Sorry RWVBWL,
The recent debate most definitely NOT about what should be done. Everyone seems to agree that recording interviews would be best practices for police in all jurisdictions.
The debate was about how to interpret the lack of a recording of the Knox interview. Some here have opined that lack of such is evidence of premeditated malicious intent or a deliberate coverup on the behalf of the police.
Nobody has yet (or I missed it) provided any evidence that recording was required or standard practice for the Perugia police at the time, so the most rational explanation is that there is no recording because it wasn't recorded because recording it was not standard practice.
Ah but I might add here that the argument is more nuanced than that. I think that many people might agree that it would be unnecessary (and not required in law) to record Amanda Knox's interrogations
if she were purely regarded as a witness at that time. Although, even here, the fact that this was a very high-profile case with international dimensions, and the fact that Knox was being questioned in a police station with recording equipment right at hand, could lead one to ask why the police
wouldn't record the interrogations anyhow (after all, what did they have to lose by doing so, if they were behaving properly - and on the other hand, I'd argue that they had a potentially significant amount to gain, owing to increased transparency and accuracy).
But, to me, the more important point is this: why was Knox still being treated as a "witness" after around 00.30-01.00 on the 6th (i.e. in the hour or so leading up to the "confession/accusation")? After all, there's a fair amount of evidence that the police had bugged her phone since about the 4th November, and they'd also apparently listened in on a number of private conversations of hers. In addition, by 00.30 (or so) on the 6th, they had Sollecito's alibi modification to add to their suspicion of Knox, and they also had what they believed to be an incriminating text message from Knox to Lumumba arranging a meeting on the murder night.
I've already previously shown that the European Criminal Bar Association believes that it's far from uncommon for Italian police to deliberately keep a person under "witness" status - long after the police actually believe that person to be a suspect - in order to keep lawyers out of the interrogation process (and also in order that the police don't have to stop their involvement and hand over to a prosecuting magistrate).
I believe that this may have been precisely what happened with Amanda Knox. I believe that Knox should properly have been declared a suspect by 01.00 on the 6th at the latest, and read her rights (including her right to an attorney) at that point. Under Italian police codes, the police interrogation would then have had to stop, and only the prosecuting magistrate (here, Mignini) could have continued the interrogation (in the presence of Knox's designated attorney). And it all would have been audio recorded.
If what I suggest above had happened, then not only would the police interrogation of Knox have stopped long before the contentious "confession/allegation", but also any interrogation where she was in any way accused of involvement in the crime would have been captured on audio tape.
And that itself raises another key issue: as things stand, it's important to note that the police pretty much
have to say that Knox's "confession/accusation" came out of a clear blue sky - i.e. during routine and non-accusatory police "witness" questioning. Because for the police to say that her breakdown and confession etc came after she was repeatedly accused of involvement in the murder would clearly imply that the police had considered her a suspect by that point. And if they had considered her a suspect by that point, they shouldn't still even have been interrogating her (much less in the absence of her being read her rights). QED.....
