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Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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I do wonder where the Kerchers were when Rudy was being tried and convicted. Did Arline address the jury and ask for justice in Meredith's memory? Did they protest the reduction in sentence? Did they push and push for a conviction and for a maximum sentence? Did anybody ask for Rudy to serve six months solitary confinement?

And if not, why not?

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
I do wonder where the Kerchers were when Rudy was being tried and convicted. Did Arline address the jury and ask for justice in Meredith's memory? Did they protest the reduction in sentence? Did they push and push for a conviction and for a maximum sentence? Did anybody ask for Rudy to serve six months solitary confinement?

And if not, why not?

Rolfe.
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What's this solitary confinement business? I thought such things were reserved only for convicted criminals who act up in prison, or for those on a suicide watch. Not in a case like this. I feel really ill now.
 
Rolfe said:
I do wonder where the Kerchers were when Rudy was being tried and convicted. Did Arline address the jury and ask for justice in Meredith's memory? Did they protest the reduction in sentence? Did they push and push for a conviction and for a maximum sentence? Did anybody ask for Rudy to serve six months solitary confinement?

And if not, why not?

Rolfe.
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I think that one of the big problems is that Guede opted for the abbreviated trial process (AKA "fast track"). He was very well-advised to do so, since he was virtually bound to be convicted based on the hand print and his post-murder behaviour alone*, so it was worth him giving up some of his trial rights in return for a lesser sentence.

But one by-product of this abbreviated trial process was that the theatre that is possible in full trials just wasn't applicable in Guede's trials. I'm not sure whether the victim's representatives even had a significant role in Guede's trials. And the upshot of all this was that the Kercher family was always bound to be far more prominent in the full trial process of Knox and Sollecito. It's sad for all concerned (including the Kerchers) that it has worked out this way, because they have focussed most of their attention on two people who actually had nothing to do with Meredith's death. I have little doubt that the Kerchers will feel empty, let down, and deprived when Knox and Sollecito are acquitted on Monday. But they shouldn't be looking towards Knox, Sollecito or their lawyers for explanations: they should be asking their own lawyer and Mignini/Comodi just how and why they were placed in this invidious position in the first place.

* This is just one of many reasons why the pro-guilt argument that goes along the lines of "Well, if the forensics work was so bad in the case of Knox and Sollecito, how come it was just fine in the case of Guede?" is misleading and plain wrong. In addition, it's totally irrelevant to the trial process of Knox and Sollecito: it's up to Guede's lawyers to question the evidence against Guede. Indeed, whether or not Guede is provably guilty of the murders is nothing to do with the trial of Knox and Sollecito. Their trial is explicitly and solely to determine whether Knox and Sollecito were provably guilty of the murder.
 
Ammonitida said:
What's this solitary confinement business? I thought such things were reserved only for convicted criminals who act up in prison, or for those on a suicide watch. Not in a case like this. I feel really ill now.
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The prosecution demanded six months solitary confinement for Amanda and (I think) two months for Raffaele, in addition to life imprisonment. I don't know if Rudy was given any solitary confinement.

Rolfe.
 
Wasn't Rudy's fast track trial closed to public and media, therefore we have no real information on it other than the Micheli report? If so the Kercher's may not have been allowed in either.
 
the solitary thing has always bothered me

Rolfe said:
I do wonder where the Kerchers were when Rudy was being tried and convicted. Did Arline address the jury and ask for justice in Meredith's memory? Did they protest the reduction in sentence? Did they push and push for a conviction and for a maximum sentence? Did anybody ask for Rudy to serve six months solitary confinement?

And if not, why not?

Rolfe.
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Rolfe,

These are all good questions. I have heard from a reliable source that Raffaele spent time in solitary starting around November or December of 2007. I do not know how long he served. The prosecution did not appeal Rudy's mitigation (the reduction in his sentence not related to its being a fast track trial), but there has been debate here whether they could or could not have. I have no reason to believe that they could not have.
 
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Rolfe said:
I do wonder where the Kerchers were when Rudy was being tried and convicted. Did Arline address the jury and ask for justice in Meredith's memory? Did they protest the reduction in sentence? Did they push and push for a conviction and for a maximum sentence? Did anybody ask for Rudy to serve six months solitary confinement? And if not, why not? Rolfe.
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I believe they were in court when Rudy was convicted at his appeal and he apologised for not doing enough to save Meredith, Maresca is quoted as saying,that he had Arline's permission to show the photo's in court,not sure about the part of not asking to have the court cleared first,these photos will appear on the Internet.

Its the Kerchers right to be in court to hear the verdict,but in my opinion the court should not have delayed for two days the release of two innocent defendants if they were not able to be present on Saturday,I hope that Arline does not address the court on Monday and ask the jury to keep Amanda Knox in prison,I think Maresca insinuated today that she will do that. I would see nothing wrong with Arline telling the court about the wonderful girl she lost
 
It's just the misidentification of the shoe-print from the very beginning, the one that was actually matched to Rudy. I have no idea why a contemporary article would still bring up this long-discredited point. Dammit, it was the discrediting of this point that sent them back to the cottage to find the famous bra clasp they just knew had Raffaele's DNA on it even before they picked it up.

Rolfe.
 
Ammonitida said:
www.cnn.com/2011/09/28/justice/italy-knox-evidence/index.html

Sollecito left a shoe print at the crime scene? Or did the author make a small error and was actually referring to the pillow case shoe print that the prosecution wrongly attributed to Knox because it was "small"?
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That's from the first six weeks of the 'investigation.' The police originally 'attributed' Rudy's shoeprints to Raffaele, until it was shown they weren't his, they were Rudy's as the article states. That was sometime in December of '08, thus it was a mistake for CNN to include them, they're no longer being contended.
 
Rolfe said:
It's just the misidentification of the shoe-print from the very beginning, the one that was actually matched to Rudy. I have no idea why a contemporary article would still bring up this long-discredited point. Dammit, it was the discrediting of this point that sent them back to the cottage to find the famous bra clasp they just knew had Raffaele's DNA on it even before they picked it up.

Rolfe.
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I know that regarding the alleged Amanda Knox shoe print, Massei felt that it was inconclusive based on Vinci's work. But what did he conclude about the one attributed to Solliceto?
 
Ammonitida said:
What's this solitary confinement business? I thought such things were reserved only for convicted criminals who act up in prison, or for those on a suicide watch. Not in a case like this. I feel really ill now.
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Yes Ammonitida thats Italy's harshest punishment,Comodi seemed to be regretting the harsher punishments available in other jurisdictions you can bet your bottom dollar that if throwing Amanda knox to the lions in the Colosseum was possible,Manuella Comodi would be demanding it

There is of course an old saying that goes something along the lines of "Be careful of what you wish for others lest it befall yourself" or something like that
 
Rolfe said:
It's bonkers. He's saying, you may think she's innocent, but convict her anyway because if you don't she'll go home.
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It's even odder than that -- basically, even if you decide she's innocent, you need to set aside your decision because another court may decide she's guilty later on, and we need to have her in jail when that happens.

Doesn't that really send a message to those deciding her fate, "your judgment is irrelevant, and you should treat it as such?" :confused:
 
I'm still intrigued by the whole Costagliola thing. I thought London John was fantasising when he said Costagliola was staying out of it, but it's beginning to look as if he was right.

This appeal was supposed to be a completely new do-over with not only a new judicial panel but also a new prosecutorial team. Mignini seems to have managed not just to weasel himself into the new team, entirely improperly, but to be dominating it. He was the one we heard from all the way through. Costagliola has said very little, and what he has said seems mainly to have been formal declarations of the prosecution's case.

So in effect, the defendants have been mauled all over again by exactly the same prosecutor who savaged them in the first-line trial. Same old schtick, really. Why?

We're supposed to believe this is such a complex case, the original prosecutor had to be retained. Because nobody else could get up to speed? That's ridiculous. It's nothing special. Why weren't prosecutors fighting to be assigned this case?

Now look at what happened. Did we get a rational, closely-argued case for guilt? Did we hell. We got the same mad rants, character assassination and frank vilification from the same perpetrator as the first time.

This seems to tell me two things. First, that there isn't a rational, closely-argued case to be made. And second, that they couldn't find anyone else prepared to deliver the mad rants, character assassination and frank vilification apart from Mignini. Costagliola really does seem to be holding himself at a distance from it all. Did he do any ranting or vilification? Not that I heard. And yet that was all the prosecution case consisted of.

I really think there's a rational case to be made that the prosecuting authorities know full well there's no case and Hellman is going to tell them to get on their bikes, and they're just letting Mignini have a last hoorah before he gets disbarred for the Monster of Florence stuff because withdrawing the case would be way too embarrassing for all concerned.

Rolfe. Hoping I'm right.
 
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Rolfe said:
I thought that's what you said. That seems convoluted, but logical. Someone over on PMF was implying, I thought, that if the Supreme Court found fault with the Hellman judgement, that this would automatically and irrevocably reinstate the Massei verdict. Which is nuts.
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Not just PMF -- Mignini said the same thing to reporters a week or so ago, about how the result of the appeal would be dismissed anyway because the defense was past its time limit to request DNA re-examination, so the Supreme Court would restore the guilty verdict from the first trial.

Of course, after today, the notion of one of the prosecutors not knowing the law is not exactly a surprise.
 
Kaosium said:
That's from the first six weeks of the 'investigation.' The police originally 'attributed' Rudy's shoeprints to Raffaele, until it was shown they weren't his, they were Rudy's as the article states. That was sometime in December of '08, thus it was a mistake for CNN to include them, they're no longer being contended.
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Are you sure that this wasn't brought up again today by the prosecution in yet another act of desperation? We've already seen them use the other shoe print in this trial despite the fact that Massei regarded it as inconclusive at best based on Vinci's analysis.
 
Don't know if anyone in the UK just saw the Newsnight segment on the trial. It was very interesting, and was not about the case itself but about the extraordinary misogynistic and satanic rhetoric used to describe Knox (especially by Pacelli, who was quoted extensively). A UK academic and an Italian news correspondent (both female) both agreed that Italy is a highly sexist country, where women are still second-class citizens in most people's eyes, and where women are routinely categorised into the brackets of virgin, whore or she-devil.
 
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