Friday, May 29, 2015
Those Pesky Certainties Cassation’s Fifth Chamber May Or May Not Convincingly Contend With #4
Posted by Cardiol MD
1. SERIES OVERVIEW
This post continues a response to the March 27th, 2015 announcement of Cassation’s Fifth Chamber that it had decided that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were Not Guilty of the November 2007 Murder in Perugia of Meredith Kercher.
The Fifth Chamber’s Reporting Judge Antonio Paolo Bruno, was reported to have said that the trials had “not many certainties beyond the girl’s death and one definitely convicted”.
In fact Judge Bruno was wrong.
Post #1 and Post #2 and Post #3 reported dozens of Certainties contained in “the trials”.
As previously noted, the Existence, Timings, Durations, and General-Locations of all the telephone calls are a very fertile source of Certains, or Certainly-Nots. This is because civil telephone time-keeping all over the Earth’s surface, including in Italy, the U.S. and the U.K, use, and specifically did use in November 2007’s Perugia, the Coordinated Universal Time Protocol (CUT).
Coordinated time-keeping assures that the time assigned to a telephone event is accurate and very precise, independent of where it occurs. It’s almost as if these November, 2007’s Perugia “˜phone users were wearing criminal-offender’s ankle bracelets. CUT records enable decisive challenge to the credibility of a false witness (impeachment).
(Uncoordinated Time-keeping could have resulted in wrong times being assigned to a telephone event)
2. MORE SUCH CERTAINTIES
(A) SOLLECITO’S PHONE
43. IT IS CERTAIN THAT SOLLECITO’S PHONE WAS EITHER AFFIRMATIVELY SWITCHED-ON, OR HAD-BEEN-MOVED, AT 6:02:59 AM, 2 NOVEMBER 2007
Therefore, contrary to the Defense “reasoning”, cited below, there is Certain proof that Sollecito’s phone was switched on or had been moved at 6:02:59 am on 2 November 2007, and that Sollecito &/or Knox were awake at that time, contrary to their assertions, which are Certainly false:
Nencini Page 158:
“If in fact one can agree with the Defense reasoning by which there is no certain proof that at 6:02:59 am on 2 November 2007 Raffaele Sollecito’s phone was switched on (by himself or by Amanda Marie Knox, the only two present in the apartment) allowing [142] reception of the SMS sent to him by his father a good six hours earlier, the only logical alternative is that someone obviously moved the phone inside the apartment from the location in which it was positioned, and where it was not receiving the “signal”, to a different location in the apartment, where the “signal” was received.What matters, and what the Court finds proved, is that at 6:02:59 am on 2 November 2007 in the apartment at 130 Via Garibaldi, they were not in fact asleep, as the defendants claim, but rather the occupants were well awake, so much as to switch on or move the phones.”
More in this case:
(B) WITNESS ANTONIO CURATOLO
Antonio Curatolo had testified at the Massei Trial that he had seen Amanda Marie Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, from 9:30pm to around midnight of 1 November 2007 in Piazza Grimana”
However, the Hellmann Court of Appeal’s motivazione had rejected the reliability of Curatolo’s Testimony.
The SCC Panel, Annulling the Hellmann Court of Appeal’s motivazione had, in turn rejected and annulled Hellman’s Analysis of Curatolo’s Testimony, stating on pp 67-69:
“The Hellmann Court of Appeal rejected the reliability of the testimony of Antonio Curatolo which, in the reconstruction of the First Instance Court, had been taken as a basis of proof that the negative alibi offered by the two accused was false, and which constituted one of the tesserae of the mosaic which led to their being held to have been present at the scene of the crime. Incidentally, it is worth recalling that the First Instance Court held, via reasoning that was correct from both a legal and logical point of view, that the false alibi must be considered as evidence against [the accused], to be placed in relation to the other elements of proof in the context of the entire body of evidence.
This method of analysing the testimony, as observed by the Prosecutor General submitting the appeal, is absolutely subject to censure in that it displays a lack of the prerequisite thorough examination of the facts and circumstances, so that the conclusion that was reached [by the Hellman Court of Appeal] ““ that in indicating the two accused students as having been present in Piazza Grimana, he confused the evening of 31 October and the evening of 1 November ““ clashes with ascertained facts that seriously contradict such an absolutely certain assumption, so as to shed full light on the well”foundedness of the charge that the justifying discourse is contradictory and thus manifestly lacking in logic (it was in fact proven by other facts that on the evening of 31 October that neither Knox nor Sollecito, who were both occupied, the former at Lumumba’s pub where she was preparing for the normal activity associated with the Halloween festival, the latter at a graduation party, could have been present in Piazza Grimana at around 11 PM).
The assertion that the sighting of the two young people by the witness should be shifted to 31 October (page 50 of the sentencing report) because the context described was more suitable to that day than the next day, since [the latter] did precede the arrival of the Scientific Police but [50] [was] taken out of context, is a manifestly illogical assertion, not only because it contradicts facts which unequivocally demonstrate that the two were not in the piazza on the evening of 31 October (a fact of fundamental importance in the context of the evaluations) and thus the impossibility of squaring the circle in the sense proposed, but also because it follows an utterly weak inferential rule.
Starting from the need to undo the knot of contradiction presented by the testimony (he saw the two young people the evening before the investigation of the Scientific Police and he saw them in the context of the Halloween festival), the Hellmann Court of Appeal, after having heard the witness testify a second time and after having verified that he erroneously placed Halloween on the night of 1”2 November, they heard the witness reiterate that his temporal placement of the fact was anchored to the described presence of people who were all dressed in white and that, after midday on the day after he saw the two young people, he caught sight of the men in white in via della Pergola (a fact with a very high level of certainty, more than any other) together with the police: this notwithstanding, the Court reached the conclusion that his testimony could not be accepted due to the man’s deteriorating intellectual faculties and due to his lifestyle, since he was a detainee for drug dealing when he testified the second time and was a habitual heroin user.
Once again, the progression of the argument emerges as obviously illogical, in that the evaluation of the testimony should have been correlated (regardless of the conclusions, this being a discussion of evaluation methods) to the unique objective fact of absolute reliability (the presence of individuals wearing the white suits, the day after the sighting of the two in the piazza, at a time earlier than 11 PM”midnight) because that is a fact whose existence is certain, which was a unique identifying circumstance, which could not but remain imprinted on the mind more than any other; while instead, once again, character issues were considered and asserted, furthermore, without any scientific examination that could ascertain whether the man’s intellectual faculties had deteriorated. Moreover, Curatolo showed up when called upon to testify, in both the first and second instance trials and, even well after the fact, he never had any difficulty recognizing the two accused as those whom he had seen in Piazza Grimana the evening before he noticed the men dressed in white (whom he called “extra”terrestrials”) and the police in via della Pergola.The fact that he had been a homeless man who spent all day in the piazza was not a reason for dismissing him as an unreliable witness out of hand, at the cost of colliding with the accepted principles on the matter of the reliability of testimony. In conclusion, [51] a contribution [that was] expressed with certainty and noted in the trial transcripts of the witness, and again during his second testimony (“as certain as I’m sitting here” he said of having seen the two accused the evening before the day in which he saw the men in white suits and the police), cannot be circumvented by merely referring to the character of the author of the contribution; this would have required a process of evaluation through facts with equally strong probative evidence.
Moreover, the opinion must be annulled and remanded, since the explanations of the reliability of the witness Curatolo are incomplete (as they did not take into consideration the facts that contradicted the conclusion reached by the Court), vitiated by an incorrect application of the laws governing the matter. The “˜precise and serious’ nature of the evidence provided by the testimony was dismissed in the [Appeal] opinion without testing its concordance with other evidence, on the basis of a conjecture (that the witness superimposed the evening of 31 October onto that of 1 November) that was not even confronted with the facts contradicting its conclusions”
In summary, this SCC Panel ruled that Hellmann’s Motivazione “must be annulled and remanded” because it ignored facts contradicting Hellmann’s conclusion, and incorrectly applied “the laws governing the matter”, “without testing its concordance with other evidence”, not even confronting Curatolo “with the facts contradicting (Hellmann’s) conclusions”.
Therefore:
44. IT IS CERTAIN THAT CURATOLO WAS PRESENT IN PIAZZA GRIMANA ON THE EVENING OF NOV. 1st, 2007
45. IT IS CERTAIN THAT CURATOLO TESTIFIED THAT HE SAW MEN IN WHITE SUITS, AND POLICE PRESENT IN PIAZZA GRIMANA ON THE MORNING AFTER HIS SIGHTING OF AMANDA KNOX AND RAFFAELE SOLLECITO IN PIAZZA GRIMANI.
3. AND MORE BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBTS
(A) WITNESS ANTONIO CURATOLO
The SCC Chamber’s reasons, given above, for Annulling And Remanding Hellmann’s conclusions re Curatelo’s misremembering the Date, in spite of his specifically remembering that it was the evening before he saw the Official Commotions relating to Meredith’s murder, justify the Conclusion that:
8. IT IS BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT THAT CURATOLO SAW AMANDA KNOX AND RAFFAELE SOLLECITO IN PIAZZA GRIMANA ON THE EVENING OF NOV.1st, 2007 ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS. A FEW YARDS FROM THE COTTAGE AT NO. 7, VIA DELLA PERGOLA, WHERE, IN THE SAME SPAN OF TIME, THE MURDER TOOK PLACE.
WITNESS MARCO QUINTAVALLE
Nencini p 156:
“Amanda Marie Knox went to Marco Quintavalle’s Conad shop around 7:45am on 2 November 2007, obviously in search of something to buy that she could not find. She was noticed by Mr. Quintavalle who, at the trial, identified her with certainty in the courtroom. So we are able to affirm that Amanda Marie Knox was lying when she claimed to have slept at Mr. Sollecito’s house in his company until 10am in the morning on 2 November 2007.
Having already been proven false by witness testimony, the alibi given by the accused is also proven false by comparing it with objective data, which tallies with the witness testimony referred to above.”
SCC. Annulling H/Z p 50
“In this case, [the Defence argues that] a re”evaluation of the witness is not allowed, given that his testimony was correctly examined by the Hellmann Court of Appeal, knowing the lapse of time after which he offered his contribution to investigators. The witness’s statements were, for the rest, compared with those of his co”workers, who referred to the doubts expressed by Quintavalle on the exactitude of his identification. There is therefore no lack of logic in the reasoning, since the lack of logic must be manifestly perceived, whereas minimal inconsistencies must have no influence”
SCC ANNULLING H/Z p 70-71
“In reality, the notice taken of the witness’s statements, as pointed out by the Prosecutor General, is absolutely biased, since the sighting out of the corner of the eye referred to the girl’s exit from the shop, whereas the witness specified having seen her at a close distance (between 70”80 centimetres), adding that she remained imprinted on his mind “because of her very light blue eyes”, her “extremely pale face”, and “a very tired expression”.
Moreover, the witness clarified in his testimony that he became convinced that the girl who appeared in the newspapers was the one he saw in the early morning of 2 November 2007, given that the colour of her eyes could not be ascertained from the photo, but that he became certain once that he saw the girl in the courtroom. The selection made from the pool of information was absolutely one”sided, which distorted the evidence to the point of making it appear uncertain, whereas the witness explained the reasons for his perplexity and the development of his conviction in terms of certainty.
As noted by the Prosecutor General in the appeal documents filed, this portion of the report assumed relevance within the framework of the reconstruction and required an explanation based on an examination of the entire testimony; instead, through a process of unacceptable selection, only some of the testimony was considered to be of value, indeed, only that portion considered to be consistent with a [specific] conclusion, one that in fact required rigorous demonstration.
The result, once again, is blatantly and manifestly illogical. What is at issue is not a re”evaluation of the evidence ““ which is obviously prohibited by this Court, as the Defence for the accused has justly pointed out ““ but rather the need to point out a glaringly evident flaw that consists of an intolerable chasm between what is stated by the witness and what is acknowledged in the justifying arguments, on a point of significant importance, since it concerns the foundation of the alibi.
On this point also, the new judgment will have to be conducted in light of the preceding observations.”
Given the above:
9. IT IS BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT THAT MARCO QUINTAVALLE SAW AMANDA KNOX IN HIS CONAD SHOP AT AROUND 7:45 am ON 2 NOVEMBER 2007.
Amanda Marie Knox was lying when she claimed to have slept at Mr. Sollecito’s house in his company until 10am in the morning on 2 November 2007.
To be continued, though we may need to wait until the end of June 2015 when SCC’s Motivazione is due.
Comments
The Court said that a re-examination of the evidence is “oobviously prohibited” by them. Well, didn’t the Fifth Section have to re-examine the evidence in order to have concluded that it was insufficient or contradictory (which conclusion is itself a jitself joke)? I guess we’ll find out. I don’t know. It seems so egregious, this decision.
Clearly they were awake by 6:02:59 because they were listening to music on Sollecito’s computer at 5.35 am. That is a categorical fact and the music ran for about half an hour. What’s more we know to what music they were listening. It started with the head banging introductory music to the Fight Club movie with it’s psycho stabbing meme and background scream-like sounds (Oh yeah, how apt?!) followed by Nirvana.
“There’s only one rule to Fight Club and that is that you don’t talk about Fight Club”!
It’s not a question of evaluating the intrinsic quality of the music but one can certainly consider why this music and why at that time in the morning!
I doubt that the judges ever got to consider that. Had they done so I am pretty sure that they would have sat up sharpish.
Furthermore there is clear evidence of manual interaction as some tracks were paused and then clicked on to the next. In fact the Fight Club theme is stopped and clicked on to Nirvana very soon after the scream-like sound begins.
Another categorical fact is that there was a dollop of Knox’s blood on the basin tap in the small bathroom. By her own admission that wasn’t there the last time she used the small bathroom on the 1st November.
She would have us consider whether this might have been deposited when she allegedly took a shower there on the morning of the 2nd when (again allegedly) she says that she removed her ear studs to clean an “infected” ear piercing. In which case she must have carelessly lost a stud (never to be found at the cottage), or have carried it around in her pocket afterwards, as photographs of her show a missing stud. That should have been a surprise question for her at her trial IMO.
And then again there is the undisputed fact of Knox’s spot lamp (and Meredith’s own) on the floor in Meredith’s room.
Why on earth would Guede and his unidentified mates (for whose presence no evidence exists) have needed Knox’s lamp?
The presence of Knox’s blood is very incriminating. Any unsentimental jury anywhere would think so and remember that the DNA traces of Knox in the mixed Knox/Kercher DNA traces, which by any sensible rationalization had to be blood, were, despite removal of the visible substance, in her case high enough in many loci to conform with her blood as the source rather than another biological substance from her.
James - Thanks for your amplifying references to Knox’s Lamp in Meredith’s room, and to the DNA.
All of the listed Certains can be similarly amplified; please do so.
@James Raper, you rock. Knox has no alibi and evidence of her was found at the crime scene.
Thanks for mention of Curatolo and the point about Meredith’s lamp. It was there for careful inspection to clean a floor or find a missing small item. It was there to shed light on a floor.
It’s undisputed that witnesses place Knox out in town during times she said she was indoors.
Toto is dead because of her, Mr. Kercher’s health is shot partly because of her. Let us not get bitter (easier said than done), but trust that good will come out of evil.
@James Raper, you rock. Knox has no alibi and evidence of her was found at the crime scene.
Thanks for mention of Curatolo and the point about Meredith’s lamp. It was there for careful inspection to clean a floor or search for something. It was there to shed light on a floor around a dead body. I doubt they used it to shine into Meredith’s eyes.
Knox was quiet about the lamp pretending she didn’t notice it gone from her room.
Undisputed: witnesses place Knox out in town during times she said she was indoors. She lies about where she was.
Toto is dead because of her, Mr. Kercher’s health is shot partly because of her lies. If what goes around comes around, Knox will be told tremendous lies.
Terrific series Cardiol, read in Italy of course.
Thanks James for coming in. James might have a series up his own sleeve (we can hope!)
Breaking News, as in the box at top now removed:
RS lawyer Maori being charged for exceptionally nasty attack interview, see translation of charges here soon.
AK lawyer Dalla Vedova quoted as advising Knox Fifth Chambers verdict was finding of innocence. Wrong, it wasnt, it was weakly argued finding of reasonable doubt, a matter only for Florence court to determine.
Dalla Vedova quoted as advising Knox no worries about Calunnia #2 trial as charges expire 2016. Wrong, they wont expire before 2020s as this is repeat offense.
Upcoming trials for books could see many “persons of interest” called or quoted who parroted false accusations.
Expect huge exposure of Knox lies here next week.
@Cardiol - awesome job, as always + THANK YOU for so clearly demonstrating the copious HARD EVIDENCE against the unjustly freed perps.
@Peter - awesome work, as always - keeping on top of all the new developments & sharing with us & the world, to help show the lies of the irrational mouthpiece$ for obKnoxious & Soulless-cheato.
Thanks for the article.
But, Peter’s comment on the 17th astounds me!! Can’t wait to hear more..
Where next:
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