The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 25

[LondonJohn]

These will be eager defence lawyers keen to discover a few tricks in getting their client off the hook.

Zellner has discovered she can do this by getting prisoners on their death beds in Death Row to 'confess' to having committed murders her clients are convicted of, and thus gets them off by this route. The other, is to pressurise key witnesses (in the case of Ryan Ferguson, the cleaning lady, Shawna Ornt - who came face to face with the two 'college-age men' as their victim lay on the ground, garrotted - who, two year's later, claimed neither of the two men were Ferguson or Erickson, although she didn't say this at the time, and the other witness, whom we are told constantly is a 'sex offender', claims he recognised the men from a newspaper article photo. She got his wife to confirm she never sent him the newspaper as he claimed and he retracted his statement, begging forgiveness.

So, Ferguson got his conviction 'vacated' on the technical grounds of one Brady violation - the prosecution omitted to mention the wife's denial -not because they discovered 'who really did it'.

He was awarded $11m on the technicality of a police irregularity in procedure (they do not admit liabilty).

But money cannot buy the one thing a guilty person can never have, and that is innocence. I look forward to the 'real perpetrators' being found.

Interestingly (but of only fleeting relevance to the Knox/Sollecito case, of course....) you also appear to be ignorant of the extremely important fact that a person who factually committed a crime could STILL be unjustly convicted of it.

Imagine, for example, that Mr A stabs Mr B (a man with whom Mr A has zero prior connections) to death in a quiet street in the dead of night with no eyewitnesses within a mile of the incident. Mr A effectively destroys the knife and all the clothing and gloves he was wearing, and douses himself in a dilute bleach and disinfectant solution he'd bought in his car before drying off and putting on fresh clothes.

In short, in other words, there is zero actual evidence that Mr A was the murderer of Mr B. However, Mr A is known to police as a bit of an oddball, and they have a "hunch" that he was involved. They "discover" a wholly bogus "eyewitness" who identifies Mr A as the killer (think "Curatolo" at this point....), and manufacture forensic evidence against Mr A (think "Stefanoni and Comodi"....).

Mr A is found guilty on the basis of this "evidence" and is imprisoned.

Yet Mr A has been wrongly convicted.

EVEN THOUGH IN ACTUAL (METAPHYSICAL) FACT, HE WAS THE ONE WHO COMMITTED THE MURDER!!

I know it's rather difficult for certain people to get their heads around this concept, but it's very real, and is in no way a corruption/failure of a criminal justice system.

I, for example, still harbour some suspicions that Barry George was involved in the Jill Dando murder. HOWEVER, there clearly was never anything even remotely approaching sufficient credible, reliable evidence to prove his guilt BARD in a court, and therefore I have no problem whatsoever in calling that out as a miscarriage of Justice and affording George his proper and correct assumption of innocence.

(In the Kercher murder, by contrast, not only am I certain that there was never anything even remotely approaching sufficient credible, reliable evidence to prove the guilt of Knox and/or Sollecito, but also I am pretty confident (note that I can never be 100% certain, unless Guede ever makes a full, honest confession - which he won't do) that neither Knox nor Sollecito factually had anything to do with the Kercher murder.)

 

[bagels]

Laura and Filomena had rock solid alibis elsewhere.

So did Patrick, but that didn't stop the police from parading him through the streets on a perp walk as a vicious killer.

 

[TruthCalls]

Laura and Filomena had rock solid alibis elsewhere.

Right, but since the prints were not made from Meredith's blood I don't see what relevance that has with anything.

 

[Vixen]

No indeed, it's not similar at all. And in addition, E&W, Scotland and NI each have difference justice systems.

And, for the record, there's no such slang as "Norn" to refer to Northern Ireland. The (rather demeaning) slang, parodying the accent, is "Norn Irn". "Norn" just represents/means "Northern", which is entirely meaningless. And nobody who actually knows about this would EVER refer to NI as "Norn". They would receive blank looks if they did so, together with an acknowledgement of their rather embarrassing ignorance. It's "Norn Irn" (or "Norn Iron") or nothing. Full stop.

A friend of mine was an advisor for one of the Norn ministers and that is what she called it. (This was a few years ago, I should add. )

 

[LondonJohn]

What is the PGP theory of the floating turd anyway? That Rudy isn't familiar with indoor plumbing, being African or whatever? I want to know more.

And, as a further point of note, people who intend to break into a house via breaking a window tend not to be so phenomenally stupid (even the most stupid ones) as to do that with bare hands.

Can anyone in the class guess why that might be? Anyone? Bueller? Vixen? Anyone?

I'll enlighten those of you at the back of the class. It's nothing to do with forensics at its heart. It's to do with NOT GETTING YOUR HANDS CUT WITH BROKEN GLASS WHILE YOU'RE IN THE PROCESS OF BREAKING IN.

So, guess what? Listening at the back there? You wear heavy gloves - leather ones are good and easy to get, or heavy canvas type ones perhaps - plus a decent coat or thick sweater covering your arms and torso, until you've got well past the broken glass part of the endeavour. Because, y'see, if you cut yourself with broken window glass - a very, very real possibility if you're breaking in via a glass window, especially a non-ground-floor one - then a) it's rather injurious to your own health (and may require a hospital trip, which is something that (rather obviously) you can do without for a number of key reasons); b) you will probably drip your blood around the house you're breaking into (and even you know that this is rather detrimental to your chances of avoiding detection and discovery); c) it will hugely hamper your chances of achieving the goal for which you're actually breaking into the property in the first place: to find items of value and steal them.

Once you're in - and if you're inexperienced and rather, shall we say, "unsavvy" (as Guede clearly was), you take off the gloves in order to give your hands the relative dexterity to go through drawers quickly and efficiently. Experienced burglars often buy and use thin latex gloves at this point, since they know it eliminates the risk of leaving finger/hand prints or touch DNA (from the hands) at the scene, yet it only slightly compromises their dexterity. Guede wasn't as sophisticated as that. He took off his heavy gloves and used his bare hands.

He opened some drawers in Romanelli's room to take a general inventory (he probably thought he had an hour or two to work with), and did the same in Mezzetti's room (IIRC, there's a very interesting and informative part of his bogus "account" in which he is careful to fabricate the story that Kercher took him into Romanelli's and Mezzetti's rooms, since he wanted to be able to "account" for any presence of himself in those rooms). He went to the fridge and drank some juice straight out of the carton (again, in his bogus "account", he is careful to pretend that Kercher invited him to "have a drink" - but of course it's vanishingly improbable that Kercher would have invited him to neck the juice straight out of the carton rather than use a glass.....).

He didn't actually leave usable prints in Romanelli's room or Mezzetti's room as it happens, because (contrary to the ignorant view promoted by CSI TV shows) it's actually quite hard to leave a latent (in skin oils and sebum etc) usable print on either a non-smooth non-porous surface, or on a surface which is frequently touched in the same place. Plus I would place a little bit of money on the incompetent Perugia crime scene team missing some amount of print evidence that WAS there to be discovered.

And the rest, as they say, is history pro-guilt BS, nonsense, misrepresentation, wilful intent to deceive, and sheer, unadulterated ignorance.

 

[LondonJohn]

A friend of mine was an advisor for one of the Norn ministers and that is what she called it. (This was a few years ago, I should add. )

You're either misremembering or making that up. NOBODY has ever referred to Northern Ireland as "Norn".

If you think about it for, oh, a nanosecond, you can see how obvious this is:

The "Norn" slang pronunciation is the representation of the way Northern Irish people say "Northern". But when they refer to the province of the UK from which they hail, they call it "Northern Ireland". Not "Northern". And, in NI slang, "Northern Ireland" is rendered as "Norn Irn" (or sometimes "Norn Iron").

As a little additional pointer as to how wrong you are, what you're saying is equivalent in many ways to claiming that the local slang rendition of the country "Australia" is "Stray". When the joke-slang rendering of it is actually "Straya".

So, if you must use that little "joke" (it's not really a joke, by the way), please use "Norn Irn" or "Norn Iron", and not "Norn" (which is meaningless). Or use "NI" or "Northern Ireland" - which would be the usual way to refer to that region. Many thanks.

 

[Vixen]

And, as a further point of note, people who intend to break into a house via breaking a window tend not to be so phenomenally stupid (even the most stupid ones) as to do that with bare hands.

Can anyone in the class guess why that might be? Anyone? Bueller? Vixen? Anyone?

I'll enlighten those of you at the back of the class. It's nothing to do with forensics at its heart. It's to do with NOT GETTING YOUR HANDS CUT WITH BROKEN GLASS WHILE YOU'RE IN THE PROCESS OF BREAKING IN.

So, guess what? Listening at the back there? You wear heavy gloves - leather ones are good and easy to get, or heavy canvas type ones perhaps - plus a decent coat or thick sweater covering your arms and torso, until you've got well past the broken glass part of the endeavour. Because, y'see, if you cut yourself with broken window glass - a very, very real possibility if you're breaking in via a glass window, especially a non-ground-floor one - then a) it's rather injurious to your own health (and may require a hospital trip, which is something that (rather obviously) you can do without for a number of key reasons); b) you will probably drip your blood around the house you're breaking into (and even you know that this is rather detrimental to your chances of avoiding detection and discovery); c) it will hugely hamper your chances of achieving the goal for which you're actually breaking into the property in the first place: to find items of value and steal them.

Once you're in - and if you're inexperienced and rather, shall we say, "unsavvy" (as Guede clearly was), you take off the gloves in order to give your hands the relative dexterity to go through drawers quickly and efficiently. Experienced burglars often buy and use thin latex gloves at this point, since they know it eliminates the risk of leaving finger/hand prints or touch DNA (from the hands) at the scene, yet it only slightly compromises their dexterity. Guede wasn't as sophisticated as that. He took off his heavy gloves and used his bare hands.

He opened some drawers in Romanelli's room to take a general inventory (he probably thought he had an hour or two to work with), and did the same in Mezzetti's room (IIRC, there's a very interesting and informative part of his bogus "account" in which he is careful to fabricate the story that Kercher took him into Romanelli's and Mezzetti's rooms, since he wanted to be able to "account" for any presence of himself in those rooms). He went to the fridge and drank some juice straight out of the carton (again, in his bogus "account", he is careful to pretend that Kercher invited him to "have a drink" - but of course it's vanishingly improbable that Kercher would have invited him to neck the juice straight out of the carton rather than use a glass.....).

He didn't actually leave usable prints in Romanelli's room or Mezzetti's room as it happens, because (contrary to the ignorant view promoted by CSI TV shows) it's actually quite hard to leave a latent (in skin oils and sebum etc) usable print on either a non-smooth non-porous surface, or on a surface which is frequently touched in the same place. Plus I would place a little bit of money on the incompetent Perugia crime scene team missing some amount of print evidence that WAS there to be discovered.

And the rest, as they say, is history pro-guilt BS, nonsense, misrepresentation, wilful intent to deceive, and sheer, unadulterated ignorance.

Which leads us to the question:

WHY DID AMANDA KNOX AND RAFFAELE SOLLECITO COVER UP FOR RUDY?

 

[LondonJohn]

Grinder was wrong.

It is one of the few times I bested him in argument. It's why I remember, because there were so few of those times!!!

I asked him to describe what is different in a case between a Section 1 and Section 2 acquittal; different in practical terms. What is it that ensues from a Section 1 acquittal which would be different from what ensues from a Section 2 acquittal?

The answer? Nothing. He at least had the decency to consult with someone who was familiar with Italian law, and was man enough to admit he'd been wrong.

Ok, that's the only time. Someone more favourable to Grinder's arguments will now list the number of times he'd bested me. Go ahead, I'm dug in for the long haul.....

Hahahaha! Oh he got the better of you many times. With me, far fewer

But yes, he was fundamentally wrong in his (initial) interpretation of the relative practical meanings of 530.1 and 530.2. Initially, I myself was wrong in my interpretation, but I think I soon learned more and figured it out properly.

And of course the reason why we had (initial) difficulties with it is that....

IT'S A BAT-GUANO-CRAZY PIECE OF CODIFICATION.

And the reason it's so crazy is that it is entirely predicated on the same section of the Code under the previous legislative "infrastructure". For what I suspect are a multitude of reasons, this section of the code wasn't just torn up and rewritten to reflect the new statute book (i.e. that - barring some very specific named exceptions - there's only one type of acquittal).

As I grow increasingly tired of claiming: the Italian criminal justice system is fundamentally unfit for purpose in 2017. For sure, it's plenty more fit than it was in, say, 1985, but it's still crazily unfit. And I'm very confident that there are a number of important factors feeding into the reasons why this should be so: they include (but are far from limited to) reluctance to modify/discard Mussolini-era legislation and Codes; reactionary forces within the judiciary; the perceived latitude required to fight the rampant and totally pervasive levels of organised crime and corruption within Italy; and the near-total lack of stable executive/legislative branches of government, owing to weak coalition governments which are frequently brought down at near-comical speeds, and which results in an inability to push through a proper, far-reaching programme of legislative reform in criminal justice.

 

[LondonJohn]

Which leads us to the question:

WHY DID AMANDA KNOX AND RAFFAELE SOLLECITO COVER UP FOR RUDY?

Read again the final sentence of the post of mine to which you responded. The answer to your question is wholly contained therein.

 

[Bill Williams]

Which leads us to the question:

WHY DID AMANDA KNOX AND RAFFAELE SOLLECITO COVER UP FOR RUDY?

They didn't. The "judicial truth" on which this claim is based, is not arrived at through actual evidence. If it were, someone would have presented it by now. It's been almost a decade and no one has been able to do that.

What you'll do from this point on is simply repeat the "judicial truth" without ever presenting a cogent case for it. That's the way true-believers in guilt roll.....

And who is "us"?

 

[Numbers]

There seems to be some confusion among one or more PGP about the compensation for unfair detention process in Italy. No one - not even Raffaele Sollecito - claiming compensation for unfair detention in Italy need be concerned about Illinois or Wisconsin laws, nor UK (neither England/Wales nor Scotland nor NI) laws. By the way, as far as I have been able to find, Wisconsin does not have a statute relating to a "certificate of innocence" while Illinois does have such a statute.

According to Merriam-Webster (online), quash means "to suppress or extinguish summarily and completely". Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quash

The legal definition of quash: Quash means to nullify, void or declare invalid. The procedure is used in both criminal and civil cases when there is an irregularity or defect in procedures. ... Source: https://definitions.uslegal.com/q/quash/

Now, regarding the likely next step in Sollecito's claim for compensation for unfair detention, his lawyer was quoted as stating she will take the case to the ECHR. Compensation for arrest and/or detention which violates the requirements listed in Convention Article 5 as determined by the ECHR (for example, in its existing case law) is required under the European Convention of Human Rights, Article 5.5, as well as Italian Constitution Article 24 and CPP Article 314. A quick search for such cases in HUDOC shows a listing of 226 ECHR judgments. Assuming that Sollecito and his lawyer(s) submit an application to the ECHR claiming that Italy violated his Convention rights by unfairly denying him compensation (likely to be complaints of violations of Article 5 and Article 6), it will be the eventual judgment of the ECHR that will determine Italy's actions according to international law (Italy's treaty obligations).

 

[Bill Williams]

Hahahaha! Oh he got the better of you many times. With me, far fewer

I resemble that remark!

Speaking of Grinder....... In cleaning out an old e-mail archive a while ago, I found the e-mail from a well-placed source which said two things:

1. The interrogation tapes/discs exist and are being kept by more than one person
2. That if and when the pair were ever acquitted, that an internecine war would break out and the tapes/discs would find themselves being released

Grinder kept at me to name the source or shut up about it. Well, whatever that source it was batting at best .500.

 

[whoanellie]

Grinder was wrong.

It is one of the few times I bested him in argument. It's why I remember, because there were so few of those times!!!

I asked him to describe what is different in a case between a Section 1 and Section 2 acquittal; different in practical terms. What is it that ensues from a Section 1 acquittal which would be different from what ensues from a Section 2 acquittal?

The answer? Nothing. He at least had the decency to consult with someone who was familiar with Italian law, and was man enough to admit he'd been wrong.

Ok, that's the only time. Someone more favourable to Grinder's arguments will now list the number of times he'd bested me. Go ahead, I'm dug in for the long haul.....

We beat this horse to a bloody pulp shortly after Grinders death and I don't want to have another go at it, but it is my position that Grinder never claimed that there was a practical difference between par 1 and par 2 verdicts. Sorry, but i am not giving you credit for besting him.

 

[whoanellie]

You can obtain exoneration by one of two methods:

1. You receive a pardon from the state.

2. You apply (petition) for it.

US law is predicated on the British one, so the Wisconsin rules for getting a 'certificate of exoneration' will be pretty similar, if not the same in the US and the UK.

In the UK it is called 'quashed'.

A pardon is not an exoneration.

 

[Welshman]

Which leads us to the question:

WHY DID AMANDA KNOX AND RAFFAELE SOLLECITO COVER UP FOR RUDY?

Amanda and Raffaele did not cover up for Guede. This has been explained numerous times.

 

[Numbers]

A pardon is not an exoneration.

Pardons have sometimes been used for exonerations in the US. It was to provide another mechanism for an exoneration that Illinois introduced the certificate of innocence. See: 735 ILCS 5/2-702, an excerpt of which I will again quote:

"Sec. 2-702. Petition for a certificate of innocence that the petitioner was innocent of all offenses for which he or she was incarcerated.
(a) The General Assembly finds and declares that innocent persons who have been wrongly convicted of crimes in Illinois and subsequently imprisoned have been frustrated in seeking legal redress due to a variety of substantive and technical obstacles in the law and that such persons should have an available avenue to obtain a finding of innocence so that they may obtain relief through a petition in the Court of Claims. The General Assembly further finds misleading the current legal nomenclature which compels an innocent person to seek a pardon for being wrongfully incarcerated. ..."

 

[Bill Williams]

We beat this horse to a bloody pulp shortly after Grinders death and I don't want to have another go at it, but it is my position that Grinder never claimed that there was a practical difference between par 1 and par 2 verdicts. Sorry, but i am not giving you credit for besting him.

He'd avoided the issue of the subsequent practicle difference, claiming falsely the use of #1 vs. #2 was something judges used to try impugn something about the "level of innocence" by the use of each. Grinder thought for the longest time that #2 was dusted off by a court when they were trying to signal that they thought the accused were almost but not quite guilty.

To his credit he reversed himself not so much because of debate here, but because he actually consulted with some sort of Italian legal expert.

So you're perhaps correct, I may not be able to claim this as a direct win, but at least allow the illusion.....

 

[Stacyhs]

You can obtain exoneration by one of two methods: 1. You receive a pardon from the state. 2. You apply (petition) for it. US law is predicated on the British one, so the Wisconsin rules for getting a 'certificate of exoneration' will be pretty similar, if not the same in the US and the UK.

In the UK it is called 'quashed'.

False:

Exoneration—A person has been exonerated if he or she was convicted of a crime and later was either: (1) declared to be factually innocent by a government official or agency with the authority to make that declaration; or (2) relieved of all the consequences of the criminal conviction by a government official or body with the authority to take that action. The official action may be: (i) a complete pardon by a governor or other competent authority, whether or not the pardon is designated as based on innocence; (ii) an acquittal of all charges factually related to the crime for which the person was originally convicted; or (iii) a dismissal of all charges related to the crime for which the person was originally convicted, by a court or by a prosecutor with the authority to enter that dismissal. The pardon, acquittal, or dismissal must have been the result, at least in part, of evidence of innocence that either (i) was not presented at the trial at which the person was convicted; or (ii) if the person pled guilty, was not known to the defendant and the defense attorney, and to the court, at the time the plea was entered. The evidence of innocence need not be an explicit basis for the official action that exonerated the person. A person who otherwise qualifies has not been exonerated if there is unexplained physical evidence of that person's guilt.

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/glossary.aspx

Knox meets the highlighted sections. She was previously convicted and later acquitted on all charges factually related to the murder by a court. Now stop claiming she was not exonerated.

 

[Stacyhs]

Which leads us to the question:

WHY DID AMANDA KNOX AND RAFFAELE SOLLECITO COVER UP FOR RUDY?

Which once again brings up the questions of why, if covering for Guede, would:

AMANDA KNOX AND RAFFAELE SOLLECITO LEAVE GUEDE'S BLOODY HANDPRINT UNDER KERCHER'S BODY (YOU KNOW...WHEN POSING THE BODY) AND LEAVE HIS VISIBLE BLOODY NIKE SHOE PRINTS IN THE BEDROOM AND HALLWAY?

(You can pick up a bottle of logic at the door...)

 

[Vixen]

So did Patrick, but that didn't stop the police from parading him through the streets on a perp walk as a vicious killer.

Thanks to Amanda Knox telling police Patrick raped and murdered Mez, putting on an act of being in great fear of him.

This was the kind gentle warm-hearted fellow who gave her a job.