Headsup: To those many lawyers amazed that Knox did not get on the witness stand to head off a certain re-conviction: the best guess among Italian lawyers is that Knox's own lawyers feared ANOTHER calunnia charge if she repeated the crackpot and highly disprovable claims that she was tortured. The tough calunnia law is primarily a pushback measure against mafia meddling which is widely suspected in this case.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Italy May Block Brexit Extension, Force UK Out Of EC Altogether March 29

Posted by Peter Quennell

Sardinia will lose a lot of trade

In The News

Italy may block the extension of the UK Brexit negotiations.

That would cause the UK to crash out on 29 March. Spain, France and Belgium are also said to be taking a hard line.

In economic terms this does not seem to make much sense. Sardinia alone could see 40 million pounds of exports down the tubes.

But in international sway Italy might gain a lot. For all years previously it was the EC’s fourth economy, after Germany, UK and France.

But now that the UK is leaving, Italy can, and should, step up. It is the third largest country and economy in the EU…

It has significant voting rights in the EU institutions. It is at the centre of the immigration crisis. It has a strong military and, despite its public debt, the third largest gold reserves in the world.

It is a manufacturing powerhouse, ranking among the top 10 exporters in the world.

With the UK out, this is the time for Italy to assert itself in, and for, the EU.

In practice, this would mean demanding to be present at any meeting where France and Germany take joint decisions designed to lead Europe forward.

“...third largest gold reserves in the world”? Hmmm!

 

Friday, February 22, 2019

Watch This “I’m The Victim” Interview Of A Few Days Ago In Full Amanda Knox Mode

Posted by Peter Quennell

TV actor Jussie Smollett makes everything up, in blazing victimhood.

Today, he was arrested, for stage-managing a fake hate-crime in Chicago three weeks ago. Numerous show-biz celebrities and politicians of all parties had come out in support of him. 

Resolving what actually happened in this volatile atmosphere has occupied a dozen competent detectives full-time. How they broke the case is pretty intriguing; some new YouTubes describe the very complex cliffhanger.

If you scroll back through the hundreds of YouTubes (really) on this over three weeks you will see that, to their great credit, most of the first posters to pick up the bad vibes and cry “fake” were from the black community. 

The interviewer above is ABC’s Robin Roberts. She’s now accused of colluding with Smollett. She also colluded with Knox.

Thursday, February 07, 2019

Pyrrhic Victory For Knox #1: ECHR Complaint Seems To Leave Her Worse Off

Posted by Our Main Posters

Dalla Vedova and Knox: Tripped up by body of lies?

[Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments]

Part 1. Origin Of The ECHR Complaint

By Peter Quennell

Part 1 provides some of the context for an analysis by KrissyG in Part 2.

The ECHR has finally after six years issued an advisory to Italy to pay a small sum to Knox in damages. Grounds are (1) an investigator being too chummy at the list-building session ending 1.45am on 6 Nov 2007, and (2) Knox not having lawyer present at the Miranda-rights session ending 5.45am.

Both are weird. And way, way below what Knox had asked for early in 2013: E2.5 million in damages and a finding of actual abuse.

Remember how Knox’s ECHR appeal began. The year after their questionable release by Judge Hellman (2012) was a time of wild highs for Knox and Sollecito. They each wrote a book and set out on money-grubbing victory tours - Sollecito late 2012, Knox early 2013.

But then, in late March 2013, the Supreme Court First Chambers did a rare and surprising thing. That court did not merely quibble with aspects of Knox’s and Sollecito’s 2011 appeal outcome (normal practice), or send it back down to Judge Hellman to correct a few minor things in law. Instead it more or less wiped the slate clean.

In scathing terms, the First Chambers annulled the 2011 outcome (except for Hellman’s “guilty” calunnia ruling for Knox) and sent it off with some guidelines to a different judge (Nencini) in a different city (Florence), to run Knox’s and Sollecito’s first appeal all over again. And Judge Hellman was forcibly retired.

From then on, throughout most of 2013, in the months before the Florence appeal court convened, though feigning triumphalism, Knox and Sollecito each appeared scared out of their wits.

Knox was too frightened to even attend, despite her Italian lawyers flying to Seattle to try to drag her back (the last time they set eyes on her, nearly six years ago). She instead sent a ranting and defamatory email to the judge, which quite possibly made things worse.

For his part, a somewhat more buoyant Sollecito lingered for some months in the Dominican Republics (which had no extradition treaty with Italy) with his unsavory Canadian relatives (who he might have been hoping would bend another court or offer him a job).

But at the last moment Sollecito (with some public arm-twisting by his dad) did arrive back for the court sessions. (He soon took off again, secretly back to see his Canadian relatives seemingly to ask if they could help.)

As generally expected by followers of the damning 2009 trial, Judge Nencini’s judgment early in 2014 resulted in both Knox and Sollecito going down hard once again. Their sentences were reinstated, and now subject only to the Supreme Court giving the final nod.

It was right here, in this threatening context, that one of Knox’s lawyers, Carlo Dalla Vedova (who is not a criminal lawyer) attempted what Americans call a “Hail Mary pass”. There is no sign that Knox’s other lawyer, Luciano Ghirga, went along with him.

Dalla Vedova filed the ECHR complaint, seemingly mainly (as many other Italian lawyers have done) to fire a shot across the bows of the Supreme Court, in a bid for leniency for Knox. (Separately, Sollecito was trying other measures.)

Dalla Vedova and Knox kept the complaint document to themselves, so nobody had any chance to fact-check it and see whether the claims stood up. Knox followers shared wild fantasies about what the document requested.

The ECHR would not share it even with the Italian Ministry of Justice: seemingly an extremely poor ECHR mode, as the Ministry lawyers had no clear idea of what to defend against.

The ECHR “investigation” essentially ignored the 2009 trial report, and its participants and its documents. Many transcripts we have translated and know well seem not to have been read or understood at all.

Instead the ECHR relied heavily on three very misleading reports:

(1) the 2013 Knox complaint by Dalla Vedova, which appears to have included a number of false claims;

(2) the 2011 Judge Hellman sentencing report - despite it having zero standing after the Chieffi Supreme Court ruled;

(3) the 2016 Boninsegna report denying a second calunnia judgment against Knox for damaging claims she made against Perugia investigators. 

The ECHR seems ignorant of many fundamental facts of the case. For example it seems ignorant of the fact that Knox was flouting a Supreme Court ruling (four years previously) that Knox MUST still pay Patrick an award for damages of about $100,000.

Worse, the ECHR found that it did not matter that the Knox legal process was not yet done because, they claimed, it would be soon.  But, as a direct result of breaking its own rules, the ECHR advanced ignorant of the fact that subsequent to the Knox filing the Supreme Court in 2015 had rebuffed any ECHR findings against Italy in advance.

From the 2015 Marasca-Bruno Sentencing Report:

2.2. The request of Amanda Knox’s defense aimed at the postponing of the present trial to wait for the decision of the European Court of Justice [sic] has no merit, due to the definitive status of the guilty verdict for the crime of calunnia, now protected [locked in stone] as a partial final status against a denouncement of arbitrary and coercive treatments allegedly carried out by the investigators against the accused to the point of coercing her will and damaging her moral freedom in violation of article 188 of penal procedure code.

And also, a possible decision of the European Court in favor 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 Prosecutor during the subsequent session [ending 5:45], in a context which, institutionally, is immune from anomalous psychological pressures; and also confirmed in her memoriale, 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.

And even worse! The ECHR seems ignorant of the fact that IF Knox’s complaints of abuse were credible to her lawyers they MUST convey the complaints to the authorities. In fact if they do not, they risk criminal penalties and even being disbarred (and may still do). In fact in 2008 both lawyers publicly announced to the media that Knox should stop telling so many lies and that they never said she was hit.

Without such an initiating complaint, the Republic of Italy can never be at fault. 

But on the plus side for Italy and the very minus side for Knox (1) the ECHR dismissed the Knox claims of abuse (“torture”) that might have shored up any attempt by her to get the calunnia conviction revisited; and (2) prospects for any Knox claim for damages for her 1-4 years in prison are terminally gone.

What DID Knox get out of this? A recommendation to Italy - which can take it or leave it -  for a very tiny award (based on patently wrong claims) which is in any case likely to end up in Patrick Lumumba’s hands!!

As the ECHR ruling is only advisory, Knox cannot argue about it or seek to repudiate it or seek to adjust the suggested award - but the Republic of Italy certainly can.

Part Two: Analysis Of Italy’s Legal Position

By KrissyG

Overview

The main issues revolve around the question of admissibility.  I have identified two or three possible grounds of appeal on points of law.  They are: 

(a) Italy submitted that date-wise, the application by Knox had been submitted too early as the hearings had not yet been finalized.  ECHR rejects this saying that the hearings finalized very shortly after.  As far as I can see, this is not so.

(b) The ECHR relies on comments by Hellmann Appeal Court, which was largely superseded and outranked by Chieffi Supreme Court, to argue factors of free will.

(c) The ECHR relies heavily on police minutes and the fact interpreter Donnino and a police office, RI, fail 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. Is it an error of law to assume these police minutes represented a failure of procedure?

1. Application admissible?

This takes up the larger part of the ECHR deliberations.  We can see that the dates are out of time and we can see it is keen to “˜get round’ this.  The relatively minor issues of police eagerness to befriend Knox, albeit misguided and improper, has clearly outraged the ECHR.

“I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS

The subject of the dispute

108. The Court notes from the outset that the applicant’s complaints relate solely to the criminal proceedings at the end of which she was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for slanderous denunciation of DL and not to the other proceedings. of which she was the subject.

B. Failure to exhaust domestic remedies in respect of the complaints under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (a) and (c) of the Convention

109. The Government submitted that, at the time of the introduction of the application, on 24 November 2013, the applicant’s conviction for slanderous denunciation was not final and that, therefore, this part of the complaint should be declared inadmissible.

110. The Court reiterates that the exhaustion of domestic remedies is assessed, with certain exceptions, at the date of submission of the application to the Court (Baumann v. France, No. 33592/96, § 47, ECHR 2001- V (extracts)).

111. However, it also recalls that it tolerates the completion of the last level of domestic remedies shortly after the filing of the application, but before it is called upon to decide on the admissibility of the application (Zalyan et al. Armenia, Nos. 36894/04 and 3521/07, § 238, March 17, 2016, and Škorjanec v. Croatia, No. 25536/14, § 44, March 28, 2017).

112. In any event, in the present case, the Court notes that the conviction in question was confirmed by the judgment of the Court of Cassation filed on 18 June 2013, at the end of three degrees of jurisdiction, and that the reference to the Assize Court of Appeal concerned only the existence of the aggravating circumstance.
113. In view of the foregoing, the objection raised by the Government must be rejected.”

2. Application premature?

By the ECHR’s own rules, as stated above, the submission was lodged 24 Nov 2013, when all domestic channels were supposed to have been exhausted.  The calunnia conviction against Lumumba had been finalised through Chieffi & Vecchio Supreme Court 18 June 2013. 

However, the second ““ and completely separate - case of calunnia brought by the police and prosecutor did not go through Boninsegna until 14 Jan 2015, on whose motivational report Knox and the ECHR heavily rely, over a year later.

Knox was acquitted by Bonisegna, hence, there was nothing for her to appeal against.  Further, Boninsegna had nothing at all to do with the merits of the Lumumba callunia, tried in 2009 and upheld at every stage, even by the egregious Hellmann court, whose judgement was largely expunged.

Why does the ECHR rely heavily on Hellmann and Boninsegna and not the superior Supreme and final court of Chieffi?

Even curiouser, Knox and the ECHR also rely heavily on quoting Hellmann of 3 Oct 2011.  Yet Hellmann was overrided and superseded by the superior Chieffi Supreme Court, finalised 9 Sept 2013.

The ECHR quotes Hellmann at some length, when it surely should have referred to Chieffi.

As an example, the judgment, translated from French, quotes Hellman as follows:

130. The Court observes that, in its judgment of 3 October 2011, [Hellmann] the Court of Appeal also emphasized the excessive length of the interrogations, the applicant’s vulnerability and the psychological pressure suffered by her, a pressure which was likely to compromise the spontaneity of his statements, as well as his state of oppression and stress.

It considered that the applicant had, in fact, been tortured to death, resulting in an unbearable psychological situation from which, in order to extricate herself, she had made incriminating statements in respect of DL (see paragraph 85 (8) and (10) above).

Yet the Chieffi Supreme Court in spiking much of Hellman’s lower court judgment writes:

So Knox was in a position, even after an initial although long moment of bewilderment, amnesia and confusion, to regain control of herself and understand the gravity of the conduct she was adopting; at the very least, in the days immediately following her heedless initiative she could have pointed out to the investigators that she had led them in a false direction, availing herself of the support of her Defence team, given that in the meantime she had acquired the status of a suspect.

Her persistence in her criminal attitude (discovered only through her taped conversation with her mother) proves the clear divergence with behaviour that could be interpreted as an attempt at cooperation, as the Defence would have it, and does not lend itself to evaluation as a response to a state of necessity, the very existence of which depends on a condition of inevitability and thus on the non”existence of any alternatives, so that it cannot even be recognized [as existing] as [her own] erroneous hypothesis.

Neither can the exercise of any right be invoked, given that the right of [self] defence does not extend under the legal system of any constitutional state to the point of allowing one to implicate an innocent person so seriously ““ it is worth recalling that he [Lumumba] underwent a period of incarceration uniquely and exclusively on the basis of the false accusations of the defendant.

3. Application Material?

Having ruled in favour of admissibility, the ECHR ruled that as the nature of Knox’ complaints of being hit and being placed under great duress triggered at least the lowest level of a potential Article 3 complaint, that of degrading and inhuman treatment, Italy should have taken it upon itself to launch an investigation of its own initiative into the allegations made against the interpreter [Donnino] and another officer [RI].  “˜RI’ claimed to have cuddled Knox, stroked her hair and held her hands.  This, the ECHR rules, had the effect of undermining Knox’ dignity and independence of will.

It has several criticisms surrounding this behavior including the fact it is not minuted in the police notes, and nor is the start and end times of the supposed “interrogations” at 1:45am and 5:45am.

The serious issue of course though is that of being allowed a lawyer. The ECHR writes of Italy’s defense (“the Government”)

142. The Government observes that the statements made by the complainant on 6 November 2007 in the absence of a lawyer were declared unusable in relation to the offenses under investigation, namely the murder of MK and the sexual violence perpetrated at against him. However, it states that, according to the established case law of the Court of Cassation (judgments Nos. 10089 of 2005, 26460 of 2010 and 33583 of 2015), spontaneous statements made by a person under investigation in the absence of a defender can in any case, be used when they constitute, as in this case, an offense in themselves. He added that the applicant had the assistance of a lawyer when the first indications of his responsibility for the murder of Mr K appeared.

143. In addition, the Government alleged that the applicant had been sentenced for slanderous disclosure not only on the basis of the statements made on 6 November 2007, but also on the basis of “a multitude of other circumstances”, recalled in the judgment of conviction of the Assize Court of 5 December 2009 (see paragraph 80 above).

144. The complainant submits that she was not informed of her right to legal assistance during her hearings on 6 November 2007, since a defense lawyer was not appointed until 8.30 am that day, and denounces the impact of the use of this evidence on the fairness of the proceedings.

A. Admissibility

145. Noting that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention and that it does not face any other ground of inadmissibility, the Court declares it admissible.
2. Application of general principles to the facts of this case

(a) The applicability of Article 6 of the Convention
(b) 146:

147. The Court notes at the outset that the first question in this case is whether Article 6 § 1 of the Convention was applicable to the facts of the case. It recalls in that regard that, on 6 November 2007, the applicant was heard twice: at 1.45 am and 5.45 am

148. It notes that the two statements were originally collected as part of the police’s acquisition of summary information, during which time the complainant had not been formally investigated.

149. With regard to the statements taken at 1.45 am, the Court reiterates that the guarantees offered by Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 of the Convention apply to any “accused” in the autonomous sense of the term. the Convention. There is a “criminal charge” where a person is formally charged by the competent authorities or where the acts of the latter on account of the suspicions against them have a significant impact on his situation (Simeonovi, cited above). , §§ 110-111).

150. Applying this principle to the present case, the Court therefore wonders whether, at the time of the hearings, the domestic authorities had reasonable grounds to suspect that the applicant was involved in the murder of Mr K.

151. It observes in that regard that the applicant had already been heard by the police on 2, 3 and 4 November 2007 and that she had been tapped. It notes that the facts of the case also show that, on the evening of 5 November 2007, the attention of the investigators focused on the applicant (see paragraphs 12-14 above). She notes that while she went to the police station spontaneously, she was asked questions in the corridor by police officers who then continued to interrogate her in a room where she had been interrogated. subjected twice, for hours, to close interrogations.

152. In the Court’s view, even assuming that these elements are not sufficient to conclude that, at 1.45 am on 6 November 2007, the applicant could be considered to be a suspect within the meaning of its case-law, it is necessary to note that, as the Government acknowledged, when she made her 5:45 statements to the public prosecutor, the applicant had formally acquired the status of a person under indictment. The Court therefore considers that there is no doubt that, at 5.45 am at the latest, the applicant was the subject of a criminal charge within the meaning of the Convention (Ibrahim and Others, cited above, § 296).

(b) The existence of overriding reasons for the restriction of the right of access to a lawyer.

Knox and her lawyers again has a second bite of the cherry and rehashes what was surely res judicata by Chieffi:

2.1.16 “ Inconsistency and manifest lack of logic in the reasoning concerning the failure to recognize an aggravating circumstance in the aims underlying the confirmed offence of calunnia. [The Prosecutor General argues as follows:] In upholding the offence of calunnia as charged against Ms Knox, the second instance court ruled out any link with the murder. It was not explained on what basis the court had inferred that the young woman had been stressed by the interviewers and that therefore she had committed the calunnia to “free” herself from the questions of the investigators, seeing that none of the young people who were living in that house, none of Ms Kercher’s friends, and many others in the days immediately following the murder, all of whom were summoned and interrogated, had the insane idea of committing a calunnia to free themselves from the weight of the unpleasant situation.

[43] The objective facts are therefore absolutely irrefutable, as was deemed in both trials; whereas the argument adopted from a subjective point of view, according to which the young woman resorted to extreme behaviour by giving the name of Lumumba only in order to get out of a situation of mental discomfort into which she was driven by the excessive zeal and unjustifiable intemperance of the investigators, cannot be well”founded given that ““ as it was ascertained ““ the accusation of Lumumba was maintained after her first statements and re”affirmed in the letter, which was written in complete solitude and at a certain distance in time from the first uncontrolled reaction in response to an insistent request for a name by the police. 

JUDGEMENT OF THE SUPREME COURT OF CASSATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF ITALY (PRESIDED OVER BY DR SEVERO CHIEFFI) IN THE MURDER OF MEREDITH KERCHER

Translated from Italian into English by http://www.perugiamurderfile.org 9 September 2013

The whole issue of whether Knox was denied a lawyer, I am sure could be an article in its own right and I know others have strong views on this issue, therefore I shall leave it here to set out the ECHR reasoning.

My Conclusions>

So, we have a heavy reliance on the judgments of Hellmann and Bonisegna, when it seems to me, Hellmann is overrided by Chieffi who upholds Hellmann’s own final conviction anyway and Boninsegna is well past the earliest admissibility date, quite aside from not being directly involved in the Lumumba calumny at all.

Having ruled that objections by Italy can be swept aside, including that of failure to exhaust domestic avenues, the ECHR then goes on to rule on Knox’ lawyer status without proper reference to the latest and highest courts.  I can understand the argument that Italy should itself have investigated the police brutality anyway.  The rest of the reasoning seems misguided in light of what higher courts than those referred to have found. 

Sources

2103 The Supreme Court of Cassation of Italy Sentencing Report

Knox Complaint: The Full ECHR Judgment (English version soon available here.)

Friday, February 01, 2019

Migration To Quality Media Continues - Away From Bottom-Feeders Hosting Knox

Posted by Peter Quennell

Demonization Enablers

Truth-telling media such as the New York Times have seen a sizeable readership influx.

Meanwhile the tabloid bottom-feeders gasp for air. Brooklyn’s VICE Media is one of those badly hit. Staff layoffs are as the video describes.

VICE gave Knox a platform just under a year ago, to wail about demonized women.

Knox omitted to point out (and sloppy VICE failed to find out) that the barbaric Knox herself is one of the nastiest most dangerous demonizers on the planet.

VICE should never never never have espoused bigotry against any country, which of course is what it was doing in providing Knox a platform.

And the bigotry was voiced in English, against a country whose first language is Italian, and whose defamed officials have no easy way of responding.

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Euro Court Of Human Rights May Rule Tomorrow On Knox’s Much-Hyped “Appeal”

Posted by Machiavelli

Dr Guido Raimondi, Italian, current president of the Court

[Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments]

1. A Weak Submission By Knox Team At Best

Italian defence lawyers file more spurious “appeals” in Strasbourg than any other.

Knox’s “appeal” was filed by her lawyer Dalla Vedova FIVE-PLUS years ago. The ECHR saw nothing in it to cause haste. It was submitted following the Nencini appeal where the court, following Cassazione guidelines, had reiterated a very strong case and Knox’s guilt for murder was reaffirmed.

Since then Knox has been confirmed definitively guilty of calunnia, case closed, not subject to reversal, and she has served her three years. Also she was found not guilty of Meredith’s murder by the Fifth Chambers of Cassazione - which should not even have got into the evidence under law.

Here are our main past posts explaining the spurious nature of what Strasbourg received.

Click for Post:  Amanda Knox Lies Again To Get Herself Into Another European Court “But Really, Judge, Its Only PR” (Kermit)

Click for Post:  Note For Strasbourg Court & State Department: Knox Herself Proves She Lies About Her Interrogation (James Raper)

Click for Post:  Multiple Provably False Claims About “Forced Confession” Really Big Problem For Dalla Vedova & Knox (Finn MacCool)

Click for Post:  Knox’s Unsound Appeal To The European Court Of Human Rights Slapped Down By Cassation (Main Posters)

Click for Post:  Carlo Dalla Vedova, Is ECHR Made Aware Italian Law REQUIRES Lawyers To First File Local Complaints? (Main Posters)

Click for Post:  Carlo Dalla Vedova: Is ECHR Advised You Condoned Malicious Defamation By Knox Of Chief Prosecutor? (Main Posters)

Click for Post:  Bad News For Knox -  Buzz From Italy Is Spurious ECHR Appeal Will Probably Fail (Main Posters)

Click for Post:  Telling Non-Development For Knox Re The European Court Of Human Rights In Strasbourg (Main Posters)

2. My Takes On The ECHR Judges And Italy’s Role

Now, we know the ECHR response is on the docket for the court most likely Thursday the 24th (one of 48 cases) and if not then the 29th.

We DONT know if a full decision has been reached.  We cannot tell yet what the ECHR verdict will be. But we can tell in advance a few things, which we should point out:

1) The ECHR verdict will not be a “yes” or “no” response; that is, whatever kind of agreement the Court may find with Knox’s recourse, the pro-Knox advocates if any are left will try to make it look as if it was a full “yes” to Knox’s narrative while it is certain it will not endorse her fully if at all. In other words they could twist it and use it as a media stunt just to have the media reporting incline their way, and they won’t pay attention to any actual content;

2) How the ECHR rules, is something that depends on how the State Attorney of Italy in Rome decided to submit: if she decided to defend Italy’s position and on what points, to what degree. Therefore, the submission and outcome are basically political: they do not involve an applicant (Knox) against an independent party, but rather against a political entity (Italy) that may or may not offer a defense and if it does so, it may follow political criteria.

So the response does not depend very much on Knox’s telling the truth or not, but more on Italy’s political interest in “winning” the points or not.

For these reasons, while we know that there are legal and factual arguments to reject completely all of Knox’s claims - and to expose some of her claims as abusive - we actually don’t know exactly how much of an interest the State of Italy had in exposing her abusive arguments and defeating her points. We don’t know, for example, if the State Attorney worked to find and bring forth all key facts (see Part 1 above) and to submit all possible evidence to the Court.

The work of the Court is very indirect. They mostly don’t perform any actual fact finding directly. Rather they rely on organs of the State party to submit to them a report about the facts - and they certainly won’t have a way to discover any information that is missing in the reports (unless the other party pushes for that).
 
The ECHR Court does not actually assess the merits of a trial; it is no real “appeal” instance. The political nature of the “trial” thus is the reason why we don’t know what the Court will decide on each point; and it is also one of the reasons why the ECHR decision will be basically meaningless however pro or anti Knox.

3) The ECHR court in any case WILL NOT suggest (it cannot demand) any court review of all the steps of the case 2007-15 by the Italian courts.

The ECHR WILL NOT overturn the calunnia conviction. This should be absolutely clear: the calunnia conviction is definitive. Cassazione firmly closed it down. Knox is never going to be “cleared”. She is a convicted felon and will remain such for life.

Knox was also found beyond reasonable doubt by Cassazione to be present in the murder room when Meredith was killed, she washed her blood from her hands, and it is definitively established in Knox/Sollecito Bruno/Marasca ruling that Guede did not kill alone and Meredith was physically killed by more than one person.

It is also definitively recognized by the Bruno/Marasca ruling and also by subsequent rulings, that Knox and Sollecito are repetitive liars (“all their versions are lies”).

One reason why there will never be a trial review of Knox’s calunnia conviction is that Knox’s application to the ECHR actually willfully omits this component.

In other words, Knox simply does not want a second calunnia trial - probably mainly because her lawyers know that she would be found guilty again in a new trial, even if the “spontaneous statements” were considered inadmissible as evidence: there is sufficient evidence that she committed calunnia even without the 1:54 and 5.45 statements).

4) the Knox ECHR application contradicts Knox’s recollection of facts she gave in her book (one of the multiple version she gave), for example in the ECHR application she accuses “Perugian doctors” of performing a fake HIV test and leaking results to the media, while in her book she accuses an abusive prison guard.

5) it is to be pointed out that, independently from ECHR ruling, we can show that Knox’s application claims are false, contradicted by trial documents, and mostly contradicted by her own positions in the trial and subsequent statements. 

6) The President Judge of the Court panel is an Italian Magistrate, his name is Guido Raimondi, he is from Naples, and this is one of his last ruling before his retirement.

As our readers might guess, I am allergic to Neapolitan Magistrates who are by their last rulings just before retirement! But let’s wait and see (he might be a decent and honest person; I don’t like his position of link to the Naples Office though).

7)  I’d like to point out a peculiarity of Knox’s ECHR application: the only part among the claims that has some chance to be accepted by the Strasbourg Court, in my opinion, is the claim about alleged violations by the police, that is where Knox claims she was not “told” early enough she was a suspect by police officers and complains about not having a good interpreter.

Albeit there is no actual violation of Italian law, Dalla Vedova complains of some alleged violation of European rights and drops in a slippery, irregular request of “changes to the law”, rather than indicating any specific damages Knox would have allegedly suffered.

An interesting aspect of this, though, is that such a point of law raised by Dalla Vedova is only about alleged violations of legal principles in the prosecution for murder.

There is no request that could affect the course of the prosecution and trial for calunnia.

In other words, the Knox ECHR application might have some theoretical potential to find a violation or violations of Knox’s rights regarding her being investigated for murder. But it has no potential to affect the regularity of her being tried for calunnia.

No way the ECHR ruling could change the course that lead to calunnia finding, no way such conviction could be cancelled, and her ECHR application does not even contain a request that would dispute the legitimacy of such conviction.

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Major Anti-Mafia Success In Italy Is Making Skilled Italian Police In Demand Elsewhere

Posted by Peter Quennell

Gamechanger

The mafias really are gone from the United States and Canada, and in Italy it is mostly likewise.

So the mafias have been moving elsewhere - the UK, Germany, Netherlands, especially Malta - and Italian police are being invited to spearhead huge sweeps against them.

Hundreds of special forces arrested at least 84 men and women overnight in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands in the largest-ever pan-European investigation into organized crime. Raids were also carried out in South America as part of the sting operation. More than three tons of cocaine and 140 kilograms of ecstasy were also seized, police said.

UK-based expert Felia Allum explains the organizational adjustments.

When I walk around London, I wonder how many of the busy nail bars, shops and restaurants are merely fronts for organised crime. For I was once told by a former member of the Neapolitan mafia: “The ambition for [an Italian] mafia member, is to go abroad, and particularly, England.”

They consider the UK to be an attractive destination because it is relatively easy to set up a company, and its legal system does not recognise “mafia membership” as a crime….

In 1991, British police based in Rome warned of the presence of Italian mafias in the UK. Two years later, the French parliament reported on the fight against the mafia’s attempt to penetrate France. Similar warnings were being made in the Netherlands.

But it wasn’t until 2012 that the European Parliament really addressed the situation. The following year, Europol (the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) finally published an “Italian Organized Crime Threat Assessment”.

It attempted to fill the “important information gap” which exists around the activities of Italian mafias in Europe. As Europol itself noted, the “difficulty in collecting information” highlights the fact that mafias operate “under the radar” outside Italy.

Finally, in November 2018, Europol set up a specific operational network focusing on Italian mafia activities abroad, with the Italian Anti-Mafia Police playing a leading role.

Malta is fighting an influx similar to that in the Dominican Republic, a Raffaele Sollecito hangout till his uncle bought it.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle! You Came Down From The Stars

Posted by Our Main Posters

One of the main Italian carols, one that just about everyone knows.

Monday, December 17, 2018

Today All Political Factions May Lurch US Justice One Big Step Toward Successful Italian Model

Posted by Peter Quennell

Culinary school inside a modern Italian prison

Overview

Justice reform was a popular issue in the national elections last month. Vox’s German Lopez describes the first step the US Senate will vote on today.

Who Is Affected

The bill, known as the First Step Act, would take modest steps to reform the criminal justice system and ease very punitive prison sentences at the federal level. It would affect only the federal system “” which, with about 181,000 imprisoned people, holds a small but significant fraction of the US jail and prison population of 2.1 million.

What Is In First Step

(1) The bill would make retroactive the reforms enacted by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences at the federal level. This could affect nearly 2,600 federal inmates, according to the Marshall Project.

(2) The bill would take several steps to ease mandatory minimum sentences under federal law. It would expand the “safety valve” that judges can use to avoid handing down mandatory minimum sentences. It would ease a “three strikes” rule so people with three or more convictions, including for drug offenses, automatically get 25 years instead of life, among other changes. It would restrict the current practice of stacking gun charges against drug offenders to add possibly decades to prison sentences. All of these changes would lead to shorter prison sentences in the future.

(3) The bill would increase “good time credits” that inmates can earn. Inmates who avoid a disciplinary record can currently get credits of up to 47 days per year incarcerated. The bill increases the cap to 54, allowing well-behaved inmates to cut their prison sentence by an additional week for each year they’re incarcerated. The change applies retroactively, which could allow some prisoners “” as many as 4,000 “” to qualify for release the day that the bill goes into effect.

(4) The bill would allow inmates to get “earned time credits” by participating in more vocational and rehabilitative programs. Those credits would allow them to be released early to halfway houses or home confinement. Not only could this mitigate prison overcrowding, but the hope is that the education programs will reduce the likelihood that an inmate will commit another crime once released and, as a result, reduce both crime and incarceration in the long term. (There’s research showing that education programs do reduce recidivism.)

Comparison With Italy

On measures (1) and (2) Italy (which does not have the US’s gun problem or rate of murders) would remain far down the road with its short prison terms and small numbers locked up..

But measures (3) and (4) definitely represent convergence on rehabilitation being more useful (and cheaper) for society than grindingly extensive punitive stays.

Thursday, November 08, 2018

“A Couple of Millennials Trying to Grope Their Way Toward Adulthood…”

Posted by Hopeful

Mafia poodles Robinson & Kovite


The header is from a NY Times review of a book by the above pair, no irony intended (I presume).

Knox supports murderer Brendan Dassey and Avery, has a boyfriend who wears dark fingernail polish (some man!?), has a cat named Mr. Screams, and received a blue glass award from Arizona Public Defender Association in June 2018 “for sharing your inspiring story”.

You can’t make this stuff up (or can you), in Knox’s case the ultimate fantasist liar who has always wanted to mythologize her own life, she’s a born actress prostitute seeking to be Amelie but is Jekyll-Hyde and had to cannibalize Meredith’s clean life to morph into notoriety.

Now she links up with Christopher Robinson who can play paparazzi to her diabolical story while she allows him to wear the crazy hats, necklaces, fur and outlandish clothes that force her to become the opposite: Miss Demure, Miss Meredith, Miss Speaker at Innocence Conventions, Supporter of the Oppressed, Miss I-Know-the-Law, I have lived through controversy, I’m a Survivor, I am Wrongly Accused, I now dress modestly, this is my classy side,

I am allowing Chris to be the wild child of this use and be-used duo.  Chris wrote his first novel with good friend Kovite, an Army veteran, titled “War of the Encyclopaedists”. Now in May 2018 they’ve got a new book out called, “Deliver Us”. I think Chris may mean deliver us from evil as in Knox. And guess where the two friends met? In Italy.

Kovite writes for Salon:

Our collaboration began 10 years ago in rome on a pilgrimage to Keats’ grave as part of an undergraduate study abroad. We had known each other only a few weeks. While wandering through the Protestant Cemetery the names of the dead called out to us: Baltimore Gosshawk Wakefield III, Aeneas MacBean Esq. They were begging to be turned into characters is a pulp historical mystery novel. So we wrote one. It took us five years and it eventually ended up in a drawer but it taught us how to write…together. Over the last five years we applied those lessons to a more serious project, “War of the Encyclopaedists.” (Scribner, 2015)

“Several years ago as we struggled toward a finished draft of “War of the Encyclopaedists”, Chris fell into an existential pit. He was thinking about culinary school, his five-year relationship dissolved, he was living out of a suitcase at one artist colony after another, he wrote a collection of nihilistic sonnets, he was thinking about suicide. Without stability his options were limitless; he was paralyzed by choice….Gavin (Kovite) meanwhile was looking toward his future as a lawyer with dread. This wasn’t the life he’d imagined for himself. He had little time to play music or write fiction, which, though fun was a big additional burden, as anyone who has written while working fulltime well knows.”

“And yet here we are awaiting publication of our debut novel (this was in 2015)...Without Chris’ drive, organization and friendly harassment, Gavin would never have made the time to contribute. And without Gavin’s contribution, Christ would be staring into the void. It was writing a novel together ... that deepened our friendship, changed the course of our lives.”

from Salon, “Why write a collaborative novel? Well…why write alone?”

Christopher Robinson is a Boston University and Hunter College MFA graduate, a poet, a MacDowell Colony fellow, etc. His co-author Gavin Kovite was infantry platoon leader in Baghdad 2004-2005, then attended NYU Law, served as Army lawyer and is now a high school teacher….Together Robinson and Kovite authored “Encyclopaedists” and “Deliver Us”.

I just hope that Knox does not destroy their good relationship. It sounds like a Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson friendship of the minds. I think Knox will sabotage it and Chris was crazy to link up with her. Now he has his new novel out, “Deliver Us” about drones from Jeff Bezos dropping items on a futuristic Detroit and the question is “are they saviors to Detroit black low earners bringing jobs to the blighted city or imperialists out for their own gain?” as one book review said. I wonder if Kovite worried about this in Afghanistan?

But I think the hidden message of Chris Robinson’s “Deliver Us” is that he is questioning his Amanda Knox relationship (why not put a ring on it, Chris?) and already regrets slumming around. It’s a true cry of “deliver us from evil”. A bit late Chris. Do you even care if Knox killed Meredith or not?

Knox was to moderate the book launch of “Deliver Us” because of “her experience with controversy, competing narratives and commitment to racial justice in the Innocence Movement.” Barf. That was a book launch in May 2018 at Elliott Bay Book Co. in Seattle.

She will explode his life out of the water one day but more fool him for shacking up with a killer. It was Guermantes’ link to Chris Robinson Instagram that led me to look at some of his nonsense. I honestly believe he is mentally ill along with his live-in lover. Chris Robinson posts Instagram pix of multiple toilets out on some grassy area. He posts a piece of art of a woman on the toilet. He uses foul language constantly.

And michellesings1 (wife of this poodle) laughs at the trash they post. When their cat, Mr. Screams, sleeps on Amanda’s “bottom” she writes Hee hee, hilarious. When Knox gives a speech, michellesings1 chimes in, Love it, happy for you.

Monday, November 05, 2018

Most Popular Least Controversial Issue In US Elections? Surprise, Surprise: Justice Reform

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. Chronic Reform Problem Worldwide

First, consider Italy.

Compared to most countries, Italy is far down the road in terms of effective policing, courts and rehabilitation. Its crime rate is comparatively low.

But its relatively minor need to speed up the court system is hampered because the parties in parliament tend to lock up at the nitty-gritty level, and so nothing gets done. Very common around the world.

Now consider the US.

This political lockup tendency is made worse in the US because, almost alone among the world’s countries, the US tends to elect or politically appoint its police chiefs, prosecutors and judges. (Italy’s system is career-path wall-to-wall.)

This tends to result in a hard line. Meaning mass incarceration has been ballooning through the roof.  Both main parties in the US, with a majority of its politicians former lawyers, tend to take quite a hard line too.

2. The US’s Surprising Reform Edge

But almost alone among the world’s countries, allowing the citizens to fix aspects of this system problem one by one, the US also has an ace up its sleeve. 

At election time, reform measures can be put on the ballot, and the electorate gets to decide on each one directly, thus leapfrogging the political infighting.

On Tuesday, a record number of justice-related proposals will be on various ballots.  VOX has a very long article with numerous examples of what various voters will get to decide.

Anti mass incarceration measures are being put before over 100 million voters this year.

3. A Likely Positive Spread Effect

And finding such common ground should have a strong ripple effect across the political landscape as a whole.

When adversaries work together for the first time on a joint venture that serves both their needs, they discover new pathways for collaboration. Like neuroplasticity in the brain, when we learn to do something that yields satisfaction, we rewire how we think and behave.

This is already taking place in the area of criminal justice reform, especially with juvenile offenders.

After decades in which the “war on crime” was a wedge issue that roiled tensions about racial injustice and public safety, Republicans and Democrats have been cooperating on an integrative model of restorative justice that serves interests on both sides.

No one wants to see at-risk youth jailed for rash mistakes that crossed the line into criminal conduct. We may not agree on much, but few Americans want to watch children enter the notorious “pipeline to prison.”

And no one likes to spend tax dollars needlessly. Keeping a teenager out of incarceration is far cheaper than surrendering him to it. Prevention programs that connect teens with adult community mentors cost far less than prosecution and imprisonment. Because those youth make amends to their victims, personal responsibility is codified and enforced.

People on the left are pleased by the social progressivism; people on the right are happy about cutting government spending. Everyone gets something when we exercise our capacity for ingenuity and enterprise, which are, in the end, signature American traits.