Just a clarification. In an Italian court, according to Italian law, and just as in a US court, according to US law, a person who is an accused (Italian term) or a defendant (US term) in a criminal trial is not at all obligated to testify. Thus, the accused in Italy does not "decline"* to testify, but chooses not to volunteer to testify. In fact, the person who is co-accused of the same offense in a joint criminal trial shall NOT testify as a witness, according to CPP Article 197, unless that co-accused gave information prior to trial in a questioning and was warned in accordance with CPP Article 64.3C. Is there any documentation from the police that Raffaele Sollecito or Amanda Knox were ever given the warnings** required by Italian law prior to or during the questioning on Nov. 5/6?
*assuming that this word is intended to mean "politely refuse" or to "withhold consent".
** A) His statements can be used against him
B) He has the right to silence
C) Any statement he makes regarding the liability of another will possibly obligate him to become a witness against that person (which implies that any false accusation may be prosecuted as calunnia).
Totally accurate.
When one looks at those 5/6 Nov police interrogations of Sollecito and Knox in the proper context, I believe it's abundantly clear that the police (most probably with the knowledge and cooperation of the PM) thought Sollecito actually had nothing to do with the murder, but that he was lying to protect Knox by falsely (in the police/PM opinion at that time) stating that Knox had been with him in his apartment that night. Remember that at that point in time, the police and PM thought they'd expertly figured it all out: Knox had met up with another man* and taken him to the cottage where he had attacked, sexually assaulted and murdered Kercher, and Knox had subsequently staged a break-in to try to divert police and turn suspicion away from herself; Sollecito knew Knox had left his apartment to participate in the murder, but he (Sollecito) was covering up for Knox out of misguided loyalty/love/fear of abandonment/etc.
And therefore (IMO), as of the night of 5/6 Nov, the police and PM were planning to "persuade" Sollecito to "come clean" and finally admit that Knox had left his apartment on the night of the murder. I therefore very strongly suspect that, at that moment in time, the police and PM planned to use Sollecito (once he'd "turned" on Knox) as a prosecution witness in the subsequent trial of Knox and Lumumba. And that's why (IMO) they got the signed statement out of Sollecito and then arrested him and isolated him: they believed that Sollecito would become a fully cooperative witness once he was "free" of Knox, and once the police/PM carefully threatened him with charges of lying to the police (in his previous claims to the police that Knox was with him in his apartment on the murder night) if he didn't play ball.
Effectively, on the night of 5/6 Nov, (IMO) the key to the first part of the police/PM plan was nothing more than to get Sollecito to "buckle" and give them a statement to the effect that Knox actually did leave his apartment on the night of the murder. In effect, the sole purpose of eliciting that statement from Sollecito was so that they could then confront Knox with it - the plan then was that Knox would "buckle" in turn once she learned that her boyfriend had "told the truth" about her leaving his apartment. As of the night of 5/6 Nov, it was Knox and the "other man" that the police and PM were really after, IMO - and not Sollecito.
As such, I thing the police and PM actually weren't concerned at all with the lawfulness (or otherwise....) of the eliciting of Sollecito's statement, since the sole use of it (at that point) was to confront Knox with it. And if they never ended up charging Sollecito with a criminal offence (and as I write above, I believe the police/PM had no plan to bring charges against Sollecito at that point in time), then his 5/6 Nov statement would lawfully stand as a witness statement to be used against Knox. And once they'd had time to work on Sollecito and remove Knox from the equation (since she'd be locked away too), they could quietly release Sollecito from custody with the confidence that he'd testify in court to the effect that Knox left his apartment that night (especially with the threat of charges related to lying to the police hanging over his head if he didn't cooperate properly).
So, in summary..... I believe that, as of the night of 5/6 Nov 2007, the police/PM believed they truly had solved the murder. The step-by-step plan for the interrogations on that night was as follows: 1) get Sollecito in for interrogation, and get him to "admit" that Knox really had left his apartment that night; 2) pull Knox in for interrogation**, confront her with Sollecito's statement, and "persuade" her to "admit" to the "truth" in turn: that she'd met with Lumumba and taken him to the cottage where he'd assaulted and killed Kercher; 3) pull Lumumba in for interrogation.
There's (IMO) one other point of note about these interrogations and their legal ramifications. As I argue above, I think the police/PM weren't at all worried about any ramifications regarding Sollecito's interrogation and statement, since they expected (at that point in time) to be using Sollecito as a witness against Knox (and not charging him with any crime). But the situation with Knox was different. They needed Knox to "buckle" and tell them "the truth" in her interrogation - but they also expected to be charging and trying Knox for participation in the murder.
So the question of when/if Knox became a "suspect" was a very important one - the police and PM would have known that it would be massively unlikely that Knox's 1.45am police statement would ever be allowed to be used in a trial of her (and Lumumba), owing to the way in which it was procured. I believe the police and PM knew the situation full well, and that they (thought they) knew a cunning way around it. Their way round it was the insertion of PM Mignini into the situation, and his anodyne (and seemingly totally inconsequential) asking of Knox to repeat to him what she'd told the police. I believe Mignini (and the police) knew all too well what was happening here: Mignini was cunningly eliciting a "copy" of Knox's incriminating and incriminatory police statement, but - crucially - this time it could be construed as a "spontaneous declaration" by Knox to the PM - meaning it would be allowed as evidence in a trial of Knox (and Lumumba).
I think this was a carefully orchestrated (and possibly (probably?) well-practised piece of sleight-of-hand on the part of Mignini and the police. Fortunately the SC saw it for what it was, and disallowed the so-called "spontaneous declaration" from being used in the subsequent trial. But of course the egregiously bad decision was then made by Micheli and Massei to run the Lumumba criminal slander trial in the same court as the Knox/Sollecito murder-related trial - meaning that those trying the murder charges got to see/hear Knox's 1.45am statement in full anyhow.......
* the man with whom she'd exchanged the texts on the murder night - we still cannot know for sure whether the police/PM had already identified that man as Lumumba.
** I actually do believe that the plan as originally devised was for Sollecito to come into the police HQ on his own (without Knox), and then once Sollecito "buckled" and "admitted" that Knox had left his apartment on the murder night, the police would then summon Knox in. I suspect that the police and PM would have preferred Knox to have been nowhere near the police HQ when they were in the process of "persuading" Sollecito to change his story - since they were concerned that Sollecito was in Knox's thrall. But when Knox arrived at the police HQ together with Sollecito, it didn't really matter all that much in terms of the plan - Knox was just sequestered under close watch in a waiting room while Sollecito was interrogated.