The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 25

[Lince]

Wrong. As in other Western European countries, and the USA, Art 530,1 is a simple upholding of a 'Not Guilty' verdict, as found by the lower courts.

Problem is, in the Knox/Sollecito case, they were not found 'not guilty' by any of the valid lower courts. This must be legal history.

As you know, criminal justice works by (1) a trial by jury (2) an appeal if allowed on a point of law only, or new evidence, or perversity, or 'public interest' [miscarriage of justice]. In Italy, all persons found guilty automatically have two appeals (unlike almost anywhere outside of Latin Europe, i.e., inquisition-style tribunals) so there is an automatic appeal = (3) The supreme court. In England and Wales, Scotland and N Ireland, the Supreme Court is reserved for rare 'constitutional matters' of law only (for example the Brexit challenge).

Thus Italy's justice system, you could say is fairer to a defendant than ours.

To sum up, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty by trial with jurors, that included both laymen and trained solicitors. The guilty verdict was upheld by the Appeal court. The Supreme Court annulled the verdict under Art. 530,2, the get-out clause normally reserved for the guilty you cannot convict because they are high up and there might be diplomatic tensions so one uses this. IOW the court finds the defendant guilty but uses 530,2 as a way of getting them out of prison, but without exonerating them in any way.

We see this come into play when Raff was refused compensation for his four years' imprisonment. Had he had a verdict of 530,1 he may have been granted it.

That's your unsupported theory. I remember reading very similar discussion about this very subject before and your opponents presenting legal documents stating what SC is authorised to do. In this case, SC stated gross violations of the due process and the BARD principle and, as a result, "fixed" the verdict, fully according to their given powers to do so. Your claims what they "normally" do in such circumstances remain just words. Can you bring any legal document that supports your statements that 530,2 aquittals by SC are somehow different in legal consequences from those 530,2 acquittals of the lower courts? Otherwise, it just wishful thinking from your side.

 

[Bill Williams]

Marasca was picking at straws, given the fact of Amanda being at the scene, washing Mez' blood from her hands and covering up for Rudy.

You keep repeating these things, as if you'd demonstrated already that the M/B report had regarded them as facts.

Which is strange, because in one of your 20+ posts today, you said that Cassation does not establish facts. And to repeat what even Machiavelli had said about the way Cassation handles hypotheses, Cassation uses a word for "hypothesize" which indicates that it is not itself expressing an opinion on them.

So please, for the umpteenth time:

• No one contests that Amanda was at the scene. The issue is "when".
• Please link to the proof that Amanda washed "Mez's" blood from her hands? Please also be advised that Cassation said that if she'd done that, she must have done that at some time after the crime, and got the blood from another part of the house than the murder room.
• How purposely leaving clues that Rudy and Rudy alone had done this is "covering" for him?

Please don't simply repeat your canards as if you'd once demonstrated them.

 

[Bill Williams]

That's your unsupported theory. I remember reading very similar discussion about this very subject before and your opponents presenting legal documents stating what SC is authorised to do. In this case, SC stated gross violations of the due process and the BARD principle and, as a result, "fixed" the verdict, fully according to their given powers to do so. Your claims what they "normally" do in such circumstances remain just words. Can you bring any legal document that supports your statements that 530,2 aquittals by SC are somehow different in legal consequences from those 530,2 acquittals of the lower courts? Otherwise, it just wishful thinking from your side.

Please get in line in asking Vixen for citations......

 

[Lince]

(a) A court does not hypothesise. It gives a verdict, i.e., it comes down on one side of the fence or other. (b) The Supreme Court does not weigh up the facts. If the Supreme Court has an issue with any of the facts found, for example BARD not demonstrated*, then the correct procedure is to send it back to a court whose remit is to assess the facts. The Supreme Court only deals with whether the correct law has been applied. It does not re-examine the case.

In this case, incorrect application of the law have made many such hypothesised, unsupported claims into judicial facts by including them into judgments of lower courts. The Supreme Court rightfully criticised such practices in its verdict. Without these judicial facts, there is no actual case to convict. Even assuming all these erratically created claims, SC concluded that they are not enough to convict BARD. Moreover, the case became a convoluted contradictory mess. To salvage it by restarting it from scratch, taking into account the deteriotated state of the hard evidence, is unfeasible. Hence, the verdict.

 

[Lince]

Please get in line in asking Vixen for citations......

I know, I know. Which queue number? 616?

 

[Bill Williams]

In this case, incorrect application of the law have made many such hypothesised, unsupported claims into judicial facts by including them into judgments of lower courts. The Supreme Court rightfully criticised such practices in its verdict. Without these judicial facts, there is no actual case to convict. Even assuming all these erratically created claims, SC concluded that they are not enough to convict BARD. Moreover, the case became a convoluted contradictory mess. To salvage it by restarting it from scratch, taking into account the deteriotated state of the hard evidence, is unfeasible. Hence, the verdict.

You're the second poster to this thread who has noted this, that the facts used to convict Ak and RS in two of the lower courts were all judicially-generated "facts". I for one would like to see you expand on this, because I've tried searching for the rationale the other poster used for claiming such.

One case in point is Vixen constantly claiming that "Knox had cleaned the victim's blood from her hands," and then citing that M/B had written that there was an elegant proof of this.

The only proof I can find is what Judge Massei said in his 2010 Motivations report, a report he used to justify convicting them.

That "proof" which Massei offered specifically said there was no forensics to support the claim that "Knox had cleaned the victim's blood from her hands," but that Massei had surmised this on other grounds, all circumstantial.

And on and on and on.....

 

[abaddon]

The last person to be executed in Ireland was 1954.

The Irish made clear their intention to abolish by law the death penalty as far back as 1964. One of the main reasons cited was Ireland was fed up of its executed political prisoners turned into hero-worshipped martyrs.

Various bills came up for discussion to abolish it by law in 1980.

William Pringle was convicted with two others of the aggravated murder to two gardai (police officers) during a botched INLA (terrorist organisation-sponsored) robbery. (=Note the 'political' element.)

The death penalty was abolished in law 1981.

On paper, as I said, in theory - note the word 'in theory' - for things such as treason, military disobedience and killing gardai were listed as exceptions.

A government declaration that commuted all death penalties for these remaining categories to 40 years without parole was made. However, there is some question over the legality of this, as Pringle and his fellow death-sentencers never had their sentences commuted by the Supreme Court.

Pringle got his conviction overturned - as is so common - on a technicality of some sort, claiming he had been rolling drunk at the time, so could not have done it (or something) in 1995.

As Ireland did not even have a trained executioner, you can see from this, that at no point was Pringle ever in any remotest danger of being executed by the State.

Compare and contract to 'Sunny Cloudy' Jacobs in the USA where, if you get a death sentence you can expect to be topped, albeit with fifteen attempts at appeal (which includes confessing your crime and showing remorse for it) and a long delay in some States.


Well spotted.

Everything you wrote in this post is made up of delusional fantasies.

 

[Vixen]

Everything you wrote in this post is made up of delusional fantasies.

Anyone supporting a cop-killer or a person/s who collude in these acts of barbarism under the guise of 'innocence project', is the deluded fantasist.

Having wriggled out of serving a jail sentence, why don't people like Jacobs, Pringle and Knox just count their blessings, thank the courts for their compassion (compassion they have never shown, themselves) and just go away from the public eye.

What makes them go touring the country, falsely claiming to be exonerated (at least in the case of 'Sunny Foggy' Jacobs and Amanda Knox).

As we saw from the recent Supreme Court pronouncement on Raff's ineligibility for compensation, Knox cannot even truthfully claim to have been wrongly imprisoned.

Her conviction remains in perpetuity for obstructing justice in accusing an innocent man, whom she knew to be innocent of rape and murder; - and both she and her mother were willing to let him rot in jail - for the reason, as set out by Marasca Supreme court, of 'covering up for convicted murderer/rapist' Rudy Guede'. The prison sentence of three years in her case was a just and equitable and the correct and rightful sentence for her crime.

As we saw from the recent Florence written reasons, she and Raff were the authors of their own remand in custody prior to the trial.

It and Marasca called her a liar.

 

[LondonJohn]

Well, the ECHR will fix that, Vixen (since the broken Italian system is unable to do so....)

 

[LondonJohn]

And I'm LOVING the delusion that a 530.2 acquittal is a "they're probably guilty but we have to acquit them for reasons beyond our pay grade" construction

Sheer bollocks..............................

 

[LondonJohn]

Oh, and a quick - repeat - reminder to Vixen that Ireland didn't abolish the death penalty for killing gardai in the line of duty until 1990. I fail to see what part of that fact is difficult to understand or incorporate. Rather black and white. Cut and dried.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Sue Neill-Fraser case and the over-application of luminol

In looking into the Fraser case in Australia, I found a presentation by Barbara Etter. There is a photograph of the dinghy with a blue glow. Here are quotes from Ms. Etter's presentation, which itself quotes from a 2014 report on this case.

"An independent expert BPA report (2014) found that the positive luminol result in the Four Winds dinghy was most likely the result of luminescence due to possible overtreatment with luminol and/or false positives."

“'During the examination of the Quicksilver inflatable Zodiac tender, at least sixteen (16) swabs from seven (7) different locations were tested with two different confirmatory tests* for human blood. In every instance test results were negative.'” P. 11 of the independent report.

“'No attempt should ever be made to align the visual colour, duration and/or intensity of any luminol reaction to the presence of human blood without confirmatory scientific support. Where no such testing is undertaken, or the results to those tests are negative the presence of blood should not be reported or opined. To do so, essentially amounts to a “guess” and is scientifically misleading.'" p. 14 of the independent report

*Elsewhere in Ms. Etter's presentation, the two tests are identified as the Ouchterlony test and the HemaTrace test.

The issue of possible over-treatment with luminol came up in the Knox/Sollecito case. Even Colonel Garofano made some comment which suggested that the luminol had been over-applied, and the droplets in some photographs are suggestive of this as well. I seem to recall finding another reference to over-application being a possible cause of false positives with luminol a long time ago, but I do not recall the details. The lack of positive results with the confirmatory tests is a critical point.

 

[abaddon]

Anyone supporting a cop-killer or a person/s who collude in these acts of barbarism under the guise of 'innocence project', is the deluded fantasist.

Strawman. I made no such claim.

Having wriggled out of serving a jail sentence, why don't people like Jacobs, Pringle and Knox just count their blessings, thank the courts for their compassion (compassion they have never shown, themselves) and just go away from the public eye.

Strawman. The cases are not comparable.

What makes them go touring the country, falsely claiming to be exonerated (at least in the case of 'Sunny Foggy' Jacobs and Amanda Knox).

Knox was exonerated.

As we saw from the recent Supreme Court pronouncement on Raff's ineligibility for compensation, Knox cannot even truthfully claim to have been wrongly imprisoned.

Wrong.

Her conviction remains in perpetuity for obstructing justice in accusing an innocent man, whom she knew to be innocent of rape and murder; - and both she and her mother were willing to let him rot in jail - for the reason, as set out by Marasca Supreme court, of 'covering up for convicted murderer/rapist' Rudy Guede'. The prison sentence of three years in her case was a just and equitable and the correct and rightful sentence for her crime.

All confessions obtained unnder duress are inadmissible.

As we saw from the recent Florence written reasons, she and Raff were the authors of their own remand in custody prior to the trial.

Irrelevant.

It and Marasca called her a liar.

I don't care.

 

[Mike1711]

(a) A court does not hypothesise. It gives a verdict, i.e., it comes down on one side of the fence or other. (b) The Supreme Court does not weigh up the facts. If the Supreme Court has an issue with any of the facts found, for example BARD not demonstrated*, then the correct procedure is to send it back to a court whose remit is to assess the facts. The Supreme Court only deals with whether the correct law has been applied. It does not re-examine the case.

*For this to be the case, it would have to show that the trial court was perverse, and this was never shown in the Kercher case.

A judge/court has wide-ranging powers and, as long as its verdict is within the realms of 'reasonableness' then, even if another judge or the Supreme Court judge might have come to a different verdict, then that is not a legal reason to overturn the verdict.

Finding a court/judge perverse, is exceedingly rare, and is quite extreme, for example, the judge falling asleep, being drunk, taking bribes, it just never happens, but if it does, then there is the safety net of appealing under the header, 'perversity'.

Courts do "hypothesise". It is the foundation of "judicial truth". There are few absolutes in law and this is recognized by the way the judicial procedure works. Hence the BARD. If absolutes were reality BARD would be replaced by "without doubt". Upper courts are forced to accept judicial truths in certain countries to accommodate due process with regard to a "retrial". There is a fine line which separates an appeal from double jeopardy.

Of course a verdict comes down on one side of the fence or the other. In this you are correct. Where you are wrong is that the verdict falling either side does necessarily make the verdict impirically valid. It makes it judicially valid (or correct). You confuse the two (deliberately?) to your own end.

You are also correct that the Supreme Court of Appeal considers application of law only and not determination of fact. (Determination of fact could be tantamount to a retrial hence the issue). In the application of law it is within the ambit of the appeal to consider the application of the law applied by the lower court in arriving at a verdict.

In the AK/RS case the application of law was found to be flawed in that even if the hypothesis (and it can only be an hypothesis) of fact were correct (given that the appeal court is bound by these "facts") the verdict was still incorrect in law. It was incorrect for the reasons given by the appeal court and which are well known to readers on this forum. Glaring errors, amnesia and a complete absence of the presence of the appellants in the murder room. In other words...it is not within the ambit of Italian law to come to a verdict of "guilty" when evidence of guilt is absent.

Now here comes the part where the guilters get confused...

The Appeal Court found the errors to be so bad, the investigation to be so flawed, the amnesia to be so profound that referral to a lower court for reconsideration would serve no purpose. The Appeal Court determined that in law it is not possible to convict on the basis of so flawed a case (EVEN with their compelled acceptance of the absurd judicial truths) and therefore the only option is to uphold the appeal without referral.

It is not rocket science. The appeal court is correct and the law simple.

 

[Bill Williams]

Your problem is, you have difficulty distinguishing legal forms of words from their colloquial/common or garden equivalents.

We have had much nonsense from you as to the meaning of:

• Synoptic
• Acquitted
• Exonerated
• Hypothetical
• "Even if"

The legal meanings are exact and invariable.

It's been pointed out to me that as long as "the other side" has to argue at this level - at the level of the meaning of words - that that "other side" has tacitly conceded defeat.

When every nuance has to be parsed to the nth-degree, and when such parsing as the agenda of getting a sentence to mean the exact opposite of what it says (cf. "The finding of the lower court is annulled" suddenly equals "The lower court almost but not quite proved that the sexual sadists who were accused did those horrid things")......

When "the other side" tries to argue that plain phrases like "even if" have inaccessible, legal formulations which are different in kind from their colloquial use.....

Not only is complete desperation in operation here, but it is a tacit admission that they have lost the larger arguments. Why? Because they always refuse to make those larger arguments, preferring to argue at arcane levels.

For Pete's sake - Machiavelli and Vixen themselves post news articles about the denial of Raffaele's compensation claim. Those news articles contain multiple references that he'd been "acquitted" and/or "exonerated" in relation to the murder, and that the Nencini conviction had been "annulled" because there had been no "connective tissue" within the evidence in front of that lower court to tie him to the murder; "even if" what the prosecution had been claiming had been (by some wild occurrence) true.

And then it starts again - Machiavelli himself claimed that the usage of those words "acquitted" and/or "exonerated" in the news were only colloquial references with no real legal meaning......

Sheesh.

And add to this one other thing. It's not up to "the other side" to simply cast doubt on innocence, or on the arguments PIP here use. The burden of proof on these issues does not work that way.....

.... And the sophists among them will argue tooth and nail that no one has proven AK and RS's innocence; which might be something to consider if anyone had first ever proven them guilty!

It's more than just no good to simply cast doubt on words like "acquittal" or "exonerated" or "synoptic" or (for Pete's sake that high-sounding legal term) "even if". That last one is proof of the overt game-playing going on, on "the other side".

 

[Bill Williams]

Now here comes the part where the guilters get confused...

The Appeal Court found the errors to be so bad, the investigation to be so flawed, the amnesia to be so profound that referral to a lower court for reconsideration would serve no purpose. The Appeal Court determined that in law it is not possible to convict on the basis of so flawed a case (EVEN with their compelled acceptance of the absurd judicial truths) and therefore the only option is to uphold the appeal without referral.

It is not rocket science. The appeal court is correct and the law simple.

I take it that you mean Cassation, because in Italy there is something denoted an "appeal court" which is (in their system) the middle level of a three-level "trial".

Hellmann's and Nencini's were "appeal" courts in their sense. Cassation can be appealed to, but (is it not true that) it is not an appeal's court in the sense used in other jurisdictions?

 

[Stacyhs]

I've been looking and I can't find anywhere Pringle himself has said he was on "death row for 15 years". Journalists have said that in their articles about Pringle. I've looked at several articles and videos and he always says he spent 15 years in prison, not on "death row". He explains that his sentence was commuted to 40 years in prison.

As for him never being in danger of actually being executed, that is your opinion but that's not what Pringle thought. He was sentenced on Nov. 27 to hang just three weeks later and came within 11 days of being executed:



(Irish News, 19 Sept, 2016)

If you can provide an example of Pringle himself saying he was on death row for 15 years, then do so. At least you've stopped claiming that he was NEVER on death row. That's progress.

Oh dear! What sort of world do we live in when people sympathise more with the perps than the victims. The killing of these two gardai in this reckless, irresponsible robbery to raise funds for a terrorist organisation, left five little children without their dad.

But, I say, let's have a pity party instead for the thugs.

It does not go unnoticed that you have not provided a single example where Pringle himself has said he was on death row for 15 years which is what you claimed. Instead, you divert to the tactic of appealing to emotion by f making a further false claim of sympathy for perps over victims. Nice touch, if a bit obvious and predictable, bringing in the "five little children without their dad" bit.

Shall we put your claim that Pringle says he was on death row for 15 years, along with your claim about Gill, into the same growing pile of falsehoods?

 

[Lince]

You're the second poster to this thread who has noted this, that the facts used to convict Ak and RS in two of the lower courts were all judicially-generated "facts". I for one would like to see you expand on this, because I've tried searching for the rationale the other poster used for claiming such.

One case in point is Vixen constantly claiming that "Knox had cleaned the victim's blood from her hands," and then citing that M/B had written that there was an elegant proof of this.

The only proof I can find is what Judge Massei said in his 2010 Motivations report, a report he used to justify convicting them.

That "proof" which Massei offered specifically said there was no forensics to support the claim that "Knox had cleaned the victim's blood from her hands," but that Massei had surmised this on other grounds, all circumstantial.

And on and on and on.....

Well, I have never claimed that "the facts used to convict Ak and RS in two of the lower courts were all judicially-generated facts". The word I used was 'many'.

Another such "a fact" that comes quickly to my mind is Nencini's acceptance of selective cleaning in his verdict report, justifying it like that "Well, I am not an expert, and many experts claim that this is impossible, but, taking into all other accepted circumstantial evidence and reasoning osmotically, I have to conclude that they somehow did it anyway".

Then the "judicial fact" about the established presence of Amanda during the crime, created at the Guede's quick-track process, imported as a judicial fact as used to prove the intent of Amanda's lying in her calumnia verdict, which in turn now used as a judicial fact to deny compensation to Raffaele, because it "demonstrates" his intent in lying. A chain of judicial facts supporting each other.

In general, I have nothing against judicial facts as technical constructs in a judicial process. The problem is when they are not based on solid evidence, but are rather a cover for wishful thinking and faulty illogical reasoning, trying reconcile incomplete, sloppy and contradictory evidence or other equally shaky and unsubstantiated judicial facts.

 

[Bill Williams]

Well, I have never claimed that "the facts used to convict Ak and RS in two of the lower courts were all judicially-generated facts". The word I used was 'many'.

Another such "a fact" that comes quickly to my mind is Nencini's acceptance of selective cleaning in his verdict report, justifying it like that "Well, I am not an expert, and many experts claim that this is impossible, but, taking into all other accepted circumstantial evidence and reasoning osmotically, I have to conclude that they somehow did it anyway".

Then the "judicial fact" about the established presence of Amanda during the crime, created at the Guede's quick-track process, imported as a judicial fact as used to prove the intent of Amanda's lying in her calumnia verdict, which in turn now used as a judicial fact to deny compensation to Raffaele, because it "demonstrates" his intent in lying. A chain of judicial facts supporting each other.

In general, I have against judicial facts as technical constructs in a judicial process. The problem is when they are not based on solid evidence, but are rather a cover for wishful thinking and faulty illogical reasoning, trying reconcile incomplete, sloppy and contradictory evidence or other equally shaky and unsubstantiated judicial facts.

Thanks for this, as well as for the clarification with which you began.

 

[Stacyhs]

In effect, he was on Death Row no longer than six months at most, right?

And not 15 years, as he claims?

Yes. I pointed that out to Vixen hours ago. We are making headway, though. She at least admits he was actually on death row now.

He never was.

He's fooled you!

But then any friend of Amanda Knox is a best friend of yours.

Oh, dear. What part of the fact that Pringle was sentenced to death, had an execution date set, and came within 11 days of that date BEFORE the death penalty was abolished are you not understanding? He heard guards discussing their roles in his upcoming execution. Whether or not you think he was never in danger of being executed is not the point. As the saying goes, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

But then any friend of, or even associated with, Amanda Knox is automatically opposed by you.