Dear Hugo: You're very wrong.
No. This is very simple: there is an ECHR right to be silent, and convicting someone on the basis of statements made under denial of counsel is a violation of that right. And don't be silly: there isn't any right to stab, so convicting someone of stabbing wouldn't violate an ECHR right regardless of whether counsel is appointed.
Sure they will. They'll just decide when Knox became a "suspect" for purposes of the ECHR, and that's the point at which her procedural rights will attach. {1} It won't be difficult to decide that the rights attached before the cops asked her to sign the 1:45 statement, and they'll be helped along by the decision of the second instance court concerning callunnia (the one that says that she "did not have the assistance of an attorney (which she should have been entitled to, being at this point suspected of very serious crimes)").
If there is a "plan to make a case against them," then either the person is already a suspect or the police are plotting to frame someone they don't think is a suspect. But, the ECHR has a simple solution: (i) determine when the procedural rights attached, and (ii) prohibit any conviction based on statements elicited in violation of those rights.
The subsequent documents don't matter at all, because the rights were violated and the rights violation was continuing until counsel was provided. None of it can be used. {2} I've never understood why they allowed the subsequent statements to be used, because they denied her counsel for three days, and therefore no conviction can be premised on these statements regardless of whether Knox wrote them on her own volition.[/QUOTE]
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1. Her right to have an attorney and to remain silent, IMO, started when she was asked to enter the interrogation room. That put her under custody, in effect. She did not volunteer to enter the interrrogation room or to give information.
2l Because they are violators of human rights.
ETA: IIUC, the judges in Italy are appointed by other, higher level judges; there is no review of who becomes a judge by Parliament. Thus the judiciary are generally independent of the "will of the people". The senior-most judges after WW II had learned their craft under the inquisitional system and the fascist-era Code of Criminal Procedure, although perhaps not all agreed with fascism. Those judges appointed the next level of judges. Thus change is slow in the Italian judiciary.
