New Delhi, July 16 -- GENOA - Egle Possetti was in the courtroom on Thursday as Judge Paolo Lepri began reading sentences, eight years of proceedings reduced to each name called. She had lost her sister, her two children, her brother-in-law and the family dog when the Morandi Bridge gave way on an August morning in 2018. Forty-three people died in those minutes. An Italian court told her and hundreds of others on Thursday that someone had been accountable.

The court convicted 32 of 57 defendants in the trial over the collapse of the Polcevera viaduct, the highest-profile infrastructure disaster in Italian judicial history to result in criminal sentencing. Chief Judge Lepri handed down sentences ranging from under two years to 12 years in...