Headsup: To those many lawyers amazed that Knox did not get on the witness stand to head off a certain re-conviction: the best guess among Italian lawyers is that Knox's own lawyers feared ANOTHER calunnia charge if she repeated the crackpot and highly disprovable claims that she was tortured. The tough calunnia law is primarily a pushback measure against mafia meddling which is widely suspected in this case.
Category: 3 No evidence hoax
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Bizarrely Jubilant And Way Too Exposed Amanda Knox Again Fails Liar-Analysis Tests
Posted by The Machine
Pamela Meyer, a highly respected liar spotter and fraud spotter, explains how she knows if someone is lying. TED Talks applies the telltale signs to Amanda Knox.
This brilliant video needs to be promoted as much as possible on social media websites. Most people can’t be bothered to read the official court reports, but they will watch a fascinating TED talk that last a few minutes.
Thursday, April 06, 2017
Eight Evidence Items Beyond Reasonable Doubt: How Honestly Did Marasca & Bruno Address Them?
Posted by Cardiol MD
1. Post Overview
You might recall that the Fifth Chambers Sentencing Report was (illegally under Italian law) published two months late in 2015.
Machiavelli posted the panel’s spoken verdict late in March 2015 and I posted a series of tests of the final report’s honesty in April 2015.
Thereafter the Perugia and Florence prosecutors posted a critique in May 2015. The Sentencing Report was finally published in August 2015, and our translation was posted in September 2015.
Finaly Catnip’s extensive critique was posted in September and James Raper’s even more extensive series in November 2015.
2. The Obvious Shortfalls And Dishonesties
I might mention first my credentials for this series. My screen-name indicates a Doctorate of Medicine, but I have also a Doctorate of Law and have professionally appeared often in American courtrooms. My purpose here is to revisit my tests of honesty of April 2015 and to complete our record here on how Marasca and Bruno shaped up on them.
A “shortfall” results when the actual benefits of a venture are lower than the projected, or estimated, benefits of that venture. I conclude that the cherry-picking ruling of the cherry-picked SCC panel, the Marasca/Bruno panel, one of 79 possible pickable SCC panels, was a huge shortfall, even more brazen than the U.S. jury-ruling in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
The first publicised sign of the pending shortfall came in March, before the Marasca/Bruno proceeding had even begun on AK/RS’s involvement in the murder of Meredith Kercher, when Judge Bruno was quoted as having said that the trials had “not many certainties beyond the girl’s death and one definitely convicted.”
It was this premature and unethically prejudicial statement that immediately triggered my April posts. I offered over 50 tests for assessing how honest the pending sentencing report (which pended for over 5 months) could prove. Eight tests were of items that for any objective panel of lawyers or judges should have been Beyond Reasonable Doubt and 43 tests were of Certainties or Certainly-Nots.
Machiavelli, Catnip and James Raper later did excellent post-publication reviews leaving the corruption of the court exposed. In all probability this corruption was really only aimed at getting RS “off-the-hook”. AK was included only because it would have been too complicated not to do so; AK is a lucky secondary beneficiary.
AK&RS are as guilty as hell, as we all know. To me it is obvious that M&B know that also. So how badly DID they fail my tests?
3. The Reasonable Doubts
BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT 1
FINAL FATAL SEQUENCE
Accepting Massei’s conclusion, Knox and Sollecito were standing-up and facing Meredith in Meredith’s room. Knox, Sollecito and/or Guede, were participating in the restraining of Meredith.
BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT 2
FINAL FATAL SEQUENCE
Sollecito (or Guede) was holding the smaller Knife, probably in his right hand. This smaller knife made Stab B.
BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT 3
FINAL FATAL SEQUENCE
Stab B preceded Stab A, and caused Meredith’s scream.
When Meredith screamed Knox plunged Knife36 into Meredith’s neck in the above long-axis direction, from left to right, transecting Meredith’s Hyoid bone, first opening Meredith’s airway to the atmosphere, then transecting Meredith’s Right Superior Thyroid Artery.
BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT 4
FINAL FATAL SEQUENCE
Knox was holding Knife36, probably in Knox’s right hand, holding Knife36 against the left side of Meredith’s neck with Knife36’s point directed slightly upwards to the right side of Meredith’s neck, the blade-label facing towards Knox, the palm of Knox’s right hand also facing towards Knox and the long-axis of Knife36 angled a few degrees above horizontal.
BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT 5
FINAL FATAL SEQUENCE
A thin stream of bright-red oxygenated blood spurted from this artery to its exterior environment, probably through the cuts made in her skin to the outside by both knives.
(Consistent with bleeding from both cuts, Follain, in his book “A Death In Italy” wrote that Guede stated that he saw blood coming out of the left side of Meredith’s neck. Follain also wrote that Francesco Camana of the Rome forensic police, in Camana’s written report, that spurts of blood in the middle of Meredith’s chest made her sweatshirt more bloody on the right side than on the left side)
BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT 6
FINAL FATAL SEQUENCE
The large knife was Knife-36, which had been brought to the murder room from Sollecito’s kitchen
Marasca/Bruno constructively-dismissed all the above references to Knife-36, ruling that Sollecito’s Kitchen Knife cannot be The Murder Knife because “it was illogical to state that the kitchen knife, used for the homicide” was “re-placed in its place, with previous cleaning” to Sollecito’s Kitchen Drawer!?
And further,that it is “objectionable” to state such a thing!?
Also, Marasca/Bruno state that Sollecito would never have given his “concurrence” to Amanda’s “unjustified carrying of knife”!?
Marasca/Bruno’s specious “reasoning” is equivalent to ruling that O.J. Simpson could not be guilty because it would not be logical for him to have committed the crime.(or “Psychopaths act logically-only; therefore they cannot be guilty of committing a crime that we think is illogical.”)
The Massei Motivazione devoted Pages 77-86 (9&1/2 pp) to a meticulous analysis, integrating all the facts, not considering them only in isolation, taking into account not only the (sworn?) testimony of these 2 witnesses, but also that of other witnesses, including Knox, and the relevant circumstances. Their rulings justify the Conclusion that:
BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT 7
WITNESS CURATOLO
IT IS BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT THAT CURATOLO SAW AMANDA KNOX AND RAFFAELE SOLLECITO IN PIAZZA GRIMANA ON THE EVENING OF NOV.1st, 2007 ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS. A FEW YARDS FROM THE COTTAGE AT NO. 7, VIA DELLA PERGOLA, WHERE, IN THE SAME SPAN OF TIME, THE MURDER TOOK PLACE.
Marasca/Bruno, after an unmeticulous analysis dismissed the testimony of Curatolo & Quintavalle with these (Translated) words:
“Nevertheless, the presence of intrinsic contradiction and poor reliability of witnesses [ ed: ie the above named] do not allow unreserved credit to be attributed to (their) respective versions, to the extent of proving with reasonable certainty the failure, and therefore the falsity, of the accused’s alibi, who insisted she stayed in her boyfriend’s home from late afternoon on the 1st November until the following morning.” As if Knox’s “insistance” proves she was not lying?
BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT 8
WITNESS QUINTAVALLE
IT IS BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT THAT MARCO QUINTAVALLE SAW AMANDA KNOX IN HIS CONAD SHOP AT AROUND 7:45 am ON 2 NOVEMBER 2007.
Amanda Marie Knox was lying when she claimed to have slept at Mr. Sollecito’s house in his company until 10am in the morning on 2 November 2007, and no court seems to have ruled otherwise.
(Marasca/Bruno’s above reference to Knox’s insistance, while probably not a ruling, betrays their underlying dishonesty.)
4. Footnote
Nine BARDs were originally listed in the relevant 2015 post but #3 was mistakenly duplicated in #6 during the settingup of the post.
Sunday, July 03, 2016
How Amanda Knox Is Encouraging West Seattle To Adulate Seriously Sick Individuals
Posted by Hopeful
At bottom: judge Persky may be fired for a light rape sentence
Fellow poster Pensky encouraged us to consider some bizarrely narcissistic postings by Knox on her Facebook.
That led me to her June 13, 2016 discussion of the Stanford rape case. My eyeballs nearly popped out at seeing Knox wax eloquent about Brock Allen Turner (right, at bottom, with lawyers).
He assaulted a comatose young woman outside a frat party, ran away but was seized by passersby. Then 12 jurors unanimously convicted Turner guilty of 3 felonies, but all he has admitted to doing is ingesting alcohol.
He is defiant, unrepentant, and really got lucky with Judge Persky giving him a slap on the wrist, 6 months in county jail, not even prison and he may serve only 3.
IMO, Brock Allen Turner is Knox’s new object of envy and Judge Persky is her new hero.
She waxes prolific about this light-sentenced rape case in the West Seattle Herald yet never ONCE reproaches or rebukes Brock Turner in a sincere and unambivalent way. She minces words, dances around in the passive voice, pretends to silently agree with the public’s outrage, yet she doesn’t fool anybody.
She is seething with jealousy that Turner got such a light sentence!
She is probably comparing Turner’s lucky escape with how she might have dodged a bullet had she only let Meredith live and not “finished her off” (my quotes, my assumptions).
Instead of dispatching the violated Meredith, Knox hoping to avoid prosecution by silencing her victim, now regrets it even more when she sees that Brock Allen Turner left his rape victim alive and that despite his alcohol fueled assault, he got off very lightly. Oh, how green with envy is Foxy Knoxy in retrospect.
Her entire article trumpets the concept of “punishment does no good”.
Yes, just let the devils go because nobody can make them feel ashamed of their crimes if the perp doesn’t wanna feel ashamed. Knox knows that from experience. She sees it in Brock, with his mealy-mouthed letter he wrote as a smokescreen fake apology.
Knox remains defiant and without remorse like Brock Turner. In this article she has the audacity to talk about how sexual assault can rarely be determined; that it’s mostly a he said/she said dilemma as to consent, and thus the suspect must be considered innocent due to reasonable doubt in most cases.
She even quotes Blackstone: “better for 10 guilty folks to escape than one innocent suffer”. I certainly agree with that. Knox got the benefit of that adage. So did Sollecito. Because they scrubbed and cleaned so well.
Knox wonders in this article if Turner’s torments in having to register as a sex offender, lose his college scholarship, lose great job opportunities, live with his reputation in tatters””if these realities will prevent him from reoffending.
She concludes, “Perhaps not. Judge Perky’s [sic] humanization of Turner-the-criminal is not abominable.” Of course not, Knox loves this judge. Herself the felon would desire the judge to go easy on all such birds of a feather as herself.
Nope, Knox isn’t into punishment. Not severe ones at any rate. No, punishment does no good in her opinion.
Her solution? to support the victim, to educate women on how not to become a victim, give victims solidarity and support, “pay attention and care about the suffering of the victim, whether they are vindicated in a court of law or not.”
Duh”¦this is precisely what TJMK and Perugia Murder File.net and .org have been doing for nearly a decade!!!
Knox’s desire as in the title of her article about redirecting focus, redirect it to what? To Knox’s new wisdom that sentences of any sort do no good, they’re vengeance and we should support the victim rather than shame the criminal! Otherwise, the criminal if treated too harshly has the right to his own victim status.
I do agree that extremely harsh sentences do as much damage to the soul of a prisoner as the lightweight joke sentence Brock Turner received.
Knox must be so jealous of the bumbling Mr. Turner. Oh if only she had let her victim live and accepted a few months behind bars, is probably her regret.
Like Turner, Knox confesses to nothing but being confused and forgetful on the night of the crime due to a fog of cannabis. She pretends to have been reduced to a dream state, thus removing any culpability in her conscience. How convenient.
Turner’s best ally and defense was his inebriation. So was Knox’s. Thank goodness for substance abuse which removes felt guilt, though the victim lies dead on the floor.
I cannot believe the gall of Knox to highlight the Brock Turner rape case and parade as a pundit for improved sentencing (or cessation of all sentences, in her ideal world, right?)
She is a ridiculous twisted pundit who claims to seek to improve the criminal justice system. Unmitigated gall. Most jailbirds like her do have great ideas for what society “should have done” with them other than imprison them for their crimes.
She talks about good things but they all assume the victim is still alive to help, things like “embrace a victim through their recovery, offer them resources, give them voice, recognize their value.” But did she recognize Meredith’s value? She could barely speak her name at trial or write it in her book. How many trees has she planted for Meredith?
Her last paragraph says not to equate condemning a criminal with recognizing a victim, and do not deny the “reparation a victim deserves.” What reparations has she paid Patrick Lumumba?
I will assess her silly Dawndra Budd photo spread soon. It is just more blind preening and another form of lies. Dawndra Budd has been deceived along with many others but The Herald article takes first prize in the brass mule contest. Knox loves Mr. Turner the escape artist.
And I am by no means entirely sympathetic to the drunk Emily Doe who was raped by Turner due to her own bad morals and stupidity.
However the really egregious culprit is the even dumber and cowardly Turner. His father is his best apologist, until Knox. At least Brock Turner did his crime alone and without a knife in hand and without a wolfpack of strong accomplices for moral support like Knox needed, if one compares the “courage” of Knox and Turner. They both used Dutch courage from a bottle as the saying goes.
Turner the lout deserves at least a two or three year sentence in lockup and extra community service hours, and stiff fines paid to his victim. Knox has skipped out on three-fourths of her rightful sentence and she remains as defiant and unremorseful as Turner, and she offended much much worse than he did. She seems to hint she might reoffend.
She never really denounces Turner, nor clearly supports Emily Doe except to admire Doe’s courage to “articulate her experience of absolute vulnerability with clarity and dignity”.
Articulate, schmiculate. Emily Doe cries loud and long about her offended dignity when there was little dignity to start with as her drunken public stupor showed. She did not deserve a physical attack, however.
Knox sympathizes with her because Doe was angry at the litany of questions put to her by the police and the wringer the police put her through about her lifestyle in an effort to delegitimize her. Knox takes umbrage with the police at all times, recalling her own dangerous position under interrogation.
Unlike Emily Doe, however, Knox was hiding a true crime of her own. Doe was merely ashamed of her alcoholic excess and her flirting at the frat party with guys when she had a boyfriend elsewhere. Knox totally empathizes with Doe’s lifestyle (remember David Johnsrud and others besides Raffaele when she dated him).
Meredith doesn’t need to articulate. She lived her goodness all along. Actions speak louder than words. Meredith never got to write her memoirs, but they would have been anointed. And truthful, unlike Knox’s clever lies.
Friday, December 18, 2015
Knox Calunnia Trial #2: Judge Receives Arguments Of Prosecution And Knox; Verdict In New Year
Posted by Our Main Posters
Court in session 7 September in Florence with Knox a no-show
1. Latest Development
We are informed that the final arguments to the judge by both sides have been submitted in writing.
We will summarise and/or fully translate them, hopefully next week. Next step is the verdict from Judge Boninsegna, which may come early in the New Year.
Below is a reposting of the background to this unusual case, and Machiavelli’s reports from the court on 7 September.
Such trials are very rare. Usually it is only organized crime figures that in the course of a trial impugn police and prosecutors who in Italy are much respected. Defendants rarely even get on the stand, and if they do so, they invariably follow the advice of defence counsel to not dig themselves in any deeper.
In contrast, Knox pretty well went haywire. NOBODY in Italy has ever believed her. Not her own lawyers, nor multiple hearings & trial judges, or the skeptical media, or the watching population, or Hellmann & Zanetti, or even Marasca & Bruno… Not even Curt Knox! He failed to turn up to give scheduled defense testimony that could have helped Amanda Knox last September.
Gee, thanks, Curt….
And she has left her own lawyers handicapped, as they had publicly counseled Knox to stop escalating her claims about illegal coercion at her “interrogation” on 5-6 November 2007.
Their filing probably needs to be especially careful to avoid their own liability.
2. Background To Calunnia Trial
This trial focuses on the claims of Amanda Knox at trial in 2009. Charges for malicious claims in her book will fall to another court, probably also in Florence. Oggi is already on trial for republishing some of them.
There seems no parallel in US or UK legal history to this - to a defendant testifying prolifically for two days to crimes by investigators, in spite of even more days of prior testimony which all pointed the other way.
Seemingly under strong pressure from her own family Knox willingly took a huge legal risk which her own lawyers had warned her about again and again, sometimes publicly, over nearly two years.
They never ever lodged even one complaint. Nor did the US Embassy in Rome, which monitored all sessions in court, and often checked her out (as did Italian MP Rocco Girlanda) in prison at Capanne.
The Massei court and the watching audience in Italy (read here and here) bought none of it. Knox still served three years for framing Patrick. Not even Judge Hellmann bought into her claims. Certainly not the Supreme Court.
The current trial in Florence was preceded by an investigation by Florence prosecutors, who bring the charges and argue them because Knox impugned officers of the justice system in their official roles.
Prior to today the prosecutors’ investigation report had only been released to Knox’s defense. So we don’t yet know if the charges extend beyond Knox’s claims of having been abused into a false “confession” on 5-6 November 2007.
Post #1 of our ongoing Interrogation Hoax series points toward what investigators testified to at trial.
Four months later Knox contradicted them at length as summarised in our two posts here and here: “The Amanda Knox Calunnia Trial In Florence: What It Is All About”
3. Machiavelli Reports From Trial 7 September
1. Tweets from the Florence court:
16. Zugarini was present throughout the interrogation and described when #amandaknox started to cry, remembered her peculiar hand-ear gestures.
15. Napoleoni testified #amandaknox was brought a chamomille when she started crying at 01:45, the interrogation was immediately stopped.
14. Napoleoni and Zugarini said they “cuddled” Knox because she was a 20-year old girl.
13. Both Mignini and Zugarini described having had impression that #amandaknox was feeling “relieved of a burden” after accusing Lumumba.
12. Mignini said Knox was not clearly a suspect to him by the 05:45 interrogation.
11. Witnesses had inaccurate memory on some details, but were convergent on some peculiar details.
10. Napoleoni said she did not enter interrogation room, she called Rita Ficarra out to talk to her.
9. Zugarini said, as for her knowledge, Knox was not told that Sollecito withdrew her alibi.
8. Zugarini said called interpreter only to ask #amandaknox more precise questions about people in her phone contact list.
7. Zugarini said #amandaknox was able to explain herself in Italian. They called an interpreter to translate what police had to say.
6. Testimony of Mignini was descriptive and framed thing in law. Mostly talked at length explaining alone, prosecutor listened.
5. In today’s hearing, Mignini talked 2 hours, confirmed arrived at 3am, police interview was over, he asked no questions of AK.
4. Napoleoni was precise and synthetic. Zugarini longer and IMO more interesting on many details.
3. Mignini and Judge Boninsegna appeared irritated by Dalla Vedova’s remarks.
2. Long hearing of Mignini at trial against Amanda Knox for calunnia. Napoleoni & Gubbiotti followed, then Zugarini
1. Testimony of some of the investigators accused by Knox and the lead prosecutor Dr Mignini [image above] is being taken in court.
[Reporting from the Florence court sometimes requires a wait to get to a place where mobile phones can connect to the outside.]
2. Emailed report following day (8 September):
No Knox calunnia session required today as last Friday and yesterday both sides completed their witness list.
Amanda Knox and Curt Knox chose not to testify.
Now Judge Boninsegna has ordered each side to prepare their arguments within three months (7 December).
The verdict is likely to arrive in the New Year.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Supreme Court Final: All 3 At Murder Scene; All Lied; Verdict Vacated; No Exoneration
Posted by Machiavelli
1. Shocking Sentencing Report
Despite the public relations campaign this was by any standards a very strong case.
In contrast the language, logic and law of the Marasca/Bruno Report are about as weak as Rome lawyers have seen. The Fifth Chambers normally handles only appeals of verdicts for fraud, defamation, and other mundane non-violent personal and family injuries and they are forbidden from judging evidence. Their reports are almost invariably 1-3 pages long.
No finding by any experienced murder judge ever stretches logic and law and evidence as much as this. This grim situation for RS and AK still remains.
- (1) The report very firmly places all three at the scene of the crime with extensive language on a long list of proofs; but though bizarrely it separates two from the crime itself.
(2) The final verdict is not “assoluzione” meaning acquittal or innocence but simply “proscioglimento” which means a mere dropping of charges for now (not usually used in a court context, see the Translator’s Note on page 48) which can be subject to appeal and to suits for wrongful death.
(3) The report does nothing to help Knox and Sollecito to get beyond their calunnia, villiipendio and diffamazione trials. It makes a win against either or both Knox and Sollecito in a wrongful-death suit more or less an assured thing. And it pre-emptively dismisses the frivolous appeal by Amanda Knox to ECHR Strasbourg.
If the appeal by Knox and Sollecito against the Nencini court findings and guilty sentences had been handled without chicanery, it is the First Chambers which deals with murder cases and which annulled most of the Hellmann appeal outcome in 2013 which would have got this appeal. Almost certainly those judges would have simply rejected the appeal, and sent Knox and Sollecito right back to jail.
The report makes lawyers question why Knox and Sollecito were not at minimum found guilty of being accessories to murder after the fact. Even the defense teams seem to have realised the risks in the shaky judgement
2. Passages Finding Knox And Sollecito Were There
In chapters 4, 9 and 10 the Marasca/Bruno report makes very clear that Knox and Sollecito were both at the house on the night. They find that the proof of that stands up. Highlighted in the translation below are passages amount to the firm conclusion that Knox definitely was there, with blood on her hands, and Sollecito logically also.
From Chapter 4
4.3.1 As for the first question, the use of the [Guede’s] definitive verdict in the current judgement, for any possible implication, is unexceptionable , since it abides with the provision of art. 238 bis of Penal Code [sic]. Based on such provision “(”¦) the verdicts [p. 26] that have become irrevocable can be accepted [acquired] by courts as pieces of evidence of facts that were ascertained within them and evaluated based on articles 187 and 192 par 3”.
Well, so the “fact” that was ascertained within that verdict, indisputably, is Guede’s participation in the murder “concurring with other people, who remain unknown”. The invoking of the procedural norms indicated means that the usability of such fact-finding is subordinate to [depends on] the double conditions [possibility] to reconcile such fact within the scope of the “object of proof” which is relevant to the current judgement, and on the existence of further pieces of evidence to confirm its reliability.
Such double verification, in the current case, has an abundantly positive outcome. In fact it is manifestly evident that such fact, which was ascertained elsewhere [aliunde], relates to the object of cognition of the current judgement. The [court’s] assessment of it, in accord with other trial findings which are valuable to confirm its reliability, is equally correct. We refer to the multiple elements, linked to the overall reconstruction of events, which rule out that Guede could have acted alone.
Firstly, testifying in this direction are the two main wounds (actually three) observed on the victim’s neck, on each side, with a diversified path and features, attributable most likely (even if the data is contested by the defense) to two different cutting weapons. And also, the lack of signs of resistance by the young woman, since no traces of the assailant were found under her nails, and there is no evidence elsewhere [aliunde] of any desperate attempt to oppose the aggressor; the bruises on her upper limbs and those on mandibular area and lips (likely the result of forcible hand action of constraint meant to keep the victim’s mouth shut) found during the cadaver examination, and above all, the appalling modalities of the murder, which were not adequately pointed out in the appealed ruling.
And in fact, the same ruling (p. 323 and 325) reports of abundant blood spatters found on the right door of the wardrobe located inside Kercher’s room, about 50 cm above the floor. Such occurrence, given the location and direction of the drops, could probably lead to the conclusion that the young woman had her throat literally “slashed” likely as she was kneeling, while her head was being forcibly held [hold] tilted towards the floor, at a close distance from the wardrobe, when she was hit by multiple stab wounds at her neck, one of which ““ the one inflicted on the left side of her neck ““ caused her death, due to asphyxia following [to] the massive bleeding, which also filled the breathing ways preventing breathing activity, a situation aggravated by the rupture of the hyoid bone ““ this also linkable to the blade action ““ with consequent dyspnoea” (p. 48).
Such a mechanical action is hardly attributable to the conduct of one person alone.
[Ed note: Firm settling on motive is not required in Italian law.] On the other hand such factual finding, when adequately valued, could have been not devoid of meaning as for researching the motive, given that [27] the extreme violence of the criminal action could have been seen ““ because of its abnormal disproportion ““ not compatible with any of the explanations given in the verdict, such as mere simple grudges with Ms. Knox (also denied by testimonies presented, [even] by the victim’s mother); with sexual urges of any of the participants, or maybe even with the theory of a sex game gone wrong, of which, by the way, no mark was found on the victim’s body, besides the violation of her sexuality by a hand action of Mr. Guede, because of the DNA that could be linked to him found inside the vagina of Ms. Kercher, the consent of whom, however, during a preliminary phase of physical approach possibly consensual at the beginning, could not be ruled out.
Such finding is even less compatible with the theory of the intrusion of an unknown thief inside the house, if we consider that, within the course of ordinary events, while it is possible that a thief is taken by an uncontrollable sexual urge leading him to assail a young woman when he sees her, it’s rather unlikely that after a physical and sexual aggression he would also commit a gratuitous murder, especially not with the fierce brutality of this case, rather than running away quickly instead. Unless, obviously, we think about the disturbed personality of a serial killer, but there is no trace of that in the trial findings, since there are no records that any other killings of young women with the same modus operandi were committed in Perugia at that time.
From Chapter 9
9.4.1 Given this, we now note, with respect to Amanda Knox, that her presence inside the house, the location of the murder, is a proven fact in the trial, in accord with her own admissions, also contained in the memoriale with her signature, in the part where she tells that, as she was in the kitchen, while the young English woman had retired inside the room of same Ms. Kercher together with another person for a sexual intercourse, she heard a harrowing scream from her friend, so piercing and unbearable that she let herself down squatting on the floor, covering her ears tight with her hands in order not to hear more of it.
About this, the judgment of reliability expressed by the lower [a quo] judge [Nencini, ed.] with reference to this part of the suspect’s narrative, [and] about the plausible implication from the fact herself was the first person mentioning for the first time [46] a possible sexual motive for the murder, at the time when the detectives still did not have the results from the cadaver examination, nor the autopsy report, nor the witnesses’ information, which was collected only subsequently, about the victim’s terrible scream and about the time when it was heard (witnesses Nara Capezzali, Antonella Monacchia and others), is certainly to be subscribed to.
We make reference in particular to those declarations that the current appellant [Knox] produced on 11. 6. 2007 (p.96) inside the State Police headquarters. On the other hand, in the slanderous declarations against Lumumba, which earned her a conviction, the status of which is now protected as final judgement [giudicato], [they] had themselves exactly that premise in the narrative, that is: the presence of the young American woman inside the house in via della Pergola, a circumstance which nobody at that time ““ except obviously the other people present inside the house ““ could have known (quote p. 96).
According to the slanderous statements of Ms. Knox, she had returned home in the company of Lumumba, who she had met by chance in Piazza Grimana, and when Ms. Kercher arrived in the house, Knox’s companion directed sexual attentions toward the young English woman, then he went together with her in her room, from which the harrowing scream came. So, it was Lumumba who killed Meredith and she could affirm this since she was on the scene of crime herself, albeit in another room.
Another element against her is the mixed DNA traces, her and the victim’s one, in the “small bathroom”, an eloquent proof that anyway she had come into contact with the blood of the latter, which she tried to wash away from herself (it was, it seems, diluted blood, while the biological traces belonging to her would be the consequence of epithelial rubbing).
(Ed: This next passages on hypotheticals shows how ignorant of murder jurisprudence Marasca & Bruno were, they had never handled a murder case before.] The fact is very suspicious, but it’s not decisive, besides the known considerations about the sure nature and attribution of the traces in question.
Nonetheless, even if we deem the attribution certain, the trial element would not be unequivocal, since it may show also a posthumous touching of that blood, during the probable attempt of removing the most visible traces of what had happened, maybe to help cover up for someone or to steer away suspicion from herself, but not contributing to full certainty about her direct involvement in the murderous action. Any further and more pertaining interpretation in fact would be anyway resisted by the circumstance ““ this is decisive indeed ““ that no trace linkable to her was found on the scene of crime or on the victim’s body, so it follows ““ if we concede everything ““ that her contact with the victim’s blood happened in a subsequent moment and in another room of the house.
Another element against her is certainly constituted by the false accusations [calunnia] against Mr. Lumumba, afore-mentioned above.
It is not understandable, in fact, what reason could have driven the young woman to produce such serious accusations. The theory that she did so in order to escape psychological pressure from detectives seems extremely fragile, given that the woman [47] could not fail to realize that such accusations directed against her boss would turn out to be false very soon, given that, as she knew very well, Mr. Lumumba had no relationship with Ms. Kercher nor with the Via della Pergola house. Furthermore, the ability to present an ironclad alibi would have allowed Lumumba to obtain release and subsequently the dropping of charges.
However, the said calunnia is another circumstantial element against the current appellant, insofar as it can be considered a strategy in order to cover up for Mr. Guede, whom she had an interest to protect because of fear of retaliatory accusations against her. This is confirmed by the fact that Mr. Lumumba, like Mr. Guede, is a man of colour, hence the indication of the first one would be safe in the event that the latter could have been seen by someone while entering or exiting the apartment.
And moreover, the staging of a theft in Romanelli’s room, which she is accused of, is also a relevant point within an incriminating picture, considering the elements of strong suspicion (location of glass shards ““ apparently resulting from the breaking of a glass window pane caused by the throwing of a rock from the outside ““ on top of, but also under clothes and furniture), a staging, which can be linked to someone who ““ as an author of the murder and a flatmate [titolare] with a formal [“qualified”] connection to the dwelling ““ had an interest to steer suspicion away from himself/herself, while a third murderer in contrast would be motivated by a very different urge after the killing, that is to leave the apartment as quickly as possible.
But also this element is substantially ambiguous, especially if we consider the fact that when the postal police arrived ““ they arrived in Via della Pergola for another reason: to search for Ms. Romanelli, the owner of the telephone SIM card found inside one of the phones retrieved in via Sperandio ““ the current appellants themselves, Sollecito specifically, were the ones who pointed out the anomalous situation to the officers, as nothing appeared to be stolen from Ms. Romanelli’s room.
Elements of strong suspicion are also in the inconsistencies and lies which the suspect woman committed over the statements she released on various occasions, especially in the places where her narrative was contradicted by the telephone records showing different incoming SMS messages; by the testimonies of Antonio Curatolo about the presence of [the same] Amanda Knox in piazza Grimana in the company of Sollecito, and of Mario Quintavalle about her presence inside the supermarket the morning of the day after the murder, maybe to buy detergents.
Despite this, the features of intrinsic inconsistency and poor reliability of the witnesses, which were objected to many times during the trial, do not allow to attribute unconditional trust to their versions, in order to prove with reassuring certainty the failure, and so the falsehood, of the alibi presented by the suspect woman, who claimed to have been at her boyfriend’s home since the late afternoon of November 1st until the morning of the following day. Mr. Curatolo (an enigmatic character: a clochard, drug addicted and dealer) [48] besides the fact that his declarations were late and the fact that he was not foreign to judiciary showing-off in judicial cases with a strong media impact, he was also contradicted about his reference to young people waiting for public buses to leave in the direction of disco clubs in the area, since it was asserted that the night of the murder the bus service was not operational; and also the reference to masks and jokes, which he says he witnessed that evening, would lead to believe that it was on Halloween night, on October 31., and not on Nov. 1. instead.
The latter point apparently balances ““ still within a context of uncertainty and ambiguousness ““ the witness’ reference to (regarding the context where he reportedly noticed the two suspects together) the day before the one when he noticed (at an afternoon hour) an unusual movement of Police and Carabinieri, and in particular people wearing white suites and head covers (as if they were extra-terrestrials) entering the house in Via della Pergola (obviously on November 2., after the discovery of the body).
Mr. Quintavalle ““ apart from the lateness of his statements, initially reticent and generic ““ did not offer any contribute of certainty, not even about the goods bought by the young woman noticed on the morning subsequent to the murder, when he opened his store, while his recognizing Knox in the courtroom is not relevant, since her image had appeared on all newspapers and tv news.
Regarding the biological traces, signed with letters A and I (the latter analysed by the RIS) sampled from the knife seized in Sollecito’s house and yielding Knox’s genetic profile, they constitute a neutral element, given that the same suspect lived together with Mr. Sollecito in the same home in via Garibaldi, although she alternated with the via della Pergola home, and ““ as for what was said ““ the same instrument did not have blood traces from Ms. Kercher, a negative circumstance that contrasted the accusation hypotheses that it was the murder weapon.
On that point, it must be pointed out that ““ again following a disputable strategic choice by the scientific police genetic experts ““ it was decided that the investigation aimed at identifying the genetic profile should be privileged, rather than finding its biological nature, given that the quantity of the samples did not allow a double test: the quality test would in fact would have “used up” the sample or made it unusable for further tests. A very disputable option, since the detecting of blood traces, referable to Ms. Kercher, would have provided the trial with a datum of a formidable probative relevance, incontrovertibly certifying the use of the weapon for the committing of the crime.
The verified presence of the same weapon inside Sollecito’s house, where Ms. Knox was living together with him, would have allowed then any possible deduction in this respect. Instead, the verified identification of the traces with genetic profiles of Ms. Knox resolves itself in a not unequivocal and rather indifferent datum, given that the young American woman was living together with Mr. Sollecito, sharing time between his dwelling and [49] the Via della Pergola one. Not only that, but even if it was possible to attribute with certainty trace B to the genetic profile of Ms. Kercher, the trial datum would have been not decisive (since it’s not a blood trace), given the promiscuity or commonality of inter-personal relations typical of out-of-town students, which make it plausible that a kitchen knife or any other tool could be transported from one house to the other and thus, the seized knife could have been brought by Ms. Knox in Via della Pergola for domestic use, in occasion of convivial meetings or other events, and therefore be used by Ms. Kercher.
What is certain is, that on the knife no blood traces were found, a lack which cannot be referred to an accurate cleaning. As was accurately pointed out by the defence attorneys, the knife had traces of starch, a sign of ordinary home use and of a washing anything but accurate. Not only, but starch is, notoriously, a substance with remarkable absorbing property, thus it is very likely that in the event of a stabbing, blood elements would be retained by it.
It is completely implausible the accusative assumption on the point, that the young woman would be used to carrying the bulky item with her for a self-defence purpose, using ““ it is said ““ the large bag she had for that purpose. It wouldn’t be actually understandable why the woman, if warned by her boyfriend to pay attention during her night time movements, was not in possession of one of the small pocket knives surely owned by Sollecito, who apparently had the hobby of that kind of weapon and was a collector of a number of them.
Finally, the matching with the current appellant woman of the footprints found in the place location of the murder is far from being certain.
9.4.2 Also the evidential picture about Mr. Sollecito, emerging from the impugned verdict, appears marked by intrinsic and irreducible contradictions. His presence on the murder scene, and specifically inside the room where the murder was committed, is linked to only the biological trace found on the bra fastener hook (item 165/b), the attribution of which, however, cannot have any certainty, since such trace is insusceptible of a second amplification, given its scarce amount, for that it is ““ as we said ““ an element lacking of circumstantial evidentiary value.
There remains anyway the strong suspicion that he was actually in the Via della Pergola house the night of the murder, in a moment that, however, it was impossible to determine. On the other hand, since the presence of Ms. Knox inside the house is sure, it is hardly credible that he was not with her.
And even following one of the versions released by the woman, that is the one in accord to which, returning home in the morning of November 2. after a night spent at her boyfriend’s place, she reports of having immediately noticed that something strange had happened (open door, blood traces everywhere); or even the other one, that she reports in her memorial, in accord to which she was present in the house at the time of the murder, but in a different room, not the one in which the violent aggression on Ms. Kercher was being committed, it is very strange that she did not call her boyfriend, since there is no record about a phone call from her, based on the phone records within the file. Even more if we consider that having being in Italy for a short time, she would be presumably uninformed about what to do in such emergency cases, therefore the first and maybe only person whom she could ask for help would have been her boyfriend himself, who lived only a few hundred meters away from her house. Not doing this signifies Sollecito was with her, unaffected, obviously, the procedural relevance of his mere presence in that house, in the absence of certain proof of his causal contribution to the murderous action.
The defensive argument extending the computer interaction up to the visualization of a cartoon, downloaded from the internet, in a time that they claim compatible with the time of death of Ms. Kercher, is certainly not sufficient to dispel such strong suspicions. In fact, even following the reconstruction claimed by the defence and even if we assume as certain that the interaction was by Mr. Sollecito himself and that he watched the whole clip, still the time of ending of his computer activity wouldn’t be incompatible with his subsequent presence in Ms. Kercher’s house, given the short distance between the two houses, walkable in about ten [sic] minutes.
An element of strong suspicion, also, derives from his confirmation, during spontaneous declarations, the alibi presented by Ms. Knox about the presence of both inside the house of the current appellant the night of the murder, a theory that is denied by the statements of Curatolo, who declared of having witnessed the two together from 21:30 until 24:00 in piazza Grimana; and by Quintavalle on the presence of a young woman, later identified as Ms. Knox, when he opened his store in the morning of November 2. But as it was previously noted, such witness statements appeared to have strong margins of ambiguity and approximation, so that could not reasonably constitute the foundation of any certainty, besides the problematic judgement of reliability expressed by the lower [a quo] judge.
An umpteenth element of suspicion is the basic failure of the alibi linked to other, claimed human interactions in the computer of his belongings, albeit if we can’t talk about false alibi, since it’s more appropriate to speak about unsuccessful alibi.
Finally, no certainty could be reached [was acquired] about the attribution to Mr. Sollecito of the footprints found in the via della Pergola house, about which the technical reports carried out have not gone beyond a judgement of “probable identity”, and not of certainty (p. 260/1).
9.4.3. It is simply the case to observe, that the declaration of the lacking of a probative framework, coherent and sufficient to support the accusatory hypothesis regarding the more serious case of the homicide, reverberates on the residual, accessory charges referred in point d) (theft of the phones) and e) (simulation of crime).
From Chapter 10
10. The intrinsic contradiction of probative elements emerging from the text of the appealed sentence, undermines in nuce the connecting tissue of the same sentence, causing the annulment of it.
And in fact, when facing a picture marked by such contradiction, the appeal judge was not supposed to issue a conviction but rather ““ as we observed above ““ they were compelled to issue a ruling of acquittal with reference to art. 530 paragraph 2 of penal procedure code.At this point the last question remains, about the annulment formula ““ that is, whether it should be annulled with remand or without remand. The solving of such question is obviously related to the objective possibility of further tests, which could resolve the aspects of uncertainty, maybe through new technical investigations.
The answer is certainly negative, because the biological traces on the items relevant to the investigation are of scarce entity, as such they can’t undergo amplification, and thus they won’t render answers of absolute reliability, neither in terms of identity nor in terms of compatibility.
The computers belonging to Amanda Knox and to Ms. Kercher, which maybe could have provided information useful to the investigation, were, incredibly, burned by hazardous operations by investigators, which caused electric shock following a probable error of power source; and they can’t render any further information anymore, since it’s an irreversible damage. [Ed: unproven how damage occurred, all records were recovered.]
The set of court testimonies is exhaustive, given the accuracy and completeness of the evidentiary trial phase, which had re-openings both times in the instances of appeal [rinvio; sic].
Mr. Guede, who was sure a co-participant to the murder, has always refused to cooperate, and for the already stated reasons he can’t be compelled to testify.
The technical tests requested by the defence cannot grant any contribution of clarity, not only because a long time has passed, but also because they regard aspects of problematic examination (such as the possibility of selective cleaning) or of manifest irrelevance (technical analysis on Sollecito’s computer) given that is was possible, as said, for him to go to Kercher’s house whatever the length of his interaction with the computer (even if one concedes that such interaction exists), or they are manifestly unnecessary, given that some unexceptionable technical analysis carried out are exhaustive (such are for example the cadaver inspection and the following medico-legal examinations).
Following the considerations above, it is obvious that a remand [rinvio] would be useless, hence the declaration of annulment without remand, based on art. 620 L) of the procedure code, thus we apply an acquittal [proscioglimento *] formula [see note just below] of dropping of charges which a further judge on remand would be anyway compelled to apply, to abide to the principles of law established in this current sentence.
[Translator’s note: Under the Italian Procedure Code, the Italian word for “acquittal” is actually “assoluzione”; while the term “proscioglimento” instead, actually refers only to non-definitive preliminary judgements during the investigation phase, and it could be translated as “dropping of charges”. When applied to the investigation phase “proscioglimento” is normally meant as a not-binding decision, not subjected to double jeopardy, since it is not considered a judgement nor a court’s decision.]
The annulment of the verdict of conviction of Ms. Knox as for the crime written at letter A), implies the ruling out of the aggravation of teleological nexus as for the art. 61 par. 2 Penal Code. The ruling out of such aggravating circumstance makes it necessary to re-determine the penalty, which is to be quantified in the same length established by the Court of Appeals of Perugia, about the adequacy of which large and sufficient justification was given, based on determination parameters which are to be subscribed to entirely.
It is just worth to note that the outcome of the judgement allows to deem as absorbed, or implicitly ruled out, any other objection, deduction or request by the defences, while any other argumentative aspect among those not examined, should be deemed manifestly inadmissible since it obviously belongs to the merit.
3. Wrong Translation Circulated By Amanda Knox
This version was garbled apparently to try to show innocence. (It is a crime to deliberately garble Italian legal documents.)
Above: wrong Knox version. Correct translation again:
4.3.1 As for the first question, the use of the [Guede’s] definitive verdict in the current judgement, for any possible implication, is unexceptionable , since it abides with the provision of art. 238 bis of Penal Code [sic]. Based on such provision “(”¦) the verdicts [p. 26] that have become irrevocable can be accepted [acquired] by courts as pieces of evidence of facts that were ascertained within them and evaluated based on articles 187 and 192 par 3”.
Above: wrong Knox version. Correct translation again:
9.4.1 Given this, we now note, with respect to Amanda Knox, that her presence inside the house, the location of the murder, is a proven fact in the trial, in accord with her own admissions, also contained in the memoriale with her signature, in the part where she tells that, as she was in the kitchen, while the young English woman had retired inside the room of same Ms. Kercher together with another person for a sexual intercourse, she heard a harrowing scream from her friend, so piercing and unbearable that she let herself down squatting on the floor, covering her ears tight with her hands in order not to hear more of it.
About this, the judgment of reliability expressed by the lower [a quo] judge [Nencini, ed.] with reference to this part of the suspect’s narrative, [and] about the plausible implication from the fact herself was the first person mentioning for the first time [46] a possible sexual motive for the murder, at the time when the detectives still did not have the results from the cadaver examination, nor the autopsy report, nor the witnesses’ information, which was collected only subsequently, about the victim’s terrible scream and about the time when it was heard (witnesses Nara Capezzali, Antonella Monacchia and others), is certainly to be subscribed to.
Monday, September 07, 2015
Knox Calunnia Trial #2: Testimony In Florence Court Today By Some Accused By Amanda Knox Of Crimes
Posted by Our Main Posters
1. Overview Of This Post
The post is in 3 parts and was added to on the fly as new information flowed in.
Part 2 below summarizes what this trial is all about. It is not about Knox’s book, it is about her claims on the stand in mid 2009 of crimes committed by numerous investigators and the lead prosecutor.
Part 3 below is live reports from the court. Part 4 is about the Supreme Court sentencing report released today in Rome.
2. Background To Calunnia Trial
This trial focuses on the claims of Amanda Knox at trial in 2009. Charges for malicious claims in her book will fall to another court, probably also in Florence. Oggi is already on trial for republishing some of them.
There seems no parallel in US or UK legal history to this - to a defendant testifying prolifically for two days to crimes by investigators, in spite of even more days of prior testimony which all pointed the other way.
Seemingly under strong pressure from her own family Knox willingly took a huge legal risk which her own lawyers had warned her about again and again, sometimes publicly, over nearly two years.
They never ever lodged even one complaint. Nor did the US Embassy in Rome, which monitored all sessions in court, and often checked her out (as did Italian MP Rocco Girlanda) in prison at Capanne.
The Massei court and the watching audience in Italy (read here and here) bought none of it. Knox still served three years for framing Patrick. Not even Judge Hellmann bought into her claims. Certainly not the Supreme Court.
The current trial in Florence was preceded by an investigation by Florence prosecutors, who bring the charges and argue them because Knox impugned officers of the justice system in their official roles.
Prior to today the prosecutors’ investigation report had only been released to Knox’s defense. So we don’t yet know if the charges extend beyond Knox’s claims of having been abused into a false “confession” on 5-6 November 2007.
Post #1 of our ongoing Interrogation Hoax series points toward what investigators testified to at trial.
Four months later Knox contradicted them at length as summarised in our two posts here and here: “The Amanda Knox Calunnia Trial In Florence: What It Is All About”
2. Machiavelli Reports From Calunnia Trial
1. Tweets from the Florence court:
16. Zugarini was present throughout the interrogation and described when #amandaknox started to cry, remembered her peculiar hand-ear gestures.
15. Napoleoni testified #amandaknox was brought a chamomille when she started crying at 01:45, the interrogation was immediately stopped.
14. Napoleoni and Zugarini said they “cuddled” Knox because she was a 20-year old girl.
13. Both Mignini and Zugarini described having had impression that #amandaknox was feeling “relieved of a burden” after accusing Lumumba.
12. Mignini said Knox was not clearly a suspect to him by the 05:45 interrogation.
11. Witnesses had inaccurate memory on some details, but were convergent on some peculiar details.
10. Napoleoni said she did not enter interrogation room, she called Rita Ficarra out to talk to her.
9. Zugarini said, as for her knowledge, Knox was not told that Sollecito withdrew her alibi.
8. Zugarini said called interpreter only to ask #amandaknox more precise questions about people in her phone contact list.
7. Zugarini said #amandaknox was able to explain herself in Italian. They called an interpreter to translate what police had to say.
6. Testimony of Mignini was descriptive and framed thing in law. Mostly talked at length explaining alone, prosecutor listened.
5. In today’s hearing, Mignini talked 2 hours, confirmed arrived at 3am, police interview was over, he asked no questions of AK.
4. Napoleoni was precise and synthetic. Zugarini longer and IMO more interesting on many details.
3. Mignini and Judge Boninsegna appeared irritated by Dalla Vedova’s remarks.
2. Long hearing of Mignini at trial against Amanda Knox for calunnia. Napoleoni & Gubbiotti followed, then Zugarini
1. Testimony of some of the investigators accused by Knox and the lead prosecutor Dr Mignini [image above] is being taken in court.
[Reporting from the Florence court sometimes requires a wait to get to a place where mobile phones can connect to the outside.]
2. Emailed report following day (8 September):
No Knox calunnia session required today as last Friday and yesterday both sides completed their witness list.
Amanda Knox and Curt Knox chose not to testify.
Now Judge Boninsegna has ordered each side to prepare their arguments within three months (7 December).
The verdict is likely to arrive in the New Year.
4. Machiavelli On Cassazione Sentencing Report
4. The Cassazione sentence on the #meredithkercher case about #amandaknox and #raffaelesollecito is an offence to intelligence.
3. Cassazione repeats several times “strong suspicion” remains about #amandaknox and #raffaelesollecito
2. Cassazione says #amandaknox was in the apartment when murder was convicted, and it is “incontrovertible” that she committed calunnia.
1. INCREDIBLE: SC says *proven* fact that #amandaknox was in house when murder was committed. Agrees with court on this
Tuesday, September 01, 2015
The Amanda Knox Calunnia Trial In Florence: What It Is All About #1
Posted by Peter Quennell
Above: Florence Prosecutor Dr Leopoldo Di Girolamo. Quick route to Comments here.
1. Arrangements For Knox Trial In Florence
Knox’s second trial for aggravated calunnia will take place later this week and early next week in Florence.
For the record the sentence for a repeat calunnia offense can be six years and the statute of limitations cuts in at 11 year and three months which in this case will be late in AD 2020.
The real drama if any will be next week, when witnesses are to be called starting on Monday. We should have some court reporting from Main Poster Machiavelli. There is the possibility of a closed court and a verdict on Tuesday.
We believe the judge will be Dr Giampaolo Boninsegna. We presume that Knox will not attend (perhaps a weak move, perhaps not).
Two prosecutors have developed the case which was sparked by complaints from investigators in the Perugia central police station. They are Dr Leopoldo Di Girolamo (image above) and Dr Angela Pietroiusti. We could see either or both of them in action.
It appears now that knox’s lawyers will again be Ghirga and Dalla Vedova, who some lawyers criticise for dropping her in it at trial with an ill-judged stint on the stand after 20 months of trying to stop Knox dropping herself in it.
2. Why Knox Was On The Stand in 2009
Knox’s team primarily primarily intended that Knox’s two days on the stand should serve to explain why she framed Patrick and then allowed him to languish in prison.
Both publicly to the media and at the Micheli hearings in late 2008 Knox’s lawyers had denied she was ill-treated or forced into a “confession”. So why was Knox put on the stand?
Probably in part because Knox absolutely insisted on it, given her considerable track record of written and spoken explanations and her interrogation in December 2007 by Dr Mignini. Each time a fail, but perhaps she had in mind the movie Groundhog Day.
And probably in part because the prosecution portion of the trial had been pretty damning. There had been stacks of evidence and numerous witnesses whose testimony fitted together pretty seamlessly.
Contrast this with the defense portion of the trial, from late summer onward, which was often awkward and hesitant, often did not fill complete court days, and really gained no ground back.
3. The Knox Defense Team’s Uphill Task Here
Bizarrely, Knox AND her lawyers AND her family had already sat through days and days of testimony earlier in the trial from various investigators who were present on 5-6 November when Knox explosively fingered Patrick.
Knox’s testimony was like night and day compared to that, as if none of that previous testimony had even happened. This was probably unique in Italian legal history and quite possibly in US legal history also.
Our ongoing Interrogation Hoax series, still far from complete, which has included a lot of new translation, showed what a very consistent picture of events on 5-6 Nov all these witnesses testified to.
Testimony led by Knox’s team (see below) was quite extensive but it tellingly wandered far from the main point and was very pussyfooting about 5-6 Nov even though Knox was not under oath and prosecutor cross-examination was circumscribed. It really won no points for Knox at all and didnt avoid her serving three years.
To consider the target testimony below against the picture the court had already developed, please read at least Part One of the series.
Look below as you read for all the numerous claims by Knox of illegal pressure and illegal abuse and illegal insistence of scenarios and names given to her by the cops.
According to the prior testimony of all those officers Knox is impugning, none of these claims of illegality seemingly designed to hurt careers had any truth at all to them.
4. Day One of Knox’s Testimony
Day two’s testimony will follow in our next post. Excerpts in both posts are from the full transcript on the Case Wiki, and all transcription and translation into English (a massive task) was by the PMF Team.
Relevant Questions By Lumumba Lawyer Pacelli
Here AK is Knox, CP is Pacelli, and GCM is Judge Massei.
CP: Listen, let’s get to the evening of November 1. On the evening of November 1, 2007, did you have an appointment with Patrick near the basketball court?
GCM: (Interrupting the interpreter who is putting this question into English for Amanda) Excuse me, excuse me. Also for the interpreter, also the English translation, everything is for everyone, this is not a dialogue between two people.
CP: I’ll ask a simpler question, Presidente.
GCM: No no, we heard it. Please, go ahead. (The interpreter translates the question)
AK: No, I didn’t.
CP: So, on the evening of November 1, you didn’t meet Patrick?
AK: No.
CP: You didn’t meet him at the basketball court?
AK: No.
CP: Then why did you say you met him at the basketball court during your interrogation of November 6, 2007, at 1:45 in the morning in front of the judicial police?
AK: It was a complicated situation. I can explain it if you want me to go into it.
CP: Yes, yes, later.
AK: Okay.
CP: You had the keys of the apartment in via della Pergola?
GCM: Excuse me, avvocato, she was saying something.
CP: Sorry. Please, go ahead.
GCM: She was adding something. Please go ahead. You can answer…
AK: Okay.
GCM: ...with all the time and the precision that you need.
AK: Okay.
GCM: (addressing the interpreter) Tell her that if she wants to add something, as it seemed she did, she can do it, and we will listen. (Interpreter puts this into English)
AK: Yes. Um, the interrogation process was very long and difficult. Arriving in the police office, I didn’t expect to be interrogated at all. When I got there, I was sitting on my own doing my homework, when a couple of police officers came to sit with me. They began to ask me the same questions that they had been asking me days…all these days ever since it happened. For instance, who could I imagine could be the person who killed Meredith, and I said I still didn’t know, and so what they did is, they brought me into another interrogation room. Once I was in there, they asked me to repeat everything that I had said before, for instance what I did that night. They asked me to see my phone, which I gave to them, and they were looking through my phone, which is when they found the message. When they found the message, they asked me if I had sent a message back, which I didn’t remember doing. That’s when they started being very hard with me. They called me a stupid liar, and they said that I was trying to protect someone. (Sigh) So I was there, and they told me that I was trying to protect someone, but I wasn’t trying to protect anyone, and so I didn’t know how to respond to them. They said that I had left Raffaele’s house, which wasn’t true, which I denied, but they continued to call me a stupid liar. They were putting this telephone in front of my face going “Look, look, your message, you were going to meet someone”. And when I denied that, they continued to call me a stupid liar. And then, from that point on, I was very very scared, because they were treating me so badly and I didn’t understand why. (Sigh) While I was there, there was an interpreter who explained to me an experience of hers, where she had gone through a traumatic experience that she could not remember at all, and she suggested that I was traumatized, and that I couldn’t remember the truth. This at first seemed ridiculous to me, because I remembered being at Raffaele’s house. For sure. I remembered doing things at Raffaele’s house. I checked my e-mails before, then we watched a movie. We had eaten dinner together, we had talked together, and during that time I hadn’t left his apartment. But they were insisting upon putting everything into hourly segments, and since I never look at the clock, I wasn’t able to tell them what time exactly I did everything. They insisted that I had left the apartment for a certain period of time to meet somebody, which for me I didn’t remember, but the interpreter said I probably had forgotten. (Sigh)...
AK: So what ended up happening was, that they told me to try to remember what I apparently, according to them, had forgotten. Under the amount of pressure of everyone yelling at me, and having them tell me that they were going to put me in prison for protecting somebody, that I wasn’t protecting, that I couldn’t remember, I tried to imagine that in some way they must have had…it was very difficult, because when I was there, at a certain point, I just…I couldn’t understand (Start of 15:19 minute video segment) why they were so sure that I was the one who knew everything. And so, in my confusion, I started to imagine that maybe I was traumatized, like what they said. They continued to say that I had met somebody, and they continued to put so much emphasis on this message that I had received from Patrick, and so I almost was convinced that I had met him. But I was confused.
CP: But—did you really meet him at the basketball court?
AK: No.
CP: Then how could you be convinced that you had met him?
AK: I was confused.
CP: When you said this, how many police inspectors were present?
AK: I don’t know how many were police officers or inspectors, but there were lots.
CP: Listen, but you were accompanied to the bar, they offered you a cappuccino over the night? They assisted you through the night?
AK: I was offered tea after I had made declarations.
CP: So they treated you well.
AK: No!
On November 6, 2007, at 1:45, you said that you went to the house in via della Pergola with Patrick. Did you go?
AK: The declarations were taken against my will. And so, everything that I said, was said in confusion and under pressure, and, because they were suggested by the public minister.
CP: Excuse me, but at 1:45, the pubblico ministero was not there, there was only the judicial police.
AK: Ha. They also were pressuring me.
CP: I understand, but were they telling you to say that, too, or did you say it of your own free will.
AK: They were suggesting paths of thought. They were suggesting the path of thought. They suggested the journey. So the first thing I said, “Okay, Patrick”. And then they said “Okay, where did you meet him? Did you meet him at your house? Did you meet him near your house?” “Euh, near my house, I don’t know.” Then my memories got mixed up. From other days, I remembered having met Patrick, at Piazza Grimana, so I said “Okay, Piazza Grimana.” It wasn’t as if I said “Oh, this is how it went.”
GCM: Please go ahead, avvocato.
CP: —which is the object of both declarations, the one at 1:45 and the one at 5:45. (Crossing voices.)
GCM: It was about facts, though?
CP: All right, I’ll reformulate the question. Meredith, before she was killed, did she have sex?
AK: I don’t know.
CP: Then why, in the interrogation of Nov 6 at 1:45, did you say that Meredith had sex before she died?
AK: Under pressure, I imagined lots of different things, also because during the days that I was being questioned by the police, they suggested to me that she had been raped.
CP: And the police suggested to you to say this?
AK: Yes.
CP: And to make you say this, did they hit you?
AK: Yes.
CP: When you wrote the memorandum, were you hit by police?
AK: When?
CP: When you wrote the memorandum. Were you hit by police?
AK: No.
CP: Mistreated?
AK: No.
CP: Did the police suggest the contents?
AK: No.
CP: You gave it to them freely?
AK: Yes.
CP: Voluntarily?
AK: Yes.
CP: Listen, in this memorandum, you say that you confirm the declarations you made the night before about what might have happened at your house with Patrick. Why did you freely and spontaneously confirm these declarations?
AK: Because I was no longer sure what was my imagination and what was real. So I wanted to say that I was confused, and that I couldn’t know. But at the same time, I knew I had signed those declarations. So I wanted to say that I knew I had made those declarations, but I was confused and not sure.
CP: But in fact, you were sure that Patrick was innocent?
AK: No, I wasn’t sure.
CP: Why?
AK: Because I was confused! I imagined that it might have happened. I was confused.
CP: Did you see Patrick on November 1, yes or no?
AK: No.
CP: Did you meet him?
AK: No.
CP: Then why did you say that you saw him, met him, and walked home with him?
AK: Because the police and the interpreter told me that maybe I just wasn’t remembering these things, but I had to try to remember. It didn’t matter if I thought I was imagining it. I would remember it with time. So, the fact that I actually remembered something else was confusing to me. Because I remembered one thing, but under the pressure of the police, I forced myself to imagine another. I was confused. I was trying to explain this confusion, because they were making me accuse someone I didn’t want to accuse.
Relevant Questions By Knox Lawyer Ghirga
CP: I’ll repeat my question. On the 10th, you said to your mother: “It’s my fault that he’s here. I feel terrible.” Why didn’t you say this to the pubblico ministero?
LG?: I object! He’s already asked this question. And it was answered.
GCM: Yes. It was already asked.
CP: Yes, but she hasn’t answered!
LG?: Yes, she HAS answered!
CP: Can she answer? I didn’t understand.
GCM: Excuse me, excuse me. Please.
CP: I didn’t understand her answer, President. Can you explain?
GCM: So, the question was asked and has been asked again because—
CP: (speaking over him) Because I didn’t understand the answer!
GCM: —the defense lawyer has not understood why—in what regards the police, the accused has said that when they came to bring her paper, they said “Oh, another truth,” so her relations with them were such that she did not feel that she could tell them this circumstance. It remains to ask why she did not tell the pubblico ministero. This is what the lawyer is asking. For what concerns the police, we have heard her position and her answer. We’re talking about the period after the 10th of November, when this conversation with the mother was recorded. In what concerns the pubblico ministero, the lawyer is asking you why you didn’t feel the necessity, like with your mother, of telling him that Patrick Lumumba, as far as you were concerned, had nothing to do with all this.
AK: We are talking about when I was in front of the judge?
GCM: After the 10th of November.
AK: Frankly, I didn’t have good relations with the police after that period, nor with the pubblico ministero, because he also had suggested declarations that got written down in the declarations. I didn’t know where to turn. I felt better talking to my defense than to the police.
LG: All right, I’ve exhausted this topic. Now, I said we were just coming to the evening when you were called in, or rather when Raffaele was called in to the Questura on Nov 5. Where did you come from? Were you having dinner somewhere? Do you remember?
AK: We were at the apartment of a friend of his, who lived near his house, and we were having dinner with them, trying, I don’t know, to feel a bit of normality, when Raffaele was called by the police.
LG: Okay. So you went with him in the car, and you came in and they settled you somewhere, and later you were heard.
AK: Yes. What happened is that they weren’t expecting me to come. I went somewhere a bit outside near the elevator, and I had taken my homework with me, so I started to do my homework, and then I needed to do some “stretching”, so I did some “stretching”, and that’s when one policeman said something about my flexibility. A comment.
LG: Okay. Then you were interrogated, let’s say interrogated, it was just for information. So you were interrogated.
AK: Mm.
LG: During the interrogation, there were several people in the room, did someone come who was involved in Raffaele Sollecito’s interrogation? He was being interrogated in one place, you in another.
AK: So, there were lots and lots of people who came in and went out, and after one had come in and gone out, another policewoman told me that Raffaele said that I went out of the apartment—at least, Raffaele apparently said that I (stammering) had gone out of his house.
LG: Okay. And the episode of the text message came later? After this person came in and said that? You don’t remember?
AK: Yes, yes. I think it happened after they told me that.
LG: Now what interests me is that you should be precise about the term “hit”, because being hit is something…was it a cuff on the head, two cuffs on the head? How precise can you be about this “hitting”?
AK: So, during the interrogation, people were standing all around me, in front of me, behind me, one person was screaming at me from here, another person was shouting “No no no, maybe you just don’t remember” from over there, other people were yelling other things, and a policewoman behind me did this to me (you hear the sound of her giving two very little whacks).
LG: Once, twice?
AK: Twice. The first time I did this, I turned around to her, and she did it again.
LG: I wanted to know this precise detail.
AK: Yes.
LG: After all that, that whole conversation, that you told us about, and you had a crying crisis, did they bring you some tea, coffee, some cakes, something? When was that exactly?
AK: They brought me things only after I had made some declarations. So, I was there, they were all screaming at me, I only wanted to leave because I was thinking that my mother was arriving, and I said look, can I have my telephone, because I want to call my mom. They said no, and there was this big mess with them shouting at me, threatening me, and it was only after I made declarations that they started saying “No, no, don’t worry, we’ll protect you,” and that’s how it happened.
LG: Then you stayed in the Questura?
AK: Yes.
LG: Then, at midday, or one o’clock, we don’t know exactly, they brought you a paper called an arrest warrant. When they served you this warrant, it must have been around twelve, one o’clock. Do you remember?
AK: So, all papers they brought me to sign, at that point, they were all the same to me, so I can’t even say what I had to sign, arrest warrant, declarations, whatever, because at a certain point, I just wanted to sign and go home.
LG: Right. But instead?
AK: Instead, no. After a while they told me I had to stay in the Questura, so I had to stay, and I rolled up in a fetal position to try to sleep, on a chair, and I fell asleep, then I woke up, and I was there thinking and some people were going in and out, and during this period of time, I was telling them: “Look, I am really confused, these things don’t seem like what I remember, I remember something else.” And they said “No no no no no, you just stay quiet, you will remember it all later. So just stay quiet and wait, wait, wait, because we have to check some things.” And at that point I just didn’t understand anything. I even lost my sense of time.
LG: And I wanted to ask you after how long they took you to prison. At some point there was a car, a police wagon that took you to prison. After how much time was that? You don’t know?
AK: Well, I can’t say, but what I can say is that I stayed a while in the Questura, and during that time I kept trying to explain to the police that what I had said was not certain, and they took my shoes during that time and they took some pictures, they undressed me to take the pictures, and so it seemed like a long time.
LG: So it was between this time and the time you went to prison that you wrote the memorial?
AK: Yes. I wrote it there because, I asked to do it because I was telling them “Listen, you’re not hearing me, give me a piece of paper, and I’ll write this down in English to be sure you understand what I’m saying.” But I couldn’t really say that. I just said “Look, I’ll give you a present.” (Laughs.) It was because I wasn’t really able to speak or understand then. So I wrote that, but after I wrote the first pages, I was in the middle of writing this memorandum, they suddenly said “Hurry up, hurry up, finish because we have to take you to prison.” I stayed there like…I didn’t expect to go to prison, I thought maybe I hadn’t understood. I asked the policemen, the people who were around me, there, “But Why? I haven’t done anything.” And they said “No, it’s just bureaucracy. At least that’s what I understood.
LG: All right Amanda, okay. Thank you. So you went to prison and spent the night. When did you write the second memorial?
AK: So in prison I again asked for paper, because that’s how I’m used to expressing myself, the way I succeed best, also to organize my thoughts, I needed to write them down. I needed to reorganize all my thoughts, because at that point I was still confused, I still had these images in my memory that finally I understood were a mixture of real images in my memory from other days mixed with imagination. So I needed those pieces of paper, so I could take everything and put it in order.
LG: All right, I’ve finished the subject of the night in the Questura. When you made your first declaration, it was without the pubblico ministero. Then he came. Can you tell us if there was some discussion about a lawyer? If you remember, and whatever you remember.
AK: So, before they asked me to make further declarations—I really can’t tell you what time it was, I was lost after hours and hours of the same thing—but at one point I asked if I shouldn’t have a lawyer? I thought that, well, I didn’t know, but I’ve seen things like this on television. When people do things like this they have lawyer. They told me, at least one of them told me that it would be worse for me because it would prove that I didn’t want to collaborate with the police. So they told me no.
Amanda Knox’s first letter of Nov 9, 2007
This letter was entered in testimony by Knox’s lawyers on the first day. It was written by Knox to her lawyers around noon on Friday, Nov., 9, three days after her arrest and one day after the Matteini Hearing. Words that are missing from the scan are shown in square brackets.
Presumably intended to help Knox, it has now become part of her problem.
Per I Miei Avvocati
- Amanda Knox (Friday, Nov. 9, 2007)
Buon giorno Signore Ghirga e Signore Vedova. I’m sorry, but I must write in english to make sure I express myself (cl)early. Please excuse my handicap. I trust you are well, though probably very busy with my case and for this I thank you. What I want to provide for you now is help, because I know my position (is) a little confusing. I want to write for you everything I know as best I can and I especially want to tell you about this so-called “confession” that the police received from me. I want to begin with this “confession” because I know it is the most confusing, and so I will begin with that night.
The night of Monday, November 5th, 2007, and the following early morning of Tuesday, November 6th, 2007, was one of the worst experiences of my life, perhaps the worst. Around 10:30pm or 11pm Raffaele and I arrived at the police station after eating dinner at the apartment of one of Raffaele’s friends. It was Raffaele who the police called, not me, but I came with him to the Questura anyway while he was to be questioned for support, as he had done for me many times. When we arrived he was taken inside and I waited by the elevator and looked through my books while I waited. Not long aftwerward one of the police came and sat by me, wanting to talk with me, supposedly to pass the time. He didn’t tell me he was a police officer. In fact, he said I could tell him whatever I wanted because it wouldn’t matter. At the time I was frustrated and told him so. I thought it was ridiculaous that the police called us in at ridiculous hours of the night and kept us at the police station for hours on end with only vending maschine (sic) food to sustain us, especially since we (wer)e all doing our best to help the police. I had been asked twice to reenter the home of my neighbors and mine, first to witness the blood in the neighbors’ apartment and then to look through (k)nives in mine. I really feared the place. Inside my own home I broke down crying because I couldn’t stand to be inside. These were the reasons for my frustration and I told him so.
He then wanted to discuss who I thought the murderer could be, but as I had already told them before, since I wasn’t there at my home, I couldn’t have any idea, but (deleted words) he wasn’t satisfied with my answer. Who did I think it was? How would I know? I didn’t know anyone dangerous. Soon I was joined by other police people who only wanted to “talk” but who interrogated me again with the same questions. What males had ever been in my house? Who knew Meredith? Did I have any phone numbers? I gave them all the information I could. Names, phone numbers, descriptions. But it was all giving me a headache. I had already answered these questions before and I was confused as to why the police wanted so much to talk to me. Why me? Why did they keep asking me who I thought the murderer was when I already told them I had no idea?
And then they brought me inside, because it was “warmer”. I (asked) where Raffaele was and they told me he would be done soon (but) in the meantime they wanted to talk to me. The interrogation process started rather quickley (sic). One minute I was just (tal?)king and the next they were asking me where I was between (?):30pm and 1:30am between November (1st) and 2nd. I told them I was with my boyfriend, like I had already said. They asked me what I had done during this time period and I found that I couldn’t remember a lot. I told them (we) watched the movie Amelie together, that we ate dinner (tog)ether, that after dinner Raffaele washed the dishes and spilled water on the floor when the pipes came loose. I told them that (we) smoked hash somewhere in that time but I couldn’t remember (mo)re. They told me I was lying. They told me they knew I had (not) been with Raffaele. They told me they knew I met someone that night. They told me they had proof I was at my house that night. This really confused me. I told them I wasn’t lying and (the)y began to get angry. Stop telling lies, they told me. We know (you) were there! But this didn’t make sense. I was frightened, because I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I did during the time (the)y were asking me. What were you doing?! Where did you go?! We (kno)w you were at your house!! Who did you meet?! But this all (did)n’t make any sense. How could they have proof that I was at my (hou)se when I wasn’t? Why did they think these things? Why me? They told me Raffaele had finally told the truth and that he had no (rea)son to lie. They told me that they knew I had told Raffaele to (lie?) and I told them this wasn’t true. I had never told him any (suc)h thing. We talked about the message I received from Patrik (and) I told them yes, I received a message from Patrik, he told me (not) to go into work that night because there was no one there. I (did)n’t remember if I had sent a message back, so I said no, but they (had) taken my phone and showed me the message I forgot I sent: (ending?) with the words, “Ci vediamo. Buona serata.” They called me a (stu)pid lier. They said I was protecting someone, who was it?! (The)y stuck pieces of paper in front of me, to write down the name (of) the murder, but I didn’t know. And I still couldn’t remember (wha)t me and Raffaele had been doing at his house. I had nothing to (say?) to answer their questions and it was terrifying me. Why couldn’t (I r)emember. The interpretor told me that one time she experienced (a ho)rrible car accident and couldn’t remember what had happened (unt)il a year later. She told me perhaps I had seen something (horr)ible and I couldn’t remember. Since I couldn’t remember (wha)t I had been doing at Raffaele’s house I started to think what (...?) was true? What if I had seen something and I didn’t (rem)ember? But it didn’t make sense. I remembered being (at) Raffaele’s the whole night. But in the meantime the police were (...?) or they were going to put me in jail for (...?) (p)rotecting the killer. They told me they had already caught the killer (a)nd they just wanted me to say his name, but I knew nothing. My (m)ind was a blank slate. Now, now, now!!! They were yelling at me. One (p)olice officer hit me on the back of my head twice. My head was (s)earching for any answer. I was really confused. I thought I was at my boyfriend’s house, but what if it wasn’t true? What if I couldn’t remember? I tried and tried and tried, but I couldn’t remember anything until all of the police officers left the room except one. He (to)ld me he was the only one who could save me from spending the (n)ext 30 years in jail and I told him I couldn’t remember. I asked to see the message on my phone to see if I remembered sending that (an)d when I saw the message my mind thought of Patrik. It was all I could think of, Patrik. I imagined meeting him by the basketball (cou)rts, I imagined him in front of my house, I imagined covering my ears to stop the sound of Meredith’s screaming, and so I said (Pa)trik. I said Patrik and I regret every second of it because now I (k)now that what I have said has done someone harm that I have no idea whether he was involved or not.
After I said his name I was hysterical. I was weeping, (s)cared of what could have happened to me. I honestly thought (t)his could have been the answer. I was so confused. They told me that they had to write all of this down but I told them I wasn’t (s)ure. So they told me just to say what I had said, that I had seen (Pat)rik. That I had heard Meredith screaming. I told them I was (c)onfused, unsure, but they weren’t interested. While they were writing my so-called “confession”, which the didn’t call it (t)o me, they asked me to say if it was okay to write certain things. I (d)dn’t explain, but just said yes or no according to what these (im)ages of Patrik were showing me, but I always told them I wasn’t (su)re, these things didn’t seem real. They asked me why he had done (thi)s and I didn’t know why. Why would anyone kill another person? I told them he must be crazy. They asked me if I feared him and I (sa)id yes. I was so confused and the idea that he would kill someone (fr)ightened me. But I had never been frightened of him before, he has (al)ways been kind to me. After all of this I was allowed to sleep, (fi)nally. The whole thing was going through my head and I felt (aw)ful, to even think I could have been involved. But the more (confu)sed I became, the more sure I was that these ideas about Patrik (w)eren’t true, but I still couldn’t remember what I had been (do)ing at my boyfriend’s house after dinner.
I seriously started to doubt when the police told me what my boyfriend had said. (1) First, that when I received the message from (Pat)rik, that I had told him I had to leave to go to work. This I (k)new, even then, wasn’t true. I remembered and still do specifically (th)at I had told him I _didn’t_ have to work and I kissed him and (...)
(...) said, “Yay!” (2) I also never told him to lie for me. Why would he lie? Could he have lied about me not being there too? I was especially troubled by this because even though I had thought of Patrik, I still remembered being at Raffaele’s house. I told the police of my doubts but they said not to worry, little by little, I would remember. So I waited.
I tried writing what I could remember for the police, because I’ve always been better at thinking when I was writing. They gave me time to do this. In this message I wrote about my doubts, my questions, and what I knew to be true.
(Deleted words) During this time I was checked out by medics (and?) had my picture taken as well as more copies of my fingerprints. They took my shoes and my phone. I wanted to go home but they told me to wait and then eventually that I was to be arrested. Then I was taken here, to the prison, in the last car of three who carried Patrik, then Raffaele, and then me to prison.
I hope this clears up some confusion for you and I’m sorry again that it is in English. I hope you are in contact with my mother and if you are, could you please tell her I love her, that I miss her, that I’m okay, and that I hope to see her soon.
I also just received the order of arrest and it says I must remain here in prison for one year. I’m assuming this means only if they can prove I did it or not. So I’m not sad, I just have to wait until they prove I’m not guilty, and that I wasn’t there.
I want to write another message for you which describes my version of events that at this time I remember very well. This I will do on a different piece of paper and a little later because I’m very tired.
Good luck and thanks,
Amanda Knox
quasi mezzogiorno
Venerdi, Novembre 9, 2007
Part 2 (Day Two) in our next post.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Why The Count Of Discredited Prosecution Witnesses Even Now Remains Down Around Zero
Posted by James Raper
As with all images on TJMK this image above will expand if clicked on
Just sifting through the latest drivel on Injustice in Perugia today and I came across this statement from one of their main posters.
“It was physically impossible for Capezalli to have heard any sounds from Meredith’s residence”.
Note : not that she was mistaken or that her evidence was unreliable but the bald statement that it was physically impossible for her to have heard anything.
Was she profoundly deaf then? If not, then why this assertion? Without some basis for this assertion then it is simply a dismissive slur on the credibility of the witness.
This happens to be the same poster who wowed that board with his claim that the Prosecution suppressed exculpatory evidence that would have cleared Knox and Sollecito.
Not that he supplied any proof. How could he?
It is axiomatic, of course, that if there was suppressed evidence then what it was would not be known. Nevertheless it was a ready springboard for calls from mindless idiots to have the Prosecution fully investigated and charged with perverting the course of justice!
Anyway, to move on, the purpose of this post is just to revisit (with pictorial assistance) Capezalli’s testimony (I shall call her Nara from now on) and see if there is even a scintilla of justification for the claim.
Now to be fair, Nara did say in her evidence that she had double glazing and maybe that is what he is referring to although for the life of me I don’t see why that would make it impossible for her to hear a scream outside.
But it’s worth investigating because it’s the sort of thing that does get repeated without further analysis and I have read others taking that remark at face value and doubting whether she did hear a scream and, perhaps more credibly, whether she would have heard the sound of someone running on the gravel of the cottage forecourt and up the metal steps from the car park.
Here is what she said -
“What happens is that getting up I’m going past the window of the dining room, because the bathroom is on that side, and as I am there I heard a scream, but a scream that wasn’t a normal scream. [A terrifying and agonising long scream as she describes it elsewhere] I got goose bumps to be truthful. At that moment I no longer knew what was happening, and then I went on to the bathroom. There is a little window with no shutters, none at all.”
Mignini then asks -
Q—Well, you go by the window and you hear this cry?
Ans ““ Yes.
Q ““ Then you continue to go towards the bathroom, you told me?
Ans ““ Yes.
Q ““ Do you open the bathroom window?
Ans ““ No.
Q ““ Explain what happened for us.
Ans ““ I haven’t any shutters on that window, I only have double-glazing so I can look straight out
Q ““ So you looked out of the bathroom window?
Ans”“ I didn’t open up because I had all the little succulent plants there for the light.
A little late in her testimony Mignini seeks to clarify her evidence -
Q”“ So you hear the scream, go to the bathroom, look out the window and you don’t see anything?
Ans ““ No.
Q ““ Then you go back to the bedroom?
Ans ““ Yes.
Q ““ When is it that you hear the noises you described, and then we will see what they are?
Ans ““ I hear the noises I described when I was closing the bathroom door, then I heard running, because that steel there [the metal stairs] makes a tremendous noise at night, then when you don’t hear cars going by or such like, I looked out but there was nobody there.
Q ““ From which way?
Ans ““ To the left and the right, and there was nobody there.
Q ““ Then you heard the scuffling?
Ans ““ The same, in the meantime I heard running on the stairs, from the other direction they were running in the driveway.
Much later Nara is helpfully (perhaps) cross examined by Dalla Vedova on her remark that she has double glazing, as follows -
CDV - How are your windows made?
Ans - My windows are made of wood. They have double glazing and they have a shutter.
CDV - When you say “they have double glazing” do you mean that every single window has two panes, or are there two windows, one in front of the other?
Ans - No, two panes in each side and opening in the middle.
Confused? What is she really describing?
Many moons ago Kermit put together a very helpful Powerpoint lambasting the behaviour and claims of Paul Ciolino, the American PI who appeared on CBS rubbishing the suggestion that Nara would have been able to hear anything. It is obviously Ciolino’s disreputable work that is the basis for the claim.
I am going to lift some stills from Kermit’s excellent Powerpoint and add to them some more from a (somewhat infamous) Channel 5 documentary, from which it will be clear that
(a) Nara doesn’t have double glazing, nor shutters, at least not at the back of her property overlooking the cottage. However there are shutters at the front and, for all I know, double glazing there but that is not of concern to us.
(b) There is little reason to doubt that she would have been able to hear sounds outside quite well.
Let’s start.
Here’s a picture of the back of Nara’s property immediately above the car park.
Here it is again in relation to the cottage
In the first picture Nara’s first floor flat is shown circled. In the second, it is obvious that only the roof of the cottage would be visible from the first floor, as indeed she said in her testimony.
There are two further floors above. The top floor is the one to which Ciolino (and Pater Van Sant) gained access, having tried but failed to interest Nara. Nara in her evidence said that there was an apartment above which she rented out and I suspect that this was the top floor. The top floor undoubtedly had double glazing or double casements.
Below is one of the top floor windows. (We can see Ciolino’s reflection in the glass)
And here he is, standing in front of the same window whilst conducting his experiment with a couple of kids running along the road outside -
As we shall see it really was quite pointless conducting off-the-cuff sound experiments from there with the double casement shut tight
Nara said that her daughter also lived in the building so either the second floor was a separate conversion for her daughter or first and second were shared and the second was where their bedrooms were. That’s actually immaterial as it is the first floor that really interests us.
Here is a close up of the first floor. We can be sure because we can see Nara and the co-presenters of the Channel 5 documentary standing on the balcony.
We can see how large the windows are on either side of the balcony. As to the window on the right it is also apparent that this has been blocked up save as to four panes in the middle so that now there is only that smaller window there.
Let us now look at that window from the inside.
“One went up, one went over there” is Nara explaining to the Italian TV reporter the sounds she heard.
Clearly then she is standing inside her bathroom and the bathroom window looks over the car park. Indeed we can see her succulent plants on the inside window ledge as she stated in her evidence. Also, if we look closely, we can see that her wall is tiled or wall-papered with a tile design befitting a bathroom. Probably that wall is also made of little more than plasterboard.
One thing is quite certain though and that is that the window, which opens in the middle, is not double glazed.
Nara’s understanding however seems to be rather different. To her “double glazing” is (as she said to Dalla Vedova) “two panes in each side and opening in the middle”.
We can also infer that the large window to the left of the balcony belongs to her dining room. What she said, in effect, was that she was traversing the first floor (from left to right) from her dining room to her bathroom (being both on the same side, as she says). She heard the scream in her dining room.
The window there does not appear to be blocked off as it is to the right. Indeed I think we can see full length drapes or net curtains but certainly one would expect a larger window there and again, clearly, it is not double glazed.
So again, why would it be physically impossible for her to have heard a sound, particularly a scream, coming from the cottage?
It couldn’t be because it was too far away. We can see that from the pictures but also here is a handy GoogleMap calculation of the distance from her place to the far side of the cottage.
So that’s, say, 45 metres. Or 49 yards. Not far at all. Thanks to Yummi for bringing that up on pmf.org.
We should also remember that it was the 1st November which is a religious holiday in Italy in remembrance of the dead and therefore background noise was quieter than usual. It was also probably sometime around 11pm and the back of Nara’s property looks out on what is a natural amphitheatre in which noise will echo.
Nara Capezalli in fact came across as a compelling witness to what she heard that night and there is no way at all that it was physically impossible for her not to have heard that scream. Nor the metal stairs (”..makes a tremendous noise at night””¦.) just off to the right of her property and immediately below it.
On a personal note I was recently driven nuts by a manhole cover that had come loose in the road outside my bedroom window. Cars constantly drove over it and the noise kept me awake. The top floor of the car park would probably also act like a sounding board and the noise made by the stairs may also have come up through the stairwell we see immediately in front of her property. I am not so sure about the sound of gravel on the cottage forecourt being crunched underneath but already I am more than prepared to believe Nara on that score as well. Why not?
Finally, as we await the Cassation Motivation (whenever!) I seem to remember that at least one appeal point was the failure of the lower courts to accede to a defence request for audio tests to be conducted from Nara’s property.
Bearing in mind that Judge Marasca reportedly has stated that the ground for overturning the Nencini convictions was insufficient and contradictory evidence one wonders whether Cassation will say that a test was required, in the absence of which Nara’s testimony can be thrown into a pot along with other evidence somehow deemed “insufficient”?
If they do then watch out for them getting the double glazing issue quite wrong as well.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Court Filing Contends Fifth Chambers Encroached Illegally On First Chambers & Florence Court Powers
Posted by Our Main Posters
Overview
It is now 2 months since the oral verdict, and the written verdict is required soon.
We have devoted an entire series by lawyers to showing how unsound in law, in science, in media analysis, and in facts of the case the Marasca/Bruno oral explanations are.
This opinion representing the Perugia and Florence Prosecutions was drafted by several of the most experienced and respected lawyers in Italy.
It was drafted in light of the spoken Fifth Chambers verdict pro-defendant at the end of March. The panel’s written explanation was then overdue. The opinion was filed with the Florence court.
These passages quoted below raise issues of what the Fifth Chambers under the Penal Code legally can and can not do, with respect to prior rulings of (1) the Supreme Court itself, which mostly overturned Hellmann in 2013 for exceeding legal scope; and (2) the Florence (Nencini) appeal court.
According to this opinion, the Fifth Chambers has significantly overstepped its legal boundaries in brushing aside previous rulings and trying to fulfill the role of an appeal court, or a first-level trial court.
This was the same overstretch that the First Chambers concluded the 2011 Hellmann appeal court had wrongly done. Both courts are widely considered in Italy to have been illegally bent.
This is now uncharted territory. If this opinion goes forward the Judges of the First Chambers and Florence court and the Council of Magistrates all seem likely to side with what it claims. If so reactions might ripple on for years.
The Fifth Chambers judges might find themselves increasingly beleaguered. And their rulings on evidence items and the investigators and prosecutors and foreign media would all seem to be moot, if the perception grows that the Fifth Chambers should not even have gone there.
the judgment of the [Florence] court remitted to would have been impugnable only for reasons not regarding the points already decided by the Court of Cassation, according to the very clear disposition of Article 628, second paragraph, Criminal Procedure Code. From this it follows that the Fifth Chamber of the Supreme Court, called on to decide the merits of the appeals brought by the accused against the decision of the court remitted to, would have had to consider as inadmissible the appeals presented in violation of the second paragraph of Article 628 Criminal Procedure Code and, in any case, would have had to rigorously conform with the points already decided by the First Chamber and with all the questions of law decided by the same”¦
the Court of Cassation cannot, therefore, ever adopt decisions on the merits and issue orders of acquittal under Article 530, second paragraph, Criminal Procedure Code.
...two chambers of the same Court of Cassation, the First (the one competent for proceedings in homicide matters, whose decision of annulment is definitive and who had identified and decided questions of law in a definitive and un-retractable manner) and the Fifth (who would have had to decide the appeals presented only on grounds of legitimacy of the defendants’, constrained by what had already been definitively decided by the First) have handed down two absolutely divergent decisions and the second had annulled the Florentine decision, positively excluding any remitting to another court and acquitting the defendants pursuant to Article 530, second paragraph, Criminal Procedure Code.
the judgment of the [Florence] court remitted to would have been impugnable only for reasons not regarding the points already decided by the Court of Cassation, according to the very clear disposition of Article 628, second paragraph, Criminal Procedure Code. From this it follows that the Fifth Chamber of the Supreme Court, called on to decide the merits of the appeals brought by the accused against the decision of the court remitted to, would have had to consider as inadmissible the appeals presented in violation of the second paragraph of Article 628 Criminal Procedure Code and, in any case, would have had to rigorously conform with the points already decided by the First Chamber and with all the questions of law decided by the same”¦
the Court of Cassation cannot, therefore, ever adopt decisions on the merits and issue orders of acquittal under Article 530, second paragraph, Criminal Procedure Code.
...two chambers of the same Court of Cassation, the First (the one competent for proceedings in homicide matters, whose decision of annulment is definitive and who had identified and decided questions of law in a definitive and un-retractable manner) and the Fifth (who would have had to decide the appeals presented only on grounds of legitimacy of the defendants’, constrained by what had already been definitively decided by the First) have handed down two absolutely divergent decisions and the second had annulled the Florentine decision, positively excluding any remitting to another court and acquitting the defendants pursuant to Article 530, second paragraph, Criminal Procedure Code.
from these starting points in fact and in law which are absolutely undeniable, it emerges that the course of proceedings in this case have been absolutely linear and respectful of the substance of the procedural rules up to and including the Florentine decision.
the Court of Cassation, on the appeal of the Prosecutor-General of [the Perugia] district Court, had in a radical and definitive manner annulled the acquitting pronouncement and had remitted it to the Florentine district court because the same would adopt the consequent decisions of merit in the line of reasoning of the principles of law laid down by the First Chamber of the Supreme Court and of the points decided by it.
These principles of law are by now unmodifiable and unarguable: the [Fifth Chambers] , called on to decide the matter, as a “second opinion”, concerning the appeal of the defendants from the [Florence] judgment below, would have had to hand down a judgment fully within the “railway tracks” of the law, as fixed by the First Chamber, like the Florentine district court did, principles from among which we may cite:
[Umodifiable principle] the principle, in fact the unfailing legal prerequisite of a Supreme Court decision, namely the fact that the Court is precluded from “trespassing into a re-evaluation of the compendium of evidence” (see the judgment of the First Chamber at page 40);
[Unmodifiable principle] the principle of law of the total and holistic evaluation of the probative material, as opposed to the “parcelled-up and atomistic evaluation of the pieces of circumstantial evidence, taking them into consideration one at a time and discarded in terms of their demonstrative potentiality”, which characterised instead, in the negative, the decision of the Court presided by Pratillo Hellmann (see the decision of the same First Chamber at pp. 40 and 41”¦ ). The ancient brocard “Quae singula non probant, simul unita probant” [”˜Those which alone do not prove, together do prove’], quoted on p 41 of the First Chamber’s judgment, consecrates in a definitive and unmodifiable manner this requirement of a global and holistic approach in which each individual piece of the jigsaw puzzle of reconstruction of the facts is considered together with all the others in their demonstrative synergy;
[Unmodifiable principle] the principle by which the [Hellmann] court had run afoul of grave shortcomings and contradictory lines of reasoning and in glaring misrepresentations of the outcome, even in the attempted decoupling of the calunnia, by now definitively attributed to Ms Knox, with the result of masking from view the responsibility of the same in the homicide;
[Unmodifiable principle] the principle according to which the testimony of the homeless person Mr Curatolo ought to have been evaluated on the basis of corroboration between his statements and the objective and unarguable circumstances emerging from the trial (such as the fact that the witness had with absolute decisiveness anchored the fact of having seen the two accused in the precincts of the basketball courts of Piazza Grimana, nowadays Piazza Fortebraccio, the evening before the arrival, the following day, at the Via della Pergola house of the men from Forensics in their white coveralls), rather than on the basis of Mr Curatolo’s social conditions and lifestyle (see the cited judgment of the First Chamber at page 50);
[Unmodifiable principle] the principle according to which the definitive conviction of accomplice Rudy Hermann Guede ought to have been taken into account (no. 7195/11, published on 16.12.2010, it also from the First Criminal Chamber of Cassation), Guede having been held to have been extraneous to the simulation of burglary of a house. [A] habitation that, on the night of the murder, was solely at the availability of the victim and of Amanda Knox and from the statements made by the same Rudy before the Perugian district court, according to which Meredith was killed by the two co-accused (see the judgment at pages 55 and 56).
[Unmodifiable principle] The principle by which contamination of the evidence is to be proved by the party invoking it and which, on the facts of the case, no evidence in support had been offered and which the [Hellmann} Court had seriously confused the abstract possibility of the fact with the averment of the fact (see the judgment at page 69).Umodifiable principle] The principle according to which it was a matter of a homicide committed by multiple persons, in concourse amongst themselves (see page 73 of the cited judgment).
Here is a translation of Article 530:
Article 530:
1. If the act does not subsist [541 2, 542], if the defendant has not commited it [541 2, 542], if the act is not an offence or it is not envisaged by law as an offence, that is, if the offence has been committed by a non-indictable person [c.p. 85] or by a not punishable person for other reasons, the judge issues a judgement of acquittal, stating the reason.
2.The judge issues a judgement of acquittal also when there is lack of evidence or it is not sufficient, or there is contradictory evidence that the act subsists, that the defendant has comitted it, that the act constitutes an offence or that the offence has been committed by an indictable person.(1).
3. If there is evidence that the act has been committed in circumstances of a legal excuse or exemption from criminal liability, that is, there is doubt about them, the judge issues a judgement of acquittal pursuant to clause 1.
4. In the event of an acquittal the judge applies security measures, in the cases provided for by law.
And here is a translation of Article 628:
Impugnability of a ruling issued by a judge after remand
1. A verdict that had been issued by a court following a Cassation order of remand, may be impugned through a recourse at Supreme Court of Cassation if the ruling was issued on an appeal instance, and through the mean provided by law if was issued on a first instance level.
2. In any case a verdict issued by a court following a Cassation order of remand may be appealed only on the reasons that do not concern those that had already been decided by Cassation on the order of remand, or for not abiding to disposition of art. 627 paragraph 2.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Questons For Knox: Adding A Dozen More To The Several Hundred Knox So Far Avoided
Posted by Chimera
Knox during a pause in questioning at trial; her answers destroyed many Italians’ trust
1. State Of Play On The Questions Front
Sollecito and his father Francesco actually take questions without 99% of them being agreed-on in advance.
They evade a lot and lose a little but they also gain some points, unlike a seemingly terrified Knox and a seemingly terrified PR who now seem stuck in tongue-tied and consistently-losing modes.
In Italy last night on the much-watched crime show Porta a Porta Francesco Sollecito had to go along with the official reconstruction of the prolonged pack attack on Meredith which rules out any lone wolf though he again maintained that Raffaele was not there.
Not by any means does TJMK give Sollecito a pass. He WAS there at the attack, the evidence is very strong. And we do have many dozens of pending questions waiting for him to respond.
But the truly evasive one is Amanda Knox. Previously helped by the fawning arm of the American press.
2. Pending Questions We Have Already Asked
These are ordered chronologically with the first questions, by Kermit in mid trial in 2009, at the bottom of the list.
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Ted Simon Gone? With Legal And Financial Woes Will The Other Paid Help Stay
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Why Does Book Smear Others On Drug Use, Mischaracterize Your Own?
Click here for: Questions For Knox and Sollecito: Why Claim Rudy Guede Did It Alone When So Much Proof Against?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: How Do You Explain That Numerous Psychologists Now Observe You Skeptically?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Ten Hard Questions That Knox Should Be Asked Monday On ITV’s Daybreak
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Why So Many False Claims In Accounts Of Your Visit To The House?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Why The Huge Lie About Your ZERO Academic Intentions In Europe?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Do You Think “False Memories Kassin” Framing Italians Yet Again Will Help?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Did You Undergo An Illegal Interrogation By Mignini Or Did You Try To Frame Him?
Click here for: Questions For Knox: Diane Sawyer, How To Push Back Against The False Claims And Emotion
Click here for: Questions For Sollecito And Knox and Enablers: Several Hundred On The Hard Evidence
Click here for: Questions For Knox: The Questions That Drew Griffin On CNN Tonight SHOULD Have Asked
Click here for: Questions For AK And RS From Barbie Nadeau As Knox Slander Trial Starts
Click here for: Questions For Knox: (Powerpoints #11) 150 Hard Questions That You Incessantly Avoid
3. My Own Dozen Questions More
I have mentioned before my belief that Meredith Kercher’s attack and possibly death was premeditated, at least on the part of Amanda Knox. Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Guede, while accomplices, and also liable, did not plan this out.
Below is my own list of a dozen more hard questions Knox should be asked. This post focuses on questions that point towards forethought and premeditation. And no, crying, having a fit, and refusing to answer just won’t do it. An open challenge to not answer in a Hellmann-court-type wail.
1. Keeping the ‘‘See you later’’ Text to Patrick
You kept the message that you sent to Lumumba, which you wrote in Italian. The literal translation from English implies that you actually intend to meet, rather than the English one that means a parting of ways. As a language student, this common expression was likely one of the first things you learned, if you didn’t know already.
At your voluntary questioning, of November 5th/6th, you give that message to the police, and claim it as proof that you left Raffaele’s apartment to meet him. The police didn’t force this knowledge from you, rather you volunteered it after Raffaele withdrew your alibi. Patrick was falsely arrested, due entirely to your statements, and that message.
I considered, and rejected the idea that you might have kept the message in case Patrick might have wondered why you didn’t show. If that were the case, you would have kept his message not to come in, and not your response.
Here is the 2009 trial video, the relevant part starts at about the 7:30 mark. At the 10:30 mark, she talks about the message. At 12:15, she says she doesn’t know how to delete sent messages.
Question for Knox: Why did you keep Patrick’s message, if not to use later as a backup plan?
2. The Lack of Videotaping for the ‘‘Interrogation’‘
You and your supporters in the U.S. frequently complain that your November 5th/6th ‘‘interrogation’’ was never recorded. You claim that if there was such a record, it would corroborate your claims, and prove you were beaten/smacked around/tortured. A video would go both ways: it could either prove police brutality and misconduct, or it could definitively prove a suspect or witness was lying.
Until that night, you claim nearly 50 hours of interrogation (see December 2013 email to Judge Nencini), yet none of it was recorded. Odd, if you were the suspect all along. Witness summaries routinely are not, but suspect interrogations almost always are, if only to cover the police officer’(s) butt(s).
That night, when you said you witnessed a crime you did not report (Patrick attacking Meredith), your legal status changed from a witness to a possible suspect. You were given a miranda warning, but still continued to talk.
At this point with your new status, the police would have wanted to videotape or audio record any questionings. And if they had, any claims of the ‘‘police beat me’’ would have been very easy to refute. So, by staying away from the camera, it actually creates at least a bit of ambiguity, and gives some wiggle room, should you decide to make complaints later. It turns an open-and-shut matter into your-word-against-theirs where you lose.
Question for Knox: Did the police ever ask to videotape any of your ‘‘questionings’‘? And if so, why did you refuse?
3. Transporting Raffaele’s Knife to Your Apartment
You and Raffaele were charged in addition to murder and sexual assault, with transport of a weapon, namely, a knife to your apartment and back. Despite all the denials of your lawyers, it had Meredith’s DNA on the blade, and your DNA on the hilt (the infamous ‘‘double DNA knife’‘). Most spontaneous violent crimes involve objects in the immediate area, such as the room, whereas this knife was taken from another location and brought to the crime scene. Frankly, it reeks of pre-planning.
I considered, and rejected the argument of needing protection. Knox never claimed she felt unsafe walking around Perugia, heck she sleeps with random people there. If she did feel afraid at times, many women just clench keys in their fists, for something like that.
Even more disturbing, (as you admit you are a CSI fan) the knife was brought back to Raffaele’s apartment, cleaned with bleach, and put back. Had the bleach actually destroyed all the DNA—it tends to miss DNA in cracks and grooves—it would have implicated Raffaele only, being his knife, and would not implicate you. Rather than throw it away, like a ‘‘smart’’ killer would do, it is put back, where it is fairly easy to be found.
Question for Knox: Why did you bring the knife from Raffaele’s apartment, if not to use against someone?
Question for Knox: Why was the knife returned to Raffaele’s kitchen? Were you hoping (as a fallback), that it might lead to him alone?
4. The Staged Break-In
You finally admitted, after long denying, that you staged an April Fool’s Day prank on April 1st, 2007, by simulating a burglary against a housemate. You found it funny, while others found it disturbing. However, in order to do such a prank, you needed to think in advance about how you wanted things to look. In short, this had to be planned out.
Well, the November 1st ‘‘break-in’’ at your apartment when Meredith was killed, was ruled by the courts to be a staged burglary. There are just too many holes in your story, and in the crime scene, to believe it was legitimate.
But what is not clear, is whether the killers staged the burglary as a panicked response to Meredith’s death, or whether some of the details were worked out ahead of time. And you had, as a prank, done this before.
I considered, and rejected the claim that it was a real burglary. However, Judges Micheli, Massei, Nencini and the Court of Cassation disagree, and they can summarize it better.
Question for Knox: Did you think of simulating a break in at your home BEFORE or AFTER Meredith was murdered?
5. Rudy Guede’s Involvement
FoAK has long smeared Guede as a drifter, drug dealer, orphan, burglar, and many other things. There was one bit of truth there: Guede had broken into at least one place, prior to Meredith’s death, although he had not been charged at the time. He recently got his jail time extended though, as a result of this.
Interestingly, while you claim to not know Guede, your book seems to include a lot of detail about him. You knew he was interested you. You say he had done a break in, and you had staged a break in. You allege his was done in Perugia, while your prank was far away, in Seattle, where no police were involved. And let’s be frank: men say dumb things to impress women. What an interesting person to bring along.
Question for Knox: Did you know about Guede’s prior break in BEFORE or AFTER Meredith was murdered?
6. Turning Off the Cellphones (you and Raffaele)
It is now common knowledge that most cellphones contain GPS that can track the movement of a user. Police know this, and can often track suspects’ movements this way. Smart people looking to avoid police attention have figured this out, and can turn their cell phones off (or leave them at home), to make their movements more ‘‘anonymous’‘.
Even smarter police have now figured out that people know, and can now find out if turning off phones is routine, or just a one time thing. Jodi Arias was caught out this way. Thomasdinh (Dinh) Bowman was caught out this way. See this.
You and Raffaele had never turned off your cellphones, but chose to (and together) the evening before Meredith was killed.
You gave multiple excuses. (1) Sollecito says in his book it was so you could fool around undisturbed. (2) You say in your book it was so you wouldn’t receive a message from Patrick if he changed his mind and wanted you to work. (3) You said in your December 2007 questioning with Mignini that it was done to preserve the charge in your phone. (4) At trial, your lawyers disputed that the phones were shut off?
Question for Knox: Why did you and Raffele turn off your phones the night Meredith died, if not to cover your movements?
7. Ditching Meredith’s Phones
Meredith’s phones, both her English and Italian phones, were found well away from the home. While it is normal to have a cell phone, very few people have more than one, and other than a friend, family member, or roommate, who would know this? Meredith’s attackers took them both, and rather try to sell them or use them, dumped them.
Police have speculated that this was done to divert attention, and to give out false leads. However, this amount of thought in a ‘‘hurried and rushed’’ crime seems very much out of place. The unexpected consequence is that it helped narrow the focus.
I considered, and rejected the idea that they were part of an actual robbery. A killer who seems to know so much about evidence, and about cell phone evidence, would take them, knowing the GPS would help track his movements. Really, what smart killer would take a mobile ‘‘ankle bracelet’’ with him?
Question for Knox: Why did you take Meredith’s phones, if not to throw off the police investigation?
8. Keeping Frederico Martini’s Number in Your Phone
It is now well known, even if not reported at the time, that Frederico Martini (a.k.a. the ‘‘Cristiano’’ in your book), was a drug dealer you met on the train to Perugia. You ditched your sister, Deanna, to be with him. And since then, he had been supplying you with free drugs in return for sex.
It is also well known that you gave Frederico’s number to police, probably trying to divert attention from yourself once again, and that he ended up serving time for drug dealing.
You have enough sense to turn your cell phone off prior to phones (see sections 1, 6, and 7), so you clearly knew that phones can provide serious evidence against you. If you truly were worried about the police searching your phone, you could have deleted his number, changed a digit or 2, changed the name, or otherwise hidden that information.
The police weren’t concerned with drugs, only with catching a killer.
Question for Knox: Why did you keep Freddy’s number, and then give it to police, other than just another diversion tactic?
9. The Lamp From Your Room on Meredith’s Floor
The lamp from your room, the only source of light in your room, was found on the floor in Meredith’s room. This would seem odd, as Meredith had two lamps of her own, and your room would be left dark. Police have speculated that the lamp was used during the clean-up, and then forgotten.
This demonstrates a lot of control, as rather than grabbing an available lamp from Meredith’s room (if it were needed for cleanup), the killers would have moved outside the bedroom, grabbed a lamp from another room and brought it back.
It further demonstrates control, as there was no bloody footprints into your room. Therefore, the killer must have cleaned his or her feet, then gone into your room to grab the lamp. And that lamp was found wiped off prints, so whoever took it had the foresight to make sure their own weren’t on it, but had Meredith’s lamp been used, finding it wiped clean would have been a dead give away.
All of this smacks of planning, and had the lamp not been forgotten in the locked room, we would never have known any of this.
Question for Knox: Why was your lamp found on Meredith’s floor, if not to clean or search for evidence?
10. Gloves Used for Cleanup?
The police went through the house. Although they did not test everything, very few fingerprints were found at all in the house, and only one belonging to Knox, on a glass. Of course, it raises the question of why any random burglar or killer would do that, and points to someone who is there regularly—a resident.
Such an undertaking would have taken a long time, again, pointing to a resident of the building. And while a sock or a cloth may be used a few times, it seems extremely impractical to use for any length of time. That leads another obvious suggestion: gloves.
However, Perugia was still warm. Amanda, (in that God-awful interview with Simon Hattenstone), said that she could sunbathe in October. Even if she had them in her luggage, they would probably take time to find. She was not known for wearing gloves as a fashion accessory.
Given her living habits, it is extremely unlikely she had her own cleaning gloves, and Laura and Filomena never reported such things missing. Nor did anyone else. So, where would they come from?
Question for Knox: Did you purchase (or steal) gloves prior to Meredith’s death?
11. Clothes and Supplies
You were seen in Quintavalle’s shop first thing in the morning on November 2nd, even if your lawyers contest it. He claims you were looking in the cleaning section, but then left. Strange, as you are not much of a cleaner, however he has no reason to lie. You also claim that you were not ‘‘missing’’ any clothes, even though Filomena mentions a sweater you were wearing but has not been recovered.
It is also known that you have made many cash withdrawls in the month of October, with seemingly little to spend on. Police and the media have speculated drugs, but with absolutely no paper trail, there is no way to know for sure how much was spent on what.
Question for Knox: Did you purchase any cleaning supplies, or extra clothes, either before or after Meredith’s murder?
12. Concerning The Gubbio Trip
You have travelled to many places, sure, but hadn’t really gone anywhere after settling in Perugia. Yes, you had given serious thought to ditching the town, even buying a ticket to China. Since meeting Raffaele, you two had kept in a relatively small area. Therefore, the trip planned to Gubbio, for the day after Meredith was killed, seems somewhat out of place.
I may very well be wrong, but was this the first road trip you had taken with him? You hadn’t packed anything, and you left your house (after the shower) without taking anything. You apparently also didn’t notice Filomena’s broken window in front of you.
Question for Knox: Was the Gubbio trip for real, or was this a staged cover?