«Giustizia è fatta!». Il problema dell’applicazione della pena di morte nel Regno d’Italia in una delle ultime esecuzioni capitali dell’Ottocento

This paper discusses the theme of the death penalty in the Kingdom of Italy during the 19th Century. The first part of it traces a short overview of the strong parliamentary debate around the abolition of the death penalty through the proposals for a new Penal Code. In the second part, the article investigates the relationship between the judiciary and the death penalty application by presenting the story of a Calabrian brigand, Pietro Bianco, whose execution, in 1873, came as a shock for the public opinion so that Antonio Buccellati, a famous Italian jurist, used it into an essay to sustain, once and for all, the abolition of capital punishment in the Italian criminal law system.