Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[charlatan]

The more interesting thing is that Mignini and Comodi threw Nara Capezzali (and Antonella Monacchia) to the wolves once they realised that the 11.30-11.40pm ToD was totally indefensible once someone took a proper look at stomach/duodenum contents. A pre-10pm ToD makes a complete mockery of the "earwitness" testimony which was seemingly so very significant to both the prosecution and the court in the Massei trial.

In hindsight, giving up any coherent theory of ToD was the single most damaging thing the prosecution did to itself during closing arguments. One of the jurors has already mentioned the confusion over ToD as a reason for acquittal.

 

[Kaosium]

He claimed that the Daily Mail article is false, but (as LondonJohn) pointed out, he has not sued them, and that suggests that they have quotations from him on file.

Of course they do, he was paid 70k Euros for it and they used a translator.

 

[Dougm]

At the time (roughly)Frank Sfarzo talked to him and wrote it up. Damn I wish that slug Mignini hadn't made the Shock go dark, they never restored the most important archives thus I can't link it. What I recall is he felt justified, Frank agreed, but Frank also said he was a changed man, just...not the same guy. The police had him for two weeks while the press was going all 'Foxy Knoxy has a knife!' They probably really did a number on him, reinforced by the people of Perugia no doubt, who'd get up at Midnight to applaud the verdict....

Apparently despite the ubiquitous unrest after this verdict Steve Moore said most of them had changed their minds. I sure hope so.

Ksosium --

At one point when Frank was first being threatened, I saved all of Perugia Shock, and I still have it. So maybe I have that part you are looking for re: Lumumba. Do you know approximately when it might have been? I can look for it.

 

[LondonJohn]

http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/daily-mail-guuilt/

or

http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2011/10/nick-pisa/

Now, here's a very interesting thing:

The Mail's - and Nick Pisa's - stated view on this debacle has consistently been along the following lines: two versions of the story were prepared - one predicated on a guilty verdict, and the other on an acquittal. And the party line is that a stupid staffer at Mail HQ simply pressed the wrong button (possibly upon hearing the guilty verdict for the slander charge, and/or watching the wrong banner come up on Sky News).

If that's true, it implies that the two different stories ("guilty" and "not guilty") were already fully-formed before Hellmann even entered the courtroom. But now let's look at some of the actual detail within the "guilty" story that was erroneously posted:

Amanda Knox looked stunned this evening after she dramatically lost her prison appeal against her murder conviction. ...

As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.

A few feet away Meredith's mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.

Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that 'justice has been done' although they said on a 'human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'.

Most people have focussed on one element of the detail: that Pisa must have invented reactions and quotes if the story was written ahead of the verdict announcement. And quite clearly the direct quote was a total fabrication (although it's possible that Pisa got a "friendly" prosecutor to give him a quote in advance, to be used in the event of guilty verdicts). But what's very interesting to me is this: the descriptions of the courtroom scene in this piece are exactly what did actually happen in the court that evening, after Hellmann started speaking. Knox did indeed sink into her chair sobbing uncontrollably, and her family did indeed hug each other. And the Kerchers did indeed remain motionless.

What's more, Pisa (and the Mail) would have been well aware that the verdict was being televised live in the UK. I therefore find it totally inconceivable that he would have risked inventing the visible reactions of the various protagonists in the courtroom in advance. In other words, it would have been almost impossible for Pisa to have pre-written a piece in which he described the visible reaction of Knox, her family and the Kerchers: he couldn't possibly have risked his "imagination" of their reactions being contradicted by what people could see with their own eyes on live TV.

So I can only come to one conclusion. And I think it has far more serious ramifications for Pisa and the Mail than the idea that two fully-formed stories were just sitting their, waiting for insertion dependent upon the nature of the verdict. It's this:

Pisa (or someone else at the Mail) actually added the courtroom reactions to the "Knox is guilty" article AFTER the verdict was announced.

In other words, I don't think this was a simple "oops, someone pressed the wrong button" mistake. I think that elements of this article - specifically the courtroom reactions - were written after the verdicts were announced.

In fact, my guess on what happened was this: I think that Pisa scoped out both articles in advance. I think he sent copy back to London for the bulk of both articles - one to be used in the event of acquittal, and the other to be used in the event of guilty verdicts. I think he also probably got quotes from a prosecutor and someone on the defence side, to be used in the respective articles. I think that the job of a staffer back at Mail HQ was then twofold: to pick the correct version of the article, and to add some immediate colour to the article based on the live TV pictures.

And I think that when the first verdict was handed down, this staffer immediately decided that the overall verdict was "guilty" (probably reinforced by the erroneous Sky News graphics banner). I think that once the staffer decided it was "guilty", (s)he pulled up the "guilty" version of the article, and immediately began to fill the placeholder part of the article: "insert courtroom reaction here". The staffer was watching pictures of Knox collapsing in tears, of her family hugging, and of the Kerchers staring blankly ahead. These reactions were typed in quickly, and the "send to the website" button was pushed.

 

[Kaosium]

Simply publishing the wrong article would be understandable. I believe Sky made the same mistake.

That's not the problem. The problem is publishing an article with fake quotes and fake descriptions of the scene.

Eh, they might well have been neutral guesses, place-savers, and the quotes legit but pre-obtained. 'What will you say if it's a 'guilty verdict?' He might have been able to change a few words before publishing, who knows, it's not like they were of consequence. It was the innocent one they eventually published, maybe he was putzing around with that to shape it up when the wrong button got pushed?

He just works for them, they set the policy. It's the Mail that's responsible, they bought the articles.

 

[Teddy2007]

That Mail article must have remained up for a while because it shows 184 facebook likes!

 

[Grinder]

They had it only from her phone.
So they had not known it before the questioning.

They asked to see her phone and found the outgoing message and then questioned her about it.

So yes, they knew it before the interrogation.

 

[Steft50]

Oh, it's not mine, I stole it shamelessly and modified it to my liking! I read it originally in....an Agatha Christie novel...


As far as Patrick, to an extent I can kinda get it. He gets hauled out of his home feeding his baby, subjected to an interrogation there's good reason to believe was even more stringent than Amanda's, send him to jail for two weeks and play the same sorts of mindgames with him, and he gets out and immediately hires a lawyer and starts talking to the Mail for boatloads of British pounds.

He got his mad out, but he never quit, it's...the police who did that to Patrick, not the helpless girl in the cage.

But he can't say anything about the police that is remotely critical or he ends up back in jail....at least that seems to be the way they work there.

 

[Grinder]

He claimed that the Daily Mail article is false, but (as LondonJohn) pointed out, he has not sued them, and that suggests that they have quotations from him on file.

And why hasn't Mignini charged calumnia for the honor of the PLE?

 

[Kaosium]

Ksosium --

At one point when Frank was first being threatened, I saved all of Perugia Shock, and I still have it. So maybe I have that part you are looking for re: Lumumba. Do you know approximately when it might have been? I can look for it.

It was pretty early I think, but not directly after the article, maybe a little while after. He didn't update as much in those days. The article was November 25th, 2007.

He might have written it a little later come to think of it, I recall pretty good English and in those days he sometimes posted in Italian and what looks like Google Translate. I wonder if Peg Ganong helped him with that one? Go back to the very first pages of TJMK if you want to know what I mean--and why she smears him to this day. It looks to me like he decided to tell her to take her manipulative ways and stick them where the sun don't shine...go Frank!

 

[Dougm]

It was pretty early I think, but not directly after the article, maybe a little while after. He didn't update as much in those days. The article was November 25th, 2007.

He might have written it a little later come to think of it, I recall pretty good English and in those days he sometimes posted in Italian and what looks like Google Translate. I wonder if Peg Ganong helped him with that one? Go back to the very first pages of TJMK if you want to know what I mean--and why she smears him to this day. It looks to me like he decided to tell her to take her manipulative ways and stick them where the sun don't shine...go Frank!

I'll look for it. I have back to November 6, 2007.

 

[smkovalinksy]

Latest from Frank Sfarzo at Perugia Shock:

Mignini, te l’avevo detto!

At the beginning we only had a couple of useless pieces of paper (top secret but distributed to the press…).
On the most ridiculous one it was written “I remember confusedly that Patrick killed Meredith”…

Sure… Imagine that a friend comes to your place, rapes and kills your roommate and you remember it “confusedly”…

http://perugiashock.com/

 

[Draca]

I don't recall -- did Katie say she recorded it?

idk. She had a witness though in her interpreter.

 

[Draca]

Well, on a purely academic basis, it was possible for Curatolo's *ahem* "recollection" to be compatible with a pre-10pm ToD. Remember that he claimed to have seen Knox and Sollecito near the basketball court at various times between around 9.30pm and 11.30pm. In his version, therefore, it's *possible* that (e.g.) he saw Knox & Sollecito at 9.30, they then went to the cottage and participated in the murder, and they then returned to the square to keep watch on the cottage. And remember too, that ironically Mignini originally had to reject multiple versions of Toto's story until his end-time stretched out to beyond 11.30pm - allowing Toto to be compatible with the 11.30+ ToD.

The more interesting thing is that Mignini and Comodi threw Nara Capezzali (and Antonella Monacchia) to the wolves once they realised that the 11.30-11.40pm ToD was totally indefensible once someone took a proper look at stomach/duodenum contents. A pre-10pm ToD makes a complete mockery of the "earwitness" testimony which was seemingly so very significant to both the prosecution and the court in the Massei trial. And at this point, it's worth repeating - for posterity - the priceless reasoning of Massei in relation to Capezzali's credibility:


(Massei, p96, English trans)


I hope that Massei is thoroughly ashamed of himself when he reads this paragraph back in the light of Hellmann's court's ruling. And that's only one of many appalling errors of reason and logic made in Massei's court. I hope - for his sake and the sake of criminal justice in Perugia - that Massei's conduct in the first trial does not now go unaddressed by higher powers.

"various times between around 9.30pm and 11.30pm." Thanks, that makes more sense. I was thinking that it was a solid time, but if it was various times it *possible* that they left the cottage and killed MK all with in about a half an hour.

That Mignini stuck with Toto after being thoroughly discredited as a confused heroin addict, when the clubs were closed, makes little sense except to the little dictator himself. To everyone else keeping Toto just made the prosecution unbelievable and illogical. It was really something how the appeal was largely ignored and all the prosecution arguments were from the 2009 trial. Character assassination and all.

 

[RWVBWL]

At the time (roughly) Frank Sfarzo talked to him and wrote it up. Damn I wish that slug Mignini hadn't made the Shock go dark, they never restored the most important archives thus I can't link it. What I recall is he felt justified, Frank agreed, but Frank also said he was a changed man, just...not the same guy. The police had him for two weeks while the press was going all 'Foxy Knoxy has a knife!' They probably really did a number on him, reinforced by the people of Perugia no doubt, who'd get up at Midnight to applaud the verdict....

Apparently despite the ubiquitous unrest after this verdict Steve Moore said most of them had changed their minds. I sure hope so.

Hi Kaosium,
Here's 2 different ways to research the old Perugia Shock:

http://web.archive.org/web/20101111130443/http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/

+

http://www.docstoc.com/profile/scornflake


Does anyone know how I can also read the forum posts from the early Perugia Shock stories?
Thanks for info,
RW

 

[RoseMontague]

I'm sitting here at my desk, right in the middle of one of the most technologically advance cities in the world, with a 1Gb fibre connection right to my apartment, and in a location, according to the telcos, with fully operational 4G mobile broadband.

My cell phone is turned on. If you send me an SMS right now, I almost certainlywon't get it. The phone even has signal bars, but I won't get the SMS. If I go step on to my balcony, the SMS may come through then. It might even come through if I go to my bathroom (interestingly, more in the center of the building).

I have no problem at all believing Sollecito's phone may have been on all night and he didn't get the SMS until next morning.

ETA: Oh - and I have no idea if I turned the phone off at all yesterday. Whether something is remembered clearly or not is primarily determined by what you were doing at the time of the event in question and how important it was. My brain doesn't bother remembering things like when or if I turned my phone off. Utterly unimportant to me.

Very good point and one made in Raffaele's appeal backed by expert measurement of the coverage in his apartment. Here is the entire section dealing with cell phones, including the SMS reception issue. (English translation katy_did)

 

[RoseMontague]

Latest from Frank Sfarzo at Perugia Shock:

[qimg]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/5qRg8AQrzq9dYUKzURbdBvrBBaaZ2wVjCcrXX7gBtz8qlQASlio_zH3YL41nHUaxd1IVbwUpJB9Y0rYb5s87VWyn3tu3UALsKl2RehRk4HPux0QwwGE[/qimg]

http://perugiashock.com/

Wow, amazing article. I liked this quote:

Today the trio Mignini-Comodi-Maresca, who had brought to court the whole Raffaele’s family and the Puglia network Telenorba because the latter had shown pictures of Meredith’s body, were beaten on the venue, too.

(Yes, the one who showed pictures of slaughtered Meredith is suing others for having showed pictures of slaughtered Meredith).

 

[Dougm]

Here is the post about Patrick from Perugia Shock

Kaosium --

I think this is the post you were looking for from Frank Sfarzo when he talked to Lumumba about the Daily Mail interview. It was from March 3, 2008.

 

[smkovalinksy]

Wow, amazing article. I liked this quote:

Yes, I found that apt! I love Frank's style, the way he will say: He who does this, now does this.

 

[RoseMontague]

Yes, I found that apt! I love Frank's style, the way he will say: He who does this, now does this.

It is interesting they are still pursuing this case despite Maresca's showing those pictures to the guests and reporters in court. It must have something to do with justification. They feel they were justified and not the Sollecito's. I don't get it, maybe there is another explanation.