These are behind-the-scenes drafts, dates and names of posters are temporary.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

gumbel - paras Vogt pointed to

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. page 75

The main evidence Mignini had to take into the preliminary hearing was my Nikes, and he did everything he could to make them as incriminating as possible. Hours after my interrogators ordered me to take the shoes off, they were examined by a forensic team from Foligno. But the Foligno police were relatively cautious: in the official report they produced that same day, they said they could make no more than a partial comparison with the clearest of the prints left in blood in Meredith’s room and could comment only on the rough size and shape of the shoe, nothing more. Still, they concluded that my shoes “could have”Â created the footprints found at the crime scene.

Mignini was not satisfied, no doubt because the finding was couched in all sorts of caveats; the Foligno police stressed that the match was a theoretical possibility only. So the next day Mignini went to the Polizia Scientifica in Rome for a second opinion. They had even less information to go on than the Foligno team because they had only photographs of my shoes, not the shoes themselves. Somehow, though, they came to the much more definitive conclusion that my Nikes were the same make, model, and shoe size as the print on Meredith’s floor. No question about it.

2. Page 101-102

The prosecution’s tactics grew nastier, never more so than when Amanda was taken to the prison infirmary the day after Patrick’s release and told she had tested positive for HIV.

She was devastated. She wrote in her diary, “I don’t want to die. I want to get married and have children. I want to create something good. I want to get old. I want my time. I want my life. Why why why? I can’t believe this.”Â

For a week she was tormented with the idea that she would contract AIDS in prison, serving time for a crime she did not commit. But the whole thing was a ruse, designed to frighten her into admitting how many men she had slept with. When asked, she provided a list of her sexual partners, and the contraceptive method she had used with each. Only then was she told the test was a false positive

To the prosecution, the information must have been a disappointment: seven partners in all, of whom four were boyfriends she had never made a secret of, and three she qualified as one-night stands. Rudy Guede was not on the list, and neither was anyone else who might prove useful in the case. She hadn’t been handing herself around like candy at Le Chic, as Patrick now alleged. She’d fooled around with two guys soon after arriving in Italy, neither of them at Patrick’s bar, and then she had been with me. Okay, so she was no Mother Teresa. But neither was she the whore of Babylon.

To compound the nastiness, the list was eventually leaked to the media, with the erroneous twist that the seven partners on the list were just the men she’d had since arriving in Perugia. Whatever one thought of Amanda and her free-spirited American attitude toward sex, this callous disregard for her privacy and her feelings was the behavior of savages.

3. Page 146-147

When my defense team examined the official paperwork, they noticed that the analysis of the footprints - including extensive inquiry into the length and shape of the foot likely to have produced them - had been conducted by two members of the Polizia Scientifica in Rome, working not in their official capacity but as private consultants charging thousands of euros to Mignini’s office. One of the analysts, Lorenzo Rinaldi, was a physicist, not a specialist in anatomy, and the other, Pietro Boemia, was a fingerprint technician with no further scientific credentials. That begged the question: if Mignini’s office felt it needed to contract the job out to private consultants, why wouldn’t it go to people with more pertinent qualifications? The whole thing stank.

We were stunned, too, to discover that some of the most important parts of the evidence were not handed over at all. We were given a document detailing the Polizia Scientifica’s conclusions about the DNA evidence on the knife and the bra clasp, but we had none of the raw data, nothing that would enable us to make our own independent evaluation. We put in a request for the data and, when it was rejected, filed another. The DNA evidence was now the bedrock of the case against me. What possible motivation could there be to withhold it?

Page 176-177

One of the reasons our hearings were so spread out was that Mignini was fighting his own, separate legal battle to fend off criminal charges of prosecutorial misconduct. He and a police inspector working on the Monster of Florence case stood accused of intimidating public officials and journalists by opening legal proceedings against them and tapping their phones without proper justification.

To Mignini, the case smacked of professional jealousy because the prosecutors in Florence resented his intrusion on a murder mystery they had struggled for so long to resolve. But Mignini’s behavior had already attracted international condemnation, never more so than when he threw the journalist most indefatigably devoted to following the Monster case, Mario Spezi, into jail for three weeks. Spezi had ridiculed Mignini’s theories about Francesco Narducci, the Perugian doctor whom Mignini suspected of being part of a satanic cult connected to the killings. In response, Mignini accused Spezi himself of involvement in Narducci’s murder - even though the death had been ruled a suicide. It was a staggering power play, and the international Committee to Protect Journalists was soon on the case. Spezi was not initially told why he was being arrested and, like me, was denied access to a lawyer for days. Even Mignini, though, could not press murder charges without proving first that a murder had taken place, and Spezi was eventually let out.

I firmly believe that our trial was, among other things, a grand diversion intended to keep media attention away from Mignini’s legal battle in Florence and to provide him with the high-profile court victory he desperately needed to restore his reputation. Already in the pretrial hearing, Mignini had shown signs of hypersensitivity about his critics, in particular the handful of English-speaking investigators and reporters who had questioned his case against us early on. He issued an explicit warning that anyone hoping he would back off the Meredith Kercher case or resign should think again. “Nobody has left their post, and nobody will,”Â he said. “Let that be clear, in Perugia and beyond.”Â

Just as he had in the Monster of Florence case, Mignini used every tool at his disposal against his critics and adversaries. He spied on my family and tapped their phones. He went after Amanda not just for murder, but also for defaming Patrick Lumumba - whom she had implicated under duress and at the police’s suggestion. He opened or threatened about a dozen other legal cases against his critics in Italy and beyond. He charged Amanda’s parents with criminal defamation for repeating the accusation that she had been hit in the head while in custody. And he sued or threatened to sue an assortment of reporters, writers, and newspapers, either because they said negative things about him or the police directly or because they quoted others saying such things.

Mignini’s volley of lawsuits had an unmistakable chilling effect, especially on the Italian press, and played a clear role in tipping public opinion against us. We weren’t the only ones mounting the fight of our lives in court, and it was difficult not to interpret this legal onslaught as part of Mignini’s campaign to beat back the abuse-of-office charges. His approach seemed singularly vindictive. Not only did we have to sit in prison while the murder trial dragged on; it seemed he wanted to throw our friends and supporters - anyone who voiced a sympathetic opinion in public - into prison right alongside us.

Page 185

One other strange thing: Amanda and I were on trial for sexual assault, yet Stefanoni confirmed that a stain on Meredith’s pillowcase that looked a lot like semen was never tested in her lab. She made all sorts of excuses about how testing it might compromise the lab’s ability to use the pillowcase for other things. The semen might well be old, she added, the result of Meredith’s consensual sexual relations with Giacomo Silenzi.

This seemed extraordinary to my defense team, so much so that we asked for - and obtained - permission to inspect the pillowcase ourselves and soon discovered signs of semen on one of Guede’s shoe prints. How could the prosecution have missed this? If the semen was fresh when Guede stepped on it, that meant it must have been produced on the night of the murder. We thought long and hard about demanding a full analysis, but we did not trust the Polizia Scientifica as far as we could spit and were deathly afraid they might choose to construe that the semen was mine. So we held back.

Page 216-217

As it turned out, Massei may not have been entirely correct to say there was no evidence that DNA results were used to fit a predetermined story line. Giuliano Mignini, of all people, had given a television interview a couple of months earlier in which he stated quite openly that he was looking for a certain result from the kitchen-knife analysis.

Mignini was asked by a special correspondent for the show L’altra metà   del crimine (The Other Half of the Crime) how he could be so sure my knife was the murder weapon when the DNA readings had come back “too low”Â and did not appear to conform to international standards. Mignini stuttered and danced around the question before replying in gloriously convoluted Italian, “Ho ottenuto di farlo risultare.”Â I managed to get it to come out right.

Page 219-222

My family was not beating up on Amanda entirely without cause. What I did not know at the time, because they preferred not to fill me in, was that they were exploring what it would take for the prosecution to soften or drop the case against me. The advice they received was almost unanimous: the more I distanced myself from Amanda, the better. The legal community in Perugia was full of holes and leaks, and my family learned all sorts of things about the opinions being bandied about behind the scenes, including discussions within the prosecutor’s office. The bottom line: Mignini, they were told, was not all that interested in me except as a gateway to Amanda. He might indeed be willing to acknowledge I was innocent, but only if I gave him something in exchange, either by incriminating Amanda directly or by no longer vouching for her.

I’m glad my family did not include me in these discussions because I would have lost it completely. First, my uncle Giuseppe approached a lawyer in private practice in Perugia - with half an idea in his head that this new attorney could replace Maori - and asked what I could do to mitigate my dauntingly long sentence. The lawyer said I should accept a plea deal and confess to some of the lesser charges. I could, for instance, agree that I had helped clean up the murder scene but otherwise played no part in it. “He’d get a sentence of six to twelve years,”Â the lawyer said, “but because he has no priors the sentence would be suspended and he’d serve no more jail time.”Â

To their credit, my family knew I would never go for this. It made even them uncomfortable to contemplate me pleading guilty to something I had not done. It was, as my sister, Vanessa, put it, “not morally possible.”

The next line of inquiry was through a different lawyer, who was on close terms with Mignini and was even invited to the baptism of Mignini’s youngest child that summer. (Among the other guests at the baptism was Francesco Maresca, the Kerchers’ lawyer, who had long since aligned himself with Mignini in court.) This lawyer said he believed I was innocent, but he was also convinced that Amanda was guilty. He gave my family the strong impression that Mignini felt the same way. If true - and there was no way to confirm that - it was a clamorous revelation. How could a prosecutor believe in the innocence of a defendant and at the same time ask the courts to sentence him to life imprisonment? The lawyer offered to intercede with Mignini, but made no firm promises. He wasn’t willing to plead my cause, he said, but he would listen to anything the prosecutor had to offer.

Over the late spring and summer of 2010, my father used this lawyer as a back channel and maneuvered negotiations to a point where they believed Mignini and Comodi would be willing to meet with Giulia Bongiorno and hear what she had to say. When Papà   presented this to Bongiorno, however, she was horrified and said she might have to drop the case altogether because the back channel was a serious violation of the rules of procedure. A private lawyer has no business talking to a prosecutor about a case, she explained, unless he is acting with the express permission of the defendant. It would be bad enough if the lawyer doing this was on my defense team; for an outside party to undertake such discussions not only risked landing me in deeper legal trouble, it also warranted disciplinary action from the Ordine degli Avvocati, the Italian equivalent of the Bar Association.

My father was mortified. He had no idea how dangerous a game he had been playing and wrote a letter to Bongiorno begging her to forgive him and stay on the case. He was at fault, he said, and it would be wrong to punish her client by withdrawing her services when I didn’t even know about the back channel, much less approve it. To his relief, Bongiorno relented.

My family, though, did not. Whenever they came to visit they would suggest some form of compromise with the truth. Mostly they asked why I couldn’t say I was asleep on the night of the murder and had no idea what Amanda got up to.

Sollecito/Gumbel Book Trial To Go Public, After Cassation Murder Outcome 25 March

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. page 75

The main evidence Mignini had to take into the preliminary hearing was my Nikes, and he did everything he could to make them as incriminating as possible. Hours after my interrogators ordered me to take the shoes off, they were examined by a forensic team from Foligno. But the Foligno police were relatively cautious: in the official report they produced that same day, they said they could make no more than a partial comparison with the clearest of the prints left in blood in Meredith’s room and could comment only on the rough size and shape of the shoe, nothing more. Still, they concluded that my shoes “could have”Â created the footprints found at the crime scene.

Mignini was not satisfied, no doubt because the finding was couched in all sorts of caveats; the Foligno police stressed that the match was a theoretical possibility only. So the next day Mignini went to the Polizia Scientifica in Rome for a second opinion. They had even less information to go on than the Foligno team because they had only photographs of my shoes, not the shoes themselves. Somehow, though, they came to the much more definitive conclusion that my Nikes were the same make, model, and shoe size as the print on Meredith’s floor. No question about it.

2. Page 101-102

The prosecution’s tactics grew nastier, never more so than when Amanda was taken to the prison infirmary the day after Patrick’s release and told she had tested positive for HIV.

She was devastated. She wrote in her diary, “I don’t want to die. I want to get married and have children. I want to create something good. I want to get old. I want my time. I want my life. Why why why? I can’t believe this.”Â

For a week she was tormented with the idea that she would contract AIDS in prison, serving time for a crime she did not commit. But the whole thing was a ruse, designed to frighten her into admitting how many men she had slept with. When asked, she provided a list of her sexual partners, and the contraceptive method she had used with each. Only then was she told the test was a false positive

To the prosecution, the information must have been a disappointment: seven partners in all, of whom four were boyfriends she had never made a secret of, and three she qualified as one-night stands. Rudy Guede was not on the list, and neither was anyone else who might prove useful in the case. She hadn’t been handing herself around like candy at Le Chic, as Patrick now alleged. She’d fooled around with two guys soon after arriving in Italy, neither of them at Patrick’s bar, and then she had been with me. Okay, so she was no Mother Teresa. But neither was she the whore of Babylon.

To compound the nastiness, the list was eventually leaked to the media, with the erroneous twist that the seven partners on the list were just the men she’d had since arriving in Perugia. Whatever one thought of Amanda and her free-spirited American attitude toward sex, this callous disregard for her privacy and her feelings was the behavior of savages.

3. Page 146-147

When my defense team examined the official paperwork, they noticed that the analysis of the footprints - including extensive inquiry into the length and shape of the foot likely to have produced them - had been conducted by two members of the Polizia Scientifica in Rome, working not in their official capacity but as private consultants charging thousands of euros to Mignini’s office. One of the analysts, Lorenzo Rinaldi, was a physicist, not a specialist in anatomy, and the other, Pietro Boemia, was a fingerprint technician with no further scientific credentials. That begged the question: if Mignini’s office felt it needed to contract the job out to private consultants, why wouldn’t it go to people with more pertinent qualifications? The whole thing stank.

We were stunned, too, to discover that some of the most important parts of the evidence were not handed over at all. We were given a document detailing the Polizia Scientifica’s conclusions about the DNA evidence on the knife and the bra clasp, but we had none of the raw data, nothing that would enable us to make our own independent evaluation. We put in a request for the data and, when it was rejected, filed another. The DNA evidence was now the bedrock of the case against me. What possible motivation could there be to withhold it?

Page 176-177

One of the reasons our hearings were so spread out was that Mignini was fighting his own, separate legal battle to fend off criminal charges of prosecutorial misconduct. He and a police inspector working on the Monster of Florence case stood accused of intimidating public officials and journalists by opening legal proceedings against them and tapping their phones without proper justification.

To Mignini, the case smacked of professional jealousy because the prosecutors in Florence resented his intrusion on a murder mystery they had struggled for so long to resolve. But Mignini’s behavior had already attracted international condemnation, never more so than when he threw the journalist most indefatigably devoted to following the Monster case, Mario Spezi, into jail for three weeks. Spezi had ridiculed Mignini’s theories about Francesco Narducci, the Perugian doctor whom Mignini suspected of being part of a satanic cult connected to the killings. In response, Mignini accused Spezi himself of involvement in Narducci’s murder - even though the death had been ruled a suicide. It was a staggering power play, and the international Committee to Protect Journalists was soon on the case. Spezi was not initially told why he was being arrested and, like me, was denied access to a lawyer for days. Even Mignini, though, could not press murder charges without proving first that a murder had taken place, and Spezi was eventually let out.

I firmly believe that our trial was, among other things, a grand diversion intended to keep media attention away from Mignini’s legal battle in Florence and to provide him with the high-profile court victory he desperately needed to restore his reputation. Already in the pretrial hearing, Mignini had shown signs of hypersensitivity about his critics, in particular the handful of English-speaking investigators and reporters who had questioned his case against us early on. He issued an explicit warning that anyone hoping he would back off the Meredith Kercher case or resign should think again. “Nobody has left their post, and nobody will,”Â he said. “Let that be clear, in Perugia and beyond.”Â

Just as he had in the Monster of Florence case, Mignini used every tool at his disposal against his critics and adversaries. He spied on my family and tapped their phones. He went after Amanda not just for murder, but also for defaming Patrick Lumumba - whom she had implicated under duress and at the police’s suggestion. He opened or threatened about a dozen other legal cases against his critics in Italy and beyond. He charged Amanda’s parents with criminal defamation for repeating the accusation that she had been hit in the head while in custody. And he sued or threatened to sue an assortment of reporters, writers, and newspapers, either because they said negative things about him or the police directly or because they quoted others saying such things.

Mignini’s volley of lawsuits had an unmistakable chilling effect, especially on the Italian press, and played a clear role in tipping public opinion against us. We weren’t the only ones mounting the fight of our lives in court, and it was difficult not to interpret this legal onslaught as part of Mignini’s campaign to beat back the abuse-of-office charges. His approach seemed singularly vindictive. Not only did we have to sit in prison while the murder trial dragged on; it seemed he wanted to throw our friends and supporters - anyone who voiced a sympathetic opinion in public - into prison right alongside us.

Page 185

One other strange thing: Amanda and I were on trial for sexual assault, yet Stefanoni confirmed that a stain on Meredith’s pillowcase that looked a lot like semen was never tested in her lab. She made all sorts of excuses about how testing it might compromise the lab’s ability to use the pillowcase for other things. The semen might well be old, she added, the result of Meredith’s consensual sexual relations with Giacomo Silenzi.

This seemed extraordinary to my defense team, so much so that we asked for - and obtained - permission to inspect the pillowcase ourselves and soon discovered signs of semen on one of Guede’s shoe prints. How could the prosecution have missed this? If the semen was fresh when Guede stepped on it, that meant it must have been produced on the night of the murder. We thought long and hard about demanding a full analysis, but we did not trust the Polizia Scientifica as far as we could spit and were deathly afraid they might choose to construe that the semen was mine. So we held back.

Page 216-217

As it turned out, Massei may not have been entirely correct to say there was no evidence that DNA results were used to fit a predetermined story line. Giuliano Mignini, of all people, had given a television interview a couple of months earlier in which he stated quite openly that he was looking for a certain result from the kitchen-knife analysis.

Mignini was asked by a special correspondent for the show L’altra metà   del crimine (The Other Half of the Crime) how he could be so sure my knife was the murder weapon when the DNA readings had come back “too low”Â and did not appear to conform to international standards. Mignini stuttered and danced around the question before replying in gloriously convoluted Italian, “Ho ottenuto di farlo risultare.”Â I managed to get it to come out right.

Page 219-222

My family was not beating up on Amanda entirely without cause. What I did not know at the time, because they preferred not to fill me in, was that they were exploring what it would take for the prosecution to soften or drop the case against me. The advice they received was almost unanimous: the more I distanced myself from Amanda, the better. The legal community in Perugia was full of holes and leaks, and my family learned all sorts of things about the opinions being bandied about behind the scenes, including discussions within the prosecutor’s office. The bottom line: Mignini, they were told, was not all that interested in me except as a gateway to Amanda. He might indeed be willing to acknowledge I was innocent, but only if I gave him something in exchange, either by incriminating Amanda directly or by no longer vouching for her.

I’m glad my family did not include me in these discussions because I would have lost it completely. First, my uncle Giuseppe approached a lawyer in private practice in Perugia - with half an idea in his head that this new attorney could replace Maori - and asked what I could do to mitigate my dauntingly long sentence. The lawyer said I should accept a plea deal and confess to some of the lesser charges. I could, for instance, agree that I had helped clean up the murder scene but otherwise played no part in it. “He’d get a sentence of six to twelve years,”Â the lawyer said, “but because he has no priors the sentence would be suspended and he’d serve no more jail time.”Â

To their credit, my family knew I would never go for this. It made even them uncomfortable to contemplate me pleading guilty to something I had not done. It was, as my sister, Vanessa, put it, “not morally possible.”

The next line of inquiry was through a different lawyer, who was on close terms with Mignini and was even invited to the baptism of Mignini’s youngest child that summer. (Among the other guests at the baptism was Francesco Maresca, the Kerchers’ lawyer, who had long since aligned himself with Mignini in court.) This lawyer said he believed I was innocent, but he was also convinced that Amanda was guilty. He gave my family the strong impression that Mignini felt the same way. If true - and there was no way to confirm that - it was a clamorous revelation. How could a prosecutor believe in the innocence of a defendant and at the same time ask the courts to sentence him to life imprisonment? The lawyer offered to intercede with Mignini, but made no firm promises. He wasn’t willing to plead my cause, he said, but he would listen to anything the prosecutor had to offer.

Over the late spring and summer of 2010, my father used this lawyer as a back channel and maneuvered negotiations to a point where they believed Mignini and Comodi would be willing to meet with Giulia Bongiorno and hear what she had to say. When Papà   presented this to Bongiorno, however, she was horrified and said she might have to drop the case altogether because the back channel was a serious violation of the rules of procedure. A private lawyer has no business talking to a prosecutor about a case, she explained, unless he is acting with the express permission of the defendant. It would be bad enough if the lawyer doing this was on my defense team; for an outside party to undertake such discussions not only risked landing me in deeper legal trouble, it also warranted disciplinary action from the Ordine degli Avvocati, the Italian equivalent of the Bar Association.

My father was mortified. He had no idea how dangerous a game he had been playing and wrote a letter to Bongiorno begging her to forgive him and stay on the case. He was at fault, he said, and it would be wrong to punish her client by withdrawing her services when I didn’t even know about the back channel, much less approve it. To his relief, Bongiorno relented.

My family, though, did not. Whenever they came to visit they would suggest some form of compromise with the truth. Mostly they asked why I couldn’t say I was asleep on the night of the murder and had no idea what Amanda got up to.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Cassation outcome

Posted by Peter Quennell

Yummi

1. The SC definitively established that Guede acted with other people, and that he could not be holding the murder weapon. This is what the Italian newspapers pointed out yesterday.
2. Cassazione didn’t throw out the final verdict on Guede, nor the Chieffi verdict. They are all still valid, this is the bizarre thing.
3. If the Guede verdict is reviewed and changed, if there is no evidence of multiple attackers, then he could not be convicted at all. There is no chance he could be convicted as a lone perpetrator. If there is no evidence that multiple attackers were there - we know 100% there is of course - but assume there isn’t, then try to imagine if there could be evidence that he did everything alone: zero evidence that he broke the window, zero evidence that he could perform all physical actions alone and leave those traces, zero evidence he walked back to lock the door or washed himself in

the bathroom on the murder scene, zero evidence he came back to alter the scene. Absolutely zero possibility to present a consistent scenario on that evidence. Guede cannot be accused of this.

****
Kermit etc

[link=]https://www.facebook.com/pages/Comitato-UNITI-per-Raffaele-Sollecito/388688981231696?fref=nf [/link]

Fast, rough translation of a couple of paragraphs of the article you-two linked (excuse me if this text was already translated):

“Amanda and Raffaele were acquitted in exactly the same manner in which former senator-for-life Giulio Andreotti was acquitted, that is, applying the second paragraph of Article 530 of the Criminal Procedure Code. It is here, in Marasca’s explanation, where one finds most of the reasons for his judgment, since the (legal) norms require that “the judge pronounces an acquittal when there is missing, insufficient or contradictory evidence to prove the existence of the accusation or that the defendant has committed it.”

Hugo

The journalist thereby means to convey that this was a mafia fix. Andreotti, supreme chief of the mafia, seven times prime minister, senator for life, multiple murderer, got away with all his crimes. The system is deliberately set up and designed for that purpose. And you know who Andreotti’s lawyer was.

The press conference today, at which that same lawyer threatened that all the judges who got Sollecito’s case ‘wrong’ were going to be investigated—and of course she’s not a prosecutor, so she’s just telling everyone who’s really in charge here—was held simply to ram home the message. And the murderer himself, Raffaele Sollecito, was warning the Italian media to sit-stay and be good boys. And you know what, they will.

JohnQ

So, I looked at Wikipedia ‘s entry for Andreotti and what do you know it’s a complete whitewash. Anyone have a good link? I don’t want to read a book but I would like to read the basic story.

This is the mechanism it took to get get Sollecito and Knox off from murder. Telling. Of course the evidence had to be ignored and dismissed. It was an open and shut case. Knox was bleeding and we know how. She mixed her blood with Meredith’s in five places. Meredith’s DNA was on the damn knife blade.

***
BR Mull
Popper poo-pooed the idea that the assignment of judges could be corrupted. He said it is impossible, and I agree that this function is so critical that it would be the most tightly controlled element in the entire system.

More likely there is a significant minority to a majority of Italian appellate judges who are corrupt and/or incompetent. It is definitely not a few rogue players like we thought after Hellmann.

Possibly there is brain-drain from the criminal side to the civil side. No one would do business in Italy if the courts were as unpredictable as they appear from this case.

We’ll probably never know but I believe the long deliberation suggests a split decision with one or two holdouts, but clearly the pro-innocence crowd had the votes and there was nothing the minority could do.

***
Fiona, with reference your long and thoughtful post, the only thing to understand here is that the Supreme Court can pretty much do and say what it wants, though obviously not without rendering itself vulnerable to criticism which I am sure that it will receive by the bagful once the Motivations are published.

You are however applying your understanding of how appeals are conducted here in the UK, and the USA, based exclusively on errors of law, to appeals in the Italy, In Italy appeal courts have broader scope, not in relation to re-deciding what is a fact or not, but in re-evaluating relevance, concordance, probity and inferences with reference to the same. In other words merit is in play as well. The system deals with this this by insisting that (as with the trial court) everything that an appeals court does must still be justified and rationalized in it’s written reasons.

I dare say I might be challenged on this but consider the wide scope given to Nencini. The SC instructions were not peculiar to his court. That were in fact a reminder of what an appeals court should be doing, including the somewhat impossible task of determining what the roles of the accused were - which Massei already did though no-one was really happy with that. Whilst it might certainly be argued that an appeals court should be more conservative and show a little more respect for the trial court’s analysis by not overturning all it’s findings, nevertheless that is not outside the scope of an appeal court.

I’m not an Italian lawuer but if that’s not right then little makes sense to me.

That said you are not the only one who is genuinely perplexed by the SC. Maybe there is an error of law that the SC can point to in the CPC. An article that has been misinterpreted or mis-applied by two experienced criminal trial judges, no less, but my hunch is that we are going to be treated to a dazzling example of dialecticism, heavily dosed with begging the question, sophistry and brute force “because we say so” (probably involving a re-writing of the Guede final Motivations), all justified as a safeguard provision and by virtue of the inherent sovereignty of the supreme court of the land. Or some such total bullshit.
***

http://www.repubblica.it/online/fatti/quindici/articolo/articolo.html

Ecco cosa dice l’articolo 530 del codice di procedura penale

L’articolo 530 del codice di procedura penale individua i casi di sentenza di assoluzione.

Il primo comma recita: “Se il fatto non sussiste, se l’imputato non lo ha commesso, se il fatto non costituisce reato o non è previsto dalla legge come reato ovvero se il reato è stato commesso da persona non imputabile o non punibile per un’altra ragione il giudice pronuncia sentenza di assoluzione indicandone la causa nel dispositivo”.

Il secondo comma, citato dal giudice Francesco Ingargiola, spiega che “il giudice pronuncia sentenza di assoluzione anche quando manca, è insufficiente o è contraddittoria la prova che il fatto sussiste, che l’imputato lo ha commesso, che il fatto costituisce reato o che il reato è stato commesso da persona imputabile”. Non si tratta quindi di una assoluzione per insufficienza di prove, cancellata con il nuovo codice che prevede in ogni caso l’assoluzione con la formula “perchè il fatto non sussiste”.

Il terzo comma fa riferimento ai casi in cui “vi è la prova che il caso è stato commesso in presenza di una causa di giustificazione o di una causa personale di non punibilità  ovvero vi è dubbio sull’esistenza delle stesse, il giudice pronuncia sentenza di assoluzione a norma del comma 1”.

Chiude l’articolo il quarto comma: “Con la sentenza di assoluzione il giudice applica, nei casi previsti, le misure di sicurezza”.

(23 ottobre 1999)

***

Yummi on above #1

The legal doctrine about whether this equates the previous “insufficient evidence” verdict or not is not the topic.
Thechnically it does not equate it, but it includes it within its scope.
But this is is no point as for a possible request for civil damages, has not to do with the topic, because the jursprudence says that in the merits, what matters is whether there was a factual finding of innocence, or not.
Mentioning 530.2 in a verdict - even more a SC court dispositivo, something I have personally never seen happening - means that there is certainly no evidence of innocence, possibly not even a reason to assume innocence.
530.2 equates to “case unsolved”, the question of innocence is not answered.
This, as for the technical content of the verdict.

In the merits of what is reasonable, or legally acceptable vs. anomalous, I believe this verdict is a “monstrum” just like Hellmann, and as such will be looked at by judges.

Yummi on above #2

No it’s incorrect. “The crime did not exist” is a different legal formula.
The second paragraph is a bit a more ambiguous and more “acquitting” formula of the old “insufficient proof”.
In fact the “insufficient proof” does not exist as a formal verdict any more, butit exists as a legal concept, it can be inferred from the motivations - even if they are often slanted in the most “innocentista” view, to emphasize innocent possibilities - and it is encompassed within the 530.2 paragraph, in which also “missing” or “contradictory” evidence is conflated.
The new code in other words estends the concept of “insufficient” to include also the “missing” or “cotnradictory” concepts, making it look more similar to a formal full acquittal.
However, menthioning the second paragraph certainly means that the question is still “open”, that means also open to further legal actions.
It’s still a type of “not having committed the crime” though.
Whilst “the crime did not exist” is another kind of formula, not applicable on this case.
***

Regarding role of Cassazione, this is what the previous Cassazione held was the role of Cassazione in these types of cases:

1.2 “ The purview of legitimacy of this Court with respect to the logical procedure followed to arrive at the judgment of attribution of fact through the use of inferences or rules of experience consists of verifying whether the court judge has indicated the reasons for his conviction and whether these are plausible: the verification must be carried out in terms of ascertaining whether the judge took into [40] consideration all the relevant information present in the court files, thus respecting the principle of completeness; whether the conclusions reached can be said to be consistent with the material received and prove themselves to be founded on inferential criteria and logical deductions (that are) beyond criticism from the perspective of respecting the principles of the non”contradiction and of the logical consistency of the reasoning. The object of the Supreme Court judge’s scrutiny is therefore the probative reasoning, (and) accordingly, the method used to assess the evidence, digressing in the reappraisal of the circumstantial evidence not being permitted. It has in fact been underscored how article 606, c 1, letter e of the Criminal Procedure Code precludes the (Supreme Court) judge from reappraisal but does not at all prevent him from verifying whether the appraisal was carried out according to logical criteria “whether, that is, the criteria of inference used by the court judge can be held to be plausible, or whether different ones can be allowed, capable of leading to different solutions [which are] equally plausible” (section IV, 12.11.2009, no 48320). It has been noted that this task had already been entrusted to the Supreme Court judge before the intervening reform introduced in letter e of article 606 of the Criminal Procedure Code with law 46/2006 and that with the amendment the flaw of misinterpretation of the evidence was placed in the category of the flaw of explanation, thus not reformulating the ambit of the scrutiny entrusted to the Supreme Court judge, (and) furthermore allowing the Court of Cassation to assess the trial records, this assessment being limited to their explanatory value and not their evaluation, when their contents are such as to undermine the conclusions reached by the trial judges.

***

 

 

 

TIMELINE Anti 57 hour interrogation

Posted by Peter Quennell

Timeline for interrogations and related events
Note: this is quite provisional, I will try to firm things up later.

Friday November 2nd
10:30 Amanda gets up
13:30 Meredith is discovered murdered
14:00 Amanda still at cottage
15:00 Amanda at police station - 6 hours of interrogation, the first hour without an interpreter, then with an English-speaking police officer ( Source: Email4Nov). The interpreter was Fabio D’Astolto see News Article 1
21:00 Initial interrogation ends - but Amand is kept in waiting area until 5:30am the next day.

Saturday November 3rd
11:00 Amanda back at police station - police take her to cottage. After 5 1/2 hours, she makes a statement at 14:45, Raffale picks her up, she has Pizza.
Evening : Amanda shops for underwear.

Sunday November 4th
03:24 Amanda sends email to her friends.
11:00? Amanda back at police station, makes another statement at 14:45.

Monday November 5th
09:00 Amanda has Italian classes in morning
13:00 Amanda meets Patrick in front of Universita per Stranieri
15:00 Eating pizza with Raffaele and friends at a Café
17:00 Raffaele questioned ( Amanda waits at station )
22:00 Raffaele questioned again, Amanda in waiting room
22:29 Amanda has 3 minute phone call with Filomena
22:32 Amanda’s is questioned by two police officers Testimony 4

Tuesday November 6th
00:30 Anna Donnino the police interpreter arrives.

01:45 SignedStatement1 taken by Rita Ficarra ( I had previously assumed this was when she signed the first statement, but see note [1] ).
05:45 SignedStatement2 taken by Mignini ( lasting maybe 30 minutes according to Mignini ).
06:30 Patrick arrested.
08:00 Mignini draws up detention order.
09:00 Amanda arrested.
Afternoon: Amanda writes first note, and is transferred to prison.

Note: It’s not clear at what time Amanda was moved to the interrogation room where she showed them her mobile phone.
Possibly it was 01:45, possibly it was earlier, it’s not clear.

Wednesday November 7th
Amanda writes first pages of prison diary, and another note.
There is an inditement dated November 7th.

Thursday November 8th
Interrogation with the pubblico ministero
“Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba appeared before the judge and other officials overseeing the investigation Thursday during lengthy closed-door interrogations.”
NB KNOX DID NOT TALK
The first draft of the medical examiner’s report was presented to the courts by Dr. Lalli ( Telegraph ).

Friday November 9th
Judge Claudia Matteini issues a court order confirming that authorities interpreted message exchange to mean that Knox and Lumumba were to meet later that evening.
Amanda writes letters “To my lawyers”, one at midday, one at 3:45 (Amanda testimony)
“I wrote that I felt upset about having said the name of Patrick. Just that. Because at that time, I remembered and I knew that everything I had said was a mistake.”

Saturday November 10th
Amanda speaks to her mother ( for the first time since she was arrested? )
Police find Rudy’s fingerprint ( UPI )

Sunday November 11th
Monday November 12th
Tuesday November 13th
Wednesday November 14th
Thursday November 15th
Friday November 16th
Rudy is identified “with absolute certainty” ( Micheli report )

Friday, April 10, 2015

MOVE Mission statement to “about us” page

Posted by Peter Quennell

Anyone who thinks that the main difference between contributors here (P.M.F) and AmandaFan-Central is a simple difference of opinions needs to take stock of this: There is a BIG difference between those who seek out and expose the truth of a matter - and those who seek to obfuscate it.

What has been accomplished here (and at other sites, most notably the Kercher Wiki) stands on its own, can survive the test of time, and will serve to inform researchers down the line. Work that is performed honestly and with the goal of enlightenment in mind goes well beyond the efforts of the individuals who performed it.

Our work did not require ongoing PayPal or Go-Fund-Me campaigns to make it work because is has been an honest research effort all along - and not a campaign. To the contrary, it has been a QUEST and when a researcher’s work is done she presents her findings and may offer personal conclusions - but finds it relatively easily to move on to the next effort or task because it was never really about outcomes; it is an effort based upon uncovering the hidden, revealing the unknown, and making everything more visible. And the true value of research is not in how institutions or organizations attempt to use it to make informed decisions - or choose to ignore it. The true value of such research always lies entirely within itself.

You know, for us there was never anything to “hate” but ignorance, intolerance, deceit, and injustice. It’s been an effort of putting the focus on a victim; placing Meredith first. On the other hand, those who are actually involved in the act of hating will always find themselves unable to move beyond it - no matter what, under any circumstances. That’s what is making this post-verdict period so interesting to observe.

Saturday, April 04, 2015

KNOX situation

Posted by Peter Quennell

My daughter pointed out that from what she has noted on social media and some of the sites she frequents is that Knox now seems to be being seen as on the same level as OJ simpson and Casey Anthony apparently some people who were uncertain now see a big question mark over her innocence.

The funny thing is that we had no ties to the Kercher family, they don’t owe us anything and we can move on, Amanda’s problem now is that she has a core group of creepy fanboy/cultists who think she owes them her freedom and she’s going to find it a bit difficult to get rid of of them.

***

Friday, April 03, 2015

LIES Longhini

Posted by Peter Quennell

LONGHINI

February 11 2014 Convicted killer in Knox case eligible for daily release

February 7 2014 Was Amanda Knox a political pawn in Italian politics?

February 5, 2014Judge who sentenced Knox, Sollecito under fire for remarks

January 31, 2014Amanda Knox and double jeopardy: Does it matter in Italy?

November 1, 2013Amanda Knox Update: Newly tested trace evidence reportedly points away from Knox, but how will prosecutors respond

October 16, 2013 Amanda Knox Update: DNA test result is a win for American accused of murder in Italy

October 4 2013 Amanda Knox Update: Would $139,000 have helped stack the odds in favor of Knox in new trial?

September 30 2013 Amanda Knox Update: Will a tiny piece of untested evidence on a butcher knife decide new trial outcome?

March 20 2012 Amanda Knox’s parents to go on trial in Perugia

November 23, 2011 We’ll be listening: Amanda Knox case reveals extent of Italian wiretappin

November 2, 2011 Amanda Knox prosecutor Giuliano Mignini back in court as a defendan

April 20, 2011Amanda Knox reporters harrassed, jailed by authorities

September 30, 2010Amanda Knox Exclusive: Former FBI Agent Fired by School for Speaking Out on Knox Case

April 23, 2010Monster of Florence: Amanda Knox Prosecutor’s Satanic Theories Rejected by Judge

April 15, 2010Amanda Knox Framed: Picture Hung in Italian Police “Hall of Shame” BEFORE She Was Charged With Murder

April 22, 2010Amanda Knox Exclusive: Convicted Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini May Return for “Appealing” Courtroom Drama, Citing Loophole

March 26, 2010Amanda Knox, Two Faces of Justice: Convicted American is in Italian Prison, Convicted Prosecutor is Free

March 18, 2010Amanda Knox Italian Police Bombshell: We Knew She Was Guilty of Murder Without Physical Evidence

March 9, 2010Jailhouse Confession Rocks Amanda Knox Murder Case

December 16, 2009Amanda Knox May be Joined in Jail by Giuliano Mignini, the Prosecutor That Put Her There

April 8 2009 American Girl, Italian Nightmare

Porta a porta

Posted by Peter Quennell

***

Popper

SC judges have no interest in [extradition worries] they just confirm a sentence or not, execution is left to others.

if nothing else, after their final conviction, Sollecito’s arrest will drive Italian public opinion, dormant for years, to demand a quick extradition of his accomplice, who was the flat mate of the victim and without whom no murder would have taken place. Italian tax money was used to prosecute after all.

I think it was more Vespa who expressed the opinion on extradition (without specifying why and on what assumptions) and she followed, she did not sound so convinced. Their opinion is not important as they have no special insight, know nothing about the treaty and did not mention good reasons.

***

Yummi

I must say I really disliked this Porta a Porta show. Not because of Gill but because of Vespa’s setting of the topics and choice of guests, but above all I was disappointed - and surprised - by Simonetta Matone’s attitude on this particular time.

It’s worth pointing out that the whole show was openly set along the line - as explicitly declared by Vespa’s own words - to talk about the possible “differences in the evidence” between Knox and Sollecito, “above all for what concerns DNA”.

The basic topic of this shaw was the “splitting of positions”, the suggestion that Sollecito’s resonsability might be separated from Knox’s, together with the two evidence sets. They noted that Knox was competley out from the equation, while they basically implied she was guilty.

Something I particularly disliked was Matone’s assumption - even though she implied that Knox was probably guilty - that anyway she wouldn’t be extradited, because of “mechanisms” or PR/political kinds set on inside the United States to protect her. I don’t subscribe with her taking for granted that the US would fail to apply the extradition treaty actually, and I know Knox’s own attorneys are absolutely not confident about that.

Another aspect I disliked was what Matone chose not to talk about, and her suggestion, unfortunatley parroting the wrong defensive thesis, that DNA was a “decisive” finding.
Something very disputable was the choice of guests: no Bruzzone and no Castellini. A geneticist hired by Sollecito’s family to face prof. Gill, instead of a pro-prosecution or neutral one, the two pro-Sollecito journalists Sottile and Feltri “replacing” Castellini and any other commenter. And finaly Francesco Sollecito, without any advesarial counterpart.

The show is irrelevant and said very little. But it leaves a bad impression as for its implication: that is the qustion of why Vespa offered himself to set up such a pro-Sollecito show. It means the Papa’s and Bongiorno’s Masonic/political circle managed to have their clout on Vespa and get a favour from him too.

***
[eric] Simonetta Matone’s role was to say: “Look she won’t go to prison, why should he go?”.
At the end of Porta a Porta 12-03-2015 Bruno Vespa throws a curveball to Francesco Sollecito, closing the show and FS has only one good shot left:
Francesco Sollecito: He always said he had nothing to do with all he was accused of.
Bruno Vespa: But he said that night he’d slept with Amanda. That’s another “¦
Francesco Sollecito: It’s not true Mr. Vespa. Bear with me. There are”¦
Bruno Vespa: They didn’t spend the night together?
Francesco Sollecito: Sure, he is convinced of it but he never claimed it, because when he claimed it to the GIP in the audience for validation of arrest, he said he didn’t remember if that night Amanda went out.
Bruno Vespa: Alright then.
Salvo Sottile: Knoxi-Foxi
End of Show

***

[quote=“Popper”]Vespa is an old christian democrat, nowadays he will support whoever is in government, right or left, his annual book is published by Mondadori but could easily change editor ... many will tell you that politicians are more worried to be supported [invited] by Vespa than the opposite ... in journalism he has considerable power.  On crime he never showed his political positions influenced his judgement, right or wrong it may be ... Matone is a judge, she never expressed politically tinted opinions on crime at PaP

The political angle of this case does not really exist in Italy (with the exception of wishy washy Rocco Girlanda, no weight at all, and a few other quick comments, nothing serious) ... there is no political angle pro Knox as everyone knows she is guilty, taking her side would be suicidal.  some in politics have a position that is systematically against the justice system, but even this today is less felt as what remains of buffoon Berlusconi’s party is polled at only 11 pct (and he has to criticise the judges who convicted him and could convict him for more crimes ... not much time left to criticise others).  PD polls 38pct and 5 Star at 19pct, even Lega polls 13pct.

Politics and public opinion may become important (now dormant) if the guilty are not sent to prison.  People may get angry and politicians would feel the pressure.  If US did not extradite they will feel the political and public opinion pressure mounting ... even Vespa will cover them in shame if that happened, whatever he is saying now ... for the rest nobody cares.  It is unlikely to happen.  This is murder, not politics, even for the US, and Knox is nobody. DoS must know she is guilty, they do their homework on these issues, unlike hairdressers and empty headed jobless security guards.

 

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Are These Meredith And Rudy Captured On Parking Facility CCTV?

Posted by Peter Quennell

This may be Rudy and Meredith each headed down out of the parking facility to the house area around mid-evening.

That’s the claim being made by an Italian TV network. It’s a tough call, with this low-quality video, but decide for yourselves.

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