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

[Diocletus]

In the American system, this would almost certainly not have led to an outright acquittal but rather a vacating of the original verdict with prosecutors left to decide whether to retry the case without the evidence thrown out by the higher court.[/indent][/I]

Yes, well, in effect, that's exactly what happened. Hellmann threw out the DNA evidence and then adjudicated the case without it. The prosecution lost on the merits. The more important point, which your guy misses, is that in the American system, that's it. Finito.

 

[Grinder]

Yes, well, in effect, that's exactly what happened. Hellmann threw out the DNA evidence and then adjudicated the case without it. The prosecution lost on the merits. The more important point, which your guy misses, is that in the American system, that's it. Finito.

My guy? I also was the first to link to the Bassiouni article. Is he also my guy?

I think you may have misread. I the US if the appeals court threw out some of the evidence such as the DNA they would usually send it back and the prosecutor would decide whether to retry the case without that evidence.

Mach kept insisting that the Hellmann verdict was completely vacated because of procedural errors.

 

[Dan O.]

While trying to find Le Chic's address I found some interesting pre murder pictures of the place.

Here is one entitled my first Mojito.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/curlyly/1577781168/in/photostream/

Sorry couldn't make a picture show up.

ETA - there are a bunch of picture of Patrick and the inside of the club. If someone can put them up, I think they would be of interest.

Interesting pictures. They even helped me confirm the location of Patrick's bar at Via Alessi nr. 66 (43.111909, 12.391240). I have added it to my map

The pictures in that photo stream are time stamped over several days in September 2007. Does anyone recall when Amanda started working there?

 

[Diocletus]

My guy? I also was the first to link to the Bassiouni article. Is he also my guy?

I think you may have misread. I the US if the appeals court threw out some of the evidence such as the DNA they would usually send it back and the prosecutor would decide whether to retry the case without that evidence.

Mach kept insisting that the Hellmann verdict was completely vacated because of procedural errors.

There's no effective difference. In the US, appeals courts don't have juries, so the case had to go back. Hellman through out the evidence, and he did have a jury. So he cut the the chase and the prosecution lost.

It's very convenient for guilterwatchin to go on about "procedural errors," but the fact is that the verdict was thrown out because they called it illogical, which I'm sure you will agree meant that they didn't agree with his findings of fact, eg credibility of witnesses and probative value of other evidence. It's another semantic game that is supposed to make the process look better. But no one is fooled. Except for fools.

 

[Bill Williams]

My guy? I also was the first to link to the Bassiouni article. Is he also my guy?

I think you may have misread. I the US if the appeals court threw out some of the evidence such as the DNA they would usually send it back and the prosecutor would decide whether to retry the case without that evidence.

Mach kept insisting that the Hellmann verdict was completely vacated because of procedural errors.

One might well assume that the reason that Hellmann's acquittals were quashed were for the reasons cited by the ISC motivations report.

I find this in depth analysis of the ISC ruling of March 2013 helpful. For me it shows how it went off the rails, and turned this into a "political trial", as hinted by Judge Hellmann himself who quppied that his acquittals were overturned because the party of the PMs in the judiciary is strong.

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/ItalianSupremeCourtDecision2013.html​

Unlike many in this, the author admits up front that he has no legal training, and that he comes from a pro-innocence bias. With that stated, I'd challenge ANYONE guilter or neutral, to argue with his conclusions as to what was wrong with the March 2013 reversals....

With regards to the status of the Conti-Vecchiotti report which turned the tide towards innocence, this is what Cheli says about how the ISC ruled on it:

The Galati appeal had gone so far as to ask that the Conti-Vecchiotti expertise ordered by the court of second instance be declared illegitimate: on this point, the Supreme Court is very clear and while saying that its necessity was poorly motivated, considers such expertise perfectly legitimate from the point of view of law.

Instead, what the Supreme Court Judges censor in this chapter is the fact that the new track sampled by Vecchiotti on the knife was not tested, according to them this trace is even close to the one attributed “with strong objections” to the victim, while according to the memory of this author the new track “36I” should be located near the handle, while the old, famous, 36B was more near the tip of the blade.

Therefore, the Nencini tested 36I as per the ISC ruling... but even that went in the defence's favour.

Yet one of the reasons for quashing the acquittals is that the ISC blamed Vechiootti for not testing 36I! Read that again. The ISC blamed Vechiootti for not testing 36I! The ISC is implying that far from throwing out the Conti-Vecchiotti report, it needed to be completed... by testing 36I, which in fact Nencini ordered.

Well, now it's tested. And the testing went in the defence's favour.

Secondly, the ISC did not so much invalidate Conti-Vecchiotti, so much as it criticised Hellmann for so slavishly following the conclusions of their report and that it was incomplete.

Incredibly, the ISC ruled that if it was so easy to dismantle DNA analysis of Stephanoni, then ALL DNA analysis since 1986 could conceivably be called into question.

So, instead of actually doing that, calling all DNA testing since 1986 into question - and not so much the DNA testing, but the approach Italian courts takes to it......

...... the ISC simply reinforces the courts' right to simply ignore criticisms of one DNA-tester's work because a second authority has found it wanting.

One should read Cheli's critique of the ISC's March 2013 decision because in there lies them trying to run this train well after if has gone off the rails.

 

[Grinder]

There's no effective difference. In the US, appeals courts don't have juries, so the case had to go back. Hellman through out the evidence, and he did have a jury. So he cut the the chase and the prosecution lost.

It's very convenient for guilterwatchin to go on about "procedural errors," but the fact is that the verdict was thrown out because they called it illogical, which I'm sure you will agree meant that they didn't agree with his findings of fact, eg credibility of witnesses and probative value of other evidence. It's another semantic game that is supposed to make the process look better. But no one is fooled. Except for fools.

It is not the case that because there is no jury that all cases must go back to the lower court in the US.

 

[acbytesla]

That's not what happened. In fact, she was found innocent by the lower court (Hellmann).

Blah blah blah. This whole argument is semantics.

Are you really fooled by their sneaky definition of a "final" judgment?

In this particular case, they have conducted their appeals on issues of fact, and thus they have effectively had a series of trials, each with its own jury, which have had outcomes including people being jailed as a consequence. This seems to me to be the very definition of double jeopardy. Moreover, they've rigged the system to get the outcome they want, and the process has taken the better part of a decade, which are the very reasons why double jeopardy prohibitions exist.

It seems so typically Italian to me that they have a constitutional prohibition of double jeopardy, yet they play a semantics game to allow the government to have a series or trials on the merits extending over a period of years. Italy doesn't just have double jeopardy . . . it has infinite jeopardy.

One thing that Grinder is not considering is that the third trial was not in effect a third trial and it was done in absentia, which cannot be said about the second trial. In effect, a tribunal reviewed the second trial where Amanda was innocent and acquitted and over ruled it. It looked at the same facts and only a few new ones (which all fell in Amanda's favor) and said NO.

From my limited perspective, this case has no precedent. No one has an answer for what the state department or judge might do. There is the treaty to be concerned with, but there are many many legal issues that could stop that runaway train.

 

[platonov]

Just this once

IIRC it was after 2 girls 1 bra, sneezing, borrowed pillows, door handles , RS sniffing her underwear and predated an equally imaginative list of reasons.

Given that 'we all know' the DNA was planted as part of the conspiracy these various confabulations seem a tragic waste of energy.

And yet - in the unthinking fervour they betray - funny none the less.

I'm waiting for a case for guilt to be presented by platonov, instead he makes up stories about RS sniffing women's underwear.

All for Meredith, I suppose.

Whoa.

Logic fail

Platonov didn't invent any of these excuses for the killers DNA being found on the victims bra - various groupies did.
[The bolded part should be self explanatory in this regard]

Again – read the thread , get up to speed.

 

[Desert Fox]

Whoa.

Logic fail

Platonov didn't invent any of these excuses for the killers DNA being found on the victims bra - various groupies did.
[The bolded part should be self explanatory in this regard]

Again – read the thread , get up to speed.

So we need to find each man who had DNA on the clasp and try them for rape and murder. . . .So we have what five men and two women in this small room all at the same time?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

YSTR egram

Platonov didn't invent any of these excuses for the killers DNA being found on the victims bra - various groupies did.
[The bolded part should be self explanatory in this regard]

So by your logic five men killed Meredith. Thanks; that clears up quite a bit.

 

[Desert Fox]

So we need to find each man who had DNA on the clasp and try them for rape and murder. . . .So we have what five men and two women in this small room all at the same time?

So by your logic five men killed Meredith. Thanks; that clears up quite a bit.

Oops

 

[Diocletus]

It is not the case that because there is no jury that all cases must go back to the lower court in the US.

If they want new facts they do. There is a constitutional right to a jury trial. Appeals courts can't just make up facts out of whole cloth like the isc thinks it can.

 

[katy_did]

I would suggest that the constitution of a country in which the person currently resides takes precedence, as Mary_H has said. With due respect to katy_did, the US Constitution is not subject to the treaty, it is the other way around. One can interpret the US Constitution without reference to the treaty, but one cannot interpret the treaty (or Article VI) without reference to the US Constitution.
So you may be correct, that the treaty itself does not give protection against double jeopardy, but there's a rumour that the US Constitution does!

Bassiouni seems to say the opposite, Bill, at least insofar as this situation has been dealt with by the courts before:

...neither the Supreme Court nor any Circuit Court has yet held that the Fifth Amendment’s “double jeopardy” provision applies to extradition. So far, double jeopardy defenses have been dealt with as they arise under the applicable treaty.

In truth, though, I don't think it's really a question of whether the constitutional protection against double jeopardy applies, but rather whether the U.S. recognizes that another country's legal system might have a concept of double jeopardy which isn't identical to theirs. Because obviously there is a law against double jeopardy in Italy too, it's just that the conviction is finalized at a different stage in the process.

If the U.S. is going to have extradition treaties at all, then I don't see how it can do otherwise than recognize that sometimes legal concepts might be defined differently in a different legal system. After all, if the U.S. decided to exclusively use its own definition of double jeopardy and say that Italy has violated it, then Italy could just as easily refuse to extradite on the grounds that the U.S. doesn't respect a person's right to be presumed innocent, given that in the U.S. you're presumed guilty after your initial conviction even if you intend to appeal, while in Italy you're presumed innocent right up until the final appeal. From an Italian perspective that would be a violation of the right to a fair trial, if they strictly applied their own concept of when a conviction is finalized.

 

[Grinder]

There's no effective difference. In the US, appeals courts don't have juries, so the case had to go back. Hellman through out the evidence, and he did have a jury. So he cut the the chase and the prosecution lost.

It's very convenient for guilterwatchin to go on about "procedural errors," but the fact is that the verdict was thrown out because they called it illogical, which I'm sure you will agree meant that they didn't agree with his findings of fact, eg credibility of witnesses and probative value of other evidence. It's another semantic game that is supposed to make the process look better. But no one is fooled. Except for fools.

If they want new facts they do. There is a constitutional right to a jury trial. Appeals courts can't just make up facts out of whole cloth like the sic thinks it can.

It remains the case that just because they don't have juries doesn't mean that a US appeals court can't change a verdict. They can.

A appeal court can exclude evidence and as a result declare the defendant not guilty without going back to the lower court. This is not a common occurrence so you might not have known. Generally cases are not sent back for new facts but rather because some evidence used in the first trial was disallowed.

 

[Grinder]

Bassiouni seems to say the opposite, Bill, at least insofar as this situation has been dealt with by the courts before:



In truth, though, I don't think it's really a question of whether the constitutional protection against double jeopardy applies, but rather whether the U.S. recognizes that another country's legal system might have a concept of double jeopardy which isn't identical to theirs. Because obviously there is a law against double jeopardy in Italy too, it's just that the conviction is finalized at a different stage in the process.

If the U.S. is going to have extradition treaties at all, then I don't see how it can do otherwise than recognize that sometimes legal concepts might be defined differently in a different legal system. After all, if the U.S. decided to exclusively use its own definition of double jeopardy and say that Italy has violated it, then Italy could just as easily refuse to extradite on the grounds that the U.S. doesn't respect a person's right to be presumed innocent, given that in the U.S. you're presumed guilty after your initial conviction even if you intend to appeal, while in Italy you're presumed innocent right up until the final appeal. From an Italian perspective that would be a violation of the right to a fair trial, if they strictly applied their own concept of when a conviction is finalized.

In addition, in the US we have allowed people to be charged and convicted of a crime after being found innocent for the same act in a different court.

The jury found Officer Laurence Powell and Sergeant Stacey Koon guilty, and they were subsequently sentenced to 32 months in prison, while Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno were acquitted of all charges.​

 

[acbytesla]

Bassiouni seems to say the opposite, Bill, at least insofar as this situation has been dealt with by the courts before:

In truth, though, I don't think it's really a question of whether the constitutional protection against double jeopardy applies, but rather whether the U.S. recognizes that another country's legal system might have a concept of double jeopardy which isn't identical to theirs. Because obviously there is a law against double jeopardy in Italy too, it's just that the conviction is finalized at a different stage in the process.

If the U.S. is going to have extradition treaties at all, then I don't see how it can do otherwise than recognize that sometimes legal concepts might be defined differently in a different legal system. After all, if the U.S. decided to exclusively use its own definition of double jeopardy and say that Italy has violated it, then Italy could just as easily refuse to extradite on the grounds that the U.S. doesn't respect a person's right to be presumed innocent, given that in the U.S. you're presumed guilty after your initial conviction even if you intend to appeal, while in Italy you're presumed innocent right up until the final appeal. From an Italian perspective that would be a violation of the right to a fair trial, if they strictly applied their own concept of when a conviction is finalized.

Look at it this way. Either it is a violation of double jeopardy or it is a violation of the defendant's right to a speedy trial. Italy says, the trial isn't over until the Court of Cassation approves the verdict. Amanda and Raffaele have been under the tip of this sword for going on 7 years!!! At what point is enough enough?
The US has been renowned to have some lengthy legal trials, but seriously folks?

 

[Diocletus]

In truth, though, I don't think it's really a question of whether the constitutional protection against double jeopardy applies, but rather whether the U.S. recognizes that another country's legal system might have a concept of double jeopardy which isn't identical to theirs.

I don't think it works like that. If the US Constitution's prohibition of double jeopardy applies to the government's response to extradition requests, then no one is getting extradited to go to jail if they have been convicted after being acquitted in a jury trial.

I think countries understand that their treaties might be subject to the vagaries of the other party's domestic law in some situations. If Italy can't understand, then I guess an amended treaty would be in order.

 

[Mary_H]

The US didn't "say anything" because it didn't expect Italy to violate its own constitution. It seems to me that all extradition treaties implicitly provide that the requesting nation has complied with its own laws and applicable international laws, which Italy did not. So, you see, Italy is the party that has violated the treaty and has dirty hands.

Why does it sound like you're trying to disagree with me when you're repeating exactly what I said?

That's not what happened. In fact, she was found innocent by the lower court (Hellmann).

Blah blah blah. This whole argument is semantics.

Are you really fooled by their sneaky definition of a "final" judgment?

In this particular case, they have conducted their appeals on issues of fact, and thus they have effectively had a series of trials, each with its own jury, which have had outcomes including people being jailed as a consequence. This seems to me to be the very definition of double jeopardy. Moreover, they've rigged the system to get the outcome they want, and the process has taken the better part of a decade, which are the very reasons why double jeopardy prohibitions exist.

It seems so typically Italian to me that they have a constitutional prohibition of double jeopardy, yet they play a semantics game to allow the government to have a series or trials on the merits extending over a period of years. Italy doesn't just have double jeopardy . . . it has infinite jeopardy.

You're right. It is essentially a system of votes -- over a series of trials, over a period of time, they measure the majority of judges' votes, and the total is the eventual verdict. It doesn't make sense in our system, but it makes sense in theirs.

That's why I say the United States should have let Italy know they were not okay with the Italian legal system right from the start, because the Italian system does not afford Americans their trial rights according the US Constitution.

 

[Samson]

One thing that Grinder is not considering is that the third trial was not in effect a third trial and it was done in absentia, which cannot be said about the second trial. In effect, a tribunal reviewed the second trial where Amanda was innocent and acquitted and over ruled it. It looked at the same facts and only a few new ones (which all fell in Amanda's favor) and said NO.

From my limited perspective, this case has no precedent. No one has an answer for what the state department or judge might do. There is the treaty to be concerned with, but there are many many legal issues that could stop that runaway train.

I would hope the whole case would be dissected in the US courts due to public interest. Public interest would be served by scrutiny of the following.

Article 111 of the Italian Constitution states that
2. Trials are based on equal confrontation of the parties before an independent and impartial judge. The law has to define reasonable time limits for the proceedings.
3. In criminal trials, the law provides for timely and confidential information of the accused regarding the nature and reasons of charges brought against them; they are granted the time and means for their defense; they have the right to question those who testify against them or to have them questioned; those who may testify in favor of the accused must be summoned and examined under the same conditions granted to the prosecution; any evidence in favor of the accused must be acknowledged; the accused may rely on the help of an interpreter if they do not understand or speak the language of the proceedings.
4. In criminal trials, evidence may only be established according to the principle of confrontation between parties. No defendant may be proven guilty on the basis of testimony given by witnesses who freely and purposely avoided cross-examination by the defense.

Here we have a legal contradiction. Because Guede has been finally convicted, he is accorded the right to permanent silence. But because he has made a written statement accusing the two, he is obliged to present himself for questioning by the defence. Since he uses his enduring right to silence to avoid the latter, his accusations in the written testimony should be struck out. There are many questions that would be asked that would yield contradictory or confused responses, that would invalidate his accusations. Where and when on the evening did he first meet the co accused? Was there any time they were all in the room together. Were they barefooted? Did he see anyone with a knife etc? It would be a total farce.

 

[Grinder]

Look at it this way. Either it is a violation of double jeopardy or it is a violation of the defendant's right to a speedy trial. Italy says, the trial isn't over until the Court of Cassation approves the verdict. Amanda and Raffaele have been under the tip of this sword for going on 7 years!!! At what point is enough enough?
The US has been renowned to have some lengthy legal trials, but seriously folks?

I think the Italian system sucks in regard to the length of time allowed to charge and then proceed with the trial and the length of the trial itself.

If we wanted to have speedy trial for our citizens then we should have included that in the treaty.

In the US murder trial including appeals last far longer than this one did.

If the US denies extradition on either of bases you suggest, no US citizen will be released by the Italians in the future until they have been set free by the full Italian process.