Headsup: Disney's Hulu - mafia tool?! First warning already sent to the Knox series production team about the hoaxes and mafia connections. The Daily Beast's badly duped Grace Harrington calls it "the true story of Knox’s wrongful conviction of the murder of her roommate". Harrington should google "rocco sollecito" for why Italians hesitate to talk freely.

Category: Hoaxes Sollecito etc

Monday, November 11, 2024

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

Posted by Peter Quennell

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

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.

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)

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)

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