This is puzzling to me. As I understand it, every trial outcome in Italy is under review --- by which I mean, not considered final until it has been validated by the SC.
So why would the sentence given to A & R in their original trial have sufficient weight to justify changing someone else's sentence? Wasn't that original result for them considered, more or less by definition, to be tentative? If the SC had validated the Hellman rulings, wouldn't that mean that Guede had been given a super break based on nothing?
1. a preliminary note: actually it’s not that simple. I have this speculation – I acknowledge that this point contains a persona speculation – but that is: I think that, had the SC validated the Hellmann verdict, they would not have validated the Guede appeal. You need to consider the Guede validation and the H&Z annulment as a complementary parts of a consistent way of assessing by the SC. If the SC accepted Guede and accepted H&Z they would have been contradictory, they would have caused a
conflitto di giudicati, which opens the road for a possibility of case review. Instead the SC accepted the Guede trial conclusion which convicted him for “concurring with other people” to the crime of murder, and there is no trace of other people but Knox and Sollecito as for the findings of the Guede trials.
This first point is the less important anyway.
2. when Guede was sentenced to 16 years the Hellmann-Zanetti verdict didn’t exist (and even if it had existed, they wouldn’t expect it to survive the SC).
3. more important thing is, the Guede appeal judges are looking at the case from their point of view. The Guede appeal judges accepted the conclusions of the prosecution, Micheli and Massei courts. The H&Z verdict didn’t exist but even if it had existed, the judges make their assessments in the merit of fact findings, and their opinion was that Guede did not act alone, that he committed the crime together with others, and these others were likely the two other suspects who are co-defendants in a parallel trial. The Guede appeal court worked out this scenario, no other scenario. They convicted Guede on this scenario. It makes no sense to object “shouldn’t that original result be considered more or less “tentative” by definition?”, it makes no sense because the judge are doing fact finding, they decided themselves that the scenario was the good one. They were going to believe that scenario and not Hellmann’s one. H&Z actually are ambiguous as for any possible Guede alone scenario, but the judges (Borsini-Belardi) on Guede’s trial cannot be ambiguous, they accepted Micheli and the prosecution and concluded that Guede was not alone.
4. your suggestion that “Guede had been given a super break based on nothing” is curious, to me, because of this emphasis of “huge” applied to Guede alone. It should be pointed out, that in fact Guede
was given the same amount of beak as the other two, that is: Knox and Sollecito had their penalty reduced from life to 24 years, Guede had his penalty reduced from 30 years to 16 years, these two things are – legally –
exactly the same thing. They got exactly the same reduction. Based on exactly the same grounds (actually, Guede could be legally more entitled to generic mitigation compared to Knox and Sollecito, because they committed further deeds in continuance and never expressed regret). It looks like a huge break because 16 years looks short, but in fact the big cut (from 24 years to 16 years) is only the consequence of Guede choosing the fast track option, the 16-year sentencing in the fast track equates to a 24-year sentencing in regular proceedings. Crini now requested 26 years for Knox and Sollecito, despite he deems to not award them generic mitigation; 26 years without generic mitigation means he is giving them actually a big break.
5. an extension of point 3: the Guede appeal reduction from 30 years to 16 years, awarding generic mitigation (equivalent to a reduction from life to 24 years in a regular trial) is anyway hinging around the judges finding that Guede was not a lone perpetrator. He did not break into the aprtment, he did not assail Meredith committing a sexual violence and a murder alone. The judge foudn that he took part to the violence and murder but that he did not premeditate any crime nor masterminded it. They also thought that he was not the one who gave the fatal blow.
If they believed that he was a kind of serial killed who made everything alone, entered to steal as a burglar and then committed alone all those violent actions, that maybe even raped an agonizing or dead victim like Charlie Wilkes believes, if the judges believed things like that, they would have handed a life inprisonment sentencing.
To conclude: you really have no point saying the Borsini Belardi court should have regarded the Massei conclusions as "tentative". It really makes no sense they would make their findings "depending" on how tentative Massei's finding would be. The Borsini-Belardi needed to draw conclusions on their own, based on the trial papers, and make a choice themselves.
Because of human sense of justice, and because the SC would probably even the sentencings in the end, they decided to give generic mitigation to Guede, because Sollecito and Knox got it (even if they were less entitled to it).
