The Illogic of Monsters
Doctors bury their mistakes. Judges put their mistakes in jail. The only consistent people are the lawyers. Lawyers send their mistakes a bill, just like they do their successes.
With all due... this is not the description of a "frame up". Building a bridge that will just stay up, does not describe one.
In Canada's well known wrongful convictions, there have been so many that they can pull out trends as to why, the factors are ones that are also systemic, rather than wilful ignoring of rules or planting of evidence. Even though the result is the same, investigative myopia is not part of a wilful frame-up.
Even with the Kish case, Justice Nordheimer is completely blind to the fact that he's just had to completely simplify a complex street melee into a fight involving only four people. The Ontario Court of Appeal is not "framing" anyone when they say that out of the four reasons for conviction Nordheimer used to convict, the defence lawyers addressed exactly none of them.
You're describing a broken system, not a frame up. Me, I'm offering a more humble analysis... that people like Judge Massei are exposed in the best part of the Italian system - the motivations reports.
Massei actually has to put it into black and white that Stefanoni actually DID face an insurmountable hurdle with 36b, that four tests needed to be done to provide the court with, gee... what's that word, it was around here somewhere?... oh yes, "evidence".
Two tests each for what the substance was, and two tests each to find out who it belonged to. Is it a "frame-up that Massei then justifies 36b as "evidence" when there was only enough minuscule amount to do one destructive test?
Is it a frame-up that he writes it and the PMF bunch do us all a favour and translate it so that English speakers can read about it? Is it a frame-up when Stefanoni says (incredibly) that her lab has never had a case of contamination, and Massei says, "Well she said it, that's good enough for me"? (How one can write that without smiling.... now THAT would be a frame-up!)
Accountants have never made an error of addition. Lawyers have never applied the wrong estate law to a will. Airplane refuelers have never put the wrong amount of aviation gas into an airplane. Scientific Police have never had an issue with contamination. 36b is evidence because, well....... ah, er, because an upcountry judge says so.
Seismologists can be charged with not predicting an earthquake.... there's something else, my hairy friend, going on here than a frame-up.
If the idea of a 'frame-up', means that something special or different was done to convict Amanda and Raf, then we may be in agreement. I think they just got, 'the usual'.
My view is that what happened to Amanda and Raf appears to be unfortunately typical of the Italian system, and typically corrupt.
I don't think one can understand this case without understanding the Monster of Florence case, as it involves many of the same prosecutors, judges, bizarre irrational theories, planted evidence, and unreliable tramp witnesses (including a village idiot, a mentally retarded man, and a homeless prostitute who would turn tricks for a 25 cent glass of red wine).
The high profile Pacciani conviction in the Monster of Florence case was impossible on its face (see MOF/preston, Spezi).
But that conviction saved Italian justice from the ignominy of not having solved the most horrifying series of murders that occurred over decades in and around florence.
At Pacciani's appeal, the prosecutor actually took the defendant's side and argued for Pacciani's acquittal. It was clear the acquittal would be granted. And the day before the acquittal verdict was announced, Guitiarri the new MOF inspector, announced charges against Vanni and Lotti (the 'picknicking friends' of Pacciani) who would subsequently be convicted as Pacciani's accomplices in the MOF cases. (Guitiarri was the same inspector that Mignini was convicted with for abuse of office.)
Despite the overwhelming certainty that the Pacciani acquittal was correct, the Italian Supreme Court reversed the acquittal and sent it back for retrial - just as has happened with Amanda and Raf.
Pacciani died within days before his retrial was to commence. (For Amand and Raf, that would correlate to the 'Nencini trial'). Pacciani was a hateful figure, a domestic abuser who raped his daughters. Amanda and Raf couldn't be further from him as people.
But the underlying motivation behind their prosecutions, convictions, acquittals, and ISC reversals, is identical. Italy and the prosecutors need bodies in jail, to provide the appearance of justice being done.
There never was any real case against Amanda & Raf, as had been thoroughly exposed in the Hellman Appeal.
Yet the Italian Supreme Court reversed it, based on nothing but sophistry. And we're all sitting around debating their "reasoning". Just as we'll all debate Nencini's "motivations".
It's not reasonable to assume that anything done or said in the prosecution and convictions of Amanda and Raf is done in good faith.
The Italian justice system is sick and rotten through and through. There are undoubtedly honest participants, like Hellman, and justice while grindingly slow, can be glimpsed from time to time.
But to suggest the police, and the labs, and the prosecutors, and civil attorneys, and even the judges themselves, are not fully aware they are railroading two innocent people in Amanda and Raf, is beyond credulity, and nothing but willful blindness.
The MOF prosecutors that stood behind the theory of a conspiracy of masonic satanic ritual sexual murders, received high profile and important career promotions. Mignini pursued that same theory, thus attaching himself to the MOF case, on the information provided by the psychic medium Gabriella Carlizzi, who claimed to have special knowledge of satanic cults, receiving 'illumination' from a dead priest and Vatican exorcist - who presumably would have an advantage in satanic matters.
When journalist Spezi declined to accept Carlizzi's information, she turned to Mignini who was interested. When Spezi continued to publicly question Mignini's MOF investigation, Mignini accused Spezi of being the Monster of Florence, and put him in jail. Spezi came very close to spending years in prison, just like Amanda and Raf. Spezi's co-author Preston was instrumental in coordinating public opinion and getting Spezi released, but it took extraordinary courage from the press to break the stranglehold of the prosecutors.
In this case, Mignini originally claimed that Meredith Kercher had fallen victim to the same masonic satanic cults and practices. The claim in this case supports his previous claims of satanic conspiracies in the MOF case.
Mignini is undoubtedly swayed by his own satanic fantasies. But he also has seen prosecutors before him benefit from career promotions, from pursuing the same theories in the same case. He knows what sells newspapers in Italy, he knows how to pitch the story to the press; and so, the press to the public, the public to the judges, and the judges to history. Mignini is nothing but a sadistic madman who lusts for power.
At the time of the Kercher murder, Mignini was under indictment for abuse of office. He had trials in the MOF case falling apart. And he had Amanda as a life-raft, pushing her under the water to stay afloat. In Mignini's mind, whose life is more important? The Upright and Correct Public Minister of Perugia Itlay, or the peasant whore from Seattle?
Cognitive dissonance implies competing realities. I don't believe Mignini has the capacity to recognize the wrongfulness of his own behavior. What's beyond shocking, is that neither apparently do the Italian judges or all of Italy seem to either.
The Italian system of justice, is the Monster of Italy. The immediate challenge, is to escape its grasp. The larger battle, is to tame the beast.
