Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Rudy Guede Appeal: Court Adjourned - Defense Closing And Court Decision December 21st

Posted by Peter Quennell



[Above: The lawyer for Meredith’s family, Mr Maresca, in the courtroom today]

This late report is by Paolo Santalucia of the Associated Press

Later Wednesday, prosecutor Pietro Catalani asked the court to confirm the sentence of 30 years in jail for Guede.

“He is not credible,” Catalani said, adding that wounds on Kercher’s body suggest it took far longer for her to die than Guede’s testimony indicated.

Proceedings were adjourned to Dec. 21, when Guede’s defense lawyers will argue their case.

The court had rejected the request of the Guede appeal team to reopen several components of the investigation, to bring in new witnesses, and to hear testimony on stress psychology and on the towel found beside Meredith.

This does not bode well for his appeal prospects.

Judge Micheli summarised a lot of evidence proving that Guede was throughout a part of the vicious assault on Meredith. He handed Guede a rape conviction as well as a murder conviction and Guede is serving his 30 years in the sex offenders’ wing of Viterbo Prison north of Rome.

Probably the best Guede could have done would have been to come clean, relate the full story, and claim that he was unaware from the other assailants of where events were headed.

But that Guede did not call an ambulance seems to have sealed Meredith’s fate forever. The prosecutor today said Guede had PLENTY of time to call an ambulance while Meredith would still have been alive.

Instead, Guede abandoned Meredith to die slowly and painfully, he went home to clean up, and he went out to a disco.  Thirty years seems pretty light for doing that.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 11/18/09 at 06:55 PM in Trials 2008 & 2009,  Guede appeals

Comments

I would have thought that Rudy, or at least his legal councel, would have a bit more common sense to realize that they needed to present something extraordinary to ensure that the appeal has a chance of success. The man is already convicted and sentenced, he has nothing to lose. So he gets one shot at hopefully reducing his sentence or copping a plea, and he does a rehash of what he pleaded before! What a waste of the time of everyone involved! But more importantly (for him) he missed an opportunity to blow the whole case wide open. Is he afraid of something? Did someone get to him and threaten him somehow? Staying in prison for 30 years where he is going to anyway be ‘acclimatized’ by hardened criminals seems already like a worse fate to me…

Posted by Terence on 11/19/09 at 01:36 PM | #
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