Amanda Knox Acquittal Overturned

[zoobyshoe]

Appearing stunned and fighting back tears, Amanda Knox said Friday that she “will never go willingly back” to Italy and would fight any effort to extradite her “to the very end.”

“It’s not right, and it’s not fair,” Ms. Knox said in the interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the day after an Italian appeals court upheld her 2009 conviction for the murder two years earlier of Meredith Kercher, with whom she had been sharing a student apartment in Perugia.

The court sentenced her in absentia to 28 ½ years in prison.

This latest decision is likely to set off years more of court battles in Italy and possibly the United States, legal experts said, before Ms. Knox could in theory be arrested and sent to Italy for punishment...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/u...y-killing-vows-to-fight-extradition.html?_r=0

By accident I happen to have run across an account of this case in the afterword to a book about another famous Italian murder case, The Monster of Florence, by Preston/Spezi. The authors included that afterword about Knox in the second edition to underscore the rather unhinged behavior of the Italian prosecutor who was in charge of both cases, Giuliano Mignini. He is a modern day Joe McCarthy who, instead of hunting communists, hunts devil worshippers, a large network of whom, he believes, are at work in the world today, killing innocent people as part of their rituals.

Preston believes Knox is completely innocent:

http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/2...ist-doug-preston-on-meredith-kerchers-murder/

and, going beyond the afterword in the other book, has put out a whole separate book in her defense:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CDU1H98/?tag=pfamazon01-20

In this article published in The Atlantic in 2006, Preston encapsulates his experiences researching in Italy with Spezi and relates how, when he and Spezi determine Mignini has prosecuted the wrong man in the Monster of Florence murders, they are harrassed and jailed, and Spezi is accused of being the Monster of Florence. This is the kind of guy Mignini is.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/07/the-monster-of-florence/304981/

I think it's important for anyone with an opinion about this case to hear what Preston has to say. It's hard to believe such a thing could exist in the modern world, but it looks to me like Knox was outright framed by a mentally unstable person with a medieval witch-hunter's mentality. I don't believe she should be extradited.

 

[Evo]

Knowing Italy, it doesn't surprise me and she should not return. Of course this doesn't reflect on the many knowledgeable Italians that are appalled by this sort of thing. But still, this sort of thing goes on.

 

[cobalt124]

I did wonder about the quality of judges in Italy and your post seems to confirm my suspicion that it is not very high. I'm now trying to square this with Knoxs interview on ABC, where she just looked guilty (IMO), and something I heard on BBC radio stating that 20 odd judges had reviewed the evidence and found Knox guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Can't find a link for the latter yet, I'll post it if I find one.

 

[AlephZero]

I have no personal interest in Ms Knox, but I don't find it surprising that her fellow-citizens would automatically assume she was innocent, especially when found guilty by a bunch of foreigners whose legal system doesn't work the same way as their own (which is self-evidently the best in the world, no doubt).

On the other hand, Preston's personal motivation seems transparently obvious: to make money from selling books, whether they are works of fiction, faction, or even fact.

 

[neyzentanburi]

how can we be sure that knox is innocent?
italy is a developed country and it doesn't have a poor legal system.
what about the legal system of the USA?
if majority of jury is black, then black is innocent and if majority of jury is white then white is innocent.
just as in treyvon martin case.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I did wonder about the quality of judges in Italy and your post seems to confirm my suspicion that it is not very high.

This is not necessarily true. Mignini and his cohort, Giuttari, came under fire from other judges for their handling of the M.o.F. case. From Preston's 2006 Atlantic article:

And yet, the tide may be turning. Mignini’s fellow judges have severely criticized his conduct of the case, and, in early May, Giuttari himself became the target of an investigation, accused of falsifying evidence in the case.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/07/the-monster-of-florence/304981/6/p.6

I'm now trying to square this with Knoxs interview on ABC, where she just looked guilty (IMO), and something I heard on BBC radio stating that 20 odd judges had reviewed the evidence and found Knox guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Can't find a link for the latter yet, I'll post it if I find one.

You really should read this interview with Preston, at least:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/2...ist-doug-preston-on-meredith-kerchers-murder/
The prosecution assembled a bunch of "half clues" against Knox and ignored all the full clues that point to this person, Rudy Guede, as the sole killer. He was clearly an opportunistic rapist who happened upon the victim, raped, and then killed her. Mignini's preference for the completely Byzantine conspiracy theory he cooked up is beyond comprehension.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I have no personal interest in Ms Knox, but I don't find it surprising that her fellow-citizens would automatically assume she was innocent,

This isn't what's happening. There are Americans screaming for her blood:

Amanda had absolutely nothing to do with the murder. The outpouring of abuse toward her is extremely disturbing. I am convinced she is innocent, and I cannot understand why there has been such a bloodthirsty rush to judgment.

The ugly anti-Americanism in the Italian and British press is perhaps understandable (although inexcusable), but why the same in America? Some of the comments posted in response to your blog verge on the psychotic.

So, the notion that she's generally considered innocent in the US is false.

...especially when found guilty by a bunch of foreigners whose legal system doesn't work the same way as their own (which is self-evidently the best in the world, no doubt).

One other detail that American readers might like to know: in Italy, prosecutors are firmly in charge. They tell the police what to look for, where to go, what evidence to analyze, what evidence not to analyze. In America, the police work independently and are specifically trained in evidence gathering and criminal investigation.

In Italy, the police must do what the prosecutor tells them. As a result, many criminal investigations in Italy are botched by prosecutors who are judges, trained in the law, who have no background in criminal investigation, police work, or forensic science.

On the other hand, Preston's personal motivation seems transparently obvious: to make money from selling books, whether they are works of fiction, faction, or even fact.

He is going completely against the tide for that. The view she is innocent is the unpopular, 'worst-selling', view.

 

[zoobyshoe]

how can we be sure that knox is innocent?
italy is a developed country and it doesn't have a poor legal system.
what about the legal system of the USA?
if majority of jury is black, then black is innocent and if majority of jury is white then white is innocent.
just as in treyvon martin case.

It sounds like you're making a case that the Italian system is just as bad as the US system, or vice versa. That doesn't amount to the Italian system not being poor. All it says is the US is just as bad.

 

[mheslep]

So, the notion that she's generally considered innocent in the US is false.

Why does the author's comment on some blog posts indicate anything about majority viewpoints in the US?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Why does the author's comment on some blog posts indicate anything about majority viewpoints in the US?

He wrote a book about the public opinion aspect of this case:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CDU1H98/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[cobalt124]

Can't find a link to my "20 odd judges" claim yet, found this:

http://news.msn.com/world/knox-judge-says-he-suffered-over-guilty-verdict

"...Nenci, another judge and six lay jurors reinstated the guilty verdicts...Asked if the final verdict was unanimous after 12 hours of deliberations, Nencini hedged, saying it was a "shared" decision...".

 

[zoobyshoe]

Can't find a link to my "20 odd judges" claim yet, found this:

http://news.msn.com/world/knox-judge-says-he-suffered-over-guilty-verdict

"...Nenci, another judge and six lay jurors reinstated the guilty verdicts...Asked if the final verdict was unanimous after 12 hours of deliberations, Nencini hedged, saying it was a "shared" decision...".

It's being reported there are "hints" Italy won't seek her extradition. I hope that turns out to be the case.

 

[lisab]

I have no personal interest in Ms Knox, but I don't find it surprising that her fellow-citizens would automatically assume she was innocent, especially when found guilty by a bunch of foreigners whose legal system doesn't work the same way as their own (which is self-evidently the best in the world, no doubt).

On the other hand, Preston's personal motivation seems transparently obvious: to make money from selling books, whether they are works of fiction, faction, or even fact.

Perhaps some Americans have that "self-evident" attitude, but I'd be surprised to fine it here.

No, the charge of unfairness comes from what we call "double jeopardy". In the US, there are clear limits on government's ability to prosecute a person more than once for the same crime. Once a person has been acquitted, the case is over. This limits a prosecutor's ability to "wage war" on an individual and keep trying him again and again until he is found guilty.

This, to me, is very fair. If a prosecutor's power is not checked it will run amok eventually.

 

[Evo]

perhaps some americans have that "self-evident" attitude, but i'd be surprised to fine it here.

No, the charge of unfairness comes from what we call "double jeopardy". In the us, there are clear limits on government's ability to prosecute a person more than once for the same crime. Once a person has been acquitted, the case is over. This limits a prosecutor's ability to "wage war" on an individual and keep trying him again and again until he is found guilty.

This, to me, is very fair. If a prosecutor's power is not checked it will run amok eventually.

+ 1

..

 

[cristo]

This, to me, is very fair. If a prosecutor's power is not checked it will run amok eventually.

You can see the other side though: US law works on the basis that double jeopardy is not permitted, so presumably there is a higher burden that the state has to prove before a case goes to court. In a country without such a law, there will likely be a lower burden of proof required before a case goes to court, since the state knows that if other evidence becomes available later, or if evidence is "mishandled" (as appears to be the case here, from my cursory reading), then there can be a re-trial.

Not saying that either side is right, but we need to be careful when comparing systems in order to make a fair comparison.

 

[zoobyshoe]

This article came out a couple days ago airing out the fact much of this is about internal Italian politics:

In 2009, Knox and her co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia. The two immediately appealed their conviction. In 2011, appellate court judge Claudio Hellmann acquitted the defendants. Knox and Sollecito were freed after each had spent 1,427 days in prison - almost four years. Following the verdict, judge Hellmann didn’t pull punches. He declared: “the evidence was nonsense.” Suddenly, several prosecutors and judges became the targets of criticism claiming they had mishandled the case from the beginning.
The vice-president of Italy’s judicial oversight committee, Michele Vietti, immediately warned against politicizing the case. Many paid heed. However, Rocco Girlanda did not.

At the time, Girlanda was a member of the Italian Parliament from Perugia. His political party was the PdL (Popolo della Libertà) which was also the party of then Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Girlanda and ten other members of Parliament signed a letter asking Italy’s president to investigate the Knox-Sollecito prosecutors. In addition, Raffaelle Sollecito’s lawyer, Guilia Boungiorno, was also in Parliament, head of its Judiciary Committee, and a member of Berlusconi’s political party.

For his part, Berlusconi and his party were at war with Italy’s prosecutors and judges. The Prime Minister was trying to reign in their investigative powers. Prosecutors, for their part, were trying to put Berlusconi in jail.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/was-amanda-knox-a-political-pawn-in-italian-politics/

 

[BobG]

Perhaps some Americans have that "self-evident" attitude, but I'd be surprised to fine it here.

No, the charge of unfairness comes from what we call "double jeopardy". In the US, there are clear limits on government's ability to prosecute a person more than once for the same crime. Once a person has been acquitted, the case is over. This limits a prosecutor's ability to "wage war" on an individual and keep trying him again and again until he is found guilty.

This, to me, is very fair. If a prosecutor's power is not checked it will run amok eventually.

In Italy, a person needs two sequential guilty verdicts in two separate trials to be convicted. This isn't like the right to appeal a guilty verdict since an appeal generally has to focus on procedural errors. A complete retrial is automatic.

There's also more than just the verdicts of guilty or not guilty. A defendant could be fully acquitted, convicted as guilty, or receive a verdict that's kind of an "unproven". A full acquittal is subject to appeal (which can't happen in the US), but if the acquittal is upheld, the process ends.

But, yes, a defendant could theoretically be tried many times if the trials kept resulting in unproven.

In Knox's case, she had one guilty verdict, followed by a full acquittal, but the full acquittal was thrown out on appeal, setting the score back at 1-0 guilty. The result of the third trial was considered the second sequential guilty verdict since the intervening acquittal result was thrown out.

She gets another automatic appeal (which is an appeal; not a retrial). If the appeal is successful, then score is back to 1-0 and there will be yet another trial.

If the appeal is unsuccessful, then the process is ended and Knox is convicted.

Definitely different than the court system most Americans think they are familiar with (especially the idea that the state can appeal an acquittal), but what happened to Knox wasn't inherently unfair within the system she was tried. If she loses her appeal, I see no reason why the US wouldn't extradite her back to Italy.

 

[russ_watters]

Definitely different than the court system most Americans think they are familiar with (especially the idea that the state can appeal an acquittal), but what happened to Knox wasn't inherently unfair within the system she was tried. If she loses her appeal, I see no reason why the US wouldn't extradite her back to Italy.

Because double jeopardy matters to us?

 

[zoobyshoe]

If she loses her appeal, I see no reason why the US wouldn't extradite her back to Italy.

Because double jeopardy matters to us?

This isn't about the double jeopardy issue at all. It's about the fact she was framed from the get-go by a nut job prosecutor, Mignini, who outright projected a satanic cult conspiracy onto what was actually a conventional rape-murder by a lone attacker:

Mignini got encouragement and theoretical assistance in the esoteric aspects of previous investigations from an unusual source: Gabriella Carlizzi, a wealthy Roman woman and courthouse gadfly whose day job consisted of running a Catholic charity that worked with prisoners. Carlizzi, who died of cancer in 2010, was, like Mignini, a serious practicing Catholic herself who had dedicated her life to exposing and fighting satanic sects.

http://nypost.com/2011/10/02/how-occult-obsessed-prosecutor-turned-knox-trial-into-a-witch-hunt/

From Preston/Spezi:

Meanwhile the indefatigable Gabriella Carlizzi went on a blogging frenzy, adding pages and pages to her site. The killing, she said, was committed by all three as part of a sexual and sacrificial rite associated with Halloween and All Saint's Day (November 1). It was a well-known fact, she wrote, that the University of Washington, which Amanda was attending, had "become a recruitment base for Masonic orders, both deviant and nondeviant, and of Esoteric Schools." She claimed that the "Esoteric School of the Red Rose," the same black order behind the Monster [of Florence] killings and 9/11, was behind the murder of Meredith Kercher. The crime, Carlizzi insisted, "has all the characteristics of a ritual culminating in human sacrifice." All three killers-Guede, Amanda, and Raffale-were involved in the School of the Red Rose, and together they murdered Kercher in a Halloween or All Saint's Day rite. The accusations were so fringe that few paid them attention. But it seemed at least one person of importance had been following them with interest.

On October 19, 2008, in the preliminary hearing, Mignini for the first time formally presented the prosecution's theory of the crime. The murder of Meredith Kercher was more than a mere sex orgy gone wrong; it was, he said, "premeditated and was in addition a 'rite' celebrated on the occasion of the night of Halloween, a sexual and sacrificial rite…"

The Monster of Florence, pp320-321

There was no "orgy" of any kind, much less a "rite". Knox and Raffale were at his place when Guede got in and raped and killed, Kercher. No one who knows the history of this woman, Carlizzi's weird influence over Gutierrez and Mignini could possibly sanction Knox being extradited. The whole thing is straight out of "The Crucible".

 

[zoobyshoe]

Let's bear in mind this equally interesting legal decision that came out of Italy last year:

Seven people — six Italian seismologists and a government official — were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison on Monday for failing to warn people of a 6.3 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 300 people.

This follows a 2009 meeting in L’Aquila Italy in which defendants were asked to assess the risk of damage from a major earthquake, following months of seismic activity. They were charged with assessing “inexact, incomplete and contradictory” information on the earthquake risk.

Two scientists, a physicist who led the department that monitors seismic risks and director of office that monitors volcano and earthquake threats resigned on Tuesday...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown...nslaughter-for-failing-to-predict-earthquake/
Had a US, or any other non-Italian seismologist been one of the consultants here, I would hope no one would support extradition.

 

[BobG]

Definitely different than the court system most Americans think they are familiar with (especially the idea that the state can appeal an acquittal), but what happened to Knox wasn't inherently unfair within the system she was tried. If she loses her appeal, I see no reason why the US wouldn't extradite her back to Italy.

Because double jeopardy matters to us?

Then the proper procedure would be for the US to terminate all of their extradition treaties with every country whose court procedures they find too unfair to respect. That's not just a fecetious statement, either. I could see refusing to enter into an extradition treaty in the first place with a country that had truly unfair laws or court procedures. And, in fact, there is a long list of countries that the US has no extradition treaty with for one reason or another (including just haven't gotten around to it).

The US has known how Italy's criminal court system works ever since Italy and the US entered into their current extradition treaty 30 years ago.

There are exceptions to extradition. The most major exceptions common to many of the US's extradition treaties being restrictions on the death penalty and that the offense has to be a crime in both countries (for instance, the US isn't going to extradite someone accused of blasphemy). Any exceptions must have been agreed to by both countries or the treaty never would have been approved.

None of the exceptions in the http://www.mcnabbassociates.com/Italy%20International%20Extradition%20Treaty%20with%20the%20United%20States.pdf apply to Knox's case.

I could understand that someone might feel we should terminate our treaty with Italy (and Canada, the UK, Australia, and just about all European countries, seeing as how the US is fairly unique in its views of double jeopardy).

I don't think the US is suddenly going to violate a 30 year old treaty simply because Knox is young and attractive and popular in the US press.

 

[russ_watters]

Then the proper procedure would be for the US to terminate all of their extradition treaties with every country whose court procedures they find too unfair to respect. That's not just a fecetious statement, either. I could see refusing to enter into an extradition treaty in the first place with a country that had truly unfair laws or court procedures. And, in fact, there is a long list of countries that the US has no extradition treaty with for one reason or another (including just haven't gotten around to it).

The US has known how Italy's criminal court system works ever since Italy and the US entered into their current extradition treaty 30 years ago...[clip]

I could understand that someone might feel we should terminate our treaty with Italy (and Canada, the UK, Australia, and just about all European countries, seeing as how the US is fairly unique in its views of double jeopardy).

I wouldn't go that far. The issue of double jeopardy doesn't come up in every case (many cases?) so it wouldn't necessarily impact an extradition case - which, by the way, are made on a case by case basis. If the extraditing country thinks the trial was unfair, they may reject extradition, regardless of the letter of the treaty and law. See: Roman Polanski.

There are exceptions to extradition. The most major exceptions common to many of the US's extradition treaties being restrictions on the death penalty and that the offense has to be a crime in both countries (for instance, the US isn't going to extradite someone accused of blasphemy). Any exceptions must have been agreed to by both countries or the treaty never would have been approved.
None of the exceptions in the http://www.mcnabbassociates.com/Italy%20International%20Extradition%20Treaty%20with%20the%20United%20States.pdf apply to Knox's case.

Fair enough: then yes, I think the US should include an optional exception for double jeopardy.

I don't think the US is suddenly going to violate a 30 year old treaty simply because Knox is young and attractive and popular in the US press.

That's belittling, insulting, and damn near racist, Bob - not to mention, wrong*. You're better than that.

Right or wrong - and since none of us, anywhere, were on the jury, none of us can know for sure - there is a real, reasoned basis for the objection (two, really, with one a cause of the other). This isn't superficial like the Polanski debacle.

*Wrong in that you overstate her popularity and the bias toward her. For example, here's CNN's analysis:

Still, if the conviction is upheld on appeal, if there are no clear violations of due process and if no new compelling evidence is submitted, the case should be treated routinely, Dershowitz said.
In other words, Knox should be treated an ordinary person, the Harvard law professor added.
Amanda Knox vows to fight DNA expert: Science was ignored for Knox Ryan Ferguson defends Amanda Knox
And if an extradition request is made, the United States would likely comply, according to Dershowitz.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/01/justice/knox-extradition/

Lotta "if"s in there, but he's hardly cheerleading for Knox. And polls on Knox's guilt come out pretty mixed:
http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-amanda-knox-guilty