V Emanuele responsible for German death (2)

(ANSA) - Rome, August 3 - The fact that a French court acquitted Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy of homicide over the 1978 death of a young German tourist does not absolve him of responsibility, Italy's supreme Court of Cassation ruled Thursday. The court said the 'prince', the son of Italy's last king before the monarchy was deposed, has responsibility in "civil and ethical" terms for the death of Dirk Hamer. The court referred to the fact that Vittorio Emanuele admitted his guilt to a cell mate during a stint in prison in a separate corruption and prostitution case.
    In a conversation with his cellmate, which was taped by prosecutors in and published by the Italian press in 2006, Vittorio Emanuele said: "At the trial, even though I was in the wrong... I have to say I put one over on them".
    The 80-year-old prince was referring to a 1991 trial in Paris in which he was acquitted of murder charges in connection with the fatal wounding ofHamer.
    Hamer was accidentally shot twice on August 18, 1978 while he was asleep on the deck of a boat anchored off a south Corsican island.
    One of the bullets severed an artery in the 19-year-old's thigh. After four months of agony, during which he underwent 14 operations including a leg amputation, Hamer died.
    Vittorio Emanuele, whose yacht was anchored near the one on which Hamer was sleeping, was accused of shooting the youth with hunting rifle by accident during a drunken row with the passenger of another boat.
    The prince was jailed for seven weeks but then released without charge.
    In October 1989, a Corsican court indicted the prince on charges of fatal wounding and arms offenses but in November 1991, the Paris Appeals Court acquitted him of unintentional homicide, finding him guilty only of the unauthorised possession of a rifle.