Continuation Part 11: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Diocletus]

{emphasis added to quote}

Diocletus,

Thanks for dividing up Hellmann's statement this way. It helps clarify the issues involved in Amanda's interrogation.

Attempting to look at the interrogation from the viewpoint of ECtHR, the primary issue may be the lack of a lawyer; I highlighted and bolded that text.

1. On its own, use by the prosecution in a trial of a statement from a subject under interrogation who does not have a lawyer present, and who has not validly waived such representation, is a violation of Convention Articles 6.3c and 6.1. That is, the trial is unfair. The term "coercion" need not be used; it is, as I understand it, assumed by the ECtHR that the absence of a lawyer during the interrogation is equivalent to coercion, or a denial of rights forcing self-incrimination.

2. In another aspect, when an interrogation employs inhuman or degrading treatment against a subject, in violation of Convention Article 3, to gain incriminating evidence, whether true or false, that is important evidence used to convict the subject at trial, then the trial in unfair - a violation of Article 6.1. {See the bottom of post 3762, #139, copied from Guide on Article 6 (Criminal Limb).} It is arguable that the interrogation techniques used on Amanda included inhuman and degrading treatment.

3. The use of subterfuge, such as practiced by the "interpreter/mediator" Donnino, on the person subjected interrogation, Amanda, to bend his/her will and thereby elicit an incriminating statement, and use of that statement at trial for a conviction, also leads to a violation of Convention Article 6.1. {See #127 in post 3762 or in the Guide on Article 6.}

From the above, it is clear that Amanda's case against Italy regarding her conviction for calunnia before the ECtHR is very strong.

In evaluating Mach's attempts at confusing the issues, one should look at the actual case law provided by the ECtHR, as you have done.

All good points. But why, oh why, haven't we heard about the rejection of Knox's application yet? I thought it was obviously meritless and on top of that, the ECHR rejects all appeals, particularly unfounded ones filed by Americans convicted of murder in the second instance, and especially those whose names start with K and end with X. What could be taking so long?

 

[tsig]

All of this becomes especially clear when reading all of the trial transcripts of those who were there that night. Even the line of questioning by the defense.

There was no coercion, no false memory syndrome.

From cartwheels to coercion in two hours.

 

[tsig]

You seem to be confused. The conclusion of law is that there was no "coercion" as defined by Italian law. Here are the conclusions of fact:

the interrogation was:

-of obsessive length

-carried out during [both] day and night

-carried out by more than one person

-carried out on a young and foreign girl

-carried out on a young and foreign girl who at the time did not speak Italian at all well,

-carried out on a young, foreign girl who was unaware of her own rights,

-carried out on a young, foreign girl who did not have the assistance of an attorney (which she should have been entitled to, being at this point suspected of very serious crimes),

-the interpreter did not limit herself to translating, but induced her to force herself to remember, explaining that she [Amanda] was confused in her memories.

The conclusion of law (in Italy): No coercion.
The conclusion of law under the ECHR: coercion.

When did the ECHR decide the case?

 

[Kaosium]

From cartwheels to coercion in two hours.

Which is nothing but a way of failing to address the question regarding why Italian police believed (and continued to believe) those confused nonsensical statements Amanda Knox herself questioned once she had a chance to sleep and repudiated completely within a day.

Why is that? Why can't people who think they're guilty address that question? It's all kinds of idiotic to think Amanda Knox was the impetus behind those statements when it was the police who took her into a that room in the middle of the night and got confused nonsensical statements that they then pretended were actual evidence of Patrick's guilt and maintained that for two weeks.

 

[Diocletus]

From cartwheels to coercion in two hours.

A complete Machiavelli beatdown.

 

[Diocletus]

When did the ECHR decide the case?

It's a prediction, of course, based on a known set of facts and analysis methodology applied by the ECtHR. Of course, this analysis will never be conducted when the ECtHR rejects Knox's application . . . you know, the obviously meritless application that has been pending for a year now.

 

[Numbers]

Falsity

False. The ECHR does not deal with the topic of free will determination. Whether a crime is voluntary or involuntary, is not a topic of law application, but a matter of fact finding and evidence assessment. This is what determines the crime of calunnia. Incitement on the part of others would be irrelevant.

Mach,
Despite your vast understanding of the law, your statement here is incorrect.
ECHR has a large collection of cases relating to incitement and to interrogation of a subject without a lawyer (effectively, coercion).

"Incitement" usually refers to a crime committed because the police, acting undercover, reward a person for committing a crime that they would ordinarily not do. In Amanda's case, the "incitement" reward could be considered the release from the coercive pressure of the police interrogation, and the subterfuge introduced by the "interpreter" Donnino (who admitted in court testimony that her role was that of "mediator".)

 

[Machiavelli]

As a general point of order, please can you stop using the term "pro-Knox". It's unrepresentative and pejorative.

Unless you'd like me and others to start calling your arguments "anti-Knox" or even "pro-Guede"...........

Chose a term of your like.
But "innocentisti" seems a bit generic and incorrect to me (since it‘s really about believers in a conspiracy theory with variouus "culprits").

 

[Vibio]

Which is nothing but a way of failing to address the question regarding why Italian police believed (and continued to believe) those confused nonsensical statements Amanda Knox herself questioned once she had a chance to sleep and repudiated completely within a day.

Repudiated? You mean the one where she says she was involved in Meredith's death? That one?

 

[Kauffer]

Repudiated? You mean the one where she says she was involved in Meredith's death? That one?

We've been over this. She said nothing of the sort. Comprehension problems again?

 

[Machiavelli]

Mach,
Despite your vast understanding of the law, your statement here is incorrect.
ECHR has a large collection of cases relating to incitement and to interrogation of a subject without a lawyer (effectively, coercion).

"Incitement" usually refers to a crime committed because the police, acting undercover, reward a person for committing a crime that they would ordinarily not do. In Amanda's case, the "incitement" reward could be considered the release from the coercive pressure of the police interrogation, and the subterfuge introduced by the "interpreter" Donnino (who admitted in court testimony that her role was that of "mediator".)

The Cassazione pointed out that Knox's calunnia is not an event that occured within an interrogation, it was instead a prolonged behaviour.
And btw yes, the law says state of coercion would be an individual's condition of absence of free will, a subjective condition but a matter of fact not law, and it's about the person alone, not incitement or any other behaviour by others. But anyway a finding of coercion would require that Knix made a claim of lying under coercion, which doesn't exist in the trial; Knox claimed false memory, not coercion.
Knox ih her book describes an "interrogation" by Mignini, and this doesen't exist in the trial papers, not evev in her own testimony. Donnino reports how she released thw spontaneous statement, an flatly cobtradicts Knox, factuallt exposing her as a liar.
I fail to imagine how any ECHR ruling could affect this finding of fact.

I am unable to imagine how any ECHR point of law could modify facts like the testimony of Anna Donnino or the prolonged and repeated behaviour of Knox, from which the court deduced her guilt in the malicious crime of calunnia.

 

[Numbers]

Lawyer not present

The Cassazione pointed out that Knox's calunnia is not an event that occured within an interrogation, it was instead a prolobged behaviour.
Knox ih her book describes an "interrogation" by Mignini, and this doesen't exist in the trial papers, not evev in her own testimony. Donnino reports how she released thw spontaneous statement, an flatly cobtradicts Knox, factuallt exposing her as a liar.
I fail to imagine how any ECHR ruling could affect this finding of fact.

I am unable to imagine how any ECHR point of law could modify facts like the testimony of Anna Donnino or the prolonged and repeated behaviour of Knox, from which the court deduced her guilt in the malicious crime of calunnia.

Mach,

Despite your vast understanding of all things legal, you have again stated something incorrectly.

The statement of Donnino regarding Amanda is a statement from the police. All those statements are self-serving, and will be seen that way by the ECHR, because THERE WAS NO LAWYER PRESENT TO COUNSEL AMANDA DURING THE INTERROGATION.

By the way, Donnino was not a FAIR interpreter and this was another violation of the Convention, Article 6.3d. See Guide on Article 6 (Criminal Limb), #345, which says in part {emphasis added}:

The services of the interpreter must provide the accused with effective assistance in conducting his defence and the interpreter’s conduct must not be of such a nature as to impinge on the fairness of the proceedings (Ucak v. the United Kingdom).

 

[Diocletus]

I am unable to imagine how any ECHR point of law could modify facts like the testimony of Anna Donnino or the prolonged and repeated behaviour of Knox, from which the court deduced her guilt in the malicious crime of calunnia.

Let me help you:

[the interrogation was of] obsessive length. . . , carried out during [both] day and night, by more than one person, on a young and foreign girl who at the time did not speak Italian at all well, was unaware of her own rights, did not have the assistance of an attorney (which she should have been entitled to, being at this point suspected of very serious crimes), and was moreover being assisted by an interpreter who . . . did not limit herself to translating, but induced her to force herself to remember, explaining that she [Amanda] was confused in her memories . . .

 

[Diocletus]

The Cassazione pointed out that Knox's calunnia is not an event that occured within an interrogation, it was instead a prolonged behaviour.

You do realize that nothing she said during the time when she was denied counsel (3 days) is usable for the callunnia crusade?

 

[Numbers]

The Cassazione pointed out that Knox's calunnia is not an event that occured within an interrogation, it was instead a prolonged behaviour.

You do realize that nothing she said during the time when she was denied counsel (3 days) is usable for the callunnia crusade?

From Guide on Article 6:

125. Early access to a lawyer is part of the procedural safeguards to which the Court will have particular regard when examining whether a procedure has extinguished the very essence of the privilege against self-incrimination. In order for the right to a fair trial under Article 6 § 1 to remain sufficiently “practical and effective”, access to a lawyer should, as a rule, be provided from the first time a suspect is questioned by the police....

 

[tsig]

Which is nothing but a way of failing to address the question regarding why Italian police believed (and continued to believe) those confused nonsensical statements Amanda Knox herself questioned once she had a chance to sleep and repudiated completely within a day.

Why is that? Why can't people who think they're guilty address that question? It's all kinds of idiotic to think Amanda Knox was the impetus behind those statements when it was the police who took her into a that room in the middle of the night and got confused nonsensical statements that they then pretended were actual evidence of Patrick's guilt and maintained that for two weeks.

It was the police's fault they believed Amanda?

 

[Kaosium]

Repudiated? You mean the one where she says she was involved in Meredith's death? That one?

No, it was the note of November 7th, 2007 where she completely repudiated the statements she signed and said they had never happened. Now if you're going to pretend she was lying and had not been mind-raped in the middle of the night by incompetent clowns, please explain why the police believed those statements from the outset, arrested Patrick on the basis of them, and refused to release him despite all the people who came forward to alibi him until Rudy Guede was captured.

No misdirections with out of context quotes, answer the question.

 

[Kaosium]

It was the police's fault they believed Amanda?

Of course it is, the police are responsible for evaluating the results of their interrogations. Why did they do such a poor job if you're going to pretend they were gulled by a duplicitous Amanda?

The reason this question cannot be answered is that there is no answer that doesn't cast severe doubt on the competence and integrity of the ILE officers working on this case. That's because it never happened that way, what they did was push Amanda (and Raffaele to a lesser extent) to say something incriminating that matched 'the facts (they) knew to be correct.'

Those facts were wrong and it was Amanda and Raffaele who tried to tell them that before and after that all night session in the Questura, yet it was the police who still insisted they were correct for two weeks while Patrick languished in custody despite all the people coming forth to alibi him.

Now, why did ILE still insist on believing those statements considering their confused nonsensical nature and the fact that both parties repudiated what they'd signed in the middle of the night without being allowed to see a lawyer or family?

 

[Kauffer]

It was the police's fault they believed Amanda?

They should have tested the evidence. That is what they are supposed to have been trained to do. But remember also that within a day and half, the DNA results from Ms Kercher's body revealed that it was not Lumumba or, for that matter, Mr Sollecito who raped Ms Kercher, yet the police continued to hold them. In front of Matteini, there was no evidence left against Lumumba and nothing against Mr Sollecito. Three weeks later, in front of Riccarelli, there was still nothing against Mr Sollecito. For both these hearings, there was nothing against Ms Knox other than her coerced statement of the 6th, which she started to question almost immediately and retracted completely a day later.

So three people were detained and defamed on the basis of no real evidence at all, just the malfeasance of an incompetent prosecutor and the gullibility of two incompetent judges.

 

[Numbers]

They should have tested the evidence. That is what they are supposed to have been trained to do. But remember also that within a day and half, the DNA results from Ms Kercher's body revealed that it was not Lumumba or, for that matter, Mr Sollecito who raped Ms Kercher, yet the police continued to hold them. In front of Matteini, there was no evidence left against Lumumba and nothing against Mr Sollecito. Three weeks later, in front of Riccarelli, there was still nothing against Mr Sollecito. For both these hearings, there was nothing against Ms Knox other than her coerced statement of the 6th, which she started to question almost immediately and retracted completely a day later.

So three people were detained and defamed on the basis of no real evidence at all, just the malfeasance of an incompetent prosecutor and the gullibility of two incompetent judges.

I think that the issue with the judges goes beyond gullibility. It may be more accurate to say that the judges were mere agents of the prosecution, that is, lacking in independence. It would be desirable for the ECtHR to censure that failure of independence on the part of the judges.