The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 31

[Stacyhs]

Aw, come on, you guys! Stop littering up the argument with all those pesky facts! Why use facts when we can just make stuff up? It's so much more entertaining and creative to let our imaginations just run wild!

 

[Vixen]

Just for the record:
Rudy Guede torna in Umbria: «Avrei dovuto fare di più per Meredith»
Omicidio Meredith, Rudy Guede: "Vorrei aver fatto di più quella notte"
Looks like Guede's PR machine is working...
... I wonder what a certain Francesco Maresca is doing right now?

What next, a reunion concert at the Hollywood Bowl?

 

[Vixen]

No, he's just wrong.

Carlo Torre disagreed; he testified that a single knife could have made all the knife wounds.







Prof. Vinci also says the alleged murder weapon does not match the bloody outline of a smaller knife left on the bedsheet.

Vinci was dealt with at the merits court.

 

[Vixen]

This is a case of "making something up that I think supports my opinion".




Then why didn't they clean up the bathroom in an effort to remove any possible traces of themselves including the rug with "RS's" bloody footprint and Amanda's drop of blood on the faucet? Was it because they knew exactly where their DNA, blood, or fingerprints would be?



LOL! Why would she mention a college prank?
"Distressing deed"; do you know exactly what this classmate said about this prank...how she described it? No, you don't.

A lot of pranks are designed to momentarily 'scare' someone...like jumping out of a closet and yelling "Boo!". Did the roommate ever complain about this prank? Did she ever consider it bullying? Not that we know of.

"...ended up having to apologise": No one forced Knox to apologize. She saw her roommate was upset so she immediately revealed it was just a prank and apologized.

I'm curious, Vixen: why do you find it necessary to make up/invent/lie about things that never happened? Why do you need to dishonestly twist things using hyperbolically negative language? You present your highly biased opinions and interpretations as if they are facts. Do you get some kind of satisfaction from it? I really do want to know what you think you are accomplishing by this.

'Would could should.' What people's friends say about them gives one an indication as to their character. Sollecito liked animal porn, taking lots of drugs, dressing up in a shroud and a butcher's cleaver, demanding 'extreme experiences', attacked a girl at school with scissors; whilst Knox looked for the nearest Black guy to frame for her crime. She bullied her classmate by donning a sinister ski mask and overturning her room. Went to Italy for sex and drugs.

 

[Vixen]

I thought Amanda named Lumumba to turn attention away from Guede. Now she's trying to finger Guede. Make up your mind.

Trying to point police towards him without letting on that she was with him.

Nothing mysterious about it.

 

[Vixen]

Rather than expunging the C&V report, a report to the Hellmann trial which panned Stefanoni's original, first trial evidence....

Nencini accepts it, but attempts to explain it away. Nencini accepts C&V's conclusion that there are unknown contributors to Trace B, as it was called. Nencini argues, though, that extra contributors are not relevant, nor even evidence of contamination (!).


So, rather than 'expunging' the C&V report, Nencini says he has no reason to doubt Vecchiotti's observations. What he's quibbling about is whether or not C&V said that Stefanoni asserted that there were only two contributors to Trace B. The quibble is that C&V criticised S. for not saying 'only' two contributors, Nencini said it was unclear if she'd used the word 'only'!

For Nencini, the sole evidentiary import of Trace B is that Sollecito was found as one of the contributors. It seems to escape him that if the extra ones were the result of contamination, then probably Sollecito's was too. With NO evidence regarding those extra contributors, he simply handwaves them away with galactically stupid reasoning.

Why does Nencini say that the extra ones cannot be the result of contamination? Read it and see if you agree:


Nencini continues by saying that extra contibutors are irrelevant, the issue is that Sollecito's is on Trace B.

Why? Because for Nencini is was 'perfectly normal' for innocent, extra contributors to be on that bra-clasp.

One cannot argue that him confusing Y-haplotypes with women, as being a typo. Read what he said.



That's a huge typo - in the range of it being a galactically stupid reason for denying that those extra contributors to Trace B could be contamination.

Nencini seems galactically uninterested in the identity of those extra contributors. Or the fact of them.

Those who make excuses for the convicting courts simply hand wave away things like that, not relying on evidence but on assumptions and guesses.

Yet, the other thing revealed when one actually reads the Nencini report, is that he says, "the Court has no reason to doubt the observations raised by Prof. Carla Vecchiotti concerning the technical report submitted by the Scientific Police"

He did not expunge it, he simply granted himself as the 'expert of the expert' like the eventual acquitting court said was part of the problem with this case when judges did that.

That is just politese before savaging them. Haven't you noticed the flowery faux-tactful language of Italian judges.

 

[Vixen]

You still appear not to understand this correctly.

The Massei and Nencini verdicts & MRs (and the reasoning that those courts used in order to arrive at their verdicts) is now totally expunged.

However, the evidence, testimony and argument that took place in those courts still stands, and was indeed available to the Marasca SC panel. And of course the Marasca SC panel's entire remit & responsibility was to examine the reasoning/verdicts of the lower courts and decide whether those lower courts followed the law or not*.

When the Marasca SC panel quashed the convictions, by definition it simultaneously struck out the judgements of the related lower courts. The Massei and Nencini verdicts are no longer extant in a legal sense.


* For example, the Marasca SC panel judged - correctly - that the lower courts had erred grossly in law when they accorded weight and significance to Stefanoni's DNA "evidence". The SC ruled - correctly - that any fair court acting in accordance with the law should/would have entirely discounted Stefanoni's "evidence" as fundamentally unreliable and worthless.

The facts found by Massei that weren't 'rectified' by Nencini remain as the legal facts of the matter. Read Marasca-Bruno report. It doesn't have the jurisdiction to weigh up evidence or the fact found, so Nencini's findings stand.

M-B claimed it annulled the sentences because of 'press interference' and some waffle about 'investigative amnesia'. That is hwo incredibly strong the case was against the defendants. That was the only way M-B could wriggle out of it, by claiming a preposterous 'insufficient evidence'. It was subjected to outside political pressure. Politically appointed judges are now banned in Italy, as being corrupt as hell.

 

[Vixen]

Vixen's statements are remarkable examples of either falsehoods resulting from bias or an inability to comprehend Italian law, even when explained on this site, or both.

The Nencini appeal court judgment was the judgment directly under review by the Marasca CSC panel. The Marasca CSC panel does mention the Chieffi CSC panel judgment in relation to the Nencini appeal court judgment. It criticizes the Chieffi CSC panel MR for straying into the merits, while one of its many criticisms of the Nencini MR is that the Nencini court did not use its lawful authority to evaluate the evidence independently of the perceived Chieffi MR directions.

The Nencini judgment was annulled without referral to a lower court by the Marasca CSC panel, under Italian law CPP Article 620, paragraph 1, subparagraph L. "Annulled" (quashed, invalidated) is not the same as "expunged" (removed from the record).

An Italian court of appeal trial has the same provisions as a first-instance trial, as applicable (CPP Article 598). The judge of the court of appeal may order the renewal of the trial evidentiary hearing if he deems it necessary, with or without the request of a party to the trial (CPP Article 603).

According to CPP Article 627, in the case of an annulment with referral, the referral court of appeal judge has the same authorities or powers as those of the judge whose judgment was annulled by the CSC, and the referral judge shall order the renewal of the trial evidentiary hearing, at the request of the parties, for the gathering of evidence that is relevant for the decision. The referral judge conforms to those judgments of law decided upon by the CSC in its referring judgment.

See: https://canestrinilex.com/assets/Up...-Code-of-Criminal-Procedure-canestriniLex.pdf

It may be so that a second instance (appeal court) has the power to relook at limited specific evidence and the facts. However, it remains statutory that an appeal can only be lodged under the terms of points of law only, as clearly set out per statute.

 

[Vixen]

For those who don't believe in, or don't understand what a coercive interrogation can do, I point them to the Riley Fox murder. An innocent, despondent father coerced into confessing to her murder despite overwhelming evidence - ignored by the police - that someone else committed the murder. Tunnel vision on steroids. By comparison, coercing Amanda was like shooting fish in a barrel.

There is zero evidence Sollecito was coercively interrogated. Stop trying to make out he was some kind of Prisoner of War or subjected to US-style good-cop/bad cop tv drama-style stuff.

Sollecito voluntarily told the police a pack of lies, not once, not twice but three times and he has still never retracted his claim Knox was out alone until 1:00am.

 

[Vixen]

Once again, you aren't answering the question. I asked why they would stage a sexual assault when a sexual assault had already happened and you say "it was probably impromptu", as if that was an answer.

Indulge me for a moment as I propose an appropriate answer for you....

"yeah, your right. It doesn't really make any sense to think they staged the body when she had already been sexually assaulted."

You see how easy that is? Next we can work on admitting it makes no sense to stage a burglary and then not take anything, or to stage a break-in when you already know the front door latch is broken.

Just because something doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean it didn't happen. Next you'll be claiming that women just do not commit this type of crime, when the annals of crimes shows they absolutely do commit horrendous crimes.

 

[Vixen]

Vixen has claimed that the Marasca CSC panel annulment of the Nencini appeal court judgment without referral was somehow unusual, unethical, or unlawful.

I previously provided some statistics taken from a table for the years 2011 - 2021 from the CSC website showing that annulments without referral were almost as common as annulments with referral. In my post, I gave the annulment with and without referral for the years 2013 (Chieffi judgment year) and 2015 (Marasca judgment year), and the maximum and minimums for the 11-year period.

Here, to provide readers with a more concise general summary of the CSC table showing, for criminal cases, the yearly number of annulments with and without referral, I present the totals for the 11-year period, the arithmetic average (mean), and the maximum and minimum.

Annulments with referral, 2011 - 2021:

Total 56,494

Mean 5136

Max 6582

Min 3821


Annulments without referral, 2011 - 2021:

Total 51,369

Mean 4670

Max 7322

Min 2614

Source: https://www.cortedicassazione.it/ca...cms/documents/AG2022_ANNUARIO_penale_2021.pdf

Table 5.4

Thanks for the figures. However, you still haven't broken them down into those who were annulled without referral that were not:

1. case were rhe defendant/s were found 'Not Guilty' at the first or second instant court or both.
2. the case was adjudged outside the statute of limitation.
3. declared a 'mistrial' or 'in the public interest'.
4. the defendant was deceased in the interim.

I take it you did not manage to find a single similar case as Knox' and Sollecito's, where the pair were found guilty of a serious crime by both the merits court and the appeal court.

This is what I was referring to when I pointed out Andreotti and Berlusconi.

 

[Bill Williams]

That is just politese before savaging them. Haven't you noticed the flowery faux-tactful language of Italian judges.

Really? That's the response?

 

[Bill Williams]

Sollecito voluntarily told the police a pack of lies, not once, not twice but three times and he has still never retracted his claim Knox was out alone until 1:00am.

You obviously do not read.

 

[whoanellie]

Just because something doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean it didn't happen. Next you'll be claiming that women just do not commit this type of crime, when the annals of crimes shows they absolutely do commit horrendous crimes.

Just because you believe Knox and Sollecito are guilty, it doesn't mean they are. Just because an Italian court believes Y-DNA came from Meredith's girlfriends, it doesn't mean it did.

 

[TruthCalls]

There is zero evidence Sollecito was coercively interrogated. Stop trying to make out he was some kind of Prisoner of War or subjected to US-style good-cop/bad cop tv drama-style stuff.

Sollecito voluntarily told the police a pack of lies, not once, not twice but three times and he has still never retracted his claim Knox was out alone until 1:00am.

Well yes, that's true, but only because the police failed to record the interrogation as they were obligated to do. I wonder why that is?

I never claimed he was some kind of prisoner of war.. more nonsense from you. What I did was point out a case where a father, completely innocent, was coerced into confessing the murder of his young daughter. Take from it what you want, which in your case I assume is nothing because police never do unethical things.

According to Raffaele, the police wrote the statement and included the paragraph about Amanda telling him to lie. He requested it be removed but the police duped him into keeping it in and signing it.

As for never retracting his claim of Amanda being out alone until 1:00am, I agree with Bill... you must not read. Not only that, but for anyone even remotely interested in the truth (and clearly the police were not) his 'account' of the evening was impossible because Popovic witnessed Amanda at his apartment twice, but that didn't stop the police from running with it anyway.

BTW, why do you suppose the police refused to let him look at a calendar? If you're interested in the truth then you should want to take every step possible to ensure you're getting things right. However, if you're trying to confuse someone, and if they are unsure of dates, then what better way than to deny them a calendar.

 

[AnimalFriendly]

Trying to point police towards him without letting on that she was with him.

Is that why she said she was cowering in the kitchen covering her ears? Yeah, the kitchen...that room where people cook and make meals and the room that just also happened to be in the cottage. Putting oneself in the room one over, during a murder, isn't likely to get the cops off your case. Especially incompetent ones who need all the help they can get.

 

[Vixen]

Nencini's reasoning:

Over the course of approximately 50 pages of his 337 reasoning report, Nencini does a thorough analysis of all the court evidence, lab data and depositions by all the forensic consultants, and essentially debunks Vecchiotti and Conti’s report. He reveals that the two experts overlooked available data, altered the meaning of forensic police statements to fit their thesis, erred in their interpretation methods and falsely claimed the technology didn’t exist to test a small trace of DNA that was later successfully tested.
The harsh Vecchiotti-Conti review begins on page 195 of Nencini’s report. The possibility of contamination so hotly debated by consultants and made credible to the point of being included in the independent experts’ written report actually “has no significance” in the criminal trial, he wrote, and was “misleading.”
Meredith’s blue sweatshirt where Guede’s DNA was found, he wrote, not just on the tiny hook of the bra clasp. He notes records show there were no other items containing Sollecito’s DNA handled that day, ruling out making laboratory contamination. Nencini accepts there may have been professional lapses on part of the forensic police, but determines that none of those oversights were so grave as to have negatively impacted the forensic analysis with regard to the case. The absence of contamination is also proven by the records of negative and positive controls performed by much-maligned forensic biologist Patrizia Stefanoni. Those controls were done and had been referred to in court, but Vecchiotti and Conti overlooked this, claiming there was no record of them.
Nencini considers several pages of statistical and genetic analysis made by various consultants in both the first and second appeals. On page 221, he writes that “the behavior of Vecchiotti was “censurable” because before providing an imprecise report in a trial, she should have requested the controls documentation from the forensic police and only in the case of that data not being provided, come to the conclusions that she did.

Source notes

This Court considers that speaking of the contamination of exhibits in a generalized way and allowing for abstract possibilities, as was several times repeated by the Defense and by the court-appointed experts, Prof. Carla Vecchiotti and Prof. Stefano Conti, even in their written conclusions [points 4) and 5) of the conclusions of the technical report, signed by them, and quoted several times], has absolutely no meaning in the context of a criminal trial, and is objectively deceptive.

Nencini report

 

[TruthCalls]

Just because something doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean it didn't happen. Next you'll be claiming that women just do not commit this type of crime, when the annals of crimes shows they absolutely do commit horrendous crimes.

An interesting response from someone who for years has argued Guede would never have broken in through Filomena's window when it would have been easier to break in from the back porch.

So I'm assuming you can't come up with a credible explanation, and there is no evidence they did such a thing, but nonetheless you'll continue to insist they did it. Another classic case of confirmation bias.

 

[Vixen]

You obviously do not read.

Perhaps you can provide a citation as to when Sollecito changed his testimony.

 

[TruthCalls]

Nencini's reasoning:

Source notes

Nencini report

All C&V did was point out the multitude of failures to follow basic procedures during collection and storage to minimize the risk of contamination, the failure to amplify the sample a minimum of two times as per ENFSI standards and the failure to properly interpret the results. Everything observed and documented by C&V was supported by international forensic standards as documented by the ENFSI, but Nencini, in his infinite wisdom, felt he knew better than two highly respected experts and dismissed their findings as objectively deceptive. No wonder Marasca destroyed Nencini in their MR.