Thursday, September 27, 2012
Sollecito’s Book Honor Bound Hits Italy And Already Scathing Reactions And Legal Trouble
Posted by Peter Quennell
[Above: Sollecito’s father Francesco on Italian national TV being made to admit the book lied]
The Sollecito/Gumbel book is an “own goal”
In Italy the extremely inaccurate and hyper-aggressive book has already set themselves up for two kinds of trouble
The Gumbel and Sollecito book was released in English on 18 September 2012 and within ten days all of Italy knew that the book was a crock.
Sollecito’s own father and own lawyers Bongiorno and Maori have already been forced to admit the book contains serious lies.
Already the prosecution has indicated that they are weighing whether there might be new charges lodged against Sollecito.
Analysis Of 3 Claims Of Criminal Conduct
We focus on three claims by Sollecito and Gumbel of criminal behavior which have already been widely repudiated by the Italian press.
1. A deal was sought by prosecution to frame Knox
Sollecito’s own father Francesco was made to concede by the host and all other guests on the popular Porta a Porta TV show last week that Sollecito lied in claiming that the prosecution had sought a deal under which Sollecito would frame Amanda.
Such a deal would be illegal so Sollecito was falsely accusing prosecutors of a very serious crime. Francesco Sollecito backed down even more in some interviews later. One of Sollecito’s own lawyers, Luca Maori, immediately denied in obvious frustration that the offer of any deal either way ever happened, and Giulia Bongiorno soon publicly agreed. .
2. A long brutal interrogation on 5-6 November 2007
Sollecito has suddenly claimed in the book, nearly five years after he said it happened, in face of vast evidence including his own writings to the contrary, that police interrogated him over 10 hours, and abused and threatened him.
But he was demonstrably not ever interrogated over 10 hours, and he folded fast when they showed him his phone records, which contradicted his earlier alibis, and so he promptly laid the blame on Amanda.
The English translations of the lengthy court transcripts of those many who were present at the central police station on the night all coincide, and damn the version cooked up by Sollecito and Gumbel..
3. Deliberately wrong reasoning in the Galati appeal
All this trouble flows from half a dozen pages of Sollecito’s book made public in Italy! Here now are several more pages not yet known about there (we will have many more) which our poster ZiaK has translated into Italian to help everybody to read. Sollecito ridicules both Dr Galati and his appeal. Let’s see:
- Dr Galati is recognised as one of the most brilliant lawyers in Italy, and he is a former Deputy Chief Prosecutor at the Supreme Court, specially assigned to Perugia because cases involving the central government are handled there when they are too hot to handle in Rome.
- Solllecito is of course a 28-year old student with a cocaine record and a long history of parental supervision who has never held a job in his life. He failed the entrance exam in virtual reality for the University of Verona but still has delusions of a career in computer games.
And surely Gumbel would never have got the job if Bongiorno and Maori had the opportunity to size up how wildly incompetent about the law and the case and and twisted in his mind about Italy he seems to be.
These ill-advised pages below show Sollecito’s and Gumbel’s profound ignorance of Italian jurisprudence, a total incomprehension of the wide scope of the appeal, and their contempt toward the advice from his lawyers.
Passages highlighted are wrong on the hard facts as shown in part 2 below.
1. What The Sollecito/Gumbel book claims
Judge Hellmann’s sentencing report was magnificent: 143 pages of close argument that knocked down every piece of evidence against us and sided with our experts on just about every technical issue. It lambasted both the prosecution and the lower court for relying on conjecture and subjective notions of probability instead of solid evidence. And it launched a particularly harsh attack on Mignini for casting aspersions on the very concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Mignini had dismissed it in one of his court presentations as a self-defining piece of linguistic trickery. Hellmann pointed out that reasonable doubt was now””belatedly””part of the Italian criminal code. A case built on probability alone, he said, was not sufficient and must necessarily lead to the acquittal of the defendant or defendants.
The prosecution’s rebuttal of the sentencing report, filed a couple of months later, was little short of astonishing.
It accused Hellmann of indulging in circular arguments, the old rhetorical fallacy known to the ancients as petitio principii””essentially, starting with the desired conclusion and working backward. The criticism applied much more accurately to what the prosecution and Judge Massei had done themselves; everything, even the absence of evidence, had been a pretext for them to argue for our guilt. But the author of the prosecution document, Giovanni Galati, chose not to dwell on such ironies. Instead, he attacked Hellmann””I wish I were joking about this””for resorting to deductive reasoning. Making yet more allusions to grand rhetorical principles, Galati said he had a problem with the appeals court taking the available evidence and seeking to make each piece follow on logically from the last. I take it he is not a fan of Sherlock Holmes.
Galati seemed incensed that Hellmann had found the “superwitnesses” unreliable. He argued that Hellmann’s problem with Antonio Curatolo, the heroin addict in Piazza Grimana, was not his failure to be consistent about the details of when and where he had supposedly seen us but rather Hellmann’s own “unwarranted prejudice against the witness’s lifestyle.” Galati even dared to embrace Curatolo’s argument that heroin is not a hallucinogen to insist he must have been telling the truth.
These arguments, to me, made a mockery of civilized discourse. I don’t honestly know how else to characterize them.
From my experience, I also know they are the bread and butter of the Italian legal system, the peculiar language in which arguments and counterarguments are formed every day. Not only do innocents go to prison with shocking regularity, while guilty people, equally often, win reprieve or acquittal; magistrates and judges who make the most howling errors rarely pay for their mistakes.
See Part 3 below for an Italian translation of the above, kindly supplied by main poster ZiaK.
2. Correctly explaining Cassation’s reasoning
Read all the posts here. Also read all the posts linked to here.
Italy’s excellent justice system is in fact exceptionally pro defendant, and prosecutors have to jump through more hoops than any other system in the world. Major errors and framings of innocent parties never make it through to a final guilty verdict.
Correctly understood in light of that system, there was nothing magnificent about the Hellman-Zanetti outcome. The Hellmann court is KNOWN to have been hijacked.
And these posts by Cardiol and James Raper show the report was written by two biased and wrongly qualified judges way out of their depth on both the evidence and the law.
Here is main poster Machiavelli’s explanation of what Sollecito.doesn’t get. The required logic Sollecito is ridiculing is intrinsic to Italian jursprudence (and US and UK jurisprudence) and is REQUIRED by the Supreme Court.
In plain English, Dr Galati is saying that Hellmann-Zanetti ignored that requirement.
Instead, they illegally went cherrypicking, with an extreme pro-defendant bias up-front. Bold text here is to emphasize that.
2. The failure to apply the inferential-inductive method to assess circumstantial evidence. This is a key point based on jurisprudence and is in fact a devastating general argument against Hellmann-Zanetti:
The appeal to Cassation’s jurisprudence on the circumstantial case originates from the fact that the Assize Appeal Court did not deploy a unified appreciation of the circumstantial evidence and did not examine the various circumstantial items in a global and unified way.
With its judgment it has, instead, fragmented the circumstantial evidence; it has weighed each item in isolation with an erroneous logico-judicial method of proceeding, with the aim of criticizing the individual qualitative status of each of them ..
Dr Galati accuses the appeal court of focusing on the quality of some pieces of circumstantial evidence, instead of their correlation to each other as the Supreme Court always requires. .The appeal judges, in actual fact, deny that the probative reasoning and the decisive and cognitive proceeding of the court is to be found in the circumstantial evidence paradigm of the hypothetico-probabilistic kind, in which the maxims of experience, statistical probability and logical probability have a significant weight.
The court must reach a decision by means of the “inductive-inferential” method: it proceeds, by inference, from individual and certain items of data, through a series of progressive causalities, to further and fuller information, so arriving at a unification of them in the context of [13] the reconstructed hypothesis of the fact.
This means that the data, informed and justified by the conclusions, are not contained in their entirety in the premises of the reasoning, as would have happened if the reasoning were of the deductive type “¦ (..) A single element, therefore, concerning a segment of the facts, has a meaning that is not necessarily unambiguous.
Dr Galati cites and explains further:
The Perugia Court of Appeal has opted, instead, precisely for the parceled-out evaluation of individual probative elements, as if each [14] one of them must have an absolutely unambiguous meaning, and as if the reasoning to be followed were of the deductive type.
This error emerges from the text of the judgment itself, but the gravity of the error committed by the Court in its decision derives from the fact that even the individual elements had been acquired by the cognitive-decisioning process in a totally partial manner, isolating the sole aspect that allowed the recognizing of doubts and uncertainties in the element itself..
So Galati-Costagliola concludes ““ and this by now is obvious ““ that the Hellmann-Zanetti court followed a “deductive only” paradigm on pieces in isolation, instead of the “inferential-inductive” paradigm prescribed by Supreme Court requirements (1995).
Moreover, Hellmann-Zanetti applied a deductive paradigm of assessment only to some cherry picked aspects of the single isolated pieces of evidence, overlooking other qualities of the single piece (an example ““ my own ““ is the possible “contamination” of the bra clasp found on the floor in the murder room.) Ordering an assessment of the quality of any element as if it was a proof in isolation from the rest of the evidence is itself unlawful.
But Hellmann”“Zanetti also picked out of the evidence one aspect alone, for example it points to the theoretical possibility of contamination by touching from gloves, but does not consider the negative check results from the possible contamination sources. The interpretation of X-DNA from the bra-clasp by Vecchiotti in the conclusion is worded as if to ignore the results on the Y-haplotype, and so on.
So even single aspects/qualities of isolated items are further isolated from other aspects by Hellmann-Zanetti, and are assessed without looking for a relationship to the context. This is a core violation of the basics of jurisprudence in cases based on circumstantial evidence.
3. Italian Version of the passage on the Cassation appeal from Sollecito’s book
This translation is kindly provided by main poster ZiaK.
Il rapporto di motivazioni del giudice Hellmann fu magnifico: 143 pagine di ragionamenti serrati che demolirono ogni singolo pezzo di prova contro di noi, e che con riferimento a quasi ogni questione tecnica presero le parti dei nostri esperti. Il rapporto strigliò sia la pubblica accusa, sia la corte di prima istanza per il loro affidamento ai congetture e ai nozioni soggettivi di probabilità invece di dipendere su prove solide. Perdipiù, il rapporto sferrò un attaco particolarmente severo su Mignini per aver denigrato il concetto stesso di prova oltre ogni ragionevole dubbio. Mignini aveva già scartato questo concetto come un inganno linguistico auto-determinante nel corso di uno delle suoi presentazioni alla corte. Hellmann fece notare che il dubbio ragionevole fa ormai - tardivamente - parte del codice penale italiano. Una causa stabilita unicament su probabilità , disse Hellmann, non é sufficiente e deve necessariamente condurre all’assoluzione del imputato o degli imputati.
La confutazione del rapporto della parte dell’accusa, presentato in appello un paio di mese dopo, fu quasi una cosa sbalorditiva.
Accusò Hellmann di abbandonarsi a argomentazioni viziosi, in quella vecchia falsità retorica conosciuta dagli antichi come petitio principii - cioè,sostanzialmente, partire dalla conclusione desiderata per poi andare a ritroso. Questa critica potrebbe essere applicata con molto più precisione a ciò che fecero l’accusa e il giudice Massei stessi: tutto - compresa anche la mancanza di prove - gli é servito di pretesto per dare appiglio agli loro argumenti sostenendo la nostra colpevolezza. Ma l’autore di quel rapporto della pubblica accusa, Giovanni Galati, scelse di non soffermarsi su queste ironie. Al contrario, preferii attacare Hellmann - io desideri davvero fossi solo scherzando su questo punto - per il suo aver ricorso al ragionamento deduttivo. Perdipiù, facendo ancora altre allusioni a grandi principi retorici, Galati si dichiarò insoddisfatto del fatto che la Corte d’appello avesse preso prove disponibili e avesse cercato di far seguire in modo logico un pezzo dopo l’altro. Devo supporre che Galati non sia un tifoso di Sherlock Holmes.
Galati sembrò furibondo che Hellmann avesse trovato inaffidabili gli “supertestimoni”. Sostenne che la difficoltà che Hellman terrò a proposito di Antonio Curatolo, il tossicomane della Piazza Grimana, non fu la sua incapacità di ricordarsi con coerenza i dettagli su quando e dove fossimo presumibilmente visti, ma piuttosto il “pregiudizio ingiustificato contro il modo di vivere del testimone” mantenuto del stesso Hellmann. Galati osò persino cogliere l’argomento di Curatolo, secondo il quale l’eroina non é un allucinogeno, per sostenere che Curatolo avesse dovuto dire la verità .
Tali argomentazioni, al mio parere, svuotino il discorso progredìto di tutte le sue valori. In onestà , non saprei descriverli in modo diverso. Nella mia esperienza, so anche che sono il fondamento del sistema giuridico italiano, e della la lingua particolare nella quale gli argumenti e controargumentazioni sono formulati ogni giorno. Non solo gli innocenti vengono incarcerati con preoccupante frequenza, mentre le persone colpevoli con altrettanto frequenza ottengono sospensione o assoluzione, ma anche i magistrati ed i giudici che fanno gli più strepitosi errori pagano raramente per i loro sbagli.
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[Below: Sollecito’s lead lawyer Bongiorno. Still in shock? She has made no statement yet on his book]
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/27/12 at 05:10 PM in Defendants in court, Raff Sollecito, Hoaxes against Italy, 1 Ital justice hoax, 2 Italian mileu hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 16 Interrogation hoax, Hoaxes Sollecito etc, Hoaxes re Guede, 34 Bad guy hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Raff Sollecito PR, More hoaxers, Raff Sollecito #2
Comments
Gumbel perpetuates an FOA myth about Curatolo instead of reading Galati, Hellmann, Massei, or any of the court transcripts for himself:
“...[Curatolo’s] failure to be consistent about the details of when and where he had supposedly seen us…”
In fact, the Galati appeal points out an error in Hellmann’s judgement regarding the sighting and the date proposed for such a sighting by the defence. The defence could not very well argue that Curatolo was not there but they argued instead that he was there and simply got the dates mixed up.
Galati pounced on this inconsistency as it was presented in Hellmann since three separate individuals (including Knox) testified or submitted statements proving that she was somewhere else on 31-OCT-2007. He points out that the defence (and Hellmann) are trying to have it both ways and sidestep the issue of a lack of alibi for the night of the murder.
Galati correctly and in detail examines the fact that Hellmann’s court did not refute Curatolo’s identification of the two defendants but discussed instead the relevance of transit vehicles, partying youths, and even the weather.
Why does Gumbel (or Sollecito) omit this important criticism of Hellmann? It’s a dishonest approach and once again avoids the issue of just where Sollecito was and what he was doing on the evening of Meredith’s murder. He never makes any attempt to explain this apart from smoking pot, sending emails that nobody has ever seen, and blaming the police.
Posted by Stilicho on 09/27/12 at 09:44 PM | #
Nicely put.
In fact the dummy Gumbel seems to have been loaded up with junk law and junk evidence in precisely the same way as the hapless Saul Kassin.
The only big difference was that this was WORSE because he came to the task with a chip on his shoulder about Italy, and he joined forces with Nina Burleigh who has - guess what?! - a chip on her shoulder about Italy!
Doug Preston’s book The Monster of Florence surely takes the prize for the most anti-Italian book by a foreigner in recent decades.
Now Sollecito’s surely takes the prize for the most anti-Italian book by a national. This phrase from what is quoted above is absolutely laughable.
“Not only do innocents go to prison with shocking regularity, while guilty people, equally often, win reprieve or acquittal; magistrates and judges who make the most howling errors rarely pay for their mistakes.”
Whaaaaat?! Would Sollecito or Gumbel care to prove that? Each judge looks over every other judge’s shoulder in those two automatic levels of appeal and they have to put their reputation on the line in every sentencing report.
And Italy’s prison population is proportionally 1/30 that of the United States. Must be some good cocaine.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/27/12 at 10:09 PM | #
Nina had a major influence on this book. Some of the allegations are similar and, of course, she was present in the audience at one of the book shows.
The other significant contributor to the style and content was Candace. She is one of those who uncritically reported that people laughed at witnesses and evidence as though a murder case is some kind of elaborate joke. Neutral observers noticed it was usually the friends and family of Amanda Knox who cackled and murmured throughout.
Neither Nina nor Candace spent an iota of time or energy listening to Mignini, Comodi, Maresca, Pacelli, or the Kercher family before unleashing their vitriol upon an unsuspecting (largely American) public. Shame on them and now shame on Gumbel for following their lead like a puppy.
Posted by Stilicho on 09/27/12 at 10:46 PM | #
It would appear that Sollecito is unaware that there are different forms of valid reasoning. I suspect he thinks that all reasoning is deductive (as per Sherlock Holmes) and that to criticize the use of deductive reasoning is hilarious and doesn’t make any sense. He does not understand that there is a difference between deductive reasoning and inductive/inferential reasoning, let alone that deductive reasoning is inappropriate to circumstantial evidence.
Does Gumbel? Maybe, maybe not, but one can see at once why he has included this ever so witty bit of reductive sarcasm. It appeals to and amuses the simple minded, like his client for instance, but unfortunately the last laugh will be on Sollecito when his acquittal is overturned, not least for the manifest illogicality of Hellmann and Zanetti’s arguments.
Posted by James Raper on 09/27/12 at 11:41 PM | #
“So, Mr Sollecito… Now that all your lawyers have fled, will you be arguing your own defense? And will you face cross-examination on the witness stand?”
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/28/12 at 12:07 AM | #
It’s been great to see some old posters on TJMK again - Kermit, True North, Hungarian and jodyodyo and new posters like Media Watcher and the Urbanist. I hope you all post regularly on TJMK until the day Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are ultimately convicted of Meredith’s murder and justice is finally served. There are many other old posters I’d love to see on here again: Tiziano, giustizia, Nicki, Jools, Finn MacCool, DF2K, SomeAlibi, jennifer, Professor Snape, Pataz, Commissario Montalbano, Cesare Beccaria and Tabby.
Posted by The Machine on 09/28/12 at 12:38 AM | #
Myself too. Old friends. They did some terriic posts. I know many still do read. Lively viewpoints in the Comments attracts more in.
Lawyer Cardiol is on vacation but he sent us this comment on the draft of the post from his IPad.
***
Guys! As I have said repeatedly:
Hellmann/Zanetti substituted a flood of IMAGINABLE evidentiary reasons to doubt for REASONABLE DOUBT, considering each one in isolation from all other evidence relevant to a sound verdict,
This piecemeal dissection obfuscates the need for the verdict to consider the ACTUAL evidence as a whole.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/28/12 at 12:58 AM | #
Is Raphael’s level of English even competent enough to read his own book? In the interview he was very weak with his answers in English. I don’t think he would have been able to write in English at a high enough level for this book.
Posted by believing on 09/28/12 at 01:38 AM | #
Raffaele Sollecito gave exhaustive proof he is unable to write a grammatical text in Italian. He in facts is unable to also speak Italian orally without grammar and phonology problems. You can simply forget he could write a book in any other language.
Posted by Yummi on 09/28/12 at 02:26 AM | #
Hi Believing
His competence or otherwise has been discussed on PMF and here are some points out of that.
1) He did this project on his own with the agent and bookwriter in LA and the FOA people named above and presumably Bruce Fischer in there as well, the one who set up Kassin.
2) He had no cool heads around like his dad or Bongiorno for reality checks (we believe Bongiorno and Francesco Sollecito both read and speak English well).
3) He is weak-willed and as you noticed not good in the subtleties of English. Gumble seems to have pushed to heat it up. Its his product though, done in his name , and he is the one promoting it.
If there are charges he will be included. Gumbel may also be at risk.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/28/12 at 02:59 AM | #
The object of this post, jurisprudence logic, is really at the guts of WHY the FOA are failing and irrelevant and disliked except in their own minds.
They have always done what Ted Simon and now Dr Galati say wont ever work in a good court - to flail away as in a whack-a-mole game, knocking down individual points of evidence, but never shaking the whole.
They seemingly cant learn to think at that level. That problem of limited mindset results in turn in this problem: not one good lawyer or expert will work with them now, so they are listened to even less.
Instead of rejecting Dr Galati - Gumbel was not the first, though he was the worst - they could have learned a lot from what he said as Yummi summarises him above.
I still dont think they could have got AK or RS off but some expression of guilt and regret would have slowed the prosecution down and altered the length of the term.
And maybe meant a lot to Meredith’s family.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/28/12 at 03:06 AM | #
Hello Peter and other collaborators: do you really think, if there’s a chance that they will be founded guilty in the last appeal and return to jail. What are the odds?
My respects for you hard work and continuous fight for justice.
Posted by lulupr on 09/28/12 at 05:37 AM | #
Hi lulupr. We believe there is no way the Hellman verdict will be endorsed by Cassation, because if they did, it would have a negative ripple effect upon cases all over Italy. It was based on very bad law.
And given a level playing field with no monkeying with the judges this time, the verdict should revert to the same as Massei. Odds get even stronger if Bongiorno leaves the RS team. No reason for the US not to send AK back, the State Department has always seen the process as fair.
Although I think AK set the fight in motion and dealt Meredith the death blow and was not-so-secretly pleased with herself for a long time, I also suspect she’s mentally broken as a result of childhood strife, and see Sollecito as marginally the more evil and dangerous of the pair and the one who introduced knives.
I’d like to see Knox tested (again - she “failed” a test at Capanne in 2008) but Sollecito is fine and should be put away for a very long time well out of hearing and sight. He has the same mindset as Brievek. I also believe with sound reason that both families have known of guilt all along.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/28/12 at 06:05 AM | #
“.........,,, guilty people, equally often, win reprieve or acquittal,,,
Doesn’t that include Amanda Know and Raffaele Sollecito?
Posted by Cardiol MD on 09/28/12 at 07:51 AM | #
Pete
Is there a chance that all this nonsense from Sollecito is part of a specific strategy? Aimed at clouding the real issues and creating a particular media reaction that they can then say is unfair or unduly influenced future proceedings?
Posted by Spencer on 09/28/12 at 02:50 PM | #
Curiouser and curiouser. Sollecito appears to have little to no inkling as to the effect his words will have on him and his situation back home in Italy.
A little like Steinbeck’s California, the USA may well be to him the land of milk and honey. After all it worked at the Appeal, didn’t it. The constant dishonest media saturation, distortion of the Truth, spreading of innuendo, lies, façades and charades……….
We do have reason to believe that wheels turned within wheels during the Appeal: change of judges in suspicious manner, friendly, prison-visiting politician etc. …… and I vividly recall a live interview on the street outside the courthouse where Deanna Knox stated with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that they were taking Amanda home the following week. Said video has vanished from the Internet.
Now he is there in the USA and free to spread stories and myths in the same manner – unfettered.
Just like a child, Sollecito does not see beyond his own self delusion but has been granted the freedom to indulge it and in it.
As noted above, Sollecito does not understand Italian law. The extracts from his book read like something from a schoolchild’s essay and serve to accentuate Sollecito’s self-indulgent immaturity.
This is an immature young man. One who rushed to buy a candy upon release from prison last year; one who has not yet graduated into adulthood with all that that entails – responsibilities, job etc. – one who must continue to be monitored by his father and sister.
He has enjoyed his holiday stint in the USA fêted by like-minded others. However he does not understand that this is a bubble about to burst. Just one year since the heady exhilaration of the release from prison on shockingly dishonest grounds and he has enjoyed the attention ever since.
By working with Gumbel, Candace, Nina Burleigh and other Friends of Amanda he has freely spouted their shallow, disconnected, dishonest and false arguments which, yes, have worked in the USA but will not work in Italy.
Yes this bubble is one created by his partner in crime and her believers in the USA and he ignores his own Italian heritage at his peril.
When exactly do you return to Italy, Raffaele?
Good luck.
Posted by thundering on 09/28/12 at 03:35 PM | #
Interesting question, Spencer….
Posted by thundering on 09/28/12 at 03:36 PM | #
1) Thundering.
Thanks. An insightful comment. Our guess is he has already been dragged back to Italy and any bubble is toast. Keep eyes peeled though?
2) Spencer.
No. No chance! Well perhaps there is some sort of simple minded strategy but none of these people are geniuses. We dont see how events they have engineered lead to them saying the media was unfair.
They shot themselves four times in the foot in recent days, and they had every opportunity in each case to come out a winner.
The four losers were (1) a frostie Katie Couric (for all of 20 minutes), (2) a Jane Velez Mitchell outnumbered by her own guests, (3) a 90% empty Kane Hall auditorium, and (4) a Porta a Porta TV show in Rome which was a disaster for Sollecito.
That last one really hurt because his own father repeatedly had to renounce a key part of his book.
Book sales are terrible. Simon & Schuster are taking a real bath and wont throw more money into promotion.
Sollecito has the Perugia prosecution and police angry and more determined than ever to see him locked up. His lawyers might walk, and his father cannot keep paying those steep lawyer bills forever.
And he could face at least two new charges on (1) the false prosecution deal claim and (2) the false police interrogation claim.
Also, in subtle ways in the book Sollecito has dropped Amanda in it, so she also loses. Her own family seem to have helped engineer the book, where was THEIR cool head when needed?
And for us on PMF and TJMK the book is a gift that keeps on giving. Showing where it simply lies is like shooting fish in a barrel. Oops!! In all, not exactly a winner of any strategy.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/28/12 at 03:52 PM | #
Hello and Good Morning,
This is my first post, so I would first like to commend all of you for the fantastic and very hard work you have done here seeking the truth for justice for Meredith.
The information here is excellent, informative, and most of all, truthful !
I have a question : Is Sollecito doing an actual “book tour”, or is he just making appearances in “random” places [where he will not be “challenged”] to promote his “lies” ?
Again, thank you all, and I am so glad I found TJMK !
MizzMarple
Posted by MissMarple on 09/28/12 at 04:18 PM | #
Hi MizzMarple.
Welcome. Appreciated by all here. It looks to us like whatever RS was embarked on is cut short, in part for the reasons in the comment just above yours: failures on all but one talk show (Anderson Cooper on Fox) and also at Kane Hall in Seattle.
Plus the accumulating fiascos back in Italy. We dont have confirmation but a strong rumor had it that Francesco and Vanessa turned up in Seattle, to capture the narcissistic little toad and take him home.
Right now, he is presumably either in Verona or locked in attic of his father’s house in Bisceglie. Francesco talks with Italian media outside his place and you can see several shots of it here.
Sorry to rain on his parade of course… With luck we will never hear him talk again.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/28/12 at 04:39 PM | #
I tried to read the free pages of RS’s book on the simonandschuster website (though at the rate at which it is selling, they might as well put up the entire thing for free). I am so angry after the first 35-40 pages. Are the Foakers blind? Why can’t they see the several, several obvious, glaring holes in his story?
1. The biggest whooper is his claim that he spent the night waking up intermittently to answer mail, listen to music etc on his computer. I can’t even believe he wrote that. Surely that should have been his biggest alibi? Even if the evil, evil policemen destroyed his hard drive, why couldn’t he simply show them his sent items? Or the mail in the recipient’s inbox? Don’t tell me they didn’t teach the point of email in all his computer classes.
2. When talking about the phone calls that AK made in the morning,he conveniently ignores the fact that she had made a call to Meredith’s English phone first. Ok, let’s say he did not know about it at that point. But surely he knows about it now. Why not address it instead of ignoring its existence completely? Ditto for the phone call that she made to Edda and “forgot”. No recollections, no opinions, no theories about it at all. He was still stoned perhaps.
3. When he talks about the morning in the cottage, he says that they peeked into Meredith’s room and saw her purse sitting on the bed. Surely, any logical person would deduce that Meredith might be inside and her phone would be in the purse. Why not call and see if it rings instead of acting the spiderwoman which he claims AK tried to do.
4. He claims that Filomena’s door was “ajar”. Did he not claim in his earlier prison dairies that it was wide open? What is this - some kind of compromise between his and AK’s versions?
5. He comes up with a ridiculous explanation for AK’s statement that Meredith kept her door closed. He says AK said that No, Meredith did not keep her door closed but he misunderstood and mistranslated. How on earth could anyone mistake a “No” for a “Yes”? Even assuming he somehow did, wouldn’t he have asked her again looking at Filomena’s panic and her insistence on breaking the door?
6. He says his sister’s colleagues told her that if they had the case, things would have been very different. Again, what is this - some kind of indirect admission of evidence tampering? If they are innocent, why would things be any different no matter who is handling the case? Things were not any different for Sophie, Amy, Filomena, Laura..et al.
7. He continues harping about comfort kiss claiming that they did not know about the cameras. It is pretty clear that they both (or atleast AK) is looking around quite clearly in between the kisses. She did not notice several cameras, videos etc being set up and shots being taken? Blind or what?
8. He expresses his annoyance that after a couple of days he could not work on his thesis at all because he had to ferry AK to the police station. Really? Suddenly very conscientious about studies, aren’t we? He had time to spend hours together having “lazy, long evenings” with AK, watch movies, go underwear shopping etc etc…yet within 2 days, taking AK to the police station became terribly bothersome. So much for “helping” the police.
9. He says Sophie inadvertently poured fuel to the sex game theory by telling that AK brought a string of strange men home, even though she did not “mean” that it was for sex. Interesting. AK brings home a string of strange men, keeps condoms and vibrators in plain view, boasts of her sexual contests….and yet, it is the prosecutors who reached the wrong conclusion. Hmmm, wonder why she brought them home then. To strike drug deals? No wait, maybe she just wanted them to read harry potter in German with her.
10. His defense of the underwear shopping incident is that there was a much expensive lingerie store nearby and they didn’t even set foot in it. So, that somehow makes it ok that they were laughing and joking and talking about sex barely a couple of days after her “good friend”‘s murder. Wow, I am so glad that’s cleared up.
If I am so annoyed after reading 35 pages, I cringe to think about the rest of the book. I can’t imagine why anyone would think it’s “well-written”. I can’t decide which is worse - Hellman’s report or this trash.
Posted by Sara on 09/29/12 at 12:57 AM | #
RS believes he has got away with murder (which we all know he hasn’t) in which case he thinks that he can do, say and write anything he wants and somehow, with a few extra added lies and PR spin, everything will work out just fine.
I have followed this case from the start, and I have to admit that for a while I feared we would never see justice for Meredith but at last, it is starting to feel like the tide has turned on the poisonous PR campaign and the truth will prevail.
Posted by Urbanist on 09/29/12 at 01:51 AM | #
After countless man hours and dollars spent on PR, lying to the public and media etc, did no one close to him actually think to proof read his book before release?
Posted by Urbanist on 09/29/12 at 01:55 AM | #
Maybe people have said this before, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Francesco blamed himself for this, for letting Raf leave home when he knew he wasn’t ready, and when he knew what he was capable of.
We know he knew about his son’s knives, and that he rang him every night to check up on him, and I’m sure its why he defends him to the bitter end - because he has a Italian fathers love of his son, and he blames himself for causing it all by letting him leave home in the first place.
Posted by Spencer on 09/29/12 at 04:01 AM | #
Corrections? Really welcome. We foresee a lot.
For Sara and others having any corrections, there is a new page for them here.
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmksollecitosbook
As the Kindle version doesnt reflect the page numbering in the hardcover version, we hope it will work out okay if you post corrections by chapter.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/29/12 at 05:34 AM | #
At first glance the book seems like a very elaborate and vastly extended version of Knox’s email of November 4th.
Maybe the intention of the book was never to make big sales, but only to communicate the ‘full story’ to Knox, before her own mega-book comes out, and before the coming trial.
Posted by Spencer on 09/29/12 at 11:30 PM | #
Sara, thanks for your 10 points where Raffaele makes dubious statements in his book. Your #1 point that he claimed to have been on his computer the night of the murder and sent several e-mails, would seem an easy proof to establish. He need only contact one of the recipients of the emails, obtain a hard copy or digital copy, right? from their I-phone or computer or whatever. It would seem worth doing as it could have fully established his innocence. This computer genius has never been able to prove he sent an email? Ludicrous.
Like you, Sara, I tried to read his book from the sample free online, but somehow when I saw his opener, “I remember the day I fell in love with Amanda Knox,” or some such smarmy hook, I just couldn’t tolerate any more that day. I know that in some things Raf is sincere but braided in are so many self-serving falsehoods I dread the process. Even his childish pre-Knox innocence seems somehow tragic in light of what later befell.
Your excellent list of the untruthful points Raf made in a mere 35 pages suggests the reader will face a mountain of moon-made-of-cream-cheese factoids.
@Peter Quennell, Galati rocks
@spencer, liking your comments
@MissMarple, welcome aboard
@The Machine, ditto on wish to hear from former posters
Posted by Hopeful on 09/29/12 at 11:44 PM | #
We all know that his DNA WAS on the bra clasp!
Posted by aethelred23 on 09/30/12 at 01:54 AM | #
Hello, and Thanks for the welcome !
I am happy to hear that Raf’s book and tour is failing miserably. Did Raf and his handlers really think that his book would be a success—are they that delusional?
This is probably a “long shot”—but is there anything that Dr. Galati or the Supreme Court can use from Raf’s book that will help Dr. Galati in the upcoming Supreme Court proceedings next March ?
I hope my question is not confusing and my aplogies if I mis-stated it (I am still learning how the Italian Court system works).
Thank You.
Again, I am so glad I found this site. The work and updates here at TJMK is fantastic !
MizzMarple
Posted by MissMarple on 10/02/12 at 04:35 AM | #
Hi MizzMarple,
I believe Franscesco Sollecito when he said the book wasn’t written for money. It was written primarily to settle scores with the family’s enemies.
The Supreme Court appeal is supposed to be focused on the procedural errors that Hellmann made, but the Court also has a mandate to ensure that justice is served. Disparaging police, prosecutors and judges is not the type of behavior that will please the Court.
If the Supreme Court returns the case to the Court of Assisi for another trial, the book can be used as evidence against them.
Posted by brmull on 10/03/12 at 12:41 AM | #
Hi BRMull and MissMarple
Our take on the book is evolving as we crack its codes and while I would agree with BRMull the Sollecitos and Knoxes have supposed scores to settle, after chatting a lot with our colleagues in Italy I would go much further.
The book is not only simply stating that black is white and dont believe your lying eyes as to the hard evidence and nasty perps. It also takes a number of half-truths and then then expands from them into inflammatory anti-Justice lunacy.
Italians are familiar with this technique from ex-PM Berlusconi and such parliamentary lackeys as Girlanda who join a long line of politicians in attempting to soften or corrode the Justice system so their friends get away with corruption.
Cases involving the Perugia prosecutors make particularly “good” political targets because Perugia has a special role: it handles cases of central government corruption which are too hot to handle in Rome. (That is why an extremely senior and able guy like Dr Galati was sent to Perugia, to head that up.)
Unfortunately for the writers of the book and those behind them, two things have gone seriously wrong.
1) The book has sunk like a lead balloon in the US and sales are terrible, we believe because we tripped promotion up at the stage of Katie Couric.
2) It is already widely notorious in Italy because some excerpts presented on the Porta a Porta show (the biggest investigation show in Italy) have much of Italy in anger.
You wait till they get familiar with the other claims and misrepresentations and defamations in the book. Our Book page is one move in that direction and translation of key passages (see our Italiano page) is another.
Quoted below is the book’s characterization of the justice system in the preface. In the case of every claim the truth is 180 degrees opposite. Its sure odd for Sollecito to be making such claims - but is he just a pawn?
For reasons deeply embedded in the country’s history, the concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt scarcely exists in Italy, and the very notion of undisputed fact is viewed with suspicion, if not outright aversion.
Few in Italian society wield as much unfettered power as the robed members of the judiciary, whose independence makes them answerable to nobody but themselves. Many Italians retain a healthy skepticism about the reliability of their procedures and rulings. The courts—tainted by politics, clubbishness, pomposity, and excruciating delays—are the most reviled institution in the country.
Because the Italian legal system is almost completely blind to precedent and relies on a tangle of impenetrable codes and procedures, prosecutors and judges have almost boundless freedom to spin their cases into any shape they please and create legal justifications on the fly.
Often, they are more interested in constructing compelling narratives than in building up the evidence piece by piece, a task considered too prosaic and painstaking to be really interesting.
Prosecutors and judges are not independent of each other, as they are in Britain or the United States, but belong to the same professional body of magistrates. So a certain coziness between them is inevitable, especially in smaller jurisdictions like Perugia.
Defendants unlucky enough to be held in pretrial detention are effectively condemned before any charges are brought and serve long terms regardless of the outcome because cases invariably grind on for years.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/03/12 at 01:52 AM | #
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