KPCR<\/a>, an Italian Court of Appeal blocked the U.S. Department of Justice\u2019s (DOJ) request to return Harris County, Texas, resident Lee Gilley to the United States. Gilley is facing capital murder charges for allegedly killing Christa Bauer, who was pregnant, in October 2024.<\/p>\nAfter Gilley was arrested and charged with Bauer\u2019s murder, he was freed after posting a $1 million bond. He then cut off his ankle monitor and used fake documents, including a forged passport with a different name, to get to Milan, Italy. He was arrested at the Milan airport. Italy, which abolished the death penalty in 1947, has refused to extradite him because he faces capital murder charges. <\/p>\n
The DOJ and Harris County District Attorney\u2019s Office argued that Texas also has the option of life without the possibility of parole and that Harris County was not pursuing the death penalty, according to court documents.<\/p>\n
However, the court did not completely rule out extradition. During a hearing held last week, the judges asked the DOJ for more guarantees that the United States would not put Gilley to death before they would allow the extradition.<\/p>\n
The judges also asked whether Gilley could be convicted of a lesser charge, whether he would be tried for one murder or two, and whether someone sentenced to life without parole has any options for release.<\/p>\n
The DOJ and Harris County have until Aug. 31 to respond to the Italian judges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Texas man facing the death penalty for allegedly killing his pregnant girlfriend and fleeing to Italy will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23086,22507,23087,23085,5,23089,23091,23092,23090,23088],"class_list":["post-34165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-courtroom","tag-defendant","tag-gavel","tag-generic","tag-italy","tag-jurors-box","tag-passaic-county","tag-paterson","tag-plaintiff","tag-scales-of-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}