The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 24

[LondonJohn]

If as Vixen constantly claims there was solid evidence against Amanda and Raffaele, why did the police need to lie about what Raffaele's family had said in wire tapped conversations?

Because, as so often happened in this horrible judicial process, the police and PM were trying to poison the well by spinning misrepresentations, distortions and (occasionally) flat-out lies and falsehoods to pliant yellow journalists*


* Special commendations go here to Nadeau, Vogt, Follain, Pisa and the odious editor of Corriere dell'Umbria - though the reporters at Corriere della Sera (to whom the mendacious misrepresentations of the phone taps was fed) should frankly have known far better.

 

[LondonJohn]

It's interesting to note that Hellmann was met with such hostility and scorn by his fellow judges after his acquittal of AK and RS that he felt he had no choice but to retire. Yet Massei and Nencini met no such reaction after they convicted the two. In the end, Marasca/Bruno declared that the investigation was so inept and the forensic evidence so lacking that no one should have convicted them in the first place, thereby validating Hellmann's conclusion. The reason this is interesting to me is that this demonstrates the pervading guilt bias that the general judiciary held despite the lack of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Now cue Vixen telling us this is because they general judiciary knew the two were guilty rather than any bias.

I think this links directly back in to the dreadfully unjust (and, in fact, unlawful) situation that still appears prevalent in so many Italian criminal courts, where the "professional" judges still appear to hold on to the belief that the prosecution's version of events is effectively the default "truth" (bolstered by the parallel belief that the prosecutors and police are perfectly neutral, objective seekers of that "truth", with zero chance of conflicts of interests, ulterior motives, dishonesty, malpractice or good old-fashioned incompetence), and that unless the defence can convincingly disprove the prosecution version, then conviction is near-automatic.

 

[Stacyhs]

I think this links directly back in to the dreadfully unjust (and, in fact, unlawful) situation that still appears prevalent in so many Italian criminal courts, where the "professional" judges still appear to hold on to the belief that the prosecution's version of events is effectively the default "truth" (bolstered by the parallel belief that the prosecutors and police are perfectly neutral, objective seekers of that "truth", with zero chance of conflicts of interests, ulterior motives, dishonesty, malpractice or good old-fashioned incompetence), and that unless the defence can convincingly disprove the prosecution version, then conviction is near-automatic.

I agree with that. It's more a case of "prove you're innocent" rather than for the prosecution to "prove you're guilty".

 

[Stacyhs]

Grahame Rhodes, a die hard ( and, imo, mentally unstable, Canadian PGP), has made numerous roundabout threats about Amanda. This is one of his latest:

"Oh good.
Like Nasear I’m still in the shadows of course. Still with any luck i will be able visit Seattle soon. of course it would not surprise me if I’m on the no-fly list. That might have it’s basis in paranoia on my part, but considering the American attempts to cover for their little murderer (in spite of evidence to the contrary) it would not surprise me. The prevailing view in Seattle is that “She’s an American citizen therefore innocent.” this kind of **** is prevalent with these small minded Trump supporters.. Of course this is the tenth anniversary and any hope by the forces of evil that we will simply go away will never happen. I am personally quite comfortable with people knowing that if I had any chance of doing Knox harm then I would gladly provide it. Keep up the good work people and thank you. Never stop Never stop"
Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 03/19/17 at 05:16 PM | #

The FBI is fully aware of Rhodes and his sick posts, thankfully.
This idiot also does not seem to realize that Seattle is a liberal city and did not support Trump. But we are talking about someone who, imo, has demonstrated a detachment from the facts.

 

[Vixen]

You have provided a quotation in your post from what appears to be a state bar association or some other organization. You have not provided the source for your quote, but seem to be falsely attributing it to the ABA. In brackets, the quote mentions "State Rules of Professional Conduct" which themselves could not be the Rules of the ABA, but rather, at most, official rules based upon such model rules. That quote does not appear to originate with the ABA, which is the American Bar Association*, a private but important group that is a voluntary association of a relatively small number of lawyers (about 1/3 the US total number of lawyers)** in the US that has no official government responsibility. In the US, each state has its own method for officially certifying (legally qualifying) the professional status of lawyers, as does the federal government and each of certain specialized aspects of federal jurisdiction (for example, patent law).***

Thus, your statement about the ABA sanctioning its members who do not follow a voluntary practice suggested in its Rules is false. Perhaps this falsehood was the result of insufficient research and excessive assumptions, or perhaps some other reason.

You have not provided any connection between your discussion of pro bono work by US lawyers as suggested by the ABA or possibly required by some official state organization and the Knox - Sollecito case insofar as I can determine. I suggest that if there is no connection to the thread topic that the discussion on pro bono work by lawyers in the US that you seem to have initiated be discontinued in this thread.

* "The American Bar Association (ABA), founded August 21, 1878, is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. The ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation of model ethical codes related to the legal profession. The ABA has 410,000 members. Its national headquarters are in Chicago, Illinois; it also maintains a significant branch office in Washington, D.C."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association

** "An attorney at law (or attorney-at-law) in the United States is a practitioner in a court of law who is legally qualified to prosecute and defend actions in such court on the retainer of clients. Alternative terms include counselor (or counsellor-at-law) and lawyer. As of April 2011, there were 1,225,452 licensed attorneys in the United States."

*** "In the United States, the practice of law is conditioned upon admission to practice of law, and specifically admission to the bar of a particular state or other territorial jurisdiction. Regulation of the practice of law is left to the individual states, and their definitions vary. Arguing cases in the federal courts requires separate admission."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorneys_in_the_United_States

Falsely?

http://www.americanbar.org/groups/p...r_lawyer_disciplinary_enforcement/rule_9.html

 

[Vixen]

Your apparently are stating that, in your opinion, a person who is "guilty" and the lawyer for that person are committing fraud if that person "pretends to be innocent", which suggests that you consider that a plea of not guilty by a defendant in a criminal trial is somehow fraudulent on the part of the defendant and the defendant's lawyer.

I don't understand how your statement can be reconciled with the law in the US under the US Constitution. Your statement also cannot be reconciled with the law in Italy under the Italian Constitution*. In Italy, the accused is entitled to a defense at every stage of the proceedings according to the Italian Constitution*. I don't know of any person in Italy (the Knox - Sollecito case happened in Italy, and thus its laws are most relevant) who has been charged with fraud relating to a plea of "not guilty" in a criminal case. If you know of any, could you please provide a citation, including source?

* Constitution of the Italian Republic
Article 24
Anyone may bring cases before a court of law in order to protect their rights under civil and administrative law.
Defense is an inviolable right at every stage and instance of legal proceedings.The poor are entitled by law to proper means for action or defense in all courts.
The law shall define the conditions and forms of reparation in case of judicial errors.

Source: https://www.senato.it/documenti/repository/istituzione/costituzione_inglese.pdf

I said nothing of the sort.

 

[Vixen]

How can you accuse someone of "fraud" and then claim it is not calumny?

Fraud happens.

 

[Vixen]

Vixen is desperately trying to backtrack, because Vixen is becoming aware that Vixen is accusing specific lawyers of fraud without any evidence, when all the allegation amounts to is a claim that in some cases a US lawyer (in accordance with US law) accepted money to defend a client (in accordance with US law). Vixen seemingly claims that these legal activities are fraudulent.

In Italy, the Parliament acknowledges that there may be miscarriages of justice, and therefore the Italian Parliament has enacted legal procedures for revision trials and compensation to correct such miscarriages (CPP Articles 629 - 647).

I challenge Vixen to produce any citations of cases where a lawyer or lawyer's client was found guilty of "innocence fraud" in the US or, more relevantly, in Italy. Does Vixen believe that Rudy Guede and his lawyers committed "innocence fraud" when they requested a revision trial? Was that request illegal under Italian law, in Vixen's "learned" opinion?

I believe innocence fraud to be a real phenomenon.

The proper place to determine innocence or guilt should be within due legal process.

Touring the country claiming to be innocent, when a court at no point said you were (Amanda Knox) is pure fraud.

She and Raff had every opportunity at trial to defend themselves. Raff chose not to. They relied on a myriad of proven lies. They have treated the police, the family of the victim, and the courts with disrespect.

Rudy is correctly pursuing his issues through the right channels.

 

[Vixen]

Vixen still does not address the issue I raised. Vixen claims that Amanda had left her blood in the bathroom and washed off Meredith’s blood which would be damming slam dunk evidence. If the prosecution had solid evidence of this nature why did the prosecution have to resort to the massive suppression of evidence, using false documents, destroying evidence, lying in court and committing perjury and feeding false information to the media as detailed in the links below. In addition why did the prosecution have to resort to the smear tactic of lying to Amanda she had HIV and releasing a list of her sexual partners. Prosecutors with solid evidence and a slam dunk case don’t need to resort to these tactics.

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/raffaeles-kitchen-knife/

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/contamination-labwork-coverup/

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/meredith-kercher-perjury-corruption/

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/evidence-destroyed/

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/milani-report/

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/bra-clasp-contamination/

https://knoxsollecito.wordpress.com...old-about-amanda-knox-and-raffaele-sollecito/

With regards to the allegation of what Raffaele’s father had said in a phone conversation, I thought Vixen was implying that Raffaele’s lawyer had used political influence to make the Marcesca court annul the convictions of Amanda and Raffaele. Vixen was actually referring to an article in 2008 before the Massei trial. Raffaele’s book Honour Bound has a section on the allegations they had tried to use political influence. I will quote it here

“Even before we’d had time to look over the newly available documents, were we were fending off accusations that we’d tried to exploit our political connections to push for my freedom.
Some of the stories said we’d begged Sara’s highly placed friends in Rome to apply pressure to the Corte di Cassasione before our hearing in April, or to exploit Bongiorno’s prominent position. Other postulated, more wildly that my family had approached Mafia thugs in Bari and contracted them with to intimidate the Perugia police.

The source for all these stories we learned to our consternation were wiretaps the police had placed on my family’s phones since February. This was no small operation: in just a few months they intercepted close to forty thousand calls. Some of the phrases in the news stories were familiar enough; my family had let rip about the behaviour of the Perugia police and called them pigs, bastards and fili di puttana. And why not? They had every reason to be angry and had no idea that their conversations were being monitored.

But a lot of the other reporting was distorted or wrong, as though designed expressly to cast us in the worst possible light and to discredit ay progress we had made in challenging the evidence. Senator Nania went public immediately to deny he had interceded on our behalf with Guilia Bongiorno, conceding only that he had mentioned her name to Sara over the phone. Bogniorno herself pointed that she had not been hired by my family until after the Corte Di Cassazione issued it’s ruling. These news stories were exactly the kind of political damage Bongiorno had been afraid of, and she was quick to share her alarm with us. The thing that perturbed her most was a report in Corriere della Sera, the country’s most prestigious newspaper, in which my father was quoted saying “I want to get Guila Bongiorno on our said because she can wield political influence on the case”.

Papa said he was quite sure this was a fabrication, but Bongiorno was insistent: “I want to believe you, but you’d better be quite sure”.
So we asked to see the intercepts ourselves. They were available, but we had to pay six thousand eruos to have them transferred onto audio CDs. The authorities made nothing easy for us.
The transcripts vindicated us entirely”

It can be seen from the above the police had lied about what was said in the wire taps. If the wire taps had incriminating conversations the police would have used these tapes as evidence and played them out.

First of all you have to be aware:

a) Andrew Gumbel the third party ghost writer for Raff is imagining the position of Raff were he to be entirely innocent, based on how he would feel. We see the same phenomenon in Amanda's book, ghost written by Linda Kulman (_sp?).

b) The book is written in hindsight to 'explain' potentially incriminating issues.

 

[Vixen]

Vixen has said some fairly disgusting things about top-tier professionals, and then fallen back on, "I was only expressing skepticism" as some sort of excuse. In response to the Italian Judge Boninsegna stating it as a judicial fact that the kids had been exonerated, Vixen called Boninsegna "a lickspittle". Vixen has also accused people like Dr. Gill or Saul Kassim or John Douglas of expressing professional opinions about the pair's innocence, that they too were only in it for the money.

And on and on and on it goes.

You have falsely claimed that Boninsegna called the pair exonerated, most likely based on Amanda's own revision of history, yet truth is, the Italian word for 'exonerated', 'l'esonerio' [_sp?] appears precisely nowhere in the judgment.

Dr Gill and Saul Kassim have put themselves out as 'guns for hire'. During the recent Innocence Conference in California, he and Amanda were still falsely claiming she was subjected to 53 hours interrogation with changing tag teams of police from Rome.

It was no false memory, it was a malicious attempt to pin the blame for the crime on an entirely innocent man. One Amanda knew to be innocent.

John Douglas is a misguided gung-ho patriotic armchair detective, who, like Gill, believes his past reputation can help swing it for the kids, from outside of the law courts.

 

[Vixen]

No, I was stating a fact that the Innocence Project's services are pro-bono in response to your claim that



"Your use of "bragging" is yet another example of your habit of exaggerating, twisting or falsifying what is said.

No, you did not merely "express skepticism", you made a false statement which was disproved.

As for the rest of your post, Numbers has already countered that sufficiently.

Please explain how Zellner earned her $ 'millions if she is entirely pro bono, as you claim.

 

[Vixen]

It's interesting to note that Hellmann was met with such hostility and scorn by his fellow judges after his acquittal of AK and RS that he felt he had no choice but to retire. Yet Massei and Nencini met no such reaction after they convicted the two. In the end, Marasca/Bruno declared that the investigation was so inept and the forensic evidence so lacking that no one should have convicted them in the first place, thereby validating Hellmann's conclusion. The reason this is interesting to me is that this demonstrates the pervading guilt bias that the general judiciary held despite the lack of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Now cue Vixen telling us this is because they general judiciary knew the two were guilty rather than any bias.

Well, you saw BiWi's extract from Marasca saying that Nencini's mention of Raff's DNA on the knife (which is clearly an error to any reasonable observer) was 'groundless' and therefore, it would annul the verdict.

 

[Vixen]

Absolutely, nothing has changed except the world has moved on. Who really gives a damn what a single person says on ISF Bill? This batcrap insanity absolutely isn't influencing anyone. I grant you that the show is hilarious because it is illogical, silly and with no connection to the truth. There is nothing to support the idea that Gill, Boninsegna, Douglas, Kassim, Hellmann etc etc are corrupt. But we've been hearing this tune from the PGP now for years.

I don't have the patience to address the exact same nonsense for the 10,000 time. 5,000 was more then enough.

...says the person with 12,000 posts on the matter.

 

[Bill Williams]

Fraud happens.

There you go again.

 

[Vixen]

Wow. Now you're implying that Zellner is somehow getting confessions using underhanded tactics. Maybe she's using the tactics that the Perugia police used?

You really just can't stand it when someone is exonerated or has a conviction overturned, can you? For someone who claims to want "justice", you have a clear bias that anyone ever convicted must be guilty. Anyone fighting to show a miscarriage of justice occurred is only in it for the money or fame is your view. And any expert supporting that fight must be a shill or have no professional ethics.

A curious person might ask what the psychology behind that could be...

Note, once again, that I never said Ferguson was exonerated. I said



I am expressing an opinion here, not stating a legal fact. But leave it to you to twist it otherwise.

I can see all sorts of ethical issues in Zellner turning up at the deathbeds of Death Row inmates to get the dying confessions.

 

[Bill Williams]

Vixen should express an opinion about online threats, such as the one noted above.

 

[Bill Williams]

You have falsely claimed that Boninsegna called the pair exonerated, most likely based on Amanda's own revision of history, yet truth is, the Italian word for 'exonerated', 'l'esonerio' [_sp?] appears precisely nowhere in the judgment.

Dr Gill and Saul Kassim have put themselves out as 'guns for hire'. During the recent Innocence Conference in California, he and Amanda were still falsely claiming she was subjected to 53 hours interrogation with changing tag teams of police from Rome.

It was no false memory, it was a malicious attempt to pin the blame for the crime on an entirely innocent man. One Amanda knew to be innocent.

John Douglas is a misguided gung-ho patriotic armchair detective, who, like Gill, believes his past reputation can help swing it for the kids, from outside of the law courts.

You often post reasons why your views should be ignored.

Calling John Douglas an "arm-chair detective" motivated by patriotism takes the cake. You win!

Is there any need for rebuttal to Vixen's nonsense once she has posted this! Hoots!

 

[Lince]

You have falsely claimed that Boninsegna called the pair exonerated, most likely based on Amanda's own revision of history, yet truth is, the Italian word for 'exonerated', 'l'esonerio' [_sp?] appears precisely nowhere in the judgment.

Who cares about one particular Italian word? Unless you can show some high-level legal documents that obligate this exact word to appear in verdicts. I strongly doubt you will be able to do that. Besides, even if this particular word happened to be in the verdict, you would probably dismiss it as "a figure of speech".

What is important that the Marasca verdict unambiguously states that Amanda and Raffaele are acquitted because they "did not commit the act". Which makes them legally innocent/not-guilty for this crime. Moreover, considering the time and effort lots and lots of smart people have spent deconstructing and analysing all the circumstances and evidence related to this crime, I would say that the likelihood that you (or me, for that matter) are actual culprits is significantly higher than that of Amanda and Raffaele.

 

[Numbers]

Excerpt from an ECHR judgment, DVORSKI v. CROATIA 25703/11[GC] 20/10/2015:

B. Relevant international law materials

Right of access to a lawyer of one’s own choosing during police custody

(a) Council of Europe

(i) Rules adopted by the Committee of Ministers

62. Rule 93 of the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Resolution (73)5 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe) provides:

“An untried prisoner shall be entitled, as soon as he is imprisoned, to choose his legal representation ... and to receive visits from his legal adviser with a view to his defence and to prepare and hand to him and to receive, confidential instructions. At his request, he shall be given all necessary facilities for this purpose. ... Interviews between the prisoner and his legal adviser may be within sight but not within hearing, either direct or indirect, of a police or institution official.”
______

Italy is a member state of the Council of Europe and is bound by treaty to obey its rules.

However, Knox and Sollecito were denied lawyers after their arrests, until immediately before their arrest hearings, contrary to the rule.

Furthermore, the ECHR has made it clear in its case law (Salduz v. Turkey, Ibrahim and others v. the UK) that a suspect is entitled to a lawyer from the first interrogation, with the only recognized exception to date being safety interviews of terrorist suspects. Convictions of the suspect based on statements obtained from such interrogations are violations of the European Convention on Human Rights Articles 6.3c with 6.1. Thus, Italy's conviction of Knox based upon her (coerced) statements from the interrogation on Nov. 5/6, 2007 without a defense lawyer was a violation of the Convention under ECHR case law.

 

[Welshman]

First of all you have to be aware:

a) Andrew Gumbel the third party ghost writer for Raff is imagining the position of Raff were he to be entirely innocent, based on how he would feel. We see the same phenomenon in Amanda's book, ghost written by Linda Kulman (_sp?).

b) The book is written in hindsight to 'explain' potentially incriminating issues.

I raised the issue of how do you explain the conduct of the prosecution and the methods they had to resort to if they had solid evidence such as Amanda leaving blood in the bathroom. Vixen avoids this issue completely and brings up the completely different issue of Amanda and Raffaele's books.