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“Rudy Guede is the Forgotten Killer” – Knox’ secret message to Rudy Guede

December 12, 2020

“Rudy Guede is the Forgotten Killer”

So claims Amanda Knox on her Labyrinth podcast and her written press release (which she also reads out). 

RUDY IS OUT OF JAIL

This was a response 10 Dec 2020 to the news report 4 Dec 2020 of Rudy Guede being relased on ‘community service’ for the rest of his sentence, having served twelve years.  He was sentenced to sixteen years imprisonment in 2008, which means his sentence does not finish until 2024.  Thus, being on some kind of probation or parole seems to suggest Knox and Sollecito are safe from his publishing a tell-all book just yet, as one of the conditions of early release is ‘playing the game’  and tacitly acknowledging guilt for the crime you served time for.  This is one reason we have not heard anything from Guede, apart from – unusually – the RAI3 – Italian state  TV channel with Franca Leosini in which he pointed the finger at Knox as being present at the crime scene, and kept up the alibi he had already given in court.

RAPID RESPONSE FROM KNOX

So why would Knox respond so rapidly and heartily to Guede’s release on community service, within days?  The speed by which she put out a response suggests she was greatly excited by this news.  Firstly, 4 Dec 2020 coincides with when she and Sollecito were first found guilty after a long merits trial. The professionalism of the podcast indicates a touch of a smooth marketing attempt, with the audio having an opening and closing clip of her mother, Ebba Mellas, ringing her up ‘about the news’ and expressing concern.  Then we have Knox vehemently expressing her anger that ‘Guede has never taken responsibility for the rape and murder of Meredith Kercher’.

“RUDY IS A BURGLAR“

In her written press release, she claims Guede was on a burglary spree, culminating at a nursery in Milan ‘where he was found with a knife’.  She omits to mention he was cleared of burglary, the knife he had in his backpack came from the nursery drawer so he didn’t have it when he arrived.  He was still there in the morning, so his claim he went there to spend the night after a party rings true.  He didn’t need to beak in as an acquaintance gave him access, as confirmed by the nursery owner in court at the trial.  So an arrogant open lie by Knox right there.  Guede had no criminal record as of the point of Kercher’s murder.  Arrogant, because she presumes the reader knows nothing about the case.  She feels confident about lying and thus providing Guede with a motive in the minds of her readers.

HUSBAND AND WIFE CHAT SESSION

Knox and Chris Robinson, her husband, then have a ‘chat session’ in which Robinson puts forward the theory that murders are mostly committed by young men of Guede’s age group.  Guede was twenty years old at the time.  Another, ‘Therefore, of course he must have done it!’ – moment, ignoring that Knox herself was also twenty and Sollecito twenty-three.  Knox claims that Guede not taking sole responsibility for the crime meant many people suffered as a result.  However, the courts found overwhelming evidence of multiple attackers.  Knox and Sollecito themselves brought out as their key witnesses, Luca Aviello, a mafia gangster, and Mario Alessi, a child kidnapper and killer, as providing alternative suggestions as to who the ‘other attackers’ might be, if not themselves.  The prosecution, the defence, the pathologist,  and the judges all agree there were multiple attackers, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Given it is for the police and prosecutors to bring the correct charges and the courts to find the correct verdict and supply the prescribed sentencing, it is hardly the onus of Guede to offer exoneration to Knox and Sollecito, as courts rarely believe anything a prime suspect says anyway on the assumption, ‘They would lie about their own involvement, wouldn’t they?’. 

WHY IS KNOX EXCITED BY GUEDE’S RELEASE?

So what is the reason behind Knox’ excitement about Guede’s release into the community?

There are a mixture of possible reasons for her public address, other than the obvious one of wanting to remain in the news as a person of interest herself.

  1.  Not having been able to communicate openly with Guede before, now she can address him directly.  She taunts him as ‘being a coward’.  Clearly she is angling for a response or reaction from him.  Her rationale to the public she avers to be addressing is that she is ‘upset’.  But why would she be?  She had her own sentence annulled.  He is in Italy on probation, she is in the USA.  They will not be meeting in the street any time soon.  She was not the victim of the crime.  If the courts ‘got it wrong’ as she claims, for she berates them for ‘giving Guede a lesser sentence’: conspiracy to murder instead of murder – then that is down to the courts.  She aggressively asserts Guede alone was responsible for the ‘rape and murder of Meredith’ and ‘there were no other suspects’.  Unless she is a detective, how would she know this?  The final Supreme Court who annulled Knox’ and Sollecito’s sentence states clearly in its written reasons that there were multiple attackers and it was indisputable that Knox was present when Kercher was murdered.  It also clearly states that Knox named Diya Lumumba as the rapist and killer of Kercher ‘to cover up for Rudy Guede’.  Knox never mentions that she still has a conviction for her false accusation of a Black man she knew was innocent, nor that her four years in jail were not ‘wrongful imprisonment’ but the correct sentence for Calunnia, of three years (which roughly corresponds with the US ‘Obstruction of Justice’  – five years maximum imprisonment in most states – or perverting the course of justice in the UK which has a similar sentence to Italy’s).  There was also one year on remand, for which she has not claimed compensation.  Sollecito tried to but had his case thrown out because the pair were proven by the courts to have lied, lied and lied again about their movements and whereabouts as of the time of the crime.  So now she is challenging Guede to ‘admit you were the sole perpetrator’.
  2. Perhaps she is desperately worried about what Guede might say, now that he cannot be prosecuted for the same crime and having served almost all of his sentence.  Now he is out and about living like a normal person.  So, her broadcast and press release is a pre-emptive strike.  Attack being the best form of defence.  Get the public on your side.  Arise sympathy in the reader/listener about all the ‘pain’ Guede made everybody suffer, especially in respect to yourself.  Warning: this man is a coward!  Do not believe him!
  3. But what if it is something else?  A coded message to Guede, as one co-crime partner to another?  Think of how when you meet an old friend and you reminisce together.  Perhaps it is an old boyfriend and you would rather your current one did not know.  So, instead of openly talking about the time you went to the cinema together, you might allude to it instead.  You might say remember that time ‘Oceans Seven’ was showing but I couldn’t go because I was washing my hair and hint, ‘I know secrets about you’ so if you agree not to tell on me, I can reward you in some way.  Read the following extract and substitute ‘I’ for ‘he’ and ‘I’ for ‘he’:

I’m [he’s] upset that he’s [I’ve] never acknowledged his [my] crimes, that he’s [I’ve] never been held fully accountable, and that I [he] continue [s] to bear the burden of his [my] infamy.

PAIN

  • Knox talks about Guede inflicting ‘pain‘, which is what a sadist does, but perhaps it takes one to know one? 
  • Knox plays ‘the race card’ by bringing in her friends ‘who are men of color just like Guede’ but they really were innocent but had to wait much longer than twelve years for their exoneration.  Here the logic becomes illogical.  This is because the point being made is not the sentencing or their presumed innocence or guilt but ‘I have friends who are persons of color’.  It is an “I am not a racist,” declaration, even though Knox did falsely accuse a ‘man of color’ as the perpetrator of Meredith Kercher’s death, yet Knox never, EVER, mentions that crime she did indeed commit and remains convicted.
  • Knox complains that the press are ‘humanizing’ Guede whilst vilifying herself.  She claims she ‘bears the burden of his infamy’.  However, Guede has no control over the press, so why blame him for one’s own press coverage?  Knox is banking on most readers of her quasi-anguished plea of not knowing any of the facts of the case.  Knox and Sollecito were charged and convicted of Aggravated (first degree) Murder because of the overwhelming evidence against them.  The sentence of 26 years for Knox was annulled after intervention from the same very sympathetic US press and PR agencies Knox now claims are her tormentors.  She was given her own column in the West Seattle Herald newspaper owned by her husband’s grandfather and edited by his Uncle Ken Robinson, wherein she was free to promote her own agenda of having being victimised by Italian police and Italian justice, which she repeated with the Netflix film.  The truth is, Guede has never been humanised.  He is always portrayed as the African drifter and prolific burglar and drug dealer.  The Black guy.
  • The issue of who let Guede into the cottage in the first place is one she prefers to ignore; hers and Sollecito’s trumped-up story of a burglary-gone-wrong was firmly disproved by solid forensic evidence that ‘the burglary’ scene was half-heartedly done and was effected after the murder, to put investigators off the scent.  It is not possible for Guede to confirm he came in through the window because it is proven not to have happened.  The window was proven to have been smashed from the inside.  Guede came in through the front door.
  • I believe her excited press release contains a coded message to Guede.  First, she is inviting him to respond to her.  Secondly, she sees him as a threat so is manipulating him.  This is apparent from the following:

I don’t need to know his reasons, what was going through his mind that night. But I would like to know if he cares now. If he cares about what he did to Meredith, what he did to me.

Translated:  ‘I don’t need to know your reasons, what was going through your mind that night [of the murder].  But I would like to know if you [still] care [about me] now.  If you care what [you made me do] to Meredith, what you did to me [by causing me to be upset that evening].  Contact me and let me know if you [still] care about me.  And maybe we can come to some arrangement. [Thanks for covering up for me so far.]’  …

’You could end all that [my appearance of guilt] in a second.’

So, when she proclaims Guede as ‘the forgotten killer’ she implicitly acknowledges there are other killers: the known killers.  However, they are not taking any responsibility.  And they need never need to if you, Guede, could contact me and we’ll talk about this.

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AMANDA KNOX – DOES SHE SUFFER FROM FALSE MEMORY SYNDROME?

May 1, 2020

ak hand

Knox claimed at her trial she suffered from false memory

AMANDA KNOX – DOES SHE SUFFER FROM FALSE MEMORY SYNDROME?

In her testimony at the trial for the Aggravated Murder of Meredith Kercher, co-defendant Amanda Knox claimed her initial accusations and confession to being at the crime scene were based on faulty memory due to coercion by the police.  For example:

AK:

According to me, it depends on the situation. I can only talk about my own experience, which was, that I had to, forced myself — because they told me that I had to remember something else — to recall something else, so I forced myself so hard, that I was trying to imagine the reality that I had apparently forgotten, and I got confused as to whether the things I had imagined were really memories or just imagination. Because they were fragmentary. They were just images of things I had seen in my life, for example Piazza Grimana, that I saw every day, Patrick, whom I saw almost every day. These things, which were fragmented, I didn’t know if they belonged to that evening, to that sequence of events, or that line of reasoning. I didn’t know, and not knowing what was reality and what was my imagination, this was the state of confusion.

She had made a voluntary statement a few days after the murder claiming she had been present at the murder and had witnessed from another room Meredith’s harrowing screams and hearing thud.  DNA, blood, luminol and subsequent circumstantial evidence after the murder of 2 Nov 2007 meant Knox was charged, together with Sollecito a few months later in the following year.

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Knox’ signed statement

Knox gave several reasons for having claimed to have been present at the murder and for naming Patrick Lumumba, whom she knew to be innocent and was subsequently convicted for criminal calunnia and served three years for it.  She has never paid Lumumba the damages she was ordered to pay by the court for his wrongful incarceration as a result of her criminally malicious claim

One reason was that the police had coerced her by slapping the back of her head, interrogated her ‘for 53 hours’ – a claim she maintains today, even though police records show she was only at the police station of her own free decision for a couple of hours before she made the startling claim, totally unexpected by the police, who correctly immediately terminated the witness interview.

In her testimony she claimed further, she had experienced a ‘flashback’:

flashbacks

Prosecutor G Mignini cross-examining Knox on her claim she had a false memory

Another reason was that the police had told her Sollecito had withdrawn his alibi for her – which he had and has never reinstated it – and that she was threatened with thirty years in jail.

The third reason, which she uses as a PR meme in her various tours of Innocence Project events is that she suffered from ‘false memory’ syndrome and even teamed up with psychologist Saul Kassin, whose pet subject this is.

An early open advocate of Knox, Nina Burleigh rushed out a book to present Knox’ side of the story.  It was Burleigh who introduced the theme of Rudy Guede as ‘a drifter’ and claims he was aged ‘twenty-seven’, when in fact he was twenty at the time.   To help Knox with her case Burleigh introduces the idea – which Knox latches onto – of False Memory syndrome, caused by being under duress.

kassin

Saul Kassin

In The Fatal Gift of Beauty by Nina Burleigh p 234  Burleigh cites Saul Kassin as a proponent of false confession.  She draws attention to the case of Barry Laughman, 24, who in 1990 was ‘falsely convicted’ of the murder and rape of 85-year old Edna Laughman in 1987.

laughman newsclip crop

Laughman was legally categorised as a ‘moron’ and when told his fingerprints had been found at the scene, he confessed and it wasn’t until later that his blood sample DNA was ‘excluded’ by a left-over sample years later.

laughman's fingerprint

At the time of his interview Laughman was not told that all the police had at the time was a whorl fingerprint and was led to believe they had his prints.  35% of the population has whorl prints.

There had been three finger marks on Miss Laughman’s arm and Laughman was seen to have had an injured pinky finger, leading police to note that he was only able to grasp with three fingers.

This syndrome, Burleigh implies, is also why Knox ‘falsely confessed’, because the police (a) used the same Reid technique as had been used against Laughman way back in DNA prehistory in 1988, when matching blood type analysis was the norm rather than DNA testing and (b) because Italian police applied a good cop/bad cop method of interrogation, called the Reid Technique  Thing is, at that stage, Knox was not a suspect and the police were still at an early investigation level.  Knox had attended the Questura of her own accord to keep Sollecito company, who had been called in.

‘On September 8, 1987, Troopers Holtz and Blevins requested that Plaintiff and his father return for more questioning. When Plaintiff and his father arrived, Trooper Holtz took Plaintiff into an interview room alone. At the time of this second questioning, Plaintiff was twenty-four years old with an IQ of 69-71, which was lower than 97.5 % of the population. He was classified as “a moron” under then existing mental health classifications.

Under current mental health classifications, Plaintiff would be considered mildly retarded.

After approximately an hour of interrogation, Troopers Holtz and Blevins claim Plaintiff confessed to the rape and murder. Although Trooper Holtz had a tape recorder, Plaintiff’s confession was not recorded. Rather, Trooper Holtz is heard reading the confession statement to Plaintiff and asking whether it is correct. Plaintiff’s voice is only heard on the tape saying “yes.” https://casetext.com/case/laughman-v-commonwealth

So, is Burleigh claiming Knox, too, like Laughman, is technically a ‘moron’ – the offivial legalese of the day – and easily manipulated into essentially lying?  She states in her book, ‘After sixteen years in prison DNA evidence finally proved Laughman innocent, and he was set free’.

laughman newsclip

Newspaper report of the day

On June 20, 2003, the motion was granted and the DNA evidence was ordered to be tested and compared to samples taken from Plaintiff. In a report dated November 5, 2003, the DNA analyst concluded that, “Barry Laughman is excluded as a source of the DNA obtained from this sample.” [ibid]

Can Burleigh reasonably claim this is an equivalent case to that of Knox or Sollecito?  The reason for its inclusion in her book and her self-professed advocacy of Knox, it seems, is to underline Saul Kassin’s theories about why someone would confess to something so incriminating as being present at a heinous crime scene.  So here we have the launch of one of Knox’ key PR memes:  she only named Patrick Lumumba and described being present herself whilst Patrick raped and murdered her room-mate…because of (1) false memory and (2) the Italian ‘good cop’ in the form of Anna Donnino making sympathetic noises about how trauma after an accident can affect your memory.

Barry Laughman’s case, whom Burleigh cites as an example of false memory

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Barry Laughman

When Barry Laughman was a small boy, he injured his pinky finger. At the time, it didn’t seem like a life-threatening injury. But it would eventually turn out to be very serious indeed.

In 1987, when Laughman was 24, a female neighbor was found murdered. The police quickly zeroed in on Laughman after noticing that he couldn’t bend his little finger. The victim had been found with three small bruises on her arm, as though someone had gripped her with only three fingers. This seemed to match Laughman’s damaged pinky.

Laughman had an IQ of 70 and was mentally the equivalent of a 10-year-old child. He eventually agreed to confess after police trooper John Holtz told him that a fingerprint found at the crime scene had a whorl pattern, as did Laughman’s fingers. Holtz wasn’t lying, but he neglected to tell Laughman that whorl fingerprints are extremely common, found in 25–35 percent of the population. In reality, Laughman’s specific fingerprints were not found at the scene.

Armed with his confession, the prosecution secured Laughman’s conviction. A short time later, DNA testing became standard practice and defense attorney Mark Beauchat mailed key evidence samples to anthropologist Mark Stoneking for testing. According to Beauchat, Stoneking called him to say that he couldn’t perform a conclusive test and then never returned the evidence. According to Stoneking, he was never able to carry out a test, because Beauchat only sent the evidence from the crime scene and ignored his request for a sample of Laughman’s DNA to compare it to.

Communication apparently broke down between Stoneking and Beauchat after this, with Beauchat believing that the evidence had been lost or destroyed, when Stoneking had actually taken it to Germany with him. It only resurfaced in 2003, when investigative reporter Pete Shellem tracked Stoneking down. (In his defense, Stoneking told Shellem that he “had no idea what the case was about.”) DNA testing quickly cleared Laughman, albeit almost a decade after it should have.

https://listverse.com/2016/04/10/10-convicted-murderers-who-confessed-but-didnt-do-it/

PCR/DQ Alpha DNA testing was done in 1993 by Cellmark Diagnostics. It tested the vaginal swabs collected from the victim, but the results were inconclusive.

Kassin, in the course of his studies as a psychology student, became interested in the works of Stanley Milgram, famous for his experiments which showed that people will often just ‘obey authority’ (Milgram’s own interest aroused by the phenomenon of German Third Reich prison camp guards obeying orders to perpetrate acts of extreme crimes against humanity).  Kassin’s interest moved to criminal psychology and he was intrigued to find out why some people confess to shocking crimes they did not commit, as in the early example of Marty Tankleff:

tankleff

Marty Tankleff

 In one of the most striking examples, Marty Tankleff, a Long Island teenager, came to breakfast one morning in 1988 to find his parents stabbed on the kitchen floor, his mother dying and his father in a coma. Detectives thought Tankleff was not sufficiently grief-stricken, so he became their prime suspect. After hours of getting nowhere, a detective said he had called Tankleff ‘s father at the hospital and that the injured man said Tankleff had committed the crime. (In truth, his father died without regaining consciousness.) Shocked beyond reason, Tankleff confessed. He spent 19 years in prison before a growing body of evidence set him free.

Exonerated or Vacated?

However, when one investigates further the reasons for the above apparent ‘exonerations’ (Laughman, Tankleff) we find that they are more as a result of ultra-persistent defence advocates, such as those active in US Innocence Projects.  Laughman was cleared because the early blood sample had deteriorated and a defence advocate pursued a scientist who still had a residual sample he took to Germany who, eventually, under pressure from the advocate, in 1993, claimed the DNA ‘excluded’ Laughman.  This is curious wording and tells us little.  Does it mean it is someone else’s DNA or more likely, it failed to identify any DNA or enough DNA loci up to legal standard due to poor quality?  We are not told.   In the case of Tankleff, his case was vacated according to Wikipedia, for reason of:  “The issue in this case is not whether there is evidence, but whether there is sufficient evidence.”  

Is Evidence Insufficient without DNA Proof?

‘Insufficient evidence’ is, of course, the unusual final verdict for Knox and Sollecito, rather than a straight forward not guilty,  when their convictions were annulled, in 2015.  So, who then, did kill Edna Laughman and Marty Tankleff’s parents?  No-one knows, is the answer.   The confessions of the two that they committed the crime at the time, together with a fingerprint in the Laughman case and a blood spot in the Tankleff one counts for nothing.

Of course it is better to see a guilty man go free than an innocent man punished for a crime he did not commit.

Ten Million Dollar Settlement

The area of legal jurisdiction opposed Tankleff’s claim for compensation after being freed, although he won in the end.  Knox and Sollecito have received zero compensation as they were not actually exonerated.

A prosecutor and detective who worked the case plan to argue against the settlement before it’s approved. They believe the jury got it right.

“Tankleff has argued for years that his confession was coerced, but he has never even attempted to explain the incriminating blood proof, which even his lawyers admitted to a federal appeals court ‘was self-evidently damning’ evidence of Tankleff’s guilt,” said Leonard Lato, a former prosecutor represented Suffolk County in Tankleff’s appeal.

 

The Advance of DNA Testing in Criminal Trials

The progress of science cannot be halted and DNA identification has helped courts in that there is a further source of evidence to access.  If there is an error in the collection phase of forensics, as in the Laughman case, when the blood sample taken in 1988 had deteriorated by 1993 and with the advances in DNA testing, no legal standard match could be found come 2003, should this make the entire trial and conviction void, given the other evidence of fingerprint, three-finger bruising, blood spots and explicit confessions?

With every pro comes a con:

  • Does a lack of DNA evidence prove a person is innocent?

  • Should a confession count for nothing in a court of law?

  • If an error is made in forensic testing does that void a trial?

  • Is there any genuine evidence for Saul Kassin’s false memory syndrome?

It would appear to be the case that the public and the press are now demanding definite DNA evidence of guilt rather than the current legal standard of ‘Beyond a Reasonable Doubt’ based on all of the evidence in a fair trial.  In other words, is a lack of a strong DNA trail grounds for ‘insufficient evidence’ despite the presence of other evidence, such as a confession, luminol footprints or fingerprints, as in Knox’ case?

Can a detailed confession to a crime be even proven to have been ‘false memory’?

 

 

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Aviello – The Truth

December 27, 2019

AVIELLO: THE TRUTH.

bongiorno-maori

How Aviello was bribed to bend the trial of Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito

 

LucianoLucia (formerly Luciano) Aviello

Luciano Aviello, a key defence witness for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito during their trial for aggravated murder, has been cleared of the serious count of calunnia, (calumny)  in a little reported acquittal in January 2018.  The news came via an obscure news item in Italian newspaper, UMBRIA24, which reported:

He [Aviello] accused his brother of killing Meredith Kercher but eight years after that slander the court acquitted him because “the fact does not exist”. The trial against Luciano Aviello, repentant of the Camorra, who during the first instance trial to Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito wrote five letters to the defenders of the American student, blaming the brother of the murder [of Meredith Kercher] on Via della Pergola. Aviello, a 49-year-old Neapolitan, among other things had told investigators that he had known Sollecito during his period of detention in Terni prison. (Google translation)

Aviello was cleared by an Italian court of the Italian equivalent of ‘Obstruction of Justice’ for allegedly giving the court false information in order to deliberately  sabotage the trial.  In his defence, the transgender 49-year-old claimed he had been bribed to throw the case into chaos by Sollecito’s attorney, Giulia Bongiorno.  He told the Appeal court during the Kercher trial he had been offered €30,000 towards his sex change operation.

bongiorno

Attorneys Guilia Bongiorno and Luca Maori acting for Raffaele Sollecito

Aviello had numerous convictions for mafia activities and was a notorious ‘informer’ according to Sollecito in his book, Honor Bound, who had to be kept in isolation, protected from other prisoners.

Sollecito claims in his book that the Squadra Mobile (Flying Squad) in Perugia had set him up to become friends with Aviello in the hope he would confess to the crime.  Aviello claimed Sollecito confessed that Amanda killed Meredith in an erotic game.  Sollecito claims that when he realised what Aviello had been saying about him, he cut him off as a friend and Aviello was moved away from Terni prison, shortly after.

sollecito

Raffaele Sollecito: Then and Now

Strangely, Aviello was introduced to the trial by Sollecito’s defence to testify that the real killers were Antonio, Aviello’s brother, and a mysterious Albanian.  Given Aviello’s long record of being an unreliable witness and numerous convictions for slander, many consider it remarkable Knox’ attorney Carlo Dalla Vedova called Aviello as a key witness, in collaboration with Sollecito’s attorney, Luca Maori.

The testimony of Aviello, unsurprisingly, was completely dismissed and Aviello told he would be prosecuted for criminal slander (obstruction of justice in an investigation).  He had written five letters to the Prosecutor Manuela Comodi setting out his wild claims.

How Hellmann gagged Aviello’s claims of bribery by the defence

After the trial in which Knox and Sollecito were found guilty of aggravated murder, the case went to automatic appeal.  The judge, Hellmann, refused to allow Aviello to be questioned in the the witness stand on the issue that he had only made his claims because of the bribe by Sollecito’s defence, leading the prosecution to appeal against this, as a point of law.

In the next stage automatic appeal to the Supreme Court, Judge Chieffi ruled Hellmann erred in not allowing Aviello’s testimony to be heard that he had been bribed by Bongiorno to make the false claims, in order to bring chaos and confusion to the case.

Advocate Bongiorno is quoted as saying she would take legal measures to defend her reputation.  To date, there are no reports she has ever sued Aviello for his accusations.

Judge Chieffi sent the case back down to the Appeal Court, this time presided by Alessandro Nencini.  See my article on the Nencini Papers Day 2, 4 Oct 2013.

Aviello gets a second chance at Nencini’s court

One of the edicts of the Supreme Court was that Aviello must be heard for his bribery claims.  The date for Aviello’s testimony was set for Day 2 of the Appeal, 4th Oct 2013.  This time, Aviello appeared in female clothing, claimed he or she was undergoing gender reassignment surgery and asking to be called ‘Lucia’.

Once again, Aviello changed his story and was back claiming again that his brother and an Albanian were responsible for the savage murder.

Aviello’s three versions

Judge Nencini was dismissive of Aviello’s testimony, remarking on Aviello’s “three versions” of his story. Knox’s lawyer, Dalla Vedova, objected to this on the grounds that there had only been two versions. Nencini smiled and said: “Don’t forget the next!”

nencini

Dr. Alessandro Nencini

To complete the farce, two of Aviello’s fellow inmates at Terni came forward to inform investigators that whilst in prison with Sollecito, he had bragged that Solllecito said his father Fransesco would give him €70,000 to disrupt the trial.

The upshot of all of this tomfoolery is that Aviello stood trial recently on the charges of obstruction and slander, related to the above shenanigans, and CLEARED of wrongdoing, by fact that ‘the act does not exist’.

Confused?  You won’t be

The legal implications of the verdict are one or more of the following:

  • Aviello made the allegations his brother and an Albanian committed the crimes in good faith
  • Aviello was indeed bribed to cause chaos in court
  • Aviello was called by the defence lawyers for Knox and Sollecito to disrupt proceedings
  • The court deemed the matter of Luciano Aviello, star witness, was too trivial to prosecute, as the police themselves did not bother to investigate Aviello’s obvious tall story
  • The Squadra Mobile did set Aviello up to inform on Sollecito. He then made up a story about his brother instead, being a compulsive liar
  • The defence were happy to have a compulsive liar and criminal with eight convictions for slander and others for Mafia activity

In his book, Honor Bound, co-written with Andrew Gumbel, 2012, Sollecito claims Aviello was transferred away from the same prison as his because,

“I can only assume this was because his presence there no longer served any useful purpose to the authorities.’

He adds, ‘Much later, I sent him a present, an embroided handkerchief, to express my gratitude.’

Why Aviello was put forward

The most likely reason the Sollecito defence wheeled in Aviello – and child murderer, Alessi, who claimed Rudy Guede had confessed to him in prison – is that the Amanda Knox defence – Dalla Vedova – and Bongiorno and Maori, for Sollecito,  knew that the ‘Lone Wolf’ theory, so beloved of the pair’s supporters, did not, and could not, stand up in court and thus, tried to present an alternative scenario of the proven presence of ‘multiple attackers’, other than their clients.  The original merits hearing, Massei 2008, the Nencini Appeal hearing, 2013, and the final Supreme Court, Marasca-Bruno, 2015, all categorically confirm in their verdicts the evidence proves multiple attackers, beyond all reasonable doubt.

You will note, Amanda Knox prefers to never mention this inconvenient matter of fact. She claims to this day: ‘One attacker: Rudy’.

Make of that what you will.

Aviello – who is he?

Born Luciano Aviello, he originates from the Spanish Quarter of Naples.  According to Wikipedia:

Quartieri Spagnoli (Spanish Quarters) is a part of the city of Naples in Italy. The Neapolitan language is stronger here than anywhere else. It is a poor area, suffering from high unemployment and strong influence of Camorra. The area, encompassing c. 800,000 square metres, consists of a grid of around eighteen streets by twelve, including a population of some 14,000 inhabitants.

Aged 49 in January last year, when he was cleared of criminal slander (=obstruction of justice, similar to the Amanda Knox charge and her conviction), Lucia (formerly Luciano) Aviello, would have been aged 42 when he first appeared at the Hellmann appeal in 2011 – as a defence trial witness (merits) called by Dalla Vedova and again at the Nencini trial, aged 44, two years later.  Nencini was directed by Supreme Court Judge Chieffi to hear his testimony, Aviello having been dismissed by Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann at the now notorious hearing in 2011 which he freed Knox and Sollecito.  That hearing outcome was subsequently rescinded and the evidence of Aviello expunged from the records.

Aviello sent five letters to the court

Aviello had contacted the authorities several times up to the trial claiming to know the real killers.  There are five letters recorded by the courts.  His claim was that Knox, Sollecito and Guede were innocent and that the crime had been committed instead by his late brother and an Albanian.  He averred that they had chanced upon the ‘poor English girl’ during a burglary, who had started screaming so one of them had swiftly ‘stabbed her in the neck’ and then tried to silence the screams by placing a hand over her mouth.  Aviello claims he and his brother were living in Perugia at the time.

Blood-stained clothing

Aviello claimed the brother appeared in blood-stained clothing and had an injury to his right arm.  The crux of his story is that he was asked by his brother to hide the murder weapon – a knife – and a set of keys under a stone in a garden in Perugia, which Aviello claims he then set about doing under a pile of bricks.

Aviello at the time of his testimony was serving a 17-year prison sentence for being an associate of the Mariano crime family of the notorious Secondigliano district of Naples, an improverished mafia-controlled area rife with drug-dealing, prostitution, extortion and money-laundering.  The 17-year sentence suggests he was not small fry.  His story remained consistent, too, even repeating his claims at the ensuing Nencini court, despite the threat of a criminal charge of slander.

Two witnesses called by the prosecution in June 2011 backed Aviello up, Cosimo Zaccaro, a fellow inmate who claimed Aviello bragged of having been offered €59,000 by Bongiorno, Sollecito’s counsel, and Alexander Ilic, his cellmate, who said Aviello claimed he’d been offered €158,000 by her.

Zaccaro was in prison for a variety of charges including drug, fraud, and theft.[48] His previous charges include three charges for slander that resulted in two convictions.[49] Zaccaro had originally met Aviello in the informants section of Ivrea prison in 1987.[50] He testified that Aviello had told him that he knew Alessi but he did not necessarily believe that was true and that Aviello was likely just bragging.[51] Zaccaro also testified that one day Aviello was crying which led to them talking.[52] Aviello confided in Zaccaro that Sollecito was paying him to testify at the trial and cause confusion.[53] Aviello told Zavvaro that he had been given €70,000 and that it was in a bank in San Paolo.[54] Zaccaro also testified that Aviello had a letter from Raffaele Sollecito thanking him for all he was doing for him.[55]  –

Alexander Ilic:

Ilic testified that he met Luciano Aviello in the summer of 2010 at Ivrea prison.[56] Aviello had told him that he had met Raffaele Sollecito while at Terni prison and that he had since met with Sollecito’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno.[57] Ilic testified that Aviello claimed that the Sollecito’s were paying him €158,000 to testify at the trial.[58] Aviello planned to use the money for gender reassignment surgery.[59] Ilic testified that Aviello had papers about gender reassignment and that he showed him one that had the signature of Raffaele Sollecito although Ilic did not know the exact content of the signed paper.[60] In addition Ilic told the court that Aviello had neckerchief that he said was a gift from Raffaele Sollecito and that Sollecito had sent Aviello books to study while in prison.[61]

The claim of being bribed by Sollecito’s counsel would have been in response to Aviello’s defence against the perjury charge that he only said what he did because he was bribed by Bongiorno.

There was also the police officer, Chiacciera, Marco:

A police officer that investigated Luciano Aviello.[62] The testimony was short but Chiacchiera told the court two items that are of interest to the credibility of Aviello’s claims. The first was Aviello’s involvement in the murder investigation of mafia member Salvatore Conte. Conte had been killed by his own organization because he was considered a risk due to his cocaine addiction. The police had thought telephone intercepts figured out that the murder was committed by Marcelo Russo at the order of Salvatore Menzo.[63] In November of 2007 Luciano Aviello contacted Dr. Paci the prosecutor in this murder requesting that he be heard because he had relevant details.[64] In March of 2008 Aviello was interviewed by the police regarding Conte’s murder and he told them a involved story including several additional murders and about a plot to kill a magistrate using explosives.[65] The police attempted to confirm Aviello’s claims but that went nowhere. Aviello had told the police that two bodies were buried near a tree in a field but when the police excavated the field they found nothing.[66] Further, the story Aviello told them did not make sense given the location and how the murders took place.[67] A second attempt to confirm Aviello’s claims resulted in Aviello being allowed out of jail for the day to lead police to another body.[68] Again Aviello was unable to produce a body to support his story.[69]

Chiacchiera also investigated Aviello with respect to his claims regarding the murder of Meredith Kercher. Aviello was a defense witness who claims that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are innocent and that his brother killed Meredith in a botched art theft. Aviello claimed to be living in Perugia at the time and that fact is central to his story. Chiacchiera testified that he attempted to confirm Aviello’s claims of living in Perugia at the time of the murder. Chiachhiera told the court that he was able to determine that Aviello had two cellphones at the the time but that neither of them had ever connected to a Perugia cell tower.[70] Chiacchiera also told the court that Salvatore Menzo the individual with whom Aviello claimed to be living was actually living elsewhere in Italy.[71] Lastly, Chiacchiera attempted to find anyone who had seen or interacted with Aviello in Perugia and was unable to find anyone who knew him.[72]

Then there was Monica Napoleoni, who was the first senior lead police officer on the scene (the first was the postal police returning one of Meredith Kercher’s phones, found abandoned):

Monica Napoleoni was also tasked with looking into Luciano Aviello’s story that his brother and a unknown accomplice were the real killers. Aviello had said he was living at #11 Via della Pergola (the murder happened at #7 Via della Pergola) but when Napoleoni went to find #11 no such address exists and after checking with civic records that address has never existed.[73] Amanda Knox’s lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova pointed out that Aviello was not certain and that he had said it was perhaps #11.[74] Napoleoni told that court that she had checked all the neighbouring properties and Aviello had not been a resident at any of them.[75     SOURCE: The Murder of Meredith Kercher 

Multiple assailants or ‘Lone Wolf’?

Let’s recap:  Aviello was secured as a witness by Dalla Vedova to claim the multiple assailants were other than the accused: Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.  Crini, for the prosecution at the Nencini appeal put it to Aviello that he had been ‘convinced’ to make up this story by Bongiorno.  Bongiorno claimed his testimony was irrelevant.  Francesco Sollecito, Raffaele’s father. said it was ‘laughable’ to claim that he or Bongiorno had offered to pay off Aviello.

fracesco

Francesco Sollecito, father of Raffaele: ‘My son has never seen a dead body, never mind killed anyone.’

Yet Aviello stood by his claim to the very end that he was bribed to subvert justice and at the end of January 2018 he was cleared.  So what exactly was this about?

The Naples Camorra

Being a member of the notorious Camorra Aviello, is ipso facto anti-state and anti-police, not to mention governed by an oath of omerta (=silence: thou shalt not grass) nor help the police in any way.

Who are the Mariano family of Secondigliano in Naples?

Robert Salviano who wrote a book about the Camorra writes in an excerpt in VANITY FAIR:

“in 2010, the Secessionists themselves split into two groups—veterans of the war with Di Lauro, known as the Old Colonels, and upstarts led by a notoriously violent kid in his early 20s, known as Mariano, who rides around not on a motor scooter but on a powerful dual-purpose Transalp motorcycle, wearing a full-face helmet in the fashion of killers.”

In 2016 it was reported that, ‘Police posed as hotel staff to capture the fugitive Salvatore Mariano, who had been on the run since March, and was one of the most-wanted members of the Italian mafia’, supposedly one of the 100 most dangerous fugitives in Italy, wanted for drug-smuggling.  This was the world in which Aviello lived, as a Mariano family member.

‘Harrowing scream’

So, let’s take Aviello at face value.  He was offered a substantial amount of money (he claims), towards an expensive sex-change treatment, by Bongiorno, acting for Raffaele Sollecito.  Two of his prison buddies come forward to verify he had boasted of being given this money in exchange for muddying the waters of the trial for the defence.  The core story is that his brother Antonio– who was then a missing person – was essentially the perpetrator, together with a mysterious Albanian named ‘Floris’.  He describes the nature of the attack, including the screams and the hand over the mouth remarkably accurately.  There are finger bruises found around Meredith’s mouth and both Guede and Knox also mention hearing the screams, as did an independent neighbour, who described it as ‘harrowing’.

Where is the missing key to Meredith’s room?

Aviello then says he was approached by a blood-stained Antonio claiming to have the murder weapon – according to Aviello, this was a flick knife – and a set of keys.  Aviello was offering to lead the police to the spot where they were hidden.

What if?  What if Bongiorno and Sollecito did plot to substitute the real murder weapon with a fake one?  And what about the missing key belonging to Meredith?  Did Sollecito supply Aviello with a copy of it or was it the real one?

Mafia

Of course, Aviello being who he is, a mobster involved in Serious Organised Crime, with no respect for law and order, was never going to be taken seriously and indeed, the police never did take him up on his offer.  The courts thought he was a joke, with the judges making quips about his truthfulness, or lack thereof.  However, we have to ask, Why did the Sollecitos and indeed, Knox – via Dalla Vedova, who actually went to Turin to video tape Aviello’s allegations – resort to this tactic?  Did they have an alternative knife and did they have possession of a set of keys?

‘Just a ploy’

In an interview with CSmonitor, Barbie Nadeau is quoted as saying, ‘“I think it’s a ploy by the defense to show that the trial was unfair and that some of the witnesses that the prosecution were allowed to call were ludicrous,” says Barbie Latza Nadeau, the author of “Angel Face – The True Story of Student Killer Amanda Knox.”

“As a mafia turncoat, he was considered credible enough to be used by the state in mafia-related matters, so Knox’s defense are asking why he shouldn’t be heard on this case.”

But suppose the police, prosecution and the courts had taken Aviello seriously?  It would appear Knox and Sollecito tried to ‘fix’ the trial.  In Italy, defendants are allowed to lie.  Indeed, they are expected to.  However, it does seem Aviello is vindicated in his claim he was bribed by Bongiorno and incited by Dalla Vedova to knowingly lie and mislead the trial.

The court accepted his story as to why he lied.

With form as long as his arm and serving a 17-year prison sentence, together with a history of mafia thuggery – he is said to have killed a dog –  it must have seemed like a miracle to Aviello to have been acquitted!  Especially against the word of a now powerful far right politician, in Bongiorno, and the establishment, as represented by the court and the state prosecution service.

As singer Tom Petty once put it:

‘Even the losers get lucky sometimes’.

 

 

 

 

Sources: UMBRIA24, The Murder of Meredith Kercher com, Court documents.

Extract from the Chieffi report:

2.1.6   Violation of Articles 190, 238 para 5, and 495 Criminal Procedure Code, with respect to the order rejecting the Prosecution’s request for a [new] hearing of Luciano Aviello. Aviello was examined on 18 June 2011 at the request of Knox’s Defence, but he subsequently retracted [his statements] before the Public Prosecutor, who then submitted a request for a new hearing that was denied, even though the original statement [SEE EXPLANATION BELOW] had been received in evidence, in which [i.e., in the retraction] the convict declared that he learned from Sollecito in prison that it was Amanda [SEE EXPLANATION BELOW] who had committed the murder, in the course of an erotic game and also over a question of money, with the knife known as Exhibit 36. [The Prosecutor General argues that] the Hellmann Court did not explain the dispensability of the evidence, seeing that, amongst other things, the interview statement [SEE EXPLANATION BELOW] was received (and it is not clear how it could have been used); the more so in that the statement [SEE EXPLANATION BELOW] made reference to confidences on the part of Sollecito, which could not have been held to be irrelevant for the purposes of the proceedings. Accordingly, the Hellmann Court of Appeal ran afoul of the aforementioned laws, having evaluated only the retractions contained in Aviello’s declarations but not the new statements concerning the confidences allegedly received from Sollecito, as well as violating Article 511bis, 511 para 2, and 515 Criminal Procedure Code for having arranged the receipt of a statement not preceded by an examination of the party concerned.

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Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito don’t want you to know what they did on the eve of the murder of Meredith Kercher

June 19, 2019

Not only were the pair decreed by ALL the courts to have lied ‘umpteen times’ (Marasa-Bruno), they never have revealed what they did that evening.

The time from when they left the cottage at between 4:0 and 5:00 in the evening up until 9:00 or even 11:00 pm remains mysterious.  It is fascinating both omitted to tell police they were in the Old Town of Perugia until about 9:00-ish that evening.  In Waiting to be Heard and her Prison Diary which she knew was being read by prison staff Knox doesn’t mention going into the Old Town at all.

Sollecito in Honor Bound and in his police statements is equally evasive.  However, police knew they were there and Sollecito only mentions it when they do.

Why lie?  What are the pair trying to hide?

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Police also pinged Rudy Guede in the Old Town, who claimed he had popped by for a kebab (the one that caused him an upset stomach inside the cottage).

 

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Amanda Knox and the ECHR: Why the judgment is defective

February 6, 2019

Italy’s defence against ECHR and why it was rejected

CDV AND AK

Knox barrister Carlo Dalla Vedova and Amanda Knox

Summary:  The main issues revolve around the question of admissibility.  I have identified two or three possible grounds of appeal on points of law.  They are:

  • Italy submitted that date-wise, the application by Knox had been submitted too early as the hearings had not yet been finalized.  ECHR rejects this saying that the hearings finalized very shortly after.  As far as I can see, this is not so.
  • The ECHR relies on comments by Hellmann Appeal Court, which was largely superseded and outranked by Chieffi Supreme Court, to argue factors of free will.
  • The ECHR relies heavily on police minutes and the fact interpreter Donnino and a police office, RI, fail to record details of their expressions of familiarity with Knox, or make a note that (i) Knox was asked if she wanted a lawyer and declined, (ii) that start and end times are not recorded, and that (iii) hours are condensed into minutes. Is it an error of law to assume these police minutes represented a failure of procedure?

ECHR PANEL

ADMISSIBILITY

 

This takes up the larger part of the ECHR deliberations.  We can see that the dates are out of time and we can see it is keen to ‘get round’ this.  The relatively minor issues of police eagerness to befriend Knox, albeit misguided and improper, has clearly outraged the ECHR.

 

“I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS

 

  1. The subject of the dispute

 

  1. The Court notes from the outset that the applicant’s complaints relate solely to the criminal proceedings at the end of which she was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for slanderous denunciation of DL and not to the other proceedings. of which she was the subject.

 

  1. Failure to exhaust domestic remedies in respect of the complaints under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (a) and (c) of the Convention

 

  1. The Government submitted that, at the time of the introduction of the application, on 24 November 2013, the applicant’s conviction for slanderous denunciation was not final and that, therefore, this part of the complaint should be declared inadmissible.

 

  1. The Court reiterates that the exhaustion of domestic remedies is assessed, with certain exceptions, at the date of submission of the application to the Court (Baumann v. France, No. 33592/96, § 47, ECHR 2001- V (extracts)).

 

  1. However, it also recalls that it tolerates the completion of the last level of domestic remedies shortly after the filing of the application, but before it is called upon to decide on the admissibility of the application (Zalyan et al. Armenia, Nos. 36894/04 and 3521/07, § 238, March 17, 2016, and Škorjanec v. Croatia, No. 25536/14, § 44, March 28, 2017).

 

  1. In any event, in the present case, the Court notes that the conviction in question was confirmed by the judgment of the Court of Cassation filed on 18 June 2013, at the end of three degrees of jurisdiction, and that the reference to the Assize Court of Appeal concerned only the existence of the aggravating circumstance.
  2. In view of the foregoing, the objection raised by the Government must be rejected.”

 

Was the ECHR application premature?

 

By the ECHR’s own rules, as stated above, the submission was lodged 24 Nov 2013, when all domestic channels were supposed to have been exhausted.  The calunnia conviction against Lumumba had been finalised through Chieffi & Vecchio Supreme Court 18 June 2013.  However, the second – and completely separate – case of calunnia brought by the police and prosecutor did not go through Boninsegna until 14 Jan 2015, on whose motivational report Knox and the ECHR heavily rely, over a year later.

 

Knox was acquitted by Bonisegna, hence, there was nothing for her to appeal against.  Further, Boninsegna had nothing at all to do with the merits of the Lumumba callunia, tried in 2009 and upheld at every stage, even by the egregious Hellmann court, whose judgement was largely expunged.

 

Why does the ECHR rely heavily on Hellmann and Boninsegna and not the superior Supreme and final court of Chieffi?

 

Even curiouser, Knox and the ECHR also rely heavily on quoting Hellmann of 3 Oct 2011.  Yet Hellmann was overrided and superseded by the superior Chieffi Supreme Court, finalised 9 Sept 2013.

 

The ECHR quotes Hellmann at some length, when it surely should have referred to Chieffi.

 

As an example, the judgment, translated from French, quotes Hellman as follows:

 

  1. The Court observes that, in its judgment of 3 October 2011, [Hellmann] the Court of Appeal also emphasized the excessive length of the interrogations, the applicant’s vulnerability and the psychological pressure suffered by her, a pressure which was likely to compromise the spontaneity of his statements, as well as his state of oppression and stress. It considered that the applicant had, in fact, been tortured to death, resulting in an unbearable psychological situation from which, in order to extricate herself, she had made incriminating statements in respect of DL (see paragraph 85 (8) and (10) above). ).

 

Yet the Chieffi Supreme Court in spiking much of Hellman’s lower court judgment writes:

 

So Knox was in a position, even after an initial although long moment of bewilderment, amnesia and confusion, to regain control of herself and understand the gravity of the conduct she was adopting; at the very least, in the days immediately following her heedless initiative she could have pointed out to the investigators that she had led them in a false direction, availing herself of the support of her Defence team, given that in the meantime she had acquired the status of a suspect. Her persistence in her criminal attitude (discovered only through her taped conversation with her mother) proves the clear divergence with behaviour that could be interpreted as an attempt at cooperation, as the Defence would have it, and does not lend itself to evaluation as a response to a state of necessity, the very existence of which depends on a condition of inevitability and thus on the non‐existence of any alternatives, so that it cannot even be recognized [as existing] as [her own] erroneous hypothesis. Neither can the exercise of any right be invoked, given that the right of [self] defence does not extend under the legal system of any constitutional state to the point of allowing one to implicate an innocent person so seriously – it is worth recalling that he [Lumumba] underwent a period of incarceration uniquely and exclusively on the basis of the false accusations of the defendant.

 

 

How Material is Knox’ Claim of being denied Legal Assistance?

 

Having ruled in favour of admissibility, the ECHR ruled that as the nature of Knox’ complaints of being hit and being placed under great duress triggered at least the lowest level of a potential Article 3 complaint, that of degrading and inhuman treatment, Italy should have taken it upon itself to launch an investigation of its own initiative into the allegations made against the interpreter [Donnino] and another officer [RI].  ‘RI’ claimed to have cuddled Knox, stroked her hair and held her hands.  This, the ECHR rules, had the effect of undermining Knox’ dignity and independence of will.

 

It has several criticisms surrounding this behavior including the fact it is not minuted in the police notes, and nor is the start and end times of the supposed ‘interrogations’ at 1:45 and 5:45.

 

The serious issue of course though is that of being allowed a lawyer. The ECHR writes of Italy’s defense (‘the Government’)

 

  1. The Government observes that the statements made by the complainant on 6 November 2007 in the absence of a lawyer were declared unusable in relation to the offenses under investigation, namely the murder of MK and the sexual violence perpetrated at against him. However, it states that, according to the established case law of the Court of Cassation (judgments Nos. 10089 of 2005, 26460 of 2010 and 33583 of 2015), spontaneous statements made by a person under investigation in the absence of a defender can in any case, be used when they constitute, as in this case, an offense in themselves. He added that the applicant had the assistance of a lawyer when the first indications of his responsibility for the murder of Mr K appeared.

 

  1. In addition, the Government alleged that the applicant had been sentenced for slanderous disclosure not only on the basis of the statements made on 6 November 2007, but also on the basis of “a multitude of other circumstances”, recalled in the judgment of conviction of the Assize Court of 5 December 2009 (see paragraph 80 above).

 

  1. The complainant submits that she was not informed of her right to legal assistance during her hearings on 6 November 2007, since a defense lawyer was not appointed until 8.30 am that day, and denounces the impact of the use of this evidence on the fairness of the proceedings.

 

  1. Admissibility

  2. Noting that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention and that it does not face any other ground of inadmissibility, the Court declares it admissible.

  3. Application of general principles to the facts of this case

 

  • The applicability of Article 6 of the Convention
  • 146: <snipped various case law>

 

  1. The Court notes at the outset that the first question in this case is whether Article 6 § 1 of the Convention was applicable to the facts of the case. It recalls in that regard that, on 6 November 2007, the applicant was heard twice: at 1.45 am and 5.45 am

 

  1. It notes that the two statements were originally collected as part of the police’s acquisition of summary information, during which time the complainant had not been formally investigated.

 

  1. With regard to the statements taken at 1.45 am, the Court reiterates that the guarantees offered by Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 of the Convention apply to any “accused” in the autonomous sense of the term. the Convention. There is a “criminal charge” where a person is formally charged by the competent authorities or where the acts of the latter on account of the suspicions against them have a significant impact on his situation (Simeonovi, cited above). , §§ 110-111).

 

  1. Applying this principle to the present case, the Court therefore wonders whether, at the time of the hearings, the domestic authorities had reasonable grounds to suspect that the applicant was involved in the murder of Mr K.

 

  1. It observes in that regard that the applicant had already been heard by the police on 2, 3 and 4 November 2007 and that she had been tapped. It notes that the facts of the case also show that, on the evening of 5 November 2007, the attention of the investigators focused on the applicant (see paragraphs 12-14 above). She notes that while she went to the police station spontaneously, she was asked questions in the corridor by police officers who then continued to interrogate her in a room where she had been interrogated. subjected twice, for hours, to close interrogations.

 

  1. In the Court’s view, even assuming that these elements are not sufficient to conclude that, at 1.45 am on 6 November 2007, the applicant could be considered to be a suspect within the meaning of its case-law, it is necessary to note that, as the Government acknowledged, when she made her 5:45 statements to the public prosecutor, the applicant had formally acquired the status of a person under indictment. The Court therefore considers that there is no doubt that, at 5.45 am at the latest, the applicant was the subject of a criminal charge within the meaning of the Convention (Ibrahim and Others, cited above, § 296). .

(b) The existence of overriding reasons for the restriction of the right of access to a lawyer.

 

Knox and her lawyers again has a second bite of the cherry and rehashes what was surely res judicata by Chieffi:

2.1.16 ‐ Inconsistency and manifest lack of logic in the reasoning concerning the failure to recognize an aggravating circumstance in the aims underlying the confirmed offence of calunnia. [The Prosecutor General argues as follows:] In upholding the offence of calunnia as charged against Ms Knox, the second instance court ruled out any link with the murder. It was not explained on what basis the court had inferred that the young woman had been stressed by the interviewers and that therefore she had committed the calunnia to “free” herself from the questions of the investigators, seeing that none of the young people who were living in that house, none of Ms Kercher’s friends, and many others in the days immediately following the murder, all of whom were summoned and interrogated, had the insane idea of committing a calunnia to free themselves from the weight of the unpleasant situation.

 

<snip>

 

[43] The objective facts are therefore absolutely irrefutable, as was deemed in both trials; whereas the argument adopted from a subjective point of view, according to which the young woman resorted to extreme behaviour by giving the name of Lumumba only in order to get out of a situation of mental discomfort into which she was driven by the excessive zeal and unjustifiable intemperance of the investigators, cannot be well‐founded given that – as it was ascertained – the accusation of Lumumba was maintained after her first statements and re‐affirmed in the letter, which was written in complete solitude and at a certain distance in time from the first uncontrolled reaction in response to an insistent request for a name by the police.

[Chieffi, Supreme Court, 9 Sept 2013]

 

In other words, the Chieffi Supreme Court overrides the lower Hellmann Appeal Court in its claim that Knox blurted out Lumumba’s name because of stress.  Yet the Knox defence, Dalla Vedova and the ECHR relies on Hellmann rather than Chieffi.

The whole issue of whether Knox was denied a lawyer, I am sure could be an article in its own right.

 

CONCLUSION

 

So, we have a heavy reliance on the judgments of Hellmann and Bonisegna, when it seems to me, Hellmann is overrided by Chieffi who upholds Hellmann’s own final conviction anyway and Boninsegna is well past the earliest admissibility date, quite aside from not being directly involved in the Lumumba calumny at all.

 

Having ruled that objections by Italy can be swept aside, including that of failure to exhaust domestic avenues, the ECHR then goes on to rule on Knox’ lawyer status without proper reference to the latest and highest courts.  I can understand the argument that Italy should itself have investigated the police brutality alleged by Knox anyway.  The rest of the reasoning seems misguided in light of what higher courts than those referred to have found.

Sources:

JUDGEMENT OF THE SUPREME COURT OF CASSATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF ITALY (PRESIDED OVER BY DR SEVERO CHIEFFI) IN THE MURDER OF MEREDITH KERCHER

Translated from Italian into English by www.perugiamurderfile.org 9 September 2013

ECHR recent judgments List of judgments and decisions

The Murder of Meredith Kercher.comECHR

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Amanda Knox demands $10,000 to talk to law students

January 28, 2018

ak hand

Amanda Knox after the dramatic annulment in 2015

Acquitted ex- murder defendant hires herself out for talks

Row over Knox charging to speak to students

A media storm erupted when it transpired that the acquitted murder defendant was paid ‘up to $10,000’ to speak in front of law students at Roanoke College last week

Amanda Knox is reported as having registered as a speaker with an entertainments agency. Her entry shows she expects between US$5,000 – US$10,000 plus expenses for an appearance.

ak agency

Kercher Attorney slams the enterprise as ‘inappropriate’

The Meredith Kercher attorney, Fransesco Maresca is quoted deploring her tactlessness towards the victim’s family.

ANSA, the Italian News Agency, reports him as saying:

“I hope I can convey how inappropriate this behavior is and how the family of Meredith Kercher can be adversely affected.“

‘Demonized’

The gist of Knox’ talks are that she is a victim of ‘demonization‘ by the Italian prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini and the press. In particular, Nick Pisa of the DAILY MAIL, has been hammered in the Netflix documentary, ‘Amanda Knox‘, as writing salacious reports during the trial.  The Netflix film was also shown at Roanoke College the day before as the background to her talk, which was on the theme of ‘Truth Matters‘.

Attendees at the event report Knox spoke ’emotionally’.  Her book Waiting to be Heard was also on sale at a discounted price.

Misogyny

Knox maintains she is the victim of misogyny and a belief the aggravated murder was part of some kind of satanist rite by the Roman Catholic prosecutor.  Court records do not support her claim that this was the grounds for her prosecution, although the fact of Halloween – the murder took place 1 Nov 2007, the day after – as was her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito‘s penchant for self-proclaimed satanist Marilyn Manson, his expressed wish on FACEBOOK for ‘extreme experiences‘ and the violent manga material found at his apartment, were observations brought up by Mignini at the initial remand trial before Judge Matteini. Matteini concluded the crime was so serious and the likelihood of Knox absconding to the US was high. Thus she remanded the pair in custody.

Convicted, then unexpectedly freed

After the pair were convicted in 2010, after a trial, the convictions were upheld by the Appeal Court. The case was taken to the Supreme Court, who annulled the conviction in 2015 on the grounds of a ‘flawed investigation‘ and ‘undue press influence‘. The judges, Marasca and Bruno, did however, remark in their written reasons that it was a judicial fact she was certainly present at the cottage during the murder, did wash off Kercher’s blood from her hands and did cover up for Rudy Guede, also convicted.

‘The burglary scene was staged”, the courts ruled

The final Supreme Court ruled that the burglary was staged. In the Netflix film, Knox claims, ‘Guede was the local burglar and he burgled my house.’

The pair were freed for the legal reason of ‘Not Guilty due to insufficient evidence‘. The words, ‘innocent‘ and ‘exonerated‘ do not appear anywhere in the judgment. In addition, the conviction for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of the assault and murder was upheld, for which Knox served three years, in addition to one year in remand.

Raffaele Sollecito bid for compensation rejected

Knox’ co-defendant Sollecito failed in his attempt to win €500,000 in compensation last year, as it was deemed he lied time and again to the police, thus excluding himself from any because of misconduct during the investigation.

‘I was wrongfully imprisoned for four years’ Knox tells audiences

In her latest move, Knox is touring America demanding up to $10,000 per event claiming she has been declared innocent and exonerated. She tells audiences that she was ‘wrongfully imprisoned‘ for four years. However, that conviction, for Calunnia (=US equivalent Obstruction of Justice) against Patrick Lumumba has never been overturned, and remains on her record.

Amanda Knox has an application to the European Court of Human Rights outstanding, since 2013, claiming a breach of Article 6 (right to a fair trial) and Article 3 (torture).

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It’s over for Raffaele Sollecito as court throws out his claim

September 27, 2017

cluedo ak rs rg#Raffaele Sollecito has been denied any compensation for the four years he spent in prison, one year on remand, and three years until the final Supreme Court Appeal decision in March 2015.

The problem is, although acquitted, it was on the grounds of ‘insufficient evidence’ and not a straightforward exoneration.

 After having to wait six months for the written reasons, in Sept 2015, Sollecito then had the way clear to put in a claim for compensation, which Italian law allows for.

Wrongful imprisonment

However, the statute that allows compensation for wrongful imprisonment specifically excludes defendants who lie to the police, described as ‘gross misconduct’.

In other words, the Florence Appeal Court in January this year dismissed Sollecito’s claim for this reason. It deemed that Sollecito had committed ‘willful misconduct’ or ‘at the very least, gravely negligent or imprudent.’

It found it ‘implausible’ that he could not account for the movements of his then-girlfriend, #Amanda Knox. It states that both he and Amanda Knox lied many times and that it was an ‘indisputable fact of absolute certainty’ that Knox was at the murder scene ‘when the young Meredith Kercher was murdered’.

Sollecito through his lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, citing the fact of Rudy Guede’s shoeprint being mistaken for his. However, this was never the point of law for which Sollecito was refused his demand for the maximum €517,000 compensation.

The Florence 10 Feb 2017 written reasons state:

On 6 November 2007 Sollecito was placed under arrest by the PM [Prosecutor], and on 8
November 2007 at the interrogation by the GIP of the Perugia Court regarding preventive
detention, he changed yet again his version of his and Knox’ movements on the evening
and night of 1-2 November 2007, saying he had stayed with her, in her house, until 18:00,
he had gone with her into the city centre until 20:00-20:30, after which they had both gone
to his house where they had eaten together, even though he didn’t recall in detail, and
then she “as it was Thursday had to go to work at Le Chic…<snip>
 He then went on to recount details of a broken sink pipe, to have been
helped by Knox to mop up the spill, and then they had both gone to bed, but he didn’t
remember at what time. He said that “For sure I worked on the computer” but when
asked what he had been working at he said “I really can’t remember because everyday I
am on the computer. I don’t remember what I did that day”. In addition he said “I
received a phone call from my father because he phones me every night before he goes to bed…I don’t remember if he phoned the landline or the cell phone that evening” (but the
judge already knew, on that occasion, that no calls to either the landline nor the cell phone
had been made). <snip>
To further questions asked by his defence, finally, he
repeated that Knox might have gone out and returned but “It could have happened but I
don’t remember this exactly” and that he had remained at his computer until about
midnight.

In addition, it notes:

On the other hand, given the certainty of the presence of Knox in that house, it is hardly
credible that he was not with her.” (Page 49 of the decision) If therefore the fact that Knox
was in the house 7 Via della Pergola at the time when young Meredith Kercher was killed
constitutes a fact of absolute and indisputable certainty; it is evident that the statements
made by Sollecito that she was with him all evening on 1 November 2007 are false, and
that one cannot believe his statements that he couldn’t remember what he and Knox were
doing from the evening of 1 November 2007 until the following morning.
It is logical to assume that she, returning to her boyfriend immediately after having helped someone she knew (Guede) and others murder her flatmate, would have been greatly distraught, a circumstance which would have allowed Sollecito to remember well what happened that night even if he had never set foot in the house where the serious crime had happened.
[Masi, Favi, Martuscelli 10 Feb 2017 Florence Appeal Court Motivational Report]

What the Florence Court of Appeal Found 10 February 2017

It’s primary finding was that Sollecito had a fake alibi.  In addition, even if he was at home, as he claimed he was and ‘Amanda came home 01:00’ as he told police in a statement 6 Nov 2007, then he ought to have told them what state she was in when she returned.

QA Around 16:00 Meredith left in a hurry without saying where she was going. Amanda and I stayed home until about 17:30-18:00.
QA We left the house, we went into town, but I don’t remember what we did.
QA We stayed there from 18:00 until 20:30/21:00. At 21:00 I went home alone because Amanda told me that she was going to go to the pub Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends.
QA At this point we said goodbye and I headed home while she headed towards the center.
QA I went home alone, sat at the computer and rolled myself a spliff. Surely I had dinner but I don’t remember what I ate. Around 23:00 my father called at my home number 075.9660789. During that time I remember Amanda had not come back yet.
QA I browsed at my computer for another two hours after my father’s phone call and only stopped when Amanda came back presumably around 1:00.

[Excerpt Police Statement 6 Nov 2007]

Instead, he refused to elaborate any further on his statement.  He has never retracted, modified, nor corrected his claim.

He claimed he had been sitting in front of the computer all evening,’smoking a spliff’, yet forensic IT investigators, and his own ISP provider, Fastweb, could find no trace of any interactive activity between 21:10 on the night of the murder and 5:32 next morning.

Crini at the Nencini appeal argued that a fake alibi is incriminating evidence in itself.

The Final Legal Position, as ruled by the Supreme Court (Cassazione)

The Supreme Court of 28 June 2017 agree, and write, in their written reasons for their final verdict, rejecting Sollecito’s compensation claim for ‘wrongful imprisonment’:

That the assertion that he had
worked on the computer
during the evening and
until midnight had been
denied by the analysis of
the processor, remained on
to download files, but on
which there had been no
human interaction between
9:10 and 05:32 hours;

That at 05:32 the computer had
been activated to listen to
music, and the phone of
the reminder turned on at
6.00, and therefore it was
not true that the two
young, unique present in
the house, had slept all
night until 10.00;

That, contrary to the other
statement, the examination
of the printouts of the
father was not received
either on his fixed user or
on the mobile phone after
the PM. 2040.

It will be recalled that both Knox and Sollecito turned off their phones for the night between 18:45 and 5:32, as well as no interactions being recorded on their computers.

Conclusion

The provably deliberate and active fake alibi, together with Marasca-Bruno’s finding that Knox was ‘certainly‘ at the scene of the crime when young Ms Kercher was killed, and Sollecito, almost certainly, that she did wash off the victim’s blood from her hands and did cover up for Rudy Guede, shows that the pair are far from the ‘exonerees’ they are now claiming to be.

Sources:  The Murder of Meredith Kercher

True Justice for Meredith Kercher

 

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The Nencini Files

September 27, 2017

nenciniDay 11

Day 11, 30 January 2014

“It hit me like a train” – Amanda Knox

“It was completely unexpected, it was devastating” – Raffaele Sollecito

Today is the big day of the verdict.  Knox is said to be camped out at her parents’ home in Seattle.  Sollecito arrives in court with his father.

Carlo Dall Vedova is next to present his rebuttals on behalf of Knox.  Her rights were violated by the Perugian police, he says.  She was in a state of shock when she accused Patrick.

“You cannot put two innocent people in jail to cover up for the mistakes of the judicial system.”

He finishes by saying Rudy Guede is the only murderer, and asks for an acquittal.

Then comes Luciano Ghirga for Knox.  His theme is ‘Reasonable Doubt’.  He argues for a single aggressor saying that the bruise at the back of Merediths head was compatible with a frontal attack.  Judge Micheli, in Guede’s trial determined that the bruise was due to Meredith falling onto her back into a supine position.  Massei ruled Meredith had her head banged against a wall.  He pleads with the court to acquit – as he has to, otherwise the court has no power to – but in the event of a conviction to reject the call for no mitigation and the precautionary measures.

The judges then retire, saying to expect the verdict not before 5:00pm

The deliberations take over twelve hours, into Day 12, 31 January 2014.

The judges and the lay judges reconvene and without further ado, and remaining standing, Nencini announces that the convictions are upheld.  Knox is given 28 years, including 3 years for simple calunnia (rather than aggravated as requested by Crini) and Sollecito 25 years.  His passport is to be confiscated.

Over in Seattle, neighbours report hearing anguished screams coming from the Knox family home.  Knox is quoted by The Independent as saying she hadn’t seen it coming.  Sollecito is later seen near the Austrian border , arrested and his passport confiscated.  He denies he was trying to flee.  He, too, claimed the verdict was, ‘totally unexpected’.

Both parties have an automatic appeal to the Supreme Court.  Extradition requests and detainment of Sollecito will be deferred until then.

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The Nencini Papers

September 27, 2017

nenciniDay 10

Day 10, 20 January 2014

A prank:  noun

  1. 1.

a practical joke or mischievous act.

“the tapestry was stolen as part of a drunken student prank”

synonyms: practical joke, trick, mischievous act, piece of mischief, joke, escapade, stunt, caper, jape, game, hoax, antic;

 

Amanda Knox has made a startling confession during in the eleven-day interim since the last session.  She has written a blog boasting that she once staged a break-in.

“She admitted that the hazing prank, played on her flat-mates at the University of Washington, involved messing up the flat and hiding things to make it appear as if items had been stolen.”

She says she caused ‘distress’ to the victim and was ‘forced to apologise’.

There is still a closing submission due from Sollecito’s other lawyer, Luca Maori.  Present is Sollecito.  Absent are Bongiorno and Lumumba, a civil party.  9:30 sharp and “No-Nonsense Nencini” (Niente Sciocchezzi Nencini) runs a tight ship, conscious of time and good order.

Maori claims the murder weapon is not the so-called Double DNA knife as the wounds are not compatible with it.  In addition, Sollecito’s boxcutter knife that he always carries with him, is not, either.

Meredith was killed at 9:00 pm, whilst he or Knox provably was at home at that time.  The bathmat footprint is not Sollecito’s.  One by one he refutes all of the prosecution’s evidence:  the window shutters were open, the intrusion through the window was not staged, the stone was thrown from the outside, and his key note is “Rudy is the sole assassin”.

He argues the computer evidence is wrong and that Sollecto manually download the Naruto film at 21:26, after putting the film ‘Amélie’ into a folder at 21:10.  The forensic IT experts had claimed the download was a file sharing peer-to-peer which needed no human interaction at Sollecito’s end.

He attacked witnesses Curatalo and Quintavalle as ‘unreliable’, as well as Giofredi ,who had claimed to have seen Meredith with the three others, in a group of four.

At 11:30 Bongiorno arrives with her three assistants.  In the meantime, Maori attacks the ‘changing motives’.  The only things certain are the presence of Rudy guide in the house that night, and the death of Meredith Kercher.

After a break, it is time for Prosecutor Crini to make his rebuttals.  He sets out Sollecito’s sidetracking of the investigation.  He affirms that Postal Police Officer Battistelli arrives ten minutes before his car, on foot, at 12:35.  This is the time he recorded on his report, lodged the same day at the police station.  Sollecito’s phone calls, to his sister and the police at 12:51 and 12:54, respectively, were ‘too late’.  He denied the CCTV time was seven minutes slow, as claimed by the defense.

About Guede’s knife wounds to the hand, Crini says there was no sign of any of Guede’s blood at the crime scene, and in any case, as he knew the house, having visited more than once, he would have made a more logical entry.

He states that Boemia and Rinaldi used compatibility measurements, whereas Vinci was ‘just conjecture’.  The former were objective as they identified the footprint thought to have been Sollecito’s to Guede.

He refutes Maori’s ‘alibi theory’ regarding Curatalo, failing to quote his testimony that refuted Sollecito’s alibi.  He cited the expert computer witnesses of 14 Mar 2009 and December 2010 who found no computer activity, as claimed.

There was no contamination at the scene and he was pleased the defence no longer claimed contamination in the laboratories.  Professor Novelli had ruled out tertiary transfer of DNA in situ.  Arguments about Low Copy Number DNA were rendered obsolete by the RIS.  He turns to the Conti-Vecchiotti reports and points out straw man use of ‘only’ and their reasoning  à priori, they failed to look at X- and Y-haplotypes together.

 

Vecchiotti admitted there was a scratch on the blade of the imputed murder weapon.

 

Bongiorno had said the crime scene was ‘flooded’ with Guede’s DNA.  Crini points out that the indications were Guede had free hands and no weapon.  He objected to Vinci’s claims about the small footprint, which Boemia had attributed to a ‘ladies size 36 – 37’, as being Guede’s footprint on a folded part of the pillow case.  The print was ‘too small’ to be Guede’s.

 

No fight wounds, no defence wounds, no material under the fingernails.  Forced restraint, evidence of two knives.  Compatibility with Sollecito’s footprint on bathmat and between the knife outline on the sheet and Sollecito’s kitchen knife.

 

He says a lack of motive does not mean proof of innocence.

 

Bongiorno had called all the English girls ‘unreliable’ because they were English and had been coached by the lawyers.  This, Crini avers, is a weak claim by the defence as it is well-documented elsewhere that there were tensions in the cottage.  John Kercher backed up a claim Meredith told him she had an argument about Knox’ lack of cleanliness.

 

He finished by urging the court to convict the pair and to take precautionary measures to ensure they serve their sentence, such as the removal of Sollecito’s passport, house arrest or immediate detention.

 

Next up is Pacelli again for Lumumba. “There was no idyllic relationship between Amanda and Meredith, they could not stand each other”

 

He claims Knox named Lumumba as a substitute for Guede.  Nencini cut him short, advising him he was only there to talk about the calunnia, and not the murder.  Pacelli promised to finish in five minutes.  His client had still not received the €22K ordered against Knox. He ends by urging the court to convict, calling her, ‘Amanda Knox the liar, the diabolical slanderer.’

Next, is the turn of the Kercher’s civil lawyers, Fabiani for Meredith’s brother, Perna for her sister and Maresca for the family, reaffirming what they said earlier in the hearing.

 

Maresca makes headline news by averring that Perugians were angry with Hellmann’s acquittal because it was ‘scandalous’ and ‘had been decided in advance’.

 

Next it is the turn of Sollecito’s sub-lawyer, who is reprimanded by Nencini for straying into bringing up new issues when the topic was rebuttals.  Sollecito did not lie to the police as it was true the crime was committed by Guede, who broke the glass and climbed in.  The scene was contaminated, there was no Kercher DNA on the bra clasp with Sollecito’s.  Nencini booms, ‘No!’ when the junior lawyer tries to introduce the topic of wiretapping of Sollecito’s family.

 

The court is adjourned at 6:00 pm.  The next hearing is listed for 30 January 2013, when Knox; lawyer will put his closing rebuttals, followed by the two appointed judges and six lay judges retiring to make their deliberations.

 

Media reaction from The Daily Beast has the following reaction:

 

Conventional wisdom in Italy, based on how presiding judge Alessandro Nencini has been ruling so far and how the high court ruled on the acquittal, is that Knox and Sollecito stand a good chance of having their murder convictions upheld.

 

 

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The Nencini Papers

September 27, 2017

nenciniDay 9

Day 9, 9 January 2014

 

Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy. Sun Tzu

There is a lot of media attention today.  Christmas and New Year has been and gone and the public are hungry for the next instalment of the appeal.  We see Sollecito arriving at the court with his father.  Franscesco is ebullient and effusive.  He is his son’s bodyguard, waving away the reporters.  Sollecito cuts a stiff, dark, lonely figure.  He looks withdrawn, staring straight ahead and mute, and wears dark glasses.

Ahead of the hearing Knox was asked by REPPUBLICA what she would do if the verdict went against her.  She said, ‘”In that case I will become a fugitive.”

Against this background, Avv. Bongiorno has her work cut out.  Knox having undermined her own lawyers by upstaging them at her defence submissions in December with her email, makes for an uphill struggle.

Bongiorno commences by asserting that her client was the subject of police persecution.  She uses the French Revolution as a parallel, claiming Sollecito has been chased by the ‘sans-cullottes’.  This is possibly a reference to his middle-class status.

The sans-culottes (French: literally “without breeches”) were the common people of the lower classes in late 18th century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the Ancien Régime.

The irony is not lost that few people can afford Bongiorno’s fees.  She is, or was, a member of Berlusconi’s cabinet thus useful for lobbying on behalf of her clients.  It seems unlikely a defendant is at a disadvantage being a doctor’s son, but okaaay.

She claims that because Police Chief Gubbio called a press conference and said, ‘casa chiusa’ on arresting the pair four days after the body was found, it proves undue haste caused by public pressure to solve the case.  She claims Knox was suspected because she acted like a liberated woman sexually and because she had the keys to the apartment.  Sollecito because of the initial footprints found and because he was Knox’ boyfriend.

Bongiorno puts forth an alternative footprint analysis to forensic police officers Boemia and Rinaldi, and shows a presentation by Prof Vinci who uses a different approach, to show that it is Guede’s footprint rather than Sollecito’s.

She is tired of her client being seen as ‘half a character’ to that of Knox.

The calunnia committed by Knox does not prove she is a murderer.  Nencini points out that the Supreme Court ruled the interrogation transcript was not permissible.

Bongiorno launches into a scathing attack on police interpreter Anna Donnino, who had suggested to Knox in the initial police interview that perhaps she had amnesia from having suffered a trauma.  She calls Donnino more of a ‘psychic’ or a ‘medium’ who induced Knox into ‘raving’ a confession.  ‘Where is Raffaele mentioned in Knox’ confession?’ asks Bongiorno.

Interestingly Knox did seize on the ‘amnesia’ suggestion and claimed to have lost her memory as to what she did that night until mid-November 2007, when she records in her Prison Diary it all came flooding back to her after seeing a prison nun.  She was asleep during the time of the murder, she tells the reader, and she is so happy she cries.

‘In my cell I was waiting for an answer to come to my head, when a sister arrived at my door.  She told me to be patient because God knows everything and would help me remember the answer.  I nodded along and after a while the sister left, wishing me good luck.  Perhaps a minute later, I sat down to write and try to remember and then it hit me.  Everything came back like a flood, one detail after another until the moment my head hit my pillow and I was asleep the night Meredith was murdered.  I cried, I was so happy.  I wrote everything I could remember and an explanation for my confession previously.  And this is what happened since I have been here.  Just a spaghetti.’

Back to Bongiorno.  Here we see the first hint of a separation strategy.  Later, she will publicly seek to distance her client from Knox.

She complains that Sollecito’s family were wiretapped by the police ‘as though they were murderers’ and called insulting names by Napoleoni and Zugarini.

Bongiorno is a colourful character in court in full amateur dramatics mode.  She gesticulates wildly, she raises her voice, she loses her temper she slams down her papers onto the desk as though in a rage.  Bongiorno has wheeled her lawyers trolley into the court and pulls out of the briefcase-on-wheels two kitchen knives which she brandishes about with flourish, startling Nencini somewhat, as she turns to Guede and his supposed knives.. Macchiavelli tweets from the court room:

  1. Details the “plausibility” of an intrusion through the window. Glass shards etc. arguments already seen.
  2. “Cogne” is a famous Supreme Court ruling saying guilt can be found “by logical exclusion” on sheer “a contrario” arguments.
  3. After brandishing two knifes before the court, talking about footprint, makes an emphatic comment “We are not in Cogne”.
  4. Bongiorno has ended the ninja-knife-rotating phase.

She claims the police conjured up Kokomani ‘like a genie from Aladdin’s Lamp’ in order to create a link between Sollecito and Guede.  She says the prosecution changed the motive as they had no choice, and even if it was an argument about hygiene, would someone who had only known Knox nine days rush in to help a murder?

She says the court didn’t give enough attention to later DNA analysis, such as that which came out in the Hellmann Court with Conti and Vecchiotti’s report.  She played a video of the car park CCTV to demonstrate the arrival time of the postale police was wrong.  It was slow, not fast, and this proved Sollecito called the police before they arrived.

She turns to the DNA issue and claims the collection of it was ‘the mother of all mistakes’, and produced photos taken by the defence of the forensic police collecting evidence at the crime scene.  One particular photo is magnified to show a speck on Stefanoni’s latex gloves holding the piece of fabric containing the bra clasp on which Sollecito’s strong DNA profile was imprinted.  She says this speck is dark, but could just as easily have been a pixel effect or a light shadow, or even a speck on the camera lens.  It is not clear what the speck has to do with the DNA.

Turning to the Double DNA knife, she again brandishes a large kitchen knife and asks how likely is it her client would bring a knife from his kitchen, and then put it back in the drawer?  She claims it is incompatible with the size of the wound and produces a penknife which she claims would be the right size, instead and that it fit with the sheet stain outline.

The kitchen knife is 17 cms long and the wound 8 cm.  Dr Umani Ronchi had argued that it had met resistance at the hyoid bone, which is about 8cms away from the entry point, and showed some serration marks where it was broken by the presumed knife.  Bongiorno asserts the knife would have been plunged in all the way.  The bruises at the entry point is believed by the prosecution to match the digits of the hand that brutally suppressed Meredith’s scream, over her lower face, because of their number, shape and that they fit such a hand placed there.  The defence claim the bruising is caused by the effect of a knife hilt.

Of the bathmat, Bongiorno says it could not be Sollecito’s imprint as his big toe does not balance on a dystal phalanx.  However, Sollecito does have a ‘hammer toe’ and this is highlighted on the two luminol prints in the hallway identified as his, the other two Knox, and one unclear.  The one facing Meredith’s door is identified as Sollecito’s.

Bongiorno finishes by pleading that both defendants be acquitted and to judge Sollecito for what he is, and not on half-truths.

Nencini it is noted by some observers, barely looks at Bongiorno’s video and photos.  He has now listed the rebuttals for 20 January and deliberations in chambers for 30 January 2014.

Once again, press interest centres on the ‘personality’ aspect.  They look for a motive for the police prosecuting the pair.   AP releases a report which is taken up by the nationals with a typical ‘police hounded the kids to keep the calm’ slant.  For example, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE.

There is some light relief.

“The relationship between Amanda and Raffaele was tender, just bloomed, and it had nothing to do with a 50s-something’s searching for thrills,” Bongiorno said.

The two, she said, liked to cuddle and rub noses like Eskimo kisses, which she called “unca nunca.”

At this point, Nencini leaned forward and said, ‘I’m sorry, I am over 50.  You’ll have to tell me what unca nunca means.’

“Unca nunca has nothing to do with bunga bunga,” Bongiorno said, eliciting a rare moment of laughter in a long day of arguments with a reference to former Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s infamous parties with scantily clad women.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

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