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

[Vixen]

Oh and by the way, Vixen - you really ought to school yourself properly in law (and Italian law in particular, of course).

Because your statement that "the court is entitled to accept (Curatolo's) testimony" - with your attendant implication being that no other (higher) court is entitled to challenge that court's acceptance - is entirely incorrect. Higher courts are absolutely entitled to judge that a lower court has not applied the law correctly when it accepted a witness's testimony, and similarly the higher court is absolutely entitled to judge that the lower court should not have accepted the witness's testimony.

The highly amusing (and embarrassing to you) coda to this is that YOU YOURSELF stated, not several posts ago in this very thread, that: "a court of law could not find that 1+1 = 3 as it would be overturned on appeal"


(As an even more extreme example (than Curatolo, or Quintavalle, or all of the DNA "evidence") to prove the point.... suppose that a witness testified in court that he'd seen the defendant shoot the victim, yet the defence produced reliable evidence in the form of a credit card receipt and CCTV showing that a person matching the witness's likeness and driving the witness's car bought petrol using the witness's credit card in a petrol station 30 miles away from the murder scene only 10 minutes before the murder.... yet the court ruled that the witness's identification evidence was credible and reliable. A higher court would obviously be potentially able to overturn the lower court's improper assessment of this witness's credibility/reliability.)

Only if the appeal is on the basis of 'new evidence' (which was not known of as of the time of the trial, nor was it reasonable to expect it ought to have been known of). Even then, 'new evidence' can only be assessed by a merits court, not a Supreme Court.

Even in England & Wales in cases where new evidence comes to light and a Review Committee determines the verdict might be unsafe, they hae to refer it. It can't issue a verdict based on the new evidence itself, other than to send it back, with clear directions in what it wants determined.

If the new evidence was known of as of the time of the trial then the correct appeal court assumption would be, well, all parties had the opportunity of rebuttal, cross-examination and counter-evidence and the court has the wide ranging power to accept or reject it.

In England and Wales, a jury comes to a verdict without giving any reasons at all for their decision and a judge rarely gives written reasons.

Italy does both in addition to providing the automatic right to appeal twice.

 

[Stacyhs]

As has already been pointed out, there were buses, it was the Thursday before a bank holiday and long weekend, so of course there were still plenty of partygoers.

It is up to the court to decide whether or not a witness is credible. Curatolo was cross-examined and the court is entitled to accept his testimony.

Ummm... no. Once again, not a single witness to these alleged busses and lines of partygoers on Nov. 1 was presented by the prosecution. NOT A SINGLE ONE. Now, why would that be? Think reeeeeeeeeal hard and the light may dawn on you. But somehow, I doubt it.

As for Sollecito's foot being in the hallway, this was the conclusion of the same guys who claimed it was his foot on the bath rug and that there was a female's size 37 shoe on the pillowcase...both of which were discarded by Marasca Bruno as they said NO EVIDENCE was found of either having been in Kercher's room. Vinci testified that the footprint was human but could not be used to identify anyone much less Sollecito. You tend to leave out any testimony that does not support your opinion as if it doesn't exist.

Your insistence that something that didn't exist did exist despite not a shred of evidence is becoming a really bad habit. Naparijini jacket, cap with red stripe, Sollecito's footprint in the hall.....

 

[Vixen]

I don't think we should so cavalierly dismiss the notion that there is a comprehension or processing issue with some guilters. Of course, that issue may be the result of exteme biases.

But here's an example.

A guilter tries to explain the appeal process. The guilter lists, for example, 5 issues related to fact that the first court dealt with. Then, the guilter supposes that only one issue is appealed, thus, the guilter believes his or her argument is proven. However, the guilter does not consider that all 5 issues may be appealed, and all those appeal issues accepted for review, thus refuting his or her argument that in Italy, where appeal courts are authorized under law to rehear previous testimony and admit new testimony, in accordance with request of the parties and the acceptance of a request by the judge, an appeal trial MAY be a trial de novo. And the appeal judge may declare all or part of the first court's judgment quashed, and change the verdict to meet the findings of the new trial, all in accord with CPP Article 605.

Art. 605. Sentenza.
1. Fuori dei casi previsti dall'articolo 604, il giudice di appello pronuncia sentenza con la quale conferma o riforma la sentenza appellata.


Google translate (with my help):

Art. 605. Judgment.
1. Except for the cases provided for by article 604 {cases of nulllity}, the judge of the appeal court pronounces a sentence {judgment} which confirms or reforms the sentence {judgment} appealed.

Yes, there are provisions for a retrial, for various reasons. However, what Knox and Sollecito had WAS NOT A RETRIAL.

 

[LondonJohn]

Only if the appeal is on the basis of 'new evidence' (which was not known of as of the time of the trial, nor was it reasonable to expect it ought to have been known of). Even then, 'new evidence' can only be assessed by a merits court, not a Supreme Court.

Even in England & Wales in cases where new evidence comes to light and a Review Committee determines the verdict might be unsafe, they hae to refer it. It can't issue a verdict based on the new evidence itself, other than to send it back, with clear directions in what it wants determined.

If the new evidence was known of as of the time of the trial then the correct appeal court assumption would be, well, all parties had the opportunity of rebuttal, cross-examination and counter-evidence and the court has the wide ranging power to accept or reject it.

In England and Wales, a jury comes to a verdict without giving any reasons at all for their decision and a judge rarely gives written reasons.

Italy does both in addition to providing the automatic right to appeal twice.

This is a total straw-man "response" to my post.

The question at hand was whether the Italian Supreme Court had the right/authority to rule that a lower court had misapplied the law in the way it assessed evidence.

The answer is: yes, it absolutely does. Despite your claims to the contrary.

And in this case, in the matter of how the lower convicting courts assessed the reliability/credibility of effectively every single piece of forensic and "witness" evidence, the Marasca SC panel a) was entirely within its remit, and b) correctly applied Italian law, in adjudicating that the lower convicting courts were wrong (in law) to have assessed all of this evidence as reliable or credible.

Not really sure how you can still be having trouble understanding or accepting this.

(Only joking! OF COURSE I know how/why you're still having trouble with it. It ain't pretty or edifying though......)

 

[Vixen]

Oh and by the way, just on the above part, it shows that you still have a worryingly poor grasp of certain significant facts about this case. Thursday 1st November 2007 was NOT "the Thursday before a bank holiday and long weekend". In fact, the following days - Fri 1st Nov, Sat 2nd Nov, Sun 3rd Nov and Mon 4th Nov - were entirely normal weekdays and weekend days respectively. It was Thursday 1st that was a public holiday. Because it was a solemn Holy Day of Obligation in Italy, Vixen. That means NO PARTYING. And on top of that, the following day - Friday 2nd - was a normal workday (and university day).

One last time (though of course I realise full well it won't be the last time, as far as dealing with your "arguments" is concerned....): there would have been nothing remotely approaching Curatolo's description of hoards of student revellers in costumes and masks present in the square on the evening/night of Thursday 1st November 2007. Why not? Well, because a) all the Halloween costume parties were the previous evening (the evening/night of Halloween, Wed 31st October); b) all the partying would have been done on that previous evening anyhow, since the following day was a public holiday (i.e. the Thursday), and since partying on the Thursday would make next to no sense on account of the following day (Friday 2nd Nov) being a normal work day); c) the day of Thursday 1st November 2007 was a Holy Day of Obligation in Italy, when it was customary for young people to attend a quiet family dinner in the evening to remember dead relatives.

There is zero chance that the scene Curatolo describes in the square could possibly have been taking place on the evening/night of Thursday 1st November 2007. Zero chance.

And that's before we even start to discus disco buses. Oh and before we even start to discuss Curatolo's hard-drug dependency, and his self-admitted usage of them on the evenings in question. Oh and before we even start to discuss Curatolo's obviously severe mental health issues.

NO! Both 1st Nov and 2nd Nov are both Holy Days in Italy:

Ognissanti (All Saints) is celebrated on 1st November, and the 2nd of November, commonly called "i Morti" in Italian, is the day dedicated to the dear ones who passed away. People start visiting the cemeteries already some days before, so that on the two festive days fresh flowers, also left on the old forgotten tombs, not visited any more for decades, give to the Italian cemeteries an explosion of colors.

http://www.italyheritage.com/traditions/calendar/november/ognissanti.htm

We have something similar in Finland. I laid evergreen wreaths on my family grave and war memorial graves and lit a candle. The entire church yard was a blaze of flickering candles. There was a service in the evening in which the names of members of the congregation who had died during the year was read out one by one and a candle lit for each, followed by the choir singing.

The next day there was a morning service in which the dead were remembered. (I vaguely recall reading that they used to bury bodies underneath the church floor, so it was all vaguely macabre, being a Mediaeval gothic Church.)

A high percentage of students in Perugia are foreign and do not recognise the Italian Holy Days. Roman Catholics don't generally care for Halloween, so the people enjoying masked Halloween parties will have been largely the foreign students. It'll be these students partying all weekend long.

Why, according to Knox and Raff by their own account, they themselves were off their head on drugs. Each swore, independently of the other, after the murder, they would never touch drugs again.

 

[Vixen]

Ummm... no. Once again, not a single witness to these alleged busses and lines of partygoers on Nov. 1 was presented by the prosecution. NOT A SINGLE ONE. Now, why would that be? Think reeeeeeeeeal hard and the light may dawn on you. But somehow, I doubt it.



Your insistence that something that didn't exist did exist despite not a shred of evidence is becoming a really bad habit. Naparijini jacket, cap with red stripe, Sollecito's footprint in the hall.....

There may not have been any private transfer buses, but local buses were running normally.

 

[Bill Williams]

Yes, there are provisions for a retrial, for various reasons. However, what Knox and Sollecito had WAS NOT A RETRIAL.

Sigh. You really do stick fingers in your ears and hum loudly.

No one has ever claimed that the 2015 ISC acquittal was the result of a "retrial". The 2015 ISC reviewed the 2014 conviction and ruled it should not have happened.

Why. To repeat for the nth time, even if what the prosecution had said was true, it still did not satisfy the legal conditions to convict.

Nencini erred by convicting on what he'd had in front of him.

Time to start humming again......

 

[LondonJohn]

Yes, there are provisions for a retrial, for various reasons. However, what Knox and Sollecito had WAS NOT A RETRIAL.

Huh?

The role of the Italian Supreme Court in cases such as this is explicitly to check whether the case has been tried correctly/properly/lawfully by the lower courts. The SC panel takes submissions from prosecution and defence, but in fact it looks at the entire case to check whether it should be signed off or not.

You seem (still) to be unaware that in serious-crime cases such as this in Italy, the SC has this mandatory sign-off regardless. This is not the same situation as an appeal court hearing - where indeed if neither the prosecution nor the defence requests an appeal hearing, none is heard. But the SC ruling is entirely different. In that respect, it shouldn't be termed an "appeal" at all. It's really nothing of the sort. It's an assessment of the case. And if either the prosecution or defence want to make a submission to the SC to try to assist it in its assessment, then so be it. But you should be under no misunderstanding: the SC examines the entire trial process before making its judgement.

In the case of the Knox/Sollecito murder-related trial process, therefore, the remit of the Marasca SC panel was, in effect, to examine the whole extant trial process before it - which was to say the verdicts of the Massei and Nencini trials (and all the evidence and argument within those trials), plus the mechanics and evidence arising from the Hellmann trial. The Marasca SC panel judged - correctly in Italian law - that on pretty much every single piece of evidence, the convicting courts applied Italian law improperly and incorrectly. And because of that, the Marasca SC panel judged - again correctly in Italian law - that no properly-constituted court, with the totality of evidence placed before it, could ever possibly convict Knox or Sollecito on any of the murder-related charges. Furthermore, it also judged that there was zero chance of any additional evidence ever coming to light which might possibly lead to convictions at any point in the future.

And, as a commentary underpinning the above, the Marasca SC panel severely criticised the shockingly poor work done by the police and PM in respect of evidence gathering/analysis, and in respect of the way they built their case against Knox and Sollecito. And the Marasca SC panel also (by definition) criticised the convicting courts, on account of the fact that no properly-constituted court could/should ever have convicted Knox or Sollecito based on the totality of the evidence, assessed properly in line with Italian law.


(Note also, in passing, three further things: 1) The Marasca SC Panel only had the remit to judge whether Knox and/or Sollecito were properly convicted in line with Italian law - it had neither the remit, authority nor requirement to rule on whether Knox or Sollecito were factually innocent (though of course they absolutely retain the presumption of innocence); 2) the Marasca SC panel had no remit nor requirement to rule on the guilt of Guede, nor on the safety of his conviction (though it must be pointed out here that the evidence upon which Guede was convicted was in fact entirely reliable and credible, and was easily sufficient to prove his guilt BARD); and 3) the Marasca SC panel was effectively beholden to ensure that its verdict did not come into conflict with the two other previous SC-settled verdicts related to this case: those related to Guede's trial and Knox's criminal slander trial.)

 

[Stacyhs]

There may not have been any private transfer buses, but local buses were running normally.

Curatolo did not mention the local busses. He said they were busses taking the lines of masked students to the discos. Try again.

 

[LondonJohn]

NO! Both 1st Nov and 2nd Nov are both Holy Days in Italy:

http://www.italyheritage.com/traditions/calendar/november/ognissanti.htm

Uh? Yes, I'm fully aware of this. That's not the question though. The question is around whether Friday 2nd November 2007 was a public holiday in Italy. And it was not. Thursday 1st November 2007, on the other hand, was.

We have something similar in Finland. I laid evergreen wreaths on my family grave and war memorial graves and lit a candle. The entire church yard was a blaze of flickering candles. There was a service in the evening in which the names of members of the congregation who had died during the year was read out one by one and a candle lit for each, followed by the choir singing.

The next day there was a morning service in which the dead were remembered. (I vaguely recall reading that they used to bury bodies underneath the church floor, so it was all vaguely macabre, being a Mediaeval gothic Church.)

I don't care. And it's entirely irrelevant.

A high percentage of students in Perugia are foreign and do not recognise the Italian Holy Days. Roman Catholics don't generally care for Halloween, so the people enjoying masked Halloween parties will have been largely the foreign students. It'll be these students partying all weekend long.

Nope.

Why, according to Knox and Raff by their own account, they themselves were off their head on drugs.

I see. Having a marijuana joint or two becomes, in your warped assessment, being "off their heads on drugs". Tell me, Vixen: what does mainlining heroin into a vein in your arm or leg qualify as? Does that qualify as being "off your head on drugs"? Now, what was Curatolo doing on the evening/night of the murder again..........?

Each swore, independently of the other, after the murder, they would never touch drugs again.

And do you know why they said that? They said that because it meant they did not have pin-sharp recollection of the minutiae of their actions and whereabouts on the night of the murder - short of knowing for sure that they were together alone in Sollecito's apartment all evening/night.

I wonder if Curatolo swore he would never touch drugs again after unequivocally conflating the nights of 31st October and 1st November.....?

 

[Stacyhs]

NO! Both 1st Nov and 2nd Nov are both Holy Days in Italy:http://www.italyheritage.com/traditions/calendar/november/ognissanti.htm

We have something similar in Finland. I laid evergreen wreaths on my family grave and war memorial graves and lit a candle. The entire church yard was a blaze of flickering candles. There was a service in the evening in which the names of members of the congregation who had died during the year was read out one by one and a candle lit for each, followed by the choir singing.

The next day there was a morning service in which the dead were remembered. (I vaguely recall reading that they used to bury bodies underneath the church floor, so it was all vaguely macabre, being a Mediaeval gothic Church.)

A high percentage of students in Perugia are foreign and do not recognise the Italian Holy Days. Roman Catholics don't generally care for Halloween, so the people enjoying masked Halloween parties will have been largely the foreign students. It'll be these students partying all weekend long.

Why, according to Knox and Raff by their own account, they themselves were off their head on drugs. Each swore, independently of the other, after the murder, they would never touch drugs again.

Wrong again. Nov. 1 is a national holiday. Nov. 2 is not.

Sep 19
Wednesday The Feast of Saint Januarius (Naples) Local holiday

Sep 23
Sunday September equinox Season

Nov 1
Thursday All Saints' Day National holiday

Dec 7
Friday The Feast of St. Ambrose (Milan) Local holiday

Dec 8
Saturday Feast of the Immaculate Conception National holiday

https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/italy/2007

 

[LondonJohn]

There may not have been any private transfer buses, but local buses were running normally.

Oh dear. PLEASE go and re-read Curatolo's combined testimony. I doubt there'll be a copy in the British Library, but I am sure you'll find other reliable sources, eh?

 

[Vixen]

Huh?

The role of the Italian Supreme Court in cases such as this is explicitly to check whether the case has been tried correctly/properly/lawfully by the lower courts. The SC panel takes submissions from prosecution and defence, but in fact it looks at the entire case to check whether it should be signed off or not.

You seem (still) to be unaware that in serious-crime cases such as this in Italy, the SC has this mandatory sign-off regardless. This is not the same situation as an appeal court hearing - where indeed if neither the prosecution nor the defence requests an appeal hearing, none is heard. But the SC ruling is entirely different. In that respect, it shouldn't be termed an "appeal" at all. It's really nothing of the sort. It's an assessment of the case. And if either the prosecution or defence want to make a submission to the SC to try to assist it in its assessment, then so be it. But you should be under no misunderstanding: the SC examines the entire trial process before making its judgement.

In the case of the Knox/Sollecito murder-related trial process, therefore, the remit of the Marasca SC panel was, in effect, to examine the whole extant trial process before it - which was to say the verdicts of the Massei and Nencini trials (and all the evidence and argument within those trials), plus the mechanics and evidence arising from the Hellmann trial. The Marasca SC panel judged - correctly in Italian law - that on pretty much every single piece of evidence, the convicting courts applied Italian law improperly and incorrectly. And because of that, the Marasca SC panel judged - again correctly in Italian law - that no properly-constituted court, with the totality of evidence placed before it, could ever possibly convict Knox or Sollecito on any of the murder-related charges. Furthermore, it also judged that there was zero chance of any additional evidence ever coming to light which might possibly lead to convictions at any point in the future.

And, as a commentary underpinning the above, the Marasca SC panel severely criticised the shockingly poor work done by the police and PM in respect of evidence gathering/analysis, and in respect of the way they built their case against Knox and Sollecito. And the Marasca SC panel also (by definition) criticised the convicting courts, on account of the fact that no properly-constituted court could/should ever have convicted Knox or Sollecito based on the totality of the evidence, assessed properly in line with Italian law.


(Note also, in passing, three further things: 1) The Marasca SC Panel only had the remit to judge whether Knox and/or Sollecito were properly convicted in line with Italian law - it had neither the remit, authority nor requirement to rule on whether Knox or Sollecito were factually innocent (though of course they absolutely retain the presumption of innocence); 2) the Marasca SC panel had no remit nor requirement to rule on the guilt of Guede, nor on the safety of his conviction (though it must be pointed out here that the evidence upon which Guede was convicted was in fact entirely reliable and credible, and was easily sufficient to prove his guilt BARD); and 3) the Marasca SC panel was effectively beholden to ensure that its verdict did not come into conflict with the two other previous SC-settled verdicts related to this case: those related to Guede's trial and Knox's criminal slander trial.)

Hahaha, they don't do anything nearly so noble. Of course the appealing party has to set out its grounds for appeal, and the other parties the right to cross-appeal or counter appeal. It was the prosecution who successfully appealed Hellmann, and the defence, Nencini.

The Supreme Court judges do not have all day. They want to be finished within half a day at best, before retiring to chambers. In Italy, judges are obliged to give their verdict at the hearing - virtually straight away.

Towards this end, the Supreme Court wants the appealing parties to present a skeleton argument (which it may or may not see in advance) and further, it wants the counsel to read it out loud and to do so in about twenty minutes.

Judges do not like long skeletons. It should be no more than two A4 pages with double spacing and wide margins (to write notes). A barrister in England who presented a 35-page skeleton was severely reprimanded. 15 pages is the absolute outside maximum.

So, in the Kercher case, each party had twenty minutes to spell out their skeleton argument.

Bongiorno took the michael and presented a 305 page appeal and presented her skeleton grossly obese arguments over an extra day ad a half.

All the judges do is accept one side's argument or the other. They then use the winning party's arguments to form the basis of their written reasons.

Marasca & Bruno is simply a copy and paste of Bongiorno, hence its inherent illogicality, because on the one hand there are the established facts found, and it some how had to insert her ranting nonsense into the framework, hence all the utter bilge about 'flawed investigation' and 'press interference'.

The only way it could annul the verdict of guilty was to claim 'insufficient evidence', which was totally dishonest.

 

[Stacyhs]

deleted

 

[TruthCalls]

Oh dear. PLEASE go and re-read Curatolo's combined testimony. I doubt there'll be a copy in the British Library, but I am sure you'll find other reliable sources, eh?

LJ, don't forget you are arguing with someone who proclaimed Ryan Ferguson was not a good example of a wrongful conviction and then proceeded to prove she knew absolutely nothing about the case. Every single thing she said about it was flat out wrong, and each time it was spelled out to her what the facts were. Despite this she never once acknowledged she was wrong nor did she even hint she might reassess her position on the case. Based on a comment made not to long ago it's clear she STILL thinks Ferguson was guilty. In other words, Vixen can't be bothered with the truth.

So if you think Vixen will ever acknowledge Curatolo was talking about Halloween then I'd like to take a hit off of whatever it is you're smoking!

 

[Stacyhs]

Oh dear. PLEASE go and re-read Curatolo's combined testimony. I doubt there'll be a copy in the British Library, but I am sure you'll find other reliable sources, eh?

What can be said about someone who insists that there were lines of masked students waiting for busses to take them to discos when not a single person out of the entire population of Perugia supported this? Well...with the exception of one homeless man who was admittedly high on heroin, was so confused he didn't even know what he was in jail for himself and admitted he "understood nothing", and who had testified for the police during two previous highly visible criminal trials in Perugia?

Despite having Curatolo's testimony provided for her, she still cannot even admit that he did mention Halloween specifically and the students being masked.

 

[LondonJohn]

Hahaha, they don't do anything nearly so noble. Of course the appealing party has to set out its grounds for appeal, and the other parties the right to cross-appeal or counter appeal. It was the prosecution who successfully appealed Hellmann, and the defence, Nencini.

The Supreme Court judges do not have all day. They want to be finished within half a day at best, before retiring to chambers. In Italy, judges are obliged to give their verdict at the hearing - virtually straight away.

Towards this end, the Supreme Court wants the appealing parties to present a skeleton argument (which it may or may not see in advance) and further, it wants the counsel to read it out loud and to do so in about twenty minutes.

Judges do not like long skeletons. It should be no more than two A4 pages with double spacing and wide margins (to write notes). A barrister in England who presented a 35-page skeleton was severely reprimanded. 15 pages is the absolute outside maximum.

So, in the Kercher case, each party had twenty minutes to spell out their skeleton argument.

Bongiorno took the michael and presented a 305 page appeal and presented her skeleton grossly obese arguments over an extra day ad a half.

All the judges do is accept one side's argument or the other. They then use the winning party's arguments to form the basis of their written reasons.

Marasca & Bruno is simply a copy and paste of Bongiorno, hence its inherent illogicality, because on the one hand there are the established facts found, and it some how had to insert her ranting nonsense into the framework, hence all the utter bilge about 'flawed investigation' and 'press interference'.

The only way it could annul the verdict of guilty was to claim 'insufficient evidence', which was totally dishonest.

This is not how the SC in Italy operates (in cases such as this) at all. Please do some more research so that you have a better chance of understanding it.

(Hint: as a starting point, you will want to consider that the SC stage of a case such as this is not an appeal in the generally-accepted use of the term. Prosecutors and defence teams may make submissions to the SC of course, but the remit of the SC is to examine the entire case and trial process. Oh and you also want to consider that the SC panel assigned to the case will have spent plenty of time BEFORE the oral submissions phase reading through trial records etc. Or do you actually think that they pick up the case for the very first time on the first morning of oral submissions....?)

(Oh and I note you still cling to the "insufficient evidence" thing, since you seem to believe it necessarily implies "plenty of smoke, but unfortunately just unable to locate the actual fire". Again, I suggest more research into what adversarial courts are actually required to adjudicate).

 

[Stacyhs]

Regarding Knox taking a shower, here is what Chiacchierra testified:

Judge Massei: Excuse me, do you know how many bathrooms there were in the house?
Chiacchiera: Two.
Judge Massei: Two bathrooms. Excuse me, please. Do you know that a shower was taken? Chiacchiera: Yes. Judge Massei: How do you know?
Chiacchiera: I know because it is a thing that I cannot, I believe, report because it was ….
Judge Massei: But you checked…?
Chiacchiera: I am trying to be very very careful.

Transcript February 27, 2009:

 

[Vixen]

What can be said about someone who insists that there were lines of masked students waiting for busses to take them to discos when not a single person out of the entire population of Perugia supported this? Well...with the exception of one homeless man who was admittedly high on heroin, was so confused he didn't even know what he was in jail for himself and admitted he "understood nothing", and who had testified for the police during two previous highly visible criminal trials in Perugia?

Despite having Curatolo's testimony provided for her, she still cannot even admit that he did mention Halloween specifically and the students being masked.

All he said was there were partygoers 'above' him (Perugia has a steep series of roads) who vanished with the bus at about eleven, to make clear that Knox and Raff were not part of the revellers, but instead, remained seated on the low wall of the basketball court in intense conversation with Raff periodically nipping down the steps. The basketball court has a viewpoint overlooking via Pergola.

In court all they want is objective information. Thus, his belief the partygoers were going to the Red Zone discos and that they were awaiting a transfer bus is merely his subjective assumption and not a verifiable fact.

Oh, and you don't get 'high' on heroin. Heroin is a soporific and is classed as a depressant.

 

[Vixen]

This is not how the SC in Italy operates (in cases such as this) at all. Please do some more research so that you have a better chance of understanding it.

(Hint: as a starting point, you will want to consider that the SC stage of a case such as this is not an appeal in the generally-accepted use of the term. Prosecutors and defence teams may make submissions to the SC of course, but the remit of the SC is to examine the entire case and trial process. Oh and you also want to consider that the SC panel assigned to the case will have spent plenty of time BEFORE the oral submissions phase reading through trial records etc. Or do you actually think that they pick up the case for the very first time on the first morning of oral submissions....?)

(Oh and I note you still cling to the "insufficient evidence" thing, since you seem to believe it necessarily implies "plenty of smoke, but unfortunately just unable to locate the actual fire". Again, I suggest more research into what adversarial courts are actually required to adjudicate).

Quite often they do. The barristers I know pride themselves on being able to do a case 'on the hoof'. A quick read through of the salient points and they've got it.