Continuation Part 14: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Desert Fox]

They have different goals. Okay, some of them have different goals. If this case taught me nothing else, it's that there are police who would rather have someone in jail that be sure that person is the actual criminal.

If you listen to that (LONG!) video, it sounds like they're adamant. Trying to help can be the surest way to create a case against yourself. Never talk to police.

And yet I'm sitting here in my house thinking . . . would I really refuse to talk to police if they knocked on my door right now and wanted to ask a few questions?? It goes against the grain. Which I suppose is why that video exists at all, right? Guys on the inside of the system are needed to explain what's not obvious to dweebs like myself.

The thing that bothers you is that you are thinking that you are actively interfering with helping somebody who might be in trouble.

 

[Kaosium]

Many on this board have criticised the Italian justice system. Do you feel that despite the supreme court annulling the verdicts, it is still fair to say Italy has a corrupt and dysfuctional justice system.

Dysfunctional, absolutely. It's about as bad as it gets in Western Europe. It's not just the the number of violations for the right to a fair trial, it's also their execrable record on the length of trials, which is ridiculous, laughable even.

As for corrupt, I'd put it this way: it's too easily corruptible. It requires a saintly prosecutor for the system to be fair, otherwise the system can be manipulated by an unprincipled PM like Mignini.

Personally I don't think Massei was either corrupt or incompetent. He made some errors, but considering his environment they were understandable. It would be natural for him to have a great deal of confidence in the integrity of the police and prosecutor, it's something he wants to believe and the odds are extreme they don't always screw up this badly. Mignini and especially Comodi no doubt put criminals behind bars on a regular basis. The Polizia di Stato likely get real confessions employing those tactics as well, they did reel in Rudy Guede from Germany and the Polizia Scientifica are perfectly capable of getting good evidence as well, as can be seen by them finding copious evidence of Rudy Guede's murder. It's the 'second trip' which is egregious forensic malpractice, the first was sloppy but not every country is going to have the resources of the FBI and I can cut some slack if training and materials aren't quite up to that standard.

His report was fine as far as I'm concerned. The facts are reliable with only the errors one might expect from having to compile so much mind-numbing minutia, and the conclusions were required by the verdict. Thus one often sees him represent the prosecution and defense arguments and pick the less plausible argument, invariably from the prosecution, which makes him look stupid, but in reality that was required by the verdict and in that three trial system the first verdict doesn't matter much, had Raffaele and Amanda been acquitted they'd still have had to face another trial. The first trial is where most of the evidence is laid out and the initial arguments made, then the motivations document is published and the defense (or prosecution) writes the appeal document which will serve as the basis for the next trial, the one that really matters.

You can be acquitted in the first one and still end up convicted in the second and end up in prison if the Supreme Court confirms, which it usually does. That first trial may well just give lip service to the idea of beyond reasonable doubt and if I recall correctly Mignini even asked for a lower burden of proof in his close as Amanda might leave the country and be out of reach (he did this for his close before Hellmann too). Thus the motivations document reads that way and it's apparent that Massei has to string it together with implausible conjectures and going from 'possible' to 'probable' without bothering with evidence or argument. That will be noticed by the appeals court like it was in this case, and additionally the appeals, especially Raffaele's, point out so many egregious errors if they weren't apparent from just reading Massei.

Hellmann's court did fine, though his weakest reasoning was the calunnia conviction but the narrative in the motivations accurately represented the circumstances. I thought at the time it may have just been a bone thrown to the police as the jury might not have wanted to imply misconduct on the part of their own police force, later Hellmann basically confirmed that suspicion in an interview where he said something to the effect of having to either convict Amanda on that charge or accuse police. I can't help but wonder if he wrote that motivations thinking it might be rejected, separated from the murder (and other) charges and re-tried or even dropped later.

Then we get to Galati, a true villain and where the weird gets weirder. It's a fundamentally dishonest document that should have had him called in and wedgied until his undies were bloody; instead it was confirmed and naturally the Chieffi document, which explains the reasoning behind the quashing of Hellmann, is little more than a summary of the Galati appeal. Even someone who knows nothing about the case ought to be able to realize there's something very wrong with the Italian justice system if they read the sections on Curatolo and Quintavalle from both Hellmann and then Chieffi. All they have to know is anything about eyewitness testimony, or memory in general, and enough streetsmarts not to go running to a dictionary when someone claims that the word 'gullible' isn't officially an English word.

At that point I lost all confidence in the Italian System. That document from the Italian Supreme Court basically ordered a show trial and allowed Nencini to use evidence and conclusions from Rudy Guede's fast-track trial where both parties were eager to agree that someone else had been present and that the break-in had been staged. Upon reflection that show trial may simply have been an attempt to produce a appeals motivation from a convicting judge to see if it would stand scrutiny, and if it did not then it would serve to determine that no guilt narrative could employ evidence and be confirmed, but it's very difficult to have any confidence in a body that could produce a document as execrable as the Chieffi motivation. That's not hyperbole, that's reality, and it makes the Italian Court System look like a welfare program for delusional sophists.

Had Hellmann been confirmed and eventually the calunnia charge voided then I'd have said the Italian System just had a brain-fart that it corrected, in part due to the media frenzy and that they allow people like Mignini to abuse their system which absolutely requires prosecutors to be intellectually ethical. However with the highest body in the land producing such an embarrassment as the Chieffi document and the Nencini show trial they confirmed that it's more than just a local problem and it took almost eight years for it to be (mostly) corrected.

During the the time the Amanda Knox saga went through the Italian Courts Nicaragua managed to right two injustices and free both Eric Volz and Jason Puracal with a total time served of 22 months. Those two also have the added benefit of clean exonerations while Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have to endure the possibility of sickos, chest-thumpers and dingbats stalking them online and in person for years to come because the Italian police and prosecution produced so much garbage 'evidence' against them in the courts and press that it generated a hate cult online that may not wane for years to come.

There are no doubt good and honest men and women serving Italy in their court system, there were heroes who emerged like Hellmann, Zanetti and the Supreme Court Justices that quashed the Nencini verdict, but the system is too easily manipulated by the corrupt who can manage to pursue bizarre theories and victimize innocent people by the dozens. We now know that Mignini filed suits or started 'investigations' on somewhere over forty people in just the Monster of Florence and Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito cases and while he was convicted on charges of abuse of power in the MoF case he managed to manipulate his way out of that on a jurisdiction claim and the case being dropped, another apparent problem with the Italian Court System: a lack of accountability.

The police have the same problem if Machiavelli is correct. I used to include Biondi, Patrizia Stefanoni's superior, when attributing blame for the DNA work as he went into court and approved of her work. However I was informed that there's no inherent accountability in Italy, a superior does not take any responsibility for the errors of their subordinates, apparently even when they approve of the work in court. I do not know if Renato Biondi has any qualifications to head a police DNA lab outside he looks good in a suit, but being as he officially 'confirmed' Patrizia Stefanoni's work I'd like to think he should bear some responsibility for it. It is unlikely that such poor DNA work could be a one time affair, it is probably systemic and widespread thus an investigation like those necessary in other countries, including the US, would be beneficial.

It is possible to empathize somewhat with Patrizia Stefanoni. Imagine: all of a sudden she becomes attached to a famous prosecutor and goes from a lab tech to running a forensic investigation and part of said prosecutors team on a high profile murder case. It must have been a heady moment for her and it wasn't her mistakes which started this debacle, the initial forensic investigation clearly identified the perpetrator and as I understand it Mignini was responsible for ensuring the body temperature of the victim wasn't taken, he gave orders to that effect. Her problems began when the Polizia di Stato with the 'aid' of Pool Boy Giobbi (demoted from Clueless Clown) and his cast of thugs arrested three people on the gibberish they got out of an exhausted college girl in the middle of the night.

The problem was they didn't actually get a confession from this gaslighting expedition and the one Amanda Knox 'confusedly' remembered being there wasn't 'Unknown Male #2' who'd left the evidence inside the victim and on the toilet. Worse luck for them, it soon became apparent he had a host of people at his bar that night giving him an alibi. The kitchen knife that had been inexplicably 'collected' the day after the arrests by being plucked out of a drawer arbitrarily was soon announced as the 'murder knife'--despite the fact it didn't match the wounds or the outline left on the bed in blood. At this point the police are using psychological pressure to get a real confession from Amanda Knox by announcing false evidence to the press, such as the CCTV video they claimed was a 'clear cut' shot of Amanda, so I have often suspected the knife was just a bluff and they never intended to produce it in court because they expected to get a confession or find real evidence.

Claiming evidence that doesn't exist is a tactic used for this purpose by police sometimes, so perhaps at first Patrizia Stefanoni was just being a bit naughty and did not intend to ever produce that lab contamination in court. However since they never did get that confession and the 'second trip' to the murder scene drew a blank (again!) on finding any evidence of Amanda in the murder room, all of a sudden that lab contamination became their very best evidence--as long as no one looked at it very closely. Thus Stefanoni may have just been dragged along by forces beyond her control and could well have never intended to cheat as outrageously as she was eventually forced to.

The real problem here is the lack of accountability in my opinion. Had she ever confessed or at least released that data I would have stopped being so condemning, I'm more interested in fixing problems than collecting scalps. However since she failed to come clean and that DNA 'evidence' is still considered valid by kooks and used by hatemongers to cast doubt upon the acquittals of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, I still think that it's necessary for the practices of that lab to be criticized harshly and if the Kerchers are going to demand a search for additional attackers the obvious place to start is to get the data behind the DNA work that Stefanoni has managed to keep hidden until this very day.

Question for anyone who managed to get this far down:

Why is it that the other European countries with a Civil Law system don't have such an embarrassing record with the ECHR? Why does it appear that Germany, for example, makes so few mistakes in comparison?

 

[Dougm]

Perhaps ‘the white kids’ whose rape/murder convictions were recently surprisingly annulled by a Cassation panel might give some thought to signing up here.
That way they would be protected by the MA.

It’s not quite as grand as suing everyone who mentions their recent legal travails but it’s something.

Is your racism protected by the MA?

 

[platonov]

I was 100% sure the ISC would end this case but was off by 180 degrees on how.

I, as with most on both sides, await the motivations. Will digestion or dead cats be mentioned?

I continue to be entertained by the PGP's hypocrisy. While only being there for Meredith they compare Amanda to OJ and Casey Anthony not the killers of (positive adjective) Caylee or Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman - guess they aren't worth remembering.

Now that someone has posted pictures and names of PGP posters (trolls) I see the leader of the PMF pack of jackals whining about it, apparently forgetting their starting the practice, even naming people's place of employment so fellow jackals could contact their employers requesting job terminations.

Good news is that they will keep the site active for at least 3 more years. I join with those here that would like to see A & R take legal action in order to expose some of the more odious posters.
I also would like to see some more of the PGP here but perhaps it would be best after the motivations. They are saying that it wasn't an innocent verdict just not guilty. To those of them reading here it would still be great if they would come up with a timeline rather than the tired lies, staging and blood in the bathroom memes.

I'm looking for some help here in Seattle in building and setting up a dunking stool near Salties in West Seattle. There are a three PMF women I would like to take the test and I'm betting all of them would survive the plunge.

This seems to be a recurring groupie mantra.
Given that in Italy it is widely perceived that RS is a dangerous lowlife who got away with murder because of his Papa’s connections individuals there would rightfully be fearful of the Sollecito clan and their legal friends.

However it’s unlikely that either of the pair who recently had their rape/murder convictions annulled will be defending their honour in the London courts for example.
We shall see but don’t hold your breath.

ps Ah now I see why misogyny is a thread tag.

 

[Bill Williams]

In case anyone is wondering, Injustice in Perugia and Injustice Anywhere are not in any way affiliated with the above website.

I am sure the PGPs will spend a lot of time going on and on to the contrary, but this has been publicly disavowed, and I am doing so again here.

The two comments which seem to sum things up at this point are:

1) what real harm have the PGP folk done with their version of this, to justify a 'tit for tat'? The answer is, perhaps, none - except for rare exceptions, none of which directly effect me.

2) Try to think about this with one's adult brain. (Planigale: "The adult part of me says this is wrong.")​

So, those things which actually do real harm can be dealt with (via screengrabs) by those to whom the harm is done, if they so choose. As for me, I need considerable improvement in this regard to sort out theoretical harm from real harm.

Otherwise, there is the ignore list. So, DougM, good for IIP/AI to take this stand.

 

[Bill Williams]

This seems to be a recurring groupie mantra.
Given that in Italy it is widely perceived that RS is a dangerous lowlife who got away with murder because of his Papa’s connections individuals there would rightfully be fearful of the Sollecito clan and their legal friends.

However it’s unlikely that either of the pair who recently had their rape/murder convictions annulled will be defending their honour in the London courts for example.
We shall see but don’t hold your breath.

ps Ah now I see why misogyny is a thread tag.

This is a disgusting post, possibly not reportable to the mods.

 

[Diocletus]

Why does it appear that Germany, for example, makes so few mistakes in comparison?

Because Germans don't like to screw up, whereas Italians don't like other people to think that they've screwed up.

 

[lonepinealex]

Dysfunctional, absolutely. It's about as bad as it gets in Western Europe. It's not just the the number of violations for the right to a fair trial, it's also their execrable record on the length of trials, which is ridiculous, laughable even.

As for corrupt, I'd put it this way: it's too easily corruptible. It requires a saintly prosecutor for the system to be fair, otherwise the system can be manipulated by an unprincipled PM like Mignini.

Personally I don't think Massei was either corrupt or incompetent. He made some errors, but considering his environment they were understandable. It would be natural for him to have a great deal of confidence in the integrity of the police and prosecutor, it's something he wants to believe and the odds are extreme they don't always screw up this badly. Mignini and especially Comodi no doubt put criminals behind bars on a regular basis. The Polizia di Stato likely get real confessions employing those tactics as well, they did reel in Rudy Guede from Germany and the Polizia Scientifica are perfectly capable of getting good evidence as well, as can be seen by them finding copious evidence of Rudy Guede's murder. It's the 'second trip' which is egregious forensic malpractice, the first was sloppy but not every country is going to have the resources of the FBI and I can cut some slack if training and materials aren't quite up to that standard.

His report was fine as far as I'm concerned. The facts are reliable with only the errors one might expect from having to compile so much mind-numbing minutia, and the conclusions were required by the verdict. Thus one often sees him represent the prosecution and defense arguments and pick the less plausible argument, invariably from the prosecution, which makes him look stupid, but in reality that was required by the verdict and in that three trial system the first verdict doesn't matter much, had Raffaele and Amanda been acquitted they'd still have had to face another trial. The first trial is where most of the evidence is laid out and the initial arguments made, then the motivations document is published and the defense (or prosecution) writes the appeal document which will serve as the basis for the next trial, the one that really matters.

You can be acquitted in the first one and still end up convicted in the second and end up in prison if the Supreme Court confirms, which it usually does. That first trial may well just give lip service to the idea of beyond reasonable doubt and if I recall correctly Mignini even asked for a lower burden of proof in his close as Amanda might leave the country and be out of reach (he did this for his close before Hellmann too). Thus the motivations document reads that way and it's apparent that Massei has to string it together with implausible conjectures and going from 'possible' to 'probable' without bothering with evidence or argument. That will be noticed by the appeals court like it was in this case, and additionally the appeals, especially Raffaele's, point out so many egregious errors if they weren't apparent from just reading Massei.

Hellmann's court did fine, though his weakest reasoning was the calunnia conviction but the narrative in the motivations accurately represented the circumstances. I thought at the time it may have just been a bone thrown to the police as the jury might not have wanted to imply misconduct on the part of their own police force, later Hellmann basically confirmed that suspicion in an interview where he said something to the effect of having to either convict Amanda on that charge or accuse police. I can't help but wonder if he wrote that motivations thinking it might be rejected, separated from the murder (and other) charges and re-tried or even dropped later.

Then we get to Galati, a true villain and where the weird gets weirder. It's a fundamentally dishonest document that should have had him called in and wedgied until his undies were bloody; instead it was confirmed and naturally the Chieffi document, which explains the reasoning behind the quashing of Hellmann, is little more than a summary of the Galati appeal. Even someone who knows nothing about the case ought to be able to realize there's something very wrong with the Italian justice system if they read the sections on Curatolo and Quintavalle from both Hellmann and then Chieffi. All they have to know is anything about eyewitness testimony, or memory in general, and enough streetsmarts not to go running to a dictionary when someone claims that the word 'gullible' isn't officially an English word.

At that point I lost all confidence in the Italian System. That document from the Italian Supreme Court basically ordered a show trial and allowed Nencini to use evidence and conclusions from Rudy Guede's fast-track trial where both parties were eager to agree that someone else had been present and that the break-in had been staged. Upon reflection that show trial may simply have been an attempt to produce a appeals motivation from a convicting judge to see if it would stand scrutiny, and if it did not then it would serve to determine that no guilt narrative could employ evidence and be confirmed, but it's very difficult to have any confidence in a body that could produce a document as execrable as the Chieffi motivation. That's not hyperbole, that's reality, and it makes the Italian Court System look like a welfare program for delusional sophists.

Had Hellmann been confirmed and eventually the calunnia charge voided then I'd have said the Italian System just had a brain-fart that it corrected, in part due to the media frenzy and that they allow people like Mignini to abuse their system which absolutely requires prosecutors to be intellectually ethical. However with the highest body in the land producing such an embarrassment as the Chieffi document and the Nencini show trial they confirmed that it's more than just a local problem and it took almost eight years for it to be (mostly) corrected.

During the the time the Amanda Knox saga went through the Italian Courts Nicaragua managed to right two injustices and free both Eric Volz and Jason Puracal with a total time served of 22 months. Those two also have the added benefit of clean exonerations while Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have to endure the possibility of sickos, chest-thumpers and dingbats stalking them online and in person for years to come because the Italian police and prosecution produced so much garbage 'evidence' against them in the courts and press that it generated a hate cult online that may not wane for years to come.

There are no doubt good and honest men and women serving Italy in their court system, there were heroes who emerged like Hellmann, Zanetti and the Supreme Court Justices that quashed the Nencini verdict, but the system is too easily manipulated by the corrupt who can manage to pursue bizarre theories and victimize innocent people by the dozens. We now know that Mignini filed suits or started 'investigations' on somewhere over forty people in just the Monster of Florence and Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito cases and while he was convicted on charges of abuse of power in the MoF case he managed to manipulate his way out of that on a jurisdiction claim and the case being dropped, another apparent problem with the Italian Court System: a lack of accountability.

The police have the same problem if Machiavelli is correct. I used to include Biondi, Patrizia Stefanoni's superior, when attributing blame for the DNA work as he went into court and approved of her work. However I was informed that there's no inherent accountability in Italy, a superior does not take any responsibility for the errors of their subordinates, apparently even when they approve of the work in court. I do not know if Renato Biondi has any qualifications to head a police DNA lab outside he looks good in a suit, but being as he officially 'confirmed' Patrizia Stefanoni's work I'd like to think he should bear some responsibility for it. It is unlikely that such poor DNA work could be a one time affair, it is probably systemic and widespread thus an investigation like those necessary in other countries, including the US, would be beneficial.

It is possible to empathize somewhat with Patrizia Stefanoni. Imagine: all of a sudden she becomes attached to a famous prosecutor and goes from a lab tech to running a forensic investigation and part of said prosecutors team on a high profile murder case. It must have been a heady moment for her and it wasn't her mistakes which started this debacle, the initial forensic investigation clearly identified the perpetrator and as I understand it Mignini was responsible for ensuring the body temperature of the victim wasn't taken, he gave orders to that effect. Her problems began when the Polizia di Stato with the 'aid' of Pool Boy Giobbi (demoted from Clueless Clown) and his cast of thugs arrested three people on the gibberish they got out of an exhausted college girl in the middle of the night.

The problem was they didn't actually get a confession from this gaslighting expedition and the one Amanda Knox 'confusedly' remembered being there wasn't 'Unknown Male #2' who'd left the evidence inside the victim and on the toilet. Worse luck for them, it soon became apparent he had a host of people at his bar that night giving him an alibi. The kitchen knife that had been inexplicably 'collected' the day after the arrests by being plucked out of a drawer arbitrarily was soon announced as the 'murder knife'--despite the fact it didn't match the wounds or the outline left on the bed in blood. At this point the police are using psychological pressure to get a real confession from Amanda Knox by announcing false evidence to the press, such as the CCTV video they claimed was a 'clear cut' shot of Amanda, so I have often suspected the knife was just a bluff and they never intended to produce it in court because they expected to get a confession or find real evidence.

Claiming evidence that doesn't exist is a tactic used for this purpose by police sometimes, so perhaps at first Patrizia Stefanoni was just being a bit naughty and did not intend to ever produce that lab contamination in court. However since they never did get that confession and the 'second trip' to the murder scene drew a blank (again!) on finding any evidence of Amanda in the murder room, all of a sudden that lab contamination became their very best evidence--as long as no one looked at it very closely. Thus Stefanoni may have just been dragged along by forces beyond her control and could well have never intended to cheat as outrageously as she was eventually forced to.

The real problem here is the lack of accountability in my opinion. Had she ever confessed or at least released that data I would have stopped being so condemning, I'm more interested in fixing problems than collecting scalps. However since she failed to come clean and that DNA 'evidence' is still considered valid by kooks and used by hatemongers to cast doubt upon the acquittals of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, I still think that it's necessary for the practices of that lab to be criticized harshly and if the Kerchers are going to demand a search for additional attackers the obvious place to start is to get the data behind the DNA work that Stefanoni has managed to keep hidden until this very day.

Question for anyone who managed to get this far down:

Why is it that the other European countries with a Civil Law system don't have such an embarrassing record with the ECHR? Why does it appear that Germany, for example, makes so few mistakes in comparison?

This is an ace post, thank you for taking the time to write it. You always manage to make the incomprehensible comprehensible!

In answer to the highlighted bit, I wondered earlier in the thread if the sheer length of the judicial process (appeal after appeal) is the cause of many of the appeals to the ECHR. Regardless of Civil Law, simply dragging things out the way Italy does pretty much guarantees human rights breaches by default.

 

[carbonjam72]

This seems to be a recurring groupie mantra.
Given that in Italy it is widely perceived that RS is a dangerous lowlife who got away with murder because of his Papa’s connections individuals there would rightfully be fearful of the Sollecito clan and their legal friends.

However it’s unlikely that either of the pair who recently had their rape/murder convictions annulled will be defending their honour in the London courts for example.
We shall see but don’t hold your breath.

ps Ah now I see why misogyny is a thread tag.

Your posts seem feistier since the acquittal. Why would the exoneration of the innocent make you angry, or am I reading too much into your posts?

Far fewer impenetrable metaphors, and inscrutable historical references.

But you are one of the last pro guilt left on the boards. Funny how even Mach has "left the stage", to use Nencini's phrasing.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Douglas Preston's observation on the role of the prosecutor

They are more constrained here and I like our system better than yours (having for a time been very pro-American where these things are concerned) at least in this respect.

I don't see why a training in law should be a bar to conducting an enquiry like this. In fact I am quite upset! I have nurtured the idea that I would be pretty good at it, actually.

anglolawyer,

Douglas Preston noted, "One other detail that American readers might like to know: in Italy, prosecutors are firmly in charge. They tell the police what to look for, where to go, what evidence to analyze, what evidence not to analyze. In America, the police work independently and are specifically trained in evidence gathering and criminal investigation.

In Italy, the police must do what the prosecutor tells them. As a result, many criminal investigations in Italy are botched by prosecutors who are judges, trained in the law, who have no background in criminal investigation, police work, or forensic science."

 

[Numbers]

This is an ace post, thank you for taking the time to write it. You always manage to make the incomprehensible comprehensible!

In answer to the highlighted bit, I wondered earlier in the thread if the sheer length of the judicial process (appeal after appeal) is the cause of many of the appeals to the ECHR. Regardless of Civil Law, simply dragging things out the way Italy does pretty much guarantees human rights breaches by default.

{Highlighting added to quote.}

I suggest it's the other way around: human rights breaches lead to long trials.
If there had not been police misconduct, Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, and Patrick Lumumba would not have been arrested; there would have been no reasonable suspicion.
If the preliminary hearing had been effective, the case against Amanda and Raffaele would have ended at that point.
If Massei had gotten it right, there would have been an acquittal at first trial.
If Hellmann hadn't been annulled using CSC's specious logic and violations of Italian law and ECHR law, the case would have been over with that acquittal.
If Nencini hadn't followed the CSC's arbitrary and human-rights violating directive, that court could have acquitted.
And the final CSC would still be an acquittal, but it could have come years earlier.

 

[anglolawyer]

anglolawyer,

Douglas Preston noted, "One other detail that American readers might like to know: in Italy, prosecutors are firmly in charge. They tell the police what to look for, where to go, what evidence to analyze, what evidence not to analyze. In America, the police work independently and are specifically trained in evidence gathering and criminal investigation.

In Italy, the police must do what the prosecutor tells them. As a result, many criminal investigations in Italy are botched by prosecutors who are judges, trained in the law, who have no background in criminal investigation, police work, or forensic science."

Ah, but were they trained at JREF?

Maybe we should form an A team?

 

[Dougm]

[/HILITE]

{Highlighting added to quote.}

I suggest it's the other way around: human rights breaches lead to long trials.
If there had not been police misconduct, Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, and Patrick Lumumba would not have been arrested; there would have been no reasonable suspicion.
If the preliminary hearing had been effective, the case against Amanda and Raffaele would have ended at that point.
If Massei had gotten it right, there would have been an acquittal at first trial.
If Hellmann hadn't been annulled using CSC's specious logic and violations of Italian law and ECHR law, the case would have been over with that acquittal.
If Nencini hadn't followed the CSC's arbitrary and human-rights violating directive, that court could have acquitted.
And the final CSC would still be an acquittal, but it could have come years earlier.

I was thinking along those lines as well.

I have been tempted to think that, because of all the layers, it gave multiple chances for review, and so ultimately, someone came to their senses, but that gives an excuse for the whole sorry mess to have happened in the first place.

It can be argued that Amanda and Raffaele were punished with the taking away of 8 years of their lives, since those lives were changed in a very negative way, even during the time they were not incarcerated. And for doing nothing. Not to mention how this will forever change the rest of their lives.

 

[Kaosium]

Because Germans don't like to screw up, whereas Italians don't like other people to think that they've screwed up.

You think it's just cultural then? Would another type of system serve them better? The current one isn't exactly organic, it was in part developed by the French and Il Duce's influence still lingers.

 

[Kaosium]

This is an ace post, thank you for taking the time to write it. You always manage to make the incomprehensible comprehensible!

In answer to the highlighted bit, I wondered earlier in the thread if the sheer length of the judicial process (appeal after appeal) is the cause of many of the appeals to the ECHR. Regardless of Civil Law, simply dragging things out the way Italy does pretty much guarantees human rights breaches by default.

They're the worst--or close enough--overall (for all violations and including places like Turkey, Ukraine and Russia who sometimes top them) historically and annually because of length of trials, but even when you take the length of trials ones out their Right to a Fair Trial violations (Article 6) are usually amongst the worst in Western Europe, which is how I've always thought of Italy.

What is it that causes the length of trials to be so much longer than the other Civil Law systems? What are they doing wrong that they might look to say, Germany, and fix?

 

[lonepinealex]

[/HILITE]

{Highlighting added to quote.}

I suggest it's the other way around: human rights breaches lead to long trials.
If there had not been police misconduct, Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, and Patrick Lumumba would not have been arrested; there would have been no reasonable suspicion.
If the preliminary hearing had been effective, the case against Amanda and Raffaele would have ended at that point.
If Massei had gotten it right, there would have been an acquittal at first trial.
If Hellmann hadn't been annulled using CSC's specious logic and violations of Italian law and ECHR law, the case would have been over with that acquittal.
If Nencini hadn't followed the CSC's arbitrary and human-rights violating directive, that court could have acquitted.
And the final CSC would still be an acquittal, but it could have come years earlier.

This is all true, but Italy also has automatic appeals, so the lengthy timescale is built into the system, regardless of the other breaches.

 

[lonepinealex]

They're the worst--or close enough--overall (for all violations and including places like Turkey, Ukraine and Russia who sometimes top them) historically and annually because of length of trials, but even when you take the length of trials ones out their Right to a Fair Trial violations (Article 6) are usually amongst the worst in Western Europe, which is how I've always thought of Italy.

What is it that causes the length of trials to be so much longer than the other Civil Law systems? What are they doing wrong that they might look to say, Germany, and fix?

Sure, I'm not saying the trial length is the only problem, but it is a big one.

Maybe they don't want to fix it*? It's a pretty sweet gravy train for a lot of vested interests.



*the judiciary that is, I know the government has been keen on reform for a long time.

 

[Kauffer]

This seems to be a recurring groupie mantra. Given that in Italy it is widely perceived that RS is a dangerous lowlife who got away with murder because of his Papa’s connections individuals there would rightfully be fearful of the Sollecito clan and their legal friends. However it’s unlikely that either of the pair who recently had their rape/murder convictions annulled will be defending their honour in the London courts for example.We shall see but don’t hold your breath. ps Ah now I see why misogyny is a thread tag.

Wake up! They won't be the defence this time. Notwithstanding, they might not have to anyway, if the nutters, haters, sociopaths and malcontents who populate some of your favourite websites cross the line of Section 127 of the Communications Act. The crown prosecution service will do it for them.

 

[Kaosium]

Sure, I'm not saying the trial length is the only problem, but it is a big one.

Maybe they don't want to fix it*? It's a pretty sweet gravy train for a lot of vested interests.



*the judiciary that is, I know the government has been keen on reform for a long time.

I too think that's a problem, it's a self-selecting institution very much opposed to reform and it likes to influence Italy's politics.

 

[lonepinealex]

Another edition of Radio 4's The Report covering the case is due for broadcast on Thursday:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jkr1q

I think this will be a follow up to the previous episode they did (rather than a repeat with amendments), as I got some insider info on this and know the producer was planning to make another one once the ISC had made a decision. I don't think she was expecting this decision, so it will be interesting to hear the new programme! The last one was pretty pro-innocence.

Scratch this - turns out it is just a reversion of last year's programme so it's not worth tuning in. Shame, would have been interesting for them to properly revisit the case - I'd have liked to hear them interview Bongiorno.