Continuation Part 5: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[anglolawyer]

Ok. Fair enough. However, I have a lifestyle issue with being fair to Machiavelli!

That's a joke people!!!!! This is the part where you're supposed to laugh!

But what it looks like is the SC has bought this argument of Galati's:

Toto saw A and R.
He either saw them on Oct 31 or Nov 01.
We know it wasn't Oct 31 because we know where they were that night and it wasn't Piazza Grimana
Therefore, he saw them on Nov 01

The worse the better.

 

[Methos]

His testimony is sound and consistent and shouldn't be diminished because of getting a date wrong.

I made that point because PG posters project too much into typos made by PI posters. Not getting her family name right, or mistyping her name is violating her memory for them. PI posters have to check every word they post at least twice...

 

[Grinder]

I made that point because PG posters project too much into typos made by PI posters. Not getting her family name right, or mistyping her name is violating her memory for them. PI posters have to check every word they post at least twice...

Well I was just poking fun at the ILE that believes Curatolo's testimony has value.

I hope Hellmann recorded Curatolo explaining that his being on heroin didn't affect his testimony because heroin doesn't make one hallucinate. One would hope that the Florentine court will allow experts on the effects of long term heroin use and the effects while being on it. Someone like NancyS could make accepting his word look like a joke.

 

[Methos]

Well I was just poking fun at the ILE that believes Curatolo's testimony has value.

I hope Hellmann recorded Curatolo explaining that his being on heroin didn't affect his testimony because heroin doesn't make one hallucinate. One would hope that the Florentine court will allow experts on the effects of long term heroin use and the effects while being on it. Someone like NancyS could make accepting his word look like a joke.

Sorry, I was reporting that Machiavelli's epic report on the supreme court verdict at TJMK starts with a typo. The typo itself isn't bothering me.
What is bothering me is that PI people get reprimanded for mistyping Meredith Kercher's first or family name while some PG posters aren't able to type "Sollecito"... just my 0.02 Euros

 

[Bill Williams]

But what it looks like is the SC has bought this argument of Galati's:

Toto saw A and R.
He either saw them on Oct 31 or Nov 01.
We know it wasn't Oct 31 because we know where they were that night and it wasn't Piazza Grimana
Therefore, he saw them on Nov 01

The worse the better.

Ok - I'm doing this from memory so don't take my word for it.

wasn't Curatolo corrected when he said Oct 31? If so this is another example of it being the PLE who first brought Nov 1 into the room for Curatolo to confusedly admit to. Oh wait, isn't that what they did to Knox at interrogation? If true, it's a wonder they bothered calling the actual witnesses. Why not just let PLE enter their evidence for them, corrections and all!

 

[Grinder]

Ok - I'm doing this from memory so don't take my word for it.

wasn't Curatolo corrected when he said Oct 31? If so this is another example of it being the PLE who first brought Nov 1 into the room for Curatolo to confusedly admit to. Oh wait, isn't that what they did to Knox at interrogation? If true, it's a wonder they bothered calling the actual witnesses. Why not just let PLE enter their evidence for them, corrections and all!

Curatolo made the same mistakes with days that Raf made. He originally reported seeing the kids to a reporter. His testimony was rehabilitated in court with Mignini's help.

The most important issue is that he didn't come forward shortly after the murder and in fact denied seeing anything significant when questioned by the police.

Being on heroin at the time combined with the other issues makes his testimony worthless for any reasonable person.

As has been pointed out numerous times, the sightings tend to make their involvement impossible as he has them there from 9:30 to 11:30 or later. I would like to know if the crack defense lawyers ever asked what times he looked their way and they weren't there.

 

[JREF2010]

But what it looks like is the SC has bought this argument of Galati's:

Toto saw A and R.
He either saw them on Oct 31 or Nov 01.
We know it wasn't Oct 31 because we know where they were that night and it wasn't Piazza Grimana
Therefore, he saw them on Nov 01

The worse the better.

Toto probably saw A&R on the newstands and then had a heroin dream.

 

[Grinder]

They didn't carry out a test on the remaining DNA on the knife, they didn't open up the handle of the knife and they weren't able to carry out any tests on the bra clasp.

This is a comment by TM criticizing C&V's work. Damn those incompetents for not opening the knife handle or testing the bra clasp.

 

[Grinder]

Yummi wrote:The Cassazione exposed C & V arguments as void, they don' carry any weight and the witness are worth no credibility given the illogicality of their testimonies and arguments; in fact - as I always said myself - the C & V report contains no useful information, it is a parsing or a photocopy of the defensive expert reports, arguments and interpretations which were already unfold and assessed in the first trial.

And the SC ruling is a photocopy of Galati.

 

[Bill Williams]

Curatolo made the same mistakes with days that Raf made. He originally reported seeing the kids to a reporter. His testimony was rehabilitated in court with Mignini's help.

The most important issue is that he didn't come forward shortly after the murder and in fact denied seeing anything significant when questioned by the police.

Being on heroin at the time combined with the other issues makes his testimony worthless for any reasonable person.

As has been pointed out numerous times, the sightings tend to make their involvement impossible as he has them there from 9:30 to 11:30 or later. I would like to know if the crack defense lawyers ever asked what times he looked their way and they weren't there.

The only difference between the way Raffaele's misremembering was handled and the way Curatolo's misremembering was handled is that the PLE was more than willing to help Mr. Curatolo remember.

That was something I thought I'd remembered reading about him at testimony.

When Raffaele was struggling, he asked to see a calendar. He was refused. The point is that at interrogation the intention is to befuddle, threaten and misinform, all with the goal of confession.

The goal with Mr. Curatolo is different.... it is to help him remember that it could have been Nov 1. And when, as AngLaw deduces, Oct 31 is ruled out, the only thing remaining must be true!

Nov 1 it is.

I also see that Machiavelli is weighing in on why the C&V report is illegal. He also has weighed in in the past about why C&V will be charged with a crime, something that Barbie Nadeau herself says is part of the rumour mill in Perugia.

For Machiavelli, Hellmann was paid off by the Masons, and he even knows the amount. And Conti and Vecchiotti were paid off by the defence. I am not sure if Machiavelli knows the amount.

Good for him. All this with the Sex-Game-Gone Wrong scenario being back in play makes the whole thing start to make sense.

 

[JREF2010]

in this case I wouldnt be surprised if Napoleoni went back to the cottage this weekend and found something else against Raffaele and Amanda.. and the courts accepted it.

geeez what a kangaroo court...

 

[Bill Williams]

in this case I wouldnt be surprised if Napoleoni went back to the cottage this weekend and found something else against Raffaele and Amanda.. and the courts accepted it.

geeez what a kangaroo court...

They had better find SOMETHING that was not in either of the first two trials. Maybe the new Florence court will simply dispense with the de novo appeals trial all together and write a motivations report which is a cut and paste of what Harry Rag/The Machine has been cutting and pasting since 2008.

Maybe Machiavelli can write the new SC motivations report in 2015. That would be fair. Besides it sounds like he's already written it..... again: why bother with the trial? Machine-Machiavelli have it all figured out right now without any evidence at all.

And if you believe the UK's "The Mirror", Raffaele's not even allowed to raise money to defend himself. Yessiree bob, if someone defends himself that's proof right there that he's guilty.

Italy.

 

[anglolawyer]

in this case I wouldnt be surprised if Napoleoni went back to the cottage this weekend and found something else against Raffaele and Amanda.. and the courts accepted it.

geeez what a kangaroo court...

Another body in the closet, perhaps. Easy to miss.

 

[toto]

From the pgp org website:

Fiona wrote:Yummi, from reading your excellent summary at TJMK I conclude that Cassation are essentially saying that the judgement was "perverse" in the formal sense used in a uk court (that is either that a jury ignored the direction of the judge, which clearly cannot happen in the Italian system; or that the verdict was entirely against the weight of the evidence, which seems to be what they are saying). Would that be correct? The two systems do not map perfectly but that seems to be the closest I can come to understanding the Cassation motivation.

If that is so then it seems to me that all the evidence is still in play, including the C&V report: the question hinges on the fact that no reasonable court, on that evidence, could have come to the conclusion Hellman et al reached, in the way that they did. That we know how they reached it is one crucial difference between the Italian system and our own: but that makes the finding stronger so far as I can see.

What Cassation is looking for is a logical reasoning to support their verdict and that is what is missing. Is that right?

Yummi:
I think it's essentially correct. Even if the systems don't coincide, the meat is about the same: the verdict was perverse, meaning not that it was right or wrong, but that it was perverse in the technical sense that is, against the law and manifestly against the correct processing of the evidence, because of how it was done.

The whole evidence set is in play, but there is no logical reason nor justification for that evidence set to be processed the way Hellmann-Zanetti did, and it cannot be used that way to support that conclusions.​

I still have the hope a thorough presentation of the facts and a careful (and no doubt respectful) dismantling of the matrix that currently binds the "clues " together can lead to a wholly logically reasoned argument for acquittal. The new judge would no doubt have to write in very formal Italian legalese to please Machiavelli and the SC but I remain quite optimistic.

 

[Diocletus]

Fine. But it's not much later. They picked it up on 06 Nov and to those like Grinder who don't think they framed anybody before they swapped black persons I would like to know how they square that.

There was splenty of opportunity for the knife to be compromised after collection and before getting to the lab. It was sent to PLE Gubbotti, who I think was cataloguing a lot of the evidence from the crime scene (the stuff that Stefanoni took back with her to the lab on the 5th seems to be from downstairs, outside, and the corpse--I think that the rest of the stuff may have stayed behind, with Gubbotti). During this process, Gubbiotti unsealed and repackaged the knife in a box that was taped together. On 11/7, he finished his report of all of the evidence, and I'm guessing that at that time all of the evidence that he had was packed up and sent to the crime lab in Rome. The knife could thus have been packaged together with a lot of other evidence items, most of which were from Kercher's room and soaked with her blood. It seems that nothing could be done with it at first, because Knox and Sollecito had formally become suspects, so the knife was still sitting around the lab, presumably with all of the bloody evidence. Sollecito's consultant appears to show up at the lab on 11/12, and that is when testing starts up again. It appears that the knife was logged into the lab (assigned lab sample numbers) on 11/13.

 

[NancyS]

I hope Hellmann recorded Curatolo explaining that his being on heroin didn't affect his testimony because heroin doesn't make one hallucinate. One would hope that the Florentine court will allow experts on the effects of long term heroin use and the effects while being on it. Someone like NancyS could make accepting his word look like a joke.

Being an unreliable witness is nothing to do with him being so 'out of it' that he wouldn't recognise anything. If he had come forward the next day and reported seeing two young people hanging around the square, it would have been credible. Coming forward a year after with detailed information just isn't believable.

Heroin isn't an hallucinagenic drug in the same way as LSD, however, it can clearly affect your perception of the world and auditory and visual hallucinations are not uncommon. It is possible for opiate dependent people to hold down jobs and to act fairly normally whilst on heroin - and many long term users take it to just feel normal rather than to get any high. However, the majority of users lead incredibly chaotic lives that are driven by finding the money to allow themselves to keep taking drugs - and lurching between withdrawal symptoms and taking too much. If they don't have enough heroin, they will usually use alcohol, cannabis or benzodiazepines to help control withdrawal states - and often use cocaine/crack to get themselves up again. Timekeeping is always appalling and patients frequently miss medical appointments, court appearances and are always unreliable and always get their days confused. The one thing heroin definitely won't do is improve your observational skills - and will definitely not give you the amazing observational skills that Curatolo claims to have.

Curatolo was obviously not a high functioning heroin user - and it just isn't believable that of all the thousands of young students in Perugia, he was able to recognise Amanda and Raffaele from a distance and in the dark - even though they have no obviously identifiable features and he had never met or spoken to them before - and then remember all the details for days afterwards (he wouldn't have seen their pictures in the paper for another 5-days) and then not come forward with this information for another year and is then confused about the day he saw them. In what crazy world is this a reliable witness?

 

[katy_did]

I still have the hope a thorough presentation of the facts and a careful (and no doubt respectful) dismantling of the matrix that currently binds the "clues " together can lead to a wholly logically reasoned argument for acquittal. The new judge would no doubt have to write in very formal Italian legalese to please Machiavelli and the SC but I remain quite optimistic.

After reading the report, I have to agree. What jumped out at me most is that the SC judges obviously don't have a good grasp of the evidence - something which is understandable (they're only supposed to rule on application of the law, after all, and doubtless have many other cases to deal with) but is also something which should be obvious to the Florence judges when the intricacies of the case come to be discussed.

Much of their reasoning is also poor, illogical, and/or doesn't consider all the facts. Curatolo is one example: they decide his testimony should be anchored to the "objective" fact that he saw Amanda and Raffaele in the piazza the evening before he saw the scientific police in white coats at the cottage. Here, of course, the proponents of "logic" confuse two "facts", only one of which is certain: that the scientific police were at the cottage on 2nd November (though not at the time Curatolo claims they were). That this happened the day after he saw the couple in the piazza is not a certain fact just because Curatolo said he was really, honestly certain about it, which is what the SC judges would like us to believe.

They don't even address another certain, verifiable fact: that Curatolo linked his sighting of the pair to the arrival and departure of 'disco buses' which the defence showed weren't running that night. And unlike the white coats of the scientific police seen on a different day, this is a fact which links directly to Curatolo's supposed sighting of Amanda and Raffaele. Why should the fact of the scientific police's presence take precedence over the fact that the disco buses Curatolo linked to the sighting weren't running? The SC judges don't say, and in fact don't even address the latter at all.

Interestingly, by the SC's logic, Nara's testimony is discredited: she said she saw newspaper headlines about the murder the morning after she heard the scream, which is surely a verifiable fact to which her testimony should be anchored, and one which means she can't have heard the scream on the night of the murder. It probably won't surprise anyone that the judges' (il)logic is inconsistent, though.

Anyway, generally I'm more optimistic after reading the ruling than I was before. Unlike the SC judges, the Florence judges won't have the luxury of taking a superficial look at the evidence but will have to examine it in depth, where the SC's flawed assumptions (e.g. that the crime scene was handled correctly, something they assume without having seen videos of the evidence collection) should be obvious. As you say, they'll just have to be careful to write appropriately formal Italian legalese...

 

[Grinder]

Thanks for the audition. You're hired.

Being an unreliable witness is nothing to do with him being so 'out of it' that he wouldn't recognise anything. If he had come forward the next day and reported seeing two young people hanging around the square, it would have been credible. Coming forward a year after with detailed information just isn't believable.

Heroin isn't an hallucinagenic drug in the same way as LSD, however, it can clearly affect your perception of the world and auditory and visual hallucinations are not uncommon. It is possible for opiate dependent people to hold down jobs and to act fairly normally whilst on heroin - and many long term users take it to just feel normal rather than to get any high. However, the majority of users lead incredibly chaotic lives that are driven by finding the money to allow themselves to keep taking drugs - and lurching between withdrawal symptoms and taking too much. If they don't have enough heroin, they will usually use alcohol, cannabis or benzodiazepines to help control withdrawal states - and often use cocaine/crack to get themselves up again. Timekeeping is always appalling and patients frequently miss medical appointments, court appearances and are always unreliable and always get their days confused. The one thing heroin definitely won't do is improve your observational skills - and will definitely not give you the amazing observational skills that Curatolo claims to have.

Curatolo was obviously not a high functioning heroin user - and it just isn't believable that of all the thousands of young students in Perugia, he was able to recognise Amanda and Raffaele from a distance and in the dark - even though they have no obviously identifiable features and he had never met or spoken to them before - and then remember all the details for days afterwards (he wouldn't have seen their pictures in the paper for another 5-days) and then not come forward with this information for another year and is then confused about the day he saw them. In what crazy world is this a reliable witness?

 

[Grinder]

Katy - I haven't read the motivation completely, only some parts translated but they apparently said Quintavalle couldn't have known she had blue eyes because the papers didn't show such pictures. Up-thread I posted quotes from articles written in November of 2007 where her blue eyes were discussed. Q had also seen her at an earlier time.

Their reasons for accepting Q seem bogus.

If as the PGP claim in an appeal contamination must be proven and C & V are not accepted this may be a difficult hurdle for extradition if the SC marching orders are followed.

 

[Grinder]

Although the Italian system allows for being found innocent by one trial de novo and then reversed by the appeal level (second instance) or sent back by the SC, it provides for another trial de novo IIUC.

From what I'm reading the SC isn't giving the Florentine court a full de novo trial. If the US were to rule in extradition that they didn't follow their own system or that evidence presented didn't meet reasonable standards that wouldn't set a precedent that no Italian verdicts would be accepted.

The fighting bunny is now contending that such a precedent would be set. This ignores that the process includes safeguards before extradition. Why have hearings and why have the State Department involved if it's automatic?

Why is it that the PGP have such faulty thinking? They in the same vein say that if the knife and bra DNA have problems, no DNA could ever be used.