Thursday, Knox lawyers will argue to First ("Murders") Chamber of Supreme Court that Florence court's Calunnia II conviction of Knox was wrong. Uphill battle. Florence reasoning has been widely praised.

Thursday, July 01, 2021

Yet ANOTHER Nail In The Coffin Of The Faked Break-In

Posted by James Raper

Scuri is white object at left

Again, Things Just Don’t Add Up

I was looking at a Powerpoint by our former main poster Brmull debunking Hellmann’s take on the rock apparently thrown at Filomena’s window.

According to Hellmann there was a genuine break-in, but if not, then there was no reason to think that Knox and Sollecito were the stagers. That guff apart, Brmull made some good points and displayed a close up of the crush-mark on the scuri (inner shutter) which I found interesting.

Unfortunately I cannot use my snipping tool on a Powerpoint so I am not able to re-produce that picture. You will just have to take my word for what I say next.

First up, of course the rock could easily have been thrown or tossed from the corner of the residents’ car park, breaking the glass. Amusingly Hellmann refers to the defence expert’s report for this blindingly obvious clarification. The trajectory of a rock so cast is on a 90 degree angle with Filomena’s window, i.e straight at it, so no problem.

There are, however, some problems with this.

The crush mark is full on the upper edge, and inside this edge, of a recess on the scuri. Assuming that the crush mark was caused by the rock then this suggests that the impact was from a trajectory that was on a different angle from that of a rock thrown from the car park.

There are a couple of points to flow from this, both by way of confirmation but which also debunk another point raised in defence.

First, the very existence of the crush mark (and there was a fragment of glass embedded in the scuri close by) confirms that the scuri was in position behind the window. Filomena had said it was, even if she could not be sure that it had been clipped firmly into place.

Short of throwing a heavy rock at the window to find out, how would the intruder have known that it was not so latched into place? And if it was, throwing the rock would not have made any difference, just a lot of noise. The intruder could not have been unaware of the existence of the scuri.

Secondly, the only mark on the scuri was that crush mark. I am surprised that there is no other damage that I can see to the scuri i.e dents or chipped paint, which is what I would expect to see, from a rock weighing 4 kilos tossed full on at the window from just several feet away.

In fact the scuri looks remarkably pristine but for the crush mark. This, for me, establishes that the crush mark was not a glancing blow past that edge. Indeed the white paint is crushed down into the dent, hardly compatible with a glancing blow.

Hence a head on crush the result of a different trajectory from a rock thrown from the car park. Both these observations support the view that it was an inside job.

Hence, a staging, it sure seems.

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Van Gogh “Immersion” Show, Selling Out In Numerous Cities Worldwide, Created By…

Posted by Peter Quennell

Two Italians. The show, designed by Italian digital artist Massimiliano Siccardi with music composed by Italian Luca Longobardi, and art (of course) by the late Vincent Van Gogh, consists of some 400 images projected onto 500,000 square feet for about one hour.

It’s on now in various countries in Europe. In north America, shows have concluded in Toronto, St Petersburg and Chicago, and are opening soon in various other cities including New York.

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Millions Of Conspiracy Theorists Take A Big Hit; Disillusion Reigns

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click “YouTube” when running to get to Comments

The QAnon conspiracy theory

This is one of a massive ongoing crime by political leaders. Especially though not only leaders of the US.

While Amanda Knox dishonestly smears only Italian officialdom, the purpose is no different: money, prestige, plenty of attention, to the considerable risk of those so demonized. 

Millions of gullible QAnon adherents were holding their breaths late Tuesday and early Wednesday believing that then-President Trump was about to initiate martial law, mass arrests, and mass executions.

That this didn’t actually pan out has left the cult pretty rudderless.

It could well be that millions will look twice before they leap next time - and react more strongly soon against Knox’s own malicious inventions.

Gee, thanks Q and your minions…

Click “YouTube” when running to get to Comments

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Time To Celebrate? Meredith’s Birthday (28th) And Maybe A Better New Year

Posted by Our Main Posters

Most preferred video of the season of one regular reader above!

“This is Alexandra Dovgan, a 12-year-old Russian girl playing. Her incredible talent of bringing out the beauty in this Bach’s piece is truly miraculous.”

Brilliant women musicians - of which the world now seems awash, shades of Italy when Scarlatti and Vivaldi were alive - have been a popular choice here at this time of year.

We are told Meredith talked about music a lot. She liked classical and ballet music; her first choices in final years were 80’s disco and the Rodgers-and-Hammerstein kind of musical show.

Many YouTube commenters consider this above to be the finest ever Rhapsody in Blue. Polish pianist Maja Babyszka was FIFTEEN when she recorded this. Watch her hands from 16’ 45” on. Nuts, right?!

The mandolin concerto Czardas, above, is by an Italian composer (of course!).

Wednesday, December 02, 2020

Italy, Lament: Though US Violent Crime Rate Has Dropped 75% In 30 Years, Now This

Posted by Peter Quennell

Breaking news: Guede leaving prison, doing community service during rest of term, for “social re-integration”. Decided by Rome supervisory court at request of Guede lawyer Ballarini. His “tell-all” book said to be step closer, Knox acting frantic.

1. Re the YouTube: There’s More…

After 17 years of zero executions by the Federal Government, suddenly we get this.

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2. So, A Question…

For the Knox sycophants: Where would YOU want to be tried?

Monday, October 12, 2020

Another Sollecito Fail: Court Says NO Malpractice By 20 Prosecutors & Judges

Posted by Peter Quennell

Genoa Courthouse

1. Genoa Court Smacks RS Down

Amanda Knox’s delusions of grandeur sail on, for now, but RS’s have taken a third big knock.

(1) Back in June 2017 we posted this report: “Sollecito Loses [Rome] Supreme Court Appeal Against Florence Court Ruling Refusing $0.55M Damages Claim”.

(2) And last year he and his fatuous co-writer Andrew Gumbel lost big to Dr Mignini in a Florence court for defamations in Sollecito’s book. They had to pay substantial damages and sign a document admitting they had lied in the book. 

(3) And now with Bongiorno’s and Maori’s seemingly incompetent legal help (they have yet to win in a single court that was not bent) Sollecito sued for malpractice some 20 of the prosecutors and judges in the case.

Unsurprisingly, the names of the judges in the failed 2011 first appeal and the successful 2015 Supreme Court appeal (all of whom were bent) did not appear on the list.

For these two main reasons Sollecito has lost once again:

(a) Because he (and Knox) had obstructed justice and told numerous lies to prosecutors and police in the days after Meredith’s death.

(b) Because all twenty judges and prosecutors named had diligently followed the rules and there had been no malpractice at all.

The lead judge was Pietro Spera. This was only the second case to occur under the recently enacted civil liability law.

Sollecito is reported in the Italian media as owing his lawyers nearly $1 million in fees (E660,000) though he may be able to argue that they advised him badly and took the several cases on spec.

Sollecito is said to owe his father a substantial sum, and his inherited properties are reported as being mortgaged to the hilt.

Tellingly, Knox of course has initiated only one suit of her own: the “appeal” to the European Court of Human Rights, for half a million Euros or so. 

Knox was awarded E15,000 or so, but wrongly, because her appeal was laden with lies and the hard-pressed ECHR judges in Strasbourg bought some of them.

Knox has never sued Italy for damages for wrong imprisonment. Also unsurprisingly, as that would draw attention to a fact she incessantly hides: that she is a rightly convicted felon for life.

2. First Details Of RS’s Claims

This reporting by Il Giornale is among the first. There will be a written judges’ report detailing the Sollecito team charges against the 20 and why they failed.

While the Giornale reporter Rosa Scognamiglio has done quite a good job, she is wrong to imply that Guede acted alone; that was not the final ruling of the Supreme Court.

Having been jailed while innocent, Sollecito still owes over €600,000 to his lawyers

Raffaele Sollecito, convicted and then acquitted for the murder of Meredith Kercher, still owes 660,000 euros to his defense team Bongiorno and Maori.

Four years of detention, trials and appeals were not enough to mark the end of the sentences for Raffaele Sollecito, finally acquitted by the Court of Cassation in 2015 for the murder of the English student Meredith Kercher, murdered in an apartment in Perugia on November 1st 2007 by the Ivorian Rudy Guede.

Today, 13 years after the start of the judicial ordeal that first convicted him and then cleared him of the charge of complicity in murder, the computer engineer originally from Giovinazzo (Bari) still carries the waste of the troubled procedural process. “Slag” translates into debts and outstanding payments towards his lawyers Giulia Bongiorno and Luca Maori for an amount of 636,212.23 euros.

The cause of the debt is the costs of a long legal battle in which Sollecito not only had to prove his extraneousness to the events in Perugia but also to fight for compensation for “unjust detention”.

In 2017, the Court of Appeal of Florence rejected the 37-year-old’s request for a monetary refund for the sensational judicial error that had overwhelmed him ten years earlier.

“There is an unjust detention given the acquittal of the plaintive - the judges of the third criminal section explained - but he himself contributed to causing it with his own willful or grossly negligent conduct”.

His poor conduct, wrote the magistrates, “consisted in making to the judicial police, investigators, and judges, particularly in the initial stages of the investigations, contradictory or even frankly false statements, which were also found to be such in the assessment inncluded in the confirming verdict of Cassation”.

After which failure, Sollecito tried another path, in suing the judges who convicted him. He could do this in the context of the “Vassalli law” on the civil liability of magistrates for “gross negligence and/or willful misconduct”.

His lawyers, Giulia Bongiorno and Luca Maori, had asked the Genoa court for 3.6 million euros for material and non-material damages.

The process played out in a Genoa court since, as Marco Preve explains well in an article in La Repubblica, the Ligurian capital has jurisdiction over judicial matters involving Florentine magistrates, and the Florence Court of Appeal was the one that convicted Sollecito and his ex-girlfriend Amanda Knox before the final acquittal.

Sollecito’s defense team had highlighted how the client had been found guilty and locked up in prison for “multiple misrepresentations of facts and evidence”.

Nonetheless, the court of Genoa sent the request back to the sender, arguing that ‘’ such reconstructions - although they may not be agreed with and be criticized - nevertheless demonstrate that the Florence Appeal sentenced them following a fair analysis and argued process..

The claims to the Genoa court had included this: that the psychological strains of the stormy judicial affair involving the 37-year-old are still being felt. Sollecito’s claims are attached to the documents of the Genoa court judgment.

“He will have to take drugs for the rest of his life for an anxious-depressive syndrome, difficulty concentrating, sleep disturbances, hypervigidity [this may mean hypervigilance], ease of crying, despair, low self-esteem, and extensive and extreme, behavioral isolation.”

Not to mention the costs of legal fees, E400 thousand already paid by mortgaging family properties, and the balance due to the legal team: E330,189.21 to the lawyer Bongiorno and E336,022.92 to the lawyer Maori.

In short, in addition to the damage also an insult. A very barbed joke.

As with Sollecito’s failed damages claim (see point (1) above) his team could appeal the Genoa court outcome to the Supreme Court

Good luck with that.

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Hit Early And Hard, Italy’s Systems Now Seen As The Best In Europe

Posted by Peter Quennell

 

More Praise In The Media

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Friday, September 11, 2020

RIP Meredith’s Beloved Mum Who We Believe Knew Even US Mood Is Turning Pro AK & RS Guilt

Posted by Our Main Posters

Mrs Arline Kercher passed away unpublicised back in June, as just established by main poster James Raper.

Her grave is right beside Meredith’s. Father John was killed in a still-unsolved hit-and-run at night in Croydon four months before.

Arline began the Kercher-family connection with Italy when she did excavation work at Pompeii in her youth. That factoid is from John Kercher’s beautifully written book.

The video above reports the end of the failed Knox-Sollecito repeat first appeal in 2014, often wrongly referred to as a second trial.

That was the last concrete good news that Arline would have received.

She spoke out low-key but compellingly in protest after the corrupted 2011 and 2015 appeal verdicts were announced. 

She knew to the end that Italian opinion was hard-line pro-guilt and that anger even in the UK and US is still gathering steam.

The next of a series of televised panels examining how the judicial process was corrupted and the outcome illegal will take place at Perugia University on October 8th.

RIP Meredith, John, and now Arline.

Saturday, August 08, 2020

Seems Relevant Here: A Viral YouTube About One Family’s Loss

Posted by Peter Quennell

You can read the viewer comments here.

Many non-Japanese-speaking viewers (there’s a Japanese upload with many more views) said it dawned on them what was going on.

Quite a few said they began to cry. If you need them, here from the comments is one translation of the words.

00:00 (Announcement) “Everyone, may I have your attention please. Here we have our bride’s father Mr. Yasuhiro with a message to share. Mr. Yasuhiro, please, the moment is yours.”
00:30 Groom “Your father can play the piano?”
00:33 Bride: Shakes her head.
00:57 Bride “Stop it.”
01:09 Bride “Stop it plz…”
01:13 Bride “The song is… Why do you play this…” (Past scene, Bride’s mother played CANON when Bride was a child.)
01:35 Bride “Unskilled…”
01:45 Bride “Play gently at the part…”
01:55 (Funeral scene, holding the remains of Bride’s mother in car.)
02:05 (After Bride’s mother was dead, Bride fell out with her father.)
02:13 Bride “Though you are awkward…”
02:41 Bride (shocked by the sudden pause) “Eh?”
02:48 Bride “You can do it…”
02:54 Bride “You can do it!”
02:59 Bride “You can do it, Dad…!!”
03:12 (Message) Music is able to surpass Words.

Friday, July 10, 2020

This Reporter Exposed Epstein & Enablers, Getting The FBI Back Into Action

Posted by Peter Quennell

1. Constraints Of The US System

Back in 2007 the FBI found their hands tied on this case - and it was Julie Brown, a Miami reporter, who got them back in the game again.

In general we’ve been warmish toward the FBI because of its major co-operation with the Italian counterparts.

Italian agents work at FBI HQ and Quantico and American agents are embedded in Italian law enforcement. We get occasional tips from both parties.

But the FBI has it less easy than the Carabinieri and Italian law enforcement generally.

The “wonderful” American political/legal system that is so much revered is really tailor-made for inefficiency, corruption, and disruption.

The FBI has to contend with the peculiarly American problem of the thousands upon thousands of ideological political appointees completely dominating the top layers of government (and costing US taxpayers many billions).

They are by far the biggest cause of legal disruptions, not least in Meredith’s case.

As we are seeing in the American news right now, urban areas, districts, counties, states, and the federal government have very ill defined legal boundaries. Tailor made for gaming.

Those thousands of political appointees make sure that hundreds and even thousands of legal cases fall through the cracks every year.

Contrast all this with Italy’s implacable fight against top-level corruption.

2. The FBI Found Its Hands Tied

The FBI was first invited in to the Epstein case by Florida prosecutors in 2006. They initiated “Operation Leap Year” leading to a 53-page indictment. What happened next, from Wikipedia: 

[Political appointee] Alexander Acosta, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, agreed to a plea deal, which Alan Dershowitz helped to negotiate, to grant immunity from all federal criminal charges to Epstein, along with four named co-conspirators and any unnamed “potential co-conspirators”.

According to the Miami Herald, the non-prosecution agreement “essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes”. At the time, this halted the investigation and sealed the indictment. The Miami Herald said: “Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims.”

Acosta later said he offered a lenient plea deal because he was told that Epstein “belonged to intelligence”, was “above his pay grade” and to “leave it alone”. Epstein agreed to plead guilty in Florida state court to two felony prostitution charges, register as a sex offender, and pay restitution to three dozen victims identified by the FBI. The plea deal was later described as a “sweetheart deal”.

For the next decade that was pretty well “it” for the FBI and there seemed no way forward for them.

But now, thanks to the implacable Julie Harris, they are roaring back with a vengeance.