Category: The Massei Report

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Sentencing Report:  The State Of The Report’s Distribution

Posted by Peter Quennell

Just over a year ago the Micheli report was released as an electronic document and we had it and began translating within hours.

In contrast the judges sentencing report for the Knox-Sollecito verdict and sentence was released to the media and public only on paper and only in Perugia. There was little advance warning of this, and the Rome group of foreign reporters had to make their way to Perugia at short notice to get their own copies.

The intent seems to have been to stop selected quotes being used in media reports under lurid headlines. The practical effect is that the report so far has been less - and possibly less accurately - dispersed than the Micheli report at a similar point in time.

We have lodged a request for an electronic copy and if the court still prefers to go the paper route we will be adjusting to that. In due course the report will - must - appear on the Ministry of Justice website, in Italian. And all or most of it will appear here, in English.

Friday, March 05, 2010

Sentencing Report: Washington State Lawyer Bill Edelblute Offers An Opinion

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for Bill Edelblute’s full commentary in The Examiner. Key Excerpts:

Sometimes analysts of legal or criminal matters will say, the simplest explanation is the best.  When the victims’ DNA is on a knife blade, and the suspect’s DNA is on the knife handle, what is the simplest conclusion?  When someone blames an innocent person, the simplest explanation is that they are a liar, are themselves guilty, and can have no conscience of any kind to deprive an innocent person of their liberty.

To those who condemn the Italian criminal court system, show us the written findings that have to back up a verdict rendered in the United States of America.  There are none, once a judge finds evidence sufficient to go to a jury, all you hear after that is “guilty,” “not guilty,” or unable to reach a decision (hung jury.)  The jury does not have to speak to anyone after the verdict if they choose in the U.S. and their exact reasoning can remain forever a mystery.

Issuing the written report, with the detail Knox and Sollecito don’t want to hear, helps remind us that Meredith Kercher was a living, breathing, feeling, thinking person, until they came along.  Instead of just a piece in a board game that Knox supporters play.

The report provides a basis for the facts in the case, instead of cheap shots taken by those with no consequences to pay when they are wrong. 

In a recent Oprah show, Knox’s new American attorney on appeal [Theodore Simon] stated unequivocally that there had been “no interpreter” when defending Amanda’s blatantly false accusation of Patrick Lumumba, her former boss. 

In fact, Knox’s own trial testimony refers to the interpreter that was present,  as she gives her pathetic excuse of why she was going to let Lumumba rot in prison if she could get away with it.  (Give a college student a few bucks, she can eat for a day.  But give her a job, and she will put you in prison for life.) ....

The written “motivations” may dispel some of the media hysteria that would otherwise surround the appellate process. 

The side supporting Knox is largely based on the premise that typical American female college students do not suddenly become transformed into murders upon their arrival in Italy.  And, that the police abused Knox into an admission she was at the scene, poorly handled DNA evidence, and that one of the prosecutors, Mignini, has been found to have committed evidentiary abuses in another case.

But the evidence is that Knox is not exactly clean-cut, that there is considerable physical evidence against her, that she clearly changed stories, and could not identify the policewoman she says was hitting her in what she claimed was a 14 hour interrogation.  Her own explanation for changing stories included not remembering much of the night due to hashish consumption. 

And while each item of evidence viewed in isolation has its weaknesses, it is curious that there are so many different pieces of it that need explaining. 

The DNA on the knife, the DNA in the bloody footprints, the change in stories of both Knox and of Sollecito, the accusation of an innocent person by Knox, Knox’s demeanor as shown on videotape outside the crime scene (extended kissing with her boyfriend), as shown by witnesses at the police station, of showing little emotion, and turning cartwheels, doing the splits, at the station.  Of statements made just a few days later while buying underwear that she would have wild sex with her boyfriend that night. 

Of the argument that a normal college student just doesn’t kill her roommate, there is abundant evidence of actions by Knox that are anything but normal. 

Little Miss West Seattle comforted a fellow roommate worrying about whether Meredith suffered by saying “What do you think? ...  She f ... ing bled to death.” Apart from how she knew the victim bled to death, is that normal empathy for the victim? 

There is just too much here to suggest that the charging and conviction of Amanda Knox was the result of anti-Americanism by an incompetent court system.

Sentencing Report: Andrea Vogt Has More Details In The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for Andrea Vogt’s full report. Key excerpts:

Jurors theorized that Knox, Sollecito and Guede arrived at the apartment together and got high. They suggested Guede used the bathroom, and when he came out saw Knox and Sollecito being intimate, became excited and sought out Kercher, who was reading in her room.

When she resisted, Knox and Sollecito came into the room and aided Guede in restraining her so he could continue. The violence spiraled out of control, and Kercher was eventually killed, with Knox threatening and eventually stabbing her with the large kitchen knife the jury was convinced is the murder weapon, jurors decided.

The court said it did not believe the crime was premeditated, but rather a result of violence partly attributable to the suspects’ uninhibited behavior after getting high.  It also noted that it gave Knox and Sollecito a reduced sentence because they were young and had taken pity on the victim and covered Kercher’s body with the duvet.

The court cited as reliable elements of proof not just the alleged murder weapon (a knife with Knox’s DNA on the handle and a trace amount of Kercher’s on the blade) and the bra clasp with Sollecito’s DNA, but also the luminol-enhanced footprints attributed to Knox and Sollecito.

The judge paid particular attention to the multiple traces of mixed blood (Kercher’s) and DNA (Knox’s) in the apartment’s small bathroom, noting that also the door and lightswitch in the bathroom had been touched with someone with bloody hands or clothes.

Traces of Kercher’s blood and Knox’s DNA were found together in several spots, the judge wrote, specifically, the on a cotton swap box, the sink and the bidet.

“Mixed biological traces belonging to Meredith and Amanda in the washbasin and bidet and seemed to indicate the cleaning of hands of feet,” the opinion read, going on to suggest that Knox’s skin tissues had rubbed off as she tried to scrub off Meredith’s blood in the bathroom.

However, jurors found two of the prosecution’s witnesses as “not credible” and did not agree with prosecutors’ theory of exactly how the murder unfolded.

Jurors discounted as unreliable two eye witnesses—an Albanian drug-dealer and another student. Both testified they had seen Knox, Sollecito and Guede together.

Sentencing Report:  Hada Messia Of CNN News Rome Has More Details

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for Hada Messia’s full report. Key excerpts:

The jurors believed that Guede went into Kercher’s room and attempted to have sexual contact with her, but Kercher pushed him away. Knox and Sollecito then came into the room and attempted to help Guede have “his way” with Kercher, the report said. Sollecito held Kercher while Guede fondled her, the report said, but things spiraled out of control.

Sollecito poked Kercher with a knife, inflicting one wound measured at 4 cm (1.5 inches), and Knox poked her with a bigger knife after she screamed, inflicting a larger 8-cm (3-inch) wound, jurors found.

“The most plausible hypothesis is that Rudy decided by himself to enter Meredith’s room,” the report said. “The reaction and refusal of the girl must have been heard by Amanda and Raffaele, who actually were probably disturbed and intervened, given the unfolding of events. They backed Rudy, whom they allowed to enter the house” and ultimately became Kercher’s killers because of events that followed, according to the judges.

All three, the jurors believed, were under the influence of drugs. “The motive is therefore of erotic sexual violent nature, which originating from Rudy’s choice of evil, found its active collaboration from Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.”

While both Knox and Sollecito denied being at the crime scene, jurors noted that Knox’s blood was found in the bathroom and Sollecito’s DNA was found on Kercher’s bra. The two cannot prove they were at Sollecito’s home until the following day, as no evidence puts them there, according to the report.

 

Sentencing Report: Richard Owen Has More Details In The Times

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for Richard Owen’s full report. Key excerpts:

In a riposte to Knox’s family and friends who claim she was the victim of a mistrial based on flawed evidence, the judges said the prosecution had drawn “a comprehensive and coherent picture, without holes or inconsistencies”. The defendants had been able to describe Ms Kercher’s injuries, and their guilt was clear from DNA traces and naked footprints found “in various parts of the house”....

In their 427-page summing up the two judges, Giancarlo Massei and Beatrice Cristiani, indicated that they and the jury of six had also been swayed by Knox’s attempts to shift the blame by falsely accusing Patrick Diya Lumumba, a Congolese barman for whom she worked part time, “knowing him to be innocent”.

Knox had tried to “put the investigators onto the wrong track” even though Mr Lumumba had always treated her well and she had “no motive for spite, enmity or revenge toward him which could justify such a serious accusation”....

The judges said that on the evening of the murder in November 2007 Knox and Sollecito had found themselves at a loose end when they met Guede by chance at the cottage at a time when Ms Kercher was alone. After the murder they had covered Ms Kercher’s lifeless body in a gesture combining pity, denial, and “a sort of repentence for what had been done”...

The judges said more than one person must have committed the crime since Ms Kercher was fit and strong, as her mother and sister had testified, and her sports included boxing and gym training.

 

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Sentencing Report: Barbie Nadeau Quotes The Motive, Physical Evidence, And Alibis

Posted by Peter Quennell

Please click above for Barbie Nadeau’s full report on the Daily Beast website. Key excerpts.

1) The motive

“One can hypothesize that the bad decision came after the consumption of stupefying substances.”

But they disagreed on the motive. The prosecution lawyers began their case in January, 2009 by arguing that Kercher was killed during a sex game gone awry. By closing arguments, they had changed the theory slightly, trying to make the case that Knox resented her prissy British roommate and killed her in hatred. The jury rejected both theories, and the reasoning document declares that “the killing was carried out with no planning, no animosity and no revenge against the victim.

“The two young lovers, interested in each other and in the intellectual and cultural world around them, would not have made a conscious decision to kill Kercher. Instead, the judge wrote, they killed spontaneously under the influence of drugs. “One can hypothesize that the bad decision came after the consumption of stupefacente””stupefying substances””that Amanda verified in her testimony.”

As the jury saw it, Knox, Sollecito and Rudy Guede, the Ivory Coast native who was convicted for his role in Kercher’s murder after a fast-track trial in 2008, came to the house the two girls shared in order to get high. Guede used the toilet, then became aroused when he saw Knox and Sollecito making out. He went to Kercher’s room and made sexual advances toward her. The reasoning refers to evidence presented at Knox’s trial that Guede was the type of guy that “bothered women” when he was under the influence.

Then, according to the reasoning, Kercher cried out for help, but instead of helping her, Knox and Sollecito, their judgment impaired, decided instead to help Guede. The killing was based on “sexual-erotic violence” but not with Knox as the mastermind. The jury felt that it was Guede who led that attack, and the other two, too high to know better, joined in.

2) The physical and forensic evidence

The judge’s reasoning also underscores what the jury believed to be the most important elements of the prosecution’s forensic case. They believed that a kitchen knife with Knox’s DNA on the handle and a trace of Kercher’s on the blade was the weapon that made the large fatal wound in Kercher’s neck. They also referred to Sollecito’s “knife habits,” surmising that, as an admitted collector of blades, he likely used his own knife to make the second wound. The jury agreed that Sollecito and Knox conspired to stage a break-in in another bedroom to cover their tracks.

And they attributed an unidentifiable bloody shoeprint found on the pillow under Kercher’s body to Knox, even though the prosecution only implied that it was compatible with a woman’s shoe size. A spot of Knox and Kercher’s mixed blood in one of the bedrooms, found using Luminol, and four additional spots in the small bathroom the girls shared also swayed the jurors.

“These were left when Amanda was cleaning her hands and feet of Kercher’s blood,” the judge wrote.

3) The Knox and Sollecito alibis

The judge also wrote emphatically about the lack of credible alibi. Although Knox and Sollecito claimed to be at his apartment all night, “Not one phone call, not one meeting, no computer activity or any other element proved that they stayed at that apartment.” And the judge was particularly hard on Knox for accusing Patrick Lumumba, an innocent man, of the murder “knowingly and deceivingly.”

Overall, however, it appears that the jury was sympathetic to the two suspects, but ultimately felt that they committed a crime for which they must pay a hefty price.

Sentencing Report: La Repubblica Has The Most Substantive Report So Far Today

Posted by ziaK

Click above for the Repubblica’s story in the original Italian.

This translation below is of this the longest report so far today in the Italian media, presumably by staff reporters in Perugia, although it is unsigned.

Verdict filed in Meredith crime: Murder arising from Guede’s sexual violence

PERUGIA - Four hundred and twenty-seven: This is how many pages it took for the judges of Perugia’s Court of Assizes to explain the sentence on the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia on 1 November 2007. For this crime carried out, the judges wrote, “without any planning, without any animosity or feeling of rancour”, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were sentenced to 26 and 25 years imprisonment, respectively. For the same crime, Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede was sentenced (to 30 years following a “fast-track” trial, subsequently reduced to 16 years in appeal) and is currently waiting to file an appeal with the Supreme Court. The Perugian judges wrote: “The motive, was of an erotic, sexually violent nature, which riginated in the evil choice made by Rudy, and elicited the active collaboration of Amanda and Raffaele.”

From Viterbo prison, where he is held, Rudy wrote a letter with an appeal: “to those who know, talk”. A request which appears to be addressed to the same Amanda and Raffaele (both - particularly the American student whom he has always claimedto know - pointed to by Rudy as having been present at the crime scent, ndr) who have always declared themselves to have no involvement in the affair.

Together, all the elements which emerged during the process “demonstrated a comprehensive and unified picture, without gaps and inconsistencies”, wrote the judges in the file signed by the Court President, Giancarlo Massei and by assessor judge Beatrice Cristiani. According to the College [as in the board of judges], the picture that emerges “has, as its necessary and strictly consequential outcome, the attribution of the hypothesized facts of the crime to both the accused.”

The measure furthermore asserts that Knox “freely accused Patrick Diya Lumumba of having killed Meredith, and so accused him with the full knowledge of the innocence of the same Lumumba”. The judges underlined that there had not been “any confirmation” that Amanda had been urged by the investigators to accuse Lumumba. For Perugia’s Court of Assizes, the objective aimed at by the American (who was also convicted for the crime of calumny with regard to the Congolese [sic] musician, ndr) was to “lead the investigators down the wrong path, far from that which could have led them to establish her own responsibility, and that of her boyfriend”. “Such behaviour is a choice”, wrote the Court, “and thus merely defensive: Amanda had a good relationship with Lumumba, by whom she had always been well treated, and therefore there could have been no motive for rancour, animosity, revenge which could have justified such a serious accusation.”

The murder of Meredith Kercher, it further reads, was carried out “without any planning, without the animosity or feeling of resentment towards the victim which in some ways can be seen as the preparation/predisposition to commiting a crime”. According to the board of judges, “the actions turn out to have been carried out as a result of purely coincidental events”.

In the judges’ report, they talk of “purely coincidental events which, when joined together with each other, created a situation which, in the combination of various factors, made possible these crimes to the detriment of Meredith: Amanda and Raffaele who suddenly found themselves without any commitments, meet Rudy Guede by chance (there is no trace of any appointment having been made), and find themselves together at the house on the via della Pergola on the very evening (between 1 and 2 November, ndr) that Meredith is there alone”. According to the judges, “even the behaviour towards Meredith - once the assault and the murder have been commited - which consisted in covering her lifeless body, shows a feeling of pity for the victim, refusal, and thus a sort of repentance for what has been done: refusal and repentance shown through such an act of pity.”

The judges attributed the material criminal act, that is, the sexual violence, to Rudy Guede, who was aided by Amanda and Raffaele, weakened by the drugs they had consumed. The judges wrote: “Amanda and Raffaele participated actively in the criminal actions carried out by Rudy with the aim of overcoming Meredith’s resistance, subjugating her will, and allowing Rudy to relieve his lustful urges.” The judges also wrote in their report: “The prospective of helping Rudy achieve his aim of subjugating Meredith in order to sexually abuse her may have appeared to be an exciting detail which, although unforeseen, should be tried”.

“The motive”, added the Perugian judges, “was therefore of an erotic, sexually violent nature, which originated in the evil choice made by Rudy, and elicited the active collaboration of Amanda and Raffaele. That such participation, active and violent, had also involved the current defendants as well as Rudy can be deduced from what has been observed in talking about the lesions suffered by Meredith, by the outcome of the genetic investigations, by the prints of bare feet found in various parts of the house.”

According to the judges, in this murder case, one of the tests, carried out by several people, is confirmed by Meredith’s physical strength, by the fact that she was conscious on the evening of the assault, and by her previous experience in the gym. “Meredith, when the violence began, was awake and dressed, and was not laying down on her bed.” Furthermore: “According to the analyses, the young woman had a slender and well-endowed physique, and was physically very strong, as was claimed by Meredith’s mother and sister. She had even done boxing”.

Judges’ Sentencing Report Released In Perugia And It Is 427 Pages Long

Posted by Peter Quennell

Judge Massei is seen above on live TV from the court on the night he announced the verdict and sentence.

The sentencing report is four times the length of the Micheli report a year ago which itself was very detailed. It was made available to the media today on paper by the court in Perugia.

First take in the Italian media is by TGCom.

The judges of the Court of Assizes of Perugia lodged the grounds for the condemnation of Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox for the murder of Meredith. All the issues raised in the process, it says, “demonstrate a comprehensive and unified whole, without gaps and inconsistencies”...  The reasons for conviction of two defendants are contained in a voluminous file. It is 427 pages signed by the President of the Court Giancarlo Massei and assessor Beatrice Christians.

The motive is described in the report as essentially the thrill of the moment in helping Rudy with a sexual attack and while there was a predisposition there was no longer term intention.

Drugs are seen as having played a role.

Sollecito and Knox are apparently seen in the report as the knife wielders and one of them seems to have delivered the fatal blow.

We will be obtaining the report of course and arriving at our own English-language version in the next several weeks.

RIP poor Meredith. This has to be so tough on her family and her friends. We love this photo below. So trusting and so full of life.