Cop who murdered 15-year-old faces new trial

Epaminondas Korkoneas, the cop who murdered 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos on December 6, 2008, setting off a near month of riots in Athens and several other Greek cities, will face yet another trial after the Supreme Court threw out an appeals court decision reducing his initial life sentence because of lack of criminal record up to that event.

It is the second time the high court invalidates an appeals court decision on Korkoneas. The new trial will focus on whether there are mitigating factors that would affect his sentence.

Korkoneas has been found as a beneficiary of the mitigating factors – having lived a “lawful life” – twice by the appeals court in the city of Lamia, Central Greece, in July 2019 and June 2022, receiving a 13-year-sentence. He was initially released in 2019, re-arrested in 2022 and released again the same year. In his third trial, the four jurors voted for the lesser sentence and the three judges dissented.

The night of the murder, Korkoneas and a colleague were on patrol in the Athens neighborhood of Exarchia, a gathering spot for anarchists and other leftists, when a group of youths threw objects at their patrol car, apparently without threatening to cause injury.. In the resulting confrontation, there was an apparent exchange of words between Grigoropoulos and Korkoneas, with the latter shooting the unarmed youth.