GIULIANI AND GAGGIO v. ITALY JUDGMENT 75 website with possible links to French anarchists; a public hearing should have been held to test the accuracy of that account. Finally, the applicants had had no effective remedy by which to challenge the investigating judge's decision to discontinue the proceedings, as an appeal on points of law was admissible only on grounds of nullity, which did not apply in the instant case (Article 409 § 6 of the CCP – see paragraph 151 above). 286. It also had to be borne in mind that the forensic examinations ordered by the public prosecutor had produced contradictory findings. The applicants stressed the following points: (a) according to the “Cantarella” ballistics report (5 December 2001), there was a 90% probability that the spent cartridge found inside the jeep matched M.P.'s gun, while the cartridge found near Carlo Giuliani's body was only a 10% match (see paragraph 54 above); (b) the “Manetto” ballistics report (15 January 2002) stated that the two cartridges had come from M.P.'s pistol and that the fatal shot had been fired in a downward direction, from a distance of between 110 and 140 centimetres (see paragraph 55 above); (c) the ballistics report of 26 July 2002 by a panel of experts concluded that before hitting Carlo Giuliani the bullet had collided with an object which had deflected its trajectory (see paragraphs 56-62 above); (d) according to the autopsy report, M.P. had fired downwards and the shot had not been deflected (see paragraph 50 above). 287. Furthermore, Mr Romanini should not have been appointed as an expert, owing to the fact that in September 2001 he had published an article in a specialist weapons journal in which he stated that M.P.'s conduct was to be regarded as a “clear and wholly justified defensive reaction” (see paragraph 56 above). Questions regarding Mr Romanini's impartiality had been raised by the daily newspaper Il Manifesto on 19 March 2003, that is to say, before the decision to discontinue the proceedings was taken on 5 May 2003. As the case had not progressed beyond the preliminary investigation stage, the applicants had not had an opportunity to request Mr Romanini's exclusion. The forensic examination in which he had participated had, moreover, been of great significance, as it had given rise to the intermediate object theory, which the investigating judge had accepted. 288. In any case, since the judicial authority had not acted promptly at the scene of the events and had not managed to preserve the scene, the bullets had never been recovered, with the result that no proper ballistics examination had been possible. Only two spent cartridges had been found, and it was not even certain that they were from the bullets fired by M.P. 289. With regard to the first and second sets of ballistics tests, the applicants conceded that it had been open to them in theory to request the public prosecutor to apply to the judge for the immediate production of evidence. However, as the prosecuting authorities themselves had made