I think Aviello might have been to 'show up' the Massei Court, and this one backfired in their face as it suggested this was one instance where Massei ruled against the defence and was absolutely right to do so. In Italy there's the 'inquisitorial' search for the truth motif, thus prosecutors and courts are compelled to hear testimony from basically anyone without regard to much of anything in the way of standards. This is how clowns like the olive-throwing guy and Curatolo end up in court, as they're required by law and tradition to hear them out unless they're certain their testimony will be untrue. Therefore Giancarlo Massei should have allowed Aviello to testify, but did not, and now we see he was right to do so.
Alessi and the other two that actually testified is something completely different and under the same procedures of the Italian Courts is something the defense isn't 'responsible' for, and thus wasn't taking a 'risk.' That had to happen under the Court's auspices, elsewise they were failing in their duty to search for the truth. All three of them corroborated that Guede told them Raffaele and Amanda weren't there, which is meaningful testimony any way you look at it, and required for the court to hear, and the defense couldn't have stopped it even if they wanted to. Keep in mind one of those guys was shrouded because the state uses his testimony in other cases to convict criminals, as authorities do with similar characters in both our countries, thus just because they're behind bars doesn't indicate their testimony is meaningless, nor does it reflect on the defendants who have no choice who Rudy talks to.
Hrm. It appears this innocent post of mine attracted some attention...and misunderstandings. Allow me to clarify in my response:
Amazing!!! An intellectual double standard: So, the likes of Bonjiourno and Vanessa Sollecito aren't going to risk their careers and reputations by staging a witness??? However, we have from these same FOAKers the claim that the prosecution, police and prosecution experts are only too happy to risk their reputations and careers by fabricating and staging evidence? Right here, we have brand new FOAKer double standard construct of convenience arbitrarily assigned to the two sides which equates to: The prosecution would not care about risking their reputations and careers (which is a contradiction in itself, since one of the FOAKer claims these past years is that Mignini has been desperately seeking a prosecution in a hunt for glory and to further his career). The defence and defendants' families would never do anything that would risk their careers and reputations. Classic!
First off, I am not a 'FOAKer,' meaning that I'm not a member of the organization 'Friends of Amanda,' however I don't mind being designated so, being as she seems like an awfully nice person once you hose away all the crap people threw at her going on four years now. Unfortunately until about a month ago I couldn't even pass the 'entrance exam' by divining how to navigate their website, being as I figured since the words were in English and all, I must have already been on the 'English' page, and from there I didn't see anything to click on to get to the other content. I could google for it, I could follow links from others, but the enigma of how to get there from the front page eluded me. Thus I am obviously of inferior cognition relative to such exalted luminaries and can answer only to my understanding of the case and not pretend to have been initiated into the deeper mysteries of the legendary 'Gogerty-Marriott/FOA PR Supertanker.'
In response to the above then, all I can say is what I've noted in the past: they
didn't try to frame them, and one of my last lines of resistance to the idea Amanda and Raffaele might actually be innocent is what kept going through my mind as I formally evaluated the 'evidence' against them, notably the bra clasp and knife: 'why didn't they just
frame them? I quite simply didn't realize at the time how easy it was for a corrupt prosecutor to manipulate an Italian Court, thus I figured if he actually wanted to ensure their conviction all the way through the Supreme Court he'd have produced 'evidence' that would at least stand scrutiny, not laughable or downright disingenuous 'evidence' any clown like me on a computer could see was bogus.
Therefore I applied the same standard to them I applied to the defense in this instance, I just didn't realize at the time they didn't do so because they
didn't have to. There's no standards of evidence in Italy outside the prosecutor's oversight and the ruling of a judge who almost always allows whatever the PM produces. If the prosecution says the footprints were made with blood, despite the fact they tested negative for blood and they were caught trying to conceal that, then in an Italian Court it's just their word against the defense, and no one would attempt to gainsay the integrity of an 'incorruptible' prosecutor, being as that's a jail sentence in Italy, thus the defense can do little more than just dispute it as 'evidence.'
By the by, Vanessa Sollecito has no career or reputation to protect, she was thrown out of the carabinieri two years ago!
As has been posted recently to this thread, she has filed suit against them to be reinstated, thus she may yet be an officer of the
Carabinieri in the future. However, even if not, she would still risk jail time as I also noted, and thus were she to attempt to suborn perjury to help save her innocent brother, she'd have done a whole lot better than finding some clown who has been convicted of slander seven or eight times for testimony in court to produce an easily falsifiable story. She was a police officer, she'd do it a whole lot better than that!
The next intellectual double standard. Had Bonjiourno and Vanessa staged the witness, they'd have made sure of the evidence to go with it by planting the knife and keys where Aviello said they were. Before getting to the intellectual double standard, this whole argument is flawed in its very basis. WHAT knife and keys would they have planted? Meredith's keys were missing and all the other sets had been confiscated by the police. Meanwhile, the cottage had had the locks changed and a new set of keys with new tennants living in it. Where the hell were they supposed to get a set of keys that matched the old lock to the cottage to plant in the wall? Where the hell were they to get a knife that matched the victims wounds and was covered in the victim's blood and genetic material? If they couldn't obtain those to plant, then what would have been the point of going to all the trouble of planting keys that didn't match the cottage and a knife that had nothing on it that could be matched to Meredith, in effect, disproving the story of their stooge?
As for the knife, all they needed to do was find a pretty standard knife that would definitely match all the wounds, it was described in Massei, and get ahold of some human blood. The trick here is not to match Meredith's DNA, but see to it no DNA can be found, but the knife would still bear blood traces that could be detected with TMB or another test. It would seem that most guilt proponents ought to know that blood can be detected where DNA is not, being as they regularly pretend that the luminol footprints which tested negative for DNA were still blood, in fact I recall having a conversation on that subject a couple Tuesdays past with someone...
As for the keys I was unaware the lock had been changed, though as I think on it that's a pretty obvious move, however keys can be made from the code itself if you know a locksmith, and a police officer and member of parliament might just have the knowledge and resources to procure a copy. In fact for some locks all a good locksmith needs is a picture of the key. If they couldn't do so, then a key wouldn't have been part of the plan, they'd have come up with something else.
At least if nothing had been found in the wall where he said it was, the idea could be left in the air that perhaps someone had removed them from the wall before the police searched it. That's the obvious illogic out of the way. The double standard: If the defence were to present a stooge with a fake story, they would ensure the evidence was there to back his story up. Yet, for years we've been hearing FOAKer accusations that the police planted and fabricated evidence against the pair. Our argument in response was that if that had been the case, then the police would have made damned sure that there was plenty of Meredith's DNA and blood on the knife blade, instead of a tiny amount that could be labeled contamination by the defence and independent experts. They also would have ensured it was found on Meredith's clothing and in her room. Except in this case, unlike Bonjiourno and Vanessa, the police had access to plenty of the evidence to plant on the blade if they had wanted to. Moreover, the police would have needed it all, since their aim was to build an actual 'case' against the pair. In contrast, Aviello was not put forward to provide an actual counter case, but instead simply to sow confusion.
Actually I agree with all this. However with this caveat: the 'evidence' in this case is still a joke, which is why the independent experts made a mockery of police procedures in this case, not because they were compromised by the FOA. It just so happens, like on so many things, the FOA and IIP analysis was so closely compatible with Conti and Vecchiotti's--just like their report reads much like a revised and extended version of the DNA experts' letter--because IIP and FOA were
right about that. There's this quote I've seen numerous times over the course of this debate that seems to apply, though oddly enough I doubt the one usually responsible for it can see the irony:
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is." - Winston Churchill
It never ceases to amaze me how the FOAKers will make up one arbitrary set of rules of convenience to apply to the prosecution and a completely different set for the defence. Is that their idea of intellectual honesty?
No, this was just a misunderstanding by someone who equivocated my analysis in with those who may disagree with me on details but not on the innocence of Raffaele and Amanda.
Of course, there is a clear and simple reason for these intellectual gymnastics. The FOAKers need to create a world where any suggestion of wrongdoing by the defence can be dismissed out of hand and any outrageous allegation against the prosecution can be made and immediately accepted and incorporated into dogma. It's about not wanting to see or present the world as it really is, but how you desperately want it to be so that it fits your agenda.
Then why is it that actually works the other way around in this debate?
As a final note on the 'sowing of confusion'. This has been the tactic of both the defendants and their defence since day one of this case. 'Confusion' has been their central means of defence. As Charles Mudede said, the innocent seek clarity as that is what will exonerate them, whilst the guilty seek confusion and as much of it as possible, as clarity is their enemy. This is a basic truth.
Raising reasonable doubt doesn't necessarily amount to 'sowing
confusion', especially in this case. Obfuscation has been the tactic of the prosecution from the moment they started in with lies about stories changing, Harry Potter books, blood-soaked bathrooms and a whole litany of attempts to muddy the waters so people couldn't see the truth: The cops arrested three people on mistaken or coincidental information without even having the forensics in, which would reveal that no evidence whatsoever of Amanda, Patrick or Raffaele existed at the scene, but of one entirely different man who's since been tried and convicted through the Supreme Court of Italy.
The case is really that simple when you come down to it.
