Wednesday, January 23, 2019

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

Posted by Machiavelli



Dr Guido Raimondi, Italian, current president of the Court

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

1. A Weak Submission By Knox Team At Best

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Machiavelli on 01/23/19 at 04:00 PM in

Comments

By KrissyG. This comment below was first posted prior to the ECHR announcement of the findings.

***

This is the ECHR English summary of the appeal as they see it, with my comments:

Forthcoming judgments and decisions: The European Court of Human Rights will be notifying in writing 48 judgments and / or decisions on Thursday 24 January 2019.

Thursday 24 January 2019 Knox v. Italy (no. 76577/13)

The applicant, Amanda Marie Knox, was born in 1987 and lives in Seattle (USA).

The case concerns the applicant’s conviction and sentence to three years’ imprisonment for malicious accusation, in the context of criminal proceedings concerning the murder of her flatmate.

At the time, Ms Knox was 20 years old and had been in Perugia for about two months as part of her studies. She had found a temporary job in a pub run by D.L. She had been dating R.S., her boyfriend, for two weeks.

More like one week - Krissy.

On 2 November 2007, at approximately 12.30 p.m., the police went to the applicant’s flat and found Ms Knox there together with R.S., who had called the police

Not true - Krissy.

... to say that he had found a broken window and traces of blood in his girlfriend’s flat. The police forced open the door of the bedroom of the flatmate, M.K., a British student on a university exchange, and discovered her body. The young woman’s throat had been cut

No, it was not a cut throat.  It was a stabbed neck - two very different things - Krissy.

...and signs of sexual violence were apparent…. On 6 November 2007 the public prosecutor ordered the arrest of Ms Knox, R.S. and D.L., charging them with sexual assault and murder.

On 14 May 2008 Ms Knox was charged with making a malicious {false} accusation against D.L. The Assize Court {Judge Massei} found that Ms Knox had accused D.L. of her own accord while being fully aware of his innocence. In the court’s view, the applicant had sought thereby to direct the investigators away from her own responsibility and that of R.S.

The first part is true - perverting justice - but I am not sure Massei found it was because it was to save her own skin - it was a stand alone as I recall.

Ms Knox appealed. She alleged that a combination of psychological pressure, exhaustion and ignorance both of the procedures and of her rights had driven her to make a statement that was at odds with reality.

Of course she knew it was at odds with reality- Krissy.

In her submission, she had not been able to recall or to assess the facts.

No, all the ‘confusedly in my head I saw Patrick raping and killing Mez’ guff was her trying to preclude being found out as a liar, it’s a classic liar tactic.  A get out clause in case you are found out.  ‘I only said ‘I THOUGHT’ not that it was so.’  If she really hadn’t been ‘able to recall’ she would have just said, ‘I don’t know’. - Krissy.

On 3 October 2011 the Perugia Court of Appeal {Judge Hellmann} acquitted the applicant and R.S. on the more serious charges, while upholding the conviction for malicious accusation. After three years in custody, Ms Knox was released and left Italy for the United States.

Ms Knox appealed on points of law. In her view, the material element of the offence of malicious accusation was lacking in the case. The Court of Cassation {Judge Chieffi} quashed the acquittal and referred the case back to the Assize Court of Appeal. That court sentenced Ms Knox to a prison term of 28 years and six months for complicity in sexual assault and murder, and a further term of three years for malicious accusation. Ms Knox appealed on points of law.

The Court of Cassation {Judge Marasca} acquitted Ms Knox and R.S. on the charges of murder and sexual assault on the grounds that the “impugned charges were not made out”.

What?  It’s grounds were ‘a flawed investigation’ and ‘press influence and citing ‘insufficient evidence’.  Both the merits trial and the appeal found more than ample evidence that the main charges were well-founded - Krissy.

The Court of Cassation observed that the conviction for malicious accusation had already become final and that the sentence had been a prison term of three years.

Further criminal proceedings were brought against Ms Knox on another count of malicious accusation: she had accused the police officers who interviewed her, among others, of violence and threats against her. She was acquitted {by Judge Boninsegna’s court} on that charge.

On 16 December 2010 the Court of Cassation concluded that R.G. had been the perpetrator of the murder and sexual assault. He was sentenced to sixteen years’ imprisonment.

This is factually incorrect.  It found Rudy Guede had been *one of the perps* but not THE perp who dealt the fatal knife blow. ~Krissy

Relying on Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (c) (right to a fair hearing / right to legal assistance), the applicant alleges that she was not assisted by a lawyer during the interviews of 6 November 2007. She complains that the proceedings were unfair. Relying on Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (a) (right to be informed promptly of the accusation), she submits that she was not informed promptly, in a language she understood, of the nature and cause of the accusations against her. Relying on Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (e) (right to the assistance of an interpreter), she complains that she was not provided with a professional or independent interpreter during her police interviews of 6 November 2007 and that the police employee who assisted her had played a role of “mediator”, encouraging her to imagine hypothetical scenarios.

This is a clue as to what the ECHR are thinking of upholding.  It is a sleight of hand to imply that somehow in the meantime the real perp was convicted (R.G.) - Krissy

Relying on Articles 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) and 8 (right to respect for private and family life), Ms Knox complains that she suffered ill-treatment during a police interview of 6 November 2007. She says she was slapped on the head twice, was subjected to extreme psychological pressure and forced to speak at a point where she was incapable of showing discernment or willpower.

So you can see I suspect the ECHR has been manipulated into pushing a particular line, which rides roughshod over the facts found by the merits court in a meticulously fair and lengthy criminal trial.  The Boninsegna acquittal seems to be the hail mary they are going for, even though the Lumumba calunnia tial was nothing to do with him.  - Krissy

The wording by the ECHR of what the judgment will cover seems to indicate the direction of its thinking.

Posted by KrissyG on 01/24/19 at 02:44 AM | #

[Posted prior to ECHR announcement of the findings]

Great work Machiavelli and KrissyG.  So the Earth trembled… and delivered a mouse of an “appeal”. The prosecution laughed when they first saw how feeble it was. Never has so much been made of so little. No wonder the Knox team kept the “appeal” doc out of sight. Good career move, Marriott leaving the scene.

If Knox had remained in Italy in 2013 this “appeal” would never have been filed because she would have been in the loop with the jubilant Sollecito and Bongiorno chortling and cooking up the final fix. Judges Marasca and Bruno clearly considered this appeal a “bridge too far”

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/24/19 at 02:52 AM | #

[Posted prior to ECHR announcement of the findings]

Machiavelli refers to political aspects. After 5 years suddenly the ECHR case is on and not that long after Italy has a new coalition government of anti establishment and right wing parties. Has it received a push?

Bongiorno is now a minister in the coalition government responsible for regulatory reform. Could she be angling for a judgement that would give her leverage to enact some changes and, of course, retrospective vindication for her own reputation?

I have no idea what sort of man Dr Raimondi is but like Machiavelli I am allergic to magistrates from Naples.Indeed I am allergic to any Italian considering this case given the current political leadership in Italy.

If I was a betting man I’d go for the 29th January. Isn’t that the date of Trump’s (now cancelled) State of the Union address to Congress?

Posted by James Raper on 01/24/19 at 12:15 PM | #

Well, here we go, the summary of findings:

“Exception préliminaire rejetée (Art. 35) Conditions de recevabilité (Art. 35-1) Épuisement des voies de recours internes Exception préliminaire jointe au fond et rejetée (Art. 35) Conditions de recevabilité;(Art. 35-1) Épuisement des voies de recours internes;Partiellement irrecevable (Art. 35) Conditions de recevabilité;(Art. 35-3-a) Manifestement mal fondé;Non-violation de l’article 3 - Interdiction de la torture (Article 3 - Traitement dégradant) (Volet matériel);Violation de l’article 3 - Interdiction de la torture (Article 3 - Enquête effective) (Volet procédural);Violation de l’article 6+6-3-c - Droit à un procès équitable (Article 6 - Procédure pénale;Article 6-1 - Procès équitable) (Article 6 - Droit à un procès équitable;Article 6-3-c - Se défendre avec l’assistance d’un défenseur);Violation de l’article 6+6-3-e - Droit à un procès équitable (Article 6 - Procédure pénale;Article 6-1 - Procès équitable) (Article 6 - Droit à un procès équitable;Article 6-3-e - Assistance gratuite d’un interprète);Préjudice moral - réparation (Article 41 - Préjudice moral;Satisfaction équitable)”

Google translation:

“Preliminary objection dismissed (Rule 35) Conditions of admissibility (Rule 35 (1)) Exhaustion of domestic remedies Preliminary objection joined to the merits and rejected (Article 35) Conditions of admissibility (Article 35 (1)) Exhaustion of tracks domestic remedies: Partially inadmissible (Rule 35) Conditions of admissibility (Art 35-3-a) Manifestly ill-founded, No violation of Article 3 - Prohibition of torture (Article 3 - Degrading treatment) (Section material) Violation of Article 3 - Prohibition of torture (Article 3 - Effective investigation) (Procedural part) Violation of Article 6 + 6-3-c - Right to a fair trial (Article 6 - Criminal procedure Article 6-1 - Fair Trial (Article 6 - Right to a fair trial Article 6-3-c - Defending with the assistance of a defender) Violation of Article 6 + 6-3-e - Right to a fair trial (Article 6 - Criminal procedure, Article 6-1 - Fair trial) (Article 6 - Right to a fair trial e) Article 6-3-e - Free assistance of an interpreter) - Non-pecuniary damage - reparation (Article 41 - Non-pecuniary damage - Just satisfaction)”

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22002-12308%22]}

Posted by KrissyG on 01/24/19 at 12:35 PM | #

Here is the ECHR judgment summary, as an Acrobat document in six pages in English

http://truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/2019ECHRJudgmentKnoxVersusItaly.pdf

Seems that Machiavelli and KrissyG already nailed it. Thanks to Ergon for his dogged follow-up. James Raper raises a very interesting suspicion even though it was not Bongiorno’s appeal.

So the calunnia conviction stands, as it was not even appealed! One could navigate a battleship through the holes in the several pro-Knox findings which make little sense with the calunnia conviction still standing.

Do read this again at the same time, as it is based on trial documents the ECHR doesn’t seem to have bothered reading:

http://truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/2018KnoxRebuttal.pdf

It was predictable that Knox would get something, after ECHR asked for the Judge Boninsegna judgment (sentencing report) on the complaint by Questura staff against Knox’s repeated defamations of them.

As we were not eligible as a party at ECHR we could not rebut that sentencing report though it was very biased (Judge Boninsegna had been moved to Florence for being too chummy with the mafias further south).

It was factually very inaccurate and also not based on the numerous and excellent police and trial documents.

The foolish Judge Boninsegna was accidentally not appealed against by the Questura staff, as the appeal deadline had been a very short one.

Staff were then all very distracted by other work, and Mignini had anyway been wrongly associated and could have no comeback.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/24/19 at 04:44 PM | #

Here’s an example of a hole one could navigate a battleship through which flows from the errant Judge Boninsegna, not from trial documents:

In spite of her repeated complaints, no investigation into the alleged treatment had been forthcoming.

Oh? WHAT repeated complaints?

1. Her own lawyers forwarded none (Italian law requires them to do so if they believe their client).

2. They publicly said she was never hit.

3. She admitted at trial she was treated well.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/24/19 at 05:18 PM | #

Knox’s damages REQUEST was for 2.5 million Euros.

Today’s suggested award is 18,400 Euros. By ECHR precedents almost a joke.

Of course, Italy’s government and taxpayers are under no compulsion to pay that.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/24/19 at 06:10 PM | #

I’ve no doubt that there will be all sorts of different reports but my first port of call, the BBC, says -

1. Her rights to a lawyer and interpreter were violated.

2. The ECHR found that she was not slapped by the police and neither was she subjected to inhumane or degrading treatment.

3. In view of 1 above the state of Italy was ordered to pay her £9,050 (10,400 euros) damages and £6,960 (8000 euros) in costs.

Actually she had an interpreter but according to the BBC the ECHR found that the interpreter went beyond her remit by being too kind and “motherly” (for heaven’s sake)!

£9,050 damages is derisory and clearly reflects what the ECHR clearly considered to be no more than a notional violation of her rights. A slap on the wrists for not being sticklers for procedure, in other words, and Italy has more defensive guarantees than a lot of countries, including the USA.

Quite how the police are supposed to get on with keeping us safe is beyond me.

The calunnia conviction has not been called into question.

I’m with Peter and hope that she gets nothing until she has paid the 22,170 euros she was ordered to pay Lumumba.

Incidentally the BBC report has Knox responding by still burbling on about being interrogated harshly for 52 hours!

Posted by James Raper on 01/24/19 at 11:14 PM | #

I’m disgusted. I saw the AP report by Colleen Barry, this evening Jan. 24, 2019 on ABC7 NY Eyewitness online, the dateline is Milan, Italy.

It reports the Strasbourg, France ECHR ruling which says Knox has been given damages of $20,000 for “police failure to provide legal assistance and an independent interpreter” during her “interrogation”.

Italy argued that “the restriction of Ms. Knox’s access to a lawyer had not irreparably undermined the fairness of the proceedings as a whole.”

Knox complained against Anna Donnino, her interpreter. Knox was given a good interpreter!!! Who is to say any other interpreter chosen for her would have done a better or more objective job than Anna did?

Knox basically attacks Donnino for having made Knox imagine various hypotheses of the crime. Her complaint picks flaws with Donnino for being “a mediator and taking on a motherly attitude which was not called for in the circumstances.” My my my, what did they expect of Anna Donnino, she is not a lawyer for Knox with canny advice.

Knox complained against policewoman Rita Napolitano for harshness, bruskness…you can’t win with Knox. If you’re sweet, you’re trying to influence her to tell the truth, what a heinous act. If you’re mean, you’re engaging in a heinous act. Anyone who urges the truth to come out of Knox the liar’s mouth, is automatically bad.

ECHR believed Knox had “quickly and repeatedly retracted” her accusation against Lumumba. Ha! No she didn’t.

She wrote that she ‘stood by’ her account of his criminal actions at the cottage, but then with same pen she muddied the waters and equivocated that perhaps it was all a dream or some figment of her imagination, she wasn’t really sure if Patrick was there or not at the crime scene, much like she was not sure if SHE was there.

She used vaporous and deceitful wording to try to have it both ways, to write a vague retraction of an explosive accusation. She refused to write a clear or a firm retraction on purpose: so she could jump either way the wind blew. She did not clearly retract the accusation of Lumumba being the killer.

Oh my, can you believe Knox’s suave defense attorney, the elegant Carlo Dalla Vedova? He now says after ECHR he’s “considering whether to challenge the standing conviction for malicious false accusations” (against Lumumba). Don’t bother.

Mr. Smooth Vedova goes on to say, “I hope Patrick Lumumba will understand also through the outcome of this (ECHR) decision that she was put in a very difficult situation.” Wow. Just Wow. Patrick should be as gullible and blind and excuse all in the name of fair youth as the ECHR it seems. What’s Mr. Smooth saying? That just because Knox didn’t have a lawyer and her own personal pick of interpreters, that it was then fine and dandy if she pointed her finger at an innocent person and accused him of murder?

In other words, anything Knox said before she got an attorney was not to be held against her? It was fruit of the poisoned tree?

Yep, I think Mr. Carlo and Knox mean exactly that, because her blog in response to ECHR decision says the ruling “means that my slander conviction was unjust. I never should have been charged with, much less convicted of, slander,” she writes in blog.

I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know what to make of these arguments but Knox is a confirmed liar. Lumumba walks the earth as daily proof. As he said, despite his own terror when taken by police to the station and accused, he never started pointing fingers at others to get himself off the hotseat. He never said, “Maybe the American roommate did it, yes, she told me hated Mez and wanted to kill her, she told me that at Le Chic one evening, look at Knox she’s the killer!!!!!”

Lumumba never did anything cowardly like that, nor accused anyone else of the murder. He didn’t point a finger at anybody to accuse them of a crime he knew NOTHING ABOUT, and he had much more to fear and to lose than the unattached Knox. And because of her guilt ridden hysterics pointing at him he did lose his livelihood in Perugia. It was due to Knox’s mudslinging to save her own skin, that people distrusted him permanently after that. 

ECHR said Knox had not “sustained inhuman or degrading treatment” as she had claimed.

Posted by Hopeful on 01/25/19 at 03:32 AM | #

Predictably Amanda Knox and her supporters are spinning the ECHR judgement as a victory, hoping nobody notices that she remains a convicted criminal. The ECHR can’t reverse or quash verdicts.

The ECHR got some basic facts wrong: e.g. Knox and Sollecito didn’t call the police at 12:30pm, Amanda Knox wasn’t questioned at 5:45am, and she didn’t retract her allegation - which is something that multiple judges including even Marasca/Bruno pointed out in their reports.

According to the witnesses who were present at the police station, Amanda Knox was offered a lawyer, but she refused the offer. I don’t understand how her human rights were violated.

Anna Donnino pointed out she also suffered amnesia. She can’t be blamed for Knox repeatedly accusing Diya Lumumba of murder.

I didn’t see any mention of the Supreme Court’s most damning findings e.g. it’s a proven fact Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith was killed, she knew specific details about the murder, she lied repeatedly to the police and she washed Meredith’s blood off in the small bathroom.

Posted by The Machine on 01/25/19 at 08:47 AM | #

Just disgusting news.
 
Guilty Amanda Knox mentions Meredith (once), and in such a disposable way.  No feeling whatsoever.

I watched the King5 report about it, and they’re so bovine; not questioning it at all. 

I still believe justice will eventually come.

Posted by DavidB on 01/25/19 at 11:31 AM | #

Knox will be severely disappointed. She was claiming 240 times the amount of damages awarded. The greedy cow!

To be fair to the ECHR it is clear that the police had grounds for suspecting Knox of not telling them the truth and of concealing more than she was prepared to reveal to the police. That’s not to say that they thought she was responsible for the murder, but that they had reasonable grounds for believing that she was protecting the guilty parties, or at the very least perverting the course of justice by withholding information pertinent to the investigation. Sollecito’s statement that they had not been together that night and that he had been persuaded by her to lie amply backs up that suspicion.

Under Italian law their very strict defensive guarantees then kick in and it is not a question of whether she was offered a lawyer and declined one. Nor is it a question of the seriousness of the offence they were investigating, public safety with a murderer of students at large, or whether they feared that she might tip off the guilty or tamper with evidence, grounds for which could (though very unusually) permit the police in the UK (which is a member of the HR Convention) to interview without the suspect having access to a lawyer.

The Italian Supreme Court itself ruled pre-trial that she was a suspect. So she had to have access to a lawyer which the police should have provided. It seems to be entirely on that basis (excluding the crap about the interpreter) that the ECHR ruled that there was a violation, even though Knox was aware of the seriousness of the matter and had declined a lawyer when she first put her signature to the malicious accusation.

That doesn’t mean that her calunnia conviction was, as Knox claims, unfair. The ECHR has not so ruled, and the issue was fully canvassed at trial and subsequent appeals. Her conviction is definitive and the process by which that decision was made was perfectly fair. Hellmann actually increased her sentence for the calunnia. Every Italian court has stood by it.

This is what Knox wrote from prison -

“I’m sorry I didn’t remember before and I’m sorry I said that I could have been at the house when it happened. I was very stressed at the time and I really did think he was the murderer. I said these things because I was confused and scared. But now I remember that I can’t know who was the murderer because I didn’t return back to the house.”

Yea, well!

The issue, for Knox, would therefore seem to have been that, whatever she had actually said about it, she had not been able to remember whether or not she had really met up with Lumumba at the cottage. Would being “confused” and “scared” really bring on a sudden bout of amnesia that was only to dissipate many hours after making two statements, themselves interspersed by about 4 hours rest, to the police?

Come on.

Posted by James Raper on 01/25/19 at 02:53 PM | #

“Greedy cow”! Yeah, those in the Italian courts were astounded when they read Knox’s appeal to see she was after big bucks, rather than a retrial or reversal of the calunnia. The tiny award will hurt.

James also says this: “That’s not to say that they thought she was responsible for the murder, but that they had reasonable grounds for believing that she was protecting the guilty parties, or at the very least perverting the course of justice by withholding information pertinent to the investigation.”

One could add Knox’s telling conniption at the house when she saw the knives.

But she was not even officially a witness prior to the late-night session 5-6 Nov. All four of her sessions with police including that with Ficarra were to do with who might have visited the house and her status was that of someone with possible useful information - as the defences actually agreed at trial.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/the_knox_interrogation_hoax_12_proof_released/

Knox HIDES that all the time. It is damning for her. I like the rest of what James wrote.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/25/19 at 05:28 PM | #

If you are searching the site to get straight on Boninsegna, apologies, we are playing catchup on this.

We’ll have a translation and takedown of his judgement (worse than Hellman’s!) done soon. Here’s the Boninsegna timeline.

At trial in 2009, Knox trashed the Questura staff.

Under their terms of employment, they are required to set such matters straight. So they filed a complaint.

The mini-trial should have happened in Perugia and been no big deal.

But Knox lawyer Dalla Vedova (when Mignini was not present, one of Dalla Vedova’s numerous nasty tricks) got an ill-briefed judge to move the mini-trial to the Florence court, which had been giving Mignini a hard time (later totally wound back).

The judge also weirdly added Mignini to the complainants, to his surprise, as Knox had not then impugned him - she did in spades later, see this:

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/Netflixhoax_omitted_Amanda_Knox_Falsely_Accused_Dr_Mignini/

Boninsegna was a tainted judge, recently moved to Florence from the south to get him away from his mafia chums.

He obviously didnt read the trial docs, Like Marasca/Bruno of the Supreme Court, instead he largely lifted his findings (sometimes word for word) from the defense lawyers’ response.

So his report is full of wrong facts, which the ECHR now repeats.

His finding amazingly rejected the Questura staff’s complaint via those wrong facts and weird logic - he was the first to accuse them of being too motherly!.

It really should have been appealed and reversed or even annulled maybe. It would have been an easy shot - though try appealing “too motherly” as a low blow!!

But someone dropped the ball. And so the myriad false claims rattle on, as we see here.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/25/19 at 05:52 PM | #

Yet more on defense dirty tricks (Knox sure knew what she was doing involving RS and Guede, murder prosecutions rarely face THREE slippery legal teams.)

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/tjmk_wiki_translation_of_the_marasca_bruno_report_2/

Scroll down to the first box in this post of the Marasca/Bruno final findings, and you will see that Dalla Vedova and Bongiorno tried to get Cassation’s final ruling on the case put off until the ECHR ruled!! To quote:

And at the end [of the defense submission], a delay of the judgment is proposed while waiting for the decision of the European Court of Human Rights, following the presentation to the international judicial body on the appeal of 11.22.2013, for alleged violation of the right to an equal trial, according to the article 6 par. 3 lett. a/c ECHR; for alleged violation of defense rights, according to the article 48 par. 2 of the Chart of Fundamental Rights of the European Union; and for the violation of the prohibition on torturing, according to the articles 3 ECHR and 4 of the Chart of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The Supreme Court was buying none of it.  Here is how they shot that defense request down.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/tjmk_wiki_translation_of_the_marasca_bruno_report_3/

2. All the [defence] requests are clearly unfounded…

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

And also, a possible decision of the European Court in favor of Ms. Knox, in the sense of a desired recognition of non-orthodox treatment of her by investigators, could not in any way affect the final verdict, not even in the event of a possible review of the verdict, considering the slanderous accusations that the accused produced against Lumumba consequent to the asserted coercions, and confirmed by her before the Public Prosecutor during the subsequent session [ending 5:45], in a context which, institutionally, is immune from anomalous psychological pressures; and also confirmed in her memoriale, at a moment when the same accuser was alone with herself and her conscience in conditions of objective peacefulness, sheltered from environmental influence; and were even restated, after some time, during the validation of the arrest of Lumumba, before the investigating judge in charge.

In other words, Cassation to ECHR: “Get lost”. This explains why any Knox attempt to reverse her felony conviction will never go anywhere.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/25/19 at 06:25 PM | #

The biggest blow to Knox won’t be the money- which was pure Fantasy anyway - but the fact her favourite narrative has been destroyer.

The narrative that portrays her as a poor vulnerable 20-year old relentlessly victimised and bullied by ‘tag teams’ of mean cops who shouted and yelled at her and slapped her round the head.

It was her explanation as to why she fingered Patrick Lumumba for the crime.  ‘They shouted, “remember, remember!” slap!  Some 53 hours of hard interrogation with no food nor drink or sleep.

Whoops!  The ECHR declared it never happened.

They were polite about it, saying no evidence of any substantive breach of Article 3: degrading and inhuman treatment. 

This is all the pro-Knox crowd could cling on to and now their dream of the ‘little woman in distress being rescued by the big butch super-hero, er, ECHR’ is shattered into tiny pieces.

No more can they bleat about Knox being harassed by doctors faking HIV tests and hawking her diary around the media.

No more do we have to suffer their constant claims of Knox being slapped around the head and forced to name Patrick.

No more do we have to tolerate her #metoo claims of being slut-shamed by the horrid Mignini. 

No more of that idiot chuntering about tag teams of twelve bullying Knox every few hours and threatening her with thirty years’ jail.

Oh dear, what will they all do now that they didn’t achieve their dream of having their own live victim of horrible nasty Italians too priggish to appreciate American hippies?

No more do we have to suffer nonsense about Knox being the victim of sexism and anti-feminism.

It didnt happen, dahling.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/knox_sollecito_how_from_their_very_first_questionings_the_cracks/

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/knox_sollecito_how_from_their_very_first_questionings_the_cracks_2/

Posted by KrissyG on 01/25/19 at 08:16 PM | #

Now I get it. Knox got the $20K because she should have had a lawyer forced upon her.

Being a suspect in police custody, the Italians should have made sure of that, despite the fact Knox was offered a lawyer and declined. The protective covering of an attorney was the big issue.

So the ECHR award was not due to any complaints about her interpreter, got it. Thanks.

About her lawyer: it seems rather exacting of the ECHR toward the Italians, since Knox had been offered a lawyer but declined one. I don’t get that part. Seems the Italians were to dot every I and cross every t. They were expected to bend over backwards to help her. Yet the money judgment was very small, a sign of what her claim was worth. She had been treated very well, all things considered, in Perugia.

Thank you to James Raper and all for breaking down the ECHR ruling to what caused it and what is its real life import.

I’ve enjoyed every comment on this from Peter Quennell’s to James Raper, DavidB, The Machine and Krissy G. and others.

The Machine framed the main point that I thought would rescue the Italians, when he said Knox was offered an attorney but she declined!

I feel like DavidB, disgusted but knowing justice will pounce on Knox one day, in some way.

And as Krissy G and others said, Knox will probably never see a penny of the money. (Krissy G, you’re a delight to read). The main takeaway from this ECHR ruling is all about what they didn’t give Knox: a rubberstamp on her silly narrative of police misconduct, coercion, and everything that flowed from that. This is the big pivotal point for Knox so she can say police pressure caused her panic which made her denounce her boss for the murder.

The ECHR said No Way. It was not the fault of police that Knox threw Patrick under the bus.

Her distress was not the outcome of police brutality.

So nice how Krissy G highlights the withering effect this ruling will have on Knox’s clung-to narrative of victimhood Knox trots out at every little tea party of innocence conventions. And in every headline she tries to generate.

Foxy so wants to play the exoneree.

ECHR stopped her charade: Her big claim she was a victim of police malfeasance, pressure, corruption, even violence! but the ECHR laughs her out of court on that whopper and even puts it in writing that the police did nothing wrong to Knox other than not jump through several hoops in dead of night and go the extra mile or three or four to get her a lawyer pronto.

The rest of her phony talk and her attack on Lumumba were all Knox’s own doing. Pop! goes the balloon of ego that has been tied to the false narrative Knox made up. ECHR ruling proves her book a lie, too.

What to do with the Money? $$$$$$$$

Knox will never see a thin dime of this ECHR money, best guess.

If she does, she should tithe off it to her local church, $2,000, then give almost all the rest of the $18,000 to Lumumba. Tell him it’s a down payment on an honest debt. She could do something in Meredith’s honor but what would be accepted? maybe a gift to a UK charity in Meredith’s memory. I’m not being facetious here.

Back to facetious: She might use a little of it to buy a wedding dress. Instead she’ll probably spend some on champagne to toast fiancé Robinson while they use the rest of it for daily bills to live on while he pens more books and films meteor with love notes on it marriage proposal to known liar. He can buy a new fur coat with beads and chains to match and a wild hat to wear to his local barber to renew tiger stripe beard.

While he’s cursing, calling co-author Kovite and at the barber, Knox can pay her expenses to travel from one legal conference to another across the U.S., one campus to another to lie at a microphone about what the ECHR meant. Maybe with a short trip to the Black Forest to run through the woods in a red cape, crying “Yes, the Italian police really were the wolf out to get me.”

She might ought to squirrel away cash under her mattress for a future divorce attorney.

Don’t be too surprised if she uses the entire $20,000 to hop a plane to South America to find her old prison cellmate, the gal who was a drug dealer. Buh-bye Mr. Robinson, hello happy place.

Posted by Hopeful on 01/25/19 at 09:58 PM | #

Yes Hopeful, that about captures it. Monty Python Time.

Not only in this trial by the way. Monty Pythonism is encouraged by two key system faults:

(1) Everything has to be written down at great length. Contrast that with an American jury which can tell the judge “Fry the guy” and head out for a nice lunch with no more ever said.

(2) At every trial-process stage, a new prosecution comes on board. They have to learn the case afresh. In sharp contrast. the same defenses go the full mile, and so can learn and learn and learn Groundhog Day style.

Truly surreal and wildly inaccurate defense submissions can be presented at every step.

That happened here.

Hellman was suckered in; then Cassation #1 was too smart; then Nencini was too smart; then Cassation #2 (Marasca and Bruno) was mostly suckered in. Boninsegna and ECHR were both suckered in.

For example, here are direct quotes from the Knox team submission to ECHR (what went to Boninsegna was likewise surreal and inaccurate).

Amanda KNOX, in the place and time of the statements, has never voluntarily intended to involve a third party in the crime. A complex of psychological pressure, exhaustion, ignorance of the procedure and of their rights led to an altered statement by Knox unable to recall and evaluate the facts.

The investigatee was hit in the head by the investigators with a slap.

ALSO Knox in the ECHR submission lies at length about the HIV-test incident - it was the defenses who actually staged the leaks!! Proof is described here.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/lifetime_movie_included_a_serious_wrong_charge/

See also this in the Knox team submission which pretty well explains all by itself why Knox got that E18,400.

KNOX was denied the assistance of a lawyer, with the excuse: “He told me it would be worse for me because I showed I did not want to cooperate with the police, so I said no.”

Monty Python Time.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/26/19 at 04:36 AM | #

This is Knox’s statement on her blog regarding the ECHR debacle:

*********

Today, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that my slander conviction was unjust. I am grateful for their wisdom in acknowledging the reality of false confessions, and the need to reform police interrogation methods.

I remain forever grateful to everyone around the world who has believed in me, defended me, and spoken out on my behalf throughout the years. I couldn’t have survived this without your support.

In early November 2007, I was studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, when a local burglar named Rudy Guede broke into my home and raped and killed my friend and roommate, Meredith Kercher. I was in shock, and I volunteered to help the Perugian police in any way I could. But they weren’t interested in my help. They were determined to break me.

I was interrogated for 53 hours over five days, without a lawyer, in a language I understood maybe as well as a ten-year-old. When I told the police I had no idea who had killed Meredith, I was slapped in the back of the head and told to “Remember!”

The police found my text messages to my boss, Patrick Lumumba. He had given me the night off, and I’d written back, “Ci vediamo più tardi,” a literal translation of the English idiom “see you later.” It isn’t an idiom in Italian. The police read that sentence as a literal plan: “We will see each other later.” This small linguistic misunderstanding could have been just that. But the Perugian investigators refused to believe me when I told them I had not met Patrick that night. They painted a story for me, about how I had witnessed Patrick killing Meredith. They told me I was traumatized by the incident and had amnesia. When I told them that wasn’t true, they said I was lying, or confused. They bombarded me with questions and scenarios, over and over again, into the morning.

I trusted these people. They were adults. They were authorities. And they lied to me. They lied to me that there was physical evidence of my presence at the crime scene. They lied to me that Raffaele said I went out that night. They threatened me with thirty years in prison if I didn’t remember what they wanted me to remember. Finally, in the delirium they put me through, I didn’t know what to believe. I thought, for a brief moment, maybe they were right. Maybe I did have amnesia. I told them I could see blurred flashes of Patrick, like they said. I told them I could imagine hearing Meredith screaming, like they said. They wrote the statements; I signed them. Then they rushed out to arrest Patrick Lumumba.

Within hours, I retracted those statements. I told them I had not met Patrick that night. They didn’t care. Patrick had a rock-solid alibi. They didn’t care. They locked him up, upending his life. And they didn’t release him until two weeks later, when DNA from the crime scene came back and identified the actual killer: Rudy Guede.

The authorities went on to charge and convict Raffaele and me for Guede’s crime, and further convicted me of slandering Patrick Lumumba. It took eight years, but we were definitively acquitted of Meredith’s murder in 2015. This final verdict, however, upheld my slander conviction, even though my statements were deemed inadmissible in court because they were produced during an illegal and unrecorded interrogation. I was sentenced to three years, time served.

I know the absolute horror of sitting in prison for a crime you didn’t commit, and I spent years wracked with guilt over those statements I signed in the interrogation room. Back then, I had never heard of a “false confession.” I had no idea that one in four people exonerated on DNA evidence in the U.S. falsely confessed. Later, I learned that the coercive methods I experienced―isolation, exhaustion, deception, verbal and physical abuse―are designed to get suspects to say whatever the police want. To judge me as the author of those false statements tacitly absolves the police for their cruel and abusive behavior that produced them, ruining lives and making a mockery of justice.

The Italian Court of Cassation has already acknowledged that the Perugian investigators and prosecutors contaminated, tampered with, and destroyed material evidence. What went unacknowledged was the fact that these same investigators and prosecutors also subjected innocent people, Raffaele and myself, to psychological torture and physical abuse while under interrogation. They contaminated their own investigation by producing false statements behind closed doors. And then they blamed us.

I never should have been charged, much less convicted, of slander. And Raffaele should never have been refused his due compensation for wrongful imprisonment because he “gave contradictory statements” while under duress. Scapegoating the wrongfully convicted for the mistakes and misconduct of the police prevents us from reforming the system, leading to further miscarriages of justice.

*********

I’m no psychologist but It is striking how often she refers to herself and how seldom to those she has harmed so taking out all the other words, this is what it looks like:

my I I me me my I I my my Meredith Kercher I I I my me I I I I I my my Patrick Lumumba me I me I Patrick Meredith me I I I me I me me my me I me I me me I I I I I Patrick I I Meredith I Patrick Lumumba I I I Patrick me me Patrick Lumumba Meredith my my I I I I I I I I me myself I.

Posted by pensky on 01/26/19 at 11:17 AM | #

Thanks a lot Pensky. We need this, for our own forthcoming press release. 

Note the shrill tone and strong hints of desperation.  Like those in the infamous Knox email to Judge Nencini. In parts Knox says the OPPOSITE of what ECHR just reported finding.

Knox is apparently channeling the mafia poodle Steve Moore. This poodle:

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/how_with_myriad_false_claims_steve_moore_pushes_to_forefront/

You can see throughout Moore’s usual wild-eyed claims.Take this example:

I was interrogated for 53 hours over five days, without a lawyer, in a language I understood maybe as well as a ten-year-old.

And now compare it with proven reality, here on Planet Earth.

http://truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/2018KnoxRebuttal.pdf

Maybe 8 hours of sharing context information. Knox never targeted. An interpreter always present. Knox signing every page of the four reports of discussion.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/26/19 at 02:18 PM | #

Re the E18,400 I’d bet 10 to 1 Knox will never see that money. It seems there are going to be developments. We’ll post if and when they get under way.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/27/19 at 03:26 PM | #

@Pensky, what a wailing Knox does when the Liar gets played. What a shame. Notice the first shriek she yells against police: they lied that they had physical evidence against Knox.

That was no lie, they did.

She wails that they lied when they said Raffaele told how she left his house during the hours of the murder.

That was no lie, and he did tell police that. More than that: he told them Knox asked him to LIE for her.

She has the nerve to insinuate that it was not her fault but the police’s fault that they held Lumumba for 2 weeks.

It took that long to establish he did have a solid alibi. (I think they were waiting on that Swiss guy who was at Le Chic bar who came like an angel from heaven to rescue Patrick and corroborate his alibi.)

Knox had no such angel. Instead she had several shady stories all different about where she was on the fateful night.

At first she claimed she couldn’t tell fact from fiction and couldn’t remember WHERE she was on the night of the murder. Raises an eyebrow.

But Saul Kassin reassured her that all her lies were merely truth without the proper clothes. She had been coerced to tell untruths, cops only want untruths.

The only valid statement in that whole blogspiel by the Fox is that Knox sat in prison and kicked herself for years for having signed the police statements. She had been too dumb to realize that if she claimed she saw Patrick at the cottage and heard a scream and the sound of him attacking Meredith in the next room, it meant SHE was at the cottage during the murder as well as he was.

The blindness soon cleared. Then we heard her hair was falling out, her vision was going bad and Capanne inmates and staff were labeling her a cold, unfriendly iceberg who rarely washed and spent all her time scribbling in journals.

- Rocco Girlanda was about the only upbeat visitor other than her bewildered and tormented family there to defend their honour; and the deluded Mad Paxton.

- Nigel Scott fell for the flighty American.

- Guilt-wracked Dr. Anderson and others wept for her.

- Ghoulish writer Doug Preston ran to her aid.

- A jaded FBI agent bored with watching co-eds in California, a man like the mad hatter and March Hare Steve and wife Michelle rode in on a zebra and a frog or a lost turtle to denounce Italian justice. They waved letters on lifted letterhead from the burnt out King County judge Heavey who listened to his young daughter to determine the distant culprit’s innocence, since the girls had carpooled.

- Mario Mr. S the seasoned Italian reporter for police blotter showed up chainsmoking and trying to sober the wild-eyed Preston.

- Two honest female journalists showed up, one named Barbie. I’ve forgotten the other Italian lady, she was smart.

- Dozens of dishonest journalists flocked to Perugia and swarmed the town, drinking coffee at cafes and wondering about Knox as the locals shouted “Assassino” when she and Raf rode by in police vans.

- One female author dug into the story, shocked at the “fatal gift of beauty”.

- A certain Candace D. threw together her account of Knox’s Via Dolorosa while the iron was hot.

- David Marriott bought 70 truckloads of spraypaint and airbrushes to repaint a wild party girl and up and coming junkie into the Mona Lisa. Curt and Edda flew to New York City to appear on tv, one weeping and one a repressed volcano much like his daughter. Thin-skinned and egomaniac.

Scandal sheets descended with rumors and gossip, and a few chunks of truth. Sollecito ran his mouth to them within days of the death, talking of parties he and Knox went to at apartments of Spanish friends in Perugia. Till Daddy told him to shut up.

Mignini rose up to give Meredith justice. He was soon crucified as a zealot behind the times, swayed by too much integrity.  Media handwringing ensued.

A Washington state senator whose brother was no saint was called on to go to bat for her persecuted constituency. An Atlanta shrink and his sister from Seattle a talking head attorney waved flags for La Knox and blogged about If You Take This Pill.

The circus came to town.

Bongiorno a ringmaster, Pinocchio and Alessi and assorted jailbirds the closing act. Killed in the ring was the poor old Curatolo, honest eyewitness they didn’t like while Frank Sforza wrote reams of vitriol against the police as his ticket to the States to the lovely lawabiding Mellas land.

Meanwhile the scholarly David Balding an Oxford professor with no dog in the fight objectively confirmed a serious fact: the DNA on the victim’s bra was that of Raffaele Sollecito.

Posted by Hopeful on 01/28/19 at 05:05 AM | #

It is breathtaking, simply breathtaking, that this convicted liar and unconvicted murderer can spin the ECHR judgement in the way she has on her blog. Where are the “fact checkers” in mainstream media who could, and should, swiftly shoot her drivel down with even a cursory search of the court documents?

It seems a shame that the Italian authorities may not have taken this seriously enough to at least correct the glaring lies in Knox’s submission to the ECHR which only allows the witch to continue to promulgate her fiction to her ever decreasing audience with some illusory veneer of truth.

So, on nothing more serious than a bit of a technicality relating to her not having a lawyer appointed at the right time (a lawyer that she had already said she didn’t need in an effort to seem innocent), the ECHR throws the dog a bone and she goes full damsel in distress with her barely coherent me me me self pitying diatribe.

Meanwhile, we all patiently wait for the day justice finally knocks on Ms Knox’s door. I hope whatever form that justice takes, it affords her the same level of mercy that she afforded poor Meredith. None.

Posted by davidmulhern on 01/28/19 at 01:49 PM | #

Dear @Hopeful All true. Eloquent and incisive as always.

I wonder if we can persuade the incomparable (but very busy) Peter Hyatt to cast his expert eye over the latest egregious drivel. His blue highlighter will need a refill in no time, such is the sheer quantity of untruths, distortions and falsehoods she is brazenly asserting. She has been emboldened by her recent duping successes. Don’t be surprised to hear: “I was interrogated for 179 hours, without food or water and was bludgeoned about the head”.

While this cash cow can be milked it will continue to be.  Nothing she has profited from since her release has not been directly connected in some way to Meredith’s death. For a supposed journalist, it’s incredible that AK does not know the difference between the words ACCUSATION and CONFESSION.

This teary voiced advocate against wrongful conviction is the only one I’ve heard of that got an innocent man banged up for 2 weeks without saying a word. She is able to rely on the lazy, sloppy lack of rigour amongst her fellow journalists, few of which are willing to undertake the rigorous process of fact-checking and research.

Posted by pensky on 01/28/19 at 02:39 PM | #

Hi Hopeful

We are done with Monty Python and channeling Fellini now?! I would mainly suggest:

(1) That Doug Preston emerges from the wings a tad earlier.

He and Heavey and Ann Bremner were the Big Three in 2008 - Big Eight if you include Spetzi and Tacopina and Dempsey and Ciolino and Sforza, all five reflecting the Calabrian view of Italian justice (amazing) as did CBS’s Longhini.

Supposed supersleuth Preston gave them ALL confidence.

(2) That we kick this around a bit.

The only valid statement in that whole blogspiel by the Fox is that Knox sat in prison and kicked herself for years for having signed the police statements. She had been too dumb…

Knox had pushed her phone over to Ficarra in the context of her documented list-building of visitors to the house; no police trickery there. Now she needed to invent a murderer when she froze over the text message.

It seems to me she could not make Patrick a satisfactory murderer without saying she was there also.

Also in the session prior to 1:45 she MAY have thought Sollecito had said she went out (as he did), maybe with him, maybe without him (I think with him) so she rather instantly had to explain what “being out” involved.

Also possible but unlikely to me that she also realised her phone could be triangulated (as it was till it was switched off) or that there are CCTV cameras everywhere or that Curatolo noticed them, if they even noticed him.

(3) Note how above in Pensky’s quote from the AK blog she barely mentions Sollecito?

And then misleadingly. In fact Sollecito DID provably rat on her that night and to Magistrate Matteini 2 days later in writing said he never want to see Amanda again as she had made him lie and was the cause of all their problems.

(Of course in the session prior to 5:45 Knox had also ratted on Sollecito - in effect: “Hmmm… Maybe he WAS there.”)

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/28/19 at 10:29 PM | #

Yes, I think it was a couple of factors that set Knox on her collision with justice that evening at the Questura. The first was obviously the fact that Sollecito had just upended her and thrown her under the bus. The second was the dawning realisation that the police were not the dupable numbskulls that she had confidently believed them to be. For the first time she saw that the carefully crafted innocent explanation on which she was going to rely was full of potholes when examined, starting with the phone records.

Always in the back of her mind must have been the problem with her lamp. Was that the hard evidence she alleges the police said they had? She was too afraid to ask. Then there were the phone records. I doubt that she even knew that these existed. The realisation that they did must have unnerved her.

In due course, with the phone records now to hand, they would double check with her 2nd Nov statement to the police, and also read her e-mail, and discover that -

1. She had tried to conceal the time of arrival of the postal police in her account. She had written -

“He tried and cracked the door, but we couldn’t open it. It was then that we decided to call the cops……. [Raffaele] first called his sister for advice and then called the Carabinieri. I then called Filomena who said she would be on her way home immediately. While we were waiting two ununiformed police investigators came to our house.”

Here in her e-mail, she clearly has the call to the Carabinieri before the arrival of the postal police. Now, it may just be a mistake on her part but she also has it before her last conversation with Romanelli. However, the phone records show the call to the Carabinieri was initiated at 12.51 whereas her last conversation with Romanelli was at 12.35. Is it significant that she has the 112 call at least 16 minutes before it was actually made? Can that just be a simple mistake or is it an attempt, even if just in her own mind, to cover for what she knew was a lie, having told the postal police that they had already called the Carabinieri?

2. She had also concealed and/or lied about the existence of, and the order of, crucial phone calls and, here and there, the response she had encountered.

(a) She concealed, in her account, the fact that she had spent 16 seconds connected to Meredith’s English phone before phoning Filomena immediately afterwards, when she not only had not volunteered that info but had lied when the specific question was put to her.

(b) In her e-mail she says that when she phoned Meredith’s Italian phone it just kept on ringing. No answer. No, the call was connected for precisely 3 seconds.

(c) Again, she says that in the last call to Meredith’s English phone (which lasted 4 seconds) an English voice told her that the phone was out of service. Really? Mrs Lana’s daughter says that it rang and then a name flashed up on the screen. Amanda. Would it do that if it was out of service? In any event it had rung for 16 seconds just 4 minutes beforehand.

(d) Finally, she had concealed the call to her mother, which she was so determined that she would never have to talk about that she doggedly pretended she just couldn’t remember it (until, that is, she wrote her book when she told a whopper about it’s chronology).

Posted by James Raper on 01/29/19 at 02:39 PM | #

It’s the Headsup box directly above this post that takes a sledgehammer to Knox’s fake optimism after ECHR.

OT but anybody in U.S. facing the polar vortex right now (Jan.29,30,31), brrr and cover up warmly. Arctic temps drastic.

Posted by Hopeful on 01/30/19 at 07:08 PM | #

I like what James posted. This really is cat & mouse stuff. Who knew what at what point of time. Hmmm. Cardiol and Finn MacCool and others have examined the phasing of developments too.

Here is James’s post on Knox’s “misplaced” lamp found locked in her room which he argues must have really spooked her from very early on.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/knoxs_lamp_the_very_incriminating_evidence_found_inside_merediths_room/

The timeline would be even precise if all of Perugia was not freaking out and students (especially women students by the many dozens) were heading elsewhere. (Most came back, some didnt, the main university sees less Americans now but more Asians).

So a need to show progress and apply calm. Additional pressure on the investigation came from the astonishingly fast start of the Knox PR and its instant hostility to the police. Possibly by the very fast start of the needling “reporting” of Frank Sforza too.

So. These forces among others put quite some pressure on police to say something. At least one officer (from Rome) who we discount here was surely too eager to get in front of cameras.

Most investigators kept their heads down, though. They did no grandstanding and kept pursuing leads for weeks and weeks. This may be the most exhaustively document murder case ever. Most serial killers end up with fewer files.

This may startle you. See this page on the Wikipedia? Items 1.1 to 1.10 covering a period of 8 weeks?

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/File_library:_Files_by_chronology

Try clicking through to any ONE day in that period, and see the astonishing number of documents still being generated.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/30/19 at 09:38 PM | #

Hi Hopeful

Yes, for the many who are trigger-happy to appeal Knox’s calunnia, it would pay to keep in mind how this could backfire.

There is an issue also of how much more Knox can afford to pay her lawyers - she may need new ones as both Sollecito and Guede did

We have long paid some attention to Knox’s money-grubbing ways, for example see this post.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/americans_are_paying_knox_10000_a_gig_to_trash_italian_cops/

Now look at this report from Seattle of a year ago. Was a room really available for rent $80 a NIGHT at the Knox-Robinson place?

https://uk.blastingnews.com/buzz/2018/02/amanda-knox-letting-out-a-room-for-80-from-her-seattle-home-002338567.html

In that rather crummmy neighborhood? Two-bedroom apartments there rent for less than $2400 a month.

If $80 a night is true was she raking it in or just desperate then? And if true who were the ghouls paying her?

Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/30/19 at 10:02 PM | #

Headline: “Amanda Knox goofs around at Sundance film festival with her fiancé just days after Italy was ordered to pay her $20,000 compensation for rights violations during murder investigation”. story by James Martin for Mailonline January 30, 2019.

“The 31-year-old from Washington posted a photo on Instagram of her and boyfriend posing in sun visors while recording her podcast, “The Truth about True Crime”, in Park City, Utah.”

“AK goofs around, tries on a $3,000 “civil war jacket” at a boutique as Sundance festival gets into full swing.” (Knox poses in boutique wearing an offwhite wool military vest with many brass buttons, topped by a similar jacket also offwhite wool full of buttons. It looks to me like a Revolutionary War uniform, maybe a British soldier? but I’m no expert.)

In another photo Knox has on a red clear plastic sun visor as she stares in profile at the comedian Mr. Robinson her fiancé. He is hamming it up as always and wears the trademark tiger stripe beard. He is also wearing his red plastic sun visor upside down. He uses 2 fingers to make the peace sign or V for victory or whatever it means; he dons a blue shirt that on my laptop looks like a floral pajama top (maybe that’s not fair or accurate, you be the judge).

He wears the long gold necklace, a big gold wrist watch and a ring. He appears from a distance like the Cat in the Hat with red and white upside down visor. At least he does on my screen.

The story contains the usual history of the Perugia case, the lovely photo of Meredith smiling and says Knox started her podcast in October 2018, began dating Robinson in 2015, got engaged to him at end of last year, 2018.

The love of costume and flippery seems to be in full swing with the silly duo as usual. But neither has a full smile or happy grin, Knox looks positively stiff in the uniform pose and somber.

Posted by Hopeful on 01/31/19 at 08:03 AM | #

Does anyone know why Amanda Knox’s Twitter account has been suspended?

Posted by The Machine on 01/31/19 at 08:04 PM | #

Hi Machine

Could be significant. Can we can firm up it is a suspension? And not by her? I am seeing a redirect, to the Scarlet Letter Reports, which she may have instigated. That has tweets on a Sundance interview she did and a Death Becomes Us “festival” late March here in NYC.


<blockquote class=“twitter-tweet” data-lang=“en”>🚨 TRUE CRIME UPDATE 🚨
We're incredibly excited to announce that Amanda Knox + John Douglas are joining #DeathBecomesUs in NYC!
Tickets go on sale Friday: https://t.co/fydJBp9RYw pic.twitter.com/ZjjaF8pV7r— BrightestYoungThings (@BYT) January 29, 2019</blockquote>

Posted by Peter Quennell on 02/01/19 at 02:44 PM | #

Hi Pete,

Amanda Knox is still suspended on Twitter:

@amamaknox

When you click on her Twitter account, you get the following message:

Account suspended
This account has been suspended. Learn more about why Twitter suspends accounts, or return to your timeline.

Posted by The Machine on 02/01/19 at 08:58 PM | #

Tks Machine.

Knox’s endemic abuse of Italy and Italians has become extremely dangerous. Threats have been made by crackpots, and some there fear one turning up with a gun.

Two examples of such crackpots are (1) Steve Moore & wife (she was arrested by the Carabinieri) and (2) the stalkers who made the Netflix documentary “Amanda Knox”.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/netflixhoax_omitted_producer_stephen_robert_morse_has_been_originating/

So possibly complainees include (1) Italians or (2) Italian Americans or (3) the FBI or (4) almost anyone who reads here.

We can guarantee a ton of trouble for her down the road.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 02/01/19 at 09:57 PM | #

Amanda Knox has created a new Twitter account:

@amandaknox

She has blocked me from following and viewing her tweets:

You are blocked from following @amandaknox and viewing @amandaknox’s Tweets. Learn more

I’ve never followed her on Twitter. She once followed me by accident when she was viewing my Twitter profile in the middle of the night.

Posted by The Machine on 02/02/19 at 02:50 PM | #

Horrible to see “Mindhunter” John Douglas in photo collage in ad for “Death Becomes Us” festival to be held this March in New York City.

A photo shows Amanda Knox to Douglas’s left with the detestable child murderer Damien Echols on his right.

Damien Echols (set free on Alford plea with his two co-conspirators after horrifying acts on and the murder of 3 young boys). Google “Damien Echols is guilty” and see Trench Reynolds blog and others that denounce his release.

Echols is a self-proclaimed Satanist. So perhaps Knox is in the right company, but John Douglas should be appalled to be seen anywhere near these villains. With his former training Douglas should see through both of these monsters. All he has to do is read the true facts of the case.

Maybe Knox, Damien, and John Douglas all three are in the right place: deceivers and being deceived all at a death festival. It’s pitiful and revolting to think Douglas would support Knox or Damien Echols as “wrongfully convicted”.
_____________________________________________________________________
Different Topic:

Saw Peter Quennell’s link to a story from Radar online about Knox and her boyfriend renting out rooms in their home for $80/night. The story said that comments left by guests mentioned a sign saying “Booze and Condoms on Offer” and that a whip was displayed on a wall. Words fail to express the ghastly disgust of such facts, if they are true. Knox and Robinson are revolting, she has not changed one iota from the vile creature she was at Via Della Pergola. Robinson may be her equal in crudeness or worse, who knows? Anyone renting a room in that place deserves what they get. How could they sleep a wink?

It’s not the entrepreneurial effort to make money I object to in the least but the rudeness and mockery. The offer of booze and condoms harks back to everything that got Knox into a murder trial in Perugia. One writer says the sign in Knox’s AirBNB-style rental is a calculated dis and intentional flashback to Knox’s clear bag in cottage bathroom that held sex toy that Meredith objected to in open view of others.

Meredith was right. Knox has no shame at all, no scrap of decency and modesty. None. No boundaries, no respect and a nasty streak wanting to drag others down to her level. And show off.

I guess Robinson has found a skank to bang and he is as dissolute as she is and both are encouraging guests to be the same. I wish they and Damien Echols and the “exonerees” from the conventions could all be shipped to their own island to live with people of like mind and sentiments as themselves, and their evil inclinations. Perhaps Chris Watts can join them and Ryan Ferguson. Knox would have a blast. Robinson would have his work cut out for him. He’d last about two months.

Posted by Hopeful on 02/03/19 at 04:15 AM | #

Surely we’ll all be blocked. I know I am.

Posted by pensky on 02/04/19 at 11:01 AM | #

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