Is it? Are you talking about an American appeal where matters of law are usually the issue and not the findings of fact by the first trial?
Or are you talking about the Italian system where the appeals trial almost constitutes a new trial? And if you are talking about an Italian appeal could you give us some feel about other trials that you based your conclusion on? And how does the weakening of the prosecutor's case in this trial compare with the other cases your comment was based on?
It's weird: nearly the entire media community is misrepresenting the mechanism of the "appeal" in the sense of its function here. The appeal trial in fact is not at all about "upholding" or "overturning" the verdict of the Massei trial. It is an entirely new trial, which pays no heed to the arguments, deliberations or verdicts that have gone before. Hellmann's court is categorically
not making an assessment of the verdicts handed down by Massei's court. Instead, Hellmann's court is looking at the case entirely afresh (albeit using evidence/testimony from other trials as part of its fact base), with entirely new arguments from all parties and an entirely new deliberation and verdict.
I can't figure out who among the English-speaking media community realise what the appeal trial really means, but are lazily choosing to employ a convenient (but misleading) shorthand of "uphold" and "overturn". I sadly suspect that a fair proportion of media personnel covering this case still can't think beyond the UK/US meaning of "appeal"*, and that this ignorance is colouring their reporting.
On a slightly unrelated topic, as others have observed, since it's prosecution arguments today and tomorrow, the media output from Perugia is very likely to be dominated by prosecution talking points. This has to be borne in mind when analysing the coverage. I see that Costagliola - as predicted - has kicked off the prosecution's closing argument. I wonder if Comodi is in court today.........
* In the US/UK system, an appeal does indeed examine the process and verdict of the previous trial, and ultimately issues an opinion on whether the verdict in the previous trial was safe or unsafe. Furthermore, the burden rests on the appellant (i.e. the convicted person) to convince the appeal judges either that there were significant procedural/law issues in the previous trial that led to conviction, or that significant new evidence has come to light which renders the first court's conviction in doubt. None of this is the case in Italian appeal trials such as Knox's/Sollecito's current trial. The prosecution has to prove its case from scratch once again, and the burden of proof is entirely upon the prosecutors (and court) to prove guilt beyond all doubt based in human reason.
