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

[Methos]

Honor Bound

Would you mind quoting it, kind sir?

Stepping in ;-)

Because the Italian legal system is almost completely blind to precedent and relies on a tangle of impenetrable codes and procedures, prosecutors and judges have almost boundless freedom to spin their cases into any shape they please and create legal justifications on the fly. Often, they are more interested in constructing compelling narratives than in building up the evidence piece by piece, a task considered too prosaic and painstaking to be really interesting.

...

 

[Bill Williams]

Imagine my surprise with Mary_H’s comment and interestingly no Tsunami of posts for Mary_H, go figure! Essentially that is my position with addition of a motivation document that demonstrates “more digging” as you say.

Don't worry, Coulsdon; I think a lot of people have me on "ignore." Otherwise, they would have avoided that whole exchange about precedent, based on a link I have posted here at least twice:

"'The Cassation is submerged by so many cases that it cannot even ascertain contradictions within the system,' said Davigo, who is now a supreme court judge. He added there was no law of precedent because the judges could not read all the cases."

Raffaele also wrote in his book that there is no law of precedent in Italy. Maybe someone with a Kindle can find it for me; it's near the end.

I find both of you hard to ignore. Imagine the years of therapy I'll need just to get over this.

It may not be right for me, a foreigner, to comment on Italy's byzantine legal system. But one part of that piece Mary_H posted is something I've run into again and again in reading about Italy.....

Italy has 40,000 lawyers specializing in supreme court cases. According to Valerio Spigarelli, head of Italy's top criminal lawyers body, the number in neighboring France, with a similar population, is 25. They are among 240,000 lawyers in Italy, compared to 54,000 in the country next door.

Statistics like this give a glimpse into a chaotic, byzantine legal system which not only reduces citizens to despair and has senior judges tearing out their hair, but acts as a serious disincentive to foreign companies planning to invest and a powerful brake on the euro zone's third economy.

Everything from a simple dispute among tenants of an apartment block to attempts by Prime Minister Mario Monti to revive Italy's stagnant economy are at the mercy of a system that can delay final judgment for many years.

Gloria Allred, someone I do not really like but respect... said this to Piers Morgan on CNN when Morgan asked for some explanation of "what the heck is going on in Italy," when the motivations' report was released in June 2013. Morgan was particularly offended (admitting as such speaking as a friend of John Kercher's) that the Italians had resurrected the sex-game gone wrong theory. To Morgan this was a slap in the face to the real victim here, Meredith - not to mention her grieving family.

Allred made brief comment on her own brushes with business/law in Italy and advised foreigners to stay away when some kinds of traffic violations can have you wound up in expensive trials for years - all to finally be signed off on by the ISC.... not to mention perhaps a dispute among business partners.

She as much as said, stay away until they get a business-friendly system over there.

The one thing I will give Italy is that with the automatic appeal - essentially a do-over of the 1st instance trial - there IS opportunity (eventually) to undo a wrong. In Canada and the US the burden of proof, so I'm told, disappears during appeals here.... there are countless cases of wrongful convictions which take decades to unwrap because once that one jury rules "guilty", the whole system is against you. Appeals of innocence from then on are seen as not admitting to crime, so innocent people rarely get parole.

Italy has that part right, I suppose. It's all well and good to say that RS and AK should never have got to trial in the first place; but then again Nyki Kish in Canada is in jail because of a thought experiment a Justice here (Nordheimer) did, where all he did was simply the evidence until he found reason to convict her - even with no evidence, really, in the simplification.

It just takes years to unwrap bad decisions like Nordheimers, and worse the virtual reversal of burden of proof makes it extremely difficult to prove innocence.

Don't worry CoulsdonUK. I still like you. Then again, since you have successfully paired your position with Mary_H's I pretty well have to like you, because I like her. Well, now that's she's off my "ignore" list.

Ooooops. Who said that!

 

[Supernaut]

"The decision condemning RCS to pay 40 thousands euros damage to the American student Amanda Knox - who was acquitted on appeal of the charge of murdering the young English woman Meredith Kercher - for having published information about her sexual life in the book Amanda e gli altri. Vite perdute intorno al delitto di Perugia written by journalist Fiorenza Sarzanini and published by Bompiani, has been nullified by the Cassazione, with remanding to a new trial."

So, what?

Are you mute?

 

[acbytesla]

Gloria Allred, someone I do not really like but respect... said this to Piers Morgan on CNN when Morgan asked for some explanation of "what the heck is going on in Italy," when the motivations' report was released in June 2013. Morgan was particularly offended (admitting as such speaking as a friend of John Kercher's) that the Italians had resurrected the sex-game gone wrong theory. To Morgan this was a slap in the face to the real victim here, Meredith - not to mention her grieving family.

Allred made brief comment on her own brushes with business/law in Italy and advised foreigners to stay away when some kinds of traffic violations can have you wound up in expensive trials for years - all to finally be signed off on by the ISC.... not to mention perhaps a dispute among business partners.

She as much as said, stay away until they get a business-friendly system over there.

The one thing I will give Italy is that with the automatic appeal - essentially a do-over of the 1st instance trial - there IS opportunity (eventually) to undo a wrong. In Canada and the US the burden of proof, so I'm told, disappears during appeals here.... there are countless cases of wrongful convictions which take decades to unwrap because once that one jury rules "guilty", the whole system is against you. Appeals of innocence from then on are seen as not admitting to crime, so innocent people rarely get parole.

Italy has that part right, I suppose. It's all well and good to say that RS and AK should never have got to trial in the first place; but then again Nyki Kish in Canada is in jail because of a thought experiment a Justice here (Nordheimer) did, where all he did was simply the evidence until he found reason to convict her - even with no evidence, really, in the simplification.

It just takes years to unwrap bad decisions like Nordheimers, and worse the virtual reversal of burden of proof makes it extremely difficult to prove innocence.

Don't worry CoulsdonUK. I still like you. Then again, since you have successfully paired your position with Mary_H's I pretty well have to like you, because I like her. Well, now that's she's off my "ignore" list.

Ooooops. Who said that!

While an automatic appeal sounds great for a defendant, I think the unintended consequences of this is that when in doubt in the first instance, they convict. Even when the evidence is sketchy, they convict thinking the second trial will get it right. This almost assuredly leads to a lot of innocent people spending time behind bars.

 

[Bill Williams]

The one thing I will give Italy is that with the automatic appeal - essentially a do-over of the 1st instance trial - there IS opportunity (eventually) to undo a wrong.

While an automatic appeal sounds great for a defendant, I think the unintended consequences of this is that when in doubt in the first instance, they convict. Even when the evidence is sketchy, they convict thinking the second trial will get it right. This almost assuredly leads to a lot of innocent people spending time behind bars.

True. Even Barbie Nadeau, when she's on her best behaviour for CNN, said on the night of the Dec 2009 conviction that there is a 50% overturning rate at appeal. She did not make mention of this phenomenon, but I couldn't help but think it at the time of first hearing her "analysis".

 

[acbytesla]

True. Even Barbie Nadeau, when she's on her best behaviour for CNN, said on the night of the Dec 2009 conviction that there is a 50% overturning rate at appeal. She did not make mention of this phenomenon, but I couldn't help but think it at the time of first hearing her "analysis".

The automatic appeal is a double edged sword. It may give a defendant a second chance, but if there wasn't an automatic appeal they might not need one.

 

[Diocletus]

Thinking about the suppressed egrams for the vaginal swab (egram no. 626) and the rectal swab (egram no. 628). I wasn't clear at first about why the prosecution would have suppressed these egrams, but now that I think about it, vaginal and rectal swabs with stray DNA would cause a huge problem for the prosecution. Could you imagine? They couldn't claim that the stray DNA was supposed to be there. That would leave only two possibilities that I can think of: 1) they blame it on contamination, or 2) we have one or more additional attackers who are not Sollecito. Both possibilities are devastating for the prosecution.

Thus, we have the suppression of two egrams.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Thinking about the suppressed egrams for the vaginal swab (egram no. 626) and the rectal swab (egram no. 628). I wasn't clear at first about why the prosecution would have suppressed these egrams, but now that I think about it, vaginal and rectal swabs with stray DNA would cause a huge problem for the prosecution. Could you imagine? They couldn't claim that the stray DNA was supposed to be there. That would leave only two possibilities that I can think of: 1) they blame it on contamination, or 2) we have one or more additional attackers who are not Sollecito. Both possibilities are devastating for the prosecution.

Thus, we have the suppression of two egrams.

Very interesting. However, did the prosecution use these egrams against Guede?

 

[Diocletus]

Very interesting. However, did the prosecution use these egrams against Guede?

Not sure, however, there were two other vaginal swab samples with guedes profile, and those egrams were produced. So they didn't need the suppressed egrams to get Guede.

 

[Mary_H]

Stepping in ;-)
...

Thank you, Methos!

 

[Mary_H]

I find both of you hard to ignore. Imagine the years of therapy I'll need just to get over this.

May I recommend tequila? It's much quicker, if you can find it.

Don't worry CoulsdonUK. I still like you. Then again, since you have successfully paired your position with Mary_H's I pretty well have to like you, because I like her. Well, now that's she's off my "ignore" list.

Ooooops. Who said that!

Phew, what a relief!

 

[anglolawyer]

Thank you, Methos!

From me too. I didn't quote the text because I can't copy and paste from my version of Kindle. Otherwise vast tracts of text from a dozen books or so would have swamped the thread already.

Re: the Italian system and its appeals, I've seen enough. The whole thing stinks.

 

[cuki777]

Re: the Italian system and its appeals, I've seen enough. The whole thing stinks.

1. ECHR
2. Global Human Rights Regime

"The door was closed"
"The door was open"
"The door was ajar"

 

[anglolawyer]

1. ECHR
2. Global Human Rights Regime

"The door was closed"
"The door was open"
"The door was ajar"

Oh, how could I forgot about that. The door mistake that proves guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Hey! You didn't give a score to this one. Btw. Cuki who is that in your avatar?

 

[Antony]

I do believe you are not looking for confrontation. But you are particularly resistant to anything other than, "Massei found them guilty", "the Supreme Court found Hellman's verdict faulty", "the prosecution won all of its points in the SC hearing", etc., to quote Antony.

I do not see the above as being resistant but accurately stating the starting point of the Florentine court next month which as you know is an appeal against the first level trial.

It may be accurate, but it's pointless because everyone here is aware of the context of the upcoming trial. Continually restating starting points when the rest of us have long since moved on to discussing the implications of them, is actually disruptive to the discussion.

OK, it's worth pointing out that the prosecution had a clean sweep of its aims in the SC appeal hearing, but your conclusion from that, that the Hellman-Zanetti report was of "poor legal standard" is simply wrong. The prosecution case has no merit, and never has had any merit, so for the SC to decide in its favour on every point - essentially by drawing perverse conclusions from vague factoids and by making up its own facts - demonstrates nothing other than that the corruption evident in this case has pervaded even the Supreme Court.

Now you will probably come back with: "but the SC decided that the prosecution case did have merit" - but the fact that you continue to refuse to examine their reasoning (you even called it "wasting time") indicates that you have nothing to contribute to the discussion. You need to understand that others are here to explore the implications of the events in court, so your continued avoiding of them gives you no credit.

 

[acbytesla]

1. ECHR
2. Global Human Rights Regime

"The door was closed"
"The door was open"
"The door was ajar"

I have to say, coming to the conclusion that this means anything kind of flabbergasts me.

 

[Dan O.]

I have to say, coming to the conclusion that this means anything kind of flabbergasts me.

The answer is blowing in the wind.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

It may be accurate, but it's pointless because everyone here is aware of the context of the upcoming trial. Continually restating starting points when the rest of us have long since moved on to discussing the implications of them, is actually disruptive to the discussion.

What is the context that everyone apart from me is aware of?

OK, it's worth pointing out that the prosecution had a clean sweep of its aims in the SC appeal hearing, but your conclusion from that, that the Hellman-Zanetti report was of "poor legal standard" is simply wrong. The prosecution case has no merit, and never has had any merit, so for the SC to decide in its favour on every point - essentially by drawing perverse conclusions from vague factoids and by making up its own facts - demonstrates nothing other than that the corruption evident in this case has pervaded even the Supreme Court.

What is your opinion of prosecutions appeal from a legal stand point? Maybe you can quote the appropriate post number, I may have missed your previous comments.

Now you will probably come back with: "but the SC decided that the prosecution case did have merit" - but the fact that you continue to refuse to examine their reasoning (you even called it "wasting time") indicates that you have nothing to contribute to the discussion. You need to understand that others are here to explore the implications of the events in court, so your continued avoiding of them gives you no credit.

Sometimes I have to check whether I have inadvertently registered on Injustice Anywhere, I prefer JREF as it has no position either way with this case. By all means continue to waste your own time complaining about me or contribute to the wider discussion as you say, your choice.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

What the ISC said

CoulsdonUK,

"The outcome of this assessment will be crucial not only to osmotically demonstrate the presence of the two defendants in the locus delicti commissi, but possibly to delineate the subjective position of the co-conspirators of Guede, in the face of the range of hypothetical situations..." Maybe you missed it the first time I posted it. The fact that the ISC refers to AK and RS as co-conspirators is extremely troubling. MOO.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

CoulsdonUK,

"The outcome of this assessment will be crucial not only to osmotically demonstrate the presence of the two defendants in the locus delicti commissi, but possibly to delineate the subjective position of the co-conspirators of Guede, in the face of the range of hypothetical situations..." Maybe you missed it the first time I posted it. The fact that the ISC refers to AK and RS as co-conspirators is extremely troubling. MOO.

Halides1

Thank you for providing extract from the Supreme Court motivations.

For the sake of discussion, you clearly believe the Florentine trial will be nothing more than a show trial if so what recourse is available to Raffaele and Amanda? Do you have any insights as to how their defence teams will approach the trial?