I just wanted to post a little note, especially for the lurkers out there who have maybe come to this case relatively recently.
Everytime there's a big event in this ongoing miscarriage of justice, a particular JREF poster comes over here to gloat and call those posters who believe in innocence Conspiracy Theorists.
Usually, conspiracy theories take the form of a group of people who question an authority's 'version' of a set of events. This case is unusual, because here we have the authority (police and prosecution) advancing a conspiracy theory, and a group of people who question this version. Pro-innocence posters are thereby the anti-CTers!
In the UK, the Criminal Cases Review Commission was set up because there had been a 'critical mass' of wrongful convictions overturned thanks to the investigation, analysis, and support of small groups of supporters, from friends and family of the accused / convicted, lawyers, experts, and members of the public prepared to give up their time to familiarise themselves with the details of a particular case, and the types of evidence in question. This has somewhat improved the chances of the wrongfully accused, as CCRC can compel the court of appeals to hear an appeal in full. However, the problem then becomes, not every case attracts this kind of support, and the CCRC don't have the resources to do the kind of work that the lucky few have dedicated supporters and advocates to do. Sure, Innocence Projects are helpful, but again, there's a distinct lack of resources there too.
Are the CCRC 'CT-ers' too?! Were the UK pandering to CT-ers when they set it up?! Are those lawyers working in Innocence Project CT-ers too? How about people who supported Ryan Ferguson? The Central Park 5? Stefan Kiszko? Barry George?
When we're discussing this case in a forum that's supposed to be about critical thinking, skepticism, and evidence-based thinking, it's almost unbelievable to me that posters with over 44,000 posts on this forum can come to this thread and criticise the people upon whom a fair and honest and transparent justice system depend. People who, whether they give any other kind of support or have any other kind of involvement in the case, do a public service in discussing the case, on the whole, with an admirable level of intellectual honesty and integrity, rigour, and in a way that's responsive to evidence, science and reason. The whole of this discussion is a permanent record that anyone, from Amanda, Raffaele and their families, the Kerchers, or just anyone interested in miscarriages of justice can read, and that is a good thing.
Mistakes in investigatory practice and approach usually happen quite early in criminal cases that end in wrongful convictions, especially when a police force is ill-prepared to handle a particularly high-profile or serious crime. Police incompetence which strays into corruption is endemic. Look at the Met's Sapphire Unit in the UK; supposed to be a flagship unit of the UK's most high-profile force, policing a 'world city', not a smallish provincial police force suddenly having to deal with an extremely brutal high profile crime. From the BBC (talking about the Independent Police Complaints Commission- what's Italy's version of this, by the way?):
"The watchdog has carried out five previous inquiries into Southwark Sapphire command.
Meanwhile, Det Con Ryan Coleman-Farrow, who was based in Southwark, was jailed for 16 months last October for failing to investigate rape and sexual assault claims and falsifying police records.
A second officer, based in Islington, north London, is still under criminal investigation.
In total, 19 officers from across London have been disciplined, including three who have been sacked."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22300360
So that's 1, possibly 2 sets of criminal charges, 3 dismissals, and a further 16 who have been disciplined. Of course, this is a slightly different kind of incompetence than the type on display in Perugia / Rome. In a slightly different context. But the type of incompetence on display in Perugia does cohere with other similar situations involving wrongful convictions for murder: deception, manipulation and aggression in interrogation of often young, often vulnerable 'suspects' who believe they are witnesses, and are often classified as witnesses by authorities because of the legal implications of doing so, resulting in false 'confessions' or accusations that do not cohere with the other evidence, or if they do it is because of information passed (sometimes) inadvertently from interrogators, sloppy forensics, and misinterpretation of forensics, suspect-centric DNA work, lack of discovery on scientifically important documentation from police run or affiliated labs, tunnel-vision in the investigation, reliance on behavioural 'evidence' when not supported by physical evidence or witness evidence, involves multiple suspects even when the crime was actually committed by one individual.
Anyone who has studied miscarriages of justice can see all the classic hallmarks displayed in this case. For that poster to come here and call us CT-ers is unbelievably socially unaware of what actually goes on in our justice systems, and displaying that kind of ignorance on JREF of all places, should be hilarious. But all it actually does is make me sad and angry in equal measure.
