My point to Vibio, however, is that Italian authorities are not in any way unique in their obsession with "saving face." It is a syndrome I have seen in many cases, throughout the world.
A certain lawyer, Alfred Denning, addressed the matter explicitly in arguing against a new trial for the Birmingham Six, in the UK:
Just consider the course of events if their action were to proceed to trial ... If the six men failed it would mean that much time and money and worry would have been expended by many people to no good purpose. If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous. ... That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, "It cannot be right that these actions should go any further."
He argued, in effect, not that the men were guilty, but that the justice system should protect itself from an inquiry that shows them to be innocent.
That kind of candor is rare. Denning laid bare the obsessive concern that keeps many innocent people locked up long after the case against them has been discredited.
I am somewhat in the loop on the Angie Dodge case in Idaho. It was a sexual homicide where an intruder killed a girl in her apartment and then stood over her body and masturbated. The DNA in the semen has never been matched to anyone.
Chris Tapp is locked up for this crime. Tapp was a local kid who knew the victim, and he was kind of a dope. A cop worked him over, day after day, for weeks, and finally got him to admit being at the crime scene and to accuse his friend, Ben Hobbs, who was the person the cops really suspected of the murder.
But Hobbs was smarter than Tapp. He didn't incriminate himself, even when the cops told him Tapp had accused him. When the cops finally got a DNA sample from Hobbs, it didn't match the crime scene DNA.
At that point, it should have been obvious that the entire premise of the investigation was just plain wrong. This was a crime committed by one pervert, not a group of guys who were friends of the victim. Good grief. But the cops and the prosecutor could not admit they had wasted months on a wild goose chase, because it would make them look bad.
So, they offered Tapp a deal: tell us the name of the guy who ejaculated, and you can go free. Otherwise, we will use your confession in court and you will go down.
Tapp of course could not take this deal, because he was not involved and had no clue who really did it. So he was tried and convicted on the strength of his "confession," and now he is in prison.
The police detective responsible for this travesty is now the mayor of Idaho Falls.
Carol Dodge, the victim's mother, realizes Tapp is innocent and her daughter's killer has never been brought to justice. She is waging a battle to free Tapp and re-open the investigation. She is a thorn in the side of the local authorities. Last year, someone from the Idaho Falls prosecutor's office stood up in a court hearing and suggested that Carol Dodge, who has been seeking justice for all these many years, might be an accessory to the murder of her daughter in some unspecified way.
Yea, verily, that is what he said.
There we have "saving face" in America. It's no different than what is going on with Amanda and Raffaele.
This one of the endless long stories I could write up and post on JREF... all completely true and relentlessly similar.
