Monday, October 12, 2020

Another Sollecito Fail: Court Says NO Malpractice By 20 Prosecutors & Judges

Posted by Peter Quennell



Genoa Courthouse

1. Genoa Court Smacks RS Down

Amanda Knox’s delusions of grandeur sail on, for now, but RS’s have taken a third big knock.

(1) Back in June 2017 we posted this report: “Sollecito Loses [Rome] Supreme Court Appeal Against Florence Court Ruling Refusing $0.55M Damages Claim”.

(2) And last year he and his fatuous co-writer Andrew Gumbel lost big to Dr Mignini in a Florence court for defamations in Sollecito’s book. They had to pay substantial damages and sign a document admitting they had lied in the book. 

(3) And now with Bongiorno’s and Maori’s seemingly incompetent legal help (they have yet to win in a single court that was not bent) Sollecito sued for malpractice some 20 of the prosecutors and judges in the case.

Unsurprisingly, the names of the judges in the failed 2011 first appeal and the successful 2015 Supreme Court appeal (all of whom were bent) did not appear on the list.

For these two main reasons Sollecito has lost once again:

(a) Because he (and Knox) had obstructed justice and told numerous lies to prosecutors and police in the days after Meredith’s death.

(b) Because all twenty judges and prosecutors named had diligently followed the rules and there had been no malpractice at all.

The lead judge was Pietro Spera. This was only the second case to occur under the recently enacted civil liability law.

Sollecito is reported in the Italian media as owing his lawyers nearly $1 million in fees (E660,000) though he may be able to argue that they advised him badly and took the several cases on spec.

Sollecito is said to owe his father a substantial sum, and his inherited properties are reported as being mortgaged to the hilt.

Tellingly, Knox of course has initiated only one suit of her own: the “appeal” to the European Court of Human Rights, for half a million Euros or so. 

Knox was awarded E15,000 or so, but wrongly, because her appeal was laden with lies and the hard-pressed ECHR judges in Strasbourg bought some of them.

Knox has never sued Italy for damages for wrong imprisonment. Also unsurprisingly, as that would draw attention to a fact she incessantly hides: that she is a rightly convicted felon for life.

2. First Details Of RS’s Claims

This reporting by Il Giornale is among the first. There will be a written judges’ report detailing the Sollecito team charges against the 20 and why they failed.

While the Giornale reporter Rosa Scognamiglio has done quite a good job, she is wrong to imply that Guede acted alone; that was not the final ruling of the Supreme Court.

Having been jailed while innocent, Sollecito still owes over €600,000 to his lawyers

Raffaele Sollecito, convicted and then acquitted for the murder of Meredith Kercher, still owes 660,000 euros to his defense team Bongiorno and Maori.

Four years of detention, trials and appeals were not enough to mark the end of the sentences for Raffaele Sollecito, finally acquitted by the Court of Cassation in 2015 for the murder of the English student Meredith Kercher, murdered in an apartment in Perugia on November 1st 2007 by the Ivorian Rudy Guede.

Today, 13 years after the start of the judicial ordeal that first convicted him and then cleared him of the charge of complicity in murder, the computer engineer originally from Giovinazzo (Bari) still carries the waste of the troubled procedural process. “Slag” translates into debts and outstanding payments towards his lawyers Giulia Bongiorno and Luca Maori for an amount of 636,212.23 euros.

The cause of the debt is the costs of a long legal battle in which Sollecito not only had to prove his extraneousness to the events in Perugia but also to fight for compensation for “unjust detention”.

In 2017, the Court of Appeal of Florence rejected the 37-year-old’s request for a monetary refund for the sensational judicial error that had overwhelmed him ten years earlier.

“There is an unjust detention given the acquittal of the plaintive - the judges of the third criminal section explained - but he himself contributed to causing it with his own willful or grossly negligent conduct”.

His poor conduct, wrote the magistrates, “consisted in making to the judicial police, investigators, and judges, particularly in the initial stages of the investigations, contradictory or even frankly false statements, which were also found to be such in the assessment inncluded in the confirming verdict of Cassation”.

After which failure, Sollecito tried another path, in suing the judges who convicted him. He could do this in the context of the “Vassalli law” on the civil liability of magistrates for “gross negligence and/or willful misconduct”.

His lawyers, Giulia Bongiorno and Luca Maori, had asked the Genoa court for 3.6 million euros for material and non-material damages.

The process played out in a Genoa court since, as Marco Preve explains well in an article in La Repubblica, the Ligurian capital has jurisdiction over judicial matters involving Florentine magistrates, and the Florence Court of Appeal was the one that convicted Sollecito and his ex-girlfriend Amanda Knox before the final acquittal.

Sollecito’s defense team had highlighted how the client had been found guilty and locked up in prison for “multiple misrepresentations of facts and evidence”.

Nonetheless, the court of Genoa sent the request back to the sender, arguing that ‘’ such reconstructions - although they may not be agreed with and be criticized - nevertheless demonstrate that the Florence Appeal sentenced them following a fair analysis and argued process..

The claims to the Genoa court had included this: that the psychological strains of the stormy judicial affair involving the 37-year-old are still being felt. Sollecito’s claims are attached to the documents of the Genoa court judgment.

“He will have to take drugs for the rest of his life for an anxious-depressive syndrome, difficulty concentrating, sleep disturbances, hypervigidity [this may mean hypervigilance], ease of crying, despair, low self-esteem, and extensive and extreme, behavioral isolation.”

Not to mention the costs of legal fees, E400 thousand already paid by mortgaging family properties, and the balance due to the legal team: E330,189.21 to the lawyer Bongiorno and E336,022.92 to the lawyer Maori.

In short, in addition to the damage also an insult. A very barbed joke.

As with Sollecito’s failed damages claim (see point (1) above) his team could appeal the Genoa court outcome to the Supreme Court

Good luck with that.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/12/20 at 03:43 PM in

Comments

What chutzpah. What gall. Raffaele has lost his lawsuit against 20 prosecutors and judges? Yay. He has a very insolent attitude to claim he has been treated badly when he lied and even told the police that he lied for his girlfriend. His sister was caught on tape threatening to cut off her finger to get moved out of the Carabinieri to help his case.

His dad’s big money saved his bacon and now he wants to sue for damages when he was given remarkable leniency and allowed to walk free on acquittal, despite the fact his DNA was on the victim’s torn off bra clasp. What chutzpah.

He sued out of anger, rage, resentment—much the same trio of passions that got him involved in the murder. I’m glad he got a smackdown by the court of common sense.

His money problems sound horrendous. Sadly it is an innocent man (Dr. Frank Sollecito, his father, a hardworking man who heals) who has had to pay this foolish son’s fines. Awful injustice.

Posted by Hopeful on 10/12/20 at 05:36 PM | #

Hi Hopeful

Few if any Italians ever thought that RS had a shot. It’s possible to bend some courts in favor of a perp (as we saw) thanks to the weakening of a good process by perps’ friends in parliament.

But Italy is about the last country in the world to see any bending against a perp. That makes no sense. This post spells out some of the daft assumptions the conspiracy theorists - almost all of them Americans, blatantly unfamiliar with the docs - have to make.

https://tinyurl.com/ycnw4c3a

Sollecito himself seems to have swallowed some of the American kool-aid. As we saw in his 2013 TV interviews, he really is not that bright.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/12/20 at 11:03 PM | #

Thanks for the update Pete. Great news!

Posted by Johnny Yen on 10/12/20 at 11:20 PM | #

Someone on Twitter, possibly Knox, claimed that (2) above about Sollecito losing in the Florence court (actually he was forced to settle, so blatant was the book) never happened.

Untrue. While the outcome has deliberately not been publicized yet, it sure did happen (ask Gumbel) and we expect it to be described in Dr Mignini’s book. Some relevant links:

https://tinyurl.com/y2zogj3m

https://tinyurl.com/y33wku6a

https://tinyurl.com/y5t6zt89

https://tinyurl.com/y6ggpv28

https://tinyurl.com/y4qt7yqb

Why would Knox run scared? Well, Knox’s book is far more defamatory, and the statute of limitations has another year or two to run.

Tick tick tick, Knox.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/12/20 at 11:24 PM | #

Knox was awarded damages of 10,400 euros by the ECHR. A paltry sum.

My recollection of Mignini’s action against Sollecito over his book is that the action was dismissed by consent after it became clear that Sollecito would never be in a position to pay a damages award and on the understanding that Sollecito would acknowledge that his book contained libel though when he would actually do so was not clear. In any event it does not seem that he has done so to date.

Posted by James Raper on 10/13/20 at 05:49 AM | #

Hi James.

Sollecito signed the retraction and apology when the Sollecito team caved. We should see it in Dr Mignini’s forthcoming book.

Sollecito paid costs. I am not sure where you saw the “unable to pay”? Part of the deal was that there would be no major media report - Dr Mignini was still on the Umbria Appelate beat then.

Under Dr Mignini’s terms of employment rules he was required to file the diffamazione (criminal libel, not personal libel) complaint.

The Florence prosecutor then took over and investigated the complaint.

It was open-and-shut that Dr Mignini had never offered Sollecito a deal for rolling over on Knox (“Honor Bound” refers to his claimed refusal to do that). 

Bongiorno and Maori knew that this was a major lie in Sollecito’s book and he had to use another lawyer in the Florence court.

Sollecito’s own father also confirmed under pressure on Porta a Porta that no such deal was advanced.

As we posted with Machiavelli’s great help there were numerous other diffamaziones in the book that COULD have sparked complaints, but Dr Mignini passed on all of those. He is not personally litigious at all. 

He has since retired and can speak out freely now. We should have a YouTube soon subtitled in English of the panel discussion at the University of Perugia on thursday last week.

He also appears in half a dozen other YouTubes uploaded in recent weeks.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/13/20 at 07:17 AM | #

The Giornale reporter refers to an article in La Repubblica by Marco Preve explaining how the suit came to be filed.

It may be this - first rough translation here.

https://tinyurl.com/yyxy2x22

Acquitted for the Perugia crime, Sollecito sues the judges

Marco Preve

11 April 2017

Ten years after one of the most sensational and controversial crime news cases, one of the suspects who had to spend four years in prison before being found innocent presents the bill to the judiciary: three million euros for a series of “errors and misrepresentations of the evidence “.

The last chapter of the Perugia crime is staged in Genoa. Meredith Kercher, Mez as she was nicknamed by her friends, was the 22-year-old English student who was killed with a stab in the throat on the evening of November 1, 2007 while she was in the house in Perugia where she was spending her Erasmus.

Between a series of legal reversals and heavy media pressure, only in 2015 the two main suspects, Raffaele Sollecito and the American Amanda Knox, were definitively acquitted by the Supreme Court.

Sollecito had initiated a request for compensation for unjust detention which, however, was rejected in February. No one knew that he had sued, under the new law on the civil liability of magistrates, nine public prosecutors, prosecutors general, judges of preliminary investigations and judges of the assize and assize court of appeal asking for compensation - there is talk of a figure of around three million - for having misrepresented facts, circumstances and evidence relating to the murder of Meredith Kercher.

The civil liability law provides for causes “for willful misconduct or gross negligence”.

Only for the second case is the summons of popular judges also foreseen. But the last word belongs to judge Pietro Spera to whom the case has been entrusted. It will be he, today, who will decide whether to involve in the summons also the 12 popular jurors of the Court of Assizes of Perugia and of that of the Assizes of Appeal of Florence.

That looks like a Berlusconi-era law to me.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/13/20 at 07:28 AM | #

Hi James again

This amazing OFFICIAL FINDING seems to clash with Bongiorno’s frequent incendiary claims, for example in her appeal filings and her 2015 Judge Nencini complaint.

And it clashes also with malpractice and corruption claims of the too-numerous American instant experts, who seem to have possible liability now.

Does it clash with Marasca and Bruno? And ECHR? Could any of the 20 sue Sollecito now? We put his book into Italian and there’s lots of legal fodder there.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/13/20 at 08:28 AM | #

This is great news. Raffaele Sollecito’s dreams of cynically making lots of money out of Meredith’s murder a la Amanda Knox now lie in ruins. His freedom was bought at a high cost, but he’ll be forever in debt. He has no chance of having a successful career in anything, so he’ll have to rely on his father’s pocket money to pay Giulia Bongiorno back. He might have to get a paper round. However, I’m not sure that will impress the gullible ghouls that he goes out with.

Posted by The Machine on 10/16/20 at 09:00 AM | #

Yes and speaking of “gullible”, how love blinds us. I looked into the “wrongful” conviction case that the man who founded the Frederick Douglass justice group based his Douglass organization on.

It seems there was NO wrongful conviction~ the man’s best friend who he went to law school for just to try to overturn his conviction, (adopted son who killed both parents), seems the son was very possibly GUILTY after all!!!!

Knox has recently jumped onto the board of that Douglass organization which is founded on a gullible friend. Good intentions, but zeal without knowledge. So often the case. An entire organization based on a possible major fraud.

Posted by Hopeful on 10/16/20 at 10:18 AM | #

For anyone who did not know there is a link to my book here.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/u378tglf9gpdt9x/Justice_On_Trial.pdf/file

Posted by James Raper on 10/18/20 at 04:01 PM | #

“He will have to take drugs for the rest of his life for an anxious-depressive syndrome, difficulty concentrating, sleep disturbances, hypervigidity [this may mean hypervigilance], ease of crying, despair, low self-esteem, and extensive and extreme, behavioral isolation.”

I wonder if, for once, Sollecito is telling the truth here. If so it is not a good place to be.

I suspect he has always suffered from an anxious-depressive syndrome but that this is exacerbated by the fact that there can be no hiding from his involvement in the case, whatever the final verdict. This is something the Mafia cannot put right for him.

If it was the case that his only involvement was active participation in covering for Knox then a remedy (but only a partial remedy) might be to fess up.

Posted by James Raper on 10/20/20 at 11:44 AM | #

Smart take, James. I take it we should not be giggling over his hyper vigidity?!

“If it was the case that his only involvement was active participation in covering for Knox… “

We lack a full scenario for this on TJMK but some here and especially on PMF have indeed wondered.

It could explain various things; for example what his ability to threaten Knox is caused by.

https://tinyurl.com/yaj34joh

Maybe he should threaten her for the E1.2 million?

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/21/20 at 11:40 AM | #

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