Note the highlighted paragraphs in this, part of the Hellmann court motivation report, translated.
Hellmann says, IIUC, that Amanda Knox knew Patrick Lumumba was innocent because he had no connection with Meredith Kercher, and because his name only came up because of her message to him left on her cell phone and pointed out to her by police. He further argues, IIUC, that at the time of the spontaneous statements (
plural) and the subsequent Memoriale 1, Amanda was not under pressure and was not suffering from a lack of will (
in the text, double negatives are used) and therefore responsible for her allegations recorded on paper. Therefore she was guilty of calunnia.
I find the Hellmann court statements (in the highlighted paragraphs below and as summarized above) to be contradicted by the description Hellmann provided earlier in this section of the motivation report, where 1) the extreme nature of the interrogation (obsessive, both day and night, carried out by many police, an interpreter suggesting amnesia) and 2) Amanda's vulnerabilities (young, inexperienced, foreign, not speaking Italian at all well, under stress of the interrogation and her flatmate's murder) are pointed out at length. I believe the argument may be made that there is a disconnect between that section and the conclusions of Amanda Knox's responsibility that is a leap of logic and thus arbitrary. Furthermore, I don't see any reference to the report of the false confession/false memory expert which I
believe was submitted to the first-level court. If the expert report was in the record and not discounted by a reasonable, scientifically supported and rational argument, that would be another indication of arbitrariness.
Excerpts from:
https://hellmannreport.wordpress.com/contents/reasons-for-the-decision/calumny/
Beyond the formal aspect, the context in which those statements were made was clearly characterized by a psychological situation which for Amanda Knox had become an unsupportable burden: witness Donnino reports that an outright emotional shock on the part of Amanda Knox occurred when the matter of the exchange of messages with Lumumba was raised.
Now, since Lumumba was in fact uninvolved in the murder, the emotional shock cannot be considered to have arisen from her having been caught (doing what, exchanging a message with a person who had nothing to do with the crime?), but rather from having reached the limit of emotional tension.
In that context, it is understandable that Amanda Knox, yielding to pressure and fatigue, would have hoped to put an end to that situation by giving her interrogators that which, in the end, they wanted to hear: a name, a murderer.
But why Patrick Lumumba, exactly? Because the police had found, on Amanda Knox’s phone, the message “see you later”, sent by her to Lumumba on the evening of November 1; which could also mean she actually intended to see him later to go somewhere, maybe to the house on Via Della Pergola — whence the insistent questioning about that message, its meaning, and its intended recipient.
By “giving up” [Dando “in pasto”] that name to those who were interrogating her so harshly, Amanda Knox probably hoped to put an end to that pressure, now a true torment after long hours, while adding details and constructing a brief story around that name would certainly not have been particularly difficult, if for no other reason than that many details and inferences [illazioni] had already appeared in many newspapers the next day, and were circulating all throughout the city, considering the modest dimensions of Perugia.
Furthermore, the very manner in which the story is told [la stessa articolazione del racconto], as contained not only in the transcripts of the spontaneous statements but also in the note written immediately afterward, makes it seem like the confused narration of a dream, albeit a macabre one, and not the description of events that actually happened — which confirms the state that Amanda Knox was in at the time she made the spontaneous statements and wrote the note, and rules out the possibility that the purpose of either could have been to conceal [tacere, lit. “keep quiet”] the name of the actual perpetrator, Rudy Guede, [even] on the assumption that it was known to her, as a co-conspirator [concorrente].
It is indeed totally illogical to suppose that Amanda Knox, if she actually had been a participant [concorrente] in the crime, could have hoped that naming Patrick Lumumba — whom in such a case she would have known to be entirely uninvolved and far, even physically, from where the crime took place — would have helped her position in any way; it would, if anything, have been easier for her to indicate the real perpetrator, even while stressing her own absolute innocence: after all, she lived in that house, and for her to have been in her own room at the time of the crime, perhaps actually entertaining Raffaele Sollecito as held by the first-level Corte di Assise, would have been entirely normal, and would certainly not have entailed responsibility for a crime committed by others in the next room.
Thus for Amanda Knox, in the event that she had been inside the house on Via Della Pergola at the time of the murder, the easiest way to defend herself would have been to indicate the true author of the crime, [who would have been] present in any case inside the house, because this would have made her credible; and not to instead indicate a totally innocent individual, whom she had no reason to hope would be without an alibi, and who might have been able to refute the account she had provided to the police.
This Court therefore finds that Amanda Knox had indicated Lumumba as the perpetrator only because, at that moment, it appeared to be the quickest and easiest way to put an end to the situation in which she found herself, her interrogators having insisted on an explanation of the message she sent to him.
It follows from this that, with regard to the murder, not only may the “spontaneous” statements not be used, but in reality neither may the note written later, since, although usable from a procedural standpoint, it does not deserve to be relied upon from a substantive one, as it does not represent what really happened in this case.
Besides which, in the note in question Amanda Knox does not indicate either herself or Raffaele Sollecito as the perpetrator of the crime, but [instead] writes of total confusion, [and] of not being in a position to remember what she is asked — the only thing of which she is sure being her and Raffaele Sollecito’s innocence.
To quote [original English text, with minor corrections]: “In these flashbacks that I’m having, I see Patrick as the murderer, but the way the truth feels in my mind, there is no way for me to have known because I don’t remember FOR SURE if I was at my house that night”…and then… “The questions that need answering, at least for how I’m thinking are: 1. Why did Raffaele lie? (or for you) Did Raffaele lie? 2. Why did I think of Patrick? 3. Is the evidence proving my presence at the time and place of the crime reliable? If so, what does this say about my memory? Is it reliable? 4. Is there any other evidence condemning Patrick or any other person? “
However,
this Court does not find that there is any significant objective evidence that, when she made her spontaneous statements and wrote her note, Amanda Knox was in not only a situation of considerable psychological pressure and stress but also even in a condition of not intending or wishing; so that, having accused of such a serious crime a person whom she knew to be innocent, she must in any case be held responsible for the crime of calumny, the constitution of which does not require any specific purpose from a psychological point of view, such as shifting the blame off of oneself [conseguire la propria impunità] (an aggravating circumstance alleged [here]). Generic criminal intent [il dolo generico] is sufficient, thus including the aim of escaping from a particularly oppressive personal situation.
According to the prosecution’s theory, it would be contradictory to find Amanda Knox guilty of calumny while acquitting her of the other crimes, since (it is argued) Amanda Knox could know that Patrick Lumumba was innocent of the murder only because she herself had participated in the crime, and thus was aware of its true perpetrators; if she had not participated in the crime or had not been present in the house on Via Della Pergola at the moment of the murder, she could not have known that Lumumba was innocent.
This argument cannot be accepted:
the circumstances under which Lumumba’s name emerged in the course of the police interrogation (a message directed to him taken from the cellular phone of Amanda Knox), and the lack of evidence of a connection between Lumumba and Meredith Kercher [should have] allowed Amanda Knox, even if actually innocent herself and far from the house on Via Della Pergola at the time of the crime, to be aware of Lumumba’s total innocence, and thus of the calumny that she was committing by pointing to him as the perpetrator of the murder.
There is no contradiction, therefore, in finding her guilty of the crime of calumny, and nonetheless rejecting the aggravating circumstance under C.P. Article 61 no.2.
Taking into account the criteria established by C.P. Article 133, and recognizing mitigating circumstances equivalent to the aggravating circumstance under C.P. Article 368, second paragraph, for the reasons already explained by the first-level Corte di Assise (lack of criminal record, young age, involvement in academic pursuits [impegno nella vita scholastica], etc.), and considering the particular gravity of the underlying crime of calumny, it is equitable to determine the sentence for the crime of calumny as three years of confinement.
