Headsup: Unsurprisingly, Knox chickens out of presenting her "proof" on 10 April of being forced to frame Patrick for Meredith's murder when actually under no stress. She's not a good liar. She could face Patrick's tiger of a lawyer and many officers she has slimed. Trial is closed to the press, like the most damning parts of the 2009 trial; a pity that. And see links here for Knox's false framing #2: Rudy Guede as sole killer.

Wednesday, July 05, 2023

Yet Further Additions To My “Justice On Trial”

Posted by James Raper



Click for current edition

Overview

The main evidence phase of Meredith’s case took eight months.

That was from early November 2007 to the end of June 2008 at which point the investigators reported to the supervising magistrate and defense that it was more-or-less complete.

Printed out, the documents in our enormously comprehensive Wiki (which even now has some some further document collection pending) would about fill an 18-wheel truck. Dr Mignini’s 2023 book adds important insights and there will be more before the end of this year.

Which is why my book continues to be a work in progress. There were, when researching the evidence, some issues that did give me pause for thought, and which I did not in fact address in earlier editions.

One of these arose from the following quote from the 5th Chambers’ Motivation.

What is certain is that no traces of blood were found on the knife. Lack of which cannot be traced to meticulous cleaning. As noted by the defence, the knife showed traces of starch, a sign of ordinary domestic use and of cleaning that was anything but meticulous. Not only this, but starch is famous as a substance with a high absorbance rate, thus it is highly likely that, in the event of a stabbing, it would have retained blood traces.

But then I thought, why can lack of blood traces not be connected to meticulous cleaning? Isn’t that, by definition, what meticulous cleaning does?  Has there been lab research on this topic?                   

Would not holding a knife blade under running water from a tap not be effective in removing all trace of fresh blood? I do not know if that would defeat TMB, but I doubt that the issue has ever been put to the test in a lab, and remember that despite 7 samples being swabbed from the knife for genetic analysis (including the handle) Sollecito’s profile was not found, although it was his knife and, according to Knox, he had prepared and cooked fresh fish on the evening that the murder took place. Whether meticulous or not only cleaning is likely to account for the absence of his DNA on the knife.

And yet, the fact that no blood traces were found is worthy of note. Does this decisively rebut, or at least cast some doubt on, any notion that the origin of 36B could be haematological, or that the knife could be the murder weapon? After all you would think so, wouldn’t you? I submit the answer is No. Appealing as it is, such an argument lacks sufficiency for a number of reasons. First of all the sample was not tested for blood (so nothing is proved one way or the other in that respect) but the origin of the sample could also have been non haematological.

But how likely is it that it was not haematological? In fact the likelihood is that it was, even if no blood traces were found elsewhere and, remember, saying that no blood traces were found is not the same as saying that there had been no blood on the knife, merely that the tests were negative, that is no blood was found when the knife was tested. Red blood cells make up 86% of the soft living cell tissue in our bodies and this remarkable fact does make it likely (if unproven) that 36B was blood, or maybe - indeed would have to involve - one of the white cells from which any DNA in blood is obtained.

I am not a forensic biologist, but it seems to me that there is another issue as well.

As for the TMB test, can we place complete reliance upon the negative result as far as the knife is concerned? This was, after all, a kitchen knife, used for normal purposes, such as cutting up vegetables and animal and fish meat. As long as there is haemaglobin then the TMB should detect it. It is a very sensitive test. There is research that shows that TMB (and luminol and phenolphthalein) both work in equal measure on human and animal blood, and fish except for a few examples such as ice fish which have no haemoglobin. The only difference between human and animal haemaglobin is that human haemoglobin produces a more intense colour reaction with the TMB test i.e if it is human the result is going to be a brighter blue.

This is, apparently, because of the greater oxygen carrying capacity of human haemoglobin. That being so, and given the function and purpose of this particular knife, then the negative TMB test can surely be regarded as somewhat remarkable. Had the knife never been used for the preparation of a meal involving fresh meat? According to Knox, it had. Even if in the unlikely event that it was not in regular use to that end it was, according to her, used to prepare fresh fish for a meal on the evening of the murder. It was analysed 6 days after it’s recovery from Sollecito’s apartment, but this passage of time, and even longer, is not of any relevance to the effectiveness of a TMB or to a luminol test.       

The above observations rather backs up what I said about the blade of the knife having been cleaned rather well. If TMB is a test with no limitations then the blade should have produced a positive result, if just for non-human blood.That the TMB test was negative does, I would submit, show it’s limitations in certain situations; it can certainly be argued that it was never going to be effective in this instance both because of the nature of the substrata i.e the smooth metal of the blade, and because the blade had been subjected to cleaning and, one can posit, meticulous cleaning at that, if it was a murder weapon.

So, certainly not decisive for me, but as to whether a lack of proven blood traces convincingly demonstrates that one needs must doubt the relevance of the DNA test on sample 36B, I leave this to your own judgement. There will certainly be those who will want to argue from the foregoing that 36B is contamination. I refer the reader to my comment immediately above where I show that touch transfer and lab contamination as an explanation for 36B are not realistic issues. In any event it is worth noting that the lack of proven blood traces, as the clinching argument against 36B, was never advanced by any court in this case. Rather it was that the DNA test, to be reliable, had to be repeated.

As to the starch issue, yes it does absorb liquids but in reality this observation seems to me to be a bit of a red herring. Remember that the starch was discovered by C&V after microscopic examination of cotton threads taken from the swab of sample H, swabbed from one side of the blade next to the hilt. Sample H had already been tested for blood and the result was negative. However, bear in mind that the wound that bled so much (no doubt when the blade was withdrawn) was 8 cms deep, in relation to a knife with a blade 17.5 cms long. That leaves a further 9.5 cms to be covered with blood. I see no reason, from what we know of the wound and the damage it caused, to assert that it would have been. Furthermore, after the strike, with the victim probably on the ground, one would hold the knife with the blade down. Same if the blade was then held under running water from the tap.

[There were also other swabs taken by C&V (though only two from the blade – E and I) which on cytological analysis appeared to have a structure similar to starch (though not as clear as in sample H) and which they attributed to starch. As part of the same cytological analysis C&V also determined that no cellular material was present in any of the samples, though without any specific biological test other than DNA quantification. One can certainly query the accuracy of their conclusions here bearing in mind that we now know that sample I (on the other side of the blade from H) certainly had DNA in it (which obviously renders the claim that “no cellular material was present” inaccurate, at least as regards sample I)]

Anyway, how do we know that the starch was there on the knife at the time of the murder? It is not improbable that having cleaned the knife it was used again for ordinary domestic use. The starch could also have got there as a consequence of the investigators handling it with latex gloves, which contain traces of the cornstarch powder commonly used with these gloves, and this had been pointed out at the Hellmann appeal.

I have, in various places, and where i can, been posting links to my book on the evidence in this case. The latest link will take you to a copy which is still not as comprehensive as i would have liked. But nevertheless here it is.

Posted by James Raper on 07/05/23 at 09:21 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etcComments here (3)

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

PM Berlusconi RIP: Attempted To Rattle Largely Impervious Justice System

Posted by Peter Quennell


Commentary

Berlusconi was last the Prime Minister of Italy from 2006 to 2011.

He worked hard throughout to tilt the Italian justice system to his advantage, but with its 100% career staff, council of magistrates, and zero political appointees, he failed to really come out ahead.

Indirectly, he was a major influence in Meredith’s case. Sollecito lawyer Bongiorno, as the powerful head of the justice committee in parliament (she controlled the police, courts and prisons budget) worked very closely with him.

For this reason Bongiorno was a fearful figure (in most democracies such conflicts of interest are forbidden) and engineered the ill-fated appointment of Judge Hellman. He whose 2011 appeal (which almost resembled a new trial) was later annulled. Bongiorno did this by leaning upon Umbria Chief Judge De Nunzio to appoint him.

Had Senior Criminal Judge Chiari not been yanked off the appeal, it would have taken only 2-3 weeks as there was almost nothing to appeal about. And Knox and Sollecito would still be locked up.

Berlusconi himself was constantly beset by his own legal problems in later years and never permanently bent the justice system. He did, however, create the template for other elected authoritarian leaders who set about trying to overthrow democracy. Sound familiar to you?

Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/13/23 at 03:09 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etcComments here (13)

Wednesday, June 07, 2023

See This UK Lawyer Exceptionally Adept At Managing And Explaining Systems

Posted by Peter Quennell


Explanation

Law is the framework, part of the rules of the game, for all higher-level systems.

Globally, regionally, nationally, and so on down. Not that most politicians are especially good at managing or designing systems, unfortunately.

In fact, many of the problems in the world happen or worsen because most politicians come from legal backgrounds. They almost invariably get zero experience or training of systems creation in their law-school or bar-exam preparation.

So it is blind leading the blind at the top of most western governments. (You knew that, right?!)

Politicians are creating law that defines systems and their frameworks amateurishly and top-down, which is muddled and often damaging. This irritates the affected populations - and thus one gets Trump-type and Boris-type situations (both fret at systems, delighting those similar.)

The English courtroom lawyer (barrister) seen here seems unusually adept at systems - Dan ShenSmith’s “Black Belt Barrister” screen-name is explained thus in his resume (taekwondo is itself a bunch of systems).

Privately, Daniel is a 6th Dan Black Belt in the Korean martial art of Taekwon-Do and POLARM Close-Quarters Combat Skills. He teaches local clubs voluntarily and on specialist combat courses for the British Army and Special Forces.

The current Prince Harry lawsuit against the Mirror newspaper group in London is also all about systems - newspaper journalist and editing systems, growing-up systems, civil-lawsuit systems, and so on - and how they matched up with the relevant past law (some of the law has changed somewhat).

Under a newish and admirable civil-law procedure (system), Prince Harry’s case against the Mirror had to be presented in the form of a witness statement in court several months ago. He claimed in court Monday to be the sole or main writer.

In his case it was 55 pages long and is highly worth reading, not least for a telling 118 mentions of his former flame Chelsy Davy.

Dan ShenSmith’s smart chat with a lawyer chum in the video at top is about the nature and claims made in Harry’s statement, and how the Mirror Group’s formidable chief barrister, King’s Counsel lawyer Andrew Green, has systematically made it look ridiculous.

He has used a number of good systems in court (not least amazing research) to portray Harry’s statement as the product of some very poor systems.

BREXIT is also an example of a failing system, meant to correct for the EC systems that BREXIT proponents falsely claimed were failing. Dan ShenSmith could be very useful on a UK team to correct that own-goal muddle.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/07/23 at 01:44 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etcComments here (4)

Friday, May 26, 2023

Madeleine McCann: Possible Evidence Against Brueckner Now To Be Analysed

Posted by Peter Quennell


Update

Possibly, just possibly, this 2007 crime might be days, weeks, or months away from being cracked.

Whatever was found, possibly a video camera and some soil, is now to be analyzed in Germany. This search was based on a tip from a credible witness whose identity has not yet been leaked. Not the first.

Exactly why such huge efforts and expenditures have been expended seems to relate to the pervasive notion that this crime might be part of a bigger whole, though Brueckner all by himself, serving time in Germany, is a proven one-man crime-wave.

Also that the Portuguese police (who essentially shrugged and blamed the McCanns; media that parroted that were successfully sued) might have got it wrong, causing British and then German police to swing into the act.

Massive resources were thrown into the gathering of massive evidence after Meredith’s murder too; it continued full-speed for eight months. Foreign media have consistently under-reported that. Dr Mignini’s book rubs this in.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/26/23 at 06:39 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etcComments here (1)

Monday, May 22, 2023

Madeleine McCann: German Prosecution To Search Portuguese Reservoir On Tuesday

Posted by Peter Quennell


Update

Our fifth post on the missing Madeleine. Of special interest here for this reason.

The Machine did our two most recent posts on the Germain suspect Brueckner, from which the search of the Barragem do Arade reservoir near where he lived, 30 miles/50 kilometers from the McCann’s hotel, fairly directly flows.

Click for Post:  Being Careful & Precise About The New Standing Of The Madeleine McCann Case

Click for Post:  Hanover-Area Search: Possible Major Advance In Germany’s McCann-Brueckner Investigation

Why the reservoir? We don’t see a reported reason yet. For more on Brueckner and his long rampage in Portugal, here is a good further update. He is known to have been close to where Madeleine was on the night.

The Portuguese cops are assisting, though they have been at times doubtful. Presumably news will spread fast if the cops find anything and we’ll post that.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/22/23 at 12:40 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etcComments here (2)

Thursday, March 16, 2023

Solitary Confinement Rate In US Prisons Many Times The Global Average

Posted by Peter Quennell


Overview

The US has four percent of the world’s population - and over 20% of all prisoners in the world.

Right now it has locked up 664 per hundred thousand. The closest any other western country comes is 129 in the UK. The rate in Italy is 89. 

While this is finally being pushed down a bit, not least for cost, the total in solitary confinement in recent years has gone spiraling through the roof. Over 80,000 right now.

Any prison superintendent can order it; in almost all other countries it requires the Minister of Justice (as in Italy) or at minimum some senior judge. 

A couple of cases we’ve paid attention to are now shaking up public awareness of this.

  • One was Alex Murdaugh in South Carolina, just convicted of killing his wife and son, who might “for his own protection” be in solitary for the rest of his life.

  • The other is Bryan Kohberger in Idaho, suspected killer of four students now awaiting trial, who “for his own protection” probably faces the same.

Solitary in the US not only means zero interaction with any other human being. It also means no TV, no books, and lights on at all times.

As the BBC video explains, American prisoners might face staring at the walls for 30-40 years, and a complete mental breakdown more likely than not.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/16/23 at 01:41 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etcComments here (12)

Monday, March 06, 2023

Cellphones May Have Boosted Justice More Than Anything In History

Posted by Peter Quennell

Drone footage of the scene of the crime

Overview

At the Knox & Sollecito trial in 2009, the cellphone evidence may well have been a game-changer for the unanimous jury.

There was a ton of it and it remorselessly demonstrated who was doing what and when despite the defense’s contrary claims. Hence all the smoke blown over the DNA.

With techniques and capacities forever gaining ground, professionals say cellphones are dissuading or putting away a lot more criminals than DNA has ever done.

Kohberger, the Washington State doctoral student charged with killing four Idaho students, has found his telling cellphone movements plotted sufficiently to fill a small book. 

A high-profile American trial has just concluded, that of prominent South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh, convicted of killing his wife and one son. He was handed two life sentences without parole to be served end-to-end. 

Whereupon three jurors have explained on national TV that above all it was Murdaugh’s voice on a video on his murdered son’s cellphone, evidence late in coming because the Apple phone had to be cracked, that proved he was there at the scene of the crime at the precise time.

Murdaugh really floundered on the stand trying to explain this one.

His own cellphone call to 911 in the video above also reeked of false claims. Scroll down here for some excellent YouTube comments.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 03/06/23 at 05:45 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etcComments here (2)

Saturday, January 28, 2023

Dr Mignini’s Book #3 On How Most Non-Italian Media & Reporters Misrepresented The Case

Posted by KrissyG



Our 2020 assessment: max 1/3 of media played it fully straight

Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments.


1. Xenophobic Stereotypes

Quite early on in the book it becomes apparent that Dr Mignini had a big problem with the press almost from the moment when the body of the victim was discovered.

He singles out specifically the ‘typical’ and ‘atypical’ media organisations of the United States, noting they were mostly unaware of the procedural documents and the protocols of the Interior Ministry experts, and taking ‘zero correct aim’ pot-shots at the Scientific Police of the Central Anti-Crime Directorate.

Why did they do this?  Mignini believes in part:

Because of a petty nationalistic prejudice and to defend, therefore, the American from Seattle was considered a victim of a legal system and of a “medieval” investigator, who would be me, as well as of a city obsessed, according to them, with witches, which were however not in Salem in Massachusetts, but… in Perugia’.  P 36

Mignini names “in particular the journalist Nina Burleigh” the author of The Fatal Gift of Beauty, an absurd book with pseudo-intellectual pontification about the mysteries of Perugia, weaving a fugue of some kind of mysticism that permeated the crime, with Knox the unlikely victim of some latter-day witch hunt, whom Mignini accuses of projection, noting that unlike Perugia, with ‘just one sentenced for witchcraft, a nearby area to Burleigh in Salem, USA, had many. (p 37). 

Judy Bacharach was another xenophobic stereotyper.

Among the many American newspapers (and even some British ones) that fell into this unforgivable mistake, I was unfavorably impressed by Vanity Fair and a journalist, a certain Judy Bachrach, who barely concealed the antipathy she felt for me, widely reciprocated. The same thing must be said about Nina Burleigh, whom I have already spoken about, author of a book on the Amanda case, full of mistakes and false stereotypes. p. 44


2. Downplaying Of Knox Felony

A major irritation for Mignini is the way the misguidedly patriotic US press and also the normally ‘quality’ UK left wing papers such as the Guardian and Independent played down Knox’s role in accusing her boss Patrick Lumumba of murder whom she knew was wholly innocent.

Far from seeing it as a serious crime (the UK equivalent of ‘Perverting the Course of Justice’, which attracts jail terms of between three to six years, or the US Federal equivalent of ‘Obstruction of Justice’ [knowingly misleading a federal police investigation] with a similar sentencing recommendation), it was instead misreported by these papers as some kind of normal reaction to stress, wherein you just name any innocent person of a heinous crime, as one does, or the well-known US custom of blaming the nearest Black man.  A pervasive problem is that the overseas press are not under any jurisdiction of Italy to correct this.

That’s another one of the nonsenses I’ve come across. Among other things, the “stars-and-stripe” journalists and even some British journalists (of “hostile” newspapers, I do not know why, like The Guardian or The Independent, tended to minimize “criminal slander”, equating it to a “defamation”, while this crime is, for us, a crime against the administration of Justice, a kind of “obstacle to justice”,something much more serious in the ordinances of civil law. P52


3. Fabricators Form Teams

Then there were the stories that were outright fabricated, such as the claim that Mignini was actually present when Knox first made her outrageous accusation against Lumumba: that he had gone to Meredith’s room and raped and killed her, whilst Knox cowered in the living quarters, hands over her ears from the harrowing scream and thud.  The implication being that the innocent Knox was coerced into making her calumny.

Abroad and especially in the United States, the public would not have understood the slants and even vicious bad faith of certain expressions of information (television or print) or, worse still, “innocentist” blogs and forums which have continued to claim that I was present when Amanda first uttered the name of Lumumba… There is evidently no deafness worse than those who do not want to hear. P 60

So what is the truth about the conviction for Calunnia, for which Knox was sentenced to three years and remains a conviction?  As far as Mignini is concerned, Knox openly lies in her book Waiting to be Heard.

Then, in the midst of the legal process, Amanda wrote a book containing a serious and conscious distortion of the facts; however her final conviction for Calunnia now precludes any possibility of repeating her version, that she had named Patrick because it was suggested to her by the police to escape the intolerable pressure to which she claimed to have been subjected.
[…]
Amanda, and only she, is definitively guilty of calunnia to the detriment of Lumumba, and this crime was committed by her and only by her without any external pressure being invoked. Amanda had thus unprovoked accused Lumumba, and I remember perfectly that she made out to be seriously afraid of Patrick and in need of police protection.  p61

Then there is best-selling pulp fiction novelist Doug Preston, who liked to purvey a false narrative that a somehow corrupt Mignini as prosecutor in the Monster of Florence case had forced him to flee Italy, as an abortive attempt by Preston to ally with Spezi to solve the crime themselves, causing conflict with the official investigation.

A perfect chance of revenge for the perceived slight then, for Preston was to become a leading and influential campaigner against Knox’s charges from the legal safety of the United States.

Another such fabricating campaigner was Seattle lawyer Anne Bremner, and yet another, one Paul Ciolino of CBS, whom Mignini paints as a comedy character.

The “lobbying” vehicle of the compaigners began to invest in and airbrush one of the College of Jesuits in Seattle [former judge Heavey] and one of them phoned the fabricator Douglas Preston to inform him that the PM who had had Amanda arrested was the same who had investigated him. Then the fabricating lawyer Anne Bremner launched “moralising” lectures at Italian jurists like me (and who would end up pathetically in a cell for driving while drunk).

Soon joined in were the investigators Joe Tacopina (a character who surfaced to take on the defense of Amanda and was then dropped) and Paul Ciolino, a kind of clone of the long-gone American comic actor Lou Costello.

[…]  In the end, this group conquered the US media, even the New York Times.  Then the powerful lobby crossed the Atlantic, and conquered British newspapers in the “lefty” area (I don’t know why) and those seemingly neutral such as The Independent, with its strange correspondent from Rome, the ineffable Peter Popham, italophobic like few others, a writer of poor quality, plagued by all kinds of “tics” as I could see for myself in the talks I had with him.” p 68


4. Contrasting Media Teams

Before Mignini knew it, there was an entire orchestra of journalists, self-styled ‘freelancers, such as Frank Sforza, and someone Mignini refers to as a ‘neojournalist’, Candice Dempsey. Also Michelle Moore, the ‘perennially exaggerating’ wife of a former FBI agent Steve Moore, who would be in court in 2011 and later accompany Knox from Capanne Prison back to Seattle.

When the trial of Knox and Sollecito began before Judge Giancarlo Massei on 16 January 2009, Mignini was confronted by a whole cacophony of the clamouring press.  With characteristic wit and pith, Mignini describes them as thus:

There, I met envoys from various news agencies and television broadcasters, especially American ones, such as CBS, ABC, NBC, the Associated Press, and CNN And also from other media outlets such as those for the fine Barbie Nadeau, Andrea Vogt, Ann Wise, Sabina Castelfranco, Phoebe Nathanson and others.

I also remember the fine Britons, Tom Kington of The Guardian, Nick Squires of The Telegraph, Nick Pisa of Sky News, and John Follain of The Times, as well as a very nice older journalist, Richard Owen of The Times.

More praise for the good.

Above all, amongst the Anglo-Saxon journalists who are objective and balanced towards the work of the investigators, I recall especially four or five:

There was Barbie Nadeau of Newsweek, also American, originally from South Dakota, an attentive observer of the legal process whose services I appreciated, and was inspired also by her
rigorous impartiality. […]

Paul Russell, British television producer, distinguished by his seriousness and scrupulous information gathering and a great integrity of character, as well as a characteristic and funny British humour.
[…]
I remember John Follain, correspondent of The London Times, with whom I had a mutual “feeling” and who established a friendship with both me and Manuela Comodi’


5. Bizarre Media Parasites

Attaching himself to these journalists was a strange character, completely uninformed in procedural matters but who managed to credit himself as a kind of freelance, self-styled “persecuted” by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and in particular by me: Frank Sfarzo (pseudonym of Francesco Sforza), an individual with dark and thin hair, almost Maghrebi-looking, who lived with his mother, and also apparently his sister with whom he was on anything but on good terms, in an apartment on Via Fonti Coperte.

I do not know what he did in life, probably nothing until he was “transmogrified” on the “way to Damascus” by Amanda Knox, whose innocence he “married” immediately and tenaciously, without knowing anything about the trial.” p127

In Sfarzo’s context Mignini describes the amateur Seattle blogger Candice Dempsey, of Calabrian ancestry (who we spotted stalking the Kerchers) as looking at him ‘with eyes full of hate’, and ‘always close to Sfarzo’

Finally, a strange British gentleman, a certain David Anderson, who was probably even closer to verbal intemperances than the last two, which says it all. I believe he was a “psychologist” and lived with his wife in a villa near Todi.

An Englishman “enlisted” in the pro-Amanda lobby who was a “goofball”. He seemed totally incapable of a serene and balanced attitude, and did not tolerate opinions contrary to his own. One day I saw him lashing out at my colleague screaming outraged and incomprehensible expressions… with me he was probably holding back because he was afraid that I would react and have him arrested. After all, wasn’t I, for them, the “Chief Prosecutor” and Manuela my “Assistant”?

Mignini praises Nadeau, Penny Ganong and Andrea Vogt in their scepticism towards the efforts of Greg Hampikian to blind with science, so to speak, and as described by Mignini,

‘He was historically the first “American” defense adviser’ [operating from outside of Italy’s jurisdiction].

TJMK is name-checked in Mignini’s spotlighting a particular misinformation campaign:

In a much later era, in 2014, Prof. Halkides was responsible for a serious defamation campaign against Dr. Stefanoni, revealing a particularly virulent character, conducted together with another biologist named Tom Zupancic.
[…]
True Justice for Meredith Kercher has always tried to fight these falsehoods [of the formers’ falsely claimed procedural fraud by Dr Stefanoni] and focus on the undisputed points of the story. The virulent content of the campaign can be assessed at [various websites]. p 155

(A full discussion of Halkide’s and Zupancic’s scurrilous claims are set out in the book, which doesn’t concern the topic of the book review post here.)

6. Two Of The Very Worst

More sinister, taking place as it did in Italy, ahead of the outcome of Pratillo Hellmann’s appeal court hearing brought by the defence, was a revelation to Mignini by a UK journalist, Bob Graham, in an interview, that he, Bob Graham, had been privy to the content of Conti and Vecchiotti before it even became public before the court. 

“I had informed my colleagues of this extremely serious fact which revealed, at the very least, a serious indiscretion made by persons legally bound by professional secrecy, such as experts or perhaps their staff, in favor of the accused. I realized that Graham had misled me and, in doing so, had recorded his imprudent statements and handed it over to the lawyers. […]
It is unsurprising that this cassette would then disappear from the chronicles because, I believe, the “pro-defendants” community immediately realized that those words that Bob Graham had uttered and released were a boomerang that could have backfired heavily against the experts and the defenders themselves, and probably shake the outcome of the appeal process; however,the very serious and far too eloquent fact remains of a journalist who was aware of the content of the expert report when it had yet to be disseminated.” P 197

Yet the journalistic nightmare for Mignini and the prosecuting team does not stop here.  Mignini talks of the bias of a CNN reporter.

He perfectly embodied a central and paralyzing defect of American psychology, the narcissistic type, and he could not hide the hostility he felt for me. I should have known that he had been “catechized” by a familiar character, the “yellow-lister” Douglas Preston
[…]
The “blend” was explosive. The interviewer was a “belligerent” journalist who made me think of a “shark”. His name was Drew Griffin. His smile, in which he exhibited his dentition, was not a smile, it was an artifact. I don’t think he could smile spontaneously. He looked like a fake, artificial, plastic character, and like all Americans, he would always pose, theatrically, when he had to present himself as an American in front of a foreigner, especially a European and an Italian.”  P 199 (Written before Griffin passed away recently.)

Then there was CBS’s Peter Van Sant:

“There was also a journalist and commentator from Seattle, CBS, Peter Van Sant, distinguished for a furious and irresponsible campaign against Italian Justice in recent months, which culminated in his bizarre hope that the 82nd Airborne Division (that of the failed airborne raid of September 8, 1943 over Rome and the landing at Salerno) would free Amanda from prison in Perugia “ p237

It is simply astonishing the extent Mignini reveals how the defence – and proxy defences in the USA -conspired and collaborated with Conti and Vecchiotti to release an unknown woman from Seattle, whom noone had ever met, all on the strength of grievances, money-making and xenophobia held by third parties that had nothing at all to do with the Kercher murder case.

“ The only culprit was, for the press, not the American nor the Italian, but the “black” Rudi Hermann Guede, who could not benefit anyone who defended him.” P 251


7. Finally, Note This Irony

The irony is, in the Fifth Chamber’s motivation report in annulling the sentences of Knox and Sollecito, ‘interference by the press’ is cited as one of the factors leading to the reversal of the 2014 Nencini verdict.

Posted by KrissyG on 01/28/23 at 04:55 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etcComments here (16)

Saturday, January 14, 2023

The District With By Far The Highest GDP In Europe? It’s In Italy. In Milan.

Posted by Peter Quennell


Context

A 15-minute walking tour of Porta Nuova in Milan.

This is the richest single district within any city in the European Union. With a GDP of over 400 billion euro, and the City of London no longer in the club, no other single district in any city in Europe comes close

It is also right now the most sustainable neighborhood in the entire world.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/14/23 at 02:32 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etcComments here (3)

Thursday, December 29, 2022

Dr Mignini’s Book On How The Supreme Court Got Meredith’s Case So Wrong In 2015

Posted by KrissyG




1. The Fifth Chambers Reports

Dr Mignini’s legal observations on the Fifth Chambers’ written report on Knox’s & Sollecito’s final appeal fill a big information gap in this controversial legal area.

He had already written very damningly back in 2015 shortly after the Marasca court presented its oral report back in March.

That was some months prior to the written report (which was published almost three months after the official deadline). This is his first written comment on the full report. 

2. The Contamination Contention

With Meredith’s body having been discovered, the pathologist Dr. Lalli, and the Scientific Police, headed by Dr Stefanoni, arrives.

Dr Mignini, the prosecutor leading the investigation, deems that it more important to preserve on-scene evidence at this point than to determine exact time of death, so priority is given to collecting samples with the body still in situ.  Mignini states:

“I did not know, at that time, that, for the judges of the [2011] Perugia appeal and the [2015] Fifth Chamber of Cassation, the one that intervened after the final annulment of the judgment of the Perugia Appeals Court and the judgment of the [2014] Florentine referring court, as well as for the official defense counsel and for those “unofficial” intervenors such as Peter Gill and others, the abstract possibility of contamination and the reality of contamination could be the same thing.

That is absurd, I know, but that was exactly what was being been said.  p.34”

After the 2009 trial of Knox and Sollecito, with the Massei finding a ‘guilty’ verdict, the 2011 appeal court, called-for by the defendants, of Hellmann & Zanetti, appoints its own ‘experts’, Vecchiotti and Conti. They argue that contamination is an abstract possibility, but fail to explain how such contamination could have occurred, as would be expected in a trial court.

This is on top of Zanetti opening proceedings in 2011 by asserting that ‘the only certainty is the death of Meredith Kercher’, and not least, by Hellman failing to explain his rationale – as excoriated in 2014 by the follow-up Supreme Court I of Chieffi – of why Hellmann had appointed his own experts, as is required.

The scientific illiteracy of Hellmann (a business judge) was compounded only by his ignorance of criminal law and of how criminal evidence should be weighed up.

In getting Hellmann to agree to the defence demand for ‘independent experts’ – which Prosecutor Comodi argued against, saying there were many experts for both sides already - Hellmann argues that a judge does not have sufficient expertise to evaluate the experts’ opinions.

Having achieved the appointment of Conti & Vecchiotti, the paired delivered the coup de grace: international standards were not met, contamination could not be ruled out and the DNA profile of Meredith Kercher on the knife could not be reliable.

This faulty reasoning was reversed by the 2014 Chieffi Supreme Court (Chamber I). And yet the final Marasca-Bruno Court returns to it, notwithstanding the intervening Nencini Court (with Prosecutor Crini) upholding Massei’s and thus Stefanoni’s treatment of scientific evidence as legally sound. 

3. The Sample Size Contention

As Dr Mignini explains.

“Marasca of the Fifth Chamber seems not to understand the difference between ‘identity’ and ‘compatibility’ (the latter is a statistical standard which should be used in court), demanding the former and rejecting Novelli’s, to the astonishment of Stefanoni.

Likewise, claiming that the Kercher sample size on the knife was too small showed him seemingly unaware of the penal code: ‘unrepeatable findings’ is provided for in Article 103 EC. 360 cp, similar to rules for the autopsy inspection. p 279

If, on the other hand, the finding must be reproducible, as the Fifth Chamber claims, then I could have carried it out without any contradiction, in accordance with Article 108 EC 359 CPP.

The Italian Criminal Code CPP 360 allows for an otherwise minute sample size to be tested once, on the grounds that the testing itself will destroy the sample – as often happens in an autopsy, for example - with the proviso that the defense must be allowed to send its own experts to witness the testing event.

Sollecito’s witness was Valter Patumi, with Francesca Torricelli for the Kercher family. There was no Knox witness there.

Article 360 “Non-repeatable technical ascertainment

1. If the ascertainment provided for in Article 359 involves persons, objects or places which are subject to change, the Public Prosecutor shall inform, without delay, the suspect, the victim and the lawyers of the day, time and place set for the assignment of the non-repeatable technical ascertainment and of the right to appoint technical consultants.”  Cpp 360 Italian-Code-of-Criminal-Procedure-CanestriniLex

Clearly, Hellmann and Marasca-Bruno, along with Vecchiotti and Conti, do not know their own criminal code when they complain the sample was ‘too small’ or ‘unrepeatable’. Mignini says:

“if it were true that the genetic test must be repeatable but it is quite clear that it is not, if only because, regardless of its quantity, there is a risk that, pending any judgment, the genetic material will be altered.

That is precisely why the Code provides for a non-repetitive finding and the Court cannot claim that, in accordance with highly questionable scientific considerations, a procedural rule provided for by the law can be eliminated.”



Ex Judge Marasca

4. The Typographical Error Contention

Mignini’s frustrations are compounded by Marasca-Bruno’s inability to spot a simple typographical error.

In typing up its late-2014 motivational report, Nencini’s Appeal Court upholding the guilty verdicts inadvertently attributes a Y-chromosome (obviously male) to a female.

Such a proof-reading error requires a simple correction, an appeal is not necessary.  However, Marasca choose to create a big scandal out of it:

“There are even obvious material errors, i.e. oversights, which can frequently be found in an elaborate report, such as the attribution to Sollecito as well as Meredith, of genetic traces in the famous knife referred to in the finding n. 36 contained in the Florentine judgment.

It is clear that the author of this crime report inadvertently wrote “Sollecito” instead of “Knox”. It was a simple clerical error, but the Fifth Chambers, in an attempt to dramatize the negativity of the sentence of Judge Nencini, presented it as one of several flagrant errors in the “motivational fabric”. p 280

5. The International Protocols Contention

Mignini makes similar criticisms about Marasca’s treatment of so-called ‘international’ protocols:

‘Genetic investigations were acquired in breach of the rules established by international protocols’, the Court expresses with the logical characteristic of ‘circular reasoning’ in p. 33 of the judgment, where it also adds that the obsolete principle of ‘judex peritus peritorum’* should be revised.

If this is not a “break” in the substance, regardless of the objectionability of the assumption, then it can no longer be understood how it can be said of “legitimacy”, whose assessment is left to the Supreme Court, and “merit” instead to the judges, specifically “of the merits”.

And what are these international protocols? This is the penalty, you have to be precise, you can’t be vague, as the fifth section are. p 277

*[“The judge is the expert of experts “. The judge, in fact, is not bound by the result of the expert’s report, since he can deviate from or completely disregard the conclusions reached by the expert. Legal Wiki]


6. The Inadequate Evidence Contention

Mignini explains how it is not the legal prerogative of the Supreme Court of Cassation to set aside evidence found by lower courts.

“Thus, the profile relating to the assessment of evidence for the purposes of the decision is not known by the Court of Cassation.

It is legally concerned only with the fairness or otherwise of the process which led to the verdict and, if it finds, in particular, a defect or defects of a logical nature which vitiated the decision, it must set aside the defective judgment, and refer the substance of the case back down to the referring court.” p 272

Mignini states wryly of Marasca-Bruno:

“Never has the definition of the limits of the Court’s knowledge of legality been more correct in the preamble, and so much disregarded with the same determination in the body of the reasoning of the judgment that has in no way sustained that correct premise.” P272

If you look at the Marasca-Bruno report you can see its faulty reasoning in respect of repeatability or replicability of genetic sampling (compare and contrast it with the aforesaid Italian Criminal Code 360):

“Also, the traces observed on the two items, which the analysis of has produced outcomes that will be discussed further, were very small (Low Copy Number; with reference to the hook CFR.Ff222 and 248), so little that it didn’t allow a repetition of the amplification¸ that is the procedure aimed to “highlight the genetic traces of interest in the sample” (f. 238) and attribute the biological trace to a determined genetic profile.

On the basis of the protocols of the matter, the repetition of the analysis (“at least for two times” testimony of Major CC Dr Andrea Berti, an expert nominated by the Appeal Court, f. 228; “three times” according to Professor Adriano Tagliabracci, technical adviser for Sollecito’s defense, f.126) is absolutely necessary for a reliable analysis result, in order to marginalize the risk of “false positive” within the statistical limits of insignificant relevance.” Marasca-Bruno

This is the Chamber V reasoning – if you can call it that - despite CPP 360 allowing a one-off testing, and Taggliabracci’s claims of the evidence testing being ‘suspect-centric’ twice being dismissed in the lower courts, both by Massei and again by Nencini.

When PCR testing is carried out, the analysis is by computer.  Stefanoni could not possibly have known in advance whose DNA profile or what effluorescant peaks (RFU’s) the machine readings will throw out.



Ex Judge Bruno

7. The Use Of “Compatibility” Contention

Likewise, the term ‘compatible’ to or with - or otherwise - is used in all criminal jurisdictions and is based on statistical probability as the scientific method assesses the probability of getting any particular scientific result by chance.

Hence, Nencini states the probability of the genetic profile 165B not being Sollecito’s and as calculated by Prof. Novelli, as:

“The probability that a random individual from the population would also be compatible (the inclusion probability) [245] was calculated, and came out to be equal to 3.05592 x 10^-6, which is about 1 in 327 thousand.

This computation is considered to be extremely conservative, since all of the allelic components are taken into consideration together with their frequency in the reference population.”

(Pages 15-17 of the technical report submitted at the 6 September 2011 hearing before the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia)”

Yet Marasca-Bruno appear completely ignorant of this convention, and write: “the outcomes of the analysis don’t arrive at a firm identity result, but merely a compatibility one.”

8. The Limits of Jurisdiction Contention

Mignini further notes of the (final) Fifth Chamber:

“Another disconcerting aspect was the fact that the Court, although only dealing with the Florentine judgment [Nencini] under appeal, wanted to revisit the whole process, even and perhaps above all those aspects that were now definitively covered by the judgment of the First Chamber, as well as the investigations on which the Court of Legality, in the doubly terminating seat moreover, could not say anything, also because it did not have the relevant acts….

“in p. 23 of the judgment, the V Chamber speaks of an “objectively wavering course” of the trial…” p 273

“[It was] anything but wavering. In a system of three sets of proceedings, the Kercher process indeed had an absolutely uniform decision-making content, with the exception of the Perugian appeal [Hellmann] and the last judgment. [Marasca-Bruno]” p 274

“The First Chamber [Chieffi] for its part had rightly taken into account the actions of the experts Conti and Vecchiotti, criticizing them with embarrassing expressions. And the decision of the First Chamber [Chieffi] was final and unassailable.

On the other hand, the Fifth Chamber, which intervened only after the order for reference, considered that it should reconsider everything, and “objectively” disprove even the judgment, which was also final, of the First Chambers.

The vulnus [wounding] of the judgment of the First Chamber is perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the final judgment.” p 274


9. The Rudy Guede Contention

As well as the issues with the genetic testing, contamination and compatibility, Mignini explains how Marasca-Bruno gets it wrong about Guede in the following passage:

“In p. 28 of the judgment, the Court states that, in the course of the Peruvian appeal, Guede failed to be examined by the defendants.

But at the hearing on 27 June 2011, this was not the case, because although it is true that Guede did not at first intend to answer the questions of the advocate Bongiorno, Sollecito’s defender, on the murder of Kercher (see pp. 18 and 19 of the minutes of the hearing of 27.06.11 before the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia), however then he faced the questions addressed to him by the lawyer.

From Guede’s own memorandum:

‘…finally I hope that sooner or later the Judges will realize my total estrangement from what was a horrible murder of a wonderful girl such as Meredith by Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox. Signed. Rudy’. P 276.

At the Hellman appeal session, Rudy specifically confirmed this letter and its contents!

10. The Referral-Back-Down Contention

Dr Mignini holds that Guede’s claim alone makes it a legal imperative that the case should be referred back down to a merits court, even if the Knox-Sollecito appeal is upheld, as it was.

[Coming soon: another post, on Mignini’s view of the press and the media.]

Posted by KrissyG on 12/29/22 at 12:32 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etcComments here (6)

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