I totally agree with you about that highlighted part, and that is because what will be almost impossible for Italy to overcome is the "double jeopardy" part of our constitution.
Once Italy decided that Amanda was "Not Guilty" and let her leave, extraditing her back to Italy would involve ignoring that part of our constitution, which will not happen.
There have been several cases where that defense against extradition was tried and failed.
I don't recall even one extradition case where the defendant was acquitted, allowed to leave Italy, and then extradited back to Italy when found guilty again. Remember each extradition treaty with the US is different:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_extradition_treaties
ALSO (Opinions differ of course):
http://world.time.com/2013/09/30/amanda-knox-explainer-trial-begins-in-italy-for-the-third-time/
Will Knox be extradited to Italy if she’s convicted?
Even if Knox is convicted for good, Robert Anello, a New York City lawyer who has dealt with extraditions in the past, says there’s less than a 50% chance the American would be delivered to Italy. On paper, the U.S. does have an extradition treaty with Italy that requires the U.S. to hand over American citizens, if asked. But that’s a big if. And if the Italians were to make the request, they would face two potential hurdles, says Anello. First,
the U.S. government could find legal arguments, including the previous acquittal verdict, to oppose extradition. Second, even if the U.S. agrees, Knox could try to block extradition in American courts, and “double jeopardy” could again come into play.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/amanda-knox-case-extradited-italy/story?id=18815983
"She can try to fight extradition, but it will be an uphill battle," Zagaris said.
In the American legal world being retried for the same crime sounds like "double jeopardy," a principle in the U.S. judicial system and enshrined in the Constitution that outlaws being tried twice for the same crime.
American unease with double jeopardy could give Knox a "fighting chance" to appeal any extradition in a U.S. court, said Christopher L. Blakesley, a professor of international law University of Nevada Las Vegas.
"There's room to fight extradition," Blakesley said, "and double jeopardy is the spot to fight on…. In the treaty, we functionally accept their system of justice, but it's up to a magistrate to decide whether" the double jeopardy clause of the Constitution was violated and if that trumps the treaty.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/20...a_knox_will_never_be_extradited_to_italy.html
I predict that, even if she is convicted in absentia, there’s no way that Knox will be extradited back to Italy to serve her sentence. Knox is a cause célèbre in the U.S., and her partisans will exert significant pressure on the government to deny any extradition request. Article X of the current U.S.-Italy extradition treaty states that the requesting nation must present a case summary that provides “a reasonable basis to believe that the person sought committed the offense for which extradition is requested.” The United States will probably use this as grounds for blocking Knox’s extradition.
They might cite double jeopardy, too, but that’s a trickier argument to win under the current treaty. More likely is that, if Knox is convicted again, Italy won’t even bother requesting her extradition. Doing so would cause a small but real international incident, something that both nations would prefer to avoid. The two countries will reach some sort of agreement, and Knox will never spend another day in an Italian jail.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...-raises-questions-about-extradition/?page=all
Some legal analysts believe the U.S. will be legally bound to return Knox to Italy if she is convicted, since the U.S. Senate has ratified an extradition treaty.
“The Senate considers whether a treaty country’s criminal justice is fair,” extradition attorney Bruce Zagaris said in an e-mail. “She can try to make the unfairness argument in that case, but U.S. jurisprudence limits such arguments.”
Mr. Zagaris was referring to exceptions that enable an accused person to challenge extradition. For instance, a request for extradition can be rejected if:
The “dual criminality” requirement — that a charged offense is a crime in both countries — is not met.
The offense is a military violation such as desertion or is a political crime.
The requesting country engages in degrading treatment or torture.
The prosecuting country administers extra-judicial punishment that the offender’s country would not engage in.
In addition, the transnational criminal law principle of "aut dedere aut judicare" enables some countries to reject extradition and try their nationals in their own legal system.
In Ms. Knox’s case, her best argument is that Italy’s judicial system allows prosecutorial appeal, a principle that amounts to double jeopardy in the U.S. Simply put, subjecting Ms. Knox to re-prosecution in Italy could violate her constitutional rights as a U.S. citizen.
http://www.npr.org/2013/03/27/175482539/italian-law-extradition-and-amanda-knox
CONAN: Well, the first question any American would have is about double jeopardy. In this country, if you've been acquitted, you can't be tried on the same charges again.
KHAZAN: Yeah.
There are actually sort of some legal questions as to whether this is actually double jeopardy that she's going to be going through, since basically they're overturning a ruling that was made by an appellate court and retrying the case in another appellate court. And in some cases the U.S. does actually permit retrials of people who have had their convictions reversed on procedural grounds. There's a lawyer quoted in USA Today as saying that the case is not likely to be considered a case of double jeopardy by U.S. courts because Knox wasn't acquitted before a jury.CONAN: So this then gets confusing because in Italy, it seems no case is ever settled.
KHAZAN: Yeah, exactly. One of the main differences between the two court systems is that appeals are very common in Italy. The initial trial tends to sort of favor the prosecution, and the appeal that follows usually results in a reduced sentence. So the court of cassation actually hears a ton of cases each year, and there's a huge judicial backlog, which might explain some of the delays that we're seeing in this case. And it actually sees 80,000 new cases each year, which is 100 times more than in France or Germany.
CONAN: And it is the - in fact, some of the people who felt aggrieved by the acquittal verdict who said, wait a minute, the family of the young woman who was murdered among them, who said, this stinks. Take another look at this.
KHAZAN: Yeah, exactly. So the acquittal has been annulled, and this is a question over whether the previous acquittal was correct. There were some accusations that there were errors made by the appellate judge and some allegations of corruption in the team of experts who nullified the forensic evidence. And there was some talk that the experts were a little bit too close to Sollecito's family, one of the defendants, and that they were only given a few items of forensic evidence to review rather than the entire body.
CONAN: And it also looks like this investigation was bungled from the start, including the police force who first went to investigate the crime scene.
KHAZAN: Yeah. Actually, that was one of the most surprising things about this case, is that the entire investigation seemed sort of flawed from the very start. They had sort of an amateurish police force gathering the evidence at the very beginning and the prosecutor on the case was sort of a hybrid of a detective and a district attorney, which you might read about in the Rolling Stone article that I mention in my story.
CONAN: Mm-hmm.
KHAZAN: So the police investigator actually had a lot of incentive to look for evidence that supported the prosecutor and the confession was also not recorded and that was the main evidence used against her. And then on top of that, in the trial, the jurors weren't sequestered and the prosecution failed to establish a motive.
CONAN: Failed to establish a motive?
KHAZAN: Yeah. That was actually one of the - part of the reason why the conviction was overturned was because of how flawed the entire trial was.
CONAN: And just said - as I remember the case - reading about it in your piece today was the - the prosecutor said, well, you know, there's stuff that happens and we can't explain it.
KHAZAN: Yeah, exactly. It does seem like also the jury was sort of not totally professional throughout the case. It seemed like they were kind of calling out and not paying attention during parts. So it looks like - but it looks like a lot of cases are actually taken through several layers of appeal. So I wouldn't say that it's unusual that this is being appealed again. It may actually be appealed another time after this. That's not unusual for Italy.
CONAN: So there could be a fourth appeal.
KHAZAN: Yes, exactly. It could be that they - this could be taken back to an even higher court. So we may not actually hear the end of it for another year or two.
CONAN: Which raises another - a number of - we keep hearing, for example, of Silvio Berlusconi, the former and, who knows, perhaps future prime minister of Italy, who's convicted in cases, and they're never seemingly decided.
KHAZAN: Yeah, exactly. It looks like the average time to settle a civil case in Italy - according to Reuters - is actually more than seven years, and for a criminal case is five. And there's - I mean, this has been the subject of a lot of investigations. And I guess - actually, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts said he couldn't believe how many cases were brought before Italy's Court of Cassation each year. That's from a Reuters article that was sort of looking at how flawed the judiciary is there, in the wake of the Berlusconi trial.
CONAN: And given all of these - well, one of the writers you cite in your story called it carnival-esque, the justice system in Italy. Is there any cry for reform?
KHAZAN: I think there is, but I actually think the current system, if I remember correctly, is actually the result of a previous set of reforms. And I think the concern is that they just want to make sure that everyone gets a trial to the fullest extent of the law, and that they're able to see their appeals through to the fullest extent. And so I think that, you know, if this hadn't been dragging on and if they had just let it stand, I feel like the victim's family in the Knox case would feel like, you know, that there were some problems in the trial and that they still deserve to see, you know, justice served.
CONAN: So what is the next step there in Italy now?
KHAZAN: So, essentially, it looks like Amanda won't have to return to Italy for the trial. It looks like she's going to be tried in absentia. And so, basically, her lawyers are likely going to appear on her behalf, and then the U.S., if her conviction is upheld, then the U.S. would have to then fight extraditing her back to Italy to serve the remainder of her sentence, which I believe was 26 years.
CONAN: She served four. We'll get onto that question of extradition next. Olga Khazan, thank you very much for your time.
KHAZAN: Thank you so much.
CONAN: Olga Khazan is the global online editor at The Atlantic, and she spoke to us from a studio there. To join us now to talk about extradition is Chris Blakesley, law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, joining us from his home in Las Vegas. Good of you to be with us today.
CHRIS BLAKESLEY: Thank you, Neal. Glad to be here.
CONAN: So the United States government would then presumably try to - if she was still here - arrest Amanda Knox and send her on to Italy.
BLAKESLEY: Right. What would happen is they - Italy would make a provisional arrest request, requesting that she be delivered to serve the sentence, to finalize it all. And then, her attorneys here would try to block that extradition, and that's possible. I mean, it's - I think there are still some lurking possible issues relating to double jeopardy. I don't think it's a closed issue, notwithstanding the language in the treaty.
CONAN: So, in other words, her lawyers could argue before an American judge, wait a minute. This amounts to double jeopardy, and therefore, we shouldn't agree to it.
BLAKESLEY:
Right. I mean, it seems to me that due process - which is also in the Fifth Amendment, along with the double jeopardy clause - double jeopardy and due process kind of fold in together. And so there can be arguments about whether that process over in Italy, under these circumstances, satisfies our double jeopardy clause.CONAN: Now, we're talking about process and procedure. Are those the only things that might be available for - in an extradition hearing? Could you go back and look at the evidence?
BLAKESLEY: Well, all that's necessary for an extradition to occur is enough evidence for probable cause. That's if there's simply an indictment or its equivalent from over there. After a conviction, then the conviction itself is sufficient.
CONAN: So no arguments about they mishandled the DNA evidence, or this witness was compromised.
BLAKESLEY: No. I mean, that wouldn't happen normally in the extradition hearing.
