Continuation Part 4: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[HumanityBlues]

I agree - and I really don't think anyone here has been metaphorically high-fiving anyhow. Everyone commenting here is acutely aware that this was a brutal, tragic and senseless murder of a promising young woman. But similarly most of us are aware that the prosecution of Knox and Sollecito in this case was a malicious abomination. The fact that Hellmann's court appears to have come to an extremely similar conclusion is vindication of our collective position - in the face of aggressive and often unpleasant opposition - but it's no cause for celebration.

Here's the truth: Rudy Guede killed Meredith Kercher. He almost certainly acted alone, and he almost certainly entered the cottage by breaking in through Filomena's window. Knox and Sollecito should never have been criminally prosecuted for the murder, and nor should they have been held in custody for any more than a month or two maximum. And it's highly likely that neither Knox nor Sollecito had anything whatsoever to do with the murder or its aftermath. That is the truth of the matter. And it appears to be Hellmann's court's conclusion as well. This is neither a coincidence nor a cause-effect situation. Hellmann's court came to the same conclusions as most of us here because it's what all the available evidence indicates.

No, people have been metaphorically high fiving. Let's not get things twisted here just for the benefit of looking good. Two innocent people were wrongly convicted and lost four years of their lives. They have been set free. That is cause for celebration. When science is demanded over bad forensics and outright lies, that is cause for celebration. When rationality and actual logic win over emotion, we celebrate and high five.

"The fact that Hellmann's court appears to have come to an extremely similar conclusion is vindication of our collective position - in the face of aggressive and often unpleasant opposition - but it's no cause for celebration."

No, it actually is cause to celebration.

 

[Dougm]

This is something that many of us pointed out repeatedly at the time. Guede's rulings simply had zero relevance to the trial process of Knox and Sollecito. Anyone with any knowledge of law and jurisprudence should have known this. The apparent fact that Mignini and his cohorts tried to argue otherwise - and that various "legal luminaries" among the pro-guilt commentator group tried to do likewise - is mystifying to me and very embarrassing to them.

Indeed. I am not a lawyer, have never studied law (other than business law), and I knew that! How people who purport to be attorneys could have been wrong on such an obvious point is beyond embarrassing, or shows their extreme bias.

Likely both.

 

[smkovalinksy]

I think we all should be muted in our high fives, though. This is still a story of a horrible murder of a true innocent.

I do not think anyone here is "high fiving". I think it is good to see the truth will out; to see that Hellmann was decisive and harsh in his condemnations of the prior treatment of logic and facts in the case.

Of course Kercher was an innocent victim, but not of AK and Sollecito, who were also victimized. Because I hold them as innocent, and wrongfully convicted, I do not equate Knox and Sollecito with Kercher's murder.

 

[katy_did]

Conversely, I think that Knox stands a very good chance of successfully appealing the criminal slander verdict - for reasons that have been articulated here before. Whether she has the stomach for a re-trial at the appeal stage of this charge is debatable though - she may just want the whole thing to end, and to get on with her life.

If the Supreme Court overturns the slander conviction, I think it may be more likely to just quash the conviction and end the case there, rather than send it back to the appeal stage for yet another trial with all the associated time and expense. It'll depend on the grounds though, obviously.

* Small intra-forum joke there, related to another thread

I nearly asked whether you really meant to say that Hellmann's verdict "jives" with our analysis.

 

[LondonJohn]

On the criminal slander charge, Hellmann is of course correct to decouple any culpability on this charge from culpability on the murder (and related) charge. Mignini was always totally incorrect to assert that Knox could only have slandered Lumumba if she herself knew who the real killer was (i.e., according to Mignini, herself and Sollecito).

Hellmann had the intelligence and perspicacity that seemingly was beyond Massei, and correctly reasoned that it's perfectly possible for someone to make a slanderous criminal accusation towards someone without having certain knowledge that the accused person didn't commit the crime. As I think I've written before, suppose that any citizen of Perugia (let's call him Mr A) had noted the manhunt going on in the days after the murder, and had phoned the police to "shop" someone (Mr B) with whom they - for example - had a vendetta. There would be no need for Mr A to have any knowledge of the actual perpetrator in order for him to have committed a criminal slander against Mr B. So in this example, Mr A would be found guilty of criminal slander, but of course would never be charged with the murder.

Having said all that, Hellmann's conclusion on the Lumumba slander is that Knox essentially gave up his name in order to end her own ordeal at the hands of the police, and that this provides the necessary mens rea for the crime. I disagree on this part, and I think that Knox's lawyers could successfully argue improper coercion and implied threat. Furthermore, it's abundantly clear that Knox's defence spent almost no time whatsoever addressing the criminal slander charge in the Hellmann appeal, since the overwhelming objective in that appeal was to gain acquittals on the murder (and associated) charges. And in that respect, Hellmann's report also explicitly gives grist to the mill that the Lumumba slander charge should have been tried separately from the murder-related charges. I think there's every chance of winning a retrial from a Supreme Court appeal, but I'd reiterate that Knox might well decide to just let the whole thing go and move on with her life.

 

[Fine]

This is something that many of us pointed out repeatedly at the time. Guede's rulings simply had zero relevance to the trial process of Knox and Sollecito. Anyone with any knowledge of law and jurisprudence should have known this. The apparent fact that Mignini and his cohorts tried to argue otherwise - and that various "legal luminaries" among the pro-guilt commentator group tried to do likewise - is mystifying to me and very embarrassing to them.

______________________

John,

It ain't an apparent fact. And they don't appear embarrassed, yet. Here's what one of them cohorts, Barbie Nadeau--- in communication with Mignini--- has told us about Hellmann's MOTIVATIONS REPORT.....

"Knox’s lawyers are pleased with Hellmann’s ruling, but it is not the end of the road for Seattle’s most notorious resident. The prosecutor who first won and then lost the convictions has one more chance to appeal, and he told The Daily Beast that he will appeal the decision to Italy’s high court. Hellman’s ruling now sets up a perfect storm between Italy’s multilayered judiciary. Because Italy’s high court already ruled that Guede acted with Knox and Sollecito, they will now have to square the appellate court’s decision when they hear this case later this year." (See: Daily Beast.)

So now, according to Barbie---if Hellmann's decision is appealed---the Supreme Court is required to square their prior confirmation of Rudy's conviction with Hellmann's decision to acquit the lovebirds. But what is there to square? The Supreme Court thought Rudy murdered Meredith in cooperation with the lovebirds. The Supreme Court was wrong about that, as demonstrated by Hellmann's MOTIVATION REPORT. So what? In Rudy's case the Supreme Court also believed, falsely, that Meredith's bra had been cut off. If Hellmann's MOTIVATIONS REPORT accurately states that the bra was ripped off.........will that create another perfect storm within the Italian Judiciary??? Nope.

///

 

[LondonJohn]

Oh, and another "by the way":

The defence lawyers' experiment of climbing the wall under Filomena's window did indeed show how relatively easy such a climb would be to a reasonably athletic young man. The idiots who mock the demonstration climber's "inability" to get himself onto the ledge or inside Filomena's room embarrass themselves by forgetting that the cottage was a sealed crime scene at that point. It would not have been possible to even open the exterior shutters (which IIRC had been sealed shut), far less open the casement window. And since the exterior shutters could not be opened, there would not have been enough room on the exterior windowsill to crouch or sit.

Therefore the entire experiment could not be reproduced, but not because of any physical difficulties of doing so. The video and photos very clearly show that it's fairly easy to get to a position standing on the grate on the lower window, with more than enough leverage on Filomena's sill to be able to pull oneself up to the ledge (provided the exterior shutters have been opened, thus giving adequate sill width for the manoeuvre).

 

[LondonJohn]

Aaand........ Nadeau once more illustrates her ignorance and low intelligence, with a totally misguided and misjudged "argument" on the Supreme Court issue. Terrifically embarrassing once again. My bolding:

Knox’s lawyers are pleased with Hellmann’s ruling, but it is not the end of the road for Seattle’s most notorious resident. The prosecutor who first won and then lost the convictions has one more chance to appeal, and he told The Daily Beast that he will appeal the decision to Italy’s high court. Hellman’s ruling now sets up a perfect storm between Italy’s multilayered judiciary. Because Italy’s high court already ruled that Guede acted with Knox and Sollecito, they will now have to square the appellate court’s decision when they hear this case later this year.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...ial-publishes-reasoning-behind-acquittal.html


Bye bye Barbie! Good luck with those travel and culture pieces though.......

 

[LondonJohn]

So Frank Sfarzo's written an interesting commentary on the Hellmann/Zanetti report. It also reminded me of another aspect of Hellmann's reasoning that confirmed what we've been discussing here for some time: the role of interpreter Anna Donnino. Many of us have long argued that Donnino acted totally inappropriately by recounting a personal anecdote related to so-called "traumatic memory loss", and thereby became an active part of the interrogation process, rather than what she should have been: a strictly passive translator of Knox's words to Italian and the police's words into English. Donnino admitted this freely in Massei's court, yet Massei didn't even seem to notice it! Fortunately, Hellmann's court did notice it. And I think it adds further weight to a the possibility of a successful retrial on the criminal slander charge - should Knox wish to pursue that path.

 

[LondonJohn]

And another thing!

Here's Sfarzo on Hellmann's take on Curatolo's "testimony" (my bolding):

He (Curatolo) always linked the presence of the defendants in the square to the buses that were bringing the students to the discotheques. But it has been ascertained that no discotheque buses were running that night. If small discotheques within the historical center were open, as testified by the cop Napoleoni, that has no importance, since those discotheques, being in town, don’t use buses.

Besides that, he remembers the presence of a crowd of young people, many of them wearing masks. We have to conclude that his testimony should be referred to the night of the 31st and not to the one of November 1st.

So, once again, Hellmann's court could properly sort out the disco bus issue, and was intelligent enough to differentiate between the city-centre discos - which, as he correctly points out, were irrelevant in this context since they never operated shuttle buses - and the large out-of-town discos, which were provably closed on the night of the murder. He therefore concludes - entirely correctly - that there can have been no disco buses in the square on the night of the murder.

And he also makes the correct deduction on the issue of the "people wearing masks". Of course, it's fanciful and ludicrous to suggest that crowds of people would have been wandering round Perugia on the night of the murder in masks and costumes. The night of the murder was the night of a solemn family-oriented religious holiday, and most young people were involved in family meals. The only conceivable night on which there would have been crowds of people wearing masks would have been Halloween - i.e. the night before the murder. This of course also makes a mockery of "on the spot reporter" Stewart Home's total crock (borne, I assume, of blind bias and perhaps a need to please) that there would indeed have been lots of people milling around in costumes and masks on 1st November. Laughable.

 

[smkovalinksy]

Remarks from Hellmann re Knox's behavior

Glad to see these many aspects covered, as they now stand on record by this court Judge's motivation remarks:

Hellmann also ridiculed the prosecution's efforts to demonize the 24-year-old Knox because she bought thong underwear days after the murder instead of more modest apparel, calling it "a garment in style and widely worn by young and not-so-young women."

Such a purchase, he wrote, "cannot be considered a show of an insensitive spirit or obscene inclinations."

He also defended Knox's behavior at a police station, where she did cartwheels and cuddled and kissed Sollecito while awaiting questioning.

Such displays could not be construed as evidence of guilt, he wrote, adding: "There are numerous ways ... to react to tragedy. An exchange of tenderness and even an exhibition of gymnastics can be explained by the need to find through gestures and behavior a bit of normality in a tragic situation."

The only elements of the prosecution case that were proven, the judge said, were a charge of slander against Knox, who was convicted of falsely accusing a bar owner of killing Kercher, and the fact that Knox and Sollecito's alibis did not match.

That the alibis were out of synch "is very different" from the prosecutors' claim of false alibis, he wrote.

And as for implicating Diya "Patrick" Lumumba after hours of intense police questioning, Knox did so because "she was convinced that was what the police wanted her to do: to name a guilty person," he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/15/amanda-knox-verdict_n_1150932.html

 

[Rolfe]

Maresca can't appeal the criminal verdict. In the criminal case, he is merely representing the victim (or, more accurately, the victim's family). He is a direct plaintiff in the civil case, but that's not appealable. The only parties that can appeal the criminal verdicts are the prosecution and the defence.

And yet Maresca is being reported as saying that he's actively engaged in writing the appeal to the Supreme Court right now. As I understand the legality of this, I don't see how he is allowed to appeal, if Costaglioli doesn't. And I have a crawling suspicion that Costaglioli is not going to appeal. That the only appeal likely to go forward is Dalla Vedova (mmmmm.....) appealling the calunnia conviction.

Rolfe.

 

[smkovalinksy]

Part of Hellmann's motivational report translated from Italian, by pmf---the calumnia charge:

According to the hypothesis of the prosecution, Amanda Knox, already exhausted from the long interrogation, and above all demoralized by having learned from the people interrogating her that Raffaele Sollecito had, as it were, abandoned her to her destiny, denying the alibi that he had offered her up to then (having spent the whole night together in Sollecito’s house), supposedly resorted to a final defense effort, representing more or less what actually happened in the house at via della Pergola, but substituting Patrick Lumumba for Rudy Guede in the role of protagonist: “one black for another”, to quote the PM.

This Court does not share the hypothesis of the prosecution.

In order to evaluate the real meaning of the “spontaneous” declarations and the memorandum written almost immediately afterwards, it is important to take account of the context in which the former were given and the latter was written.

Edited by Gaspode: 

Snipped for compliance with rule 4.

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=428&start=4000

 

[Draca]

Andrea wrote, "While her most avid supporters have been busy pursuing writing and speaking engagements about the fight for her release, she has not given a single public interview, choosing instead to keep a low profile."

I know that Bruce Fisher has a new book out, but speaking engagements? I am not sure to whom she refers.

Possibly Greg Hampikian.

 

[bookworm]

Wasn't Rudy's trial much, much sooner than Amanda and Rafffaele's? It seems to me that when Rudy trial went on alot of evidence was presented that was discounted and proved false by the time A&R's trial came along. If that's the case, then how could the Supreme Court even uphold that there were more than one killer? That decision was based upon faulty evidence. Is this correct? It's what seems pretty obvious to me.

 

[Freddy]

[A]fter all Rudy Guede knew Meredith even less well, and he murdered her.

You hit the nail on the head right there. The calunnia verdict was not defended in a way that suggests Hellmann agrees with the conclusion.

The thing that gets me is this: if it was so obvious that Lumumba could not have done it, what does that say about the Perugian police?

 

[RandyN]

An interesting development.........

"Raphael went to Perugia recently to deposit a crucifix and pray in front of the house of the crime." (See: HERE.)

Is Mignini now investigating, hoping to charge Raffaele with trespassing too?


///

Ahhh do you mean Raffaele?

 

[RandyN]

The only person with the authority to appeal the acquittal for murder is the chief prosecutor, Giancarlo Costagliola. Today he preferred not to comment. HERE.

///

So said Mignini to the masses...

I think we now have Mignini trying to goose step his way out of the mess he created. Mignini stated yesterday that it is up to the chief prosecutor but that may be the other guy who heads up the whole sheeee bang. Remember he made an appearance and stated his full confidence in the Perugia prosecution section. The name is avoiding me at the moment.

Its over guys and girls..... Now let the wrongful arrest and incarceration and slander and lying to the court to illegally arrest and detain law suits begin against Italy, Mignini, Flying Squad, Giobbi, Stefanoni, and all the rest of the lying liars.....

Payback days are ahead.

 

[snook1]

Edited by Gaspode: 

Edited for moderated thread.

Anyway, from what I've seen, Hellmann did a really great job. He, as many of you already popinted that out, destroyed the prosecution's case and Massei's report.

I'm waiting for the translated final version and it will be a good read! I guess there's no chance for a christmas release, correct?

Also, I'm waiting for Amanda's comments or interviews, but most probably she won't speak before The Supreme Court's decision or until the time passes for prosecution to fill an appeal. I do wonder if they will appeal. This case is so over. Hellmann really left no doubt whatsoever.

Plus, Raffaele is "more than happy" with the report.

 

[LondonJohn]

And yet Maresca is being reported as saying that he's actively engaged in writing the appeal to the Supreme Court right now. As I understand the legality of this, I don't see how he is allowed to appeal, if Costaglioli doesn't. And I have a crawling suspicion that Costaglioli is not going to appeal. That the only appeal likely to go forward is Dalla Vedova (mmmmm.....) appealling the calunnia conviction.

Rolfe.

Easy tiger!

I might be wrong, but I believe the only prosecutor with the authority to lodge a Supreme Court appeal on this case is the Umbria Attorney General, Giovanni Golati. But in any case, Maresca is (to my knowledge) in no position to launch an appeal. I think that Maresca might be performing his usual "arrogant self-righteous bluster" tricks...