There is only one case of a witness's defying the code. In October 1986 Claudio Domino, the eleven-year-old son of a small-time entrepreneur responsible for cleaning the courtroom in which the maxi-trial was being held, was gunned down in Palermo. The mafia was instantly suspected of this atrocity. Two days later Giovanni Bontade—brother of the murdered boss Stefano Bontade and co-defendant along with 474 others—stood up behind the bars of one of the cages in the courtroom to make a remarkable declaration: "Signor Presidente, we want to be cleared of every suspicion.... We reject the hypothesis that such a barbaric act could be even faintly connected with us. We are men. We have children.... We want to express our sympathy to Claudio's family" (Repubblica, October 10, 1986; emphasis added). The other defendants nodded and even shouted their agreement.

XREF: Connects to the author's broader examination of the mafia's code of silence and its occasional ruptures under moral pressure.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 265