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

[Kaosium]

Strozzi, you need to understand Italian collowquialism. Cabina di regia does not mean 'control room', it means director room or staff room or simply directorate or coordination activity.

This strikes me as a distinction without a difference. How would 'control room' be all that different than a 'staff room' or directorate?

Moreover, Giobbi states clearly that he did not witness Knox's 'confession', and that he was in the corridoor outside the door.

So how many hours was he waiting in that corridor and why?

 

[acbytesla]

Thanks, Rose.

It's very interesting to compare this Italian law against the ECHR rules on deprivation of counsel.

The Italian law basically provides that if you interview a suspect without counsel present, then the ensuing statements can't be used against the person in prosecuting the crime.

The ECtHR says that if you violate someone's right to counsel, you can't use the statements to prejudice the person.

Notice that the Italian law applies without exception to questioning when counsel isn't present: it appears to be absolute. In contrast, the ECtHR rule only applies when the right to counsel is violated, which isn't necessarily eery situation where counsel isn't present (e.g., there could be waiver or exigency).

On the other hand, the exclusionary force of the ECtHR rule is way broader. If there is a violation of the right to counsel, that violation cannot be used to prejudice the defendant in any way. Under the Italian law, the statement taken in the absence of counsel can be used to establish a charge other than what the suspect was suspected for--that's how they used it to prove callunnia.

What all of this means is that even though the prosecution was able to use the Knox statements to charge callunnia, if they violated her right to counsel (they did), the entire callunia conviction and murder conviction are going to have to be abandoned, because the callunnia conviction is by definition a prejudice to Knox, and that conviction underlies the murder conviction, too.

Not looking good for Italy.

Fruit of the poisonous tree.

 

[Strozzi]

Strozzi, you need to understand Italian collowquialism. Cabina di regia does not mean 'control room', it means director room or staff room or simply directorate or coordination activity.
Moreover, Giobbi states clearly that he did not witness Knox's 'confession', and that he was in the corridoor outside the door.

Machiavelli, do you have a cite for that? If so, I would like to see it. To convince me that Giobbi was not in the control room, you will have to demonstrate that for several hours repeat several hours Giobbi was pacing in the hall and did not enter the the control room.

I do have a cite for my statement that Giobbi was in the control room. Candace Dempsy wrote:
"Giobbi, the Rome detective, had remained in the control room with Profazio, the head of Perugia's Flying Squad. Giobbi was helping orchestrate the his-and-hers interrogation rooms, though he never stepped inside those rooms. He didn't need to, because the officers kept going back and forth. Everything that needed doing was being done."

 

[moodstream]

After getting Amanda to start talking in the lobby, they moved her into the interrogation room and then had her repeat the answers to the earlier questions. Testimony is given that some of the offers were monitoring the interrogations from the "Control Room". For me, there is no question that a recording was produced. Their excuse for not recording the 5:45 statement, that in all the excitement they forgot! This is supposed to be what they do for a living. Are Italians really that dysfunctional?

As for the continued existence of the recordings, they are evidence against some which makes them valuable ammunition for others. If there were ever an inquest, the recordings could come into play. But nobody that has access wants to bring them out to help Amanda and Raffaele.


But the recordings themselves are not required. Amanda made written statements about the interrogations at a time when she had no reason not to believe that there could be recordings of those interrogations that could refute any inaccuracies in her statements. So, without the recordings, Amanda's statements are the indisputable account of what happened in the interrogation.

In Mignini's cnn interview he claims there are minutes for the 1 am and 5:45 interrogations / statement takng. Have these minutes ever surfaced?

 

[Strozzi]

Machiavelli, here is another cite. How can you question the reliability of the author of this twitter message, who goes by the name "El Presidente™ ‏@GuilterWatchin"

"El Presidente™ ‏@GuilterWatchin·
@Sallyoo Read Giobi. He ordered them in, had everything set up for the interrogation and watched from the control room. He heard screams."

 

[Wildhorses]

Thanks, Rose.

It's very interesting to compare this Italian law against the ECHR rules on deprivation of counsel.

The Italian law basically provides that if you interview a suspect without counsel present, then the ensuing statements can't be used against the person in prosecuting the crime.

The ECtHR says that if you violate someone's right to counsel, you can't use the statements to prejudice the person.

Notice that the Italian law applies without exception to questioning when counsel isn't present: it appears to be absolute. In contrast, the ECtHR rule only applies when the right to counsel is violated, which isn't necessarily eery situation where counsel isn't present (e.g., there could be waiver or exigency).

On the other hand, the exclusionary force of the ECtHR rule is way broader. If there is a violation of the right to counsel, that violation cannot be used to prejudice the defendant in any way. Under the Italian law, the statement taken in the absence of counsel can be used to establish a charge other than what the suspect was suspected for--that's how they used it to prove callunnia.

What all of this means is that even though the prosecution was able to use the Knox statements to charge callunnia, if they violated her right to counsel (they did), the entire callunia conviction and murder conviction are going to have to be abandoned, because the callunnia conviction is by definition a prejudice to Knox, and that conviction underlies the murder conviction, too.

Not looking good for Italy.

Why didn't the defense lawyers protest this all along? I haven't looked at the Knox appeal document for a long time so I don't recall if they mentioned it.

But if this is such a big deal why didn't the SC catch it? THREE trials. THREE judges. All of them allowed Lumumba to be part of the proceedings despite it obviously meaning inadmissible statements would admitted.

I hope your right, of course. It makes sense, of course. I just don't see how so many slept through a blatant violation of rights.

 

[Strozzi]

Machiavelli, here is another cite. How can you question the reliability of the author of this twitter message, who goes by the name "El Presidente™ ‏@GuilterWatchin"

"El Presidente™ ‏@GuilterWatchin·
@Sallyoo Read Giobi. He ordered them in, had everything set up for the interrogation and watched from the control room. He heard screams."

Mach, as I google the issue of the control room I keep coming up with some ambiguous accounts from someone named Peter Quennelli and another guy named Yummi. Have you asked Giobbi about it? I understand he testified to being in the control room.

 

[RandyN]

These are the discussions between Paul Callan and Steve Moore Platonov is referring to

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/vide...fjq4FA&usg=AFQjCNEXIPeUk0yXd05Z9nXhX9_XQLCAqw

http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2...erin-panel-italy-amanda-knox-retrial.cnn.html

Yes this points to the crux of the matters now. The lawyer on this show is taking the position that I would. Listen how can you contend that everyone including the Italian Supreme Court got it wrong? So many eyes saw so much evidence. And frankly this guy overpowered Steve Moore which was mostly do to time constraints since Steve was not given the time to explain that yes...crazy false evidence that would never make it into a real court anywhere else is floated in on a gondola in Italy and there are no safeguards apparently that can overcome BS stacked up this high.

But the CNN lawyer goes on...why would anyone ....the judges, the jurors even the ffnnnn ISC all have it out against an American girl, an Italian national and an Ivorian? And honestly one can make a strong argument just sticking to this narrow path. It is tough to attack such senselessness...but that is what needs to happen...and sadly the defense played soft ball for so long that strong words ...the truth...now sound like sour apples.

Who can actually believe how truly screwed up the Italians are? They have presented a consistent lying corrupt front....except for that annoying Hellmann appeal part with corroborating independent experts...and yet.

This latest judge and or the ISC ignore the Hellmann inconvenience as if it never happened. SO sure...people can speculate...how is this possible? They must be guilty ...of something at least.

Without something to break this fraud wide open these two, but especially RS are in deep doo. He is going back to jail. That will happen as fast as they can get this case back in front of the ISC.

I don't think Knox can or will be extradited but all the ECOHR stuff cant even begin until all appeals are final. Years yet. Years of Italian corruption and intimidation from its judiciary...a place where the good guys are suppose to be found...what happens when there are no good guys? The smart or frustrated ones are leaving or have already gone.

Honestly a travel warning should be released by the State Department but lawyers can still argue...come on....everyone is lying and this little girl and boy are innocent? We looked 4 or 5 or 6 times...what is our motive?

This would be quite hard for someone not close to the case to get their heads around. How can a judiciary fool a whole country... or the world?

Because this judiciary is repeatedly found guilty...worse than everyone for violation of human rights according to independent judges...but sure...come sit have a gelato.

Kafka was an unimaginative slouch. These people have lies and corruption bred into them. Don't say no...where are the protesters? No one sees what happened here? Really? I don't think so.

Let them put their own countryman into jail. Let them release the real killer for his good behavior. Knox is staying here.

Oh she cant leave USA. LOL...how many bad toilets and cobble stone streets does one need to see? Pretty sure we can tuck most of Europe well inside the borders here...not counting Alaska or Hawaii or Puerto Rico or US Virgin Islands or tons of other places not Europe. Heck there is even Canada although I don't know why anyone would want to go there...well to fish, ski, drink or look at a moose maybe.

Who really needs Italy or any of its partner nations for that matter? That's like leaving the crazy uncle on the joint checking account. Better you than me.

 

[Poppy1016]

As I already said, police don't record summary information of informants as a praxis, for several reasons, most important for obvious financial reasons. Due to beaurocracy rules and possibility of requests, that would likely force the state to transcript many of them.

Are these the same financial reasons that allowed them to spend a fortune on their ridiculous cartoon?

 

[Poppy1016]

Not even when they gave been secretly recording them in the waiting room? Lol. Were they informants or suspects? It's Monday so I guess you are sticking with informants today. Tomorrow is Tuesday when they can be suspects again.

Remind me what all those cops were doing working a night shift? Also, I asked your source for saying Mig showed up at 2.00 a.m. Who told you that?

Weren't some of the police brought in from Rome? To question a witness? Hmmmm

 

[anglolawyer]

snip

I don't think Knox can or will be extradited but all the ECOHR stuff cant even begin until all appeals are final. Years yet.

snip

If, as seems highly likely, the ISC affirms Nencini (later this year according to one estimate) time for filing an appeal to the ECHR will start to run, so one would expect the filing to be sometime in 2015.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Raff just keeps saying, "he is innocent". Of course he is innocent. Does he not understand that he is just a pawn? The Italians are going to put him in jail for sure because they will have a much harder time getting Amanda extradited. They will keep him in jail as long as possible with the hopes that Amanda finally breaks with guilt and provides the information they want or just use him as some kind of leverage. I am not saying she is guilty or has any information to provide but the Italians clearly think she does and I think they will have no qualms about putting Raff in jail. Pretty sure this is their intention. I have no doubts they will do everything in their power to extradite Amanda too. Amanda should feel frightened, these guys are not messing around for the final round. Have to hand it to Raff, he seems very calm in this interview considering the situation he is in.

You're right, they don't care about him, but you have worked it backward in terms of the pressure tactic they are using. They aren't trying to break her. They are trying to break him, so he will incriminate her to keep himself out of jail.

"She went out that night. I stayed home with my computer."

That was the whole point of Nencini's interview: Raffaele could have saved himself.

 

[anglolawyer]

When I stop laughing, I'd like to ask you to remind all of us just how many of Knox's and Sollecito's phone calls were wiretapped before they were even interrogated on the 5th/6th November. (I'll give you a hint: your answer will involve something in the magnitude of 10 raised to the fourth power......).
Once we've established how many tens of thousands of Knox's/Sollecito's phone calls were tapped, perhaps you can tell us how these calls were dealt with: who listened to them? Who transcribed them? How much did the entire operation cost?

And once you've done that, they perhaps you can estimate how much it would have cost to record and transcribe the three to four hours of interrogations that took place on the night of the 5th/6th November.

And once you've done that, perhaps you could take your "argument" that cost was a decisive factor in not recording the 5th/6th interrogations (and let's not also forget that this was one of the most high-profile criminal investigations Umbria had seen for decades), and you can put it exactly where it deserves to be put

Shome mishtake surely LJ. I think the 30,000 or so wire tapped calls were made over a period extending well beyond the 5-6 Nov. Nor could they have been K and S's calls given they weren't in a position to make any after that date.

 

[Kaosium]

Shome mishtake surely LJ. I think the 30,000 or so wire tapped calls were made over a period extending well beyond the 5-6 Nov. Nor could they have been K and S's calls given they weren't in a position to make any after that date.

Most of those were on the Sollecito family. They wiretapped at least five members of that family for years.

 

[Samson]

You're right, they don't care about him, but you have worked it backward in terms of the pressure tactic they are using. They aren't trying to break her. They are trying to break him, so he will incriminate her to keep himself out of jail.

"She went out that night. I stayed home with my computer."

That was the whole point of Nencini's interview: Raffaele could have saved himself.

So the bra clasp the bathmat print and male help with the stagings would be gone as evidence. Could the real world believe that?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

These are the discussions between Paul Callan and Steve Moore Platonov is referring to

http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/vide...fjq4FA&usg=AFQjCNEXIPeUk0yXd05Z9nXhX9_XQLCAqw

http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2...erin-panel-italy-amanda-knox-retrial.cnn.html

Unfortunately I think Steve could have been far more effective in summarizing what went wrong in this case.

Callan is incredulous that all these judges would collaborate to railroad innocent people, if the crime is as simple as Steve says. Why would they do that?

The answer is not that Guede was a police informant.

The answer is that the police made a grandiose public accusation before they knew what had happened, before they knew about Guede or the evidence proving he was the real killer. They didn't want to admit they were wrong.

This has lots of precedents, starting with the Nicarico case in Illinois. The police caught the guy who did it, Brian Dugan. They nailed him with DNA and he confessed. He was a serial killer who acted alone in his other murders.

But by that time, they had already accused Hernandez and Cruz and they didn't want to admit they were wrong, so they hung on for dear life with a crazy theory in which Hernandez and Cruz were Dugan's accomplices in the Nicarico murder.

The David Camm case is a more recent example. Why would the police and prosecutor continue to railroad a white ex-cop, even after DNA led them to the black guy who really did it?

Because they had already publicly accused him and they didn't want to admit they were wrong.

This goes all the way back to the Dreyfus Affair. Esterhazy? Who's he? He's the scoundrel and con artist, desperate for money, who really committed the act of espionage for which Dreyfus was charged. The entire French army command went into full-on conspiracy mode. They suppressed evidence against Esterhazy and acquitted him in a secret trial. Why? Because they had already accused Dreyfus and they didn't want to admit they were wrong.

 

[Poppy1016]

You're right, they don't care about him, but you have worked it backward in terms of the pressure tactic they are using. They aren't trying to break her. They are trying to break him, so he will incriminate her to keep himself out of jail.

"She went out that night. I stayed home with my computer."

That was the whole point of Nencini's interview: Raffaele could have saved himself.

But what about the bra clasp?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

So the bra clasp the bathmat print and male help with the stagings are gone as evidence. Can the real world believe that?

The "evidence" has never mattered to these judges. They accept it or wave it away as they see fit, without any concern for its real value or its relevance to the crime.

The public is focused on Amanda. The reputation of the Italian court system hinges on the accusation against her. If they could get Raffaele to implicate her, the Italian mob would buy it in a heartbeat, no matter what contortions are required. The Italian mob is who supports the prosecution and the courts in this farce of a case.

 

[kwill]

The "evidence" has never mattered to these judges. They accept it or wave it away as they see fit, without any concern for its real value or its relevance to the crime.

Isn't that exactly what you'd expect in a legal system that doesn't have either rules of evidence or a requirement that juries not be influenced by their own prejudice, the media, or conversations with their friends about the case?

I'm trying to get my head around a legal process that gives so much power to authorities (whose good faith and competence is NOT TO BE QUESTIONED) and so few protections for accused persons (whose dishonesty is ASSUMED). We get justice wrong all the time in the states, but at least some workable principles exist. Italian courts seem to be a setup for inside-out results.

 

[Samson]

The "evidence" has never mattered to these judges. They accept it or wave it away as they see fit, without any concern for its real value or its relevance to the crime.

The public is focused on Amanda. The reputation of the Italian court system hinges on the accusation against her. If they could get Raffaele to implicate her, the Italian mob would buy it in a heartbeat, no matter what contortions are required. The Italian mob is who supports the prosecution and the courts in this farce of a case.

It seems to be so. This case inhabits every point on the continuum from cock up to conspiracy. Where is the movie like West of Memphis? Who will make it?

ETA from authentic Wikipedia
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, movie critic Joe Morgenstern described West of Memphis as "a devastating account of police incompetence, civic hysteria and prosecutorial behavior that was totally at odds with a vastly persuasive body of evidence uncovered in a privately funded investigation." Director Amy Berg, wrote Morgenstern, "has a dramatist's eye for what was irretrievably lost — the innocent lives of the children, plus 18 years of three other innocent lives. And she saw, equally well, what was there to be gained: dramatic new insights into an inexorable progression from random arrests through groundless supposition, fevered conjecture and flagrant perjury to official disgrace in a supposedly airtight case."[2]