2 ITALIANS GO ON TRIAL IN DEATH OF U.S. BOY.Byline: Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. Trial began Wednesday for two men accused of murdering Nicholas Green Nicholas Green was an American boy who was shot and killed in an attempted moving automobile robbery in Italy in September 29, 1994. When he died his parents asked the hospital if his organs could be donated. The lives of five very sick Italians, four of them teenagers, were saved. , the 7-year-old American boy shot in a highway robbery highway robbery n. 1. Robbery usually of travelers on or near a public road. 2. Informal The exaction of an exorbitantly high price or fee. highway robber n. in 1994. The donation of Nicholas' organs by his parents touched a chord in a country where organ donation Organ donation is the removal of the tissues of the human body from a person who has recently died, or from a living donor, for the purpose of transplanting or grafting them into other persons. rates are very low, and for a time led to an increase in organ transplants. Reginald Green, Nicholas' father, and Clark Ellis, the American consul-general in Naples, attended the opening of the trial. Green told reporters he and his wife had decided not to file a civil lawsuit against the killers. In Italy, such lawsuits for damages are often attached to criminal trials. "There is no sum of money that could give me back my son," said Green, who is expected to be called as a witness in the trial. "Whereas justice heals, vengeance just creates new problems." Nicholas' mother, Margaret, who is pregnant, came to Catanzaro but didn't attend the trial. Francesco Messiano, 22, and Michele Iannello, 27, are charged with murder, attempted murder In the criminal law, attempted murder is committed when the defendant does an act that is more than merely preparatory to the commission of the crime of murder and, at the time of these acts, the person has a specific intention to kill. and attempted robbery. The length of the sentences if the men are convicted wasn't immediately known. |
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