The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 25

[TruthCalls]

Wow. You really don't like Raffaele!

Typical Vixen. Most of her diatribe is baseless speculation and biased opinion, something we've come to expect. It's also entirely irrelevant. Raffaele was arrested, held in solitary, spent four years in prison and was subjected to numerous trials resulting in massive legal debt. Much of this not only affected Raffaele but his family as well. And since he was found to be innocent of the crime he deserves to be compensated for this. Italy seems to be saying "yes, we took four years of your life, put you into tremendous debt and caused permanent damage to your character, all for a crime you have been declared innocent of committing, but we're not going to pay you a dime because during a coercive interrogation you gave some conflicting statements". It's sad to see Italy still can't get it's house in order.

 

[LondonJohn]

Well, I've said it before and.....etc

The Italian criminal justice system is not fit for purpose.

It appears that all courts in Italy, up to and including the Supreme Court, are fundamentally not prepared to consider police misconduct. They are prepared to accept that the police may have made mistakes of omission or incompetence in an investigation, but it appears there's an institutional refusal to recognise the possibility of police misconduct.

I suspect that part of this is rooted in general reactionary attitudes among the judiciary (one can examine Justice Lane's extraordinary statement in one of the early appeals of the Birmingham Six in the UK for an example of this - or, much more topically, the long-belated prosecutions of various police on misconduct charges in respect of the investigations into the Hillsborough tragedy). After all, if the public know that senior judges think the police are willing to lie, cheat and employ unlawful means in the course of their investigations, this can have hugely damaging effects upon the faith of the public in the entire law enforcement process. And, in turn, that can lead to significant problems in enforcing law and order.

Fortunately, in the UK (and most other similar countries, I believe), this issue has now been substantially addressed and corrected. It is not now taken as read that the police behave with the utmost integrity at all times (and that therefore a defendant must be able to PROVE misconduct BARD before the court will ever be prepared to accept that it could have happened). Instead, there is a constant implicit onus upon the police to prove that they acted with probity, within the law, and with proper ethical standards. In the UK, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) went a very long way to legislating in this direction. As a result, what happened in those interrogation rooms in Perugia on 5th/6th November 2007 almost certainly could/would never have happened in the UK.

I also suspect that in Italy (as well as in other corrupt, second-world nations such as Turkey and Russia), there's something of a prevailing attitude - among legislators, law enforcers and the judiciary alike - along the lines of: "the odds are against us with all these organised crime gangs and corrupt citizens - why not allow the police a decent bit of latitude to fight fire with fire?"

Whatever the underlying reasons are, I maintain that there are extremely strong reasons (supported by a good amount of reliable evidence) that Sollecito (and Knox too, of course) was unlawfully coerced and bullied by the police in that 5th November interrogation into changing his recollection of events into something that the police wanted (NEEDED) him to change it to: that Knox had left his apartment for a lengthy time period on the evening/night of the murder. It's clear that Sollecito was coerced and bullied into convincing himself that the events of the evening/night before the murder (i.e. the evening/night of Halloween, 31st October) were actually the events of the evening/night of the murder (1st November). Everything he told the police in that coerced statement chimes reliably with known events and movements from that Halloween evening/night. Sollecito didn't lie to the police. He was bullied and coerced so assertively that he mixed up the two evenings.

Hopefully the ECHR will see all of this for exactly what it is. I always suspected (and have written about it before) that Sollecito would probably need to end up taking this to the ECHR to get a proper, first-world assessment and adjudication. I trust that Sollecito's lawyers are preparing an ECHR application even as I write (actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd already started preparing it in advance of this Italian SC ruling........).

 

[Bill Williams]

Well, I've said it before and.....etc

The Italian criminal justice system is not fit for purpose.

It appears that all courts in Italy, up to and including the Supreme Court, are fundamentally not prepared to consider police misconduct. They are prepared to accept that the police may have made mistakes of omission or incompetence in an investigation, but it appears there's an institutional refusal to recognise the possibility of police misconduct.

I suspect that part of this is rooted in general reactionary attitudes among the judiciary (one can examine Justice Lane's extraordinary statement in one of the early appeals of the Birmingham Six in the UK for an example of this - or, much more topically, the long-belated prosecutions of various police on misconduct charges in respect of the investigations into the Hillsborough tragedy). After all, if the public know that senior judges think the police are willing to lie, cheat and employ unlawful means in the course of their investigations, this can have hugely damaging effects upon the faith of the public in the entire law enforcement process. And, in turn, that can lead to significant problems in enforcing law and order.

Fortunately, in the UK (and most other similar countries, I believe), this issue has now been substantially addressed and corrected. It is not now taken as read that the police behave with the utmost integrity at all times (and that therefore a defendant must be able to PROVE misconduct BARD before the court will ever be prepared to accept that it could have happened). Instead, there is a constant implicit onus upon the police to prove that they acted with probity, within the law, and with proper ethical standards. In the UK, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) went a very long way to legislating in this direction. As a result, what happened in those interrogation rooms in Perugia on 5th/6th November 2007 almost certainly could/would never have happened in the UK.

I also suspect that in Italy (as well as in other corrupt, second-world nations such as Turkey and Russia), there's something of a prevailing attitude - among legislators, law enforcers and the judiciary alike - along the lines of: "the odds are against us with all these organised crime gangs and corrupt citizens - why not allow the police a decent bit of latitude to fight fire with fire?"

Whatever the underlying reasons are, I maintain that there are extremely strong reasons (supported by a good amount of reliable evidence) that Sollecito (and Knox too, of course) was unlawfully coerced and bullied by the police in that 5th November interrogation into changing his recollection of events into something that the police wanted (NEEDED) him to change it to: that Knox had left his apartment for a lengthy time period on the evening/night of the murder. It's clear that Sollecito was coerced and bullied into convincing himself that the events of the evening/night before the murder (i.e. the evening/night of Halloween, 31st October) were actually the events of the evening/night of the murder (1st November). Everything he told the police in that coerced statement chimes reliably with known events and movements from that Halloween evening/night. Sollecito didn't lie to the police. He was bullied and coerced so assertively that he mixed up the two evenings.

Hopefully the ECHR will see all of this for exactly what it is. I always suspected (and have written about it before) that Sollecito would probably need to end up taking this to the ECHR to get a proper, first-world assessment and adjudication. I trust that Sollecito's lawyers are preparing an ECHR application even as I write (actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd already started preparing it in advance of this Italian SC ruling........).

Solely from memory, I can only recall one reference in all the sundry motivation reports of criticism of the police..... Marasca/Bruno's motivations report (in definitively acquitting the pair) which called the investigation "amnesiac".

One has to get used to Italian jurists using words like that, with no explanation or other legal reference - quite like when the Chieffi ISC panel back in 2013 said - in overturning the 2011 Hellmann acquittal - that Hellmann's court had not considered the evidence "osmotically".

The PGP translation of the Chieffi motivations report tacitly admitted the problem with that word, when they translated the underlying Italian as "organically". Be that as it may (getting back to the thread) even the courts which acquitted Knox and Sollecito seemed to steer clear of overt criticism of police or prosecutors. This is in a situation where both police and prosecutors clearly bungled the case, so much so that Marasca/Bruno eventually conceded that.....

...... what was in front of the courts as "evidence" (presumably collected and analyzed by professionals) was useless in either determining guilt or establishing factual innocence.

Indeed, one of the early posters to this ISF/JREF series of threads said that the problem with this case was that all the evidence was "judicially generated" to begin with; there was no actual investigatively-derived-evidence, just a series of judicial facts that judges ruled on....... mainly just because.

Marasca-Bruno touched on that as well, saying that those convicting judges of lower courts could very well have believed on a hunch that the pair were guilty. But those beliefs and hunches were no substitute for ...... lessee there's a word floating out there somewhere.... oh yes...

EVIDENCE!

But even Marasca-Bruno stopped at that point - putting the dots on the graph paper, but not connecting them.

From Italy, the M/B report and the Hellmann report are about as far as Italian jurists are willing to go. Any further is to expose the systematic investigative and juridical flaws the country is stuck with.

Not to mention prompting open warfare among the "parties" within the judiciary; such division is perhaps the only thing PIP and PGP agree upon.

 

[Stacyhs]

Nah. He's a classic con man. The grifter got €66K for his start up business, which he now claims is not viable.

He drives a big red Ferrari sports car. Hasn't done a day's work in his life. Lives a life of leisure in Parma. Claims he can't find a job because of the 'persecution', when Italy is in an economic crisis with high unemployment especially amongst its youth and two major banks having to be bailed out by the government to stave off a run on them.

Raff has lived a life of privilege, getting a handsome government grant for his business which others would love. He's leeched off his family, relied on mafia connections to holiday in Dominican Republic at a moment's notice.

Massive advance on his two books. Fooled BBC's Victoria Derbyshire into shedding tears of sympathy on his plight earlier this year.

All the time, a smirk dances around his mouth.

He really tries it on, doesn't he.

This is the perfect example of extreme bias which clearly demonstrates the inability to interpret anything connected with Sollecito (or Knox) in any way other than negative. When a person is this biased it renders them incapable of looking at evidence or anything connected with the case with any objectivity. This is when luminol+/TMB- results become evidence of blood, when amorphous blobs become footprints, when a knife that has no blood on it and does not match the wounds becomes the murder weapon, when the complete lack of any physical evidence of a suspect in the murder room is due to an impossible clean up. This is when a heroin addict, admittedly high at the time, with a record of being a witness for the prosecution in three other trials, and who describes seeing the suspects clearly on the night before the murder becomes a reliable witness. This is when a witness who denies to a detective having seen the suspect at his store within a week of the crime, but a year later "remembers" her very clearly, becomes reliable.

 

[Machiavelli]

This is not how it was translated following your instructions. Nor did any of the several translation webpages I used.

No, I don't need to do a search. I'm not the one making the claim. You are.

http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/06/28/news/cassazione_nessun_risarcimento_a_sollecito_per_i_4_anni_di_carcere-169422173/

 

[Machiavelli]

Well, I've said it before and.....etc

The Italian criminal justice system is not fit for purpose.

It appears that all courts in Italy, up to and including the Supreme Court, are fundamentally not prepared to consider police misconduct. They are prepared to accept that the police may have made mistakes of omission or incompetence in an investigation, but it appears there's an institutional refusal to recognise the possibility of police misconduct.

I suspect that part of this is rooted in general reactionary attitudes among the judiciary [snip the rest of comical rationalization ]

The truth: in reality the Italian justice system is neutral about "police misconduct", in fact that's just any other misconduct. Wheneer a misconduct by anyone is proven.

But here, in the merits of the case about Sollecito & Knox, there was never a grain of evidence of misconduct. In fact there was not even an allegation of a misconduct. In any event, no potential misconduct would have anything to do with the reasons why Sollecito doesn't deserve anything.
It has just nothing to do with others' alleged misconducts: it has only to do with the actions of Sollecito.

It is also transparent from the Florence judgement that the courts believe Sollecito is manifestly guilty.

 

[Stacyhs]

http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/06/28/news/cassazione_nessun_risarcimento_a_sollecito_per_i_4_anni_di_carcere-169422173/

View attachment 36908

Yes, Mach. We know what the original Italian said. That is not is dispute. What is in dispute is the translation of "dolosa". That is different depending on what translation program is used.

My question is if we accept the translation as "malicious", exactly what was malicious about Raffaele's statements? To whom or what was he deliberately intending harm? Unless that can be answered, then "malicious" cannot be accepted as the correct translation in this case.

 

[Bill Williams]

It is also transparent from the Florence judgement that the courts believe Sollecito is manifestly guilty.

So? The Florence court heard no evidence with regard to the murder trial. They can believe all they want about things which they did not hear.... but as outlined in the Marasca-Bruno report, courts should not make judgments based on their beliefs, but on the evidence. The "insurmountable barrier" M/B described as the only one relevant to judging the murder case is that there is no evidence linking the pair to the murder room.

"Believe" all you wish. It is your right.

 

[Bill Williams]

Yes, Mach. We know what the original Italian said. That is not is dispute. What is in dispute is the translation of "dolosa". That is different depending on what translation program is used.

My question is if we accept the translation as "malicious", exactly what was malicious about Raffaele's statements? To whom was he deliberately intending harm?

Please note that the very Repubblica article Machiavelli posts, has five instances calling the March 2015 decision about the murder, an acquittal.

Machiavelli has been very active lately trying to say otherwise. Perhaps Machiavelli should start with The Repubblica.

 

[Stacyhs]

Please note that the very Repubblica article Machiavelli posts, has five instances calling the March 2015 decision about the murder, an acquittal.

Machiavelli has been very active lately trying to say otherwise. Perhaps Machiavelli should start with The Repubblica.

Yes, I posted earlier that TJMK is claiming that Knox wasn't "definitively acquitted". There's a ridiculous article there written by TJMK "main contributors" attempting to argue otherwise. Hmmmmmm.....I wonder just who could they be?

 

[Machiavelli]

Yes, Mach. We know what the original Italian said. That is not is dispute. What is in dispute is the translation of "dolosa". That is different depending on what translation program is used.

My question is if we accept the translation as "malicious", exactly what was malicious about Raffaele's statements? To whom or what was he deliberately intending harm? Unless that can be answered, then "malicious" cannot be accepted as the correct translation in this case.

The term doloso in Italian law refers to a harmful (criminal, damaging or illegal) action that was deliberate. There is no other possble meaning as far as I know.
Doloso means: with dolo;
dolo means: "a deliberate intention of committing a crime"

The object of harm may be unspecified in the judgement about Sollecito, but from the word we can only infer that his actions had a deliberate purpose of hindering/obstructing the investigation and the finding out of the truth. So, he was voluntarily harming the investigation efforts. That's the meaning of doloso.

 

[Bill Williams]

Yes, I posted earlier that TJMK is claiming that Knox wasn't "definitively acquitted". There's a ridiculous article there written by TJMK "main contributors" attempting to argue otherwise. Hmmmmmm.....I wonder just who could they be?

There are very few in a very active PR campaign to spread the misinformation about what Marasca-Bruno and the 5th Panel of Cassation ruled in 2015. Someone is actively editing the English-language Wikipedia page for Giuliano Mignini about it (!!) and all one needs to do is check the "Edit" page to see who is responsible for that! (There isn't even an Italian language page for Mignini, which is a wonder.....)

But holy cow, Repubblica inserts five - not one, not two, not three, not four, but five - references to the 2015 definitive acquittal, and Repubblica fails to mention the larger Masonic conspiracy that Machiavelli actively spreads about the ISC 5th panel....

Machiavelli should not waste his time here on this obscure thread which very few follow any more. He's got obvious work to do to convince the rest of Italy - much less the ECHR - of his views.

Maybe we're the only ones who will respond to his claims?

 

[Machiavelli]

(...) The "insurmountable barrier" M/B described as the only one relevant to judging the murder case is that there is no evidence linking the pair to the murder room.

(...)

The only problem is that such purported "insurmontable barrier" doesn't exist, and B/M court could not and did not assess evidence.

 

[Machiavelli]

There are very few in a very active PR campaign to spread the misinformation about what Marasca-Bruno and the 5th Panel of Cassation ruled in 2015. Someone is actively editing the English-language Wikipedia page for Giuliano Mignini about it (!!) and all one needs to do is check the "Edit" page to see who is responsible for that! (There isn't even an Italian language page for Mignini, which is a wonder.....)

(....)

The previous was just a narrative by Doug Preston & fans.

What Marasca-Bruno and the 5th Panel of Cassation ruled in 2015 is exactly what I said, nobody has been, and nobody will be able to disprove the undisputable truth that I am telling you.
The information that I reported about the 5th panel report is absolutely correct, and the only correct one.

I have shown this (this thread pages 64-66) and I will blow any attempt of denial. I know what an Italian text says, you do not.

 

[Bill Williams]

The only problem is that such purported "insurmontable barrier" doesn't exist, and B/M court could not and did not assess evidence.

They had a duty to rule if Nencini had enough evidence in front of his court in 2013-14 to find the pair guilty. The insurmountable barrier, acc. to M/B to that finding of guilt was as M/B described - that even if Knox had scrubbed blood from her hands, etc., that still did not break through the legal-barrier of the kind of evidence a court in Italy needed to find someone guilty.

Please do not interpret the M/B report by trying to reinterpret words. At the very least quote the M/B report. As in....

8.1. An element of evidence of unchallengeable relevance - for the reasons explained hereinafter - is represented by the total absence of biological traces attributable with certainty to the two defendants in the murder room or on the body of the victim, whereas, instead, abundant traces surely attributable to Guede have been found.

This was an insurmountable monolithic barrier on the path taken by the fact-finding judge to arrive at the conviction of the present defendants, already acquitted previously for the murder by the Court of Appeals of Perugia.​

It is unfortunate that M/B wrote what they wrote, but it is what they wrote. You have not provided ANY evidence at all to break through this barrier, much less claim it did not exist!

 

[Bill Williams]

I have shown this (this thread pages 64-66) and I will blow any attempt of denial. I know what an Italian text says, you do not.

Repubblica also knows what the Italian text says. You should quit wasting your time with English speaking, non-Italian speakers and turn your attention to outlets like The Repubblica.

It seems to think the pair were acquitted, and says so five times in the article you, yourself, linked to.

 

[Machiavelli]

Please note that the very Repubblica article Machiavelli posts, has five instances calling the March 2015 decision about the murder, an acquittal.

Machiavelli has been very active lately trying to say otherwise. Perhaps Machiavelli should start with The Repubblica.

The point is that when you write "acquittal" you purposely end the statement there, but forget that there are some clauses, and this is a cherry picking.
One preliminary thing you forget to say is that the verdict is anomalous since SC does not have a power to acquit, but only annull, and this is something that has no be remembered (because it implies that the SC did not look at the evidence).
The biggest things you forget to say, anyway, is that the formula is subjected to art. 530.2 - which is normally called reasonable doubt - and also, that the same court stated that that it is a proven fact that Meredith was killed by multiple persons, that it is a proven fact Knox was at the scene of crime when Meredith was killed, that they said they even agree with the courts of merits that Knox heared Meredith's scream (and that she was able to somehow know in advance that there was a sexual assault, before the police could know), and also wrote that there is "eloquent proof" that Knox had contact with Meredith's blood and washed her hands of it.

You try to sweep these things under the carpet. But they are here to stay.

 

[Machiavelli]

Repubblica also knows what the Italian text says. You should quit wasting your time with English speaking, non-Italian speakers and turn your attention to outlets like The Repubblica.

It seems to think the pair were acquitted, and says so five times in the article you, yourself, linked to.

Italians actually already understand how things went quite better than you, in fact - as the same Sollecito pointed out - recent courts judgements "sound like a conviction" and nobody hires Sollecito in Italy.

 

[Stacyhs]

The term doloso in Italian law refers to a harmful (criminal, damaging or illegal) action that was deliberate. There is no other possble meaning as far as I know.
Doloso means: with dolo;
dolo means: "a deliberate intention of committing a crime"

The object of harm may be unspecified in the judgement about Sollecito, but from the word we can only infer that his actions had a deliberate purpose of hindering/obstructing the investigation and the finding out of the truth. So, he was voluntarily harming the investigation efforts. That's the meaning of doloso.

This is what is so contradictory and illogical about the court's reasoning. Sollecito is definitively acquitted of the murder yet any statements he made under interrogation that proved to be incorrect are attributed to his malicious intent to obstruct the investigation of that murder. He would only need to do that if he were guilty. Which the Supreme Court says there is no evidence of.

There is no evidence that Sollecito was deliberately lying to the police, and not just confused, during his interrogation. In fact, I'd say his giving a description of Knox's actions on the night before the murder is evidence of confusion and not lying.

It has always amazed me that the Italian courts refuse to believe that what Knox and Sollecito said during their unrecorded and lawyer absent interrogations could possibly have been coerced. Any mistake or confusion just had to be a deliberate lie.

 

[Machiavelli]

They had a duty to rule if Nencini had enough evidence in front of his court in 2013-14 to find the pair guilty. The insurmountable barrier, acc. to M/B to that finding of guilt was as M/B described - that even if Knox had scrubbed blood from her hands, etc., that still did not break through the legal-barrier of the kind of evidence a court in Italy needed to find someone guilty.

Please do not interpret the M/B report by trying to reinterpret words. At the very least quote the M/B report. As in.... (....)

Please note that I do not re-interpret any words of B/M: I report exactly what B/M say: what they says is that there is eloquent proof that Knox washed her hands of Meredith's blood.
This is not an "if" statement - forget any "if" in this sentence - there is eloquent proof that Knox washed her hands of Merediht's blood. This is not what I say, this is what Bruno/Marasca say. No "if". But an eloquent proof of a fact instead, this is what is stated in the text.