Cont: The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 32

Vixen said:
At least Guede's account, albeiit self-serving and painting himself in a good light, does have an internal consistency, that if it were to be broadly true, one would not be surprised.
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Ah well it's good to know that Guede's out-and out lies were so consistent. :rolleyes:
 
Numbers said:
I feel compelled to address some apparent misunderstandings in your post. My sense of compulsion is due to my having not understood the basis in Italian law about the calunnia charge and conviction for probably the first year after I became actively interested in the Knox - Sollecito case, and some of my confusion was not resolved until the ECHR judgment Knox v. Italy was published in 2019.

Firstly, under Italian law, certain wrongful actions, harmful to another, are subject to both a criminal charge and penalty (for example, a prison term, and a civil (tort) action with liability (an award to the victim or the victim's family). This is similar to US law, for example, murder is a crime with a criminal penalty and, as wrongful death, a tort with a civil liability (award for damages).
But there are differences between US and Italian laws and judicial practices. In the US, as far as I know, criminal and civil trials cannot lawfully take place at the same time before the same jury or the same judge. The following online reference supports that view:
pr

Source:
legalclarity.org

Can Criminal and Civil Cases Be Tried Together?

Explore the distinct legal pathways for criminal and civil actions. Learn how these separate proceedings, stemming from a single event, can influence one another.
legalclarity.org legalclarity.org

However, in Italy, victims or the family of a victim of a crime have a choice: they can file an independent civil claim against an alleged perpetrator (the accused), or file that claim by joining the criminal trial; the victim's or the victim's family's civil lawyer becomes a private party lawyer (private prosecutor) working alongside the public prosecutor. Probably in part because Italian criminal trials can continue for extended times (indefinitely, for a murder, which has no statute of limitations), it is not at all uncommon for civil cases to be joined to their corresponding criminal cases, if there is one. The advantage for the civil party is that if the accused is finally convicted, the civil party is awarded compensation damages from the accused (CPP Article 651). The disadvantage for the civil party is that if the accused is finally acquitted, the civil party loses any right to collect any award from the accused, and cannot raise any subsequent civil action against the accused for the same act, provided that the reason for the acquittal is one of the following: the criminal act did not occur, the accused did not commit the criminal act, or the accused had a legal duty or right to commit the act [such as self-defense] (CPP Article 652).

Thus, for the Knox-Sollecito case, the criminal case of murder was joined by a civil case brought by Kercher's family, and the criminal case of calunnia (malicious accusation) was joined by a civil case brought by Lumumba.

Finally, there's the question of how the Italian courts reasoned to allow Knox's interrogation statements to be used against her in the criminal and civil calunnia trials (held together before the same judges but presented by a public prosecutor and private party lawyer, respectively), although the statements could not be used against her for the murder/rape charges because of the violation by the police and prosecutor of CPP Article 63, as stated by the CSC in an early ruling. The reason was not that there was a civil trial for calunnia, but because there had been an earlier ruling, in another (and subsequent) cases, by the CSC, that CPP Article 63 did not apply to spontaneous statements that were themselves criminal made during an interrogation. I learned this from statements made by Italy in the ECHR case Knox v. Italy. This is the Italian government statement, as presented in Knox v. Italy (Google translation):


Source:

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-189422
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The court's reasoning very clearly says that CPP Article 63 did not apply to spontaneous statements that were themselves criminal made during an interrogation interview. I knew that and I am not even a lawyer.
 
Vixen said:
BTW RS had a second laptop. That one was fine.
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The police fried the laptops, then lied to try to avoid their incompetence being exposed. Anyone who knows anything about computer hardware and about this case knows this was the case: the police powered up the hard drives with a way too high voltage, which destroyed the control modules for the drives. And Knox and Sollecito provably used their laptops right up to the point they both went to the police HQ on the night of 5th November. Oh and Sollecito requested to have his experts try to recover the lost data (a request which was denied).

As per usual, you don't have the first idea what you're talking about. Next?
 
Mojo said:
Did the Italian government accuse him of rape and murder?
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To be remanded into custody he would have been hauled before a judge, who needs to be provided with probable cause of a crime serious enough to be imprisoned on remand, so yes, Lumumba was accused by prosecutors on behalf of the Italian State of murder and rape.
 
Vixen said:
If you read the Micheli report he was convicted of sexual assault, not rape, and murder as being an accessory with others. He was convicted of murder because he failed to stop the killer from doing it.
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In a trial process which was explicitly designed - by both the police and the courts - to incriminate Knox and Sollecito without them even having any representation in the proceedings. Yep, that's the broken Italian justice we know and love hate (as do many, many legal commentators including the European Bar Association).
 
LondonJohn said:
Well if he didn't realise he'd left it there, then how/why did he and Knox point it out to the police? Your logic is as bad as your scientific illiteracy, I'm afraid.
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Er, they pointed out the obvious to the plainclothes police who turned up. RS said Filomena's door was 'wide open' whereas Knox said it was only ajar hence she hadn't seen the burglary mess before supposedly taking a shower. The pair were waiting for Filomena to arrive so that SHE could be the one to discover the body.
 
LondonJohn said:
The police fried the laptops, then lied to try to avoid their incompetence being exposed. Anyone who knows anything about computer hardware and about this case knows this was the case: the police powered up the hard drives with a way too high voltage, which destroyed the control modules for the drives. And Knox and Sollecito provably used their laptops right up to the point they both went to the police HQ on the night of 5th November. Oh and Sollecito requested to have his experts try to recover the lost data (a request which was denied).

As per usual, you don't have the first idea what you're talking about. Next?
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So how come Lumumba's was fine, exactly the same voltage. And explain how come Filomena's found hers fried, or did she also apply a super high voltage to it?
 
Vixen said:
The court's reasoning very clearly says that CPP Article 63 did not apply to spontaneous statements that were themselves criminal made during an interrogation interview. I knew that and I am not even a lawyer.
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Once again you're way out of your depth. The European Bar Association's report on Italy's "judicial" system already had reported - in advance of the Knox/Sollecito case - about the reprehensible way that police and PMs manipulated the system (in a method which was clearly a hangover from the way they manipulated the system in the former inquisitorial days): they brought the suspects in as "witnesses", elicited a confession from them as "witnesses" (using certain...ahem....methods). And because they were "witnesses" the "confession" did not under Italian code need to be audio/visual recorded. Then they got the person(s) in question to repeat the "confession" to the PM meaning that this second "confession" counted in law as a "spontaneous declaration" - the suspect(s) didn't realise that simply repeating to the PM what they'd said to the police would have such disastrous implications for them. I'm sure this corrupt process actually ended up working well (insomuch as the factually guilty person was coerced to confess to the crime) in probably the majority of cases. But it clearly had a heightened risk of forcing people into unlawfully-coerced confessions which then turned into an improper "spontaneous declaration". The EBA obviously new this judicial trick already.
 
LondonJohn said:
In a trial process which was explicitly designed - by both the police and the courts - to incriminate Knox and Sollecito without them even having any representation in the proceedings. Yep, that's the broken Italian justice we know and love hate (as do many, many legal commentators including the European Bar Association).
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Oh please.
 
Vixen said:
Er, they pointed out the obvious to the plainclothes police who turned up. RS said Filomena's door was 'wide open' whereas Knox said it was only ajar hence she hadn't seen the burglary mess before supposedly taking a shower. The pair were waiting for Filomena to arrive so that SHE could be the one to discover the body.
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If they pointed out "the obvious" to the police, then why didn't they realise "the obvious" as they were checking through the cottage before the police arrived? You're really, really bad at this, Vixen.
 
Vixen said:
So how come Lumumba's was fine, exactly the same voltage. And explain how come Filomena's found hers fried, or did she also apply a super high voltage to it?
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Why would Sollecito have wanted or needed to fry Romanelli's laptop, Vixen? As I said: you're really, really bad at this.
 
Vixen said:
To be remanded into custody he would have been hauled before a judge, who needs to be provided with probable cause of a crime serious enough to be imprisoned on remand, so yes, Lumumba was accused by prosecutors on behalf of the Italian State of murder and rape.
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"Hauled before a judge". Your unneccessary purple prose is noted, Vixen. And quite obviously, Lumumba was arraigned in court and remanded into custody precisely and solely because Knox had - improperly, unlawfully and probably illegally, according to the ECHR - made a criminal "accusation" against Lumumba. After all, the police most certainly had zero other evidence of Lumumba's involvement in the murder.
 
LondonJohn said:
Why would Sollecito have wanted or needed to fry Romanelli's laptop, Vixen? As I said: you're really, really bad at this.
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He obviously reasoned that it might look suspicious if Knox' was the only one. Now we have AK pretending to weep and wail the police destroyed all of her happy photos with Mez. Sollecito is an incredibly calculating character. It is no surprise Dad had to ring him up six times a day to check on what he was up to.
 
Vixen said:
Do a search in the thread and earlier thread for 'Rinaldi', 'Boemia' or both, or bathmat and you'll see extensive discussions of the topic already.
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They were specific questions from forum members, that you claimed to have answered. But now it seems that you are unable to say where these answers are.
 
Vixen said:
He obviously reasoned that it might look suspicious if Knox' was the only one. Now we have AK pretending to weep and wail the police destroyed all of her happy photos with Mez. Sollecito is an incredibly calculating character. It is no surprise Dad had to ring him up six times a day to check on what he was up to.
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LOL nice try. But utterly ridiculous. The police destroyed all of them. Oh and computer experts knew - and know - that the contents of the fried drives were relatively easy to read using advanced software and hardware techniques. As Sollecito most probably knew as well.

ETA: And how on earth did Sollecito know when he went to the police HQ for his "interview" on the night of 5th Nov that he and Knox were going to arrested and imprisoned from then onwards. In other words, how did he know when was the right time to fry Knox's laptop (which she'd provably been using right up to that night? And even more to the point, how did he gauge that this was the right time to fry Romanelli's laptop? How did he know that Romanelli was not going to use her laptop from the night of the 5th Nov onwards? Your "claim" falls flat on its face, Vixen.

ETA2: Evidence for the claim that Sollecito's father "had to ring him up six times a day to check on what he was up to"? Thought not.
 
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Vixen said:
Knox was caught out blurting a confession and ever since then she's been trying desperately hard to convince people it was a 'false memory', police brutality, Ficarra cuffing her, tag teams of twelve flying squad from Rome shouting REMEMBER REMEMBER all night long. Icy cold Sollecito on the other hand managed to keep his cool, which gave Mignini the creeps.
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Maybe read the ECHR adjudication, Vixen. You might be surprised and actually learn something.
 
Vixen said:
I must apologise for using an example of Fair Market Value from Taxation Law in valuing property as the concept I was trying to convey about close friends and relatives. I obviously didn't succeed, my bad. Try again. 'Teacher, dog ate my homework'. Little brother: 'That's right miss, I saw the dog do it'. Now, this doesn't have the same level of credibility as, third party random stranger passerby, 'That is correct, I saw a dog, a fluffy grey-brown cockerpoo that did toss about an A4 notepad, ripping it to bits, with the headed paper, 'Homework'".
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What the HECK does a fair market value calculation have to do with Tramontano's GF backing him up about his laptop robbery? You've totally lost the plot.
 
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