A UK solicitor has tried desperately to rationalise Comodi's incredible comments about court bias, as reported by Nick Pisa. The solicitor has tried to reason that Comodi was very specifically only referring to a denial of the prosecution's request to review the DNA evidence with an "re-re-test", when she made the damning comment: "The judge and his assistant are clearly against us".
Now, the solicitor bases his bogus opinion on a few things. Firstly, he accuses Pisa of chopping and repasting Comodi's remarks. Strangely, one of the apparent "reasons" the solicitor uses to support this bogus claim is a grammatical one: he claims that two different parts of Comodi's statement have been incorrectly jammed together because of a "dropped paragraph". Now, I don't know where this solicitor went to primary school. but it's fairly basic knowledge of English grammar that if you are writing a direct quotation which includes paragraph spacing, you repeat the quotation mark at the beginning of the new para, but don't put a quotation mark at the end of the preceding para. So Pisa's quote of Comodi's statement is actually correct as written if she spoke (or wrote) the two adjoining paragraphs that he's quoting here:
There is no grammatical requirement for a quotation mark at the end of Comodi's first paragraph, but the quotation mark is correctly inserted at the start of the second para. And ironically, the only scenario in which it would be correct to put a quotation mark at the end of the first para would be if the two paragraphs were not contiguous in the original statement. So we can in fact conclude that the first para and the second para were linked together in Comodi's original statement.
So, grammatical difficulties aside, the solicitor also uses another bogus and wholly invented "argument" to try to show that Comodi was only narrowly referring to the DNA retest when she talked about the judges being against the prosecutors. Some of it seems to be an argument from incredulity: the solicitor can't see how Comodi would be so stupid as to make a sweeping remark about court bias (I can though). And the solicitor's "argument" is essentially destroyed by two things: firstly, these comments were made before the prosecutors had even requested a re-test; and secondly, this is another part of Comodi as quoted by Pisa:
Here, Comodi is clearly saying that she's "not confident" that the forthcoming prosecution request for a re-test will be granted by the court. She doesn't say that the request definitely won't be granted in her opinion. And it's also then clear that she is justifying her opinion of "low confidence" in the granting of the prosecution request by stating that "it's very obvious this time that they (the judges) are against us". It's perfectly clear to any objective observer that "this time" means "this appeal trial", and not "the issue of the DNA re-test". After all, if it meant the latter, then this half of her sentence would be totally incompatible with the first half of her sentence in which Comodi expresses "low confidence" in the outcome, rather than the outcome being "very obvious".
Damn you're good!
It never would have occurred to me there was any need for separate paragraphs in the first place, Comodi's statements seem to better fit in one anyway. If one goes chopping paragraphs (or long-winded sentences) up as far as I'm concerned they better put in an ellipse (...) and do it only for clarity; if they dare change the substance then I know they're
lying, they're
guilty! 
Incidentally, what does one do when a quoted piece starts or ends with a quote? I mean if you're actually going to play by the rules and use double-quote marks (") and not cheat like I do? So if I wanted to start a quote of someone else quoting Shakespeare or something, how does that work? I think it has something to do with a single quote mark (') around the whole thing? Like start it '"Shame, and eternal shame, nothing but shame!" exclaimed the Italian prosecutor.' Is that how it would work, with the single quote at the end too? Or is it the the other way around, with the Shakespeare in single quotes and my quoting of the passage in double quotes?
So unfortunately the solicitor has failed badly in a misguided and biased attempt to interpret Comodi's accusations of court bias in a far narrower and less-damaging (to Comodi and the prosecution) way. It's clear as day that Comodi's remarks were intended to suggest that Hellmann and the other judges were biased against the prosecution in the trial in general. And I for one look forward to her being seriously reprimanded for her ill-chosen remarks, together with a likely removal from the case. Shame, huh?
"Shame, and eternal shame, nothing but shame!"
What's most interesting to me is how she said
"they"--the plural there is intriguing. I wonder if that means Hellmann and his little helper only, or the entirety of the laity as well in the other one? In other words she might think the 'jury is against them?' Either way they damn well ought to be against her, think of what they had to endure, another quote from Pisa's
Mail piece:
Comodi said: 'Aviello was a key witness for the defence in this appeal but he has now contacted me to retract everything he said so it is only right that we ask for him to be called back so he can testify again.'
This lady is
crazy! A 'key witness?' He was a joke, and she was the punchline! We went from his entirely worthless testimony, to the 'revelation' of the sex-change conspiracy, by way of the one jealous of his prison job who saw conspiracies everywhere, through to Luxxor the famed transexual, and somehow Aviello wanted to involve Alessi, which is what he'd probably testify to, which is silly because they're in separate prisons and their testimony was unrelated.
So Comodi's 'complaints' amount to not liking the Judge's experts, who said what everyone could see with their own damn eyes, and not getting to parade forward every loon in an Italian prison to try to 'implicate' the Ministry of Justice defense attorney in a plot of entirely worthless testimony for a sex change.
Yeah, I'd say
this pretty much sums it up.
