The assessment made at the pre-trial screening hearing must take account of the concrete prospects of the evidentiary proceedings at trial. Identifying uncertainty in the evidence is therefore not, by itself, sufficient to dismiss the case.
In judgment no. 36572, filed on 16 October 2026, the Fifth Criminal Division of the Italian Court of Cassation clarified the distinction between the reasonable prospect of conviction required by Article 554-ter of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the standard applicable at the conclusion of the trial.
When alternative accounts depend on specifically identified circumstances that can usefully be examined at trial, the judge cannot treat the uncertainty in the case file as definitively unresolved. The judge must assess whether the taking of evidence could overcome it, making a conviction reasonably foreseeable.
The decisive point remains the concrete basis of this assessment: the judgment refers to specific evidentiary issues that can still be examined, without stating that every doubt requires the proceedings to continue.
