Category: Hoaxes Sollecito etc

Rejected Yet Again By Knox, Sollecito Seems Frantic To Avoid What Might Be A Final Return To Italy

Posted by Peter Quennell

The explosive story of Kelsey Kay

Radar Online is an American celebrity-news website owned by the American Media group in New York.

It is ranked at about the 500th most popular site in the US. Starting yesterday, Radar Online has been advancing a story with a video by an ex-girlfriend of Sollecito, Kelsey Kay (image above) who lives in Idaho.

Kelsey Kay is claiming that while in the US in several of his 2012-2013 stays Sollecito was seeking a way to get married in a hurry, supposing that being a US resident would somehow keep him safe from Italian law. At first glance Kelsey Kay seems compassionate and smart and she paid Sollecito some money and it is not obviously that she is drumming up any for herself. She sized him up accurately in retrospect. So here we go.

Foxy Knoxy BETRAYED: Ex-Lover Raffaele Sollecito Turns On “˜Evil B*tch’ Amanda As He Faces 26 Years For Meredith Kercher Murder “” And Knox Won’t Help Him Beat The Rap

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were branded a modern-day Romeo & Juliet when they were both imprisoned for the 2007 murder of Knox’s roommate, Meredith Kercher. But now, Sollecito is turning on the woman who was once his only ally, branding Knox an “evil bitch” who is “selfish, mean, [and] cruel” “” all because she wouldn’t marry him in a scheme designed to keep him out of prison!

As Radar has reported, Sollecito proposed to Knox in March 2013, hoping she would marry him and help him flee the retrial and potential reconviction for Kercher’s murder. When Knox refused, he turned to his online pen pal, Idaho woman Kelsey Kay to air his anger.

According to a new report in Star, Sollecito told Kay Knox was “a selfish, mean, cruel girl,” and an “evil bitch.”

Now Kay tells Radar, that was only the half of it.

“I think his feelings were hurt,” Kay explains. What’s more, she says, it seemed that Sollecito felt Knox was obligated to help him because of the couple’s unique history.

“He came across very entitled, like he had saved her [during the first trial] in Italy by not turning on her,” Kay claims, “and that maybe she was obligated to do the same for him.”

“I’ve read text messages “¦ between the two of them,” Kay says. “The text messages were [often] him texting her and her not responding. And he portrayed that to me as she was insensitive, and didn’t care.”

But in the few messages that Knox did send Sollecito, Kay says, she seemed like an entirely different woman than her ex-lover claimed.

“There were some [texts] about them not being able to marry, and [Amanda] explained herself in a very elegant way,” Kay reveals.

Sollecito’s responses, however, were “more desperate, needy,” Kay says…

The Knox-Sollecito kabuki dance goes on

Going back to the very night they were arrested Knox and Sollecito have never been fully as one.

In early statements they each quite openly placed suspicion on the other, and Sollecito retained this high-ground position right through the 2009 trial to its “guilty” end, slyly suggesting he had the upper hand.

Sollecito never at trial or the 2011 Hellmann appeal ever yanked his charge that Knox was absent from his house and maybe present at the attack on the night that Meredith died.

At trial in 2009 the distancing continued. Knox became so desperate about this that she wrote Sollecito frequent “love letters” and finally quite publicly asked justice authorities if they could meet (it was denied).

Their lawyers danced the same kabuki dance. Read this series by a Rome lawyer who watched every feint on TV.

In January 2012 the prosecution said they would appeal the Hellmann outcome to the Supreme Court. They KNEW the outcome had been tainted by the defenses - as, later, so did the Supreme Court.

Two months later this happens. Sollecito suddenly rockets off to Seattle - with his family in hot pursuit.

No marriage with AK resulted, but what did result, six months later, was Sollecito’s dishonest book, which shows all the signs of channeling the Seattle-centered FOA loonies, and none at all of the hard facts on the ground.

Six months later Knox’s own book appears.

In the two books, Knox and Sollecito not only tell different versions of their truth - they each reveal some exasperation with the other, and it reads in both books like their amazing love affair back in 2007 would have soon ended on the rocks.

In the short period they were together in Perugia, Knox continued messing with other boys - both in Perugia and (with her old boyfriend) in Seattle - while Sollecito stayed home and sulked.

The titles of both books (Honor Bound and Waiting To Be Heard) were themselves big lies - but Sollecito’s is probably the bigger lie.

The prosecution did NOT ask him to roll over on Amanda - they had no need and no legal right - as even Sollecito’s own dad on national TV confirmed (“That was made up.”) and Sollecito’s one and only claim to be “honor bound” had been that he had resisted.

Thereafter Sollecito and Knox seem to have met again in Seattle and maybe in London and New York. But still no peace of mind or mutual joy at the end of the road for either, as this post and this post strongly demonstrate.

And legal residency in a country is of course not a barrier to perps convicted in other countries ending up back there and behind bars. The US sends its own nefarious citizens-by-birth to face foreign justice on occasion. Very naive.

Knox and Sollecito both self-admitted flight risks

Ten days ago in a breaking-news box we posted this:

Breaking news. UK media quote Amanda Knox as saying she may go on the lam if guilt is confirmed. (Remember this is HER appeal. She opened this can of worms.) However the US/Italy extradition treaty and official US paper trail give her zero reason for comfort, and an extradition request would immediately put her in a US jail to stop her going on the lam. An Interpol Red Notice would make her unemployable and subject to worldwide arrest.

Now the poster Jackie on PMF dot Org (a lawyer) has posted this:

I think the Kay Fiasco bears directly on the proceedings underway: IF the texts can be authenticated, and IF there is a guilty verdict, those exchanges will make it all but impossible for RS’s lawyers to argue that he is not a flight risk.

So one week from today there is a strong chance a judicial order to lock them up will flow from the Florence court.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/23/14 at 06:05 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Amanda Knox, Raff Sollecito, Appeals 2009-2015, Florence 2014+, Hoaxes Knox & team, 14 AK/RS got-on hoax, Hoaxes Sollecito etc, 26 RS/AK got-on hoax • Comments here (26)

Questions For Sollecito: Do You Stand By Your Smear Of Reasonable Doubt In Italian Law?

Posted by Our Main Posters

The Italian Supreme Court is seen here at rear-right with the Vatican in the foreground]

How the tough questions for you only grow, and grow… We have 12 posts already in our questions for Knox series and 11 posts already in our questions for Sollecito series.

We also have increasing confirmation that this thrust is paying off and is helping to meet a widespread felt need in the media. Ask Katie Couric, and Diane Sawyer, and the CNN legal talking heads, and the BBC, and an increasing number of others in the media.

Today’s post returns, certainly not for the last time, to your wildly inaccurate book.

1. What You Wrote in Honor Bound On Reasonable Doubt:

Amond the absurd legal babble in your absurdly titled book Honor Bound this legal babble especially stands out.

The meandering complexities of the Italian legal system, where speculation and hearsay are allowed to run rampant and time invariably slows to a maddening trickle, did little to help our cause. 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.

2. How Lawyer James Raper With Yummi Disagreed

From their post last January before Cassation uttered its final word, which also takes to task Hellmann’s and Zanetti’s interpretation.

What he is implying (in a manner gratuitously insulting to the intelligence of his compatriots) is that were the above statement not true then he, and Amanda, would have been acquitted in the first instance.

Oh, really?

It seems that we are also being asked to believe that Sollecito and his ghostwriter, Gumbel, are historians of Italian jurisprudence. So, let’s quickly examine what substance there is to the claim.

It will be seen that the concept of “reasonable doubt” is understood well enough in the courts of Italy, though unfortunately less well understood by the former Umbria Appeal Court judges Hellmann and Zanetti.

Not only that but those two judges made pointed remarks at the outset of the appeal also garbling the concept, which were very disturbing. I shall look into that in a moment.

Sollecito”˜s remark does have some context but it is wildly inaccurate and unfair.

We know that the Italian legal system is based on the inquisitorial system common to continental Europe, whereas the anglo-saxons amongst us are used to the adversarial system. It is also true that the specific expression “beyond reasonable doubt” was not introduced into the Italian criminal procedure code until 2006.

It is Article 533 of the Criminal Procedure Code: “The judge pronounces sentence of conviction if the accused is guilty of the offence charged beyond all reasonable doubt.”

Now let me defer to our Italian poster Yummi who can explain the historical context. He writes -

The current Italian system is the result of a procedure code reform introduced in 1989. This reform introduced several features of the adversarial system into a new criminal procedure code. One of the features of the new code was the abolition of the “not proven” verdict. This factually had been working very effectively as the version of “reasonable doubt” in the Italian system.

In an inquisitorial system the court is a council headed by professional judges and it’s task is not just to deliver a verdict, but to deliver a written rationale or dossier aimed to provide “a judicial truth”. Typically “reasonable doubt” is a formulation coming from systems where juries do not issue a written rationale while systems that have motivation reports on verdicts usually don’t have it: it was commonly agreed that the absence of doubt should be understood from the rationale. Absence of doubt is not a quality that is inherent in the internal conviction of a juror, but instead is understood to be a feature of the logical proof provided by the written rationale. It was believed that the absence of doubt in the judge’s mind should be shown by the fact that a motivation report is logical.

No Italian scholar would ever maintain that the “reasonable doubt” standard is a recent introduction in the Italian system. Only the acknowledgement of it’s wording is relatively recent. In the Italian system the formulation “reasonable doubt” was starting to be used explicitly in Supreme Court jurisprudence in the early nineties; a change of wording in honour of the adversarial reforms, but in fact a continuation of the long jurisprudence tradition of the “not proven” standard.”

In fact in the adversarial system “beyond reasonable doubt” is really an instruction to the jurors that they must arrive at a certain evidentiary standard if they are to convict. Any system that would produce a “not proven” verdict would mean that the standard has not been met.

In the adversarial system no written rationale for a verdict is required to accompany the verdict. That the Italian system retains this requirement is very much a safeguard for the accused as well as for the State both being thereby protected from perverse or capricious convictions or acquittals.

Second here is Judge Zanetti at first appeal:

The only certain and undisputed fact is the death of Meredith Kercher.

So said Judge Zanetti on the opening day of the appeal. It was a statement that brought gasps of astonishment from those in court, particularly from the reporters present who deemed it to be an admission that reasonable doubt existed.

In fact, of course, there were a lot of certain and undisputed facts. No one denied that there was evidence, most of it undisputed. What was disputed was the interpretation of that evidence.

That, being so, why did not Zanetti say that? Clearly the remark was injudicious, and cogent only in its intended impact.

What of the Massei Motivations Report one might ask? is it toast?

That remark not only helped to set the tone for the entire appeal - what was said soon after by his senior colleague was even worse.

Compliance with article 533 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Judgement of conviction only if the defendant is guilty of the offence complained of beyond a reasonable doubt) does not allow (us) to share fully the decision of the Court of Assize of First Instance.

(In Italian: il rispetto dell’articolo 533 del Codice di procedura penale (pronuncia di condanna soltanto se l’imputato risulta colpevole del reato contestatogli al di la ogni ragionevole dubbio) non consente di condividere totalmente la decisione della Corta d’Assize di primo grado”)

That was said by Judge Hellmann on the third day of the appeal before even the evidentiary and discussion stage had opened. And thanks again to Yummi for the above quote.

It seems that the presiding judge had felt compelled to expand upon his colleague’s stark opening remark but in doing so he had opened a can of worms. He had just made things even worse. Unfortunately the prosecution decided not to challenge the remark and the appeal proceeded. They should have done so.

Article 533 relates to verdict. The verdict (to be) is not to be hinted at or discussed at the opening of any trial or appeal and certainly not as pointedly as this. So serious is this faux pas that I have it on good authority that the prosecution considered impeaching the presiding judge for incompatibility and incompetence. It seems that they did not because of the furore this might have caused and perhaps also because they were confident of the strength of the case in any event. In retrospect a grave mistake.

What in fact was Hellmann saying? Let us consider.

“Compliance with article 533.”¦..”¦does not allow us to share fully the decision of the Court of Assize of First Instance.”

I believe that what we see here is the first indication of the judges’ manifest misunderstanding of what should have been the correct approach to an evaluation of the evidence in the case and the application of the “reasonable doubt” standard.

I do not intend to deal with that in any detail. It is set out cogently in the Galati appeal.

Suffice to say that the “reasonable doubt” standard applies only to the culpability of the accused for the offence with which he/she is charged. Article 533 makes this abundantly clear and this is no different from how our own adversarial system deals with it. It is not a standard to be parcelled out to each item of evidence or inference drawn. That the appeal judges thought they could do (and did) precisely that is implicit in Hellmann’s remark.

How can one not “share fully the decision of the lower court”?

Hellmann could have said that he did not fully share the decisions of the lower court as regards each element of evidence rather than “the decision”, which can only be a reference to the actual verdict. But “the decision” is what he says, linking it specifically to article 533 where only the singular use of the noun would have any meaning. So on the face of it this can only be about the verdict of the lower court. And yet, how can one not fully share a verdict? A verdict cannot be parcelled out. One either agrees or disagrees with it.

Despite it’s manifest inappropriateness, no doubt the remark was meant to acknowledge that there was some doubt about the validity of the verdict in their minds. Well at least that’s honest but in that case, was it not incumbent on them to specify what it was that concerned them? I would have expected that. True, it was already clear that the DNA on the knife and bra clasp, and Curatolo’s credibility, were specific issues, as they had allowed these to be examined, but beyond that there was no disclosure as to what other doubts on the evidence they had in mind. We know now from the Motivations that there were others and what these were ( Quintavalle and the staged break-in, just for example) - and I think it would be pretty disingenuous of them to pretend that they did not exist at the time.

Already one sees elements of confusion, incompetence, mis-procedure, misleading the prosecution and coded messages (for the media and politicians?) to the effect that the appeal judges had already rationalized an acquittal in the appeal.

And if, with their doubts, they had in fact done so then what, pray, was the point of :-

1. Ordering a review of the DNA evidence on the knife and the bra clasp

2. Re-hearing Curatolo

3. Hearing from Aviello and Alessi

“¦”¦other than that they were seeking that elusive “reasonable” element of doubt.

It is almost as if the entire appeal was tailored to suit and a sham. It certainly looks that way in retrospect, particularly as the element of reasonable doubt still remains elusive on close examination.

Yet it may just be that the appeal judges were just incompetent and that their incompetence (with the incompetent assistance of Conti & Vechiotti) infected the entire proceedings.

We shall see what Cassation thinks of the garbling of this fundamental concept when the prosecution appeal is entertained on 25 March.

3. How The Cassation Motivation Report Also Disagrees

The Supreme Court doesnt buy your smear of Italian law either, though we doubt your book was a hot item there. The concept of “reasonable doubt” was fully respected in the Massei trial where your guilt was firmly established - and the concept was trashed by the unlamented Hellmann & Zanetti.

This is from the Cassation report on the decision to annul the Hellmann appeal.

2.2.3 “ Manifest lack of logic and inconsistency in the reasoning in reference to the use of the principle of reasonable doubt in sustaining the order of 18.12.2010. [According to the lawyers for the Civil Parties], the verdict of conviction beyond a reasonable doubt could have been reached even after the outcome of the expert report arranged for in the second instance trial, inasmuch as the examination of the circumstantial evidence ought to have been global and consistent, the hypothetical defect of any one of these being acceptable, provided that the remaining elements were ““ as they ought to have been deemed ““ sufficient to reach the required level of certainty, [29] since what is asked of isolated elements of proof being evaluated is that they display the credentials of correspondence with real events, at least with predominant probability. Proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt can rest on items of circumstantial evidence that are not all equally certain, that is, not all established with the same level of probability.

So, Raffaele Sollecito, you jobless failure in all walks of life: would you care to correct all these fine lawyers?

Posted by Our Main Posters on 10/25/13 at 07:29 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in The judical timeline, News media & movies, Hoaxes Sollecito etc, Hoaxers from 2007, Raff Sollecito #1, Hoaxers from 2011, Raff Sollecito #2 • Comments here (8)