The PIP's desperation to give validity to the rogue judge Hellman (a business law judge) means you confuse yourselves as to how appeals work.
The merits court (Massei) establishes the facts of a case and comes to a verdict. In the UK/USA, the defendant can appeal on grounds of law , perversity, new evidence, public interest, ONLY, but not on facts found. In Italy, the same grounds for appeal, except the appeal is automatically accepted, and in addition, the appeal court (the Second Instance court) in Italy can look at the merits further but only on the issues of law accepted for the appeal.
In this case, there were two or three issues deemed outstanding, within the context of the appeal pleaded.
In the UK, if an appeal fails, the defendant (not the state) can apply to the High Court to take the appeal further, but permission is rarely granted and is usually on grounds of public interest. It used to go to the House of Lords, but now goes to Supreme Court.
In Italy, either the defendant or the state prosecutor can appeal.
Hellman upheld the defendants' appeal and acquitted the pair calling them 'innocent'.
The state prosecutor appealed on procedural grounds (their submissions were completely ignored in Zanetti-Hellman's summing up).
The appeal automatically went to the Supreme Court, where Chiefi ruled the Hellman court completely perverse, extinguishing the entire judgment and heavily criticising it in unprecedented terms, and sent back down the original issues appealed only back to the lower Second Instance (appeals) court. Nencini looked at the Conti-Vecchiotti issues and witness issues (Aviello, Curatolo and Quintavalle only.
All the facts, aside from the aforementioned, were rubber-stamped by the Chiefi court as legally binding in perpetuity.
Nencini Court considered the Conti-Vecchiotti and eye witness issues only; reassessed the facts, reestablished Massei's original facts on these aforesaid issues (for example, rejecting the claim of contamination or that Aviello was at all a credible witness).
The defendants' automatically appealed to the Supreme Court, legally allowable on the above limited issues ONLY - the Chiefi Supreme Court already having underpinned the legality of the other issues as legally settled facts; and this was constituted of Paulo Bruno, the junior judge who wrote up the report, and Marasca, the lead judge who signed it off.
This judgment is defective, as it interferes with the rulings of the Chiefi Supreme Court, which it does not have the constitutional power to do. It weighs up evidence and facts and substitutes its own verdict in place of the merits court - again defective and legally errant. In effect, they carried out an 'armchair trial', a notoriously unreliable method of dispensing justice.
They were legally perverse in allowing the defence team of Bongiorno two or three days of submissions, including testimony from Prof Peter Gill, who was never cross-examined, and nor did he produce an experts witness statement to the original merits court, as is proper, whilst all other parties to the proceedings were given just twenty minutes each to present their skeleton arguments, in addition to the written appeal/cross appeal, which will have been read by the Supreme Court judges in chambers.
The Bruno-Marasca court did not have the power to acquit a serious criminal case without remitting it back down to a lower court for the evidence under question to be reassessed for its merits. In effect, it queered the pitch of a lower court by making all kinds of findings that had (a) never been presented before a lower merits court (i.e., 'flawed police investigation', 'too much press influence' (perversely, as this was mainly due to Curt Knox' US$2m PR campaign) and (b) make rulings on issues that had never been pleaded by either side. For example, it issued a verdict stating the kids' were present at the scene, but did not participate in the murder. Neither Bongiorno, for Raff nor Dalla Vedova, for Amanda, had pleaded this in the alternative (their sole pleading being, 'they didn't do it, they were not there.')
Both Bruno and Marasca were politically appointed judges, who had not been through the legal career path, and no doubt felt themselves under political pressure to free the pair given (i) the big money invested in the case by multinational corporations (for example, Harper Collins, Simon and Shuster, the US tv networks) (ii) the undercurrent of serious organised crime, with the potential embarrassment of rumoured big money bribes for the Italian government to deal with, in the full glare of international public gaze.
It, however, made it clear, the pair were not found innocent. It did a damage limitation exercise to minimise the kids' chances of compensation (again, unethical of itself).
Shortly, after their long-delayed written reasons ( a breach of court protocol in itself) Marasca immediately retired and Bruno - rumoured to be suffering psychological issues - was moved sideways to a post with a fancy title, but little substance, 'head of the fifth chambers of the Supreme Court'. IOW a desk job.
All clear now?
