6. Why Investigators’ Version Won Hands-Down At Trial

Click for Post: #10: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #1

Click for Post: #11: Why Prosecution And Defenses Never Believed Knox’s Version #2

2. Explaining Overall Arc Of Events

Much of the testimony listed above was about events at the central police station pre-arrest in early November 2007 and subsequent court attempts to achieve some believability and relief.

Early in 2009 at trial Knox and Sollecito sat glumly through all of the investigators’ pre-arrest testimony and cross-examination at trial. They were downhearted and apprehensive, and there were no smiles and few interruptions.

Subsequently Sollecito chose not to get on the stand, so from his team there really was never a rebuttal.

But Knox HAD to get on the stand, in July, for two days. She had no other way to defend herself against the serious felony crime of falsely framing Patrick for murder.

It was her word against theirs. It contradicted in many places what she had heard months earlier in sworn testimony from many investigators.

Knox’s version inevitably weakened a lot under cross-examination, and was ultimately a fail at trial and several appeals, even the annulled one.

Knox ended up serving three years. While on the stand she confirmed that she had been treated well, stiffing thousands of supporters duped into believing she had not been.

3. Explaining Court-Accepted Narrative For 6 Nov

This is an overview of Knox’s so-called “interrogation” at Perugia’s central police station, the subject of the first ten posts.

It led to her arrest and three years served. To make this picture really firm we will quote a lot of the testimony at trial. The Case Wiki carries all of these transcripts, many in English translation, and more. 

Senior Inspector Rita Ficarra testified that she arrived back at the police station late on 5 November, and finds her way blocked by a cartwheeling Knox.

She rebukes Knox, who testily responds that she is tired of the investigation. Rita Ficarra tells Knox to go home and get some sleep. Knox testily refuses, and remains there.

Shortly after, Ficarra suggests to Knox that if she really wants to help, she could add to the list of possible perps - men who Meredith knew and who might have visited the house.

This was a recap/summary, a simple checking of facts with someone who might or might not be of help. This could have been done on a street corner or in a house by a single officer. It was not a witness or suspect interrogation. From the transcript:

Ghirga: “While this interrogation - let’s call it thus - was in progress, some colleagues arrive…”  Ficarra: “It was not an interrogation, Attorney.” Ghirga: “They are called recaps/summaries.

Knox eagerly agrees. So they begin on the list.

This goes slowly because of language problems, until an interpreter, Anna Donnino, arrives. In total only Knox and four others (three of them women) are present.

Knox builds a list of seven people and adds maps and phone numbers (placed in evidence) in a calm proceeding. These were the names: Peter Svizzero, Patrick, Ardak, Juve, Spiros, Shaki and “a South African [Guede]” who played basketball near the house.

At several points in the evening Knox is provided with refreshments. No voices are ever raised, no bathroom breaks are refused.

In a separate wing Inspector Napoleoni and a couple of colleagues are seeking facts from Sollecito. Shown conflicts between what he has said and what his phone records show, Sollecito backtracks, and declares that Knox went out alone on the night, and made him lie.

Napoleoni moves through the questura to suggest to Ficarra to discuss the night of the attack with Knox in more detail and clarify who might have been present. Knox is not informed of Sollecito’s backtrack. She is asked for more names and spontaneously shares her phone. There is an outgoing to Patrick but no prior incoming. Knox is asked who Patrick is.

Suddenly, to the considerable surprise of others present, Knox has a yelling, head-clutching conniption (the first of several that night) and says “It’s him, it’s him, it was him, he killed her”. The session is halted.

Despite warnings she should not do so without a lawyer, Knox insists on a recorded statement which says she headed out to meet Patrick that night after he texted her. She accuses Patrick of killing Meredith. 

Efforts are made throughout the next several hours to try to help Knox to calm down. Knox is put on hold, given more refreshments, and made comfortable on some chairs so she might try to get some sleep.

A second session ending at 5:45 is intended as merely a formal reading of Knox’s legal status and her right to a lawyer, with Dr Mignini presiding. She is to be held as a material witness and for her own protection.

Again warned that she should not speak without a lawyer, and no questions can be asked, Knox still insists on a second spontaneous accusation culminating in a second recorded statement.

This also says she went out to meet Patrick that night, also accuses Patrick of killing Meredith, and now also hints that Sollecito may have been there. 

Just before noon, now under arrest and about to be taken to Capanne Prison, Knox insists on writing out at length a third statement this time in English.

She gleefully hands it to Rita Ficcara who cannot read it as she as no English. In the statement, Knox included this damning remark, without any mention of having been coerced: “The questions that need answering, at least for how I’m thinking are… 2. Why did I think of Patrik?”

Knox’s lawyers never ever substantially challenge this version. At trial they accept that there was no interrogation, leave standing that Knox insisted on all three statements, and dont ever pursue Knox’s claims that she was coerced.

Courts all noted that there is no mention in that third note of Knox having been coerced, although this note was her idea and she could put in it anything she liked. From this there never was any going back.

In July 2009 at trial, in face of days and days of prior investigator testimony, Knox brashly tried to substitute this scenario above with the one below. Of course she was disbelieved.

For the calunnia framing of Patrick Lumumba Judge Massei in 2009 sentenced her to a year more than Sollecito, amended by Judge Hellmann in 2011 to three years served.

The Supreme Court definitively overruled her calunnia appeal so for her false framing of Patrick she is a felon for life.

4. Explaining Knox Family & PR Alternative

Knox’s Italian lawyers were not a part of this; in contrast the American PR lawyer Ted Simon sought to introduce major confusion.

In Italy, lawyers are REQUIRED to report tales of abuse of their clients or face possible criminal charges. Contrariwise, if they knowingly report false charges they can face similar charges. So what they do is a strong indicator of truth. 

Amanda Knox’s lawyers not only did not ever report any abuse. They even announced publicly, in face of incessant claims of abuse by Knox, family, and PR forces, that they had seen no evidence of abuse and so would not be reporting. 

Though her precise claims vary and often contradict one another, Knox herself has on and off ever since November 2007 tried to put the investigators on trial - tried to blame the police for causing her conniption and her false accusation of Patrick for the death of Meredith.

Her fail rate has been spectacular.

Knox failed to convince (1) Supervising Magistrate Matteini and (2) the Ricciarelli review panel in November 2007, (3) failed to convince Prosecutor Mignini in December 2007, (4) failed to convince the Supreme Court in April 2008, (5) failed to convince the Micheli court in late 2008, (6) failed to convince the judges and jury at trial 2009, (7) failed at annulled appeal 2011, (8) failed at repeat appeal 2013, (9) failed to convince the Supreme Court in 2012 and (10) failed again in 2015.

As Knox’s team simply did not ever believe her, they may not have given this their hardest shot. It was not part of their largely spurious complaint to the EC HR.

And yet despite all of these failures, the huge and very nasty Knox PR effort went full-bore ahead with the abuse allegations anyway.

Read this post of 11 February 2009 which was about two weeks before the Knox “interrogators” were cross-examined at trial, and several months before Knox herself took the stand. Dozens of media reports repeated the Knox claims as if true.

Knox repeated them in her April 2013 book, and her December 2013 email to Judge Nencini, and her appeal to EHCR Strasbourg, and in some TV and newspaper interviews, including one with the Italian weekly Oggi which caused that paper legal harm.

This version has been blown up by Knox PR shills in internet posts, articles, TV interviews, and books. Among others propagating it have been mafioso wannabes Raffaele Sollecito (in his book), Doug Preston, Saul Kassin, Steve Moore (especially), John Douglas, Jim Clemente, Paul Ciolino, Michael Heavey, Greg Hampikian, Chris Halkidis, Mark Waterbury, Doug Bremner, Candace Dempsey, Nina Burleigh, Bruce Fischer, and many posters on the Knox sites and Fischer sites and on Ground Report.

Main claims included 50-plus hours of “interrogation”, numerous officers in teams, no food or drink, no sleep, no bathroom breaks, no lawyer, no recording, and much abuse and yelling and suggestions and threats. Way beyond anything even Knox herself and notably her own lawyers ever claimed. 

• Here is Steve Moore claiming that around a dozen cops in rotating tag teams of two assaulted a starving and sleepless Knox over 20/30/40 hours, threatened her, and refused her a lawyer throughout.


• Here is Saul Kassin claiming that Knox was interrogated over the entire night of 5-6 November, until she was finally broken and a coerced “confession” emerged - even though the “false confession” actually framed Patrick and was in reality a false accusation. That Kassin ignores.


• Here are several former FBI profilers blatantly embellishing the same claims in a book, with (today) 60 five-star reviews.

And yet Knox’s own Italian lawyers specifically denied her accusations! No complaint against the police was ever lodged. All courts disbelieved her. Knox served her three years. But still the PR-driven hoax keeps resounding.

Monday, January 01, 2024

Despite Her Claims, Knox Was NOT Exonerated By Italy’s Supreme Court

Posted by Our Main Posters

Kentucky State Capital and Supreme Court

Originally posted June 23 2017. Copied here with comments to put it at top of the Exonerated Hoax category.

1. Wave Of US Lawyers Getting Duped

The Kentucky Bar Association is the latest to get swindled by Knox. They have paid a ton of money to be lectured to by a fake exoneree.

The online notice of today’s talk by Knox at their annual conference says it all: it PROVES a complete lack of due diligence. It wrongly reads as follows:

On Friday 23 June the programming will be packed with fun and interesting sessions.. Topping off Friday’s schedule will be the featured presentation; AMANDA KNOX will share her story. She is the American exchange student who spent almost four years in an Italian prison, following her conviction for the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student who shared her apartment. In 2015, Knox was definitively acquitted [aka exonerated].

2. But Knox Was NOT Exonerated

Knox’s sentence was merely vacated (she could be tried again) because under mafia influence the Fifth Chambers of the Supreme Court ignored most of the evidence - and then claimed there was not enough.

Read here. The Fifth Chambers was assigned the case through quite open defense manipulation. It does not normally handle murder cases, and neither the lead judge nor the writer of the sentencing report had previously handled murder cases. Their reasoning was torturous, evidence was cherry-picked, and it seems certain any experienced and trained murder-case judges would have found for guilt here.

Read here  Knox was in fact found to have been at the scene of the crime, and with blood on her hands. The Supreme Court’s Fifth Chambers in fact handed down the weakest possible “not guilty” sentence, not guilty due to “insufficient evidence” (though see below; most of it they ignored, and the trial prosecution was not even at the Supreme Court) which allows an appeal if the prosecution or victim’s family wish to take up that option.

Read here. Knox was definitively found guilty of calunnia (criminal defamation) against her boss, Patrick Lumumba. The Supreme Court in her final appeal confirmed that she falsely accused Patrick Lumumba, a black man, of murder. She served three years in prison, and is a convicted felon for life. (To date she has refused to pay compensation of about $100,000, placing her in contempt of the Supreme Court. So much for Knox “helping” the wrongfully imprisoned.)

Read here. That book by Knox - in an expanded but unrevised 2nd edition - is one of the most dishonest ever written. It contains an estimated 400-plus provable lies and up to 100 possible defamations. See this example. For those Knox still faces multiple possibilities of prosecution.

Read here. Also read here. The evidence against Knox and her co-defendant Sollecito was in fact massive, and when correctly seen as a whole (as only the 2009 trial jury saw, not the several appeal juries) absolutely damning. Read also here. Thereafter the gaming of the system began, starting with the defense procuring ANOTHER judge not qualified for murder trials (Judge Hellmann, now edged into early retirement) for their first (2011) appeal. 

Read here. If true to form Knox will again try to claim to your audience that police interrogators forced a false confession out of her. Again untrue. She was not interrogated on that night or any other night. In fact she was only ever interrogated twice, BOTH TIMES at her own request by Dr Mignini, in December 2007 and July 2009. She was given SIX court opportunities to get herself off before the 2009 trial - and she failed all of them.

Read here. The supremely fair Italian justice system comes out pretty well against other systems including the American system. Italy’s rate of incarceration is 1/6 that of the United States, and among Italians the system polls very positively.

There’s much more if your members are inclined to set up a task force. For the protection from fraud of bar associations everywhere, we would welcome that.

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Explaining The New Attempt To Annul Knox’s Calunnia Conviction & ECHR’s Role

Posted by KrissyG

Florence court where decision will be made

1. The History

Knox has provisionally won a Supreme Court appeal against her 2009 calunnia conviction for framing Patrick. A Florence court will now check the facts and rule whether she did win.

It is worth looking back to see on what grounds Knox had a limited victory at the ECHR in Strasbourg which gave its findings in January 2019, and in which Italy unsuccessfully appealed against.

Back in 2008, the European Court of Human Rights issued a groundbreaking decision in the case of Salduz v. Turkey. The court held that people detained at police stations have the right to access a lawyer. If people are interrogated by the police without getting the benefit of legal assistance, this could be a violation of their fundamental right to a fair trial.  It is on this point that Knox succeeded.

But we can readily see that (a) Knox was not being detained at a police station when she made her false allegations against Lumumba, she arrived of her own volition, and (b) as of that point she was not a suspect, ergo nor was she scheduled for an interrogation.  As soon as Knox accused Patrick Lumumba of being the rapist/killer of Meredith, the interview was terminated.

So where did the ECHR get the idea Knox had been ‘interrogated’?  From the fact of Knox’s defence lawyer, Carlo Dalla Vedova’s submissions to the ECHR, relying heavily on the Motivational Reports of Boninsegna, 2016, and Hellmann-Zanetti, 2011. 

Problem is, Boninsegna was not the judge in Knox’s callunia conviction case; that was Massei, 2009.  Massei was largely ‘overturned’ by 2011 Appeal Judges Hellmann-Zanetti, who in turn was largely annulled by the 2013 Chieffi Supreme Court, and the Knox-Sollecito first apeal was reverted back to the 2014 Appeal Court Nencini, 2014, in a different legal region (Tuscany).

Judge Hellmann nonetheless upheld Knox’s Calunnia conviction, as did final Supreme Court Bruno-Marasca. Thus, the Calunnia conviction was never at any stage rescinded or referred back on appeal. 

But it was Judge Hellmann who introduced the concept of ‘interrogation’ and Judge Boninsegna, who oversaw the second Calunnia trial, this time relating to a different charge of slander, against the police, and which was thrown out, relied heavily on Hellmann’s descriptive narrative of an ‘interrogation’.

Yet Knox was not in custody and was there only as a person of interest.  She volunteered to hang around, having arrived at the Questura with her then boyfriend, Sollecito, who had been summonsed by the police to attend.  Thus, volunteering information is not technically an ‘interrogation’ in the legal sense.

The ECHR upholding Knox’s claim under Article 6, right to a fair hearing:

•relied on comments by Hellmann Appeal Court, which was largely superseded and replaced by the Chieffi Supreme Court.

•relied heavily on police minutes and the fact, it says via Boninsegna, that an interpreter, Doninno, and a police officer, RI, failed to record details of their expressions of familiarity with Knox, or make a note that (i) Knox was asked if she wanted a lawyer and declined, (ii) that start and end times are not recorded, and that (iii) hours are condensed into minutes. These police minutes represented a failure of procedure, the ECHR reasoned. 

But if Knox was not technically under police interrogation nor detained, that would explain the lack of ‘start’ and ‘finish’ times and obviate the need to read the informant their rights.

2. The Evidence

So what is the evidence of Knox falsely, of her own free will, accusing Patrick Lumumba of raping and killing Meredith?

According to Prosecutor Mignini in his recent book, the facts are these:

When Amanda receives that message in her mobile phone 3484673590, precisely at 20.18.12 […]  the users were “hooked” to the cell “Via dell’Aquila n. 5 - Torre dell’Acquedotto sector 3” […].

Amanda replies to Patrick at 8.32.34 p.m., with the SMS message whose screen Lumumba recognized […]. Amanda writes: “Of course. See you later. Good evening!”, in Italian but which was thought by Amanda in English as equivalent to “see you later”, an equivalent of “See you later” or “to resent”, indicating an indeterminate future, next meeting, just of people who see themselves regularly. That evening, in fact, there was no work.

Amanda and Patrick had no appointments whatsoever […]. When Amanda sends the SMS message in reply to Patrick, the reference cell, to which Knox’s users are “hooked”, is that of “Via Berar- di sector 7”, which gives coverage to Corso Garibaldi, where the Sollecito’s home is located.  This means that the girl from Seattle, as it was said, had gone out […] from where she was returning to the Sollecito’s house when she received Patrick’s SMS. It is quite likely that Amanda returned from Sollecito at about 20.30, after getting off via Ulisse Rocchi or passing through Piazza Cavallotti, where she received Patrick’s SMS.

[…]on the night between Monday and Tuesday, that is between 5 and 6, is the centre piece of the trial, […] because the most important event of that week was precisely the false accusation made by Amanda Knox against her employer, Patrick Diya Lumumba, owner of the Pub “Le Chic”, in the historic centre of the city. This slander, repeated on several occasions in the hours and days after, and which would be completely unexplained if Amanda had not at least been present at the crime, played a fundamental role in the judgment of responsibility against Knox and constitutes, so to speak, the painful point against which Amanda defended herself, […]  in front of the policemen to whom she accused Patrick and to me who, however, arrived at the police station later. I would stress that, for the offense of slander against Patrick, Knox has been definitively convicted, so that she can no longer claim invoked pressure from the investigators, which made her falsely accuse Lumumba. This crime was committed with full conscience and self-determination by Amanda, who is the only author of it and who, for this reason, was sentenced to an exemplary sentence.”

There is also the issue of the police wiretap which caught Knox confessing to her mother in the following week of knowing that Patrick was in prison wrongfully, but neither informed the police to rectify the situation.

Mignini further explains in his book that Knox said in her statement to the police that she lied to Sollecito that she had to go to work that evening:

...that, therefore, she had gone out and met Patrick in the nearby basketball field, and that she had then returned with him to the apartment of Via della Pergola. There, again according to Knox’s account, Lumumba would have secluded himself in Meredith’s chamber with her, had sexual intercourse with her, then degenerately killed her. Amanda would have heard everything from the position where she had stayed. It’s evident that she must have heard screams, fuss and then cries of Meredith before she was killed.’

[…]… and, therefore, the need to hide from Raffaele the encounter with Patrick (or, perhaps, with the other black, hidden under the guise of Lumumba, that is Rudi Hermann Guede), the next story may have a more or less innocent side, in the sense that Amanda would have only wanted to make Lumumba meet with her British roommate, but also, on the contrary, a disturbing side, alluding to a real participation of the girl from Seattle in the violence suffered by Mez and in her killing at the hands of Lumumba, having knowingly allowed him to meet Meredith in the apartment. However, Amanda accused Lumumba, not herself. They were statements that were “straight incrimination of another party”, not “self
incrimination”.

This is an important distinction.  One has the right in law not to incriminate oneself but no-one has the right to falsely accuse another of a crime that leads directly to their detriment.  Lumumba was arrested in the early hours, in front of his wife and children, wearing nothing but underpants, and thrown into jail accused of a particularly heinous rape and murder, as a terrified African man from the Congo.  The photograph of his arrest appeared in the worldwide press.

2. The Court Judgments

Then of course, there is the finding of the Supreme Court, Marasca & Bruno, Sept. 2015, who made it clear that Knox’s confirmed Calunnia conviction was borne out of a need to cover up for Rudi Guede, by virtue of his being also Black, as was Lumumba, and by reasoning that had a neighbour seen someone of that description near the cottage, that could be interchangeable with the person Knox had pointed a finger at, insofar that Marasca and Bruno upheld as a fact that Knox was present at the cottage when Meredith was murdered.

“All this took place in Perugia, during the night between the 1st and 2nd of November 2007. Knox […], knowing that he was innocent, with statements filed during declaration to the Flying Squad and the Police of Perugia on the 6th of November 2007, she falsely blamed Diya Lumumba called “Patrick” for the murder of the young Meredith Kercher, all of this to obtain impunity for everyone and particularly for Guede Rudi Hermann, coloured as is Lumumba; in Perugia, during the night between the 5th and the 6th of November 2007.
[…]

4. Meanwhile, it can’t be ignored, on a first summary overview, that the history of these proceedings is characterized by a troubled and intrinsically contradictory path, with the only fact of irrefutable certainty being the guilt of Amanda Knox regarding the slanderous accusations against Patrick Lumumba.

[…] On the other hand, in the slanderous declarations against Lumumba, which earned her a conviction, the status of which is now protected as final judgement [giudicato], [they] had themselves exactly that premise in the narrative, that is: the presence of the young American woman inside the house in via della Pergola, a circumstance which nobody at that time – except obviously the other people present inside the house – could have known (quote p. 96). According to the slanderous statements of Ms. Knox, she had returned home in the company of Lumumba, who she had met by chance in Piazza Grimana, and when Ms. Kercher arrived in the house, Knox’s companion directed sexual attentions toward the young English woman, then he went together with her in her room, from which the harrowing scream came. So, it was Lumumba who killed Meredith and she could affirm this since she was on the scene of crime herself, albeit in another room.’

[…]

‘Another element against her is certainly constituted by the false accusations [calunnia] against Mr. Lumumba, afore-mentioned above. It is not understandable, in fact, what reason could have driven the young woman to produce such serious accusations. The theory that she did so in order to escape psychological pressure from detectives seems extremely fragile, given that the woman [47] could not fail to realize that such accusations directed against her boss would turn out to be false very soon, given that, as she knew very well, Mr. Lumumba had no relationship with Ms. Kercher nor with the Via della Pergola house. Furthermore, the ability to present an ironclad alibi would have allowed Lumumba to obtain release and subsequently the dropping of charges. However, the said calunnia is another circumstantial element against the current appellant, insofar as it can be considered a strategy in order to cover up for Mr. Guede, whom she had an interest to protect because of fear of retaliatory accusations against her. This is confirmed by the fact that Mr. Lumumba, like Mr. Guede, is a man of colour, hence the indication of the first one would be safe in the event that the latter could have been seen by someone while entering or exiting the apartment.’

FIFTH CHAMBERS MOTIVATION REPORT (PRE-FINAL DATED 1 NOVEMBER 2015

For completeness of facts, here is what Massei, the trial court judge, had to say about Knox’ framing of Lumumba:

“It must therefore be asserted that Amanda Knox freely accused Diya Lumumba of having killed Meredith, and so accused him with full knowledge of the innocence of the [419] same Lumumba. The incriminating evidence against Amanda Knox and her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito which has been presented also highlights the goal that was thus pursued: to lead the investigators down the wrong track, far away from that which might have led to an investigation of her own and her boyfriend’s responsibility. A behaviour and a choice, therefore, [that were] purely defensive: Amanda had good relations with Lumumba, by whom she had always been treated well, as she herself stated, and thus there could have been no reason for rancour, animosity, revenge which could have justified such a serious accusation; the sole reason for unjustly accusing Lumumba was that of distancing herself and her boyfriend from every possibility of suspicion and the necessity of further investigations. To obtain this it was necessary to indicate a different perpetrator and so Amanda pointed to Diya Lumumba. A behaviour, therefore, which follows the same defence strategy as that already put into effect with the staging implemented by breaking the window of Romanelli’s room, and constitutes a further confirmation of Amanda Knox’s capacity for fictitious representations and contrived manipulation of the events.
SENTENCE OF THE COURT OF ASSIZES OF PERUGIA 2009

(PRESIDED OVER BY DR. GIANCARLO MASSEI)

3. Conclusions

So we can glean the following conclusions from this.  During the very earliest days of the course of investigation of Meredith’s murder, on the very next Tuesday evening after the Friday of 2 November, 2007, Knox pointed a finger at Lumumba knowing he was innocent and of her own free will, as found by all of the criminal courts.  The Italian criminal charge of Calunnia equates to the US charge of Obstruction of Justice or the UK equivalent of Perverting the Course of Justice, and is quite separate and distinct from any associated charge, such as the Aggravated Murder charge.  In the recent submission to the Court of Cassation, Knox relied heavily on the fact that the Aggravated Murder charge was annulled, and thus, ipso facto, was the argument that the Calunnia charge was also void.  However, the Court was not buying this and instead of the immediate annulment of the Calunnia conviction, a retrial has been set.

Did Amanda Knox seek to derail the police investigation by pointing the detectives in the wrong direction of an innocent man, Patrick Lumumba? This is what will need to be determined once again.

Why would Knox use the heavily criticised judgement of Hellmann - who found her guilty anyway - or that of third-party Judge Boninsegna who didn’t even deal with the Calunnia case against Lumumba, but who, to Dalla Vedova’s delight -ever the defence lawyer looking for a ‘get-out clause’ -  quoted Hellmann’s imprecise description of her voluntary police statements as an ‘interrogation’, when there were other, more completely, legitimate and more authoritative judgments that said otherwise, including the final Supreme Court Judge Marasca & Bruno of 2015.  Not forgetting that after she had signed her statement, she went away to her own private space and wrote a letter to the police underlining her belief she saw Patrick at the cottage, entirely unasked for and off her own free will.  Imagine the astonishment of the police officer when Amanda Knox crammed this letter into her hand, calling it ‘a present’.

Far from being cowed or confused, it seems as though Amanda Knox was determined to direct the police to the wrong person.  As many people are unaware - especially in the USA - of Knox’s Calunnia conviction, this whole new retrial might be a shot in the foot for Knox as well as a waking up surprise for those who had no idea of this aspect of her involvement in the Meredith Kercher case nor of her true character.

Sunday, September 24, 2023

Knox’s Misleading Petition To The Supreme Court

Posted by James Raper

Dalla Vedova also wrote untruthful Knox ECHR petition

1. Setting The Record Straight

With reference to this MailOnline article and numerous Italian reports (see one translation below) on Knox’s attempt to have Italy quash her calunnia conviction.

It should be borne in mind that the conviction was:

1. Rendered definitive by the 1st Chambers of the Supreme Court following an appeal by Knox on the issue

2. Effectively confirmed as definitive by the 5th Chambers of the Supreme Court

3. The 5th Chambers also poo-poo’d any attempt by the ECHR to interefere with the conviction whatever decision the ECHR came to.

4. The ECHR, in it’s ruling, did not in any event request the Italian justice system to review the safety of the conviction

5. The 5th Chambers also held, as a fact, that Knox was present in the cottage when Meredith was murdered. Accordingly she was perfectly well aware that Lumumba was not there and thus innocent.

There is an argument for saying that with a lawyer present she probably would not have made the accusation incriminating Lumumba.

That rather depends on what we cannot know, but it is hardly an excuse since she did (though there was no justifiable reason as to why she should, and she knew she was lying when she did.

The argument being used is like saying “Well I would not have shot him if there had been someone there to stop me”. Hardly an adequate defence.

I suspect that the hearing to which the MailOnline refers is really for leave to appeal - the route Guede took when challenging his definitive conviction, only to be denied leave.

Again Knox is drumming up interest so that she can continue with another round of grift and money making appearances.

But again - as always with the Italian Justice system - it is a question of watch this space.

2. Italian media report

Translation from Italian News Service TGCOM:

Meredith Kercher Case: Amanda Knox asks to cancel her sentence for slander against Lumumba

Appeal to Cassation of the American for the three years of imprisonment on the basis of one of the articles introduced by the Cartobia reform. Congolese opposes “out of respect for truth and justice”

Amanda Knox is asking that the definitive sentence of three years of imprisonment arrived for slander against Patrick Lumumba and linked to the trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher (for which she and Raffaele Sollecito were aquitted) be canceled.

She is doing this with an appeal to the Court of Cassation on the basis of one of the articles introduced by the Cartobia reform and after the European Court of Human Rights recognized the violation of her defense rights during the investigation.

However, Patrick Lumumba, the Congolese owner of the former pub Le Chic of Perugia, who was accused by the girl from Seattle and unjustly arrested for the murder, is opposed to the application. His motivation: “No to the cancellation of the sentence out of respect for truth and justice”.

Acquitted for the crime of Meredith Kercher but condemned for slander towards Patrick Lumumba, Amanda Knox presented the application in the Court of Cassation through the lawyers Carlo Dalla Vedova, her historical lawyer, and Luca Luparia Donati.

The appeal will be examined, in the council chamber and in non-participatory form [only lawyers present] at the beginning of October by the Fifth Chambers of Cassation. The appeal is accordingly opposed by Lumumba, represented by the lawyer Carlo Pacelli, “out of respect for truth and justice”.

This court may reject the American appeal, revoke the sentence of conviction for slander, or order a renewal of the trial, which in that case would be held in Perugia.

However, the possibility of a new trial is deemed very remote by Knox’s lawyers on the basis of the sentence of Cassation which acquitted her of the murder charge.

A possible cancellation of the conviction for slander would not however open the way to a request for compensation for unjust detention by Knox, since the terms have expired, though she could still make a request for damages.

Patrick Lumumba opposes the request of Amanda Knox to cancel the sentence against her slander towards him “out of respect for truth and justice”.

“Especially in the memory of Meredith Kercher” Patrick underlined with his lawyer, the lawyer Carlo Pacelli who will also represent him in the Court of Cassation. “Lumumba immediately became a civil party against Knox and that remains party to every procedural act” added the lawyer.

Lumumba was arrested for the murder of Meredith Kercher accomplished in Perugia in November 2007 based on Knox’s initial statements, but after 14 days in the cell he was released, because he was totally recognized as foreign to that crime and immediately acquitted.

Amanda Knox will not be in Italy for the hearing of the Cassation which will examine her request to cancel the sentence suffered for slander to Patrick Lumumba. “The procedure will be in the council chamber and without the parties. And also Amanda is awaiting a second child ...” explained the lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova, her defender from the initial stages of the investigation for murder. A charge from which she was definitively acquitted [actually, untrue].

It was Knox herself who asked to present the application to cancel the sentence of conviction. “She has always considered the accusation of slander unjust because she believes she had not committed that crime”.

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

PM Berlusconi RIP: Attempted To Rattle Largely Impervious Justice System

Posted by Peter Quennell

Commentary

Berlusconi was last the Prime Minister of Italy from 2006 to 2011.

He worked hard throughout to tilt the Italian justice system to his advantage, but with its 100% career staff, council of magistrates, and zero political appointees, he failed to really come out ahead.

Indirectly, he was a major influence in Meredith’s case. Sollecito lawyer Bongiorno, as the powerful head of the justice committee in parliament (she controlled the police, courts and prisons budget) worked very closely with him.

For this reason Bongiorno was a fearful figure (in most democracies such conflicts of interest are forbidden) and engineered the ill-fated appointment of Judge Hellman. He whose 2011 appeal (which almost resembled a new trial) was later annulled. Bongiorno did this by leaning upon Umbria Chief Judge De Nunzio to appoint him.

Had Senior Criminal Judge Chiari not been yanked off the appeal, it would have taken only 2-3 weeks as there was almost nothing to appeal about. And Knox and Sollecito would still be locked up.

Berlusconi himself was constantly beset by his own legal problems in later years and never permanently bent the justice system. He did, however, create the template for other elected authoritarian leaders who set about trying to overthrow democracy. Sound familiar to you?

Saturday, January 28, 2023

Dr Mignini’s Book #3 On How Most Non-Italian Media & Reporters Misrepresented The Case

Posted by KrissyG

Our 2020 assessment: max 1/3 of media played it fully straight

Long post. Click here to go straight to Comments.

1. Xenophobic Stereotypes

Quite early on in the book it becomes apparent that Dr Mignini had a big problem with the press almost from the moment when the body of the victim was discovered.

He singles out specifically the ‘typical’ and ‘atypical’ media organisations of the United States, noting they were mostly unaware of the procedural documents and the protocols of the Interior Ministry experts, and taking ‘zero correct aim’ pot-shots at the Scientific Police of the Central Anti-Crime Directorate.

Why did they do this?  Mignini believes in part:

Because of a petty nationalistic prejudice and to defend, therefore, the American from Seattle was considered a victim of a legal system and of a “medieval” investigator, who would be me, as well as of a city obsessed, according to them, with witches, which were however not in Salem in Massachusetts, but… in Perugia’.  P 36

Mignini names “in particular the journalist Nina Burleigh” the author of The Fatal Gift of Beauty, an absurd book with pseudo-intellectual pontification about the mysteries of Perugia, weaving a fugue of some kind of mysticism that permeated the crime, with Knox the unlikely victim of some latter-day witch hunt, whom Mignini accuses of projection, noting that unlike Perugia, with ‘just one sentenced for witchcraft, a nearby area to Burleigh in Salem, USA, had many. (p 37). 

Judy Bacharach was another xenophobic stereotyper.

Among the many American newspapers (and even some British ones) that fell into this unforgivable mistake, I was unfavorably impressed by Vanity Fair and a journalist, a certain Judy Bachrach, who barely concealed the antipathy she felt for me, widely reciprocated. The same thing must be said about Nina Burleigh, whom I have already spoken about, author of a book on the Amanda case, full of mistakes and false stereotypes. p. 44

2. Downplaying Of Knox Felony

A major irritation for Mignini is the way the misguidedly patriotic US press and also the normally ‘quality’ UK left wing papers such as the Guardian and Independent played down Knox’s role in accusing her boss Patrick Lumumba of murder whom she knew was wholly innocent.

Far from seeing it as a serious crime (the UK equivalent of ‘Perverting the Course of Justice’, which attracts jail terms of between three to six years, or the US Federal equivalent of ‘Obstruction of Justice’ [knowingly misleading a federal police investigation] with a similar sentencing recommendation), it was instead misreported by these papers as some kind of normal reaction to stress, wherein you just name any innocent person of a heinous crime, as one does, or the well-known US custom of blaming the nearest Black man.  A pervasive problem is that the overseas press are not under any jurisdiction of Italy to correct this.

That’s another one of the nonsenses I’ve come across. Among other things, the “stars-and-stripe” journalists and even some British journalists (of “hostile” newspapers, I do not know why, like The Guardian or The Independent, tended to minimize “criminal slander”, equating it to a “defamation”, while this crime is, for us, a crime against the administration of Justice, a kind of “obstacle to justice”,something much more serious in the ordinances of civil law. P52

3. Fabricators Form Teams

Then there were the stories that were outright fabricated, such as the claim that Mignini was actually present when Knox first made her outrageous accusation against Lumumba: that he had gone to Meredith’s room and raped and killed her, whilst Knox cowered in the living quarters, hands over her ears from the harrowing scream and thud.  The implication being that the innocent Knox was coerced into making her calumny.

Abroad and especially in the United States, the public would not have understood the slants and even vicious bad faith of certain expressions of information (television or print) or, worse still, “innocentist” blogs and forums which have continued to claim that I was present when Amanda first uttered the name of Lumumba… There is evidently no deafness worse than those who do not want to hear. P 60

So what is the truth about the conviction for Calunnia, for which Knox was sentenced to three years and remains a conviction?  As far as Mignini is concerned, Knox openly lies in her book Waiting to be Heard.

Then, in the midst of the legal process, Amanda wrote a book containing a serious and conscious distortion of the facts; however her final conviction for Calunnia now precludes any possibility of repeating her version, that she had named Patrick because it was suggested to her by the police to escape the intolerable pressure to which she claimed to have been subjected.
[…]
Amanda, and only she, is definitively guilty of calunnia to the detriment of Lumumba, and this crime was committed by her and only by her without any external pressure being invoked. Amanda had thus unprovoked accused Lumumba, and I remember perfectly that she made out to be seriously afraid of Patrick and in need of police protection.  p61

Then there is best-selling pulp fiction novelist Doug Preston, who liked to purvey a false narrative that a somehow corrupt Mignini as prosecutor in the Monster of Florence case had forced him to flee Italy, as an abortive attempt by Preston to ally with Spezi to solve the crime themselves, causing conflict with the official investigation.

A perfect chance of revenge for the perceived slight then, for Preston was to become a leading and influential campaigner against Knox’s charges from the legal safety of the United States.

Another such fabricating campaigner was Seattle lawyer Anne Bremner, and yet another, one Paul Ciolino of CBS, whom Mignini paints as a comedy character.

The “lobbying” vehicle of the compaigners began to invest in and airbrush one of the College of Jesuits in Seattle [former judge Heavey] and one of them phoned the fabricator Douglas Preston to inform him that the PM who had had Amanda arrested was the same who had investigated him. Then the fabricating lawyer Anne Bremner launched “moralising” lectures at Italian jurists like me (and who would end up pathetically in a cell for driving while drunk).

Soon joined in were the investigators Joe Tacopina (a character who surfaced to take on the defense of Amanda and was then dropped) and Paul Ciolino, a kind of clone of the long-gone American comic actor Lou Costello.

[…]  In the end, this group conquered the US media, even the New York Times.  Then the powerful lobby crossed the Atlantic, and conquered British newspapers in the “lefty” area (I don’t know why) and those seemingly neutral such as The Independent, with its strange correspondent from Rome, the ineffable Peter Popham, italophobic like few others, a writer of poor quality, plagued by all kinds of “tics” as I could see for myself in the talks I had with him.” p 68

4. Contrasting Media Teams

Before Mignini knew it, there was an entire orchestra of journalists, self-styled ‘freelancers, such as Frank Sforza, and someone Mignini refers to as a ‘neojournalist’, Candice Dempsey. Also Michelle Moore, the ‘perennially exaggerating’ wife of a former FBI agent Steve Moore, who would be in court in 2011 and later accompany Knox from Capanne Prison back to Seattle.

When the trial of Knox and Sollecito began before Judge Giancarlo Massei on 16 January 2009, Mignini was confronted by a whole cacophony of the clamouring press.  With characteristic wit and pith, Mignini describes them as thus:

There, I met envoys from various news agencies and television broadcasters, especially American ones, such as CBS, ABC, NBC, the Associated Press, and CNN And also from other media outlets such as those for the fine Barbie Nadeau, Andrea Vogt, Ann Wise, Sabina Castelfranco, Phoebe Nathanson and others.

I also remember the fine Britons, Tom Kington of The Guardian, Nick Squires of The Telegraph, Nick Pisa of Sky News, and John Follain of The Times, as well as a very nice older journalist, Richard Owen of The Times.

More praise for the good.

Above all, amongst the Anglo-Saxon journalists who are objective and balanced towards the work of the investigators, I recall especially four or five:

There was Barbie Nadeau of Newsweek, also American, originally from South Dakota, an attentive observer of the legal process whose services I appreciated, and was inspired also by her
rigorous impartiality. […]

Paul Russell, British television producer, distinguished by his seriousness and scrupulous information gathering and a great integrity of character, as well as a characteristic and funny British humour.
[…]
I remember John Follain, correspondent of The London Times, with whom I had a mutual “feeling” and who established a friendship with both me and Manuela Comodi’

5. Bizarre Media Parasites

Attaching himself to these journalists was a strange character, completely uninformed in procedural matters but who managed to credit himself as a kind of freelance, self-styled “persecuted” by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and in particular by me: Frank Sfarzo (pseudonym of Francesco Sforza), an individual with dark and thin hair, almost Maghrebi-looking, who lived with his mother, and also apparently his sister with whom he was on anything but on good terms, in an apartment on Via Fonti Coperte.

I do not know what he did in life, probably nothing until he was “transmogrified” on the “way to Damascus” by Amanda Knox, whose innocence he “married” immediately and tenaciously, without knowing anything about the trial.” p127

In Sfarzo’s context Mignini describes the amateur Seattle blogger Candice Dempsey, of Calabrian ancestry (who we spotted stalking the Kerchers) as looking at him ‘with eyes full of hate’, and ‘always close to Sfarzo’

Finally, a strange British gentleman, a certain David Anderson, who was probably even closer to verbal intemperances than the last two, which says it all. I believe he was a “psychologist” and lived with his wife in a villa near Todi.

An Englishman “enlisted” in the pro-Amanda lobby who was a “goofball”. He seemed totally incapable of a serene and balanced attitude, and did not tolerate opinions contrary to his own. One day I saw him lashing out at my colleague screaming outraged and incomprehensible expressions… with me he was probably holding back because he was afraid that I would react and have him arrested. After all, wasn’t I, for them, the “Chief Prosecutor” and Manuela my “Assistant”?

Mignini praises Nadeau, Penny Ganong and Andrea Vogt in their scepticism towards the efforts of Greg Hampikian to blind with science, so to speak, and as described by Mignini,

‘He was historically the first “American” defense adviser’ [operating from outside of Italy’s jurisdiction].

TJMK is name-checked in Mignini’s spotlighting a particular misinformation campaign:

In a much later era, in 2014, Prof. Halkides was responsible for a serious defamation campaign against Dr. Stefanoni, revealing a particularly virulent character, conducted together with another biologist named Tom Zupancic.
[…]
True Justice for Meredith Kercher has always tried to fight these falsehoods [of the formers’ falsely claimed procedural fraud by Dr Stefanoni] and focus on the undisputed points of the story. The virulent content of the campaign can be assessed at [various websites]. p 155

(A full discussion of Halkide’s and Zupancic’s scurrilous claims are set out in the book, which doesn’t concern the topic of the book review post here.)

6. Two Of The Very Worst

More sinister, taking place as it did in Italy, ahead of the outcome of Pratillo Hellmann’s appeal court hearing brought by the defence, was a revelation to Mignini by a UK journalist, Bob Graham, in an interview, that he, Bob Graham, had been privy to the content of Conti and Vecchiotti before it even became public before the court. 

“I had informed my colleagues of this extremely serious fact which revealed, at the very least, a serious indiscretion made by persons legally bound by professional secrecy, such as experts or perhaps their staff, in favor of the accused. I realized that Graham had misled me and, in doing so, had recorded his imprudent statements and handed it over to the lawyers. […]
It is unsurprising that this cassette would then disappear from the chronicles because, I believe, the “pro-defendants” community immediately realized that those words that Bob Graham had uttered and released were a boomerang that could have backfired heavily against the experts and the defenders themselves, and probably shake the outcome of the appeal process; however,the very serious and far too eloquent fact remains of a journalist who was aware of the content of the expert report when it had yet to be disseminated.” P 197

Yet the journalistic nightmare for Mignini and the prosecuting team does not stop here.  Mignini talks of the bias of a CNN reporter.

He perfectly embodied a central and paralyzing defect of American psychology, the narcissistic type, and he could not hide the hostility he felt for me. I should have known that he had been “catechized” by a familiar character, the “yellow-lister” Douglas Preston
[…]
The “blend” was explosive. The interviewer was a “belligerent” journalist who made me think of a “shark”. His name was Drew Griffin. His smile, in which he exhibited his dentition, was not a smile, it was an artifact. I don’t think he could smile spontaneously. He looked like a fake, artificial, plastic character, and like all Americans, he would always pose, theatrically, when he had to present himself as an American in front of a foreigner, especially a European and an Italian.”  P 199 (Written before Griffin passed away recently.)

Then there was CBS’s Peter Van Sant:

“There was also a journalist and commentator from Seattle, CBS, Peter Van Sant, distinguished for a furious and irresponsible campaign against Italian Justice in recent months, which culminated in his bizarre hope that the 82nd Airborne Division (that of the failed airborne raid of September 8, 1943 over Rome and the landing at Salerno) would free Amanda from prison in Perugia “ p237

It is simply astonishing the extent Mignini reveals how the defence – and proxy defences in the USA -conspired and collaborated with Conti and Vecchiotti to release an unknown woman from Seattle, whom noone had ever met, all on the strength of grievances, money-making and xenophobia held by third parties that had nothing at all to do with the Kercher murder case.

“ The only culprit was, for the press, not the American nor the Italian, but the “black” Rudi Hermann Guede, who could not benefit anyone who defended him.” P 251

7. Finally, Note This Irony

The irony is, in the Fifth Chamber’s motivation report in annulling the sentences of Knox and Sollecito, ‘interference by the press’ is cited as one of the factors leading to the reversal of the 2014 Nencini verdict.

Saturday, January 14, 2023

The District With By Far The Highest GDP In Europe? It’s In Italy. In Milan.

Posted by Peter Quennell

Context

A 15-minute walking tour of Porta Nuova in Milan.

This is the richest single district within any city in the European Union. With a GDP of over 400 billion euro, and the City of London no longer in the club, no other single district in any city in Europe comes close

It is also right now the most sustainable neighborhood in the entire world.