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

[LondonJohn]

"Catnip" on .org writes the following:

Procedurally, one thing does not make sense (yet) to me: if the presumption of innocence applies uintil Cassation's final verdict, and the evidentiary standard is lesser or lighter at the committal hearing than the full "beyond all reasonable doubt" standard of a full trial, how and when can a court pre-empt the final verdict and override the precautionary custody orders? In effect, it is a whim to do so. Until Cassation, there is a reasonable doubt that any lower court's reasoning may be incorrect, or fallacious, or misinformed, or misled. Public policy would dictate prudence, one would imagine.

(S)he is obviously unfamiliar with the jurisprudence arguments applying to preventative custody and the remand of suspects into custody. In brief, the argument is as follows: even though the suspect is still presumed innocent in law (and in ethics), there is clearly a reasonable possibility that the suspect committed the crime with which (s)he has been charged, pending a full examination of the case by a criminal trial in a courtroom. And if the offence with which the suspect has been charged is a serious one, this has certain ramifications: firstly, the very serious nature of the charges themselves mean that conviction would carry a sentence with a long period of custody; secondly, the seriousness of the charges mean that if the suspect was indeed culpable, it would be justifiable to remand the suspect into custody pending the trial process, since the potential protection of the public (against the suspect re-offending in the same or similar way) is judged to outweigh the suspect's right to liberty until convicted; and thirdly, the serious nature of the charges (and the attendant heavy sentence if convicted) might cause the suspect to flee before a trial if (s)he was released on bail, and that preventative pre-trial custody is deemed important to ensure justice ensues - and overrides the right of the suspect to pre-trial liberty.

However, if an authorised criminal court assesses all the evidence and finds for acquittal, then even if the trial process has not yet concluded, jurisprudence dictates that this is easily a sufficient factor to move the scales of balance heavily back in favour of the suspect(s). In other words, the factors which justified preventative custody in the first place - severity of the charges, risk of re-offending, and flight risk - are now minimised by the acquittal verdict of the court, and the right of the suspect(s) to liberty pending the conclusion of the trial process now overrides all the factors pointing to custody. Therefore, it's perfectly correct - legally and ethically - that any suspects acquitted by an accredited criminal court should be released from custody, even if the trial process is not yet complete.

I had thought that this would all have been pretty obvious to most people. Clearly I was wrong, though.

 

[Grinder]

"The authorities proved Knox’s staying at Sollecito’s flat was a iie," is a complete non-sequitor, because the authorities had to prove that they were also at the cottage to make presence or absence at Raffaele's even remotely interesting, and there is no evidence at all that they were ever at the cottage on Nov 1.

To be fair, if it were proven that the morning after the murder the two kids claimed to be at Raffaele's and were in fact seen near the cottage for extended lengths of time that would be a strike against them. It certainly wasn't a non-sequitor in Wendy's list of why she thought they are guilty.

To me Wendy is the worst of the pro-guilt commentators on those shows. It appears she has been reduced to lower level local shows and teaching at a second rate law school.

I believe her bio line used to be former prosecutor and perhaps got her start with OJ or the satanic rite child daycare era.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

nice work if you can get it

It's not clear to me that that would protect Wendy Murphy (or the broadcasting network) from a defamation suit from the Knox legal team.

I don't think that there are enough hours in the day to go after everyone who deserves it. What I want to know is why does anyone give Wendy Murphy a pulpit, especially when she clearly does not know the case?

 

[Grinder]

The rumor was that Maria Cantwell called on her senate colleague John Kerry, who called on his ex-brother-in-law, who happens to be the current ambassador to Italy, and that pressure was applied. I don't have any proof of this, but it would come as no surprise. The problem is that this muddies the narrative and weakens the case for innocence.

From PMF, the mod once again presents in Fox news style completely made up theories denying having the ability to either prove or disprove the contention.

Thanks for not stopping by.

 

[Grinder]

So when anyone declared in July (or so) that the case was "over", there didn't need to be any inside knowledge to be able to confidently make that assertion. Closer to the verdict, it's true to say, I was confident enough to state repeatedly here that I was 100% certain that Knox and Sollecito would be acquitted of murder in Hellmann's court. I was certain in my beliefs because I knew what the court knew, and I therefore knew that - barring malpractice or incompetence of a very serious standard - the court was absolutely bound to acquit. I most certainly didn't have any inside knowledge of the upcoming verdict, and I most certainly hadn't received a shady "tip-off" that "Hellmann has been taken care of - he's ours now"....

What makes you even begin to believe the story of having an email conversation with an insider of the Knox team?

If the person had any correspondence with anybody, it would more likely be Curatolo than Judge Heavey. I very much doubt that "non-internet wannabee" people associated with the case would correspond with any of the PGP.

If someone actually did correspond with the ace "lawyer", then they now have his name and location. If that's the case then the UK defamation laws could come in handy as said "lawyer" has made many a statement against the kids and particular Amanda.

Does anybody have the comment section from Finestein archived? The person in question spent a lot of time saying Amanda perjured herself in the trial. He obviously doesn't understand what perjury is but never-the-less his statements were actionable in the UK.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Murphy made even less sense the second tim I listened

Murphy's contention was that the computer and phone records proved that Knox's contention that she was at Sollecito's flat was a lie. There are no phone records to suggest Knox or Sollecito left the flat; at best the phone records are neutral on that question (and of course show no interaction with Guede).

Likewise even if there were no interactions with the computer, it would not prove that she and Sollecito were not there; it would only fail to give them an alibi. It ignores the undisputed interaction on Raffaele's computer at 9:08 as well as the interaction at 9:26. It ignores the loss of the meta data, such as the access time of Stardust. It ignores Raffaele's appeal, which contends that the screensaver file does show interaction. Other than that, it is OK.

 

[Didaktylos]

...
I'd imagine, for example, that the reason that someone close to the Knox camp might have said something like "it's over" as long ago as July was that even an objective view of the situation at that point would have led to the same conclusion. The Conti-Vecchiotti report had confirmed what many objective commentators had been saying for a very long time about the total farce surrounding the police antics with the knife and bra clasp, and about the wider farce concerning the entire crime scene analysis. Objective commentators also knew that Hellmann's court had already confirmed another thing they long knew to be true: "superwitness" Curatolo was a shambling heroin-abusing wreck who could barely distinguish himself from the Messiah, and whose "evidence" against Knox and Sollecito was not only provably wrong (viz disco buses and students in masks), but was inherently unreliable in almost every way imaginable.
...

My own view (and I've used this metaphor before) is that once the C&V report came out, the prosecution case was like a water buffalo that had been bitten by a Komodo dragon: it might manage to stay on its feet for a while longer, and the death-throes would be prolonged, painful and ugly but it wasn't going to survive.

 

[smkovalinksy]

I don't think that there are enough hours in the day to go after everyone who deserves it. What I want to know is why does anyone give Wendy Murphy a pulpit, especially when she clearly does not know the case?

Because she stirs up outrage, and is a sort of hate-monger and grievance collector, who is passably attractive and intelligent (depending what your standards are ) - all which apparently have an eager audience out there. I guess you could call her a kind of lower-rung, lesser Nancy Grace.

 

[smkovalinksy]

Let's clear this up one more time...

Once again, today on PMF it is being pondered how corruption may have entered into the appellate process and led to the acquittals by Judge Hellmann.

After - wisely - dismissing the idea that compromising pictures of John Kerry may have come in handy, we once again return to the idea that Hellmann is basically a civil judge, with no high profile murder experience.

Question: Was not Hellmann the judge who in fact overturned a somewhat high profile murder case, the case of ____? Can someone recall the name?

Despite the selection of the "independent" experts, surely the weakest link here is the appointment of a judge more familiar with civil cases and utterly unfamiliar with murder cases ? My first question would be "why was Hellman appointed to such a case" ? Then I'd ask why a judge with experience of high profile cases wasn't appointed, and finally try and found out if Hellman was the first judge to be offered this case. I believe I read here that at least one judge rejected the case.......perhaps someone can help here.

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=428&sid=ccd4d371869b625c5f29129abcc86891&start=5100

 

[smkovalinksy]

I found it...

I found the reference to Hellmann's other case; originally posted as a reply to me by Grinder:

From one of their most trusted sources, Andrea Vogt (where are they now?):

"The new judge assigned to Knox's case is no stranger to allegations of judicial error. In fact, he was one of three judges who, in 2000, overturned a controversial conviction in the stabbing murder of Cinzia Bruno, setting free a man who had been jailed for more than seven years.
Bruno's husband, Massimo Pisano, was convicted along with his lover in the stabbing death of Bruno, who was found in 1993 on the banks of the Tiber River, near Rome. He was sentenced to life in prison, a ruling upheld in all three phases of Italian court process, including the Supreme Court.

Then, a "revision" of the case by a three-man court of appeals panel, including Pratillo Hellman, freed Pisano after he had already served seven years, six months and 12 days behind bars.

The Bruno case is, of course, no indicator of how Pratillo Hellman might approach Knox's case. However, it shows a willingness to go against the judicial grain that is likely to please hopeful Knox supporters."

 

[Grinder]

While I have some issues with Hellmann's report, (lost shoe, lunch dishes) it baffles me how PGP can just ignore the huge leaps of Massei and his making up stuff.

Hellmann is criticized for writing the lunch dishes could have been what Raffaele was washing when his father called - so they were the dishes from breakfast or the night before, college dishes used to "soak" overnight at my pad - but when Massei made up the scurrying around the house leaving blood and DNA because the tow truck was there nary a peep from the PGP.

They ignore that if Nara actually heard the scream and people running shortly thereafter, the murder had to take place after the truck left because the car people and the truck driver would have heard the loudest most chilling scream of Nara's life and Massei's TOD puts the truck long gone.

 

[smkovalinksy]

My own view (and I've used this metaphor before) is that once the C&V report came out, the prosecution case was like a water buffalo that had been bitten by a Komodo dragon: it might manage to stay on its feet for a while longer, and the death-throes would be prolonged, painful and ugly but it wasn't going to survive.

I would agree, and that is an apt analogy.

 

[Grinder]

komponisto, once again thank to you and all the translators for giving us a timely and first rate translation. Although I can't verify the accuracy, I can verify that unlike the Massei translation your English version is actually readable English.

I hope that you will be able to make it available as a PDF download.

 

[Grinder]

Wheeeee here we go again from ADMINISTRATOR at PMF:

Anyway, as I have indicated many times before, I have my sources and they have mostly been right. I don't expect any big scoop about the deal that was worked out and about who exactly was involved. And I still think that the decision to go the PR route is a double-edged sword with a cost that never stops. I find that to be a form of punishment.

Perhaps the court considered that four years was enough time behind bars for Knox and Sollecito. This is unfair to Rudy, of course, and probably deeply hurtful to the Kerchers, but Hellmann did not have to face them. They stayed out of his court. The media circus had assembled to hear the acquittal verdict read aloud.

Stilicho, you are free to continue arguing about this, but I see no point in doing so. We are never going to agree and I am never going to share my sources because I can't.

Yes, her "sources" have been so correct, not.

If anybody over there has any sources why would they need to get from Wilkes any of the court documents or case documents.

It's too bad that there isn't a UK for Internet Calunnia charges

 

[Grinder]

There has been much ado about the fact that Hellmann wasn't a criminal judge. As smkovalinksy reminded us (atta-girl and thanks for the props) he had a history of handling at least one big criminal case (probably bigger than any Massei ever did) and IIRC he had been a criminal judge earlier in his career. What I haven't seen discussed is that civil law is much more complicated than criminal albeit the penalties are monetary and not incarceration.

Intellectual proerty law is much more complicated than understanding DNA evidence.

Added note, it is interesting that elsewhere people are criticizing us here for saying that the system in Italy is medieval when those same people are calling this verdict a result of tribalism. I will admit that I think the Catholic religion is more cultish than most and that a country that has religious symbols in public court room is a bit backward, but I never called them tribal.

 

[Grinder]

From PMF:

jfk1191 wrote:
With the knife being destroyed in this trial, I dont have expectations Amanda and Raffaele will be found guilty. I never thought the knife was real, a wrong path the prosecution took. I mean the police investigation lab said there was no blood on it. then they found there was no blood in the crevice and it wasnt cleaned with bleach etc... its over, for that one..imo.


The knife wasn't destroyed at the trial at all. Meredith's DNA was on the blade of the knife and contamination couldn't have occurred in the laboratory or at Sollecito's apartment. Incidentally, try to stick to the facts rather than making things up. The "police investigation lab" never claimed that they had found blood in the crevice or that the knife wasn't cleaned with bleach.

I think JFK meant the knife as evidence was destroyed and why would the fact that the police never found blood or bleach on it be helpful for a guilty verdict?

Does anybody understand why in a lab not set up for LCN DNA and protocols not followed for the tests why there couldn't have been contamination in the lab?

Does anybody have that quote from Novelli where he throws the contamination must be proven people under the bus?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

If we click our heels three times and say, "Contamination is not possible"

From PMF:


I think JFK meant the knife as evidence was destroyed and why would the fact that the police never found blood or bleach on it be helpful for a guilty verdict?

Does anybody understand why in a lab not set up for LCN DNA and protocols not followed for the tests why there couldn't have been contamination in the lab?

Does anybody have that quote from Novelli where he throws the contamination must be proven people under the bus?

Grinder,

I think you are correct with respect to the knife and JFK comments. I am not sure which Novelli comment you mean, but in a review article which he coauthored, he wrote, on page 265: (bolding mine)
“Moreover, because the majority of commercial kits have an optimal amount of input DNA of approximately 0.5-1.0 ng, the results of forensic analysis in theses conditions are below the threshold for reliable interpretation, and several precautions and issues have to be considered to carefully interpret such profiles. Thus in these conditions [less than 100 picograms of DNA] there is a greater probability of artefacts, partial profiles with fewer alleles, contamination, preferential allele amplification, the complete absence of one allele (allele drop-out) in heterozygous loci and the nonspecific generation of extra alleles (allele drop-in) [78,79]." 100 pg of DNA is one cutoff for what constitutes low template DNA.

The argument that there could not have been contamination during collection is bogus. The second person who handled the knife, Gubbiotti (sp.?) had been at the girls' flat previously. The argument that there could not be contamination at the laboratory is just about equally bogus. (1) There have been contradictory reports about when the knife was tested. IIRC correctly, Stefanoni testified initially that it was tested in the midst of other samples, then much later someone claimed that it had been tested six days after other samples. (2) If the six-day lag were real, it might reduce the odds of contamination, but it would not eliminate the possibility entirely. (3) The lack of blood on the knife makes it very unlikely that there was DNA on the knife at the time it was collected. (4) The presence of starch on the knife is hard to reconcile with vigorous cleaning. (5) Negative controls done under identical conditions and reviewed by independent experts in the form of electronic data files would bolster the prosecution's case a little bit. As far as I am aware, we are still waiting for those.

 

[Rolfe]

Thank you also from me to the dedicated translators. I have now read the section on the time of death and noted a couple of interesting points.

Hellmann seems not to have appreciated the significance of the full stomach and empty duodenum. This doesn't even rate a mention, and I suspect this is because, as a lawyer and not a doctor, he couldn't decide between the conflicting interpretations being offered. It may have been a judicious get-out simply to say that the medical evidence was inconclusive, and look at other matters.

I do note, however, that the time he quotes (10.13 pm) is indeed merely an outer limit from the non-medical evidence, not his actual time of death. His inner limit is the time Meredith can be calculated to have returned home, or shortly afterwards. So his findings as they relate to time of death are in fact around 9 to 9.30 (allowing time for the struggle and knowing that she didn't die instantly) at one end, and before 10.13 at the other.

In doing this, he has come to much the same conclusion as everyone else, without using the medical evidence at all. Of course, the earlier time is far more probable from the medical evidence, but the range he gives is rational from someone unsure whether the medical obfuscations from the prosecution side can really be dismissed.

The only thing I'm a bit unclear about is, if there was an aborted call to 901 at 9.58, then a non-connected call to Abbey at 10.01, why does he go as late as 10.13, the time of the aborted internet connection? He seems to have decided that Meredith would have been very unlikely to call 901, then abort the call before the end of the welcome message, and absolutely wouldn't have tried to call Abbey at that time of night, and certainly not without the +44 at the beginning. To me, that says the phone was in the hands of the burglar/attacker before 10 pm, and that he pressed these buttons trying to turn it off or something like that. Hellmann seems to concur. So why doesn't he set the outside end of the ToD at about 9.55? That would seem consistent with his logic. (It also fits better with Rudy's evidence, and although Rudy is obviously a liar it's less likely he would lie about something like that, which he would have reason to think might be independently verifiable.)

I also think the fact that Meredith didn't call home again after 9 pm isn't given as much weight as I would have given it. The aborted call shows she was thinking about calling her mum. Natural filial behaviour would have been to try again in 15 to 20 minutes, once she was in the house and sitting down in comfort, not leave it for an hour. So if she didn't call before 9.30, why not? Add that to the lack of evidence of her having done anything in the way of normal living after she got in, and again it tends to push the estimate towards the early limit rather than the late one.

But then, maybe none of that matters, if he believes that a ToD before 10.13 exonerates the defendants. That's what he's supposed to be deciding, after all.

Rolfe.

 

[Dougm]

There has been much ado about the fact that Hellmann wasn't a criminal judge. As smkovalinksy reminded us (atta-girl and thanks for the props) he had a history of handling at least one big criminal case (probably bigger than any Massei ever did) and IIRC he had been a criminal judge earlier in his career. What I haven't seen discussed is that civil law is much more complicated than criminal albeit the penalties are monetary and not incarceration.

What they forget to mention is that none of that matters anyway. He was selected by the appropriate legal authorities, and his ruling is legally binding (pending SC review of course). I don't recall anyone on the pro-innocence side, despite complete disagreement with Massei's verdict, saying that he should not have been trying the case.

This is more whining because their facts don't win the argument. What are they going to say if the SC approves Hellmann's decision, "the SC judges don't have the right background"? "The SC judges were paid off by the PR Supertanker?".

Come on, people! You can do better than that!

 

[LondonJohn]

Here's a brief outline of the people in the broken-down car opposite the cottage, and the time during which the evidence suggests they must have been there:

These people said that they tried to fix the car by themselves for around 15 minutes, then they gave up and called for breakdown assistance. It's generally agreed that they broke down at 10.30pm. This is corroborated by the testimony of Alessandra Formica (the woman whose boyfriend was barged into by a North African man). She testified that she saw one of the broken-down car's occupants on the telephone at 10.45pm - this was the call to the breakdown service.

Now to the possibly more important question of establishing what time this broken down car was removed from the scene. It's been established that once the call was logged by the control centre of the breakdown service, it took them 20 minutes to assign the pick-up to a particular tow-truck. This means that the tow-truck driver cannot have been alerted to the situation before around 11.05pm. From where he was located at the time of receiving the call, it would have taken him another 15-20 minutes to drive to the location of the breakdown. He therefore cannot have arrived at the breakdown location before 11.20-11.25pm. Everyone agrees that it took 10-15 minutes to hook up the car to the truck and so on, meaning that the broken-down car and its occupants left the scene at some time between 11.30 and 11.40pm.

Therefore, the car and its occupants were very likely present opposite the cottage between around 10.30pm and at least 11.30pm. There are certain verifiable timings (Formica's sighting, the phone call to the breakdown service, the stated length of time to assign the job, the time needed for the driver to get to the broken-down car, the time taken for the car to be assesses and hooked up to the truck) that tend to support this overall timing. And since the car's occupants were all observational and alert, and the car was parked on a quiet, semi-lit street on the outskirts of town, and it was parked slap-bang opposite the cottage and the entrance to the cottage's driveway, they could be quite sure that a) there was no observable activity (lights, noises) in the cottage for the entire time they were there, and there were also no entrances or exits from the cottage (whose front door was in plain view).