Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Machiavelli]

Machiavelli,

My previous point was that without representation Raffaele could not properly prepare for his appearance before Judge Matteini. I don’t believe you have responded to this problem, which is one of fairness. His lawyer Tiziano Tedeschi was angry about the fact that the prison director had told him he could not see Sollecito on 7 November. On 8 November Mr. Tedeschi pointed this out to the GIP, and the GIP asked the PM about this refusal. The PM said that the decree of deferment could be in the files, but it was never found. My interpretation is that Mr. Tedeschi did not know that the deferment decree was lost or never existed, and that is why he did not file an immediate protest.

Well, I think I answered previously simply by giving an explanation - while speaking with katy_did and Mary H - on what the rights of a suspect are.
Being "prepared" by a lawyer, in the time frame after the police arrest and before speaking with a preliminary investigation judge, is not a suspect's right. A detainee doesn't have the right to take counsel before his GIP interogation. One cannot claim an inviolable right on this point. This is a matter of principle. I think I replied, by stating that in my opinion it is not exactly fair to warrant a right to counsel before the hearing with the GIP, and this right doesn't belong to the procedure.

The defence rights of a suspect - in a logic of fair trial - have to be seen as conditions provided altogether: when a person is put under arrest, has the right to speak immediatly (with no delay) with a judge (within 48 hours), and there is a legal bond for the judicial office to make so this hearing with the suspect takes place immediatly. The office called G.I.P., which means judges for the preliminary investigation, always have a judge on duty for all cases of arrest and detention. The detainee has also the right to be assisted immediatly by a lawyer from the beginning of the detention, while the beginning of detention is considered by the time of validity of a decree of arrest. There is no right to have a counsel with the attorney prior to the GIP hearing. There is no rule that specifies that the detainee and an attorney must meet earlier in advance, to "prepare" for the GIP interrogation, no rule says this counsel must take place prior to the judge hearing. The right to legal assistence is immediate but not meant to be more immediate than the other immediate actions.

And meanwhile Raffaele was not "without rapresentation", properly he was without legal counsel during the time of his detention prior to the preliminary investigation judge hearing. Without a counsel in advance, obviously some defensive choices cannot be made, but the system is obviously not meant to allow the atorney to "properly prepare" the suspect for his appearance before a preliminary investigation judge. The GIP is, after all, an investigator as well as a judge, his task is to protect the quality of the investigation, not just the interests and rights of the arrested person.

If Tedeschi had any problem in finding the decree of differing, instead of just getting angry, he could have raised an objection to the questioning, since he spoke before Raffaele Sollecito. But this objection is missing. So because of the lack of this objection, while Amanda refused to speak, the interrogation of Sollecito took instead place, Raffaele made statements and answered the questioning. Only very late, before a court of Assise, the defence raises again the point, as after having realized they don't like Raffaele's statements, now they seek an opportunity to dismiss them.

 

[Withnail1969]

You're welcome. The big out-of-town discos were closed on Thursday 1st November 2007. The defence now apparently have affadavits and solid evidence to prove this. And therefore the disco buses were not running that night.

And if you think people are in the habit of partying until 4am or 5am on Thursday nights/Friday mornings, then working or going to university on Friday at 9-10am, then you come from a very different part of the world to me: a part of the world where productivity rates are appalling.....

During my vacation from JREF, I took the liberty of asking a Perugia native about the exact status of these infernal disco buses on Thursday, November 1st, 2007. Here is my question and the ensuing comments.

November 8, 2010 5:59 PM
Anonymous said...

Would a Perugia local (i.e. Frank) please confirm for us that the discos Gradisca and Etoile 54 were closed on 1st November 2007, meaning that there were no disco buses on that night, thanks

Frank Sfarzo said...

I can confirm that the big discotheques are closed on November 1st, and there weren't buses.
As is natural, since the discotheques work on the pre-holiday, not on the holiday, and to be filled they need a town full of students, not with the 80% of them gone home.
But Sollecito's team will bring documentation for it.

Btw, I remember to have asked Toto, at the beginning, why he remembered the masks and didn't remember the buses. He thought that he HAD to remember the opposite, so at the trial he didn't mention the masks but he mentioned the buses.

So, more than one year after our previous talk I congratulated to him for his testimony and I asked him why he remembered the buses.
At that point he understood that the buses were wrong too (but too late). And he answered that he was confused with the city buses....

But all this is useless. The truth is that people believe what they want to believe...

Anonymous said...
Thank you so much for confirming that the disco buses did not run on the night of the murder, Frank - and what you say about Curatolo is very enlightening - it almost sounds as though he had been coached by someone to testify against Amanda and Raff - but surely this cannot be!

 

[Machiavelli]

(..)
So I wonder:
If Raffaele Sollecito was not at his apartment, but was there the night that Miss Kercher was brutally stabbed to her death,
why did he not simply turn "State's witness" against Amanda Knox and Rudy Guede in the very beginning?

Actually, we don't have "state's-witnesses", but yes that of why he didn't testify as a witness is a good question, and it is the reason why I believe he is in a position of guilt. My simplest answer is he did not testify as a witness because he is not a witness, he is responsible.

 

[RoseMontague]

Here is what Frank Sfarzo says on the subject in a reply to one of the comments on his blog (Perugia Shock) - the bolding is mine and I think it could not be clearer - Frank Sfarzo, the Perugia local:

'' I can confirm that the big discotheques are closed on November 1st, and there weren't buses. As is natural, since the discotheques work on the pre-holiday, not on the holiday, and to be filled they need a town full of students, not with the 80% of them gone home.

But Sollecito's team will bring documentation for it.

Btw, I remember to have asked Toto, at the beginning, why he remembered the masks and didn't remember the buses. He thought that he HAD to remember the opposite, so at the trial he didn't mention the masks but he mentioned the buses.

So, more than one year after our previous talk I congratulated to him for his testimony and I asked him why he remembered the buses. At that point he understood that the buses were wrong too (but too late). And he answered that he was confused with the city buses....

But all this is useless. The truth is that people believe what they want to believe...''

Gee, homeless park bench gentleman vagrant was confused. I would have never thought that could happen. Even if I had a link to a study of 40 confused bums that gave erroneous testimony it would just be anecdotal anyway and let us just throw common sense out the window. Massei thought he seemed like a fine man of integrity and another of those witnesses with a super amazing memory. Go figure.

 

[RoseMontague]

Actually, we don't have "state's-witnesses", but yes that of why he didn't testify as a witness is a good question, and it is the reason why I believe he is in a position of guilt. My simplest answer is he did not testify as a witness because he is not a witness, he is responsible.

It may be your simplest answer but not the mostest simplerest answer. I think he did not testify as a witness because he didn't witness anything.

 

[RWVBWL]

Actually, we don't have "state's-witnesses", but yes that of why he didn't testify as a witness is a good question, and it is the reason why I believe he is in a position of guilt. My simplest answer is he did not testify as a witness because he is not a witness, he is responsible.

Hi Machiavelli,
Thanks for the answer and your opinion too.

Being that I have read that you are Italian, and are living in Italy,
I would like to ask 1 more question before I head back to the beach:

Is it common in your country, with its history of organized crime, to have a group of people investigated and then arrested BUT yet NOT have any 1 person in the group agree to testify against the others, you know, say the ringleaders of the group, in exchange for leniency by way of a lighter prison sentence from the convicting court?

Thanks for your time Machiavelli!
RWVBWL

 

[Withnail1969]

In a perhaps relevant point, I recently watched this documentary called 'Curse of the Camorra' about the organised crime families in Naples, Italy.

the link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DjmzOemvXA&feature=grec_index

It turns out that Camorra gangsters convicted of multiple murders can get out of jail within 3 years due to plea bargaining. This is documented in the film by Italian law enforcement officers. Lucky for the Camorra they're not American female students, I guess.

 

[Onofarar]

Freeing Patrick

Are. you. kidding. me.

No he is not. The professor actually at his own expense returned from his home (in Switzerland I believe) to vouch for Patrick's whereabouts that evening. Note that the professor did not trust ILE to release him based only on a phone call from Switzerland. The ILE still held Patrick several more days - seven IIRC. Then after releasing Patrick they kept his bar Le Chic closed for months under the preposterous position that it was part of a "crime scene" - forcing Patrick into bankruptcy. No wonder he sued AK for slander - she was the only non-suitproof deep pocket in the vicinity from whom he could hope to recover his loses.

 

[Dan O.]

What about the day trip to Gubbio? Amanda testified that the whole reason for going back to her apartment that morning was to take a shower and change clothes for the trip. Part of the reason for shutting off her phone, she said, was to save the battery for the trip.

Amanda never stated that the trip was cancelled or postposted from when she said it would be, on the morning of the 2nd.

What time did Amanda and Raffaele plan to leave for Gubbio? According to Google maps, it's 40.9km away and would take less than an hour to drive. What were their plans, when did they expect to return?

You are trying to infer that they had already abandoned the planned trip the night before but you haven't shown what the plan was in the first place. They could have left right after breakfast if they hadn't needed to go back and check out the problems at the cottage.

 

[Onofarar]

Why would I want my posts to wear neckties?

A gravata é uma tira de tecido, estreita e longa, que se usa em torno do pescoço e que é presa por um laço ou nó na parte da frente. Peça predominantemente do vestuário masculino.[carece de fontes?]

O termo gravata deriva do francês "cravate", que por sua vez é uma corruptela de "croat", em referência aos croatas, que primeiro apresentaram a indumentária à sociedade parisiense.[1]
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravata

My bad - the correct spelling is gravitas (not cravat) and the meaning I leave to you to look up.

 

[RWVBWL]

Gee, homeless park bench gentleman vagrant was confused. I would have never thought that could happen. Even if I had a link to a study of 40 confused bums that gave erroneous testimony it would just be anecdotal anyway and let us just throw common sense out the window. Massei thought he seemed like a fine man of integrity and another of those witnesses with a super amazing memory. Go figure.

Hi RoseMontague!
I had to chime in 1 more time before I get back to the beach.
This time about Antonio Curatolo, a "Super Witness"

Perugia Shock
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Day of Foolery
SUPER FAKE WITNESS

http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2009/03/blog-post.html

"Antonio Curatolo, the homeless guy, the first and main Superwitness, the one who was supposed to nail Amanda and Raffaele saw them at the basketball court from 21:30 to 23:30. So, they were not at his place. But, if he's right, they were not even assailing Meredith.

Curatolo knew he had to study his part well, that he couldn't afford to to screw-up. Apparently he was aware of what not to say. The masks and the witches are wrong. So he eliminated them. The buses to the discotheque are fine. So he inserted them. Then he needed to show details, and how he could fix the presence of Amanda and Raffaele to exact times. Who knows how many times he repeated to himself this concept and so he tried. But he tried too much, he added too many details, imaginary details, wrong details.

Today he repeated that as soon as he arrives to the square, at 21:30-22:00, he starts to read a newspaper and while reading he's looking around and sees Amanda and Raffaele. The difference from his previous deposition is that now he sees them as soon as he starts reading, at 21:30-22:00, or just at 21:30, as it will emerge later.
They were Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, no doubt, he pointed at them in the courtroom.
So he sees them from the beginning, from 21:30, and he keeps seeing them, talking, arguing, going to the rail to watch below... until at least 23:30, when the discotheque buses start to leave.
It seems that he's been working hard to remember, but probably he forgot that Amanda and Raffaele had to be there only after 22:30-23:00.
He maybe thought that having seen the lovebirds only for a few minutes wasn't enough and in an effort to be credible he extended their presence to the whole period, providing them, in this way, an alibi for the crime. Or proving that his testimony was a fake.

No surprise, that's what happens when you rely on lunatics. People who can learn the same lesson a hundred times and still getting it wrong.
Curatolo was so worried about fixing the time that besides recalling that he goes to check it to the electronic board --on the other side of the square-- he added, today, that he also checks it on his own watch. But he had always stated not to have a watch. So Massei asked him to show his watch. And he didn't have it. Massei asked him if he could be more precise about his arrival time because 21:30-22:00 was a bit vague. And he did get more precise, much more precise: 21:27-21:28!
This is Antonio Curatolo, he can tell you exactly what you want to hear, he can tell you anything and the opposite of anything. He, as I always said, is simply a psychiatric case.
Now everyone realizes it. Even those who went to interview him and found him totally rational and credible. Even the judge Micheli, probably, while reading about today's hearing. Everyone was laughing at him in the courtroom. At him and at the heroes who discovered the Superwitness in that hard to reach place, the street."

The "Super Witness",
who can remember that he saw Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito at exactly 9:27-9:28 pm rolleyes that night
FORGOT that the buses WERE NOT RUNNING that night!
Hmmm...

Have a pleasant rest of the day,
RWVBWL

 

[platonov]

Raffaele made a de facto retraction of what he said on the 5th-6th with his statements in front of Judge Matteini on the 8th. Works for me.

Yea that's fine, but it didn't work for Raff & Manders - murder investigators are slightly more skeptical than that.

.

 

[Machiavelli]

Is it common in your country, with its history of organized crime, to have a group of people investigated and then arrested BUT yet NOT have any 1 person in the group agree to testify against the others, you know, say the ringleaders of the group, in exchange for leniency by way of a lighter prison sentence from the convicting court?

The mechanism of leniency has its rules, it is not like an exchange that happens in court. I don't know how to answer your question, because it's a question on a very inhomogeneous topic, it's like asking "is it common to see the receeding of pancreatitis?". It depends (on the kind of pacreatitis for instance), sometimes you see a scenario and sometims you se another one, but the contexts can be very different and make no homogeneous set, just like the kinds of pancreatitis are very different one from the other. People arrested in mafia trials are suspects of certain kinds, from different contexts, and they can happen to find themselvs in different legal contexts. There are certainly several criminal associations where no witnesses were found, like for example a recent corruption case involving politicians and entrepreneurs in the building buisness. It depends entirely on the actual situation of the investigation and on the kind of defendants.

 

[Withnail1969]

Then after releasing Patrick they kept his bar Le Chic closed for months under the preposterous position that it was part of a "crime scene" - forcing Patrick into bankruptcy.

If 'Le Chic' was a crime scene then wasn't the entire Universita dell'Stranieri also a crime scene, given that Amanda studied there? Maybe the University of Perugia and all of Meredith's and Amanda's friends' flats should have been closed, along with any bars they drank in?

The more I learn about Italy, the more dangerous it seems to anyone who falls foul of the authorities in any way.

 

[Alt+F4]

What time did Amanda and Raffaele plan to leave for Gubbio? According to Google maps, it's 40.9km away and would take less than an hour to drive. What were their plans, when did they expect to return?

You are trying to infer that they had already abandoned the planned trip the night before but you haven't shown what the plan was in the first place. They could have left right after breakfast if they hadn't needed to go back and check out the problems at the cottage.

According to Amanda's trial testimony, the trip was to be in "the morning". It was Mary H. who said she thinks they were sleeping in until mid day to make up for the fact that they were up all night, on the computer. If they had plans for the morning, why stay up all night on the computer?

Why no mention from Rafaelle that he at least, was up for multiple hours on the computer?

 

[Onofarar]

Perhaps if Italy incarcerated more people, i.e Rudy Guede for multiple burglaries and break-ins, Meredith would be alive today.

 

[katy_did]

If Tedeschi had any problem in finding the decree of differing, instead of just getting angry, he could have raised an objection to the questioning, since he spoke before Raffaele Sollecito. But this objection is missing. So because of the lack of this objection, while Amanda refused to speak, the interrogation of Sollecito took instead place, Raffaele made statements and answered the questioning. Only very late, before a court of Assise, the defence raises again the point, as after having realized they don't like Raffaele's statements, now they seek an opportunity to dismiss them.

It seems from Raffaele's appeal that the defence did object to the delay in his being allowed to consult with a lawyer (I'm assuming that since the date of the transcript is 8 November, that must be the Gip interrogation?):

Peraltro, in data 8 novembre 2007, in sede di interrogatorio di garanzia, è stata tempestivamente eccepita dal difensore la nullità dello stesso interrogatorio per violazione del diritto di difesa, attesa l’illegittimità del divieto di colloquio.

Si riportano di seguito alcuni brani della trascrizione dell’interrogatorio di garanzia dell’8 novembre 2007 (p. 5):

“Avvocato: (…) Io preliminarmente, prima di dar seguito all'interrogatorio volevo eccepire la nullità ai sensi dell'art. 104, comma terzo del codice di procedura penale in quanto è stata stato leso il diritto di difesa relativamente alle possibilità di colloquiare e conferire con il proprio cliente (...).

It seems that the defence objection was rejected by the Judge on the grounds that the P.M. has the right to delay the meeting with a lawyer up until the accused is brought before the Court (Judge: "nel caso di specie, il P.M. ha il potere di impedire il colloquio con il difensore da parte dell'Indagato"). But of course, this only applies where the appropriate decree of deferral is produced and filed (the Judge assumed it had been, despite not having seen it) and that never happened in this case.

The Judge didn't dismiss the defence objection on the grounds that it wasn't valid because 'immediate' means within 48 hours; he dismissed it because the PM has the right to delay the meeting (with the appropriate decree, which here apparently didn't exist).

I can appreciate what you're saying earlier in your post in that there is no specific rule stating a suspect has to meet with a lawyer before appearing before the Gip. Nonetheless, the fact the right to meet with a lawyer is 'immediate' suggests the purpose is to protect the suspect's rights in all subsequent legal proceedings, which would include the interrogation before the Gip. And I see no evidence here that 'immediate' should be interpreted as 'within 48 hours' as it relates to the suspect's right to confer with a lawyer; rather, I think this is contradicted by both the defence and the judge.

 

[Alt+F4]

Then after releasing Patrick they kept his bar Le Chic closed for months under the preposterous position that it was part of a "crime scene" - forcing Patrick into bankruptcy. No wonder he sued AK for slander - she was the only non-suitproof deep pocket in the vicinity from whom he could hope to recover his loses.

Could you please cite that the bar was considered a crime scene and this forced him into bankruptcy? Thanks.

Why would Patrick think that Amanda had "deep pockets"? She was an undergraduate college student and being over 18 her parents are not required to payout any lawsuit she would lose.

 

[Alt+F4]

Perhaps if Italy incarcerated more people, i.e Rudy Guede for multiple burglaries and break-ins, Meredith would be alive today.

Besides the break-in at the kindergarten, what other burglaries and break-ins did Rudy committ?

 

[Withnail1969]

According to Amanda's trial testimony, the trip was to be in "the morning". It was Mary H. who said she thinks they were sleeping in until mid day to make up for the fact that they were up all night, on the computer. If they had plans for the morning, why stay up all night on the computer?

Why no mention from Rafaelle that he at least, was up for multiple hours on the computer?

Well when I was 20 years old and experimenting with 'jazz cigarettes' at university, 'morning' was a pretty flexible concept. If you have any experience with late teenage or early 20s kids, you know that they are capable of sleeping until ridiculous times in the afternoon, particularly when they have been up smoking the weed all night. So maybe they planned to go to Gubbio, but that was, like, yesterday, man?