Wednesday, June 05, 2024
Amanda Knox Again Found Guilty of Criminal Slander; Our Further Explanation Of Why
Posted by KrissyG
Knox & husband arrive at court
1. Previous Analysis
Click for Post: Nailing In Advance Amanda Knox’s Expected Lie-A-Thon At 10 April Retrial #1
Click for Post: Nailing In Advance Amanda Knox’s Expected Lie-A-Thon At 10 April Retrial #2
Click for Post: Knox Calunnia Retrial: Prosecution Makes Strong Case For Letting 3 Year Felony Sentence Stand
2. Further Analysis
Knox appeared in court in Florence today - and lo-and-behold, she did once again lie!!
Here is an excerpt of her probably dishonest statement posted today 5 June 2024 by the BBC News:
“She told the court on Wednesday that police had coerced her into implicating Mr Lumumba.
“The police threatened me with 30 years in prison, an officer slapped me three times saying ‘Remember, remember’,” Knox, 36, said.
“I’m very sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to withstand the pressure from the police,” she added, speaking in Italian.
“I never wanted to slander Patrick. He was my friend, he took care of me and consoled me for the loss of my friend (Meredith). I’m sorry I wasn’t able to resist the pressure and that he suffered.”
Lumumba was a civil plaintiff in the trial and his lawyer had asked for the calunnia conviction to be reinstated.
Let’s flashback to the original slander.
Guiliano Mignini, Perugia state prosecutor in the initial stages, writes in his recent book, soon to be in English and for-now translated from the Italian:
“…[…]…the most important event of that week [6th – 7th Nov 2007]was precisely the false accusation made by Amanda Knox against her employer, Patrick Diya Lumumba, owner of the Pub “Le Chic”, in the historic center of the city. This slander, repeated on several occasions in the hours and days after and which would be completely unexplained if Amanda had not at least been present at the crime, played a fundamental role in the judgment of responsibility against Knox and constitutes, so to speak, the painful point against which Amanda defended herself, shifting the accusation against the policemen in front of whom she accused Patrick and against me who, however, arrived at the police station later. I would stress that, for the offense of slander against Patrick, Knox has been definitively convicted, so that she can no longer invoke pressure from the investigators to make her falsely accuse Lumumba. This crime was committed with full conscience and self-determination by Amanda, who is the only author of it and who, for this reason, was sentenced to an exemplary sentence.” p.52.
So we see Knox still tries to pin the blame on the police even today.
It is clear the Florence court was not having it, even without the disallowed documents, as highlighted by the ECHR.
“…her final conviction for slander now precludes any possibility of repeating her version that she had named Patrick because suggested to her by the Police and to escape the intolerable pressure to which she would have been subjected.” p 63
Knox even tried to blame Dr Mignini! Even though he was not present at the time.
So, if all of the courts reject Knox’ claim the police pressurised her – including the court today - then what made her name Lumumba?
Firstly, on the murder evening of 2nd Nov 2007, Knox had received Lumumba’s text message to not come in to work that evening, in the vicinity of Plaza Grimana, despite her claiming never to have left Sollecito’s apartment after arriving home from the students’ cottage at via del Pergola, at about 5:00pm (claims Knox in several sources).
Secondly, Guede remains definitively convicted of the murder and he himself admits he was at the scene but with others.
So why would Knox lie about not leaving Sollecito’s apartment and why name Lumumba to the police?
Clearly both men, Guede and Lumumba, are black African in appearance, and indeed, this was the motivation put forward by the final Fifth Chamber Supreme Court that annulled the murder charges, under the grounds of ‘insufficient evidence’, but affirmed the Calunnia conviction.
It said definitively that Knox had named Lumumba to cover up for Guede. Its reasoning was that by deflecting the investigation towards Lumumba it covered the possibility that Guede had been seen by a neighbour but that he could be mistaken for Lumumba, whilst at the same time, deflecting suspicion away from the real perpetrators.
In his book Dr Mignini writes:
“ The connecting factor, therefore, was there, and it was made up of the very Knox that had made Lumumba known to the victim. Thus, the aggravating circumstance at issue could not be ruled out, and the slander was clearly a device that Amanda found herself “compelled” to mislead the investigators. It is clear that if Amanda was convicted of slander, it means that she accused Lumumba while aware of his innocence and that this in turn presupposes, as has been said, that the girl knew who was with her in the house of Via della Pergola and had participated in the murder. After the judgment of the Fifth Chamber, Knox was with “complete certainty” at the time and place of the crime, while Rudi killed Meredith in concurrence with two accomplices. Sollecito was (present) almost certainly. We shall see this little gem further, which, by now, is no longer open to question. P 242
This refers to Knox’ statement to the police that she had met Lumumba in the basketball court of Plaza Grimana and had taken him to the cottage to meet Meredith, whereupon he raped and killed Meredith, whilst she, Knox, covered her ears from the screams and thuds.
We might ask why Knox bothered to appeal the Calunnia charge, given the conviction has now been reaffirmed on six occasions and has never been annulled nor once declared ‘not guilty’ at any stage.
Given the aggravated murder conviction was overturned twice (Hellmann and Marasca/Bruno) you might think Knox would just shrug it off, having served the three-year sentence, plus one year on remand, and was now free, back in Seattle, and having largely lost on most points of her ECHR claim, to just get on with her life with her young family.
Most people, apart from those who have followed the case closely probably are not even aware she was still convicted of a serious crime, and from newspaper reports assumed she had been ‘exonerated’ of everything.
By bringing this back to appeal and re-trial, the whole world is now more aware than ever, that Amanda Knox accused an innocent man of the worse crime known to man, a man who himself had a young child, and a man whom she referred to as ‘a friend’ in court today.
And what does it say about her lack of empathy that getting her conviction quashed was more important to her than allowing Lumumba justice for the terrible wrong, which was purposefully and callously done to him by Knox herself? What kind of a person does that?
Posted by KrissyG on 06/05/24 at 09:28 AM in Hoaxes Sollecito etc
Comments
So Knox is guilty - again.
In a new criminal slander trial, at her own request. She will remain a felon for life.
Well, that did not pay off. And apparently there were no attempts to bend this Florence court. Two previous Florence courts (one for Dr Mignini re the Monster of Florence investigation, and one for Knox for her other criminal slander, of the Perugia police) were indeed bent.
However, the judges in both were later fired, and the verdict in the first reversed (the verdict in the second, accidentally not appealed, confused the lazy ECHR).
And the 2014 repeat in Florence of Knox’s first appeal for the murder of Meredith (after the 2011 appeal was bent) was superb. A masterclass in how things should be done. Unfortunately, the outcome was later thoroughly garbled by the Supreme Court’s Fifth Chamber, under United States’ & mafias’ pressures (really; strange chums).
Prepare for a shrill media response. Reports are still coming in and we will be adding to them here.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/05/24 at 10:17 AM | #
[Reposted for James R as this post replaced a quickie first post]
It was the 5th Chambers, Pete, not the 4th. It was also the 5th Chambers that sent the calunnia case to Florence for review.
So, good news. It was never really a trial in the sense that we understand the term.The only issue was a legal one and, as I thought, the review was based on legal arguments alone, without any need for hearing from witnesses again, who could add nothing new to the issue. There was already plenty of witness testimony on the record anyway. There was only one way to go. Presumably there will be a Motivation that will have to be translated.
Presumably Knox will appeal and we will have to hope that the 5th Chambers have not reserved the case to themselves. But a well argued Motivation should be decisive and have the 5th Chambers boxed into a corner they cannot escape from, nor particularly want to given that they saw nothing wrong with the conviction in the first place and said so in their Motivation.
The I’s have been dotted and the T’s have been crossed. Justice has been served. Knox should now compensate Lumumba.
[Reposted for James R as this post replaced a quickie first post]
Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/05/24 at 10:17 AM | #
The US’s Associated Press has been a Knox PR poodle all along. Their reports, which can appear on 1500 media sites, show unremitting anti-Italy bias. Here the appalling Colleen Barry yet again does so:
<blockquote>An Italian court reconvicted Amanda Knox of slander Wednesday, quashing her hope of removing a legal stain against her that has persisted long after her exoneration in the brutal 2007 murder of her British roommate while the two were exchange students in Italy.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/05/24 at 10:41 AM | #
Kudos to the BBC. They usually get it right.
One of our main posters just linked us to this BBC post by the formidable Andrea Vogt taking apart some lies by Knox in her book.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22351375
After that, we went on to identify over 500 lies in Knox’ book.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/05/24 at 08:16 PM | #
James R notes above that it was the Fifth Chambers that sent the case to Florence for retrial.
Of course that could be the most innocent & routine administrative task in the world by a junior clerk.
But suspicious minds (well mine anyway!) think maybe not.
Marasca & Bruno are long gone. But we have heard it said that the current justices don’t appreciate that they left the Chambers with egg on its face.
Every Italian lawyer knows that in 2015 matters of EVIDENCE should have been referred back down - to Florence in fact. (Note that Florence had no role in the 2009-2015 calunnia arc.)
Over the final murder judgment there seems this illegitimacy cloud.
Practical implication? That Chambers might not want to award a second win to any Knox appeal.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/05/24 at 09:05 PM | #
Colleen Barry of AP is a disgrace. She is supposed to be a professional accredited journalist yet goes into teenage fangirl mode over Knox. Her depiction of the current case as Knox needing to remove a ‘legal stain’ makes Knox sound like she randomly got spluttered with birds muck that had nothing to do with her and all she had to do was get it wiped it off.
I can’t see how Knox addressing the panel yesterday was going to change their already arrived at verdict. Should have turned up at the ‘trial’ when legal arguments were being put. Not that the claim, ‘the police made me do it’ passes muster at this late stage. Not even Hellmann was swayed by this.
Posted by KrissyG on 06/06/24 at 05:47 AM | #
Right on Collen Barry. The post on media linked to in the box now at the top showed how often at that stage Colleen Barry had misrepresented the case. See the Associated Press sub-section.
If you check out that page, you should know that we have behind-the-scenes pages nearly ready for many of the bent media. Our best way forward looks to be to privately tell each of theme to re-think, before our global press release on their misreporting goes out.
We had hoped Dr Mignini’s book in English would be out first, but that could be many more months away (I have suggested Kindle). So expect this “nice threat” in tandem with the Florence Court’s written judgment (which we will need to translate).
Just between us obviously… By the way, Knox has an obvious way to try to clear her name. Sue us! We tremble.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/06/24 at 04:05 PM | #
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Where next:
Click here to return to The Top Of The Front PageOr to next entry Knox Lie-A-Thon #3: Nailing New Lies In Florence Court On June 5th #1
Or to previous entry Knox Calunnia Retrial: Prosecution Makes Strong Case For Letting 3 Year Felony Sentence Stand