Saturday, May 30, 2015
Court Filing Contends Fifth Chambers Encroached Illegally On First Chambers & Florence Court Powers
Posted by Our Main Posters
Overview
It is now 2 months since the oral verdict, and the written verdict is required soon.
We have devoted an entire series by lawyers to showing how unsound in law, in science, in media analysis, and in facts of the case the Marasca/Bruno oral explanations are.
This opinion representing the Perugia and Florence Prosecutions was drafted by several of the most experienced and respected lawyers in Italy.
It was drafted in light of the spoken Fifth Chambers verdict pro-defendant at the end of March. The panel’s written explanation was then overdue. The opinion was filed with the Florence court.
These passages quoted below raise issues of what the Fifth Chambers under the Penal Code legally can and can not do, with respect to prior rulings of (1) the Supreme Court itself, which mostly overturned Hellmann in 2013 for exceeding legal scope; and (2) the Florence (Nencini) appeal court.
According to this opinion, the Fifth Chambers has significantly overstepped its legal boundaries in brushing aside previous rulings and trying to fulfill the role of an appeal court, or a first-level trial court.
This was the same overstretch that the First Chambers concluded the 2011 Hellmann appeal court had wrongly done. Both courts are widely considered in Italy to have been illegally bent.
This is now uncharted territory. If this opinion goes forward the Judges of the First Chambers and Florence court and the Council of Magistrates all seem likely to side with what it claims. If so reactions might ripple on for years.
The Fifth Chambers judges might find themselves increasingly beleaguered. And their rulings on evidence items and the investigators and prosecutors and foreign media would all seem to be moot, if the perception grows that the Fifth Chambers should not even have gone there.
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 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.
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.
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.
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:
[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);
[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;
[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;
[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);
[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).
[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).
Here is a translation of Article 530:
Article 530:
1. If the act does not subsist [541 2, 542], if the defendant has not commited it [541 2, 542], if the act is not an offence or it is not envisaged by law as an offence, that is, if the offence has been committed by a non-indictable person [c.p. 85] or by a not punishable person for other reasons, the judge issues a judgement of acquittal, stating the reason.
2.The judge issues a judgement of acquittal also when there is lack of evidence or it is not sufficient, or there is contradictory evidence that the act subsists, that the defendant has comitted it, that the act constitutes an offence or that the offence has been committed by an indictable person.(1).
3. If there is evidence that the act has been committed in circumstances of a legal excuse or exemption from criminal liability, that is, there is doubt about them, the judge issues a judgement of acquittal pursuant to clause 1.
4. In the event of an acquittal the judge applies security measures, in the cases provided for by law.
And here is a translation of Article 628:
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.
Posted by Our Main Posters on 05/30/15 at 07:00 PM in The officially involved, The prosecutors, The defenses, Appeals 2009-2015, Cassation 2015, Cassation critiques, Prosecution critique, Machiavelli critique, The legal followups, Italian related, Hoaxes against Italy, 3 No evidence hoax, 4 No firm DNA hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 16 Interrogation hoax
Comments
Quote: “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.”
To scrub out Capezelli, Quintavalle and Curatalo when Chiefi and Nencini ordered them reinstated as fact found evidence from the merits hearing at first stage, shows how perverse and subversive Marasca and Bruno’s report is.
Bruno wrote it, as the junior. I wonder if the delay was Marasca unable to sign it off.
Posted by Slow Jane on 09/08/15 at 07:36 PM | #
I do not generally believe in conspiracy theories, so I will just call this a hypothesis. This case has become a political hot potato for the Italian government and not just a legal case.
In the U.S., it is said that the Supreme Court “reads the papers” and I am sure that the Court of Cassation does the same. There are many reasons why Italy and the Renzi government (or any Italian government) would want this case to just go away.
Clearly the US media has pretty well convinced the “low information voters” in the US that Amanda Knox was railroaded. We can argue the facts, but this is not about the facts. The media war has been won by her; that may be shitty but it is the truth. The readership of this blog, sad to say, is miniscule.
There would be a huge battle if Italy were to seek extradition, even if the facts were on their side. It would be a battle that would result in Italy taking a beating regardless. Italy depends hugely on American tourism and does not want to scare off customers. Italy also has a very good working relationship with the US Law Enforcement community that ultimately depends on political support from Congress and the public.
Finally, to be cynical, the victim is not Italian. She is a Brit, and Italy can figure that civil lawsuits in Britain and the US may offer some recompense so she does not profit. The Italian mind may philosophically opine that Amanda may eventually screw up again and get her just desserts later, or ultimately from God. Plus, this way they get to let their own citizen (Raffaele) off, and after all, he was only a good Italian boy whose mind was clouded by the evil Americano.
The Italian justice system is going to have to learn what the US prosecutors learned when the OJ case blew up in their faces: If they are dealing with an American suspect, they had better have an airtight perfectly investigated case, and be ready to aggressively manage the media message going to US readers and viewers. Dr. Mignini and his crew got their lunch eaten by the PR attackers. We may complain about that, but objectively speaking, that is why this result happened.
The inner workings of the Italian Court of Cassation will now disappear into the labyrinth of the “Palazzacio” and what happens there may be buried in a morass of Italian legal procedure that ultimately will have no effect on this case. Except for what happens in the afterlife, it is over.
Posted by Gonzaga on 09/08/15 at 07:39 PM | #
Gonzaga, yes this case was tainted by PR, media and politics.
However, the ISC should have been able to approve Nencini’s finding of upholding “Guilty”, quite regardless of whether or not the USA complied with extradition.
The rot set in with Hellmann freeing the pair. They were never going to return to jail after that.
Posted by Slow Jane on 09/08/15 at 07:50 PM | #
@Gonzaga
Really sad but everything you have written is correct.
Except that we are resistant to learning and history is going to repeat. The PR team was really professional and well, the money invested was well spent.
Sorry Meredith, we have failed. I know you do not care anymore about our comments but we have also failed our future and our justice.
There is a reason we see so much of vigilante justice delivered so often…
Posted by chami on 09/08/15 at 08:01 PM | #
While Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito may not go to prison for this crime, there is a possibility that they will for others soon.
Knox is currently on trial for obstruction of justice which is an extraditable offense and could result in her doing 5-10 years in prison. Sollecito will have his next day in court in May.
At the very least, that will bankrupt him forevermore and force him into a life of even more crime and prison. Bongiorno said that she will file a complaint for false imprisonment, which will bring the murder case back into yet another court of law and further expose his guilt of murder and he will not get a single Euro from the state.
I hope that Bongiorno actually does file and gets removed from office for that.
Posted by Johnny Yen on 09/08/15 at 08:02 PM | #
I can understand there may be a desire at some levels to bury the case under the carpet. However, it appears to me that the First Chambers said to Helmann “you can’t just dismiss the evidence and pronounce the pair not guilty.”
Now the Fifth have done exactly that, in direct contradiction to the First. Note, the Fifth have not just found insufficient evidence or reasonable doubt, but “absolutely no evidence”.
Such an obvious flawed verdict doesn’t seem like a good way to make the case go away. It raises some deep and troubling questions about how the SC works. I suspect that if international opinion had an effect, it was on the Fifth Chambers solely.
I think what we learn from the US experience is that justice by PR creates very poor justice; the rich go free and the poor go to jail. That is not something any civilized country should wish to emulate.
Posted by bobc on 09/08/15 at 08:19 PM | #
Elegant insightful thinking, Gonzaga. A must-read. I’d like to build on some points tomorrow.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/09/15 at 03:26 AM | #
To the Naysayers,
It is not over till it’s over!
Posted by Vinnie on 09/09/15 at 04:06 AM | #
In addition to the first-tier problem of the scope allowed by the Penal Code, there’s the second-tier problem of simply not enough time available for a lot of in-depth judicial examination. Especially at Cassation level. Any commentary on any evidence must be highly suspect.
Read here on all the review hoops all the prosecutors have to make it through to get a conviction and make it stick.
At Cassation level picture this. More cases than all other Supreme Courts in Europe combined. All judges are on a treadmill. Each handles several or some cases every week. No work gets done thoroughly. The prosecution from trial court and appeal court isnt even there on the day (isnt THAT loopy). The defence usually has had years to fine-tune their message. Only one judge (the reporter, here it was Bruno) has really examined the case. The other judges simply have to trust him. If he falls victim to the CSI Effect they all do.
I do think we’ll find out who did what as skepticism mounts. There are quite a lot of leaks, everyone in effect claiming “it was the other guy”.
Reactions/corrective actions in Italy can be very subtle. They dont broadcast them. You have to watch closely for them. There actually have been quite a few in “our cases”.
Here’s one subtle reaction/corrective action. Italy mostly has career-path judges and prosecutors who are tested and rise up on the merits (Mignini scores exceptionally high). But a very few are political appointees, and some can bring a lot of baggage.
Guess who the political appointees are in this case? Right. Marasca and Bruno. The Council of Magistrates has already closed off this route to a seat on the Supreme Court. From now on it seems no more Marascas and Brunos. Cassation judges will be career-path.
This of course puts yet another shadow over the outcome in the eyes of the legal community. Theres even more bad news on the future of Marasca, to do with his politics. He must feel he is nibbled to death by rabbits.
I’d still rate Italy’s one of the worlds best system, with some reforms quite possibly the best, and one the US could learn from (does learn from).
The FBI has embedded officers in the several police HQs in Rome. They are impressed. You wont get them talking the system down. They all know over 100 judges and prosecutors have been assassinated standing up for the system and facing down bad guys. They really respect that.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/09/15 at 05:57 AM | #
Thanks Pete.
Posted by Cardiol MD on 09/09/15 at 06:41 AM | #
Italy’s Supreme Court has to follow case law and protocol. They may have set a new precedent and broken ‘Res Judicata’. Then the ECHR can order Italy to reopen the case as noted here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Res_judicata#In_international_law
Posted by Johnny Yen on 09/09/15 at 07:24 AM | #
@ Johny Yen - Ingenious!
How does a Prosecutorial-Party get that ECHR-Ball rolling?
Posted by Cardiol MD on 09/09/15 at 08:05 AM | #
@johnny yen - nice piece of detective work my friend. It would be wonderful indeed if this proved a fruitful path to follow. Surely those amongst the Italian legal fraternity who have been disgusted by this fifth chambers travesty could raise this matter with the ECHR as a possible means to ensure fair play?
I’d also like to see someone like Dershowitz, who was slimed by many of the FOA when he made his comments in support of Knox/Sollecito guilt (albeit he stopped short of saying they were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt), offering his services pro bono to Meredith’s family in a civil action similar to the Goldman action against OJ. I’m sure he isn’t short of cash and such altruism would refreshing. The fact that the Knox PR campaign has been so successful may well put the kibosh on it right enough. There may be too much accompanying negative publicity.
Reading that paragraph where the fifth chambers ruling appears to state fairly unequivocally that they would have been found guilty if not for prosecutorial errors reads awfully like the OJ case. Or the reverse of an episode of Scooby Doo where the unmasked janitor declares “I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those pesky kids”. This pair of pesky kids have gotten away with it. For now.
Marasca/Bruno might be more suited to writing for something like Scooby Doo as they appear to have somewhat childishly
rushed to judgement whilst suffering what Peter correctly defines as the CSI effect. They seem to know Knox/Sollecito are guilty but want to blame someone else for their own rushed incompetence in clearing them. Gut wrenching and astonishing, both at the same time.
Posted by davidmulhern on 09/09/15 at 11:35 AM | #
Hi Gonzaga. Again a must-read. A thoughtful piece. If I may add:
1) On the political realities. Absolutely those were the considerations in play. Nicely put. At top levels governments are not so much monoliths with great continuity as elected administrations with a temporary hold on power, fish to fry, small budgets, and promised programs to get through. Its the political appointees at middle levels who take hundreds of little actions every day to advance matters and keep the boss out of the soup. We know this happened here.
2) On the PR. Yes prosecutors are hamstrung, though deliberately so. Italian judges and prosecutors are not elected and have no constituencies of their own. They are forbidden from speaking out except in narrow instances when they are not active on a case. At the same time, it is illegal for the bad guys to run dishonest PR that slams justice officials and institutions. This is a mostly-successful end-move around the mafias to protect justice officials and make sure cases are tried fairly in court. The calunnia, difamazione and vilipendio trials are outcomes of that.
3) The end point we see is not so much to seek RS and AK locked up as to delegitimize an illegitimate outcome (and inspire or at least report on system improvements) and actually that has gone a very long way: a majority in Italy and a large minority in the US still see guilt. The OJ outcome, not the world’s worst trend. This is if anything speeding up, because of why RS visited the Dominican Republic twice in 2013. Some who really stuck their necks out for Knox and now realise why he did that have had a startled rethink.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/09/15 at 03:08 PM | #
We are not a huge megaphone but we are a distance away from the heat and we do have this expanding by 1-2 posts a week:
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmkgiustiziameredith
That top post alone of the Wiki’s extraordinary evidence list translated should give the Brunos pause.
**************
Hearings in 2008-2008 were pretty exhaustive intense and we now have them all in English except 1-2 of Matteini’s in 2008.
Plus Catnip has the Micheli trial report nearly done. They show just what a rigorous process to trial it was.
Here’s the November 2007 Ricciarelli judges review panel report in English - an especially tough report.
http://truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/2007Ricciarelli_Verbale_English.docx
It will be excerpted and attached to this post:
http://truejustice.org/ee/system/index.php?S=0&C=edit&M=edit_entry&weblog_id=20&entry_id=2296
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/09/15 at 04:04 PM | #
@Pete:
“The end point we see is not so much to seek RS and AK locked up as to delegitimize an illegitimate outcome (and inspire or at least report on system improvements)”
Can the Italian Prosecutors submit a broken ‘Res Judicata’ Complaint to ECHR?
I have been caught in the U.S. by both Res Judicata and “The Law of the Case”.
This 5th Chamber deserves a broken ‘Res Judicata’ Complaint to ECHR.
Posted by Cardiol MD on 09/09/15 at 04:13 PM | #
Hi Johnny and Cardiol
At first glance this seems a funny but improbable legal move which may apply only to international law.
Now I am not so sure. I’d like to know more. Nothing ventured nothing gained. And as Gonzaga suggests: wizen up on the PR.
Prosecutors could not I think be the ones to sign the ECHR appeal, because it would have to come from the Minister of Justice who may be unlikely to intervene.
We should be able to file an appeal ourselves though with a dissection of the Sentencing Report attached. How would you feel about that?
If you’ve time, might you research this? Write a small essay on how it might work? We can put it into Italian and get some reactions back.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/09/15 at 04:41 PM | #
Machiavelli has added some very interesting tweets to the post on the Knox calunnia trial directly below.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/09/15 at 05:08 PM | #
Someone using the names Don Murphy and ColScott claims in emails and messages on PMF that he has been shut out here from two years ago. In fact his membership has been valid the whole time. The password is case-sensitive, please note. If anyone else wonders if they are locked out do email us right away..
He also says this: “your current post throws all kinds of legalese against the wall but none of it fits together.” The legalese is actually not ours. Is that not clear? Its in charges against Maori filed in Florence which also put the Fifth Chambers on the spot. The entire document which seems better legalese than the sentencing report - and is being well understood - is available in English here:
http://truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/2015GMMaoriComplaint.pdf
**********
Mafia fellow traveler? Witting or unwitting? Someone noticed that Don Murphy after saying nothing for two years opens up exactly at the same time as we report the microscope focusing on the mafia angle and mafia fellow-travelers.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/09/15 at 10:42 PM | #
Cassation currently handles more cases than all other European Supreme Courts combined. Judges have to handle up to one new case a day.
Major focus is on Judge Bruno, as he was the only judge of the five tasked to know the case. He’s allied to Bongiorno and the mayor of Naples has accused him of unsavory links.
The Council of Magistrates has just pointedly changed the rules of appointment to prevent politically appointed judges being promoted to the Supreme Court. Today he (and Judge Marasca) could not even make it there.
Becoming known in Italy is Sollecito’s visits twice to a particular Caribbean town in 2013 which the FBI says these folks own.
If the State Department did send signals about Knox that mattered to the court (no proof, just rumor) it ran a risk of strange bedfellows, which a check with the FBI would have avoided.
Italy in fact has long had two trump cards which would have turned American public opinion about the case around, after conviction, or before extradition.
This above, and the solid facts of the case, which 34 judges and lay judges have thought were pretty strong, but officially never presented in English.
Italy doing this would have left both Italy and the US in good standing. Better for Italy than Italian justice officials unfairly being made to look foolish before the whole world.
*********
Post soon on the tremendous suffering of Italian victims & families. Nothing humane about the system as far as they are concerned. Its deliberate because bad guys in parliament have seriously skewed the system to help their buddies out. But absolutely not the original intention.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/09/15 at 11:55 PM | #
Biggest disappointment for me has been the absence of any interest in the UK. At least we knew what we were going to get from corruption-filled Italian SC. Nobody here thought that the motivation was going to be anything but a crock. It was just a matter of how bad it would stink. When the BBC, The Guardian and other “respected” news sources have never given objective reporting on the case based on available primary sources we have little chance of finding justice for Meredith and the Kercher family. Where’s the UK Foreign Office? This was the murder of a UK citizen.
Posted by whatswisdom on 09/10/15 at 06:38 PM | #
Hi davidmulhern
Dershowitz? I like that. He is one of maybe as many as 50 lawyers and legal commentators who wouldnt mind having a go at this.
In the northeast US here people know and like Italy and Italians and pro-Knox xenophobia has no traction. (Remember “Bruce Fisher of New York”? That seemed suspect to me, rightly so.)
Alan Dershowitz knows and likes the Italian system and I saw him live on TV implying he thinks it has the edge on the US system (though its right now slanted pro-perp.)
The superbright Wendy Murphy (who teaches law at Boston U and fills in for Dershowitz at Harvard) urged as does Gonzaga above that if we take this any further we need to look more at how PR works. (Gonzaga fears the horse has bolted, Wendy is not so sure.) She suggested to me we bone up on this book:
http://www.amazon.com/And-Justice-For-Some-Dangerous/dp/1481849670
She thinks the US has a way bigger problem in justice slanted by PR as anti-justice PR in Italy has little traction (she know Italy; is half Italian) even in Meredith’s case.
I asked an Italian law firm with an office here in NYC what an effective PR campaign would need. They said “In this instance maybe a million”. Thats a lot for our zero-budget websites! But more direct contact with media could leave one final truth standing in the long run.
In Italy the opinion needle has hardly moved from “both guilty with Knox as the dangerous initiator”.
At minimum a system of press releases is in our future. Only one media outlet needs to pick up an angle and run with it and others pile on in a hurry. Knox’s “shagging the drug dealer” story really had legs there.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/10/15 at 07:50 PM | #
Hi whatswisdom
Map out the UK media on this for us? Other than that they are all 180 degrees opposed to each other?!
The two pro-Knox captives in London have been the Guardian and the Independent, in each case because of a single guy there.
Its often like that. We got on great with the BBC until “our guy” rotated onto other regions. We engineered this one:
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/10/15 at 07:56 PM | #
Hi whatswisdom
May I amend the above? Actually all we need is a long list of Uk editors and reporters and talking heads who did report or might report on the case. It does not matter on what side of the case they have been on. Their twitter address would help.
We have already been asked for “deep background” by one or two, and the UK press has far more skills and reasons to dig than the ad-driven spread-thin US press.
Who knows? Media in the UK could lead the way to one final truth. Maybe even within a few weeks.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/11/15 at 01:37 PM | #
@ Fast Pete,
quote:Someone using the names Don Murphy and ColScott claims in emails and messages on PMF that he has been shut out here from two years ago. In fact his membership has been valid the whole time. The password is case-sensitive, please note. If anyone else wonders if they are locked out do email us right away..
He also says this: “your current post throws all kinds of legalese against the wall but none of it fits together.†The legalese is actually not ours. Is that not clear? Its in charges against Maori filed in Florence which also put the Fifth Chambers on the spot. The entire document which seems better legalese than the sentencing report - and is being well understood - is available in English here:”
I spoke to him on a different forum. He didn’t take the time to understand what a few of us were saying and got very belligerent.
Posted by JohnQ on 09/11/15 at 04:14 PM | #
Amen, Peter. I came on board here in earnest immediately following Nencini. Before that it was just another true crime story; tabloid fodder; sex game gone wrong; drugs, etc. (Yawn.) When the annulment was flipped I sat up and paid attention. The has been the most revelatory experience in all my years reading the news. CSPAN is the only news outlet I trust. I thought BBC was a (somewhat) close equivalent but how wrong I was. The UK govt. and media owe it to the Kerchers to quash the lies, PR and corruption that has denied justice to one of their own. We must persist here.
Posted by whatswisdom on 09/11/15 at 04:56 PM | #
Hi JohnQ
Thanks for the tip. The emails from others suggest that he is “democratically” arguing all over the place with everyone he can find. I hadnt read even one thing he said, didnt know he existed, before he went ballistic on another site. He’s the only case in seven years to think he was locked out when he wasnt. Normal people would think to ask.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/11/15 at 06:02 PM | #
Hi whatswisdom
Hoax of the century pehaps? I begin to think so. Giant size. All these hundreds of reporters ever had to do was go to prosecutors and police and seek their side of it. Especially if the report attacks those folks. Isnt that Journalism 101?
Italian prosecutors and police CAN answer questions when asked. What they cant do (perhaps unique in the world) is try their case in the press. In the US with (most often) elected prosecutors and police chiefs and judges, they would have been mounting press conferences every few days. This hoax would not reach Square One.
Andrea Vogt NBC Dateline and one or two others did really fine jobs but were drowned out or not picked up. Hammering Italy draws a crowd - it has for years. One of the new targets when the Cold War dried up. The Godfather etc pictures did real harm. Not one movie was made about the 100-plus Italian officers who gave their lives.
By the way the Michele Giuttari books are GREAT for a real take on Italian police. He sent me some. Top-selling fiction author in Italy. Runs rings around Doug Preston etc.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/11/15 at 06:25 PM | #
Honor to 9/11 victims today. As a proud American I remember the free and the brave, some of whom fought the terrorist hijackers and preemptively crashed their plane, at cost of their own lives.
Posted by Hopeful on 09/12/15 at 02:33 AM | #
OK It was expected of course. The forces of stupid/hypocrites or in it for personal gain such as Steve Moore and his mad wife are giving high fives all over. OK so what? It really makes no difference in the long run. Such rabid children as Lyn Duncan in Wellington New Zealand are overjoyed. These people now will have to find another vehicle in order to promote their criminal organizations such as ‘The Innocence Project’ which has never saved a single person but continues to extract money from desperate families, rather like Steve Moore who bills himself as the ex head of the FBI Anti Terrorist Squad in order to con people out of their hard earned cash. Never forget these organizations were built on the back of the real victim in this case Meredith Kercher. Let’s not lose sight of that.
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 09/12/15 at 03:29 AM | #
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