Saronno Hospital Patient Deaths (Leonardo Cazzaniga case)

Case background and investigation

Leonardo Cazzaniga was deputy head of the emergency department at the hospital in Saronno, a town in Lombardy, northern Italy. Italian courts have found that he killed patients there by giving them large intravenous doses of morphine, anaesthetics and sedatives in quick succession. According to the news agency AGI, the practice was known among staff as the 'Cazzaniga protocol' and was applied to elderly patients with multiple illnesses.

AGI reported that the inquiry began in 2014, when an emergency department nurse, Clelia Leto, went to the Carabinieri. The investigation, called 'Angeli e Demoni' and led by the prosecutor's office in Busto Arsizio, resulted in the arrest in late November 2016 of Cazzaniga and of Laura Taroni, a nurse at the hospital with whom he was in a relationship. The initial accusations concerned four patients and Taroni's husband, Massimo Guerra, who died on June 30, 2013. Investigators later examined about fifty sets of medical records.

Cazzaniga was tried on fifteen counts of murder: twelve patients and three members of Taroni's family. On January 27, 2020, the Court of Assizes in Busto Arsizio sentenced him to life imprisonment with three years of daytime isolation, Il Fatto Quotidiano reported. He was convicted on twelve counts and acquitted on three, including the death of patient Domenico Brasca. Four doctors who had sat on an internal hospital commission that reviewed his conduct were given sentences of two years and six months for aiding and abetting. His defence argued that he had been providing palliative sedation to relieve suffering and had no intention to kill, and he told the court he was innocent.

On April 13, 2021, the Court of Assizes of Appeal in Milan upheld the life sentence, confirming ten murder convictions and acquitting him of three, according to ANSA. The same court ruled that the case against the four commission doctors was time-barred. VareseNews reported that the Court of Cassation upheld the life sentence in 2022, making final his convictions for the deaths of eight patients and two of Taroni's relatives, and sent one remaining count back for a further appeal hearing.

That count concerned Domenico Brasca, a man in his eighties from Rovello Porro who died on August 18, 2014. Cazzaniga was convicted of his murder at the new appeal hearing in Milan on June 27, 2023, and the Court of Cassation rejected the defence's appeal in March 2024, VareseNews reported.

Taroni was tried separately under a fast-track procedure. According to Il Fatto Quotidiano, she was sentenced to 30 years for her part in the deaths of her husband and her mother.