Tuesday, June 04, 2019

The Italian Venue (Really) Where Knox Will Feature On A Media Panel Next Week

Posted by Peter Quennell

Really? Here? Behind those garbage skips?!

We had to laugh. This really is the main entrance to the Open Laboratory space in Modena which that northern city now makes available for happening events.

The image below shows the main interior. It looks rather prison-like, to us appropriately so.

Here is the program in Italian for the first-ever conference of the Innocence Project’s Italian arm.

Knox’s media panel is shown as being next saturday there. 

As there are no known innocents in Italian prisons, given how careful the justice process is, importing Knox was apparently the best they could do to get anyone to come.

We’ve held back posting on this up to now, as we really do want to see how Knox is received there.

But expect some posts intended to open Italian eyes to Knox in the next several days.

No word yet on whether Sollecito will be there.

Friday, May 10, 2019

Pyrrhic Victory For Knox #3: Italy Now Challenges Knox’s “No Lawyer” ECHR Award (Continued)

Posted by KrissyG

Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos, from 1 April the ECHR’s chief judge

Added June 2019: Another panel of ECHR judges has just reviewed Italy’s appeal but balked at send the minor matter to the Grande Council of all ECHR judges (which is actually reserved for cases with greater import: less than 10% of requests make it up there). So Italy gave in amicably. The Ministry’s lawyers could see how confused and misinformed the judges had become, still thinking Knox had incriminated herself and not Patrick. In sharp contrast, Dalla Vedova was a sore winner. He showed anger in front of the press having lost face in being denied the now-public E2.5 million demand. He again claimed Knox was interrogated for 54 hours, with no interpreter, blah blah. Ghirga, a real criminal lawyer, must be laughing.

Legal Context Of Italy’s Appeal

This report picks up where yesterday’s analysis concluded.

The Italian government has lodged an appeal against the ECHR ruling in January 2019 upholding that Amanda Knox’ right to a fair trial (Article 6 of the Human Rights Convention) had been breached, in that the translator had not been impartial, and that as a suspect (was she?) Knox should have been given a lawyer earlier than she had.

This update is translated from the Perugia newspaper UMBRIA 24

The ruling by which the European Court of Human Rights has argued that Italy has violated Amanda Knox’s right of defense during the investigation of the murder of Meredith Kercher is being contested before the Grande Chambre in Strasbourg.

The decision by which last January Italy had been advised to pay 10,400 euros for moral damages to the American student, definitively acquitted by the accusation of murdering her English roommate on November 1, 2017 in Via della Pergola in Perugia, is was challenged by the Italian government.

La Grande Chambre, which represents a sort of Cassation of the European Court, is composed of 17 judges. In the recent past, Silvio Berlusconi has also passed through the Grande Chambre, bringing to the judges’ attention a question concerning its reliability.

Last January, the Court recognized Italy’s violation of Knox’s right to defense during the November 6, 2007 interrogation, and also evidence confirming complaints about police during the same interrogation . Amanda had asked for two and a half million euros.

In yesterday’s post I summarized from my point of view the findings of the ECHR in the original deliberations and how they may be challenged.

Summary:  The main issues revolve around the question of admissibility.  I have identified two or three possible grounds of appeal on points of law.  They are:

• Italy submitted that date-wise, the application by Knox had been submitted too early as the hearings had not yet been finalized.  ECHR rejects this saying that the hearings finalized very shortly after.  As far as I can see, this is not so.

• The ECHR relies on comments by Hellmann Appeal Court, which was largely superseded and outranked by Chieffi Supreme Court, to argue factors of free will.

• The ECHR relies heavily on police minutes and the fact interpreter Donnino and a police office, RI, fail to record details of their expressions of familiarity with Knox, or make a note that (i) Knox was asked if she wanted a lawyer and declined, (ii) that start and end times are not recorded, and that (iii) hours are condensed into minutes. Is it an error of law to assume these police minutes represented a failure of procedure?

That’s not to say that these are the grounds Italy have set out. We don’t know those yet.

The rules for such an appeal are set out under Article 43 which states the following:

ARTICLE 43

Referral to the Grand Chamber

1. Within a period of three months from the date of the judgment of the Chamber, any party to the case may, in exceptional cases, request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber.

2. A panel of five judges of the Grand Chamber shall accept the request if the case raises a serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention or the Protocols thereto, or a serious issue of general importance.

3. If the panel accepts the request, the Grand Chamber shall decide the case by means of a judgment.

From another newspaper citing the ECHR in Strasburg:

STRASBOURG (France) - The Government has challenged in front of the Grand Chamber the decision with which the European Court in Strasbourg claimed that Italy violated Amanda Knox’s right to defense in the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher, carried out at Perugia the evening of 1 November 2007, for which she has already been definitively acquitted by the Italian justice. The action - as learned by ANSA - was notified to the American’s lawyers, Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga.

The Grand Chamber is a sort of Cassation of the European Court. “This - the lawyer Dalla Vedova explained - is a judge only of legitimacy. The Grand Chamber {Panel} will now have to rule on the admissibility of the Government’s request to transmit the case to be decided {by the Grand Chamber} of the European Court. Decision on the request has reserved. The request will move to discussion {by the Grand Chamber Panel}.”

It has to said that it is relatively rare for a case to be referred back to the Grand Chamber after the appeal is assessed for permissibility.  ECHR is predicated on case law, so I would expect Italy will be demonstrating an error of interpretation based on a previous case or cases. 

Case law generally refers to cases that have set a legal precedence.  For example, Salduz, which was to do with the rights of a person suspected of terrorist acts.

Yesterday I argued (1) that the original ECHR claim by Knox was ‘out of time’ – in this case presented too early - as internal procedure had not been exhausted - and (2) there was a too-heavy reliance on Hellmann (First Appeal Court) and Boninsegna (Knox’s second calunnia case) instead of the First Chambers of the Supreme Court (Chieffi) which overrode the Hellmann appeal.

In Judge Chieffi’s rationale Hellmann’s reasoning was largely struck down, and came in for stern criticism by Chieffi.

In effect, Dalla Vedova for his client, Knox, had resuscitated the appeal lodged with Hellmann although Judge Chieffi’s was the Res Judicata verdict. 

A principle in law is that you cannot have your case heard twice unless a higher court directs it back to the lower court.

It should be kept in mind that a referral to the ECHR Grand Chamber is statistically remote as the issue of admissibility has to be surmounted first.

Thursday, May 09, 2019

Pyrrhic Victory For Knox #2: Italy Challenges Knox’s “No Lawyer” ECHR Award

Posted by Peter Quennell

Dr Alfonso Bonafede the Italian Minister of Justice

The Breaking News

There should be more to come. This is what we know so far. Knox’s suggested award last February was simply for questions having been asked of Knox when her lawyer was not there.

But the ECHR was in fact parroting two corrupted courts (Hellman and Boninsegna) and so very clearly did not understand what other courts including the Supreme Court had already definitively found: (1) Knox specifically refused a lawyer several times; and (2) Once Knox falsely fingered Patrick no questions were asked.

The Italian Justice Ministry has just announced it is refusing for now to make the ECHR’s suggested award, and will soon be making (1) and (2) clear to the Strasbourg Court.

ECHR Strasbourg had already handed Knox numerous setbacks, in not accepting various grounds of her “appeal” although her team tried to paint the tiny suggested lawyer-related award as a win.

Knox’s biggest setback was that ECHR went along, not with her, but with the Supreme Court in refusing to find that Knox had been tortured and abused. That forever-repeated and defamatory false claim is STILL at the very heart of Knox’s book, paid presentations, and TV appearances and magazine interviews. Knox is again threatening to return to Italy to yet again repeat her defamatory claims. She might find some legal action awaiting her.

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

If You Are Going To Offshore A Fraud, Maybe It’d Be Smart To Not Pick Italy

Posted by Peter Quennell

Scarlet curve BT stock, purple curve Dow stockmarket index

When BREXIT Arrives…

The UK is going to need a few world-beating companies. Relentless prods by Italy suggest British Telecom is not one of them.

Back in the day, BT was perhaps the world’s most revered national telephone provider. It fielded teams to numerous developing countries to help with the planning and training needed to develop their national infrastructures.

BT was privatized by the British government in the mid 1980s, and if you had sold its stock around 2000 you would have done very nicely.

But since then BT has steadily headed down the tubes, and its stock now is actually worth less than on its very first day on the market.

Giving BT a hard time for several years have been the formidable fraud investigators of the Italian police.

Now a damning report has been issued by them.

Prosecutors in Milan allege that three former senior BT executives, Luis Alvarez, Richard Cameron and Corrado Sciolla, set unrealistically high business targets and were complicit in false accounting at BT Italy.

Alvarez and Cameron were respectively the former chief executive and former chief financial officer of BT Global Services, and Sciolla was the former head of continental Europe for BT. The three men, two of whom were based in London, left the company in 2017.

Allegations of fraudulent bookkeeping are part of a range of suspected wrongdoing at BT Italy. Italian prosecutors allege that a network of people at the unit exaggerated revenues, faked contract renewals and invoices and invented bogus supplier transactions to meet bonus targets and disguise the unit’s true financial performance.

The company has publicly disclosed that it uncovered a complex set of improper sales, leasing transactions and factoring at the division. Factoring is a way in which firms sell future income to financiers for cash…

Italy’s financial police found an email dated 5 August 2016, from O’Ferrall in which he says that Cameron wanted operating profit to increase by 700,000 euros and suggests to Luca Sebastiani, then CFO at BT Italy, along with other colleagues across Europe, that they capitalise labour costs as a solution.

“All, I have an urgent request from Richard to find another €700K,” O’Ferrall wrote to Sebastiani and his counterparts in Germany, Benelux, France, Spain, Hungary as well as Simon Whittle, then finance manager, reporting and consolidation, at Global Services Europe.

“Please, can you look at all opportunities and come back to Simon and me asap. Labour capitalization? Regards Brian,” says the email, whose subject line reads “Another €700K EBITDA needed in [July].”

Sad business. Italy and the UK have been special friends.

Friday, April 12, 2019

The Numerous Little Italys Throughout North America - Check These Out

Posted by Peter Quennell

Monday, April 01, 2019

Former (And Future?) Very Fine City Seattle: Good Luck In Reversing This Tough Trend

Posted by Our Main Posters

This great old-style reporting was uploaded by Seattle’s KOMO News two weeks ago.

It was mentioned to us by a loyal reader there who wants to see addressed less Knox and more this.

This video is already nearing two million views. It is one hour long.

Best of luck, all.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Italy May Block Brexit Extension, Force UK Out Of EC Altogether March 29

Posted by Peter Quennell

Sardinia will lose a lot of trade

In The News

Italy may block the extension of the UK Brexit negotiations.

That would cause the UK to crash out on 29 March. Spain, France and Belgium are also said to be taking a hard line.

In economic terms this does not seem to make much sense. Sardinia alone could see 40 million pounds of exports down the tubes.

But in international sway Italy might gain a lot. For all years previously it was the EC’s fourth economy, after Germany, UK and France.

But now that the UK is leaving, Italy can, and should, step up. It is the third largest country and economy in the EU…

It has significant voting rights in the EU institutions. It is at the centre of the immigration crisis. It has a strong military and, despite its public debt, the third largest gold reserves in the world.

It is a manufacturing powerhouse, ranking among the top 10 exporters in the world.

With the UK out, this is the time for Italy to assert itself in, and for, the EU.

In practice, this would mean demanding to be present at any meeting where France and Germany take joint decisions designed to lead Europe forward.

“...third largest gold reserves in the world”? Hmmm!

 

Friday, February 22, 2019

Watch This “I’m The Victim” Interview Of A Few Days Ago In Full Amanda Knox Mode

Posted by Peter Quennell

TV actor Jussie Smollett makes everything up, in blazing victimhood.

Today, he was arrested, for stage-managing a fake hate-crime in Chicago three weeks ago. Numerous show-biz celebrities and politicians of all parties had come out in support of him. 

Resolving what actually happened in this volatile atmosphere has occupied a dozen competent detectives full-time. How they broke the case is pretty intriguing; some new YouTubes describe the very complex cliffhanger.

If you scroll back through the hundreds of YouTubes (really) on this over three weeks you will see that, to their great credit, most of the first posters to pick up the bad vibes and cry “fake” were from the black community. 

The interviewer above is ABC’s Robin Roberts. She’s now accused of colluding with Smollett. She also colluded with Knox.

Thursday, February 07, 2019

Pyrrhic Victory For Knox #1: ECHR Complaint Seems To Leave Her Worse Off

Posted by Our Main Posters

Dalla Vedova and Knox: Tripped up by body of lies?

[Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments]

Part 1. Origin Of The ECHR Complaint

By Peter Quennell

Part 1 provides some of the context for an analysis by KrissyG in Part 2.

The ECHR has finally after six years issued an advisory to Italy to pay a small sum to Knox in damages. Grounds are (1) an investigator being too chummy at the list-building session ending 1.45am on 6 Nov 2007, and (2) Knox not having lawyer present at the Miranda-rights session ending 5.45am.

Both are weird. And way, way below what Knox had asked for early in 2013: E2.5 million in damages and a finding of actual abuse.

Remember how Knox’s ECHR appeal began. The year after their questionable release by Judge Hellman (2012) was a time of wild highs for Knox and Sollecito. They each wrote a book and set out on money-grubbing victory tours - Sollecito late 2012, Knox early 2013.

But then, in late March 2013, the Supreme Court First Chambers did a rare and surprising thing. That court did not merely quibble with aspects of Knox’s and Sollecito’s 2011 appeal outcome (normal practice), or send it back down to Judge Hellman to correct a few minor things in law. Instead it more or less wiped the slate clean.

In scathing terms, the First Chambers annulled the 2011 outcome (except for Hellman’s “guilty” calunnia ruling for Knox) and sent it off with some guidelines to a different judge (Nencini) in a different city (Florence), to run Knox’s and Sollecito’s first appeal all over again. And Judge Hellman was forcibly retired.

From then on, throughout most of 2013, in the months before the Florence appeal court convened, though feigning triumphalism, Knox and Sollecito each appeared scared out of their wits.

Knox was too frightened to even attend, despite her Italian lawyers flying to Seattle to try to drag her back (the last time they set eyes on her, nearly six years ago). She instead sent a ranting and defamatory email to the judge, which quite possibly made things worse.

For his part, a somewhat more buoyant Sollecito lingered for some months in the Dominican Republics (which had no extradition treaty with Italy) with his unsavory Canadian relatives (who he might have been hoping would bend another court or offer him a job).

But at the last moment Sollecito (with some public arm-twisting by his dad) did arrive back for the court sessions. (He soon took off again, secretly back to see his Canadian relatives seemingly to ask if they could help.)

As generally expected by followers of the damning 2009 trial, Judge Nencini’s judgment early in 2014 resulted in both Knox and Sollecito going down hard once again. Their sentences were reinstated, and now subject only to the Supreme Court giving the final nod.

It was right here, in this threatening context, that one of Knox’s lawyers, Carlo Dalla Vedova (who is not a criminal lawyer) attempted what Americans call a “Hail Mary pass”. There is no sign that Knox’s other lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, went along with him.

Dalla Vedova filed the ECHR complaint, seemingly mainly (as many other Italian lawyers have done) to fire a shot across the bows of the Supreme Court, in a bid for leniency for Knox. (Separately, Sollecito was trying other measures.)

Dalla Vedova and Knox kept the complaint document to themselves, so nobody had any chance to fact-check it and see whether the claims stood up. Knox followers shared wild fantasies about what the document requested.

The ECHR would not share it even with the Italian Ministry of Justice: seemingly an extremely poor ECHR mode, as the Ministry lawyers had no clear idea of what to defend against.

The ECHR “investigation” essentially ignored the 2009 trial report, and its participants and its documents. Many transcripts we have translated and know well seem not to have been read or understood at all.

Instead the ECHR relied heavily on three very misleading reports:

(1) the 2013 Knox complaint by Dalla Vedova, which appears to have included a number of false claims;

(2) the 2011 Judge Hellman sentencing report - despite it having zero standing after the Chieffi Supreme Court ruled;

(3) the 2016 Boninsegna report denying a second calunnia judgment against Knox for damaging claims she made against Perugia investigators. 

The ECHR seems ignorant of many fundamental facts of the case. For example it seems ignorant of the fact that Knox was flouting a Supreme Court ruling (four years previously) that Knox MUST still pay Patrick an award for damages of about $100,000.

Worse, the ECHR found that it did not matter that the Knox legal process was not yet done because, they claimed, it would be soon.  But, as a direct result of breaking its own rules, the ECHR advanced ignorant of the fact that subsequent to the Knox filing the Supreme Court in 2015 had rebuffed any ECHR findings against Italy in advance.

From the 2015 Marasca-Bruno Sentencing Report:

2.2. The request of Amanda Knox’s defense aimed at the postponing of the present trial to wait for the decision of the European Court of Justice [sic] has no merit, due to the definitive status of the guilty verdict for the crime of calunnia, now protected [locked in stone] as a partial final status against a denouncement of arbitrary and coercive treatments allegedly carried out by the investigators against the accused to the point of coercing her will and damaging her moral freedom in violation of article 188 of penal procedure code.

And also, a possible decision of the European Court in favor of Ms. Knox, in the sense of a desired recognition of non-orthodox treatment of her by investigators, could not in any way affect the final verdict, not even in the event of a possible review of the verdict, considering the slanderous accusations that the accused produced against Lumumba consequent to the asserted coercions, and confirmed by her before the Public Prosecutor during the subsequent session [ending 5:45], in a context which, institutionally, is immune from anomalous psychological pressures; and also confirmed in her memoriale, at a moment when the same accuser was alone with herself and her conscience in conditions of objective peacefulness, sheltered from environmental influence; and were even restated, after some time, during the validation of the arrest of Lumumba, before the investigating judge in charge.

And even worse! The ECHR seems ignorant of the fact that IF Knox’s complaints of abuse were credible to her lawyers they MUST convey the complaints to the authorities. In fact if they do not, they risk criminal penalties and even being disbarred (and may still do). In fact in 2008 both lawyers publicly announced to the media that Knox should stop telling so many lies and that they never said she was hit.

Without such an initiating complaint, the Republic of Italy can never be at fault. 

But on the plus side for Italy and the very minus side for Knox (1) the ECHR dismissed the Knox claims of abuse (“torture”) that might have shored up any attempt by her to get the calunnia conviction revisited; and (2) prospects for any Knox claim for damages for her 1-4 years in prison are terminally gone.

What DID Knox get out of this? A recommendation to Italy - which can take it or leave it -  for a very tiny award (based on patently wrong claims) which is in any case likely to end up in Patrick Lumumba’s hands!!

As the ECHR ruling is only advisory, Knox cannot argue about it or seek to repudiate it or seek to adjust the suggested award - but the Republic of Italy certainly can.

Part Two: Analysis Of Italy’s Legal Position

By KrissyG

Overview

The main issues revolve around the question of admissibility.  I have identified two or three possible grounds of appeal on points of law.  They are: 

(a) Italy submitted that date-wise, the application by Knox had been submitted too early as the hearings had not yet been finalized.  ECHR rejects this saying that the hearings finalized very shortly after.  As far as I can see, this is not so.

(b) The ECHR relies on comments by Hellmann Appeal Court, which was largely superseded and outranked by Chieffi Supreme Court, to argue factors of free will.

(c) The ECHR relies heavily on police minutes and the fact interpreter Donnino and a police office, RI, fail to record details of their expressions of familiarity with Knox, or make a note that (i) Knox was asked if she wanted a lawyer and declined, (ii) that start and end times are not recorded, and that (iii) hours are condensed into minutes. Is it an error of law to assume these police minutes represented a failure of procedure?

1. Application admissible?

This takes up the larger part of the ECHR deliberations.  We can see that the dates are out of time and we can see it is keen to “˜get round’ this.  The relatively minor issues of police eagerness to befriend Knox, albeit misguided and improper, has clearly outraged the ECHR.

“I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS

The subject of the dispute

108. The Court notes from the outset that the applicant’s complaints relate solely to the criminal proceedings at the end of which she was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for slanderous denunciation of DL and not to the other proceedings. of which she was the subject.

B. Failure to exhaust domestic remedies in respect of the complaints under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (a) and (c) of the Convention

109. The Government submitted that, at the time of the introduction of the application, on 24 November 2013, the applicant’s conviction for slanderous denunciation was not final and that, therefore, this part of the complaint should be declared inadmissible.

110. The Court reiterates that the exhaustion of domestic remedies is assessed, with certain exceptions, at the date of submission of the application to the Court (Baumann v. France, No. 33592/96, § 47, ECHR 2001- V (extracts)).

111. However, it also recalls that it tolerates the completion of the last level of domestic remedies shortly after the filing of the application, but before it is called upon to decide on the admissibility of the application (Zalyan et al. Armenia, Nos. 36894/04 and 3521/07, § 238, March 17, 2016, and Škorjanec v. Croatia, No. 25536/14, § 44, March 28, 2017).

112. In any event, in the present case, the Court notes that the conviction in question was confirmed by the judgment of the Court of Cassation filed on 18 June 2013, at the end of three degrees of jurisdiction, and that the reference to the Assize Court of Appeal concerned only the existence of the aggravating circumstance.
113. In view of the foregoing, the objection raised by the Government must be rejected.”

2. Application premature?

By the ECHR’s own rules, as stated above, the submission was lodged 24 Nov 2013, when all domestic channels were supposed to have been exhausted.  The calunnia conviction against Lumumba had been finalised through Chieffi & Vecchio Supreme Court 18 June 2013. 

However, the second ““ and completely separate - case of calunnia brought by the police and prosecutor did not go through Boninsegna until 14 Jan 2015, on whose motivational report Knox and the ECHR heavily rely, over a year later.

Knox was acquitted by Bonisegna, hence, there was nothing for her to appeal against.  Further, Boninsegna had nothing at all to do with the merits of the Lumumba callunia, tried in 2009 and upheld at every stage, even by the egregious Hellmann court, whose judgement was largely expunged.

Why does the ECHR rely heavily on Hellmann and Boninsegna and not the superior Supreme and final court of Chieffi?

Even curiouser, Knox and the ECHR also rely heavily on quoting Hellmann of 3 Oct 2011.  Yet Hellmann was overrided and superseded by the superior Chieffi Supreme Court, finalised 9 Sept 2013.

The ECHR quotes Hellmann at some length, when it surely should have referred to Chieffi.

As an example, the judgment, translated from French, quotes Hellman as follows:

130. The Court observes that, in its judgment of 3 October 2011, [Hellmann] the Court of Appeal also emphasized the excessive length of the interrogations, the applicant’s vulnerability and the psychological pressure suffered by her, a pressure which was likely to compromise the spontaneity of his statements, as well as his state of oppression and stress.

It considered that the applicant had, in fact, been tortured to death, resulting in an unbearable psychological situation from which, in order to extricate herself, she had made incriminating statements in respect of DL (see paragraph 85 (8) and (10) above).

Yet the Chieffi Supreme Court in spiking much of Hellman’s lower court judgment writes:

So Knox was in a position, even after an initial although long moment of bewilderment, amnesia and confusion, to regain control of herself and understand the gravity of the conduct she was adopting; at the very least, in the days immediately following her heedless initiative she could have pointed out to the investigators that she had led them in a false direction, availing herself of the support of her Defence team, given that in the meantime she had acquired the status of a suspect.

Her persistence in her criminal attitude (discovered only through her taped conversation with her mother) proves the clear divergence with behaviour that could be interpreted as an attempt at cooperation, as the Defence would have it, and does not lend itself to evaluation as a response to a state of necessity, the very existence of which depends on a condition of inevitability and thus on the non”existence of any alternatives, so that it cannot even be recognized [as existing] as [her own] erroneous hypothesis.

Neither can the exercise of any right be invoked, given that the right of [self] defence does not extend under the legal system of any constitutional state to the point of allowing one to implicate an innocent person so seriously ““ it is worth recalling that he [Lumumba] underwent a period of incarceration uniquely and exclusively on the basis of the false accusations of the defendant.

3. Application Material?

Having ruled in favour of admissibility, the ECHR ruled that as the nature of Knox’ complaints of being hit and being placed under great duress triggered at least the lowest level of a potential Article 3 complaint, that of degrading and inhuman treatment, Italy should have taken it upon itself to launch an investigation of its own initiative into the allegations made against the interpreter [Donnino] and another officer [RI].  “˜RI’ claimed to have cuddled Knox, stroked her hair and held her hands.  This, the ECHR rules, had the effect of undermining Knox’ dignity and independence of will.

It has several criticisms surrounding this behavior including the fact it is not minuted in the police notes, and nor is the start and end times of the supposed “interrogations” at 1:45am and 5:45am.

The serious issue of course though is that of being allowed a lawyer. The ECHR writes of Italy’s defense (“the Government”)

142. The Government observes that the statements made by the complainant on 6 November 2007 in the absence of a lawyer were declared unusable in relation to the offenses under investigation, namely the murder of MK and the sexual violence perpetrated at against him. However, it states that, according to the established case law of the Court of Cassation (judgments Nos. 10089 of 2005, 26460 of 2010 and 33583 of 2015), spontaneous statements made by a person under investigation in the absence of a defender can in any case, be used when they constitute, as in this case, an offense in themselves. He added that the applicant had the assistance of a lawyer when the first indications of his responsibility for the murder of Mr K appeared.

143. In addition, the Government alleged that the applicant had been sentenced for slanderous disclosure not only on the basis of the statements made on 6 November 2007, but also on the basis of “a multitude of other circumstances”, recalled in the judgment of conviction of the Assize Court of 5 December 2009 (see paragraph 80 above).

144. The complainant submits that she was not informed of her right to legal assistance during her hearings on 6 November 2007, since a defense lawyer was not appointed until 8.30 am that day, and denounces the impact of the use of this evidence on the fairness of the proceedings.

A. Admissibility

145. Noting that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention and that it does not face any other ground of inadmissibility, the Court declares it admissible.
2. Application of general principles to the facts of this case

(a) The applicability of Article 6 of the Convention
(b) 146:

147. The Court notes at the outset that the first question in this case is whether Article 6 § 1 of the Convention was applicable to the facts of the case. It recalls in that regard that, on 6 November 2007, the applicant was heard twice: at 1.45 am and 5.45 am

148. It notes that the two statements were originally collected as part of the police’s acquisition of summary information, during which time the complainant had not been formally investigated.

149. With regard to the statements taken at 1.45 am, the Court reiterates that the guarantees offered by Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 of the Convention apply to any “accused” in the autonomous sense of the term. the Convention. There is a “criminal charge” where a person is formally charged by the competent authorities or where the acts of the latter on account of the suspicions against them have a significant impact on his situation (Simeonovi, cited above). , §§ 110-111).

150. Applying this principle to the present case, the Court therefore wonders whether, at the time of the hearings, the domestic authorities had reasonable grounds to suspect that the applicant was involved in the murder of Mr K.

151. It observes in that regard that the applicant had already been heard by the police on 2, 3 and 4 November 2007 and that she had been tapped. It notes that the facts of the case also show that, on the evening of 5 November 2007, the attention of the investigators focused on the applicant (see paragraphs 12-14 above). She notes that while she went to the police station spontaneously, she was asked questions in the corridor by police officers who then continued to interrogate her in a room where she had been interrogated. subjected twice, for hours, to close interrogations.

152. In the Court’s view, even assuming that these elements are not sufficient to conclude that, at 1.45 am on 6 November 2007, the applicant could be considered to be a suspect within the meaning of its case-law, it is necessary to note that, as the Government acknowledged, when she made her 5:45 statements to the public prosecutor, the applicant had formally acquired the status of a person under indictment. The Court therefore considers that there is no doubt that, at 5.45 am at the latest, the applicant was the subject of a criminal charge within the meaning of the Convention (Ibrahim and Others, cited above, § 296).

(b) The existence of overriding reasons for the restriction of the right of access to a lawyer.

Knox and her lawyers again has a second bite of the cherry and rehashes what was surely res judicata by Chieffi:

2.1.16 “ Inconsistency and manifest lack of logic in the reasoning concerning the failure to recognize an aggravating circumstance in the aims underlying the confirmed offence of calunnia. [The Prosecutor General argues as follows:] In upholding the offence of calunnia as charged against Ms Knox, the second instance court ruled out any link with the murder. It was not explained on what basis the court had inferred that the young woman had been stressed by the interviewers and that therefore she had committed the calunnia to “free” herself from the questions of the investigators, seeing that none of the young people who were living in that house, none of Ms Kercher’s friends, and many others in the days immediately following the murder, all of whom were summoned and interrogated, had the insane idea of committing a calunnia to free themselves from the weight of the unpleasant situation.

[43] The objective facts are therefore absolutely irrefutable, as was deemed in both trials; whereas the argument adopted from a subjective point of view, according to which the young woman resorted to extreme behaviour by giving the name of Lumumba only in order to get out of a situation of mental discomfort into which she was driven by the excessive zeal and unjustifiable intemperance of the investigators, cannot be well”founded given that ““ as it was ascertained ““ the accusation of Lumumba was maintained after her first statements and re”affirmed in the letter, which was written in complete solitude and at a certain distance in time from the first uncontrolled reaction in response to an insistent request for a name by the police. 

JUDGEMENT OF THE SUPREME COURT OF CASSATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF ITALY (PRESIDED OVER BY DR SEVERO CHIEFFI) IN THE MURDER OF MEREDITH KERCHER

Translated from Italian into English by http://www.perugiamurderfile.org 9 September 2013

The whole issue of whether Knox was denied a lawyer, I am sure could be an article in its own right and I know others have strong views on this issue, therefore I shall leave it here to set out the ECHR reasoning.

My Conclusions>

So, we have a heavy reliance on the judgments of Hellmann and Bonisegna, when it seems to me, Hellmann is overrided by Chieffi who upholds Hellmann’s own final conviction anyway and Boninsegna is well past the earliest admissibility date, quite aside from not being directly involved in the Lumumba calumny at all.

Having ruled that objections by Italy can be swept aside, including that of failure to exhaust domestic avenues, the ECHR then goes on to rule on Knox’ lawyer status without proper reference to the latest and highest courts.  I can understand the argument that Italy should itself have investigated the police brutality anyway.  The rest of the reasoning seems misguided in light of what higher courts than those referred to have found. 

Sources

2103 The Supreme Court of Cassation of Italy Sentencing Report

Knox Complaint: The Full ECHR Judgment (English version soon available here.)

Friday, February 01, 2019

Migration To Quality Media Continues - Away From Bottom-Feeders Hosting Knox

Posted by Peter Quennell

Demonization Enablers

Truth-telling media such as the New York Times have seen a sizeable readership influx.

Meanwhile the tabloid bottom-feeders gasp for air. Brooklyn’s VICE Media is one of those badly hit. Staff layoffs are as the video describes.

VICE gave Knox a platform just under a year ago, to wail about demonized women.

Knox omitted to point out (and sloppy VICE failed to find out) that the barbaric Knox herself is one of the nastiest most dangerous demonizers on the planet.

VICE should never never never have espoused bigotry against any country, which of course is what it was doing in providing Knox a platform.

And the bigotry was voiced in English, against a country whose first language is Italian, and whose defamed officials have no easy way of responding.