Mike has a very good point about cases that could fall under CPP Art. 530.1.
In my opinion, to deliver a verdict in a reasonable way, the judge must evaluate the prosecution case and its evidence. If the evidence does not meet the standard of proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, then the judge must acquit. It doesn't matter whether the amount of reasonable doubt is small or large or overwhelming; there must be an evaluation of the evidence. This suggests to me that CPP Art. 530.2 is universally applicable, while 530.1 is redundant.
My suspicion or hypothesis is that CPP Art. 530.1 is a survivor from the inquisitorial system of justice that Italy had prior to the reforms of 1988 - 2006. The BARD concept was only introduced into Italian law starting in 1988, and was only "completely" part of law with the Italian parliament enacting a law that resulted in CPP Art. 533.1.
So CPP 530.1 is, in my hypothesis, the standard for acquittal that Italian law used during the inquisitorial system period, when a defendant was obligated to prove innocence and was otherwise considered guilty.
Without identifying the paragraph numbers specifically, in Gialuz's essay on Italian law in Gialuz, Gialuz states that in 1988, the CPP was modified for the purpose of advancing to the adversarial system of law. The exact wording of Gialuz is as follows:
My interpretation of Gialuz's statement quoted above: The new wording introduced in 1988 clearly went into CPP Article 530.2. Prior to that reform, apparently the defendant had to prove innocence by some profound measure, in accordance with the absolute wording of CPP Article 530.1, or the judge apparently could evaluate the prosecution evidence and find it insufficient. Otherwise, apparently the only verdict available was that the defendant was guilty (although perhaps some other acquittal by Article 530.1, such as the crime did not occur, might have been available).
My hypothesis is the persons in Italy of a certain age may recall that defendants prior to the complete change to the adversarial system had to prove their innocence, and therefore find verdicts of acquittal based on failure to prove guilt BARD unsatisfactory. There is certainly a large section in the Hellmann court MR devoted to a justification of the use of BARD and includes considerable legal and judicial history (CSC court decisions) relating to its adoption in Italy. The Massei court MR (annulled by the Hellmann court verdict) used probabilistic arguments or supremacy of prosecution arguments norms to reach it a verdict of guilty, an apparent survival of the inquisitorial system in the Knox - Sollecito case.
