text:
Category: More hoaxers
Exoneration Hoax: Why Knox Groupies Like Martha Grace Duncan Should READ The Final Report
Emory Law Dean Schapiro; Martha Grace Duncan; Harvard Law Dean Manning
1. Overview Of This Post
This flows from our first post ten days ago.
Martha Grace Duncan credits many dozens for their research help. Really? For precisely what?
This is more about the research that Martha Grace Duncan and the huge group she thanks (see Part 4 below) should have done. We will see here how she makes false claims that even a mere hour or two of checking if the courts actually said what she claimed would have stopped those claims dead in their tracks.
Did neither Duncan nor any of those hapless dozens now associated with her fraud think to do that? Below, with quotes, I will show how it is done.
2. Misrepresentation Of Supreme Court
It is blatantly apparent from reading Martha Grace Duncan's academic paper bizarrely titled "WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN YOUR ROOMMATE IS MURDERED IN ITALY: AMANDA KNOX, HER "STRANGE" BEHAVIOR, AND THE ITALIAN LEGAL SYSTEM" that she hasn't actually read Judge Marasca's final Supreme Court report.
She is ignorant of what that court actually said, and so she thoroughly misrepresents it.
Remember that Knox received TWO convictions: (1) for murder and (2) for calunnia. Duncan falsely claims in her academic paper that Amanda Knox has been "fully exonorated by Italy's highest court" implying both. Knox was not exonerated for either in fact.
(1) If Martha Grace Duncan had bothered to read Judge Marasca's Supreme Court report, she would have known that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were acquitted under paragraph 2 of article 530, which is an insufficient evidence acquittal. That is appealable, as overuling of the Nencini court and dabbling in the evidence were both against the code.
(An acquittal under paragraph 1 of article 530 is a definitive acquittal or exoneration, the much stronger outcome.)
(2) Martha Grace Duncan further highlights her ignorance with regard to the contents of Marasca's Supreme Court report by falsely claiming that the Supreme Court dropped all charges against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.
"March 29, 2015: The Supreme Court of Cassation overturns the murder convictions of Amanda and Raffaele and drops all charges against them."
The Supreme Court confirmed Amanda Knox's conviction for calunnia. She served three years in prison for repeatedly accusing Diya Lumumba of murder despite the fact she knew he was innocent.
"It is restated the inflicted sentence against the appellant Amanda Marie Knox, for the crime of slander at three years of prison."
Judge Marasca pointed out in his report that Amanda Knox's conviction for calunnia cannot be overturned.
"On the other hand, in the slanderous declaration against Lumumba, which earned her a conviction, the status of which is now protected as a final judgement".
There is a common misconception amongst Amanda Knox's supporters that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) might overturn Knox's conviction for calunnia.
However, she is believed not even to have asked for that. And the ECHR cannot quash or reverse verdicts anyway, it can only recommend. In other words, Amanda Knox will remain a convicted criminal, a felon, for the rest of her life. That cannot be wound back.
Appeal Judge Nencini pointed out in his report that Amanda Knox didn't retract her false and malicious allegation against Diya Lumumba the whole time he was in prison, and the motive for her allegation was to deflect attention away from herself and Sollecito and avoid retaliatory action from Rudy Guede.
"Amanda Marie Knox maintained her false and malicious story for many days, consigning Patrick Lumumba to a prolonged detention. She did not do this casually or naively. In fact, if the young woman's version of events is to be relied upon, that is to say, if the allegations were a hastily prepared way to remove herself from the psychological and physical pressure used against her that night by the police and the prosecuting magistrate, then over the course of the following days there would have been a change of heart. This would inevitably have led her to tell the truth, that Patrick Lumumba was completely unconnected to the murder. But this did not happen.
"And so it is reasonable to take the view that, once she had taken the decision to divert the attention of the investigators from herself and Raffaele Sollecito, Amanda Marie Knox became fully aware that she could not go back and admit calunnia. A show of remorse would have exposed her to further and more intense questioning from the prosecuting magistrate. Once again, she would bring upon herself the aura of suspicion that she was involved in the murder.
Indeed, if Amanda Marie Knox had admitted in the days following to having accused an innocent man, she would inevitably have exposed herself to more and more pressing questions from the investigators. She had no intention of answering these, because she had no intention of implicating Rudy Hermann Guede in the murder.
"By accusing Patrick Lumumba, who she knew was completely uninvolved, because he had not taken part in the events on the night Meredith was attacked and killed, she would not be exposed to any retaliatory action by him. He had nothing to report against her. In contrast, Rudy Hermann Guede was not to be implicated in the events of that night because he, unlike Patrick Lumumba, was in Via della Pergola, and had participated [100] in the murder. So, he would be likely to retaliate by reporting facts implicating the present defendant in the murder of Meredith Kercher.
"In essence, the Court considers that the only reasonable motive for calunnia against Patrick Lumumba was to deflect suspicion of murder away from herself and from Raffaele Sollecito by blaming someone who she knew was not involved, and was therefore unable to make any accusations in retaliation. Once the accusatory statements were made, there was no going back. Too many explanations would have had to be given to those investigating the calunnia; explanations that the young woman had no interest in giving."
The Marasca/Bruno court took no issue with that. Judge Marasca also believed Amanda Knox wanted to avoid retaliatory action from Rudy Guede and stated it was a circumstantial element against her.
"However, the said calunnia is another circumstantial element against the appellant, insofar as it can be considered a strategy in order to cover up for Mr. Guede, whom she had an interest to protect because of fear of retaliatory accusations against her."
Apart from these two significant factual errors concerning the Supreme Court's rulings in her academic paper, it's clear that Martha Grace Duncan is labouring under the misapprehension that Amanda Knox was "fully exonerated" by the Supreme Court because there is some exculpatory evidence that provides definititve proof that Amanda Knox is innocent. However, she never explains what this exculpatory evidence is.
If Martha Grace Duncan had taken the time to read Marasca's report, she would have known that the Supreme Court didn't fully exonerate Amanda Knox at all. On the contrary, it actually implicated her in Meredith's murder.
It ascertained the following: (1) there were multiple attackers (2) it's a proven fact that Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith Kercher was killed (3) she washed Meredith's blood off in the small bathroom (4) she lied to the police (5) she falsely accused Diya Lumumba of murder to cover for Rudy Guede in order to avoid retaliatory action and (6) the break-in at the cottage was staged.
I'll substantiate each and every one of the claims above with quotations from Judge Marasca's report to show Martha Grace Duncan how it is done and to give her the full picture of what's in the report rather than the partial one that has been given to her presumably by Amanda Knox and her supporters.
1. There Were Multiple Attackers On The Night
"The [court's] assessment of it, in accord with other trial findings which are valuable to confirm its reliability is equally correct. We refer to multiple elements linked to the overall reconstructions of events, which rule out Guede could have acted alone.
Firstly, testifying in this direction are the two main wounds observed on the victim's neck, on each side, with a diversified path and features, attributable most likely (even if the data is contested by the defense) to two different cutting weapons. And also, the lack of signs of resistance by the young woman, since no traces of the assailant were found under her nails, and there is no evidence of any desperate attempt to oppose the aggressor, the bruises on her upper limbs and those on mandibular area and lips (likely the result of forcible hand action of constraint meant to keep the victim's mouth shut) found during the cadaver examination, and above all, the appalling modalities of the murder which were not pointed out in the appealed ruling.
"And in fact, the same ruling (p323 and 325) reports of abundant blood found on the right of the wardrobe located in Kercher's room, about 50cm above the floor. Such occurrence, given the location and direction of the drops, could probably lead to the conclusion the young woman had her throat literally "slashed" likely while she was kneeling , while her head was being forcibly held tilted towards the floor, at a close distance from the wardrobe, when she was hit by multiple stab wounds at her neck, one of which - the one inflicted on the left side of the neck - caused her death, due to asphyxia following the massive bleeding, which also filled the breathing ways preventing breathing activity, a situation aggravated by the rupture of the hyoid bone - this also linkable to blade action - with consequent dyspnoea" (p.48).
"Such a mechanical action is hardly attributable to the conduct of one person alone." (p.49)
2. Amanda Knox was there when Meredith was killed
"Given this, we now note, with respect to Amanda Knox, that her presence inside the house, the location of the murder, is a proven fact in the trial, in accord with her own admissions, also contained in the memoriale with her own signature, in the part where she tells that, as she was in the kitchen, while the young English woman had retired in the room of same Ms Kercher, together with another person for a sexual intercourse, she heard a harrowing scream, so piercing and unbearable that she let herself down squatting on the floor, covering her ears tight with her hands in order not to hear more of it. About this, the judgement of reliability expressed by the lower [a quo] judge [Nencini] with reference to this part of the suspect's narrative, [and] about the plausible implication from the fact herself was the first person mentioning for the first time [46] a possible sexual motive for the murder, at the time when the detective still did not have the the cadaver examination, nor the autopsy result, nor the witnesses' information, which collected only subsequently, about the victim's terrible scream and about the time when it was heard (Nara Capezalli, Antonella Monocchia and others), is certainly to be subscribed to. We make reference in particular to those declarations that the current appellant [Knox] on 11.6.2007 (p.96) inside the State Police headquarters. On the other hand, in the slanderous declaration against Lumumba, which earned her a conviction, the status of which is now protected as a final judgement [giudicato] [they] had a premise in the narrative, that is the presence of the young American woman, inside the house in via della Pergola, a circumstance which nobody at that time - except obviously the other people present in the house - could have known (quote p.96).
"According to the slanderous statements of Ms. Knox, she had returned home in the company of Lumumba, whom she had met by chance in Piazza Grimana, and when Ms. Kercher arrived in the house, Knox's companion, directed sexual attentions toward the English woman, then he went together with her to he room from which the harrowing scream came. So, it was Lumumba who killed Meredith and she could affirm this since she was on the scene of the crime herself, albeit in another room. (p.97)
3. Amanda Knox washed Meredith's blood off in bathroom
"Another element against her [Amanda Knox] is the mixed traces, her and the victim's one, in the 'small bathroom', an eloquent proof that anyway she had come into contact with the blood of the latter, which she tried to wash away from herself (it was, it seems, diluted blood, while the biological traces belonging to her would be the consequence of epithelial rubbing).
"The fact is very suspicious, but it's not decisive, besides the known considerations about the sure nature and attribution of the traces in question."
4. Cassation confirms Amanda Knox lied to the police
"Elements of strong suspicion are also in the inconsistencies and lies which the suspect woman [Amanda Knox] committed over the statements she released on various occasions, especially in the places where her narrative was contradicted by the telephone records which show different incoming SMS messages".
5. Knox accused Lumumba of murder to avoid Guede's retaliation
6. The break-in at the cottage was staged
"And moreover, the staging of a theft in Romanelli's room, which she is accused of , is also a relevant point within an incriminating picture, considering the elements of strong suspicion (location of glass shards - apparently resulting from the breaking of a glass window pane caused by the throwing of a rock from the outside - on top of the clothes and furniture) a staging, which can be linked to someone who as an author of the murder and flatmate [titolare] with a formal {"qualified"] connection to the dwelling - had an interest to steer suspicion away from himself/herself, while a third murderer in contrast would be motivated by a very different urge after the killing, that is to leave the dwelling as quickly as possible."
3. Duncan's Misrepresentation Of Supreme Court
Writing an academic paper on the Amanda Knox case without having read Judge Marasca's Supreme Court report is akin to writing an academic paper on the assassination of JFK without having read the Warren Report and relying on Oliver Stone's film and some books written by conspiracy nuts.
The fact Martha Grace Duncan hasn't even read Marasca's Supreme Court report, but has instead relied primarily on Amanda Knox and her PR and partisan supporters for her information is embarrassing, to say the least.
Amanda Knox admitted lying to the police in her Waiting to Be Heard. She was convicted of lying by all courts, including the Italian Supreme Court. Since when did the word of a convicted liar trump the official court reports?
Martha Grace Duncan is a professor of law, although you couldn't tell that from reading her academic paper. Her mistakes e.g. getting basic facts wrong and not bothering to read Marasca's Supreme Court report or any other official court reports for that matter are unforgivable.
An early version of this Article received the Judith Siegel Pearson Award for Nonfiction in 2014. I am grateful to the judges. Previous versions of this Article were presented at the Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Università degli Studi di Torino; the European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy; the Emory Law Faculty, the Emory Psychoanalytic Studies Program, and the Emory Workshop on Geographies of Violence. My thanks go to the participants. My thanks also go to Robert Ahdieh, Giulia Alagna, Cathy Allan, Flavia Brizio-Skov, Michele Caianiello, Elisabetta Grande, Joe Mackall, Stefano Maffei, Alice Margaria, Claudia Marzella, Gaetano Marzella, Colleen Murphy, David Partlett, Lucia Re, Bob Root, Elena Urso, and Liza Vertinsky. Deep appreciation goes to my research assistants: Stefania Alessi, Mary Brady, Andrew Bushek, Peter Critikos, Sarah Kelsey, Tess Liegois, Zishuang Liu, Mike McClain, Jon Morris, Kaylie Niemasik, Sarah Pittman, Faraz Qaisrani, Deborah Salvato, Shannon Shontz-Phillips, Anthony Tamburro, and Michelle Tanen.
Posted by The Machine on 12/09 at 06:07 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Crime hypotheses, Faux feminism, The officially involved, Supreme Court, Hoaxes against Italy, 2 Italian mileu hoax, 8 No motive hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 13 AK persona hoax, 16 Interrogation hoax, 17 Fake memory hoax, 18 Use of drugs hoax, 22 Exonerated hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers • Comments here (18)
Netflixhoax 17: Omitted - Too Many Pesky Truths, To Inflame False Notion Italian Justice Failed Here
Posted by Corpusvile
Inside Netflix's Silicon Valley headquarters
Amanda Knox the Netflix documentary was directed and exec produced by two ardent Knox supporters, Rod Blackhurst and Stephen Robert Morse
They have been campaigning for Knox since 2011, which has included harassing real journalists who actually covered the case far more thoroughly than they did.
The movie opens with lingering almost gleeful close ups of the bloody crime scene and goes downhill from there. It begins by trying to shape a false narrative of handy villains who all seemingly came together like the stars aligning to make innocent Amanda look so screamingly, beyond a reasonable doubtingly guilty.
In the beginning, there were the cops. It was them who railroaded and coerced poor Amanda.
Then it was the nasty prosecutor, who the documentary falsely intimates took part in Knox's trial and appeal, whereas he only took part in her trial and was one of several prosecutors. The documentary attempts to make out he's some Sherlock Holmes fanboy nut job.
They also mistranslate him, by having him proclaim that only a female killer would cover a female victim, when he actually said that an "unknown" male killer - within the context of a supposed burglary gone wrong - would be unlikely to cover up a victim.
Then it was the ENFSI certified forensic specialist who Knox's fan club labeled a "lab technician". (Oddly, though, the same forensic specialist and prosecutor seemed to do a great job testifying against and prosecuting the black guy, and sogood work guys).
Then it was Meredith Kercher's friends who conspired against The Railroaded One, then it was the innocent victim's innocent family themselves who were "persecuting" sweet Amanda.
Now, courtesy of Netflix, the REAL villains were the tabloid media, specifically one tabloid hack, Cockney wideboy Nick Pisa, who comes across like I'd imagine Danny Dyer's dad would come across as and is quite hilarious, albeit totally devoid of any scruples as any tabloid hack worth his/her salt would.
The media, the prosecutor, the witnesses, THEY were the ones who were responsible for poor Amanda's woes (and not the 10,000 pages of behavioral, circumstantial and hard physical evidence against her which the documentary brushes over in a cursory manner.)
It makes out that Knox and Sollecito were in love after an alleged five day romance. I say "alleged" as Sollecito is rather inconsistent in this regard, variously claiming a fortnight, 10 days, to a week to now apparently five days. This is hammered home by shots of what I presume to be lovebirds, complete with feel-good treacle music.
Sollecito comes across as a smirking stoned weirdo, and Knox comes across as her usual creepy quasi psychopathic self, complete with crocodile tears and loud theatrical sighs.
Knox is also her usual inconsistent self and can't seem to stop changing her story, whether it's droning on that she and Meredith weren't the best of friends (after droning on in other interviews that they were "dear friends").
Or claiming that she only knew Guede to look at and had only seen him two or three times. This despite claiming that she only saw Guede for the first time ever in court (Dianne Sawyer interview) and claiming she never had contact with Guede, in her rambling eight page email to the Nencini appellate court before claiming - in a consecutive sentence no less - that she actually did have contact with him.
She proclaims it's "impossible" for her DNA to be on the murder weapon, disregarding that it was a matter of established fact that her DNA is on the murder weapon with Meredith's DNA on the blade.
The film makes out that Rudy Guede, the sole person convicted for Meredith Kercher's murder, left his DNA all over the crime scene, with funky arrows pointing here, there, and everywhere. The problem is this simply isn't true. Rudy Guede was convicted on less DNA evidence (five samples) than Amanda Knox (six samples).
The documentary also displays quasi racism, where trial and appellate courts can be rejected for innocent Amanda, but innuendo is sufficient for black guys, as Knox lies in the documentary that Guede is a known burglar.
The documentary happily facilitate this lie by obligingly showing a mugshot of Guede with the intimation that it's a mugshot for burglary. The problem again is, this is simply untrue. Guede has no burglary convictions, and indeed was the only one out of the trio with no prior criminal record before Ms Kercher's murder.
Knox and Sollecito both had minor run-ins with the law resulting in fines. Guede was never even charged with the burglary, and even the acquitting court decreed that the burglary was staged, as in staged in another flatmate's room where Amanda Knox left her presumed blood DNA mixed with the murder victim's and where no trace of Rudy Guede exists.
Knox also claims that no biological traces of her exist in one localized area of the crime scene, specifically Meredith's bedroom, yet ignores that by such a rationale Guede couldn't have committed the burglary.
Knox also claims that Guede acted alone, but no court decreed this, and she claims that he broke into her home when Meredith was present, neglecting to explain how Meredith never heard the 4 kilo rock hurling through Filomena Romanelli's bedroom and why she obligingly did nothing while Guede shimmied 13 feet up a sheer wall TWICE.
The documentary, apparently not content with trying to match the record of most lies ever told in a single documentary before, then breezily attempts to surpass such a record, by introducing the film's saviors, Stefano Conti and Carla Vechiotti, as "independent forensic DNA experts".
Conti hypothesizes, like he did in court, that anything is possible. It's like totally possible that contamination could have occurred, therefore it… DID occur. Basically a hypothesis on the basis that "anything's possible" supersedes actual submitted evidence.
Vechiotti not to be outdone promptly contradicts Conti by attacking Low Copy Number (LCN) DNA as a science. Basically he claims Meredith Kercher's DNA profile on the murder weapon (found in Sollecito's flat, causing him to lie in his diary as to how the DNA got there by claiming that Meredith had cut herself cooking while at his apartment; but Meredith had never visited Sollecito's apartment) is so tiny that it should be discarded and ignored.
LCN DNA is however now accepted by courts of law worldwide, including in the State of New York USA. Vechiotti also admitted in court that it was Meredith's profile, and that contamination couldn't have occurred due to the six day delay between testing.
She does a u-turn on the documentary though, claiming that contamination was likely due to Meredith's profile being LCN and so small, despite testifying the exact opposite where it mattered the most, in court.
Problem is, Conti makes the contamination hypothesis for the bra clasp, only Sollecito's DNA found there isn't LCN, it's a 17 loci match, with a US court considering between 10-15 loci sufficient enough to be used as evidence.
The doc also fails to explain how his DNA ended up only on the tiny bra clasp in such abundance and nowhere else apart from a cigarette, but mixed with Knox's. So, too small for the knife, and hey, anything's possible for the bra clasp.
They also make a big thing about the bra clasp lying in a sealed crime scene for 46 days, yet don't mention that two samples of DNA evidence used to convict Guede (Meredith's sweatshirt and purse) also lay there for 46 days. I guess there's different burdens of proof bars for black guys.
However again the problem is that all of this (yep, again) is simply untrue. Conti and Vechiotti are not experts in forensic DNA or ENFSI certified.
Carla Vechiotti is a pathologist. Her lab at Sapienza University was shut down due to atrocious hygiene practices including honest to God corpses being strewn about the halls, I kid you not.
Conti's expertise is "computer medical science"...whatever that's supposed to be. Nor are they independent. Conti and Vechiotti were found "Objectively biased" and "Objectively deceptive" in court by the Nencini appellate. Specifically because Vechiotti falsely claimed that the technology did not exist to re-test the murder weapon. It did indeed exist in 2011.
Vechiotti was also filmed by the BBC shaking hands with Sollecito's father in court, no less, hardly appropriate behavior for so-called independents. Vechiotti has also been found guilty of criminal misconduct in a separate case, and was fined €150,000 for screwing up in yet another separate case, known as the Olgiatta murder.
You'll notice in this review how I've rarely mentioned the victim Meredith Kercher. That's because she barely gets a mention in this sad excuse for a documentary. Not even an RIP.
Meredith, the victim is relegated to a mere footnote and indeed a foot under a duvet.
The doc does use archive footage of her mother, Arline, and intimates that she herself is having doubts, whereas the Kerchers have made very clear on several occasions that they know who murdered their daughter.
Reprehensibly, the doc also displays close up autopsy photos of Meredith, yet the autopsy photos were never made public.
Considering only the Kerchers (who didn't take part in Netflix's PR makeover) and the defence - and by extension the two former defendants - had access to such material, this begs the very pertinent question: who provided two ardent Knox supporters with autopsy photos of the murder victim?
The filmmakers should be ashamed of themselves for this alone, utterly contemptible behavior which comes across as needlessly and despicably taunting the victim's family, and at the very least exploiting their daughter and sister purely for lurid effect to make their documentary more "gritty".
So what's the verdict on Amanda Knox the documentary?
Well, it's a terrible, false and ultimately immoral exercise in innocence fraud, and here are some more of the facts that Knox's PR infomercial left out:
1 The Supreme Court's acquitting report states that Amanda Knox was present during Meredith's murder and may even have possibly washed the victim's blood from her hands afterwards but it STILL can't be proved that she did it, which begs more questions, namely why didn't innocent Amanda call the cops for her friend and why wasn't she charged as an accessory at least? (The same Supreme Court did not make the same allowance for the black guy though, had he washed the victim's blood from his shoes for example.) The court also states that there's "strong suspicion" that Sollecito was there.
2 The Supreme Court's acquitting report states that the burglary was staged.
3 The Supreme Court's acquitting report states that Meredith was murdered by three attackers and that Guede had two accomplices. (And you really don't have to be Stephen Hawking to figure out who these two accomplices were, when you view the evidence in its totality)
4 The Supreme Court's acquitting report states that Meredith's murder was NOT due to a burglary gone wrong.
5 The Supreme Court's acquitting nonetheless finalizes Knox's calumny/criminal slander conviction, which she was handed for falsely accusing her innocent employer of rape and murder, leaving him in prison for two weeks, and never retracting her statement, despite false reports that she did, meaning that Knox's status is still that of a convicted criminal felon.
6 In finalizing Amanda Knox's calumny/criminal slander conviction, the Supreme Court's acquitting report states that Knox blamed her boss to protect Rudy Guede as she was afraid that Guede could "retaliate by incriminating" her, which of course begs some more very interesting and pertinent questions, such as how could Guede incriminate innocent Amanda to begin with?
7 The Supreme Court's acquitting report does NOT exonerate Knox, it acquits her due to "insufficient evidence",like Casey Anthony, OJ Simpson and that nice man Robert Durst now back on trial.
The Truth is Out There, as a fictional 90s FBI agent who investigated strange stuff once mused. The truth in Meredith Kercher's case is out there too, specifically in the Massei and Nencini court reports.
Never have I seen a case where such overwhelming evidence existed and where all the primary sources and court reports are fully available, only for such false reporting and fawning (and equally false accounts abound). It's like the mainstream media have collectively turned into the robotic town of Stepford.
Yet the truth often has the strangest habit of coming to light, often when we least expect it to shine. I have hopes it'll shine in Meredith's case, in time. The supporter fanboy filmmakers are fooling nobody who is familiar with Meredith's case, and neither are Amanda Knox or Raffaele Sollecito.
RIP Meredith Kercher, who along with her stoic dignified family (who have been subjected to absolutely abhorrent abuse and attacks by Knox's supporters online) and Knox's employer Patrick Lumumba are the only victims here.
May the truth shine in your case one day and the facts and truth come to light.
Posted by Corpusvile on 11/12 at 08:51 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Evidence & Witnesses, The pack attack, Hoaxes against Italy, 1 Ital justice hoax, 2 Italian mileu hoax, 3 No evidence hoax, 4 No firm DNA hoax, 5 No pack attack hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, 12 Rabid media hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 13 AK persona hoax, 15 Single alibi hoax, Hoaxes Sollecito etc, 25 RS persona hoax, Hoaxes re Guede, 33 Sole attacker hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case • Comments here (22)
Netflixhoax 15: Omitted - Amanda Knox's Incriminating Lies To The Police, Prosecution And Courts
In 2008 Knox lawyers publicly ask that she stop lying publicly; one resigned earlier over lies.
Netflix's Amanda Knox is an extreme example of misleading bias by cherrypicking. This post is another in our ongoing series, the mothership for material for this media-friendly page online soon.
Overview Of This Post
The filmmakers Blackhurst, McGinn and Morse allow Amanda Knox to portray herself as a terrified ingenue.
One who lied about Diya Lumumba killing Meredith and placed herself at the cottage only because she was subjected to a coercive police interrogation and was physically assaulted.
They don't question ANY of the witnesses who were present when she was questioned at the police station to contradict her account of events - witnesses who testified as to exactly what did happen over many days at the trial in 2009.
They allow her account of her questioning to go unchallenged though NOT ONE JUDGE at pre-trial hearings, the trial, first appeal, Supreme Court, second appeal, and Supreme Court appeal considered any of her varying accounts to be the truth.
The filmmakers also don't address the fact that Amanda Knox lied repeatedly to the police and others both before and after her questioning on 5 November 2007, let alone provide viewers with a plausible innocent explanation for these lies.
In this article, I will detail the lies Amanda Knox told the police and others using the official court reports and court testimonies as well as Amanda Knox's book Waiting to Be Heard.
Instances Of Knox Lies Refuted
Amanda Knox lied to Filomena about where she was on 2 November 2007.
But the Nencini report, 2014, page 174, said:
"In the first telephone call the defendant made to Filomena Romanelli, she clearly said that she would go back to Raffaele's place to tell him about the strange things discovered in the apartment, and then return with him to check the situation. This circumstance is clearly false, since when Amanda Knox made the first call to Romanelli at 12:08:44 pm on 2 November 2007 she was at already Raffaele Sollecito's apartment and not at 7 Via Della Pergola.
This fact is certain because it is gleaned from the telephone records, as has been already been said, and specifically from the fact that the telephone call above connected to the cell that served precisely 130 Via Garibaldi, a cell that is not within reach of anyone who would have been at 7 Via Della Pergola.
Amanda Knox claimed that she and Sollecito called 112 before the arrival of the postal police officers at the cottage.
"There was one specific circumstance about which, this time, both the defendants lied. This is about the succession of events at the moment when the postal police intervened on the spot."
And the Nencini report, 2014, page 179, said:
"From the testimony of the witnesses referred to above it thus clearly emerges how both of the defendants (but to be precise it was Raffaele Sollecito to tell the police this) declared to Inspector Battistelli that they were sitting there awaiting the arrival of the Carabinieri whom they had called. However Inspector Battistelli indicated in his service notes that he arrived on the scene at 12:35 pm, and questioned in the court hearings by the Judges of First Instance Court, he explained that he looked at his watch at the moment when he arrived at the cottage." (The Nencini report, page 179).
Amanda Knox told the postal police on 2 November that Meredith always locked her door.
But the Massei trial report, 2010, page 31, said:
"This last circumstance, downplayed by Amanda, who said that even when she went to the bathroom for a shower Meredith always locked the door to her room (see declarations of Marco Zaroli, page 180, hearing of February 6, 2009 and declarations of Luca Altieri, page 218, hearing of February 6, 2009), had alarmed Ms. Romanelli more. She said she was aware of only once, when she had returned to England and had been away for a few days, that Meredith had locked the door of her room. (This circumstance was confirmed by Laura Mezzetti, page 6, hearing of February 14, 2009).".
Knox pretended she hadn't called Meredith when she spoke to Filomena.
But the Massei trial report, 2010, page 387, said:
"Amanda called Romanelli, to whom she started to detail what she had noticed in the house (without, however, telling her a single word about the unanswered call made to Meredith, despite the question expressly put to her by Romanelli)"
Amanda Knox falsely claimed in her e-mail to friends on 4 November 2007 that she had called Filomena first
But she had actually called Meredith a minute earlier. The Nencini appeal report, 2014, page 169, said:
"A first discrepancy is immediately noticeable between what the defendant states in the memorial and what is ascertained from the telephone records."
"At the moment when Amanda Marie Knox rang Filomena Romanelli she had already made a call to the English telephone used by Meredith Kercher, not therefore the opposite."
Amanda Knox claimed that when she called Meredith's English phone after speaking to Filomena, it "just kept ringing, no answer".
But the Nencini appeal report, 2014, page 170, said:
"From the telephone records it appears that the telephone call made at 12:11:02 pm to the Italian Vodafone service of the victim lasted 3 seconds"
Amanda Knox claimed she slept until around 10:00am the next morning.
"What the Court finds proved is that at 6:02:59 am on 2 November 2007 they were not in fact asleep, as the defendants claim, but rather the occupants were well awake. At 5:32 am on 2 November 2007 the computer connected to a site for listening to music, remaining connected for around half an hour. Therefore, at 5:32 am someone in the house occupied by Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito sat in front of the computer and listened to music for around half an hour and then, at 6:02:59 am, switched on Raffaele Sollecito's mobile phone"¦"
Amanda Knox claimed she was at Sollecito's apartment when she received Diya Lumumba's text message.
But the Nencini appeal report, 2014, pages 132-132, said:
"At 8:18 pm and 12 seconds, Amanda Marie Knox received a text message sent to her by Patrick Lumumba, in which he informed her that it would not be necessary for her to go to the bar to carry out her usual work. At the time of receipt, Amanda Marie Knox's handset connected via the sector 3 mast at Torre dell'Acquedotto, 5 dell'Aquila, as shown by phone records entered in evidence. This mast cannot be reached from the vicinity of 130 Corso Garibaldi, the home of Raffaele Sollecito. According to the findings of the judicial police entered in evidence, this mast could be reached by anyone in Via Rocchi, Piazza Cavallotti or Piazza 4 Novembre, all locations in Perugia which are intermediate between 130 Corso Garibaldi, the home of Raffaele Sollecito, and Via Alessi, where the "Le Chic" bar is located.
"From this set of facts established in the case, Amanda Marie Knox's claim, according to which she received Patrick Lumumba's text message while she was at 130 Corso Garibaldi, appears false. Given the mast connected to and the time, it is reasonable to assume that, when Amanda received the message, she had already left Raffaele Sollecito's home and was on her way to the "˜Le Chic' bar. Presumably, she then turned around and went back."
Amanda Knox initially claimed she was at Sollecito's apartment on the night of the murder.
But Sollecito categorically stated in his own signed witness statement that Amanda Knox wasn't at his apartment on the night of the murder: Raffaele Sollecito's witness statement, 5 November 2007, said:
"At 9pm I went home alone and Amanda said that she was going to Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends. We said goodbye. I went home, I rolled myself a spliff and made some dinner, but I don't remember what I ate. At around eleven my father phoned me on the house phone. I remember Amanda wasn't back yet. I surfed on the Internet for a couple of hours after my father's phone call, and I stopped only when Amanda came back, about one in the morning, I think."
And Judge Bruno and Judge Marasca of the Fifth Chambers stated in their 2015 report that Amanda Knox was at the cottage when Meredith was killed.
The Bruno and Marasca report, 2015, said:
""¦ now we note, regarding Amanda Knox, that her presence in the dwelling, that was the "theatre of the murder", was proclaimed in the trial process in alignment with her own admissions, including those contained in her signed statement in the part where she states she was in the kitchen, after the young English girl [Meredith] and another person went off to Kercher's room for sexual intercourse, she heard a harrowing scream from her friend, so piercing and unbearable that she fell down huddled on the floor, holding her hands tightly against her ears so as not to hear more.
We do indeed share the previous judge [Nencini's] opinion that this part of the accused's story is reliable, due to the plausible observation that it was she who first put forward a possible sexual motive for the murder and mentioned the victim's harrowing scream, at a time when the investigators still didn't have the results of the examination of the corpse or the autopsy, nor the witness information, which was subsequently gathered, about the victim's scream and the time it was heard.
Amanda Knox told the police she hadn't replied to Diya Lumumba's text message.
But Judge Chieffi's Supreme Court report, 2008, page 36, said:
"the police, who merely asked Ms Knox whether she had replied to the message that he had sent her, that her phone showed she had received, and to the young woman's negative response it was put to her that [her telephone showed] that a reply was in fact given."
Amanda Knox claimed the police hit her.
But the witnesses who were present when Knox was questioned, including her interpreter, testified under oath at the trial in 2009 that she wasn't hit.
These repudiations are from the relevant court transcripts:
Giuliano Mignini: ... violence, of "¦
Monica Napoleoni: But absolutely not!
Mignini: You remember it"¦ you've described it; however, I'll ask it. Was she threatened? Did she suffer any beatings?
Anna Donnino: Absolutely not.
GM: She suffered maltreatments?
AD: Absolutely not.
Carlo Pacelli: In completing and consolidating in cross-examination the questions by the public prosecutor, I refer to the morning of the 6th of November, to the time when Miss Knox had made her summary information. In that circumstance, Miss Knox was struck on the head with punches and slaps?
CP: In particular, was she struck on the head by a police woman?
AD: Absolutely not!
CP: Miss Knox was, however, threatened?
AD: No, I can exclude that categorically!
CP: With thirty years of prison"¦ ?
AD: No, no, absolutely not.
CP: Was she, however, sworn at, in the sense that she was told she was a liar?
AD: I was in the room the whole night, and I saw nothing of all this.
CP: So the statements that had been made had been made spontaneously, voluntarily?
AD: Yes.
Carlo Della Valla: This"¦
Giancarlo Massei: Pardon, but let's ask questions"¦ if you please.
CP: You were also present then during the summary informations made at 5:45?
CP: And were they done in the same way and methods as those of 1:45?
AD: I would say yes. Absolutely yes.
CP: To remove any shadow of doubt from this whole matter, as far as the summary information provided at 5:45 Miss Knox was struck on the head with punches and slaps?
AD: No.
CP: In particular, was she struck on the head by a policewoman?
Knox told the police she hadn't smoked marijuana.
But Amanda Knox herself in "Waiting to Be Heard" said:
"When we finished, a detective put me through a second round of questioning, this time in Italian. Did we ever smoke marijuana at No.7 Via della Pergola? 'No, we don't smoke,' I lied. squirming inwardly as I did."
Amanda Knox was forced to accuse Diya Lumumba of murder.
But Amanda Knox voluntarily told the police and her interpreter that Diya Lumumba had killed Meredith.
Anna Donnino: "It's a thing that has remained very strongly with me because the first thing that she did is that she immediately puts her hands on her ears, making this gesture rolling her head, curving in her shoulders also and saying "˜It's him! It's him! It was him!'"
Rita Ficarra: "She suddenly put her hands to her head, burst out crying and said to us "˜It's him, it's him, it was him, he killed her'.
Amanda Knox then claimed Diya Lumumba killed Meredith in two witness statements she insisted on writing.
"Amanda Marie Knox accused Patrick Lumumba of the murder at 1:45 am on 6 November 2007."
"Amanda Marie Knox repeated the allegations before the magistrate, allegations which she never retracted in all the following days."
Also Amanda Knox reiterated her false allegation against Diya Lumumba on 6 November 2007 when under no pressure.
"[Amanda] herself, furthermore, in the statement of 6 November 2007 (admitted into evidence ex. articles 234 and 237 of the Criminal Procedure Code and which was mentioned above) wrote, among other things, the following:
"I stand by my [accusatory] statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrick"¦in these flashbacks that I'm having, I see Patrick as the murderer"¦"
This statement was that specified in the notes of 6 November 2007, at 20:00, by Police Chief Inspector Rita Ficarra, and was drawn up following the notification of the detention measure, by Amanda Knox, who "requested blank papers in order to produce a written statement to hand over" to the same Ficarra. (Massei report, page 389.)
For several weeks Amanda Knox let the police believe Diya Lumumba killed Meredith.
But the Nencini report, pages 115-116, said:
She never retracted her false and malicious allegation the whole time he was in prison. This verdict from the 2013-14 Nencini Appeal Court was THE FINAL WORD from the courts; the Supreme Court did not reverse it:
Knox claimed that Mignini questioned her and made suggestions on 5 November 2007.
But the transcript of Knox's cross-examination at trial 2009 said:
Amanda Knox: The declarations were taken against my will. And so, everything that I said, was said in confusion and under pressure, and, because they were suggested by the public minister [Giuliano Mignini].
Carlo Pacelli: Excuse me, but at 1:45, the pubblico ministero was not there, there was only the judicial police.
The computer and telephone records as well as the corroborative testimony of multiple eyewitnesses provide irrefutable proof that Amanda Knox lied repeatedly to the police and others. Many of these lies were told before and after her questioning on 5 November 2007, so they can't be attributed to police coercion.
There isn't a plausible innocent explanation for these lies. Perhaps that's the reason why the filmmakers don't address them - they presumably don't want to portray Amanda Knox in a negative light. It would be far harder to persuade their audience that Amanda Knox is an innocent victim, which is undeniably their ultimate objective. They were never interested in making an objective and balanced documentary that give viewers the full picture.
Judge Bruno and Judge Marasca clearly couldn't brush these numerous lies under the carpet and pretend they didn't exist because Judge Massei, Judge Nencini and Judge Chieffi had detailed Amanda Knox's lies in their reports. They acknowledge that Amanda Knox lied and claimed she had lied to cover for Rudy Guede.
The Netflix filmmakers completely hide all of this in their documentary.
Posted by The Machine on 10/28 at 06:59 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Amanda Knox, Hoaxes Knox & team, 13 AK persona hoax, 15 Single alibi hoax, 16 Interrogation hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Mellas team, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case • Comments here (11)
Netflixhoax 14: Omitted - Any Mention Of Big Red Flag In Forced Closing Of Vecchiotti's Laboratory
Posted by The TJMK Main Posters
This post is one in our ongoing series.
Amazingly EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO Dr Carla Vecchiotti became quite possibly the most discredited DNA expert in the world, when news about her appalling lab conditions exploded in Italy.
In their narrow-minded fanaticism to make Dr Mignini the most reviled prosecutor in the world - and Nick Pisa the most reviled reporter - the producers somehow left that awkward fact out of their report entirely. She and Dr Conti are given major time in the film to misrepresent key evidence.
Netflix's own due diligence (if any; we think not) missed all of this entirely. Now thanks to Netflix the misrepresented evidence and Vecchiotti's discredited opinions of the Scientific Police labs are being given credence as hard fact worldwide.
KrissyG in her own excellent review of the movie summarised the conditions that led to the lab being closed down. It happened directly because the Carabinieri DNA experts Dr Barni and Dr Berti appointed for the 2013-14 Nencini appeal (which Netflix also omitted any mention of) visited the place to inspect it, and to pick up some key evidence, a DNA sample from the knife.
They made mention of what they encountered in their report and in court testimony. That was nearly three years ago (January 2014) long before the final cut of the movie and long before the sale to Netflix was a done deal.
In our view this HAD to be yet another deliberate dishonesty.
2. Catnip's Translations Of Main Italian Reports Of Lab Closing
Catnip kindly provided us with these translations of some of the Italian news reports 18 months ago.
The March 2015 report from News 24
The Medico-Legal Institute of Sapienza University in Rome was closed down this morning.
For some time it has been known that unhygienic conditions were the norm in the Institute and the Rector of the University has decided today, in anticipation of NAS findings, to shut down the entire mortuary.
Sapienza's Institute did not have adequate space to accommodate the large number pf bodies and quite often they had to be spread out along the corridors.
The hygiene rules were onerous and the building inadequate. It was for this reason that the Public Prosecutor's Office had ordered a detailed report by NAS which would have presented their findings within a few weeks.
The Rector of the University, Eugenio Gaudio, has pre-empted the PPO's expected closure of the Institute. The closure, explains Guadio, had been necessary to prevent the raising of legal questions as regards the autopsies being carried out, which would have risked the results being no longer reliable in future.
During the NAS inspections, even cadaver remains from 1990 had been found, a serious anomaly due to, as the mortuary attendants explained, the fact that no one had ever reclaimed the bodies. Another serious problem at the Sapienza Institute is the huge disorder that reigns inside the building, where, in point of fact, cadavers are to be found out in the corridors.
The March 2015 report from Corriere.
Rome: bodies in the mortuary corridors, Medico-Legal Institute of Sapienza closed
The Rector's decision anticipates the MOSSA by the Prosecutor's Office which has been investigating conditions at the Medico-Legal Institute of Rome's flagship university
by Giulio De Santis
ROME "" The University of Sapienza's Legal Medicine Institute has been closed for health reasons. The decision has been made by the university's Rector, Eugenio Gaudio, who made the order before the Prosecutor's Office could make a move. At Clodio Place the investigators, in fact, are expecting the filing of a report by NAS, where serious hygienic shortcomings by the management of the Institute are highlighted.
Unreliable autopsies?
The closure has been necessary to head off the raising of questions relating to future autopsy results that would have risked being unreliable. The problems discovered by the Carabinieri of the Health and Food Adulteration Unit "" and noted to the university administration "" relate to, in fact, the equipment, starting with the tables, intended for carrying out autopsies, which have deteriorated during the course of time. The oldest have been in the building since the early 1980s while those acquired more recently go back to ten years ago. Even the instruments used to examine the cadavers have deteriorated and should be replaced.
Cadavers in the corridors
During the inspections, remains of cadavers preserved since 1990 were found. An anomaly due to the fact that no one had ever reclaimed the bodies. The other problem raised by the doctors at the Institute and revealed by NAS is the disorder that reigns in the Institute, where it is possible to see cadavers in corridors due to the lack of space in which to store them. Sapienza has now promised to proceed with restoration works. There is lack of certainty though on the end point by which the Institute will become operative again. There is no compulsory time limit but the university has guaranteed a return to normality by the beginning of May.
Transferring the bodies
Contributing to the uncertainty are Sapienza's empty coffers and the collection of funds is expected to be complicated. In the meantime, to try and minimise the impact of the closure, autopsies will be carried out at the Tor Vergata Institute directed by Professor Giovanni Arcudi. The bodies have already started to arrive in the last few days in the mortuary of that university and in some cases the work has been given to specialists from the Gemelli Polyclinic. A case file has been opened by the Prosecutor's Office and assigned to Antonella Nespola who in October had already ordered the sequestration of the mortuary. The decision to close the Institute has been communicated to the Prosecutor's Office, who is caught out by the choice.
The March 2015 report from RAI News.
Rome, Medico-Legal Institute closed. The Public Prosecutor's Office is investigating health conditions. The decision of the Sapienza University Rector Ettore Gaudio. Cadavers from 1990 found.
Cadavers in the corridors because of lack of space for storing them, serious health issues in the management of the Institute. For this reason, Sapienza's Medico-Legal Institute has been shut down for health reasons. The decision was made by the university's Rector, Eugenio Gaudio, who made the order before the Prosecutor's Office could make a move. At Clodio Place the investigators, in fact, are expecting the filing of a report by NAS, where serious hygienic shortcomings by the management of the Institute are highlighted.
The closure had been necessary to pre-empt questions being raised about the risk of future autopsy results being unreliable. During the inspections, cadaver remains preserved from 1990 were found. An anomaly due to the fact that no one had ever claimed the bodies. The other problem raised by the doctors at the Institute and noted by NAS is the disorder that reigns in the Institute, where it is possible to see cadavers in the corridors because of the lack of storage space.
The March 2015 report from Cronaca
Cadavers in corridors, Medico-Legal Institute in Rome closed
Rector Eugenio Gaudio's decision: «Autopsy results at risk».
There were cadavers in the corridors due to lack of space, as well as serious health issues in the management of the building. For this reason the Medico-Legal Institute at Sapienza University in Rome has been closed for health reasons.
RECTOR'S DECISION. The decision had been taken by the unicersity's Rector, Eugenio Gaudio, who made the order before the Public Prosecutor's Office could act. At Clodio Place, the investigators, in fact, are expecting the filing of a NAS report, where serious hygiene problems in the management of the Institute are highlighted. The closure was necessary to forestall questions being raised concerning future autopsy results which would have been at risk of being unreliable.
REMAINS OF CADAVERS FROM 1990. Inspections revealed remains of cadavers preserved from 1990. An anomaly due to the fact that no one had ever reclaimed the bodies. The other problem raised by the doctors at the Institute and noted by NAS is the disorder that reigns in the Institute, where it is possible to see cadavers in the corridors because of lack of space to store them.
The March 2015 report from Dagospia.
Sad corridors dimly lit. A room with refrigeration units from the 1980s, dozens of units occupied by the bodies of persons deceased by violent means and never recognised, never asked for, and, if foreigners, never repatriated. It's here that, as many say, along the basement corridor it is even sadder: there's no space inside and the cadavers are just left there, on trolleys, at times not even in mortuary bags. The smell, they say, is pungent and nauseating. To say nothing of the dissection tables and the equipment, or even the safety of the workers. Non-existent.
And so the Public Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation by NAS, the Carabinieri of the Health and Food Adulteration Unit [nucleo antisofisticazione e sanità ]. Eugenio Gaudio, Rector of Sapienza University "" of which the Medico-Legal Institute is a part "" and Domenico Alessio, Director-General of the Polyclinic at Umberto I University, have pre-empted likely legal orders deciding to shut down the building.
SAPIENZA MORTUARY
It received the latest body last Wednesday a little before midnight. The others "" like that of the young man squashed on Friday night by a bus in Piazza Venezia and dying in San Giovanni Hospital "" will all be, from Thursday onwards, taken to the Gemelli Polyclinic.
A truly disconcerting situation for the largest mortuary in the Capital, the Sapienza Medico-Legal Institute. Already by October month end Public Prosecutor Antonella Nespola had sequestered six operating theatres at the Umberto I University Polyclinic, which is close to the mortuary, and also placed the Medico-Legal Institute in her sights.
And «for possible contamination, likely compromised results, the building physically falling apart, cadavers in the corridors and inadequate equipment», they explain in the mortuary. «NAS inspected the mortuary when I was not even Rector» explains Eugenio Gaudio. «We are all hopeful that the restoration works will conclude as soon as possible: within two months».
Eight years a scandal led to the lose of the operating theatre at Umberto I: not only were the health and safety conditions extremely bad (blood traces everywhere, building falling apart, a back and forth of funeral agency operators who were following the relatives of the deceased), but corneas were being stolen from the bodies, which in turn ended up having to be transferred from one place to another under armed guard. But today «we're re-opening the Polyclinic dissection room» explains Gaudio. «I've put in an order for autopsy tables and new and modern equipment».
And even if the Rector highlights that the decision to close «had been taken in accord with the Health Director and Director-General of the Polyclinic, with all due care and authority» in the Public Prosecutor's Office the news of the closure, which seems to have arrived with only 24 hours' notice, has raised a storm. Chief Prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone plays it down. But he also explains that today or at the latest tomorrow «there will be a meeting at the PPO with the top layers of management from the Polyclinic and Rector Eugenio Gaudio». And in the meantime, «for now, Gemelli will be asked to handle the immediate exigencies».
The funeral undertakers who tell of the scene from hell are describing «flies and bluebottles attracted by the odour, doors that don't seal properly and when you go downstairs at the least you almost fall ill», as a source who works in the mortuary recalls. «But even on the first floor, where the forensic pathologists work, everything has remained stuck at 40 years ago. To say nothing of the place where the evidence is kept: all heaped up on each other, contaminated according to me unusable».
EUGENIO GAUDIO
Captain Dario Praturlon, NAS Commander in Rome who last September on delegation from the Public Prosecutor's Office carried out an inspection, explains that «we only had to check if there were health and safety irregularities: and we had found lots of them. The employers "" that is the Rector and the Polyclinic Health Director "" are obliged to fix up the building. To give the workers a safe place to work. We found none of all this». The first criminal charges are expected quite soon, although relating to previous management.
3. Lab Reopens Sans Vecchiotti
The lab has been closed for 18 months but now Corriere reports its reopening under the supervision of three prosecutors' offices, making it all but impossible for either the lab or Vecchiotti to perpetrate further transgressions.
University's Polyclinic takes over management of Rome's mortuary instead of Sapienza University, while the forensic pathology department is now overseen by the three relevant Public Prosecutor's Offices (Rome, Tivoli and Civitavecchia).
Posted by The TJMK Main Posters on 10/23 at 10:00 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Evidence & Witnesses, The two knives, DNA and luminol, Hoaxes against Italy, 4 No firm DNA hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case, Conti & Vecchioti • Comments here (16)
Netflixhoax 13: Omitted - How The DNA Processes And Evidence Points Were Deliberately Misrepresented
Posted by KrissyG
Above, modern Scientific Police labs in Rome; bottom, hellhole consultants labs (now closed)
"Amanda Knox" by Netflix is massively misleading on the DNA. It completely ignores that Conti's and Vechiotti's 2011 report was unceremoniously ridiculed in 2013 by the First Chambers of the Supreme Court and the fraudulent pair branded as "˜intellectually dishonest'.
Netflix presents Conti and Vechiotti as trustworthy and competent when Vechiotti's appalling lab had already been forcibly shut down. They ignore that the pair illegally colluded with US and British DNA academics Hampikian, Budowle and Gill beholden to the defense who interfered to pervert the outcome of the appeal.
They present Knox and Sollecito as "˜exonerated' and "˜innocent' based in part on Vecchiotti & Conti's misleading narrative when they were nothing of the kind.
They ignore that, in large part because of their incompetences and dishonesties, the 2011 appeal was annulled. They ignore that the case was remitted back down to a different Appeal Court, in a different area (Florence) under a different judge (Nencini) while the 2011 judge (Hellman) was edged into retirement.
And they ignore that Italy's best DNA experts, from the Carabinieri labs in Rome, were assigned the role of DNA analysis for the repeat appeal, as they should have been in 2011, and important confirmations were presented and barely challenged.
Here is TJMK's series of DNA analyses and the Wiki's giant DNA spreadsheet with a lengthy explanation of how it works. And here in Italian is the full rebuttal of all defense challenges by Dr Stefanoni, lead prosecution expert at trial and annulled appeal.
Finally, a tip on the images below. These are movie snippets, with English subtitles included. They expand to full screen in Acrobat Reader (please download it if you dont have it) if you click on each image.
Part 2 below explains what is in the film that misleads, and Part 3 describes all that was left out.
2. What Is In The Film
In the film, Vecchiotti and Conti appear quite deeply into the film, at minute 64 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. 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.
Next, enter his co-partner, the other "˜independent' expert hired by the Hellmann appeal court to evaluate the evidence concerning he DNA identified on the presumed murder weapon knife, and the bra clasp sample: Carla Vecchiotti.
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.
Vecchiotti then continues the theme of the film that the 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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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 2011 report was unceremoniously ridiculed in 2013 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. About three times, 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 2011 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.
3. What Was Left Out
Part 3 is perhaps twice as long as Part 2 because Netflix lied by omission to its audience on such a grand scale. These are the areas to be covered.
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.
Vecchiotti lab
The Conti and Vecchiotti 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.
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 her and Conti's work as "misleading" and "reprehensible".
The Hellmann Court (Appeal Court)
On 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 Guede'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.
Request (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', strongly rebutted by Stefanoni, who said in that case, there should have been contamination elsewhere, not just on the bra clasp.
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.'
Hellmann accepted "˜the experts' 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)
In 2013 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'.
On 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)
In 2014 Judge 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 Dr Barni, witness for the Carabinieri Lab, that "˜no US standards' are to be quoted which C&V had done profusely. 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:
[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.'
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.
Was There Contamination?
There were NO full male DNA profiles on the bra, apart from Sollecito 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.
The expert witness testimony of Professor David Balding, to the court is as follows, and who, until October 2009 was Professor in Statistical Genetics at Imperial College, London, where he still retains an affiliation as Visiting Professor. 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.
Back in 2008 pre-trial there was an independent review of the forensic evidence.
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. 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 thus we have a pointer as to why Conti introduced his presentation by claiming "˜DNA is spread like dust.'
To the bottom line, 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.
2. 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.
3. Numerous DNA experts believe the bra clasp is strong evidence - Professor Balding, Professor Novelli, Luciano Garofano, Professor Torricelli and Dr Biondo.
4. It's impossible that the knife was contaminated.
5. There is no universally accepted DNA standards for collecting and testing DNA evidence. DNA protocols vary from country to country.
6. Conti and Vecchiotti cited obscure sources, They didn't refer to the specific guidelines of an international forensic organisation.
7. Conti and Vecchiotti excluded contamination in the laboratory.
8. The defence experts had no objections when the DNA evidence was tested.
9. Vecchiotti made calamitous errors in other cases and her lab was closed down.
10. 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 Marasca-Bruno Supreme Court (Final)
In the final Marasca-Bruno Supreme Court appeal, the short-form provisional 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 First (Chieffi) Supreme Court Chambers directly challenged by the Fifth Chambers and the criticisms of Vecchiotti and Conti swept aside, as though they had never happened.
Judges Marasca & Bruno write:
"˜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 Judge Marasca, just a few handfuls of abstractions along the lines of Conti's famous, "˜Anything is possible.'
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.
Nobody from either the Perugia or Florence prosecution teams was even present.
In addition, her 306 page appeal was appended with Gill's advocacy report. Gill was never cross-examined.
The resuscitation of the hitherto presumed decaying corpse of Vecchiotti & Conti is remarkable, given the cadaver of their report to Hellmann was picked raw, first by the First Chambers Supreme Court (Chieffi) and then Judge Nencini.
Vecchiotti and Conti have risen like Lazarus from a car crash, shrouded in the malodorous cloth of something fishy.
Illegal intruder Hampikian
How the "˜Heist' was pulled off.
Andrea Vogt wrote 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 C&V reports, which I cannot better here, so do read it for yourself.
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?'
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, he 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 strongly by 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, driven by the man referred to devoutly by the defence as "˜the father of forensic science'.
Dr Naseer Ahmed 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.
Illegal intruder Gill
My Main Sources:
Thanks to Naseer Ahmed and The Machine, for the section on "˜Contamination?'
The Machine's analysis of 50 of the most common myths still promoted.
The Meredith Case Wiki
The Perugia Murder File Forum (Net Version)
The Nencini Sentencing Report.
The Chieffi Sentencing Report.
The Massei Report.
The Marasca-Bruno Report:
My thanks to the wonderful translators and everybody who helped me with material.
Posted by KrissyG on 10/17 at 10:15 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Evidence & Witnesses, DNA and luminol, Hoaxes against Italy, 4 No firm DNA hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 15 Single alibi hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case, Greg Hampikian, Peter Gill • Comments here (22)
Netflixhoax 11: Omitted - How Italian Justice Is Misrepresented By Multiple Cherrypickings Of Facts
Posted by Swansea Jack
Quote: "The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses." Malcolm X
We live in a society where I believe I'm justified in saying a majority of people are easily swayed by the material they see on TV or read in the newspapers.
Recently I have witnessed a mass of new posters on Twitter and other social media forums who after watching the Amanda Knox Netflix documentary have formed a cast iron, unshakable opinion on the case.
It is clear after engaging with them very briefly that they frankly have very limited knowledge and understanding of the facts relating to the murder of Meredith Kercher.
I will credit the producers of the documentary Blackhurst and McGinn on what I consider to be a quite clever (but ever so sneaky) disguising of their absolute bias towards Amanda Knox which will not be evident to those who are not acquainted with the case.
They have obviously correctly banked on the ignorance of the majority of their audience.
I get the impression that Nick Pisa is used as a "filler" and a distraction. I come to this conclusion as I feel the producers would be hard pushed to make a 90 minute documentary, favourable to Knox, while addressing the real facts of the case without getting themselves into serious legal trouble.
I also know from first-hand experience that it is a long-term strategy of Knox and her little band of PR hate-mongers to vilify others, in order to distract attention away from the real villains.
It is my impression that the intended main target for vilification was Perugian Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini.
But try as they might, even with their selective editing, they could not produce enough material to achieve their goal due to Mignini's humility and integrity.
For me personally the documentary raised a few questions which I will share with you.
We have Knox herself stating words to the effect of "either i am a psychopath, a Wolf in sheep's clothing or I am you" Well she certainly isn't me or anyone else, she is her, so is this an involuntary but frank admission?
The documentary shows a clip of Diane Sawyer's interview with Knox in which Amanda is asked "Were you there that night?" She replies "No" but nods yes.
It is my opinion that Knox gets a real power kick out of the notoriety afforded to her and revels in the "Did I or didn't I" mystery.
She then goes from being the wolf in sheep's clothing to being a "Warrior Princess like Xena". An ultimate and powerful fantasy figure.
Knox maintains that she was at Sollecito's address at 110 Corso Garibaldi watching Amelie at the time of Meredith's murder.
Not even Raffaele supports this version of events.
It begs the question why Blackhurst and McGinn have omitted the fact that Marasca and Bruno who acquitted the pair state in their motivation report "her (Knox) presence inside the house, the location of the murder, is a proven fact in the trial."
The acquitting Judges go on to explain their reasoning that Knox was the first person to offer a sexual motive before there was any cadaver or autopsy reports available.
They also make mention of Amanda's description of "the victim's terrible scream" which was confirmed some time later by witnesses Nara Capezzali, Antonella Monacchia and others.
How could a person who wasn't present know these details of the crime?
Knox goes on to describe an idyllic evening, smoking pot and making love, yet makes no mention of who was listening to music on Sollecito's computer at 05:32 in the morning, a time when both Knox and Sollecito claim to be blissfully sleeping.
Knox can't comprehend why there is a knife with her DNA on the handle and Meredith's DNA on the blade.
There is no mention in the documentary of Amanda's recorded prison conversation with her parents in which she says "I am very worried about this thing with the knife, because there is a knife of Raffaele's" (*Reference Massei report page 292.)
Neither do they address Sollecito's claim that the reason Meredith's DNA is on the blade is because he "accidentally pricked her while cooking."
He later admitted this was a total fabrication, Meredith had never attended his home.
Knox claims that she accused Diya Lumumba after long hours of questioning. Yet we know that due to the time recorded on her signed voluntary statement that she had fabricated a story swapping Guede for Lumumba in under 2 hours.
She only did so upon learning Sollecito was no longer supporting her alibi.
There is no mention in the documentary that Amanda had provided Diya Lumumba's name to Rita Ficarra in a list of persons of interest prior to learning Raffaele was not corroborating her version of events.
There is no mention of the sample of Knox's blood recovered from the faucet of the bathroom she shared with Meredith which Amanda herself dated in her court testimony to the night of Meredith's murder.
There is no mention of the mixed DNA sample of Knox and Meredith, recovered from a luminol revealed bloodstain in Filomena Romanelli's room. This is where the alleged point of entry for the burglary occurred. It is worth noting there is no biological trace of Rudy Guede in this room.
Addressing the bra clasp, the Netflix documentary fails to address the fact that the only other sample of Sollecito's DNA identified in Via Della Pergola 7 was on a cigarette butt in an ashtray in the kitchen. This was a mixed sample containing Raffaele and Amanda's DNA.
The documentary emphasises the farcical views of the so called "independent experts" Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti. It fails to mention that Vecchiotti confirmed that contamination at Dr Patrizia Stefanoni's laboratory was not possible if there was a six day gap in the testing of materials during cross questioning at the Hellmann appeal hearing.
PROSECUTOR COMODI: "Is six days a sufficient interval to rule out contamination?"
CARLA VECCHIOTTI: "Yes absolutely"
Neither do they address Conti's explanation (or lack of) as to how and why Sollecito's DNA was located on the hook of Meredith's bra clasp
PROSECUTOR COMODI: "How would Sollecito's DNA accidentally arrive on the hook of Meredith's bra?"
STEFANO CONTI: "Anything is possible"
During his input in the documentary Conti implies that DNA is easily transferable, he gives an example of running his fingers along his arm and magically shedding DNA.
If this is the case I would like to pose a few of questions to him.
1, Why is the only other sample of Sollecito's DNA located on a cigarette butt in the kitchen?
2, Why is there no genetic trace of Guede in the small bathroom or in Filomena Romanelli's room?
3, Can you provide a figure for the statistical probability of Sollecito's solitary sample of DNA (other than the mixed trace on the cigarette butt) innocently finding it's way on to Meredith's bra clasp?
Blackhurst and McGinn predictably make use of Rudy Guede's Skype conversation with Giacomo Bendetti in which he states Knox wasn't there, yet do not address the letter Guede wrote to his lawyers in which he refers to "a horrible murder of a splendid, beautiful girl that was Meredith by Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox"
Why have the documentary makers chosen to ignore so very many facts?
Posted by Swansea Jack on 10/11 at 08:37 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Justice systems, Italian system, Hoaxes against Italy, 1 Ital justice hoax, 2 Italian mileu hoax, 3 No evidence hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 13 AK persona hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case • Comments here (20)
Netflixhoax 10: Omitted - How Amanda Knox Falsely Accused Dr Mignini Of A Felony
1. The 2009 Trial Verdict Was Exactly Right
The 2009 prosecution phase was as perfect as any Italian prosecution heard in court.
This phase from January to June was fast and implacable, about as forceful as a high-speed train. Amidst so much that damned, days of largely unchallenged police testimony for example proved that Knox framed Patrick only because Sollecito sold her out.
Nothing else. He said she had made him lie, and never wanted to see her again, and he and Knox never got back to one narrative theme.
Knox on the witness stand in June was a wince-making disaster - this tough sarcastic rather thuggish girl claiming "the cops were meanies to fragile little me" did not exactly ring true.
The defense lawyers never ever recovered from that and we expected at least two to simply walk off. Late in the trial Sollecito lawyer Maori sarcastically said Knox had been high on cocaine (we believe that is true) as barb after barb was exchanged.
Remember that the Massei court was the only one to see all of the massive evidence. That included days and days of autopsy-related evidence in closed court with both the perps being closely observed throughout.
And that jury got the verdict and sentence exactly right. Knox and Sollecito should indeed be serving their time as in the US or UK they would.
So. Why did the two ever get released? Simple. Gaming of the Italian justice system to produce two bent appeals.
The 2011 appeal court was bent when the defenses got the Umbria region's top criminal judge blatantly forced aside in favor of a semi-senile business judge absolutely at sea on the law. Additionally his "independent" DNA experts were cherry-picked for him.
The 2015 Supreme Court was bent by way of known mafia connections and of the blatant breaking of Italian appeal law. Italian law enforcement never talks about mafia investigations before some bad guys are locked up, but one day the whole story should be widely known. We know much of it now.
2. Thirty PR Hoaxes To Make You Ignore The Above
Check out the 30 PR Hoaxes in our right column, or better still, wait a few days, and we will open a new page summarizing each hoax. What the Netflix hoaxers have done is to pick up a few of those hoaxes, and run with them in a mocking, sneering tone.
Hence the mocking, sneering tone of many ill-researched movie reviews.
The best way to annihilate the Netflix slant is to fully comprehend each hoax they used. One major hoax is that the synthetic Knox you see now is the real-life Knox around the time of the crime and at trial through 2009.
We can show that back then Amanda Knox was a loose cannon - and widely seen as such.
Another major hoax Amanda Knox herself advances in the film is that she was yelled at and abused by cops on 5-6 November 2007 over a long time. And so, desperate, she fingered as the real killer Patrick Lumumba.
Believe her? We address this question to Knox herself about the "interrogation" as described in her book six years later. Let us see if her response (if any) makes her look like someone you can blindly trust.
We will also post more later to destroy the interrogation hoax.
3. Question For Knox About Her "Interrogation"
Here is how you describe in BOTH editions of your book (2013 and 2015) a supposed interrogation by Prosecutor Mignini at your first (witness) interview. Below the quote, we describe what everyone else present says took place.
[This is the voluntary witness interview.] Eventually they told me the pubblico ministero would be coming in.
I didn't know this translated as prosecutor, or that this was the magistrate that Rita Ficarra had been referring to a few days earlier when she said they'd have to wait to see what he said, to see if I could go to Germany.
I thought the "public minister" was the mayor or someone in a similarly high "public" position in the town and that somehow he would help me.
They said, "You need to talk to the pubblico ministero about what you remember."
I told them, "I don't feel like this is remembering. I'm really confused right now." I even told them, "I don't remember this. I can imagine this happening, and I'm not sure if it's a memory or if I'm making this up, but this is what's coming to mind and I don't know. I just don't know."
They said, "Your memories will come back. It's the truth. Just wait and your memories will come back."
The pubblico ministero came in.
Before he started questioning me, I said, "Look, I'm really confused, and I don't know what I'm remembering, and it doesn't seem right."
One of the other police officers said, "We'll work through it."
Despite the emotional sieve I'd just been squeezed through, it occurred to me that I was a witness and this was official testimony, that maybe I should have a lawyer. "Do I need a lawyer?" I asked.
He said, "No, no, that will only make it worse. It will make it seem like you don't want to help us."
It was a much more solemn, official affair than my earlier questioning had been, though the pubblico ministero was asking me the same questions as before: "What happened? What did you see?"
I said, "I didn't see anything."
"What do you mean you didn't see anything? When did you meet him?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Where did you meet him?"
"I think by the basketball court." I had imagined the basketball court in Piazza Grimana, just across the street from the University for Foreigners.
"I have an image of the basketball court in Piazza Grimana near my house."
"What was he wearing?"
"Was he wearing a jacket?"
"What color was it?"
"I think it was brown."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I'm confused!"
"Are you scared of him?"
"I guess."
I felt as if I were almost in a trance. The pubblico ministero led me through the scenario, and I meekly agreed to his suggestions.
"This is what happened, right? You met him?"
"I guess so."
"Where did you meet?"
"I don't know. I guess at the basketball court."
"You went to the house?"
"Was Meredith in the house?"
"Did Patrick go in there?"
"I don't know, I guess so."
"I don't know. I guess in the kitchen."
"Did you hear Meredith screaming?"
"How could you not hear Meredith screaming?"
"I don't know. Maybe I covered my ears. I don't know, I don't know if I'm just imagining this. I'm trying to remember, and you're telling me I need to remember, but I don't know. This doesn't feel right."
He said, "No, remember. Remember what happened."
At that moment, with the pubblico ministero raining questions down on me, I covered my ears so I could drown him out.
He said, "Did you hear her scream?"
I said, "I think so."
My account was written up in Italian and he said, "This is what we wrote down. Sign it."
So you choose to portray yourself as reluctant to talk at all? While Dr Mignini relentlessly edges you more and more into saddling Patrick with the blame? While you have no lawyer there?
In fact, as you well know, every word of that dialogue is made up. You invented it. Dr Mignini was not even there. Right then, he was home in bed.
Now we contrast this malicious figment of your imagination with the account of that night by many others who were present at various times. Even you yourself essentially agreed to this narrative at trial, with the one exception that the slaps to your head that several observed were by you were actually by someone else.
Feel free to tell us where we have got this wrong:
1. You insist on being around in the central police station despite being grumpy and tired while Sollecito helps investigators to check a few claims.
2. After a while an investigator, Rita Ficarra, politely invites you to help build a list of names of men who might have known Meredith or the house. She is somewhat reluctant as it was late and no interpreter was on hand. You quite eagerly begin. An interpreter is called from home. You calmly produce seven names and draw maps.
3. Sollecito breaks suddenly and unexpectedly early in his own recap/summary session when confronted with phone records which showed he had lied. He quickly points the finger at you as the one having made him lie. You are briefly told he is saying you went out.
4. You break explosively soon after when an outgoing text shows up on your phone after you had claimed you sent none. You slap your head. You yell words to the effect that Patrick is the one, he killed Meredith. Police did not even know of the existence of Patrick before you identified the text as to him.
5. Thereafter you talk your head off, explaining how you had overheard Patrick attack Meredith at your house. The three ladies present and one man do what they can to calm you down. But you insist on a written statement, implicating him, and stating you went out from Sollecito's alone.
6. This from about 2:00 am is the state of play. You are taken to the bar for refreshments and helped to sleep. You testify at trial that you were given refreshments, and everybody treated you well.
7. As you had admitted being at the scene of a crime you had not reported, you had in effect admitted to a crime, so a legal Miranda-type caution is required saying the signee understands they should not talk without a lawyer, and if they do talk that can be used as evidence in court.
8. Dr Mignini, the on-call duty judge for that night, is by multiple account, including your own at trial, not present at that list-building session with Rita Ficarra, and in fact knows nothing about it until Rita Ficarra closes it down. He comes from home.
9. Dr Mignini reads you your rights. You now sign acknowledging you know you should not talk unless your lawyer is there. Dr Mignini asks you no questions. He is anxious to get the session over so he can get on to the task of pulling Patrick in. You yourself shrug off a lawyer and repeat your accusation and insist on a new written statement. Though you are again warned, you see it done.
10. Under Italian law that second statement could and should have been used against you, but the Supreme Court denied its use except against Patrick. Dr Mignini has said he thinks that was wrong in law but did not appeal.
Really a very simple chain of events, which was attested to at trial by all of those who had been present on the night, even including yourself.
There are no signs at all in anyone else's description that you were leaned on by anybody, and nobody at the central police station had the slightest vested interest in making you into a target that night.
So where precisely does this new claim in your book and the Netfllix film of an illegal interrogation by Dr Mignini fit in? Now would seem a very good time to simply admit it is a hoax. Remember all courts saw it as such.
Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/08 at 08:52 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxes against Italy, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 13 AK persona hoax, 15 Single alibi hoax, 16 Interrogation hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Mellas team, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case, Knox Book • Comments here (17)
Netflixhoax 9 Omitted - Numerous Facts The More Widely Viewed BBC Report Did Not Hide
1. The BBC Report
This fine BBC production has been aired in many countries and although it has been "officially" blocked in the US over one million have watched it there.
The superior Andrea Vogt/Paul Russell report for the BBC Is Amanda Knox Guilty? was made on a lower budget and took substantially less production time.
It actually contained some Italians other than two discredited DNA experts and a hoodwinked Dr Mignini and Nick Pisa.
British viewership exceeded 700,000 in its first airing in February 2014. Foreign broadcasts worldwide - mysteriously it was not ever aired in the US - exceeded that by up to 10 times. There are several pirated uploads available on BitTorrent, and YouTube views are well over 100,000.
Let us say a total of at least 5 million worldwide for the BBC production by Andrea Vogt and Paul Russell, and maybe up to twice that.
Promotion of the fair and unemotional BBC production was low-key worldwide. The formidable prosecution case is explained in an interesting way, and the very odd claim that some minor 2007 UK reporting is what swayed a row of judges and a smart Italian jury two years later is absent.
2. The Netflix Report
More than twice those who have watched the biased Netflix report online. It is hard to see Amanda Knox breaking even. It could be a big loss for the Knox-beholden producers.
iTechPost is estimating viewership of Amanda Knox as below 400,000. A typical primetime success in the US would exceed that by maybe 30 times.
The iTechPost report suggests that leaving so much factual material out, and simply playing to American emotions, looks to have been a major mistake.
By comparison, Netflix's Avery success Making A Murderer which dwelled on plenty of evidence (though not all of it) and courtroom drama exceeded one million views in the US for each of 10 episodes, making a total of over 10 million.
There were many more views elsewhere.
Amanda Knox included such audience-bait as demonization of the prosecutor to hiss at, and demonization of one UK reporter to hiss at. Plenty about Italian justice to hiss at.
Also a major (and long discredited) smear by Amanda Knox accusing the investigators of felonies - which Dr Mignini was not even told about, let alone allowed to respond to; now that would have been fair and interesting.
The promotional theme was Monster v Victim but the movie did not devote even a minute to exploring that theme. Now that really could have been interesting.
Amanda Knox was given pervasive and very expensive promotion in the US including a costly billboard in NYC's Madison Square Gardens. Netflix and Knox PR have engineered close to 100 positive reviews (though negative reader comments are in the clear majority).
3. The Bottom Line
Why pay to see PR distortions? Objectivity rules. Truth rules. Fairness rules. Fact rules. Good word-of-mouth rules. A lot less of the dishonest ultra-self-absorbed whiner Amanda Knox rules.
The ratings for Amanda Knox are a fail by Netflix's own Avery standard. And a big fail by the BBC standard.
Posted by The TJMK Main Posters on 10/07 at 06:40 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case • Comments here (10)
Netflixhoax 8: Omitted - Honest Picture Of Sleazy Production Team, Hard Facts That Challenge Them
I saw the film at the Toronto International Film Festival. As a passionate lover of movies and documentaries, I respect the right of ANYONE to create a documentary or film through the prism of their own POV.
On the other hand, they owe us, the audience, a modicum of honesty in their reporting. Otherwise, as some one once complained about deceptive editing and reporting in one of Katie Couric's documentaries, it prevents "democratic discourse" and this is what we ask.
By all means, engage with us, but do so honestly.
Having followed the case for many years as well as attending the earlier Supreme Court hearing in 2013 I can add the following:
Rudy Guede's lawyer Valter Biscotti had a lot more to say about his client being convicted 'in conjunction with others'. This was edited out, as well as the caption Knox put alongside her blog when she posed with a machine gun, "The Nazi Within". Something the media reported correctly at the time, McGinn and Blackhurst not.
The Producer Stephen Robert Morse hid his involvement in the project with Brian McGinn and Rod Blackhurst since 2011. They had ALL made inflammatory comments in favour of Amanda Knox over the years, with Morse hastily deleting some (but not all) as the Netflix sale came up.
He even called Nick Pisa "a piece of shit" in Perugia in 2011. It was the reputable Danish production company head Mette Heide that approached Mignini and Pisa, who didn't know of Morse's involvement, but that gives the background to this biased 'documentary' and why some may feel it is less than fair or balanced in its portrayal of the protagonists.
Mignini was referring to the Monster of Florence case when he talked of people coming up to shake his hand, the film makes it look like they were congratulating him for putting away Amanda Knox.
He was referring to it being an inside job when he said an "unknown" man (edited out to make him seem misogynistic) would not have covered Meredith with a blanket.
The film emphasized his Catholic beliefs to make it seem he was making a moralistic judgement about her. As he pointed out, the evidence was somewhat overwhelming. It also made it seem like his love of Sherlock Holmes was proof of him following a hunch. Um, that's what investigators sometimes do, especially when faced with the numerous prevarications and failed alibis of Amanda Knox. Obscuring the evidence to match your narrative is dishonest to the extreme.
The 'independent' DNA experts Conti and Vecchiotti were given lots of room to claim contamination though that was never proved in court, only inferred. Also left out: Vecchiotti's sentence for not maintaining sterile conditions in HER laboratory. Her switching a suspect's DNA with another in one of Italy's worst murder cases in order to falsely exonerate someone with 'connections'. The tests had to be redone to obtain a conviction. As they make fun of Nick Pisa for 'not fact-checking', should they not have fact-checked before they placed her on camera?
The biggest laugh the Toronto audience gave was WITH Nick Pisa when he said "I mean, she's (Knox) a complete and utter loon".
This follows the Netflix template of creating reasonable doubt as it did with "The Making Of A Murder". By over emphasizing the defense case, and ignoring the prosecution's, it reads like propaganda.
This is neither fair nor balanced, nor is it original. It adds nothing to our knowledge, being a rehash of her book and numerous TV interviews, and already covered in Michael Winterbottom's "The Face Of An Angel" in his fictionalized 'the making of a movie within a movie' adaptation of reporter Barbie Nadeau's book. Oh, and producer Morse insulted HER too.
There were several prosecutors and numerous judges helped convict her, not just prosecutor Mignini. Nor was it an exercise in misogyny, the case was largely driven by five women: Judge Claudia Matteini, co-prosecutor Manuela Comodi, Scientific Police DNA lab technician Patrizia Stefanoni, homicide Inspector Monica Napoleoni, and Inspector Rita Ficarra.
This exercise in PR looks like an Amanda Knox Production, with her playing the lead role, director, producer and writer. Yet she fails to see how she comes across with her melodramatic styling and emotive pauses and outbursts. She is neither believable nor sympathetic, no matter how hard they all try.
Two stars out of ten for production values and slick cinematography, none for the film itself.
In the end, the picture belongs to Meredith Kercher, remembered by her family with a grieving Arline Kercher, her mother saying how she just could not understand how there could be two convictions and two acquittals; justice denied.
And a haunting video of Meredith, taken in the full bloom of her youthful promise by Amanda Knox. She didn't want to be filmed, but as Knox admits in her book, she took the video anyway. (And included in her film).
Meredith Kercher, RIP.
Posted by Ergon on 10/05 at 09:33 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Evidence & Witnesses, The pack attack, Hoaxes against Italy, 2 Italian mileu hoax, 3 No evidence hoax, 4 No firm DNA hoax, 5 No pack attack hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, 12 Rabid media hoax, Hoaxes re Guede, 33 Sole attacker hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case • Comments here (8)
Netflixhoax 7: Omitted - How Knox Lied Repeatedly To Florence Court She Was Too Scared To Attend
1. Many false claims in the film
NONE of the false claims by speakers were rebutted. Not one, by the Knox PR team moonlighting as serious directors and producers.
The producers' bizarre technique was to place Knox, Sollecito, Conti & Vecchiotti in front of a camera and then to let them lie unchecked as they did repeatedly throughout the 90 minute film.
For example, Knox makes a very shrill claim in the film that she was repeatedly hit and forced into a "confession" by angry and abusive cops.
In fact she wasnt hit by anyone, except by herself. There was not even an interrogation that night - only the building of a list of names with a couple of kind cops.
Her own lawyers confirmed she was not hit, and they never filed a complaint. They publicly pleaded that she stop making things up. The movie never tells us this, never ever challenges Knox. We'll return to this false claim in depth.
For balance, how many Italian justice officials do you suppose the PR team invited to represent the huge team of police, prosecutors and judges, and all of the witnesses, and the huge body of evidence? And to rebut Knox' claims? After, all she was accusing his staff of crimes.
Precisely one. Dr Mignini. That was it.
He was not even told of the accusations of crimes from Knox. Instead he was asked to address only childish touchy-feely questions which no Italian journalist would ever dream of addressing to a highly trained prosecutor or judge. Dr Mignini is a regular on Italian TV explaining serious legal issues of some complexity, and is a master at it.
2. Lies previously reported and rebutted
We have so far rebutted seven false claims made by the team in the media or in the film in the previous posts here..
(1) That Knox was found innocent by the Fifth Chambers and fully exonerated or exculpated. No she wasnt. She was confirmed as being at the scene at the time with blood on her hands based on copious evidence, and any trial or appeal court which normally handles murders (the Fifth Chambers does not) would have insisted the Nencini verdict should stand. She remains guilty for life of calunnia and she still owes Patrick his award. Research anyone?
(2) That Dr Mignini hoodwinked the Justice system some way in a supposed pursuit of Amanda Knox although 30-plus judges in fact guided the judicial process - in Italian justice they and not prosecutors are the equivalent of American district attorneys. Raffaele Sollecito is conveniently not accounted for in this conspiracy theory, although with the possible exception of Patrick Lumumba's lawyer, Sollecito's words for Knox were the harshest, and his anger rattled on for years. Research anyone?
(3) That Dr Mignini pursued this because he had been convicted, although the conviction, by a rogue prosecutor and rogue judge in Florence with murky connections, had been annulled (in effect deleted; no record) by an appeal court and that confirmed by a strident Supreme Court ruling more than three years prior to the Netflix movie. Research anyone?
(4) That Dr Mignini had consulted a psychic, though it was widely known for many years that he had done no such thing and had written to Corriere at length refuting this more than three years prior to the Netflix movie. Research anyone?
(5) That Dr Mignini holds satanic and sex-orgy theories in this and other cases. No he does not. He has been on national TV pushing satanic theories back and saying they are few. The satanic theory of the Monster of Florence case goes back over a decade before he was requested to check an arm of the case. Knox and Sollecito and Guede were all convicted of murder with a sex-crime element, read all the judges reports prior to trial, all agreed an attack with a sexual aspect was what the evidence said. Research anyone?
(6) That the Italian justice system is somehow a dangerous error-prone joke (widely accepted as gospel by the movie's reviewers) though in fact it is one of the most careful systems in the world and unlike the American system (with which it links extensively) never ever sees a false conviction standing by the end of the exhaustive appeals process. Research anyone?
(7) That the release of a provisional positive HIV finding for Knox and a list she created of her recent sex partners was a malicious act by prison staff or prosecutors, though they released precisely NOTHING and it was the Knox defense team that was fervently distributing those materials (of considerable damage to Knox's public perception). Research anyone?
3. Starting to address Knox's lies
Much of what Knox says in the movie is untrue. That is not unusual. She consistently lies in all her interviews. She also consistently tries to damage people.
In her book alone we have counted several lies on each page, close to 1000, and about 100 instances of defamations, lies intended to create real damage.
We are going to post separately on each of Knox's most sweeping and most self-serving lies. Here, we give several dozen examples of lies repeatedly refuted, some of which are in the movie.
The Knox PR team moonlighting as serious directors and producers claim that they devoted SIX YEARS to getting their movie right. They could have found these rebuttals and read them all in a day or two if an honest movie was what they wanted to make.
Perhaps they were simply uncaring of the truth, lost in the complexities of the case, and uncaring of who they damaged, including the real victim's family, and of what portrait they offered of Italy and Italian justice and its officers, however damaging and vile and untrue.
Or perhaps they were already deeply corrupted, and crazed at the prospect of fame and future career prospects and bloodmoney. If so, they are in unsavory company.
4. Knox's lies to Italy (#1) rebutted
Knox does not often get the opportunity to lie on a grand scale to Italians. Just as well for her as the negative reaction is opposite and immediate.
Italians followed the trial in real-time witnessed a strident contemptuous sharp-tongued "Terminator Knox" on the witness stand for two days at trial, resulting in this sarcastic reaction and this sarcastic reaction.
"Daffy Knox" and "Terminator Knox" who forever sought media attention at trial in 2009 were retired from 2010 onward in favor of "Whiny Victim Knox".
In 2013 Knox was too timid to return for her own Florence appeal presided over by Judge Nencini, but not too timid to send him a massively self-infatuated email containing some of the same lies Knox repeats in the movie. Here they all are, easily rebutted by Finn MacCool in Dec 2013. Research anyone?
[By Finn MacCool] You can read here the email Amanda Knox sent to Judge Nencini.
It is dated 15 December 2013 and was handed to Dr Nencini by Dr Ghirga, apparently to the disdain of both of them. It contains many statements which, if she were under oath, could be considered perjury.
One telling point is that she claims "I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid." Her co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito, was not so afraid and he did present himself at an earlier stage of the proceedings.
He made a spontaneous statement and the judge assured him that he should feel free to intervene and make further interventions whenever he wished. So far he hasn't wished to - he preferred to head back to the Caribbean for his holiday.
But that event and that presence by Sollecito completely undermine the credibility of Knox's claim that she feels afraid of the court proceedings. There would be nothing to stop her coming and going, at this stage, just as Sollecito did.
I have no doubt that my lawyers have explained and demonstrated the important facts of this case that prove my innocence and discredit the unjustified accusations of the prosecution and civil parties.
That's what her lawyers were about to try to do. But instead they had to hand this email to the judge, showing their client's complete contempt for the court process.
I seek not to supplant their work
She doesn't want to supplant the work of her own lawyers? Most defendants don't, nor do they feel the need to tell the court that using an archaic seventeenth-century grammatical construction (where modern English would have "I do not mean to…" or "I do not wish to"¦")
Because I am not present to take part in [my own appeal], I feel compelled to share.
As Judge Nencini said, if anyone wants to talk to a court, come to court. Knox chose not to be present, which means that the word "because" is not a logical connector for why she feels compelled to share what she thinks. "Even though" would make more sense.
The Court has access to my previous declarations and I trust will review them…
The court has access to thousands of pages. Everybody trusts that courts will review the evidence before passing judgment "" that's how the legal process works.
I must repeat: I am innocent.
In fact she does not have to repeat that, which is simply a reiteration of her not guilty plea.
I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid.
The wording is reminiscent of a previous declaration, "I am very afraid of Patrik, the African boy who…" Also the court may remember the presence of her co-defendant, who made a brief presentation to the court (and was invited to intervene again at any time he saw fit) and who afterwards flew back to his extended vacation in the Dominican Republic. It is difficult to see what the defendants have to be afraid of from the court, except perhaps the truth.
I am afraid that the prosecution's vehemence will leave an impression on you, that their smoke and mirrors will blind you.
The prosecution's case has already been made; this was the opportunity for the defense to make their case. It is the court's duty to consider the evidence without being overly swayed by the vehemence of lawyers from either side "" they look at the facts, and pass judgment based on that, and this happens in literally millions of cases every year. (Cassazione alone reviews more than 80 thousand cases each year.)
This is not for lack of faith in your powers of discernment, but because the prosecution has succeeded before in convincing a perfectly sound court of concerned and discerning adults to convict innocent people "" Raffaele and me.
The second half of the sentence contradicts the first. The writer is explicitly stating that she doubts that the court has sufficient powers of discernment to be able to see through the prosecution's arguments. Her justification for saying this is simply that it has happened before, with a previous court.
I've attentively followed this process and gleaned the following facts…
This is a delusional statement. The writer is the defendant, who is the subject of the process, not an external observer to it. We can compare it with her statements following her arrest, in which she claimed still to be helping the police on an equal basis with them, despite being charged with the murder.
No physical evidence places me in Meredith's bedroom, the scene of the crime…
The bedroom is where the murder took place, but the crime scene is much wider than that, and certainly encompasses the adjoining room where the burglary was faked, the bathroom where the killers cleaned up, and the corridor that connects those rooms. Knox's blood, DNA, bare footprints are all found in those places. Within Meredith's room itself, there is also a woman's shoeprint that does not match the victim, and which Knox's own lawyer was obliged to claim was caused by an unfortunate fold in the pillowcase.
Meredith's murderer left ample evidence in the brutal scenario: handprints, footprints, shoe prints in Meredith's blood, DNA in her purse, on her clothing, in her body.
The term "brutal scenario" makes no sense here, although she repeats it again a couple of lines later. Perhaps she means "crime scene" or "bedroom". The only footprints found at the crime scene are those of Knox and Sollecito. A woman's shoeprint in the room where the murder took place cannot be that of either Guede or the victim, and is most likely that of Knox.
The prosecution has failed to explain how I could have… been the one to fatally wound Meredith "" without leaving any genetic trace of myself. That is because it is impossible.
Actually it is perfectly possible to do this "" for example, simply by stabbing someone to death while wearing gloves. However, in this case the prosecution has in fact explained how several traces of Knox's DNA have been found on the handle of the knife which had the victim's DNA on the blade. That obviously fits a scenario in which Knox stabbed Meredith Kercher with that knife.
Either I was there, or I wasn't.
The same thing applies to the appeal court. Either the defendants are there, or they are not. In this case, the defendant is not.
The analysis of the crime scene answers this question: I wasn't there.
Knox's footprints, blood and DNA, sometimes mixed with that of the victim, all place her at the crime scene, and so does her DNA on the handle of the murder weapon.
My interrogation was illegal and produced a false "confession" that demonstrated my non-knowledge of the crime.
"Non-knowledge" is a curious word. Knox's witness interview was perfectly legal "" it was only the unexpected confession from the witness that changed the status of that interview, so that its contents could no longer be used against her. But there is no question over its legality.
The subsequent memoriali, for which I was wrongfully found guilty of slander…
This is an extraordinary aside. The defendant is here rejecting the legitimacy of the Italian Supreme Court, which has definitively found against her, and is also rejecting the findings of the Hellmann court that provisionally freed her, pending appeal. Every single court has found against her on this count.
. ...did not further accuse but rather recanted that false "confession".
Let us reread some excerpts from this supposed recantation: "After dinner I noticed there was blood on Raffaele's hand… I stand by my statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrik… In these flashbacks I'm having, I see Patrik as the murderer…Why did I think of Patrik?... Is there any other evidence condemning Patrik or any other person?" This is not a recantation, and it does in fact contain further accusations of Patrick Lumumba while also seeking to throw suspicion both on Sollecito and an unnamed "other person".
My behavior after the discovery of the murder indicates my innocence.
As dozens of witnesses have testified in a series of trials and appeals, Knox's post-murder behavior indicated the exact opposite, which is why suspicion fell on her in the first place.
I did not flee Italy when I had the chance.
On page 71 of her memoir, Knox recounts the following exchange with Officer Ficarra, on the day after the murder was discovered: "My parents want me to go to Germany to stay with relatives for a couple of weeks. Is that okay?" She said, "You can't leave Perugia. You're an important part of the investigation."
I stayed in Perugia and was at the police's beck and call for over 50 hours in four days.
Chapter Ten of her memoir gives her own account of what she did on Monday, November 5th. She went to a nine o'clock grammar class, at which she refused to discuss the case with her fellow students; she spoke on the phone with her Aunt Dolly, admitting that she had not yet contacted the US embassy; she bumped into Patrick Lumumba where she refused to talk to BBC reporters; she spent the afternoon with Sollecito and then accompanied him to a friend's house where she played the ukulele. Far from being at the police's beck and call, she ignored their request that she stay home while they interview Sollecito separately, and turned up to the Questura regardless, although not before they had finished their evening meal.
The police coerced me into signing a false "confession""¦.
Her false accusation of Patrick Lumumba, for which she was convicted and has already served four years in prison, was not a confession and was not coerced.
. "¦one may be coerced into giving a false "confession" because of psychological torture"¦ This is a universal problem.
The US-based Innocence Project reports that there have been 244 exonerations since 2000, which is just over seventeen per year, which in turn means that currently in the USA, roughly 0.1% of cases are eventually overturned. Being wrongfully convicted might be devastating for the person concerned, but it is not a universal problem.
I did not carry around Raffaele's kitchen knife.
The defendant has not been accused of carrying the knife around, but rather of stabbing Meredith Kercher to death with it. Forensic evidence supports that accusation, too.
I had no contact with Rudy Guede. Like many youth in Perugia, I had once crossed paths with Rudy Guede.
Very typical of Knox's writing is this kind of self-contradiction, sometimes occurring within the same sentence, or as in this case, in consecutive sentences, seemingly with no self-awareness that any contradiction has even occurred.
If the prosecution truly had a case against me, there would be no need for these theatrics.
The prosecution is present in the court, having made its presentation in the usual way. The defense lawyers are about to do exactly the same thing. The only theatrics happening in the court at that moment is a bizarre email sent by one of the defendants, in lieu of attending her own appeal to her own murder conviction.
But because no evidence exists that proves my guilt, the prosecution would seek to deceive you with these impassioned, but completely inaccurate and unjustified pronouncements.
No further comments… [End Finn MacCool]
The Italian weekly magazine Oggi is actually on trial for contempt of court for translating and republishing some of the numerous lies and defamations in Knox's book Waiting To Be Heard. This is the article with offending Knox quotes in bold, and below our own rebuttal. Research anyone?
Amanda Knox: The American girl's sensational story
Chilling. No other adjectives come to mind after having read Waiting to be Heard, finally released in the United States. An extremely detailed and very serious charge against the police and magistrates who conducted the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher.
Immediately after the crime, Amanda recounts, and for entire days and nights, they had interrogated the American girl and placed her under pressure to make her confess to a non-existent truth, without officially investigating her, denying her the assistance of a lawyer, telling her lies, even prohibiting her from going to the bathroom and giving her smacks so as to make her sign a confession clearly extorted with something similar to torture.
And now the situation is very simple. There are only two choices: either Amanda is writing lies, and as a consequence the police officers and magistrates are going to have to sue her for defamation; or else she is telling the truth, and so they are going to have to go, not without being sanctioned by the CSM [the magistrates' governing body] and the top brass of the Police. The third possibility, which is to pretend that nothing has happened, would be shameful for the credibility of our judicial system.
Amanda Knox has written her Waiting to be Heard memoir with the sense of revulsion and of relief of someone who has escaped by a hair's breadth from a legal disaster, but has got her sums wrong. Cassation has decided that the [appeal] proceedings have to be redone and the hearings should be (re)commencing in October before the Florence Court of Appeal.
In a USA Today interview, Ms Knox has not excluded the possibility of "returning to Italy to face this battle too", but it would be a suicidal decision: it's likely that the appeal will result in a conviction, and the Seattle girl will end up in the black hole from which she has already spent 1,427 days.
In this way Waiting to be Heard risks being the "film" on which Amanda's last words are recorded about the Mystery of Perugia, her definitive version.
We have read a review copy. And we were dumbfounded. Waiting to be Heard is a diary that has the frenetic pace of a thriller, written in a dry prose (behind the scenes is the hand of Linda Kulman, a journalist at the Huffington Post), even "promoted" by Michiko Kakutani, long-time literary critic at the New York Times.
The most interesting part does not concern the Raffaele Sollecito love story (which Amanda reduces it to puppy love: "With the feeling, in hindsight, I knew that he… that we were still immature, more in love with love than with each other"), and whoever goes looking for salacious details about the three Italian boys Amanda had casual sex with, one night stands, will be frustrated (Ms Knox describes those enounters with the nonchalance of an entomologist disappointed with his experiments: "We undressed, we had sex, I got dressed again with a sense of emptiness").
There are no scoops about the night of the murder and even the many vicissitudes endured during the 34,248 hours spent in Capanne prison "" the [claimed] sexual molestations suffered under two guards, the unexpected kiss planted by a bisexual cellmate, the threats made by another two prisoners "" remain on the backdrop, like colourful notations.
Because what is striking and upsetting, in the book, is the minute descriptions, based on her own diaries, on the case documents and on a prodigious memory, of how Ms Knox had been incriminated (or "nailed").
COME IN KAFKA. A Kafkian account in which the extraordinary naivety of Amanda (the word naïve, ingénue, is the one which recurs most often in the 457 pages of the book) mixes with the strepitous wickedness of the investigators decided on "following a cold and irrational trail because they had nothing better in hand".
Devour the first 14 chapters and ask yourself: is it possible that the Police and Italian justice work with such incompetence, ferocity, and disdain for the truth? You place yourself in her situation and you scare yourself: If it happened to me? You're in two minds: is it a likely accusation, or a squalid calumny, the version of Amanda?
Because in reading it you discover that in the four days following the discovery of Meredith Kercher's body (on 2 November 2007), Amanda was interrogated continuously, and without the least of procedural guarantees [=due process].
She changes status from witness to suspect without being aware of it." No one had told me my rights, no one had told me that I could remain silent", she writes. When she asked if she had the right to a lawyer, the Public Prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, had responded like this: "No, no, that will only worsen things: it would mean that you don't want to help us". Thus, the Public Prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini.
For a long period of time, Ms Knox, who at the time spoke and understood hardly any Italian at all, mistook him for the Mayor of Perugia, come to the police station to help her.
Then, with the passage of time and of the pages, the assessment changes: Mignini is a prosecutor "with a bizarre past", investigated for abuse of office (he was convicted at first instance, but Cassation annulled the verdict on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction: the case will be held in Torino "" ndr) and with the hunger to fabricate "strange stories to solve his cases".
Mignini "is a madman who considers his career more important than my liberty or the truth about the killing of Meredith". On the phone, the Perugian prosecutor reacts with aplomb: "First I will read the book and then I will consider it. Certainly, if it really calls me "˜mad' or worse, I think I will file suit".
BEING IN PRISON IS LIKE CAMPING Amanda goes looking. When the officers mysteriously bring her along to the crime scene inspection of the apartment below the one in which she and Meredith were living in, Ms Knox put on the shoe protectors and the white forensics gloves and called out Ta-dah! spreading her arms "as if I was at the start of a musical: I wanted to appear helpful".
When they dragged her in handcuffs into Capanne Prison, she believed what the Police would have told her, and that was they would hide her for a couple of days to protect her (from the true killer, one presumes) and for unspecified bureaucratic reasons. "In my head I was camping: "˜This won't last more than a week in the mountains', I told myself," writes Amanda.
They take her money off her, and her credit cards, licence and passport, and she draws strength from repeating to herself that "surely they're not going to give me a uniform, seeing that I'm a special case and that I'll be here for only a little while".
But it's the account of the notorious interrogation that takes the breath away. Around ten in the evening on her last day of freedom, Ms Knox accompanies Raffaele to the police station (he was called in, also without a lawyer, by the Police) and is thrown into a nightmare which she populates with many faces: there is Officer Rita Ficcara, who gives her two cuffs on the head ("To help you remember," she would say); there's another officer who advises her: "If you don't help us, you'll end up in prison for 30 years"; Mignini arrives and advises her not to call a lawyer; super-policewoman Monica Napoleoni dives in and bluffs: "Sollecito has dropped your alibi: he says that on the night of the murder you had left his apartment and that you had told him to lie to "˜cover you'".
And a crescendo of yelling and intimidations that lasts from 11 at night until 5.45 in the morning. Seven hours "produce" two confessions that, exactly because they are made without a defence lawyer, cannot be used in the proceedings, but forever after "stain" the image of the accused Knox: Amanda places herself at the scene of the crime and accuses Patrick Lumumba.
RAFFAELE CONFIRMS THE ACCUSATIONS An account of the horror is confirmed by Sollecito in his memoir, Honor Bound, Raffaele writes of having heard "the police yelling at Amanda and then the cries and sobs of my girl, who was yelling "˜Help!' in Italian in the other room", and of having being threatened in his turn ("If you try to get up and go, I'll punch you till you'll bleed and I'll kill you. I'll leave you in a pool of blood", another officer had whispered to him).
Published lines which have passed right under the radar of the Perugian investigators: "No legal action [against the interrogators] has been notified to us," Franco Sollecito, Raffaele's dad, tell us. For having recounted the sourness of her interrogation in court, Amanda was investigated for calunnia: the trial will take place in Florence. This one, too, will be a circumstantial case: it's the word of two young people against that of the public prosecutor and the police.
The recording of the interrogation would have unveiled which side the truth stands on. But it has gone missing.
Our own rebuttals:
Knox was NOT interrogated for days and nights. She was put under no pressure in her brief witness interviews except possibly by Sollecito who had just called their latest alibi "a pack of lies".
Knox WAS officially investigated in depth, after she surprisingly "confessed" and placed herself and Patrick at the scene. Prior to that she'd been interviewed less than various others, who each had one consistent alibi.
Knox herself pushed to make all three statements without a lawyer on the night of 5-6 November 2007 in which she claimed she went out from Sollecito's house, met Patrick, and witnessed him killing Meredith.
Far from Knox being denied a lawyer, discussions were stopped before the first statement and not resumed, in the later hearing she was formally warned she needed one; she signed a confirmation of this in front of witnesses.
Prosecutor Mignini who Knox accuses of telling her a lawyer would hurt her prospects when she claims she asked for one was not even in the police station at that interview; he was at home.
She was not prohibited from going to the bathroom. At trial, she testified she was treated well and was frequently offered refreshments. Her lawyers confirmed this was so.
She was not given smacks by anyone, though she did repeatedly smack her own head. Over a dozen witnesses testified that she was treated well, broke into a conniption spontaneously, and thereafter her talking was hard to stop.
There is no evidence whatsoever that Knox was subject to "something similar to torture" and as mentioned above only Sollecito applied any pressure, not any of the police.
There is nothing "suicidal" about returning to Italy to defend herself at the new appeal. Sollecito did. She risks an international arrest warrant and extradition if she doesn't.
There is no proof except for her own claims of sexual molestations in prison; she is a known serial liar; and she stands out for an extreme willingness to talk and write about sex.
Many people have testified she was treated well in prison: her own lawyers, a member of parliament, and visitors from the US Embassy were among them; she herself wrote that it was okay.
She may have based her account on her diaries and "prodigious memory" but the obviously false accusation against the prosecutor suggests that much of the book was made up.
The investigators had a great deal of evidence against Knox in hand, not nothing, and they were not ever faulted for any action; they helped to put on a formidable case at trial in 2009.
"Police and Italian justice work with such incompetence, ferocity, and disdain for the truth" is contradicted by a very complete record prior to trial which was praised by the Supreme Court.
Mr Mignini has NO bizarre past at all. He is widely known to be careful and fair. He would not have been just promoted to first Deputy Prosecutor General of Umbria otherwise.
He was put on trial by a rogue prosecutor desperate to protect his own back from Mignini's investigations; the Supreme Court has killed the trumped up case dead.
There was nothing "mysterious" about Knox being taken to the crime scene to see if any knives were gone, but her wailing panic when she saw the knives was really "mysterious".
Knox never thought she was in prison for her own protection; she had signed an agreement at the 5:00 am interview confirming she did know why she was being held.
Monica Napoleoni did not "bluff" that Sollecito had just trashed their joint alibi; he actually did so, because his phone records incriminated him; he agreed to that in writing.
There was no crescendo of "yelling and intimidations that lasts from 11 at night until 5.45". There were two relatively brief sessions. Knox did most of the talking, named seven possible perps, and drew maps.
There was zero legal requirement to record the recap/summary interview, no recording has "gone missing" and many officers present testified to a single "truth" about what happened.
6. Coming up In Our Next Posts
More of the same. Knox blowing smoke and our exposing her. Some of the same smoke she blew for Netflix. And also, our lies of omission seies.
Posted by The TJMK Main Posters on 10/03 at 12:58 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Appeals 2009-2015, Florence 2014+, Hoaxes Knox & team, 13 AK persona hoax, 15 Single alibi hoax, 16 Interrogation hoax, 17 Fake memory hoax, 20 No-PR hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Mellas team, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case • Comments here (9)
Netflixhoax 6: Omitted - The Almost Unique Carefulness Of Italy's Justice System
Bigotry for fame and profit: Stephen Robert Morse, Rod Blackhurst, and Brian McGinn
1. Wrong "facts" and numerous omissions
As first explained previously in this series the very loaded Netflix report Amanda Knox included some seriously wrong "facts".
Here is another of them. The HIV Hoax. Italian doctors did NOT fool Knox about a possible HIV positive; they told her in confidence not to worry, they would retest (a common practice in HIV testing) and that test soon came back negative.
NOBODY in the justice system leaked about this. The leak to the media complete with Knox's list of recent sex partners was blatantly and well-recordedly made by the Knox-Mellas defense team. Even several of us were leaked-to - this was months before we got a grip on the case.
We shall be deconstructing the various wrong "facts".
But mainly though the film operated at the level of cut-and-paste innuendo. And it banked on the extreme ignorance of its audience. Hundreds of inconvenient facts were omitted, any few of which would have disrupted its propaganda purpose.
We shall be adding in the numerous omissions.
2. The report's macro-level takeaways
About 50 movie reviewers so far have mostly declared these to be their main takeways.
(1) A muddled or desperate or evil Dr Mignini framed Knox and fooled his co-prosecutor, numerous experts, 30-plus judges, and most of Italy.
(2) The justice system of Italy is a dangerous error-prone joke, but thankfully some much smarter Americans are here, to save silly Italy from itself.
(3) Somehow a few BRITISH tabloids influenced an ITALIAN jury to vote "guilty" and the damning prosecution case the hapless defenses did not once dent in 2009 was immaterial.
All three of them are untrue. We'll take a first stab at correcting for them below, with much more to come.
(1) The REAL Dr Mignini
He framed Knox? On this there is vast evidence to the contrary. Dr Mignini has already explained some and we have much more to come. Dr Mignini had no motive, early on he was pretty good to Knox, and the checks and balances against any such hoax are simply enormous.
Ask yourself, why would a prosecutor intent on framing Knox do this recorded interrogation?
In fact he did it as a favor to Knox, because she asked him for it. She asked also for the interrogation at trial. Those were the ONLY two interrogations of Knox. Both damning. There were no others, ever.
In both of them, Knox by her own tongue dropped herself in it, far more than any police or prosecutor ever did. The second had a major effect on the jury (and on Italy).
In that same post we pointed to two of the Netflix team's numerous self-serving omissions.
(1) [The movie] appears to accept that innocence was proved and that Knox and Sollecito had zero role. That was not what the Supreme Court said. [See Dr Mignini's final paras.]
(2) Italian lawyers think the Fifth Chambers ruling may have been illegal as well as bent. The reasoning can be read here. That is headed to court soon.
(2) Italy's REAL justice system
Pretty well the exact opposite of what you'd suppose if you read only Michael Heavey and Frank Sforza and Paul Ciolino and Bruce Fischer and John Douglas and Saul Kassin and Steve Moore and of course Doug Preston and the late Mario Spezi. Read only them, and one might be excused for thinking Italy's is a huge, horrible system which the Italian population desperately needs THEM to save it from! Bigotry for fame and profit.
A total illusion, which Morse, Blackhurst, and McGinn now want you to swallow. Bigotry for fame and profit.
The main characteristics of the Italian system are (1) a large and visible national and local police presence with excellent forensics labs, (2) a low crime rate even by European standards, and even more-so by American standards, and (3) a very low rate of incarceration that is only 1/6 the rate of the US.
The system is immensely careful and with two AUTOMATIC rights of appeal for convictions for serious crimes the chances of a false conviction standing are zero. Compare this with thousands uncovered in the US. The vast wave of appeals has clogged the courts and right now Parliament is trying to reverse this.
Appellants have a huge advantage which makes it easy for them to game this system: the prosecution presents their case ONLY at trial. Then seasoned defences can game bewildered prosecutors at higher levels.
Officially the US knows all of this. It has much to gain politically from Italian co-operation and works very hard on their functional relationships. The FBI and the Italian equivalent embed one another's officers in Rome and Washington, aid one another's labs, share huge amounts of information, mutually take down mafia, and organize dozens of extraditions annually.
Almost all prosecutors are highly-trained by career-path; the only three who were not in this case (Judges Hellmann, Marasca and Bruno) and sprung Knox and Sollecito are all believed to have been corrupted.
Finally, the mafias and fellow-travelers work hard to smear police and prosecutors (as well as assassinating them, over 100 now). In this respect the Knox PR has wittingly or unwittingly been functioning as an arm of the mafias. Bongiorno, substituted for the hapless Sollecito PR which cost Vanessa her Carabinieri post, became famous for mafia defenses.
The 20 posts we link to below go deeper. You might read at least the headlines and the quotes below. That Italy's is a pretty good system should be compelling.
1. Click here for post: How Italian Justice REALLY Works
Comparing the US and UK common law system - a model founded on non-written laws and developed through judicial proceedings - with this system which arose from the Roman Law model - based on a written civil code - is really like comparing apples to oranges.
They were both conceived to protect individual's rights at a maximum level, while seeking justice for the victims. But with entirely different processes.
One is not necessarily better or worse. But there are legal experts who think the Italian system is distinctly fairer - much more weighted toward the defendants. In the US and the UK the prosecutor usually has to make it through only one pre-trial hoop. In Italy the prosecutor has to make it through a whole row of pre-trial hoops…
2. Click here for post: Why The Prosecutors In Italy Are Relatively Popular
Italy's a tough country with, albeit dwindling now, a legacy of violent crime, and many brave prosecutors over the years have been assassinated.
And the Italian legal system is not particularly weighted in their direction, with a large number of hurdles they have to climb over before a case ever gets to trial.
And the Italian prison system is relatively lenient, heavily pro-prisoner-remediation and early release, and proportionally only 1/10 the size of the US's.
So the endemic attempts to undermine Prosecutor Mignini have invariably won only MORE popular support for him and his case in Perugia and Italy in general.
3. Click here for post: Why The Italian Judiciary's Probably Less Prone to Pressure Than Any Other In The World
Italian magistrates enjoy an extraordinary level of autonomy from the other powers of government (executive and legislative) and the point of this post is to explain why. This autonomy is above all due to the Italian constitutional framework.
That framework is intended to guarantee such an exceptional level of independence so as to avoid the abuses that occurred during Mussolini's fascist regime, when Italian magistrates were forced by the executive to prosecute (and persecute) political opponents to the fascist dictator…
4. Click here for post: Explaining How The Italian Appeals Process Works And Why It Consumes So Much Time
The extraordinary broad appeal rights awarded by the Italian system are all part of the 1989 reform, which intended to add even more guarantees to the right of the accused. This has resulted in an incredible increase in pending cases in the overburdened Italian justice system….
This situation is exacerbated by the broad appeal rights guaranteed also on the 2nd level of appeal, at the Supreme Court of Cassation. Like other supreme courts around the world, such court does not re-examine the entire body of evidence, but only "˜errores in iudicando' and "˜errores in procedendo' (errors in procedure or application of the law).
However, unlike its American or English counterparts, the Italian Supreme Court cannot refuse to review a case, and defendants have unlimited appeal rights to the Supreme Court of Cassation. They don't even have to wait for the Appeal Court. You can in fact appeal to the Supreme Court directly after the first trial. ...
5. Click here for post: Barbara Benedettelli: Campaigner For Victims And Families Says Italian System Denies Them Justice
There are proportionally very few perpetrators in Italians prison by global standards, and when there in prison they are given quite a nice time, trained to perform usefully when released, and very often get out of prison early.
Seemingly very humane. But this does carry very high costs. There are often almost unbearable pressures on victims' families, as Meredith's father John Kercher has several times described. On top of all this, there is the growing western fascination with perps, and in many cases their elevating to popular cult-worship status.
Barbara Benedettelli is a writer and columnist and the editor of the popular "Top Secret" program on Rete4 TV… Her latest book (only in Italian) is called "Victims Forever". She talks of various prominent perps and the enormous and unrequiting pressures on victims' families. In polls a large majority of Italians detest this. They want much less stress on "fairness" and MUCH more compassion for victims families and, if still alive, for the victims.
6. Click here for post: Harvard Political Review Writer Alex Koenig Reproaches The Sliming of Italy's Justice System
The fact of the matter is, those that immediately claim that Knox was wrongly accused and jailed by a corrupt justice system make two extremely arrogant assumptions that reveal perverse American exceptionalism.
1) It is assumed that, as an American "" an American woman no less "" Knox is incapable of murder. This case differs, of course, from the 1,176 domestic murders committed by women because, well, who knows?
2) It is assumed that not only is the Italian justice system incapable of fulfilling its legal duties, but that the intentions of the court were swayed by anti-Americanism.
This is not merely an abstract sentiment, but was actually articulated by Senator Maria Cantwell (D) of my home state of Washington.
7. Click here for post: Interesting Tilts Of Marcia Clark And Alan Dershowitz Toward Educated, Informed Italian-type Juries
"[American] jury instructions are so numerous and complex, it's a wonder jurors ever wade through them. And so it should come as no surprise that they can sometimes get stuck along the way. The instruction on circumstantial evidence is confusing even to lawyers. And reasonable doubt? That's the hardest, most elusive one of all. And I think it's where even the most fair-minded jurors can get derailed."
"Well, if you want justice, don't look to the criminal law system. That's not its job. Its job is not to produce a just result. Its job is to produce a legally correct result…"
"We've opted for a much more democratic system, and it means that in the end you're going to be dissatisfied with a lot of verdicts. Just don't expect too much from our legal system. Don't expect truth. Don't expect justice, because that's not what it's supposed to give you."
8. Click here for post: The Chief Enforcer Of The Constitution And The Rule Of Law is Wildly Popular Throughout Italy
He is said to receive dozens of petitions a day and in certain cases he does act to get things done. Significantly, two that he chose to ignore recently concerned the ongoing Sollecito-Knox appeal process.
Of two pretty blatant attempts to bias the Perugia process, one came from Joel Simon of the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, and one came from the junior Berlusconi-party MP Rocco Girlanda.
President Giorgio Napolitano simply ignored both of them.
9. Click here for post: Compared To Italy, Say, Precisely How Wicked Is The United States?
We have often remarked that Italy's crime rate is low, the three mafia families (Sicily, Calabria and Naples) are on the rocks, and the justice system is one of the most cautious - conviction rates are infuriatingly low for the suffering families of victims, but in a forgiving Catholic nation rates of incarceration are unlikely to jump any time soon.
The American incarceration rate in sharp contrast has for a decade led the rest of the world, and it increased every year for nearly 30 straight years from the arrival of President Reagan to the departure of President GW Bush. Its prison rate is ahead of Russia's, with its mafias and corruption and poverty, and ahead of China's, with its large population of political prisoners.
10. Click here for post: Involvement Of The Formidable Carabinieri Shows How Italian Justice Will Not Be Leaned Upon
Judge Nencini may have invoked the help of the Carabinieri for reasons going beyond simply very good science.
Italy has among the world's lowest crime-rates, murder-rates and incarceration-rates. Unusually low criminal and anti-social tendencies among native-born Italians, and strong family pride, explains a large part of this.
But another main reason is the high-profile and exceptionally smart police presence. Deliberately a cool presence rather than a hot and intimidating presence, and in fact a very popular one
11. Click here for post: Italy's Unpopular Politicians And Mafia Fellow Travelers Against Italy's Popular Justice System
For comparison, in 2011 the percentage of Italians who declared they trust the justice system "a lot" or "enough" was 53.3%. By comparison, the percentage of Italians who declared they trust the government "a lot" or "enough" were 14.7%, and those who trust the parliament were only 15%.
In 2012, the percentage of Italians who trust the parliament is now only 9.5%, and those who trust the Mario Monti administration are only 21.1%.
Over the eight years from 2004 to 2012 the percentage of Italians who trust the justice system was always bigger than those who trust parliament or government by at least ten points, and in some years we can see a spread of 20, 30, even 39 percentage points achieved by the judiciary over the parliament and government.
12. Click here for post: Italy's Advanced, Effective, Humane Law & Order System Also Adopted By City Of New York
New York is now the safest big city in America. It is following a route that is not only almost identical to Italy's - it is being watched and emulated elsewhere across the US….
Now that the United States has the world's highest reported rate of incarceration, many criminologists are contemplating another strategy. What if America reverted to the penal policies of the 1980s? What if the prison population shrank drastically? What if money now spent guarding cellblocks was instead used for policing the streets?
13. Click here for post: Italian Prime Minister Renzi Will Push Measures To Speed Up Justice
In a move popular not least among those who are part of it Mr Renzi announces moves to speed up Italian justice.
Italian justice and those who work in it are widely trusted and respected in Italy. But a very humane system designed post WWII to give those accused a level of rights unique in the world has been even further tilted over the years by politicians passing laws to aid political and business colleagues in legal trouble.
14. Click here for post: Why Numerous American JUDGES Favor The Supremely Neutral Italian Kind Of System
See that above at the bottom of the YouTube screen? Some $280 million has been spent since the year 2000. Can you guess what the $280 million was for?
In fact the $280 million is funds raised and spent for judges' election campaigns in the roughly 3/4 of all American states where such judges' elections are held - the original intention of which was good: to get judicial choices out of smoke-filled rooms.
15. Click here for post: Meredith May Not See Justice (Yet) But She Will Leave At Least Three Legacies
Knox behaved grossly irresponsibly in heading to Perugia under-funded, intent on drug-doing, and with zero intention of seriously studying.
The University of Washington and many others realised they could have huge liabilities if they did not distance themselves a lot from such loose cannons in future.
In October 2009 we reposted this report by Andrea Vogt which described the initiation of measures many American universities have now come to implement….
16. Click here for post: Counterterrorism: Another Way Italian Law Enforcement Is An Effective Model For Everywhere Else
A leading military analyst is citing Italy as a model of counterterrorism done right, pointing out that despite many factors going against it, Islamic terrorists have failed to kill a single person on Italian soil.
17. Click here for post: Italian Justice & The Telling Status Of Extraditions To And From Italy
If countries agree to extradite to other countries, that suggests a high degree of trust in justice at both ends. They are in effect voting confidence in each other's justice systems.
Italy achieves an exceptionally high rate of extraditions in both directions and continues to sign more bilateral treaties.
It is clearly trusted almost worldwide as a destination where those charged will receive a fair shake. And it is very no-nonsense about sending back fleeing felons who try to go to ground there.
18. Click here for post: Knox's Nasty-Prisons Hoax: NY Times Describes How Italy Leads The World In Rehabilitation
Around five years ago, largely because of immigrant crimes, the prison population (previously below 100,000 - in the US, California prisons alone hold almost twice that) began to balloon.
New prisons were built, with no expenses spared, and in these images you can see the result.
Stories of extreme over-crowding have gone away, and the New York Times profiles the new prisons and their programs of today.
19. Click here for post: How The Italian "Justice Tortoise" Is The Likely Winner Compared To For Example the US System
Italy is working to try to update its justice system right now and we will report on that shortly. At least in theory, it has one of the easiest tasks in the world, because post WWII its legal system was redesigned from the ground up. It had already junked bad aspects, some going back centuries.
Italy already has some of the world's smartest juries - jury service is compulsory, so smart people cannot dodge them. And the system already has some other very positive things going for it.
Mainly what is needed is some weeding. And such reforms are made easier in Italy because (1) judges and prosecutors all follow career paths and so they are not politically competing with one another; and (2) there is the Council of Magistrates (CSM) which can be very progressive in the reforms it pushes at its level.
20. Click here for post: So Where Would YOU Want To Go On Trial? In Italy Or In The U.S.?
We have still not seen even ONE American lawyer claim that after the first trial in 2009 which found RS and AK guilty that there were strong grounds for an appeal.
In the US, back in 2009, full prison terms would have been begun.
And in fact virtually nothing at the 2009 trial was challenged in the appeal. But the defenses subversively organized to get Civil Judge Hellmann instead of Criminal Judge Chiari to preside, and in 2011 a farcical "not guilty" outcome was the result.
Then there was a THIRD jury trial, in 2013-14, which (as so often in Italy) threw out the not guilty outcome of the previous appeal trial.
And finally, in 2015, due to more subversive defense machinations with a little mafia help, the final Supreme Court appeal was assigned to the FIFTH Chambers, for the first murder appeal that Chambers has ever heard.
A second farcical "not guilty" outcome was the result.
Say what you like about the American system, there is not remotely any parallel in its judicial history to all of that. Quite the opposite in fact. We have had various posts pointing to an increasingly hard line in the US.
(3) British tabloids corrupted a jury in THIS system?
Subject of future posts. Check back shortly.
Posted by The TJMK Main Posters on 09/28 at 09:10 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Justice systems, Italian system, Hoaxes against Italy, 1 Ital justice hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, 10 Mignini MOF hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 19 HIV test leak hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Mellas team, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case, John Douglas • Comments here (28)
Netflixhoax 5 Omitted - Blackhurst Now Nervous Of Legal Risks For Doing Mafias' Dirty Work?
Netflix Director Rod Blackhurst has worked for Knox PR since 2010
1. How Blackhurst Went Wrong
First, see above. Blackhurst's pro-Knox fanaticism goes back seven years THAT is sure not explained in the film.
Second, see the image of Blackhurt's bizarre tweet at bottom, conceivably welcoming our expose of his huge hoax. A minor development which could come to signify more.
The REAL story here is not the framing of Knox or a justice system that doesnt play fair. It is instead the giant innocence fraud perpetrated by Curt Knox and David Marriott since late 2007, and the known mafia manipulation to spring RS and AK and to bring Italian justice down a peg.
The aggressive PR scheme is not even mentioned at all, though it put out and took in millions of dollars. It has promoted anti-Italy fanaticism to the extent that several dupes have screamed at public events in Perugia and cops have been told to be wary of Americans who might tote guns.
Check out the 30 hoaxes in our right column hatched by the PR which we will expand upon in coming weeks. Many are furthered by this hapless film.
2. How Blackhurst Might Get Things Right
Blackhurst could start setting things right by starting way back when. That well-documented childhood abuse (touched on also in Knox's book) could explain why so many have found Amanda Knox erratic and hard to take.
Not the least of those of course is Sollecito, who on and off since 2007 has railed at her.
Meredith and her other flatmates and her cellmates in prison and pretty well anyone she ever met in Perugia found her hard to take, though when she was not high on drugs she did seem now and then to be trying to act right.
Why did Curt Knox initiate take-no-prisoners PR in a heartbeat in 2007? To cover his own tail for damage he had done to her in childhood, provoking a crazed escalation resulting in Meredith's death? And why did so few in Seattle speak up for Amanda Knox in 2007? Why were so few parents keen to see an award created in her name at her high school?
Let's hope Blackhurst is capable of real work and not simply parroting the PR..
Posted by The TJMK Main Posters on 09/22 at 09:05 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Mellas team, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case • Comments here (3)
Netflixhoax 2: Omitted - Producers Morse, Blackhurst, McGinn Commited Stalking Crimes
Bigotry & stalking for fame & profit: producers Morse, Blackhurst, McGinn
Under Italian law the stalkers Stephen Robert Morse, Rod Blackhurst, and Brian McGinn have committed four kinds of crimes.
(1) Misrepresenting evidence in an attempt to affect the outcome of an ongoing legal process in Italy.
(2) Stalking justice officials (see below) in an attempt to affect the outcome of an ongoing legal process.
(3) Stalking the family of the victim (this is a crime also in England and the United States).
(4) Stalking members of the media (see further below) including screaming abuse at them in public.
Numerous abusive tweets have been deleted, but these and others were captured, and would weigh against them in court.
@NickPisa "Convinced you're a heartless tabloid journo, but wanted to remind you that you f*cked up people's lives:"
@BLNadeau "Reminder: Your quest for the latest, greatest story damaged people. You should be ashamed of yourself:"
@andreavogt "Wanted to remind you that your work seriously damaged many lives & you should be ashamed of yourself:"
Our main poster Pataz posted this about the gang's harrassment of the Kercher family on his own site.
See "Amanda Knox" producer Stephen Morse's shocking comment about the Kercher family
Posted on September 26, 2016 by pataz1
Here's what we know: Sometime in late 2010 or early 2011, "Amanda Knox" directors Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn hooked up with Stephen Robert Morse and decided to create a documentary on Knox. Morse and Blackhurst went to Perugia in September of 2011 when Knox's first appeal was heard. It appears that McGinn may have been with them, and that they connected with journalist Mario Spezi (who had previously been arrested by prosecutor Mignini for interfering with an investigation).
The Kercher family was represented at trial by their lawyer, Francesco Maresca. In Italy, the civil suit happens at the same time as the criminal suit, so Maresca was there to represent the Kerchers in their civil suit against the defendants for Meredith's death. As a part of the original conviction in 2009, the Kerchers were awarded damages.
Knox's defenders frequently attacked the Kercher family and their lawyer, Maresca, for the damages awarded to the Kercher family. Knox's defenders claimed Maresca and the Kercher family were driven by the monetary damages awarded to the Kerchers.
Producer Stephen Morse, while covering the appeals, joined in these attacks on Meredith's family, claiming the Kerchers were blinded by money. While covering the appeals, Morse stated his belief the DNA evidence would result in an acquittal. Three days later, while waiting for the verdict, Morse claimed the Kerchers were ignoring evidence. In a tweet (still available Sept 2016), Morse charged the Kercher family with being driven by money:
"i feel for the kercher family but they cannot ignore dna evidence simply because they were awared an 8 figure civil victory. #amandaknox" ""Stephen Robert Morse, 3-Oct 2011, 7:57 am.
For US readers, this is similar to claiming the Nicole Brown family was only out for money when they filed their civil suit against O.J. Simpson.
Two of the Kerchers- Meredith's father John and her brother Lyle- have previously spoken about the symbolic nature of the damages, and that they do not care about the money awarded. In 2009 Lyle told the Guardian "It's not the case that this has ever been about us seeking money, which is why we've been reluctant to do much media stuff throughout. That money will never really change anything in that respect."
Meredith's father John Kercher spoke to the Sun after the Hellmann appellate court overturned the trial conviction. He spoke out against potential book and movie deals for Knox and Sollecito:
Kercher explained that their civil claim- and an £8million damages award made when Knox was convicted "" were symbolic in Italian law. "I find it distasteful that Knox stands to make millions from what happened to Meredith. I don't think anyone should make money out of it "" not us, not them," he said.
"How would any parent feel if their daughter's murder was to be turned into a movie for people's entertainment?"
"We would not take a single cent from Amanda Knox," Kercher added.
Nobody has asked yet how much Netflix is paying Rod Blackhurst, Brian McGinn, and producer Stephen Robert Morse for the rights to add the "Amanda Knox" film to Netflix's library on September 30th, 2016.
Posted by The TJMK Main Posters on 09/14 at 08:59 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in The officially involved, The prosecutors, Hoaxes against Italy, 1 Ital justice hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, 10 Mignini MOF hoax, 12 Rabid media hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 20 No-PR hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Mellas team, More hoaxers, Hoaxers: media groups, The Netflix hoax, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Movies on case • Comments here (4)
How Bob Woffinden And So Many Others Managed To Misstate The Case And Get Away With It
Meredith on a Skype chat session
Do you know this? Most people still dont. It explains a LOT including the numerous innocence frauds.
The attack on Meredith as summarised by Dr Mignini in the Machine's must-read post below was reconstructed by Italy's best crime-scene specialists, from Rome Headquarters, and it took an entire Saturday. Every mark in Meredith's room and on her body were convincingly accounted for.
After the killers left and locked her in, Meredith was still alive, holding both sides of her neck to stop her life-blood leaking out. She might have lived for half an hour, in great pain, during which time an ambulance could easily have arrived and saved her.
But nobody called one. Her death was quite deliberate.
The Massei jury is said to have found all this evidence very powerful and left in NO doubt three had been involved (unanimous verdict) in what was a prolonged and exceptionally barbaric attack.
The Kercher family had asked Judge Massei in January 2009 for a closed trial as the autopsy part in particular would be key but also long and very graphic. Unfortunately it was settled that only the trial days covering the autopsy and the horrific attack would be closed.
This unique call by Judge Massei turned out to be a terrible one. It has caused immense damage to public understanding outside Italy, and to the legitimacy of the case ever since.
The public and the two later appeal juries never got to witness directly all this compelling evidence. In Italy, descriptions leaked out (not illegal) and so Italians following the case could get a good grasp - and the vast majority, perhaps all, were convinced (and still are) that the government team had got it right.
But the Hellmann and Nencini appeal juries and the Marasca/Bruno panel of the Supreme Court never got the full impact. And trial followers in the US and UK and so on had no idea (and even now only a very few have any idea) of what was presented behind those closed doors in 2009 and how it came across (several present were in tears during it) to the trial jury.
This terrible situation has allowed Knox and Sollecito and their teams and media supporters starting with Doug Preston, Candace Dempsey and Frank Sfarzo (a stage name, real name Sforza) and ending (for now) with Woffinden to lie incessantly for eight years about Guede as a lone wolf and about the numerous hard facts of the attack and the autopsy.
There would be NO effective PR and NO effective appeals and NO effective innocence fraud otherwise.
Our summaries of the sentencing reports by Judge Micheli for Guede and by Judge Massei for Sollecito & Knox are very good, but even they fall short here. The best way to get all this powerful evidence right is to read the full Micheli report (translated by Catnip) and full Massei report (translated by Skeptical Bystander and team). Both reports are on the case wiki.
"Missing" still from the public record because it was part of the closed trial was what is said to be a very compelling video construction of the attack. This video is also ridiculed and misrepresented by Sollecito and Knox and their teams and apologists - because they could get away with it.
Will the Netflix movie being unveiled in Toronto this week explain all or even any of this? Why do we doubt it?
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/04 at 06:19 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Rudy Guede, Hoaxes against Italy, 3 No evidence hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes re Guede, 35 Good guy hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers • Comments here (21)
How Bob Woffinden, Aggrandizing Investigative Journalist, Attempts To Perpetrate Innocence Fraud
Said to be Bob Woffinden - as a pop music reporter, some years ago
1. Woffinden and innocence fraud
These days innocence fraud is a very real thing.
A stern warning was issued to crime laboratory administrators that some post-conviction exonerations may have been secured by innocence activists using malicious tactics, or 'innocence fraud', creating potential public safety threats as convicted felons are released from prison.
In this post, I will analyse another example of innocence fraud, this time by British journalist Bob Woffinden on Meredith's case. Woffinden has done this on other cases before.
He specialises in alleged miscarriages of justice, and has written articles for The Guardian, The Daily Mail and The New Statesman and authored a number a books about high-profile murder cases: Miscarriages of Justice; Hanratty: The Final Verdict and The Murder of Billy-Jo.
Woffinden's default position when it comes to controversial murder cases seems to be to assume a miscarriage of justice, and to claim someone has been convicted of a crime they didn't commit.
He's claimed that James Hanratty, Jeremy Bamber, Barry George, Sion Jenkins and Jonathan King are all innocent. Reflexively anti-police, Woffinden as I described in the post linked to above on the James Hanratty case has a history of putting victims' families through considerable pain.
2. Woffinden On Meredith's case
Here he tries to prove that Rudy Guede is innocent of murder, and falsely claims he was convicted because he was black. He also tries to cast doubt on the hard fact that Meredith was sexually assaulted - or that the police got anything right.
Anyone who has read the official court documents and court testimonies with regard to the Meredith Kercher case will be able to assess Bob Woffinden's professionalism and credibility and ethics as an investigative journalist article by reading his contorted take.
To those who really do know the case, it is immediately apparent that he's pretty ignorant of the main facts, and that he hasn't bothered to read the official court documents or the court testimonies available in English here.
He mindlessly repeats various endemic Friends of Amanda PR myths. For example, he erroneously claims the prosecutors concocted the scenario of a sex orgy gone wrong.
"The second mistake then ensued from the first. Needing to explain the presence of their three suspects in connection with the supposed sexual assault "" and knowing there was absolutely no evidence to link Guede with Knox and Sollecito "" they [the prosecutors] concocted the absurd scenario of a sex orgy gone wrong."
Dr Mignini didn't ever say anything about there being a sex orgy that went wrong when he presented his scenario to the court at the trial in 2009 and the numerous hearings (which Woffinden seems totally unaware of) in the 15 months before.
Instead he gave the court a detailed chronological account briefly summarized below of a vicious physical and sexual assault on Meredith, which culminated in her dying some time after the killers left and locked her in.
23:21: Amanda and Raffaele go into the bedroom while Rudy goes to the bathroom.
23:25: A scuffle begins between Amanda, helped by Raffaele, and Meredith. The English girl is taken by the neck, then banged against a cupboard, as shown by wounds to the skull. She resists all this. Rudy Guede enters.
23:30: Meredith falls to the floor. The three try to undress her to overcome her; they only manage to take off her trousers. The girl manages to get up, she struggles. At this point, the two knives emerge from the pockets of Amanda and Raffaele: one with a blade of four to five centimetres, the other, however, a big kitchen knife. Meredith tries to fend off the blades with her right hand. She is wounded.
23:35: The assault continues. Sollecito tries to rip off the English girl's bra.
23:40: Meredith is on her knees, threatened by Amanda with the knife while Rudy holds her with one hand and with the other hand carries out an assault on her vagina. There is first a knife blow on her face, then straight away another. However, these blows are not effective. The three become more violent. With the smaller knife, Sollecito strikes a blow: the blade penetrates 4 centimetres into the neck.
There is a harrowing cry, which some witnesses will talk about. Amanda decides to silence her, still according to the video brought to court by the prosecutors, and strikes a blow to the throat with the kitchen knife: it will be the fatal wound. Meredith collapses on the floor.
23:45: Meredith is helped up by Rudy and is coughing up blood. The English girl, dying, is dragged along so that she can continue to be undressed.
Why is Woffinden unable to substantiate his claim that the prosecutors concocted the scenario of a sex orgy gone wrong with a verbatim quote from Mignini or Comodi?
Because they never claimed this at all. A competent and ethical professional journalist should be able to support every claim they make.
Woffinden regurgitates another popular PR myth by claiming that Rudy Guede pleaded guilty late in 2008.
"Even as he [Rudy Guede] pleaded guilty, he vehemently asserted his innocence, saying, "˜I can't talk about things I haven't seen and that didn't happen to me'."
Rudy Guede has never pleaded guilty or confessed to Meredith's murder. He has always denied killing Meredith. He opted for a fast-track trial in mid 2008 because he could escape a blatant attempt to frame him as sole perpetrator by the Knox and Sollecito defense.
It meant he would automatically received a third off his prison sentence but at the time he had no idea what that would look like.
Bob Woffinden gets yet another fact wrong when he claims the Hellmann appeal court sanctioned a full review of the scientific evidence.
"...the Italian court sanctioned a full review of the scientific evidence on which they had been convicted."
It did nothing of the kind. Hellmann merely asked Carla Vechiotti and Stefano Conti to review two pieces of DNA evidence - the knife and bra clasp evidence.
They didn't review the bloody footprint on the bathmat, the bare bloody footprints which had been revealed by Luminol, or the five samples of Knox's DNA or the blood mixed with Meredith's blood in three different locations in the cottage.
Yet another wrong "fact". Bob Woffinden claims that a police officer flushed away Rudy Guede's faeces and thus destroyed evidence.
"His recollection that he had leapt up from the toilet seat the instant he heard the scream was bizarrely corroborated by the fact that there were faeces still in the pan when the police arrived. Needless to say, one officer activated the toilet, thereby flushing away important evidence."
Needless to say? In fact this claim is complete and utter nonsense. The faeces in the toilet wasn't flushed away. It was carefully collected as evidence and tested. However, it didn't yield any results.
"The faeces present in the toilet of that bathroom did not, however, yield any results, and Dr Stefanoni, the biologist of the Scientific Police, explained that the presence of numerous bacteria easily destroys what DNA might be found in faeces." (The Massei report, page 43).
Why would Woffinden make these and other demonstrably untrue claims? It seems obvious that he wants to portray the Italian National Scientific Police (much respected by the FBI) as the Keystone Cops, in order to ridicule the forensic investigation, seemingly his purpose here.
Woffinden makes yet another false claim by stating that Guede made only one inconsistent statement.
"Guede's solitary inconsistency was this. He did comment at the outset of the investigation that "˜Amanda doesn't have anything to do with it'. But, at that stage, perhaps he couldn't believe that she did have."
Judge Micheli, who found Rudy Guede guilty of sexual assault and murder in October 2008, pointed out in his sentencing report of January 2009 that Guede's accounts were unreliable and varied a lot.
"Analyzing the narratives of the accused"¦he is not credible, as I will explain, because his version is (1) unreliable, and (2) continuously varying, whether on basic points or in minor details and outline."
Bob Woffinden also seems to be pushing the wrong notion that Rudy Guede didn't implicate Amanda Knox until much later - which is another FOA PR myth.
Guede first implicated Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito whilst on the run in Germany on 19 November 2007 in an intercepted Skype conversation with his friend Giacomo Benedetti:
Giacomo: "So they [Knox and Sollecito] killed her while she was dressed."
Guede: "Yes, here it says that they [clothes] were washed in the washing machine, but that's not true. She was dressed."
Bob Woffinden makes the erroneous and offensive claim that there's no evidence that Meredith was sexually assaulted,
"In their investigation, prosecutors made a series of blunders. The first serious mistake was their assumption that Meredith was sexually assaulted. If one takes cognisance of Guede's account, there is no evidence of this. The second mistake then ensued from the first. Needing to explain the presence of their three suspects in connection with the supposed sexual assault "" and knowing there was absolutely no evidence to link Guede with Knox and Sollecito "" they concocted the absurd scenario of a sex orgy gone wrong."
Had Bob Woffinden actually bothered to read the key Massei trial report, he would have known that several medical experts - Dr Lalli, Professor Marchionni, Professor Bacci and Professor Gianaristide Norelli - testified that there were indications of sexual violence on Meredith.
Such conclusions were further explained [by Dr Lalli] at the hearing of April 3, 2009, in which it was highlighted that signs were present of sexual activity with characteristics of non cooperation by the young woman, which can be derived from the lesion pattern at the vulvo vaginal level (page 40 of transcripts).
[111] These signs were present in the purple ecchymotic type spots detected on the inner surface of the labia minora, the area where they are usually produced. It is the first point of contact for the sex organ or object including fingers penetrating the vagina and therefore the point at which an action ... performed without the full cooperation of both actors would produce purplish spots of this kind. (The Massei report, page 116).
He [Professor Marchionni] noted in this regard that, even without lubrication injuries of this nature are not the result of consensual sexual intercourse, and he argued that the cause of these lesions had originated from a "forcing" that could have been done by the penis or by hands (page 21, hearing on April 4, 2009). (The Massei report, page 117.)
With regard to sexual violence, he [Professor Bacci] referred to the inspection of the genital area conducted by Dr. Lalli at the morgue operating room. On the internal surface of the labia minora, attention was focused on areas of discolouration, which can be interpreted as small bruises, small abrasions associated with small haemorrhages indicative of "small lesions" (page 16, transcripts) consistent with a violent action of friction, pressure an typical of sexual violence and, while affirming the absence glaring signs of typical sexual violence (page 16, transcripts) he concluded compatibility with non-consensual sexual intercourse' (page 16, hearing, hearing on April 18, 2009). (The Massei report, page 121.)
He [Gianaristide Norelli] further underlined the presence of a slight bilateral suffusion in the area of the iliac spines, i.e. in the areas corresponding to the anterior lateral part of the flank, which represent the end/terminal parts of the wings of the [pelvic] basin and the fact that "lesions in this area are fairly characteristic of seizure [grasping] and immobilisation"; [it is] an area which is "˜highly suggestive' in the context of the investigation of sexual assault. (The Massei report, page 124).
It should be stressed that the the doctor who actually performed the autopsy - Dr Lalli - believed Meredith had been sexually assaulted.
"The prosecution focused on Lalli's statements that he believed there had been non-consensual sex." (Andrea Vogt, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 2 April 2009).
You need just an ounce of common sense to know that murder victims who were also raped or sexually assaulted didn't consent. The Kerchers' lawyer Dr Maresca made this very point:
"Sex that ends with someone dead is not consensual."
Dr Maresca also highlighted the fact several medical experts said there were signs of sexual violence in court. Dr Maresca told the court that the expert witnesses
"sustained the prior results and valuations of the coroner who performed the autopsy and the forensic evidence specialists who already testified". He added: "And for the first time today, we also heard that the bruises on the victim's hips were consistent with a sexually violent approach."
Unbelievably, Bob Woffinden regards Rudy Guede as a reliable and credible witness.
I'm surprised anyone would believe Guede's ever-changing versions of events when they are so blatantly untrue. Guede gave two different accounts of arranging a date with Meredith and they're both demonstrably false.
Meredith didn't go to the Halloween party at the Spanish students' house on 31 October 2007.
Guede then changed his story and claimed that he had met her at Domus, but Meredith was with her friends continuously and none of them saw her with him. None of Guede's friends saw him with her either.
"He [Rudy Guede] stated that he met the girl on Oct. 31 in the house of some Spanish students and did not meet her later in the "Domus" pub, that the next day, shortly before going to the date with Meredith…
In the third interrogation, by the P.M. [public prosecutor] on March 26, 2008, he changed the place of his meeting with Kercher on Oct. 31 from the Spanish students' house to the Domus pub" (Judge Giordano's Supreme Court report, page 17).
"...and also because none of Meredith's friends (Amy Frost, Robyn Butterworth and [10] Sophie Purton, with whom she had gone out on the evening of Halloween, Oct. 31, 2007) nor any of Guede's friends (among others AC and PM) had ever seen them talk to each other." (Judge Giordano's sentencing report, page 10).
Meredith had NOT arranged a date with Guede at the cottage on Via della Pergola on 1 November 2007. She and Sophie Purton left their friends early that evening because they mistakenly believed they had lectures the next day.
"They [Meredith Kercher and Sophie Purton] were to meet on the morning of the second at around 10:00 am for a lecture at the university…:" (The Massei report, page 35).
"Meredith was tired from the day before when she had come home about five in the morning; the next day she supposed that she had a lesson at the University at 10 am and she needed to prepare for this and she had to also think about resting" (The Massei report, page 58).
Judge Massei explained at length in his report why Rudy Guede's claims he had a date with Meredith were not credible.
"Speaking of Meredith, there has already been occasion to make mention of her personality (serious, not superficial, with a strong character), of her romantic situation [i.e. her love life] (she had not long beforehand begun a relationship with Giacomo Silenzi), of the plans she had for that evening (studying, preparing for the following day believing that there would be classes at the University, finishing a piece of homework, as her mother recalled during the hearing of 6 June 2009, and resting).
None of the people she frequented and in whom she confided (her relatives and her English girlfriends) testified that Meredith had made any mention to them at all of Rudy, for whom, therefore, she must not have felt any interest. With regard to the totality of these circumstances, it must be considered that Meredith could only have made an outright refusal to Rudy's advances" (The Massei report, pages 365-366).
In rejecting Guede's final appeal Judge Giordano succinctly summarised the reasons why he was found guilty of sexual assault and murder in his Supreme Court report. It had nothing to do with the colour of his skin.
"The judgement rationale thus proceeds through rigorous logical steps, quite consistently, with no possibility of misinterpreting evidence, distorting significant data, or disruption of the overall probative reasoning. Meredith Kercher, before being slaughtered with the deadly blow at her throat, was the victim of a series of wounds, of forced restraining of her limbs, especially the left hand and arm - and on the cuff of the left sleeve of the sweatshirt she wore clear traces of DNA of the defendant are found "" aimed at overcoming her resistance to sexual violence, of which the traces of DNA of Guede of the vaginal swabs are evidence, which then led to the violent behaviour of the deadly slaughtering.
The version of the accused is totally unrealistic because, even apart from the obvious omissions and contradictions detectable in his many statements, his previous acquaintance of Meredith, shaped in his story by a meeting on the night before the murder at the Domus pub, by a kiss between the two and by a date for the evening of the following day, is clearly disproved by a whole articulated testimonial structure, [19] coming from several people and indicating that: the two did not meet at the Domus (indicated by the testimonies of all the friends who were accompanying Meredith), even less did they converse, even briefly, at the Shamrock pub during the match between England and South Africa broadcasted the day before (indicated by the testimonies of AC, PM and F), and Kercher never confided anything, as would have been natural, to her friends about a date with Guede, not even on the afternoon of Nov. 1, as she had done in other occasions about details of her personal and love life (indicated by the testimonies of Robin Carmel Butterworth, Sophie Purton).
This is consistent with the portrait of Meredith's character; she avoided sexual relations with other men apart from Giacomo Silenzi with whom she had begun a relationship that she absolutely did not mean to betray, as stated by her friends, especially not for unimportant adventures." (Judge Giordano's Supreme Court report, pages 17-18).
Some conclusions
Bob Woffinden has made a name for himself by publicly championing the causes of convicted killers and sex offenders. Mainstream media organisations such as The Guardian, The Daily Mail and The New Statesman have given him a certain degree of credibilty and respectabilty by publishing his articles. Many people will trust him and assume that he's a reliable and trustworthy journalist.
However, their trust is misplaced. His lack of due diligence with regard to his article about Rudy Guede and the Meredith Kercher case is disturbing and unacceptable. He doesn't get the basics of journalism right - which is astonishing for someone who has worked as a journalist for decades. He gets basic facts wrong and he has made numerous demonstrably false claims.
A professional journalist should be able to substantiate every claim they make. Bob Woffinden is unable to do this because he has relied on some of the numerous factually inaccurate articles and the massive defense and PR spin about the case instead of the official court documents and court testimonies.
It defies belief that he accepts Rudy Guede's fairy tale version of events. You don't expect such childlike naivety from an adult let alone an investigative journalist. He's obviously blissfully ignorant of the fact that Guede gave contradictory and confllcting accounts.
It seems he has a deep-rooted psychological need to believe in innocence and police malfeasance, which completely clouds his judgement to the point where he blindly supports and campaigns on behalf of people who are blatantly guilty of sexual assault and murder like James Hanratty and Rudy Guede.
If there's a more sloppy and self-serving journalist in the world, I haven't come across them yet.
Posted by The Machine on 09/01 at 02:13 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Rudy Guede, The officially involved, Police and CSI, The prosecutors, Evidence & Witnesses, Real crimescene, Hoaxes against Italy, 3 No evidence hoax, 8 No motive hoax, 9 Mignini v Knox hoax, Hoaxes re Guede, 35 Good guy hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers, News media & movies, Terrible reporting • Comments here (10)
Problems With Fred Davies #2: His Claims On Knives, Wounds And Stains Also Highly Mislead
Posted by James Raper
Several of the numerous scientific witnesses; some evidence was behind closed doors
Remember that Amanda Knox, a felon for life, served three years for framing Patrick for murder.
In my previous post I dismissed the claim which the British barrister FG (Fred) Davies pervasively made in Parts 1 to 20 of his mammoth series in Criminal Law and Justice Weekly that it was actually Guede and his team who had somehow framed Knox and Sollecito for a crime he alone committed and left all of Italian law enforcement bamboozled.
I now have Parts 21 to 26 as well, all of the series, and I wish to examine one more large area of cherrypicked facts and misinterpretations, along with Davies's final conclusion.
First, Fred Davies's Final Scenario
As anticipated, Davies concludes that Knox and Sollecito should only have been convicted of the charge of simulating a burglary. He presents his own synopsis of what happened on the night of the murder which has both Knox and Guede present at the cottage for the murder, but not Sollecito.
Davies says it is Guede who sexually assaults and stabs Meredith. Knox, unaware of what was going to happen is horrified and scared out of her wits, retreating to her bedroom and locking herself in.
Davies says Guede flees, ignoring or unable to do anything about the fact there is/was a witness to his horrific crime. When it's safe to do so Knox emerges and meets up with Sollecito.
Davies says that Knox, fearing that if she went to the police she would only end up being accused of involvement in the murder, persuades Sollecito to be her alibi, and to stage the scene to point to a burglar, and Sollecito, being the Honour Bound sort of chap he is, agrees to go along with this. Once they both embark on this course of action there us no turning back.
I trust that you are all duly intrigued with Davies's scenario and panting to learn how and why he arrives at it. Unfortunately this will have to wait until another day if it is to be from me.
He has, after all, taken 26 Chapters in half a year to get to this point and I am not yet ready to deal with them comprehensively. Others here may contribute posts and discuss implications with the Criminal Law editor.
Fred Davies On Knife Or Knives
Whilst I guess most comments are going to be about the above synopsis, I am going to deal with his thoughts regarding the knives, these being quite central to his synopsis.
My argument below is supported by numerous previous posters none of whom differed markedly from Massei or Nencini.
Davies in contrast is sharply critical of Massei. He simply excludes the Double DNA knife (Exhibit 36) as the murder weapon.
He is also critical"¦.nay, I would have to say that he is outraged"¦. at Massei holding that Sollecito was responsible for the lesser of the two wounds, that on the right side of Meredith's neck. He is critical of Micheli for not finding, as a matter of fact, that Guede was the one responsible for the wounds, using his own knife which has yet to be recovered.
Without more ado I will proceed to Mr Davies' evaluation:
"The finding against Sollecito that it was he who inflicted two of the three wounds to Meredith Kercher using a pocket knife which was in his possession at the material time is deeply flawed, offensive and wrong in law"
Well, I was unaware that Massei had found that Sollecito inflicted two of the three wounds. In fact I am not aware of three wounds (unless he includes what is effectively a nick) , but if there were then Massei only attempted to attribute two, the one to the right of the neck, 4 cms deep and with a width of 1.5 cms, being attributed to Sollecito's "pocket knife".
It did not cause any significant structural damage, unlike the wound to the left, 8 cms deep and 8 cms wide which had penetrated both Meredith's larynx and the cartilage of the epiglottis, and had broken the hyoid bone.
Is the rest "deeply flawed, offensive and wrong in law"?
"It could not have been part of the prosecution case that Sollecito used a pocket knife to subdue and stab Meredith Kercher. If it had why was Sollecito and/or Knox not charged with carrying the said pocket knife without justified reason? To recapitulate,, the charge alleged that the killing was achieved by means of"¦"¦"¦"¦.and deep lesions to the left anterior-lateral and right lateral regions of the neck, caused by a bladed weapon (Exhibit 36).
The Massei Court's finding strikes against basic principles of fairness which applies to all criminal proceedings. Put another way, a criminal court is not generally entitled to bring in a verdict which differs markedly from the basis on which the prosecution puts it's case. This is because the defence would not be able to adequately prepare and meet such an unexpected contingency. In plain English the defence would be ambushed or taken by surprise. In this case the defence was ambushed and the defendants' rights (Knox and Sollecito) were fundamentally infringed."
Oh come on! Ambushed? Really?
OK, so the charge did indeed indicate that that both the right and left sided wounds were caused by "a bladed weapon to which Chapter B applies" (Exhibit 36) but the reality is that the defence always knew that Exhibit 36 (because of it's dimensions and in particular it's width 4cms from the tip) could not have been the cause of the wound to the left anterior lateral. That's a matter of simple logic and in any event every expert and all the lawyers in the case agreed on that.
So the way the charge was erroneously framed in fact misled no-one.
Indeed had the defence thought so then they could have raised the matter. Mr Davies does not claim that Massei did not have the power to amend the indictment. If the court was unable to, or the defence chose not to raise it, either way thinking it was a clever appeal point, then it did not become one.
Indeed, Mr Davies will know anyway that in English law, by virtue of The Indictments Act 1915, courts can (and frequently do) order an amendment to an indictment at any stage (which includes during a trial) provided the amendment does not result in an injustice to the accused. This is a practical necessity as it would be an affront to the concept of justice if defendants were to be acquitted on the basis of a mere technicality.
One might consider what amendment might have been made.
A possibility is that reference to the right-sided wound might have been excluded. It was the left-sided wound that was fatal, after all, and caused, as the prosecution would endeavour to prove, by a weapon which, as it happened, belonged to Sollecito.
The prosecution did, of course, maintain that it was Knox who wielded the weapon, but might, as an alternative, have also asserted that it was Sollecito. Indeed the framing of the charge leaves it an open question as to which of them did. They were charged jointly with having caused Meredith's death.
The evidence that it may have been either (AK or RS) is a common feature of cases to which the English legal doctrine of joint criminal enterprise applies.
The doctrine applies particularly to a case such as this in that no matter who actually wields the weapon the other participant in the common enterprise is deemed to possess the same level of criminal liability even if he did not know that there was a knife or that it would be so used. Being reckless as to that possibility is sufficient.
It is surprising how often how little is required to establish joint enterprise. Frequently the mere fact that the participants know each other and were there, and that the situation was a combustible one of the group's making, is enough. The doctrine has come in for a great deal of justified criticism but despite this remains firm law.
My preference would have been to amend the indictment to refer to the right sided wound being caused by a bladed weapon, the blade being of indeterminate length but with a width of approximately 1.5 cms. It is the width of the wound that is salient because it is indicative of the width of the blade on the knife being used which, whilst also being indicative of the likely length of the blade, but without being sure, could be either a pocket knife (4 cms or more) or a flick knife (which could also be a pocket knife). 1.5 cms is about the width of the tip of one's index finger, by the way.
Massei, and others, always refer to this knife as a pocket knife. However henceforth I am going to write "pocket knife" to refer to the options of a pocket knife with a blade of 4cms or more, or a flick knife.
As to Mr Davies other point as to why Sollecito was not specifically charged with carrying a "pocket knife" without justified reason, I do not know, but since the framing of charges is a matter for the prosecution, one might as well leave the matter there.
In any event the lack of a specific charge does not in any way preclude a court from inferring the nature of a weapon from the pathology of the wound nor from identifying the probable assailant (as distinct from having to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the culpability of a single perpetrator named in a specific charge of "carrying").
Guede did not ever face a specific charge of carrying a weapon but that does not prevent Mr Davis from concluding that Guede had a knife and had stabbed Meredith. It seems that Mr Davies would have been quite happy for Guede to have been so charged and convicted on Professor Vinci's (see later) dubious testimony.
In this last respect, however, Mr Davies could have more telling argument. Lets see.
"To infer that Sollecito had a pocket knife at Via della Pergola 7 on the fateful evening of November 1-2, based on the character evidence of four witnesses called for the defence, was to say the least highly unusual.."
I think the operative words here are "witnesses called for the defence", amongst whom was Sollecito's own father. Yes, highly unusual but then that is what happens when you do not vet your own character witnesses before cross-examination.
Sollecito's proclivity for carrying a knife (usually a pocket knife) at all times (and indeed he had one on him at the time of his arrest in the Police Station) is highly relevant. These witnesses referred to a knife with a blade of about 4 cms, or perhaps 6 cms.
In addition Sollecito was something of a knife aficionado. The police found two specialist knives, a Spiderco and a 2004 model Brian Tighe. Neither of these can be connected to Meredith's wounds but they are indicative of his affinity to weapons specifically designed to be used in a fight to maim or kill. Clearly a flick knife falls into the same category.
As to proclivity evidence against Guede one can refer to his brief possession of a kitchen knife acquired at and belonging to the Milan nursery (which he did not break into, he had been given a key).
There is, of course, Tramontano's dubious claim (angrily dismissed by Micheli even though Guede was never given the chance to challenge this in court) that a black man broke into his property and, confronted by Tramontano, had pulled out a flick knife as he exited. Tramontano tried to claim the burglar was probably Guede based on a photo of him he had seen in a newspaper. If it really was Guede he was not carrying that knife with him at the Milan nursery 8 weeks later.
"Even if Sollecito was present at the scene of the crime (as distinct from being complicit), the court could not have been sure that any "pocket knife" in his possession, which incidentally was never recovered, had inflicted all or some of the injuries, the most cogent rationale being:
1. The prosecution could not prove the dimensions and the character of the knife were consistent with the injuries inflicted upon Meredith Kercher.
2. The Court paid scant regard to the totality of expert opinion as to the type of bladed weapon (or weapons) which had been used to stab the victim
3. The Court paid scant regard to the dimensions of a bloody outline of a knife found on Meredith's pillow
4. Consequently the Court could not have been sure that any pocket knife and, a fortiori, exhibit 36 had been used to stab Meredith that fateful night."
As to 1 above, we know that no suitable weapon was ever recovered but if the indictment had been amended in accordance with my preference then the prosecution would easily have proved that part of the indictment, relating as it does to the wound on the right side of the neck.
It is a reasonable inference on the balance of probabilities that the wound was caused by a "pocket knife" and if one accepts the presence of multiple attackers (which I understand is a judicial truth in the case even following the latest acquittal of Knox and Sollecito) then, again on the balance of probabilities, and taking into account all the other circumstantial evidence in the case, I submit that it is a reasonable inference that it was Sollecito's "pocket knife".
The bar of "beyond a reasonable doubt" applies to culpability re the specified charge and is not to be confused with the elements.
As to 2, this simply is not true. I shall look at the totality of the expert opinion in a moment but suffice it to say that Massei spent a considerable amount of time in his Motivation detailing with and discussing the defence experts' opinions.
As to 3, (and it was not on the pillow but the bedsheet) it was Professor Vinci's contention that the bloody outline (there was a dual outline, he said) was left by a knife with a blade 11.3 cms long or a knife with a blade 9.6 cms long with a congruent section of handle 1.7 cms long (9.6 + 1.7 = 11.3). Davies does not mention a blade width but in fact Professor Vinci actually says 1.3 to 1.4 cms wide.
Taking these measurements as read, Davies points out that they are incompatible with either a pocket knife (such as Sollecito had a proclivity to carry) and Exhibit 36. I have no argument with that observation. It follows, he then argues, that one has to infer the presence of a third knife in any hypothesis and if a pocket knife and Exhibit 36 are already accounted for by Knox and Sollecito then a reasonable inference is that the third knife would have to be Guede's. Indeed (Davies does not say this, but I will) Professor Vinci's blade is not incompatible a priori with either of the two wounds.
This is worth looking at seriously as so far it is the only worthwhile point Davies has made.
First of all I have to say that I have searched for but have not found any rebuttal evidence or comment from the prosecution amongst the documents on the Wiki. I do not even see a question on the matter in the cross-examination of Professor Vinci.
Massei only briefly commented about the bloody outline on the bed sheet. He opined that the blood stains were certainly "suggestive" but insufficient to establish any clear outlines from which reliable measurements could be established. Clearly then he did not accord any reliability to Professor Vinci's measurements. But is Massei right? One does not have to be an expert to consider this.
First of all, here are images of the blood stains.
In the picture below the stained section of sheet is cut out for analysis the day after the discovery of the murder.
Did the prosecution overlook their own analysis of the stains? Did they deliberately do so after Exhibit 36 was found, 9 days later on the 12th November, to have Meredith's DNA on it? Or did they always know that the stains established nothing?
The next question to be asked is whether we can see the outline of a knife, or rather a blade. I think the honest answer to that is, on balance, yes. We think we see the tip of a blade, do we not? Maybe two, maybe even three.
It is fairly clear that Professor Vinci takes the largest of the stains to be the hilt of the handle to the knife. Lining that up with what is perhaps the likely clearest possible perceived blade tip (being the middle out of a possible three I believe I see) then the distance to the perceived hilt is indeed something like the 9.6 cms which Professor Vinci has measured.
But there are problems. Here are two of Ergon's photos from his posts here and here with Exhibit 36 superimposed on the stains in two different positions to reflect the supposed dual outlines.
The blob of blood in the bottom left of the pictures and it's lesser moon at 1, or 2, o'clock are regarded as having come from the same position on the blade and so with that reference point the blade is positioned accordingly in each photo.
We can surely take it that Professor Vinci also sees the same duality. But if the bloody hilt is aligned to fit with "the moon" stain in order to get the 9.6 cms measurement, then what has happened to that large hilt stain when the knife is moved further to the left, and then dropped a bit, to align to the moon's planet (the blob)?
It has either disappeared or become an edge. That doesn't make sense if "the moon" is the lesser version of the blob. The blob has to come from the first positioning of the knife. Despite this, in the knife's later position the volume of blood at the hilt has actually increased comparative to the knife's first position. That doesn't make sense either.
So maybe the largest stain pre-exists, even for perhaps a moment, the stains suggesting the blade outlines, but in that case we can throw Professor Vinci's measurements out of the window.
Can we do without the blob and it's moon? It's all a lot less convincing without them. But in truth we cannot even be sure that they are related. Nor that the largest stain has anything to do with the hilt of a knife.
A further connected observation concerns Professor Vinci's claim that the blade of the knife is 1.3/1.4 cms wide. Like the rest of his evidence I do not find this very convincing. I suspect that he has deduced this from the largest stain which has a length, he says, of 1.7 cms. It's width could then be something like 1.3/1.4 cms.
If the width of the knife is represented by approximately 1.4 cms then, given the position of the bloody hilt relative to the tip of it's blade, what are we to make of the two spots of blood in a horizontal line above? They look like the upper (or lower) edge of a knife but they can't be without making the blade wider.
Why does it have to be the same knife anyway? The stains could be the result of two different knives collected and laid to rest in the same spot.
The blood stains are certainly bewitching - rather like seeing patterns in tea leaves at the bottom of one's cup - but on the balance of probabilities I would not totally rely on anyone's perception of them even, with all due respect, Ergon's but his analysis is as good as anyone's, and that for me is the point of it.
In short I think that Massei was probably right. These stains are suggestive but basically useless and the police/prosecution ignored them for that reason.
"Consistent with English law the Massei Court's findings should be struck down as Wednesbury unreasonable. Where there is no evidence to support a finding of a court or the court has reached a conclusion which is irrational or perverse, in the light of the evidence adduced at trial, a conviction based on that part of the evidence cannot be sustained"¦"¦"¦.The Massei Court also appears to have violated Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to a fair trial),"
Yeah, right. The case to which he refers, Associated Provincial Picture Houses v Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1KB 223, is an odd and unnecessary one to pray in aid. It was a civil case where the appellant sought judicial review in respect of a licencing decision. As a formulation of a first principle of natural justice it is, of course, unquestionable. However the claim that Massei reached a conclusion that was irrational or perverse is laughable.
It is at this point that one does begin to wonder whether Davies is indeed connected in some way with the daffy Nigel Scott (Sollecito"˜s ex Lib Dem Haringey Councillor groupie) who similarly emerges with bizarre arguments.
Next, in his evaluation, we come to a numbers game as to who was for and against the incompatibility of Exhibit 36 with the fatal wound on the left side, but before I enter into that game I want to make a point about incompatibility.
A knife blade is only incompatible with a wound if the depth of the wound is longer than the length of the blade or if the width of the wound is shorter than the width of the blade at the relevant depth.
We can therefore establish that Exhibit 36 was not incompatible, a priori, with the depth of the wound. The blade on Exhibit 36 was 17. 5 cms long and the depth of the wound was 8 cms.
Yes, I know that other arguments as to incompatibility were advanced based, in the main, on these measurements. These Massei logically deconstructed. In fairness to Mr Davies he did not advance them in his evaluation and so neither shall I.
I would also have to concede that Sollecito's "pocket knife" is not incompatible a priori with the wound on the left side nor, even if it"˜s length of blade was over 4 cms, with the wound on the right. Nor Professor Vinci's knife either.
The same is true of the width of these knives.
It should however be recalled that the width of the right-sided wound was also 8 cms. That is over 5 times the width of the "pocket knife". The width of the blade on Exhibit 36 - 8 cms from it's tip - was twice the width of the blade on the "pocket knife".
This fact, and the robustness of the larger weapon, particularly with regard to the observed butchering at the base of the right-sided cut, makes Exhibit 36 a far more likely candidate, in my submission, than a "pocket knife", and that's without taking into account Meredith's DNA on the blade.
Returning to our numbers game, Mr Davies puts it slightly differently from Massei. He says -
"And if that were not enough, of the 8 experts who gave evidence on the point, two (Dr Liviero and Professor Bacci) opined that Exhibit 36 could have caused the fatal wound to Meredith's left side. Professor Norelli could not rule out Exhibit 36. Professor Ronchi's opinion is not clear due to the use of the "double negative" (non-incompatibility) - it will be assumed that he supported the prosecution contention, but in any event al the remaining four experts, Professors Introna, Torre, Cingolani and Dr Patumi) opined that Exhibit 36 could be ruled out."
In other words a draw but one of the prosecution experts is a bit "iffy".
Massei tells us that Dr Liviero concluded "definite compatibility", Dr Lalli and Professors Bacci and Norelli "compatibility" whilst "non- incompatibility" came from the 3 GIP experts nominated at a preliminary hearing. The latter were Professors Aprile, Cingolani and Ronchi.
"Non-incompatibility" is not hard to understand. It simply means not incompatible or rather, compatible.
Note that Mr Davies has Professor Cingolani lining up to exclude Exhibit 36. Massei disagrees and I agree with Massei. So, for what it is worth (and this is a bit childish I know) Mr Davies loses the game 7 - 3.
"And one final thought. If the defendants (Knox and Sollecito) were sufficiently compos mentis to dispose of the pocket knife "¦. Why did they not dispose of Exhibit 36? By a process of deduction and logical synthesis the answer is plain for all to see: Exhibit 36 never left Corso Garibaldi and was not the murder weapon "
Because it was on his landlord's inventory of kitchen items? Indeed we don't know for sure that the "pocket knife "was actually disposed of. All we know is that it was not identified and recovered by the police.
This is the second of my posts involving Mr Davies. I may not be disposed to do any more. I have to say that although he certainly provided some food for thought on this one, I have not been impressed with his analysis in the topics I have covered so far.
Others here have been tabulating other factual errors and forced arguments and as I mentioned at the start we may see them carry this a bit further.
Posted by James Raper on 08/11 at 12:52 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Defendants in court, Rudy Guede, Evidence & Witnesses, The pack attack, Hoaxes against Italy, 5 No pack attack hoax, Hoaxes re Guede, 33 Sole attacker hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers, News media & movies, Terrible reporting • Comments here (12)
Why The Count Of Discredited Prosecution Witnesses Even Now Remains Down Around Zero
As with all images on TJMK this image above will expand if clicked on
Just sifting through the latest drivel on Injustice in Perugia today and I came across this statement from one of their main posters.
"It was physically impossible for Capezalli to have heard any sounds from Meredith's residence".
Note : not that she was mistaken or that her evidence was unreliable but the bald statement that it was physically impossible for her to have heard anything.
Was she profoundly deaf then? If not, then why this assertion? Without some basis for this assertion then it is simply a dismissive slur on the credibility of the witness.
This happens to be the same poster who wowed that board with his claim that the Prosecution suppressed exculpatory evidence that would have cleared Knox and Sollecito.
Not that he supplied any proof. How could he?
It is axiomatic, of course, that if there was suppressed evidence then what it was would not be known. Nevertheless it was a ready springboard for calls from mindless idiots to have the Prosecution fully investigated and charged with perverting the course of justice!
Anyway, to move on, the purpose of this post is just to revisit (with pictorial assistance) Capezalli's testimony (I shall call her Nara from now on) and see if there is even a scintilla of justification for the claim.
Now to be fair, Nara did say in her evidence that she had double glazing and maybe that is what he is referring to although for the life of me I don't see why that would make it impossible for her to hear a scream outside.
But it's worth investigating because it's the sort of thing that does get repeated without further analysis and I have read others taking that remark at face value and doubting whether she did hear a scream and, perhaps more credibly, whether she would have heard the sound of someone running on the gravel of the cottage forecourt and up the metal steps from the car park.
Here is what she said -
"What happens is that getting up I'm going past the window of the dining room, because the bathroom is on that side, and as I am there I heard a scream, but a scream that wasn't a normal scream. [A terrifying and agonising long scream as she describes it elsewhere] I got goose bumps to be truthful. At that moment I no longer knew what was happening, and then I went on to the bathroom. There is a little window with no shutters, none at all."
Mignini then asks -
Q—Well, you go by the window and you hear this cry?
Ans "" Yes.
Q "" Then you continue to go towards the bathroom, you told me?
Q "" Do you open the bathroom window?
Ans "" No.
Q "" Explain what happened for us.
Ans "" I haven't any shutters on that window, I only have double-glazing so I can look straight out
Q "" So you looked out of the bathroom window?
Ans"" I didn't open up because I had all the little succulent plants there for the light.
A little late in her testimony Mignini seeks to clarify her evidence -
Q"" So you hear the scream, go to the bathroom, look out the window and you don't see anything?
Q "" Then you go back to the bedroom?
Q "" When is it that you hear the noises you described, and then we will see what they are?
Ans "" I hear the noises I described when I was closing the bathroom door, then I heard running, because that steel there [the metal stairs] makes a tremendous noise at night, then when you don't hear cars going by or such like, I looked out but there was nobody there.
Q "" From which way?
Ans "" To the left and the right, and there was nobody there.
Q "" Then you heard the scuffling?
Ans "" The same, in the meantime I heard running on the stairs, from the other direction they were running in the driveway.
Much later Nara is helpfully (perhaps) cross examined by Dalla Vedova on her remark that she has double glazing, as follows -
CDV - How are your windows made?
Ans - My windows are made of wood. They have double glazing and they have a shutter.
CDV - When you say "they have double glazing" do you mean that every single window has two panes, or are there two windows, one in front of the other?
Ans - No, two panes in each side and opening in the middle.
Confused? What is she really describing?
Many moons ago Kermit put together a very helpful Powerpoint lambasting the behaviour and claims of Paul Ciolino, the American PI who appeared on CBS rubbishing the suggestion that Nara would have been able to hear anything. It is obviously Ciolino's disreputable work that is the basis for the claim.
I am going to lift some stills from Kermit's excellent Powerpoint and add to them some more from a (somewhat infamous) Channel 5 documentary, from which it will be clear that
(a) Nara doesn't have double glazing, nor shutters, at least not at the back of her property overlooking the cottage. However there are shutters at the front and, for all I know, double glazing there but that is not of concern to us.
(b) There is little reason to doubt that she would have been able to hear sounds outside quite well.
Let's start.
Here's a picture of the back of Nara's property immediately above the car park.
Here it is again in relation to the cottage
In the first picture Nara's first floor flat is shown circled. In the second, it is obvious that only the roof of the cottage would be visible from the first floor, as indeed she said in her testimony.
There are two further floors above. The top floor is the one to which Ciolino (and Pater Van Sant) gained access, having tried but failed to interest Nara. Nara in her evidence said that there was an apartment above which she rented out and I suspect that this was the top floor. The top floor undoubtedly had double glazing or double casements.
Below is one of the top floor windows. (We can see Ciolino's reflection in the glass)
And here he is, standing in front of the same window whilst conducting his experiment with a couple of kids running along the road outside -
As we shall see it really was quite pointless conducting off-the-cuff sound experiments from there with the double casement shut tight
Nara said that her daughter also lived in the building so either the second floor was a separate conversion for her daughter or first and second were shared and the second was where their bedrooms were. That's actually immaterial as it is the first floor that really interests us.
Here is a close up of the first floor. We can be sure because we can see Nara and the co-presenters of the Channel 5 documentary standing on the balcony.
We can see how large the windows are on either side of the balcony. As to the window on the right it is also apparent that this has been blocked up save as to four panes in the middle so that now there is only that smaller window there.
Let us now look at that window from the inside.
"One went up, one went over there" is Nara explaining to the Italian TV reporter the sounds she heard.
Clearly then she is standing inside her bathroom and the bathroom window looks over the car park. Indeed we can see her succulent plants on the inside window ledge as she stated in her evidence. Also, if we look closely, we can see that her wall is tiled or wall-papered with a tile design befitting a bathroom. Probably that wall is also made of little more than plasterboard.
One thing is quite certain though and that is that the window, which opens in the middle, is not double glazed.
Nara's understanding however seems to be rather different. To her "double glazing" is (as she said to Dalla Vedova) "two panes in each side and opening in the middle".
We can also infer that the large window to the left of the balcony belongs to her dining room. What she said, in effect, was that she was traversing the first floor (from left to right) from her dining room to her bathroom (being both on the same side, as she says). She heard the scream in her dining room.
The window there does not appear to be blocked off as it is to the right. Indeed I think we can see full length drapes or net curtains but certainly one would expect a larger window there and again, clearly, it is not double glazed.
So again, why would it be physically impossible for her to have heard a sound, particularly a scream, coming from the cottage?
It couldn't be because it was too far away. We can see that from the pictures but also here is a handy GoogleMap calculation of the distance from her place to the far side of the cottage.
So that's, say, 45 metres. Or 49 yards. Not far at all. Thanks to Yummi for bringing that up on pmf.org.
We should also remember that it was the 1st November which is a religious holiday in Italy in remembrance of the dead and therefore background noise was quieter than usual. It was also probably sometime around 11pm and the back of Nara's property looks out on what is a natural amphitheatre in which noise will echo.
Nara Capezalli in fact came across as a compelling witness to what she heard that night and there is no way at all that it was physically impossible for her not to have heard that scream. Nor the metal stairs ("..makes a tremendous noise at night""¦.) just off to the right of her property and immediately below it.
On a personal note I was recently driven nuts by a manhole cover that had come loose in the road outside my bedroom window. Cars constantly drove over it and the noise kept me awake. The top floor of the car park would probably also act like a sounding board and the noise made by the stairs may also have come up through the stairwell we see immediately in front of her property. I am not so sure about the sound of gravel on the cottage forecourt being crunched underneath but already I am more than prepared to believe Nara on that score as well. Why not?
Finally, as we await the Cassation Motivation (whenever!) I seem to remember that at least one appeal point was the failure of the lower courts to accede to a defence request for audio tests to be conducted from Nara's property.
Bearing in mind that Judge Marasca reportedly has stated that the ground for overturning the Nencini convictions was insufficient and contradictory evidence one wonders whether Cassation will say that a test was required, in the absence of which Nara's testimony can be thrown into a pot along with other evidence somehow deemed "insufficient"?
If they do then watch out for them getting the double glazing issue quite wrong as well.
Posted by James Raper on 07/26 at 03:11 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Crime hypotheses, Various scenarios, The officially involved, Police and CSI, Evidence & Witnesses, Other witnesses, Trials 2008 & 2009, Massei prosecution, Hoaxes against Italy, 3 No evidence hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 15 Single alibi hoax, Hoaxers from 2007, More hoaxers • Comments here (24)
So Is James Moninger The One Moonlighting As Anonymous Spokesman For Dept Of State?
Above: the unfavorable context which persuades Sec of State John Kerry to stick most carefully to the rules
This is the second of two posts on the real source of an increasing flow of anonymous but seemingly official State Department claims that Knox's extradition is not in the cards.
My first post noted an increasing flow of anonymous but seemingly official claims that Knox's extradition is not in the cards.
Also there is a certain sameness in all of the news reports of secret State Department agreements and assurances alleged to save Amanda Knox from extradition. This is a very typical one.
Paul Thompson in The UK Express for Sunday 22 March 2015 2015
US officials: Amanda Knox will never go back to Italian jail
AMANDA KNOX will never be extradited from America, even if an Italian court this week upholds her conviction for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, according to US sources.
"Lawyers for Knox, 28, are confident she will remain free even if Italy asks for her to be sent back to resume a 28-year jail sentence.
US State Department sources say the uncertainty of the case against Knox means they will not agree to any extradition request.
Knox also has a huge amount of public sympathy in the US where she is seen as a victim of a miscarriage of justice by a foreign court.
A source at the State Department said: "There is a feeling that the whole case is flawed and that a US citizen should not have to go to jail because of that. If there is an extradition request from Italy it will be denied."
2. My Hunt For "Anonymous Source" Begins
The question of who is the State Department source (Burleigh calls him "˜American diplomat') was highlighted in my previous post.
Former US Ambassador David Thorne?
Some low level employee at State or Justice?
Completely made up by Anne Bremner and co?
So I reached out to my sources and this is what they told me informally for general background.
They considered it extremely unlikely that Ambassador Thorne or any one in Rome would pass on such assurances to Anne Bremner or even the likes of Nina Burleigh. While they could not confirm whether high level talks had taken place they did point out that John Kerry, as Secretary of State would respond differently now than when he was in the Senate and pointed to his statement "he would do his duty".
And Italy had a new government and foreign secretary, so the latest news reports seemed entirely made up. State and Justice had been following the case quite closely and they were not going to risk offense to Italy for this case. Not to say they hadn't been nervous when Knox went back to the US and got such heavy hitters in the media go to bat for her, but, also duly noted that public support for her was really paper thin.
This left either a made up story or some low level civil servant speaking out of turn with personal opinions "¦ we know that The FOA lie, but also, they sometimes seize on a wisp of rumour, or some "˜source' whose importance they tend to exaggerate.
We know about retired Justice Department lawyer J. Michael Scadron who's been saying State and DOJ would never allow extradition. There's even a photo of him at the Vashon Island gathering, in all his fan boy glory.
But then another person showed up on my radar. Take a look.
I'm so tired of debating with the kooks, but when some members asked me to help them out on a closed Facebook Page (275 members) Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito Roundtable which was run and overrun by FOA I joined to help out.
It turned out one of the admins was a State Department employee called James Moninger who is indeed, a "˜diplomat', working in some role for State in Hawaii. Consular, maybe.
His Facebook friends are the entirety of the FOA it would seem (see some below), and he is an active member and admin of several other pro Knox groups. Quite the fan boy too, it seems.
He hemmed and hawed about my inclusion but within the course of a few hours I was bounced out of the group twice. He wrote to me:
Naseer,
"I am writing to confirm that I removed you from the Amanda Knox Roundtable group. This was my decision, and I have advised the other administrators accordingly.
Earlier in the day I received a plea from one of the group members who claimed that you have harassed her in the past and contacted her employer. I have no opinions on this issue, but as site owner I am unwilling to take on a potentially significant liability.
Please don't feel that this action was in any way predicated on the opinions you expressed in the forum."
James Moninger
Here is my reply:
Hi, James,
"It's your group and you're welcome to do as you wish. That you didn't give a chance to respond to the (false) allegation is par for the course and no loss for me. As you know, I have far bigger platforms to present my views; it was YOUR group that invited me to participate in the first place.
I already know the source of that slander from other forums and will respond appropriately.
You should also know I'd contacted the State Department previously concerning the Daily Mail and Express articles that "sources in the State Department" have said "Amanda Knox will never be extradited to Italy".
Imagine my surprise to see you are the owner of this pro-Knox debate site, and membership in several others, which you have every right to. However, since your bio says you are a State Dept. employee, and your rather lengthy list of friends and followers have been actively advocating that Knox would never be extradited, with all sorts of references to internal department sources it is my responsibility to ask for comment:
1.	Have you in any way told them the State Department would deny an extradition request?
2.	Have you advised the Amanda Knox campaign in any way how to lobby the State Department or how it would respond to an extradition request?
3.	Please explain the following comment on the Amanda Knox blog on February 7, 2014 at 20:38.
"Concerns about this case would more appropriately be directed to the US Department of State; not to Congress. There is little or nothing the legislative branch of the government can do to affect treaties that are already in place. (Senate hearings, etc. are not the way the federal process works.) Using profanity with senior members of Congress can never be helpful.
I am hopeful that the State Department is watching this case carefully and is prepared to choose the correct path, whatever that may eventually entail, to protect a US citizen from any further violations of human and legal rights."
Are you, as a State Department employee, stating that Amanda Knox's human and legal rights were violated? In a G7 country? Would you like to retract it?
I will be writing my story in 48 hours or so. Please reply at your earliest".
Naseer Ahmad
He never replied, and it's been a while though he did agree with someone else who called us "haters" ?
Conclusion: I will end with this. PMF/TJMK member Odysseus wrote to UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, expressing his concerns. He got a reply from the North America Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office:
"If the Italian authorities were to make an extradition request to the US Government, we would expect that it would be considered in accordance with US laws."
Funny sort of a coincidence, but. I sent a list of questions three days ago to the Kerchers through an intermediary. Q. 4 was "Will they call for extradition Amanda Knox if she's convicted?"
I know they haven't received it yet, but, in The Sunday Times the Kercher family say Knox must be extradited
Tom Kington Rome
"Amanda Knox must be extradited from the US if her conviction for murdering Meredith Kercher is upheld by Italy's supreme court this week, the family of the British student have urged."
"Meredith's family hope that the sentence is upheld and the law is carried out to its fullest extent," said Francesco Maresca, a lawyer representing the family. "If that means extradition for Knox, that's what they want."
As always, we are with them on this. Knox needs to serve her time. Zero mistake has been proved - except for hers.
Below: some of the self-important James Moninger's "friends" on Facebook
Posted by Ergon on 03/24 at 02:04 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Mellas team, Sollecito team, More hoaxers, Other legal processes, Extradition issues, The wider contexts, N America context • Comments here (36)
Did The State Department Offer Assurances To Knox She Never Would Be Extradited?
US Sec of State Kerry (discussing Snowden) really needs extraditions to work
This is the first of two posts on the real source of an increasing flow of anonymous but seemingly official State Department claims that Knox's extradition is not in the cards
2. The Current Italy/US Extradition Treaty
As repeatedly explained here by posting lawyers the Italy/US treaty is deliberately written to exclude any politics.
If either nation has arrived at a guilty verdict of someone currently in the other nation by following its own laws, then the other nation deliberately has no legal option but to extradite them to serve their term.
So far neither nation has ever refused to do what the treaty says and so far politics has never intervened. That helps both nations in pursuing other extradition cases around the world.
3. Claims By An Anonymous Source
"Will Amanda Knox Be Dragged Back to Italy in Murder Case?" This was by Nina Burleigh in a cover story in Newsweek on March 19, 2015 quoting an anonymous source.
A State Department source tells Newsweek that diplomats in both Italy and the U.S. expect an extradition request to be denied: "I don't think either Italy or the U.S. wants a major burr under our saddle in terms of relationships between our countries, and this would be that, if the Italians pushed it." If they do, the source adds, there "is not any way" the U.S. will arrest Knox, nor will it have her declared a fugitive.
The elected Italian government in Rome is separate from the judiciary, and traditionally the two branches do not have warm relations. "I know the Italian government was rolling its eyes" over the prospect of the case reaching this phase, the State Department source says, adding that Rome faces "a real political problem" if the judiciary requests extradition. The American diplomat predicts the Italian court won't ask to extradite.
It seems that ever since Amanda Knox was wrongfully acquitted by the Hellmann appeals court of Perugia in 2011 we have been inundated with unsourced reports that "the United States would never extradite Amanda Knox.
Going back several years to the Daily Mail, Guardian, The Express and various American media, they all seemed to be reading from the same script:
She hadn't received a fair trial.
American public opinion would "˜never allow her to be sent back".
The Secretary of State would quietly prevail upon his counterpart in Italy to not request extradition.
And, as the final appeal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito came up to the last stretch it seemed that these same hacks were repeating the same talking points, even though much has changed since 2011.
These were the basic points, reported over and over in the main stream media till it almost seemed like a guarantee. So I have been looking for the last three years to verify the truth of that. And, who made that promise, if any were made? These were the basic parameters of my search, and I had to tune out the background noise of "˜double jeopardy" and "˜dueling extradition experts".
Then I had to look for the "˜unnamed source" quoted in all the news reports.
These possibilities came up:
WA US Senator Maria Cantwell spoke to her colleague Sen. John Kerry of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who spoke to his brother in law David Thorne, the former US Ambassador to Rome, who passed on a quiet message to the Italian Foreign minister. But would they ever speak on or off the record to reporters or like it very much if it was going to be bruited about?
Mid-level Friends Of Amanda Knox like Anne Bremner and Judge Heavey had received vague assurances from Senator Cantwell; somehow extrapolated as iron clad guarantee that Knox would never be extradited, never mind there has not been any precedent I can find that would apply to a similar case like this.
Someone in the Department of Justice and/ or State is feeding them shite.
The FOA are making it all up. That last was my favourite, given that they are led around by people like Steve Moore, Bruce Fischer, and J. Michael Scadron.
4. My Search For The Truth
This has been an interesting journey, and as always, things seem to just come together at the last moment. It has helped that I have been watching diplomatic activity up-close all my life.
My father was in the Pakistani Foreign Service stationed in London, so, shortly after I was born, lived in the UK from age 0-3, then with the Pakistan Embassy in Tokyo from age 3-8. We were a cosmopolitan group of embassy brats going to St. Mary's International School.
My friends were American, Iranian, Turk, Indian, East German, Canadian, New Zealand, points all over. Their parents were all diplomats and I made lifelong friends. My father could have received a posting as assistant to the ambassador to Washington D.C. after that but fate prevailed as he'd been stationed out 8 years and had to be rotated back to Pakistan.
Since that time I kept in touch with my friends and also developed this passion for International Relations and Geopolitics. Traveling to the US and other countries but also meeting over the internet, made many more friends at various levels of the State Department. Saw the changes there as respected career diplomats got replaced by interest groups and major donors to political parties. Such only went to choice postings, of course, but not second or third world countries, so I had many interesting discussions with them over the years.
The Wikileaks cables were a revelation as Embassy intercepts showed the thousand different ways diplomacy led to but also tried to prevent, war. I'd been reading them ever since they first came out so started searching for links to secret discussions with Amb. Thorne. Couldn't find anything except what already was reported, so reporter Andrea Vogt's FOI request find was a goldmine:
NEWLY RELEASED EMBASSY CABLES SHED LIGHT ON STATE DEPT HANDLING OF AMANDA KNOX CASE
By Andrea Vogt
FEBRUARY 13 "Newly released state department documents show the U.S. Embassy in Rome declared the Amanda Knox matter "Case Closed" in a cable to Washington just days after the American's clamorous 2011 acquittal. The memo reveals wishful thinking on the part of some U.S. diplomats, who were only too eager to see the thorny case come to a clean close."
In Update March 23, 2015 posted today, Andrea Vogt says this:
In a 2011 Italian embassy cable released as part of several Freedom of Information Act requests I've filed on this case (first published Oct 11, 2011) [US] diplomats in Italy mistakenly thought Knox's acquittal in 2011 would bring to a close this complex and divisive international case. Italy's Court of Cassation would prove them wrong, overturning her Perugia acquittal and ordering a second appeal in a different venue (Florence) which ended last year with a guilty verdict.
So is a political fix being attempted or already in? See my Part Two Conclusion to be posted next.
Posted by Ergon on 03/23 at 10:08 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in Concerning Meredith, Overview Powerpoints, Justice systems, Crime hypotheses, Defendants in court, The officially involved, Evidence & Witnesses, Trials 2008 & 2009, Appeals 2009-2015, Cassation critiques, Hoaxes against Italy, 12 Rabid media hoax, Hoaxes Knox & team, 13 AK persona hoax, 20 No-PR hoax, Hoaxes Sollecito etc, Hoaxes re Guede, Hoaxers from 2007, Knox-Mellas team, More hoaxers, Hoaxers from 2009, Nina Burleigh, Hoaxers from 2011, Knox Book, Hoaxers: media groups, Time weekly, UK Guardian, News media & movies, Terrible reporting, Other legal processes, Extradition issues, The wider contexts, Europe context, N America context • Comments here (18)
Page 1 of 9 pages 1 2 3 > Last ›