Tuesday, January 24, 2012

So What Can Seattle Offer Visitors That Arrive From Perugia? Fish Throwing!

Posted by Peter Quennell

This is a serious art form. All Seattle’s own. Seattle readers are very welcome to explain.

Images here of the terrific Pike’s Place Market in downtown Seattle (with its back incongruously to the sea - well, to the smallish bay off Puget Sound that goes by the name of Seattle harbor) because the Commune of Perugia still runs a an English-language web page promoting the tourism of Seattle.

Where is the fun at in Seattle? The real answer is everywhere, but just to name a few”¦.  The Pike Place Market is a must see, and trust that you won’t want to experience it just once.

It is nicknamed the “Soul of Seattle” for good reason.  With a never ending selection of food, including giant artichokes, specialty wines, and fresh fish caught from the sea that morning, let your taste buds lead the way.

Restaurants surround the market specializing in any type of food that you are craving, including several Italian restaurants.  You won’t go home hungry.

In between sampling every food there is to offer, you can watch the street musicians as well as visit any of the quirky shops that have everything from a store selling only books for women to a store that sells solely magic tricks.

If it is your first time visiting the market, consider signing up for the “Chef’s Tour of the Market” where some of Seattle’s top chefs lead groups through the market for a tour and follow up by taking the group back to their very own restaurant to cook lunch with the items they purchased on the tour.

To learn more about the market and the fun it has to offer, check out the website at http://www.pikeplacemarket.org/

Friday, January 13, 2012

Umbria’s Chief Prosecutor Will Proceed Against Knox And Sollecito And Also Aviello

Posted by Peter Quennell

Above: Cassation. Image replaced till we are sure we have one of Dr Galati. See comment in thread below.]


Dr Giovanni Galati is the region of Umbria’s chief prosecutor. He was appointed by the Minister of Justice last year. Previously he was a high-profile and very successful Deputy Prosecutor General at the Supreme Court of Cassation in Rome.

The chief-prosecutor post in Umbria is a sign of great official confidence in Dr Galati. His office in Perugia is one of the best staffed and most formidable of that of any of Italy’s 20 regions. The principle reason for this is that the Perugia office serves as a national surrogate for Rome prosecutors where national political cases are concerned.

His office has been investigating corruption in construction related to the Winter Olympics in 2006 and the severe earthquake in 2010. Parliamentarians in the party of former Prime Minister Berlusconi (which is also the party of Sollecito defense counsel Gulia Bongiorno and Amanda Knox acolyte Rocco Girlanda) are among those now being investigated. Several or some MPs could end up in prison and the parliamentary party severely damaged..

Mr Berluconi’s party is no longer the lead party in the governing coalition in parliament, but it was the lead during the whole of the first-level Knox and Sollecito appeal in Perugia up to the surprise verdict from Judge Hellman. Berlusconi, Bongiorno and Girlanda seem to have all had good reasons to humiliate Giovanni Gelati and his team.

Now Dr Galati gets to fight back.

Reporting items of breaking news on Meredith’s case on her excellent Twitter feed ( @andreavogt )  the Italy-based reporter Andrea Vogt has already reported that Dr Galati is preparing to proceed with a forceful Cassation appeal of the appeal verdict.

Andrea Vogt also reports that the defense super-witness and Mafia super-snitch Luciano Aviello will face a slander hearing in Perugia on 24 May. This may be a smart tit-for-tat move by Dr Galati as Judge Hellman did seem to have bent over backward in his report to ridicule all the prosecution witnesses - most of whom he never even set eyes on.

It may also be a smart taunt directed at Giulia Bongiorno. On the witness stand during the appeal, Mr Aviello claimed that Ms Bongiorno had channeled suggestions to his prison of bribes from the Sollecito family for false testimony. She angrily said she would sue him - but so far she hasn’t launched a suit. 

Dr Galati is said to respect Mr Mignini, and to consider that his sliming and the sliming of the police investigators by the Knox forces has been way, way, way over the top.

During the appeal Dr Galati appeared twice in the courtroom to show solidarity with his prosecution colleagues. He addressed the court at the start of October on what he considered severe shortcomings in the DNA report written by Stefano Conti, Carla Vecchiotti and the peripatetic grandstander Greg Hampikian.

Our main poster Tiziano translated this from La Nazione.

The new Prosecutor General of Perugia, Giovanni Galati, spoke briefly in Court in support of his colleagues. He wished to “show his complete support of all the matters raised by his colleagues, in particular as far as the expert report is concerned.”

Seated next to the deputy Prosecutor General, Giancarlo Costagliola, Galati spoke before the Court affirming that it had seemed “his duty” to inform himself on the proceedings in court.  “I hope that the Court’s decision will be the fruit of a dignified confrontation of the parties.”

Referring to the expert report of the consultants named by the Court ... he spoke of “evident gaps” and “evaluations [which had been] not requested.”

Last month there was an official function involving Dr Galati and the mayor of Perugia and the chief judge of the Umbria appeal court to initiate Italy’s first online system to allow every interested party to track the progress of court cases and appeals and to obtain all the public documents.

It was not said at the time that one reason for such an open information system is to counter the massive misinformation put out by the Knox and Sollecito forces - but smart people in Italy are not slow to connect up the dots.

Dr Galati’s grounds for the appeal to the Supreme Court (where until recently as mentioned above he was a trusted main player) will be published by February 18th. He does know that court.

Friday, January 06, 2012

Knox Movie Offer Is Sharply Withdrawn; Hardly Helpful to Knox Book Agent Robert Barnett

Posted by Peter Quennell

There have always been several huge problems in the promotion of Amanda Knox.

One problem is that Knox is not the real victim in the case and a great deal of compassion still resides for Meredith. Earning windfall blood money from the cruel death of a claimed close friend is hardly a classy way to go. 

A second problem is that we are still only at the end of the second act of a three act play in terms of the trials and appeals, and the Italian Supreme Court in the third act to come will almost certainly be no gullible pushover. And a whining or inaccurate book or movie demonising Italy and Italians (as her complaints about Capanne already have done) might not help her legal prospects one little bit. 

A third problem is that Italy’s officialdom and its population tend to maintain a hard and unblinking belief in the evidence against Sollecito and Knox, especially as the million dollar PR campaign largely flew below the radar there and they saw much of the hard case and a callous Knox live on TV. For example in Florence and Milan.

A fourth problem is that Amanda Knox and her personal life and her trials and time in Capanne are likely to be a low-viewership yawn. Our main poster Lauowolf did a great job last October of pointing this out.

Does her story have the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster?  Probably not.

For one thing, the producer types would have to know that the case is still live.  The public won’t be keeping track of that, or at best will be considering it a case of the prosecutor continuing to seek revenge.

But people looking to invest millions of dollars in movies tend to go into all the fine print. And the looming third trial in 2011 is just the kind of complication they are likely to want to avoid.  And there’s just too much inconvenient information floating around about the story.

Finally, there really isn’t that much “there” there with Amanda Knox herself.  What would her storyline be, anyway, and who does it appeal to? 

• Is it the story of the young lovers, AK and RS?  Nah, AK and RS are not going to complete the story arc for them, so no drama-romance. And you can’t substitute the Seattle boyfriend, because he’d look like a fool.
• Is it the story of Edda, getting her daughter back, a la Not Without My Daughter?  Nah, Amanda is getting a bit old for that storyline to work. The PR played out this line in Amanda’s absence, so that it is already stale, and besides, the target audience is wrong.  The Lifetime movie worked that thread, and it didn’t really do all that well.
• Is it a story of Amanda suffering, arrested, in prison, on trial?  Nah, there really isn’t much filmic going on there.  Arrested people end up sitting in rooms, and prison is boring.  Even if they wanted to spend a lot of time on AK giving the performance of her life in court, they’d have to deal somehow with the accusations and evidence. And they really, really don’t want to do any of that.
• Is it the story of Amanda herself?  Nah, the PR has reduced her to such a little painted doll that there isn’t anything to be done with her.  Seriously, weekly mass and the prison choir? Or hanging out with the middle-aged married Italian political type? Who wants to watch a movie of that?  They’ve set her up as a frail, pale victim, and it is difficult to create an entire movie focusing on someone being done to, rather than doing.

Now there is a FIFTH problem looming large.

The up-and-coming movie producer Chad Verdi (left above) has just announced that he has withdrawn a million dollar offer for a Knox movie, implying that he may have been misled. This statement is likely to chill the prospects for any other.

Rhode Island Producer Chad A. Verdi has withdrawn his official offer of One Million Dollars (U.S. $1,000,000) for Amanda Knox’s life rights. The film was to be produced by Mr. Verdi and Noah Kraft if a deal could have been reached. The offer was made through Verdi Productions and was being handled by Hollywood entertainment attorney, Anita First.

Mr. Verdi, the President and CEO of Verdi Productions (VP), stated, “After reviewing all the information we had involving the Knox case, I have decided it was not the inspirational feel good story that VP was looking for and we have withdrawn our offer.”

Very well done, Mr Verdi. That is an act of some class.

The prominent and respected Washington lawyer and book agent Robert Barnett (right above) was seemingly roped in by Knox PR chief David Marriott a month ago to work miracles for Knox in the field of book publishing.

Robert Barnett seems to have made no public statement about it as yet.  Seemingly Mr Barnett and all those other supposed eager book agents did not exactly come looking for a deal.

If you read how the Washington Post describes it, the deal was very much promoted by a frenetic Marriott.

“He has a very strong resume,” said Knox family spokesman Dave Marriott, who announced the deal Monday…

Why Barnett? His name “popped up in conversations with many people,” Marriott told us. Though he doesn’t call himself a literary agent, Barnett knows his way around seven-figure deals (he’s also repped James Patterson, Mary Higgins Clark, Rosie O’Donnell and Barbra Streisand) “” and the Knox family liked the fact that he’s a lawyer with a powerful firm behind him.

Another plus: He’s arguably a bargain, charging a hefty hourly fee instead of the standard 15 percent commission. He was hired after flying to Seattle and meeting with the Knox family.

A bargain? Hmmm. Perhaps Mr Barnett is at this very moment reading the same judges’ reports and the other in-depth materials that have turned off Mr Verdi, and wondering whether he was snowed. 

Or reviewing his hourly fee.

Friday, December 30, 2011

NYC Turns To The Only Country In The World That Can Handle Two Ultra Complex Projects

Posted by Peter Quennell

New York City turns to (of course!) Italy for two large infrastructure projects.

One project is the laying of a 660 megawatt power cable diagonally across the Hudson from midtown Manhattan to Edgewater in New Jersey just below the George Washington Bridge.

The ultra high capacity cable was manufactured in Italy and is now being laid by a specialized Italian cable laying vessel, the Giulio Verne (home port Naples), which every night is lit up on the Hudson like a Christmas tree.

The ship digs and backfills a trench for the cable as it goes. The Italian crew is fired up with expresso coffees every hour on the hour as this New York Times article describes.

The other project is the excavation, now largely complete, of three tunnels through Manhattan’s hard granite using giant Italian-made tunnel boring machines which are half a mile long and cost $10 to $20 million for each one. They are assembled below ground and only ever used once.

The tunnels are the Second Avenue subway, the East Side Access to allow Long Island trains to arrive at a new station deep below Grand Central Station, and the extension of the 7 subway from Times Square to 34th Street on the west side and possibly also to New Jersey.

Italy excels at these large and complicated projects. Some of the autostradas which sweep through the mountains along tunnels and bridges are astonishing. Two very large Italian projects due to begin soon are the re-engineering of Venice to stop it sinking, and the suspension bridge (the world’s longest) between the Italian mainland and Sicily.

Perugia has its share of dazzling projects too. The minimetro already running and soon one of the world’s longest escalators which may result in Meredith’s house coming down to allow for parking expansion.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

First Italian Criticisms Of The Hellmann Verdict Statement Now Starting To Appear

Posted by Peter Quennell

Early days yet and the main crack at Hellman’s report will not arrive for another month from the prosecution, but the Italian news service Adnknonos offered this editorial. .

The Appeal Court is ridiculous to think that Guede is the only one guilty

The reasons set forth by the Assize Court of Appeal in Perugia for the killing of Meredith read oddly. According to the criminal court Rudy Guede alone did it.

This is ridiculous. Prosecutor Manuela Comodi spoke in court of the ‘embarrassing performance of’ experts’ on the testing of the murder weapon and the victim’s bra clasp.

“Too bad that the judges of the Court of Appeal have slavishly married the thesis of these so-called ‘experts’‘’ says Massimo Montebove, the president of the National Council of Police Unions.

‘‘The work of forensic science, the testimonies, the reconstruction of the truth of the facts of the case carried out to date all show that the verdict of guilty in the first instance was well grounded. ” Mr Montebove added.

Do not forget that attempts at delegitimization will always be directed at the police and the scientific flying squad, including international pressures that many say were placed and other murky development talked about in the media.

One thing is certain: the game is not’ over. We are only sorry that Amanda Knox may not pay for her responsibilities if she is again found guilty following a new appeal trial that could be decided by the Supreme Court

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Crticism Of The Hellmann Verdict From Meredith’s Family’s Lawyer Francesco Maresca

Posted by ziaK

Mr Maresca made remarks last week critical of the verdict to various Italian media outlets. This is a translation from the Umbria Journal.

Maresca, on Mez: “They were acquitted for lack of proof, but the sentence takes a very one-sided approach”

“Only the defences’ expert witnesses were given any credence. It’s excessive to completely throw out the first instance case”.

The “reasoning report” of the Assizes court of appeal has confirmed that this is a case of an acquittal because of lack of evidence, rather than an acquittal with “formula piena” [approximately “proof of innocence without doubt”]

However it is also a sentence which is a result of a one-sided approach”.

This is the commentary of Francesco Maresca, who together with the lawyer Serena Perna, represents the young victim’s family, on reading of the “reasoning report” on the acquittal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito on the charge of having murdered Meredith Kercher.

“This reasoning report”, he added, “leave us with an even more bitter taste in our mouths because we consider that the judges gave credence only to the defence-team experts, even on items of evidence of a scientific nature which were never the object of consultation”.

“For them to have completely tossed out the preliminary investigations and the first-instance trial seems excessive to me”....

“There are no great surprises”, said Prosecutor Manuela Comodi, who was prosecutor in the first and second-level trials. “It seems to me”, she added, “that there is a lot of room to challenge the sentence. That duty [however] lies entirely with the Attorney General.”

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Does A Perverse Fear Factor Account For The Hellmann Jury Breaking The Way It Did?

Posted by Peter Quennell

[Above: Italian criminologist Massimo Picozzi, a physician, psychiatrist, professor, author and TV host].


We have already posted on the increasingly notorious CSI Effect.

That’s the phenomenon where these days fearful juries can react ultra-cautiously against multiple ambiguous strands of evidence and become impatient with complex science. Among other things, they don’t want egg on their faces down the road .

Some of us who have now absorbed most of the Hellmann report released yesterday are noting two distinctive themes:

• A garbling of the law and the hard facts (one hard fact Hellmann garbled is that no-one has come close to proving that was Guede’s bare foot print on the bathroom mat, or explained when and why he took his shoes off);
• A sense of a condescending fury by this jury toward the jury at the first level (Massei’s trial panel) and the prosecution’s scientific experts; this is actually not a unique occurrence in Italy where appeals require whole new juries eager to strut their stuff.

Today on the Perugia Murder File Forum the Italian lawyer Yummi in part had this to say:

The parts that I found more dishonest and unacceptable are, however, those in the matter (and their omissions) rather than the mistakes in [legal] procedures. The “probable” attribution of the footprint to Guede is an example of insult to intelligence. I haven’t read thoroughly the entire document yet, but from what I’ve read I can say this document is a sloppy and shameful fraud.

I think what really matters - the actually “true” part of the document - is the conclusion, where the court explain that the reason for the acquittal was they were afraid. They thought they were in danger of making a mistake, they explain they felt unable to eliminate possibility of mistake. Their fear stemming from not being able to see a clear overall picture of the evidence and a motive is everything. Their fear, confusion and uncertainty is the ground for their lack of any indication even of the paragraph 1 or 2 [mandatory reason for the verdict].

Interviewed today by the Italian paper Corriere the eminent Italian criminologist Massimo Picozzi (image above), who knew of the Hellmann verdict but had not yet seen the Hellmann report, predicted very much the same thing. 

Picozzi: A debate too technical for the jury

Interview of Massimo Picozzi by Leonardo di Molinelli

Corriere: What of the outcome of Perugia?

“I think it was already decided by the jury when there was a battle between consultants on a very technical issue, the contamination of some DNA.”

The criminologist Massimo Picozzi has not yet read the [Hellman] motivation of the absolution of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, but he has a clear idea as to why the appeal outcome contradicted the first level outcome.

“The reasons can be stated in different ways but don’t bend one iota.  The judgment is due to the fact that when expert consultants have been in dispute, and not only on the content of [some experts] report but also on the skills and qualifications of those experts, the battle becomes so complex that the jury loses the plot.”

Corriere: A controversy has diverted attention from the crime on a technicality?

“Reducing everything to a technical debate has created confusion that the jury was unable to handle. Often even [court] presidents, judges and magistrates are not as competent technically as the progress of science should require.

The prosecution’s DNA advisor Professor Novelli is a forensic geneticist at the international level. When he challenged the findings of the experts and proposed to the judge a third study, the president of the jury said “No thanks, we have enough.’”

Corriere: There are other cases like this? This is just an Italian problem?

“No. The distortion was introduced by TV series like CSI creating the effect that juries require new technologies but are not always prepared to understand them.

I could tell you that in the United States and Canada they are moving more and more into “neuroimaging” which is exploring uses of the nuclear magnetic resonance of genetic structures of criminals.

At this new frontier the accused can be acquitted because it can be assumed that having an MRI of a certain type and genetic constitution does not allow for the having of free will, and therefore they are acquitted for that failure. “

Corriere: [Norway’s mass murderer Anders] Breivik might be such a case?

“Yes, and behind these things it is easy to see a Lombrosian outcome.” [ed. note: said somewhat jokingly. Cesare Lombroso was an Italian doctor who invented the “antropologia criminale” in which criminals are born rather than self-made. ]

“There are at least a couple of facilities in the U.S. that offer screening based on CT and MRI for the recruitment of top managers. “

Corriere: What is the basic thrust?

“Criminal behavior is determined by a series of neurological factors, biological, genetic. In the U.S. and Canada juries hear battle of genetic structures, amygdala, and more. “

Corriere: It becomes very difficult for jurors to live up to?

“Absolutely, and one ends up saying “But how do we crack the structures of criminal behavior if we do not even know what is normal human behavior?” The latest branch of study that is spreading is neuroethics, the fact that we can have a certain neurological structure which does not have any area for ethical responsibility. “

Corriere: It is disturbing?

“Absolutely, we arrive back at the pre-crime state like that in [the movie] Minority Report. So in the end it does not work. “

Corriere: They were right on the Knox case, the American media?

“No. But we guaranteed that development too. The real problem is the length of our trials. If the [trial and first appeal] are compressed into two years instead of four that will eliminate much of the controversy. “

Corriere: Amanda and Raffaele are innocent?

“I prefer to say that they were found not guilty by one particular jury.”

Friday, December 16, 2011

Our Translation Of Today’s Corriere Newspaper Report On The Hellmann Motivation Document

Posted by ziaK

Click image above for the original. This is today’s straight reporting. In-depth commentary should start appearing soon.

The appeal court: “There is no proof of offence” : Amanda and Raffaele are good kids

The report contradicts the first instance judgment: “The motive - of an unplanned choice of evil without purpose by two good youngsters, who were well-disposed towards others - is improbable”

MILAN - The board of appeal judges, which acquitted the two young folk of the charge of having murdered Meredith Kercher, talks of the “essential baselessness” of the elements upon which the Court of the first instance based their conviction of Raffaele Sollecito and of Amanda Knox.

“There is no proof of guilt” with regard to Amanda and Raffaele, writes the judges of the Appeal court of Perugia, in the “reasoning” report on the second-grade acquittal ruling, which was published on Thursday. This baselessness, according to the report, “takes precedence over even the equivocality of those same elements”.

“BUILDING BLOCKS” OF THE CONSTRUCTION - In the 144 pages which must be lodged before 3 January, the judges who wrote the report claim that “those same building blocks” which led the first-instance judges to convict Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox “had failed”. “The Assizes Court of the first instance felt the need to seize upon a motive which, however, while it was not corroborrated by any element of proof, was in itself entirely improbable”, says the report, which demolishes, brick by brick, the structure upon which the judges of the first instance based their verdict of guilt.

GOOD KIDS - “The unplanned choice, by two good young folk, who were well-disposed towards others, of evil for evil’s sake, without any other purpose, is even more incomprehensible because it was aimed at upholding the criminal acts of another youth, Rudy Guede, with whom they had no relations, and is unlike their own personal histories, character and human condition.”

RUDY GUEDE - The judges set out these considerations, reflecting briefly on Rudy Guede’s definitive sentence to 16 years of incarceration for his participation in Meredith Kercher’s murder. In the reasoning report, they explain that the hypothesis of the participation of several people in carrying out the crime had been set out in the Ivorian’s appeal-court conviction [which had] “basically upheld all the arguments put forward by the prosecutor”.

According to the judges who acquitted Sollecito and Knox, however, “an analysis of every single element on which the hypothesis of joint contribution [to carrying out the crime] leads one, at the least, to doubt the necessary participation of several people in perpetrating the crimes in question”. The Assizes court of appeal therefore stated that they could “concur with” the appeal court conviction with regard to Guede’s responsibility, without “assuming that this conviction has any probatory relevance” as far as determining the responsibility of Sollecito and Knox is concerned.

“The only evidentiary elements which remain unopposed (the crime of “calunnia’ towards Patrick Lumumba) but without the aggravating circumstance, the incompletely demonstrated truth of the alibi, and the dubious reliability of the witness (Quintavalle), when taken as a whole, do not even allow us to hold that the guilt of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito has in any way been clearly demonstrated”.

AMANDA UNDER STRESS - “Over and above the formal aspect”, the judges write, “the context in which those declarations were made was clearly characterized by psychological conditions which had become, for Amanda Knox, a truly unbearable burden. In that context, it is understandable that Knox, yielding to the pressure and to fatigue, had hoped to put an end to the situation, by giving to those who were interrogating her what they, at heart, wanted to hear: a name, an assassin.

By giving “the news” of that name to those who were interrogating her so harshly, Amanda Knox hoped, no doubt, to put an end to that pressure, by then - after many hours - a real torture, while adding details and building a brief story around that name was surely not particularly difficult, since many of the details and many conjectures had already appeared the previous day in many newspapers, and were in any case doing the rounds of the town, given the small size of Perugia”.

According to the judges, furthermore, for Amanda “it would have been easier to name the real author of the crime” because “basically, she lived in that house, and to have been there at the time the crime was committed, in her own room, perhaps entertaining [herself with] Raffaele Sollecto, would have been a completely normal circumstance, to the extent that it would certainly not entail responsibility for a crime committed in the room beside [hers]”.

WHO MUST JUDGE - “Having excluded the existence of the proof of guilt which the two current defendants are charged with”, the judges write, “it is not up to this Court to suggest how the affair [the crime] might really have been carried out. Nor whether the author of the crime was one or more than one person, nor whether or to what extent other investigative hypotheses might have been neglected.”

Breaking News Thursday: Judge Hellmann’s Sentencing Released In Italian; Responses From Italy Follow

Posted by Peter Quennell

Quick summary of main points of the 150 page report by our Italian poster ncountryside below. 

We will have a roundup post on the reporting and takes of the Italian media on Friday and a full translation courtesy of the fluent Italian speakers on PMF in due course.

At first glance our lawyers in three countries are not at all impressed. Any seamless legitimizing is seemingly not obvious to them.

Page 8
Lumumba was arrested following “spontaneous” Knox’s statements.Please note: Court’s quote.

Page 11
The previous report is long even (italian: “ben”) 425 pages.

Page 12
Quintavalle: testimony, however, after one year

Page 27
Guede and sentence of Supreme Court. The sentence is not binding for the Appeal Court mainly because: defendants would be judged on the basis of evidence obtained in their absence during Guede’s trial; Guede’s trial was fast Track (“abbreviato”).

Page 28
Bra clasp, knife, wounds, break-in: examining separately all these facts is strengthened the hypothesis of the presence of an only one person in the house.

Page 30
In page 30 cartwheels are recognized as “gymnastic maneuvers” ( italian: “manovre ginniche”).

Page 30-35
Calunnia. AK accused Lumumba because exhausted by obsessive interrogations without lawyer. She was well aware of accusing an innocent person, so she is guilty but without aggravating circumstances. Anyway her guilt cannot be used as evidence to the murder.

Page 40
Guede surprisingly has never been questioned .... follows the description of the well known hearings ... conclusion: Guede is unreliable also for this trial, in particular during the hearing of 27 June and also his letter. Instead the chat from Germany with his friend Benedetti is considered reliable.

Page 42
Aviello, Alessi, Castelluccio, De Cesare, Trincan. Called by defense are considered unreliable but the prosecution can not exploit them as witnesses against the defendants.

Page 44 and following.
Curatolo. He is a tramp, now held in prison, with a decline of his mental faculties. Unreliable.

Pages 51-55
Quintavalle. One year later.

Pages 56-58
Capezzali. Unreliable
Monacchia. Not clear.
Deamis.Unreliable.

Pages 58-61
Phone calls. For the Court, Bongiorno’s considerations are valid while Massei is wrong, so the time of death is fixed not later than 22,30

Page 64
Murder weapon.The arguments of defense consultants seem more convincing than the prosecution’s.

Page 87
The clue represented by presence of Meredith’s dna on the knife cannot be considered valid/existing

Page 92
Bra clasp. Contaminated before gathering

Page 100
Footprint on the bathmat. Probably belongs to Guede

... Mixed blood ...

Pages 114-123
Staged break-in. Real and not staged.

Pages 123-130
Alibi. Erroneous conclusions drawn by the Court because based on erroneous scientific expertise .

Page 129
The shower. Not implausible

Page 131
Phone call to Meredith at 12.07. Nothing of suspect.

Page 137
Remain; 1) calunnia 2) non completely proved alibi.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Mignini’s And Giuttari’s Florence Convictions Are Annulled: No Evidence, And No Jurisdiction

Posted by Peter Quennell

The ANSA news service is reporting that Giuliano Mignini’s and Michele Giuttari’s 2010 convictions have been annulled.

The Florence appeal court ruled scathingly that no evidence exists and also that the Florence trial court did not have jurisdiction. The case might be looked at again by the prosecutors in Turin or Genoa, which Mignini and Giuttari favor to get the spurious case against them more than just annulled. They’d like its root causes brought out. .

Mignini had caught the exact-same Florence prosecutor on tape, with a judge’s consent, bewailing the fact that the Monster of Florence cabal was tying his hands. That trial was simple a panicky attempt to get himself out from under which will hurt his career and the trail judge’s too.

It wasn’t Mignini who invented the Florence cabal (or satanic sect) notion, and he is suspicious of people (like Preston and Spezi) who work so hard to deny it.  Many of the Italian Monster of Florence books also argue 180 degrees away from Preston. Hmmm. What hold does the Monster of Florence sect have over Preston? Is he a secret satanist?! The world really wants to know…

Mignin’s quoted remarks outside the appeal court make it sound like he would like to resume the investigation of why Dr Narducci died suspiciously in Lake Trasimeno. That had to be halted because the Florence prosecutor seized all the papers on the case.

We have posted several times as much on Mignini as most of the UK and US media combined, and we translated a long email from him, and two long and very revealing interviews.

Kermit’s contrast of Preston’s satanic obsessions with Mignini’s really very mundane interests are an absolute must-view.