Friday, October 09, 2015

The Marasca/Bruno Report, A Dissection In Four Parts: #2 The Strange Two Unrelated Tracks Approach

Posted by catnip



The Bruno demon in the cage…

Initial impressions of the legal reasoning

A closer reading, or later pages, may reveal a change in opinion might be required. If so, those changes in the post will be noted. Based on experience, the likelihood is that, how a thing starts, is how it will tend to continue. Changing horses in mid-stream, though theoretically possible, is not an everyday occurrence.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: A European Court of Human Rights decision in Amanda’s favour won’t affect the calunnia conviction, since the accusations were repeated to the Prosecutor (such interviews are institutionally immune to psychological pressure), and she confirmed them again when writing in her note, signed by her, in a moment when she was alone with herself and her conscience. (2.2)

COMMENT: To the defence allegation that it was police pressure that caused Amanda to falsely claim that Patrick was the murderer, the obvious and common sense response that the claim was repeated in situations where no pressure was possible, deflates the allegation.

However, note Bruno’s implicit assumption, that Amanda was behaving rationally, that is, not affected by drugs, impaired mental states, or delusional or incorrect beliefs, is not raised, let alone examined and a factual finding made. (Not that it is in the Court of Cassation’s general remit to make findings of fact, but that is another matter.

And Bruno specifically addresses that point later, so he is not unaware of it.)  This way of treating assumptions forms a characteristic pattern, and has implications later. Note that while the murder charges were dismissed, the calunnia conviction was confirmed. This would not be a matter that any PR push for Raffaele would need to be concerned about, as we indeed find.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: The request is refused to have the Grand Chamber consider the probative value of evidence collected in breach of international forensic standards; witness statements made under a strong media spotlight; and the admissibility of accusatory statements made in the judgment of another court and received into evidence. (2.3)

COMMENT: Bruno can handle the forensics methodology question, Alessi’s bag-of-hot-air statements, and the legal implications of the explicit accusations made in the judgment reasons confirming Rudy’s conviction.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: The appeal court did not follow Cassation’s ruling on the principles of law involved, namely that the court is not to rely on the original (annulled) reasoning, the court must not trespass into the merits of the case, the court retains the original scope of enquiry, all the facts must be looked at, and the action to take depends upon the type of annulment because there can be errors of law, and errors of logic. (3)

COMMENT: The Florence Court of Appeal did not follow the instructions set down for it by Cassation. This aspect of the rules of law and procedure will take some detail to examine fully, but suffice to say here that Bruno’s own methodology is not automatically immune from the same defects he is accusing Florence of having, merely because it is him saying so. How well does Bruno himself follow the rules?, in other words. Verbal gymnastics and semantic yoga poses are presaged.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: There were glaring errors. (3.1)

COMMENT: This becomes his leitmotiv, and he actually uses that word when talking of others.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: There is only one irrefutable certainty in this case: Amanda’s guilt as regards her criminal calumny (calunnia) against Patrick Lumumba; the investigator’s glaring errors and omissions ““ the intrinsically contradictory complex of evidence is anything but beyond a reasonable doubt (4).

COMMENT: Amanda’s crime against Patrick remains; the evidence is intricate and, due to errors, incomplete, therefore the standard of “˜beyond a reasonable doubt’ has not been met. How it is that the investigator’s actions were in actual error is not established: the implication is that the defence appeal claims are simply being taken on copy-paste trust.

A fair assessment would entail examining the basis of claims that there was forensic error, hearing any counter-arguments, weighing the significance and importance of any such error if it were found to exist, and deciding if it has a bearing and impact on the legal question to be decided ““ this is all trial-court matter.

People being driven by the media spotlight is another leitmotiv of Bruno’s. It’s almost as if he is embodying what he is saying that others have done.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: The absurd and incomprehensible death of Meredith Kercher in mysterious circumstances and the international media spotlight forced an increase in the pace of the investigation and a knee-jerk search for someone guilty to display to the international media, and lack of regard for international protocols about possible contamination, led to hurried, incomplete and incorrect investigative activity. The lack of repeatability, breaking one of the most fundamental requirements of the scientific method as established by Galileo, was a flaw. (4.1)

COMMENT: Here is the first clue that the search for a rational motive is not going to be successful: the murder was senseless. The media spotlight provides the logical underpinning, the motive if you will, of why the police made errors: they needed a quick result, and so therefore cut corners. The “˜international standards’ (which are never named explicitly) provide the yardstick against which these cut corners can be measured.

(Which leads to a circular-logic paradox scenario: At the scriptwriters’ workshop for Detectives 101: Writer A: “I’ve got them on the scene now, ready to decide what to do. So how do I get them to cut corners? What are the corners, the international standards?” Writer B: “I don’t know. Make “˜em up. Or download something official-looking off the Internet.” Writer A: “What are their guidelines in real life, though? Surely they don’t go about breaching guidelines on every callout. How did they know about putting on gloves, for instance?” Writer B: “.”)

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: The media and its associated “noise” (in it computer science sense) induced a mythomane seeking to break the long grey day of an incarceration regime, at least for a day; and Rudy the half-truth teller is key: definite traces of him were found in the room and on the victim. (4.2)

COMMENT: Alessi, believed to be a full-truth teller, wanted some fresh air for a couple of hours, so a trip to the courtroom was organised. The media’s fault. Rudy, the known half-truth teller, knows more, because actual traces of him were found in what can be referred to as the “˜murder zone’. Notwithstanding that a person’s traces can be found on a victim, and the person is not a murderer. Bruno is also performing some literary yoga poses in this passage.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: Rudy’s finalised, definitive, judgment, and his statements, attract questions of admissibility. (4.3)

COMMENT: This is the crux of the legal use of the inferences available in terms of Bruno’s reasoning. Rudy’s trial and conviction are being treated by Bruno as separate and distinct from the trial of Amanda and Raffaele, rather than logically interlinked: if the forensics against Amanda and Raffaele are flawed, then those against Rudy are not, because his conviction has become definitive. That is an artificial way of looking at it. Inferences can go both ways: if Raffaele’s DNA is the result of contamination, then so could Rudy’s be, for exactly the same reasons; if a person has the victim’s blood on their hands, then that does not make them the (or a) murderer.

Indeed, Rudy explicitly stated he got blood on him while trying to help Meredith (implicitly, this must be the untrue part of one of Rudy’s half-truths). So then Rudy’s conviction becomes a legal fiction, not a representation of what actually happened, and Rudy’s definitive judgment voids itself into nothingness. Bruno avoids discussing this line of thought, for some reason. He also, conveniently, has somehow forgotten about the phrase “acting in company with” in the Criminal Code, again, for some reason (presumably).

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: Rudy’s judgment: The search for a motive for the murder has yielded nothing, in proportion to what has been conjectured: mere disagreement among flatmates, sexual desires (an at least initial consensual act cannot be excluded); and even less for an unknown burglar who graduates from theft, to uncontrollable sexual assault, to gratuitous homicide with such brutal ferocity, unless there was a serial killer in action, which there is no evidence of in the documents that in Perugia, at that time, other homicides of other young women in identical circumstances were being committed. (4.3.1)

COMMENT: This counts as a straw man within a straw man. The Perugian Serial Killer angle almost qualifies as a laughable joke. And what are the chances of finding a traditional rational motive for an irrational (“senseless and absurd”) act? Close to zero, would be the statistician’s answer. The key word is “gratuitous”. Although, the lone-burglar scenario defence gambit gets a drubbing.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: Rudy’s statements—made in the absence of the people whose rights are affected (a denial of rights), not always coherent and constant (a denial of logic), and somehow involving Amanda (but never Raffaele explicitly), while continuing to maintain his innocence notwithstanding his forensic presence at the scene and on the victim ““ can only be rejected as inadmissible, and in breach of the requirements for a fair trial. In fact, Rudy as a witness violates his right not to testify after finalisation of his sentence or undergo cross-examination. (4.3.2)

COMMENT: There’s legal yoga posing in this section. The interlinked nature of the trials works both ways: accusations made by the Amanda and Raffaele defence against Rudy in his absence can’t be responded to and cross-examined by him. The bit about “˜not always coherent and constant’ also applies to Amanda and Raffaele. And the bit about Rudy never mentioning Raffaele being on site and present does not sound like it came from Amanda’s defence. On the plus side, Bruno, as editor, did manage to condense the 600-and-more pages of the (Bongiorno) defence appeal down to a couple of dozen paragraphs.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: The procedural rules were violated when the defence request to re-open argument was refused. The term “relevant”, as in relevant evidence as mentioned in the Code, is mere linguistic decoration (4.4)

COMMENT: There might be some merit in the idea that witnesses are recalled and argument re-opened only when it’s relevant, and not otherwise. The assertion of procedural violation remains just that, though, an assertion. In any case, opposing views are not examined. So how did Bruno reach his decision? A set of reasons without the actual reasons being given ““ is that what we are looking at?

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: The charge relating to unlawful transport of a knife has exceeded the time limit set by the statute of limitations. (5)

COMMENT: The limitations period expiry gambit is a widely-used defence strategy. Lots of people, including very many in the media spotlight, have taken advantage of it and benefitted from it.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: The judgment appealed from, the subject of multiple censures by the parties, exhibits mistakes, incongruities and errors of law. (6)

COMMENT: The prosecution are strangely absent from all of this. Did Bruno only have the transcript of the second day’s hearing, after misplacing the prosecution’s or leaving it at the bus stop? In any case, he does not give any indication that he has read it.

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: In first place, the affirmation that determining the motive is substantively irrelevant is an error. Automatically transferring Rudy’s sexual motive to the others doesn’t hold up; the erotic game scenario finds no corroboration; extending a shared and definite set of interpersonal relationships amongst the co-participants is also a species of transfer.

The love-story between Amanda and Raffaele is obvious and even if it appears certain that she somehow, somewhen, knew Rudy, there is no evidence that Raffaele knew him or ever visited him. If Laura and Filomena didn’t know Rudy and are ruled out as murderers, not to do the same with Raffaele is illogical and irrational. (6.1)

COMMENT: The other judges got it wrong about the importance of motive. If motive is essential, then no motive means no crime. And if one person had motive, it doesn’t mean the others must have had the same motive. The love-story appears obvious, but appearing so doesn’t make it so. Calling it a love-story is an interpretation, in any case. How was the conclusion reached and alternative hypotheses rejected? And how does not knowing Rudy socially (beforehand) have a bearing on anything (even motives)? A straw straw-man being invoked?

Cassation (Bruno) ““ gist: Holding that the exact time of death was irrelevant was also an error. From the phone records, it emerges that the time of death can be set between 21:30 and 22:13. (6.2)

COMMENT: The exact time is needed for a fair trial so the accused can supply an alibi. The prosecution method of picking the middle of the estimated time range is “˜mere’ arithmetic, not science (including gastric).  Perhaps Bruno read along the line underneath by mistake on the phone call log printout (if he actually read anything)? Perhaps he just accepted the defence claim at their word? Who can tell?

Pause here and re-energize, before we continue in another post. Bruno’s pattern seems to be shaping up as:

Make assertions as if they are conclusions; show no reasoning for them; exhibit a predilection and fondness for posing (of which more, when we get to the detail); and embody what he alleges the prosecution (and Alessi) have done, namely hastening under pressure and influence of the media spotlight and not following international standards, in this case, of legal reasoning and fairness (plus the implicit backhanders to all those who “got it wrong”).

It’s almost as if this case has provided him with the opportunity of at least a small break from long grey days of unproductive solitude. If so, it’s no wonder his sympathy with Raffaele’s situation of watching mould growing on his cell wall shines through so brightly.

Comments

Excellent @Catnip.

This is a properly forensic look at the national disgrace that the Bruno motivation report represents. Keep on exposing the straw men, I suspect you’ll have enough for a whole field of scarecrows by the end.

It appears that Bruno does not truly believe the tripe that he writes but in an effort to justify the unjustifiable, he feels that obfuscation, trapped in the middle of a bait ball of red herrings, is the way to go.

Ruthless exposure such as you and the other fine folks at TJMK subject Bruno and his co conspirators to has never been more necessary. Hopefully somewhere, further up the food chain in Italy, and hopefully the UK, someone is taking notice.

Posted by davidmulhern on 10/09/15 at 03:12 PM | #

Thanks Catnip.

What I can’t understand is how the Fifth Chamber is seemingly able to get away with exceeding their remit (which I understand to have been to oversee the law and make sure Nencini applied it correctly) and summarily acquit the deadly duo, rather than send the case back down.

Why isn’t there more of a hue and cry about this flagrant illegality, especially in Italy but also elsewhere (notably here, in Meredith’s homeland, the U.K. I sincerely hope the Kerchers raised the matter with the FCO)?

I know we must be careful not to copy the mafia and debunk Italian jurisprudence undeservedly, and it’s their jurisdiction, etc., but this daylight perversion of justice can’t be allowed to stand, surely?

Bruno et al will happily continue to pursue their bent careers, no matter how much we (rightly) dissect and criticize their absurd “reasoning” here, unless strong representations are made at a high diplomatic level.

Posted by Odysseus on 10/09/15 at 05:50 PM | #

@Catnip, Thank you for clarifying the Bruno/Marasca report and getting to the heart of the matter. It is so refreshing to read clear prose instead of the rococo or baroque language of legalese that, despite being interpreted from Italian to English, made the report almost incomprehensible without your extra help.

What a painstaking job it must have been to essentially have to re-write the entire report in understandable terms, but thank you very much.

Since Amanda’s calunnia conviction still stands, that means she accused her boss of her roommate’s murder in an accusation that was definitely not coerced, because she repeated it much later twice when under no pressure.

So how can Cassation reconcile this gigantic lie from defendant Amanda who was the one roommate who remained at the cottage with Meredith on the night of the crime? A lie specifically intended to cast blame on a man who wasn’t even there? Doesn’t this lie by itself suggest guilty knowledge and bad faith? Knox’s conviction for this stands, yet what does it mean?

Cassation says this bald-faced lie doesn’t mean she was guilty of murdering anyone! But then why would she suggest who the murderer was and point a finger at him on three separate occasions, continuing her charade in a campaign to direct police enquiry in the wrong direction?  Very suspicious behavior from the only roommate who was left behind at the cottage and had opportunity to kill Meredith or to allow a killer in the door.

The straw man within a straw man is interesting, too.

Another takeaway from this clarified report that explains the gist of the Court, is the trend of separating useful findings from Rudy’s trial and yet blocking them from evidence against Amanda or Raffaele. That does seem to be a case of flawed logic. Shouldn’t it be, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”.

With Supreme Court it seems incriminating evidence is driven down a one-way street in only one direction: simply toward Guede. But since all the fatal actions in both cases occurred in the exact same house (and the defense made much of “the murder room”), logic would demand that anything “learned” or established as fact in one case must apply to the other case equally. Artificial separations seem to be made.

OT, but I wish a Madame Tussaud’s wax museum figure of Meredith could follow Amanda to her next Halloween party.

Posted by Hopeful on 10/09/15 at 09:24 PM | #

Catnip - very nicely done.  You point out a lot of glaring holes in the report.

(1) Bruno seems to be accusing the police/prosecution of short-cutting the case simply due to the publicity?!?!  In the U.S., such unfounded statements (even if made by a judge), would likely trigger a lawsuit.

(2) Bruno seems to find Knox’s calunnia (against Patrick), totally baffling.  Well, there was no brutal interrogation, and she is not insane, or on drugs.  Then why would she do it, other than to divert attention?

(3) What about all those false alibis?  Do those even get mentioned?

(4) Right on, Bruno is doing the same thing (a Knox like projection), he accuses Nencini in Florence of doing—namely not following his own mandate.

(5) Agreed, Guede and Sollecito did not have to know each other.  Knox knew them both, and by her own admissions, both were attracted to her.  And despite her changing stories, Knox does know Guede. 

(6) Another red-herring here: that certain arguments were not reopened.  Most defense lawyers, would never allow the arguments to be closed, and here no real reason is given as to why it should be opened.

(7) MK’s death was between 9:30-10:13pm?  No medical examiner anywhere in the world can get an exact T.O.D.  All they can do is give a range, usually over several hours.  Getting the ‘‘exact’’ time in a sense is a bit irrelevant, since the alibi of watching Amelie(and being at Sollecito’s flat), places them mere minutes away.

Are we sure Bongiorno didn’t just write it and submit it to Bruno to publish?  What kind of cr@p is this?

Posted by Chimera on 10/09/15 at 09:33 PM | #

“Cassation (Bruno) – gist: There is only one irrefutable certainty in this case: Amanda’s guilt as regards her criminal calumny (calunnia) against Patrick Lumumba”

There are dozens of certainties which cannot be successfully refuted e.g. Knox’s mobile phone was not at Sollecito’s flat when it received Lumumba’s message, (which let her off from having to go to work at the Le Chic pub) at 20:18:12 on Nov.1st, 2007.

Posted by Cardiol MD on 10/10/15 at 03:22 AM | #

PMF.net recently discusses Raffaele’s picture on cover of Vanity Fair, the Italian edition. He’s also been on an Italian TV talkshow hosted by a Ms. Gruber.

Raffaele sports a pulled back ponytail Japanese style as one commenter describes it, and says he will one day become famous for his ideas. He boasts of his unique Italian website that he has named “Memories”.

When asked if he regrets meeting Amanda he does the usual tapdance around the truth, a No that he soon qualifies into a partial Yes. Then he says Amanda made a lot of stupid mistakes, but that those are not the real reason he suffered his ordeal. He implies that an out of control prosecution with an agenda and an eye to media coverage was what persecuted him.

He mentions the many who believe in his guilt based on his DNA on the bra clasp and on his knife. He claims this evidence is worthless, contaminated, yada yada yada.

There seems to be hidden envy underneath his complaint that media attached way too much importance to Amanda’s “All You Need Is Love” tee shirt in court. He follows this remark by real or pretended anger that the media could have spared Amanda but marched on. He compares this to somebody dancing on human lives, not realizing the reportage is not harmless like when they cover a soccer player’s holiday in the Bahamas. (I hear echoes of Dominican Republic visit, echoes of Amanda the soccer player thus equating himself with her?)

Raffaele complains of media’s dreadful attention to surface matters where appearance becomes uppermost, as he poses for a glamorous photo layout in Vanity Fair magazine, and wears a dapper dark suit for Ms. Gruber’s TV show. Oh, the irony.

He mentions Meredith’s family in their sorrow and loss by recalling the death of his own mother, saying he knows the pain of never being able to go back. (We assume he refers here to going back to happy times with a living loved one, or in his case perhaps misdirected guilt over his mother’s death?) He makes remarks about resurrection, how he died many times over the last years in his prison ordeal and legal battle.

Is it possible he got himself involved in a murder case to vicariously commit suicide to atone for anything he felt he did wrong to his mother before her suicide? He claims he has resurrected many times and can adjust to anything now.

Prison had a tremendous effect on him, he says they treat you like a vegetable and you become a vegetable. He describes in sincere horror the miseries of confinement, cockroaches, retaliation by offended prisoners, the delicate line a prisoner walks to not be too cozy with prison staff, a life of walking on eggshells. The worst crime in prison is to become famous, and thus the target of envy.

He said that he was able to adjust to all this hell and will continue to adjust, when the question was asked whether he has Stockholm syndrome and an addiction to media attention now that he has suffered from so much of it?

The article says he’s living in his father’s house in Bari. He said no comment when asked about Greta. He appears pale but healthy with bright eyes and obviously a sense of scarcely reined in triumph from a natural satisfaction after Supreme Court ruling. He claims there are a few countries he could live in where he is not automatically recognized.

He held up his book titled “Taking a Step Out of the Night” which has his gigantic face covering the front cover. One can only bemoan its parallel to the book by John Kercher titled, “Meredith” where her lovely face and figure appear, most deservedly and so beautiful in her softness and true innocence.

Raffaele laments false judgments were made against him because he listened to heavy metal Marilyn Manson music, read Manga, and occasionally watched a porno.

He reserves his most withering contempt for the investigators, police and judges who he considers should have recognized his innocence.

His refusal to completely vouch in bold, honestly indignant terms for Amanda’s innocence continues to be a red flag. He says he might vouch for his parents’ innocence but beyond them, he cannot vouch for anyone else’s innocence except his own.

The tone of his TV interview and Vanity Fair interview hint or suggest that he is raring to go now, to springboard from his negative fame to greater and better fame he plans to earn from his own ideas and intellect. He wants to be no longer a sideshow in the shadows of Amanda Knox and a murder case.

Posted by Hopeful on 10/10/15 at 03:44 PM | #

So he’s bitter the judges didn’t recognise his innocence.  Giving testimony and taking the stand for cross-examination might have helped clear up that misunderstanding.

Good article, Catnip.  The remark about Laura and Filomena not knowing Rudy is ridiculous.  Of course RS is going to deny knowing him.

It could be there are no reasons given for Bruno’s various outpourings because they were edited out by Marasca as being legally unsound.

The report is so disjointed, and nothing follows on from anything else, I feel sure Bruno’s pseudo-philosophical ponderings have been subjected to Marasca’s sharp censors scissors.  It’s a miracle there is even 52 pages left, and even they are utter rot.  And he calls Nencini illogical.  Nencini makes Bruno look like a crazed Edward Lear meets Lewis Carroll, with some Stephen King-like ghostly serial killer (who is not) thrown in.  He makes Hellmann read like Shakespeare.

As a parody, it is brilliant in its sheer awfulness.  Such a shame the other thousand pages that ended up in the shredder never got to see the light of day.

How will Marasca live down this embarrassment of a report?

Posted by Slow Jane on 10/11/15 at 02:36 AM | #

Please consider submitting a concise entry here for a news story.  These guys appear to fear no one and I think we could make some noise in the U.S. with some crisp, articulate and to the point statements that outline the facts of the case.  Thanks, guys.  Check it out:

http://gotnews.com/submit-tip-gotnews/

Posted by whatswisdom on 10/11/15 at 06:54 AM | #

Hi Hopeful and Slow Jane

On Sollecito agoniste… I’m on the road (Miami today) and havent yet organized its translation but an Italian reader Fabrizio who sends good tips kindly sent this Facebook link where there are a lot of sarcastic remarks at RS’s expense.

https://it-it.facebook.com/la7fb?ref=ts&_ft_=fbid.158216507616606:c.m&filter=1

It seems Miss Gruber is a known masonist of the flavor which would make Hellmann and the Perugia chief judge, De Nunzio who appointed him, feel right at home.

For those who dont know about the rogue mason angle in the case, which is the ultimate driver of the pro-MOF, anti-Mignini bus, Machiavelli (Yummi) has acquired a lot of material on this angle and posted some of it back here:

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/an_overview_from_italy_2_current_perceptions_in_italy/

Mignini is (a) a catholic who (b) got a lot too close to the real truths behind the MOF killings. Why Preston screams so much might be because he’s in bed with those rogue masons - possibly Doc Sollecito and Curt Knox too - theres an unhealthy alliance between them at least as with the mafia fellow travelers.

In all cases we know of where there was strong lingering suspicion of guilt of a killing that only seems to get STRONGER over time. US crime TV shows that daily.

Sollecito has this huge boulder chained to him called Chutzpah which brought many serial killers down and Knox’s boulder is the sheer nastiness and mixed-up-ness of her endless “victim” claims which has hundreds gunning for legal payback against her and the retrieval of their reputations now.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/11/15 at 01:51 PM | #

Pete

Well said.

“In all cases we know of where there was strong lingering suspicion of guilt of a killing that only seems to get STRONGER over time. US crime TV shows that daily. Sollecito has this huge boulder chained to him called Chutzpah which brought many serial killers down and Knox’s boulder is the sheer nastiness and mixed-up-ness of her endless “victim” claims which has hundreds gunning for legal payback against her and the retrieval of their reputations now.”

Agreed. It’s karma. Knox and Sollecito, two pathetic and obnoxious juvenile delinquents, in their gobsmacking ignorance, have brazenly challenged the gods with murder. Thus we patiently and confidently await the obvious denouement.

Posted by Odysseus on 10/11/15 at 07:48 PM | #

It is distasteful to see that RS is again benefiting financially from his cruel involvement in the death of poor Meredith. Will the indignities never end?

As to why anyone on earth would care one iota as to what he thinks about anything is beyond me. One can only hope a wrongful death suit will follow and all the blood money these perps have gotten will be stripped away from them.

Thank goodness someone knows how to translate this treatise in obfuscation written by Bruno/Maresca. The irony is he is accusing others of the exact blunders he is making!He is pointing his finger but the other 4 are back at him! One wonders if he truly feels what he wrote is correct or he/they just couldn’t handle doing the right thing.

Thanks Catnip for all your hard work as well as the many who had to translate this contradictory legal brief.

Posted by Vinnie on 10/12/15 at 06:15 AM | #

A recent Twitter Post states re the Marasca/Bruno verdict, “NOT an ‘innocence’ verdict…but (an) ‘insufficient evidence’ verdict.”

This confused sophistry starts with the implication that the Marasca/Bruno verdict was ‘Innocent’, which it was not.
‘Insufficient evidence’ is simply a reason for a ‘not guilty’ verdict.

Isn’t the Scottish Criminal Common Law ‘Not Proven’ verdict constructively analogous to an ‘Insufficient evidence’ verdict?

IIRC others have said that Kerchers can sue under Italian Civil-Rights Law, avoid the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt Criminal Law standard, and take advantage of a Civil Law more-probable-than-not lower standard of proof.

If this is so, the Kerchers could, and certainly should, be awarded major damages.

Are there loopholes in Italian law similar to the ones in the U.S., that allowed O.J. to evade paying the damages awarded in the civil rights case against him? AK has so-far evaded Italian damage awards against her.

Posted by Cardiol MD on 10/12/15 at 06:56 AM | #

Hi Cardiol

That all seems to me right. A huge dagger dangling (and no route to financial recourse by RS and AK) which was realised first by Bongiorno back in March.

She did not like the judgement at all and seemingly expected to see it back in Nencini’s hands, and she seems to have seen in a heartbeat what Machiavelli posted here, Bruno ludicrously stopping just millimeters short of guilt.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/supreme_court_confirms_all_three_were_there_and_lied/

Bongiorno is the recent chair of the justice committee in parliament and a co-leader of a new party now, and as a connected lawyer from Sicily she had and has immense clout.

Twice she went judge shopping, and twice the judges (first Hellmann and then Bruno) went a step too far. The Sollecito forces groan. The delusionary Knox forces as usual are quite lost.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/12/15 at 01:38 PM | #

I think that’s fair comment re the Scottish “not proven” verdict @Cardiol.

It has been used by shyster lawyers here in Scotland to get some notorious killers off the hook. It is not a popular quirk of Scots law here in my homeland amongst the general population.

Unless you’re a guilty party and looking for a way out or one of the aforementioned shyster lawyers looking to inflate your ego.

Posted by davidmulhern on 10/12/15 at 07:52 PM | #

All sarcasm aside, here is my attempt to explain the ruling:

Bruno/Marasca and the gang did decide beforehand to throw the case out, but knew it would not be easy.  Therefore, an hour long hearing (in which most defence presentations should have been disallowed) stretched into 2 days.

B/M did not anticipate the public backlash that immediately followed after the AK/RS murder case was thrown out.  Perhaps they are also ‘‘tone-deaf’‘.

However, as the public immediately began demanding answers, B/M realize that they have essentially redone a ‘‘Hellmann’‘, and that their careers are at stake.  As everyone here knows, Hellmann tossed the case in 2011, and his convoluted ‘‘report’’ was wiped out by Cassation 1st Chambers in 2013

But B/M are determined not to go down Hellmann’s path, despite replicating his actions.  So the next 5 1/2 months become a tortured search to look for some justifications for their annulling the case.  They surely realize that (1) simply confirming Nencini’s ruling would have been safest, and (2) a less career-suicidal path would have been to send it back down.

Hence we get this report (translated by Catnip, Machiavelli, and others).  It seems to be a combination of Hellmann, which used tortured logic to acquit, and Nencini, who found no option but to uphold.  The problem is that you can’t ‘‘fuse’’ together or ‘‘merge’’ them.  You can’t make a legitimate verdict by ‘‘Frankenstein-ing’’ contradictory lower court verdicts.

And now the new standard for screwy has been set.  We used to score things on the ‘‘Hellmann Scale’‘.  Hellmann now scores a 6 on the ‘‘Bruno Scale’‘

Thanks again guys.

***

I thought (briefly) that writing this cr@@ was B/M’s way of ensuring things stayed too ‘‘muddied’’ to fix.  But in retrospect, they don’t seem bright enough to pull something like that off.

Any word on when a legal challenge will come?

Posted by Chimera on 10/12/15 at 08:32 PM | #

I would really like to have a meeting with Guede, and talk with him, in a non-confrontational way.
I feel it would be very good, and a progress.

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding on 10/12/15 at 09:56 PM | #

How long before Guede gets out? and is there any indication at all as his future?

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 10/13/15 at 02:59 AM | #

I’ve been following all the posts and all the comments - Odysseus gets close to my question.

What on earth is First Chambers doing?  Let’s say they went their separate ways, OK but their reputation was still severely impugned in the Fifth Chambers report, let alone the illegalities associated with it.

Is something big in the wind - can one branch of the judiciary challenge another if it is superior?  Would they?  There just seems to be nothing happening.

Perhaps they’re waiting for the calumny process to finish, see the fallout and ascertain their position after that, vis-a-vis Fifth Chambers.

Surely though those of the First are not just going to take this lying down?

Posted by James Higham on 10/13/15 at 12:50 PM | #

Hi James

Rest assured that daggers are drawn and things are still a year or two away from steady-state. 

Nobody on the justice career path simply comes out and says things. The notion that its courts and only courts that can speak out loud is a very strong one. That is why the only strong public anti-Marasca/Bruno commentary so far was by the nationally very respected legal team for Mignini, ingeniously using the complaint against Maori as a within-the-rules vehicle.

The same notion usually applies to defendants (for good reason there was MUCH less pro-Knox and pro-Sollecito ranting in Italy than in the US and UK) and this is the basis for the calunnia, vilipendio and diffamazione processes with more to come; there are no charges so far for Knox’s book except for the excerpts in Oggi.

In the US a lot depends on the increasingly many folks who see things the way we do and think important principles are at stake like us to get the full picture out and we are quite sure now that the media will not turn its back on that.

We still have numerous half finished projects some of which must first be completed. For example the Liewatch pages pending for RS and AK which will be hard for them to make go away, also the summaries of all the hoaxes not only the interrogation hoax (see list in right column). This page below is public but still in semi completion.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmkoverviews

My guess is that around the end of this year or very early next year any continuing support for RS and AK will have 95% evaporated. Few will have continuing illusions. Already both are obviously uncomfortable - Sollecito outraged and Knox paranoid.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/13/15 at 04:52 PM | #

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