Cont: The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 27

[RoseMontague]

The newest development is that the CSC has issued the motivation report for the decision denying Raffaele Sollecito compensation for unfair detention. I don't know if the CSC short-form verdict on Rudy Guede's request for a revision trial has been issued yet.

Here's a summary of the case, from my previous post #49 in this continuation:

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have been finally and definitively acquitted of the murder/rape of Meredith Kercher by the March, 2015 verdict of the Supreme Court of Cassation of Italy. According to Italian law, they can face no other legal action, criminal or civil, regarding the matters for which they have been acquitted.

Amanda Knox was finally convicted of the crime of calunnia (false accusation) against Patrick Lumumba by the March, 2013 verdict of the Supreme Court of Cassation. However, convictions in Italy are not necessarily definitive, and may be retried by an Italian revision court (a court of appeal) under certain conditions. One such condition, according to Italian law (a judgment of the Italian Supreme Constitutional Court) is a final judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that the conviction was the result of an unfair trial, or was otherwise unfair, and that the legal proceedings must be reopened at the request of the convicted person. The ECHR is an international court that hears claims of violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention), a treaty to which Italy is a charter signatory. Italy is obligated to follow the terms of the Convention under international and Italian law.

Amanda Knox lodged an application with the ECHR in November, 2013 (within the deadline, which is based on the date of delivery of the motivation report, and not the short-form verdict) claiming that Italy violated her rights under the Convention. The case was communicated to Italy by the ECHR in April, 2015, to allow Italy to prepare a defense, if it so chooses. The ECHR considers this case a "noteworthy pending case", meaning it considers the claims and potential outcome of significance for human rights in the Council of Europe states (that is, all the states that are signatories of the European Convention of Human Rights). A date for the publication of the ECHR judgment has not been announced; the ECHR has tens of thousands of pending cases before it, and it can be quite slow in reaching judgments.

There have also been some satellite cases in Italy related to the main Knox - Sollecito trials. These include, but are not limited to:

1. A case accusing Amanda Knox of false accusation against the police, regarding her statements in court, at her trial, about their behavior toward her during the Nov. 5-6, 2007 interrogation. Knox was finally acquitted on these charges in January, 2016.

2. A case accusing Raffaele Sollecito of criminal defamation against the police, regarding certain statements he had published in a book (which was not publicly available in Italy) he co-authored with Andrew Gumbel. Sollecito and Gumbel were acquitted in October, 2017 on these charges. Prosecutor Mignini had joined this case with a civil lawsuit, as allowed and rather usual in Italian cases. Mignini has withdrawn his suit. I suspect this will be a final acquittal, but I don't believe the time limit for an appeal by the prosecution has run out (I think it will by the end of December, 2017), and I am not sure when the statute of limitations will expire on the charges.

3. There were some additional cases, such as a defamation suit against Knox's parents by Mignini. I am not sure what has happened to those; I suspect the case against Knox's parents and any other such cases have been allowed to expire. But I'm not sure of that.

4. The request by Sollecito for compensation on account of unjust detention was recently finally denied by the Supreme Court of Cassation. His lawyers indicated that this will be taken to the ECHR, because the Convention mandates that there be acknowledgment and compensation for unfair detentions.

5. Rudy Guede, the only person convicted of the murder/rape of Kercher, has appealed the first rejection of his request for revision of his conviction. The Supreme Court of Cassation is expected to issue a ruling on this appeal by the end of November, 2017.

So is Rudy out of prison now, or is it partial (work release)?

 

[Bill Williams]

There have also been some satellite cases in Italy related to the main Knox - Sollecito trials. These include, but are not limited to:

There's also the defamation case Mignini brought against Maori and a newspaper for the use of derogatory descriptions of him.

Perhaps Methos could repost Mignini's "brief" in support of this claim - it is a virtual current PGP playbook of recent posts they make. Mignini claims that the defamation Maori and the paper allegedly made against him cannot be understood unless one also sees how bent and potentially illegal the 2015 ISC acquittals of Sollecito and Knox were.

Hence all the recent PGP talking points. The current PGP campaign is really to defend Mignini.

Welcome back Rose!

 

[Numbers]

So is Rudy out of prison now, or is it partial (work release)?

As I understand it, he's on work release of some kind.

"Rudy Guede lavorerà all’esterno del carcere di Viterbo dove sta scontando una condanna a 16 anni di reclusione per l’omicidio di Meredith Kercher. Sosterrà infatti un tirocinio della durata di un anno legato alla laurea in Scienze storiche del territorio e della cooperazione internazionale presso il Centro per gli studi criminologici (Csc). A scriverlo è il sito Tusciaweb in un articolo del portavoce di Guede. ...."

"Rudy Guede will work outside the prison in Viterbo where he is serving a 16-year prison sentence for Meredith Kercher's murder. In fact, he will hold a one-year internship linked to his degree in Historical Sciences of Territory and International Cooperation at the Criminal Studies Center (CSC). To write it is the Tuscia web site in an article by Guede's spokeswoman. ...."

Source: https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/20...uede-lavorera-allesterno-del-carcere/3958876/

Translation by Google translate

 

[Bill Williams]

There have also been some satellite cases in Italy related to the main Knox - Sollecito trials. These include, but are not limited to:

Wow. There are others which Mignini brought:

http://knoxarchives.blogspot.ca/2010/02/another-giuliano-mignini-defamation.html

3. Joe Cottonwood (Fiction Writer): I wrote about this in September of 2009. No U.S. papers picked it up, but some Italian ones did. Joe Cottonwood had the misfortune of being sued by Giuliano Mignini for this quote in an Italian newspaper:

"The Meredith Kercher murder is

one of those mirrors that reflects the prejudices of whoever is looking into it. There is no physical evidence and no credible motive, and yet an egotistical prosecutor is blaming Amanda Knox anyway. In the USA, this would only happen if she were black. Perhaps partying American college kids are so hated in Italy that Amanda will be treated as blacks are treated in the USA, and she will be convicted not because of the evidence but because of general resentment of shallow rich Americans. Personally, from what I've read I don't like Amanda Knox. She sounds spoiled, naive, and shallow. But that's not a crime. I loathe the prosecutor, who has a counterpart in every city in the USA - a preening, intellectually dishonest bully who cares more about making newspaper headlines than in serving justice. It's the same all over the world. Power and prejudice are the enemies of justice."​

Mignini charged Cottonwood with criminal defamation, which could have included a jail sentence. Upon Mignini's own conviction for abuse of power, Cottonwood now asks "Am I still a criminal?". Well Mr. Cottonwood, if you're not a criminal now, you will be soon if you don't keep your mouth shut! I expect this case to go nowhere at all.

In 2010 Mignini also brought suit against Luciano Ghirga (Attorney for Amanda Knox), Luca Maori (Attorney for Raffaele Sollecito), Giangavino Sulas (Journalist for Oggi Magazine), Editor and Director of Oggi Magazine. I do not know if this is the same action as the one I mentioned above.

Also Francesca Bene, who worked for a small Italian paper, Giornale dell 'Umbria, who had been interrogated by one of the same police women who had interrogated Amanda Knox and was indicted for causing public alarm by publishing false information.

Lastly, Gabriella Carlizzi also got into his crosshairs: the Roman "Psychic" who Mignini charged with defamation multiple times even though, according to Doug Preston, he used her as a "very important witness in the Monster of Florence Case."

 

[Bill Williams]

If You Are My Enemy

Mignini's philosophy - if you are my enemy, I will indict you!

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/mignini2.html

This is an article from Panorama Magazine that discusses Giuliano Mignini's enemies list. This article was mentioned on the 48 hours CBS blog. The article also briefly discusses why Mignini was convicted. The article was written before Mignini had been eventually cleared of abuse of office allegations.

 

[Numbers]

Mignini's philosophy - if you are my enemy, I will indict you!

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/mignini2.html

This is an article from Panorama Magazine that discusses Giuliano Mignini's enemies list. This article was mentioned on the 48 hours CBS blog. The article also briefly discusses why Mignini was convicted. The article was written before Mignini had been eventually cleared of abuse of office allegations.

The would be many continuations of this thread if we followed up on all of Mignini's lawsuits for defamation and indictments for criminal defamation.

 

[bagels]

The newest development is that the CSC has issued the motivation report for the decision denying Raffaele Sollecito compensation for unfair detention.

It's worth noting that evidence cited against Raffaele in this decision is evidence that wasn't upheld at any of his trials (112 call after the arrival of the Postal Police).

We should never casually refer to an Italian verdict as if it has any legal legitimacy when it's easy to transparently cite their corruption without regard for any opinion or point of view.

 

[Bill Williams]

It's worth noting that evidence cited against Raffaele in this decision is evidence that wasn't upheld at any of his trials (112 call after the arrival of the Postal Police).

We should never casually refer to an Italian verdict as if it has any legal legitimacy when it's easy to transparently cite their corruption without regard for any opinion or point of view.

I believe the Nencini court held that Raffaele had called 112 for Carabinieri AFTER the arrival of the postal police.

The observation of the Judges of first instance does not appear to this Court to take into account the relevance of a series of verifications of fact which lead it to be held, differently from what has always been maintained by the defendants, who themselves notified the Carabinieri after the arrival of the police officers and not before; and that therefore, when the police arrived, the two defendants were sitting outside the cottage, not waiting for the Carabinieri, but waiting for Filomena Romanelli.​

Nencini cites the Postal's 2009 testimony, and accepts the 12:35 arrival time as certain, because, it is, "the normal habit of State Police officers is to note the time when they attend on duty."

Nencini concluded that Raffaele had then waited 15 minutes to call 112. Also acc. to the way Nencini calculated the CCTV clock deficiency, Raffaele still must have called 112 nine minutes after the Postal's arrival.

In any event, all this hinged on the timing of Knox's call to Filomena. That was 12:34. Nencini also entertains doubt because if the Postals had arrived late (eg. "just before 1 pm" as even Massei observed), then what exactly were Raffaele and Amanda doing from 12:24 until 12:51 which is the time stamp of the first 112 call?

Nencini then attempts his own "logical" reconstruction of the events from 12:35 until the finding of the body.

Nencini accuses Knox of lying about where she'd placed the call to Filomena. He says it came from Raffaele's, with the intent to have Filomena find the body - not Knox and Sollecito.

I'm going to stop there. Nencini, in reconstructing this, insists on inventing his own conclusions - rather than follow what had been presented in court. He says that this circumstantial reconstruction merely strengthened the overall notion of guilt, as K and S (acc. to him) devised (on the fly) the "countermeasure" of calling 112 AFTER the arrival of the Postals had created problems for their ability to control the investigation to that point; particularly is the controling of who should have found the body.

Nencini overexplains all of this - when a guilty K and S could have just left for their weekend trip and accomplished all of that, while themselves miles away from the scene.

 

[Stacyhs]

I believe the Nencini court held that Raffaele had called 112 for Carabinieri AFTER the arrival of the postal police.

​

Nencini cites the Postal's 2009 testimony, and accepts the 12:35 arrival time as certain, because, it is, "the normal habit of State Police officers is to note the time when they attend on duty."

Nencini concluded that Raffaele had then waited 15 minutes to call 112. Also acc. to the way Nencini calculated the CCTV clock deficiency, Raffaele still must have called 112 nine minutes after the Postal's arrival.

In any event, all this hinged on the timing of Knox's call to Filomena. That was 12:34. Nencini also entertains doubt because if the Postals had arrived late (eg. "just before 1 pm" as even Massei observed), then what exactly were Raffaele and Amanda doing from 12:24 until 12:51 which is the time stamp of the first 112 call?

Nencini then attempts his own "logical" reconstruction of the events from 12:35 until the finding of the body.

Nencini accuses Knox of lying about where she'd placed the call to Filomena. He says it came from Raffaele's, with the intent to have Filomena find the body - not Knox and Sollecito.

I'm going to stop there. Nencini, in reconstructing this, insists on inventing his own conclusions - rather than follow what had been presented in court. He says that this circumstantial reconstruction merely strengthened the overall notion of guilt, as K and S (acc. to him) devised (on the fly) the "countermeasure" of calling 112 AFTER the arrival of the Postals had created problems for their ability to control the investigation to that point; particularly is the controling of who should have found the body.

Nencini overexplains all of this - when a guilty K and S could have just left for their weekend trip and accomplished all of that, while themselves miles away from the scene.

Apparently Nencini was unable to figure out that it was impossible for Marco Zaroli and Luca Altieri to have arrived before the 112 call. The police testified that both of the boys were at the cottage when they claim RS "snuck out" to call 112 at 12:51:40. The phone records disprove this. Marco called Luca at 12:45 from his landline at home. Marco then explained to Luca what was happening and asked him to come to his house and pick him up. Then they had to drive to the via della Pergola cottage. Marco testified they arrived at 1:00. There is no physical way that Marco called Luca, Luca drove to his house to pick him up and then drove to the cottage in 6 minutes. Marco testified that it's about 10 min. from Luca's house to his and another 10-12 minutes to the cottage.

 

[Methos]

There's also the defamation case Mignini brought against Maori and a newspaper for the use of derogatory descriptions of him.

Perhaps Methos could repost Mignini's "brief" in support of this claim - it is a virtual current PGP playbook of recent posts they make. Mignini claims that the defamation Maori and the paper allegedly made against him cannot be understood unless one also sees how bent and potentially illegal the 2015 ISC acquittals of Sollecito and Knox were.

Hence all the recent PGP talking points. The current PGP campaign is really to defend Mignini.

Welcome back Rose!

The link is in this post:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=11947011#post11947011

As I wrote back then, I still love to re-read that deposition, because it makes clear that for Mignini it's not about justice, but his very own "bella figura"...

Hi Rose, welcome back

 

[Bill Williams]

The US gv't uses the Library of Congress, students worldwide use Wikipedia. Mostly we use Methos.

 

[bagels]

I believe the Nencini court held that Raffaele had called 112 for Carabinieri AFTER the arrival of the postal police.

Nencini also found that Amanda stabbed Meredith to death while Raffaele ripped her bra off.

But as Vixen has pointed out about Hellmann, Nencini is toast, expunged, vanquished, no more.

There is no standing judicial ruling that found Raffaele called 112 after the arrival of the postal police, so the compensation ruling citing this false evidence is transparently fraudulent and lawless.

 

[RoseMontague]

Thanks for the updates. I'll try to visit on a regular basis.

 

[Bill Williams]

The link is in this post:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=11947011#post11947011

As I wrote back then, I still love to re-read that deposition, because it makes clear that for Mignini it's not about justice, but his very own "bella figura"...

Hi Rose, welcome back

Who translated this?

 

[Stacyhs]

This is a very interesting TIME article on the growing number of exonerations in the U.S.

One of the most interesting things was the number of false drug convictions due to faulty in-field drug testing kits that reacted, not only to illegal substances, but also legal over the counter drugs. Much like luminol, they have a high false positive rate.

http://time.com/wrongly-convicted/?xid=fbshare

In another article, these drug tests reacted to Mucinex, aspirin, chocolate, peppermint, gingko, and even some soap.
https://ncforensics.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/false-positives-in-drug-field-testing-kits/


Undoubtedly and most certainly, these studies were run by drug supporters. I mean, what else but drugs could they have been reacting to?

 

[Numbers]

Keeping up with Rudy Guede:

Rudy Guede: ora può lavorare fuori dal carcere
Pubblicato 3 settimane fa il 4 novembre 2017

Rudy Guede lavorerà all’esterno del carcere di Viterbo dove sta scontando una condanna a 16 anni di reclusione per l’omicidio di Meredith Kercher. Sosterrà infatti un tirocinio della durata di un anno legato alla laurea in Scienze storiche del territorio e della cooperazione internazionale presso il Centro per gli studi criminologici (Csc) della stessa città laziale. A scriverlo è il sito Tusciaweb in un articolo del portavoce di Guede.

Nel luglio del 2016, l’ivoriano si è laureato in carcere con il massimo dei voti nell’ambito di uno dei corsi dell’Università Roma Tre.
Guede, che ha già usufruito di diversi permessi premio grazie ai quali è anche tornato a Perugia, sarà nella sede del Csc – scrive il sito – quattro pomeriggi a settimana per tre ore al giorno (probabilmente già da martedì prossimo). Nel corso del tirocinio si occuperà essenzialmente di ricerche bibliografiche e della catalogazione dei libri della biblioteca del centro.

Source: https://www.osservatoreitalia.eu/rudy-guede-ora-puo-lavorare-dal-cercere/

Translation by Google translate with my help:

Rudy Guede: Now he can work out of prison
Published 3 weeks ago on November 4, 2017

Rudy Guede will work outside the prison in Viterbo where he is serving a 16-year prison sentence for Meredith Kercher's murder. He will be supported for an internship of one year related to the degree in Historical Sciences of the territory and international cooperation at the Center for Criminological Studies (CSC) in the same city in Lazio. This was written in the Tusciaweb site in an article by Guede's spokeswoman.

In July 2016, the Ivorian graduated in prison with the highest marks for one of the courses of the University Roma Tre. Guede, who has already received several special permits thanks to which has recently returned to Perugia, will be at the headquarters of CSC - writes the site - four afternoons a week for three hours a day (probably [starting] next Tuesday). During the internship he will mainly deal with bibliographic research and library cataloging of the center library.

 

[Numbers]

Allegations of conspiracies and proven conspiracies among police are a reality, contrary to PGP assertions to the contrary.

Here's an example of an alleged police conspiracy in Baltimore, Maryland:

'The federal grand jury is investigating a group of Baltimore officers who worked together on a firearms crime task force and have been charged with stealing money, property and narcotics from people over two years. An indictment has described the members of the Gun Trace Task Force, a small unit dedicated to getting illegal guns off Baltimore's streets, as using their position to allegedly threaten the innocent, detain people on false pretenses and steal their money. They are also accused of faking police reports, lying to investigators and defrauding their department."

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/baltimore-detective-sean-suiter-corruption-probe-shot-with-own-gun/

 

[Stacyhs]

Allegations of conspiracies and proven conspiracies among police are a reality, contrary to PGP assertions to the contrary.

Here's an example of an alleged police conspiracy in Baltimore, Maryland:

'The federal grand jury is investigating a group of Baltimore officers who worked together on a firearms crime task force and have been charged with stealing money, property and narcotics from people over two years. An indictment has described the members of the Gun Trace Task Force, a small unit dedicated to getting illegal guns off Baltimore's streets, as using their position to allegedly threaten the innocent, detain people on false pretenses and steal their money. They are also accused of faking police reports, lying to investigators and defrauding their department."

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/baltimore-detective-sean-suiter-corruption-probe-shot-with-own-gun/

The PGP have to believe the police would never, ever lie about their actions or to protect themselves. They would never, ever lie about smacking Amanda, withholding water, food or bathroom breaks, feeding her leading questions, threatening her with 30 years in prison, lying to her, denying her a lawyer or not recording the interrogation. Nope. Not ever.

 

[Stacyhs]

This is a very interesting article about police not believing women who report being assaulted. Not only did the police, without evidence, decide the women were lying, but they charged the women with the crime of making a false report. One young victim named Marie, age 18, reported a man broke into her apartment and raped her.

Police detectives treated small inconsistencies in her account — common among trauma victims — as major discrepancies. Instead of interviewing her as a victim, they interrogated her as a suspect. Under pressure, Marie eventually recanted — and was charged with false reporting, punishable by up to a year in jail. The court ordered her to pay $500 in court costs, get mental health counseling for her lying and go on supervised probation for one year. More than two years later, the police in Colorado arrested a serial rapist — and discovered a photograph proving he had raped Marie.

In Marie’s case, and with some of the other cases, the victims hadn’t acted the way the police thought a victim should act. Their affect seemed off, or they declined help from an advocate, or they looked away instead of making eye contact. As a result, their stories became suspect.

Sound familiar? Amanda Knox and Raffaele didn't "act" how the police thought they should act on Nov. 2 or during interrogations, etc. They relied on their "gut feelings". I can't tell you how many times I've read PGP declaring that they could see guilt in Amanda's eyes or declared her body language indicated she was lying.

In 2001, a 13-year-old in White Bear Lake, Minn., reported being abducted and molested. “You keep lying and lying and lying and lying,” a police detective told her. In 2015, a physical therapist in Vallejo, Calif., reported being kidnapped and sexually assaulted. The police called her story a hoax. One lieutenant said that she “owes this community an apology.” In both instances, video footage later surfaced affirming the victims’ reports.

Studies show that police are no better at discerning deception than anyone else, but tend to believe they are. And once they decide a person is lying, that person becomes the suspect in their eyes. As the article states:

Some victims will be hysterical, others stoic; police should not measure credibility by a victim’s response. Police should not interrogate victims. They should listen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/...assault-victims-lying.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

 

[Pacal]

This is a very interesting article about police not believing women who report being assaulted. Not only did the police, without evidence, decide the women were lying, but they charged the women with the crime of making a false report. One young victim named Marie, age 18, reported a man broke into her apartment and raped her.

Sound familiar? Amanda Knox and Raffaele didn't "act" how the police thought they should act on Nov. 2 or during interrogations, etc. They relied on their "gut feelings". I can't tell you how many times I've read PGP declaring that they could see guilt in Amanda's eyes or declared her body language indicated she was lying.

Studies show that police are no better at discerning deception than anyone else, but tend to believe they are. And once they decide a person is lying, that person becomes the suspect in their eyes. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/...assault-victims-lying.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Unfortunately this tendency to analyze victims and accused in terms of them acting or speaking "correctly" is a very common one. People look for "signs" in terms of demeanor or speech to indicate whether or not someone is telling the truth or is lying / guilty. Thus if someone is not "acting innocent" they are a suspect. Sadly the fact is the behavior of people is a poor guide as to whether or not someone is innocent or guilty of anything.

For example if someone is all fidgety and nervous when questioned by the police that may indicate nothing more than a bad case of nerves and not guilt at all.

As for speaking correctly some of the guilters have relied on the "science" of Statement Analysis, a pseudoscience based on the notion, quite unproven, that there is a "correct" "proper" way that truly innocent people will talk about the crime they are a accused of being involved in and that all guilty people will talk differently from an innocent person and of course Statement Analysis is a near infallible guide to guilt and innocence.

I have read Statement Analysis analysis which "proves" that Amanda Knox was guilty of a crime, it of course ignores the mountain of evidence that indicates she almost certainly had nothing to do with it.

But then Statement Analysis makes people feel they have a built in lie detector, so of course why bother with actual evidence.