Headsup: In the US, the bizarre AP report, widely parroted, and a delusional, highly defamatory rant by Knox in The Atlantic, seem the only major questionings of the Florence and Rome guilty verdicts so far. There are other developments we wish to report next though we'll keep an eye on this.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

A Common View In Legal Circles: Knox Campaign Often Talks Legal Nonsense - As On Oprah

Posted by Peter Quennell

(1) This is the position lawyer Theodore Simon took in December 2008 on NBC Dateline as an impartial commentator then being straight with the American public.

“Theodore Simon thinks the prosecutors evidence made public so far is daunting. The defense could argue a faked robbery, and a moved body, and contamination, but eventually it could become like whack-a-mole, and all of their arguments could lose force.”

(2) This is the position Theodore Simon takes on the Oprah Winfrey show in February 2010 now that he is on the payroll and seemingly trying hard to mislead the American public. “The case makes no legal sense.”

The recent appointment of Theodore Simon as the US legal adviser to the free-Knox campaign met with some ridicule in Italy.

We certainly begin to see why.

Ted Simon’s performance on the Oprah Winfrey show sounded to us a lot like the hapless John Q Kelly. How grounded in either the very hard evidence or the very-different Italian law really is he?

The highly-respected Spokane lawyer Bill Edelblute (who we have quoted before) now weighs in forcefully on the New York Examiner website on the many claims made on the Oprah Winfrey show.

He pretty well reflects here what many other good lawyers are telling us: Don’t take any legal advice from that campaign - not if you actually want to win some…

Concerning the callous uncaring attitude to the Kerchers

Mr Edelblute starts by examining an arrogant and almost pathologically callous remark made by Curt Knox about the family of Meredith.

The parents of Amanda Knox lament the limited contact they now have with their daughter due to her imprisonment, while awaiting the upcoming appeal.  Only near the end of at least the ABC news account of the interview do they give any mention of the victim and the Kercher family. 

Here’s what they have to say in comparing their loss with that of the relatives of the murdered beautiful British student.  In commenting on the fact that they would not welcome a call from the Kerchers, Curt Knox explains it this way:

“We still have a chance with Amanda, and they don’t with their daughter,” he said, and that any such discussion might be best to take place only if the Kerchers are positive Amanda is innocent. “We still have a chance with Amanda, and they don’t with their daughter.”  No, they don’t have a chance with Meredith Kercher, because someone murdered her.  Amanda Knox has been convicted of that murder, subject to appeal.

Let’s see - - the victim’s parents are supposed to believe Amanda is innocent before they ever dare speak to the parents of Amanda Knox.  Guilty or innocent, the parents of Amanda Knox did not murder anyone, so why would they place conditions on what the Kerchers have to believe before ever speaking to them? 

Hint - the reaction of the Kerchers to the verdict was one of believing justice has been done, not of believing the trial went horribly wrong.  Don’t expect them to change their belief anytime soon. 

The Kerchers did not make Amanda Knox turn cartwheels, make out with her boyfriend a few feet from where the body was just discovered, or to change her story several times, or to say that she heard Meredith scream, and that a black individual was in the bedroom with Meredith.  It was scientifically proven with DNA that a black man, Rudy Guede, was in that room, and he said Meredith was screaming, just like Amanda said.  Who is at fault for all that?  The victim’s parents, or Amanda’s sisters?

The chances that the Kerchers feel they need to speak to anyone about the murder of their completely blameless daughter who has not been shown to have done anything other than act like a normal college student, with normal boundaries on her behavior, are nil.

The Kerchers have nothing to explain, but deserve more than an apology from anyone who has made the rights of their daughter a non-issue. And the parents of an accused also have nothing to explain, but when they decide to conduct a media campaign, do they set conditions for the parents of the victim?

Concerning Amanda Knox’s sisters

Bill Edelblute contends with a couple of the often-loose claims of Deanna Knox, well worth reading in the original, and then has a long commentary on the use of young children as PR puppets. He concludes “When comedy fundraisers for Knox don’t do the trick, try making a kid cry.”

Concerning Oprah’s performance

Next he assesses Oprah Winfrey as host - like us, he clearly believes Oprah was under-researched and under-briefed and fell into several traps. He commends her for not simply taking an “she’s innocent” stance and for asking a few blunt questions, concluding:

• She aired a written statement by Lyle Kercher, brother of victim Meredith Kercher, who apparently was invited to appear or speak live, but declined.  However, this was at the end of the segment when it probably belongs right smack in the middle. A photo of Meredith was flashed only very briefly.

But much of how Oprah handled the show he clearly did not like - becoming mushy over Amanda, misleading her audience on the sequestering of juries, and making an anti-Italy crack.                                                                                                                                                                                         

• Oprah made a unequivocal statement that the jury was not sequestered, as it would have been in America.  That is not true.  Even in murder cases, juries are not routinely sequestered throughout the trial.  It is possible a judge would grant such a request upon motion by attorneys.  It is possible a jury might have been sequestered during deliberations, but not during the trial, or both, or neither….
 
• When Edda Mellas told Oprah that Amanda said in a phone call to “tell Oprah I love her” Ms. Winfrey displayed what was clearly a flattered smile.  You are just told that someone who has been convicted of murder, albeit subject to appeal, likes you, and you react as though someone’s puppy has taken an immediate liking to you, or have received a much sought after complement.  We don’t know what Meredith Kercher thinks of Oprah or her show, as her life was taken and she is not here to groom and manipulate others, as is Amanda Knox even from a prison cell.  (Nor would Meredith need to do so.)
 
• For the banal statement, while turning to the audience: “If you want to be tried - you want it to be in the U.S.A.!”  Sure about that?  Amanda will get two levels of appeal as a matter of right in Italy.  In her home state of Washington, she would have only one. Oprah’s statement clearly implies the Italian system is not fair compared to that of the U.S., when there is no evidence of that, and implies there are more procedural protections, when there is no evidence of that.

We could have added this one: Oprah ignored the huge money-making operation and where all the money is going - for example, the very large sums that seem to be spent to mislead the American audiences.

Concerning Elizabeth Vargas

He then takes a look at the quality of the reporting of ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas, who is notorious for repeatedly omitting key facts, muddling what the jury hears in court with what the media says outside, denigrating Italy and the Italian players, taking a very one-sided position (she is believed to have an exclusive deal with the PR campaign, one never made public on-air), and in general misinforming ABC’s viewers.

He judges her commentary as follows: “Ms. Vargas is loose with the facts.  There is almost no value of any kind in what Ms. Vargas had to offer, and negative value, when it comes to attacking a legal result with nothing to back it up, murdering the truth.” 

Concerning Theodore Simon

Bill Edelblute then has serious contention with many of the remarks of Ted Simon, again well worth reading in full.

On Knox pointing to a black man, Patrick Lumumba, now, as our post below underscores, replaced as the sole perp of choice by another black man, Rudy Guede.

Oprah asked him if the fact that Amanda “pointed at an innocent man” reflected on her integrity.  His answer: “Quite to the contrary.”  So it meant she had good integrity, being to the contrary of reflecting poorly upon it?  The tired old refrain that the police forced her to know that it was a black man in Meredith’s room does not mean Amanda was of good integrity, even if believed.  Simon’s answer just means his gun was cocked to say “to the contrary” to any evidence against Amanda.  Amanda would let an innocent man rot in prison, potentially for the 26 years she is doing, if he hadn’t been able to convince the court of his alibi. 

Yet it is “to the contrary” to suggest she has no integrity to allow Patrick to unjustly be deprived of his freedom, business, and reputation? Simon pointed out there had been no interpreter.  Knox didn’t say she had been misunderstood when accusing Lumumba.  She testified she made the false accusation only after being hit on the back of the head by a policewoman who she could not identify. What does lack of an interpreter have to do with the point of accusing an innocent man?  He was in prison two weeks.  Did Knox ever say during that time - no, he’s not involved, you’ve got an innocent man in prison?  His bar that employed Knox is now closed.  A product of Knox’s false accusations.

On Ted Simon on the physical evidence in the house.

Simon rattled off a list of things not found in the room where Meredith was found, such as Amanda’s hair, DNA, sweat, etc.  He did not mention that no murder weapon, which had to have once been in the room, was found in the room either. 

So is Meredith still alive? Simon did not mention the DNA of Amanda and the victim being on a knife where Amanda claimed at times she had spent the night of the murder.

He could have added - as our DNA experts here have often pointed out - that there was zero reason for Knox’s DNA to be in Meredith’s room if she was simply standing there with a knife, goading the men on and taunting Meredith. And that a bloody footprint of Knox’s size was found in the room, on a pillow. And that the mixed DNA of Knox and Meredith was found at five locations - and that mixed DNA had to have been deposited very recently.

And that it had to have been Knox who moved Meredith’s body - nobody else had a need to. And that Amanda Knox’s bedside lamp was found in Meredith’s locked room, presumably used in the cleaning up and rearranging of the crime scene - of which there is no doubt.

He continues on the physical evidence.

Simon does not identify any rule of law that says the sweat of the accused has to be found in the room where the the victim’s body is found.  Yet, he says the case “makes no legal sense.” 

This is a case in which there is an admission of being at the scene, of the DNA of the accused and a victim being on a knife, of knowledge that Meredith screamed while a black man was in a bedroom with Meredith. 

A black man was in a bedroom with Meredith, Rudy Guede, as shown by his DNA.  Guede, though denying murder, says he heard Meredith scream.  Knox said she screamed, before Guede was known by police to be involved.  How did she know what Guede knew?...

There is no legal element missing, it is more a question of the independent strength of certain pieces of evidence, all put together the jury was convinced, and that is their role in the system.

Hmmm. That seems to make a lot of legal sense.

And concerning Curt Knox and Edda Mellas

Finally Bill Edelblute questions many of the claims of Curt Knox and Edda Mellas of bias in the legal process and the Italian media. Please see his original post. He comments further on Curt Knox’s almost pathologically callous remark with regard to Meredith’s family.

While the comments above about the Kerchers could be construed as acknowledging their loss of their daughter, of having “no chance”, as worse than the situation of the Knoxes, I’m not so sure.  Because clearly Curt Knox then says that to speak to them, the Kerchers would have to acknowledge Amanda was innocent. 

That thinking is the product of a different kind of mind.  the Kerchers don’t have to do anything, it is not a question of why Curt Knox would not lower himself to talk to them, it is a question of why the Kerchers would bother.

In other words, why would Meredith’s family WANT to reach out to the family of a possible charming psychopath found guilty of killing their daughter, who still shows zero remorse? Especially when her family seem to display some chilling psychologies of their own.

Fine brave careful humane work by Bill Edelblute and the Examiner. which is helping to re-educate a huge component of the American public on the stark realities of the case.  Reader comments on the Examiner website and every other website we have looked at are running at least four or five to one against Oprah, Curt Knox, and Edda Mellas.

Something in their campaign must be broken. Perhaps they should just pack up and stay home.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Oprah Gets Snowed: Why Was She Not Made Aware of The Race Card Being Played?

Posted by Peter Quennell

Previous posts on Oprah’s intervention here and here.

We will have a detailed takedown of the large number of disputable claims made today on Oprah Winfrey’s show posted here in a day or two. 

Meanwhile, we must say that it was a pretty weird experience to witness Oprah Winfrey, of all people, being taken in by the “of course the black guy did it” meme.

• Is she aware that the poor black guy Rudy Guede has no prior convictions and that all three have had prior brushes with the police?


• Is she aware that there is NO reliable evidence that the poor black guy Guede has ever done drug dealing or burglary in Perugia or for that matter wielded a knife?


• Is she aware that there is no REMOTELY feasible scenario under which a lone wolf like the poor black guy Guede could have done this crime all alone?


• Is she aware that there is EXTENSIVE evidence that Knox and Sollecito rearranged the crime scene and moved Meredith’s body - while the poor black guy Guede was reliably reported at a disco?

There seems to be a nasty race card deliberately being played here to deflect blame from Amanda (remember Patrick Lumumba?) which Oprah’s staff should have picked up on in a mere 15 minutes of research.

This was the REAL story here - that blaming it all on the black guy is a theory that just doesn’t fly - and Oprah should have been onto this one like a hungry dog onto a bone.

Hopefully next time she will be.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Oprah, Perhaps Your Guests On Today’s Show Could Explain This Very Tough One Away

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click here for Finn MacCools’ chilling analysis of Amanda Knox’s first call to her mom the day after.

Finn posted this incriminating piece of work on TJMK last July, and ever since, it has awkwardly lurked like an elephant in the room.

The prosecution never really required a smoking gun to prove the Knox-Sollecito case. To those in the courtroom who heard all the fine details, the totality of the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to guilt.

But for anyone for whom it hadn’t, this strange story of the call that suddenly wasn’t came as close as anything in the evidence to a smoking gun. One that Edda Mellas may have dropped to around two years ago, as Finn shows.

One that that in most courts around the world would almost by itself result in case closed.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Oprah Winfrey, Please Discuss The Case With Jeanine Pirro, Anne Coulter, And Now Tina Brown

Posted by Peter Quennell

Next Tuesday [today] at 4:00 pm the influential American talk-show host Oprah Winfrey will weigh in at last on the case.

There is a growing history of high-profile American media personalities like Oprah being misled and thus misleading on the real strength of the evidence (and it is very strong.)

And then going publicly silent. Apparently more than once, behind the scenes, very angrily.

Unquestionably, Oprah Winfrey helped Barack Obama to get elected. She is very powerful. And the self-made billionaire is famous for getting very, very angry behind the scenes if given wrong facts or lied-to.

In fact Oprah is probably the last woman in America that anyone would want to lie to.

In the past few months both prominent American media personalities and entire American networks and publishing empires have got deeper into the hard evidence, and seen for themselves that justice in this case has been done.

These days, no media personality or media empire in the United States seems to want to be the last one standing in defense of a probable charming psychopath.

• Larry King of CNN has not returned to the case since this fiasco.
• Geraldo Rivera of Fox Cable has not returned to the case since this fiasco.
• Jane Velez-Mitchell of CNN has not returned to the case since this fiasco.
• The New York Times has reported very fairly since this fiasco.
• CBS TV dropped its series of very biased reports after this fiasco.

Now Oprah is famous for being a voracious reader. And we know that her crack production team and possibly Oprah herself have been studying this website and our sister website the PMF forum.

There is a mountain of objective evidence on these two websites, and we will not be at all surprised if Oprah and her team get right on top of it and blow the faux defense right out of the studio.

Additionally, Oprah and her production team would do well to consider phoning Oprah’s fellow media stars Jeanine Pirro and Ann Coulter and now Tina Brown.  All three consider the case to be closed. And the verdict to be a perfectly fair one.

Knox killed Meredith quite horrifically. Knox was rightly found guilty. And without further ado, Knox should get on with serving her time.

Friday, February 05, 2010

True Justice Is Rendered For Patrick Lumumba (Sort Of)

Posted by Tiziano

Above & below: Patrick’s bar which Knox managed to drive out of business.

1. Explanation of calunnia

Knox was prosecuted by the Republic of Italy, not by Lumumba, on a calunnia charge and her prison sentence was extended when she was found guilty of that. 

The charge of calunnia (art. 368) has been commonly translated as “slander” in the English/US media. This translation is incorrect, however, as calunnia is a crime with no direct equivalent in the respective legal systems.

The equivalent of “criminal slander” is diffamazione, which is an attack on someone”Ÿs reputation. Calunnia is the crime of making false criminal accusations against someone whom the accuser knows to be innocent, or to simulate/fabricate false evidence, independently of the credibility/admissibility of the accusation or evidence.

The charges of calunnia and diffamazione are subject to very different jurisprudence. Diffamazione is public and explicit, and is a more minor offence, usually resulting in a fine and only prosecuted if the victim files a complaint, while calunnia can be secret or known only to the authorities. It may consist only of the simulation of clues, and is automatically prosecuted by the judiciary.

The crimes of calunnia and diffamazione are located in different sections of the criminal code: while diffamazione is in the chapter entitled “crimes against honour” in the section of the Code protecting personal liberties, calunnia is discussed in the chapter entitled “crimes against the administration of justice”, in a section that protects public powers.

2. Knox Defense

Knox took the stand for two days during her trial, of course, trying to explain why she did what she did to her kindly former employer.

She only seemed to dig herself in deeper.

3. Patrick’s Win

Now Terni In Rete confirms his government compensation for his several weeks in Capanne and some damaging badmouthing.

CASSATION:  EIGHT THOUSAND EUROS FAIR COMPENSATION FOR PATRICK LUMUMBA

February 4th, 2010

By Adriano Lorenzoni

The fourth criminal session of the Court of Cassation has established that the sum of eight thousand Euros is fair compensation for Patrick Lumumba, the Congolese involved in spite of himself in the murder of the English student, Meredith Kercher.

Lumumba was dragged into involvement by Amanda Knox, and precisely because of her statements spent 14 days in prison.  Then the elements gathered by the investigators completely exonerated him. For that unjust imprisonment Lumumba had requested damages of 516 thousand Euros.

In the trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher, Amanda Knox was condemned to 26 years imprisonment, her ex-fiancé, Raffaele Sollecito to 25.

Knox, precisely for her false accusations against Lumumba, was condemned to the payment of damages of the sum of 50 thousand Euros with an interim award, immediately applicable, of ten thousand Euros.  Neither Lumumba nor his lawyer wished to comment on the decision of the Court of Cassation.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Why The Florence Conviction Of Dr Mignini Doesnt Matter Very Much

Posted by Commissario Montalbano

Trial prosecutor Giuliano Mignini with appeal prosecutor Giancarlo Costagliola

1. Background Of The Case

We previously posted on the case here and here.

Dr Francesco Narducci was found dead in Lake Trasimeno, to the west of Perugia, in 1985, and he had been a suspect in the Monster killings.

At first it was presumed to be a regular drowning. However, years later, as a result of some wiretapping for unrelated extortion cases, and thanks to some anonymous claims that Narducci was part of a satanic sect which had commissioned the monster’s killings, and had been killed by members of the same sect, the prosecutor in charge (Mignini) reopened the Narducci case.

The monsters’ modus operandi was to kill courting couples and to cut off the left breast and the genital area of the woman killed using a scalpel, which is why doctors tended to be suspected at the time.

The body was exhumed in 2002 and they found during the new autopsy (no autopsy was done back in 1985) that he might have been drugged and strangled in fact.

There had been some investigations following that autopsy finding dating back to 2004, and apparently some turf wars between the prosecutor’s office in Florence (which was in charge of the Monster case) and the one in Perugia (which was now in charge of the Narducci case).

It seems that in spite of an indictment of a pharmacist in Mercatale (the town near Florence where one of the 3 monsters was from) and a dermatologist, the complete mystery of the murders haven’t been solved as yet.

2. Outcome Of First-Level Trial

There were disagreements between Prosecutor Paolo Canessa in Florence, who for murky reasons wanted to bury the case, and Mignini, who thought there was a need to investigate the allegations that there was a sect that was actually commissioning and buying the body parts from the monsters (the actual killers were three friends, all convicted and now passed away).

The Florence prosecutor at the trial, Luca Turco, claimed that Giuttari and Mignini had conducted illicit investigations - which were in fact authorized by a judge - on some police officials and journalists because they were obstructing the investigation into the mysterious death of Francesco Narducci. Turco requested 10 months for Mignini and 30 months for Giuttari.

3. Legal Ramifications Of Provisional Verdict

First of all Article 27 of the Italian constitution says that a defendant is innocent until found guilty with a definitive sentence (i.e. only after the Supreme Court upholds the conviction in the second and last appeal). The appeal prospects of Giuttari and Mignini seem to be strong on both jurisdiction and evidence grounds.

Therefore in the eye of Italian law Mignini is provisionally still innocent until all appeals are exhausted.

Second of all, all sentences of 2 years in prison or under are automatically suspended, even when definitive, if one has no prior conviction. If within the next five years the defendant doesn’t commit any crime, the sentence is totally expunged. If instead he commits another crime than the suspended sentence is also applied, and the defendant has to serve it.

The suspension applies to both the prison term, and also to the interdiction from holding any public offices (which comes automatically with any conviction).

As a result of the above, Mignini will be able to continue his work in the Kercher case with no consequences. This provisional conviction may be exploited by some US media to discredit the Italian justice system further, and in particular this prosecutor and his handling of the Knox investigation as well.

I doubt that will have any effect on the outcome of the Knox/Sollecito appeal case. Although Mignini will give some assistance to the Procuratore Generale in the appeal, his own office is not competent at the appeal level, and therefore Mignini will not be arguing the case in court at the appeal level.

4. Three Levels Of Prosecution

There are 3 separate types of Prosecutor’s offices in Italy, each competent for a certain level of trial.

1st Level: Procura Della Repubblica

This office comprises the Procuratore della Repubblica (State Prosecutor), assisted by various Sostituti Procuratori della Repubblica (Assistant State Prosecutors). Mignini and Comodi are two such Assistants (Sostituti).

This office is competent for arguing on behalf of the State before the Tribunal and before the Court of Assizes (the latter tries serious crimes for which the Penal Code calls for at least 24 years in prison as the maximum sentence)

This Office (Procura della Repubblica), of which Mignini is part, tries only at the first trial level. These magistrates are not the competent offices for representing the State at the appeal level. That tasks falls into the hands of the office below

2nd Level (appeal level): Procura Generale Della Repubblica Presso La Corte D’appello E La Corte D’assise D’Appello

Long name, but the key words are GENERALE and APPELLO. That’s a sort of District Attorney General office before the Courts of Appeals. It’s composed of a Procuratore Generale Della Repubblica (District State Attorney General) assisted by various assistants called Sostituti Procuratori Generali Della Repubblica.

This office is competent for representing the State at the Appeal level both at the Court of Appeals and at the Court of Assizes of Appeals. This is usually argued by the Procuratore Generale himself or sometimes he might delegate his Sostituti (Assistants).

The prosecutor’s offices explained above are present in each district (basically each province) and they present the cases for which they are competent before the courts and tribunals in their districts.

Third level: Procuratore Generale Presso La Suprema Corte Di Cassazione

If the case reaches the Supreme Court of Cassation, located in Rome, there will be another prosecutor representing the State before that court:

That’s the State Prosecutor General before the Supreme Court of Cassation. His office is in the Courthouse of Rome. He’s also one of the ‘de jure’ members of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura

He will be the one arguing the case before the Supreme Court. Of course he has assistants as well. The office above is the only one in Italy, and as just mentioned it’s located in Rome.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Extreme Tastelessness Being Decried Of Knox Comedy Fundraiser In Seattle Tonight

Posted by Peter Quennell

Great to see Spokane lawyer Bill Edelblute speaking out for justice, taste and common sense once again.

Here Mr Edelblute comments in

today’s Examiner on tonight’s very widely-criticised laugh-in about Meredith’s death.

Murder a laughing matter for Seattle, comedy fundraiser for Amanda Knox January 27th

Apparently help is not on the way from Senator Maria Cantwell or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fast enough.

Or, Amanda Knox’s fans would not be holding a comedy fundraiser at the “Comedy Underground” in her hometown of Seattle tomorrow night, January 27th.  Believe it or not, but that is what is reported by KING 5 News of Seattle.  And see the ad posted by Comedy Underground for the event “starring SUSAN JONES, GEOFF LOTT,BILLY WAYNE DAVIS plus Xung Lam, John Gardner & Renee Perrault.”  Lott publicly calls women four letter obscenities.

Renee Perrault is a comedienne who used to work with Curt Knox, the convicted murder’s father.  She helped with a baby shower when Mr. Knox and his wife, now Edda Mellas,  were expecting Amanda.  (And, now, a “murder shower?”)

At $50 a head, Perrault hopes to raise $10,000 for Amanda’s appeal fund.  Though Perrault says there will be no jokes about the murder, it seems a strange mix.  It would seem difficult to not visualize the demise of Meredith Kercher while attending a fundraiser for legal fees arising from charges for that incident.  If that doesn’t suppress the laugh reflex, something is wrong no matter what you think about the trial result so far.  Perrault’s sense of humor seems a little off, in parallel with Knox’s seemingly inappropriate smiling during the trial.

Featured “comedian” Geoff Lott calls women four letter obscenities

But wait, it gets worse.  Geoff Lott, another performer slated for the event, has a blogspot in which he responds to critics of the appropriateness of the performance.  He says maybe they should get “physical” instead of just “textual” and ” maybe your arguments begin to hold the amount of water your fat dumb asses do.”  And this classy, professional, Knox supporter says ” if you get in my face about doing what I choose to that in no way effects, disrespects, or discredits you, then you better stay off my shoes, c*nt.” 

While this last word, even in abbreviated form is extremely offensive, in order to report on the nature of the performers for this event, it was deemed necessary, as you probably would have never dreamed of it.  To anyone planning to take any impressionable young people, then it should serve as a warning.  He in “no way ... disrespects” you, just calls you a filthy name, degrading to females?

Please, America, and the world, do not judge all of Seattle or Washington by this.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Andrea Vogt Reports On The Mignini Conviction In Florence

Posted by Peter Quennell

Andrea Vogt in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Giuliano Mignini was convicted on Friday on [one charge] stemming from his handling of a series of killings in Florence. The charges dis not involve the Knox case.

Knox was convicted in December of killing her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, and sentenced to 26 years in prison. She is appealing, and it’s unclear how her prosecutor’s troubles will affect her appeal.

On Friday, Mignini was given a suspended sentence of one year and four months, pending appeal.  He will be allowed to continue his regular duties.

The sentence was seen as a way of placating multiple powerful interest in Italy’s longest running unsolved mystery, the Monster of Florence.

The charges from 2006 allegations of unauthorized wiretapping of journalists and others as crimes were being investigated related to the Monster of Florence serial killings in the 1970s and ‘80s.

The abuse-of-office charges against Mignini have made him a lightning rod for criticism from Knox’s supporters, who argue that she was wrongly accused and convicted.

So Mr Mignini was found provisionally guilty on one narrow charge. Another charge was thrown out today, and several charges were thrown out previously.

Giuliano Mignini is a lot more popular in Perugia than he has been in recent times in Florence, where he investigated a narrow aspect of the Florence case perhaps too forcefully for some powerful interests.

He noted in an email to a Seattle reporter recently that what he caught secretly on tape was a Florence prosecutor lamenting the fact that his own hands were tied in the Monster of Florence investigation.

Given that, it is perhaps no surprise that Mr Mignini has hinted that he thought the dice might be loaded against him in the first round.

It was Mr Mignini’s own decision to appoint a very senior and respected co-prosecutor in the Knox-Sollecito trial, Ms Manuela Comodi, who handled at least half of the prosecutions’ case.

Now all eyes will be on the judges report on the Knox-Sollecito verdict, due out latest early in March. Judge Micheli arrived at his own conclusions a year ago based on the evidence and testimony in those 10,000-plus pages.

He was perhaps even a bit dismissive of Mr Mignini’s theory - though it was pretty mild compared to what is often portrayed.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

We Now Examine The Vital Sentencing Report The Entire US And UK Media Overlooked

Posted by ViaDellaPergola

The report overlooked is of course the formidable Micheli Report of precisely one year ago.

This 106-page report in Italian - initially issued electronically to the press and on paper to the public, and later posted on the Ministry of Justice website - explained Guede’s sentencing and Knox’s and Sollecito’s commitment to trial.

There were literally DOZENS of evidence points. And it is crystal-clear after reading it all that there is no way in the world that the attack on Meredith was carried out by a single person.

TJMK and our sister site PMF posted what were the ONLY long excerpts of the report ever published in the English-speaking world.

The UK and US mainstream media almost universally ignored the Micheli Report. The UK media published only brief, mild excerpts, and the US media published NO EXCERPTS AT ALL.

We have repeatedly referred back to the report in the posts and comments here, as it is so vital to seeing how the totality of the prosecutions’ case points so unequivocally to Knox, Solllecito and Guede ALL being guilty of killing Meredith.

Here are six of our key posts on the report.

• Judge’s Report On Guede Sentence Suggests Roles Of Knox And Sollecito


• Understanding Micheli #1: Why He Rejected All Rudy Guede’s Explanations As Fiction


• Understanding Micheli #2: Why Judge Micheli Rejected The Lone-Wolf Theory


• Understanding Micheli #3: How Damning Is The DNA Evidence Coming Up?


• Understanding Micheli #4: The Staged Scene - Who Returned To Move Meredith?


• Italians Have For A Long Time Known How Depraved And Cruel The Final Struggle Was

That second-to-last posting (The Staged Scene - Who Returned To Move Meredith?) is absolutely devastating to the dwindling group of Knox apologists that try to argue that there was no clean-up and a lone wolf (Guede) acted entirely alone.

Guede did NOT move Meredith or clean selectively to simulate a sex crime several hours after she passed away. First, he had no reason to (good reason not to, in fact), second, he left no evidence of that nature, and third, he was already otherwise engaged, in front of various witnesses.

At the latest by early March, the judges in the Sollecito-Knox trial will release a report that is similar in depth and detail to this one and presumably also in its power to convince.

Hopefully the English-language media will actually do their own translations of the report this time around. But if not, it will all be available in good English, fairly promptly, here.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Perugia Police Requirement To Protect Their Good Name: Another Calunnia Suit Now In The Works

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click above for the Daily Mail report. Good except calunnia (defined at bottom here) and not slander is the charge

Jailed student killer Amanda Knox is to be charged with slander after she claimed she was beaten by police

Today prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, who led the case against her, confirmed that Knox had been formally notified that the slander investigation had ended.

The step is the first procedure under the Italian legal system before being formally charged and gives a defendant time to contact lawyers and work out a defence.

Mr Mignini said: ‘On two occasions during her trial Amanda Knox claimed that she had been beaten during questioning - a claim which was denied by all the officers involved.

‘There was no proof to back up her allegation and to protect the good name of the police department a slander investigation was started and this has now been complete.

‘Knox has been informed of this through her lawyers at the jail where she is being held and a formal charge against her will be made within the next few weeks.’...

Under Italian law slander is punishable with a fine and or a prison sentence of between two and six years….

In November it also emerged that Knox’s divorced parents Curt Knox and Edda Mellas, had been placed under investigation for defaming police by claiming in an interview with a British Sunday newspaper their daughter had been beaten.

Explanation of calunnia

The charge of calunnia (art. 368) has been commonly translated as “slander” in the English/US media. This translation is incorrect, however, as calunnia is a crime with no direct equivalent in the respective legal systems.

The equivalent of “criminal slander” is diffamazione, which is an attack on someone”Ÿs reputation. Calunnia is the crime of making false criminal accusations against someone whom the accuser knows to be innocent, or to simulate/fabricate false evidence, independently of the credibility/admissibility of the accusation or evidence.

The charges of calunnia and diffamazione are subject to very different jurisprudence. Diffamazione is public and explicit, and is a more minor offence, usually resulting in a fine and only prosecuted if the victim files a complaint, while calunnia can be secret or known only to the authorities. It may consist only of the simulation of clues, and is automatically prosecuted by the judiciary.

The crimes of calunnia and diffamazione are located in different sections of the criminal code: while diffamazione is in the chapter entitled “crimes against honour” in the section of the Code protecting personal liberties, calunnia is discussed in the chapter entitled “crimes against the administration of justice”, in a section that protects public powers.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

With Not Many Prisons And Forecast Overcrowding Italy Decides To Build A Few More

Posted by Peter Quennell

[Above: Viterbo Prison where Guede is in the sex offenders’ wing]


Looks like bad news for the three convicted of murdering Meredith.

Their chances of early release if they fail to win release on appeal may now become much less. First the context, from Commissario Montalbano

Given these facts, coupled with the chronic lack of prison space, it shouldn’t be a surprise that in spite of the Cosa Nostra, the Camorra and N’drangheta (as the mafia is called in the various regions), Italy has maybe the absolute lowest prison population in the world in relationship to the total population.

Italy in fact has 66 inmates for every 100,000 population, a figure matched only by Denmark, a country certainly not famous for their organized crime. By comparison, the US boasts a prison population of more than 750 inmates for every 100,000, over 1 million inhabitants, a figure 12 times the one in Italy.

Now ANSA is reporting a declaration of a state of emergency in the prison system, and the round-the-clock building of new cells to contain about 37,000 new beds.

Alfano announced that first on the agenda was the construction of 47 new jail annexes to boost the system’s capacity by 21,749 units.

The new cell blocks would cost a total 600 million euros and follow the rebuilding strategy implemented in the earthquake-struck city of L’Aquila, with construction crews working in round-the-clock shifts.

“This is the same scheme that has allowed us to put a roof over the head of everyone who lost their home” in the April 2009 quake, Alfano said.

In addition, between 2011 and 2012 the government would launch a second campaign to build brand-new prisons to accommodate a total of 80,000 inmates, almost twice its current capacity.

To depressurize jails in the meantime, the justice minister promised new legislation allowing home detention for inmates with less than one year to serve on their sentence and probation with community service for anyone sentenced to less than three.

Finally, he promised to hire some 2,000 new guards needed to oversee Italy’s swelling prison population, which hit a post-war high last year of over 65,000 detainees.

Italy’s aging jails, most of which built in the 19th century, were designed to accommodate just 43,000 prisoners.

Experts have blamed the overcrowding for a record 71 prison suicides in 2009 and another four in the first week of January.

Below,  Viterbo Prison again. All prisoners in Italy are required to learn a useful trade. No info yet on what the three convicted of Meredith’s murder are learning, though there seems plenty of lead-time.

We presume that sooner or later, for their own protection like Guede already, Sollecito and Knox will end up in sex offenders’ wings.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

The False Accusation By Amanda Knox Against Patrick Lumumba

Posted by The Machine

This incisive video by our main poster ViaDellaPergola explores Amanda Knox’s accusations against Patrick Lumumba - made even though she knew very well he had then been at his bar.

These accusations resulted in Patrick’s arrest and imprisonment on the morning after the night that she first voiced them. Knox first made the claims as a WITNESS and so no lawyer was present, and so the statement was not entered into evidence.

But later on 6 November 2007 when she was in her prison cell as a SUSPECT she wrote her claims all out again. This purely voluntary written statement (alibi version 4)  by definition puts her at the scene of the crime. 

This written statement WAS entered into evidence - and not retracted or modified in any way until all believability had flown, and Patrick was already back home with his family.

In fact, it was not until she was on the stand on June 12 and 13 2009 that Amanda Knox came up with Alibi Version 5. This is the one never supported by Sollecito - where she claimed she was at his place all night.  Amanda Knox STILL has no alibi that stands firm.

Knox is being prosecuted by the Republic of Italy, not by Lumumba, on a calunnia charge. 

Explanation of

calunnia

The charge of calunnia (art. 368) has been commonly translated as “slander” in the English/US media. This translation is incorrect, however, as calunnia is a crime with no direct equivalent in the respective legal systems.

The equivalent of “criminal slander” is diffamazione, which is an attack on someone”Ÿs reputation. Calunnia is the crime of making false criminal accusations against someone whom the accuser knows to be innocent, or to simulate/fabricate false evidence, independently of the credibility/admissibility of the accusation or evidence.

The charges of calunnia and diffamazione are subject to very different jurisprudence. Diffamazione is public and explicit, and is a more minor offence, usually resulting in a fine and only prosecuted if the victim files a complaint, while calunnia can be secret or known only to the authorities. It may consist only of the simulation of clues, and is automatically prosecuted by the judiciary.

The crimes of calunnia and diffamazione are located in different sections of the criminal code: while diffamazione is in the chapter entitled “crimes against honour” in the section of the Code protecting personal liberties, calunnia is discussed in the chapter entitled “crimes against the administration of justice”, in a section that protects public powers.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

American Lawyer Ted Simon Appointed To Help Out Italian Team On Appeal

Posted by Peter Quennell

A couple of US media websites and many in Italy are reporting that Theodore Simon is joining the Ghirga-Della Vedova defense team in Italy for Amanda Knox’s appeal.

The Press Association quotes him as follows.

Mr Simon said: “Amanda’s conviction stands as a tragic example of a wrongful conviction which requires meaningful review.  “I look forward to working with Amanda and her family and with her Italian legal team, as we approach an appellate process that is designed, capable and empowered to ‘right this wrong’ which hopefully will result in her deserved release.”

Three points here.

First, Theodore Simon came across well in NBC’s excellent second Dateline report on Meredith’s case last year when he was then more neutral and even a tad pro-prosecution.

Mr Simon then predicted an uphill fight for the defense, and he explained the real danger of a whack-a-mole defense, where all the effort is put into trying to discredit a few straw-men elements when the body of the whole remains unshaken.

Second, the Ghirga-Della Vedova team never seem to have shown any appreciation for the “help” offered from the US which has seemingly turned many Italians off and possibly made their own task harder.

And third, Theodore Simon himself now seems to have moved sharply into his own whack-a-mole mode. When another prominent US defense lawyer attempted an intervention, we pointed out the real strength of the entire body of evidence.

John Q Kelly has been invisible on the case ever since.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

The Vicious Destruction of Curt Knox, The Father

Posted by Danusunt

Picture Amanda Knox’s father, Curt Knox, as he nervously adjusted his posture when a cameraman snapped, “Sit up straight,” before Curt’s first appearance on global television.

He may have been in a corporate video or two in the past, perhaps some family videos. But this was big time. People behind and around the cameras weren’t smiling. The feeling of all business must have felt less than sympathetic.

Imagine how someone from make-up yanked hairs out of Curt’s nose, and how a snotty producer cut Curt off mid sentence to bark, “Try not to say, ‘Ummm’ so much.” In the background imagine someone saying, “Curt, that LA lawyer lady is on the phone again.”

Thrust into the spotlight, things escalate from embarrassing to overwhelming to Gloria Allred pretty quickly. But the image of Curt Knox squirming under the lights and in front of the cameras cannot be so nightmarish as what happened to Curt Knox next. Curt Knox, the father.

His reflex would come as it would to most fathers, to protect his little girl’s reputation; and, himself being a VP at Macy’s, perhaps a little bit of his own. As it would play out, by throwing himself into the fray, he was putting himself in the witness stand, and would either be deemed a reliable, or an unbelievable witness.

From the beginning, Curt Knox appeared a little disheveled as he laid out the boilerplate. ‘She just couldn’t do this. She doesn’t have it in her,’ he’d say.

He and his ex wife, a math teacher from West Seattle Vanity Fair writer Judy Bachrach found ‘perpetually baffled,’ would drone on and on about how perfect and innocent Amanda is. Then relatives, then friends, then friends of friends, and ultimately people pulled off Seattle streets, waxed poetically about the outgoing little girl who’s favorite piece of clothing was a slightly rusted My Little Pony chastity belt.

But imagine Curt’s face as he listened to someone tell him, “Amanda boned seven dudes, one of them at least on a train, and another, that Raffaele guy, a couple hours after she met him. And it’s gone public. It’s everywhere.”

Jesus. To hear that about his own daughter after sticking his neck out proclaiming she is as pure as snow that’s yet to hit the ground. How awful to learn you’ve been made a liar by your own flesh and blood, and that daddy’s little girl has been whoring around.

And with not even the chance to recover, there on video for the world to see was his little darling, fingering lacy panties in a trendy store, as that Raffaele guy told her, loud enough for others to hear, that the sex that night was sure to be pretty good. Some may recognize that as a common West Seattle girl’s need after a roommate’s murder. But most wont, least of whom, the Italians.

Curt was a VP at Macy’s, and held a position whereby honesty and integrity were key. Of course this didn’t look good for his daughter. But what about Curt? Curt the man? Curt the father? Curt the VP? Curt the guy who makes his living with a perceptive awareness of everything around him. What kind of impact did this have on his standing as a reliable character witness? How does a guy make eye contact after something like that?

I imagine Curt walking the halls of his office, wanting to yell at his fellow muckity mucks, “Your daughters are boning just like mine. Don’t kid yourself goddammit!”

But he stayed the course, again and again selling his daughter’s innocence into the camera, playing up her honesty, and perhaps playing the smart card in sticking to his own story. VPs don’t blink. Part of me admired him for that. But the majority recognized the great mistake he was making.

Now imagine Curt’s face as he listened to someone tell him, “Your daughter keeps telling different stories of where she was. She was at that Raffaele’s house smoking drugs. Or, no, she was at home, smoking drugs. She slept in late, no, she was at the store first thing buying cleaning supplies. No, she listened as a black man raped and murdered that girl, and fingered her boss as the guy. They arrested him . . . oh, they let him go. He’s going to sue for defamation. Now she says she was so high she can’t remember anything.”

To make matters worse, the nighttime tabloid shows found the story juicy enough to pour their hearts and wallets into, and it was everywhere in HD, starring the crazy lying tramp American girl with multiple stories and a myriad of personalities. And emerging as the man who knew her least was Curt Knox the father, who by now was clearly an unreliable witness.

The harder Curt Knox worked to proclaim his daughter’s innocence, the harder she worked to refute it. Curt and his ex wife said she got along great with her roommates. Truth was the roommates found her annoying, and dirty. Curt claimed she was loved by all, but many in Perugia called her troia, or bitch. The more they painted their daughter a victim, the more came out that they didn’t know their daughter at all - the exceptional Ugly American.

It bordered on perjury.

Curt and his ex wife claimed there was anti-American sentiment. And if there wasn’t, they were working hard to get it. Or somebody was. And they had lots if help, mostly from knee-jerk dirt hustlers at small Seattle stations, to the larger-than-lifes at the mega corps. That kind of help turned Amanda Knox the poor little confused victim, into Amanda Knox, the big screw you from all of here at USA dot com.

It didn’t take long for the wolf effect to happen. The louder they cried their faith in their daughter, the louder was Amanda’s response with shame, the louder and clearer appeared her guilt in an Italian court. It got to the point that if Curt Knox and his ex wife said one thing, the immediate opposite was looked forward to with great anticipation. And of course, Amanda delivered.

I imagine Curt Knox roaming the halls wanting to scream, “What are you looking at! You know what your daughters are doing at their dorms, don’t you! You know what your daughters are doing in their sororities! They’re drinking! They’re smoking! They’re FUCKING!” And I can’t blame him. I imagine him kicking and punching and throwing things through doorways and out windows. I imagine his rage to be unfathomable, the pain so far out of reach. And I for one would hold his hand through the worst of it, Amanda’s guilt and all.

It wasn’t surprising when Americans started whining about the state of Italian CSI. Specialists started cashing checks as on-camera experts on criminal investigations. They went so far as to point at grainy video and cry foul at how things were handled. Americans have grown so fond of the sexy edgy forensic crime dramas that these people had no problem feeding hysteria to the bloodthirsty masses that wanted lasers and massive glistening breasts and bulging slacks covering the scene as only Americans can do. No Horatio, no deal.

But Italians don’t see things the same way. I suspect the Italian prosecutors viewed the defense’s cry about DNA evidence as a stroke of good luck, and knew they’d won the case when America at large started chanting it. The louder the cry, the greater the insult to the Italian process. In reality Amanda had already hung herself with her mouth, but American pride continued to spit blood and snot into the face of Italian common sense. All of this was just gravy.

Maybe even Gloria Allred saw that and said, “Shit. She’s toast.” Maybe Curt should have taken her call.

At some point, someone somewhere made a different call, and suddenly the American media that had immediately smelled a shit-stinking rat in Amanda Knox, was now smelling and selling sweeter and more patriotic, if not nationalistic bunny farts. On every channel were gossip-level shows pandering to the American idiot that the Euro wolves had captured their purest stray lamb, and a team of the brave should go get her.

I kept waiting for Curt Knox to at least go silent on the advice of a qualified PR agent. Silent like the murder victim’s family. Silent like that Raffaele’s father, a prominent Italian doctor who for sure could have raised quite the stink in his own country if he felt there were foul play. But you’ll notice that Raffaele’s father, Curt Knox’s counterpart, was nowhere to be found in the American media.

But Curt and his ex wife kept whoopin’ it up like Slim Pickins at a chili cook-off that had run out of spoons. Many called it a coordinated media campaign, which included an impotent Larry King handing over the national stage to Curt and his ex wife to increase focus on that which, in the end, was doing more harm than good. Great for the ratings, bad for their daughter. It was as if some Hollywood screw was walking the two of them over every possible mine in the field just for giggles and grins.

CNN reported that Della Vedova, a member of Team Knox, reminded the jury of its obligation to church law, and to be “morally certain of their decision.” Again, probably another mistake, being that the majority of Amanda Knox’s transgressions had been of the moral nature. She had proven herself a liar, had bared false witness, and had clearly established herself a Jezebel. By continuously singing Amanda’s praises, Americans more so crucified her as they did come to her rescue.

There would be better judges to evoke than they of the Church. Perhaps Horatio Caine. But anyway, that’ll be 486,987 Hail Marys and 25 years in what is a pretty nice prison by any standards.

I imagine Curt Knox now, a burned-out tree trunk of a man sitting alone in his car in his VP parking spot. The wipers have stopped in the middle of the windshield and he stares at them with squinted eyes. He’s had the screaming matches with his ex wife over what she must have done to fuck up his daughter. He’s had the fights with the lawyers who couldn’t put a stop to it. He’s had the hugs and sobs with the foreign diplomats who really aren’t going to go to bat on this one. But deep inside, his anger rests on something he just can’t lash out at.

Amanda Knox had left home on Daddy’s dime no doubt, with a farewell to be remembered - “peace out suckers, loves Amanda.”

How does Curt Knox recover from something like that? Curt Knox the man. Curt Knox the father. Curt Knox, the sucker.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

The Driving Psychology In The Perugia Case: Could Those Just Convicted Be “Charming Psychopaths”?

Posted by Miss Represented

A Newish Psychological Concept

Those not yet familiar with the “charming psychopath” concept may be in for a surprise when they google the term.

It has been quite thoroughly explored in the past decade, in part with the hope of preventing future crimes.

Many thousands of relatives and friends of both victims and perpetrators have had their lives upended when one or other charming psychopath - probably part of a large pool - sheds any constraints, and a cool callous murder results. 

The “charming” component leads easily to denial. There is quite a history of campaigns that set out to deny that any particular such murderer could actually have done it.

They simply seemed far too nice. 

A widely read article by Robert D Hare on charming psychopaths in Psychology Today presented a precise description of the symptoms that should hint to the perceptive eye that something might be seriously wrong.

These are two highly-rated book-length treatments of the charming psychopath concept which have recently been selling well

• Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D Hare


• Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work by Paul Babiak and Robert D Hare

Psychologists well qualified in this field have now begun to float articles on the concept as it may apply to Raffaelle Sollecito and/or Amanda Knox, and some books will presumably follow.

Here is an article “Signs that suggest Amanda Knox is a psychopath” by an experienced American psychotherapist, Dr Coline Covington, who now practices in England.

She was the former Editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology as well as the former Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council, and she has also worked for the London police.  In the article she describes Amanda’s behaviour in court:

Knox’s narcissistic pleasure at catching the eye of the media and her apparent nonchalant attitude during most of the proceedings show the signs of a psychopathic personality. Her behaviour is hauntingly reminiscent of Eichmann’s arrogance during his trial for war crimes in Jerusalem in 1961, and most recently of Karadzic’s preening before the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

The psychopath is someone who has no concern or empathy for others, no awareness of right and wrong, and who takes extreme pleasure in having power over others. The psychopath has no moral conscience and therefore does not experience guilt or remorse.

Most psychopaths are highly skilled at fooling those around them that they are normal by imitating the emotions that are expected of them in different circumstances. They are consummate at charming people and convincing them they are in the right. It is only when they reveal a discrepancy in their emotional response that they let slip that something may be wrong with them.

The psychopath is the conman, or in the case of Amanda Knox, the con-woman par excellence. Her nickname “Foxy Knoxy”, given to her as a young girl for her skills at football, takes on a new meaning.

Whether or not Knox, who is appealing her verdict, is ultimately found guilty, her chilling performance remains an indictment against her. Her family’s disbelief in the outcome of the trial can only be double-edged.

This is not the only time a suggestion has been made that Amanda has displayed behaviour which is often associated with psychopathy. It is a view that I myself have supported in the past.

And similar arguments have just been made by Professor David Wilson and Professor David Canter.  Rather lurid headlines, but their science is sound.

On my companion website to TJMK on the psychological dimensions of the case, Miss Represented, there is some interesting discussion in the Comments on the arguments for charming psychopathia now being presented.

These articles are probably only the tip of the iceberg as more psychoanalysts get drawn to this case.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Rudy Guede Appeal: The Published Judgement Of The Court Of Appeal

Posted by Peter Quennell

The AGI News Service carried the full wording of the judgment which was published after the court session concluded.

Judges Giovanni Borsini (above) and Maria Rita Belardi presided over the appeal. There were no lay judges. The translation of the judgment below was kindly provided by our poster Tiziano.

The Court of the Assizes of Perugia at a hearing in chambers has published through a reading of the purview of the sentence the following judgement with reference to Articles 443, 605, 599 of the Code of Penal Procedure,

In partial emendation of the judgement handed down on October 28th, 2008, by the GUP of the Law Court of Perugia, in the matter of Rudy Hermann Guede, appealed against by the former, previously allowed the reduction of general mitigating circumstances, equivalent to the contested aggravating circumstances, reduces the sentence of the appellant to 16 years incarceration.

It confirms the remainder of the contested sentence. 

It condemns the appellant to payment of the expenses of the defence of the civil complainant Aldalia Tattanelli , which it liquidates in total as 1,500 euros.

Of those [legal costs] of the civil complainants John Leslie Kercher, Arline Carol Kercher, John Ashley Kercher, Lyle Kercher, it liquidates in total as 8,000 euros each, as well as that of the defence of Stephanie Arline Kercher, which it liquidates in total as 5000 euros.

It assigns the period of 90 days as the limit for the lodging of questions for the motivations for this judgement.

                                                         

Added: The post has been corrected and the translation above clarified in light of poster Nicki’s comment below - several of us took it to mean that the main award to Meredith’s family that had been reduced.

For the record, the financial awards that Judge Micheli handed down at the end of October 2008 against Rudy Guede were 2 million Euros each to Meredith’s parents John and Arline, and 1.5 million Euros each to Lyle, John junior, and Stephanie.

That is about US $12.1 million at today’s exchange rate.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Rudy Guede Appeal: And The Outcome Is A Reduction Of His Sentence From 30 To 16 Years

Posted by Peter Quennell

The decision is not yet announced. But it should be decided within two or three hours. The court is now in closed session.

Yesterday Guede’s two lawyers, court-appointed Walter Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile, asked at the outset for his acquittal for their client.

Seemingly contradictorily to us, they also asked for the granting of the extenuating circumstances already granted to Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

They said their client is frank, young, not a liar, has not slandered anyone, and is the only one that has always told the same version of events.

As our posts below explain, this is not strictly correct. Guede in fact subtly backed off his claims of intimate relations with Meredith and of clearly having seen Sollecito.

The prosecution repeated their demand that Guede have his full term in prison affirmed, and the lawyer for Meredith’s family did likewise.

By the way, some of our emails, several quite passionately, argue for the innocence, partial or total, of Rudy Guede. There is a feeling that he was either set up or fully framed for the crime.

Though even he admits that he left Meredith to die, and that he never called an ambulance that might have saved her.

Update: As TJMK poster Commisario Montalbano had warned in his posts and comments below Rudy Guede stood to get his sentence reduced to about this amount. 

The extenuating circumstances extended to Knox and Sollecito are now taken into account. Also because Guede had selected a short-form trial he was eligible anyway for a sentence 1/3 less than that of Sollecito and Knox.

Fairly automatic in fact. We see nothing in this that should provide any comfort to Knox and Sollecito that their own verdicts will be overturned. 

Emailed for inclusion here by Commisario Montalbano.

The two appeals are totally independent. The judges are different too. The process for an appeal of an abbreviated trial are subject to the procedures of Art. 599 of the CPP, which are different from the full appeal of an appellate Court of Assizes, the tougher process that Knox and Sollecito must contend with.

This judge simply expected that Amanda and Raffaele will get their sentence confirmed in appeal, and he then acted accordingly. Basically he granted to Guede the same ‘attenuanti generiche’ applied to the two of them.

And then with the 1/3 auto-reduction for his short-form trial Guede got his sentence reduced to 16 years.

On the appeal of AK and RS anything can happen, but the most likely scenario is a confirmation of the sentence. The only way they’ll get out of it is if a majority of jurors see grounds for reasonable doubt based on ‘insufficient evidence’.

That’s not too likely, but possible.

The 16 years is arrived at because Knox and Sollecito each received 24 years for Meredith’s murder. Sollecito received an extra year, and Knox an extra two years, for the other crimes for which they were found guilty. 

Our legal advisers tell us that all three sentences seem to be light by American standards.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Rudy Guede Appeal: Not Yet The Hoped-For Last-Minute Story Change

Posted by Tiziano

As my fellow poster Commisario Montalbano explains under the post directly below, Rudy Guede might get several years off, for some equity relative to the Knox-Sollecito sentences.

But other than that, his appeal grounds still don’t consist of coming clean and giving us all, Meredith’s family and friends especially, the full story of why and how things happened as they did which might make a SERIOUS difference.

This is a translated summary of the report in advance of today’s hearings from the news agency Adnkronos

Rudy Guede has 2 days to risk all for his future, 48 hours to dismantle the “concrete castle” of reasons for his guilty verdict and 30 years in gaol

Now serving his term in prison in Viterbo, Guede, 23, a former basketball player plays his last cards Monday & Tuesday in Appeal Court; the appeals court has already refused to reopen his case and requests for more expert reports made by Gentile & Biscotto, his lawyers

The riskiest card to play? That of sexual violence. Guede says he was in the bathroom when two assassins entered, one of whom was Amanda Knox; his only guilt was in not helping Meredith; He says he was in intimate contact with Meredith, but not against her will

Meredith’s body was found half-clothed although she did not have major bruising. Guede claims Meredith was dying but fully clothed when he ran away; he asks why he would have simulated violence; that would have directed blame against him as he had had contact with her. Thus someone else turned the house over and undressed Meredith according to Guede; proving this, her legs were not blood-stained, so she was wearing jeans when killed

There is a hard battle ahead [in these two days]: the reasons for the 1st stage trial verdict [Judge Micheli’s] were not in doubt according [Judge Micheli], and the prosecutor has asked already for confirmation. But in the meantime [the past one year] other things have transpired

Guede chose his fast-track trial in hope of a discounted sentence, but in fact received the heaviest of the sentences: Knox & Sollecito were granted some relief on their penalties as they were recognized as deserving general mitigating circumstances, resulting in their sentences of 26 & 25 years respectively

Although his case is independent of AK/RS trial, he continues to say:“Now there is confirmation that my verdict was unjust”  Guede’s lawyers will ask for his full acquittal, but he would get just below 20 years even if he were only granted mitigating circumstances

On Monday the civil complainants will appear; and Maresca & Perna (for the Kercher family) will come first at the hearing; then it will be the turn of Guede’s defenders

And this is translated from this morning’s El Messagero

Guede has claimed in a statement that he was only guilty of failure to help Meredith: He did not kill her, neither did he violate her. He claims there was a difference of opinion between AK & MK over money.

He turned to Kercher lawyers & stated that he wished Meredith’s parents to know his only fault was in his failure to assist their daughter as she lay dying

Added: The AGI news service is reporting from the hearings Guede’s lawyers are bitterly attacking the media and especially Knox’s and Sollecito’s lawyers for trying to pin all the blame onto him.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Guede Appeal Outcome Mon-Tues Could be An Indicator To Knox-Sollecito Appeal Outcome

Posted by Peter Quennell

The first eight posts at the bottom here represent our previous reporting on Rudy Guede’s appeal.

Commissario Montalbano’s recent post on the Italian appeals process is also vital reading here.

The appeals grounds seemed thin, and the appeals judge will be very thoroughly acquainted with the report of the judge who first sentenced him, Judge Micheli.

There were only two variations to his original story in the appeal hearings: that he had not had intimate relations with Meredith, and that he had seen and identified Knox but not Sollecito. In his trial, his story was that he had identified Sollecito by appearance if not by name, and that he might have heard Knox nearby.

He emphasized that he briefly tried to save Meredith. But of course he fled without ever calling an ambulance, even anonymously, and Meredith was left clutching her wounded neck, with her door locked and her mobile phones removed. Guede then went out to a disco before taking to his heels to Milan and then Germany.

Recently Guede was mysteriously attacked in prison. Connected or not? Who knows? But Rudy might be thinking that 30 years in prison with time off for behavior is a better bet than another possible attack that ends worse.

The pro-Knox and Sollecito factions seem to be banking on their appeals late 2010 being a whole new trial. Guede’s appeals judge simply refused to reopen the whole case with new witnesses, and the November hearings were over very quickly.

Our Italian experts tell us that if Guede gets freedom, then Knox and Sollecito may expect to see freedom too. And if Guede gets his sentence reduced or confirmed, then that is very likely to be their fate too.

For why they all seem to be so joined at the hip read here and here. The Guede-as-lone-wolf theory never even got to first base.

Friday, December 18, 2009

A Shoot-From-The-Hip Donald Trump Appears To Have Been Told Less Than The Full Truth

Posted by Our Main Posters

Click here and here for Donald Trump’s take on the case.

An expanded version appeared on the defunct Trump University website. The discussion thread there probably contains more strident anti-Italy comments than any other, ever, on Meredith’s case.

If you live in most parts of the United States you can go a thousand days without hearing even a single a racist or xenophobic comment. For the most part that is simply not how most people talk. Many have a real eagerness to travel and learn more and student exchange schemes have really rocketed.

There are still some immigrant tensions along the border with Mexico but these days that largely is it. The racial mix in the US is very good fun, it is a huge cultural and economic asset to the country, and there is lots of nice “ethnic” food and some real fun parades. The many young European and Asian women who visit New York say it is the nicest city in the world for them, because they feel safe and welcomed and nobody hits aggressively on them.

The big foreign targets that anyone older than 20 will remember were China, Russia and the Soviet countries. Those of course faded as villains. Since then the most villainously depicted in the movies made here have tended to be Arab. And even that seems to be fading.

So the extreme anti-Italian animosity deliberately and cynically fueled by the FOA campaign is really quite an outlier. The only other demon European country in the recent period was France, when the Prime Minister said war with Iraq was a bad idea, and much of that evolved into farce rather than real hatred.

Donald Trump’s property business went bankrupt in the late 1990s and his casino business went bankrupt last year - at which time his own board forced him out for being such really bad news. He really is not now someone of consequence as oppposed to high-profile. That is, if he ever was. 

Quite why Donald Trump leaped into Meredith’s case is frankly not at all clear. He clearly knows almost none of the real facts and he seems to have little to gain.

This strident anti-Italianism he is stoking is really sad, sick news.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Another Prominent US TV Commentator Sees The Evidence Pointing Pro-Guilt

Posted by Peter Quennell

Three highly influential women commentators in the US are now forcefully arguing pro-guilt on TV.

They are legal talk-show host Jeanine Pirro (video below), legal analyst Wendy Murphy, and now conservative political commentator Ann Coulter. All three proceed from a deep understanding of the hard evidence.

The bleach purchases mentioned here were never actually proven, though Knox was seen in the bleach area of the Conad supermarket early the day after (when she claimed to be asleep), and in both Knox’s and Sollecito’s apartments, bleach did appear to have been used. 

Otherwise, pretty good.

By the way, Ann Coulter’s new book “Guilty” that you see promoted on the video is not about Amanda Knox. It is actually about liberals being too soft on defendants. To ourselves the large and rapidly growing community of those pro-justice-for-Meredith and pro the verdict and sentence seems to cross all political boundaries.

We’d say the common factors here are strong logic, hard work in really getting into the evidence (a lazy Peter Van Sant obviously hasn’t), a reluctance to be snowed, and a deep humanity toward the real victim.

Meredith. In case the FOA campaign ever forget.

Andrea Vogt Has A Long Cool Take In The Seattle PI On Where Things Stand

Posted by Peter Quennell

Please click above for the report. This one is highly worth reading in full.

Apart from the highlights quoted below, the report touches on Amanda Knox, now semi-resigned in her cell, on the very extensive nature of the evidence, and on the pro-defendant stance of the Italian justice system.

Italian reactions to the commentaries of Timothy Egan and others not very immersed in the evidence are also reported on.

According to Andrea Vogt, in many ways, things are not, at least not yet, so very different from before. The campaign goes on, if now sensibly a lot more subdued.

We do however continue to see large numbers coming by TJMK to read here at length (especially now from Seattle) and according to our emails the shock-factor of the actual evidence is often quite considerable.

And the judges’ long and very detailed judgment report out early next March at the latest may prove to be a definitive bottom line, as Judge Micheli’s report was after the Rudy Guede trial.

It is that objective and exhaustive judgment statement that will define what the appeal is about.

1) On Italian reactions to the charges of anti-Americanism

On Monday, another salvo was fired at Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., from Italy as the Italian president of the Italy-USA Foundation, an association that works closely with the U.S. Embassy in Rome, released a statement on the foundation’s website describing his Sunday prison visit with Knox and harshly criticizing Cantwell’s comments about the Italian justice system.

“I believe it is out of place to insert anti-Americanism, as stated by American Sen. Maria Cantwell, into a situation like this that can be easily exploited,” wrote Rocco Girlanda, president of the Italy-USA Foundation, in a news release posted on the foundation’s website. “In my opinion it would have been more correct to avoid creating controversy or alleged affairs of the state that are totally outside the official declarations of the parties and of their respective governments.”...

On Monday, Cantwell’s spokeswoman did not repeat the complaints that the senator has made but said her office will continue to monitor the Knox case….

Cantwell’s questioning the fairness of the Italian justice system has raised the ire of many on this side of the Atlantic….The handful of American journalists inside the courtroom regularly attending the trial did not witness the “anti-Americanism” of which Cantwell spoke.

2) What really mattered to the jury in their deliberations and the length of the sentence

Jurors said they believed the forensic evidence, as reported last spring here and here and not the defense’s attempts to dismiss the evidence at trial and during closing arguments.

The forensic evidence was presented in open court and subject to cross-examination and robust debate. Legal scholars say Knox is lucky she didn’t get a longer sentence….

The jurors, polled and interviewed after the verdict, said they were not split on the question of innocence or guilt but rather on the question of whether she should get life in prison or less.

3) An Italian expert on the justice system notes that this was a fair trial

“This is the simplest and fairest criminal trial one could possibly think of in terms of evidence,” said Stefano Maffei, lecturer in criminal procedure at the University of Parma.

“There were 19 judges who looked at the facts and evidence over the course of two years, faced with decisions on pre-trial detention, review of such detention, committal to trial, judgment on criminal responsibility. They all agreed, at all times, that the evidence was overwhelming.”

The court’s sentence of Knox and Sollecito was mild, Maffei said, with the jury taking into account the facts of the crime along with her clean criminal record.

He noted that a similar reduction in sentence did not happen with co-defendant Rudy Guede, even though he agreed to a fast-track trial, which reduced his sentence from life to 30 years.

4) The very extensive nature of the evidence presented.

Often lost in the debate over Knox’s guilt is the evidence presented at trial. Some of it was strongly disputed, and some likely forgotten by those in America trying to keep up on a trial that took place a couple of days a week over several months with long breaks of no proceeding at all.

Jurors, interviewed after the verdict, said they were convinced by the forensic evidence and were unanimous on the question of guilt or innocence, though they made a point of noting they did not believe Kercher’s murder was premeditated.

[In Andrea Vogt’s full report in the Seattle PI (click through above) there follows an excellent bullet-point list of the evidence.]

5) The many pro-defendant protections built into the Italian justice system

For historical and political reasons unique to Italy, the country has a justice system with an extraordinary number of protections for the accused, more than many other European nations.

“These criticisms we are hearing from the United States are so strange,” said Stefania Carnevale, an assistant professor of criminal procedural law and prisoner’s rights at the University of Ferrara.

“They leave me perplexed because the critique seems to be about the behavior of the police or the prosecutor or small details of this single trial, not the system as a whole. If there are errors in a trial, the Italian system has rigorous checks and balances in place to correct such mistakes, and guarantee an appeal.”

Knox may have a number of salient points on which to base her appeal, most notably several pieces of contested forensic evidence and the fact that she was questioned without an attorney present despite being treated as a suspect by Perugian police.

The presumption of innocence is so strong in Italy that under criminal procedural law, Knox is still not considered a convicted murderer, and won’t be, until she has been found guilty through all phases of the process: Court of Assize, where the jury just made a decision; the Appellate Court of Assize; and the Court of Cassation.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Jeanine Pirro A Former Powerhouse Prosecutor Weighs In Accurately On The Case

Posted by Peter Quennell

Jeanine Pirro is extremely well known and much admired and respected around New York because she was a FORMIDABLE District Attorney for Westchster County.

Westchester County is directly north of New York City and it is one of the two or three most wealthy in the US. It has more than its share of powerful perps. 

Jeanine Piro won case after case after case, and she has an absolutely exceptional TV presence, being scary smart, extremely funny, and absolutely gorgeous to look at.

She appears in the second half of this clip, right after a mumbling and confused Ann Bremner.

The host here, Geraldo Rivera, never lets real facts get in the way of a good story. Here his grasp of the real facts is dismal. But although he tries very hard to trample all over Jeanine Pirro, it is pretty clear that he is desperate and she emerges the clear winner.

Geraldo Rivera’s stance here is interesting. This is only the second example after Jane Velez Mitchell of CNN of a Hispanic leaping on board the xenophobia bandwagon. Normally Hispanics have very good reason to want to see other countries and peoples treated with respect.

Memo to Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC: perhaps one way of reducing your exposure to those defamation suits that may be headed your way from Italy?

Have Jeanine Pirro on your broadcasts from now on. You know. For some actual balance.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Our Letter To Senator Maria Cantwell: Please Don’t Take Precipitate Action Till Full Facts Are In

Posted by Highly-Concerned Washington-State Voters

We are all regular voters who live in the Seattle area. We have signed the original of this letter to our US senator, Maria Cantwell, and sent it off to her Capitol office. 

We think we increasingly mirror a very large minority or even a majority of cool-headed but concerned Seattle-area voters who would like to see her speaking up for truth and real justice in this case.

And for the rights of the true victim.

We are not running a campaign. We don’t think Senator Cantwell needs hard persuasion. We think once she immerses herself deeply in the real facts, those facts will tell her the right thing to do.

Dear Senator Cantwell

A number of your well-informed constituents are wondering about your motivations for suddenly injecting yourself into the Meredith Kercher murder trial debate, immediately following last week’s unanimous guilty ruling for American Amanda Knox in Perugia, Italy. 

We wonder because you said you were saddened by the verdict and had serious questions about the Italian judicial system and whether anti-Americanism had tainted the trial.  But then you went on to describe how you knew for a fact that the prosecution in the case did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Amanda Knox was guilty. 

We’re confused because it seems to us that if you had been following the case closely enough to be certain that not enough evidence had been presented by the prosecution that you would consequently have a very clear idea of how the Italian judicial system functioned and know whether or not anti-American sentiment had impacted the ruling. 

So, as a group of concerned Seattle area constituents who have been following every detail of this case since poor Meredith Kercher was murdered, we humbly offer you our assistance towards bringing things into proper perspective.

Were you aware that Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian from Giovinazzo, Bari was convicted right alongside Ms. Knox?  Mr. Sollecito received some of the best legal representation available in Italy, including senior lawyer and parliamentary deputy Giulia Bongiorno who won fame as a criminal lawyer when she successfully defended former Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti a few years ago. 

Ms Bongiorno has said nothing about anti-American sentiment having influenced the ruling against her client, nor has she complained about fundamental problems with the way this trial was run.  Instead, she is now completely focused on looking ahead to the appeal process as her next opportunity to mitigate sentences or argue for her client’s innocence. 

This should assuage some of your concerns.

But perhaps you are referring to the extra year Ms. Knox received in comparison to Mr. Sollecito’s 25-year sentence as a clear example of anti-American sentiment?  That’s a fair concern; however, in Italy the jury panel for a trial is required to submit a report within 90 days of a ruling describing in great detail the logic used to convict and sentence, or absolve a defendant. 

For example, in Rudy Guede’s fast-track trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher last year Judge Paolo Micheli issued an exhaustive 106 page report outlining the panel’s labored decision-making process, in sometimes excruciating detail.  We can expect no less for the trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, and when that report is issued we will have our best look yet at the evidence that was used to convict the pair.

We suggest that you seriously reconsider “bringing” Hillary Clinton and the State Department into the debate.

Consider that State Department spokesman Ian Kelly stated that the US embassy in Rome had been tasked with monitoring the trial and had visited Ms. Knox in jail, and several embassy representatives were known to have attended the reading of the ruling last week. In addition, an American reporter based in Italy who has followed the case from the outset said last night on CNN that the trial had been monitored from the outset.

Secretary Clinton has clearly been very busy with far more critical tasks than to have maintained a personal familiarity with the Kercher murder case; however, Kelly did state that in response to recent press reports Secretary Clinton had taken time to look things over and has yet to find any indication that Knox did not receive a fair trial.  You surely realize that Secretary Clinton will not be interested making public comments regarding an ongoing legal process in a sovereign, democratic nation that is a long-time ally of the United States.

Also note that on the Italian side of the equation, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told his countrymen that he has yet to receive any criticisms of the trial from the office of the US Secretary of State and that the fierce criticism of the case by the Seattle based Amanda Knox support group should not be confused as the position of the US government. 

And Luciano Ghirga, Knox’s own Italian lawyer, has stated that he does not question the validity of the trial and that he believes it was conducted correctly. Furthermore, regarding your desire to have Clinton become involved, Ghirga concluded, “That’s all we need, Hillary Clinton involved”¦this sort of thing does not help us in any way.” 

Perhaps he is referring to the heated discussions in the Italian press these days regarding the strong criticisms of Italy’s legal system coming from a country that supports Guantanamo Bay, the death penalty, and other perceived injustices of a far-from-perfect American legal system.

As these examples demonstrate, and from your own humble constituents’ well-informed perspective, there is nothing out of the ordinary or alarming about the Meredith Kercher murder trial process.  The prosecutors and defense teams will continue to debate the evidence throughout the appeal process, just as we should expect them to. 

If you do decide to go forward with your inquiry, despite significant opposition from your constituents, we recommend that you do so only after becoming more familiar with the evidence presented during the trial, as presented by a neutral source. The family and friends of the US citizen recently convicted are probably not neutral.

If you take a good look, you will see that there are checks and balances in the Italian way of achieving justice, just as there are in the American system. In the final analysis, it is completely as Beatrice Cristiani, deputy judge for the Kercher murder trial, put it: “As far as I am aware our system of justice does not make provision for interference from overseas.”

Fully signed by all of us in the original sent to Senator Maria Cantwell

CNN’s Legal Analyst Lisa Bloom Nails Cantwell’s Ill-Informed Intervention

Posted by Peter Quennell

This is from Anderson Cooper’s nightly news show on CNN in the US.. Certainly it is one of the best.

Lisa Bloom appears at the 4 minute mark (and Barbie Nadeau after that) following Senator Cantwell’s various ill-informed charges. But in the space of less than a minute she really nails it.

Here Lisa Bloom stands up for truth, fairness to Italy, and compassion to the real victim. Meredith Kercher. .

 

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Most Important Italian Paper Balks At The Attempts In US At Intimidation

Posted by Commissario Montalbano

[Above: The Corriere Della Sera building in Milan]

The Corriere Della Sera is the Italian equivalent of the New York Times and the London Times.

It wields huge influence throughout Italy and reflects the popular mood in its reporting. It does NOT like the campaign of vilification against the trial and its outcome. Here is a translation of today’s blast by Beppe Severgnini.

The do-it-yourself verdicts and that wrongful U.S.A. cheering

Many Americans criticize the ruling, but have never followed the case. Why do they do that?

Judicial nationalism and media justice, when put together, form a deadly cocktail. We also have Reader-patriots and journalist-judges ourselves, but what is happening in the United States after the conviction of Amanda Knox, is embarrassing. Therefore it is highly worth pondered upon.

American television, newspapers and websites are convinced that Amanda is innocent. Why? No one knows. Did they follow all of the trial? Did they evaluate the evidence? Did they hear the witnesses who, moreover, testified in Italian? Of course not! They just decided so: and that’s enough.

Like Lombroso’s*** proselytes: a girl that is so pretty, and what’s more, American, cannot possibly be guilty. No wonder Hillary Clinton is now interested in the case: she’s a politician, and cannot ignore the national mood.

There are, as I wrote at the beginning, two aspects of the issue. One is judicial nationalism, which is triggered when “a passport is more significant than an alibi” as noted in yesterday’s Corriere’s editorial by Guido Olimpio. The United States tend to always defend its citizens (Cermis tragedy, the killing of Calipari) and shows distrust of any foreign jurisdiction (hence the failure to ratify the International Criminal Court). In the case of Italy, at play are also the long almost biblical timespans of our justice, for which we’ve been repeatedly criticized at the European level.

But there is a second aspect, just as serious as the first: the media justice operation. Or better: a passion for the do-it-yourself trial. It’s not just in the United States that it happens, but these days it is precisely there that we must look, if we want to understand its methods and its consequences.

Timothy Egan - a New York Times columnist, based in Seattle, therefore from the same city of Amanda - writes that the ruling “has little to do with the evidence and a lot with the ancient Italian custom of saving face.” And then: “The verdict should have nothing to do with medieval superstitions, projections sexual fantasies, satanic fantasies or the honor of prosecuting magistrates. If you only apply the standard of law, the verdict would be obvious “. 

But obvious to whom? Egan ““ I’ll give it to him - knows the case. But he seems determined, like many fellow citizens, to find supporting evidence for a ruling that, in his head, has already been issued: Amanda is innocent. In June - the process was half-way - he had already written “An innocent abroad” (a title borrowed from Mark Twain, who perhaps would not have approved this use).

To be sure, among the 460 reader comments, many are full of reasonable doubt and dislike journalists who start from the conclusion and then try in every way to prove it.

I did not know if Amanda Knox was guilty. In fact, I did not know until Saturday, December 5, when a jury convicted her. I do have the habit of respecting court judgments, and then it does not take a law degree ““ which I happen to have, unlike Mr. Egan - to know how a Court of Assizes works.

It is inconceivable that the jurors in Perugia have decided to condemn a girl if they had any reasonable doubt. We accept the verdict, the American media does not. But turning a sentence into an opportunity to unleash dramatic nationalistic cheering and prejudice is not a good service to the cause of truth or to the understanding between peoples.

A public lynching, a witch hunt trial? I repeat: what do our American friends know? How much information do those who condemn Italy on the internet possess? How much have those who wrote to our Embassy in Washington, who accused the magistrates in Perugia, and who are ready to swear on Amanda’s innocence, studied this case for past two years?

Have they studied the evidence, assessed the experts’ testimony, or heard the witnesses of a trial that was much (too) long? No, I suppose. Why judge the judges, then?

They resent preventive detention? We don’t like it either, especially when prolonged (Amanda and Raffaele have spent two years in prison before the sentence). But it is part of our system: in special cases, the defendant must await trial while in jail.

What should we say, then, about the death penalty in America? We do not agree with it, but we accept that in the U.S. it is the law, supported by the majority of citizens. A criminal, no matter which passport he has in his pocket, if he commits a murder in Texas, knows what he risks.

Before closing, a final, obligatory point: I also did not like the anti-Amanda crusade in the British media, for the same reasons. The nationality of Meredith, the victim, does not justify such an attitude.

For once - can I say it? - We Italians have behaved the best. We waited for and now we respect the ruling, pending further appeal.

I wish we Italians behaved like that with all other high profile crimes in our country - from Garlasco’s case and on - instead of staging trials on television and spewing verdicts from our couch.

***Note: Cesare Lombroso, was a 19th century Italian criminologist who postulated that criminality was inherited, and that someone “born criminal”’ could be identified by physical defects.

[Below: the distinguished Italian columnist Beppe Severgnini of Corriere]

Saturday, December 05, 2009

“Amanda Knox: Behind The Hollywood Smile, A Liar, A Narcissist And A Killer”

Posted by Peter Quennell

Knox’s flippant callousness in court clearly did her no good.

With the exception of several in the media the universal view seems to be that Knox has been given her due.

Here’s a commentary by Tom Rawstorne that is typical of any of the reporters who followed the best of the reporting from the court.

For Team Knox, it wasn’t meant to end like this. The flights back home to America had been reserved and plans meticulously laid out for the first day in Seattle ““ a manicure to smooth Amanda’s prison-worn nails and then a Mexican meal followed by her mother’s home cooked pastries.

Then there would be the seven-figure media deals to be mulled over (with best-selling crime writer John Grisham pitching to pen the definitive book) and dates with Oprah Winfrey and Larry King to fulfil. There was even talk of a Hollywood film ““ after all, who could resist the story of a beautiful 22-year-old American whose trip to Italy ended with her being forced into confessing to a brutal murder that she did not commit?

But, as film goers know, Tinseltown loves a happy ending, and the guilty verdict delivered last night in the Aula degli Affreschi (Court of the Frescoes) put paid to that.

So instead it is a very different future that now faces Amanda Knox and her family, who had flown in en masse to be by her side for the closing days of the year-long trial.

For Knox, her conviction for the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher means an immediate return to Capanne prison on the outskirts of Perugia where she has spent much of the past two years.

She will be placed in a cell on her own and checked by guards every 15 minutes. If she is deemed not to be a suicide risk in all probability she will then be returned to the five-person cell she was in before.

There she had bagged one of the top bunks, so that she could see out of the window and to the world beyond.

Of course although Knox has been convicted, the judicial process is far from over. An appeal will be launched in the New Year, but that will not be heard until the autumn.

Not only will it take time to organise but it will also cost a lot of money, with high-flying lawyers and forensic experts once again to be retained. It is money that Team Knox claims it no longer has. The family has already spent in excess of $1.2million (£750,000) supporting Knox.

Her divorced parents Edda Mellas and Curt Knox have remortgaged their homes, and so has Knox’s 72-year-old German-born grandmother Elizabeth Huff .

They say that their credit cards are ‘maxed out’ and that they are now so short of money that they will have to sell their homes to continue their fight. Indeed, Mrs Mellas is seriously contemplating moving lock stock and barrel to Italy with her new husband to reduce the need for expensive transatlantic flights.

Mrs Mellas insists that she has never once doubted her daughter’s innocence.

‘Never,’ she says. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes for Amanda, however long it takes. The good news is she will get out of this, the bad news it could take several more years.’

That she and her family are so sure of her innocence has at its essence a belief that Amanda Knox simply could not have murdered another human being.

‘I’ll tell you a little story about Amanda,’ is the way Mrs Mellas explains it. ‘She doesn’t know how to lie. If you were to ask her, “What d’you think of my shoes?” and she thought they were hideous, she doesn’t do the polite thing ““ she’ll tell you they’re hideous. Since she was five she’d do that.’

When Amanda Knox was first remanded in custody a little over two years ago, she vowed that she would learn to speak Italian. Having cut her linguistic teeth on The Jungle Book, she recently finished reading Anna Karenina.

Indeed so good is her grasp of the language that her lawyer has suggested that she should herself go in to the law. While many will raise an eyebrow at such a suggestion it is entirely in keeping with the spin put on Knox’s incarceration by her supporters.

They insist that she has tried to draw positives from her time inside, rather than wasting energy getting angry and resentful about the fate that has befallen her.

So it is we are told that she has whiled away the time by helping teach other inmates English and yoga and by learning to cook, to do needle-point and to play the classical guitar.

‘She’s made it a time to learn, to learn about herself and the friends she has and the way the world works,’ says her mother. ‘She realises it’s not about her any more, she truly sees herself as one of the lucky ones in there.

‘She sees women in there who have no support, or good lawyers, or even family, they have nothing.’

Such a depiction is central to the portrayal of Knox as herself a victim in this tragedy, the suggestion being that the way she has comported herself is indicative of her true character.

Since her arrest, any cracks that have emerged in that portrayal have time and time again been dismissed as being down to ‘naivety’ rather than anything more sinister.

For instance, at the police station prior her to arrest, why was Knox seen performing cartwheels?

‘This is Amanda just being Amanda,’ explains her mother. ‘As her friends would say, “It’s an Amanda thing”. The police were still being friendly to her then, so she was stretching, and they were talking to her and she said, yes, she had been a gymnast, and they were like, “Well, how about a cartwheel?” so she did one.’

Shortly after that came Knox’s confession, the one that put her squarely at the murder scene.

‘It was coercion,’ says her stepfather Chris Mellas, a 36-year-old IT professional who has spent many weeks at the trial supporting Knox.

‘They (the Italian authorities) did what they needed to do to get her to say what they wanted her to say.’

Next they had to explain why she told police that Patrick Lumumba, an entirely innocent bar owner, was involved in the killing. Again, we are told, it was all down to police ‘bullying’, and that ever since Knox has felt ‘terrible’ about dragging him into it.
Amanda Knox on her way to Germany

Then there is the story she had written about a violent rape and posted on her Facebook site that was discovered by journalists following her arrest.Over to her mother again.

‘That was for an assignment at university,’ she says. ‘Her friend Jessie had the same assignment, and she said Amanda’s story is tame compared to hers.’

During the trial there were other slips, other quirks that caused surprise. Arriving at a hearing on Valentine’s Day she wore a t-shirt bearing the slogan ‘All You Need Is Love.’

On another occasion she interrupted proceedings to explain that a pink vibrator found amongst her belongings was a gift from a friend and was just ‘a joke’.

Then there has been her see-sawing behaviour, smiles and flirty flirty glances followed soon after by tears and pained protestations of innocence. On its own, no one is saying that any of the above is indicative of guilt.

But taken with the prosecution’s DNA evidence, it is easier to understand why the jury was willing to accept that Knox did indeed have it in her to carry out a brutal murder.

They clearly did not believe that Knox was an innocent abroad (the girl with the so-called ‘acqua e sapone’ face, the ‘water and soap’ representing wholesomeness and purity).

Rather, they chose to accept the version put forward by prosecutor Giuliano Mignini who describes the real Knox as being ‘narcissistic, aggressive, manipulative, transgressive, with a tendency to dominate’.

Not only was she ‘easily given to disliking people she disagreed with’ but was a ‘talented and calculating liar’.

On the night of the murder, the prosecution alleged, Knox and Sollecito were high on drink and cannabis and returned home after meeting Rudy Guede, the Ivory Coast drifter who was separately convicted of the killing.

Finding Miss Kercher at home alone, Knox decided to take revenge against her housemate whom she had come to view as boring and sober-minded.

Maybe the spark was an argument about Knox bringing home another man, or maybe about some missing money. No one knows for sure. But it is claimed that when Guede went to the bathroom, Knox and Sollecito started to argue with Miss Kercher in her room.

Venting her resentment of Miss Kercher, Knox pushed her violently against a cupboard while her boyfriend held her hair. Guede emerged from the bathroom and joined in, eager to compete with Sollecito to have sex with Miss Kercher.

When she fell to the ground the three tried to undress her, Knox pulling out a knife while Guede began to sexually abuse her.

Mr Mignini told the jury: ‘It is easy to believe Knox said . . . “You were such a little saint . . . now you are going to be forced to have sex”.’

As Sollecito pulled at her bra strap, Knox stabbed her for the first time. Pulling out his own, smaller knife, Sollecito did the same. As it became clear Miss Kercher would not submit, Knox began to strangle her as Sollecito continued to stab her, prompting Meredith to let out the ‘terrible’ scream that neighbour Nara Capezzali heard.

At this point, Knox delivered the fatal blow, plunging her knife into Miss Kercher’s neck at around 11.30pm.

Under Italian law, relatives of victims can ask for compensation from the defendants if a guilty verdict is reached. Miss Kercher’s family have lodged a claim for £22million damages for her death.

While the amount is largely symbolic, it is an additional front for Team Knox to fight. Mr Lumumba ““ later released without charge ““ has also put forward a compensation claim after what his lawyer called his ‘ruthless defamation’.

He has said: ‘My life as a man, husband and father has been ruined because of Amanda Knox.’

Then there is the separate case being brought by Italian police, also for defamation, over an interview given by Curt Knox and his ex-wife Edda to the Sunday Times in which they said their daughter had ‘been abused physically and verbally’ by police.

Team Knox has dismissed the possibility of such court action as a minor problem, adding that all their efforts will focus on clearing the name of Amanda.

Plans for her home-coming will not be cancelled, they say. Just put on hold. Whether that postponement will be a matter of months ““ or years ““ only time will tell.

The Rulings: The Judge Hands Down The Sentences And Those Convicted Head Back To Prison

Posted by Peter Quennell

Full Roundup On The Verdict, Sentencing And Reactions Here For Sure Sunday Latest

Posted by Peter Quennell

There is so very much to report.

And obviously we are playing catch-up here after yesterday’s crashes despite some amazing support from our hoster in Phoenix. .

This site is very demanding. with the YouTubes, Powerpoints, images, and Acrobat versions of images. The site runs stable on a shared server with up to 300 or so online but above that it loses stability..

TJMK will move to a dedicated server starting next week. We are not going anywhere. An average of 300 readers puts TJMK in THE TOP TWO PERCENT of all sites visited in the world.

Friday, December 04, 2009

The Rulings: The Families And The Media Have Been Summoned To The Courtroom

Posted by Peter Quennell

The as-usual impartial Ann Wise reports for ABC News.

An Italian court deliberating the fate of Amanda Knox has summoned the defendants and lawyers to the courtroom in what may be a verdict in the nearly year-long murder trial.

The long awaited verdict may be delivered when court resumes at midnight in Italy [6 p.m. ET] after the defendants, lawyers and their families—as well as the family of murder victim Meredith Kercher—arrive at the court in this medieval town.

If convicted of murder, Knox, 22, and her co-defendent and former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 25, could be sentenced to life in prison.

The announcement of a verdict came 11 hours after the six jurors and two judges began their deliberations this morning, and 11 months after the prolonged trial began.

The last 24 hours have been tense for Knox whose younger sister Deanna told ABC News that Knox was torn between excitement about the prospect of going home for Christmas, but scared that she would be convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

This we believe will be the first time Meredith’s family has ever had to encounter the Knoxes and the Mellases. They have seen Amanda Knox in court several times, and it was once noted that Knox seemed to stare fixedly at them, perhaps hoping for eye contact.

And below, translated by our poster Tiziano, is a an article in Il Messagero today explaining what the judges and lay-judges are going through,

The Court of the Assizes is called upon at this time to undertake a very difficult task, and frankly this writer feels compelled to express his understanding of the difficulty within which the judges will have to operate.  Furthermore, the function of the Court of the Assizes is linked to the examination and the decision-making on trials which have a notable social profile in relation to the crime for which the judgement arises. 

As is known, the Court of the Assizes is composed of a president and an assistant judge (a “side judge”: trsl.), both of whom are stipendiary (=career) magistrates, and of a full six civil judges, chosen from those who have matriculated from high school (ie: who are qualified for university entrance), who have full civil and voting rights and who are between the ages of 30 and 65.

The ambit of the Court of the Assizes is a very special jurisdiction, which our order imported from the French law:  the term “assise” was already noted in the medieval epoch with the French word “asise”, that is to say, “a fixed article”, which in its turn derived from the latin “assidere”, that is, “to seat next to”.  It was only in 1810 that the French order introduced “le cour d’assises”.  In the Italian order the Court of the Assizes appeared in 1859, in the Sardinian penal procedures code, until in alternate phases, it found a new place in the reform of the judicial order which came into force in 2003. 

Briefly, it is competent to decide on all those crimes for which the law sets out a penalty of life imprisonment or a penalty of not less than 24 years.  In the Kercher judgement, therefore, the decision will be in the hands of two career judges (“robed judges”: trsl.) and six civil judges,  who will have the difficult task of evaluating even complex technical legal questions.  The worth of the vote of the civil judge is equal to that of the career judges, thus substantially each of the eight judges is to be considered equal in grade in the expression of his/her own conviction on the guilt or otherwise of the defendants. 

Because of the nature of the structure of the Court of the Assizes , as well as because the circumstances of the Kercher trial are substantially that of a circumstantial trial, it is to be presumed that the deliberations of the panel will be extremely long.  On each of these judges weighs the delicate task of having to decide on the future life of two young people, and at the same time, of giving an answer to the thirst for justice of the Kercher family and of society as a whole.

It is not to be excluded that a majority decision will be arrived at, in so far as in these cases, it is arduous to obtain an unanimous one, for in addition to technical reasons, the individualities of each single judge must must prevail, each of whom must be intimately convinced of his or her own choice.  There still exists, borrowed from Anglo-saxon law, the border which separates guilt from acquittal, constituted by the principal of a choice made “beyond any reasonable doubt”.