Headsup: In the US, the bizarre AP report, carried by just some of the media, and a delusional, highly defamatory rant in The Atlantic, seem the only major questionings of the Florence and Rome guilty verdicts so far. There are other developments we wish to report next though we'll keep an eye on this.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
Sollecito Family Trial: On The Component About Their Alleged Attempt At Political Interference
Posted by Jools
Almost nothing is showing up in the English language media on the court case Raffaele Solecito’s family are facing for allegedly trying to throw the murder investigation.
In the Italian media (as so often in this case) the reporting on this is franker, fuller, and on the whole way more honest. I previously posted articles that focussed mainly on the Telenorba TV video component of the trial.
This now is a translation of a June 2008 writeup of official wiretaps on a police association website of the political-influence component of the trial. The police association would be interested because it was some of their members allegedly being impugned.
Perugia Flying Squad: other interceptions published.
The role of Carabinieri lieutenant, Vanessa Sollecito, becomes stronger from the latest interceptions published by the daily newspaper LIBERO”¦
THE TELEPHONE CALLS OF THE SOLLECITOS’ TO POLITICIANS FOR RAF
The relatives are accused of manipulating the investigation. The sister a lieutenant: “I break a finger and I move to the civilian personnel this is how I’ll get him out”
Murder in Perugia. This is the sister of Raffale Sollecito, the student from Giovinazzo charged with the murder of the young English girl Meredith Kercher, who in a telephone call to her father Francesco tells him that she is prepared to break a finger just to transition into a civilian role in the carabinieri and succeed like this to pursue an “illicit” scheme to get her little brother out of prison and help him to get out of this sh**”¦ country.
Vanessa Sollecito is 31 years old and she is a lieutenant of the Carabinieri armed forces in the Lazio Region. She too, like her father and the rest of the relatives (uncle/aunt, a brother in law, cousins, dad’s second wife), try to gain favors from well known “excellent” people in order to exonerate Raffy and to remove the “real culprits”. These (“real culprits”) would be the police officers that have placed him under investigation and the magistrates who don’t want to know about freeing him.
The Sollecito “clan” (this is how who’s investigating the murder of Via Della Pergola defines Raffaele’s family) is written in the logbook register on the occasion of a second line of police investigation on the murder of November 2 last. The alleged offences are: defamation, invasion of privacy, and publication of arbitrary acts of a criminal case.
The time is 18:20 hours March 3 last [2008] when Vanessa phones her father (a well-known cardiologist [sic] in Puglia) and announces: “I’ve met a man, he is from the penitentiary police who works at the Ministry of Justice. He says that a union leader has explained to him that there is one way for transitioning into the carabinieri civilian staff role, although it is not very legal. And that is for me to break a finger, if things were to go down badly for Raffy, in order to lose the (fit to serve) eligibility” and move to the authority in control of civil service roles.
Francesco Sollecito gets very angry. Not about his daughter breaking a finger, but because he knows that his phone is being intercepted, and screaming he says: “You mustn’t speak on this phone, it is intercepted.” And Vanessa says: “Yours might be intercepted, but not mine!”
Two weeks later, it’s the morning of March 17 - at 10:59, Vanessa tries to phone the “˜Idv’ party - Senator Domenico Formisano - in order to go to meet him. And conveys to her father “He is our friend. He asked me a favor for a young man who must stay in Rome. He’ll be in his office Wednesday at 12:30, I hope to please him so afterwards I make use of the favor owed and will help Raffaele. He is the number two to Di Pietro.”
It’s [a date in] May at 10:23 and aunt Sara Achille (wife of Francesco Sollecito’s brother, Giuseppe) says: “Listen Francesco, Senator Domenico Nania told me to call him to arrange for a meeting in Rome. You know, it’s always better to have a nice… And Sara wanted to involve in the affair even the honorable Renato Schifani.”
Three days before, at four in the afternoon, Vanessa also spoke to her father in a “sarcastic” tone: “That lot are still going to take the foot prints”¦ Colonel De Fulvio, who is the one from RiS, says that they are still at this point”¦ and he’s offered himself to meet up with lawyer Bongiorno in terms of friendship, to see the scientific police material”¦”
[Her father Francesco] Sollecito interrupts her: “About these things you must not speak on this telephone, THIS ONE IS BEING MONITORED! Call me later.”
Uncle Giuseppe Sollecito, on July 30, utters offensive phrases toward the magistrates in Perugia because they haven’t gone in-depth into investigating the trail of the junkie found covered in blood near the victim’s house the day of the murder… “and this is just on purpose to keep Raffaele in prison”. His brother Francesco responds: “I’ll skin them alive those… and they’ll hear from me as well.”
Raffaele’s stepmother Mara Papagni, puts her complete trust in lawyer Giulia Bongiorno: That one “Ms Thirtyballs” will fix everyone”¦ She knows how to behave on certain occasions.
The strategy of Sollecito’s relatives appears to be clear in other wiretappings: they want to put pressure on the judges of the Supreme Court of Cassation so that they’ll agree to accept the appeal presented by the defenders of the young man, they prefer that some investigators whom they regard as inconvenient be removed from the investigation.
In their targets above all are Commissioner Monica Napoleoni, head of the [Perugia] Homicide Section, and Giacinto Profazio, head of the Flying Squad. In their phone calls, the Sollecitos call them bastards, pigs, sons of whores. And they all agree: “We must find someone to intervene at any rate. As written in the logbooks: Its necessary to stop police from doing other vileness.”
The “clan” accuses them of falsifying evidence to frame Raffy. And for this reason they contact journalists and television networks to supply documents and images for broadcasting (such as those depicting the tortured body of poor Mez after the murder and aired by a local television in Puglia).
They wanted to demonstrate that the scientific police played dirty to frame Raffaele. Now the Sollecitos’ and their respective wives are under investigation.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Harsh Language For Possible Defense Witness Mario Alessi From The Supreme Court Of Cassation
Posted by Peter Quennell
Mario Alessi is the jailhouse snitch who claims that Rudy Guede told him that Guede and two others murdered Meredith.
That if believed would leave Knox and Sollecito in the clear. But if the Knox and Sollecito defenses put him on the witness stand, it might destroy their appeal like a hand grenade.
Why? Well, the prosecution interviewed both Alessi and Guede in prison and they further investigated Alessi’s claims - and have never made those results public. Alessi’s own lawyer does not believe him and she has publicly urged him not to get on the stand to repeat his claims.
She presumably fears he might get slapped with perjury charges and end up spending even more years behind bars - he is already serving a life sentence at Parma Prison which normally means 30-plus years.
The Supreme Court has just issued a ruling on the appeal of Alessi’s wife wife Antonella Conserva. It says that as she was not present at Mario Alessi’s horrific killing of Baby Tommy when the baby would not stop crying, her 30 year sentence is not properly supported in law.
Her case is referred back to the Appeals Court in Bologne where the first-level appeal must be repeated. Meanwhile Alessi looks even more disreputable.
The other possible witness with an alternative theory is Luciano Aviello. But he has a well-established record of lying.
More and more it is looking now like Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito may be forced to take the witness stand in last-ditch efforts against their appeals totally failing and their getting awarded even tougher sentences.
Little else is going their way these day - the DNA review and and Mr Curatolo’s testimony are expected to still remain creditable, and even if they don’t they are only two drops in a large evidence bucket.
If either do take the stand (and if they don’t, much will be made of that, even though Italian law says it shouldn’t) Kermit’s cross-examination questions are waiting.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
The Precise And Accurate Italian Wikipedia Article On Meredith’s Case, Now Translated Into English
Posted by Tom M and Skeptical Bystander
A recent post on TJMK by Gwaendar refers to Wikipedia and the current effort by the Fictitious Friends of Amanda to make her the focus of an article that has so far been devoted to the Murder of Meredith Kercher.
The Eclectic Chapbook blog often comments on the case. It has called this effort “tragically misguided and possibly somewhat demented,” describing it as an instance of “the Enchanted Glen Phenomenon, which is a psychological space wherein normal laws do not apply and all rules are magically suspended. “
We have now examined and translated the Italian Wikipedia article which was written in a space where the normal laws certainly are applied and no rules have been suspended.
The main reporting and the voluminous records of the trial and the appeal are of course all in Italian, and Italians on the whole have a far better grasp of events and the legal context than do most observers in the US and the UK. Because there is so much source material, and so little misleading reporting, it would seem that If any Wikipedia in any language in the world is going to describe the case correctly, it will be the Italian one.
This translation below of most of the Italian Wikipedia article is not word-for-word, but it is intended to convey the substance of the Italian article as it would have been if originally written in English.
The index, the sections on books and movie, and the citations were omitted.
The murder of Meredith Kercher, an English student in Italy enrolled in the Erasmus program at the University of Perugia, occurred during the night of November 1, 2007. Meredith was found lifeless, with her throat cut, in her bedroom in the house she shared with other students in Perugia. The cause of death was hemorrhage due to bleeding from a wound to the neck caused by a sharp object used as a weapon.
Two men and a woman were convicted as a result, of murder, sexual violence and theft.
Biography
Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher was born December 28, 1985 in Southwark, London, lived in Coulsdon, and was a student at the University of Leeds, where she was pursuing a degree in European Studies. She enrolled in the Erasmus program, and had arrived in Italy in September 2007 to complete her degree in European Studies.
Details and circumstances of the murder
Kercher was murdered at night between 1 and 2 November 2007, in the apartment she shared with three other young women, two Italian and an American, who were away that night. Based on the first examination of the autopsy, the pathologist who handled the case ruled that the death occurred between 22:00 and midnight on that day.
The following morning an elderly woman living near Via della Pergola where Meredith’s body was found, alarmed by the discovery of two abandoned mobile phones, called the police. From information obtained from one of two mobile phones the Postal Police of Perugia sent agents to the house of Meredith Kercher. On their arrival the police found Amanda Knox (Seattle, USA, July 9, 1987), Meredith Kercher’s flatmate, and her Italian friend, Raffaele Sollecito (Giovinazzo, March 26, 1984), with whom she had recently started a relationship, outside the house.
The two young people said they were awaiting the arrival of the police; when asked why, they said they had found a window broken, the door open, and suspected a theft. Later, these claims were questioned by investigators, given that the Police Post arrived at the house on Via della Pergola at 12:35 and telephone calls to the Police were not made not until 12:51 and 12:54. Entering, the Police found the bedroom of Meredith Kercher locked and decided to break down the door. Upon entering, they found a number of bloodstains, the room in disarray, and a foot sticking out from under the duvet which had covered the bed.
The Convicted:
The three convicted at the first stage are:
- Raffaele Sollecito, who was born in Giovinazzo (BA), a university student of 23 years at the time of the murder;
- Amanda Knox, a student originally from Seattle, U.S., 20, who had a relationship with Sollecito at the time of the crime;
- Rudy Hermann Guede, born December 26, 1986 in the Ivory Coast, was arrested in Germany on November 20 and extradited to Italy on December 6, 2007. At his lawyers’ request, Guede received from the court at a preliminary hearing an order granting expedited trial.
Knox and Guede were detained in Capanne prison, a 20-minute drive from Perugia. Sollecito, after also being held in Capanne, was transferred in early 2008 to the Vocabolo Sabbione prison in Terni.
The case also, initially, erroneously involved Patrick Lumumba, owner of the restaurant where Amanda Knox worked; her statement placed him at the crime scene on the night of the crime. The charges were later proved unfounded and demonstrated the unreliability of Knox as a witness. Implicating the Congolese man was also an incorrect translation of a text message sent to him in English by Knox (‘see you later’, which rather than a generic “Ci vidiamo,” was translated literally as “we will see each other later”[“ci vidiamo dopo”].
Thus, police thought that the two had an appointment for the evening of the crime). Patrick Lumumba was ultimately released and all charges against him were dropped. Following the unjust detention lasting 14 days, Lumumba was awarded € 8000 as compensation, but this was deemed inadequate by his lawyer, who threatened to sue.
The Sentences
Knox, Sollecito and Guede were sentenced respectively to 26, 25 and 16 years in prison. Rudi Hermann Guede opted for an abbreviated trial and his conviction for complicity in murder and sexual violence was made final by the Court of Cassation, First Criminal Division, on December 16, 2010. For the other two participants, the case is on appeal. The decisions reconstruct in detail the manner and circumstances of the murder, a motive defined “violent, sexual, erotic.”
The conviction in the first trial of Sollecito and Knox, issued by the Court of Assizes of Perugia, is based on numerous expert opinions, objective evidence and testimony.
According to the reconstruction regarding Knox and Sollecito, on the evening of November 1, 2007, they met in piazza Grimana, where they had occasionally met Guede, an acquaintance of Knox, who decided to join them for the evening. They decided to go to Knox’s house, to which her roommate Meredith Kercher, after an evening with her English friends, had just returned. Kercher’s bedroom door was presumably ajar, and upon entering the house the three defendants immediately noticed her presence.
Going directly to another part of the house, Knox and Sollecito made love. Guede, shortly after, went to the bathroom, where he left organic residues in the water of the toilet, as found in the investigation. According to the reconstruction, Guede left the bathroom, probably excited by the sounds of Sollecito and Knox making love, noted again the door ajar at Kercher’s room, and decided to approach. Then he entered Kercher’s room; but after her refusal, he became violent, attempting to rape her.
Kercher’s cries led Knox and Sollecito to go to her room, where they joined Guede’s criminal action, finding it an “exciting situation.” While the Guede violated Kercher, Knox and Sollecito tried to immobilize her: to do this Sollecito and Knox wielded knives to threaten the victim. The analysis shows that the knife wounds by Sollecito were probably quite small, while Knox wielded a kitchen knife, later found, and on which were found genetic traces of her mixed with those of Kercher.
The situation then deteriorated, partly because of the screams and resistance of Kercher: Knox then, with the kitchen knife, struck the victim in the neck, causing fatal injuries. The three defendants, shortly after the murder, fled with Kercher’s phones, fearing that if someone called her and got no response, they would be suspicious and the crime would be discovered: the cell phone was ultimately found in an embankment a few hundred meters from Kercher’s house.
Then they headed in different directions: Guede to a nightclub, Knox and Sollecito to the latter’s flat. The next morning Knox and Sollecito tried to clean up the crime scene and clean up their tracks; then they broke a window in the house to stage a mock burglary, hoping to throw the investigation off course.
Guede’s Supposed Confession
In March 2010 rumors spread of an alleged confession by Rudy Guede. The facts are as follows: it seems that Guede had revealed his complicity, with a friend, in killing Kercher, to Mario Alessi, an inmate housed in the same prison, a character already known to police and media for the murder of little Tommaso Onofri, Guede had invited Kercher to go to a party, she refused, and subsequently the friend of Guede tried to rape her. According to Alessi, Guede tried to come to Kercher’s aid, and Guede’s friend rebuked him, saying that he should just strike the final blow to end the girl’s misery, which is what Guede did.
Then Guede and his friend met again by chance in a nightclub, and Guede’s friend gave him money to flee to Germany, where he was at the time of the extradition and return to Italy for arrest. This reconstruction, which would completely exonerate Knox and Sollecito, was found by investigators to be totally unfounded.
Monday, April 04, 2011
Today An Obsessional Group Rant About “No Evidence” By A Stacked Panel At Seattle University?!
Posted by Peter Quennell
Seattle University is a small Jesuit college just this side of Seattle’s downtown.
Today at 4:00 pm in the Pigott Auditorium, in what seems to us a seriously dopey and un-academic exercise, some of the most obsessed of the conspiracy theorists will assemble to peddle their illusions.
Two of the panelists, Paul Ciolino and Steve Moore, have been exhaustively debunked on TJMK in the past, and sooner or later we will probably turn our attention to debunking the other two: Mark Waterbury, and Candace Dempsey.
Our posts on the hotheaded faux detective Paul Ciolino are here, here, and here, and our posts on the hotheaded faux FBI murder investigator Steve Moore are here, here, here, and here.
The other two panelists, Mark Waterbury and Candace Dempsey, have authored slow-selling books which studiously ignore 95 percent of the evidence and mis-state the other 5 percent. Tom Wright of the Friends of Amanda Knox group will be presiding.
Would you like to attend, well-equipped with some questions? Ask these questions and these questions and these questions. Around 400 in all. Any reports would be appreciated.
Below: Seattle University President Father Steve Sundborg. Does he know what his film department is getting up to?
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Evolution Of The Wikipedia Article On The Murder Of Meredith Kercher
Posted by Gwaendar
It’s been mentioned by several Seattle media outlets - but none nationally - that the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (above) was considering somehow intervening to tilt the article on Meredith after “Bruce Fisher” started an online petition.
This post looks at how articles evolve under various checks and balances and the prospects for Jimmy Wales if he can indeed have any effect on the editing process - set up so that even he essentially can’t.
1) The principles of Wikipedia
Wikipedia, the online Encyclopedia that anyone can edit, is and has always been a fascinating case study on the strengths and weaknesses of Crowd Sourcing.
Its arcane and often byzantine rules that have evolved over a decade are often difficult to follow, and have produced an environment with a steep learning curve, one that renders submission of new articles very difficult for novices - a situation often commented upon in the media.
For all their complexity, Wikipedia’s core rules provide a framework sustaining over 3 million articles today just for its English edition. It has its flaws, but in the grand scheme of things it works out quite well for the majority of articles.
Wikipedia’s English language website is right now the eighth most visited in the world and there are various versions in other languages.
2) How Wikipedia articles are built
Any article must stand on two core concepts, neutrality and verifiability.
- Neutrality implies that the topic is described in as objective manner as possible, covering the relevant aspects while giving each the due weight they deserve.
- Verifiability is the embodiment of an implicit compact between Wikipedia and its readers, the assurance that we aren’t just making things up. This is illustrated by the statement “Wikipedia is about Verifiability, not Truth”. To that effect, any claims in an article must be verifiable through external reliable sources - If nobody made a claim before it appeared on Wikipedia, it will eventually be removed as “Original Research”.
For a source to be considered reliable, it must be either peer-reviewed or reported by a media outlet with a solid track record for fact checking and accuracy. In the final section of this piece, we will look at the shortcomings of that policy.
The three core content policies, “Neutral Point of View”, “Verifiability through Reliable Sources” and “No Original Research” are summed up in another guideline, the often misunderstood and maligned concept of Notability.
In Wikipedia-speak, Notability isn’t an indication of fame or importance, but refers to the notion that an article’s subject has been noted by others - that is, commented upon by multiple third party reliable sources in a non-trivial manner so that it is possible to verify that a Neutral Point of View is being maintained and no Original Research finds its way into the article.
Last but not least, articles involving living people are subject to particular considerations, called “BLP” (Biographies of Living Persons), here to ensure Wikipedia is particularly careful to avoid libel. The smearing of the prosecutor, or the portrayal of Guede as a lone wolf when the judicial truth established by the Italian courts makes him one among three participants are both violations of the BLP policy.
3) Consensus: How conflicts are ironed out
As appears evident, those policies are put to the test everytime an article addresses a contentious issue.
Quite often, the available reliable sources present multiple sides of a same story. The requirement of Neutrality is often confused with the notion of balance (the simple representation of all sides of an issue). The challenge arises when it becomes necessary to determine what weight to give to a specific point of view.
For example, the population’s sentiment regarding nuclear power generators today can be presented in two different manners by a news organization interviewing people in the street: presenting three persons extremely worried about nuclear power, and three persons expressing confidence in the technology.
It is a balanced presentation, but if 90% of the population is actually worried, the presentation doesn’t give the appropriate weighting to the issue, whereas interviewing 5 worried people and one unworried would have been closer to the reality.
In order to determine what an article should contain and to what extent, volunteers will often discuss matters and reach a consensus on an article’s talk (or discussion) page.
The English Wikipedia is home to a multitude of regular and occasional contributors hailing from every single country and culture of the globe. For this extraordinary melting pot to work out, participants in any discussions are expected to, first, assume that other participants are acting in good faith, second, treat each other with respect, and third, to accept that a compromise will have to be found that may not match their personal convictions.
The blogosphere and comment forms of newspaper reporting on the Murder of Meredith Kercher are packed full with contributors who believe that bullying and intimidation, outlasting and outshouting the opposition will win over other people.
Needless to say, this attitude is frowned upon in Wikipedia, and it is the reason why several contributors sympathetic to the Knox cause have been blocked from editing over the past two years.
In determining consensus, Wikipedia operates in a manner combining civil law and adversarial prosecution: arguments are heard based on established policies and guidelines, and prior decisions on similar situations are not taken into consideration.
The final call is usually made by an uninvolved editor who will review all arguments and try to determine what the strongest arguments representing the existing policies. This is also transient, as it is accepted that consensus can change and prior decisions can be revisited later on.
4) A little history of the Murder of Meredith Kercher article
Originally created as an article on Amanda Knox in late 2007, it was swiftly renamed to its present title and started to grow. And as the controversy around the case grew, more and more editors turned up trying to ensure that it presented “the Truth” as they understood it.
The FOA core arguments are familiar to readers of TJMK, of course: Amanda Knox was railroaded by the kangaroo courts of a third world country, a victim of rampant anti-americanism, by a corrupt and insane prosecutor and a brutal police force who convicted her out of thin air.
During early 2010 in particular, the regular Wikipedians trying to maintain a neutral coverage were subjected to heaps of abuse from some particularly aggressive Knox supporters.
After numerous reports on the administrative noticeboards, uninvolved admins stepped in, tried to get these users to conform to the acceptable norms of discourse, and eventually blocked them after they demonstrated their inability to do so.
At that stage, the FOA crowd started organizing their activity: a certain PhanuelB showed up and started arguing, supported by a string of new users who had never edited on anything else before.
This lasted for another three months, until PhanuelB got himself banned for the same atrocious behaviour, along with several of his supporters, while the others vanished without a trace at the same point. They all came back once, when a discussion was started around some content PhanuelB had intended to turn into an article before he got banned.
Through all this, the article has undergone several stages. In Spring 2010, it was a long laundry list of prosecution arguments countered by defense arguments - balanced certainly, but essentially useless. In early Summer, the article underwent a rewrite that almost halved its size and tried to prune much of those arguments.
At regular intervals, the article had to be protected due to excessive edit-wars, and is currently still “semi- protected”, that is, locked off to new accounts and anonymous contributors.
From the point of view of a Wikipedian without direct stakes in the case (I am an editor) the article was certainly perfectible, but did a reasonable job at presenting the main facts of the case, the judicial situation at present, and the nature of the controversies surrounding the case.
5) The FOA appeal to Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales has abandoned most of his leadership functions over the course of the years, but still carries the prestige attached to his name.
The Open Letter published by “Bruce Fisher” was swallowed line, hook and sinker, and Wales entered the Murder of Meredith Kercher article rather like an elephant in a china shop, essentially accusing established editors who had laboured for years to try and maintain the article of having conspired to suppress and censor other points of view.
His point is aided, obviously, by the scores of media coverage generated by the Knox PR campaign, in publications and reports matching the letter of a “Reliable Sources”. See, there is a loophole in the policy in the sense that anything appearing on, say, CNN, is considered Reliable because CNN is a network with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.
As CNN’s own disclaimers state, though, opinions offered by people appearing on their talk shows are explicitly not endorsed by CNN. But the loophole in policy doesn’t address this nuance, and this is mostly where Wales is trying to give much more prominence to the Knox story.
Fortunately, Jimbo is also increasingly seen as out of touch with the rest of the Wikipedia community, and in practice enjoys no particular privileges. Concerns have been raised on his manner of refusing to hear to the other side of the story.
The article’s talk page is unlikely to quiet down for a while.
But while the FOA perspective is given additional weight at present, the aspect that Wales hasn’t acknowledged is that the article, at the time of this writing, has not just minimized certain aspects of the arguments presented by the Knox PR campaign, but conversely toned down much of the debunking of those same claims.
At this stage, neutrality can be preserved or even improved by providing additional sources.
The sentencing reports for instance are what is qualified as a primary source and can only serve to verify the letter of the courts’ decision. More valuable are media reports or scholarly works (in any language, by the way) that analyze and comment on Massei and its critics.
It is important however to remember that polite discourse is required. If a contributor is subjected to personal attacks, it is better to request politely but firmly that the attack be struck or redacted and move on. Treading lightly and arguing on content with conviction rather than condescension will help guarantee that any contributor can at least be heard.
***********
Gwaendar has been a wikipedia editor for several years.
Monday, March 28, 2011
The Sollecito Family Criminal Trial And Civil Trial For Leaking Evidence Will Both Start On 29 April
Posted by Peter Quennell
The Sollecito family face charges for releasing an evidence video to the Bari TV station Telenorba showing Meredith’s body unclothed.
Also for attempting to influence some politicians to get some cops investigating the case moved on. Several Telenorba TV Bari staff-members will also also face charges. The trial was postponed five weeks ago as the judge was still on another case.
It is now reported in Italy by the news service Adnkronos that at today’s brief hearing a Kercher family civil suit against the Sollecitos for this disrespecting of Meredith will run in parallel.
The Sollecito defense team want to dispute the Perugia court’s jursidiction as the alleged crimes took place in Bari and Rome. That seems unlikely to fly as the evidence leaked was taken from Perugia.
The next court date for the Sollecito family will be Friday 29 April.
Sixth Appeal Hearing: Andrea Vogt On The Testimony Of The Witness In The Square
Posted by Peter Quennell
[Above and below: north side of Piazza Grimana showing the benches where Mr Curatolo normally sits]
Click here for Andrea Vogt’s report for the Seattle PI from the appeals court.
One of the case’s most colorful and controversial characters, Curatolo, 53, has spent many a day sitting in the small public Piazza Grimana square near the university where college students come to play basketball, buy hashish and hang out….
When questioned by prosecutors, he said he remembered seeing Knox and Sollecito having “an animated discussion” in the square, which overlooks the villa where Kercher’s body would be found the next day. It was not raining that night, he said, when asked about the weather. The following day the Carabinieri came around to ask him if he had seen anything, he recalled, and he had watched as forensic crime scene investigators worked around the house.
“Are you sure that the day after you saw those two discussing in an animated way you were questioned by the Carabinieri and saw the police at Via della Pergola in their white suits?” asked Mignini.
“Very sure,” Curatolo said. “As sure as I am that I am sitting here.”
But minutes later, in questioning by Sollecito’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno, Curatolo also said he had seen young people in masks and getting on buses to go to the discos. The distinction is important because Halloween was Oct. 31 and there were likely students in costumes, getting on shuttles to go to the discos on the outskirts of town.
Kercher, however, was killed on the evening of Nov. 1, 2007, which is All Saints Day, a somber holiday in Italy, when it is less likely there were any festivities.
“I think it is clear that he does not have a lucid memory,” said a member of Knox’s legal team, Maria del Grosso, after the hearing. “And I think it was demonstrated today that he is not a credible witness.”
However, prosecutors and the lawyer for the Kercher family, Francesco Maresca, maintained the testimony was in line with previous statements.
“He repeated exactly what he said during the first trial. We still believe he is reliable.”
Good neutral report, as you’d expect, from Andrea Vogt who is the American reporter most consistently in the courtroom. All the other reports in English seemed to include a lot of fluff from the defenses.
We’ll have an analysis post on this hearing and the DNA testing in Rome later today or tomorrow.
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Below: Mr Curatolo’s preferred benches are at the far left there. If Sollecito did watch the gate of the house on the night he’d need to be to the far right there. The gate can easily be seen from there.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Giordano Supreme Court Report On Final Appeal By Rudy Guede
Posted by Our Main Posters
[St Peters in foreground; Supreme Court large white building in background]
Please click on the image above for this meticulous translation from Italian to English.
The PMF translation team on three continents consisted of Jools, Thoughtful, Clander, TomM, Catnip, Yummi and the 411.
This post spelled out how very ominous for the Knox and Sollecito defenses this report really is.
We will have a post soon examining the fine details of this very tough report.
The Civil Case Of Knox v Lifetime - Umbria 24 TV Video Of Arrivals Today At The Courthouse
Posted by Peter Quennell
Amanda Knox is the supplicant here but you’d be hard-pressed to know it.
Unfortunately there’s no video or images of the team for Lifetime the alleged wrongdoers in this case, who seem to be keeping well out of sight.
There are reports in English here and here and here. Ann Wise of ABC notes that YouTube has removed the video of the movie’s trailer.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
The Civil Case Of Knox v Lifetime Will Be Considered By The Perugia Courts On July 4
Posted by Peter Quennell
On July 4? Big day in America. Seems today’s judge has a sense of humor.
The closed hearing in civil court in Perugia was brief, and there are just a couple of media images of Knox looking rather dispirited. The Italian media have not yet identified who are Lifetime’s legal representation or whether they were in court.
Knox’s lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova said his client wants the Lifetime TV movie withdrawn. He claimed that the movie had already been viewed 687,000 times on Lifetime’s website from all over the world, and that there is a version with Italian subtitles.
He said the movie could do irreparable harm to the prospects of his client. Amanda Knox in her statement said: “I am shocked at this invasion of my life and the speculations made about myself… I was very disturbed at the images in the trailer I saw on TV.”
The Knox and Sollecito suits were all actually filed before the movie itself had ever aired. No specific scenes were complained about today in court, and as the movie for the most part adheres to Massei, with some artistic license, it will be interesting to find out precisely which scenes are the bad ones.
The movie appeared to give Knox at least one big break in public eyes by making the provisional finding of an HIV test seem highly malicious though the facts don’t support this.
Sollecito appears in the movie much more briefly than Knox, and his most dramatic scene is where he throws one of Knox’s various alibis under the bus. Otherwise he comes across like a pussy.
His legal team has also said they were filing suit against Lifetime both in Perugia and in New York. No sign yet of those filings.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Amanda Knox To Be In Court In Perugia Tomorrow In Hearing About Stopping The Lifetime TV Film
Posted by Peter Quennell
[Above: Lifetime TV has an office suite in this giant hitech building which Google is presently purchasing]
Past posts on this mixed bag of a TV movie can be found here.
Late February Amanda Knox’s lawyers filed suit in Perugia to stop the airing of the movie (so far aired maybe half a dozen times in the US) and Raffaele’s Sollecito’s lawyers filed suit in Perugia and (or so they say - we can find no court record) also in New York.
The Perugia judge at the first hearing took a pretty relaxed view of the urgency of the matter and so it is only now that legal teams for Lifetime and Amanda Knox will face one another in court. The suit claims that the movie “violates the reputation” of Amanda Knox.
Very substantial payment for damages has been requested. If the New York suit also proceeds (unlikely as US law is not exactly favorable) the total asked appears to amount, converted from Euros, to over two hundred million dollars to compensate for sullied reputations.
Today’s Italian media reports in ANSA and AGI dont say very much more than that, except that Amanda Knox would like to be present in court.
As this is not Sollecito’s team’s suit, this is about the first time that one appellant will appear in court without the other. No word at all yet on the constitution of Lifetime’s legal team.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Limited Review Of The DNA Tests Agreed To By Judge Hellmann Are Now Underway In Rome
Posted by The Machine
[Amended by the Machine after his posted comment.]
Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti of La Sapienza University in Rome (above) have begun the review of the DNA on the large double-DNA knife and the bra clasp under the eyes of expert witnesses.
Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni and Professor Giuseppe Novelli will be testifying on behalf of the prosecution.
Professor Novelli has an impressive CV. He is a highly regarded professor of biomedicine at Tor Vergata in Rome and director of the Centre of Excellence for Genomic Risk Assessment in Multifactorial and Complex Diseases. Professor Novelli is regarded as the “father of police forensics” in Italy.
If there had been any doubts about the validity of the DNA evidence against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, he wouldn’t have agreed to testify for the prosecution.
A number of independent experts have already confirmed the validity of the DNA evidence at various court hearings.
There was an independent review of the forensic evidence in 2008. Dr. Renato Biondo, the head of the DNA unit of the scientific police, reviewed Dr. Stefanoni’s investigation and the forensic findings. He testified at Rudy Guede’s fast track trial in October 2008 and confirmed that all the forensic findings were accurate and reliable.
He also praised the work of Dr. Stefanoni and her team. “We are confirming the reliability of the information collected from the scene of the crime and at the same time, the professionalism and excellence of our work.”
Alberto Intini, the head of the Italian police forensic science unit, testified for the prosecution at the trial last year. He maintained that the crime scene had not been contaminated. He pointed out that unless contamination has been proved, it does not exist.
He also stated that the results of the tests showed that the investigation had been carried out correctly because there was not even one trace of any of the forensic technicians.
The Kercher family hired their own DNA expert, Professor Francesca Torricelli, and asked her to examine the DNA evidence.
Professor Torricelli is the Director of a genetic facility at Careggi University Hospital and has been working in genetics since 1976. She testified at Knox’s and Sollecito’s trial last year and she also confirmed Dr. Stefanoni’s findings.
She told the court that the significant amount of Sollecito’s DNA on Meredith’s bra clasp meant that it was unlikely that it was left by contamination. She also agreed with Dr. Stefanoni that Meredith’s DNA was on the blade of the double DNA knife.
Distinguished DNA expert and former Caribinieri General Luciano Garofano analysed the DNA and forensic evidence for the early 2010 book “Darkness Descending”.
He has more than 32 years of forensics experience and is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. He is considered by many as Italy’s top forensics expert. In his section of the book, he explains at length why he too thinks that Knox and Sollecito are guilty of Meredith’s murder.
Although General Garofano agrees with Dr. Renato Biondo and Alberto Intini that the scientific police did a good job, he thinks the police should have separated the plastic handle from the knife and checked for blood there because it often gathers in the grooves and recesses under the blade.
Stefano Conti has asked Judge Hellman for permission to take apart the handle of the knife.
The conclusions of the DNA retesting must be filed with Judge Hellman’s court no later than May 9 and they will be discussed at the appeal hearing on May 21.
Retesting of the DNA was always a high-stakes gamble for the defense teams and could prove to be game-over for Knox’s and Sollecito’s appeal in a single stroke.
On the other hand, the prosecution has little to worry about either way, as the balance of the evidence is so massive.
Friday, March 18, 2011
John Follain Foreign Correspondent UK Sunday Times Chats Online About Case And Italian Politics
Posted by Peter Quennell
Transcript of a live online Sunday Times discussion with foreign correspondent John Follain on Monday 7 March 2011.
Sunday Times Foreign Editor:
Welcome to John Follain, foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times who has covered Italy since 1998. He has written a book about the murder of Meredith Kercher which is out in August. So let’s begin, John is waiting for your questions
John Follain:
Hello, all set and looking forward to your questions - about the Kercher case, Berlusconi or anything you see fit to throw at me
[Comment From James Ellington]
Hi John, How do you think Amanda Knox managed to gain celebrity status given the gruesome nature of the crime she has been convicted of?
John Follain:
Hi James,
Should we blame the media or the readers? Seriously, I think one big reason why this case has interested people is that they identify themselves with the parents of Meredith Kercher, or of Amanda Knox.
As for Amanda Knox being a celebrity, I’d say the twists and turns of the investigation and the trial have a lot to do with it - as well as her looks and the fact that it has to be a rarity to have an American exchange student with such a background being convicted (the appeal trial is now on, of coruse) of such a crime.
[Comment From Freddy: ]
What do you make of the film? It doesn’t seem to have gone down too well with anyone involved
John Follain:
Hi Freddy,
Having covered so many of the events, it was very moving to see some of them on screen - the actors do look very much like the real protagonists. But I did find it peppered with inaccuracies and callous in its depiction of events just before Meredith’s death - including a completely unbelievable scene showing Rudy Guede embracing Meredith.
[Comment From Rebecca Ward]
So let’s cut to the chase, do you think Amanda Knox to be guilty or has she been wrongly convicted? And what do you base your opinion on?
John Follain:
Hi Rebecca,
Ah, thought that one would come up. Under Italian law, Knox’s conviction doesn’t become definitive until she has exhausted her chances of appeal - meaning the current appeal trial and a possible Supreme Court trial.
Having said that, I do think she played a role in the murder, along with her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede. That’s an opinion based on the evidence against her including the staged burglary, the DNA samples involving all three, and her behaviour at the police station
[Comment From Suzanna, Gloucs]
I have read that Guede was able to elect to go down the “˜fast track’ route for trial. What is that? Sounds like a McDonalds version of the law?
John Follain:
Hi Suzanna,
Not McDonalds but the Italian equivalent of plea-bargaining in a way. The fast track route involves a defendant agreeing to a faster trial, with fewer witnesses and no jury among other conditions, in exchange for a lower sentence if convicted.
But there’s no doubt many in Perugia and elsewhere have been shocked by his final prison sentence of 16 years, which will be greatly reduced for good behaviour among other factors.
[Comment From JJ ]
Can Knox be thought of as credible when saying she had been assaulted and asked questions under duress when being interviewed in light of the Facebook comments and images of swords and rituals?
John Follain:
Hi JJ,
I think it’s hard to accept that she accused an innocent man - Patrick Lumumba, the owner of the bar where she worked - simply because the police supposedly “pressured” her into doing so.
When she appeared in court and was questioned at length by the prosecutor over this, she didn’t come up with a convincing explanation. Plus there’s the fact that the day after the police interrogation, she repeated the scenario of Lumumba killing Meredith at the cottage.
[Comment From Charles and Jane]
I’ve seen interviews with Knox’s parents ““ difficult not to make assumptions here ““ but they seem rather unhinged (especially the mother). I realise it is not the everyday situation you find yourself in re your children but I think they do AK rather more harm than good?
John Follain:
Hi Charles and Jane,
To be honest, no, I don’t think they’re unhinged. I spent more than three hours interviewing them and AK’s sister Deanna in Seattle, and they came across as determined to bring Ak back from Perugia.
As for them doing AK more harm than good, the massive PR campaign they launched didn’t go down well with at least one of her Perugia lawyers, and it has backfired with the courts in the sense that judges in Perugia think the attacks - especially against prosecutor Giuliano Mignini are unjustified.
[Comment From james forrest]
What was the greatest challenge you faced in writing your book and did you meet any of the people connected with the case during the course of your research? Would you be interested to interview Knox if you had the chance? What question would you most like to ask her if you had the chance?
John Follain:
Hi James,
I set out to re-construct events from the moment Meredith and AK arrived in Perugia, through the murder and the subsequent investigation, right up to the current appeal trial - as much as possible describing not only what the main characters did but also what they thought at the time.
So the challenge was obtaining numerous, repeat interviews - one was six hours long - with as many of the characters including the prosecutors, detectives, lawyers, experts, relatives and friends among many others.
Yes of course, which journalist who has followed the case wouldn’t like to interview AK? But she is banned from giving interviews as long as her conviction, or acquittal, hasn’t become definitive. I don’t have a top question for her, what I would like is to ask her to go through events in as detailed a way as possible.
[Comment From Peter Polites]
What do you expect to be the outcome of the Amanda Knox appeal which has been delayed so forensics can carry out a review of the evidence used to convict her? When do you think we will hear the result? And do you think there is the possibility that the forensic evidence was contaminated?
John Follain:
Hi Peter,
Given that more than 20 judges have so far ruled that AK is guilty, I think the appeal court will head the same way - although it could reducer both the sentences for both her and Sollecito.
But no thinks the outcome is certain - the key hearing will be in late May when the court-appointed experts report back on their review of the DNA evidence found on the kitchen knife believed to be the murder weapon, and on Meredith’s bra clasp in her bedroom.
Yes contamination is in theory always possible but I see nothing to indicate that happened here.
[Comment From Ivor Gibson]
There have been heaps of books published about the case of Amanda Knox ““ what does yours do that the others don’t?
John Follain:
Hi Ivor,
I hope that my book offers the fullest-possible account of the case - I hope the reader will feel he or she are with Meredith and her friends in her last weeks in Perugia, behind the shoulder of the prosecutor or the detective as they make their discoveries, with AK and her mother as they talk in prison, and present in the courtroom at the key moments of the trial.
[Comment From Sammy]
what is the reaction of the average Italian to the bunga bunga scandal? disgust or secret envy?
John Follain:
Hi Sammy,
If you believe Berlusconi, 51% are for him, and 49% are against him. The truth is the average Italian does think the scandal is pretty awful but that doesn’t stop a big minority - a majority if you include his coalition partners - thinking Berlusconi is the best man for the job right now.
Basically the Left has yet to persuade anyone apart from diehard followers that it does have a programme for government and can rule the country efficiently.
[Comment From Elise Crothers]
I read that Berlusconi thinks he can prove in court that Karima El Mahroug was not underage when he allegedly paid her for sex ““ what do you think will be the outcome of his trial in Milan next month?
John Follain:
Hi Elise,
The prosecutors are confident that Berlusconi’s claim that she wasn’t underage will be thrown out by the court - her date of birth is on her Moroccan passport and as her father points out, they wouldn’t have spent such a long time trying to get her into community centres for minors if she was an adult.
The outcome is a very tough one to predict, but one near-certainty is that Berlusconi won’t try to stop the trial going ahead. He wants to fight his corner in court by attending all the hearings.
If he is convicted, he would most likely get a suspended sentence because he is over 70 and because he has a clean record.
And if he is convicted, he has said he will stay on as prime minister.
[Comment From jude]what does Bunga Bunga mean? I think I know but do I?
John Follain:
Hi Jude,
I think I know too, but only on the basis of what Ruby told prosecutors before the whole scandal became public.
And that’s second-hand, in that she said that Berlusconi told her that it was something copied from Gadaffi’s harem - ie. an orgy.
But then again, Berlusconi’s people have claimed it’s no such thing but just a joke about two ministers on an island who come to an obscene end with natives (don’t ask).
And the newcaster Emilio Fede, who is accused of aiding and abetting prostitution for bringing showgirls to Berlusconi’s home, said it was the name of the sofa
[Comment From Mary]
How can you stay on as Prime Minister if you are convicted?
John Follain:
Hi Mary,
A prison sentence of three years or more would automatically include Berlusconi being barred from holding public office for a year or more. But that wouldn’t become definitive until the case was ruled on by the Supreme Court, which could be in a couple of years or more.
[Comment From Simon Kennedy, Edinburgh]
Last year Berlusconi fawned over Gadaffi, treating him like royalty on his visit to Italy and has also described him as “my great friend”. Now they seem to have changed direction due to the threat to their energy supplies. Should Italy take a stand against Gadaffi and what would this mean for the Italian economy?
John Follain:
Hi Simon,
Despite Berlusconi’s previous “friendship”, and embarrassing scenes including Gadaffi being allowed to lecture young women - all from a PR agency - bussed in to attend his lecture on “Islam”, Italy says it will stick to whatever the EU and the UN decide on sanctions.
But it’s been noticeable that Libya’s interests in Italy - there’s even a stake in the Juventus soccer club - have gone untouched officially because they’re not held by Gadaffi himself or his clan.
The trouble for Italy is that taking too strong a stand against Gadaffi could threaten vital energy supplies.
And the Italians are quick to point out that they were not alone in giving Gadaffi red-carpet treatment.
[Comment From Gemima9]
how will Italy cope with the thousands of North African migrants arriving in the country after the unrest in the middle east?
John Follain:
Hi Gemima,
The government hopes it won’t be alone in coping and that other EU countries will step in, because it simply doesn’t have the facilites to cope with the possible arrivals - some estimates are around 250,000 to Italy alone.
The emergency plans drawn up by the government including using converted barracks to house them but this would all be temporary. And the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has regularly criticised the way Italy has been dealing with previous cases, saying it doesn’t give them a proper chance to claim and obtain refugee status.
Sunday Times Foreign Editor
Well, that’s all we have time for folks. Thank you for all the questions. Thanks to John for giving us his time. Do tune in next week at the same time for another heavy-weight topic. Have a good week. Bye.
John Follain:
Thanks to you all for your interest, and hope we get another chance to talk soon.
According to a BBC report Bunga Bunga is the nickname of Greman actress Sabina Began who organizes Mr Berlusconi’s controversial parties. Therefore “bunga bunga parties”.
Not everybody is buying that explanation it seems. Other versions keep surfacing.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Today’s Celebration In Italy Of Its Unification Into One Nation 150 Years Ago
Posted by Peter Quennell
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Remarks Mocking Japan Win Disapproval In The American Media
Posted by Peter Quennell
Most Americans are eager global travelers (or would be if they could afford it) and large numbers live through choice in foreign countries.
But there are some for who certain foreign countries seem to give problems. Italy has been given a vey hard time over Meredith’s case, both by some journalists we previously thought reputable and by some anonymous commenters online.
Typically they depict an Italy that none of us here recognise, and as we periodically try to show through our videos, images and reports there is a reason why in the eyes of most of the rest of the world it is rightly seen as a gentle, cultured, beautiful country.
Japan is another country toward which a few media stars and a few online commenters have felt safe in presuming there’s an open season for unkind remarks. But not, it seems, any more.
Dozens of media sites are today reporting negatively on such remarks. Best not to repost the unpleasant remarks right here. But click on the image above for some examples, and the reactions they are now engendering.
The reader comments below that report are good. The decent broad middle steps in.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Fifth Appeal Hearing: Testimony On Club Closings And Buses Leaves Credibility Of Eyewitness Intact
Posted by Peter Quennell
The shot above from the front of the School for Foreigners is of Piazza Grimana.
Click for a larger image. You can see the square with the benches at extreme left and right, and at rear the basketball court where Rudy Guede played. At the back there at the far right are the stone stairs down which Knox and Sollecito may have entered the park.
The many traversing buses mostly stop right in front here and they would block most of that view.
It is hard for us to see the defense witness testimony from six witnesses - one nightclub owner apparently refused to show - that several clubs were closed and several buses not running as any big deal.
In this post below we mentioned that Judge Micheli at Rudy Guede’s trial in October 2008 had accepted the testimony of Mr Curatolo because he said it was the night before the police descended on Meredith’s house and the square.
Judge Masse’s court also used this as a pointer to Mr Curatolo’s credibility and the Supreme Court of Cassation in denying Guede’s ten appeal grounds also endorsed the testimony as good.
Here now is a repeat of our report on Mr Curatolo’s day in court by our man in the court at the time, StewartHome2000, almost precisely two years ago (29 March 2009).
He is a fixture in Perugia. He is a vagrant that spends most of his time hanging around Corso Garibaldi (the street where Sollecito lived) and Piazza Grimana (the piazza in front of the School for Foreigners within eyeshot of the gate of Meredith’s house on Via della Pergola).
The crowd murmured as he was helped in by court assistants, uncleaned and dressed in an old jacket and winter knit hat. His skin was dark against his long un-groomed white hair, beard and mustache. But once he opened his mouth, you knew that this guy was no slouch. He spoke clearly, concisely and directly, and was very certain of what he saw.
His testimony never swayed and was consistent even under cross examination. In short, his appearance was one thing, his articulate convincing testimony was another.
He stated that he has been a regular hobo (for lack of a better term) around that part of Perugia for about 8-9 years. He testified that he was in Piazza Grimani around 9:30-10:00pm when he saw across the piazza two people, a man and a woman. He described them as a couple from the way they were sitting next to one another.
He was asked to describe them and he turned and looked at Amanda, just a few feet away, and said calmly, “it was her”, and then looked at Sollecito and said “and him.” He stated that having been in that area he had seen them before separately, but this was the first time he saw them together. But he was certain it was them.
He said also that, although he did not watch them all the time, he did see them again “poco prima di mezzanotte” or “just before midnight” at the same place. He originally said that they were there from 9:30 through midnight, but clarified that they were there at 9:30-10:00pm and may have left around 11-11:30 and then returned to be there just before midnight.
After midnight, he left the piazza to go to the park and sleep.
The next day, he arrived at his faithful piazza around 12:00pm, and eventually, around 1:30 or so, he saw the carabinieri pass by, and the police and crime scene staff, and stated that he watched them at the scene, including the CSI people dressed in the full-white suits.
Under cross-examination, Sollecito’s lawyer Ms Buongiorno may have thought she had an easy target. But in fact he held up extremely well. She asked, “how could you possibly know it was 9:30?” and he responded “Because the sign next to the piazza has a digital clock. I look at it often to check the time”.
He stated that “when I sat on the bench to read I looked at my watch and it was just before 9:30pm”¦.and I saw them shortly afterwards.” He said he knows what he saw, and he saw those two! No more questions.
Buses and nightclubs were not even mentioned in this comprehensive report. They were not even brought up by the defenses to rebut Mr Curatolo’s timeline two years ago.
The defenses again seem to be clutching at straws.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Fifth Appeal Hearing: The Two Appellants Arrrive In The Courtroom
Posted by Peter Quennell
Friday, March 11, 2011
Fifth Appeal Hearing: What Will Be On The Agenda Tomorrow In Court
Posted by Peter Quennell
Scheduled for tomorrow are seven witnesses for Sollecito’s defense, which is trying to prove that the eyewitness in the park, Mr Curatolo, got his dates wrong.
One of the ways in which Mr Curatolo identified the night on which he says he watched Knox and Sollecito sitting and talking in the park and periodically peering in the direction of the gate of Meredith’s house was by the presence of some buses.
They may have been the buses which climb up the very narrow Via Ulise Rocchi from the square to some clubs further up. However many, many other buses also pass through that square.
The defense hopes to land its first blow on the prosecution’s case by showing that on the night those nightclub buses weren’t there - that the clubs were closed that night for the holiday, and so the nightclub buses were nowhere to be seen.
Is this crucial? We think not. Mr Curatolo is useful in establishing a possible timeline for the night, but not for much more than that. The prosecution have never given the slightest hint that they believe anything like their whole case hangs on him.
And in Rudy Guede’s brief trial in October 2008 Judge Micheli accepted Mr Curatolo’s testimony as valid because he said he saw Knox and Sollecito on the night before all the police descended on Meredith’s house and the square.
Judge Micheli examines the evidence of Antonio Curatolo. He says that although Curatolo mixes up his dates in his statement, he does have a fix on the night he saw Amanda and Raffaele in Piazza Grimana sometime around 11:00 to 11:30pm. Curatolo is certain it was the night before the Piazza filled up with policemen asking if anyone had seen Meredith.
In his evidence, he says they came into the square from the direction of Via Pinturicchio and kept looking towards the cottage at Via della Pergola from a position in the square where they could see the entrance gate.
Judge Micheli reasons in his report that their arrival from Via Pinturicchio ties in with the evidence from Nara Capazzali that she heard someone run up the stairs in the direction of that street. He also reasons that they were likely watching the cottage to see if Meredith’s scream had resulted in the arrival of the police or other activity.
Acceptance of his testimony is already endorsed by two appeals courts, including the Supreme Court of Cassation, and all the decisions and all the evidence from all three courts now get ported into the Knox-Solleito appeal.
You can see photos of the square here and the view down to the gate of Meredith’s house here.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Giuliano Mignini’s Trumped-Up Conviction For Guessing Right In The MOF Case
Posted by TomM
We previously posted on the case here and here and here.
Giuliano Mignini became involved in the Monster of Florence case only years after many people had already come to believe a satanic sect in Florence might be behind the MOF murders. But he pursued it with a vengeance when a body that in 1985 mysteriously washed up on the shore of a lake in his jurisdiction showed signs of murder.
And when the crime fiction writer Doug Preston injected himself into the case under a pseudonym and appeared to be planting evidence, Mignini gave him a very brief shaking up and Preston timidly removed himself from the case and from Italy - to turn to inventing a whole lot of fiction about it from safely across the Atlantic.
Here now is the fine Italian journalist Adriano Lorenzoni, describing The Strange Conviction of PM Giuliano Mignini by the prosecutor whose frustrated conversation was captured (the recording seemed to prove there was indeed a satanic sect in Florence) in objective terms that prove sympathetic to Mr Mignini.
Translation here is with the kind help of my fellow poster Clander.
The Perugian investigation of the instigators of the crimes of the Monster of Florence has, in effect, been stopped.
In January of 2010 the Public Prosecutor of Perugia, Giuliano Mignini, and the former head of the flying squad of Florence, Michele Giuttari, were sentenced by the Court of Florence on the charge of abuse of office in an investigation into some Perugians connected to the “instigators” of the crimes of the Monster of Florence. According to the prosecution’s theory, Mignini and Giuttari illegally wiretapped and investigated journalists and law enforcement officials to influence their activities.
These are abnormal proceedings, since the Public Prosecutor Mignini had been properly authorized by the Investigating Magistrate of Perugia to use wiretaps for his investigation, actions that he had the duty to carry out. Abnormal proceedings also because leading the investigation against Mignini and Giuttari was the same Public Prosecutor’s Office [Procura] that Mignini [PM di Perugia], had investigated the head of, Ubaldo Nanucci. Not by chance did Dr Mignini object to the jurisdiction of that Office [Procura] to carry out the investigation and raise objections of the legitimacy of the judgment. The Court of Appeal of Florence will hear the appeal next November 22 [2011].
This all springs from a recording made by Michele Giuttari of one of his conversations with a Deputy Prosecutor of Florence, Paolo Canessa, in which Canessa states that his boss was not a free man and admits to having been hindered by the then Prosecutor General, Ubaldo Nannucci, regarding the requests of Dr Giuttari into the investigation of the crimes of the Monster of Florence.
Giuttari [then] sent the recording to Mignini, who turned it over to the Prosecutor’s Office of Genoa which had been authorized to investigate the magistrates of Florence. Prosecutor Nannucci was then investigated [verrà inquisito] for having slowed down, or rather obstructed, the investigation of the Monster of Florence. Genoa promptly dismissed [archivierà ] it.
Giuttari continued to complain to Mignini about the conduct of the police commissioner of Florence, De Donno who, as ordered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, should have set up a new wire tapping room for the GIDES (serial crimes investigative unit) where Giuttari and his men were working [si erano sistemati]. De Donno never set up the new room [cosa che non fa]. Mignini charged him and sent the file to Florence.
A question comes to mind: where is the abuse of office in all of this?
It is also puzzling why there was such an apparent lack of interest in the investigations conducted by Michele Giuttari, even when they are not being obstructed. “The instigators must not be investigated because there are only conjectures, a fruitless waste of time,” Giuttari is told.
Astonishing. As long as the [lowlife] “snack buddies” are being investigated [for the MOF , all is well. It’s fine to investigate Pacciani, Lotti and Vanni; but when the investigation tries to produce greater results [si alza il tiro], problems start to arise. Michele Giuttari was even relieved of his post and transferred.
Prosecutor Mignini’s office is searched and documents from an ongoing investigation into the death of the Perugian doctor Fransesco Narducci are seized, documents which Mignini had without success objected were secret.
Another question comes to mind: why so much fear (in Florence and in Perugia) about the investigation of the death of Francesco Narducci?
According to the Perugian Public Prosecutor [Mignini], Francesco Narducci was connected in some way to the Monster of Florence case. Giancarlo Lotti, one of the [lowlife] snack buddies, asserted that some doctor was given the amputated parts of a female body, in exchange for money.
Crimes, therefore, on commission [i.e. murder or mayhem for hire] by a doctor. A real doctor, not the mere pharmacist, Francesco Calamandrei, of San Casciano val di Pesa. Among other things, during the investigation it emerged that Calamandrei and Narducci knew one another. Narducci then died in unclear circumstances on October 13, 1985. Drowned in the waters of Lake Trasimeno. One month after the last murder committed by the Monster of Florence.
Suicide was claimed at that time. A truth considerably less than believable. So much so that while the Preliminary Investigations Judge [GIP], Marina De Robertis, dismissed the case for lack of enough evidence [con formula dubitativa] the hypothetical murder case against certain suspects (the journalist Mario Spezi, the pharmacist from San Casciano, Calamandrei, and others) and declared it time-barred, still, evidence exists of other crimes committed at the time: the concealment and abduction of a corpse and the falsification of numerous public records.
Moreover, since last April, we have been waiting to learn the reasoning with which, for different reasons, including claimed lack of evidence, the Preliminary Hearing Judge, Paolo Micheli, acquitted twenty people (including Narducci’s father and brother) of charges of forgery, criminal conspiracy, dereliction of duty, and concealment of a corpse.
Against this decision of the Preliminary Hearing Judge, Public Prosecutor Mignini will most likely file an appeal as soon as the sentencing reports are lodged which should have been lodged last July 20 [2010].
Mignini and Giutarri were acquitted of the charges of abuse of office (and Mignini also of aiding and abetting Giuttari) because it was not proven that any crimes were committed [i fatti non sussistono] (and the Florence Prosecutor’s Office did not appeal).
[The abuse of office charges] related to their so-called parallel investigations to those of the Genoa Prosecutor’s Office, which was investigating the former head of the flying squad of Florence for false acts [falso] due to the recording of the conversation with the deputy [Prosecutor] Canessa (of which we have spoken above) which, according to the indictment, had been tampered with. This investigation then led to the search of the office of the Public Prosecutor of Perugia [Mignini’s office] and the seizure of numerous investigation documents.
Needless to add that the proceedings against Giuttari and the two police officers concluded with a judgment of non-suit for absolute lack of foundation of fact, as proclaimed by the Genoan Preliminary Hearing Judge Roberto Fenizia. The “aberrant” conviction of Giuliano Mignini does not have immediate disciplinary consequences of any kind. The disciplinary proceeding is in fact suspended until the resolution of the criminal case on which it depends.
And Public Prosecutor Mignini is able to continue to carry out his functions, in trials of great importance and of international interest, such as that relating to the death of the English student, Meredith Kercher.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Strange Story Of Congressional Knox Supporter Apparently Becoming Over Aggressive
Posted by Peter Quennell
[Above: Portland, largest city in Oregon, David Wu’s constituency; Mount Hood at back there]
A few months ago Oregon Congressman David Wu wrote a mean and inaccurate letter on Knox’s behalf
Now his own Congressional staffers are having to restrain him from becoming too over-the-top on other matters.
Their concern had been spiking for weeks in tandem with the Oregon Democrat’s increasingly unpredictable performance on the campaign trail and in private. He was loud and sometimes angry, some of them told The Oregonian. He said kooky things to staff and—more worrisome with a tough election fast approaching—around potential voters and donors.
Earlier and gentler efforts had failed, so the tight-knit group of high-level staff took other steps, including quiet inquiries about the availability of beds in hospitals in Portland and Washington, D.C., multiple sources familiar with the effort told The Oregonian.
Several staff members confronted Wu for the final time on Oct. 30. Wu’s psychiatrist was brought into that meeting as well, joining the group at the Portland campaign headquarters by speaker phone. The meeting was held after four consecutive days of troubling behavior that led the staff to agree that Wu needed a higher level of medical care, according to people intimately familiar with the events of that period.
“This is way beyond acceptable levels and the charade needs to end NOW,” wrote Lisa Grove, a senior and long-serving campaign pollster, in an e-mail to colleagues that day. “No enabling by any potential enablers, he needs help and you need to be protected. Nothing else matters right now. Nothing else.”
Wu, however, remained defiant, sources said. He left the meeting and said he was going to a movie.
Unfortunate case. What a surprise.
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Thoughts On Meredith’s Tragic Case And Its Significance In The Bigger Scheme Of Things
Posted by Saskia van der Elst
As one of the regular commentators on this forum once pointed out, the question we all are trying to answer regarding the pointless murder of the talented and beautiful Meredith Kercher in Perugia is: What is it, that keeps on drawing us to this case?
We all have our own reasons. According to me, a murder case seldom has so much in common with an old school murder mystery, or “whodunnit”. A victim that you instantly sympathize with, several suspects, each with their own particular background, ethnic origin and possible motives, a tragic event taking place on the day of the Death, a charismatic prosecutor, who himself is the center of some controversy, and all of this set in the stunningly beautiful medieval hilltop town of Perugia, with its two universities, its relatively small population and its many temporary residents, studying and partying in the small town center.
All are ingredients for a captivating story: a small universe, that can easily be explained to an outsider and once you heard the beginning of the story, you crave more. More information, more depth, more color. For those that have a normal, healthy brain, there comes a point in any murder mystery where you are convinced of the guilt of one or more of the characters in the story and as you near the end of the story, there might be an unexpected twist, but you can rest assured that you will find out who did it.
Of course, in real life stories don’t follow formulas, most of the time they don’t have a definitive ending and in the case of the murder of Meredith, the book is not closed. The three perpetrators of the crime have been convicted to a total of 67 years in jail between the three of them, but all three maintain their innocence. We all know that three cannot keep a secret, so it is a matter of time until one of them reveals more about the exact events that took place on the 2nd of November in 2007.
Each of the three perpetrators will go through a process of maturing in prison. Once they feel they have paid a significant price for their crime, they may realize the graveness of they crime and realize that they made bad decisions in their past. Not until that moment, they can find redemption and may feel the need to let the world know that they have changed as a person. All three perpetrators were immature in their own way when they committed their crime, so it might take a while for them to mature enough to be able to face reality.
Rudy might be the first one to reach that point, since he is more or less an orphan, with no controlling relatives, friends and others with vested interests in the lies that have masked the truth. Nobody will lose face if he decides to confess his participation in the crime. The same thing, but to a lesser degree, is true for Raffaele. Since he never even cared about clarifying all inconsistencies in his stories, he implicitly has already admitted his involvement. He too, doesn’t affect many people if he opens up and gets clean. The only close relatives he has are his father and sister and they have not publicly expressed a strong believe in his innocence.
Amanda is in a much more difficult position, because of the amount of people that was mobilized to defend her. By now she has been the income generator for quite some people and although nobody envies her parents, they have a clear mission, that keeps them occupied and that gives their lives meaning. The moment Amanda would confess her involvement, the parents would be forced to exchange the “free my innocent daughter” banner for one that reads “I raised a murderess that is serving two and a half decades in a foreign prison”.
On top of the above, the process of coming clean might be a slow one, because all three suffer from uncertainty about how the other two are doing. That uncertainty might cause postponing the advance, until they are forced to speak up, because one of the others did so first.
The result for those that are following the case is that we know we don’t have all information yet and for us to fill in all the blanks and be able to understand what exactly has happened to Meredith we need that information. Until we have it, we cannot accept the story as is as it leaves us unsatisfied. Of course we are talking about a true story here and not about a work of fiction, but for the rational part of our minds that doesn’t make a difference.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
The DEFENSE Not Italian Officials Leaked About Knox HIV Test In Capanne DRAFT
Posted by Michael
The several wrong facts in the Lifetime movie, especially of timeline, perhaps balanced one another out, and seemed to leave many viewers sensing the possibility of guilt.
However, there was one very serious wrong claim in the movie and in the following documentary which implied criminal action on the part of the Capanne Prison medical staff and prosecutors and may have aroused a lot of false sympathy for Amanda Knox.
The film depicted Amanda knox being told by the doctor at Capanne that in a routine test she tested positive for HIV and to write down a list of her previous partners. Later, a confrontation was shown between an angry Amanda and the doctor (which never happened) when he told her she was all clear.
In reality, the doctor told Amanda at the start that the test was probably a false positive and that she shouldn’t worry and that another test would be run. The doctor never instructed Amanda to write out a list of her previous partners. And the prosecutors never leaked that list.
In Amanda Knox’s own words, you can read above how it went down: She chose herself to create the sex partners list.
The myth in the movie of how the sex partners list was created and spread around was then later compounded by the ‘Knox friendly’ Lifetime documentary. That also claimed Amanda Knox was told to write down her list of partners by the doctor and then her diary was leaked by prosecutors to the public.
We know this to be false. We know that it was instead Amanda Knox’s own lawyers that leaked the diary with the sex partners list (to journalists like Barbie Nadeau) and the family effort that leaked it to people like Frank Sfarszo (who duly published Amanda’s diary page on previous sexual partners), and Candace Dempsey, and even tried to leak it to us!
Amanda’ Knoxs family know the truth of this, but have not yet come out and corrected a seriously wrong pervasive impression. And Lifetime repeated the lie of the sex partners list, leading millions to believe the ILE deliberately terrified, tricked and humiliated Amanda Knox.
But they didn’t. Amanda Knox herself showed it was not so.
Lifetime’s Misleading Portrayal Of Knox HIV Leak: One Of Many Dishonest Knox-Team Leaks
Posted by Michael
Above and below: images from the two misleading scenes
1. Movie Advances HIV & Sex Partners List Hoax
The Lifetime movie nicely depicted Meredith and Dr Mignini, and was not tough on Knox, though it seemed to leave many viewers sensing the possibility of guilt.
However, there were several seriously wrong scenes in the Lifetime movie, and also in the associated Lifetime documentary. Two scenes advanced the HIV-test and sex-partners-list hoax.
- 1. In a first long and emotional scene, the film depicted Amanda Knox being told by the doctor at Capanne that in a routine test she tested positive for HIV. It implied the test was a form of pressure. It showed Knox being told she should write down a list of her previous partners.
2. In a second long and emotional scene, the film depicted a confrontation between an angry Amanda and the doctor when he told her she was all clear. And thereafter depicted that it was the the prosecution that leaked the sex partners list.
These implied criminal actions on the part of both the Capanne Prison medical staff and the prosecutors, and aroused a lot of false sympathy for Knox.
2. The Hard Facts About Knox’s HIV Testing
1. Lifetime V Reality: Knox Had Herpes When She Was Tested
Lifetime simply depicted Amanda Knox being told by the doctor at Capanne that she tested positive for HIV. It implied the test was unusual.
In fact, on her admittance to Capanne Prison, Knox was simply routinely tested for HIV and some other possible conditions, as all prisoners are, for their own good.
Knox had herpes at the time, visible on her lip in many photographs, and herpes can result in a false positive result for HIV.
2. Lifetime V Reality: Proof Knox Warned Positive Test Maybe False
Lifetime did not depict Knox being warned about false positives. But Knox’s diary reads:
Last night before I went to bed I was taken down to see yet another doctor who I haven’t yet met before. He had my results from a test they took which says I’m positive for HIV.
First of all the guy told me not to worry, it could be a mistake, they’re going to take a second test next week….
3. Lifetime V Reality: Knox Herself Creates Sex Partners List
Lifetime claimed Amanda Knox was told to write down her list of partners by the doctor.
But in Amanda Knox’s own words, you can read how it went down: She chose herself to create the sex partners list. The doctor never instructed Amanda to write out that list. Her diary reads:
Thirdly, I don’t know where I could have got HIV from. Here is the list of people I’ve had sex with in Italy [strike Italy] general:...
4. Lifetime V Reality: There Was No Angry Confrontation
Lifetime depicts a yelling, pointing Knox, who has to be restrained.
The doctor merely conveyed the news of a negative results and Knox cheerfully went off. He had no ill intent, she did not get angry, and no accusations were made.
3. The Hard Facts About Who Leaked The Results & List
Lifetime implied that Knox’s diary with the list of partners was leaked by the prosecutors to the public.
We know this to be false. We know that it was instead Amanda Knox’s own lawyers that leaked the diary with the sex partners list (to journalists like Barbie Nadeau). And that the family effort leaked it to people like Frank Sforza (who duly published Amanda’s diary page on the previous sexual partners), and Candace Dempsey, and even tried to leak it to us!
Amanda’s lawyers leak like sieves, always have, and they’ve rarely, if ever, asked Amanda permission to do so. It isn’t actually required, since she’s already given them permission to act on her behalf. In a way, it’s a bit like electing a politician. Once you’ve elected them, they don’t have to come back to you (the electorate) for permission every time they want to pass a bill, create a new policy or enter into negotiations.
When we had our own reporter (Stewart Home) attending the trial, the defence happily showed him anything in the case file he asked to see. In fact, many times they offered without his having to even ask.
In addition, Amanda’s family have been doing quite a lot of ‘leaking’ themselves. Frank Sforza and Candace Dempsey got most of their data from them, as did Charlie Wilkes, Mark Waterbury and Bruce Fischer. And this leaking by the family started long before the trial.
It needs to also be pointed out, Sollecito’s family and lawyers have also been doing their share of leaking.
However, the Knox family and their followers have been only too happy to publicly blame all this leaking on Italian law enforcement (ILE) and cite this as another injustice against their daughter. The US media have been only too happy to carry these accusations, without question. This is how the ILE have been framed and it stinks.
4. Relevant Misleading Scenes In The Lifetime Film
Top and below: the first partly imaginary scene
Above and below: the first partly imaginary scene
Below: the second very misleading scene
Below: the second very misleading scene
5. Bottom Line: One Of Many Knox-Team Hoaxes
Amanda’ Knoxs family know the truth of this, but have not yet come out and corrected a seriously wrong pervasive impression.
And Lifetime repeated the lie of the sex partners list, leading millions to believe the ILE deliberately terrified, tricked and humiliated Amanda Knox.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Andrea Vogt: Supreme Court Report Highlights Amanda Knox Mention To Mom She Was There
Posted by Peter Quennell
[Above: Amanda Knox and her mother in courtroom when Edda Mellas testified 19 July 2009]
Andrea Vogt in the Seattle PI translates from the Cassation Report described in our two previous posts.
A sentencing report just released by the highest Italian appeals court sheds new light on why so many Italian judges have maintained Amanda Knox was involved in her roommate’s murder.
The document, among others, cites a conversation Knox had with her parents while under surveillance during a prison visit in which she said “I was there,” apparently referring to the night of the murder.
Amanda Kox’s remark was recorded at Capanne Prison and was long public knowledge, but that the Supreme Court listed it among other evidence of involvement in this report is significant. The report summarises what is the evidence against all three, especially that against Rudy Guede.
The court…said that based on the 43 wounds to Kercher’s body (and the time it would take to inflict them) that it was… probable that Guede and two others forcibly held Kercher down, threatened, taunted and eventually fatally stabbed her.
The Court’s quoted language is extremely hard and gives a sense that the judges were appalled. The Court’s report has been out in Italy for over four days now - but the Seattle PI’s is the first extensive US or UK media summary.
The US and UK media have a pretty consistent habit of ignoring these inconvenient reports.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Five Sleepers For The Knox And Sollecito Defenses That Could Make Matters Even Worse
Posted by Peter Quennell
[Above: Knox defense lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova and Sollecito defense lawyer Luca Maori]
The situation actually seems tougher for the defenses than even the very stark facts in the post below suggest. Here are some sleepers.
1) All the DNA tests could go against them, Amanda Knox’s DNA might be confirmed on Meredith’s bra or bra clasp as several DNA witnesses believed it was, and if the opening of the knife handle is permitted, Meredith’s DNA might be discovered in there.
2) The defenses hope to destroy the timeline of Curatolo the eyewitness in the park by proving there were no nightclub buses operating that night. But Judge Micheli said that in accepting him as credible his statement that he saw the two in the park the night before all the police activity at the house was enough, and did not even mention any buses. The Hellman court might agree.
3) Prosecutors interviewed and investigated both Alessi and Aviello but never revealed what they found out. If the defenses call them as witnesses, as they desperately need to in light of the Supreme Court of Cassation position below that Guede and two others were involved, they could be destroyed in cross examination and end up facing perjury charges and longer prison terms as a result.
4) The Hellman court might discount the Massei scenario that Guede just happened to be there for a reason not explained, and just started to molest Meredith with two others nearby, who then just oddly chose to join in on his side with some handy knives. The prosecution and Judge Micheli both believed the hazing of Meredith was probably a Knox-driven initiative. The prosecution could make this a main argument in the requested waiving of the mitigating circumstances the Massei court allowed.
5) Sollecito and/or Knox could insist on mounting the witness stand despite counsel advice and in trying to explain the alibis and cellphone and computer happenings and a few other things might collapse under cross-examination - their first unrestrained cross-examination in this process.
Raffaele Sollecito’s superstar lawyer Giulia Bongiorno, now on maternity leave, may not be heard from again. And Sollecito still seems to be maintaining some separation and not giving Knox any help with her fifth alibi.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Very Hard Language Of Supreme Court In Rejecting Guede Appeal, Confirming Three Did It
Posted by Peter Quennell
The report of the Supreme Court of Cassation released on Thursday was foreshadowed in content in our post of 17 December:
Rudy Guede’s appeal is rejected on all ten grounds. His appeal grounds were ugly and dishonest and he has no further appeal. He will serve his 16 years, with maybe some time off, for being a savage willing party to the cruel stupid murder of Meredith.
Rudy Guede will go down in infamy for his sex crime against a defenseless victim, for being a party to a taunting torturing knife attack, for claiming Meredith invited him in for consensual sex, and for not calling for help for Meredith and maybe saving her life while it was still possible.
Cassation continues the fine Italian court tradition in this case of taking a firm and unblinking position, and for being utterly oblivious to the vile over-the-top campaign of Curt Knox, Edda Mellas and David Marriott which may now haunt Amanda Knox all of her life.
What really caught the Italian media’s attention and made this the second most widely reported development in the case after the Amanda Knox-Raffaele Sollecito verdict was the icy hard language, the pure contempt for the depraved pack attack, the total rejection of all Guede’s stories, including his oft-repeated and totally unbelievable claim that Meredith invited him in and wanted love-making, and the court’s conclusion once again that the evidence methodically described in the Micheli Report overwhelmingly proves that THREE perpetrators took part in the crime.
The Court of Cassation in this report made clear that Knox and Sollecito are not already formally nominated as the other two perpetrators and it does wait the referral of the outcome of the present appeal in Perugia. But unless the defense witnesses Alessi and Aviello can indeed convince Judge Hellman’s appeal court that Guede attacked Meredith with friends or that some other people entirely carried out the attack, there seems no way out for them.
The court also indicated that it considered the motive of the attack on Meredith to be frivolous, which is precisely what the prosecution claims in the current Perugia appeal as grounds for rejecting Massei’s mitigating circumstances, and for increasing Knox’s and Sollecito’s prison sentences to life terms.
This post of a month ago further explains Knox’s and Sollecito’s almost insurmountable problems.
The written report from Cassation on that December 2010 decision on Guede’s final appeal (due soon), plus Judge Micheli’s Sentencing Report for Rudy Guede of January 2009, plus all that associated evidence, now gets automatically ported by law straight into Knox’s and Sollecito’s appeal.
Judge Micheli took a hard line toward Rudy Guede, and he sentenced him to 30 years. He also remanded Knox and Sollecito to trial, and his report explains the basis for that remand.
Judge Micheli’s remorseless and tightly argued report (see summaries below) very comprehensively backed up his decisions. (Later reductions in sentence were automatic and they flowed from the terms of Guede’s short-form trial, and some controversial mitigating circumstances advanced by Massei for Knox and Sollecito.)
The prosecution’s appeal against the Knox and Sollecito sentences argues that the acceptance of mitigating circumstances by the Massei court should be thrown out, and that Knox and Sollecito should be subjected to a longer sentence. Remember that even in the case of Alessi’s wife, who was not even present when he beat the kidnapped baby to death, she received a sentence of 30 years.
So here is how it is stacking up:.
For the prosecution, four courts including the Supreme Court of Cassation have ruled that three people participated in the crime against Meredith, plus all of the evidence from both the Guede and Knox Sollecito trials now comes in, plus the prosecution is appealing for tougher sentences, which seems well justified based on precedents.
And for the defenses? Will they now feel they have no choice but to put Knox or Sollecito or Alessi or Aviello or for that matter Rudy Guede on the stand as a last-ditch manoeuvre?
Hard to see what further they have to lose.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Thursday Trial Hearing Scheduled For Sollecito Family Charges Of Perversion Of Justice
Posted by Peter Quennell
[Above: Raffele Sollecito’s father Dr Francesco Sollecito who is a urologist practicing in Bari]
Update: Italian media sites are reporting that the new trial date for the Sollecitos is 28 March as the investigating judge Alberto Avena has commitments outside Perugia. The prosecutors are Giuliano Mignini and Manuela Handy. The Sollecito defense team is Marco Brusco, Francesco Crisis, Luca Maori and Donatella Donati.
There should be a hearing in Perugia in the case against the Sollecito family on Thursday.
Francesco (Sollecito’s father), Vanessa (his sister), Mara (his stepmother) Giuseppe (his uncle) and Sara (his aunt) all of Bari have been charged with leaking a crime scene video out of the 10,000-plus pages plus of evidence and exhibits to Telenorba, a Bari television station.
It was an apparent attempt to discredit the investigators although the video backed that claim weakly if at all. The video included deeply upsetting closeups of Meredith’s uncovered body and the wounds to her neck. It was later re-broadcast by the state network RAI throughout Italy.
Richard Owen of the London Times in an article no longer online described the Telenorba and RAI broadcasts as follows.
Relatives of Meredith Kercher, the British student murdered in Perugia in November, were said to be shocked and distressed last night after images of her bloodied corpse were broadcast on Italian television…
Telenorba, which showed the footage late at night, warned viewers that it was disturbing and suitable only for adults. It showed police scientists in white protective clothing pulling back the duvet to reveal Ms Kercher’s body and slashed throat, and turning the corpse over to examine her bloodied back.
Her eyes were covered by a mask. RAI did not include this part of the footage in its news broadcasts.
[Above Raffaele Sollecito with his sister Vanessa Sollecito who was fired late in 2009 by the Carabinieri]
This is a translation by Jools of an April 2009 report in La Nazione.
The prosecutor of Perugia has served notice of the completion of four investigations into Raffaele Sollecito’s family members and two journalists of the TV station Telenorba on the transmission of a forensic video in which the body of Meredith Kercher wa shown…
The report on the investigations (usually a prelude to a request for trial) indicates crimes were committed of defamation, invasion of privacy, publication of arbitrary acts of investigation and publication of gruesome acts.
According to the reconstruction by the Perugia prosecutor, the father and sister of Raphael Sollecito had legitimately obtained the scientific survey of the police, and had then illegally provided it to Telemundo.
The report also cites a journalist and the editor of Panorama for the publication of an article in which they reported that blood samples from Meredith had revealed an alcohol concentration above the legal norm - implying she was drunk when she was killed. This claim was proved a lie in the course of the forensic tests.
And this is a translation by Jools of an AGI news-service report of April 2009 also no longer online.
Eight “notices of termination of the investigations” have been reported by the public prosecutor of Perugia… Four Sollecito family members, the TV journalist on Telenorba and the director of the station, are accused of the crimes of defamation, invasion of privacy, publication of documents during the investigation, and publication of gruesome acts….
According to the reconstruction, the Sollecito family members delivered to Telenorba the video and photos of the crime scene survey carried out by the forensic team on November 2 of 2007 in Meredith’s house. Telenorba then put the material on the air.
Other investigations are on-going.
The family members are all also charged with an attempt to manipulate the Knox-Sollecito trial through the political process. There is said to be evidence wiretaps capturing them trying to get family friends in the Italian parliament in Rome to have several senior investigators removed from the case.
Vanessa Sollecito was fired from the Carabinieri late in 2009 for her involvement in this attempt to manipulate politicians, and we believe she still faces a further internal Carabinieri hearing.
[Above: the town of Bari in south-east Italy where ferries depart for the east Adriatic coast and Greece]
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Open Questions: An Experienced Trial Lawyer Recommends How To Zero In On the Truth
Posted by SomeAlibi
Welcome
If you’ve come to this website because of the Lifetime movie of Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox, then welcome.
Like all of us who come to this case, you have one key question: did they do it? The movie you’ve just watched is equivocal on that matter and perhaps didn’t help you at all.
On the internet, you will find people who are passionate in their defence of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito and you will find people who are passionate in their support of the prosecution.
My own arrival
Placing my own cards on the table here: as a twenty-plus year practising trial lawyer, I am firmly a part of that latter camp. But it wasn’t always that way.
It was information ““ evidence ““ that changed my views. What became very clear to me, early on, was that very few people in the English-speaking world are aware of anywhere near all of the evidence in this case.
I had thought I had grasped the core of the case, but I did not. The case is deep and complex and like many criminal cases, the complete facts behind it have been only sketchily reported in the media. The movie you may have just watched only skirts the real reasons the jury convicted.
The unanimous jury
I am sure that we all agree that no jury, in any murder case, given the awesome responsibility of adjudicating on (young) people’s lives for a multi-decade period of imprisonment, condemns people lightly.
It should be a matter of logic that the evidence presented against the accused must have been deep and satisfied the 6 lay jurors and 2 judges on the case for them to pronounce that huge judgement. That doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be the possibility of a mistrial, but clearly the evidence presented must have been substantial.
In this, we’ve already hit the first problem. Some supporters of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito will tell you there’s no evidence against them.
This is patently silly. No jury ever convicts people and sends them to prison for 24 plus years without being quite convinced of the case against them. Miscarriages of justice do happen, but the idea that there is “no evidence” can be summarily dismissed.
The only question is whether the evidence is sufficient, true and accurate.
The voluminous evidence
So is the evidence enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt? The six lay jurors and two professional judges thought so, clearly. What you realise, when you come to the facts of the case, is that the evidence is based not around a single key event but on multiple points.
It can be astonishing to realise that the case is based not only on DNA evidence but also on cellphone evidence and computer records and further yet on multiple conflicting and contradicting versions of what happened that night from the mouths of the accused, not to mention falsely accusing an innocent man of responsibility for murder causing his incarceration.
The wealth of evidence is actually extremely unusual. It goes way beyond the quite similar Scott Peterson case.
The Massei Sentencing Report
What is absolutely new to the English speaking legal world is that the reasoning for the conviction can be read in an extremely detailed 440+ page report online. Bilingual posters at the Perugia Murder File Forum many of whom who are also key posters at TJMK translated the entire document into English over several months last year.
It was my privilege to play an extremely small part in that work. People from four different continents with backgrounds in forensic science, law, academia and a host of other disciplines participated.
You can read an effective executive summary by clicking on the Massei Report link at top here and reading the conclusions from page 388 onwards:
The Knox PR campaign
If you are new to this case, you will likely be shocked how much evidence there is against the convicted parties. Amanda Knox’s family have spent over $1m and involved a professional PR agency called Gogerty Marriot to suggest otherwise in the English-speaking media.
You might wonder why an innocent person needs a million dollar PR campaign on their part. Make yourself a coffee and read the conclusions of the judge’s report. It will take you about 15 minutes. Up until you read this report, almost everything you watch, hear and read is PR spin and is quite deliberately positioned to make you believe there is no case.
When you complete it, I believe you will have a very different take. That 15 minutes could change your ideas about everything you thought you knew about the murder of Meredith Kercher.
Now for a quick tour of the evidence.
Some of the points of evidence
Consider as you read it what is your own possible explanation for each of the following:
- the fact that the wound pattern and the reconstruction of the attack, each presented at trial in extensive closed-court sessions, showed this absolutely had to be a pack attack;
- the DNA of Raffaele Sollecito on Meredith’s bra-clasp in her locked bedroom;
- the almost-entire naked footprint of Raffaele on a bathmat that in *no way* fits that of the other male in this case - Rudy Guede;
- the fact that Raffaele’s own father blew their alibi that they were together in Raffaele’s flat at the time of the killing with indisputable telephone records;
- the DNA of Meredith Kercher on the knife in Raffaele’s flat which Raffaele himself sought to explain as having been from accidentally “pricking” Meredith’s hand in his written diary despite the fact Meredith had never been to his flat (confirmed by Amanda Knox);
- the correlation of where Meredith’s phones were found to the location of Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guedes’s flats;
- the computer records which show that no-one was at Raffaele’s computer during the time of the murder despite him claiming he was using that computer;
- Amanda’s DNA mixed with Meredith Kercher’s in five different places just feet from Meredith’s body;
- the utterly inexplicable computer records the morning after the murder starting at 5.32 am and including multiple file creations and interactions thereafter all during a time that Raffaele and Amanda insist they were asleep until 10.30am;
- the separate witnesses who testified on oath that Amanda and Raffaele were at the square 40 metres from the girls’ cottage on the evening of the murder and the fact that Amanda was seen at a convenience store at 7.45am the next morning, again while she said she was in bed;
- the accusation of a completely innocent man by Amanda Knox again and again when under no pressure which she insisted on putting in writing;
- the fact of Knox’s claim that she was aggressively interrogated for days, although she did not even have the status of a witness, and signed every page of every typed record of her mild, mundane and quite limited questionings;
- the fact that during Knox’s very unconvincing performance on the witness stand in July 2009 she admitted she was treated well and was not abused;
- the fact that when Amanda Knox rang Meredith’s mobile telephones, ostensibly to check on the “missing” Meredith, she did so for just three seconds - registering the call but making no effort to allow the phone to be answered in the real world
- the knife-fetish of Raffaele Sollecito, and his formal disciplinary punishment for watching animal porn at his university so far from the wholesome image portrayed;
- the fact that claimed multi-year kick-boxer Raffaele apparently couldn’t break down a flimsy door to Meredith’s room when he and Amanda were at the flat the morning after the murder but the first people in the flat with the police who weren’t martial artists could;
- the extensive hard drug use of Sollecito as told on by Amanda Knox;
- the fact that Amanda knew details of the body and the wounds despite not being in line of sight of the body when it was discovered;
- the lies of Knox on the witness stand in July 2009 about how their drug intake that night (“one joint”) is totally contradicted by Sollecito’s own contemporaneous diary;
- the fact that after a late evening’s questioning, Knox wrote a 2,900 word email home which painstakingly details what she said happened that evening and the morning after that looks *highly* like someone committing to memory, at 3.30 in the morning, an extensive alibi;
- the fact that both Amanda and Raffaele both said they would give up smoking dope for life in their prison diaries despite having apparently nothing to regret;
- the fact that when Rudy Guede was arrested, Raffaele Sollecito didn’t celebrate the “true” perpetrator being arrested (which surely would have seen him released) but worried in his diary that a man whom he said he didn’t know would “make up strange things” about him despite him just being one person in a city of over 160,000 people;
- the fact that both an occupant of the cottage and the police instantly recognised the cottage had not been burgled but had been the subject of a staged break-in where glass was *on top* of apparently disturbed clothes;
- the fact that Knox and Sollecito have feuded quite publicly ever since November 2007 and have shown far more anger toward one another than either has ever shown toward Guede;
- the fact that Knox and Sollecito both suggested each other might have committed the crime and Sollecito TO THIS DATE does not agree Knox stayed in his flat all the night in question;
- the fact of the bizarre behaviour of both of them for days after the crime;
- the fact that cellphone records show Knox did not stay in Sollecito’s flat but had left the flat at a time which is completely coincidental with Guede’s corroborated presence near the girl’s flat earlier in the evening;
- the fact that Amanda Knox’s table lamp was found in the locked room of Meredith Kercher in a position that suggested it had been used to examine for fine details of the murder scene in a clean up;
- the unbelievable series of changing stories made up by the defendants after their versions became challenged;
- Knox’s inexplicable reaction to being shown the knife drawer at the girl’s cottage where she ended up physically shaking and hitting her head despite being joyful earlier at the police station.
In conclusion
This list is not exhaustive. It goes”¦ on”¦ and on”¦ and on”¦ And yet, those supporting Knox will tell you that’s all made up, all coincidental.
Really? Does the weight of all that evidence sound made up to you?
If so, it must be the most over-rigged criminal case in the history of crime. Unlikely beyond all and any reasonable doubt.
The judge’s report explains why the jury found the defendants guilty. I truly expect you will be astonished at the amount of evidence if all you’ve done is watched a film or read a few press reports.
For any questions thereafter, please join us and post them on truejustice.org or perugiamuderfile.org . You’ll find here a host of good people who are all working on a totally volunteer basis in memory of the only victim of this crime.
Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher. RIP.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Italian Media Reporting Injunction And 100 Million Euro Suit Filed In NYC By Sollecito Defense Team
Posted by Peter Quennell
This above is the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York at 500 Pearl Street in downtown.
It is adjacent to the Borough of Manhattan Federal Supreme Court for which we posted an image previously. Italian media including the newspaper Il Giorno are reporting from New York that an injunction request to stop tonight’s showing of the Lifetime film has now been filed at this court by Sollecito’s defense team, with a request that damages for 100 million Euros (about $137 million) be awarded if Lifetime proceed tonight with the airing.
Most of Il Giorno’s long article describes scenes which may or may not be true and damaging and the possible effects on the appeal of Raffaele Sollecito, which has been showing some hints that it may depart from the appeal grounds of Amanda Knox - which to some extent, on the matter of alibis, it already has.
The Lifetime producer Craig Piligian has already spoken out that the film script followed the official record closely (especially the Massei report) and concludes with the verdict and various questions left open.
We should have more on this later today. We doubt that a Federal judge will grant an injunction to stop the airing of the movie, but not much in this case has proved predictable.
Andrea Vogt In New York Post Finds Lifetime Movie Fairish Though Hurtful To Kerchers And Ill-Timed
Posted by Peter Quennell
Andrea Vogt reminds us that the legal process is very exhaustive, very balanced and far from complete.
Also that Mr. Mignini is a reasonable person, that an extraordinary number of careful judges have been a party to the process, and that US State Department have monitored the case and not seen any reason to try to intervene - though it is doubtful they could have any influence over the judiciary.
During filming in Rome last fall, the Knox chattering classes speculated whether it would favor “innocentisti or colpevolisti” (the innocents or guilty). As the first clips emerged, everyone was upset. Producers clearly took factual liberties (in real life, Amanda and Raffaele didn’t attend the memorial vigil for Meredith, but in the film they do, for example).
But the communal outrage is nothing new. All the parties agree: it is inappropriate to air this film before completion of appeal. Knox was convicted of murder and sentenced in an Italian court based on the scenario of all three being involved, as described in the judge’s ruling. Lifetime attempted to re-enact this in their own way…
That said, the US State Department has been monitoring the case as more than two dozen judges have considered the evidence and determined (to varying degrees) that Knox was involved…
Unfortunately this case exists in a cultural time warp where fiction races ahead of fact. In the US, everything happens too fast; a film is thrown together in months. In Italy, everything happens too slow: a case can take seven years to get to the Supreme Court. The final judicial decision about who murdered Ms. Kercher and how is still years away.