Breakdown of La giuria ha giudicato l'uomo che aveva rubato l'arma.
l'uomo
the man (m)
avere
to have
rubare
to steal
che
who, that (relative pronoun)
giudicare
to judge
la giuria
the jury
l'arma
the weapon (f)
Questions & Answers about La giuria ha giudicato l'uomo che aveva rubato l'arma.
Why is aveva rubato used here instead of the passato prossimo ha rubato?
This sentence contains two past actions: the jury judging (ha giudicato) and the man stealing (aveva rubato). Because the stealing happened before the judging, Italian uses the trapassato prossimo (past perfect) for the earlier action. Even though this is a relative clause and not indirect speech, it uses the exact same backshifting logic you are learning: an action prior to a past event is pushed one step further back into the past.
Why do we use che for "who"? Shouldn't it be chi?
In Italian, che is the standard relative pronoun for "who", "whom", "that", or "which" whenever it refers directly back to a specific noun that was just mentioned (in this case, l'uomo). Chi translates more closely to "he who" or "the person who", and is only used when there is no specific noun being referred to (e.g., Chi ha rubato l'arma? - Who stole the weapon?).
Why doesn't giudicato change its ending to match la giuria (feminine) or l'uomo (masculine)?
When a verb forms its passato prossimo with the helping verb avere (like ha giudicato), the past participle simply ends in -o. It does not agree with the subject (la giuria). It would only agree with the direct object (l'uomo) if we had replaced the object with a direct object pronoun right before the verb (for example: lo ha giudicato -> l'ha giudicato).
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