Why are you making those questions?
They have nothing to do with the theory that a prosecutor may have orchestrated a fake test and a leak of sexually-related material in order to influence the public.
I asked whether Amanda knew her diary could go public in response to your post, "No, she leaked it herself, by writing it in her prison diary. Anything a person in cautional custody does or keeps in their cell is not private." Your claim that she leaked the diary herself is not valid unless she knew that what she was writing could not be kept not private.
From Amanda's testimony, it sounds like the confiscation of the diary was unexpected:
CDV: And this diary which is in the dossier, from the period of Oct 8 to Dec 29, 2007, when you were in prison, do you remember what happened?
AK: Yes. They called me downstairs and told me that they had to confiscate some things in my room. They told me I could either go up with them and do what I wanted and they would come later with a warrant, or I could let them take whatever they wanted spontaneously. I said they could, so they came up with me and they came into my room and looked in all my things, and they took everything on which I had written anything.
CDV: Listen, in relation to this diary, there is a part in which you tell about the AIDS tests that were made in the first days. Can you tell us? It's written in the diary, but you can tell us exactly what happened, and also why you wrote about it in the diary?
AK: So, the first thing that happened when I got to prison was that they made a [blood] analysis. After the analysis, they called me downstairs and told me that they had to make further tests because I might have AIDS. I was really shocked because I didn't understand how it could have happened that I could have gotten AIDS. But they advised to to think about where I might have caught it, so they wanted me to really think about it. So I was writing in my diary about how astonished I was, and then I wrote down every partner that I had ever had in my life...
I asked the question about the lawyers because I am curious about whether it is a custom in Italy for lawyers to instruct their clients to keep prison diaries, and I thought you might know. All three defendants kept prison diaries. If that is the custom, it lends more credence to the belief that the prosecution might have been relying on what they could get Amanda to write.
Additionally, if her lawyers asked her to keep the diary, it would have been
their responsibility to let her know that it could be confiscated and become public, and that she should be very careful about what she writes.
Inmates are tested for HIV for obvious reasons. Of course she was gives informed consent, otherwise the doctor cannot take her blood, consent is not specifically related to HIV, only blood test in general.
These are false assumptions. Consent
is specifically related to HIV, and the World Health Organization recommends against routine testing of prisoners for the virus. Furthermore, Amanda is not in a high risk population -- she has a greater risk of developing breast cancer and heart disease than HIV. One wonders whether they tested her for those conditions, too, or just for conditions having to do with sexually transmitted diseases. One also wonders whether the male defendants were tested at all.
From later in Amanda's testimony:
CDV: How many times did they make the test to check whether you were positive?
AK: So, I think it was three times. I think they made one where it was negative, then one where it was maybe positive, maybe negative, and then one where it was negative.
CDV: How much time passed between the first and the last?
AK: Two weeks.
From what Amanda says in these pieces of testimony, it sounds to me like they didn't test her for HIV in the first blood analysis, because they had not gotten permission from her to do so. Then they told he she might have HIV, which was a roundabout way of getting her to give them permission to test her "again."
I have no idea of Amanda’s information about writings nor of her lawyers instructions.
The doctor “stood by” ?!!
What are you talking about? The doctor has nothing to do with that. The doctor has no responsibility over Amanda’s sensitive data in her possession. Amanda is the only person legally entitled to complain for this kind of violation.
I would think that the prison doctor(s) who performed Amanda's HIV tests would be highly offended to see how her right to medical privacy was illegally violated by the media and by whomever provided the media with the information. The fact that they remained silent leads to questions about whether they even knew anything about the HIV tests, or whether they knew but were afraid to speak.
This rule in particular has a cause, not a goal. The cause is the structure of the judicial system, in which too many powers and actors are involved and have access to investigation files. It is a paradox effect of transparency in a beaurocratized investigation process. The main goal is obviously a form of democratic transparency, of which witnesses and suspects in custody may pay the price: the public and the other judges want to see the ongoing work of prosecutors and judges, see what they investigate and why, the material they search and collect, how they motivate their decisions. A rule doesn't have a goal slanted in only one direction and never has only one side, a rule is a rule, you are supposed to know in advance how it works in the place where you are. If you know the rules you can better serve your interests, regardless who you are. Not knowing of rules, praxis and cultures always creates a disadvantage.
It sounds like you are describing something similar to the Freedom of Information Act, used in the United States to gain access to court records. I can certainly appreciate that it's a form of democratic transparency. The objectionable aspects in this case, though, are that authorities
unnecessarily confiscated personal materials (legal, not contraband), which then made their way into the hands of the media, solely for prurient interests. Given the subject matter, the whole scenario suggests intentional character assassination by the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.
