Posts Tagged ‘italy’

AMANDA KNOX – DOES SHE SUFFER FROM FALSE MEMORY SYNDROME?

May 1, 2020

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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.

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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!”

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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 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 Papers

September 27, 2017

nenciniDay 5

The Florence Appeal Court has vacated other hearings listed for 25 – 27 November 2013 for the next three days for the Nencini Appeal.

Day 5, 25 November 2013

As a consequence of Hellmann’s decisions being rejected in whole by the Supreme Court, Nencini has a wide scope to cover: almost everything that came up at the 2011 appeal, is having to be dealt with again.

Raffaele Sollecito is present.

Today the lead is taken by Alessandro Crini, for the prosecution. Mignini is no longer involved in the case.  In short, Crini’s aim is to refute the defence’s automatic grounds for appeal.  He describes the Hellmann Court as ‘razed to the ground’ and urges the new court to look at the case as a whole, rather than by piecemeal, as Hellmann did, taking one small part of the evidence at a time and systematically rejecting it.

Criticisms of the previous court out of the way, Crini outlines the problems with Knox and Sollecito’s alibis.  ‘A false alibi is also evidence’, he contends.

CRINI: ‘What is the alibi?   …[…]…  It is a kind of defensive argument that is used by saying no, that “I did not commit the offense” but that “I was somewhere else when someone obviously committed that offence”. 

…[of Knox and Sollecito] it is realized that the alibi is actually false, because it is appreciated that it is false.’

Key is Sollecito’s false claim that he was on the computer that evening.  D’Ambrosio, the computer expert, found no human interaction after 21:10 when the Amélie film crash finished and someone must have clicked on the ‘end’ message.  Sollecito’s internet provider, Fastweb back up that there was no activity that night at the salient time.  In effect, Sollecito’s lies about this is positive evidence against him.

Let’s recap Sollecito’s alibi, as given to the police:

Statement to police 5 Nov 2007 [excerpt]:

QA I have known Amanda for about two weeks. From the night that I met her she started sleeping at my house. On November 1st, I woke up at around 11, I had breakfast with Amanda then she went out and I went back to bed. Then around 13:00-14:00 I met her at her house again. Meredith was there too. Amanda and I had lunch while Meredith did not have lunch with us.
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.
QA I don’t remember how she was dressed and if she was dressed the same way as when we said goodbye before dinner.
QA I don’t remember if we had sex that night.
QA The following morning around 10:00 we woke up, she told me she wanted to go home and take a shower and change clothes.

CRINI: “I have nothing to do with the way of murder, I have nothing to do with Via Pergola, because I was in Via Garibaldi “- the singular -” in front of my computer “, with this lightweight drug pastime”.

Thus, Sollecito has insisted he was on his computer on the murder night, yet there is no trace of the interactions he describes.  In addition, he never has, to this day, withdrawn his claim Knox went out without him until 01:00, and declined to testify in court under oath.  He was no doubt advised by his counsel it would be a mistake to change his alibi.

Pausing for a moment, Sollecito has provided a false alibi from the outset and yet has never amended it, supplied the correct details of what he was doing, nor explained why he said it.

Crini turns to the prosecution star witness, Antonio Curatalo.  He points out Hellmann made the mistake of focussing on the person and ignoring the content of the eye witness testimony.

CRINI: Toxic or non-toxic, Curatolo is confident of his memory, which, let’s say, places the two defendants at compatible times – then there is the issue of the date we will address – in this Grimana Square.

He touches on timings, the time of death, which he believes is more likely 22:30 than after 23:15.

CRINI: ..we’re talking about phones that to be found in the [woman’s] garden around midnight have certainly left the house … that is, they probably left home in the same context as the murder. So even this aspect, let’s say, somehow returns its likelihood to the possibility – as it were to say – that time of 22:13 [when it is last pinged at the cottage]is a time that must somehow already belong to the offence, otherwise we say, the time becomes no longer consistent.  The timetables that derive from this- these indicators are all pretty elastic, the first of which is the time of death , with respect to which, once the defendants have been placed, and in the hourly part of which  Curatolo indicates from ten pm onwards in Grimana Square …

Then there is the issue of the reliability of Quintavalle, who claims to have seen Knox outside his shop circa 7:45 in the morning after the murder and who went to browse around the cleaning section of his grocery store.  The issue here is that it took him a year to come forward and then only at the urging of an acquaintance.

CRINI:  Quintavalle gives us certainty, that is, the certainty of seeing him, as a layman of Via Garibaldi, of having seen Knox in front of his shop at the opening of the blinds, that particular morning. Quintavalle, he’ll remember seeing Knox once with Sollecito, but at that moment he has a stranger, but it makes clear to us that despite the delay in propagation …[…]…he did it I did not say right away, but almost immediately, that is to say later a few days that this photograph began to circulate on printed paper, or it was seen on television, etc., and so on.

Crini is abundantly talkative and it is now 13:15 and proceedings break for lunch until 14:00.

Resuming, Crini  refers to the bloody footprint on the bath mat with no blood leading up to it.  This, he points out, indicates a clean-up in the surrounding area.  He covers the luminol-highlighted footprints in the hallway – identified as those of Knox, Sollecito and Guede – and the one in Filomena’s room as being the most important, as it includes the mixed DNA of Knox and Meredith.  He dismisses the defence’s claim the footprints were not blood.

CRINI:  For a policeman, the most striking feature is precisely the blood pound found on the small bath mat…[…]… the most impressive figure, because it is a unique one, as though it were a spoken word, it is this imprint that we find on this pattern, on this mat, a celestine, greenish mat, that of the small foreigners’ bathroom.

Coming onto the footprints exposed by luminol, which reacts with the iron element in haemoglobin to produce a fluorescent light in the dark:

CRINI ;…[…]…[re Luminol]. in my opinion is the most important element of this whole story – at least in one case we are superimposed on the DNA of the victim, on this footprint, with the DNA of Knox. Then we, to imagine – understand? – that this DNA comes from something other than Kercher’s blood, we have to conjecture that there is a substance that is exalted by Luminol through a reagent X, which is certainly not signalled, but which we hypothesize, and that for the very part that was torn, clearly left either by Knox or by Kercher, of course, or perhaps by Kercher, but in that case then on that point, let’s say, there would be the Knox DNA itself. 

He believes the most incriminating evidence of all is against Knox:

…[…]… So there is a fluorescence in Romanelli’s room, which remarks at the same time – we are not in the victim’s room, we are not in the Knox room, indeed, that of Knox is totally cleaned from this point of view – simultaneously refers to DNA victim and Knox.

…[…]… That in this room of the Italian, in which the presence of the other two is certainly there … yes, precisely in that room they were given a convention the two strangers, leaving their DNA exactly in the same spot in the room.’

In other words, Knox has trailed Meredith’s blood into Filomena’s room and shed her own DNA on exactly the same spot as the victim’s and that they were mixed together.

Next, there is the issue of the staged burglary, the clean-up operation and the attempt to subvert investigators.  Only one person had the motive to go to these lengths, he claims.  He specifies the glass from the window found on top of the clothes and not underneath.  He sets out why the staged burglary is a part of a ‘post factum plan’. The plan he explains is to point to a third party, Guede, as the sole perpetrator.  He doesn’t accept that the fact of the break in at the Milan nursery just days before shows a pattern and argues that Guede would not have broken in to the cottage.

CRINI: It is clear that, by the probability that this is any how a property altogether off limits for him from the point of view of his very easy recognizability, it is of solar evidence. And then it is clear that this hypothetical theft – fake – certainly, it seems the more faked to the extent that it turns out that ex post is known to be that of Rudy rather than a stranger. When the hand print tells me “it’s him”,  what does Rudy think he’s doing trying to rob people at home? But there is not an attempted theft built in this Baroque way, in this way it is absolutely devoid of any actual burglary on the concrete plane. ..[…]… we say the camouflage profile is a profile that involves both scenarios [Rudy’s bloody handprint and the staged mise en scène].

 

After a short break the hearing resumes

Crini points to the behaviour of the defendants, in particular Knox’s various email and memoriale claims, and makes clear that the issue of the motive for the calunnia is still to be determined.  By this, he means whether her falsely accusing Patrick of rape and murder was because of undue police pressure or, ‘aggravated’, as a tactical device to throw suspicion away from her own involvement by subverting the investigation onto him.

CRINI: ‘There is an email sent to a number of people, including one who is a person who then posts this mail to the investigating bodies, and then there are two verbal statements by Miss Knox Amanda, which are – here, here are all – that’s just one of the full night of 05 on 06 and the other on the morning of 06. Those are statements in which you also introduces this character, Lumumba, and it is not that you introduce it so, pour parler, you introduce it to throw out the conditions for him then to be arrested for murder. ‘

Crini has it that Knox didn’t just blurt out Patrick’s name under police pressure, she insisted on underlining it over and over again.  When she handed her privately written and entirely voluntary memoraile to the police she referred to it as ‘a present’.  There is something about her email to 25 people that tells us she knew perfectly well it would find its way back to the Perugia investigators.  Here we have the sense of a puppet-master pulling strings and controlling the narrative.  Amanda Knox is going to tell us how it is, right from the start.

The very late phone call by Sollecito to the police is deemed significant regardless of whether it was before or after the Postale Police arrived.

CRINI: So the Postal Police arrived at 12:35, or, following the on-site (CCTV) camera and analyzed by the Mobile Team, at 12:26. Now, we have a phone call of 12:51 and one of 12:54. 

…[…]… frankly I must say that even if the call had been made five minutes before the arrival of the Postale,  it would still have been a phone call delayed with regard to the state of affairs…[…]… most of all, it seems to me that the thing takes on a completely implausible window dressing,… I use the word “suspect” a very suspicious piece of cloaking from the investigations of the Judicial Police. So, to arrive at noon in a situation such as this …it’s  not convincing, in the opinion of the Prosecutor. 

But even at a time that follows this unexpected arrival of the Post Police, it is an element that… it is not that he says “I’m calling the Carabinieri.” And then he says “well, I’m late but somehow” … No. He says, “we have already called the Carabinieri” and then adds that other element, which the judgments have well underlined, “there was a theft, but they did not steal anything“

As well as Sollecito’s various statements, there are those of Knox.  For example, her claim that Meredith’s door being locked was normal.

Crini expresses scepticism about Knox’ story about experience with the faeces in the large bathroom toilet, her shower and seeming indifference to the blood.  There are anomalies between Knox’ and Sollecito’s accounts: she said Filomena’s door was shut, thus could not see any disturbance, whereas he claimed it was wide open, when he arrived at the cottage on the morning of 2 November 2013.  Knox showed foreknowledge of the scream and the sexual assault, even though she had not seen into the room when the door was broken down.  She accused Patrick and included elements of truth about the scream and sex attack and embellished her stories with ‘dreamlike’ references to ‘fish blood’ on Sollecito’s hand.  Crini believes Knox’ calunnia is a deliberate strategy and a clear piece of evidence against her.

Expanding Crini, continues:

CRINI: Now, for heaven’s sake, it is conjectured that Knox did not even look in there [Laura’s room] to see if something had happened,  [Laura’s drawer was hanging open] It is a fact, that he [Sollecito]tells us that that door was open when he arrived. Then it’s a bit strange – you know – that this Knox, when she arrives and gets ready for its shower, finds a situation of doubt, certainly worthy of suspicion, but for this very reason … let’s say this suspect construct does not add that suspicion that would immediately make the need to call the police, right? If you find theft at eleven, at eleven and two minutes you have to call the Carabinieri. 

But of all these things she sees, she does not see the most striking, which, I repeat, was available to her, because … not only, but then also the Mezzetti  room. was a bit tricky. But it was a visual view as the door was still open. And then, in this situation, …there is a bathroom with a flush to pull, there is a bathtub with blood inside, there is a locked door, a situation that then Knox a little suspicious, because Knox says, though, “I’m sorry, so I went out from outside and went to see, trying to figure out what could be in that room”. 

Knox claims she came back to the cottage to find the door open, and despite her uneasiness and the cold November air and no heating, she claims she proceeded to have a shower and change, with door still unlatched in case whoever had gone out to empty the trash or whatever needed to come back in.

CRINI: ..then you come home, to the boy’s house, in Via Garibaldi, and return [together]to Via della Pergola. It is there that at that moment we are aware of the presence of a theft. But at that point we are at that time that it is back to the remarks made by Sollecito…

 So, the combination of all these elements is plainly plausible this eleventh hour tale of eleven to  eleven, with all this set of elements that are, sufficient to induce suspicion. I would say … the theft not seen, frankly would make a clown smile. 

 

Crini looks at the behaviour of the couple as a whole, their individual discrete actions painting a wider picture of deception.

CRINI: The locked door, in a situation that everyone else tells us not to be a normal situation. And this is the first segment of the borderline declarations. Then there is the second segment, because Knox intervenes, spouting the name of Lumumba, we say it’s severely calunniatory, she wants to emphasize this figure.

 This person is jailed, like a murderer, and goes out on the 20th, which is just the day Guede is caught following the call from Benedict’s Skype of 19. So let’s go ahead and consider this thing as well , an element … a little girl. She is a little girl who, however, told Mama that she was a little worried that this wretch was in jail. 

In an intercepted conversation with her mother, Edda Mellas, on a prison visit, Knox had stated Patrick was innocent and yet neither she or her mother did anything about it.

CRINI:, Knox Amanda, says meaningful things, because it provides a context that, in their historicity, of the process, which was not available at that time.  Let’s not miss that English friend’s report, corroborating that Knox makes it known that she has seen Meredith’s position in the room. This is also a source of suspicion,

When the door to Meredith’s room had been kicked down, Knox and Sollecito were to the back of the cottage and were not there to see inside it.

CRINI…[…]… the substance of the words, which they refer to … “Well, that’s all plausible, basically, I mean, there was a theft and say .. what happened happened, surely … you want there to be some kind of violence “? Bah. And why? And why should you go, as you say, in the face of a theft situation, you have to go to the fact that the girl was raped? 

For what reason, if, say, the data is not known to the person concerned, how can she somehow refer to it? And because she must, tell of a scream? …[…]…we see how incongruous it is to say, there are bruises around all parts right in the mouth area . 

 But meanwhile it is important that Knox delivers us two data, she reports two data: the cry of the poor Meredith Kercher, and the dark violence ; which are data that are not normal in the context in which the action has developed. …[…]…

The speech is set in the face of slander, it is in the necessity of having to include other elements that are somehow complementary to slander. 

Crini elaborates in which way controlling the narrative enables Knox to spin a web of deceit.

 If I shed the slander of a person who may not be there, but maybe it may be plausible if nothing else but the colour of his skin. ..The segments of truth that part of the narrative, precisely. But not as a natural development of the chaos caused by this wretched man climbing the window. No, absolutely no! They describe the process on other bases: the process of aggression that then is over, as it is over. And then you understand the scream, and then you understand the violence. But if I start from theft, there is not much screaming or violence to see. 

 When I blurt out a slander about a wretch [Patrick] who has nothing to do with it, …these pieces of truth that are the ones that emerge from these words – as if to say – uttered by this girl who finds herself in this particular situation and therefore has the need to build this strategy of defence, in particular. 

Drawing in Sollecito’s similarly false narrative and proven false alibi, Crini asserts:

CRINI: And then we also have this other piece, which has no relevance to itself, but it is significant. At a certain point, when we say the accused Sollecito states what he says, that is, “I was at home alone at the computer and I even smoked” – I do not want to repeat the statement, but it seems we are loaded on it – for Knox, Sollecito in her memory, becomes one who had his bloody hands. The fish. …[…]… why do we have to hypothesize this dreamlike component? It appears like a pochettino, a bit ‘baroque, right? a bit excessive, a little bit of weight, a little justification, here is a little justification to make sense of the statements that instead … which instead have a primary meaning from the point of view of the indictment,’

And thus, Crini elegantly sums up Knox’ strategy in particular.  Her calunnia and determination to control the storyline all makes sense within the context of her involvement in the crime:  He has spoken for seven hours.

Nencini adjourns the prosecution submissions to continue for 9:30 tomorrow, together with the civil lawyers.

There is an excellent ‘bird’s eye’ view from the courtroom today from ‘Yummi/Macchiavelli’ for True Justice of Meredith Kercher, well worth a read, together with a photo of Crini.

 

 

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The Nencini Papers

September 27, 2017

nenciniDay 4

On 3 Nov 2013 ahead of the next session, Rudy Guede joins in the press clamour by issuing a statement that ‘Meredith Kercher’s killers are still free.’

Guede, who was born in Ivory Coast and grew up in Italy, made the claim in a letter sent from his prison cell in Viterbo to the Italian TV show, ‘Quarto Grado’.

“I want to point out that whoever committed this terrible crime is still free,” Guede said.

 

Day 4, 6 November 2013  Today the court will hear evidence pertaining to reports by Stefanoni (2007-2008), Conti-Vecchiotti (2011) and Berti-Barni (Rome RIS, 2013).

 

Carlo Dalla Vedova makes a submission to cast doubt on Stefanoni’s report.  This is dismissed by the judge as already having been settled at trial.  Taggliabracci had made submissions that Stefanoni had been ‘suspect-centric’ in her approach and that she had failed to disclose her raw data and controls. According to ‘Yummi (Machiavelli)’ who reports from the case today in person in a tweet :

Dalla Vedova said Tagliabracci was the only Italian source in the RIS report, all others are foreigners, emphasized the American labs [TJMK]

In a thinly veiled sideswipe at Conti and Vecchiotti, Nencini directs Barni to formulate opinions ‘without reference to American standards’.

C& V’s report had been full of references to American standards which led to specious claims by the defence that Stefanoni had not followed ‘international standards’ In ‘The Great DNA Sting’, it is noted.

The Italian Scientific Police follow the guidelines of the ENFSI – the European Network Forensic Science Institutes. Dr Stefanoni observed that they followed these specific guidelines whereas Conti and Vecchiotti basically picked and mixed a random selection of international opinions:

“We followed the guidelines of the ENFSI, theirs is just a collage of different international opinions”.

In other words, Conti and Vecchiotti were not referring to the specific guidelines and recommendation of one particular international forensic organisation despite giving that impression at the appeal in Perugia. They cited a number of obscure American publications such as the Missouri State Highway Patrol Handbook and Wisconsin Crime Laboratory Physical Evidence Handbook. The Italian Scientific Police are under no obligation to follow the DNA protocols of the Missouri State Highway Patrol and Wisconsin Crime Laboratory.

Raffaele Sollecito makes a ‘spontaneous declaration’.  In Italy, these are statements to the court by defendants, which have little evidentiary value, as the speaker cannot be cross-examined on what they say.  Nencini had urged Sollecito to make statements.  He had declined to take the stand during the first instance trial phase.

There had been speculation that Sollecito was preparing to flee the country after he took a holiday in the Dominican Republic, which does not have an extradition treaty with Italy. But his father said his son’s decision to return for the hearing showed he had no plan to escape Italian justice.

We can give credit for Sollecito’s appearance to Francesco, who has suffered a nightmare, by Sollecito’s own account.  In Honor Bound he writes:

‘Papà was spinning like a dervish to clear my name’

 

He recounts how Francesco was asked for €8K up front from a consultant to monitor the RIS, but who was loath to criticise them.  Another demanded €50K and ‘I’ll get your son out of prison.’

 

Elsewhere in the book, Sollecito relates how his father all but gave up his job as a respected urologist in order to visit his son dutifully in Capenne Prison, ‘for six hours a month’ all the way from Terni.  One gets a sense of the sheer stress Sollecito put his family under and the desperate attempts by his father to get his son to show respect for the court.

 

Addressing the court, Sollecito is reported as saying:

 

First, Sollecito spoke of his Italian family and background and stressed that he was an honest man. He said Knox was his first true love, and he insisted he had no reason to want to murder anyone just a week before his graduation. He added that he has never enjoyed going to parties or drinking alcohol, although he admitted to smoking a joint now and then.

Sollecito also spoke of how difficult it had been for him in prison and how he feels he is constantly scrutinized for anything he does, even traveling abroad.

 

“I never knew Rudy Guede and I only knew Meredith a little bit. It doesn’t make any sense that I would have had any interest in her that could have led to such an atrocious act, against a 20-year-old girl, it has no basis in reality. And this thing, unfortunately, is going on for too many years,” he said.

 

“I humbly request you to please look at the reality of this situation and to consider the immense wrong that has been done,” he told the judges

 

‘Yummi/Machiavelli, the on the spot reporter for True Justice for Meredith Kercher, tweets as follows:

            Sollecito said his family absolutely never had issues with justice. And he is a proud ‘member’ of that family

  1. He also played the ‘national’ card, as he re-emphasized ‘I am Italian’ twice and then addressed the court ‘I am an Italian, as you are’
  2. Sollecito mentioned the defense’s arguments (he has an orthopedical issue with his foot etc.).
  3. The questions of all parties to the experts were intended to elicit information to be used in arguing the unrelated previous finding
  4. He mentioned Meredith’s name only once, to say he barely knew her.
  5. Sollecito talked with a faint voice, a long speech in which he described himself as a victim.

What Sollecito is doing here is manipulating people’s emotions (and indeed, one of the jurors, Genny Ballerini came out later to say she was on his side).  Ballerini, much later, gave an interview to OGGI claiming she thought the prison sentence was ‘too long’.

I myself once felt so sorry for Sollecito, despite being convinced of his guilt, I sent him some funds of £10 through his Go Fund Me page.

 

To see how well Sollecito elicits sympathy, it is worth visiting his book, Honor Bound wherein on p 126 he recounts his visit to Dachau concentration camp, as an Erasmus student in Germany, and compares it with his taking a shower in Capenne:

 

‘I thought about the forced marches and the hymns of joy prisoners were forced to sing.  I thought about the mass slaughter, all those people killed for no reason, just as Meredith had been killed for no reason.’

 

A cold callous psychopath skilled in stirring people’s emotions, or an ill-fated waif unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

 

Back to the court room, where people are now beginning to fidget after a long day.  Nencini declares the evidence phase closed.  Aviello’s testimony is to be sent to  the Attorney General’s Office (the state prosecutor, possibly to see if any charges can be brought).

 

The next court dates are 25 Novemebr, for the prosecution arguments, 26 Novemner, the civil parties, 16 December of Sollecito’s defence and 17 December for Knox’.  The closing submissions, rebuttals and deliberations are listed for the 9th and 10th January 2014.  In Italy, courts are expected to give the verdict immediately after this, at the hearing.

 

 

 

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What Marasca-Bruno Supreme Court said about Raffaele Sollecito

February 7, 2017

rs-and-lawyers

Bongiorno, Sollecito, Maori legal team

Compensation claim by Raffaele Sollecito

UPDATE

BREAKING:   Claim thrown out! ‘ANSA) – PERUGIA, FEBRUARY 11 – Rejected by the Court of Appeal of Florence, the claim for wrongful imprisonment advanced by Raffaele Sollecito, finally acquitted of the charge of having participated in the murder of Meredith Kercher. He asked over 500 thousand euro for almost four years in jail before being released from prison. As learned by ANSA Tuscan courts have held contradictory his statements in the initial survey. ‘ – Too many lies in the early stages.

Motivation Report of the Florence Compensation Claim Dismissal now available:

This translation was done by a group of unpaid volunteers who are regular posters on the Perugiamurderfile.org message board devoted to discussing the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, in November of 2007. The translation and editorial team was international in its make-up.

It was completed in February 2017, having been undertaken for the sole purpose of promoting a better understanding of this complex case, and to ensure that the facts are readily available to the English-speaking world without selective emphasis, misstatement or bias.

It has been translated on a “best efforts” basis, and has gone through multiple rounds of proofreading and editing, both to ensure its accuracy and to harmonize the language insofar as possible. Persons fluent in both Italian and English are invited and encouraged to contact PMF if they find any material errors that influence the meaning or intention of the judges. All such corrections will be investigated, made as required and brought to the attention of the public. The original Italian document is twelve pages long.

As with any translation, some terminology in Italian has no direct equivalent in English. Explanations have been provided where relevant. Similarly, readers are encouraged to submit any questions about legal or other concepts that may arise as they peruse the report. Our goal is to make the report as clear and as accurate as possible; to this end, it will be amended whenever doing so promotes this goal.

As the report was written and published in Italian, that language prevails in the event of a dispute over interpretation. This English-language version is provided for readers’ convenience only; accordingly, it is a free translation and has no legal authority or status.

This translation may be freely copied or otherwise reproduced and transmitted in the unedited pdf format, provided that the translation or any excerpt therefrom is accompanied by the following attribution: “From the translation prepared by unpaid volunteers from http://www.perugiamurderfile.org to promote a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding the death of Meredith Kercher and the case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the English-speaking world”.

The compensation claim

Raffaele Sollecito, represented by his attorneys throughout the process, Avvocato Giulia Bongiorno and Luca Maori, is currently claiming compensation for ‘wrongful imprisonment’ in respect of the four years he served of a sentence of 25 years handed down for the Aggravated Murder of Meredith Kercher, 1 Nov 2007.  The conviction was controversially overturned by the final Italian Supreme Court in March 2015, and its Motivational Report published – some three months late – in September 2015.  It was only then Sollecito was able to commence compensation proceedings, as the Italian Penal Code provides for this, given, its long-winded legal process whereby defendants accused of serious crimes (i.e., one with a sentence of over three years custody) can be held on remand whilst awaiting trial.  In theory, this should only be for up to one year.

The issues with the Marasca ruling

The Marasca verdict is considered controversial because Sollecito and his co-defendant, Amanda Knox had been found guilty at the first instance trial court (merits), which was upheld on appeal.  It is unusual for the Supreme Court to have not remitted the case back to  the Appeal (second instance) court as the Penal Code – as is standard in the UK and the USA – does not allow the Supreme Court to assess facts found at trial.  The correct procedure is to send the disputed evidence back to the court which in the opinion of the Supreme court erred.  Marasca did not rule a Section 530,1 ‘Not Guilty’ acquittal, but a Section 530, 2 ‘Not Guilty’ ‘insufficient evidence’, which some say is similar to Scottish Law, ‘Not Proven’.However, the wording used, proscioglimento indicates a pre-trial ‘charges dropped’, rather than ‘acquittal’ (assoluzione).

Sollecito and Knox made several applications against being held in custody whilst awaiting trial and were turned down at every stage, including appeals and an application for ‘house arrest’ in lieu.

The prosecution opposed the application on the grounds of the seriousness of the crime, and in Knox’ case, the standard ground that she might flee the country, as a foreigner to Italy.  In addition, the prosecution had used special preventative powers to isolate the defendants (Knox, Sollecito and Guede) to prevent tampering with witnesses, a power which had been added to the Penal Code to assist in the fight against mafia gangs who did intimidate witnesses, often through their lawyers.  Therefore the law allowed the prosecutors to deny the defendants an attorney until just before their remand hearings.

Sollecito’s challenges

However, the award of compensation for having (a) been held in remand, and (b) serving a sentence until such time the conviction was overturned, is not automatic.  The applicant has to show that they are factually ‘not guilty’, i.e., cannot possibly have committed the crime, perhaps because the ‘real perpetrator’ has come to light, or ‘new evidence’ presented.  Neither of these scenarios apply in Sollecito’s case.  Whilst a defendant is allowed to ‘lie’ and indeed, does not need to swear an oath in testifying, this only holds true if they are guilty.    Marasca did not find Sollecito or Knox, ‘Not Gulty’ as per Article 530,1, the common or garden ‘Not Guilty’ verdict.

Further, Sollecito refused to testify at his own trial, and made various misrepresentations and lies to the police.  He argues in current tv and radio show rounds – for example, in the recent Victoria Derbyshire BBC morning show – that as he was a ‘collector of knives’ and had always carried a knife around since age thirteen, ‘To carve on tables and trees’, he explains, and thus argues, the police should not have viewed this with suspicion when he attended the questura carrying one in the days after the murder.

Sollecito’s other difficulty is that Marasca, whilst criticising the investigation as ‘flawed’, and this being the main reason for acquittal, it nonetheless cuts Sollecito little slack.

How Marasca cuts Sollecito little slack

From the Marasca Supreme Court Motivational Report, Sept 2015:

It remains anyway strong the suspicion that he [Sollecito] was actually in the Via della Pergola house the night of the murder, in a moment that, however, it was impossible to determine. On the other hand, since the presence of Ms. Knox inside the house is sure, it is hardly credible that he was not with her.

And even following one of the versions released by the woman, that is the one in accord to which, returning home in the morning of November 2. after a night spent at her boyfriend’s place, she reports of having immediately noticed that something strange had happened (open door, blood traces everywhere); or even the other one, that she reports in her memorial, in accord to which she was present in the house at the time of the murder, but in a different room, not the one in which the violent aggression on Ms. Kercher was being committed, it is very strange that she did not call her boyfriend, since there is no record about a phone call from her, based on the phone records within the file.

Even more if we consider that having being in Italy for a short time, she would be presumably uninformed about what to do in such emergency cases, therefore the first and maybe only person whom she could ask for help would have been her boyfriend himself, who lived only a few hundred meters away from her house.

Not doing this signifies Sollecito was with her, unaffected, obviously, the procedural relevance of his mere presence in that house, in the absence of certain proof of his causal contribution to the murderous action.

The defensive argument extending the computer interaction up to the visualization of a cartoon, downloaded from the internet, in a time that they claim compatible with the time of death of Ms. Kercher, is certainly not sufficient to dispel such strong suspicions. In fact, even following the reconstruction claimed by the defence and even if we assume as certain that the interaction was by Mr. Sollecito himself and that he watched the whole clip, still the time of ending of his computer activity wouldn’t be incompatible with his subsequent presence in Ms. Kercher’s house, given the short distance between the two houses, walkable in about ten [sic] minutes.

An element of strong suspicion, also, derives from his confirmation, during spontaneous declarations, the alibi presented by Ms. Knox about the presence of both inside the house of the current appellant the night of the murder, a theory that is denied by the statements of Curatolo, who declared of having witnessed the two together from 21:30 until 24:00 in piazza Grimana; and by Quintavalle on the presence of a young woman, later identified as Ms. Knox, when he opened his store in the morning of November 2.

An umpteenth element of suspicion is the basic failure of the alibi linked to other, claimed human interactions in the computer of his belongings, albeit if we can’t talk about false alibi, since it’s more appropriate to speak about unsuccessful alibi.

Sollecito in his police interview of the 5 Nov 2007, shortly after which he was arrested, withdrew his alibi from Amanda Knox.  During the Nencini appeal phase, he and his advocate, Bongiorno, called a press conference to underline that Sollecito ‘could not vouch for Knox’ whereabouts between 8:45 pm and 1:00 am on the night of the murder.  Sollecito has never once retracted this withdrawal of an alibi for Amanda.  

Further, Marasca states:

The defensive argument extending the computer interaction up to the visualization of a cartoon, downloaded from the internet, in a time that they claim compatible with the time of death of Ms. Kercher, is certainly not sufficient to dispel such strong suspicions.

In fact, even following the reconstruction claimed by the defence and even if we assume as certain that the interaction was by Mr. Sollecito himself and that he watched the whole clip, still the time of ending of his computer activity wouldn’t be incompatible with his subsequent presence in Ms. Kercher’s house, given the short distance between the two houses, walkable in about ten [sic] minutes.

Sollecito had claimed he was surfing the internet until 3:00 am in one statement and claimed to have watched Naruto cartoon until 9:45 pm on the murder night. It winds up:

The technical tests requested by the defence cannot grant any contribution of clarity, not only because a long time has passed, but also because they regard aspects of problematic examination (such as the possibility of selective cleaning) or of manifest irrelevance (technical analysis on Sollecito’s computer) given that is was possible, as said, for him to go to Kercher’s house whatever the length of his interaction with the computer (even if one concedes that such interaction exists), or they are manifestly unnecessary, given that some unexceptionable technical analysis carried out are exhaustive (such are for example the cadaver inspection and the following medico-legal examinations).

Leading to the verdict:

Following the considerations above, it is obvious that a remand [rinvio] would be useless, hence the declaration of annulment without remand, based on art. 620 L) of the procedure code, thus we apply an acquittal [proscioglimento *] formula [see note just below] which a further judge on remand would be anyway compelled to apply, to abide to the principles of law established in this current sentence.

*[Translator’s note: The Italian word for “acquittal” is actually “assoluzione”; while the term “proscioglimento” instead, in the Italian Procedure Code, actually refers only to non-definitive preliminary judgments during investigation phase, and it could be translated as “dropping of charges”. Note: as for investigation phase “proscioglimento” is normally meant as a non-binding decision, not subjected to double jeopardy, since it is not considered a judgment nor a court’s decision.] http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Marasca-Bruno_Report_(English)

The Issues Facing the Florence Appeal Court

Sollecito has clearly passed the first hurdle of being eligible to have a hearing for compensation.  His legal team have asked for the maximum €516,000.  A claimant who can successfully plead ‘wrongful imprisonment’ can claim €500, per diem imprisonment, up to a cap of €516,000.

Sollecito’s legal team have referred to Marasca’s criticism of the investigation as grounds for the full compensation, claiming Sollecito’s “innocence and loss of youthful endeavours” because of the ‘flaws’.  Problem is, the issue of investigative flaws was never pleaded at trial, or at least, not upheld, by either the trial or appeal court judge.  Marasca never really explains in which way this was a proven fact.

The Prosecutor’s Office based at Florence is opposing the application.  I would expect they will be relying on Matteini’s remand hearing and Gemmelli’s written reasons rejecting Sollecito’s appeal against being kept in custody until the hearing.

The three judges who on 27 January 2017 in a hearing listed for five days announced they would issue their verdict ‘within five days’, as of 7 Feb 2017, some seven working days later, have yet to make a decision.  Alternatively, the decision has been made, but the public and press have not yet accessed it.  It could be Sollecito’s legal team have yet to call a press conference, whilst they study the findings.

The panel will decide:

  • is Sollecito entitled to compensation?
  • if so, how much?
  • did he lie to police or mislead them?
  • if so, to what extent was he contributory to his being remanded?
  • to what extent the ‘flawed investigation’ a factor in his ‘wrongful imprisonment’?
  • should Sollecito receive compensation for the one year remand in custody leading up to the trial?
  • should he be compensated for the three further years of a sentence served as a convicted prisoner, six months of it in solitary confinement?
  • should this be for both of the above, either of the above, or neither of them?

Watch this space!

bongiorno-maori

Sollecito has made noises that he plans further legal action against the prosecutor, based on Marasca’s criticisms in its Motivational Report.

Sources: The Murder of Meredith Kercher com  True Justice for Meredith Kercher

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Meredith Kercher

December 28, 2016

RIP You’ll Never Walk Alone

 

A touching poem from her sister, Stephanie reminds us of how precious she was and how she touches us still.

 

This video was uploaded by me last year, after a disappointing year for justice, with the alleged perpetrators of her untimely death being controversially acquitted in March 2015, by the Italian Supreme Court in the Fifth Chambers.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa3

28 Dec 1985 – 1 Nov 2007

Today, on what would have been her 31st birthday, we still keep hope in our hearts for justice.

 

Walk on, with hope in your heart, and you’ll never walk alone.

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Netflix ‘Amanda Knox’ Review: The Italian Job: The DNA Sting

October 24, 2016

vandc

Above: ‘Independent’ Expert Witnesses, Conti and Vecchiotti, fraternise in Hellmann’s Court with Sollecito’s defence. Vanessa, Raffaele’s sister, and their father, Francesco, is pictured greeting Vecchiotti and Conti with beaming smiles.

I have previously written a review about the Netflix film, ‘Amanda Knox’ [2016], see here: https://krissyg1.com/2016/10/01/review-of-the-netflix-film-amanda-knox-2016/

How Conti & Vecchiotti Misrepresent the DNA Facts

Here I plan to expand on the section: ‘’The Appeal to Authority”: the inclusion in the film of geneticist scientists, Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti.

I hope to set out how and why the film misleads the viewer in respect of the appearance of Vecchiotti & Conti.  The choreography used by the film makers to present Knox and Sollecito as ‘exonerated’ and ‘innocent’ based on Vecchiotti & Conti’s narrative in the film will be revealed for the careful script that it is.  I will demonstrate why Vecchiotti & Conti’s declarations in the film are deceptive.  An analysis of Vecchiotti and Conti’s entire role in attaining the release of the pair and the revelation of the hidden agenda that underlies the film will be explored.

Fine Slicing

In the film, Vecchiotti and Conti appear quite deeply into the film, at 1’ 4” of 92 minutes.  The appearance of the ‘DNA experts’ towards the end, enables the film makers to reinforce the image of a great miscarriage of justice, leading up to the grand finale denouement.  Enter Conti.

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Referring to the evidence of Sollecito’s DNA found on the bra, Conti introduces the audience to a key principle of DNA.  It is ‘dust spread everywhere,’ he avers.  To set the scene, we are informed that the Forensic Police (‘Scientific Police’ in Italy) acted chaotically and that the crime scene was an absolute shambles.  We hear an audio voiceover of a supposed scientific policeman saying to another ‘this is absurd, there is unbelievable chaos everywhere’.

So there we have it.  ‘A crime scene must be completely sterile’.

We are roundly informed that this crime scene was not, based on Conti’s word for it.

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Next, enter his co-partner, the other ‘independent’ expert hired by the Hellmann appeal court to evaluate the evidence concerning the DNA identified on the presumed murder weapon knife, and the bra clasp sample: Carla Vecchiotti.

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Carla Vecchiotti claims that the issue of contamination of the DNA ‘was raised by the court’.

Shot moves to the scientific police as she continues, ‘ it could have been by other people’.

She then throws in a red herring.  ‘There was the DNA of two unknown males on the clasp’, which we can dispense with straight away.  In reality they were fragments of DNA, no more than 6 – 8 alleles, and precisely of the type of dust contamination Conti is talking about.   This effectively subverts the issue away from the strong DNA profile of Sollecito found on the clasp.

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Vecchiotti then continues the theme of the film that prosecutor, Mignini, was acting entirely intuitively.  ‘You can’t just make it what you want it to be’.

She claims there are ‘problems with contamination in the laboratory’, yet in court she insisted the alleged contamination was at the collection stage, and not at the laboratory.  A picture of the knife comes up.

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Vecchiotti comments, ‘The Knox DNA profile is a very good one.’

Of the Kercher DNA on the blade she states, ‘It’s so small.  So scarce, the likelihood of contamination is very high.’

From this, she concludes the Kercher DNA is ‘inconclusive’.

The film makers show us the picture at least three times with ‘INCONCLUSIVE’ in bold red letters.  ‘I asked Dr Stefanoni (the forensic police chief in charge of this case) how she concluded this is the murder weapon without any other evidence?’

However, the courts upheld, and Conti and Vecchiotti themselves concurred under oath, that far from being inconclusive, it was a strong profile of Meredith, at 15 alleles.

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Again, Vecchiotti repeats the lie that the laboratory was contaminated, when no such finding was upheld by any court, including Hellmann’s, by referring to Stefanoni stating she had examined fifty of Meredith’s samples at the same time, see above.  She insinuates Stefanoni overrode standards so that they would not have to close the lab up between samples.

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The film then cuts to clips of US media outrage at Vecchiotti’s findings of ‘contamination’, even dragging in Donald Trump, no doubt sucking on a tic tac, with just a small cameo of Mignini for ‘balance’, stating that ‘all evidence’ needs to be looked at, implying that Mignini accepted the alleged contamination and was now trying to deflect from it onto other evidence.  The reader should bear in mind, that in fact, there was no such finding of contamination in Stefanoni’s labs.

Nor does she or her co-partner ever once in the film, and nor do the film makers mention that their report was discredited by the Chieffi Supreme court and Hellmann expunged.

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Having established – falsely – that Vecchiotti and Conti had proven contamination to an unwary audience, the film then cuts to Amanda Knox claiming, ‘There is no trace of me in the murder room…and nothing reliable of Raffaele’.

We are shown a diagram of eight black spots of Rudy Guede’s traces and one white one for Sollecito, some distance away from the body, underneath which, it was actually found.  A police mug shot of Guede appears on screen, whom Knox describes as ‘ a guy who regularly committed burglaries’.

From this we are led to believe Guede is a seasoned criminal career burglar, when as of the time, he had no convictions at all.  The film makers inform the audience it is, ‘a burglary gone wrong’, not a finding by any court, apart from the vacated Hellmann court.  The balance (at roughly six to one against, in terms of time coverage) once again is provided by Mignini who points out its unfairness, given the evidence found at the trial.

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The film then cuts to Conti, who makes an astonishing confession – for a scientific professional expert witness and professor –  stating, ‘What happened inside that room between Guede and Meredith, was not a job assigned to me.’

So now it is out in the open, Vecchiotti and Conti, far from protecting their professional integrity by following their ethical code, which states that they are expected to act with objectivity in their professional role and should safeguard this by recusing themselves should they feel that they have become advocates for a party, in the film do not even hide their partisanship.

Conti  feels confident in this ‘documentary’, now as a global film star, to declare his advocacy for Knox and Sollecito with the above statement.

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The Vecchiotti and Conti sequence of the film ends with a drawn out episode of a supercilious Conti leaning back in an attitude of condescension, no doubt aimed at Mignini, when he concludes,

‘Cicero once said’ – pause – ‘ Any man can err, but only a fool perseveres.’

Next, the film completely ignores that his and Vechiotti’s report was unceremoniously ridiculed by the next level court – Chieffi, Supreme Court – and the pair branded as ‘intellectually dishonest’.  It ignores that the case was remitted back to a completely different Appeal Court, in a completely different area, from Umbria to Tuscany, and under a completely different judge.

In the Netflix film, a diagram showing Knox’ DNA on the knife handle is admired as a strong profile.  Meredith’s DNA on the blade is highlighted as a question mark.  Time and again, the viewer is shown the same diagram with the word ‘INCONCLUSIVE’ above the Meredith DNA in red letters.  The truth is, ALL of the defence experts – including Vecchiotti and Conti – accepted it was a strong DNA profile of Meredith (15-allele) so we see a blatant misrepresentation here, that rather than the confidently strong profile it is, Vecchiotti declares that it is ‘inconclusive’, and leads the viewer to believe this was because of proven contamination.  This deception is underlined by the film makers immediately galloping to the Hellman Court after the Vecchiotti & Conti interview, with wild scenes of Hellmann freeing the pair and declaring them innocent.  The connection is made: the knife DNA – and the bra clasp – is ‘contaminated’ and that is why the pair were freed.  ‘This was the only flimsy evidence,’ is the message conveyed. Thanks to the lurid and putrid imaginings of Mignini and Pisa, those kids suffered, the viewer is told.  Cue mass media bombardment by the outraged Netflix viewers, on Twitter and Facebook excoriating Pisa, mostly, and also Mignini, as having botched up the whole case and ruined the lives of these two kids.

That was the film: now the reality

  • I will look at Vecchiotti and Conti’s true track record, which is appalling. The husband of a murder victim was denied justice for a staggering NINETEEN years, as DNA investigator Vecchiotti, et al, negligently refused to investigate the DNA of the perpetrator of the murder.
  • How did Vecchiotti and Conti get appointed by Hellmann court at all? I reveal how the US contingent of pro-Amanda Knox scientists helped ‘fix’ it.
  • I will highlight the legerdemain ploys adopted by the pair in preparing their report, which predicated Hellmann freeing the pair from prison. It was a moot point henceforth as to whether they would ever return.
  • I will set out Chieffi’s and Nencini’s damning criticisms of Vecchiotti and Conti in the case.  Crini points out, in the Nencini report, that Vecchiotti’s own laboratory fridge did not have a thermometer!
  • I will show how the elaborate ‘heist’ of the judicial system in springing ‘the kids’ from jail happened. A US scientist, using Boise University resources, Greg Hampikian, was bragging to courts in the US under oath, even as Hellmann had been expunged and Nencini had just recommenced the appeal, that, ‘I am still working on the Amanda Knox case’.
  • My analysis exposes the interconnections between US advocates Hampikian, Bruce Budowle and British forensic expert, Dr Peter Gill, with Vecchiotti and Conti, which casts grave doubt on the pair being ‘independent’ expert witnesses at all.

modern-scientific-police-labs-in-rome

Modern Forensic Science Laboratories in Rome

The track record

On 21 April 2016, Carla Vechiotti, together with Pascali, Vicenza and Arberello, was found guilty in a civil suit of gross negligence in the examination of the murder of Contessa Ogliata, dating from 1991, and ordered to pay €150,000 in damages.  Vecchiotti appears to have a reputation for cutting more corners than Stirling Moss, with other cases often quoted, with which she is associated.

Above:  Conti & Vecchiotti laboratores forcible closed down.  Right: Bodies line the corridors

Recently, Conti and Vecchiotti’s laboratory in Rome was closed down due to public health issues. Contamination almost certainly occurred in their laboratory.   Rotting cadavers unclaimed by relatives, were said to have piled up in the corridors.  Stefanoni’s laboratory, which followed all the conventional standards of the day was never proven to have been contaminated.

Carla Vecchiotti’s reputation is in tatters. She has made a number of shocking errors in a couple of murder cases, she repeatedly misled the appeal court – Judge Nencini described hers and Conti’s work as “misleading” and “reprehensible“.

The Hellmann Court (Appeal Court)

judge-claudio-pratillo-he-007

18 Dec 2010  At the Hellmann appeal the defences made three unusual requests, (a) to get an independent review of the DNA and (b) to bring in Alessi to challenge Curatalo’s testimony and (c) Aviello, a mobster.  Hellmann agreed to appoint Conti &Vecchiotti from La Sapienza University in Rome.  In the interim 16 Dec 2010, Rudy Guede was definitively convicted. (a) was challenged by Comodi, saying there were many experts for both sides already.  Hellmann argued a judge did not have sufficient expertise to evaluate the experts’ opinions.  Having achieved the appointment of Conti &Vecchiotti , Conti &Vecchiotti [‘the experts’] delivered the coup de grâce: claiming  international standards were not met, contamination could not be ruled out, and that the DNA profile of Meredith could not be reliable.  The pair made the claim the DNA could have ‘come from dust’, and rebutted by Stefanoni, who said in that case, there should have been contamination elsewhere, not just on the bra clasp.

braclasp

Contamination from the laboratory was completely ruled out, contrary to the claims made in the Netflix film, after which, ‘the experts’ moved to a stance that the contamination happened before it even got to the laboratories.  At the hearing, Conti was constantly asked what the criteria were for alleging contamination, to which he replied, ‘Anything is possible’.  As a scientist, a proper evaluation of probability was expected of him.

In their report they claimed, ‘The electrophoretic profiles exhibited reveal that the sample indicated by the letter B (blade of knife) was a Low Copy Number (LCN) sample, and, as such, all of the precautions indicated by the international scientific community should have been applied.’

It transpired ‘the experts’ had decided to use the US standards of Bruce Budowle and supported by Gill, et al., that the threshold for Low Copy Number (LCN) DNA should be raised to 200 picograms, from the hitherto conventional 100 picograms.  In addition, ‘the experts’ argued, the US standard of 50 RFU’s should be used in place of the then Italian standard of 30 RFU’s.  Analysis of DNA below these levels introduces a higher risk of ‘background noise’; contamination from alien sources, i.e., everyday dust, which may contain DNA fragments.  Hellmann, ‘the experts’ and the US scientists getting involved, by virtue of ‘the experts’ quoting extensively from their papers, erred in presupposing that Dr Stefanoni knew nothing about these issues.  Professor Novelli, for the state, challenged the claim that there was any contamination.  Indeed ‘the experts’ were unable to demonstrate this other than by quoting lengthy academic papers which had little to do with mundane case law and more to do with ivory towers.  Vecchiotti, born 1951, with a long CV from medical student days, would have known what Italian standards were, yet tried to subvert them in retrospect.

A complaint was lodged by the prosecution about the pair being seen to openly fraternise with Sollecito’s defence team during the hearing, a strict Bar Standard ‘no, no’ for an independent expert witness.

‘The experts’ refused to analyse a further sample of DNA found on the knife, giving the reason it was LCN, and they ‘didn’t want to make the same mistake as Stefanoni.’

rsakrg

Above: Raffaele Sollecito;  Amanda Knox;  Rudy Guede

Hellmann accepted Vecchiotti & Conti’s findings and acquitted Knox and Sollecito, declaring them ‘innocent’, aside from the calunnia for Knox, together with finding that Guede acted alone, as a ‘burglar disturbed.’

For the film makers, this defines the end of the film.

The Chieffi Court (Supreme Court)

The next level of appeal court overturned completely Hellman’s findings.  It rebutted that the DNA sample of Meredith’s was ipso facto low quality just because it was LCN.  ‘The experts’ had claimed, relying on their US sources, that LCN sampling should only be done on special projects, such as missing persons or cadaver identification, and that there was not the technology as it was ‘too innovative’.  Chieffi did not buy this, pointing to embryology studies.  He scoffed at the idea of ‘the experts’ being more expert than Professor Novelli or Dr Torricelli.  He censured Hellmann for failing to consider their equivalent expert knowledge.

Chieffi was particularly critical of ‘the experts’ refusing to test the remaining knife sample, calling their reasoning, ‘intellectually dishonest’.  25 March 2013, Chieffi ordered the case back to the Appeal court to consider the DNA evidence again, amongst other issues, and that the knife sample be tested.  One suspects ‘the experts’ were loath to test the sample in case it turned out be further DNA of Meredith, and this may be why Chieffi smelt a rat.

The Nencini Court (Appeal Court)

nencini

Nencini made it clear in a newspaper interview it was not within his remit to criticise ‘the experts’, but rather, to assess the legal rectitude of the Massei court decision, which Hellmann patently failed to do.  However, criticise he does.  He directs Barni, witness for the police, that ‘no US standards’ are to be quoted.   In upholding the findings of the Massei court, he makes the following point in his reasoning about the DNA of the knife and bra clasp:

  “… The consultant holds furthermore that the most appropriate technical approach to interpret the genetic profile arising from trace 165B and to avoid subjective interpretations is to “call upon”, meaning to consider as valid, all of the alleles with RFU > 50, independently of their position or whether or not they might be stutter. Once the complete profile is determined, given that there may also be more than

two contributors to the trace, we feel that the only statistical approach that can be used adequately here is the RMNE (Random Man Not Excluded) method. This statistical approach makes it possible to estimate the possible error due to a chance compatibility, meaning that of a person chosen randomly from the population and who by pure chance is fully compatible with the genetic characteristics of the individual represented in the trace. The higher and nearer to 1 that probability is, the more likely it is that the profile could be the result of a random choice and thus the higher the probability of an error in the attribution of the genetic profile to a given individual. In this case, as seen in Table 5, the profile of Raffaele Sollecito is compatible at all the loci analyzed in the mixture of DNA found on Exhibit 165B.

The probability that a random individual from the population would also be compatible (the inclusion probability) [245] was calculated, and came out to be equal to 3.05592 x 10^-6, which is about 1 in 327 thousand. This computation is considered to be extremely conservative, since all of the allelic components are taken into consideration together with their frequency in the reference population.” (Pages 15-17 of the technical report submitted at the 6 September 2011 hearing before the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia.)

The same investigative method was also suggested by the consultant of the Prosecutor in relation to the interpretation of the genetic profile of the markers located on the Y chromosome of trace 165B. Here again, all alleles with RFU>50 were considered, giving the following table:

Table 3. Profiles of Chromosome Y taken from trace 165 B

Marker

Exhibit
165B

Raffaele
SOLLECITO

DVS456

13.15

13

DYS3891

12-13

12

DYS390

22-23-24

22

DYS3891

29

29

D’tS458

14-15-17

15

DVSI9

14

14

DVS385

13-14-16

13-14

DYS393

12-13-14

13

DYS39I

9-10-11

10

DYS439

11

11

DVS635

21-22

21

DVS392

11

11

V GAT,t 114

11-12

11

DYS437

14-15

15

D’t’S438

9-10

10

DVS448

19-20-21

20

 [246] On the basis of the data in the above table, applying the method of statistical calculation indicated above, Prof. Novelli estimated the probability of a chance inclusion of a random person from the population in the mixed profile, together with the chance compatibility of this random individual with the major contributor to the Y chromosome, as about 1 in 3 billion.”

He upholds that the Forensic Police, aside from some human error, acted correctly and dismissed defence claims that Stefanoni had withheld raw data, and as claimed by ‘the experts’, citing documentary proof the information had been deposited.  Nencini reinstated the convictions, 31 January 2014, and dismissed the claim of contamination.  The sample on the knife ‘the experts’ had claimed was ‘starch’ and ‘too low LCN’ was successfully tested and found to be that of Amanda Knox.  None of this is mentioned by Vecchiotti & Conti in the film and nor do the film makers point it out, leaving their audience to believe ‘the experts’ claim of ‘contamination is proven’.

A key finding was that Professors Novelli and Torricelli had already been the target of the criticisms raised specifically by Prof. Adriano Tagliabracci, technical consultant for the Sollecito defense, at the first instance trial court, and thus was a matter settled (res judicata).  This is important to note, for Marasca later describes Tagliabracci in glowing terms as ‘world renowned’ when he reinstates the Hellmann findings in this matter, at the next level.  Nencini observes, ‘Finally, it is observed that Prof. Tagliabracci’s criticism is founded on an unproven and unprovable suspicion, namely that the biologist doing the work being already in possession of reference samples supposedly used the “suspect-centric” method.’

tagliabracci

Professor Adriano Tagliabracci

Nencini also found that the second instance [Hellman] court undervalued the fact that the tests carried out took place during the preliminary investigation [of which the Defence was notified and had the right to attend], that at the time of those tests, there were no objections concerning the sampling and laboratory activity, nor was a pre‐trial hearing requested regarding the testing, all of which proves agreement with the [laboratory] procedures.

Is Contamination Possible?

There were NO full male DNA profiles on the bra, apart from Sollecito’s and Guede’s.  Vecchiotti and Conti, significantly, in the film, try to detract from this highly incriminating scientific fact, by making reference to everyday dust fragments, as if that could possibly account for it.  The assertion by Conti in the film that ‘a crime scene must be kept sterile,’ is meaningless for there are many environmental pollutants at every crime scene.

prof_david_balding

Professor David Balding

Expert forensic geneticist Professor David Balding, and who, until October 2009 was Professor in Statistical Genetics at Imperial College, London, where he still retains an affiliation as Visiting Professor commented as follows. He is an editor of the Handbook of Statistical Genetics.

“Sollecito’s alleles are all represented and these generate the highest peaks, but there are some low peaks not attributable to him; so at least one of the additional contributors of low-level DNA to the sample was male.”

“They correctly criticised the scientific police for ignoring these: many do appear to be stutter peaks which are usually ignored, but 4 are not and definitely indicate DNA from another individual.  The extra peaks are all low, so the extra individuals contributed very little DNA.  That kind of extraneous DNA is routine in low-template work: our environment is covered with DNA from breath and touch, including a lot of fragmentary DNA from degraded cells that can show up in low-template analyses.  There is virtually no crime sample that doesn’t have some environmental DNA on it, from individuals not directly involved in the crime.  This does create additional uncertainty in the analysis because of the extra ambiguity about the true profile of the contributor of interest, but as long as it is correctly allowed for in the analysis there is no problem – it is completely routine.” (David Balding).

“in some cases we have peaks that correspond to a fourth person.”

“The fourth person is not Guede, it seems. This mystery fourth person hasn’t been mentioned much”. (Luciano Garofano, Darkness Descending).

“But because Sollecito is fully represented in the stain at 16 loci (we still only use 10 in the UK, as the legal threshold, so 16 is a lot), the evidence against him is strong.”

“In this case all the peaks associated with Sollecito seem clear and distinct  so I think there can be no concern about the quality of the result as far as it concerns him or Kercher.”

The Italian Scientific Police follow the guidelines of the ENFSI – the European Network Forensic Science Institutes. Dr Stefanoni observed that they followed these specific guidelines whereas Conti and Vecchiotti basically picked and mixed a random selection of international opinions:

“We followed the guidelines of the ENFSI, theirs is just a collage of different international opinions”.

In other words, Conti and Vecchiotti were not referring to the specific guidelines and recommendation of one particular international forensic organisations despite giving that impression at the appeal in Perugia. They cited a number of obscure American publications such as the the Missouri State Highway Patrol Handbook and Wisconsin Crime Laboratory Physical Evidence Handbook. The Italian Scientific Police are under no obligation to follow the DNA protocols of the Missouri State Highway Patrol and Wisconsin Crime Laboratory.

Professor Novelli also pointed out that contamination has to be proved:

“The contaminant must be demonstrated, where it originated from and where it is. The hook contaminated by dust? It’s more likely for a meteorite to fall and bring this court down to the ground.”

Professor Torricelli testified that it was unlikely the clasp was contaminated because there was a significant amount of Sollecito’s DNA on it. Professor Novelli analysed the series of samples from all 255 items processed and found not a single instance of contamination, and ruled out as implausible that a contaminating agent could have been present just on one single result.

There was an independent review of the forensic evidence in 2008.

Dr Renato Biondo, the head of the DNA Unit of the Scientific Police, reviewed Dr Stefanoni’s investigation and the forensic findings. He testified at Rudy Guede’s fast-track trial in October 2008 and confirmed that all the forensic findings were accurate and reliable.

stefanoni

Dr Patrizia Stefanoni, leader of the Forensic Police, addressing Sollecito defence team.

He also praised the work of Dr. Stefanoni and her team. “We are confirming the reliability of the information collected from the scene of the crime and at the same time, the professionalism and excellence of our work.”

So, now we have a pointer as to why Conti introduced his presentation by claiming ‘DNA is spread like dust.’  To mislead the general public viewers of the Toronto International Film Festival 2016 – endorsed ‘documentary’ into believing the DNA evidence of the bra-clasp and knife was ‘contaminated’.

To sum up, then, WAS there any possibility of contamination, as Vecchiotti and Conti are now claiming in the film?

  1. Conti and Vecchiotti didn’t prove there had been any contamination.  Judge Chieffi pointed this out.
  1. Conti and Vecchiotti lied to the appeal court – Judge Nencini pointed this out – and they didn’t test the DNA sample despite the fact they were specifically instructed to do so.
  1. Numerous DNA experts believe the bra clasp is strong evidence – Professor Balding, Professor Novelli, Luciano Garofano, Professor Torricelli and Dr Biondo.
  1. It’s impossible that the knife was contaminated.
  1. There is no universally accepted DNA standards for collecting and testing DNA evidence. DNA protocols vary from country to country.
  1. Conti and Vecchiotti cited obscure sources, They didn’t refer to the specific guidelines of an international forensic organisation.
  1. Conti and Vecchiotti excluded contamination in the laboratory.
  1. The defence experts had no objections when the DNA evidence was tested.
  1. Vecchiotti made calamitous errors in other cases and her lab was closed down.
  1. Does anyone really believe Sollecito’s DNA floated on a speck of dust under Meredith’s door and landed on the exact part of her bra clasp that had been bent out of shape during the attack on her?                                              –  THE MACHINE

The Marasca-Bruno Supreme Court (Final)

marasca-bruno

Above: Italian Supreme Court Judges, Fifth Chambers, Genaro Marasca and Paolo Bruno

In the final Marasca-Bruno Supreme Court short 48- page reasoning, from March 2015, the guilty verdicts as upheld by Massei and Nencini are overturned, and Vecchiotti & Conti‘s report reinstalled.

“The second reason [the first reason being: The first reason challenged the violation and inobservance of the criminal law], highlights a problem of great relevance in the circumstance of the present judgment, that is the right interpretation of the scientific examination results from a perspective of respect of the evaluation standards according to article 192 of the criminal procedural code and the relevance of the genetic evaluation in the absence of repeatable amplification, as a consequence of the minimal amount of the sample and, more generally, the reliability coefficient of investigations carried out without following the regulations dictated by the international protocols, both during the collecting phase and the analysis. Particularly, anomalies were challenged in the retrieval of the knife (item 36) and the victim’s brassiere hook, which do not exclude the possibility of contamination, as correctly outlined in the Conti-Vecchiotti report, ordered by the Perugian Court of assizes, which also notified the unreliability of the scientific data, precisely because it was not subject to a further examination. It was also denied that the retrieved knife would have been the crime weapon.”

Thus, we see the Chieffi Supreme Court directly challenged by a sister chambers and the criticisms of Vecchiotti and Conti swept aside, as though they had never happened.

Marasca writes:

‘In fact, no trace of Sollecito was found in the room of the murder. The only element of proof against him was represented by the DNA trace retrieved on the brassiere hook of the victim; trace of which relation with the indicted was actually denied by the Vecchiotti-Conti report, which, in this regard, had accepted the observations of the defense advisor Professor Tagliabracci, world-renowned geneticist.’

It further states:

‘12) Also erroneous was the interpretation of the results of the genetic evidence on item 36) …[…]

14) Obvious also was the flawed reasoning on the results of the genetic investigations on the bra hook, …[…]… With regard to the possible contamination of the item, the appeal judges overlooked the photographic material placed before the court, which clearly demonstrated the possible contamination, regarding the way the hook was treated, with a “hand to hand” passage carried out by persons who wore dirty latex gloves. Furthermore, a second amplification was not carried out on the hook …[…]… With regard to this, the objections by the defense and the contrary conclusions of the defense adviser professor Tagliabracci, were not considered.’

In other words, the DNA evidence for the knife and the bra clasp is completely dismissed.  We see no proper rationale by Marasca, just a few handfuls of abstractions along the lines of Conti’s famous, ‘Anything is possible.’

peter-gill

Dr. Peter Gill

It takes on board Gill’s theories of ‘secondary’ and ‘tertiary’ transfer of DNA, when Gill himself appears to have overlooked that he himself wrote, that ‘this is highly improbable after 24 hours have passed’.

If Marasca’s rulings are considered bizarre, then light is shed when one realises that Bongiorno, for Sollecito, was given NINE times longer to present her appeal than any of the other parties, so it is fair comment to assume its reasoning is based on Bongiorno’s appeal points.  In addition, her 306 page appeal was appended with Gill’s advocacy report, and whom was never cross-examined.

The resuscitation of the hitherto presumed decaying corpse of Vechhiotti & Conti is remarkable, given the cadaver of their report to Hellmann was picked raw, first by the First Chambers Supreme Court (Chieffi) and then Nencini.

Vecchiotti and Conti have risen like Lazarus from a car crash, shrouded in the malodorous cloth of something fishy.

How the Sting was pulled off

Freelance journalist Andrea Vogt, who reported extensively on the case, said of the Marasca reasoning:  ‘In my opinion, their report is superficial at best and intellectually dishonest at worst, when even the most minimal amount of Quellenkritik is applied’.

Andrea Vogt writes an incisive analysis of the US influence on the Conti & Vecchiotti reports, which I cannot better here, so do read it for yourself:  http://thefreelancedesk.com/the-secret-u-s-forensic-defense-of-amanda-knox/

However, I will repeat her prophecy, ironic in hindsight:

  “If Knox is acquitted at the end of this month, the quiet American hand in her forensic defense will be heralded as the turnkey that made the ultimate difference in her case. But if she is convicted, there are legitimate questions to be asked about exactly what public resources were spent on this international defense.”

Vogt uncovered what appears to be a whole secret network that she was unable to penetrate through the fog of Freedom of Information law, which enabled Hampikian to claim ‘trade secrets’ as a project of Boise University, where his laboratory is based, to evade the question of, ‘Who was funding his Amanda Knox advocacy work?’

hampikian-tv

If then, it is clear beyond any reasonable doubt that both Meredith’s and Sollecito’s DNA is strong and background contamination ruled out by the trial courts, why then does the film revisit the discredited testimony of ‘court experts’ Vecchiotti & Conti?  We can link this back to the film makers own self-professed strong pro-Knox beliefs in her innocence.  Thus we have come full circle.

The defence managed to convince the now expunged Hellmann court to appoint ‘independent experts’; the Chieffi Supreme Court ruled that, whilst this was within Hellmann’s remit, it did not provide adequate reasoning for doing so.  Vecchiotti & Conti, remarkably, in their report, relied heavily on US standards, thus making the straw man claim that Italy hadn’t followed them, notwithstanding their strong academic and legal background in Italy.  This therefore cannot have been due to ignorance, so we have to point to their own volition to be influenced by strongly Knox-advocates.  For example, Hampikian, funded by Boise University grants and protected by a blanket of secrecy, citing ‘trade secrets’ when journalist Andrea Vogt requested information under the Freedom of Information statutes.

In addition, Bruce Budowle, a more conservative ex-FBI forensic expert, was heavily relied upon, together with peers Gill, et al.  It was at this stage Gill may have got roped in.  His later book draws on Vecchiotti &Conti’s Hellmann’s Report.  Thus, we see a band of pro-Amanda Knox advocates determined to influence the so-called ‘independent’ experts, even when both Hampikian’s and Budowle’s reports were rejected as depositions by the courts.  Even when ‘the experts’ were spiked by the Chieffi Supreme court, Hampikian was still averring, ‘I am involved in the Amanda Knox case’.

Friends of Amanda Knox even today lovingly quote Hellmann despite his de facto ex-communication from the judiciary.  Little surprise we see the film makers eager to include Vecchiotti and Conti, who made it all possible for the birds to fly.

On the subject of Dr Peter Gill, who is widely regarded as having influenced the Fifth Chambers, via Bongiorno’s Appeal, to which his theories were attached, is now drawing on Vecchiotti and Conti as his main source, so we have a case of the experts’ racing car, as it were, driving the man, referred to devoutly by the defence, as ‘the father of forensic science’.

Dr. Naseer Ahmad of PMF.net was moved to comment:

 ” – A look at his sources show that the chapter on Meredith Kercher was directly influenced by the Conti-Vecchiotti report.
– He argues contamination, but doesn’t prove a path of transmission.
– He cites papers on secondary transfer of DNA, but misses the point his suggested routes, RS>door handle>investigator’s latex glove>bra clasp is tertiary transfer.
– He argues the low cell count of Meredith’s Kercher’s DNA on the knife suggests contamination without considering that rigorous washing with household bleach might degrade it. (Yet miraculously those cells did provide a full match with Meredith’s DNA)
– The shoe box belonging to Meredith story has been shot down.
– He clearly has not read Inspector Gubbiotti or Finci’s testimonies, which removes all possible paths of ‘innocent transfer’.
– Reading the actual research papers he cites, there is no way that such significant amounts of DNA could actually transfer to the bra clasp.
– He did not review Patrizia Stefanoni’s Scientific Report or any of her notes, instead relying on the IIP translated C&V report and Hellmann decision.
– He refers to the Meredith Kercher wiki, but never even looked at the DNA segments which would have alerted him to problems with the C&V report.
– He may have had indirect input from Sollecito’s first DNA expert, Vincenzo Pascali, and Carla Vecchiotti, but does not seem to know of Vecchiotti’s colorful record of falsifying evidence.

Last, and worst of all, he did not refer to the Supreme Court decision annulling Hellmann even though the translation was widely available almost ten months before his book was published. There is no way he could not have known this, since we had been in contact with him since earlier this year. It is unconscionable that he chose this route to promote his theories. Elsevier under its new ownership and editorial policies seem to have allowed any number of self-published books to be written. If Professor Gill had written a scholarly text book it would have to be reviewed by an editorial board and sent for peer review, which might have led to professional experts critiquing and hopefully pointing out his errors. Instead, he wrote a slim, unreviewed ‘popular’ book to promote his own theories, which, embarrassing perhaps for him, is being critiqued and torn apart by lay persons, ahem.

Misleading DNA Evidence – Reasons for Miscarriages of Justice, Peter Gill, Academic Press.

Quote:

Recommendation 1: The expert should provide the court with an unbiased list of all possible modes of transfer of DNA evidence (pg 20).”

The irony is not lost.

meredith

R.I.P

Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher (28 December 1985 – 1 November 2007)

Sources:
Thanks to Naseer Ahmad.
Thanks to The Machine, for the section on ‘Contamination, is it possible’
The Machine’s analysis of ’50 of the most common myths still promoted’ can be read here:
http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/fifty_of_the_most_common_myths_still_promoted/
http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Main_Page
http://www.perugiamurderfile.net/viewforum.php?f=1
The Nencini Sentencing Report: http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Nencini_Sentencing_Report_(English)
The Chieffi Sentencing Report:
http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Supreme_Court_of_Cassation_of_Italy_Sentencing_Report
The Massei Report: http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Massei_Report_(English)
The Marasca-Bruno Report: http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Marasca-Bruno_Report_(English)
My thanks to everybody who helped me with material.

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