Italy's Supreme Court on Friday rejected an appeal by Williams technical director Patrick Head to be fully cleared of the manslaughter of Brazilian Formula One racing legend Ayrton Senna.
Head escaped conviction two years ago but only because too much time had elapsed since Senna crashed and died at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.
After the 2005 verdict, Head said he was unhappy that Italy's statute of limitations had not allowed him to clear his name.
Rejecting the appeal on Friday, the court said it had found no new grounds for ruling that Head was not responsible for a modification to Senna's steering column that caused the fatal crash.
It upheld an earlier assessment that the modification was "poorly designed and poorly executed" and the problem should have been foreseen.
Head was tried in 2005 along with Williams' former chief designer Adrian Newey, who was cleared because he was judged not to have been responsible for the changes to the car.
Head and Newey were originally acquitted of the indictments in 1997 along with team boss Frank Williams and three race officials.
A 1999 appeal court ruling confirmed these sentences and altered the previous verdict to remove any shadow of blame from Senna's team, attributing the driver's death to pure chance.
In 2003, however, the Supreme court overturned those rulings and ordered Head and Newey be retried
The Brazilian driver died of massive head injuries soon after the start of the San Marino Grand Prix on May 4, 1994. His Williams car shot straight off the track at the high-speed Tamburello bend, hitting a concrete wall at an estimated 220 kph.
The prosecution's charges were based on a forensic inquiry which suggested that Senna's car came off the track because his steering column snapped. This was said to have been the result of a faulty weld two weeks before the race, when the car was modified to make the driver more comfortable.
