is not okay. You think about defending your clients and Roma, instead, which is indefensible." (In 2018, Taormina criticized the unrelated conviction of former Juventus player Vincenzo Iaquinta.) Although he later sided with the ultras, Taormina had initially defended Juventus, saying: "Frankly, I think I can break a spear in favour of Juve because these are people who do not look at anyone when they act. [On strict liability] The blackmail is all there. Since in Italy personal responsibilities are very difficult to identify, then there is this thing of objective liability which is something that still spreads and governs a lot in sports, especially in football." One of the ultras Tormina defended was Umberto Toia, who had been convicted. Taormina said: "I went to see him [in prison] and he was bitter, because he had relations with Pairetto. Let's appeal to the Supreme Court and try to get him out."

Personal life Taormina is married to Celestina Del Signore. On 28 May 2009, Taormina was the victim of a €2.3 million theft (jewels and cash money) in his villa. The Supreme Court of Cassation annulled the acquittals and called for a new appeal trial.