Category: Massei defense

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Our Letter To Senator Maria Cantwell: Please Don’t Take Precipitate Action Till Full Facts Are In

Posted by Highly-Concerned Washington-State Voters

We are all regular voters who live in the Seattle area. We have signed the original of this letter to our US senator, Maria Cantwell, and sent it off to her Capitol office. 

We think we increasingly mirror a very large minority or even a majority of cool-headed but concerned Seattle-area voters who would like to see her speaking up for truth and real justice in this case.

And for the rights of the true victim.

We are not running a campaign. We don’t think Senator Cantwell needs hard persuasion. We think once she immerses herself deeply in the real facts, those facts will tell her the right thing to do.

Dear Senator Cantwell

A number of your well-informed constituents are wondering about your motivations for suddenly injecting yourself into the Meredith Kercher murder trial debate, immediately following last week’s unanimous guilty ruling for American Amanda Knox in Perugia, Italy. 

We wonder because you said you were saddened by the verdict and had serious questions about the Italian judicial system and whether anti-Americanism had tainted the trial.  But then you went on to describe how you knew for a fact that the prosecution in the case did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Amanda Knox was guilty. 

We’re confused because it seems to us that if you had been following the case closely enough to be certain that not enough evidence had been presented by the prosecution that you would consequently have a very clear idea of how the Italian judicial system functioned and know whether or not anti-American sentiment had impacted the ruling. 

So, as a group of concerned Seattle area constituents who have been following every detail of this case since poor Meredith Kercher was murdered, we humbly offer you our assistance towards bringing things into proper perspective.

Were you aware that Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian from Giovinazzo, Bari was convicted right alongside Ms. Knox?  Mr. Sollecito received some of the best legal representation available in Italy, including senior lawyer and parliamentary deputy Giulia Bongiorno who won fame as a criminal lawyer when she successfully defended former Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti a few years ago. 

Ms Bongiorno has said nothing about anti-American sentiment having influenced the ruling against her client, nor has she complained about fundamental problems with the way this trial was run.  Instead, she is now completely focused on looking ahead to the appeal process as her next opportunity to mitigate sentences or argue for her client’s innocence. 

This should assuage some of your concerns.

But perhaps you are referring to the extra year Ms. Knox received in comparison to Mr. Sollecito’s 25-year sentence as a clear example of anti-American sentiment?  That’s a fair concern; however, in Italy the jury panel for a trial is required to submit a report within 90 days of a ruling describing in great detail the logic used to convict and sentence, or absolve a defendant. 

For example, in Rudy Guede’s fast-track trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher last year Judge Paolo Micheli issued an exhaustive 106 page report outlining the panel’s labored decision-making process, in sometimes excruciating detail.  We can expect no less for the trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, and when that report is issued we will have our best look yet at the evidence that was used to convict the pair.

We suggest that you seriously reconsider “bringing” Hillary Clinton and the State Department into the debate.

Consider that State Department spokesman Ian Kelly stated that the US embassy in Rome had been tasked with monitoring the trial and had visited Ms. Knox in jail, and several embassy representatives were known to have attended the reading of the ruling last week. In addition, an American reporter based in Italy who has followed the case from the outset said last night on CNN that the trial had been monitored from the outset.

Secretary Clinton has clearly been very busy with far more critical tasks than to have maintained a personal familiarity with the Kercher murder case; however, Kelly did state that in response to recent press reports Secretary Clinton had taken time to look things over and has yet to find any indication that Knox did not receive a fair trial.  You surely realize that Secretary Clinton will not be interested making public comments regarding an ongoing legal process in a sovereign, democratic nation that is a long-time ally of the United States.

Also note that on the Italian side of the equation, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told his countrymen that he has yet to receive any criticisms of the trial from the office of the US Secretary of State and that the fierce criticism of the case by the Seattle based Amanda Knox support group should not be confused as the position of the US government. 

And Luciano Ghirga, Knox’s own Italian lawyer, has stated that he does not question the validity of the trial and that he believes it was conducted correctly. Furthermore, regarding your desire to have Clinton become involved, Ghirga concluded, “That’s all we need, Hillary Clinton involved”¦this sort of thing does not help us in any way.” 

Perhaps he is referring to the heated discussions in the Italian press these days regarding the strong criticisms of Italy’s legal system coming from a country that supports Guantanamo Bay, the death penalty, and other perceived injustices of a far-from-perfect American legal system.

As these examples demonstrate, and from your own humble constituents’ well-informed perspective, there is nothing out of the ordinary or alarming about the Meredith Kercher murder trial process.  The prosecutors and defense teams will continue to debate the evidence throughout the appeal process, just as we should expect them to. 

If you do decide to go forward with your inquiry, despite significant opposition from your constituents, we recommend that you do so only after becoming more familiar with the evidence presented during the trial, as presented by a neutral source. The family and friends of the US citizen recently convicted are probably not neutral.

If you take a good look, you will see that there are checks and balances in the Italian way of achieving justice, just as there are in the American system. In the final analysis, it is completely as Beatrice Cristiani, deputy judge for the Kercher murder trial, put it: “As far as I am aware our system of justice does not make provision for interference from overseas.”

Fully signed by all of us in the original sent to Senator Maria Cantwell

Friday, December 04, 2009

The Summations: The Two Defendants Make Their Final Pleas To The Court

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for a video of Amanda Knox’s final plea.

The Judge had asked Knox if she’d prefer to speak in English. She declined, speaking her last words to the court in Italian - and she neglected to mention Meredith by name, even though she followed some notes.

A fact that apparently escaped few in the courtroom.

Instead it was really only all about her. Nick Pisa reporting the Amanda Knox statement in the Daily Mail

Knox’s voice shook as she told the court in perfect Italian: ’” am confident that my conscience is clear” adding that she was afraid of “having the mask of a killer branded onto my skin”.

The American also said: “I want to thank the accusers because they are only trying to do their job even if they don’t understand. They are only trying to bring justice to someone whose life has been taken from this world.”

“‘I am vulnerable in front of you and decisions are being made about me. ‘People have been asking me how I stay so calm - I am not calm.  ‘These last few days… I was worried that I was not going to be myself and that I am being described as someone who I am not.”

“I feel sad, confused and frustrated. I could face years in prison and this makes me unhappy. ‘I could be pulling out my hair, taking apart my cell but I don’t do these things. I just take a breath and try and be positive in moments like this.”

Knox, who spoke from notes, ended by telling the judge and jury: ‘Now it’s your turn and I thank you.’

Andrea Vogt reporting the Raffaele Sollecito statement in the Seattle PI.

“Why would I commit something so horrible as murder?” asked Sollecito, a computer-engineering graduate. “You are deciding my life. I am not living a nightmare anymore, but something far more dramatic.”

Through it all, Knox has not changed, said the only woman on her defense team, Maria Del Grosso.

“I have gotten to know her during this trial. She is intelligent, sweet, and yes, a bit naive. She didn’t cry to get your attention. She’s like that. She’s genuine, and I think she has shown great dignity through all of this.”

Sollecito also defended her, saying he thought it was difficult to imagine that she was the maneater the prosecution depicted. He added that he did not feel dominated by her.

“I am not a dog on a leash, and I am not Amanda-dependent as the prosecution has argued.”

Richard Allen Greene and Hada Messia report on the CNN website

Before [Sollecito’s] testimony, prosecutor Manuela Comodi offered a rebuttal to defense claims of sloppy evidence-gathering at the crime scene. She focused on the technical aspects of the evidence against Knox and Sollecito and questioned the forensic arguments used by the defense. She also defended the investigators, calling them professionals who stayed out of the media show surrounding the case.

Comodi rejected allegations that Sollecito’s DNA found on a bra belonging to Kercher could have been contaminated. Other than a cigarette butt in the kitchen with Sollecito’s DNA on it, she said, investigators did not find his DNA anywhere else in the house. The bra, the prosecutor said, was found in the bedroom where Kercher was killed. Forensics investigators wore gloves when retrieving the bra, Comodi said.

That proves, she said, that Sollecito was at the crime scene when the slaying took place.

Sollecito also left other traces of having been in the house, including footprints, she said. Some of the footprints were found in the bathroom, Comodi said.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

The Summations: Ghirga Finishes, Mignini Wraps Up. And Knox May Speak Tomorrow

Posted by Peter Quennell

The conclusion of Mr Ghirga’s remarks from Alan Pizzey’s report for CBS

A lawyer for Amanda Knox wrapped up her defense in the Italian murder trial today with an emotional, at times tearful, appeal to the court to acquit her of charges that she murdered roommate Meredith Kercher.

The lawyer appealed for sympathy for Kercher, but also for Knox. “We suffer for what happened to Meredith,” Ghirga told the jurors, referring to the murder victim, “but also for the future of Amanda.”

Ghirga teared up at the end of his summation and apologized for a little “emotion.” Turning to Knox’s parents, he told the court, “Amanda’s parents ask you for her acquittal. There is no Knox clan, just two desperate parents.”

“The prosecutor is right about one thing, you should not forget the victim, Meredith,” he said. “And there is one thing the prosecution should have done for Meredith, and that is an investigation done well from the beginning, with rigor.”

Ghirga concluded by saying, “Amanda asks you for her life. Give Amanda her life back, by acqutting her.”

And Mr Mignini’s remarks translated from Il Giornale

The Rudy Guede is guilty ploy “does not relieve Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox, his co-defendants” in the reconstruction of the murder of Meredith Kercher made by the prosecutor of Perugia….

The magistrate said that “Rudy has been tried” by Knox’s and Sollecito’s lawyers. “Accused of everything without the ability to defend himself…. ”  Amanda and Raffaele claim that they were not in Via della Pergola but that they know everything about how Rudy has smashed a window with a rock as he climbed and as he raped Meredith.

Their defenses have claimed contamination of biological traces that match them but insist they match Guede one hundred per cent. There ‘s been a selective contamination? “.

Amanda was like a compressed spring and “felt resentment” toward Meredith Kercher. “Raffaele Sollecito always followed Amanda and tried to please her. And they were full of drugs and alcohol on the night.”

The defense is allowed to have the last word and Amanda Knox may speak in her defense tomorrow.

The Summations: Agence France-Presse Has First Long Report On Ghirga Summing-Up For Knox

Posted by Peter Quennell

[click for larger image]

Very on the ball. The first time we have linked to a French media report from Perugia. It is carried by AsiaOne. Excerpts from the report.

Over-zealous interrogators “ground down” American student Amanda Knox to concoct a scenario in which she and her Italian boyfriend murdered Briton Meredith Kercher in a sexual misadventure, her defence said Wednesday.

“Amanda was the victim of a mechanism that ground her down,” lawyer Luciano Ghirga said in impassioned closing arguments two days ahead of a verdict in the year-long trial…

The white-haired Ghirga, frequently resorting to sarcasm and operatic shouting, said a “whiff of racism and anti-feminism” hung over the investigation launched after Kercher was found dead in her blood-drenched bedroom on November 2, 2007.

He suggested that women police officers “clashed” with Knox in four days of questioning following the gruesome 2007 murder in the house Knox shared with Kercher, leading the suspect, then 20, to make false declarations.

Notably, the native of Seattle, Washington, falsely accused her part-time employer, Congolese bar owner Patrick Lumumba, who was hauled off “like a sack of potatoes,” Ghirga said….

Seated nearby, Lumumba stared ahead, his face propped on his hands, as Ghirga said Knox had no “direct intention” of accusing him….

As Wednesday’s proceedings began, the lawyer held up one of four books he said were published on the case while the investigation was still under way.

The tabloid media, notably in Britain, screamed with lurid headlines, raising concerns over whether a fair trial was possible, he said.

Lawyers on both sides have complained, the defence charging that the media demonised Knox and the prosecution that “wannabe crime writers” were conducting a parallel trial.

The glaring spotlight on Knox eclipsed the role of Rudy Guede, an Ivorian immigrant convicted separately of the grisly crime in a so-called “fast-track” trial limited to evidence from the probe….

Sollecito, an engineering student and the son of a wealthy doctor, appears timid behind his glasses, leading prosecutors to portray him as a follower in Knox’s thrall.

The Summations: Knox Lawyer Ghirga Makes A Claim We Hadn’t Heard Before

Posted by Peter Quennell

Fox News reports the Sky News story (they are both Rupert Murdoch vehicles) which is not yet online.

Women police officers investigating the murder of British student Meredith Kercher “had it in” for suspect Amanda Knox because of a sex toy, a court has heard, Sky News reported.

Luciano Ghirga, defending Knox, described a “clash between women from the Perugia flying squad” and his client.

“They had it in for her just because she had condoms and a vibrator in her beauty case,” said Ghirga, according to Sky News.

Knox “had suffered as a result of this antagonism,” Ghirga told the murder trial, being held in Perugia.

 

 

The Summations: La Nazione On Arguments Of Knox Lawyer Della Vedova

Posted by Tiziano

Final report on Mr Della Vedova yesterday while we wait for the first reporting on Mr Ghirga today. This is from the report of Il Tempo translated.

By Marino Collacciani

Knox comes into court.  Beautiful, very beautiful, with a magnetic gaze.  And what if she were Eva Kant instead of Amélie from Seattle?  No, the magnificent companion of Diablik is probably in some secret hideout in Clermont, and Amanda Knox today appears further and further away from the clutches of Inspector Ginko.  And then Raffaele Sollecito doesn’t look like Diabolik at all…

There is certainly a great distance between the life imprisonment of the prosecutors and and the complete liberty demanded by the defence.  The Giussani sisters, creators of the cult crime comic, would have certainly drawn and dramatised a better trial, with proof in hand.  Because it really isn’t absolutely simple to take the side of either the “innocentisti” or the “colpevolisti”: those two, Raffaele and Amanda, could be our children, brothers or sisters.  The problem is that Meredith Kercher could be too…  And so therefore what?  The best thing for now is to prepare the crime news.  And to look forward to the third and final stage of the Perugia trial.

Today, indeed, another defender of the American girl will take the stand, then the rejoinders which will continue tomorrrow: then the arrival of Friday, when the judges could go into deliberations and hand down the verdict.  Which will certainly be appealed.  So, two families, two states of mind.  Knox’s, all present in court, optimistic about the the judgement expected for the first time.  Amanda’s father, Curt Knox, spoke of “another step in the right direction”.  Then he explained how Amanda was: “She bearing up quite well.  Today was good for her (yesterday, ed), hearing the truth instead of fantasy.”  But the members of the Kercher family stay silent, for they have put their trust completely in lawyer Maresca.  However, they will be there on Friday in court to listen to the judgement.

The address of Dalla Vedova started with a 360 degree turn around from an assumption: that is, the involvement of Amanda Knox, a “wholesome student overtaken by a tsunami”, was all the outcome “of a mistake”.  Because the initial statements made to the police by a girl “in difficulty and totally confused” which linked her herself to the house of the crime and Patrick Lumumba (who turned out to be comletely extraneous to the event and thus exonerated) “had to be checked”.  And Amanda had to be freed as he was.  In court in black jumper and pants, her hair pulled back in a plait, Amanda confided, in a note left on the desk and written in English, the fear of “losing myself, of being condemned for something I have not done”.

The lawyer spoke then of “absolute lack of motive” or, rather of the “illogicality” of the theory of the prosecution about a crime linked to a vendetta or a sexual assault.  But also of the “unlikelihood” of the kitchen knife seized from the residence of Raffaele Sollecito, with the DNA of Knox and Kercher on the blade, indicated by the prosecution as the weapon of the crime.  “Why take it to the house in Via della Pergola - he asked - when there were so many there?”  And finally for Della Vedova the group violence “is not proved”, just by virtue of “lack of space” available for the attackers (Knox, Sollecito and Guede, according to the PM) in Meredith’s bedroom where traces of Knox are “equal to zero, because she was not there”.

The Summations: Andrea Vogt Summarises Knox Defense By Della Vedova

Posted by Peter Quennell

Andrea Vogt has a report in the Seattle PI that adds significant detail to that of ABC’s Ann Wise below. Key excerpts.

“Amanda Knox never should have been arrested. And everything that has happened since then has been part of an attempt to maintain an accusation, that, bit by bit, has disintegrated.”

It began with “psychosomatic” observations of one powerful cop, he said, Edgardo Giobbi, the former director of the violent crimes division of the central operations unit in Rome, who on “investigator’s instincts” suspected Knox from the beginning.

“Immediately after the crime, they focused attention on her,” said Dalla Vedova. “They started recording her conversations. They were quick to say ‘case closed,’ but it was a mistake the police made in the beginning, then they couldn’t let it go.”

He played tapes of secretly recorded conversations between Knox and her other roommate in the days after the slaying. They comforted each other in broken Italian and English….

Like his colleague Giulia Bongiorno the day before, Dalla Vedova spent considerable time countering attacks on Knox’s character, reading letters from the owner of a Seattle art gallery where she worked and citing former teachers. He described her as a “regular girl leading an ordinary, serene life with positive values.”

“I’ve known her for two years. She is ‘soap and water’” he said, using the Italian phrase to describe someone as wholesome. Knox, in a conservative black turtleneck sweater and with her hair pulled back from her face in a neatly woven French braid, appeared concentrated on her lawyer’s every word.

Knox is also expected to make a statement to jurors, at whom she nods and makes eye contact with each time she enters or exits the courtroom. On Thursday, the prosecution and the Kercher family attorney will be allowed to give rebuttal remarks before the case goes to the jury for deliberations.

Francesco Maresca, the attorney representing the Kercher family, said the attorneys intend to remind the jury of the “ample and massive” amount of forensic and circumstantial evidence behind the prosecution’s case. But the defense has one more day to sow more seeds of doubt.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Barbie Nadeau Cracks The Mystery Of Why Sollecito’s Lawyer Was Arguing For Knox

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for the report in the Daily Beast.

Yesterday’s strategy by Ms Bongiorno had been puzzling us behind the scenes. Even the Italian media seemed confused. Some thought she was subtly saying that Knox had framed Sollecito. This analysis sounds authentic.

American murder suspect Amanda Knox was nervous Monday morning when she entered the courtroom in Perugia…

Sollecito’s co-counsel Giulia Bongiorno…. surprised court observers and spent most of the morning ignoring her own client. Instead, she defended Knox even though Sollecito is the only of the two with DNA evidence in the room where Kercher was murdered…

By doing the work of Knox’s defense team, Sollecito’s own defense took a calculated risk that it will be harder for the jury to convict them both. But in doing so, she paved the way for the two to be judged as one, meaning they will either both be acquitted or both receive life sentences.

And by defending Knox and attacking the forensic evidence against her…. [Bongiorno] is banking that Knox’s lawyers will also do their bit to defend Sollecito later this week when it is their turn.

“She is not Amanda the Ripper,” Bongiorno told the jury, which at times must have been wondering when she would get to Sollecito. “She is a little crazy, extravagant. She does the cartwheels in the police station because reality for her is too strong to deal with. She is spontaneous, immediate, and imprudent.”

It was a moment of obvious relief for Knox. The last few weeks have been particularly arduous for her. Two weeks ago, Rudy Guede, the man who has already been convicted for his part in Kercher’s murder, testified in his appeals trial that he saw her silhouette in the window of the crime scene the night of the murder.

The same week, the prosecutor painted a disturbing picture of Knox as a drug-fueled vixen who called Meredith Kercher “prissy” before threatening her at knifepoint to have group sex with Guede and Sollecito. Then last week as the civil plaintiff’s closing arguments against her concluded, Knox was called a “dirty minded she-devil” by lawyers for Patrick Lumumba….

[Monday] was the best day the defense has had in this trial. Bongiorno’s oratory was a tribute to criminal defense. The jury didn’t take their eyes off her as she weaved a story separated by her own self-titled chapters. And when Knox’s defense lawyers begin their summation, they are expected to do their part and pick up where Sollecito’s defense left off.

“We are really four lawyers with two clients,” Knox attorney Carlo Dalla Vedova said after court. “We are all in the same boat.” Soon the jury will decide whether it will stay afloat.

The Summations: Today’s Arguments For Amanda Knox By Her Lawyer Della Vedova

Posted by Peter Quennell

Ann Wise reports today’s arguments for Knox on the ABC news-site. Key excerpts:

Amanda Knox’s lawyer told the jury today that Italian prosecutors abruptly switched the alleged motive for what they charge was Knox’s murderous assault on her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

“The motive is fundamental,” attorney Carlo Dalla Vedova told the jury in Perugia, Italy, where Knox has been jailed for the last two years. “But today the motive has been changed at the last minute.”...

“At the very end of the trial the prosecution has changed the motive, not in the course of the trial and supporting it with evidence,” Dalla Vedova said. “It is no longer the result of a sex party gone wrong. Now it is Amanda who organized the crime out of vengeance.”..

“Amanda stayed in Perugia, she did not run away. She did not go to Germany when her aunt told her to come. On the morning of the 5th, the day she was interrogated, she went to school. She wanted to be in Perugia,” Dalla Vedova told the jury. Knox, he said, was a “clean-faced young girl. I know her well. And she was swept away by a tsunami” of events.

He described the police investigation as an “incredible evolution of facts that led to the arrest of Amanda Knox. It was a sort of rush.” The lawyer said police looked at Knox as a suspect because she behaved oddly in the days after the murder, including doing a cartwheel in a police station while waiting to be questioned, behavior he explained by saying she as “a girl who was alone on the other side of the world from her family.”...

Dalla Vedova challenged some of the evidence presented by prosecutors, particularly the claim that a knife found in the kitchen of Knox’s co-defendant and former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito had a speck of Kercher’s DNA on the blade and Knox’s DNA on the handle. Prosecutors claim the knife is the murder weapon….

Knox, he said, “has been the object of a trial through the media, of slander, of violation of privacy… You have to keep in mind the great influence of the press on this trial.”

In the courtroom, Dalla Vedova also lashed out the prosecution’s demand that Knox be sentenced to life in prison. “Remember,” Dalla Vedova said, “that life in prison is the most severe punishment in our country. There is nothing worse than what the prosecutor has asked for Amanda.”

Ann Wise also adds that the jury could get the case as early as this Thursday - two days earlier than we have heard previously.

The Summations: Sollecito’s Defense As His Home Town Media Outlet Described It

Posted by Tiziano

Giovinazzo Live is a media outlet in Raffael Sollecito’s home town just to the north of Bari in the south-east of Italy.

Below here is a translation of their report on Ms Bongiorno’s remarks yesterday. Ms Bongiorno, Raffael Sollecito, his father, and his sister are seen in the images above and below.

A Probing Address by Raffaele Sollecito’s lawyer

By Gianluca Battista

There was a bit of everything in the defence address by Giulia Bongiorno, well-known criminologist, part of the defence team for Raffaele Sollecito, from Calmandrei to Socrates, and passing by Sergio Endrigo.

Yesterday before the court of the Assizes in Perugia, one of the most noted female lawyers in Italy took the stand in the first-stage trial which sees her client and Amanda Knox accused of the murder of the English student, Meredith Kercher.

“In this trial Raffaele Sollecito seems to be a silent “little attachment” of Amanda and one doesn’t really understand what use he is,” Bongiorno attacked. “In this trial nothing is made known about him.  His motive is not known.  Amanda is seen as the witch (sorceress), but Raffaele?”

“According to the lawyer for the information sciences engineer from Giovinazzo, who also quoted a song by Sergio Endrigo, the prosecution reconstruction is devoid of elements which are essential to support it.”

For the Sicilian lawyer, “(It is) a murder trial without a motive, a trial which leaves one stupefied.“The lawyer recalls that on the morning of November 2nd it was Rafaele Sollecito himself who alerted the Carabinieri.“It’s a surprising idea - Bongiorno said - that an assassin should call the Carabinieri and say: come and get me, I’m at the crime scene.  Raffaele called the Carabinieri and together with Amanda awaited their arrival sitting on the steps in front of the crime house.”

Then there were many references to the other co-accused of the crime, Amanda, depicted by many as a perverse spirit. But for Bongiorno “Amanda Knox is the “Amelie from Seattle, she looks at people with the eyes of a little girl, fizzing with energy and has a spontaneous and rash attitude to life.”

The defender of the young man from Giovinazzo thus recalled the protagonist of the film “The Fabulous World of Amelie” with whom her friends compared the American girl.  The same video which Knox and Sollecito claimed to have seen in the hours while Meredith Kercher was being killed.

Then an important reference to the statements made by Knox during the questioning at police headquarters, the same which led to the arrest of the innocent Patrick Lumumba.  “Amanda was denied the right of staying silent,” she stressed.

Bongiorno then recalled that Knox, at the time barely twenty, had just arrived in Italy, did not speak Italian and did not know the laws.“Does it seem so strange - she asked, referring to the police interrogations - that she fell into despair, put into statements things which were not true and then did not have the courage to change them?  You must decode Amanda.”

The lawyer then said that Knox has been described as a female “Jack the Ripper”.  “But to me - she commented - it is difficult to think of her in this way.  I see her in the way Amanda’s friends do, that is,  she looks at the world through Amelie’s eyes.”

As for the marking of Meredith’s bra with the prints of Raffaele, collected 46 days later by the investigators, Bongiorno has no doubts: “It should have been discarded from the outset,” she thundered.“Either the prosecution explains how it was moved - she added - or you must have the courage to consign it to the rubbish bin.  A just verdict could be contaminated by a fastener collected in this way.”