An Italian court has reversed the ruling of an earlier appellate court that found Amanda Knox not guilty in the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. The latest court actually handed down a longer sentence against Knox who has remained in Seattle, Washington with her family. The case has drawn attention to a number of flaws in the Italian legal system and I have serious reservations over this ruling. I believe that there is evidence that Knox committed the crime but the evidence is highly circumstantial and much of the crime scene was contaminated by poor police work.
This is the fourth verdict in the sensational murder case. The earlier appeals jury overturned the convictions of Knox and Sollecito four years before that ruling. While it has shocked many, it was a victory for the rule of law given the lack of evidence and serious mistakes of police in the course of the investigation. We have previously discussed the problems in the physical evidence and false statements made in the case against the couple. We also discussed the ludicrous slander charges made against the parents.
The defamation claim stems from her accusing her former boss in a bar where she worked, Patrick Lumumba, in testimony. Later she said that the police pressured her into accusing Lumumba. The use of defamation to charge people for such testimony (considered privileged in the U.S.) is a terrible practice.
What is clear after this case is that the police investigators are virtually “libel proof” in light of their numerous and mind boggling mistakes. I fear great sympathy for the parents of Kircher. There was a foundation to suspect both Knox and Sollecito, whose testimony changed in fundamental ways and retained serious gaps. However, the police so bungled this case, the threads of evidence left ample doubt. The prosecutors relied on open speculation based on highly questionable forensic evidence such as Sollecito’s DNA on the bra strap. The evidence against Knox was even weaker. None of this dispels suspicions of the couple or their contemptful conduct before and after the murder. The earlier jury proved itself dispassionate and disciplined is separating speculation from fact in overturning the convictions.
The decision this week pushed aside those problems over the 2007 murder. It seemed to punish Knox for not appearing in Italy (which is her right) and gave her 28 years and six months in prison. Her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and co-defendant was sentenced to 25 years. She was previously given 26 years.
Her lawyer Knox’s attorney, Carlo Dalla Vedova qouted Dante in response noting that Dante reserved the lower circle of hell for those who betrayed trust in reference to the police. It was a curious choice since many people in Italy view that particular circle as made for Knox.
Knox issued a statement that she was “frightened and saddened by this unjust verdict” and “expected better from the Italian justice system.” Her counsel will now appeal but her domestic counsel will not to be prepared for an extradition demand. However, while Presiding Judge Alessando Nencini ordered the 29-year-old Sollecito’s passport revoked, he made no requests for Knox’s movements to be limited, saying she was “justifiably abroad.”
As I discussed on ABC News, extradition may be hard to fight even though this could still take years before she is faced by re-incarceration. It must first go to the Italian Supreme Court, then to the Foreign Ministry for an extradition request, then to the State Department, and potentially to a court to review the basis for extradition. However, that review is limited. While this case looks like double jeopardy with four verdicts, the Italians are likely to argue that the system is simply different and that no final stage was reached in the process until it was heard by the Italian Supreme Court. The Italian system has multiple fact-based proceedings of this kind. It is a system that has been heavily criticized for its inefficiency and inconsistency. However, a court could easily conclude that this is not multiple convictions for the same offense. In the end, this will become a diplomatic issue and the U.S. (particularly when it is demanding the extradition of Edward Snowden) is unlikely to refuse a close ally. We demand more extraditions from other countries than we sent to other countries. The issue is not likely to be a close one for the Obama Administration in ordering the U.S. Attorney in Seattle to carry out an extradition demand from Italy. However, that could be years away since the Italian system moves at a glacial pace.
Two Italian judges and six jurors reached the decision after about six hours of deliberation.
In the bizarre world of American celebrity crimes, the store of the conviction ran with the apparently equally important story that Knox has been dropped from the CBS reality show “Big Brother.” Knox had hope to win the $500,000 grand prize by being the last person evicted on “Big Brother.” Somehow a conviction for murdering your last roommate is viewed as a bar on participation with the roommates on the reality show. A bit too real.
Meanwhile, on November 15 — a fortnight after Kercher’s death — the prints in her room were identified as belonging to Rudy Guede, a 20-year-old unemployed gardener from Ivory Coast, who fitted the description of the man seen running away.
His palm print was on the bloodstained pillow under Kercher’s hips. His DNA was found on her clothes and inside her. Guede also wore Nike trainers that were consistent with the bloody footprint on the floor.
This hard evidence unambiguously established that he was in Kercher’s room, had sexual contact with her, and left after her blood was spilled. He also had knowledge of the cottage. A fortnight earlier he had met the Italian men living downstairs while playing basketball and, in the week of the murder, he went there to smoke hash with them. On that occasion, he met both Kercher and Knox.
Guede was also under suspicion for other recent break-ins in Perugia and for stealing credit cards.
Less than a week before the murder, he had been briefly detained by police in Milan for climbing into a nursery and stealing an 11inch kitchen knife.
Guede, who had fled to Germany, was extradited back to Italy. But by that time Knox had become such a focus of the media’s attention, and the putative sex games by an angel-faced killer such a cornerstone of the story, that the Italian prosecutors were not about to abandon their group murder theory, even though Patrick Lumumba was now out of the frame.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2390600/Amanda-Knox-case-The-real-crime-Foxy-Knoxy-EVER-charged-murder.html#ixzz2s0Sp3EWV
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The theory of a GROUP murder sounds VERY far fetched in this case……
nick spinelli
Darren, Italians know food, music, art, etc. Government, law, etc. they are bozos.
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Hey
Judedood, don’t forget that they are also masters @ ballbustingbursting.I read that there was absolutely NONE of Knox’s DNA found on or near Kircher.
If she had an argument with Kircher and the 2 ladies had a fight, then I would assume that some of Knox’s DNA would have been found on her.
The alibi evidence offered by Knox and Sollecito really is very poor and unconvincing and contradicted by quite a lot of evidence, compounded by Sollecito have no less the 4 versions of his story of what happened that night.
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what have you heard as far as the evidence?
I see the canard that she lied after hours of being interrogated. She appears to have accused Lumumba after 1 hour of interrogation – while she says she confided to her mother on November 10 that the accusation was false and completely spontaneous, neither Knox nor her mother alerted her lawyers or the authorities that she had falsely accused Lumumba in the three weeks he was held. That was why she was convicted of calumny.
One of the things that pretty well everyone reading the press, especially the US and english speaking press needs to be careful about is that the Knox family hired a substantial PR operation, who are spending a lot of time pushing their version of her story to english speaking journalists – who do not read the actual Italian materials. As a result all sort of myths have come to be extant in the United States, ranging from the “double jeopardy” argument, that there was no evidence (the case record is over 10,000 pages with dozens of witnesses), that they had the guilty when Guede was arrested (the problem was that the burglary was very obviously faked, plus there was strong evidence that Kircher’s murder was not by a sole actor – that she had been restrained), that Guede is a “drifter,” i.e., homeless (he is a resident of Perugia for decades and had an apartment 100 meters from Sollecito’s.)
The alibi evidence offered by Knox and Sollecito really is very poor and unconvincing and contradicted by quite a lot of evidence, compounded by Sollecito have no less the 4 versions of his story of what happened that night.
In Europe, a lot of lawyers tend to take the view that this case is probably a Scottish verdict situation (Scotland has 3 criminal verdicts possible – guilty, innocent and case-not-proven.) But I don’t know any lawyer who takes the view that Knox is convincingly innocent. Most think that Knox and Sollecito were involved in some way, but how is unclear.
The evidence is pretty conclusive that the break in was staged. The window that was broken into is very high off the ground – 13 feet and like a lot of Italian windows has two sets of shutters – exterior and interior (blackout). A 10 pound rock was found in the room (pretty heavy to throw up over 13 feet), but no glass in the path garden outside – instead the broken glass fell in the room and on the interior and exterior window sill, but on the exterior fell in a line that corresponds to the position of the bottom of the shutter – ergo the outer shutter was closed when the window was broken – plus there was no sign that anyone had disturbed the glass as they would have on entry. There were valuable items in the room – laptop, etc. that were not taken. That was a factor that led the Italian police to be convinced that someone let Guede in – and that the burglary was intended to cover that up. Since the other roommates were out of town ….
My own “guess” is that there had apparently been considerable friction between Knox and the roommates over the hours she kept (she was not in a formal college exchange program) and her habit of bringing random strangers back to apartment (there is a fair amount of evidence on this.) It seems entirely possible that Knox was there with Sollecito and Guede when Kircher returned home, Kircher was annoyed, there was a row and things got out of hand – leaving Kircher dead. Knox and Sollecito then panicked and tried to cover up – and things went downhill for them from there.
Thank you, zipser, for the excellent explanation.
I think that is a very fair assessment. To suggest that Knox has no case to answer – that there was no evidence against her is really inaccurate.
One other argument which I heard one of her lawyers deploying was “Italy has no double jeopardy rule” and that is why she won’t be extradited. Frankly, if he thinks that, Knox needs another lawyer. Italy under the ECHR has a double jeopardy law:
“No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings under the jurisdiction of the same State for an offence for which he or she has already been finally acquitted or convicted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of that State.”
The misrepresentation (and it seems it is Knox’s PR team pushing it) is about the “standard of review” in appeals. The Italian court system provides for an appeal “de novo” as of right. What an appeal “de novo” means is that the appeal is a fresh trial of the issues – every finding of the lower court has to be re-proven in the appeal court, and “as of right” means that the the appeal is automatically granted. In contrast the US appeal system a “clearly erroneous” standard for factual finding – which internationally is considered the toughest standard of review. Thus it is very hard to win on appeal for a defendant in the US, much easier in Italy. That said, the subsequent actions of the Italian Court of Cassation (Supreme Court) are more like a US appeal court (that is the layer above the appeal court), and in effect what the Italian Supreme Court did was reverse and remand for a retrial because it was unhappy with how the first pair of courts handled the case. That is the same thing as the US process where an appeal strikes down an original conviction and remands for a new trial. In short, the argument that Knox faced double jeopardy does not pass the laugh test.
There are some issues that US readers need to understand when evidence in a civil law system is being discussed. In a civil law criminal court there is a jury – but it consists of (in Italy) two judges and 4-6 lay jurors. This leads to a different approach to evidence than in a common law – pure lay-jury trial. To explain, in “common law” systems, if any doubt at all about the reliability of an item of evidence is raised – it is excluded from consideration – the “exclusionary rule or principle.” This is because of a concern by judges that a jury composed entirely of lay people might put too much weight on a problematic item of evidence. In a civil law trial – the evidence is admitted, but the problems with its reliability are also admitted – and the jury is relied upon (with its two judges) to decide the weight to put on an item of evidence. Thus in the US if the defence challenges successfully the manner in which DNA evidence was gathered – it is OUT. In civil law, it stays in but with a big question mark on it – the jury gets to weigh it and consider it in the context of all of the other evidence, and discount it or decide that it has some corroboration.
Part of what happened in the Cours de Cassation reversal of the original appeal was that they concluded the appellate court had applied the wrong evidentiary approach, looking at items of evidence in isolation, disregarding items of evidence altogether, and not looking at evidence in context.
My own sense of the situation is that Sollecito and Knox were probably accessories – certainly “after the fact” because of being found trying to clean up – and probably before the fact – i.e., they were present when the murder took place. I don’t think that the evidence as such shows more than that – but in a US court that would still, if proven, lead to a finding of guilt. Does the evidence meet the requisite standard of proof – well I was not on the jury.
But again, if someone is arguing that there was no evidence against them – that is complete nonsense. There certainly was evidence, the question was whether it was enough.
Zipzer – Thanks – it is really nice to have someone who has their pulse on a case and can explain the various elements. Need more of your type, less of mine.
mespo727272
“I think the evidence was not the strongest I’ve seen but clearly she lied to police about what happened.”
She “lied” after being questioned by police for hours, without sleep and without counsel. How many cases of coerced confessions have we seen in the US related to individuals later fully exonerated? She was convicted for being weird by a judicial system that prosecuted scientists for not being able to accurately predict an earthquake. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/italys-unfounded-earthquake-prosecutions/
Bron, “The truth shall make you free.”
nick:
Isnt that rather insulting? To your Italian half of yourself. 🙂
One of the reasons I don’t believe in capital punishment is that I don’t trust the legal system very much. They have already incarcerated and put to death way to many innocent people. Can you imagine being put to death for a crime you didn’t commit. I wonder what that would do to your psyche. Police and prosecutors frame others to cover-up either for themselves or other prominent people.
As a back seat jurist, you just hope that she is really guilty in this case. The Italian court is obviously looking for somebodies scalp.
What does everyone think of 6 people and 2 Judges being involved in the decision.
I would certainly council my son against marrying her.
Darren, Italians know food, music, art, etc. Government, law, etc. they are bozos.
I think the evidence was not the strongest I’ve seen but clearly she lied to police about what happened. First, implicating a clearly innocent man and then herself after protestations to the contrary. That breach in her credibility and her admission of being present when the murder was committed along with the forensic evidence could support a murder charge. On balance though, I think she was involved enough in the crime so as to justify a civil judgment (where the Italian standard is preponderance of evidence) but beyond a reasonable doubt seems … well … doubtful?
Given the eventually the Italian courts are going to convict her even if it requires 20 retrials the US Government should refuse to extradite her.
This is a textbook example of a double-jeopardy case and an extradition request petitioned by the Italian government would violate Amanda’s Fifth Amendment Rights. Under Reid v. Covert the constitution supercedes any treaty the senate has ratified, in this case the Extradition Treaty with Italy.
I hope the courts here in the US protect this US citizen. I am not confident enough she will be proected by some in our government though, and this is sad.
Charlton Stanley
How hard does anyone think the Italian government is going to fight to extradite her? Also, since double jeopardy is forbidden by the US Constitution, how does the State Department and DoJ respond to that issue?
Obviously, even if she is not extradited, she can no longer travel outside US borders without risking arrest on an international warrant.
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Excellent points.
They increased the sentence too, which is not kosher in this country either.
Hey Nick, what up wid dat?
I’m no fan of Amanda Knox, but this case seems very weak, from what Ive read. IIRC, there was no motive, only circumstantial evidence, and that a person with a prior conviction for robbery was already convicted and is serving time for the murder. Knox changed stories, but we have many cases in the USA where this occurs, particularly under pressure, and is later ruled to be coerced: e.g. confessions to crimes that were proven to have been committed by another.
I’m concerned in the sense that she might be actually extradited….. I agree that this is a travesty of justice and that the evidence has been tainted…. But there are international skills at play…. Diplomacy is one of them…. Some of the Italians are still upset that American GIs were not convicted for the death of the folks in the gondola years ago….at one time they demanded that the US landing rights be ceased…. But hey…. George, Dick and Barack should be sent to stand charges for war crimes…. But hey….
How hard does anyone think the Italian government is going to fight to extradite her? Also, since double jeopardy is forbidden by the US Constitution, how does the State Department and DoJ respond to that issue?
Obviously, even if she is not extradited, she can no longer travel outside US borders without risking arrest on an international warrant.
I thought a felony conviction, tax fraud, and/or having done porn or pole dancing were prerequisites for being on a reality show. depending on your point of view that part of her story enhances or distracts from her “blond on the run” appeal for CNN and second or third-tier local news programs.
The whole things sounds like a circus, esp. with her own lawyer not ruling out guilt. The public likes to find a hero or a villain in these things, but really there are just a lot of trainwrecks and all you can hope is that principle triumphs and this dim bulb quietly fades into the woodwork (although that seems pretty unlikely).