Tuesday, February 14, 2012

First Post Reports That Meredith’s Family Have Joined In The Supreme Court Appeal

Posted by Peter Quennell





Click image above for a long and impressively fast report by Andrea Vogt about the Supreme Court appeal: and Meredith’s family being a party to it.

Andrea Vogt also notes the huge mismatch between the Hellman outcome and its terms of reference which Attorney General Galati targeted in his remarks today (see post below) and which the Supreme Court, based on past performance. may not take kindly to..

First the Court of Cassation must decide whether to consider the case or not. Once under consideration, if the court agrees with prosecutors, a new appeals trial is triggered. If they disagree, the current acquittal stands.

“They [the petitioning lawyers] will seek nullification of the second instance decision on points of law,” explained Stefano Maffei, an expert on Italian criminal law. “If they are successful, the case will then return to the Court of Appeals for a further assessment of the merit of the case.”

And on the problematic Amanda Knox book:

While US media this week described Knox as having bowled over editors with her “smart, self-assured and intelligent” manner, some in Italy have been less than impressed, instead criticising her for everything from her appearance since returning home to her latest attempts to profit from Meredith Kercher’s murder.

The real question is, how much exactly will Knox reveal? Will she publish all the letters she received in prison… including those fawning pleas for first interviews? Will she describe the jealousies of fellow prisoners, which she finally overcame working for the prison dispensary?

How much will she disclose about Rocco Girlanda, the Umbrian parliamentarian who used his parliamentary right to enter the Capanne prison at any time to regularly visit her and bring her gifts? Girlanda eventually capitalised on those visits to write his own book in Italian - a cloying account of those visits in which Knox’s letters to him were reprinted after being censored and redacted.

We will be drawing attention in a later post to several hundred additional questions. 

 

Comments

A Seattle lawyer is reported as making some irrelevant claims on TV of this being double jeopardy.

Good grief. The lawyer seems to have long harbored confusions over Italian law which actually does differ from the American.

In Italy if there are appeals no verdict or sentence is considered final until the Supreme Court signs off on it.

THAT IS WRITTEN INTO THE ITALIAN CONSTITUTION.

We hope that remark sinks in in Seattle, though past precedents are not good. And by the way the appeal was submitted by Attorney General Galati who was himself an assistant prosecutor general in the Supreme Court.

Not by Prosecutor Mignini.

This constant stream of insults and wrong facts from Seattle does Knox no good at all in Italy. The place where some tact sometimes bears fruit.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 02/14/12 at 06:55 PM | #

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Where next:

Click here to return to The Top Of The Front Page

Or to next entry Typical Of Dozens Of Cool Italian Reports On Mr Galati’s Appeal - This One By Cronaca

Or to previous entry Umbria Attorney-General Galati Files 111-Page Supreme Court Appeal Against Hellmann