Continuation Part 10: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[moije2]

Chris_Halkides

I might have missed the posts you are referring too. Everything I have seen has been in the context of a verdicts being overturned as opposed a trial process being stopped by public opinion. As for the Stallings case I don’t think it is comparable to this case i.e. a brutal murder.

Maybe someone who pays closer attention to your posts can fill me in, but the flow is difficult to follow:

Coulsdon UK Post 3125:

Okay, please provide an example of where public opinion changed the course of an ongoing judicial process involving a murder case.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

brutal crimes may not be easily defined

Chris_Halkides

I might have missed the posts you are referring too. Everything I have seen has been in the context of a verdicts being overturned as opposed a trial process being stopped by public opinion. As for the Stallings case I don’t think it is comparable to this case i.e. a brutal murder.

Patricia Stallings was convicted of poisoning her infant son with ethylene glycol. That may not be brutal in the sense of physical violence, but it would be a heinous crime if it actually happened. I am not sure why one should restrict oneself to murders. The Duke lacrosse case involved the charge of a brutal rape.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

Patricia Stallings was convicted of poisoning her infant son with ethylene glycol. That may not be brutal in the sense of physical violence, but it would be a heinous crime if it actually happened. I am not sure why one should restrict oneself to murders. The Duke lacrosse case involved the charge of a brutal rape.

Sorry, Patrica Stallings was convicted? Sorry I thought you said public opinion somehow stopped the trial process.

Do you believe the judicial process in this case should be stopped? If the answer is yes, all I am asking for is examples of where this happened in a comparable murder case.

 

[kwill]

My position is and always has been it is for the Italian justice system to try this case in accordance with its own laws, if the process ended with Raffaele and Amanda being acquitted, so be it.

Right. And you've also refused to say whether or not you believe the evidence is sufficient to convict or exonerate them, or whether or not you believe they are guilty or innocent.

I don't understand that, especially now that it's known you're privately congratulating another poster on having scored what you both apparently believe was a good hit on Raffaele Sollecito.

If you think he's guilty of murder, why not say so? If you don't, why the joy at someone's ridiculous "gotcha" moment?

Anyway, what did you make of that story about a wrongly imprisoned Seattle man being granted $50k per year of incarceration? I think it's a good law - hopefully it will move the justice system here toward taking more care with how it railroads certain defendants into jail.

The best part is that he didn't have to sue them for those damages; the law awards them automatically.

If Italy had such a law on the books, we might be seeing an entirely different process here.

 

[carbonjam72]

Sorry, Patrica Stallings was convicted? Sorry I thought you said public opinion somehow stopped the trial process.

Do you believe the judicial process in this case should be stopped? If the answer is yes, all I am asking for is examples of where this happened in a comparable murder case.

When the trial and appeal judges won't allow independent experts or testing of exculpatory evidence, and fail so thoroughly in their role as has happened in this case, it difficult to fairly call it a "judicial process" at all.

How can you condone a fraud on and by the Italian courts? There was no legitimate basis for overturning the Hellman acquittal, and its just silly to pretend that there is.

Whats going on now, is pure politics.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

it takes a village to unbake a cake

Sorry, Patrica Stallings was convicted? Sorry I thought you said public opinion somehow stopped the trial process.

Do you believe the judicial process in this case should be stopped? If the answer is yes, all I am asking for is examples of where this happened in a comparable murder case.

CoulsdonUK,

The sooner any wrongful prosecution is stopped, the better, at any stage in the judicial process. One problem is that there is rarely a governmental institution whose job it is to overturn wrongful convictions. It is obviously in the interest of the convicted person to for the case to be reassessed, but he or she is in prison and probably broke at that point in the process. If public opinion causes leaders to reconsider a bad case at any point in the judicial process, that strikes me as being a good thing. With respect to the Duke lacrosse case, each defendant faced up to thirty years in prison, far longer that Guede will serve. Therefore, I see no reason to restrict ourselves only to murder cases. MOO.

 

[lonepinealex]

Neutral! My position is and always has been it is for the Italian justice system to try this case in accordance with its own laws, if the process ended with Raffaele and Amanda being acquitted, so be it. It’s not my fault that a number of people here seem to have decided they are as good as convicted.

Right, well the investigators and prosecutors have broken their own laws in this case, so where does that leave your position? Which is hardly a position anyway. What does it even mean? The Italian justice system has come to two different conclusions so far, and you're saying you're happy with either, once they've rubber stamped it all? What kind of a position is that? It's morally bankrupt and I frankly don't believe it.

Anyway I have little time for people who claim to be floating voters or undecided. They're either:

a) ignorant of the relevant information and therefore unable to form an opinion

or

b) attention seekers.

 

[Desert Fox]

Neutral! My position is and always has been it is for the Italian justice system to try this case in accordance with its own laws, if the process ended with Raffaele and Amanda being acquitted, so be it. It’s not my fault that a number of people here seem to have decided they are as good as convicted.

Let us try this. . . .

We have four actors here
Sally, a British student that decides to go to the University of Washington
Beth, a US Student from Virginia who also decides to go to the University of Washington
John, a Washington State native going to school for computer engineering hoping to go to work for Microsoft
Dwain, lives in Washington state not in school. His family original came from Jamaica. He is black while the other three are white.

Sally and Beth both share the same apartment off campus. There may be some minor disagreement. They also smoked a bit of pot, not uncommon in Washington state.

Sally due to her cool British accent gets a job at a pub. Also somewhere along the way she meets John and they have a romance.

One day Beth gets raped and murdered with Sally and John discovering the body. Sally is considered a bit strange by the Seattle cops with his customs from UK which makes their alarm bells ring. They are interrogated by the police over several days. After a long interrogation, Sally gives some sort of weak confession implicating her boss as the pub. Both she, John, and the pub owner are arrested.

Later, through an e-mail Dwain confessed to not committing the murder but witnessing the murder. He does not finger either Sally or John but states that it was some sort of mystery killer. He fled to Canada and Canada extradites him back after Washington agrees to no death penalty.

At the same time, the owner of the pub has an airtight alibi which the cops have to reluctantly accept. He is freed.

Sally and John however are tried for murder. There is no real evidence against them and they have a reasonable alibi. Maybe not an absolute ironclad alibi but still fairly solid. You think they are almost certainly innocent. Still, the jury finds them guilty. Washington state does not like the Death Penalty so they get life imprisonment.

Are you arguing that you would not be pretty angry at the US for imprisoning an almost certainly innocent British girl even though it was in accordance with Washington State laws?

 

[xinonix]

In situations like these they should have a change of venue and have Amanda's trial in the USA.
If the Italians don't want this, they should have thought of that before they lost World War II

 

[CoulsdonUK]

When the trial and appeal judges won't allow independent experts or testing of exculpatory evidence, and fail so thoroughly in their role as has happened in this case, it difficult to fairly call it a "judicial process" at all.

How can you condone a fraud on and by the Italian courts? There was no legitimate basis for overturning the Hellman acquittal, and its just silly to pretend that there is.

Whats going on now, is pure politics.

If Raffaele and Amanda’s are actually convicted I assume they will appeal to the ECHR, if as you and many here contend the Perugian appeal was overturned for no legitimate legal reason then I assume they would win their ECHR appeal, but it should be on a point of law.

CoulsdonUK,

The sooner any wrongful prosecution is stopped, the better, at any stage in the judicial process. One problem is that there is rarely a governmental institution whose job it is to overturn wrongful convictions. It is obviously in the interest of the convicted person to for the case to be reassessed, but he or she is in prison and probably broke at that point in the process. If public opinion causes leaders to reconsider a bad case at any point in the judicial process, that strikes me as being a good thing. With respect to the Duke lacrosse case, each defendant faced up to thirty years in prison, far longer that Guede will serve. Therefore, I see no reason to restrict ourselves only to murder cases. MOO.

Charis_Halkides

I do not know of a trial process involving murder that has been stopped because of public opinion.

Right, well the investigators and prosecutors have broken their own laws in this case, so where does that leave your position? Which is hardly a position anyway. What does it even mean? The Italian justice system has come to two different conclusions so far, and you're saying you're happy with either, once they've rubber stamped it all? What kind of a position is that? It's morally bankrupt and I frankly don't believe it.

Anyway I have little time for people who claim to be floating voters or undecided. They're either:

a) ignorant of the relevant information and therefore unable to form an opinion

or

b) attention seekers.

Noted.

Let us try this. . . .

We have four actors here
Sally, a British student that decides to go to the University of Washington
Beth, a US Student from Virginia who also decides to go to the University of Washington
John, a Washington State native going to school for computer engineering hoping to go to work for Microsoft
Dwain, lives in Washington state not in school. His family original came from Jamaica. He is black while the other three are white.

Sally and Beth both share the same apartment off campus. There may be some minor disagreement. They also smoked a bit of pot, not uncommon in Washington state.

Sally due to her cool British accent gets a job at a pub. Also somewhere along the way she meets John and they have a romance.

One day Beth gets raped and murdered with Sally and John discovering the body. Sally is considered a bit strange by the Seattle cops with his customs from UK which makes their alarm bells ring. They are interrogated by the police over several days. After a long interrogation, Sally gives some sort of weak confession implicating her boss as the pub. Both she, John, and the pub owner are arrested.

Later, through an e-mail Dwain confessed to not committing the murder but witnessing the murder. He does not finger either Sally or John but states that it was some sort of mystery killer. He fled to Canada and Canada extradites him back after Washington agrees to no death penalty.

At the same time, the owner of the pub has an airtight alibi which the cops have to reluctantly accept. He is freed.

Sally and John however are tried for murder. There is no real evidence against them and they have a reasonable alibi. Maybe not an absolute ironclad alibi but still fairly solid. You think they are almost certainly innocent. Still, the jury finds them guilty. Washington state does not like the Death Penalty so they get life imprisonment.

Are you arguing that you would not be pretty angry at the US for imprisoning an almost certainly innocent British girl even though it was in accordance with Washington State laws?

What I find interesting is that Sally and John would not be able to appeal their convictions to an international judicial body because America is not a signatory to any.

 

[Desert Fox]

In situations like these they should have a change of venue and have Amanda's trial in the USA.
If the Italians don't want this, they should have thought of that before they lost World War II

Interestingly the Italians will play that game
There is a case where a man committed murder in Florida
Italy refused to extradite him but instead tried him themselves under their laws.
Never found out what the results were of the trial

 

[Desert Fox]

What I find interesting is that Sally and John would not be able to appeal their convictions to an international judicial body because America is not a signatory to any.

However, if a higher judge was to overturn the conviction on appeal, except in some very specific circumstances, they would be considered innocent.

We both know that the European court of appeals can only view a small percentage of cases. Also, they can only recommend while if a federal court in the US vacates the charges, the state has no choice but to do what the federal court orders them.

 

[kwill]

What I find interesting is that Sally and John would not be able to appeal their convictions to an international judicial body because America is not a signatory to any.

They wouldn't have to if the story continued to the analog of the acquittal by the Hellmann court. That would be the end. And if that happened in WA today after Sally had been incarcerated for four years and then exonerated, we the taxpayers here would owe her $200k for her trouble.

You really don't want to admit that you think they're guilty, do you?

 

[Anode]

If Raffaele and Amanda’s are actually convicted I assume they will appeal to the ECHR, if as you and many here contend the Perugian appeal was overturned for no legitimate legal reason then I assume they would win their ECHR appeal, but it should be on a point of law.

Charis_Halkides

I do not know of a trial process involving murder that has been stopped because of public opinion.


Noted.


What I find interesting is that Sally and John would not be able to appeal their convictions to an international judicial body because America is not a signatory to any.

What I find appealing and interesting is that the defense lawyers could vigorously challenge, disparage, ridicule, and otherwise destroy the credibility of the prosecutor and the lack of evidence without fear of being sued. And the judge, the prosecutor, and the jury would not be so closely aligned...

 

[lonepinealex]

What I find interesting is that Sally and John would not be able to appeal their convictions to an international judicial body because America is not a signatory to any.

There's the federal courts, which are essentially equivalent given the relative populations and systems of government.

 

[lonepinealex]

So Coulsdon, you're not interested in the strong probability that the police and prosecutors broke Italian laws during the investigation and trials of this case, and that therefore by your own definition your declared position is invalid?

 

[CoulsdonUK]

However, if a higher judge was to overturn the conviction on appeal, except in some very specific circumstances, they would be considered innocent.

We both know that the European court of appeals can only view a small percentage of cases. Also, they can only recommend while if a federal court in the US vacates the charges, the state has no choice but to do what the federal court orders them.

I assumed a federal judge’s in this hypothetical scenario were comparable to the Italian Supreme Court. I am pretty sure that if the ECHR ruled that the Italian Supreme Court had broken its own laws then Italy as a signatory would have to act. However, in your scenario America does not recognise nor is it a member of any independent international judicial body.

I’m off to bed, wouldn’t want to be accused attention seeking.

 

[lonepinealex]

I assumed a federal judge’s in this hypothetical scenario were comparable to the Italian Supreme Court. I am pretty sure that if the ECHR ruled that the Italian Supreme Court had broken its own laws then Italy as a signatory would have to act. However, in your scenario America does not recognise nor is it a member of any independent international judicial body.

Each state has its own supreme court, which would be closer to the ISC. The US federal courts have a function similar to the European Courts, as I understand it.

 

[lonepinealex]

I’m off to bed, wouldn’t want to be accused attention seeking.

Oh well, there's always category (a) if you prefer.

 

[Desert Fox]

I assumed a federal judge’s in this hypothetical scenario were comparable to the Italian Supreme Court. I am pretty sure that if the ECHR ruled that the Italian Supreme Court had broken its own laws then Italy as a signatory would have to act. However, in your scenario America does not recognise nor is it a member of any independent international judicial body.

I’m off to bed, wouldn’t want to be accused attention seeking.

You probably will not want to see if this way but you are still arguing that you do not trust the Washington state legal system. I don't entirely either.

However, I do not trust the Italian legal system. I cannot trust the ECHR to actually see the case either.