Headsup: In the US, the bizarre AP report, carried by just some of the media, and a delusional, highly defamatory rant 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.

Friday, January 24, 2025

US’s Financially Beleagured Associated Press Again Shows Anti-Italy Pro-Mafia Bias

Posted by KrissyG

AP Reporting Update

Is the Associated Press on the take?! Hard to account otherwise for its perpetual strong bias on Meredith’s case. We have a full report in the works.

Colleen Barry, the ardant Amanda Knox fan-girl reporter who supplies the AP releases on Knox, has been filing heavily pro-Knox reports since 2013. That was already long after the trial, and the Massei sentencing report, which she clearly has never read.

She has never even mentioned the mafia angle although even the cautious Italian press has often openly reported on it. She has never even hinted at how the Hellman appeal court and the Maresca-Bruno appeal court and the Boninsegna calunnia court were bent.

She ignored the 500 or so false claims in Knox’s book. She reported none of the smoking guns on this page. She shows the legal aptitude of a newt. She is utterly at sea on ECHR.

Now she is failing Americans again in her latest laughable attempt to swing it for Knox. Her gushing pieces appear in worldwide media as syndicated articles which hundreds of outlets quote verbatim as their template.

For example, see this glowing AP press release put out by Barry, back in April 2024 re the then forthcoming calunnia trial, fawning over Knox with an overdose of sugary syrup and saccharine that is quite nauseating:

MILAN (AP) — Amanda Knox faces another trial for slander this week in Italy in a case that could remove the last legal stain against her, nine years after Italy’s highest court threw out her conviction for the murder of her 21-year-old British roommate.

Knox, who was a 20-year-old student when she was accused along with her then-boyfriend of murdering Meredith Kercher in 2007, has built a life back in the United States as an advocate, writer, podcaster and producer — with much of her work drawing on her experience.

Now 36 and the mother of two small children, Knox campaigns for criminal justice reform and to raise awareness about forced confessions. She has recorded a series on resilience for a meditation app and has a podcast with her husband, Christopher Robinson, and an upcoming limited series on her struggles within the Italian legal system for Hulu that has Monica Lewinsky as an executive producer.

...and continues in a similar cloying vein, with Lumumba, the victim of the crime - let’s not forget, not Knox - dropped in as merely a few words, a passing pesky footnote, to the proceedings at hand.

Colleen Barry’s favourite phrase in respect of all of this is that of “a case that could remove the last legal stain” from Knox. 

Prior to yesterday’s final outcome, Barry was still using the term ‘taint’ that very morning to describe the presumed abomination Barry saw as being outrageously placed on Knox’s saintly head. 

By yesterday evening, Barry - with the verdict in - had pulled words like ‘stain’ and ‘taint’ out of her articles, now that Knox is indeed irrevocably ‘stained’ and ‘tainted’ - Barry’s own words - by her serious criminal conviction. 

So today, all the references to ‘stain’ and ‘tainted’ have been removed as we cannot have Colleen Barry’s object of admiration thus described.  Barry then has to do her actual paid job, as a neutral journalist, of just reporting the facts (what a bore for her):

Judge Monica Boni read the verdict aloud in a courtroom that was empty except for a few reporters and guards. The lawyers for both Knox and the man she wrongly accused, Patrick Lumumba, had gone home during deliberations.

But Colleen Barry of AP cannot resist sneaking in a few fangirl words about Knox nonetheless, tacked on at the end, quoting Knox’ X-twitter message and displaying the whole image:

Knox called it a “surreal” day in a post on X.

“I’ve just been found guilty yet again of a crime I didn’t commit,” her post said. “And I was just awarded the Innocence Network Impact Award, ‘created to honor an exonerated person who raises awareness of wrongful convictions, policy issues, or assists others post-release.’”

As if Knox is not a confirmed convicted felon of a serious crime.

Oh dear.  Amanda Knox and her keen admirer, Colleen Barry of AP, propagandist extraordinaire, just cannot understand - nor seemingly accept - the concept of the rule of law.

Sod Lumumba, the victim of her crime: in Colleen Barry’s world, who cares about him?

But Colleen Barry was forced to approach Lumumba for comment, given, hello, *that is her job* and so she had to reveal:

Reached by telephone, Lumumba said he was satisfied with the verdict. “Amanda was wrong. This verdict has to accompany her for the rest of her life,″ he said.

Shucks.  That was really hard for Colleen Barry to write.  It hurt.

Media Tip On Calunnia Verdict: Knox Actually Lost On SEVEN Occasions.

Posted by James Raper

Caustic “explaining” at trial - it failed

All Of Knox’s Seven Losses

1. Guilty at the 2009 Massei trial; guilty verdict; sentenced.

2. Guilty at the 2011 Hellman appeal; confirmed guilty; re-sentenced.

3. Guilty at the 2013 Chieffi First Chambers annulment of most else of Hellman.

4. Guilty at the 2014 Nencini court repeat of the first AK and RS appeal.

5. Guilty at the 2015 5th Chamber’s appeal (strictly speaking it wasn’t up for consideration here, because it was already a definitive conviction, but the Motivation made it clear that the outcome of her ECHR case would make no difference to it).

6. Guilty at the 2024 Florence appeal court retrial, following an annulment and referral back down die to law change.

7. Guilty at the 2025 Supreme Court 1st Chamber, final appeal.

It’s the end of the road on this for her. Hardly a case of “Waiting to be Heard”.

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Supreme Court: Knox Calunnia Guilty Verdict Correct; Appeal Fails

Posted by Peter Quennell

Lead judge Monica Boni

Knox Fails Final Appeal.

1. Breaking News

Italy’s Supreme Court has confirmed Knox’s criminal slander conviction by the Florence Appeal Court for accusing the innocent and deeply harmed Patrick Lumumba of murder.

RAI is “Italy’s BBC”. It is state-owned. We have quoted their reports a lot. Here is their report on tonight’s Supreme Court verdict against Knox which just went up on their site.

Meredith murder, the Supreme Court upholds Amanda Knox’s three-year sentence for slander

The appeal filed by lawyers for the American woman Knox accused of defamation against Patrick Lumumba in the case of the murder that took place in Perugia in November 2007 has been rejected

The First Criminal Section of the Supreme Court has rejected the appeal filed by Amanda Knox against the 3-year sentence (already served) for the accusation of having slandered Patrick Lumumba.

The 37-year-old American citizen was put on trial (again, at her own request) for having blamed Lumumba (not involved in the crime) for the murder of Meredith Kercher, the English student killed in Perugia on November 1, 2007. Lumumba, who was innocent, remained in prison for 14 days.

Amanda Knox was re-sentenced last June by the Court of Appeal of Florence. The case came to the attention of the Tuscan judges after the European Court of Human Rights (wrongly) found her right to defense violated in the interrogations in which she accused Lumumba.

“I am very satisfied because Amanda made a mistake and this sentence must accompany her for life. I felt it and I salute the Italian justice system with great honor”. This is what Patrick Lumumba said after the sentence.

Knox lawyer Luca Luparia Donati, defender together with Carlo Dalla Vedova of Amanda Knox, remarked “It is a totally unexpected sentence for us and unjust for Amanda. We are incredulous. We will read the reasons why.”

2. In-depth analyses

Our explanations of the Florence verdict just endorsed can be read here and here.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Mind Game: My Lawyer Persona Represents Knox On Night Of Arrest

Posted by James Raper

Central Police Station; girls’ house over hill at rear

Mind Game

I have sometimes thought – none too clearly it has to be said -  what might have happened had Knox had a legal representative with her when she was interviewed by the police about the exchange of text messages on her phone.

The easiest way to do this, since I have often attended clients at the police station, is to envisage what might have happened had I been that legal rep. This, therefore, is a thought experiment based upon my own knowledge of the case, that is the material that arose during the trial, the law, police tactics/ethics/professional standards etc as would have applied had the interview occurred within my own jurisdiction.

I may get a bit Mickey Spillane with the following.

I see myself arriving at the Questura and seeking initial disclosure before speaking to my client in private. I expect that the police would tell me about the murder and that my client was a flatmate of the murdered girl.

The murdered girl was a Meredith Kercher and that she had been found in her bedroom at the cottage which my client shared with her and two other girls, with her throat slashed. The best estimate they had as to time of death was that the murder had occurred overnight on the 1st/2nd November.

My client, Amanda Knox, had told them in various verbal and written statements that she had been with her boyfriend at his flat at that time.

That had been what the boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, had also said, but now he had contradicted that saying that my client left him earlier that evening and had not returned until about 1 am. The boyfriend had told the police that he had been persuaded by my client to give the police a false version of events but had not elaborated further on that.

In view of this contradiction to what had hitherto been a joint alibi they wanted to interview my client for her explanation of this development and to find out if she had any further information to give which she had not so far given, and if so, why not. The suspicion they had was that she had, at best, deliberately misled the police as to her alibi, for whatever reason, and at worst, that she had done so to avoid her own involvement in the murder being investigated.

So yes, having come to the Questura voluntarily initially she was now being detained for the time being, that is, under arrest, as was Sollecito.

Other than the foregoing they had no actual evidence of my client’s involvement (at least that they were prepared to disclose). I am going to assume also that my client had been told about the position concerning Sollecito, that she had told me this when she phoned me to request my assistance. After all, why would she need a legal rep unless something had just gone pear shaped.

I therefore go to see my client. She wants to talk a lot straight away but I shut her up immediately and give her the well rehearsed introduction as to who and what I am, what I am here to do for her and what I have been told by the police.

I tell her that murder, short of treason, is the most serious criminal offence there is, and if the State were able to prove her involvement in the death of her flatmate, then she could expect a mandatory life sentence.

Waiving away any possible protestation of innocence I tell her the good news is that the police apparently have very little to go on in that respect, in fact nothing but an alibi that does not now stand up, and that’s what they want to question her about.

I tell her that what we discuss, what she tells me, is confidential and privileged. I will not say anything to the police without her consent.

There are, however, some professional rules by which I must abide. If she discloses some fact which is self incriminatory (at worst, for instance, that she did murder Kercher) then although I will not tell the police, I will not sit silently by her side in the police interview as she denies it. I will not be complicit in that and will excuse myself from the interview and, furthermore, not act for her any more.

She needs to understand what is kosher but, of course I am here to advise her every step of the way, so long as I am still acting. I tell her that although she will be questioned she does not have to say anything other than to confirm her name, date of birth, address, and nationality. Anything she does say will be recorded and may be used in evidence against her.

However should she have an explanation in response to a question then a refusal to offer that up at this stage might go against her should she then want to rely on such an explanation at a later date. Any questions that stray off track and have anything to do with her possible involvement in the murder are a definite no-no and she should simply reply “No comment”.

I will be there to ensure that there is no “fishing “ by the police and that she goes “No comment” when appropriate. It is, after all, up to the police to prove a case and she does not have to give them any help.

As to whether she has committed another offence for which she can be charged, such as lying to the police as to her whereabouts for the purpose of an alibi, then that is unlikely unless it can somehow be stretched to perverting the course of justice which again, I advise her, is very unlikely.

I then ask her whether she has an explanation for Sollecito’s behaviour. If what Sollecito had said were true, then can she give an innocent account of her whereabouts up until about 1 am, preferably with witnesses to back it up?

If she can then she can expect the police to try and verify or disprove that account. Furthermore, if she could do so, why had she not already done so? Perhaps she was just waiting for me. If Sollecito was lying, had she any idea why?

Now I am guessing here, obviously, but it seems fairly clear from the stance she took at trial that she is not about to concede that she had been away from Sollecito during the relevant time period. Nor tell me that if she was, she had an innocent explanation that she could give, which anyone could at least try and check.

So she doesn’t say anything on that score but on the question of why Sollecito would lie, she has two options: she could say “I don’t know, what he says isn’t true” or she could try a bit of mind reading.

However I think it likely that she would have done the first and only then set about the second.

She tells me that she stayed with Sollecito. Normally she would have gone to work but that night she had a text message from her boss telling her that she didn’t have to turn up.

She doesn’t understand why Sollecito would lie to the police. All she can think is that he, like her, had walked into a situation he had never been in before, got scared, and must have been trying to find a way out by disassociating himself from her (the explanation she gave in her Memorial).

I let it rest as to why he would have been scared but I assure her she has no reason to be scared. I ask her if she has her phone but of course this had been taken off her when she was detained. I ask her to tell me whether there might be anything recorded on the phone that might be incriminatory. She could be asked about that during the interview. She says no.

Now there are some legal reps who simply insist that their client say nothing to the police : “say “No Comment” all the way through”.

I am not one of them as there are circumstances where I judge that it is probably in their best interest to co-operate, unless, that is, I have some very bad vibes from the police disclosure, or from my client. In this case I have got neither.

Furthermore my client wants to be released as soon as possible and a “No Comment“ interview would potentially hinder that outcome, which I have already in mind to argue for quite forcefully when the interview is over, whatever their suspicions. She should respond to their questions in the same way she has with me. My client is happy to proceed.

And so into the interview which I expect will not take long.

It is to be tape recorded. There are 4 other people there. We are all seated round a table. Inspector Rita Ficarra is to lead with the questions, assisted by Officer Lorena Zugarini. They are on one side, I and my client sit on the other side.

To one side, but next to my client, sits the interpreter, Anna Donnino. Just as well as I cannot speak a word of Italian! (I have dropped Ivano Raffo from this scenario as otherwise it would be getting a bit crowded.)

The tape is switched on, introductions are made and my client is read her rights and given the prescribed Caution.

Ficarra recounts what Sollecito had said during his interview with them, pointing out that what he had said contradicted what Knox had been telling them about her whereabouts. Had she in fact left Sollecito’s apartment in the evening of the 1st November, returning at about 1 am? My client replies “No. I don’t understand why he would have said that.” Had he left and she stayed? Knox replies “No. We were together all the time.”

Ficarra looks sceptical and produces Knox’s phone. “You sent a text to someone at 8.35 pm, just a few hours before the murder, in which you indicate that you’re going to meet up with him, or her, a little later. Who was that?”

WOAHH! I suspect the police of having had this information and of not having disclosed it to me when I arrived. I look at my client. My look says “Anything to worry about?” She shrugs her shoulders but looks irritated and confused at the same time.

Ficarra continues before any response can be formulated. “You were responding to an unidentified text that has been deleted from your phone. What did that say and who were you communicating with?”

At this point I want to stop the interview and have a private word with my client. My client has already told me about the text she received but not about the reply and a meeting. I ask for a break so that I can consult with my client.

Ficarra will have none of it. She says “Miss Knox has already had the benefit of legal advice from her rep. She is now in a recorded interview and being asked questions – quite simple questions – which she can choose to answer or not. The interview will continue. She says she did not leave Sollecito’s flat and if true she should have nothing to worry about. We need her co-operation and (looking at my client) she has been very co-operative to date.”

I interject and ask to see the text message. Ficarra places the phone in front of me and my client. I read “Va bene. Ci vediamo piu tardi. Buona serata.”

Now my Italian is rubbish but with the benefit of a bit of Latin and French even I can see that this does not add up to much. Loosely translated I read “OK, See you later. Good evening.” I say that out loud and look across at the interpreter. She nods her head.

But then there is the deleted text (on my client’s phone) and who this other person is.

Again I look at my client. She responds spontaneously to my look. “See you later? That doesn’t mean that I was going to meet someone. That’s just something one says”. I nod.

Ficarra continues. “We are conducting a murder investigation and we need to trace and interview the person you were texting. Who is it?”

My client looks puzzled if not a bit stunned. Not what I was expecting. What’s the problem?

Knox says “I don’t remember.”

Ficarra presses her. “Think.”

The interpreter jumps in at this point, telling my client that memory can be effected by trauma and giving an example from her own experience.

Again I say “I do need to have a word with my client. You have brought up something that was not disclosed to me and if you persist on your right to continue and to ask my client questions, then I will direct my client, each time, to answer “No Comment”.” I give my client a long look to make sure that she has got the message too. It appears she has.

Ficarra nods in exasperation and the tape is switched off.

When we are alone together I ask my client why she can’t remember and if there is a problem. I ask her to bear in mind my previous advice. She tells me it is her boss Patrick Lumumba and that she works a couple of evenings each week at his bar, “Le Chic”.

I ask her if there is any reason why she would not want to tell the police this. She shakes her head. I tell her that if that’s the case then it would be in her best interest to tell the police that she does remember now and that it was Patrick Lumumba.

However I also tell her that the police will certainly check with Lumumba and ask him for his version of what the text exchange was about.

Knox nods but still looks concerned. I notice that and again ask if there is anything else she wants to tell me. She says no. Only after Lumumba’s arrest do I (or the police) learn that in his deleted text to her he had said that she would not be required for work that evening.

The interview re-commences. I tell the police that my client has a short statement which she wishes to make. This statement basically just confirms what she had told me about Lumumba and her employment at Le Chic. Ficarra thanks my client for that but wants to probe a lot deeper.

Doesn’t “See you later” suggest a meeting later that evening and why did my client not mention any of this in the statements which she had already given to the police?

Knox says that no meeting had been or was being suggested and that she hadn’t mentioned it previously because it didn’t seem to be relevant – not, incidently, because she had been unable to recall the exchange of texts. That was my first warning that she could be unpredictable, indeed untruthful.

Also flashing up in my mind was the disclosure I had received that Sollecito had said that he had been persuaded by Knox to give a false version of events.

I had indeed mentioned this to Knox at our initial meeting. Was the issue of relevance an easier thing for her to put forward than a lack of memory on her part, which, whenever mentioned, only ever seemed to provoke further discussion?

Was that what she was trying to avoid? Ficarra certainly seemed to think so because she immediately mentions this to my client. Why had my client put him under pressure to give a “false version of events”?

I interject and say that my client, quite clearly, disputes what Sollecito had told them. Knox adds “He is not telling the truth”. I’m going to wrap things up for my client now and tell the police that on my advice she will now answer all further questions with “No comment”.

Ficarra, however, presses on but is met with “No comment” each time. That said some of those further questions are certainly food for thought, and are going to make my overture to the police to release my client, whether unconditionally or on bail, somewhat more complicated.

Why, in Filomena’s room, was there glass on top of the scattered clothing rather than underneath, which would be the case if the break-in was genuine? She mentions a host of other observations, all indicative of a staging. Who would be most likely to have an interest in a staging, she asks my client? Again “No comment”

Why is my client’s lamp on the floor in Meredith’s room, behind a locked door?

“No comment”.

Why are there no visible prints in blood between the blood in Meredith’s room and the footprint in blood on the bathmat in the small bathroom? Somebody must have removed them. Was it her?

“No comment”.

And so on, basically a trawl through all the circumstantial evidence the police had accumulated by this point in time. Much of this stuff, admittedly, was not mentioned in disclosure, but the police are still entitled to bring it all up.

And perhaps this is what Knox had in mind when saying, later, that she had been told by the police that they had (in her own words) “hard” evidence against her.

Ficarra’s tactics here are obvious. She is trying to unsettle my client, and she is succeeding, not that I can do anything about it. Knox looks pained and unsettled. She is holding her head in her hands. I point that out to Ficarra, telling her that my client is obviously distressed and needs a break from the questioning.

Ficarra nods and the tape is switched off. However she tells me, and deliberately in Knox’s presence, that there will be further questions for my client, that the police are waiting on forensic results, and a search of Sollecito’s bedsit, and that although a matter for the custody sergeant, and ultimately for the Superintendent at the station if an extension of detention is required, she will be opposing police bail, until this is all out of the way. Clearly she thinks that my client is somehow involved in Meredith’s death.

Suddenly there is an outburst from my client. “It’s him. It’s him!” This is not recorded on tape because it has been switched off. I now ask for time to consult with my client. I can see that the request pains Ficarra but after a moment’s hesitation she nods in agreement.

Back in private conference with my client, she tells me that, although her memory is confused, she is now able to remember, in flashes of blurred images, that she had been in the cottage and that Lumumba, who had accompanied her to the cottage, had attacked Meredith and had murdered her. The trauma of the event had blocked the memory until now. Well, at least that explains the memory problem.

I point out what my client has in any event fully appreciated, that the “It’s him. It’s him!” bit (be it not on tape) certainly needs to be explained to the police. It will only increase their suspicions about her if it is not.

The interview will have to be re-started. My client can give the police the above information, just as it has been given to me. Indeed the information should lessen their suspicion of her involvement in the murder since it is adequate and believable.

Furthermore she is now an extremely valuable witness in the investigation and that should also make it much easier for me to seek her release on bail, though that cannot be assured, and she might have to await Lumumba’s arrest. She has committed no crime that I am aware of.

She may have let the perpetrator into the cottage but an innocent explanation for that would surely be available. As my client is desperate to be out of detention she agrees to the foregoing.

But what actually happened was that her further detention was authorised and Knox, in a pique, dispensed with my further services.

What I could not have known, of course, was that Knox had been lying about Lumumba. Perhaps I should have factored in that possibility? Should I have explained to her that if she was lying then that, in itself, would expose her to a criminal charge with a maximum penalty of 6 years imprisonment (in Italy at any rate, though here in England we do not have, specifically, a similar criminal offence except for a generic one of perverting the course of justice) or would that not have made a difference?

I go home to bed. I have a long day ahead tomorrow.

Monday, November 11, 2024

Amanda Knox Said To Be Almost Certain To Face Murder Retrial Now

Posted by Peter Quennell

Tweet near end of 1st appeal; bent not-guilty verdict was annulled

1. Knox’s Self-Imposed Trap In Headlines

Millions of Italian-Americans including politicians in both parties have been disadvantaged by the dozen years of mafia-tool Amanda Knox’s endless bigotry for cash. Now this circles back to bite her.

Above: Associated Press report 17 April 2017 on 2000 websites

Above (html): May 2017 op-ed by Knox in the Los Angeles Times

Above (pdf): May 2017 op-ed by Knox in the Los Angeles Times

Above: 4 May 2017 report in SeattlePI carried by numerous media

On 20 January 2025 Mr Trump will be back in power. There is already movement behind the scenes to have Knox sent back to Italy for a retrial, this time without mafia or Knox-PR meddling. 

2. The Wider Context

Back in 2008-2009 the rabid Knox PR headed by David Marriott (now deceased) made a beeline for any American with influence to whom they could lie about “no evidence” and “persecution of a fellow citizen”.

Then-private-citizen Donald Trump (and fellow New Yorker; I encountered him a couple of times, not to talk to) was lured into this trap, and he spoke up sharply against Italian justice at the end of the 2009 Massei trial - to no effect of course.

This post of 18 December 2009 resulted.

Mr Trump did not really dig further, or follow up much - his main beef in 2009 was said to be that his first wife was living in Italy with a rich Italian. (She later moved back to NYC and relations were good when she passed on.)

This post of 18 August 2011 resulted.

Later in 2011 in the final days of the Hellman appeal Trump tweeted that Italy should be boycotted if Knox failed her appeal. He was obviously not made aware that he was a strange bedfellow with the Italian mafia.

Knox was (illegally) sprung by Judge Hellman with, well, mafia influence, with some pressure on the President of the Republic (head of the Italian justice system) from the Obama administration (also extensively lied-to by the rabid Knox PR).

Trump and Knox then went their separate ways, until the post-2016-election fracas summarised in the headlines at the top blew up. You really should read how Knox bristled at Trump with her trademark ultra-pompous victimhood.

We have repeatedly emphasized (rebutting still-endless false claims by Knox and her almost defunct bandwagon) that Knox was never “exonerated”.

This post of 23 June 2017 mainly drafted by the formidable Italian legal expert Machiavelli explains the legal situation.

The final (corrupted) Supreme Court appeal which Knox provisionally won can readily be reversed, by the President of the Supreme Court or the President of the Republic.

We hear that retaliatory action against Knox is already in the works. What so threatens Knox is not only Mr Trump.

It is also thousands of Italian-American politicians ON ALL PARTS OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM (this case has never been political), some of whom we are asked to bring up to speed on the hard facts of the case, who have had to sit and watched Knox fan anti-Italy and anti-Italian bigotry for blood money - for a dozen years now.

This is the November 3 2020 tweet sent out by Knox prior to the presidential election vote. 

The next four years? For Knox? Not as bad? Actually… they can.

Thursday, September 19, 2024

Florence Court Explains Second Knox Guilty Verdict For Criminal Slander #2

Posted by James Raper

Sequential images all from courthouse; court was closed to press

Reflections

These are my reflections, as a lawyer, on the Motivation of the Florence Appeal Court re Amanda Knox’s conviction for criminal defamation of Patrick Lumumba

This appeal was heard in Florence before the presiding appeal judge Dr Anna Sacco and the reporting judge Angelo Grieco. The offence for which Knox was convicted was pursuant to Article 368 of the Italian Penal Code. It is worth stating the offence as follows –

Anyone who with a denunciation, complaint demand or request, even anonymously or under a false name, directs a judicial authority or other authority with an obligation to report, to blame someone for a crime who he knows is innocent, that is he fabricates evidence against someone, shall be punished with imprisonment from two to six years.

Knox had been convicted of the offence at trial in 2009 - where the evidence was that she had named Lumumba as Meredith’s murderer, effectively as a witness herself present in the cottage at the time - and then again on her first appeal before the Hellmann court in 2011, and then again on her final appeal to the 1st Chambers of the Supreme Court in 2013. Her conviction for the offence thus became definitive under Italian law.

Why then did the Italian Supreme Court (in Italy it was reported that it was the 5th Chambers) refer the conviction to the Florence Appeal Court for a review? I have my suspicions as to the 5th Chambers’ motive for taking this step but a more charitable and legalistic view would be that it was a tidying up exercise pursuant to an alteration that had been made to Italian law by a Legislative Decree in October 2022.

The Florence Appeal Court refers to this in its Motivation. Basically, the Decree states that henceforth there must exist a framework in the Italian judicial system for implementing, in it’s domestic law, decisions at the European Court of Human Rights that go in favour of the applicant.  As to what is meant by “implementing”, in the case in hand, it must be that such decisions by the ECHR have to be, and have to be shown to be, taken into account in achieving the final verdict. In the event the 5th Chambers excluded any discussion, let alone a critique, of these decisions, by declaring that they could not be challenged.

That ruling, however, does not apply to us.

I had not, until now, known anything about the terms of reference laid down by the 5th Chambers for the Florence Appeal Court, other than what could be gleaned from social (and the largely unreliable) media. Having now read the Motivation I now know, as the Appeal Court refers to them.

The ECHR had found three violations, or rather procedural infringements, in the case, and it was on this basis that the 5th Chambers had made the referral.

The first was to do with Knox’s treatment at the Questura on the night of the 5th/6th November. Although the ECHR dismissed the claim (under article 3 ) that she had been subjected to inhumane or degrading treatment, it did say that there should have been “an effective investigation” by law enforcement and the judicial system “to identify and punish possible perpetrators”. What was meant by this I am not entirely clear. It surely cannot mean the perpetrators of the murder. We are dealing with the defamation here so it must be a reference to the behaviour of the police oficers and whether this had a prejudicial impact on the offence that then occurred. But what would constitute an “effective investigation” other than a trial of the accused on the charge, with the hearing and cross-examination of witnesses etc, which is exactly what came to pass? What, exactly, would have been the point of an earlier, and presumably less rigorous, investigation conducted, presumably by the said perpetrators i.e the police, or at any rate by those institutionally biased in favour of them? This makes little to no sense at all to me.

The second infringement (or violation, whatever you prefer)  was to do with Knox’s lack of legal representation. The ECHR had determined that Italy “had failed to demonstrate that the restriction of access to a lawyer had not irrepairably affected the fairness of the process as a whole”. This is taken by Knox supporters as a statement that the outcome (the verdict) had been irrepairably unfair, and accordingly the verdict should be squashed.

The statement, in one brief sentence, puts together, sequentially, as if one entailed the other, the bones of a premise and then a conclusion, even if the conclusion was not expressly stated. To my mind, there is no logical structure here such as would enable anyone to draw a valid conclusion from it. There is clearly something missing. The missing part (well it is there but cleverly hidden) is an assumption, or an additional premise that holds that “restriction of access to a lawyer is irrepairably unfair”. On the face of it that might also appear a reasonable proposition. So, insert that and then at least we have a logical argument, as follows –

Restriction of access to a lawyer is irrepairably unfair

Italy failed to demonstrate otherwise

Therefore the “process” was irrepairably unfair

But the conclusion to even a seemingly valid logical argument can be unsound and the above, as it relates to the case in hand, is unsound.

For a logical argument to be sound the premises upon which it is built have to be established as true in the given circumstances. There is a reason for why the aforesaid premise is missing. It is both untrue, in the given circumstances, and highly loaded (the use of the word irrepairably!)

The assertion, as it stands, without the missing premise, is pure sophistry, and begging the question, the petitio principii fallacy. The concept of it being irrepairably unfair is as much a part of the premise as it is the conclusion , which the conclusion then expands to “the process as a whole”. Whether Italy did, or did not, fail to demonstrate otherwise is actually irrelevant as to whether what happened was fair or unfair.”

In fact it was the ECHR which had failed to demonstrate required truths. It had failed to demonstrate

(a) that Knox did have her access to a lawyer restricted. The only person who claims that this was so is, of course, Knox herself. Was the State under an obligation, in the circumstances, to ensure that she had a lawyer whether or not she wanted one? It seems to be only in retrospect that she says she did want one.

(b) that her untrue accusation against Lumumba was in fact connected to and part of, that is that it arose from an unfair “process as a whole”, whatever that means, but let us restrict it to the absence of a lawyer in this instance. Without this the logical argument is meaningless in so far as it relates to the matter in hand.

(d) that, and of course this is the crux of the matter, restriction of access to a lawyer was, in the circumstances, unfair and, indeed, irrepairably unfair.

Whether it, and the other two procedural infringements, were unfair, let alone in the case of the absence of a lawyer, irrepairably unfair, and had a material and substantive adverse impact upon the safety of the conviction for slander, the ECHR did not attempt to establish as it would under the terms of Italy’s treaty obligations as to the Convention have to be a matter for an Italian trial court to investigate and rule upon, in accordance with the law and on the evidence before it.

The ECHR would know that, and that it was a matter more appropriate for an Italian court but now with regard to the concerns the ECHR had expressed. Indeed I see the above statement as being little more than saying that. Had it been more than that, and had it been within it’s remit, then the ECHR could have, but did not, declare, in unmistakable language, that the lack of legal representation, and the other two infringements, in the precise circumstances at the time, was unfair, and impacted on what happened next – with a precise explanation as to why it so held. That it did not speaks to an understanding on it’s part that it was not competent to the task and that the task was beyond it’s remit and the generalities of Human Rights Law.

As far as Italian law itself is concerned we have (in so far as relevant) Article 63 of the Italian Procedure Code. This states that if a person who is not accused or a suspect makes self incriminatory statements to the criminal police, then the proceedings must be terminated and the accused/suspect warned that investigations may be carried out on him and that he should appoint a lawyer. If the person should have been heard as an accused or suspect from the beginning his statements shall not be used. Nothing unfair in any of that.

It is, of course, arguable that Knox had made herself a suspect when she declined to co-operate with the police over the exchange of texts with Lumumba, but even so surely only as a suspect in the murder case or, at the least, suspected of withholding information in relation to that investigation, not that she had made any self-incriminatory statements up to then, or prior to the slander of Lumumba. Actually, I would go further and say that she should already have been a suspect due to Sollecito’s prior dismissal of her alibi. However, at no stage could she have been a suspect for the offence which she then committed. One cannot be a suspect for an offence that has not yet occurred. However at the point when that did occur, Article 63 would apply. Although it is difficult for me to see how that would have assisted Knox, perhaps it played into the 5th Chambers terms of referral which excluded the Appeal Court from giving any consideration to the 1.45 and 5.45 statements that Knox signed, contrary to the ruling by Gemelli at the Supreme Court in 2008 which held them to be admissable in respect of the charge of slander only.

To be fair to the ECHR neither the trial court nor any subsequent court actually addressed the obligations imposed upon Italy by the Convention on Human Rights in their respective Motivations confirming the convictions for slander, and had they done so then perhaps that would have gone some way to mollifying the ECHR. But that is not to say that, as judges, they had not done so. A beneficial by-product of the Legislative Decree may well be that in future judges will deal have to do so to avoid being thus ensnared.

The third infringement was that the Interpreter had been too familiar with Knox and had led her on to believe that she had amnesia. This, to some extant, actually accords with the testimony of Anna Donnino.

In short, according to the 5th Chambers, these infringements may have been procedural but they had a “decisive impact (here the 5th Chambers, in the rather dogmatic and pre-emptive fashion with which we have become familiar, enters on the merit following on from a definitive verdict with which it had previously agreed) on the very moment of (Knox) making the slanderous accusations in the 1.45 and 5.45 statements.” The ECHR had not said as much. The statements therefore had to be removed, the 5th Chambers ruled, declaring that only it had an interface with the ECHR and thus be able to interpret it’s rulings! The Appeal Court, in it’s Motivation, refers to this as a “peremptory” ruling, hardly bothering to hide it’s disgust with it.

However the Appeal Court also pretty much has it’s hands tied by the effect of Article 628 which states –

“In any event a verdict (in this case the annulment of the conviction for slander) issued by a court following a Cassation [Supreme Court] order of remand may be appealed only on reasons that do not concern those that had already been decided by Cassation on the order of remand….” As it was the 5th Chambers which issued the verdict and order of remand this has the hallmark of a self entitled student being allowed to mark his own work! Nevertheless the Court of Appeal had to be careful and not fall into the trap laid for it.

What we are left with, thanks to the 5th Chamber’s (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) interface with the ECHR is the Memorial. The Memorial (the 5th Chambers said) remained to be assessed as it could not be said that it was impacted by the aforesaid infringements.

The 5th Chambers went on to say that there were 2 unanswered questions in this respect. I have to paraphrase what these were as the Motivation is a bit obtuse at this point, but they come straight out of the same playbook used by the 5th Chambers in acquitting Knox and Sollecito in 2015.

1.  Does the content of the Memorial imply the existence and content of the slanderous statements at 1.45 and 5.45? This looks to me pretty much like a trap for the Appeal Court.

2.  Is the Memorial to be taken as a retraction or confirmation of the slander?

Entry in to the merit was provided for by the Legislative Decree but that was not for the Supreme Court at this stage. Hence the referral. However we have to worry that the matter might come back to the 5th Chambers on appeal.

In the final analysis the terms of referral for the Appeal Court was that it “had to determine whether, in the light of the false evidence, the Memorial written by Knox contained statements accusatory against Lumumba made in the knowledge of his innocence, such as to uphold the guilty verdict at 1st instance”.

The Appeal Court took into account the submissions of interested parties.

According to Knox’s defence the Memorial was nothing more than a dreamlike account of fragments of a nightmare that Knox doubted had any connection to reality; flashes of blurred images etc. Furthermore, the police had already formed an investigative hypothesis of Lumumba’s involvement in the murder given that his detention was authorised (at the same time as Knox’s) at 8.30 am on the 6th, which was well before Knox (at around 13.00 hours) asked for paper on which to write her Memorial. Thus it was not the Memorial that instigated his arrest! No, it was plainly Knox’s earlier accusations. It is all really rather Fawlty Towers, isn’t it? Think Basil Fawlty and “Don’t mention the war!” when some germans come to stay at his Guest House. Here it is don’t mention the statements at 1.45 and 5.45! Also the language of the Memorial fell short of the necessary intent to commit the crime. I will come to how the Court of Appeal dealt with these submissions shortly.

Of course, in addition to the Memorial there is Knox’s letter of the 7th November which is likewise unimpacted by the aforesaid infringements.

The Appeal Court went through both documents with a fine tooth comb.

The Appeal Court also listed the submissions on the part of Lumumba. In my opinion it was rather clever in doing this as the effect was to destroy much of the subversive agenda that lay hidden in the 5th Chamber’s terms of referral all the while avoiding any charge that the Court of Appeal was itself challenging those terms. Indeed the Court of Appeal disposed of a number of these submissions in a manner making it clear that it had fully got the message from the 5th Chambers.

One of the Lumumba defence submissions was that, taking into account the first infringement mentioned by the ECHR, there needed to be a Review of Procedure hearing. That was not accepted by the Court of Appeal as it was not in the terms of referral it had received. In any event we can mention here, be it not menioned by the Court of Appeal itself, the following remark by the 5th Chambers in 2015 –

“And also, a possible decision of the European Court in favour of Ms Knox, in the sense of a desired recognition of non-orthodox treatment of her by investigators, could not in any way affect the final verdict, not even in the event of a possible review of the verdict, considering the slanderous accusations that the accused produced against Lumumba consequent to the asserted coercions, and confirmed by her before the Public Minister during the subsequent session, in a context which, institutionally, is immune from anomalous psychological pressures; and also confirmed in her Memorial, at a moment when the same accuser was alone with herself and her conscience in conditions of objective peacefulness, sheltered from environmental influence; and were even restated, after some time, during the validation of the arrest of Lumumba, before the investigating judge in charge.”

Another was that in the Memorial, which was, indeed the crux of the referral, Knox had specifically mentioned her earlier statements – “and I stand by my statements that I made last night” -  and thus it was clear from this that she had full recall of their content, and stood by it. The Court of Appeal did not fall into the trap, but re-iterating this submission in the Motivation speaks for itself.

Another, in aid of the foregoing, was Knox’s letter of the 7th November, in which Knox claimed that she had not lied and stated that “I really thought he was the murderer”. In addition, Amanda Marie Knox, at the hearing on 8 November 2007 validating the arrest before the Judge for preliminary investigations, had made use of the power not to reply and, therefore, neither at that meeting nor at any time thereafter had she or her lawyers represented to the investigators the innocence of Diya Lumumba, and yet that she was already perfectly aware of her guilt as to the slander is apparent from the content of her conversations with her mother, and then both parents together, in prison.

Turning to the Knox defence submission that a proper interpretation of the Memorial was that it contained a retraction of the accusatory statements, the Court of Appeal was of the firm view that this was not acceptable.

The Court of Appeal said – “the incidental reference in the grounds of the judgment of the ECHR to the content of the Memorial, in the sense of the alleged retraction of the statements previously made by Amanda Marie Knox, in that case evidently inferred from the interpretation given by the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia in the judgment of 3 October 2011 (Hellmann, annulled by the ruling of the Court of Cassation), is therefore not relevant for the assessment of the substance to be carried out in this case. It follows that the defense, which seeks to give the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 24 January 2019 a broader scope than the actual one, which also extends to a binding interpretation of the substance of Knox’s Memorial of 6 November 2007, going beyond the provisions of the judgement of the Court of Cassation of 12 October 2023 (annulling the conviction and setting out the terms of referral), is therefore unfounded.”

On the Knox submission that the Memorial contained nothing but the fragments of a nightmare dimly remembered, the Court of Appeal considered whether there could be any reasonable doubt as to Knox’s ability to distinguish between reality and unreality and, indeed, whether this was relevant to the issue in hand. It was not just a case of having flashes of blurred images as Knox herself had referred to them as flashbacks –

“In the flashbacks I’m having I see Patrick as the killer, but the way the truth appears in my mind……. there’s no way for me to tell you, because I don’t remember for sure if I was at the house that night.”

The Court of Appeal, referring to Case Law, stated that doubt is only relevant to the material element of an accusation if that element does not have the character of seriousness, or is absurd, unlikely or grotesque. Even then, doubt is irrelevant if the accuser is aware of the innocence of the slandered person.

“The case law has long made it clear that the crime of slander is supplemented even if the criminal liability of a third party is maliciously put forward in doubt, provided that the complainant is aware of the innocence of those who are indicated as possible offenders.”

Logic comes into play here because if she was there, as she was definitively held to be by the 5th Chambers upon her acquital, then she must have been aware of Lumumba’s innocence and even if she was not then she must have been aware that she was fabricating evidence against him.

Furthermore the dream theme pushed by her defence is contradicted by the thread of the circumstances related by her flashbacks. Meeting Lumumba on the basketball court, then with him at the door to the house, then she curled up in the kitchen with her hands over her ears as Meredith screamed. That screaming was heard by witnesses but not suggested to her by Mignini or anybody else. Such a thread with evidential elements in support, is inconsistent with the disassociated fragments of a nightmare.

“The indication of Lumumba as the perpetrator of the murder is explicit and precise in the Memorial, written by the defendant autonomously and in solitude, in her own language and in her own hand”, the Court of Appeal held.

On the matter of intent, again this is irrelevant.

“According to the settled case-law of the Court of Cassation, slander is a crime of danger. The question to be assessed is whether, in the present case, Knox’s conduct was liable to create a risk of criminal proceedings being initiated, a requirement which can be regarded as inadequate only where the false accusation has a purpose which is manifestly and prima facie unlikely or incredible by reason of the circumstances in which it was carried out, the manner in which it was expressed or the absolute unreliability of its content, so that a finding that it is unfounded does not require any investigation. Only in such cases can the action be regarded as lacking the ability to harm the interests protected by the offending rule and constitute a criminal offense impossible under Article 49 cod. pen.

On the other hand, for the offence of slander to be capable of being characterized, it is only necessary that the false accusation contains in itself the necessary and sufficient information for the initiation of criminal proceedings against a person who is unequivocally and easily identifiable, as was certainly the case - even nominally and documentally - in the present case.”

By and large I think this is a well argued Motivation, it covers all the basic points and does nothing to put itself at odds with it’s terms of referral. It established, despite the bizarre exclusion of the signed statements, that the conviction was sound. I had not expected otherwise from a panel of reasonable and intelligent judges. It was always a slam dunk case.

I am not sure about this but I believe that Knox has been given 6o days in which to lodge an appeal, that is until the 8th October.

Friday, September 13, 2024

Florence Court Explains Second Knox Guilty Verdict For Criminal Slander #1

Posted by KrissyG

1. Overall Context

The image above shows Tuscany Chief Judge Nencini (left; 2014-15 lead judge on Knox’s main appeal) and Tuscany Appeals Court President Judge Anna Maria Sacco (second from right), the lead judge for this retrial, discussing another case.

This was Knox’s own repeat calunnia trial - a repeat of a segment of the 2009 trial. It was HER choice. It was not something Italy insisted upon. On this Knox had previously failed THREE appeals, in 2011, 2013, and (in part) 2015.

The option to request a new trial and potentially to wind back her felony conviction was offered to Knox (if she paid court costs if again found guilty) because of a bizarre and misinformed advisory to Italy from the European Court of Human Rights as we explain in earlier posts and again below.

Unlike the ECHR the Rome Supreme Court and Tuscany Appeal Court actually did their homework and now have seemingly left Knox without a leg to stand on.

Knox’s new guilty verdict was announced on 5 June by Judge Sacco. The long-form judges’ explanation (largely unique to Italy; the US and UK have no direct equivalent) signed by Judge Sacco followed several weeks ago. If there is an appeal route we don’t see it.

Our Wiki and two PMF forums and TJMK have a track record of great caution in translations, often requiring back-and-forths to Italy, and so a final English version is still several weeks away. Meanwhile this is a first of several overviews. 

2. Immediate Wider Context

Back in June Knox turned up at the Florence Court with her entourage in tow, having “defaulted” (the court’s word) by skipping the “merits” hearing back in October 2023.

The press saw Knox’s attendance as a sign that maybe she could be acquitted. But the written reasons indicate that her attendance was not optional; it was to do with showing up as ordered by the court, and so the default was revoked.

In the event, Knox declined to read out her ready prepared victory statement (though she later shared her delusional opening statement with the whole world) as the court ruled in Lumumba’s favour. It ordered that she pay an immediately enforceable €10,000 to him, plus the court costs. Her calunnia conviction was reinstated, with an amendment to one of the “aggravating” factors, as ruled on by the Fifth Chambers on 27 Mar 2015 (final verdict).

3. Immediate Narrow Background

The background of the retrial is that Knox’s defence had demanded the Calunnia conviction be quashed, owing to the ECHR finding of 24 Jan 2019, under Article 6, “right to a fair trial”, and in part Article 3, “freedom from psychological pressure”, that (a) a lawyer was not provided as of the times Knox made her verbal allegations against Patrick Lumumba, and that (b) the interpreter provided, Anna Donnino, had exceeded her remit in providing Knox emotional support (this is all the ECHR upheld; Knox had requested more, including a vast payment, but ECHR endorsed a mere token equivalent of $20,000).

To this the Florence Court now points out:

However, the Strasbourg Court did not find any infringement of Article 81 EC in substantive terms of the Convention, observing that there was “nothing to support the conclusion that the applicant had been subjected to the inhuman and degrading treatment complained of.”

The only remaining allowable evidence re the calunnia charge was the written document dated 6 Nov 2007, which Knox had hand-written around noon and gleefully handed to policewoman Ficarra as “a gift” after having provided two signed statements after midnight.

It was thus decided by the Central Court of Cassation (Supreme Court) on 10 Oct 2023 that the case could go back down to retrial, with the two typed and signed statements impermissible, and the remaining independently-written post-noon one assessed on its merits as to whether it could be said to be a case of Aggravated Criminal Calunnia against Lumumba.

“Aggravated” relates to a serious crime that attracts more than ten years imprisonment and accordingly:

... of teleological connection, ex art. 61 n. 2 cod. pen. for having acted in order to obtain impunity for all and, in particular, Guede Rudi Hermann for the crime of murder.

Knox was jailed for three years (2009-2011) for “multiple aggravated slander”, with some aggravating elements excluded by the Supreme Court Fifth Chambers final verdict of 27 March 2015.

The Supreme Court’s College of Legality had thus ruled that the convictions of 26 Mar 2013 and that of 27 March 2015 together with the Perugia Court of Appeal of 3 Oct 2011 – the controversial Hellmann court that saw Knox freed to fly back to America but still convicted of calunnia – could all be annulled conditional upon a retrial and possible re-conviction of calunnia albeit with time served.

Knox’s oral accusations against Lumumba had been made at around 01:00 and again at 05:45; these are the statements now barred as evidence because of the murky ECHR ruling. But Knox’s claimed ‘retraction’ was written in private and in English at circa 13:00, the same day.

The warrant executed for Lumumba’s arrest and subsequent imprisonment had been enacted at 08:30 that morning (6 Nov 2007) and thus precedes the timing of the memo in question.

4. The Defendant’s Case

Knox’s lawyers (Carlo Dalla Vedova of Rome and Luca Luparia Donati of Milan) argued thus:

... the memorial was a dream-like account of the fragments of a nightmare in which Amanda Marie Knox repeatedly admitted that she was unsure of having lived the confusingly reported experience, which re-emerged in the reality elaborated by her mind, badly prostrated after the last interrogation held the previous night. These were flashbacks which she herself doubted to the point of questioning who the real murderer was and of ruling out the possibility of being considered a witness against Diya Lumumba.

The Florence Appeal Court rejected this claim, reasoning that the language deployed was escamotage – a trick or sleazy ploy.  For something to be considered circumstantial evidence, there needs to be a logical chain of events that leads up to it and from it.

The Appeal Court now points out that Knox’s use of the clear chain of events (seeing Patrick in the basketball court – seeing him at the door - hearing Meredith’s screams) couldn’t be claimed to be a “messy dream” in particular because the event of Meredith’s screaming had been independently witnessed and verified by two separate neighbours, and because Knox was the only person with the key to access the apartment that night.

5. The Civil Party’s Case

Carlo Pacelli of Perugia representing Patrick Lumumba argued as follows.

In this regard he highlighted the part of the writing in which Amanda Marie Knox claimed that she had not lied when she had said that she thought the killer was Patrick and added immediately afterwards “I really thought he was the murderer”.

6. Court Consideration Of Arguments

The defence for Knox claimed the memo represented a retraction of the claims she had made during the early hours and a need to clarify that she was doubtful and confused.

The Florence Court rejected this, saying that far from being a retraction or a description of a dream state, it was a reiteration, with the language used not as expressing doubt but as “a ploy” or a literary device if you like.

It explained that under the criminal code, a defendant was allowed to lie about their own involvement in a crime (equivalent to the right not to incriminate oneself), but, when an innocent third party is blamed, it brings in the concept of risk brought upon against that person.

Thus, Knox had endangered Lumumba with imprisonment and the risk of a conviction of a serious crime, of which he did unfairly serve fourteen days.

In its reasoning, the court further points out the transcripts of police wire-tapping of Knox talking in prison with her mother, in which she says she felt “terrible” about what she had done to Lumumba. Putting him “in a horrible situation and in jail through her fault, reiterating that concept several times”.

And yet, the court points out, Knox failed to mention Lumumba’s innocence at her post-arrest remand hearing with Magistrate Matteini, indicating a deliberate false accusation against Lumumba. (That was the hearing where for the second time Sollecito seriously sold Knox down the river. And as per routine procedure, Matteini now took over overall management of the case from Dr Mignin.)

The court also notes:

The defendant told her mother - who spoke of possible lies spread artificially by the mass media - “But it is stupid. I can’t say any more, because I know that I was there and I can’t lie about it, I have no reason to do it.” (bold is mine).

The defence had also argued that Knox’s further memo written before 1:00 pm on 6 Nov 2007 (four days after the murder, at the Questura) was done after the time of the order of detention of Lumumba, at 08:30 am, and thus, they argue, cannot be said to have caused his arrest, her earlier statements which caused this now not being permitted as evidence.

The court dismisses this point, stating:

On the other hand, for the offense of criminal slander to be capable of being characterized, it is only necessary that the false accusation contains in itself the necessary and sufficient information for the initiation of criminal proceedings against a person who is unequivocally and easily identifiable, as was certainly the case - both nominally and documentally - in the present case.

It rejects the claim Knox was confused and bringing up false memories because of the logical nature of the sequence of events she describes, as pointed out above.

In any case, I note, personally - not the court - a false memory typically occurs when a person suffers a traumatic event and is unable to remember what happened.  Later, with the passing of time, one’s brain fills in the missing details to make sense of the forgotten parts, and these details may be false.

For a memory to be false, a traumatic event must have happened in the first place. For example, via early childhood abuse or a car crash.  If Knox had never been at the cottage whilst Meredith was murdered, how could she have a false memory of it?  It certainly wouldn’t qualify as a “false memory” in its conventional sense.

The court further writes:

To conclude this point, it must be added that - a fortiori - the essential and direct nature of the false accusation does not make it either absurd or unlikely and confirms its suitability to integrate the material element of the alleged crime.

In Knox’s read-out statement to the current hearing she said “I wanted the police to know that I was doing my best to cooperate.” But the Florence Court questions this:

It must be said that the crime of slander requires general intent, that is to say, the conscience and willingness to charge a person who is innocent of a crime, the reason for the false accusation being irrelevant (Cassation 2489 of 2000).

[snip]

Amanda Marie Knox was perfectly aware of Diya Lumumba’s innocence, as Patrick is known, from a number of elements.

The first is that the defendant was at the time of the murder of Meredith Kercher at the house and, therefore, she knew that there was no Diya Lumumba there.

The situation is clear from Knox’s own writing, which locates her inside the house, and reports a scream from Meredith (“I saw myself curled up in the kitchen with my hands over my ears because in my head I heard Meredith screaming”).

That harrowing scream, which in her account required her to press her hands to her ears and to curl up in the kitchen in an attempt not to hear it, was a fact that really happened and was clearly perceived by Capezzali Nara and Monacchia Antonella, two neighbors of the house, with dwellings located near the cottage of via della Pergola #7, who both heard her, deeming it anomalous and atrocious, so much so that they were shocked.

[snip]

Meredith Kercher’s harrowing scream, at the time of Knox writing the accusatory statement against Diya Lumumba in the noon 6 November memoriale, was an element unknown to investigators, and to anyone who could not hear it because they were not present in or near the house where the murder took place.

[snip]

That circumstance demonstrates - first - the presence of Amanda Marie Knox in the house where the homicide occurred, at the time when it occurred, a place where, moreover, she herself sits (“curled up in the kitchen with her hands over her ears”) and, secondly, that the defendant was perfectly aware of the innocence of Diya Lumumba, known as Patrick, who was certainly not in that house.

7. The Florence Court’s Conclusions

The persistence of this attitude marks a clear departure from any behavior aimed at cooperation with investigators, so often represented by the defense and by the defendant herself, most recently in her final statements.

In short, Amanda Marie Knox must be held liable for the crime of aggravated criminal slander within the meaning of Article 2(2) of Regulation No 40/94 subpart f of paragraph 368 of the penal code).

The judgment at first instance [2009] must, however, be reformulated in part, first, by considering the definitive exclusion of the aggravating teleological link by reason of the formation of the final judgment on Knox’s acquittal on the charge of participation in the murder of Meredith Kercher, handed down by the Court of Cassation on 27 March 2015, and, second, from the point of view of the penalty [actually adjusted slightly by Judge Hellman in 2011].

[There follows various court costs orders.]

Thus decided in Florence on 5/6/2024
Anna Maria Sacco, President
Angelo Grieco, Jury Manager
And six lay judges

Thursday, June 13, 2024

Knox Lie-A-Thon #4: How Myriad Past Lies About “Forced Confession” Are Sinking Her Now

Posted by FinnMacCool

Breaking news 20 December 2013. This post goes live just as the news breaks that it was Knox lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova who filed these patently false claims against the justice system of Italy with the European Court.

1. “There would be no need for these theatrics.”

Amanda Knox has not been present for any part of her latest appeal [at the Nencini court] against her own murder conviction. Nevertheless, she has made two meretricious contributions to the proceedings.

First, on the day that the prosecution opened its presentation of the case against her, she announced that her lawyers had filed an appeal against her slander conviction to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). ECHR hears only allegations of human rights abuses, which must be reported within six months of the alleged incident (or within six months after all local avenues have been exhausted; in this case none has even been explored).

This out-of-date application to an inappropriate body in pursuit of a groundless allegation is therefore bound to fail.

Knox’s second publicity stunt came on the day that her own defense lawyers began their own presentation. She sent a five-page email in English and Italian, with grammatical mistakes in each language, protesting her innocence and affirming that the reason she is not present in the court is because she is afraid of it.

There are many comments that could be made about the email, but perhaps its most grievous legal error comes in the aside where she claims that the “subsequent memoriali (sic), for which I was wrongfully found guilty of slander, did not further accuse but rather recanted that false ‘confession’.”

That singular document does not recant her previous statements (“I stand by what I said last night”), but does contain further accusations against Patrick Lumumba (“I see Patrik (sic) as the murderer”), as well as seeking to cast suspicion on Sollecito (“I noticed there was blood on Raffaele’s hand”), and on an unnamed “other person”.

However, by claiming that she has been “wrongfully found guilty” on that charge of calunnia, she is refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the Italian Supreme Court, which has definitively found against her on that count, and also of the Hellmann appeal court (the only court to date that has not found her guilty of the main charge of murdering Meredith Kercher).

Dr Alessandro Crini presented the prosecution’s case on November 25th/26th 2013. It was not a particularly theatrical performance, but rather a very long summary of the many items of evidence against Sollecito and Knox.

The most theatrical element of the case so far has been when one of the defendants insisted that the judge should read out five vacuous pages of her email immediately before her own lawyers presented their case on her behalf.

This gives a certain dramatic irony to Knox’s claim “If the prosecution truly had a case against me, there would be no need for these theatrics”.

Such ironies appear to be lost on Knox, however, since she seems incapable of reading back over her own work for solecisms or contradictions. (In the email itself, for example, in consecutive sentences she writes: “I had no contact with Rudy Guede. Like many youth in Perugia I had once crossed paths with Rudy Guede.”)

One of the many errors she makes in the email is to put in writing some of the wild claims that she and/or her supporters have previously made regarding the witness interview she gave on the night of November 5th/6th 2007.

The purpose of the current post is to consider that interview in greater detail, using as source material primarily Knox’s memoir “Waiting to be heard” (2013) and Raffaele Sollecito’s memoir, “Honor Bound” (2013), abbreviated here to WTBH and HB respectively.

2. “When we got there they said I couldn’t come inside.”

Amanda Knox was not even supposed to be at the police station on the evening of November 5th, 2007. She should have been attending a candlelit vigil, in which Meredith Kercher’s friends, classmates and supportive well-wishers met at eight o’clock at Corso Vannucci to proceed through to the Duomo, carrying candles and photographs of the victim.

A friend of Meredith’s “a young Polish student” texted Amanda Knox to invite her to this vigil, but Knox had better things to do. (WTBH: 82) She accompanied Sollecito to his friend Riccardo’s house for a bite to eat (HB: 29) where she absent-mindedly strummed a ukulele. (WTBH:82)

Knox writes of the vigil: “I wanted to be there but the decision was made for me” because “Raffaele had somewhere else to be”. (WTBH: 82)

One consistent feature of her narrative is her refusal to accept responsibility for anything, including her failure to turn up for her murdered roommate’s vigil, but we should note also that the vigil (eight o’clock) and the dinner (nine o’clock) both take place within the timeframe of her supposed series of interrogations, which according to her email involved “over 50 hours in four days”.

By her own account, when she ignored the police’s request not to accompany Sollecito to the Questura and just came anyway, it was the first contact she had had with the police in well over 24 hours.

Let us consider what was happening in the early part of the evening of November 5th, 2007.

The police are at the station studying the evidence; Meredith’s friends are proceeding downtown with candles and photographs of the victim; and Knox is playing the ukulele at Riccardo’s house.

Far from taking part in a lengthy coercive interview, Amanda Knox had gone to her University classes as normal, had bumped into Patrick Lumumba, whom she would later accuse of Meredith’s murder, and had later skipped the vigil to have dinner with Sollecito. (WTBH:83)

Meanwhile, back at the Questura, the police could see that Raffaele Sollecito’s stories simply did not add up.

They therefore called Sollecito and asked him to come into the station for further questioning. They told him that the matter was urgent; that they wanted to talk to him alone; and that Amanda Knox should not accompany him. (HB: 29) 

Sollecito responded that he would prefer to finish eating first. (The same meal is used as an excuse for not attending the vigil at eight o’clock, and for delaying their response to the police request at around ten.) By his own account, Sollecito resented being ordered what to do by the police (HB: 29), and so he finished eating, they cleared the table together, and Amanda Knox then accompanied him to the station. (HB:30; WTBH: 83)

Naturally the police were both surprised and disappointed to see her. Their civilian interpreter, who had worked flat out through the weekend accompanying not only Amanda Knox but also the rest of Meredith’s English-speaking friends, had gone home. The only person they were planning to speak to that night was Sollecito, and even he was late. According to Knox, the police were not expecting their interview with Sollecito to take very long:

When we got there they said I couldn’t come inside, that I’d have to wait for Raffaele in the car. I begged them to change their minds. (WTBH: 83)

The police were not prepared for an interview with Amanda Knox. They had asked her not to come, and they tried to send her away when she got there. It was late on a Monday evening and there were no lawyers or interpreters hanging around on the off-chance that someone might walk into the police station and confess.

However, that’s what happened. And it is on that basis that Amanda Knox is now claiming that the interview which she herself instigated was improperly presented by the police:

I was interrogated as a suspect, but told I was a witness. (Knox email, December 15, 2013)

But she wasn’t a suspect. In fact, she wasn’t even supposed to be there.

3. “Who’s Patrick?”

We will now examine Knox’s claim that “the police were the ones who first brought forth Patrick’s name” (Knox blog, November 25th, 2013).

She has already admitted in court that this is not true. In fact, it is clear from her own book that the police did not even know who Patrick Lumumba was, at that point.

If they had suspected him or anybody else, they would have brought them in for questioning, just as they had already questioned everyone else they thought might be able to throw some light on the case.

The police plan that evening was to question Sollecito in order to establish once and for all what his story was. They would perhaps have brought Knox back the following day (together with the interpreter) to see how far Knox’s story matched Sollecito’s. In the event, their plan was disrupted first because Sollecito delayed coming in, and second because when he finally arrived, he had brought Knox with him.

“Did the police know I’d show up,” Knox asks rhetorically, “or were they purposefully separating Raffaele and me?” (WTBH: 83) She does not offer a solution to this conundrum, but the answer is (b), as the patient reader will have noticed.

She thus turned up to the police station despite being expressly asked not to come. The police asked her to wait in the car and she refused, complaining that she was afraid of the dark. They allowed her inside.

Today, she might complain that she “was denied legal counsel” (Knox email, December 15th 2013) as she entered the Questura, but there was absolutely no reason for a lawyer to be present, since by her own account, all the police were asking her to do is go home.

Knox did not go home. According to WTBH, while Sollecito is in the interview room, she sits by the elevator, doing grammar exercises, phones her roommates about where to live next, talks to “a silver-haired police officer” about any men who may have visited the house (she claims to have first mentioned Rudy Guede at this point, identifying him by description rather than name) and does some yoga-style exercises including cartwheels, touching her toes and the splits.

It is at this point “somewhere between 1130 and midnight” that Officer Rita Ficarra invites Knox to come into the office so that they can put on record Knox’s list of all the men she could think of who might have visited the house.

Knox takes several pages (WTBH 83-90) to explain how she went from doing the splits to making her false accusation against Patrick Lumumba. Like much of her writing, these pages are confused and self-contradictory.

One reason for the confusion is that Knox is making two false accusations against the police, but these accusations cannot co-exist. First, she attempts to demonstrate that the police made her give the name of Patrick Lumumba. Second, she wants us to believe that Officer Ficarra struck her on the head twice.

This is denied by all the other witnesses in the room, and Knox did not mention it in her latest story about applying to ECHR. In her memoriale (WTBH: 97), she claims she was hit because she could not remember a fact correctly.

But in her account of the interview (WTBH: 88), Knox explains that Ficarra hit her because, the fourth time she was asked, “Who’s Patrick?”, she was slow in replying, “He’s my boss.” This is the exact opposite of not remembering a fact correctly. Knox is so keen to make both false charges against the police stick that she fails to notice that one contradicts the other.

Knox at least provides us with two fixed times that allow us to verify the start and finish times of the formal interview. It began at 1230, when Anna Donnino arrived to interpret, and ended at 0145 when Knox signed her witness statement.

Bearing in mind that this statement would have needed to be typed up and printed before she signed it, the interview thus took little over an hour, and was not the “prolonged period in the middle of the night” that her recent blog post pretends. (We might also remember that Knox’s regular shift at Le Chic was from 9 pm to 1 am, meaning that the interview began during her normal working hours.) (WTBH:31)

WTBH also flatly contradicts Knox’s own claim that her accusation of Lumumba was coerced by the police.

According to her own account, she first mentions her boss (although not by name) in the less formal conversation, before the interpreter’s arrival, telling the police : “I got a text message from my boss telling me I didn’t have to work that night.” (WTBH: 84)

The police appear to pay no attention to the remark (which undermines Knox’s argument that the police were pressing her to name Lumumba) but instead keep questioning her on the timings and details of what she did on the night of the murder. And Knox finds those details difficult either to recall or to invent.

Donnino arrives at half past midnight, and the formal interview begins.

Again, the focus is on the timings of Amanda Knox’s movements on the night of the murder, and again she is having difficulty remembering or inventing them. Ficarra picks up Knox’s cell phones and observes: “You texted Patrick. Who’s Patrick?” and Knox answers, “My boss at Le Chic.” (WTBH: 86)

There is a short discussion about this text message, and then a second police officer asks her: “Who’s Patrick? What’s he like?” This time Knox answers: “He’s about this tall… with braids.” They then continue to discuss the text message, and then the police ask her a third time, “Who’s this person? Who’s Patrick?” Knox again replies: “Patrick is my boss.” (WTBH: 87)

Donnino then makes the intervention about how traumatic events can sometimes affect memory. Such events certainly seem to have an effect on the memory of the police, because one of them asks Knox a fourth time: “Who’s Patrick?” At this point, Knox claims in her memoir that Ficarra struck her on the head. (WTBH: 87)

This is nothing to do with failing to remember a fact correctly, because the fact is correct: Patrick Lumumba is indeed her boss.

The police continue to believe that she is hiding something, and they ask her who she is protecting. After a few minutes of questioning along those lines, Knox has an epiphany in which she claims that the face of Patrick Lumumba appeared before her and she gasps: “Patrick… it’s Patrick.”

If we believe one of Knox’s other stories, that the police were cunningly trying to get her to name Patrick Lumumba, we might expect them to be quite pleased to have succeeded at this point. But according to Knox, their response is to ask her a fifth time, “Who’s Patrick?” The whole room must have wanted to chorus at this point, “He’s her boss!”, but according to Knox, it is she herself who simply repeats: “He’s my boss.”

4. “I was also hit in the head when I didn’t remember a fact correctly”

Shortly after lunch on Tuesday November 6th, Knox wrote a piece of paper (known as her “memoriale”) in which she makes her first accusation that the police hit her. She hands this memoriale to Rita Ficarra, the very person she would later name as doing the hitting. We have noted above that in her account of the interview, the context Knox provides for this alleged blow is as follows:

This singularly repetitive catechism is supposed to have taken place at around one o’clock in the morning.

However, writing the following afternoon, Knox describes the event like this:

Not only was I told I would be arrested and put in jail for 30 years, but I was also hit in the head when I didn’t remember a fact correctly. I understand that the police are under a lot of stress, so I understand the treatment I received. (WTBH: 97)

This makes no sense as a reflection on the interview as she has earlier described it. In her version of the interview, she claims that the police kept asking her the same simple question, to which she keeps replying with the same factual answer, and the blows to the head take place in the middle of all that. Yet in her “memoriale”, she claims that the blow was because she could not remember a fact correctly.

In case two mutually contradictory accounts of that false allegation are not enough, Knox also provides a couple more explanations for why she was hit. Her third bogus claim is that the police said they hit her to get her attention, which makes for a dramatic opening to Chapter 10 of WTBH:

Police officer Rita Ficarra slapped her palm against the back of my head, but the shock of the blow, even more than the force, left me dazed. I hadn’t expected to be slapped.

I was turning around to yell “Stop!” my mouth halfway open, but before I even realized what had happened, I felt another whack, this one above my ear. She was right next to me, leaning over me, her voice as hard as her hand had been. “Stop lying, stop lying” she insisted.

Stunned, I cried out, “Why are you hitting me?”  “To get your attention,” she said. (WTBH: 80)

This is a direct allegation against a named police officer, and not surprisingly it has resulted in another libel charge against Amanda Knox. It is a strong piece of writing, too: on its own, isolated from context, it reads like a trailer for the movie version. The trouble is, that when Knox later tries to set it in context, it makes no more sense than “because I didn’t remember a fact correctly” as an explanation as for why the blow came.

They pushed my cell phone, with the message to Patrick, in my face and screamed,

“You’re lying. You sent a message to Patrick. Who’s Patrick?”

That’s when Ficarra slapped me on my head.

“Why are you hitting me?” I cried.

“To get your attention,” she said.

“I’m trying to help,” I said. “I’m trying to help, I’m desperately trying to help.” (WTBH: 88)

This makes no sense. They already have Knox’s attention, and she is having no difficulty giving them a factual response to their repeated question, “Who’s Patrick?”

It is difficult to explain any logical motivation for that slap in terms of any of the three suggestions Knox has made so far: (1) because she couldn’t remember a fact correctly; (2) because she failed to answer the repeated question “Who’s Patrick?” quickly enough; or (3) to get her attention. She’d got the fact right, she’d answered the question, and they already had her attention.

Knox then provides us with a fourth version of possible reasons for the alleged slap. She describes the following encounter between herself and Rita Ficarra on their way to lunch at around two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon:

With my sneakers confiscated, I trailed [Ficarra] down the stairs wearing only my socks. She turned and said, “Sorry I hit you. I was just trying to help you remember the truth.” (WTBH: 94)

Once again, this makes no sense in the context of a blow to the head while waiting for a reply to the question, “Who’s Patrick?” It is perfectly true that Patrick Lumumba was Amanda Knox’s boss, and she had already correctly answered the same question twice, by her own account.

These are the four main WTBH versions of how Amanda Knox was struck on the head by Rita Ficarra. Perhaps she hopes that readers will choose the one they like best and will ignore its discrepancies with the others.

When testifying in court, however, Knox provided three further versions of the same alleged incident.

First, when asked to explain why she had stated in her witness account that Meredith Kercher had had sex before she died, Knox answered that the police had suggested this to her and that they hit her to make her says so in her statement (Knox testimony, June 12 2009).

Second, a few minutes later during the same testimony, she claimed that the police hit her twice before she gave the name of Patrick, to make her give a name she could not give. (WTBH: 227-8; Knox testimony, June 12 2009)

Third, later still, she tells her own lawyer that the police were screaming at her “You don’t remember”, she was struck from behind, and when she turned around she was struck again. (WTBH:227; Knox testimony, June 12 2009)

These are seven different stories Knox has told about how she was hit during her interview. Even her most generous supporters would have to admit that at least six of them must be false. Everyone else in the room at the time has testified that it did not happen.

When Knox published her fantasy claim about appealing to ECHR last month, she neglected to mention that she was hit. This essentially confirms what has been obvious for some time: Rita Ficarra did not hit Amanda Knox during the interview.

Nobody did. All seven stories are false. 

5. “She was screaming in Italian ‘Aiuto! Aiuto!’ “

However, Sollecito provides an ear-witness account of Knox’s traumatic interview, claiming that he could hear her shouting from where he was being interviewed in a nearby room. Here’s his version:

Then came a sound that chilled my bones: Amanda’s voice, yowling for help in the next room. She was screaming in Italian, “Aiuto! Aiuto!” I asked what was going on, and Moscatelli told me there was nothing to worry about. But that was absurd. I could hear police officers yelling, and Amanda sobbing and crying out another three or four times. (HB:33)

If Sollecito’s aim here is to invent a story even more ridiculous than Knox’s, he has succeeded.

For one thing, it does not match any of Knox’s seven stories about how her interview went. But even on its own terms, Sollecito’s story makes no sense. If we imagine for a moment an Italian witness or suspect being interrogated in Italian by Italian officers in an Italian police station, what possible motivation could such a woman have for shouting “Aiuto!”? Who could she be hoping might conceivably respond to her call?

How much more absurd, then, to suppose that an American woman accompanied by an interpreter would shout “Aiuto!” when by her own account she was trying to help the police with their inquiries at that point.

Perhaps Sollecito wants us to believe that Knox was offering to help the police with their inquiries, and Donnino was loudly translating it to “Aiuto!” at this point. Or perhaps, as is often the case with Sollecito, he has given so little thought to his lies that he has not made the slightest effort to make them believable.

There are other occasions when Sollecito is cavalier with the credibility of his explanations for the evidence against him. For example, when confronted with evidence that the victim’s DNA is on his kitchen knife, he suddenly remembers an occasion when he accidentally pricked her while cooking.

(Astonishingly, he repeats this absurd fiction on page 49 of Honor Bound, although he shifts the pricking to Via della Pergola and makes it a knife local to there, since it is obvious that the victim had never visited his own apartment.)

Or again, on being confronted with the (incorrect) evidence that his shoeprints have been found at the scene of the crime, he speculates to Judge Matteini that someone might have stolen his shoes and committed the murder in them. (HB:42)

Even today, Sollecito is currently making a public appeal for funds for his defense, pleading financial hardship, while taking lengthy vacations in the Caribbean, with photographs of his tropical lifestyle appearing in Oggi.

In his book, Sollecito also decides to make a claim of his own that the police struck him:

One of my interrogators opened the door noisily at one point, walked over, and slapped me. “Your father is a fine upstanding person,” he said. “He doesn’t even deserve a son like you, someone who would stand by a whore like Amanda.” (HB:36)

This is actually one of his more plausible stories. He has not named the officer, and he has created an incident to which there are no witnesses; he gives the impression that he was alone in the interview room when this officer came in.

Of course, he has made no formal complaint about this, nor has he mentioned it before publishing it in his book, nor has he named the officer or given any clue as to his identity. Nevertheless, these details simply stand in contrast to Knox’s libelous allegation, in which she named the officer, gives several contradictory accounts of how the blow occurred, and there are several witnesses all of whom deny that any such blow took place.

6. “Maybe a cappuccino would help.”

Finally, it seems only fair to speak up for Anna Donnino, the much-maligned interpreter who was given the task of accompanying Knox as she made her slanderous accusation of Patrick Lumumba.

Knox describes her arrival at the station like this:

The interpreter sat down behind me. She was irritated and impatient, as if I were the one who had rousted her from bed in the middle of the night. (WTBH:86)

While someone else must have done the rousting, by Knox’s own account it is indeed her fault that Donnino was called into the police station that night. Knox was the only English-speaker present, and she had ignored the police’s request that she stay home while they interviewed Sollecito.

Although Donnino must have had every right to feel irritable and impatient, Knox gives little evidence of it in her transcript of the interview. On the contrary, Donnino patiently volunteers an explanation that might attribute Knox’s self-contradictory stories to trauma and stress rather than deliberate lying.

Amanda Knox has often repeated her assertion that police called her a liar during that interview. For example, in the movie-trailer-type excerpt at the beginning of Chapter Ten, she writes:

They loomed over me, each yelling the same thing: “You need to remember. You’re lying. Stop lying!” (WTBH:80)

However, in the more detailed version that she gives on pages 83-90, she does not mention a single police officer calling her a liar. Only once do the police even ask her “Why are you lying?” (WTBH:88) The only person to call Knox a liar, in her account, is Anna Donnino, in the following passage:

“In English, “˜see you later’ means good-bye. It doesn’t mean we’re going to see each other now. It means see you eventually.”

In my beginner’s Italian, I had had no idea that I’d used the wrong phrase in my text to Patrick””the one that means you’re going to see someone. I’d merely translated it literally from the English.

The interpreter balked: “You’re a liar.” (WTBH:87)

The verb “balked” makes no sense here, and so let us charitably call it a printer’s error for “barked”. However, that is the only instance of Knox being called a liar her entire remembered account of the interview.

It seems that she is so reluctant to admit to having said anything that her readers might think sounds like a lie that she forgets this gives the police no context for calling her a liar. This in turn means that the only “lie” she can be accused of is her demotic interpretation of the English phrase “see you later”, in which she presents herself as correct and Anna Donnino getting it wrong.

Ironically, Anna Donnino’s next intervention, for which there are several witnesses including Amanda Knox herself, is clearly intended to suggest that failing to remember the details of a traumatic event properly may NOT be an indication of lying, but instead may be the result of the stress of the trauma:

The interpreter offered a solution, “Once, when I had an accident, I didn’t remember it. I had a broken leg and it was traumatizing and I woke up afterward and didn’t remember it. Maybe you just don’t remember. Maybe that’s why you can’t remember times really well.”

For a moment, she sounded almost kind. (WTBH:88)

“Kind” is a key word for Amanda Knox, and she continually judges people by whether they are kind to her. On this occasion, she is quite right: Anna Donnino does sound kind and helpful in volunteering this intervention. It is not a kindness that Knox would repay, however. On the contrary, in her later account of the trial, she is scathing of prosecutor Mignini’s description of Donnino as “very sweet”:

As for my interrogation at the questura, Mignini described the interpreter”” the woman who had called me “a stupid liar” and had told me to “stop lying”“”as “very sweet.” “I remember that evening how she behaved toward Amanda,” he said. (WTBH:244)

Knox has evidently forgotten that she has failed to mention anybody at all calling her a “stupid liar” during the interview, or that anybody told her to “stop lying”. Even her claim that Donnino called a liar over a translation error is illogical and is out of keeping with Donnino’s subsequent intervention.

Knox has also forgotten that the only other mention she makes of Donnino at the questura is in the following passage, from the day before the interview. While Knox is going over the events of the night of the murder in her mind, she reports: 

“”¦the interpreter walked by, looked at me, and said, “˜Oh my God, are you okay?... You’re pale”¦ Maybe a cappuccino would help. Come with me.” (WTBH: 76-77)

Once again, Knox unwittingly provides evidence that supports Mignini’s description of Anna Donnino, and undermines her own. Once again, she unwittingly provides evidence that her human rights were perfectly safe at Perugia police station.

7. “What does this say about my memory?”

The accounts of all three defendants in this case are so obviously fictitious that the subject should no longer be open for discussion. Any level of reasonable doubt that might have been acceptable to the Hellman appeal court has been removed not only by the Italian Supreme Court but even more so by the self-penned accounts published by Knox and Sollecito themselves.

Their bizarre and delusional writings will appear incredible to any objective reader who troubles to read them. The physical evidence against them - the DNA, the footprints, the knife, the faked burglary, and so on - only serves to confirm the most likely explanation for their wildly unbelievable stories - namely that they are lying to cover up their involvement in a brutal murder.

Given that his own account was patently fictitious, Guede has been fairly well advised to opt for a fast track trial which offers a reduced sentence and an abbreviated process. (Better advice might have been to plead guilty, but that is for him to choose.)

As a result, he will be eligible for parole relatively soon, even as the longwinded trials of Knox and Sollecito grind toward their conclusions. Whether or not it is right and fair for Guede to be given that parole is a separate question that will be considered in due course - even his expressions of remorse sound false and are undermined by his continuing refusal to give a plausible and honest account of what happened that night.

However justice systems all over the world are obliged to balance the rights of victims against the rights of defendants, with resultant compromises that are often uneasy and unsatisfying. Victims’ families may want the truth, but the perpetrators don’t always want to tell it.

The situation for Knox and Sollecito is different because their preposterous stories have been shored up by a coterie of supporters who in the long run have done the two defendants no favors whatsoever.

The pair have chosen the full trial process which may have postponed the final decision for several years, but which is also likely to result in much lengthier prison sentences.

It is too late now for Knox and Sollecito to opt for a fast track process, and everyone, no matter how ill-informed, can surely agree at least that the path they have chosen has been painfully slow and longwinded.

But there were many other options that, although previously open to them, have now been closed down by their supporters’ stubborn insistence that the case against them was first concocted by a vindictive prosecutor who took an early dislike to them and was subsequently supported by a vast conspiratorial network of police, judges, journalists, shopkeepers, students, friends and relatives of the victim, and so on.

This conspiracy theory is not only daft, but it provides no help at all for the two people at its core whose words and actions remain delusional and psychotic.

Amanda Knox wrote in her memoriale,  “Is the evidence proving my pressance [sic] at the time and place of the crime reliable? If so, what does this say about my memory? Is it reliable?” (WTBH 98-9). These words are a clear cry for help.

Whether or not this cry was genuine, or was simply a cunning attempt to diminish punishment, is a matter that could and should have been determined at the time by a qualified psychiatrist. Instead, Knox was provided with a set of lawyers and a PR firm both of whom were set the task of claiming and proving their client’s innocence.

Her false allegation against an innocent man was then explained as resulting from a coercive police process - another ludicrous claim, contradicted by all the available evidence, including the self contradictory accounts published by the defendants themselves.

Knox and Sollecito are damaged individuals whose grip on reality is loose and whose delusional ramblings suggest that they need urgent psychiatric help. Instead, their fantasies have been cocooned by highly vocal supporters who have enabled the fantasists to maintain a series of fictions that, in the final analysis, will almost certainly fail to stand up to legal scrutiny.

Friday, June 07, 2024

Knox Lie-A-Thon #3: Nailing New Lies In Florence Court On June 5th #1

Posted by James Raper

Patrick Lumumba at Knox & Sollecito trial in 2009

Pesky Comparisons

“She told the Court on Wednesday that police had coerced her into implicating Mr Lumumba”.

That is a hoax that needs to be thoroughly dismantled, particularly as it has such fervent acceptance amongst Knox supporters online and in incurious official media outlets.

For a start it is not, to my knowledge, a claim that she has publicly made before. We will strive in vain to find, either in her trial testimony or in her book, where and how the alleged coercion to implicate Lumumba occurred.

This from her trial testimony -

GCM - “Now what happened next? You, confronted with the [text] message, gave the name of Patrick. What did you say?” [Note: So, it was not the police who suggested Lumumba to her, as she would have it, this having to be a critical element of the alleged coercion.]

AK -  “Well, first I started to cry. And all the policemen, together, started saying to me, you have to tell us why, what happened? They wanted all these details that I couldn’t tell them, because in the end, what happened was this: when I said the name of Patrick I suddenly started imagining a kind of scene, but always using this idea; images that didn’t agree. That maybe could give some kind of explanation of the scene.”

She suddenly [note the “suddenly”] started imagining a kind of scene? And “always using this idea”? What idea was that? She does not explain. Is “idea” a synonym for “flashback”, or for a flash of inspiration?

In her “memoriale” later that day, she talks of flashes of blurred images which can only be a reference to flashbacks.

“In my mind I saw Patrick in flashes of blurred images. I saw him near the basketball court. I saw him at my front door. I saw myself cowering in the kitchen with my hands over my ears because in my head I could hear Meredith screaming.”

Where is the element of coercion in all of this? Even if one were to give any credence to the inappropriate pressure she says she was under from the police, there is still no coercion, let alone to falsely accuse Lumumba of murder, in what she is saying.

Incidentally, it is reported that she told the Court that she had been slapped three times round the head - roundly denied by three police officers and the Interpreter - whereas it was only twice in her trial testimony. Another example of Knox playing up the original lie.

Who is to be believed? Make your choice. Even if the choice is to believe her then, in context, it only relates to her strange inability to remember with whom the exchange of texts had been, not to the coercion she is alleging.

Even in her book she does not actually say that the police coerced her to implicate Lumumba though that, through her description of her treatment at the hands of the police was what she wanted the reader to believe, and which so many, in their ignorance, do.

But it does not add up. None of it.

As to the pressure she says she was under, that does not add up either. What was so difficult that she was unable to remember with whom the exchange of texts had been or in explaining the somewhat unremarkable content (which she tried to do later but not at the time)?

Her subsequent explanation (the day after she was detained in prison) does not make sense either.

“I’m sorry I didn’t remember before and I’m sorry I said that I could have been at the house when it happened. I was very stressed at the time and I really did think he was the murderer. I said these things because I was confused and scared. But now I remember that I can’t know who was the murderer because I didn’t return back to the house.”

The issue, for Knox, would therefore seem to have been that she had not been able to remember whether or not she had really met up with Lumumba at the cottage. So why say she had? Would being “confused” and “scared” really bring on a sudden bout of amnesia that was only to dissipate some time after, and as a credible eye witness, giving two statements, 4 hours apart, to the police, directly incriminating Lumumba?

Plenty of time there to reflect on what she had just done. That made no difference. She doubled down on it, both in her 5.45 am statement and in her Memorial.

One would think, would one not, that not being at the cottage at the time of the murder would, for her, and whatever the stressful circumstances, be a pivotal, and unshakable fact, ever present at the forefront of her mind? In her case so much so that she had already given statements to the police to that effect. This was never about her memory being affected by confusion, or by being scared, as she would have us believe, and there is simply no credible (but plenty of disprovable) evidence for the coercion she is alleging.

And finally, the 5th Chambers itself, the court which acquitted Knox and Sollecito of murder, and which referred the criminal defamation to Florence for this review in the light, apparently, of the ECHR ruling (though frankly I do not understand the reason for this, other than it was to enable Italian courts to demonstrate that in the final analysis they had indeed taken the Convention on Human Rights into account in any definitive verdict ), said the following -

“And also, a possible decision of the European Court in favour of Ms Knox, in the sense of a desired recognition of non-orthodox treatment of her by investigators, could not in any way affect the final verdict, not even in the event of a possible review of the verdict, considering the slanderous accusations that the accused produced against Lumumba consequent to the asserted coercions, and confirmed by her before the Public Minister during the subsequent session, in a context which, institutionally, is immune from anomalous psychological pressures; and also confirmed in her memorial, at a moment when the same accuser was alone with herself and her conscience in conditions of objective peacefulness, sheltered from environmental influence; and were even restated, after some time, during the validation of the arrest of Lumumba, before the investigating judge in charge.”

Wednesday, June 05, 2024

Amanda Knox Again Found Guilty of Criminal Slander; Our Further Explanation Of Why

Posted by KrissyG

Knox & husband arrive at court

1. Previous Analysis

Click for Post:  Nailing In Advance Amanda Knox’s Expected Lie-A-Thon At 10 April Retrial #1

Click for Post:  Nailing In Advance Amanda Knox’s Expected Lie-A-Thon At 10 April Retrial #2

Click for Post:  Knox Calunnia Retrial: Prosecution Makes Strong Case For Letting 3 Year Felony Sentence Stand

2. Further Analysis

Knox appeared in court in Florence today - and lo-and-behold, she did once again lie!!

Here is an excerpt of her probably dishonest statement posted today 5 June 2024 by the BBC News:

“She told the court on Wednesday that police had coerced her into implicating Mr Lumumba.

“The police threatened me with 30 years in prison, an officer slapped me three times saying ‘Remember, remember’,” Knox, 36, said.

“I’m very sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to withstand the pressure from the police,” she added, speaking in Italian.

“I never wanted to slander Patrick. He was my friend, he took care of me and consoled me for the loss of my friend (Meredith). I’m sorry I wasn’t able to resist the pressure and that he suffered.”

Lumumba was a civil plaintiff in the trial and his lawyer had asked for the calunnia conviction to be reinstated.

Let’s flashback to the original slander. 

Guiliano Mignini, Perugia state prosecutor in the initial stages, writes in his recent book, soon to be in English and for-now translated from the Italian:

“…[…]…the most important event of that week [6th – 7th Nov 2007]was precisely the false accusation made by Amanda Knox against her employer, Patrick Diya Lumumba, owner of the Pub “Le Chic”, in the historic center of the city. This slander, repeated on several occasions in the hours and days after and which would be completely unexplained if Amanda had not at least been present at the crime, played a fundamental role in the judgment of responsibility against Knox and constitutes, so to speak, the painful point against which Amanda defended herself, shifting the accusation against the policemen in front of whom she accused Patrick and against me who, however, arrived at the police station later. I would stress that, for the offense of slander against Patrick, Knox has been definitively convicted, so that she can no longer invoke pressure from the investigators to make her falsely accuse Lumumba. This crime was committed with full conscience and self-determination by Amanda, who is the only author of it and who, for this reason, was sentenced to an exemplary sentence.” p.52.

So we see Knox still tries to pin the blame on the police even today.

It is clear the Florence court was not having it, even without the disallowed documents, as highlighted by the ECHR.

“…her final conviction for slander now precludes any possibility of repeating her version that she had named Patrick because suggested to her by the Police and to escape the intolerable pressure to which she would have been subjected.” p 63

Knox even tried to blame Dr Mignini! Even though he was not present at the time.

So, if all of the courts reject Knox’ claim the police pressurised her – including the court today - then what made her name Lumumba?

Firstly, on the murder evening of 2nd Nov 2007, Knox had received Lumumba’s text message to not come in to work that evening, in the vicinity of Plaza Grimana, despite her claiming never to have left Sollecito’s apartment after arriving home from the students’ cottage at via del Pergola, at about 5:00pm (claims Knox in several sources).

Secondly, Guede remains definitively convicted of the murder and he himself admits he was at the scene but with others.

So why would Knox lie about not leaving Sollecito’s apartment and why name Lumumba to the police?

Clearly both men, Guede and Lumumba, are black African in appearance, and indeed, this was the motivation put forward by the final Fifth Chamber Supreme Court that annulled the murder charges, under the grounds of ‘insufficient evidence’, but affirmed the Calunnia conviction.

It said definitively that Knox had named Lumumba to cover up for Guede.  Its reasoning was that by deflecting the investigation towards Lumumba it covered the possibility that Guede had been seen by a neighbour but that he could be mistaken for Lumumba, whilst at the same time, deflecting suspicion away from the real perpetrators.

In his book Dr Mignini writes:

“ The connecting factor, therefore, was there, and it was made up of the very Knox that had made Lumumba known to the victim. Thus, the aggravating circumstance at issue could not be ruled out, and the slander was clearly a device that Amanda found herself “compelled” to mislead the investigators. It is clear that if Amanda was convicted of slander, it means that she accused Lumumba while aware of his innocence and that this in turn presupposes, as has been said, that the girl knew who was with her in the house of Via della Pergola and had participated in the murder. After the judgment of the Fifth Chamber, Knox was with “complete certainty” at the time and place of the crime, while Rudi killed Meredith in concurrence with two accomplices. Sollecito was (present) almost certainly. We shall see this little gem further, which, by now, is no longer open to question. P 242

This refers to Knox’ statement to the police that she had met Lumumba in the basketball court of Plaza Grimana and had taken him to the cottage to meet Meredith, whereupon he raped and killed Meredith, whilst she, Knox, covered her ears from the screams and thuds.

We might ask why Knox bothered to appeal the Calunnia charge, given the conviction has now been reaffirmed on six occasions and has never been annulled nor once declared ‘not guilty’ at any stage. 

Given the aggravated murder conviction was overturned twice (Hellmann and Marasca/Bruno) you might think Knox would just shrug it off, having served the three-year sentence, plus one year on remand, and was now free, back in Seattle, and having largely lost on most points of her ECHR claim, to just get on with her life with her young family.

Most people, apart from those who have followed the case closely probably are not even aware she was still convicted of a serious crime, and from newspaper reports assumed she had been ‘exonerated’ of everything. 

By bringing this back to appeal and re-trial, the whole world is now more aware than ever, that Amanda Knox accused an innocent man of the worse crime known to man, a man who himself had a young child, and a man whom she referred to as ‘a friend’ in court today.

And what does it say about her lack of empathy that getting her conviction quashed was more important to her than allowing Lumumba justice for the terrible wrong, which was purposefully and callously done to him by Knox herself?  What kind of a person does that?

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Knox Calunnia Retrial: Prosecution Makes Strong Case For Letting 3 Year Felony Sentence Stand

Posted by Our Main Posters

The Prosecutor General of Tuscany

1. Today’s Happenings

The Florence court met for its first tense and briefly heated session today.

The verdict for Knox in the calunnia retrial, in which she is accused of criminal slander against Patrick Lumumba, her boss, is postponed to 5 June.

The Florence Prosecutor-General Dr Ettore Squillace Greco (tellingly a very big gun) asked for confirmation of the three-year sentence for Knox, who was provisionally acquitted of murder by the Supreme Court’s Fifth Chambers (bizarrely, that is the family court) in 2015.

During the session’s opening, the fiery lawyer Carlo Pacelli, Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer, shouted “Amanda is a liar” to Ms Knox’s lawyers.

He was interrupted by the judge, and Ms Knox’s lawyer replied: “We cannot restart the murder trial again, we are here for a defamation case.” (An odd response, as that is why Patrick’s team is there too.)

According to the Prosecutor General, when Knox wrote her “memoriale” on 6 November 2007 she would have been “aware of Lumumba’s innocence” and “aware of suggesting to investigators the name of a person who had nothing to do with the murder”.

It was explained to the court that the ECHR was simply mistaken in its summary of Knox’s treatment on the night of her arrest.

The court has before it all the documents we summarized in the two posts just below.

2. Some Context

Knox of course repeatedly undermined her own case by testifying under oath in December 2007 and at trial in 2009 that she was treated well.

We now know that a major reason for the ECHR’s confusion was a pretty fictional account by Knox lawyer Dalla Vedova, who did not seem to have anything compelling to say in her support today.

The case Dalla Vedova made to ECHR was kept confidential by Knox’s defence for years. When Italian prosecutors finally got to see it, they were amazed and amused. All it asked for was the equivalent of about $1 million in damages. No verdict rollbacks. The ECHR only recommended a payment to Knox of about $20,000.

Amanda Knox wrote her “memoriale” in English before being transferred to Capanne Prison, and she handed it to Officer Ficarra (who has no English) with a gleeful laugh. In it she seems to be trying to walk back damage done in her sessions with Ficarra and Dr Mignini before daylight on that same day.

Knox’s memoriale makes no mention of having been pressured or abused except a claimed tap on the head that all witnesses and her own lawyers denied. (In her other calunnia trial Judge Boninsegna in effect accused the cops of being too kind!)

Nor did she claim this to the supervising magistrate, Dr Matteini, several days later, or to Dr Mignini on 19 December when she was interrogated (actually her first interrogation) at her own request.

Even Knox’s own lawyers made a public announcement denying any abuse in early 2008. They never filed a complaint - something they could be disbarred for if they really believed Knox.

Knox did not actually go looking for this appeal, which could have major impact on her “I’m the victim” flow of cash. The Italian Parliament dropped it in her lap with a change of the rules. Did Sollecito lawyer and Member of Parliament Bongiorno not think this thing through?

Or maybe she did. Like the Sollecitos, she has always seemed to want to see Knox brought down.

Tuesday, April 02, 2024

Knox Lie-A-Thon #2: Nailing In Advance Expected Lies At 10 April Retrial #2

Posted by KrissyG

Florence courts, venue of callunia retrial

Recap of Knox’s and Sollecito’s earliest written records

The Recorded Statement taken from Amanda Knox re the afternoon and evening of 2 Nov 2007 is timed at 3:30pm. Dr Mignini had arrived about 3:00pm. What jumps out is the following statement:

Amanda Knox [statement 2 November 2007]

“Around 5 pm I left my house together with Raffaele to go to his house where we stayed the whole evening and the night.”

So, from having been at Via della Pergola for lunch, during which time, Sollecito joined her, and Meredith had got out of bed after arriving home in the early hours, who according to Knox and Sollecito, still had the remains of vampire makeup on her chin, was wearing her ex-boyfriend’s jeans, and had gone out at four, “Without saying where she was going”, the pair claim to have gone straight to Sollecito’s apartment in Via Garibaldi, ‘At about five’.

The next written record we have comes from Knox’ email home to 25 people in her address book:

Amanda Knox [email Sunday 4 Nov 2007, in the early hours circa 36 hours or so after Meredith’s body was found]

“meredith came out of the shower and grabbed some laundry or put some laundry in, one or the other and returned into her room after saying hi to raffael. after lunch i began to play guitar with raffael and meredith came out of her room and went to the door. she said bye and left for the day. it was the last time i saw her alive.

after a little while of playing guitar me and raffael went to his house to watch movies and after to eat dinner and generally spend the evening and night indoors. [sic]”

The next written record is Sollecito’s first written statement to the police:

Raffale Sollecito [November 5th 2007 at 22:40 in the offices of the Flying Squad of the Perugia Police Headquarters]

“QA Around 16:00 Meredith left in a hurry without saying where she was going. Amanda and I stayed home until about 17:30-18:00.
QA We left the house, we went into town, but I don’t remember what we did.
QA We stayed there from 18:00 until 20:30/21:00. At 21:00 I went home alone because Amanda told me that she was going to go to the pub Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends.”

For the first time we are made aware that the pair went somewhere after leaving Via della Pergola at between ‘5:30 and 6:00’ according to Raffaele’s statement, this glides neatly into Popovic’s visit at 6:00pm at Raff’s abode.  No visible gaps in the timeline here.

Next comes Knox’ handwritten statement to the police:

Amanda Knox [Handwritten Statement to the police 6 Nov 2007]

‘Thursday, November 1st I saw Meredith the last time at my house when she left around 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Raffaele was with me at the time. We, Raffaele and I, stayed at my house for a little while longer and around 5 in the evening we left to watch the movie Amelie at his house.’

So Knox says they left at 5:00 – as she set out in the email home, above, whilst Sollecito makes it an hour later.  So, we are led to believe, they didn’t stay in town long at all, and in any case, ‘I don’t remember what we did’.

This is a big red flag.  When people say, ‘I don’t remember’, they are telling you they recall an event, but are unable to retrieve it from their memory.  In fact, Knox and Sollecito do not even try to ‘remember’, not even when elite detectives are carrying out a crucial murder investigation of your girlfriend’s own roommate.  A person who was not involved would surely say, ‘I don’t know’ when asked a straight question, not ‘I don’t recall’.

Sollecito sticks to his script: ‘We left via della Pergola at six’:

Raffaele Sollecito [7 Nov 2007 Prison diary]

“An amusing thing I remember is that Meredith was wearing a pair of men’s jeans which belonged to her ex‐boyfriend in England. She left quickly around 4 pm, not saying where she was going. Meanwhile, Amanda and I stayed there until around 6 pm and we began to smoke cannabis.

My problems start from this moment because I have confused memories. Firstly, Amanda and I went to the centre going from Piazza Grimana to Corso Vannucci passing behind the University for Foreigners and ending up in Piazza Morlacchi (we always take that road). Then I do not remember but presumably we went shopping for groceries. We returned to my house at around 8 ‐ 8:30 pm and there I made another joint and, since it was a holiday, I took everything with extreme tranquillity, without the slightest intention of going out since it was cold outside.”

Note the signifier, informing the reader, ‘it was cold outside’ implying, ‘therefore we would not have gone out that night’.

So, whilst Sollecito on 7 Nov 2007 jotted in his Prison Diary they were out between ‘six and eight’, Amanda writes to her lawyers a couple of days later adhering firmly to her script of not going anywhere at all.

Amanda Knox [Letter to her Lawyers 9 Nov 2007]

“Around 3 or 4 Meredith left the house wearing light-colored clothing, and all she said was “Ciao”. She didn’t say where she was going. I continued playing guitar and after a while Raffaele and I left my house, probably around 5pm.

We went to his house and the first thing we did was get comfortable.”

Then comes Knox’ next written affirmation of what she did the day of the murder:

Amanda Knox [Page 1223 Prison diary27 Nov 2007]

“Here is what I did that night:
5pm: Left my house with Raffaele and walked to his apartment.
5:05pm - ???:  (1) Used the computer to look up songs to play on the guitar.
  (2) Read Harry Potter in German w/Raffaele.
  (3) Watched Amelie.
  (4) Prepared and ate dinner – Fish.
  (5) While cleaning the dishes a bunch of water spilled on the floor.
  (6) We tried to soak up a little with small towels but there was too much.
  (7) Raffaele rolled a joint.
  (8) We smoked the joint together and talked.
  (9) We had sex.
  (10) We fell asleep.
It’s that simple.”

Still no mention of going into the old town.  None. Note the qualifier, “It’s that simple”.  Note the triple question mark as if she is unsure it took half an hour to an hour to arrive at Sollecito’s, when it would only have been five or ten minutes away, at most.

Raffaele helpfully offers us an insight in his book several years later as to why he revealed – even if Amanda NEVER does, not once – they went into town in his police statement of 5 Nov 2007.

Andrew Gumbel and Raffaele Sollecito [From Honor Bound 2012]

P 17
“It was the last time I ever saw [Meredith Kercher].
Amanda and I smoked a joint before leaving the house on Via della Pergola, wandered into town for shopping before remembering we had enough for dinner already, and headed back to my place.”

P53 (in the Questura 5 Nov 2007)

“I mentioned [to police] Amanda and I had gone out shopping, something I had apparently omitted in my previous statements.” [note the plural].

So, we see, Sollecito has not voluntarily offered the information ‘We went into town’ either, on the afternoon of 1 Nov 2007.  He concedes he only proffered it, because the police brought it up.  When asked the purpose of the trip, he claims they went ‘shopping’, but on not being able to prove they bought anything via receipts nor state which shops the pair frequented, Sollecito had to retract this claim, by now adding to his 6 Nov 2007 official police statement, later, that once there, they suddenly realised ‘We had enough for dinner already’.

So, we are led by this to conclude the purpose of the expedition into the old town was ‘shopping for dinner’.

So Sollecito says they set out to do something – shopping - but then didn’t do it.  Sollecito omits to even mention to police going into the old town, and Knox persistently does not mention it at all, even though Sollecito told police she was with him, in a signed statement.  He only mentions it when detectives ask him why he omitted to in the earlier police statements. 

Sollecito then suddenly remembers this implied unimportant detail and tells the police they were there, shopping.  But wait.  The pair then suddenly do not do any shopping at all because once there, they realise they ‘already had’ provisions for the evening meal.  Amanda Knox makes clear that the evening meal was FISH.  Yet she claims she couldn’t remember exactly what she did at Sollecito’s, for at least three weeks. (Fishy indeed.)

Astonishingly, years later, Knox still refuses to mention the pair’s mysterious excursion. Here in her book Amanda Knox resolutely omits the detail of ‘going into the old town’.

Amanda Knox [Waiting to be Heard 2013]

P61

“Sometime between 4:00pm and 5pm we left to go to his place.”

There then follows filler sentences about how “we wanted a quiet cozy night in.

As we walked along, I was telling Raffaele that Amélie was my all time favourite movie.

‘Really?’ he asked.  ‘I’ve never seen it.”

[Forgetting completely, forensic police discovered he’d downloaded the movie way back on 28 Oct 2007].

“Oh my God,’ I said, unbelieving.  ‘You have to see it right this second.  You’ll love it.”

The narrative then completely jumps to:

“Not long after we got back to Raffaele’s place, his doorbell rang.”  [Enter first alibi Jovanna Popovic, whom Raff states appeared at 6:00pm].

A whole hour is omitted.  One whole hour to get back to Raff’s, just around the corner, four to ten minutes away at the outside.  And once again Sollecito sets out to help Popovic with her suitcase but that doesn’t actually happen after all, either.

From all the evasions and omissions we see that what happened between 4:00pm and 9:00pm on the afternoon of the murder and where the pair went, is deeply significant.  The trip into the old town which took up to two to five hours of their time seems rather more sinister than some kind of coyness or embarrassment about perhaps buying some drugs. They talk quite openly about smoking dope in their police statements and books.

In his statement to police on 5 Nov 2007, Sollecito claims he came home alone from town at “20:30/21:00”.  As we now know, the pair both switched off their phones together, between 20:45 and 21:00, so we can be sure this time is supremely salient.  Meredith was on her way back around then.  From Knox not ever mentioning the trip into town, it could be she indeed never did go into town, and that Raff went alone; after all it was Amanda, Popovic claimed to have seen at six.

When Knox wrote in her follow-up memorandum to the police – which was not allowed to be used as evidence in court – after having named Patrick Lumumba as the perpetrator, she portrays herself as having been dreadfully confused.  But the importance of concealing ‘going into town’ between 4:00pm and 6:00pm seems to be closely connected to what happened vis-à-vis Patrik Lumumba-cum-Rudi Guede.

Amanda Knox [memo to police 6 November 2007]

“In my mind I saw Patrik in flashes of blurred images. I saw him near the basketball court. I saw him at my front door. I saw myself cowering in the kitchen with my hands over my ears because in my head I could hear Meredith screaming. But I’ve said this many times so as to make myself clear: these things seem unreal to me, like a dream, and I am unsure if they are real things that happened or are just dreams my mind has made to try to answer the questions in my head and the questions I am being asked.”

And indeed, the annulling final Fifth Chamber confirms that Knox, as a finding of fact, covered up for Guede by naming Lumumba.

Can we really believe Knox was simply stressed out by the police when she named Lumumba?  If so, why the great desperation to conceal what she did between 16:00 and 21:00?

And what were her exact whereabouts when her room mate was killed?

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Knox Lie-A-Thon #1: Nailing In Advance Expected Lies At 10 April Retrial #1

Posted by Peter Quennell

Perugia Central Police Station at night (left-center)

Overview

Right now, Amanda Knox is a convicted felon who served three years.

Knox still owes damages of about $100,000 as well. This award over a decade ago was to Patrick because Knox had framed him for murder when under no pressure (as all courts agreed).

Because of an absurd mistake by the bungling European Court of Human Rights - falsely concluding from “evidence” that one of Knox’s lawyers made up that Knox was (1) a formal suspect (2) under extreme police pressure, and (3) should have had a lawyer present (4) when she was “interrogated” - Knox is being given a chance to annul her felony.

She will present her evidence if any before an appeal court starting in Florence on April 10. 

Knox’s endemic false claims and smears that make up this interrogation hoax took a team of more than 30 of us three years, with extensive document gathering and translation, and over 20 posts (see all links below) to definitively put to bed. This text below was our final overview, first posted here in 2014.

1. Masterlist Of Posts In The Pre-Trial Series

The Interrogation Hoax pre-trial series consists of a total of 20 posts. Numbering of posts is not chronological. It represents the original order of postings.

These posts quote from a large number of transcripts only recently acquired and translated. There are no serious conflicts, no gray areas. One can assume with total certainty that this is the real thing (see Part 3 below), and that any other versions (see Part 4 below) are fabricated.

1. What Happened At AK & RS Q&A Prior To 6 Nov

Click for Post: #19: ALL Knox Q&A Sessions 2-6 November 2007 WERE Recorded #1

Click for Post: #20: ALL Knox Q&A Sessions 2-6 November 2007 WERE Recorded #2

2. What Happened At Knox Q&A 6 Nov Ending 1:45 AM

Click for Post: #2: Trial Testimony From Rita Ficcara On Realities 5-6 Nov

Click for Post: #3: More Defense Pussyfooting Toward Rita Ficcara, Key Witness

Click for Post: #4: More Hard Realities From Rita Ficcara, More Nervousness From Defense

Click for Post: #12: Ficarra & Knox Notes PROVE Knox Merely Worked On Visitors Names List

Click for Post: #5: Key Witness Monica Napoleoni Confirms Knox Self-Imploded 5-6 Nov

Click for Post: #7: Testimony Of Witness Lorena Zugarini On The Knox Conniption 5-6 Nov

Click for Post: #8: Testimony Of Interpreter Donnino On Events Night Of 5 November

3. What Happened At Sollecito Q&A 6 Nov Ending 3:30 AM

Click for Post: #6: Sollecito Transcript & Actions Further Damage Knox Version

Click for Post: #9: Officer Moscatelli’s Recap/Summary Session With Sollecito 5-6 Nov

4. What Happened At Knox-Rights Session Ending 5:45am

Click for Post: #15: Knox Is Told Her Rights And Repeats Fake Murder Charge

5. What Of Relevance Happened In Ensuing Months

Click for Post: #13: The First Two Pre-Trial Opportunities Which Knox Flunked

Click for Post: #14: The Third Pre-Trial Opportunity Which Knox Flunked

Click for Post: #16: The Fourth Pre-Trial Opportunity Which Knox Flunked

Click for Post: #17: Sollecito April 2008 Before Supreme Court Again Coldshoulders Knox

Click for Post:#18: The Final Pre-Trial Opportunities Which Knox Flunked

Click for Post: #21: Illustrating How Batshit Crazy The Interrogation Hoax Has Become

6. Why Investigators’ Version Won Hands-Down At Trial

Click for Post: #10: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #1

Click for Post: #11: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #2

2. Explaining Overall Arc Of Events

Much of the testimony listed above was about events at the central police station pre-arrest in early November 2007 and subsequent court attempts to achieve some believability and relief.

Early in 2009 at trial Knox and Sollecito sat glumly through all of the investigators’ pre-arrest testimony and cross-examination at trial. They were downhearted and apprehensive, and there were no smiles and few interruptions.

Subsequently Sollecito chose not to get on the stand, so from his team there really was never a rebuttal.

But Knox HAD to get on the stand, in July, for two days. She had no other way to defend herself against the serious felony crime of falsely framing Patrick for murder.

It was her word against theirs. It contradicted in many places what she had heard months earlier in sworn testimony from many investigators.

Knox’s version inevitably weakened a lot under cross-examination, and was ultimately a fail at trial and several appeals, even the annulled one.

Knox ended up serving three years. While on the stand she confirmed that she had been treated well, stiffing thousands of supporters duped into believing she had not been.

3. Explaining Court-Accepted Narrative For 6 Nov

This is an overview of Knox’s so-called “interrogation” at Perugia’s central police station, the subject of the first ten posts.

It led to her arrest and three years served. To make this picture really firm we will quote a lot of the testimony at trial. The Case Wiki carries all of these transcripts, many in English translation, and more. 

Senior Inspector Rita Ficarra testified that she arrived back at the police station late on 5 November, and finds her way blocked by a cartwheeling Knox.

She rebukes Knox, who testily responds that she is tired of the investigation. Rita Ficarra tells Knox to go home and get some sleep. Knox testily refuses, and remains there.

Shortly after, Ficarra suggests to Knox that if she really wants to help, she could add to the list of possible perps - men who Meredith knew and who might have visited the house.

This was a recap/summary, a simple checking of facts with someone who might or might not be of help. This could have been done on a street corner or in a house by a single officer. It was not a witness or suspect interrogation. From the transcript:

Ghirga: “While this interrogation - let’s call it thus - was in progress, some colleagues arrive…”  Ficarra: “It was not an interrogation, Attorney.” Ghirga: “They are called recaps/summaries.

Knox eagerly agrees. So they begin on the list.

This goes slowly because of language problems, until an interpreter, Anna Donnino, arrives. In total only Knox and four others (three of them women) are present.

Knox builds a list of seven people and adds maps and phone numbers (placed in evidence) in a calm proceeding. These were the names: Peter Svizzero, Patrick, Ardak, Juve, Spiros, Shaki and “a South African [Guede]” who played basketball near the house.

At several points in the evening Knox is provided with refreshments. No voices are ever raised, no bathroom breaks are refused.

In a separate wing Inspector Napoleoni and a couple of colleagues are seeking facts from Sollecito. Shown conflicts between what he has said and what his phone records show, Sollecito backtracks, and declares that Knox went out alone on the night, and made him lie.

Napoleoni moves through the questura to suggest to Ficarra to discuss the night of the attack with Knox in more detail and clarify who might have been present. Knox is not informed of Sollecito’s backtrack. She is asked for more names and spontaneously shares her phone. There is an outgoing to Patrick but no prior incoming. Knox is asked who Patrick is.

Suddenly, to the considerable surprise of others present, Knox has a yelling, head-clutching conniption (the first of several that night) and says “It’s him, it’s him, it was him, he killed her”. The session is halted.

Despite warnings she should not do so without a lawyer, Knox insists on a recorded statement which says she headed out to meet Patrick that night after he texted her. She accuses Patrick of killing Meredith. 

Efforts are made throughout the next several hours to try to help Knox to calm down. Knox is put on hold, given more refreshments, and made comfortable on some chairs so she might try to get some sleep.

A second session ending at 5:45 is intended as merely a formal reading of Knox’s legal status and her right to a lawyer, with Dr Mignini presiding. She is to be held as a material witness and for her own protection.

Again warned that she should not speak without a lawyer, and no questions can be asked, Knox still insists on a second spontaneous accusation culminating in a second recorded statement.

This also says she went out to meet Patrick that night, also accuses Patrick of killing Meredith, and now also hints that Sollecito may have been there. 

Just before noon, now under arrest and about to be taken to Capanne Prison, Knox insists on writing out at length a third statement this time in English.

She gleefully hands it to Rita Ficcara who cannot read it as she as no English. In the statement, Knox included this damning remark, without any mention of having been coerced: “The questions that need answering, at least for how I’m thinking are… 2. Why did I think of Patrik?”

Knox’s lawyers never ever substantially challenge this version. At trial they accept that there was no interrogation, leave standing that Knox insisted on all three statements, and dont ever pursue Knox’s claims that she was coerced.

Courts all noted that there is no mention in that third note of Knox having been coerced, although this note was her idea and she could put in it anything she liked. From this there never was any going back.

In July 2009 at trial, in face of days and days of prior investigator testimony, Knox brashly tried to substitute this scenario above with the one below. Of course she was disbelieved.

For the calunnia framing of Patrick Lumumba Judge Massei in 2009 sentenced her to a year more than Sollecito, amended by Judge Hellmann in 2011 to three years served.

The Supreme Court definitively overruled her calunnia appeal so for her false framing of Patrick she is a felon for life.

4. Explaining Knox Family & PR Alternative

Knox’s Italian lawyers were not a part of this; in contrast the American PR lawyer Ted Simon sought to introduce major confusion.

In Italy, lawyers are REQUIRED to report tales of abuse of their clients or face possible criminal charges. Contrariwise, if they knowingly report false charges they can face similar charges. So what they do is a strong indicator of truth. 

Amanda Knox’s lawyers not only did not ever report any abuse. They even announced publicly, in face of incessant claims of abuse by Knox, family, and PR forces, that they had seen no evidence of abuse and so would not be reporting. 

Though her precise claims vary and often contradict one another, Knox herself has on and off ever since November 2007 tried to put the investigators on trial - tried to blame the police for causing her conniption and her false accusation of Patrick for the death of Meredith.

Her fail rate has been spectacular.

Knox failed to convince (1) Supervising Magistrate Matteini and (2) the Ricciarelli review panel in November 2007, (3) failed to convince Prosecutor Mignini in December 2007, (4) failed to convince the Supreme Court in April 2008, (5) failed to convince the Micheli court in late 2008, (6) failed to convince the judges and jury at trial 2009, (7) failed at annulled appeal 2011, (8) failed at repeat appeal 2013, (9) failed to convince the Supreme Court in 2012 and (10) failed again in 2015.

As Knox’s team simply did not ever believe her, they may not have given this their hardest shot. It was not part of their largely spurious complaint to the EC HR.

And yet despite all of these failures, the huge and very nasty Knox PR effort went full-bore ahead with the abuse allegations anyway.

Read this post of 11 February 2009 which was about two weeks before the Knox “interrogators” were cross-examined at trial, and several months before Knox herself took the stand. Dozens of media reports repeated the Knox claims as if true.

Knox repeated them in her April 2013 book, and her December 2013 email to Judge Nencini, and her appeal to EHCR Strasbourg, and in some TV and newspaper interviews, including one with the Italian weekly Oggi which caused that paper legal harm.

This version has been blown up by Knox PR shills in internet posts, articles, TV interviews, and books. Among others propagating it have been mafioso wannabes Raffaele Sollecito (in his book), Doug Preston, Saul Kassin, Steve Moore (especially), John Douglas, Jim Clemente, Paul Ciolino, Michael Heavey, Greg Hampikian, Chris Halkidis, Mark Waterbury, Doug Bremner, Candace Dempsey, Nina Burleigh, Bruce Fischer, and many posters on the Knox sites and Fischer sites and on Ground Report.

Main claims included 50-plus hours of “interrogation”, numerous officers in teams, no food or drink, no sleep, no bathroom breaks, no lawyer, no recording, and much abuse and yelling and suggestions and threats. Way beyond anything even Knox herself and notably her own lawyers ever claimed. 

• Here is Steve Moore claiming that around a dozen cops in rotating tag teams of two assaulted a starving and sleepless Knox over 20/30/40 hours, threatened her, and refused her a lawyer throughout.


• Here is Saul Kassin claiming that Knox was interrogated over the entire night of 5-6 November, until she was finally broken and a coerced “confession” emerged - even though the “false confession” actually framed Patrick and was in reality a false accusation. That Kassin ignores.


• Here are several former FBI profilers blatantly embellishing the same claims in a book, with (today) 60 five-star reviews.

And yet Knox’s own Italian lawyers specifically denied her accusations! No complaint against the police was ever lodged. All courts disbelieved her. Knox served her three years. But still the PR-driven hoax keeps resounding.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 02/14/24 at 02:05 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etc • Comments here (9)

Monday, January 01, 2024

Despite Her Claims, Knox Was NOT Exonerated By Italy’s Supreme Court

Posted by Our Main Posters

Kentucky State Capital and Supreme Court

Originally posted June 23 2017. Copied here with comments to put it at top of the Exonerated Hoax category.

1. Wave Of US Lawyers Getting Duped

The Kentucky Bar Association is the latest to get swindled by Knox. They have paid a ton of money to be lectured to by a fake exoneree.

The online notice of today’s talk by Knox at their annual conference says it all: it PROVES a complete lack of due diligence. It wrongly reads as follows:

On Friday 23 June the programming will be packed with fun and interesting sessions.. Topping off Friday’s schedule will be the featured presentation; AMANDA KNOX will share her story. She is the American exchange student who spent almost four years in an Italian prison, following her conviction for the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student who shared her apartment. In 2015, Knox was definitively acquitted [aka exonerated].

2. But Knox Was NOT Exonerated

Knox’s sentence was merely vacated (she could be tried again) because under mafia influence the Fifth Chambers of the Supreme Court ignored most of the evidence - and then claimed there was not enough.

Read here. The Fifth Chambers was assigned the case through quite open defense manipulation. It does not normally handle murder cases, and neither the lead judge nor the writer of the sentencing report had previously handled murder cases. Their reasoning was torturous, evidence was cherry-picked, and it seems certain any experienced and trained murder-case judges would have found for guilt here.

Read here  Knox was in fact found to have been at the scene of the crime, and with blood on her hands. The Supreme Court’s Fifth Chambers in fact handed down the weakest possible “not guilty” sentence, not guilty due to “insufficient evidence” (though see below; most of it they ignored, and the trial prosecution was not even at the Supreme Court) which allows an appeal if the prosecution or victim’s family wish to take up that option.

Read here. Knox was definitively found guilty of calunnia (criminal defamation) against her boss, Patrick Lumumba. The Supreme Court in her final appeal confirmed that she falsely accused Patrick Lumumba, a black man, of murder. She served three years in prison, and is a convicted felon for life. (To date she has refused to pay compensation of about $100,000, placing her in contempt of the Supreme Court. So much for Knox “helping” the wrongfully imprisoned.)

Read here. That book by Knox - in an expanded but unrevised 2nd edition - is one of the most dishonest ever written. It contains an estimated 400-plus provable lies and up to 100 possible defamations. See this example. For those Knox still faces multiple possibilities of prosecution.

Read here. Also read here. The evidence against Knox and her co-defendant Sollecito was in fact massive, and when correctly seen as a whole (as only the 2009 trial jury saw, not the several appeal juries) absolutely damning. Read also here. Thereafter the gaming of the system began, starting with the defense procuring ANOTHER judge not qualified for murder trials (Judge Hellmann, now edged into early retirement) for their first (2011) appeal. 

Read here. If true to form Knox will again try to claim to your audience that police interrogators forced a false confession out of her. Again untrue. She was not interrogated on that night or any other night. In fact she was only ever interrogated twice, BOTH TIMES at her own request by Dr Mignini, in December 2007 and July 2009. She was given SIX court opportunities to get herself off before the 2009 trial - and she failed all of them.

Read here. The supremely fair Italian justice system comes out pretty well against other systems including the American system. Italy’s rate of incarceration is 1/6 that of the United States, and among Italians the system polls very positively.

There’s much more if your members are inclined to set up a task force. For the protection from fraud of bar associations everywhere, we would welcome that.

Posted by Our Main Posters on 01/01/24 at 06:00 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Appeals 2009-2015,  Cassation 2015,  Hoaxes Knox & team,  22 Exonerated hoax • Comments here (14)

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Explaining The New Attempt To Annul Knox’s Calunnia Conviction & ECHR’s Role

Posted by KrissyG

Florence court where decision will be made

1. The History

Knox has provisionally won a Supreme Court appeal against her 2009 calunnia conviction for framing Patrick. A Florence court will now check the facts and rule whether she did win.

It is worth looking back to see on what grounds Knox had a limited victory at the ECHR in Strasbourg which gave its findings in January 2019, and in which Italy unsuccessfully appealed against.

Back in 2008, the European Court of Human Rights issued a groundbreaking decision in the case of Salduz v. Turkey. The court held that people detained at police stations have the right to access a lawyer. If people are interrogated by the police without getting the benefit of legal assistance, this could be a violation of their fundamental right to a fair trial.  It is on this point that Knox succeeded.

But we can readily see that (a) Knox was not being detained at a police station when she made her false allegations against Lumumba, she arrived of her own volition, and (b) as of that point she was not a suspect, ergo nor was she scheduled for an interrogation.  As soon as Knox accused Patrick Lumumba of being the rapist/killer of Meredith, the interview was terminated.

So where did the ECHR get the idea Knox had been ‘interrogated’?  From the fact of Knox’s defence lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova’s submissions to the ECHR, relying heavily on the Motivational Reports of Boninsegna, 2016, and Hellmann-Zanetti, 2011. 

Problem is, Boninsegna was not the judge in Knox’s callunia conviction case; that was Massei, 2009.  Massei was largely ‘overturned’ by 2011 Appeal Judges Hellmann-Zanetti, who in turn was largely annulled by the 2013 Chieffi Supreme Court, and the Knox-Sollecito first apeal was reverted back to the 2014 Appeal Court Nencini, 2014, in a different legal region (Tuscany).

Judge Hellmann nonetheless upheld Knox’s Calunnia conviction, as did final Supreme Court Bruno-Marasca. Thus, the Calunnia conviction was never at any stage rescinded or referred back on appeal. 

But it was Judge Hellmann who introduced the concept of ‘interrogation’ and Judge Boninsegna, who oversaw the second Calunnia trial, this time relating to a different charge of slander, against the police, and which was thrown out, relied heavily on Hellmann’s descriptive narrative of an ‘interrogation’.

Yet Knox was not in custody and was there only as a person of interest.  She volunteered to hang around, having arrived at the Questura with her then boyfriend, Sollecito, who had been summonsed by the police to attend.  Thus, volunteering information is not technically an ‘interrogation’ in the legal sense.

The ECHR upholding Knox’s claim under Article 6, right to a fair hearing:

•relied on comments by Hellmann Appeal Court, which was largely superseded and replaced by the Chieffi Supreme Court.

•relied heavily on police minutes and the fact, it says via Boninsegna, that an interpreter, Doninno, and a police officer, RI, failed to record details of their expressions of familiarity with Knox, or make a note that (i) Knox was asked if she wanted a lawyer and declined, (ii) that start and end times are not recorded, and that (iii) hours are condensed into minutes. These police minutes represented a failure of procedure, the ECHR reasoned. 

But if Knox was not technically under police interrogation nor detained, that would explain the lack of ‘start’ and ‘finish’ times and obviate the need to read the informant their rights.

2. The Evidence

So what is the evidence of Knox falsely, of her own free will, accusing Patrick Lumumba of raping and killing Meredith?

According to Prosecutor Mignini in his recent book, the facts are these:

When Amanda receives that message in her mobile phone 3484673590, precisely at 20.18.12 […]  the users were “hooked” to the cell “Via dell’Aquila n. 5 - Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3” […].

Amanda replies to Patrick at 8.32.34 p.m., with the SMS message whose screen Lumumba recognized […]. Amanda writes: “Of course. See you later. Good evening!”, in Italian but which was thought by Amanda in English as equivalent to “see you later”, an equivalent of “See you later” or “to resent”, indicating an indeterminate future, next meeting, just of people who see themselves regularly. That evening, in fact, there was no work.

Amanda and Patrick had no appointments whatsoever […]. When Amanda sends the SMS message in reply to Patrick, the reference cell, to which Knox’s users are “hooked”, is that of “Via Berar- di sector 7”, which gives coverage to Corso Garibaldi, where the Sollecito’s home is located.  This means that the girl from Seattle, as it was said, had gone out […] from where she was returning to the Sollecito’s house when she received Patrick’s SMS. It is quite likely that Amanda returned from Sollecito at about 20.30, after getting off via Ulisse Rocchi or passing through Piazza Cavallotti, where she received Patrick’s SMS.

[…]on the night between Monday and Tuesday, that is between 5 and 6, is the centre piece of the trial, […] because the most important event of that week was precisely the false accusation made by Amanda Knox against her employer, Patrick Diya Lumumba, owner of the Pub “Le Chic”, in the historic centre of the city. This slander, repeated on several occasions in the hours and days after, and which would be completely unexplained if Amanda had not at least been present at the crime, played a fundamental role in the judgment of responsibility against Knox and constitutes, so to speak, the painful point against which Amanda defended herself, […]  in front of the policemen to whom she accused Patrick and to me who, however, arrived at the police station later. I would stress that, for the offense of slander against Patrick, Knox has been definitively convicted, so that she can no longer claim invoked pressure from the investigators, which made her falsely accuse Lumumba. This crime was committed with full conscience and self-determination by Amanda, who is the only author of it and who, for this reason, was sentenced to an exemplary sentence.”

There is also the issue of the police wiretap which caught Knox confessing to her mother in the following week of knowing that Patrick was in prison wrongfully, but neither informed the police to rectify the situation.

Mignini further explains in his book that Knox said in her statement to the police that she lied to Sollecito that she had to go to work that evening:

...that, therefore, she had gone out and met Patrick in the nearby basketball field, and that she had then returned with him to the apartment of Via della Pergola. There, again according to Knox’s account, Lumumba would have secluded himself in Meredith’s chamber with her, had sexual intercourse with her, then degenerately killed her. Amanda would have heard everything from the position where she had stayed. It’s evident that she must have heard screams, fuss and then cries of Meredith before she was killed.’

[…]… and, therefore, the need to hide from Raffaele the encounter with Patrick (or, perhaps, with the other black, hidden under the guise of Lumumba, that is Rudi Hermann Guede), the next story may have a more or less innocent side, in the sense that Amanda would have only wanted to make Lumumba meet with her British roommate, but also, on the contrary, a disturbing side, alluding to a real participation of the girl from Seattle in the violence suffered by Mez and in her killing at the hands of Lumumba, having knowingly allowed him to meet Meredith in the apartment. However, Amanda accused Lumumba, not herself. They were statements that were “straight incrimination of another party”, not “self
incrimination”.

This is an important distinction.  One has the right in law not to incriminate oneself but no-one has the right to falsely accuse another of a crime that leads directly to their detriment.  Lumumba was arrested in the early hours, in front of his wife and children, wearing nothing but underpants, and thrown into jail accused of a particularly heinous rape and murder, as a terrified African man from the Congo.  The photograph of his arrest appeared in the worldwide press.

2. The Court Judgments

Then of course, there is the finding of the Supreme Court, Marasca & Bruno, Sept. 2015, who made it clear that Knox’s confirmed Calunnia conviction was borne out of a need to cover up for Rudi Guede, by virtue of his being also Black, as was Lumumba, and by reasoning that had a neighbour seen someone of that description near the cottage, that could be interchangeable with the person Knox had pointed a finger at, insofar that Marasca and Bruno upheld as a fact that Knox was present at the cottage when Meredith was murdered.

“All this took place in Perugia, during the night between the 1st and 2nd of November 2007. Knox […], knowing that he was innocent, with statements filed during declaration to the Flying Squad and the Police of Perugia on the 6th of November 2007, she falsely blamed Diya Lumumba called “Patrick” for the murder of the young Meredith Kercher, all of this to obtain impunity for everyone and particularly for Guede Rudi Hermann, coloured as is Lumumba; in Perugia, during the night between the 5th and the 6th of November 2007.
[…]

4. Meanwhile, it can’t be ignored, on a first summary overview, that the history of these proceedings is characterized by a troubled and intrinsically contradictory path, with the only fact of irrefutable certainty being the guilt of Amanda Knox regarding the slanderous accusations against Patrick Lumumba.

[…] On the other hand, in the slanderous declarations against Lumumba, which earned her a conviction, the status of which is now protected as final judgement [giudicato], [they] had themselves exactly that premise in the narrative, that is: the presence of the young American woman inside the house in via della Pergola, a circumstance which nobody at that time – except obviously the other people present inside the house – could have known (quote p. 96). According to the slanderous statements of Ms. Knox, she had returned home in the company of Lumumba, who she had met by chance in Piazza Grimana, and when Ms. Kercher arrived in the house, Knox’s companion directed sexual attentions toward the young English woman, then he went together with her in her room, from which the harrowing scream came. So, it was Lumumba who killed Meredith and she could affirm this since she was on the scene of crime herself, albeit in another room.’

[…]

‘Another element against her is certainly constituted by the false accusations [calunnia] against Mr. Lumumba, afore-mentioned above. It is not understandable, in fact, what reason could have driven the young woman to produce such serious accusations. The theory that she did so in order to escape psychological pressure from detectives seems extremely fragile, given that the woman [47] could not fail to realize that such accusations directed against her boss would turn out to be false very soon, given that, as she knew very well, Mr. Lumumba had no relationship with Ms. Kercher nor with the Via della Pergola house. Furthermore, the ability to present an ironclad alibi would have allowed Lumumba to obtain release and subsequently the dropping of charges. However, the said calunnia is another circumstantial element against the current appellant, insofar as it can be considered a strategy in order to cover up for Mr. Guede, whom she had an interest to protect because of fear of retaliatory accusations against her. This is confirmed by the fact that Mr. Lumumba, like Mr. Guede, is a man of colour, hence the indication of the first one would be safe in the event that the latter could have been seen by someone while entering or exiting the apartment.’

FIFTH CHAMBERS MOTIVATION REPORT (PRE-FINAL DATED 1 NOVEMBER 2015

For completeness of facts, here is what Massei, the trial court judge, had to say about Knox’ framing of Lumumba:

“It must therefore be asserted that Amanda Knox freely accused Diya Lumumba of having killed Meredith, and so accused him with full knowledge of the innocence of the [419] same Lumumba. The incriminating evidence against Amanda Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito which has been presented also highlights the goal that was thus pursued: to lead the investigators down the wrong track, far away from that which might have led to an investigation of her own and her boyfriend’s responsibility. A behaviour and a choice, therefore, [that were] purely defensive: Amanda had good relations with Lumumba, by whom she had always been treated well, as she herself stated, and thus there could have been no reason for rancour, animosity, revenge which could have justified such a serious accusation; the sole reason for unjustly accusing Lumumba was that of distancing herself and her boyfriend from every possibility of suspicion and the necessity of further investigations. To obtain this it was necessary to indicate a different perpetrator and so Amanda pointed to Diya Lumumba. A behaviour, therefore, which follows the same defence strategy as that already put into effect with the staging implemented by breaking the window of Romanelli’s room, and constitutes a further confirmation of Amanda Knox’s capacity for fictitious representations and contrived manipulation of the events.
SENTENCE OF THE COURT OF ASSIZES OF PERUGIA 2009

(PRESIDED OVER BY DR. GIANCARLO MASSEI)

3. Conclusions

So we can glean the following conclusions from this.  During the very earliest days of the course of investigation of Meredith’s murder, on the very next Tuesday evening after the Friday of 2 November, 2007, Knox pointed a finger at Lumumba knowing he was innocent and of her own free will, as found by all of the criminal courts.  The Italian criminal charge of Calunnia equates to the US charge of Obstruction of Justice or the UK equivalent of Perverting the Course of Justice, and is quite separate and distinct from any associated charge, such as the Aggravated Murder charge.  In the recent submission to the Court of Cassation, Knox relied heavily on the fact that the Aggravated Murder charge was annulled, and thus, ipso facto, was the argument that the Calunnia charge was also void.  However, the Court was not buying this and instead of the immediate annulment of the Calunnia conviction, a retrial has been set.

Did Amanda Knox seek to derail the police investigation by pointing the detectives in the wrong direction of an innocent man, Patrick Lumumba? This is what will need to be determined once again.

Why would Knox use the heavily criticised judgement of Hellmann - who found her guilty anyway - or that of third-party Judge Boninsegna who didn’t even deal with the Calunnia case against Lumumba, but who, to Dalla Vedova’s delight -ever the defence lawyer looking for a ‘get-out clause’ -  quoted Hellmann’s imprecise description of her voluntary police statements as an ‘interrogation’, when there were other, more completely, legitimate and more authoritative judgments that said otherwise, including the final Supreme Court Judge Marasca & Bruno of 2015.  Not forgetting that after she had signed her statement, she went away to her own private space and wrote a letter to the police underlining her belief she saw Patrick at the cottage, entirely unasked for and off her own free will.  Imagine the astonishment of the police officer when Amanda Knox crammed this letter into her hand, calling it ‘a present’.

Far from being cowed or confused, it seems as though Amanda Knox was determined to direct the police to the wrong person.  As many people are unaware - especially in the USA - of Knox’s Calunnia conviction, this whole new retrial might be a shot in the foot for Knox as well as a waking up surprise for those who had no idea of this aspect of her involvement in the Meredith Kercher case nor of her true character.

Posted by KrissyG on 10/14/23 at 03:01 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etc • Comments here (2)

Sunday, September 24, 2023

Knox’s Misleading Petition To The Supreme Court

Posted by James Raper

Dalla Vedova also wrote untruthful Knox ECHR petition

1. Setting The Record Straight

With reference to this MailOnline article and numerous Italian reports (see one translation below) on Knox’s attempt to have Italy quash her calunnia conviction.

It should be borne in mind that the conviction was:

1. Rendered definitive by the 1st Chambers of the Supreme Court following an appeal by Knox on the issue

2. Effectively confirmed as definitive by the 5th Chambers of the Supreme Court

3. The 5th Chambers also poo-poo’d any attempt by the ECHR to interefere with the conviction whatever decision the ECHR came to.

4. The ECHR, in it’s ruling, did not in any event request the Italian justice system to review the safety of the conviction

5. The 5th Chambers also held, as a fact, that Knox was present in the cottage when Meredith was murdered. Accordingly she was perfectly well aware that Lumumba was not there and thus innocent.

There is an argument for saying that with a lawyer present she probably would not have made the accusation incriminating Lumumba.

That rather depends on what we cannot know, but it is hardly an excuse since she did (though there was no justifiable reason as to why she should, and she knew she was lying when she did.

The argument being used is like saying “Well I would not have shot him if there had been someone there to stop me”. Hardly an adequate defence.

I suspect that the hearing to which the MailOnline refers is really for leave to appeal - the route Guede took when challenging his definitive conviction, only to be denied leave.

Again Knox is drumming up interest so that she can continue with another round of grift and money making appearances.

But again - as always with the Italian Justice system - it is a question of watch this space.

2. Italian media report

Translation from Italian News Service TGCOM:

Meredith Kercher Case: Amanda Knox asks to cancel her sentence for slander against Lumumba

Appeal to Cassation of the American for the three years of imprisonment on the basis of one of the articles introduced by the Cartobia reform. Congolese opposes “out of respect for truth and justice”

Amanda Knox is asking that the definitive sentence of three years of imprisonment arrived for slander against Patrick Lumumba and linked to the trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher (for which she and Raffaele Sollecito were aquitted) be canceled.

She is doing this with an appeal to the Court of Cassation on the basis of one of the articles introduced by the Cartobia reform and after the European Court of Human Rights recognized the violation of her defense rights during the investigation.

However, Patrick Lumumba, the Congolese owner of the former pub Le Chic of Perugia, who was accused by the girl from Seattle and unjustly arrested for the murder, is opposed to the application. His motivation: “No to the cancellation of the sentence out of respect for truth and justice”.

Acquitted for the crime of Meredith Kercher but condemned for slander towards Patrick Lumumba, Amanda Knox presented the application in the Court of Cassation through the lawyers Carlo Dalla Vedova, her historical lawyer, and Luca Luparia Donati.

The appeal will be examined, in the council chamber and in non-participatory form [only lawyers present] at the beginning of October by the Fifth Chambers of Cassation. The appeal is accordingly opposed by Lumumba, represented by the lawyer Carlo Pacelli, “out of respect for truth and justice”.

This court may reject the American appeal, revoke the sentence of conviction for slander, or order a renewal of the trial, which in that case would be held in Perugia.

However, the possibility of a new trial is deemed very remote by Knox’s lawyers on the basis of the sentence of Cassation which acquitted her of the murder charge.

A possible cancellation of the conviction for slander would not however open the way to a request for compensation for unjust detention by Knox, since the terms have expired, though she could still make a request for damages.

Patrick Lumumba opposes the request of Amanda Knox to cancel the sentence against her slander towards him “out of respect for truth and justice”.

“Especially in the memory of Meredith Kercher” Patrick underlined with his lawyer, the lawyer Carlo Pacelli who will also represent him in the Court of Cassation. “Lumumba immediately became a civil party against Knox and that remains party to every procedural act” added the lawyer.

Lumumba was arrested for the murder of Meredith Kercher accomplished in Perugia in November 2007 based on Knox’s initial statements, but after 14 days in the cell he was released, because he was totally recognized as foreign to that crime and immediately acquitted.

Amanda Knox will not be in Italy for the hearing of the Cassation which will examine her request to cancel the sentence suffered for slander to Patrick Lumumba. “The procedure will be in the council chamber and without the parties. And also Amanda is awaiting a second child ...” explained the lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova, her defender from the initial stages of the investigation for murder. A charge from which she was definitively acquitted [actually, untrue].

It was Knox herself who asked to present the application to cancel the sentence of conviction. “She has always considered the accusation of slander unjust because she believes she had not committed that crime”.

Posted by James Raper on 09/24/23 at 09:18 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etc • Comments here (5)

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

PM Berlusconi RIP: Attempted To Rattle Largely Impervious Justice System

Posted by Peter Quennell

Commentary

Berlusconi was last the Prime Minister of Italy from 2006 to 2011.

He worked hard throughout to tilt the Italian justice system to his advantage, but with its 100% career staff, council of magistrates, and zero political appointees, he failed to really come out ahead.

Indirectly, he was a major influence in Meredith’s case. Sollecito lawyer Bongiorno, as the powerful head of the justice committee in parliament (she controlled the police, courts and prisons budget) worked very closely with him.

For this reason Bongiorno was a fearful figure (in most democracies such conflicts of interest are forbidden) and engineered the ill-fated appointment of Judge Hellman. He whose 2011 appeal (which almost resembled a new trial) was later annulled. Bongiorno did this by leaning upon Umbria Chief Judge De Nunzio to appoint him.

Had Senior Criminal Judge Chiari not been yanked off the appeal, it would have taken only 2-3 weeks as there was almost nothing to appeal about. And Knox and Sollecito would still be locked up.

Berlusconi himself was constantly beset by his own legal problems in later years and never permanently bent the justice system. He did, however, create the template for other elected authoritarian leaders who set about trying to overthrow democracy. Sound familiar to you?

Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/13/23 at 03:09 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etc • Comments here (13)

Saturday, January 28, 2023

Dr Mignini’s Book #3 On How Most Non-Italian Media & Reporters Misrepresented The Case

Posted by KrissyG

Our 2020 assessment: max 1/3 of media played it fully straight

Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments.

1. Xenophobic Stereotypes

Quite early on in the book it becomes apparent that Dr Mignini had a big problem with the press almost from the moment when the body of the victim was discovered.

He singles out specifically the ‘typical’ and ‘atypical’ media organisations of the United States, noting they were mostly unaware of the procedural documents and the protocols of the Interior Ministry experts, and taking ‘zero correct aim’ pot-shots at the Scientific Police of the Central Anti-Crime Directorate.

Why did they do this?  Mignini believes in part:

Because of a petty nationalistic prejudice and to defend, therefore, the American from Seattle was considered a victim of a legal system and of a “medieval” investigator, who would be me, as well as of a city obsessed, according to them, with witches, which were however not in Salem in Massachusetts, but… in Perugia’.  P 36

Mignini names “in particular the journalist Nina Burleigh” the author of The Fatal Gift of Beauty, an absurd book with pseudo-intellectual pontification about the mysteries of Perugia, weaving a fugue of some kind of mysticism that permeated the crime, with Knox the unlikely victim of some latter-day witch hunt, whom Mignini accuses of projection, noting that unlike Perugia, with ‘just one sentenced for witchcraft, a nearby area to Burleigh in Salem, USA, had many. (p 37). 

Judy Bacharach was another xenophobic stereotyper.

Among the many American newspapers (and even some British ones) that fell into this unforgivable mistake, I was unfavorably impressed by Vanity Fair and a journalist, a certain Judy Bachrach, who barely concealed the antipathy she felt for me, widely reciprocated. The same thing must be said about Nina Burleigh, whom I have already spoken about, author of a book on the Amanda case, full of mistakes and false stereotypes. p. 44

2. Downplaying Of Knox Felony

A major irritation for Mignini is the way the misguidedly patriotic US press and also the normally ‘quality’ UK left wing papers such as the Guardian and Independent played down Knox’s role in accusing her boss Patrick Lumumba of murder whom she knew was wholly innocent.

Far from seeing it as a serious crime (the UK equivalent of ‘Perverting the Course of Justice’, which attracts jail terms of between three to six years, or the US Federal equivalent of ‘Obstruction of Justice’ [knowingly misleading a federal police investigation] with a similar sentencing recommendation), it was instead misreported by these papers as some kind of normal reaction to stress, wherein you just name any innocent person of a heinous crime, as one does, or the well-known US custom of blaming the nearest Black man.  A pervasive problem is that the overseas press are not under any jurisdiction of Italy to correct this.

That’s another one of the nonsenses I’ve come across. Among other things, the “stars-and-stripe” journalists and even some British journalists (of “hostile” newspapers, I do not know why, like The Guardian or The Independent, tended to minimize “criminal slander”, equating it to a “defamation”, while this crime is, for us, a crime against the administration of Justice, a kind of “obstacle to justice”,something much more serious in the ordinances of civil law. P52

3. Fabricators Form Teams

Then there were the stories that were outright fabricated, such as the claim that Mignini was actually present when Knox first made her outrageous accusation against Lumumba: that he had gone to Meredith’s room and raped and killed her, whilst Knox cowered in the living quarters, hands over her ears from the harrowing scream and thud.  The implication being that the innocent Knox was coerced into making her calumny.

Abroad and especially in the United States, the public would not have understood the slants and even vicious bad faith of certain expressions of information (television or print) or, worse still, “innocentist” blogs and forums which have continued to claim that I was present when Amanda first uttered the name of Lumumba… There is evidently no deafness worse than those who do not want to hear. P 60

So what is the truth about the conviction for Calunnia, for which Knox was sentenced to three years and remains a conviction?  As far as Mignini is concerned, Knox openly lies in her book Waiting to be Heard.

Then, in the midst of the legal process, Amanda wrote a book containing a serious and conscious distortion of the facts; however her final conviction for Calunnia now precludes any possibility of repeating her version, that she had named Patrick because it was suggested to her by the police to escape the intolerable pressure to which she claimed to have been subjected.
[…]
Amanda, and only she, is definitively guilty of calunnia to the detriment of Lumumba, and this crime was committed by her and only by her without any external pressure being invoked. Amanda had thus unprovoked accused Lumumba, and I remember perfectly that she made out to be seriously afraid of Patrick and in need of police protection.  p61

Then there is best-selling pulp fiction novelist Doug Preston, who liked to purvey a false narrative that a somehow corrupt Mignini as prosecutor in the Monster of Florence case had forced him to flee Italy, as an abortive attempt by Preston to ally with Spezi to solve the crime themselves, causing conflict with the official investigation.

A perfect chance of revenge for the perceived slight then, for Preston was to become a leading and influential campaigner against Knox’s charges from the legal safety of the United States.

Another such fabricating campaigner was Seattle lawyer Anne Bremner, and yet another, one Paul Ciolino of CBS, whom Mignini paints as a comedy character.

The “lobbying” vehicle of the compaigners began to invest in and airbrush one of the College of Jesuits in Seattle [former judge Heavey] and one of them phoned the fabricator Douglas Preston to inform him that the PM who had had Amanda arrested was the same who had investigated him. Then the fabricating lawyer Anne Bremner launched “moralising” lectures at Italian jurists like me (and who would end up pathetically in a cell for driving while drunk).

Soon joined in were the investigators Joe Tacopina (a character who surfaced to take on the defense of Amanda and was then dropped) and Paul Ciolino, a kind of clone of the long-gone American comic actor Lou Costello.

[…]  In the end, this group conquered the US media, even the New York Times.  Then the powerful lobby crossed the Atlantic, and conquered British newspapers in the “lefty” area (I don’t know why) and those seemingly neutral such as The Independent, with its strange correspondent from Rome, the ineffable Peter Popham, italophobic like few others, a writer of poor quality, plagued by all kinds of “tics” as I could see for myself in the talks I had with him.” p 68

4. Contrasting Media Teams

Before Mignini knew it, there was an entire orchestra of journalists, self-styled ‘freelancers, such as Frank Sforza, and someone Mignini refers to as a ‘neojournalist’, Candice Dempsey. Also Michelle Moore, the ‘perennially exaggerating’ wife of a former FBI agent Steve Moore, who would be in court in 2011 and later accompany Knox from Capanne Prison back to Seattle.

When the trial of Knox and Sollecito began before Judge Giancarlo Massei on 16 January 2009, Mignini was confronted by a whole cacophony of the clamouring press.  With characteristic wit and pith, Mignini describes them as thus:

There, I met envoys from various news agencies and television broadcasters, especially American ones, such as CBS, ABC, NBC, the Associated Press, and CNN And also from other media outlets such as those for the fine Barbie Nadeau, Andrea Vogt, Ann Wise, Sabina Castelfranco, Phoebe Nathanson and others.

I also remember the fine Britons, Tom Kington of The Guardian, Nick Squires of The Telegraph, Nick Pisa of Sky News, and John Follain of The Times, as well as a very nice older journalist, Richard Owen of The Times.

More praise for the good.

Above all, amongst the Anglo-Saxon journalists who are objective and balanced towards the work of the investigators, I recall especially four or five:

There was Barbie Nadeau of Newsweek, also American, originally from South Dakota, an attentive observer of the legal process whose services I appreciated, and was inspired also by her
rigorous impartiality. […]

Paul Russell, British television producer, distinguished by his seriousness and scrupulous information gathering and a great integrity of character, as well as a characteristic and funny British humour.
[…]
I remember John Follain, correspondent of The London Times, with whom I had a mutual “feeling” and who established a friendship with both me and Manuela Comodi’

5. Bizarre Media Parasites

Attaching himself to these journalists was a strange character, completely uninformed in procedural matters but who managed to credit himself as a kind of freelance, self-styled “persecuted” by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and in particular by me: Frank Sfarzo (pseudonym of Francesco Sforza), an individual with dark and thin hair, almost Maghrebi-looking, who lived with his mother, and also apparently his sister with whom he was on anything but on good terms, in an apartment on Via Fonti Coperte.

I do not know what he did in life, probably nothing until he was “transmogrified” on the “way to Damascus” by Amanda Knox, whose innocence he “married” immediately and tenaciously, without knowing anything about the trial.” p127

In Sfarzo’s context Mignini describes the amateur Seattle blogger Candice Dempsey, of Calabrian ancestry (who we spotted stalking the Kerchers) as looking at him ‘with eyes full of hate’, and ‘always close to Sfarzo’

Finally, a strange British gentleman, a certain David Anderson, who was probably even closer to verbal intemperances than the last two, which says it all. I believe he was a “psychologist” and lived with his wife in a villa near Todi.

An Englishman “enlisted” in the pro-Amanda lobby who was a “goofball”. He seemed totally incapable of a serene and balanced attitude, and did not tolerate opinions contrary to his own. One day I saw him lashing out at my colleague screaming outraged and incomprehensible expressions… with me he was probably holding back because he was afraid that I would react and have him arrested. After all, wasn’t I, for them, the “Chief Prosecutor” and Manuela my “Assistant”?

Mignini praises Nadeau, Penny Ganong and Andrea Vogt in their scepticism towards the efforts of Greg Hampikian to blind with science, so to speak, and as described by Mignini,

‘He was historically the first “American” defense adviser’ [operating from outside of Italy’s jurisdiction].

TJMK is name-checked in Mignini’s spotlighting a particular misinformation campaign:

In a much later era, in 2014, Prof. Halkides was responsible for a serious defamation campaign against Dr. Stefanoni, revealing a particularly virulent character, conducted together with another biologist named Tom Zupancic.
[…]
True Justice for Meredith Kercher has always tried to fight these falsehoods [of the formers’ falsely claimed procedural fraud by Dr Stefanoni] and focus on the undisputed points of the story. The virulent content of the campaign can be assessed at [various websites]. p 155

(A full discussion of Halkide’s and Zupancic’s scurrilous claims are set out in the book, which doesn’t concern the topic of the book review post here.)

6. Two Of The Very Worst

More sinister, taking place as it did in Italy, ahead of the outcome of Pratillo Hellmann’s appeal court hearing brought by the defence, was a revelation to Mignini by a UK journalist, Bob Graham, in an interview, that he, Bob Graham, had been privy to the content of Conti and Vecchiotti before it even became public before the court. 

“I had informed my colleagues of this extremely serious fact which revealed, at the very least, a serious indiscretion made by persons legally bound by professional secrecy, such as experts or perhaps their staff, in favor of the accused. I realized that Graham had misled me and, in doing so, had recorded his imprudent statements and handed it over to the lawyers. […]
It is unsurprising that this cassette would then disappear from the chronicles because, I believe, the “pro-defendants” community immediately realized that those words that Bob Graham had uttered and released were a boomerang that could have backfired heavily against the experts and the defenders themselves, and probably shake the outcome of the appeal process; however,the very serious and far too eloquent fact remains of a journalist who was aware of the content of the expert report when it had yet to be disseminated.” P 197

Yet the journalistic nightmare for Mignini and the prosecuting team does not stop here.  Mignini talks of the bias of a CNN reporter.

He perfectly embodied a central and paralyzing defect of American psychology, the narcissistic type, and he could not hide the hostility he felt for me. I should have known that he had been “catechized” by a familiar character, the “yellow-lister” Douglas Preston
[…]
The “blend” was explosive. The interviewer was a “belligerent” journalist who made me think of a “shark”. His name was Drew Griffin. His smile, in which he exhibited his dentition, was not a smile, it was an artifact. I don’t think he could smile spontaneously. He looked like a fake, artificial, plastic character, and like all Americans, he would always pose, theatrically, when he had to present himself as an American in front of a foreigner, especially a European and an Italian.”  P 199 (Written before Griffin passed away recently.)

Then there was CBS’s Peter Van Sant:

“There was also a journalist and commentator from Seattle, CBS, Peter Van Sant, distinguished for a furious and irresponsible campaign against Italian Justice in recent months, which culminated in his bizarre hope that the 82nd Airborne Division (that of the failed airborne raid of September 8, 1943 over Rome and the landing at Salerno) would free Amanda from prison in Perugia “ p237

It is simply astonishing the extent Mignini reveals how the defence – and proxy defences in the USA -conspired and collaborated with Conti and Vecchiotti to release an unknown woman from Seattle, whom noone had ever met, all on the strength of grievances, money-making and xenophobia held by third parties that had nothing at all to do with the Kercher murder case.

“ The only culprit was, for the press, not the American nor the Italian, but the “black” Rudi Hermann Guede, who could not benefit anyone who defended him.” P 251

7. Finally, Note This Irony

The irony is, in the Fifth Chamber’s motivation report in annulling the sentences of Knox and Sollecito, ‘interference by the press’ is cited as one of the factors leading to the reversal of the 2014 Nencini verdict.

Posted by KrissyG on 01/28/23 at 04:55 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etc • Comments here (16)

Saturday, January 14, 2023

The District With By Far The Highest GDP In Europe? It’s In Italy. In Milan.

Posted by Peter Quennell

Context

A 15-minute walking tour of Porta Nuova in Milan.

This is the richest single district within any city in the European Union. With a GDP of over 400 billion euro, and the City of London no longer in the club, no other single district in any city in Europe comes close

It is also right now the most sustainable neighborhood in the entire world.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/14/23 at 02:32 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etc • Comments here (3)

Thursday, December 29, 2022

Dr Mignini’s Book On How The Supreme Court Got Meredith’s Case So Wrong In 2015

Posted by KrissyG

1. The Fifth Chambers Reports

Dr Mignini’s legal observations on the Fifth Chambers’ written report on Knox’s & Sollecito’s final appeal fill a big information gap in this controversial legal area.

He had already written very damningly back in 2015 shortly after the Marasca court presented its oral report back in March.

That was some months prior to the written report (which was published almost three months after the official deadline). This is his first written comment on the full report. 

2. The Contamination Contention

With Meredith’s body having been discovered, the pathologist Dr. Lalli, and the Scientific Police, headed by Dr Stefanoni, arrives.

Dr Mignini, the prosecutor leading the investigation, deems that it more important to preserve on-scene evidence at this point than to determine exact time of death, so priority is given to collecting samples with the body still in situ.  Mignini states:

“I did not know, at that time, that, for the judges of the [2011] Perugia appeal and the [2015] Fifth Chamber of Cassation, the one that intervened after the final annulment of the judgment of the Perugia Appeals Court and the judgment of the [2014] Florentine referring court, as well as for the official defense counsel and for those “unofficial” intervenors such as Peter Gill and others, the abstract possibility of contamination and the reality of contamination could be the same thing.

That is absurd, I know, but that was exactly what was being been said.  p.34”

After the 2009 trial of Knox and Sollecito, with the Massei finding a ‘guilty’ verdict, the 2011 appeal court, called-for by the defendants, of Hellmann & Zanetti, appoints its own ‘experts’, Vecchiotti and Conti. They argue that contamination is an abstract possibility, but fail to explain how such contamination could have occurred, as would be expected in a trial court.

This is on top of Zanetti opening proceedings in 2011 by asserting that ‘the only certainty is the death of Meredith Kercher’, and not least, by Hellman failing to explain his rationale – as excoriated in 2014 by the follow-up Supreme Court I of Chieffi – of why Hellmann had appointed his own experts, as is required.

The scientific illiteracy of Hellmann (a business judge) was compounded only by his ignorance of criminal law and of how criminal evidence should be weighed up.

In getting Hellmann to agree to the defence demand for ‘independent experts’ – which Prosecutor Comodi argued against, saying there were many experts for both sides already - Hellmann argues that a judge does not have sufficient expertise to evaluate the experts’ opinions.

Having achieved the appointment of Conti & Vecchiotti, the paired delivered the coup de grace: international standards were not met, contamination could not be ruled out and the DNA profile of Meredith Kercher on the knife could not be reliable.

This faulty reasoning was reversed by the 2014 Chieffi Supreme Court (Chamber I). And yet the final Marasca-Bruno Court returns to it, notwithstanding the intervening Nencini Court (with Prosecutor Crini) upholding Massei’s and thus Stefanoni’s treatment of scientific evidence as legally sound. 

3. The Sample Size Contention

As Dr Mignini explains.

“Marasca of the Fifth Chamber seems not to understand the difference between ‘identity’ and ‘compatibility’ (the latter is a statistical standard which should be used in court), demanding the former and rejecting Novelli’s, to the astonishment of Stefanoni.

Likewise, claiming that the Kercher sample size on the knife was too small showed him seemingly unaware of the penal code: ‘unrepeatable findings’ is provided for in Article 103 EC. 360 cp, similar to rules for the autopsy inspection. p 279

If, on the other hand, the finding must be reproducible, as the Fifth Chamber claims, then I could have carried it out without any contradiction, in accordance with Article 108 EC 359 CPP.

The Italian Criminal Code CPP 360 allows for an otherwise minute sample size to be tested once, on the grounds that the testing itself will destroy the sample – as often happens in an autopsy, for example - with the proviso that the defense must be allowed to send its own experts to witness the testing event.

Sollecito’s witness was Valter Patumi, with Francesca Torricelli for the Kercher family. There was no Knox witness there.

Article 360 “Non-repeatable technical ascertainment

1. If the ascertainment provided for in Article 359 involves persons, objects or places which are subject to change, the Public Prosecutor shall inform, without delay, the suspect, the victim and the lawyers of the day, time and place set for the assignment of the non-repeatable technical ascertainment and of the right to appoint technical consultants.”  Cpp 360 Italian-Code-of-Criminal-Procedure-CanestriniLex

Clearly, Hellmann and Marasca-Bruno, along with Vecchiotti and Conti, do not know their own criminal code when they complain the sample was ‘too small’ or ‘unrepeatable’. Mignini says:

“if it were true that the genetic test must be repeatable but it is quite clear that it is not, if only because, regardless of its quantity, there is a risk that, pending any judgment, the genetic material will be altered.

That is precisely why the Code provides for a non-repetitive finding and the Court cannot claim that, in accordance with highly questionable scientific considerations, a procedural rule provided for by the law can be eliminated.”

Ex Judge Marasca

4. The Typographical Error Contention

Mignini’s frustrations are compounded by Marasca-Bruno’s inability to spot a simple typographical error.

In typing up its late-2014 motivational report, Nencini’s Appeal Court upholding the guilty verdicts inadvertently attributes a Y-chromosome (obviously male) to a female.

Such a proof-reading error requires a simple correction, an appeal is not necessary.  However, Marasca choose to create a big scandal out of it:

“There are even obvious material errors, i.e. oversights, which can frequently be found in an elaborate report, such as the attribution to Sollecito as well as Meredith, of genetic traces in the famous knife referred to in the finding n. 36 contained in the Florentine judgment.

It is clear that the author of this crime report inadvertently wrote “Sollecito” instead of “Knox”. It was a simple clerical error, but the Fifth Chambers, in an attempt to dramatize the negativity of the sentence of Judge Nencini, presented it as one of several flagrant errors in the “motivational fabric”. p 280

5. The International Protocols Contention

Mignini makes similar criticisms about Marasca’s treatment of so-called ‘international’ protocols:

‘Genetic investigations were acquired in breach of the rules established by international protocols’, the Court expresses with the logical characteristic of ‘circular reasoning’ in p. 33 of the judgment, where it also adds that the obsolete principle of ‘judex peritus peritorum’* should be revised.

If this is not a “break” in the substance, regardless of the objectionability of the assumption, then it can no longer be understood how it can be said of “legitimacy”, whose assessment is left to the Supreme Court, and “merit” instead to the judges, specifically “of the merits”.

And what are these international protocols? This is the penalty, you have to be precise, you can’t be vague, as the fifth section are. p 277

*[“The judge is the expert of experts “. The judge, in fact, is not bound by the result of the expert’s report, since he can deviate from or completely disregard the conclusions reached by the expert. Legal Wiki]

6. The Inadequate Evidence Contention

Mignini explains how it is not the legal prerogative of the Supreme Court of Cassation to set aside evidence found by lower courts.

“Thus, the profile relating to the assessment of evidence for the purposes of the decision is not known by the Court of Cassation.

It is legally concerned only with the fairness or otherwise of the process which led to the verdict and, if it finds, in particular, a defect or defects of a logical nature which vitiated the decision, it must set aside the defective judgment, and refer the substance of the case back down to the referring court.” p 272

Mignini states wryly of Marasca-Bruno:

“Never has the definition of the limits of the Court’s knowledge of legality been more correct in the preamble, and so much disregarded with the same determination in the body of the reasoning of the judgment that has in no way sustained that correct premise.” P272

If you look at the Marasca-Bruno report you can see its faulty reasoning in respect of repeatability or replicability of genetic sampling (compare and contrast it with the aforesaid Italian Criminal Code 360):

“Also, the traces observed on the two items, which the analysis of has produced outcomes that will be discussed further, were very small (Low Copy Number; with reference to the hook CFR.Ff222 and 248), so little that it didn’t allow a repetition of the amplification¸ that is the procedure aimed to “highlight the genetic traces of interest in the sample” (f. 238) and attribute the biological trace to a determined genetic profile.

On the basis of the protocols of the matter, the repetition of the analysis (“at least for two times” testimony of Major CC Dr Andrea Berti, an expert nominated by the Appeal Court, f. 228; “three times” according to Professor Adriano Tagliabracci, technical adviser for Sollecito’s defense, f.126) is absolutely necessary for a reliable analysis result, in order to marginalize the risk of “false positive” within the statistical limits of insignificant relevance.” Marasca-Bruno

This is the Chamber V reasoning – if you can call it that - despite CPP 360 allowing a one-off testing, and Taggliabracci’s claims of the evidence testing being ‘suspect-centric’ twice being dismissed in the lower courts, both by Massei and again by Nencini.

When PCR testing is carried out, the analysis is by computer.  Stefanoni could not possibly have known in advance whose DNA profile or what effluorescant peaks (RFU’s) the machine readings will throw out.

Ex Judge Bruno

7. The Use Of “Compatibility” Contention

Likewise, the term ‘compatible’ to or with - or otherwise - is used in all criminal jurisdictions and is based on statistical probability as the scientific method assesses the probability of getting any particular scientific result by chance.

Hence, Nencini states the probability of the genetic profile 165B not being Sollecito’s and as calculated by Prof. Novelli, as:

“The probability that a random individual from the population would also be compatible (the inclusion probability) [245] was calculated, and came out to be equal to 3.05592 x 10^-6, which is about 1 in 327 thousand.

This computation is considered to be extremely conservative, since all of the allelic components are taken into consideration together with their frequency in the reference population.”

(Pages 15-17 of the technical report submitted at the 6 September 2011 hearing before the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia)”

Yet Marasca-Bruno appear completely ignorant of this convention, and write: “the outcomes of the analysis don’t arrive at a firm identity result, but merely a compatibility one.”

8. The Limits of Jurisdiction Contention

Mignini further notes of the (final) Fifth Chamber:

“Another disconcerting aspect was the fact that the Court, although only dealing with the Florentine judgment [Nencini] under appeal, wanted to revisit the whole process, even and perhaps above all those aspects that were now definitively covered by the judgment of the First Chamber, as well as the investigations on which the Court of Legality, in the doubly terminating seat moreover, could not say anything, also because it did not have the relevant acts….

“in p. 23 of the judgment, the V Chamber speaks of an “objectively wavering course” of the trial…” p 273

“[It was] anything but wavering. In a system of three sets of proceedings, the Kercher process indeed had an absolutely uniform decision-making content, with the exception of the Perugian appeal [Hellmann] and the last judgment. [Marasca-Bruno]” p 274

“The First Chamber [Chieffi] for its part had rightly taken into account the actions of the experts Conti and Vecchiotti, criticizing them with embarrassing expressions. And the decision of the First Chamber [Chieffi] was final and unassailable.

On the other hand, the Fifth Chamber, which intervened only after the order for reference, considered that it should reconsider everything, and “objectively” disprove even the judgment, which was also final, of the First Chambers.

The vulnus [wounding] of the judgment of the First Chamber is perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the final judgment.” p 274

9. The Rudy Guede Contention

As well as the issues with the genetic testing, contamination and compatibility, Mignini explains how Marasca-Bruno gets it wrong about Guede in the following passage:

“In p. 28 of the judgment, the Court states that, in the course of the Peruvian appeal, Guede failed to be examined by the defendants.

But at the hearing on 27 June 2011, this was not the case, because although it is true that Guede did not at first intend to answer the questions of the advocate Bongiorno, Sollecito’s defender, on the murder of Kercher (see pp. 18 and 19 of the minutes of the hearing of 27.06.11 before the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia), however then he faced the questions addressed to him by the lawyer.

From Guede’s own memorandum:

‘…finally I hope that sooner or later the Judges will realize my total estrangement from what was a horrible murder of a wonderful girl such as Meredith by Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox. Signed. Rudy’. P 276.

At the Hellman appeal session, Rudy specifically confirmed this letter and its contents!

10. The Referral-Back-Down Contention

Dr Mignini holds that Guede’s claim alone makes it a legal imperative that the case should be referred back down to a merits court, even if the Knox-Sollecito appeal is upheld, as it was.

[Coming soon: another post, on Mignini’s view of the press and the media.]

Posted by KrissyG on 12/29/22 at 12:32 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etc • Comments here (6)

Saturday, December 17, 2022

My Contexting Of Dr Giuliano Mignini’s Spectacularly Eye-Opening Book

Posted by KrissyG

1. Advent Of The Book

Italy finally gets to see the Italian version of this highly anticipated book, by one of the two trial prosecutors, Dr Guiliano Mignini, on the Meredith Kercher Murder case.

He can finally write much more freely, if not yet entirely, as he now works at the national level with official bodies unrelated to the case. The English-language edition might spell out details much more, as Italians had the advantages of watching most court sessions on TV and of reading key documents as soon as uploaded. 

The book reads almost like a novel, insofar as characters are rounded out by a few descriptive brush strokes, though without losing the clear logic and precision of the dry codified Italian Penal Code and procedural protocols.

2. Trial Persona, Observed

Mignini’s fine observational skills become apparent from page 1, in his natural ability to appraise everyone he meets at a glance, whether by accent, appearance, ethnicity, or even from which part of the world or specific region of Italy they are from.

Meredith Kercher is described thus.

The girl had dark hair and complexion, while her eyes were of medium intensity hazelnut. […] It was understood that she had “exotic” and extra-European blood in her veins, while there was an Anglo-Saxon origin of the other of her parents. It was as if that maiden expressed the great wealth and linguistic ethnic diversity of the British Commonwealth. p34

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are described thus.

[…] typically Anglo-Saxon face, with very light skin, with eyes of an intense blue color and reddish blond hair, not very tall, dressed in a blue vest with fur liner inside and jeans, and a normo-type boy, with light hair and eyes, with a pair of goggles, a showy yellow scarf at the neck on a blue pullover and jeans. p26

Rudy Guede’s judge Micheli is described thus.

The magistrate was the well-known Paolo Micheli, whom I would have dubbed “Zaratustra”, younger than me of some years, of “Sabina” origin, in particular, a creature surrounded by a halo of fame and respectability, among lawyers in particular. p116

Guilia Bongiorno, Sollecito’s counsel, is described thus:

...a brilliant lawyer from the “copana” school.

Carlo Dalla Vedova, Knox’s counsel, is described thus.

...who was very close to the U.S. Embassy and would easily be mistaken for an American because of his appearance, resembling that of a U.S. Army officer. p119

Dr. Claudio Pratillo Hellmann, 2011 Court of Appeal, is described thus.

The surname Hellmann, added to Pratillo, denoted German ties which I would not know […] well-known in Spoleto but not in Perugia and coming from the [court’s] business welfare section. p 183

For something on Hellman’s background please see my footnote.

3. Media Persona, Observed

A key section of the book describes the various journalists surrounding the courts in person, including:

There, I met envoys from various news agencies and television broadcasters, especially American ones, such as “CBS”, “ABC”, “NBC”, “Associated Press” and “CNN” or other media outlets, such as Barbie Nadeau, Andrea Vogt, Ann Wise, Sabina Castelfranco, Phoebe Nathanson and others. I also remember the Britons, Tom Kington of “The Guardian,” Nick Squires of “The Telegraph,” Nick Pisa of “Sky News”, John Follain of “The [London] Times” as well as a very nice old journalist, Richard Owen of “The [London] Times.” p124 on Massei Court.

Dr Mignini early on in the case sees very clear factions, differentiating the largely hostile US press, often depicted as purveying disinformation, although some, such as Barbie Nadeau, Peggy Ganong and Andrea Vogt are perceived as truer to their profession. 

Throughout the book, Mignini conveys an exasperated sense of frustration at some of the ‘reporters’ identifying as pro-Amanda Knox advocates, and these come across as stock comedy figures.

There is the hapless Doug Preston, who is one of the most vicious of the protagonists in his attacks on the prosecutor.  Mignini clearly and patiently explains how Preston completely misunderstands Italian Criminal law, mistaking it for US-style adversarial, and thus not realizing that a lawyer was not required to be present at the stage he was interviewed by Mignini in the Monster of Florence case.  Preston is mentioned here because he is key in initiating the destructive campaign against Mignini from the USA.

There is a large gaggle of these trouble-making characters. Example here:

Among these journalists, there was a strange character, completely uninformed in procedural matters, but who managed to credit himself as a kind of freelancer, self-styled as “persecuted” by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and in particular by me.

Frank Sfarzo (pseudonym of Francesco Sforza) was an individual with dark and thin hair, almost Maghrebi-looking, who lived with his mother and also it seems to me with his sister, with whom he was anything but on good terms, in an apartment of Via Fonti Coverte.

I do not know what he did in life, probably nothing until he was “electrocuted” on the “way to Damascus” by Amanda Knox whose innocence he “wedded with” immediately and tenaciously, without knowing anything about the trial. p127

Another, more concerning figure is the formerly friendly investigative journalist Bob Graham, turned Friend of Knox, who late in trial in 2009 wrote an especially misleading report in the UK Daily Express.

As with any evolving plot, Mignini becomes aware of a key turning point in the Hellmann Appeal, when his suspicions of collaboration by Vecchiotti and Conti with the defence are confirmed.  He and Manuela Comodi were joint trial co-prosecutors, and it is with grim amusement that Mignini relates how the Americans refer to himself as ‘Chief Prosecutor’ and Comodi as some kind of assistant.

Vecchiotti really annoys him in the Hellmann appeal by insisting on referring to Comodi as ‘Lawyer’ instead of ‘Prosecutor’.  Mignini points out that, contrary to US belief there were altogether four prosecutors in the case, himself and Comodi (2009), Giancarlo Costagliola (2011) and Crini (2013-14). Plus assigned judges in 2013 and 2015 at Cassation.

The other main troublesome characters are swathes of US armchair scientists, DNA experts, and lawyers, who see themselves as Knox’s proxy US attorneys, conducting her defence from afar. 

It seems to me that that period was the turn of a fat and somewhat ridiculous character who presented himself as a great investigator and demanded to give lessons to all the Italian investigators.

But also there were the more skilled who acted either as private jurists of the Knox family in the parallel fiction trial or who acted in a “reserved” way in the service of the “pro Amanda” lobby: the lawyer Theodore Simon, the geneticist Bruce Budowle, director of the Institute of Genetic Investigations, who among other things authored a letter addressed to the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia, at the request of the lawyers Ted Simon, Carlo Dalla Vedova, and Carla Del Grosso, in which he challenged the validity of the scientific analysis, while technically lacking the credentials to be a Knox consultant in the judicial process.

Another was Greg Hampikian, professor of genetics at the Boise State University in Idaho […] For all these characters, who felt free to teach the Italian Scientific Police some lessons, the official work especially on DNA carried out by investigators was kind of shameful, and this judgment would be reflected by the [2011 appeal] “independent” experts, as the Americans called them. p 151

Again, few made even the slightest effort to grasp Italian law and legal processes, and several materially contributed to the Hellman verdict’s annulment. 

Courthouses: 2008 hard right, 2009 and 2011 top of hill

4. The Judicial Narrative 2007-15

The book is written in logical chronological order, commencing with Mignini who was on duty then being called in to investigate the murder of the young British student, Meredith Kercher.

As he arrives at the house, he takes in everything of the scene, noting that the window to Filomena Romanelli’s room (which is broken) showed no signs of scuff marks on the wall under the window, its aspect towards a busy road and its sheer height, whilst musing that there is nothing wrong with using circumstantial evidence.  One doesn’t need to wait weeks for a sample to be tested.

He describes how an unfortunate press conference by the then chief of the Perugia police, after he had arranged the arrest of Sollecito, Knox and Lumumba as of 6 Nov 2007, was to become a portent of the final Supreme Court Fifth Chambers’ erroneous reasoning to come, some seven-plus years later.

...the attribution to me of the unexpected and startling words of Perugia Police Chief Arturo De Felice, who on the morning of 6 November 2007, that of the arrest, said that the case had been resolved with unparalleled speed.

This attracted heated criticisms of myself and of officers of the Mobile Police. This was one of the foundation lies of the Friends Of Amanda lobby, and in particular of the self-proclaimed “insightful” (former) FBI agent Moore and his unruly wife Michelle, who repeated them over and over again. p274

De Felice was technically mistaken, and was not even a member of the judicial team. And yet the Marasca/Bruno Supreme Court Chamber used his announcement as an example of an error in our own investigation.

With respect to Knox’s arrest, Mignini explains and proves that neither the police nor he himself suggested the name ‘Lumumba’ or ‘Patrick’ to Knox.

This also later becomes an error repeated in the 2011 Hellmann Appeal Court and 2015 Marasca/Bruno Supreme Court, when they fail to add the ‘aggravated’ part onto the calunnia conviction wording, on the grounds that there was no link between Lumumba and Kercher (which there clearly was).

In the book’s later section dealing with the ECHR Knox judgment, Mignini with flawless logic shows that it is erroneous to claim or rule that under Italian law Knox needed a lawyer, as it was an act not of self-incrimination but one of accusing a third party (Lumumba).

He shows quite elegantly by way of court transcripts that, contrary to common Friends of Amanda beliefs, nobody suggested the name Lumumba to Knox.

Mignini takes us chapter by chapter through the 2009 Massei Trial Court (see one of the next posts), and then through the 2011 Hellmann Appeal Court.

Here he has a lot to say about outside interference and something decidedly fishy going on. Right at the start, Mignini realises the two main judges are duds.  Zanetti is described as a contrary character. Again a harbinger of things to come, and in hindsight, he avidly wishes he had demanded a recuse.

In the third line of the report, Dr. Zanetti [Hellman’s #2] wrongly claims [because this was an appeal court]: “it is necessary to start from the only objective and really certain and undisputed fact: on 2.11.2007, shortly after 13.00,  the body of the English student Meredith Kercher… was found in the building of Via della Pergola 7, in Perugia”.

This claim [by an appeal court] is incredible and denotes the inexperience of the magistrate in criminal matters.

I still seem to experience all over again when I listened scandalized to this clumsy expression that should have deserved immediate recusal, of Zanetti, and also of President Pratillo Hellman, who had allowed such a claim, because he could not fail to know the expression was an overreach transgression.

But the decision to recuse wasn’t taken by our colleague Costagliola, who was from the Prosecutor General’s Office, while we were at appeal. p 183

Mignini explains clearly and concisely the proceedings and the errors found in Hellman’s annulled ruling by the 2013 Supreme Court First Chambers – and directly links to those same errors repeated again in the 2015 Fifth Chambers Marasca/Bruno report.

For example piecemeal treatment of evidence, which leads to Curatalo’s fine testimony being excluded by them despite proof that party buses were indeed running on Thursday night 2nd Nov 2007. Thus belying the concept of “quae singula non probant simul unitant probant” as Mignini puts it. 

The 2013 Chieffi Supreme Court, and Nencini’s 2014 Appeal Court in Florence to which they referred back down the appeal, is dealt with in rather less detail than that found in earlier chapters, possibly because the prosecutor dealing with it is now Alessandro Crini, and all seems to go well and as expected.

However, disaster had already struck at the end of the 2011 Hellmann Appeal Court, for Hellman had erroneously freed the two defendants, and Knox had fled Italy to the USA, never soon to return.

We are then moved onto the final 2015 Marasca Supreme Court appeal, dealt with in detail. There is hard language about the American administration and its interference at this point which will reverberate both in the Italian media and in judicial circles in Rome. 

There are so many errors made, unusual logic, and a bizarre reversion back to the largely expunged 2011 Hellmann appeal.  This is quite detailed, so I will include the major points in a separate review.

Mignini goes into quite a lot of detail as to why the Marasca-Bruno report is an illegal curve ball, explaining with his usual clear logic why it is, and this is a chapter that will likely most interest the legally-minded as to the reasoning behind the overturned guilty verdict.

The book ends with chapters on the Knox appeal to ECHR, long before the Italians process was done, and the highly misleading Netflix production “Amanda Knox” in which Mignini is cast (and later ridiculed by the American Friends Of Amanda) as seeing himself as Sherlock Holmes, not revealing the Netflix producers from Knox PR had specifically asked him a question – not seen by viewers - about his preferences in sleuths.

5. The Book’s Final Overview

All in all, Mignini has no doubts at all about the original guilty verdict.  There is a whole chapter devoted to what Mignini thinks happened on the night of the murder, which I will not spoil here (you need to read the book!).

In closing, Mignini has the following remarks to make about the three ex-defendants:

Three suspects were in due course found: the Ivorian Rudi Hermann Guede, the Apulian Raffaele Sollecito, and the American from Seattle, Amanda Knox.

Rudi has never shown signs of influencing the judicial process in any way and has always respected Italian jurisdiction over the matter.

Sollecito was and is, in my opinion, the most enigmatic, indecipherable character of the three and who had suffered most in his life, especially for the death of his mother.[…]

[Key about] the girl from Seattle is that she was and is actually a normal girl of the far west American, very extroverted and extremely curious, this is a very important aspect of her, very open to the dialogue, but also extremely narcissistic, and very firm in her own convictions which, however, she tends to simplify, often excessively. p 311

The family circles and the rivalries of Sollecito and Knox, well-known in Italy, are not a main focus of this edition. 

In all, a logically set out, easy to read, flowing and relatable account, albeit slightly repetitive in parts, of a now retired, successful prosecutor disappointed by the failure to achieve justice for Meredith Kercher’s family thanks to the nefarious interference of outside forces, of shady characters with little understanding of how Italian criminal law works.

A recurring theme is Mignini’s astonishment at the utter ignorance of too many American writers, especially Nina Burleigh, and more recently Jessica Bennett of the NY Times, with their near-childish belief in the ‘bad prosecutor’ versus the innocent-because-I-can-sense-it Knox supporters.

In the context of the article, the journalist Jessica Bennett argued that, during the trial, I had presented Amanda as a “sex demon” who wanted to take revenge on her roommate and that I had charged her only because the blanket that had been placed on Meredith’s corpse must have been laid by a woman and this woman should have been her.

I am appalled, once again, by the proverbial ease and superficiality of certain Americans, in particular Bennett, who is the author of this report for which condemnation is deserved. p306

6. For Now An Interim Take

As you can see, this book helps clear up issues that have puzzled many for years. More contexting is still to come.

The book ends with an intriguing revelation that Knox had requested to meet him in person, and after all of the vilification Mignini has been put through by her and her supporters as the ‘wicked prosecutor’ he has clear reservations about this.  For the moment, they kept in touch via WhatsApp.

*[author’s note: [Hellmann is from Padua. In Veneto. The name Hellmann comes from the name that the illustrious Venetian lady (the widow of Renier) acquired from his second husband, who was an officer of the Austrian army (at the time Venice was part of the Austrian Empire). The officer, Mr. Hellmann, had a status significantly lower in prestige than the noble Mr. Renier and his wife, therefore the really “important” person was the Lady, who is also remembered for having donated an art collection to the city]

Posted by KrissyG on 12/17/22 at 12:00 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etc • Comments here (7)

Friday, December 02, 2022

Mignini Unchained: Rollback Starts, Of Perhaps The World’s Greatest Legal Hoax

Posted by Peter Quennell

Context

“The Meredith Kercher Case”. Published by Morlacchi Press, the University of Perugia Press.

This preface is rather long for an excerpt, but we doubt that Dr Sagnotti will mind. It frames the book.

Dr Sagnotti is a Full Professor of Law & Philosophy at the University of Perugia. Where she also teaches Legal Computer Science, Legal Logic and Judicial Criminology; in addition to Epistemology and Criminal Evidence in the Course of Advanced Training in Criminological Sciences and Investigation Techniques. 

Preface By Simona C. Sagnotti

I have always maintained that the magistrate is a person, an individual, like anyone else. In his veins the blood flows, in his chest pulses a heart. But, in his head must lie a refined attitude of logical character.

This is precisely as the author of this volume, the Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, testifies about the account of the well-known legal case linked to the murder of Meredith Kercher. He finds himself a protagonist in a double role - as he himself says - of investigator and jurist.

From the reading of the pages of the book there immediately surfaces a special talent of Mignini: in the observation of the facts, on which only later the investigative hypotheses are grafted, and never vice versa.

There is no falling in love with a hypothesis. Always far from that.

We see it clearly when the author of the book recounts his arrival at the house of Via della Pergola, the scene of the tragic crime. At first Mignini analyzes the house from outside, noting that the window whose glass was broken (reason for which investigators were initially alerted) is not easily accessible except by climbing a few meters up the wall below it.

The Magistrate is immediately alert to the fact that that there is no sign, no corresponding evidence, on that wall to prove that any attacker had entered the house by that route. In addition, Mignini realizes, it would have been much easier to enter through other windows closer to the ground, and less visible to any passers-by.

Once inside, our investigator - it’s obvious to call him that at this point - also realizes that on the windowsill of the violated window there is glass shrapnel with which, if someone had passed through, he would inevitably have injured himself. But there was no blood trace, precisely to confirm that the rupture of that glass could only have been staged.

Here is what it means to act with method: first to observe, and only then to formulate hypotheses capable of forming a logical link between the facts observed and the hypothesis formulated in support of it.

A good investigator, a good magistrate can be recognized through this professional instinct - which the author of this book himself recognizes - to link facts or behaviors distant from one another in time or space. This attitude is the real luminous thread of the story that winds through the pages of this book.

And it is for this reason that, as a teacher, I recommend that students and young jurists who want to pursue a career in the judiciary also read it. This book, therefore, by Mignini is aimed not at an audience of experts alone.

On both the literary and judicial levels, the choice of chronology is a major lesson.  Not as they happened, but in the order in which they made themselves known to the Prosecutor himself. In this way the reader can relive with the author the feelings, impressions, knowledge, deductions in the order in which the investigating protagonist lived them.

The story told in this book also has the peculiarity of developing on different levels. While the history tells of a young victim of a heinous crime and three young people accused of that crime, the history also tells of politics, media, and unjustified attacks on the prosecution.

Regarding the political pressures, the book explicitly mentions them, along with criticisms from the highest institutions of the United States, which were addressed to both investigating magistrates and the Italian judicial system itself.

Systematic proof that the Americans were far from capturing both the letter and the spirit.

These politics pressures were amplified by an “innocentist” press overseas. The press is even now still silent about numerous circumstances of no secondary importance, such as the final sentence for criminal slander [calunnia] awarded to Amanda Knox.

This is a tale of badnesses narrated by Mignini in this volume.

Bad for the young age of the victim: Meredith, Mez for friends, as Mignini himself recalls. Bad for the young age of the defendants: Raffaele Sollecito, Amanda Knox, Rudy Guede.

Bad for the “interference” in particular in the judicial process Knox and Sollecito were required to undergo.

Mignini, in this regard, refers in the concluding pages of his book to the conduct of Section V of Court of Cassation. This Chamber, contradicting many previous findings of the First Chamber of Court of Cassation, annulled the sentence of the defendants Knox and Sollecito by the Court of Assizes d’Appeals of Florence, and itself ordered itself the acquittal of the defendants.

Such a serious legal act is difficult to understand. The [2013-14 Nencini] Florence court only complied with the requirements of the First [“murder”] Chamber of the Court of Cassation. The Fifth Chamber, not being a judge on the substance of the case, had no legal right to convict or acquit any person.

Yet this is what happened and, I would add, this is precisely why, if the case is closed, it is still open and remains in the eyes of a large part of public opinion.

Lastly, I would like to turn to the literary nature of the text in question, as well as the legal case. In this sense, both the autobiographical digressions (childhood, the disappearance of the father…) and the historical digressions (from the Etruscan origins of the Italian places narrated to the suburb of Croydon, the place of origin of Meredith, evocative of a part of Spanish history linked to Francisco Franco) are unusual and pleasing for the reader. Geographical references are always present in the background, allowing the reader to better contextualize the whole.

As I hope to have shown in this preface, there are many reasons to go through the pages of this book and learn, perhaps for the first time, decisive details that have remained hidden from the general public.

Simona C. Sagnotti

In the next day or two there will a media presentation in Perugia’s Morlacchi Theater. A video will be uploaded to YouTube not too long after. Translations of key excerpts and Italian reviews are down the road. Good news for so many here who held the fort for so long.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 12/02/22 at 10:31 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes Sollecito etc • Comments here (3)

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Dr Mignini’s 360-Page Blockbuster Book Due To Be Released in One Month

Posted by Our Main Posters

1. Re The Book

Dr Mignini’s book will be released before Christmas by the University Of Perugia Press.

An English edition of the ultra-serious 360-page opus is in the works. We have not seen it yet, but we do understand that it closely mirrors and takes much further the general thrust of this page.

It follows hard on the heels of the Rudy Guede book which has just hammmered home that:

(1) all courts ruled that it had to have been a three-person attack (this was largely based on autopsy and situational evidence and a whole-day reconstruction PRESENTED IN CLOSED COURT);

(2) Knox & Sollecito were definitely at the scene of the crime; there was not a single scrap of evidence that anyone else was.

Not something unknown to every single Italian, but a useful time for it to be hammered home.

2. Re The Case

It seems all Italy is heartily sick of being globally impugned for a fine and fair legal process which was repeatedly illegally undermined. Sollecito’s appeal for damages was caustically shot down; tellingly, Knox did not even apply. 

The 2015 Supreme Court findings and verdict were nonsense, probably deliberately so to hint at pressures applied. In their report, the Fifth Chambers made clear that new evidence could render their verdict null and void.

The new evidence is of course the small mountain which the Fifth Chambers chose to ignore.

The President of the Republic and the Italian Supreme Court can each order a reopening of the case and a repeat of the final appeal.

The initiative is said to already have support within Parliament, Cassation, the Ministry of Justice, and the Council of Magistrates.

It is clearly likely to be huge, and could ripple on for years. Knox & Sollecito, their parents, their lawyers, their PR, and others in Italy could find themselves caught up in the net.

Maybe even more in the US: mafioso wannabes Preston, Ciolino, Moore, Fischer, Heavey, Burleigh, Hampikian, and a dozen others might find diffamazione targets on their backs.

Sollecito and his shadow writer Gumbel already lost a diffamazione trial, in Florence, that cost them big fines, and Knox lost a calunnia trial in Perugia, which cost her three years and huge damages owed to Patrick (still unpaid).

It’s strongly recommended that you check out the 2015 Cassation critiques in our right column and especially (in this order) the critiques of the Prosecution, of Machiavelli, and of James Raper, who may all be having a very nice day.

Posted by Our Main Posters on 11/23/22 at 12:42 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (6)

Monday, August 29, 2022

Alert! Serial Misrepresenter Of MK Case Now Misrepresenting Under New Name

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. Overview

Two heavily promoted and wildly inaccurate new reports have appeared.

In both, a whiny I’m-the-real-victim Sollecito reprises his recent Der Spiegel rant in German which we took apart here. 

One is a two-part report on the new Paramount Plus video-streaming channel, and the other is a Kate Mansey story in the Online Daily Mail.

We’ll also be taking each of them apart next. First, some wider context here.

2. Wider Media Context

Netflix entered the internet-based video-streaming business first and has generally grown very fast. Today it is global, and still huge.

Back in 2016 Netflix took a huge stock hit, when a so-called real-crime report turned out to be in part fake.

On-line streamers have generally tried to be above board in their relatively few cautious true-crime productions since. 

Paramount Global with all its subsidiaries, including Showtime and CBS, is worth in total only about 10 percent of what Netflix is worth. William Cohan in Puck News explained Paramount Global’s overall fit.

Paramount Global is a minnow among sharks. With a market value of around $23 billion [now down to $16 billion] it is the smallest of the group of companies that aspire to Hollywood hegemony. Netflix, even after its recent plunge, still has a market value of about $157 billion. Comcast [NBC] is valued at around $206 billion. Disney [ABC] has a market value of more than $250 billion. [Content provider Amazon is at $1.3 trillion, Apple at $2.54 trillion, and Alphabet/Google/YouTube at #1.42 trillion.]

In this distinctly precarious situation, where misrepresenting true crime could be a real mistake, minnow Paramount Global’s video-streaming service Paramount Plus was launched a year ago in the US.

Paramount Plus was also launched a few weeks ago in parts of Europe including the UK (but not Italy) with its flagship promotional vehicle… an anti-Italy Sollecito whine?!

3. Demonizing Italy Context

Paramount Global under its old names (first Viacom and CBS, and then Viacom/CBS) has long been the most misleading and dishonest of all of the exploiters of the case among the main media in the US.

It had no reporters in the Italian courts (in fact none to our knowledge anywhere in Italy) and it has done zero translations of key reports.

Nevertheless it has historically taken a large number of cracks at Italian justice with help from a group of Seattle money-grubbers and members of Knox’s PR. See this partial list of posts below. 

Click for Post:  Why CBS Should Report Better - Way Better - On This Case

Click for Post:  CBS Attempts To Trash Another Witness, Lies To Its Audience

Click for Post:  Rumors In Manhattan About Ludicrously Bad CBS Report

Click for Post:  CBS Reporter’s Bizarre Claims About Prosecutor And Reporters

Click for Post:  CBS Report Sets New Record For Trashing Of Meredith, Xenophobia, Multi-Inaccuracies, Possible Libels

Click for Post:  Plight Of CBS Network: Anti Justice For Meredith Is Increasingly Bad Business

Click for Post:  We Now Examine The Compelling Evidence For The REAL Railroading From Hell

Click for Post:  Producer Of CBS Reports On The Case “Crazy, Desperate, Stupid, And/Or Unscrupulous” ?

Click for Post:  CBS Producer of Most Biased Perugia-Case Reports Pleads Guilty To An Unrelated Crime

Click for Post:  Emmy Nomination For CBS Producer For Xenophobic And Wildly Inaccurate Reports On Meredith’s Case?!

Click for Post:  The Very Appropriate Casting Of CBS’s Doug Preston As The Fredo Corleone Wannabe

Click for Post:  That Supposed Tsunami Of Leaks That Supposedly Hurt The Alleged Perps: Who REALLY Leaked?

Click for Post:  CBS’s Paul Ciolino Hit With A $40 Million Suit For Real Railroad Job From Hell

4. Context Of Daily Mail

The Daily Mail has had no fixed positions on the case, and mainly dabbles in it sensationally now and then, often to the discomfort of Knox.

Kate Mansey is a main editor of the paper, and her crackpot report mainly summarizes and promotes the streaming Paramount Plus report which mainly has Sollecito whining in misleading terms yet again.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/29/22 at 01:35 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (5)

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Georgia Meloni Likely To Become Italy’s First Woman Prime Minister Next Month

Posted by Our Main Posters

Context

Georgia Meloni is the leader of the Brothers Of Italy Party.

Her party is now ahead in the polls. She has uploaded similar statements in excellent Spanish and French.

The party is widely labeled ultra-conservative and does seem to include adherents who have taken some very hard lines. The UK’s Observer newspaper has published this cautionary report. 

So here for an international audience she sets out to compare her own positions as being more akin to those of Liz Truss and the conservatives in the UK.

What of Italian justice? Typically, it goes its own way, politically unaffected, because of all the checks and balances built in - nice, but hard to execute even the few reforms it really could use.

Posted by Our Main Posters on 08/16/22 at 01:44 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (3)

Friday, August 05, 2022

Another Legal Hoaxer Takes The First Of An Expected Many Hits

Posted by Peter Quennell

Overview

Bad day for legal hoaxers as the American justice system delivers another body-blow. 

The Texas jury has now awarded PUNITIVE damages of $45.2m against the money-grubbing far-right radio host Alex Jones. This is on top of $4.1m awarded against him yesterday in COMPENSATORY damages.

Suing were just the first two of a possible 50 parents and teachers’ relatives that Jones had demonized daily for years in his false claims that a real bloodbath at a Connecticut school was a hoax to drive gun-control legislation.

Evidence that his own staff knew that it was a moneygrubbing hoax was presented. Alex Jones’s legal troubles have barely begun. He already faces a second trial in Connecticut next week.

Also Jones egged on the 6 January mob. thousands of recent text messages to Donald Trump etc etc that were handed over to the court by his own lawyer are headed for the Justice Department and Congress. This could result in criminal charges down the road.

For the many anti-Jones comments under the video (scroll down) please click here.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 08/05/22 at 06:55 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (3)

Thursday, July 28, 2022

Back In The News: UK’s Suzy Lamplugh Case, Maybe Most Obsessed-Over Anywhere

Posted by Peter Quennell

The History

Suzy Lamplugh disappeared in West London exactly thirty-six years ago today.

A real-estate broker, she had headed out alone to show a “Mr Kipper” a house, and she has never been seen since. No body. No hard proof of murder. Articles still pour out ceaselessly. There are so many YouTubes that it seems best that you take your pick.

The national frustration in England in part results from the fact that there are TWO suspects, both serial killers, the probable John Cannan whose car showed traces of Suzy’s DNA; and the possible Steve Wright, the Ipswich Killer, who Suzy’s family want interviewed - his own father labels him a possibility.

They have each spent years in prison and have divulged details of other crimes. So if either is guilty, why not do the same for this one?

Especially the one called John Cannan, locked up in Yorkshire, who is said to be on the point of dying. On 31 October 2018 our main poster James Raper kindly posted this tip about him.

I see that the police have started excavating the back garden of John Cannan’s mother’s back garden in the hope of, at long last, finding the remains of Suzy Lamplugh. Suzy was an attractive young estate agent who disappeared some 32 years ago after she had gone to meet a certain Mr Kipper at one of the properties on the agency’s books.

I rather doubt that they will find her there but if they do it will bring closure to Suzy’s remaining family. Her parents died a few years ago. Cannan can also then be charged with her murder.

The police never had anyone else in the frame. At the time of her disappearance Cannon was staying at a bail hostel nearby where he was called Mr Kipper because of his love of fishing and always being asleep. He was, it has to be said, rather a handsome man (though with rather strange, staring eyes) but he was also a sexual predator whose MOD with women was to portray himself as a successful businessman.

I bring this up because I was practicing law in Bristol when he was arrested and convicted for the murder of the newly-wed Shirley Banks. He had tried to abduct another woman only the day before Shirley disappeared. He is currently doing life.

It also transpired that he was having an affair with a Bristol solicitor whom I remember from my days there. IIRC she was representing him on some marital issue. She was married to a Bristol barrister though I never did work out who that was. Anyway, a narrow escape for her, and I didn’t see her around after that.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/28/22 at 01:37 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (6)

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Mainstream Media Woes: NBC Takes Heat For Blatantly One-Sided Report

Posted by Peter Quennell

NBC originated a live feed from the court. Now NBC slams those who actually watched?!

Below: 5 minutes. Comments here.

Below: 37 minutes. Comments here.

Below: 120 minutes. Comments here.

Below: 120 minutes. Comments here.

Below: 46 minutes. Comments here.

Below: 120 minutes. Comments here.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/20/22 at 12:12 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (4)

Thursday, July 14, 2022

More Proof That Mainstream Media Does NOT Accurately Report On Trials

Posted by Peter Quennell

Context

Main-media’s slow suicide by another name?

We recently quoted from some very ill-informed mainstream-media op-eds on the Depp-Heard case.

The NY Times’s and Washington Post’s OWN READERS in online comments below the op-eds almost universally said the opinion writers had NOT WATCHED THE CASE.

There are now literally thousands of comments under the numerous YouTube videos on the case arguing that social media did NOT affect the jury. It was hard facts that did.

Social media in fact simply reflected what many millions saw (except seemingly any mainstream media reporters) on the 20 or so live feeds from the court.

This video of a wildly biased NBC “news report” that aired last night was uploaded just a few hours ago.

Click through to the (at present 2600) comments here (scroll down) in effect almost all saying that, once again, mainstream media is lying to all of us on a grand scale.

Shades of the Meredith Kercher case and Danielle Redlick cases? You can find similar comments to these below under those biased media reports too. We have a lot of like-minded friends out there.

Betsy Packard 1 hour ago

Social Media did NOT determine this case. We watched Amber get caught lying time after time.

Jack White 7 hours ago

Wow NBC, this is how you treat information? Twist it to your will, you know as the public we see what you are doing and you are just loosing viewers.

Ashley Jordan 6 hours ago

This right here is why I refuse to watch MSM! They clearly did not watch the entire trial like most of us with common sense!

Matt Davis 10 hours ago

Really upsetting to see a big news media video like this completely disregard 90% of the trial and give a narrow, biased view on the trial discrediting the court and jury’s verdict, and humiliating Johnny depp, a surviver of amber heard. Both had huge evidence suppressed, Johnny couldn’t play the audio she admits to cutting his finger off.She was proven to be the abuser in a 6 week trial, and to watch this video is disgusting- this would not be happening had the roles been reversed

Gina Simmons 10 hours ago (edited)

I have never seen anything so biased in all my life. I watched the trial ! With an unbiased opinion and the truth slowly unfolded   that Amber Heard was the abuser,  based purely on fact.
I am a woman, and for my own reasons have always side with women about abuse - but this this trial changed my perspective- that men can be victims of abuse too. It sickened me that a woman could go to the depths she went to, to destroy a man that could no longer suffer her abuse.
It is saddening that something like this could be put together in such a way to discredit the verdict. I am sick of being called a Depp fan - I am a fan of truth and justice - something you have left out of this, people who know right from wrong - not fans. Though the right verdict was reached, you have tried to smear it and social media who have been far more truthful about the trial evidence than the MSM.
And as for Elaine Bredahoft- shameful, as she herself knows the lies her client has told and is still pushing them, she even told a few herself, I witnessed that - she should be disbarred.
Shameful that you have put a handful of people together so speedily who obviously never watched the whole trial,  trying to sway the audience to believe a person who constantly perjured herself and covered it over with theatrics - was the victim and treated unjustly.
Amber Heard is the calculating, manipulative,  narcissistic, physical and mental abuser of her former huband - why do you try to paint it as though this fact is not true - and because I have come to this conclusion after seeing it with my own eyes - I am described as Johnny Depp fan?
These are two people, the whole world is not split into two categories - either fans of Depp or Heard. Like me, as I said , just a fan of the truth and justice - for women and for men.

Kris 1 hour ago

This is actually appalling and insulting to everyone who watched this trial live. Insulting to all the fantastic Lawyers and law-workers commenting on this and cases similar to this for years to be smeared by wanna-be journalists who blatantly lie about them again and again. To give this stuff such a stage is unbelievable. Unquestioned biased opinions being presented as “facts”. As i can still see the dislikes this is getting rationed and rightfully so. When will the media finally get the message that they can NOT lie to their viewers any more? Its over. And imagine they would not have allowed cameras in there? News cannot be trusted, so called “experts” cannot be trusted. Thats what i learned from it. Because they lied to my face about stuff i was able to see first hand. This is just another idiotic try to change the “court of public opinion”.

barbde65 3 hours ago

And y’all at NBC and all other MSM’s wonder why we are all turned off? I recall the day she went and played the victim and the fallout… how I was so disappointed and had to believe her…then here comes this trial and I found a new community to follow and these attorneys didn’t believe he could win, the law was on her side… then JD puts on his part and I began to wonder… then AH takes the stand and I was angry… she showed herself as a liar and was fake…the way she kept trying to stare down the jury, the way she told stories that weren’t the same as her “witnesses”…then during both rebuttals, I changed my mind and realized how she’d used the metoo movement, women wanting to believe any claimant and the media to cancel JD… while he’s been all the things he said he was, I mean come on we all knew of his drinking and drug usage way back to the Viper Room and River Phoenix… but the way she described certain alleged abuses? She’d have needed IMMEDIATE treatment for sliced and bleeding feet and in Australia had he really committed SV with a “broken bottle” he would still be there in jail… you all owe JD the actual and fair truth which I highly doubt anyone of you has the decency to report… you’re nothing better than TMZ at this point! Shame on you for not reporting the ACTUAL facts and how disgusting she is as a person…

Randy Moog 3 hours ago (edited)

Three things.
1) NBC was caught replacing audio in the middle of the sentences Amber Heard was saying during their big interview.  They replaced words mid sentence because it was pointed out when the first teasers came out she was obviously lying about facts, and it was easy to prove she was lying.  So NBC removed parts of the video, and edited words mid sentence to make audio clips that were never said, but didn’t have the lies in them.  There are a number of videos that show the teaser clips versus the final clips where this is clear.
2) The trial influences social media, not the other way around.  People mocked AH lying and bizarre behavior AFTER they watched the trial, not the other way around.  People watched the trial with open minds and it was the trial that made them then go to social media and talk about what they saw. 
3) With social media it is easy to comment and fact check in real time.  It is harder with MSM like NBC.  NBC tries very hard to control the narrative and blocks and fact checking.  Luckily this is posted on YouTube were people can comment - something you CANNOT do on NBC’s sites.  And after watching them edit audio and change what people said, you can see why.

Keyyyyzzzz 8 hours ago

I recall a time when both the media AND online commentary were overwhelmingly in support of Amber ... which gradually turned around to support Johnny after the public release of two things: (1) the footage of Amber’s testimony in the UK, and; (2) the many hours of audio recordings - largely Amber’s own. So, as a ‘liberal’ minded (Australian) lawyer I made a point of following the entire six week trial, while deliberately blocking all commentary (both online and traditional media). My verdict was virtually identical with that of the Virginia jury. Not only was Amber’s testimony very contradictory, but there was simply no credible evidence to support her DA claims: and the little that there was ultimately seemed to emanate from Amber herself.
I have to say I’m really surprised at the traditional ‘liberal’ media commentaries - like this one - which appear to have rejected this verdict on the grounds that it will have a suppressing effect on victims of DA! Not only have you clearly NOT followed the evidence presented in this case itself, but you are ignoring the fact that the jury DID vindicate the DA survivor in this case: ie, Johnny Depp. As even your own expert commentators make clear in this video: men are extremely reluctant to come forward as DA victims! Its pretty clear that Johnny would NEVER have come forward ... if it weren’t for the fact that his entire reputation and career were at jeopardy! And yet you’re prepared to disregard both the bulk of the evidence AND the verdict of the jury; simply because it doesn’t conform to your outdated notion of what a DA survivor must look like. It seems to me that the traditional US ‘liberal’ media stands in very real danger of losing relevance in the News environment; a sad and frightening prospect in my opinion ... and in the opinion of hundreds of millions of fair and reasonably minded people around the world.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/14/22 at 03:51 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (5)

Tuesday, July 05, 2022

Unsavory Knox & Sollecito Chums Are Taking Quite A Beating Now

Posted by Peter Quennell

Fine Australian report praised by Italian viewers (scroll down)

1. Italian Developments

The video report on a mass trial in southern Italy could be good news.

That is if there is to be more exposure of the nefariousness in Meredith’s case. And of how way too much of the American media and the political administrations were led around by the nose, by these guys intent on taking Italian justice down a peg.

Not that Italian media have been exactly shy though. Few in Italy believe all was above board - in the selection of Judge Hellman and his “independent” consultants, in the final sentence issued in 2015 by the Supreme Court, and in Knox’s “not guilty” verdict in the Florence calunnia trial.

Everybody knows of the Sollecito family’s blood ties in the deep south and in Canada, though those have mostly dwindled since the assassination of Canadian mafia kingpin Uncle Rocco in Montreal in 2016.

Calabria is in the deep south of Italy, across the Strait of Messina from Sicily. Several thousand years ago, those were among the wealthiest areas in the world. Agriculture flourished back then, and the south was a major waypoint for cargo traffic making its way along the Mediterranean.

The remorseless decline of the deep south was first set in motion by climate change, and by piracy from bases in countries further to the east. Lawless gangs emerged after the 19th century uprisings against royalty.

The mafia big three families have long been considered Cosa Nostra (Sicily), Camorra (Naples) and Ndrangheta (Calabria). All three had connections with Meredith’s case.

The Ndrangheta was infiltrating the Perugia area around the time that Meredith died. Knox’s and Sollecito’s lead lawyers had represented mafia previously. Appeal judge Hellman was assigned in suspect circumstances. Sollecito was suspected of seeking help from the Canadian arm of the Ndrangheta. Both of the lead Supreme Court judges were from Naples and subjects of whispers. The judge in Knox’s second calunnia trial was transferred to Florence from the Ndrangheta area due to suspect friendships. A pro-prosecution witness had been a Camorra member. Perugia prosecutors and judges sometimes have a role in mafia cases. Perugia saw a mafia mass-arrest. One of the lead investigators transferred to Rome to head anti-mafia investigations.   

Sicily’s Cosa Nostra was mostly responsible for the assassination of over 100 judges, prosecutors and others in law enforcement through the 1990s, at which time the kingpin was put away and the first several of various mass trials put away additional hundreds. It then faded, and the Ndrangheta mushroomed.

The current Ndrangheta mass trial in western Calabria is of the Mancuso clan, the west-coast segment of the Ndrangheta, which because of a seaport built in the 1990s is definitely the most significant. The trial will conclude in a few months - many took the short-form trial (in effect they pleaded guilty) but over 300 didn’t. 

Does this suggest the last of the big Italian mafia families is finally on the ropes and of diminishing significance? Maybe; maybe not. As the Australian video explains, for many in the area, the Ndrangheta remains more popular than the government, because they make sure to provide more services.

But certainly by global standards they are not such big-fry. Russian, Japanese and Mexican crime families are estimated to be larger, both in membership and turnover. But the Ndrangheta is still big in European cocaine, and has bought a collection of conventional businesses.

Italian law enforcement has developed a number of admired and emulated techniques to diminish their crime families. One is to isolate members from one another and from other prisoners, in prison conditions that by Italian standards are not too nice.

Even at the peaks of these crime families, reported crime rates in Italy, murder or otherwise, have steadily remained below 1/5 of the American rates. Italian law enforcement is brave, and their systems are good models.

2. Canadian Developments

Mobster Dominico Scarfo has been on trial for the shooting of Rocco Sollecito at a traffic light in Montreal in May 2016, and for a related killing.

Rocco Sollecito had been the de facto head of the Rizutto crime family, which was very closely associated with the Italian Ndrangheta. Raffaele Sollecito met with him several times in 2012 and 2014 in a mob-controlled town at the east end of the Dominican Republic island.

Scarfo was found guilty of both killings in April. This is a report on the trial outcome from the Montreal Gazette.

The jury also found Scarfo, 49, guilty of conspiring to kill both men.

The trial began in late January, and the jury deliberated for 19 days — one of the longest deliberations in Canadian history — before reaching unanimous decisions on all four charges. The record for the longest deliberation is 28 days.

“In the name of us all, and in the name of the community you served as judges, I want to thank you for your services. All good things must have an end though,” Superior Court Justice Michel Pennou told the 10 jurors who remained on the panel at the trial’s end.

The prosecution faced an uphill battle as its key witness, an informant, initially refused to testify when he was first called to the stand in February.

“No. I won’t be answering any questions,” the informant told prosecutor Isabelle Poulin after she asked her first question.

“F—ing me over is f—ing everybody over. It ain’t happening,” the informant said back in February while complaining that his contract with the Sûreté du Québec was not being respected.

He eventually settled down and testified at length, despite several outbursts throughout.

With the first-degree murder verdicts, Scarfo automatically received a life sentence with a period of parole ineligibility fixed at 25 years. Pennou said he will hear sentencing arguments on the conspiracy charges at a later date….

Scarfo is said to have collaborated with, among others in the Canadian mob, a “deceased crime boss”.

Hmmm…  Rocco Sollecito’s predecessor Nicolo Rizutto was gunned down in his house by a long-distance sniper.

Rocco has been widely presumed to have been behind that, and although said to have been a guy quite easy to get along with, some in the mob may have remained loyal to the previous boss.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/05/22 at 08:08 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in • Comments here (20)

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