Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Big Shot Across Bows Of Fifth Chambers: Charge Claims Several Illegalities By Marasca & Bruno
Posted by Our Main Posters
President Sergio Mattarella, right, might have the power to overturn Judge Marasca’s verdict
1. The Unexplained Delay Of The Sentencing Report
Judge Marasca and President Mattarella, a former judge, have similar reputations: they have both fought mightily to prevent bent outcomes.
It has been put about in Italian legal circles that Judge Marasca is not exactly in love with his panel’s verdict. We reported talk in Rome that he held out for several hours on 25 March against a majority faction led by Judge Bruno.
Perhaps he remains a captive of the majority in what might be a tainted court - if it is, it would not be the first tainted court in this case. The Hellmann court is considered as such, as quotes below indicate.
Almost with no exceptions, Cassation routinely reports its appeal verdicts both fast and briefly. Often the reports are presented within several weeks. and most of them come in at under 50 pages.
In Meredith’s case all of the previous Cassation reports came in well before their deadlines. The one that took the longest was the 74-page report of the First Chambers in 2013, annulling most of the Hellmann verdict.
That took 85 days. We are already 10 days beyond that. It will not be very long before the delay in the report really raises red flags.
2. Judge Marasca’s Post-Verdict Interview
Judge Marasca is well known for not giving interviews and for letting his court statements speak for themselves.
Seemingly aware that his court statement on 27 March was already being questioned, and by some ridiculed, he did give this interview to the reporter Fiorenza Sarzanini for Corriere. Key quotes from it.
A further process could not ascertain the truth about the murder of Meredith Kercher. The “proof used was so contradictory “it is impossible to overcome the doubts and inconsistencies…
The judges of the fifth section of the Court of Cassation were all agreed on canceling the sentence to 28 years and six months for Amanda Knox and Raffaele 25 years “without referral” [back down to the Florence court].
The panel chaired by Dr Marasca also considered “non-binding” the earlier ruling of the Supreme Court that in March two years ago ordered a new appeal trial [in Florence and annulled the Hellmann verdict]
These claims are contended in this new criminal complaint (see the Italian original here) and are rebutted most forcefully in the quotes from it below.
3. The Complaint In The Florence Chief Prosecutor’s Hands
On 28 May the criminal complaint was filed by the Perugia prosecutor Dr Mignini and two lead investigators against one of Sollecito’s lawyers, Luca Maori, together with a reporter and an editor of the Perugia weekly Settegiorni Umbria.
The interview and editorial comments sliming the prosecution and the investigators were published back in January, two months before the Fifth Chambers ruled. They might be seen as one of many attempts to poison public opinion and to lean on the courts - in this case, the Fifth Chambers, which had the appeal.
The narrative describes some nasty lies of commission and omission by Maori and the magazine staff. We wont repeat them here. Impactful on a much wider plane is how the complaint characterizes the investigation and the prosecution of the case, and the various attempts to bend courts and so bend outcomes of the case.
It is highly significant that this complaint was filed by a Florence lawyer and with the Florence court. The chief prosecutor for Florence and its region Tuscany has been quoted as scathing of the Fifth Chambers verdict, presumably seeing it as a slap in the face to his own team which contended the Knox-Sollecito appeal, and perhaps an attempt to take the powerful Florence court down a peg.
The Florence court had made a large number of documents available to the Fifth Chambers. As this narrative is highly relevant, the law would have required the Florence Chief prosecutor to forward it. We can presume then that all the Fifth Chambers judges have the document available and, as it sets up a polarity, quite possibly the First Chambers judges as well.
4. The Significance Of The Complaint’s Various Phrasings
If we notionally divide the document into five parts, part (1) explains the people named in the rest of the document and their respective roles, parts (2) and (3) describe the main elements of the very complex legal process and mistakes that were made by the Hellmann court and the Fifth Chambers; and parts (4) and (5) go into detail about the case against Maori and his interviewer and editor.
The excerpts below are from parts (2) and (3). Anyone involved in the legal process would see rather rapidly that parts (2) and (3) could constitute a blueprint for legal action against the Fifth Chambers (such legal action is now allowed) and could also constitute a petition to President Sergio Mattarella, the head of the Italian justice system, who has the power to overrule a Cassation outcome.
[1] it appears necessary to highlight the circumstances, in fact and in law, left in the shadows by the interview and which render even more serious, frankly incomprehensible and above all without any justification on the basis of the complex course of proceedings, the defamatory statements contained in the article and the very grave and intolerable accusations launched with so much superficiality against the investigators and the 34 magistrates who had upheld the prosecution’s case against the 11 who had doubted it.
Noted above are the many lies of omission (some are listed below; we have a long list pending) that tend to be typical when the defenses and those who were in the dock and their supporters describe the case. Also noted are the 34 magistrates who handled elements of the case and did not abort the process. See the examples here and here.
[2] The two accused Knox and Sollecito had been arrested on the morning of 6 November 2007, under an arrest warrant issued by Dr Mignini, as the Public Prosecutor in charge, a decree promptly validated by the GIP Dr Claudia Matteini who had issued a precautionary custody order for imprisonment. The appeals of the suspects against this latter, as issued by the GIP on the request of the same Dr Mignini, had then been timely rejected by the Re-examination Court for Perugia and by the First Chamber of the Court of Cassation.
Noted above is one area subjected to numerous lies of omission. In fact many magistrates were guiding the process and the prosecution had no opportunity for independent initiative prior to trial. Dr Mignini did not have to do that interview with Knox, he did it at Knox’s own request, to give her another fair shot at clearing herself - which she failed miserably.
[3] As a consequence, the two remained in a state of preventative imprisonment until the decision of the Court of Assizes Appeal Court presided over by Dr Pratillo Hellmann, that is for almost four years and there had never been, by their defence, any application of revocation or substitution of the orders against the accused, Knox and Sollecito…
A legal omission by the defenses which might be considered an incompetent blunder, which contrasts strongly with Maori’s claim that the two were in effect being railroaded. The lawyers did not go the extra mile.
[4] the Court of Assizes at first instance, presided over by Dr Giancarlo Massei, with Dr Beatrice Cristiani as Recorder, at the end of a very long and thorough trial phase, had sentenced Mr Sollecito and Ms Knox for murder and the connected offences and Ms Knox, in addition, for calunnia against Patrick Diya Lumumba.
The trial was indeed long and thorough. Some of the most compelling evidence was behind closed doors - another area for lies of omission. Knox did herself great harm on the stand, sounding flippant and callous and not at all consistent or convincing, which ultimately cost her three years for calunnia. During the defense phase the lawyers had little to present and sessions were shortened or cancelled. There was much railing against Rudy Guede, who was not in court to answer back to it.
[5] At appeal level, the Court of Assizes Appeal Court - inexplicably composed of the President of the Social Security [Welfare] Chamber [Hellmann] and of an advisor specialised in the Civil Chamber [Zanetti]—despite it being that the President of the Criminal Chamber, Dr Sergio Matteini Chiari, was presiding over a bench; in any case there not being present a magistrate from the competent criminal chamber —had acquitted the two but had upheld the conviction of Ms Knox for calunnia, setting the penalty as a good three years of imprisonment.
This is still being investigated - did the defenses request of Chief Judge De Nunzio that the president of the criminal chamber Judge Chiari be replaced by the wrongly qualified Judge Hellmann? Judge Chiari (who resigned over this) has himself claimed so. And why was the wrongly qualified Judge Zanetti there?
[6] In the course of the proceedings there had been two experts nominated [by the Court] who, amongst other things, had submitted their report ignoring the documents attesting to the negative result of controls on the presumed contamination of the knife and of the bra-clasp, documents adduced instead by the Public Prosecutor. This should have entailed the sweeping away of [=the complete rejection of] the same expert report but the Court, presided by Pratillo Hellmann, with Advisor-Recorder Dr Massimo Zanetti, had ignored the grave error committed by the experts, an error which had been severely censured by the [Chieffi] Court of Cassation, First Criminal Chamber, in the decision handed down on 26 March 2013…
Investigation of Conti and Vecchiotti is also proceeding. They seem to have been bent and to have lied to the court - either that or remarkably incompetent. There is another quote strongly suggesting they were bent below.
[7] [Judge Chieffi] accepted almost all the grounds of appeals put forward by the Prosecutor-General and had annulled completely and definitively the acquittal decision, with remission (evidently upholding the grounds of appeal) to the Court of Assizes Court of Appeal of Florence which, in its turn, had fully confirmed the convictions of the Court of Assizes of Perugia.
There are many lies of omission about the annulment - one can find numerous quotes from the Hellmann court embedded in comments, articles and books - the Knox book goes on about how wonderful that appeal was without saying that none of it is of legal relevance now.
[8] the judgment of the [Florence] court remitted to would have been impugnable only for reasons not regarding the points already decided by the Court of Cassation, according to the very clear disposition of Article 628, second paragraph, Criminal Procedure Code. From this it follows that the Fifth Chamber of the Supreme Court, called on to decide the merits of the appeals brought by the accused against the decision of the court remitted to, would have had to consider as inadmissible the appeals presented in violation of the second paragraph of Article 628 Criminal Procedure Code and, in any case, would have had to rigorously conform with the points already decided by the First Chamber and with all the questions of law decided by the same,—the latter constraint, as constituted by the jurisdiction of sole legitimacy, being understood—, for defect pursuant to Article 606 Criminal Procedure Code and limited to the grounds proposed by the appellants (Article 609 Criminal Procedure Code).
Here is a translation of Article 628 of the Penal Code:
Impugnability of a ruling issued by a judge after remand
1. A verdict that had been issued by a court following a Cassation order of remand, may be impugned through a recourse at Supreme Court of Cassation if the ruling was issued on an appeal instance, and through the mean provided by law if was issued on a first instance level.
2. In any case a verdict issued by a court following a Cassation order of remand may be appealed only on the reasons that do not concern those that had already been decided by Cassation on the order of remand, or for not abiding to disposition of art. 627 paragraph 2.
The second paragraph of Article 628 clearly indicates the Fifth Chambers of Cassazione should absolutely not have accepted requests of appeal from AK and RS against the Florence verdict on those points that had been already decided by the First Chambers (the Chieffi court). Those points decided by the Chieffi court, as per Article 628, cannot be appealed. Questions about them should be inadmissible.
[9] the judgment of the [Florence] court remitted to would have been impugnable only for reasons not regarding the points already decided by the Court of Cassation, according to the very clear disposition of Article 628, second paragraph, Criminal Procedure Code. From this it follows that the Fifth Chamber of the Supreme Court, called on to decide the merits of the appeals brought by the accused against the decision of the court remitted to, would have had to consider as inadmissible the appeals presented in violation of the second paragraph of Article 628 Criminal Procedure Code and, in any case, would have had to rigorously conform with the points already decided by the First Chamber and with all the questions of law decided by the same…
the Court of Cassation cannot, therefore, ever adopt decisions on the merits and issue orders of acquittal under Article 530, second paragraph, Criminal Procedure Code.
...two chambers of the same Court of Cassation, the First (the one competent for proceedings in homicide matters, whose decision of annulment is definitive and who had identified and decided questions of law in a definitive and un-retractable manner) and the Fifth (who would have had to decide the appeals presented only on grounds of legitimacy of the defendants’, constrained by what had already been definitively decided by the First) have handed down two absolutely divergent decisions and the second had annulled the Florentine decision, positively excluding any remitting to another court and acquitting the defendants pursuant to Article 530, second paragraph, Criminal Procedure Code.
The Fifth Chambers seems to have clearly broken the law governing its allowed scope. It had no business getting into the evidence. If there was a perceived problem that should have been referred back down to Florence.
[10] from these starting points in fact and in law which are absolutely undeniable, it emerges that the course of proceedings in this case have been absolutely linear and respectful of the substance of the procedural rules up to and including the Florentine decision.
Well proven by the narrative. As we have frequently noted Knox was given six opportunities to liberate herself even before the 2009 trial began (try finding an equivalent of that in any other system) and failed all of them.
[11] the Court of Cassation, on the appeal of the Prosecutor-General of [the Perugia] district Court, had in a radical and definitive manner annulled the acquitting pronouncement and had remitted it to the Florentine district court because the same would adopt the consequent decisions of merit in the line of reasoning of the principles of law laid down by the First Chamber of the Supreme Court and of the points decided by it.
What the First Chambers said must stand. Surely all of the judges of the panel knew this very basic principle of Cassation. Be assured the First Chambers judges will be rubbing it in that this more junior panel has no right to reverse them.
[12] These principles of law are by now unmodifiable and unarguable: the [Fifth Chambers] , called on to decide the matter, as a “second opinion”, concerning the appeal of the defendants from the [Florence] judgment below, would have had to hand down a judgment fully within the “railway tracks” of the law, as fixed by the First Chamber, like the Florentine district court did, principles from among which we may cite:
Once again the emphasis is on how the First Chambers knew both the law and the case thoroughly, and the Fifth Chambers was seemingly adrift at sea.
[13] [Umodifiable principle] the principle, in fact the unfailing legal prerequisite of a Supreme Court decision, namely the fact that the Court is precluded from “trespassing into a re-evaluation of the compendium of evidence” (see the judgment of the First Chamber at page 40);
[14] [Unmodifiable principle] the principle of law of the total and holistic evaluation of the probative material, as opposed to the “parcelled-up and atomistic evaluation of the pieces of circumstantial evidence, taking them into consideration one at a time and discarded in terms of their demonstrative potentiality”, which characterised instead, in the negative, the decision of the Court presided by Pratillo Hellmann (see the decision of the same First Chamber at pp. 40 and 41… ). The ancient brocard “Quae singula non probant, simul unita probant” [”˜Those which alone do not prove, together do prove’], quoted on p 41 of the First Chamber’s judgment, consecrates in a definitive and unmodifiable manner this requirement of a global and holistic approach in which each individual piece of the jigsaw puzzle of reconstruction of the facts is considered together with all the others in their demonstrative synergy;
[15] [Unmodifiable principle] the principle by which the [Hellmann] court had run afoul of grave shortcomings and contradictory lines of reasoning and in glaring misrepresentations of the outcome, even in the attempted decoupling of the calunnia, by now definitively attributed to Ms Knox, with the result of masking from view the responsibility of the same in the homicide;
[16] [Unmodifiable principle] the principle according to which the testimony of the homeless person Mr Curatolo ought to have been evaluated on the basis of corroboration between his statements and the objective and unarguable circumstances emerging from the trial (such as the fact that the witness had with absolute decisiveness anchored the fact of having seen the two accused in the precincts of the basketball courts of Piazza Grimana, nowadays Piazza Fortebraccio, the evening before the arrival, the following day, at the Via della Pergola house of the men from Forensics in their white coveralls), rather than on the basis of Mr Curatolo’s social conditions and lifestyle (see the cited judgment of the First Chamber at page 50);
[17] [Unmodifiable principle] the principle according to which the definitive conviction of accomplice Rudy Hermann Guede ought to have been taken into account (no. 7195/11, published on 16.12.2010, it also from the First Criminal Chamber of Cassation), Guede having been held to have been extraneous to the simulation of burglary of a house. [A] habitation that, on the night of the murder, was solely at the availability of the victim and of Amanda Knox and from the statements made by the same Rudy before the Perugian district court, according to which Meredith was killed by the two co-accused (see the judgment at pages 55 and 56).
[18] [Unmodifiable principle] The principle by which contamination of the evidence is to be proved by the party invoking it and which, on the facts of the case, no evidence in support had been offered and which the [Hellmann} Court had seriously confused the abstract possibility of the fact with the averment of the fact (see the judgment at page 69).Umodifiable principle] The principle according to which it was a matter of a homicide committed by multiple persons, in concourse amongst themselves (see page 73 of the cited judgment).
Some brilliant legal arguing. This seems to really make it impossible for the Fifth Chambers to override these firm ruling of the First Chambers .
[19] [Only by ignoring all of the above, in reading the misleading Maori interview, one could be] induced into thinking that errors upon errors had been committed by the officers and agents of the police taskforce and by magistrates convinced of the prosecution case against Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito, then in fact of a “conversion” of the error into a knowing arbitrary act… One would have been led to think of investigators who, incurable in terms of these continual “denials”, falling prey to a kind of accusatory delirium which was by now running unchecked, would have continued to “persecute by prosecuting” two poor youngsters, contrary to any probative evidence, for the sole purpose of not seeing their initial reconstruction denied.
But see how Lumumba was checked out and released by the same team. Plus the same team worked on other cases which drew no accusations at all. It is significant to note that the Bongiorno & Maori team and Sollecito himself again and again dropped Knox in it, even in remarks made after the Fifth Chambers ruling on 27 March.
[20] for the readers it would have been difficult to be able to learn the details of the Kercher proceedings, [Maori and Lagana] launched themselves into making unbelievable, irresponsible statements, defamatory beyond any limit, statements which express an inexplicable rancour and bitterness towards the investigators in the Kercher case, from which, for the rest, especially Advocate Maori had given proof of from the start itself of his defence of Raffaele Sollecito
Maori falsely ascribed the “satanism as motive claim” to Mignini and seems to have been a party to other dirty tricks and loaded statements. At this point of the complaint the Curatolo testimony and knife evidence is re-emphasized as valid for their purposes and never undermined by the innuendo of the defenses.
[21] Maori adds, repeating a singular idea repeated many times in the course of the proceedings and put to the Prosecution as the most significant expression of the error committed by the investigators: the guilty party, Rudy Hermann Guede, had already been secured by justice. Why continue to investigate the other contenders, when it had been found that it was Rudy who, no one knows why, would have been the sole killer and whose presence would have been incompatible with any accomplices?
As mentioned above, Guede was not at the trial in 2009 and so the defenses could freely rant on about him. Although some witnesses were devoted to trying to prove him a bad guy who must have acted alone, it went nowhere. The jury visit to the cottage showed them how ludicrous it was to argue that anyone would choose THAT window to break in.
[22] Laganà knows nothing about the proceedings and plainly ignores: the calunnia by Ms Knox against Lumumba, the mise-en-scene of the burglary (which could have been realised only by someone who would have been afraid of becoming involved in the investigations), the genetic material of Ms Knox found a little bit below the handle of the knife and that of the victim in proximity to the point of the blade, the genetic profile of Mr Sollecito found on the clasp of Meredith’s bra, the systematic lies of the two, the traces of mixed blood of Knox ““ Meredith and the print of Sollecito’s foot stained with blood on the small mat in the bathroom next to the room where the murder happened, the traces revealed with Luminol, of the bare feet of Amanda and Sollecito, the witness who sees the two between 21.30 and 23.30 in Piazza Grimana, a couple of dozen metres from the murder scene, and Rudy’s accusations, just to mention a few examples.
Once again we see the theme common throughout the narrative of noting copious lies of omission - vital things simply left out which dont suit Lagana’s apparent purpose.
[23] [Maori] launches accusations against the press [although] the accused were able to benefit from a systematic information process in their favour and without any contradiction. One can see the case of, for example, the programme “Porta a Porta” which, in the months immediately preceding the Fifth Chamber judgment, had interviewed only Sollecito or his family and consultants, blatantly ignoring any requirement of an even balance, which instead had occurred previously, and all this in a programme on the public network..
This describes how even some arms of the Italian media became tainted and partisan and how the court officers were forbidden by the code of conduct from offering the kind of contradiction and rebuttal very common on American TV.
[24] Unfortunately, this procedural matter has been marked by pressures (often accompanied by menaces) and defamations which the investigators, themselves as well, have suffered in the media, by a very serious activity of disinformation and from serious attacks on the personal and professional reputation of the investigators by numerous organs of information especially in the United States (like in fact CNN), [and] by the extremely challengeable behaviour of experts who, beyond having “forgottten” the existence of negative controls, had been seen by Dr Mignini (and, according to what has been said to him, also by the biologist at Scientific Police headquarters Dr Patrizia Stefanoni), to be having a long conversation and in a “private” manner, with the defence lawyers of the accused, in particular with Advocate Maori, before the hearing in which the experts were to be examined and cross-examined had started. This had happened in particular on two occasions, both in Piazza Matteotti, in front of the law courts building, one time in front of the main entrance and a second time, further back, in the direction of Via Oberdan, while [on a third occasion] Dr Stefanoni and Dr Comodi had seen them together, amongst the various defence lawyers for the accused, in a bar..
This illegal mingling of supposedly impartial court-appointed consultants with the defense teams, described in public writing here for the first time, should have been enough to see Conti and Vechiotti dismissed as consultants from the case, and further down the road facing charges.
[25] there are letters addressed to Dr Mignini, the first on paper with letterhead from the Supreme Court [sic] of the State of Washington (in which place is found Ms Knox’s city of residence, that is Seattle), on the part of judge Michael Heavey (now in retirement after having undergone a disciplinary proceeding for having used Washington State Supreme Court letterhead in a “private” letter addressed to his Italian counterparts) which turns out to have been written also to other magistrates involved, under various roles, in the proceedings and which claimed, with absolutely inconsistent reasoning, the innocence of Ms Knox, asking his Italian colleagues in a pressuring way to “acquit her”; or the highly contentious and clumsily inexpert comments of satisfaction concerning the judgment of the Court presided by Dr Pratillo Hellmann, by authority of the Government of the United States, as, to cite a couple of examples, the then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and, above all, with repeated interventions in the proceedings under way, Senator Maria Cantwell, of the State of Washington
Failures in fact checking shows up the very one-sided nature of American politics and media coverage. Judge Heavey even wrote to the Presidents of the US and Italy and copied those letters to Congress. Italian court officials are highly restrained from response to protect themselves. Even now many Italians officials dont even know what was being said in English about them and what they were being accused of.
[26] All this evidences the very particular climate in which the proceedings unfolded, especially that of the first appeal, introduced by a summary by the Recorder Dr Massimo Zanetti in which the latter was not at all worried about affirming that in the proceeding that was then being opened the only certain thing was the death of Meredith Kercher, a phrase matching the one that the Recorder of the Fifth Chamber of the Supreme Court, Dr Paolo Antonio Bruno, pronounced according to what was referred to Dr Mignini by an advocate for the civil party.
What a remarkable coincidence. In the case of both statements this is not in accordance with the Italian appeals code. Frequent examples were quoted above of how the Fifth Chambers must accept the First Chambers rulings as givens, and the First Chambers in 2013 in effect ruled in annulling Hellmann that no appeal should be a whole new trial lacking the rather key prosecution part. Note that in March 2015 the Fifth Chambers heard at length from defense lawyers who had been seven years on the case - but no prosecutor from Perugia or Florence was even invited to be there.
5. And In Conclusion
This was a VERY solid case. As is said there, all the lists of evidence in the quotes above could have been longer. Here is a much longer list. Cardiol’s great four-part series on Certainties contains a long list. We have posted various other such lists of evidence, a list of hoaxes, and numerous lists of false claims, and many Powerpoints, and many questions for Sollecito and Knox. Plus even more lists via our right column here.
So it looks like the verdict could become unglued. Italian courts work to some extent on precedent and a tainted verdict could be a very bad precedent. Other prosecutors and judges will be getting similar messages to the judges, not least the judges of the First Chambers which normally handles the murder appeals.
Please read the posts on the fight for legitimacy here and here for more context to all of this.
Posted by Our Main Posters on 06/30/15 at 08:57 PM in The officially involved, The prosecutors, The defenses, Supreme Court, Appeals 2009-2015, Nencini Report, Cassation 2015
Comments
Awesome, as always. 😊
Posted by Tina on 07/01/15 at 08:48 AM | #
Superb! Thank you!
I will comment as soon as I can!
Posted by JohnQ on 07/01/15 at 09:27 AM | #
The golden rule: he who has the gold, makes the rule.
Posted by chami on 07/01/15 at 10:33 AM | #
An excellent exposure of the rot set into this case, thank you! I hope that these criminal charges worry those who deserve to be worried and that we are now on the path to overturning this disgusting verdict. The day Knox and Sollecito finally disappear into their cells will be a good one and I have faith in this happening.
Posted by MHILL4 on 07/01/15 at 11:12 AM | #
Nice one.
I like this further quote from the complaint:
“The Fifth Chamber’s reasons have not yet been handed down and we await their contents becoming known. It cannot be denied, in any case, that the decision of the Fifth Chamber, is a decision that is not only absolutely unforeseeable and anomalous but that it positively constitutes a unicum [singular object in defiance] of the jurisprudence of the Court of legitimacy.”
It’s no surprise really that there’s a delay in releasing the rationale (if there could be anything that might be even remotely so described for the “thinking” behind the verdict). They’ve got themselves a bloody unicum, no less; I imagine there’s a lot of coffee being consumed - and head scratching going on - among the, ahem, venerable judges as they try square the circle. That’s assuming they understand and care about the problem of course.
On the other hand, maybe the judges are so incompetent and/or corrupt that they don’t give a hoot about notions of legitimacy and are happily sitting around sipping vino until, in their own good time, they feel like releasing a report which was prepared weeks ago. (They will know full well that any tardiness can be misconstrued as being painstaking and wise.)
Posted by Odysseus on 07/01/15 at 02:41 PM | #
A marvellous post. Many thanks to all who contributed. That little seed of hope I’ve been feeling has taken root and the green shoots of justice in this case are now searching for the sun. Every passing week, hope gets stronger. Some luck along the way may be needed but the truth, as far as we can ever know it due to the lies and obfuscation by the three murdering scumbags, will out. I believe that now.
Posted by davidmulhern on 07/01/15 at 03:59 PM | #
Yes, as a case precedent - i.e., no other Supreme Court bench in Italian history has ever made such a verdict before, based on findings of, “Guilty” at the trial and again, at the appeal - the key phrase is, “it is a bad precedent”.
In fact, “bad precedent” is an understatement: it absolutely stinks to high heaven! The stench of decay and corruption hovers over the current Fifth Chamber like bloodsucking vultures covered in carrion.
Imagine it’s allowed to stand. Every two-bit mafioso will be pressurising their barrister to appeal, citing Knox, Sollecito v Italian State, on the legal grounds, “Who cares evidence was overwhelming, we can still get out of jail legally, through a malleable Supreme Court judge. They cannot refuse, as it is case law.”.
Sicilian-born Avv Giulia Bongiorno, from the home of the mafia, will become a multi-billionaire with this new criminals’ opt out clause.
Posted by Slow Jane on 07/01/15 at 04:33 PM | #
Please excuse me for asking a very stupid question, but why did this case not get reassigned to the 1st Chamber after the Florence verdict? 1st Chamber knew the case and had issued strict guidelines under which Nencini had to work.
Why send the bloody case to someone else? How stupid can you get?
Posted by Smacker on 07/01/15 at 04:54 PM | #
Smacker is really onto something here. I guess he wont be the last one to ask!
The First Chambers did handle the 2007 appeal which resulted in this, scroll down to the top of Catnip’s translation where the judges and division are named.
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/the_knox_interrogation_hoax_16/
The First Chambers also ruled on the Guede appeal (denied) and the prosecution appeal against Hellmann (approved).
One quote in the complaint does sort of say the Fifth Chambers was the wrong court, though everybody in law in the long run wants to keep the Supreme Court on their side.
[9] ...two chambers of the same Court of Cassation, the First (the one competent for proceedings in homicide matters, whose decision of annulment is definitive and who had identified and decided questions of law in a definitive and un-retractable manner) and the Fifth (who would have had to decide the appeals presented only on grounds of legitimacy of the defendants’, constrained by what had already been definitively decided by the First) have handed down two absolutely divergent decisions
Thanks Smacker, sharp eyes.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/01/15 at 05:51 PM | #
@Smacker
Others may have more of a clue on this than me but if an experienced criminal-case judge like Chiari can be replaced (to general surprise) by someone like Hellmann, who had limited criminal-case experience, and then the Fifth Chamber’s verdict 3+ years later is described as “absolutely unforeseeable and anomalous” we may reasonably come to the conclusion that there is more than stupidity at play here.
Posted by Odysseus on 07/01/15 at 06:30 PM | #
Hi Slow Jane
Great point about the danger of a bad precedent rippling on and on. Funny but true. This is why the Fifth Chambers increasingly seems on an island alone.
Yes she has sort of corned the market you describe though there was some hint a year or two ago that she wanted to make damaged women her clients of choice.
Also noted is the town in the Dominican Republic where Sollecito holed up in in 2014. Google Sollecito and Montreal, it is said to be those relatives’ hidey-hole.
There’s no proof to our knowledge that “the real thing” has had a finger in the pie or even knows about the case.
But about fellow travelers and useful idiots who do play a role there is something of a list. That is not lost on the prosecution in this case.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/01/15 at 06:33 PM | #
Although Fifth Chamber SCC’s Motivazione has been improperly withheld, this Complaint mentions the Chamber 12 times, and although Knox is not listed as a Defendant in this Complaint, she is mentioned 22 times.
Posted by Cardiol MD on 07/01/15 at 07:06 PM | #
Theres a link now in the Conclusion to the first of Cardiol’s excellent lists.
Maybe this post should be put into Italian as all the raw material and good advice came from there.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/01/15 at 07:25 PM | #
Well - my response to smacker (why did it get assigned to the 5th section and not the 1st) - is that Bongiorno argued in the ricorso after Nencini’s verdict that it should be heard by ‘the sezioni unite’ of the cassazione.
This implied she wanted it treated as a constitutional issue. Personally I think she was trying it on, but maybe (without enough forethought) the schedulers said you can’t have the whole court, but we’ll give you the 5th. That wasn’t (on the face of it) an unreasonable crumb to throw her.
Anyway - one fundamental comment has got to be correct; further delays are bound to raise eyebrows everywhere, and the longer the delay the higher the eyebrows.
Posted by Sallyoo on 07/02/15 at 12:05 AM | #
and, Sallyoo…....who gives a shit about the victim?
Posted by Smacker on 07/02/15 at 12:56 AM | #
What John Q said. Awesome post. I read it in awe this morning after a way too long night online, can’t do it justice without more sleep.
First impressions: Hallelujah for Mignini launching this through Florence against the myopic stance of Maori and the squirrely reasoning of Hellmann.
Thank goodness the complaint shows the hop skip and jump that Cassation’s 5th then made to leapfrog over long established principles of law. They seemingly enlarged their remit or perhaps have turned their backs on safeguards and principles, while overreaching.
As Attorney for Kerchers Frank Maresca said, their ruling is “drastic”.
I tried to search Maori, isn’t he a blood relative of the Sollecito clan? None of the Sollecitos seem to be able to help one another.
The complaint paints a full color picture of the case. It takes things out of the shadows that were hidden wrongly by breathtaking omissions.
It complains that overriding principles of law were crashed into a mountain of illogicality. Why? Well perhaps due to clothes or a wadded up blanket smashed down into an aileron.
It seems only right to see Judge Heavey censured in this complaint for his heavy-handed interference in matters he knew little about. His dubious letters on court letterhead created their own falsehood. He made it clear he was ruled by blatant partiality and friendship for the defendants not an honest search for the truth. Then he ran around to every Rotary Club in town.
His audacity was merely par for the course for the entire Knox PR campaign, stirred up by the Melloxes and the Moores (think of them calling BR Mull’s family to intimidate a doctor!)
Seattle Prep prejudices not to mention money poured out to Marriott for a one-note cantata in A flat. “no evidence of Foxy in the murder room” repeat like a mantra that simple-minded statement for seven years.
Then self-proclaimed experts on DNA and broken glass patterns and criminal profiling a la FBI flocked to throw their “objective” findings at the Italians. The clown show crossed the ocean to berate the labwork. The clowns decided luminol footprints detecting blood had never been heard of in the U.S.
Then there was Anne Bremner the lawyer quipping about the supertanker needing to be turned around and her Women in Ink, her TV appearances racing against Nancy Grace, then her brother’s “Before You Take That Pill” blog.
We saw Mr. Wright raising $$$ for an Amanda Knox scholarship at Seattle Prep long before the court ruled on her guilt or innocence. He also put on panel discussions at UW to tell the world Amanda was innocent, Candace Dempsey attending and Steve Moore. The frenetic Mrs. Moore was still somewhat restrained at that time, still grieving the Pepperdine job loss after Hawaii trip payout.
Closer to the action in Italy was a rumor of good ole boys’ Masonic network and Dr. Sollecito trying to make water run uphill. Since the doctor lived in Bari in the south I guess by north he meant uphill to Rome. He specified it would do so because of “money”. He worked very hard to wash up the mess his boy made, a lot of water was needed, an aqueduct. Raffaele learned a lot about cleaning.
Posted by Hopeful on 07/02/15 at 03:12 AM | #
Great post @Hopeful. I think it can safely be filed under the “acerbic wit” section. All after little sleep too. Impressive my friend!
Posted by davidmulhern on 07/02/15 at 01:22 PM | #
Google search engines have captured the criminal complaint with the Florence court posted here not only in English, but more importantly, for the first time, in Italian.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/02/15 at 04:02 PM | #
New readers asked for links to our lists of evidence mentioned in the first para of the Conclusion so here it is again with hyperlinks.
This was a VERY solid case. As is said there, all the lists of evidence in the quotes above could have been longer. Here is a much longer list. Cardiol’s great four-part series on Certainties contains a long list. We have posted various other such lists of evidence, a list of hoaxes, and numerous lists of false claims, and many Powerpoints, and many questions for Sollecito and Knox. Plus even more lists via our right column here.
One readers specifically asked how to find all the Powerpoints, and the link to go to see all of them (21) is there above. Here is a masterlist which we will make “clickable” and post again soon.
Powerpoints #1: A CBS-Trashed Witness In Fact Looks Very Credible
Powerpoints #2: A Comprehensive Guide To The Relevant Locations
Powerpoints #3: A Minute By Minute Visual Guide To The Events On The Night
Powerpoints #4: A Very Odd House, In A Very Odd Location
Powerpoints #5: A Graphical Tour Of The Crime Scene Itself
Powerpoints #6: Trace Evidence Seems To Confirm More Than One Perpetrator At Scene
Powerpoints #7: DNA Evidence - A Very Clear Intro To A Vital Subject Here
Powerpoints #8: Forced Entry Via Filomena’s Window Fails The Giggle Test
Powerpoints #9: Defense Claim That AK And RS Couldn’t Have Disposed Of Meredith’s Phones Is Wrong
Powerpoints #10: The DNA Evidence May Be A Tough Mole To Whack
Powerpoints #11: Countering The Spin By The Defenses On The Recent Cottage Break-in
Powerpoints #12: Telling Evidence Against Sollecito The Experts Seem To Have Got Absolutely Right
Powerpoints #13: 150 Questions For The Defendants They Incerssantly Avoid
Powerpoints #14: The Telling Case Of The Doctored Footprint
Powerpoints #15: Justice For Meredith - The Thoughts Inspired By Two Mountains
Powerpoints #16: We Now Examine The Compelling Evidence For The REAL Railroading From HellPowerpoints #17: Why The Totality of Evidence Suggests Knox And Sollecito Are Guilty Just As Charged
Powerpoints #18: Katie Couric Interviews Raffaele Sollecito! We Already Have A Sneak Preview!!
Powerpoints #19: Placing The Noisy Claimant Doug Preston In The Hot Seat
Powerpoints #20: On Contradictions, Here Preston Contradicts Preston
Powerpoints #21: Diane Sawyer’s Very Tough Interview With Amanda Knox: ABC’s Sneak Preview
Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/02/15 at 04:23 PM | #
@davidmulhern, Thanks a bunch. This TJMK Main posters discussion of the Florence complaint spells out the lucid reasoning and long memory of the case. The complaint reasons far and wide and infallibly.
Thrust of the Complaint (as an amateur here understands it):
The First Chamber, the Chieffi court, had already decided some points and as per Article 628 of crim code, those points cannot be appealed. Those points cannot be appealed! Yet they were appealed.
So the complaint demands a restoration of principle and a return to the railroad tracks of law and boundaries, no court overstepping or undermining another.
Fifth Chamber did not respect this division of power and did not try to conform their decision to the First Chamber’s judgment at all.
Instead Fifth Chamber made an end run around everything that the Florence court, also the prior courts, the many magistrates and even the First Chamber of Supremes had established.
The decision of the First Chamber should have been held inviolable or as paragraph 9 says: “definitive and un-retractable”. Because this principle was brainwaved away the 5th Chamber steamrolled over protocol with the lamentable effect of then pronouncing “two absolutely divergent decisions”. To add to that irregularity they not only annulled the Florence decision but then blocked any further appeal action. So they acquitted the defendants and closed the process, halted it with the dust of error still blowing in the wind.
All of this 11th hour twisting of customary law and procedure is highly irregular.
Point 10 above states, allow me to paraphrase, that there was no need for such 5th Chamber contortions of logic and procedure, no need at all if things were being handled objectively, because at every step along the way the defendants’ rights had been carefully protected during the entire “course of proceedings”, a course that was always “absolutely linear and respectful of…the rules…up to and including the Florentine decision.”
A worthy gloss that TJMK Main Posters add here is the reminder that Raffaele and Knox’s rights were respected “Knox was given 6 opportunities to liberate herself even before the 2009 trial began” {Point 12}
The trial was long and thorough. The complaint reiterates that MANY magistrates guided the process, not just Mignini. And rather than allow any leaning towards the prosecution or showing false bias toward the prosecution, Mignini even bowed to Knox’s early request for another interview to allow her latitude to extricate herself from the charge. Rather than this interview with Mignini clearing Knox or casting her in a better light or allaying suspicion at least a bit, she failed at it.
Later she took the stand in Perugia and she set herself back again in public opinion. She had the right to spontaneous declarations during the trial, she could stand up and shout out any truth she wanted without fear of being cross-examined on anything she said.
She wasted this opportunity and chose instead to mention trivialities and sex toys. I say trivial compared to the death of a fellow student, although of course Knox’s aim was on the surface to clean up her reputation. Omigosh, so that’s your approach? better not to mention and draw attention to such devices during a sex crime trial. Her lawyers must have been embarrassed, though hardly shocked.
Knox appeared in my opinion in Perugia courtroom when she testified, to present a false and coquettish naivete with a very thin civility spraypainted over a more pronounced earthy and very real arrogance and natural impatience born of self-centeredness. The exact opposite of Meredith.
She pretended on the stand to become an open book of cooperation and youthful effort to please the judges, jury and truth-seekers and to provide them with details to prove her innocence. All the while any blindman could see in her face, her tone of voice and body language and verbal responses that she actually had a more basic personality of defiance, rule-breaking, and longstanding sense of entitlement. She let slip a casual disregard and contempt for the victim.
She revealed how little she was abashed even after months of opportunity for retrospect and reflection, unabashed by her grossly disrespectful displays of calisthenics and snuggling and stuck-out tongue toward the police, the victim’s grief-stricken friends at the Questura in Perugia right after Meredith’s violent death.
Again in my opinion Knox showed impatience on the stand for the sober procedures. She used waving hands in a carefully tailored act to pretend to be Italian in her mannerisms while having to make an effort to hide her irriation at her own Italian interpreter.
The flamboyant actress resented any leash or restrictions. We expected to see her blow kisses to the court observers, we saw many a grinning entry. The latter might be excusable as childishness and the flush of relief to be out from the cell among family. But on the stand she had a chance to prove her mettle and her innate innocence and even some sympathy for the dead woman, even a little, and failed. Knox did a careful job of a few things, mostly in the form of omissions and casuistry. She did rein herself in more than normal but it was not enough to convince the discerning. She proved she was easily provoked and anything but sad about Meredith’s demise.
This stage she found herself on in the first court gave her the platform to spout obvious lies and frequent forgetfulness.
She could not even recall the very odd and urgent phone call made to her mother in the middle of her mother’s deepest sleep. This forgetfulness was not caused by duress or police slapping her or insisting on their scenario. The important call was made while Knox was at perfect liberty. A call timed right after Meredith’s death and for which phone records exist. At the mention of these, Knox became snippy.
She insisted on pleading confusion and uncertainty while expecting all listeners to excuse her for substituting fantasy and the use of her imagination for reality. Suddenly there were no clear answers when she was asked hard questions.
This trend revealed Knox to be more calculating than confused and forgetful like most common criminals who suddenly get amnesia about the time and date of the crime and where and what they were doing.
These remarks don’t begin to do justice to the document from Florence which shows Mignini’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the case and his patience to pursue when legal virtue is in crisis. He and Florence attorneys have presented a real challenge to anyone who doubts their essential grasp of the case and their impartiality.
Well, it’s another morning here, let me grab a second cup of stronger tea. After reading this post and considering all that has occurred since 2007 my hat is off to almost all attorneys. They must have a lot of gray matter to get through law school, not to mention the demanding rise to judgeship.
This Florence complaint is an infallible refutation of strangely Knox-like reasoning that should not be behind the 5th Chambers’ decision.
TJMK Main Posters have distilled it even further to show its powerful import.
Posted by Hopeful on 07/02/15 at 05:28 PM | #
Hopeful’s casting for her ship of fools tragedy is really spot-on. Great work.
The criminal complaint looks like a real shapeshifter. It is being widely and approvingly read in Italian legal circles. Like a neutron bomb its effects should ripple further and further for ages.
It already seems known from the inside how the Fifth Chambers was affected and the criminal complaint against Maori (which is now Googlable in both Italian and English) does seem to have the Fifth Chambers in a total bind. Does it decide to try to overrule the First Chambers illegally? If so does the CSM step in to investigate this illegality?
The criminal complaint also for the first time openly says there was corruption in the appointment of Hellmann and the behavior of C&V, and Florence investigators are already pursuing those leads. Mentioned also in the complaint are various others (including the fatuous Heavey at some length) who could down the road see themselves officially rebutted.
And Knox not only has to face imprisonable charges for calunnia #2 but she will soon be on trial for her book alongside Sollecito. What is in those English-only books is not yet known to Italians but Sollecitos book in particular is rabidy anti-Italian in tone, see this post for example:
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tj ... our_smear/
Sollecito seems set to see any temporary popularity really plummet.
We know of other trials are proceeding or contemplated - none of them for simple libel or slander, these are all led by prosecutors. Cases won in Italy make it easier for cases to win in the Uk and Us and there is no shortage of willing legal manpower.
Why is this being taken so seriously? Well Google sollecito + montreal for results that are quite well known in Italy. Sollecito himself rubbed in that connection by staying in their hidey-hole in the Dominican Republic. Taking the justice system down a peg is something fellow-travelers have attemped a lot of but for years Italy has been the more winningest.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/02/15 at 06:32 PM | #
Another excellent post @Hopeful. Nobody needs a degree in psychology to see the blatant mendacity displayed by Knox each and every time she opens her mouth in public. I’ll wager that she was a pathological liar and fantasist long before Meredith met her gruesome end.
Her arrogance is astonishing given her limited intelligence but it is precisely this lack of intelligence that will ultimately be her undoing. A bright criminal will cover the bases, not expose them. To not even bother attending Meredith’s candlelit vigil in Perugia with everyone else would have been unthinkable to any criminal with a modicum of intelligence. It didn’t apparently occur to her that this might be a red flag. Somewhere a village is missing its idiot!
The Internet and social media are, in the main, wonderful things and testament to man’s ingenuity. Sadly, they can be fairly easily hijacked for nefarious purposes as we have seen with this case. Without them, I don’t believe Knox and her coterie of the credulous would ever have got the traction they needed to pull this off and she would be locked up where she belongs.
It’s to be hoped that the very medium that she used to achieve this perversion of justice will now be unleashed against her, with the help of Peter’s site and others, and a heinous wrong can finally be righted.
Posted by davidmulhern on 07/03/15 at 03:04 AM | #
Why does Andrea Vogt tweet that Cassation should have issued the reasoning after 30 days, when we’ve all been assuming 90 days?
Posted by Odysseus on 07/03/15 at 02:52 PM | #
Its not so much that we were assuming 90 days, its that Judge Marasca himself promised it in 90 days and we chose to take him at his word..
Somebody’s been dusting off the rules for this kind of case, it seems. The report is not even filed with the registry yet. Nearly 70 days overdue.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/03/15 at 03:01 PM | #
I have a few comments. I’ve taken my time with this post so that I could do the best job I could with it.
First, three quotes from “The Interview of Advocate Maori by Alberto Lagana’ and the “Settegiorni Umbria†Article’‘
The preamble and the list of principles of law definitively fixed by the First Chamber of the Court of Cassation were indispensable for accepting the extreme gravity of the affirmations attributable to the author of the article and to the Advocate, for their absolute gravity and superficiality, and the grave defamatory import and bad faith which emerges from the willing elimination from the narrative of elements which would have provided a picture of the investigations and of the various phases of the proceedings quite different to that supplied by the interview. If the contents of the same had been read, ignoring the now unalterable “brush-strokes†of the First Chamber of Cassation’s judgment, one would have been induced into thinking that errors upon errors had been committed by the officers and agents of the police taskforce and by magistrates convinced of the prosecution case against Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito, then in fact of a “conversion†of the error into a knowing arbitrary act and a continuing denial of this hypothesis, finding its verification in the course of the proceedings. One would have been led to think of investigators who, incurable in terms of these continual “denialsâ€, falling prey to a kind of accusatory delirium which was by now running unchecked, would have continued to “persecute by prosecuting†two poor youngsters, contrary to any probative evidence, for the sole purpose of not seeing their initial reconstruction denied.”
Then Maori adds, repeating a singular idea repeated many times in the course of the proceedings and put to the Prosecution as the most significant expression of the error committed by the investigators: the guilty party, Rudy Hermann Guede, had already been secured by justice. Why continue to investigate the other contenders, when it had been found that it was Rudy who, no one knows why, would have been the sole killer and whose presence would have been incompatible with any accomplices?”
In addition to this, and just to take a couple of examples, there are letters addressed to Dr MIGNINI, the first on paper with letterhead from the Supreme Court [sic] of the State of Washington (in which place is found Ms Knox’s city of residence, that is Seattle), on the part of judge Michael Heavey (now in retirement after having undergone a disciplinary proceeding for having used Washington State Supreme Court letterhead in a “private†letter addressed to his Italian counterparts) which turns out to have been written also to other magistrates involved, under various roles, in the proceedings and which claimed, with absolutely inconsistent reasoning, the innocence of Ms Knox, asking his Italian colleagues in a pressuring way to “acquit herâ€; or the highly contentious and clumsily inexpert comments of satisfaction concerning the judgment of the Court presided by Dr Pratillo Hellmann, by authority of the Government of the United States, as, to cite a couple of examples, the then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and, above all, with repeated interventions in the proceedings under way, Senator Maria Cantwell, of the State of Washington.”
I want to relate a story which I find to be uncanny. I had an online conversation with an American woman (not on any of the truth and justice websites).
This woman got all of her news from American television. She told me that Knox and Sollecito were innocent, and furthermore, that neither was at the cottage the night of the murder. The uncanny aspect is that she repeated Maori’s lies above almost verbatim.
Mignini said, “One would have been led to think of investigators who, incurable in terms of these continual “denialsâ€, falling prey to a kind of accusatory delirium which was by now running unchecked, would have continued to “persecute by prosecuting†two poor youngsters,contrary to any probative evidence, for the sole purpose of not seeing their initial reconstruction denied.”
This woman told the exact same story. Mignini and the investigators had no evidence. At some point, they realizes that they had nothing against Knox and Sollecito. However, they continued to maliciously prosecute the two because they did not want to admit that they were wrong. In her words, they wanted to “save face.” I find in uncanny that she believed this exact propaganda, years before Maori gave this interview, and after getting her news from Ameican television.
I quote Mignini’s second paragraph, likewise, because I have read countless racist posts from Americans who said (inanely) that they had a black guy, so would would the investigators look for anyone else?
My third quote is to note the, the highly contentious and clumsily inexpert comments of satisfaction concerning the judgment of the Court presided by Dr Pratillo Hellmann” by Hillary Clinton. I remember reading many posts saying that they doubted that Hillary Clinton would do this. Aside from being highly inappropriate, Hillary Clinton has a JD downfYale Law School, hands down one of the two best law schools in the US. There’s no excuse for her to have involved herself in this way.
Ultimately, I am thrilled that Mignini wrote this complaint. He has suffered more than any man should for nothing more than doing his job as a public servant. I’m delighted that he’s fighting back.plaint. He has suffered more than any man should for nothing more than doing his job as a public servant. I’m delighted that he’s fighting back.
Posted by JohnQ on 07/05/15 at 09:43 AM | #
Thanks a lot Peter for your precious post about “Procura della Repubblica di Firenze”, especially for Italian language!
It’s not easy find out good press information in my country especially about this case.Very interesting the Mignini statement.
Good work as usual.
Posted by Albi62 on 07/06/15 at 12:41 PM | #
On the subject of the current reforms to the Italian system which we have an interest in, Hugo on PMF dot Org reported this news.
Incidentally, not long after I suggested here that the system of automatic appeals should go, I was surprised to learn that the Court of Cassation apparently thinks the same. The ermines are recommending that automatic appeals be abolished, because they clog up the courts and result in a ridiculous case overload, particularly at Cassation itself.
There’s resistance to this, because people don’t want to be weaned off the drug of endless deferral, but, if it happened, the implications would be rather large. Grounds for appeal would have to be defined, there should be no more re-do’s, the role of the supreme court would be modernised, the ability of certain defendants to carry on judge-shopping till they get the result they want would be restricted and the old statue-of-limitations card wouldn’t keep getting played so often.
Good catch by Hugo. Minor tweaks like this and the Italian system will again be a world beater. I dont know any lawyer who is not on the whole extremely impressed by it. Polls show it remains the most trusted institution in Italy.
The Kerchers and justice for Meredith were very well served up to where De Nunzio replaced Judge Chiari with Judge Hellmann after the defense met with him “secretly”. Mignin describes how wildly unqualified Hellmann and Zanetti were and how they broke the law in numerous ways. Some system change is required there.
Jurors added nothing at the Hellman-level appeal and have a reputation of dumping on the jurors at first trial. They were hornswoggled by the CSI effect. Some system change is required there.
If the Nencini appeal had been referred back to the First Chambers we would now be staring at the just outcome. Some system change is required there.
And if the Fifth Chambers had not broken the law in two respects their verdict could not have been what it was and we would now be staring at a just outcome. Some system change is required there.
This is still playing out and for the resolute forces of justice looking pretty good. The Kerchers have immense power in a new law that allows them to sue the Republic of Italy to correct a corrupted outcome, though the Council of Magistrates and the Florence court have substantial powers also.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/06/15 at 03:56 PM | #
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.
Where next:
Click here to return to The Top Of The Front PageOr to next entry Rome Shocked - Seems Drafting Of Fifth Chambers Report With Poss Illegalities Not Even At First Base
Or to previous entry What No-Show Amanda Knox SHOULD Have Emailed Judge Nencini As Truthful Testimony in December 2013