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Amanda Knox, acquitted of murder - Italian court orders new trial after appeal
So It Goes
We keep moving...Registered User regular
We keep moving...Registered User regular
From the Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/world/europe/05italy.html?_r=2&hp
PERUGIA, Italy — After one of the most closely watched trials in Italy, an American college student and her Italian former boyfriend were found guilty of murdering her housemate two years ago in this picturesque university town.
Amanda Knox was taken to court Friday to hear the verdict in her murder trial in Perugia, Italy.
The case gripped Italy and drew intense international media attention to a pair of young people who seemed to have no clear motive or violent pasts.
Prosecutors had accused Amanda Knox, 22, then a student at the University of Washington, and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 25, of killing her housemate, Meredith Kercher, 21, of Surrey, England, in November 2007 after a scuffle escalated into their coercing her into a sex game.
Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito were both found guilty on all the major charges by the jury, in a verdict that was read in court about midnight. Ms. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison and Mr. Sollecito to 25 years. Prosecutors had been seeking life sentences, Italy’s stiffest sentence, for both.
A third defendant, Rudy Guede, 22, is already serving a 30-year sentence for sexual assault and murder, although the judge ruled that he was one of three assailants. All three deny wrongdoing. Mr. Guede’s trial in his appeal is under way.
In addition to the murder charges, an eight-member jury, after a yearlong trial and more than 12 hours of deliberation, also found Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito guilty of unlawful possession of a weapon, (a knife that prosecutors claim was involved in the murder), of staging a crime scene and of burglary.
Prosecutors contended that the three had faked a burglary to cover up the murder.
Ms. Knox was also found guilty of defamation, for having accused her former boss in a bar where she worked, Patrick Lumumba, of the crime in both verbal and written testimony. He was jailed before being released. Ms. Knox has said that the police pressured her into accusing Mr. Lumumba.
A Times article that came out before the verdict:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/world/europe/04italy.html
But to American eyes, many aspects of the trial can in fact seem baffling, even if they are perfectly normal here.
Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito were held in jail for a year before prosecutors moved to indict them. Although it began in mid-January, the trial has taken nearly a year — long by American standards but fast by Italian standards — because it has met only two days a week, partly to accommodate a powerful lawyer for Mr. Sollecito, Giulia Bongiorno, who is also a sitting member of Parliament and the head of Parliament’s Justice Committee.
The case the prosecutors have presented is largely circumstantial, though even some American legal experts say it could be strong even in an American courtroom.
Prosecutors have cited records showing that Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito stopped using their cellphones around the same time on the evening of the crime, and began using them again around the same time early the next morning. Forensic experts have testified that evidence with Ms. Knox’s and Ms. Kercher’s commingled DNA was found in a room in the house where prosecutors allege Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito staged a break-in as a cover-up, for which they are also charged.
Ms. Knox has maintained that she spent the night of the murder at Mr. Sollecito’s house, where the two smoked marijuana, watched the French film “Amélie” and had sex. She said she went home the next morning and found the door to the house open and Ms. Kercher dead.
Mr. Sollecito has said he does not remember whether or not Ms. Knox spent the whole night at his house. His lawyers chose not to subject him to cross-examination, in part because his story does not entirely corroborate Ms. Knox’s. On Thursday he delivered one of his few declarations in court, saying, “I did not kill Meredith” and appealing to jurors to give him his life back.
Unlike in some American trials, where defendants often turn on each other, Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito’s lawyers have mounted a common defense. They say this is because their clients are innocent. Yet the Italian justice system offers no American-style plea bargain, in which defendants admit some guilt in exchange for a lesser sentence. The closest equivalent is a fast-track trial, which Mr. Guede’s lawyers asked for with the hope of a shorter sentence for him.
The jury of six civilians and two judges is not sequestered and has access to news media coverage of the case. They must convict if they are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. In closing arguments on Thursday, one prosecutor, Manuela Comodi, told jurors that they did not require absolute truth. That, she added, was known only “by God.”
From the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/05/amanda-knox-meredith-kercher-murder
The two former lovers gave contradictory accounts of their movements on the night of the crime when, as they both acknowledged, they had been smoking cannabis. Amanda Knox then gave police a statement which she subsequently retracted, in which she said she had been at the flat when Kercher was murdered and had covered her ears to block out her screams. Her statement, at the end of an overnight without the assistance of either a lawyer or interpreter, interrogation was ruled inadmissible by Italy's highest court.
But, by a quirk of the law, it was able to be cited repeatedly in court and even shown this week on a giant screen to the two professional and six lay judges trying the case. That was not the only unusual aspect of a trial during which the leading counsel for the prosecution, Giuliano Mignini, was being tried for abusing his powers in another case.
Mignini, who initially suggested Kercher might have died in an occult rite, later argued that Knox had killed her because she had come to hate her British flatmate. The judges appeared to have accepted that explanation and the prosection's reconstruction of the killing, which also changed during the trial.
This had Sollecito taunting Kercher with one knife while Knox plunged another into her throat. Mignini suggested it was culmination of a violent game forced on the British student in which she was sexually assaulted by Guede.
The final days of the trial saw media sentiment in Italy shift in favour of the defendants as their lawyers kept up an offensive on the forensic evidence linking them to the crime.
On Thursday, Knox and her former boyfriend both made emotional appeals to the judges to free them, but to no avail. The US student and the young Italian had spent more than two years in jail waiting to know their fate. Trials in Italy proceed at a leisurely pace of, at most, two hearings a week and this one took eight months.
Two points of discussion here:
1. What really happened that night, and why?
2. The Italian justice system is whacked, y/n? I tried to highlight a few of the aspects that would not fly in the American justice system or don't make a lot of sense.
So It Goes on
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Did they ever explain what the motive was for this murder?
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
First it was an occult ritual. Then it was because she grew to hate her. Then it was a sexual thing gone wrong or something.
I mean, I don't want to say that people who look innocent on the outside can't be capable of some pretty terrible things. But I have a hard time wrapping my head around this one. I guess the sex thing is the most credible of the above. Maybe your boyfriend sexually assaults someone (while you are there) and you think you should probably kill the victim to cover it up? I dunno, that just sounds stupid for this situation.
I also love how she got convicted of slander for making a statement that someone else did it. Better not speak up on your own behalf in Italy, that's another crime! Like a cherry on top.
From what I've read, the prosecution started with the theory of as some sort of Sex Game gone wrong. Basically the american girl, the boyfriend and the guy who was convicted earlier tried to coerce the victim into a sex game and when she refused, the convicted fellow slit her throat.
Apparently the prosecution changed the motive in the closing argument though, from "sex game gone wrong" to "rage over the victim accusing the american girl of being "promuscuious""
It's really hard to compare other countries justice systems to the U.S. In a lot of ways the U.S. justice system is the one that's "whacked" if you're comparing it to the norm. Things like discovery and rules of evidence can be really different in Europe, and in many cases it's because the U.S. has innovated while European countries are still following rules that might be hundreds of years old and based in issues that aren't relevant any more.
Actually, Mussolini had things rather under control. We just can't admit that because we beat him in a war.
And this case is the further thing from "reasonable doubt" I have ever come across.
To be fair, they then had a xenophobic reaction to some rape cases.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7902107.stm
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE52C02S20090313
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I'd say being a fascist country and engaging in shitty foreign wars causing the deaths of millions is pretty dysfunctional. The government was still very shitty, and he didn't do that much to improve it other than adding to the shit.
A) In, I think, mutually poorly-understood Italian
C) Being asked what she imagined happened instead of what happened to her knowledge?
Seriously, there's a reason the dude got hung from a meat hook (I think?) when the people finally caught him.
Anyway, the trial seems pretty fucked up, certainly by American standards of due process (well, pre-Bush standards).
Pretty sure she speaks fluent Italian.
After a year in Italian jail I would too.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Yeeeah, except what she did is referred to as "defamation." I'm fairly certain it's possible to stand up for yourself without committing a crime.
I agree that the Italian justice system may be fubar, but that doesn't change the fact that something horrible happened and Amanda Knox, most likely, knows something about what took place. Whether or not she actually committed the crime, we will probably never know.
Defamation isn't a crime in America. Yo, free speech.
Slander and libel? Not against the law?
not crimes, no
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
This, really, has no bearing on weather or not she committed murder. Unless you suggest that because she's capable of, gasp, defamation, she's obviously a murderer.
EDIT: misquote
Nah, I was just saying it was pretty crap that on top of being convicted of murder, possessing a knife, staging a burglary scene, etc, they also slapped on defamation. Just 'cause.
Actually, in a number of states there are criminal libel laws on the books.
lots of states have a lot of wacky laws on their books
isn't interracial marriage still illegal in alabama?
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
It seems pretty fucked up by 2009 American standards, and pretty much any other American standards not involving witches. Start with the non-sequestering of the jury in such a high-profile case.
The major forensic evidence by the prosecution was a knife they claimed had both Knox's and Kercher's DNA on it. Yet that knife was never even shown to be the murder weapon.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1904571,00.html
Point being, in 17 states libel is in fact a crime. And I'm not sure what the 1st Amendment has to do with anything, because it's irrelevant to the civil or criminal nature.
We have really crappy standards at the moment. Though I suppose as long as you're not Muslim they're ok.
Though, on the bright side, at least people will complain less about the media's coverage.
Here's what I know would happen in my state:
She would have had a trial within 60 days if she was still in jail, there would have been 12 jurors plus alternates, they would have been hella sequestered, the trial would have taken place over a series of weeks instead of a year, her coerced statements would not have been mentioned, (or she would have had a lawyer present at least during interrogation), a plea deal would have been possible, and she wouldn't have been prosecuted for slander.
I mean these are basic standards as far as a murder prosecution goes.
It's not a "crime" any more than sodomy is a crime in all the states that still have anti-sodomy laws on the books. Those statutes aren't enforced, and even in the extremely rare case when a prosecutor is dumb enough to try, they get thrown out (like the case of that kid in utah a few years ago who got convicted under a criminal libel law that hadn't been used in a hundred years.)
but we're off topic now, so I'll just leave it there
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
For murders, the US runs off a policy of "beyond a reasonable doubt," which in this case it seems like there's plenty of things to doubt.
The argument about defamation is polluted as well since according to some sources she was coerced into saying it by the authorities.
It also doesn't help with the sequestering issue and how the Italian media painted her as "Foxy Knoxy" the slut-whore she-devil. No defamation charges there, huh?
I'm familiar with the spirit of the law, but if memory serves, the media wavers in coverage of high profile criminal cases. This time, they all fell in line--at least for now. I'm not saying there aren't good reasons for them to do so (well, technically, I'd still like them to have stayed firmly in the "We cannot confirm nor deny" camp, but that's just me), just observing that they were very clearly talking in a context as though they knew, for a fact, that she hadn't done it.
When, you know, they don't.
Unless the American media has some sort of magical Italian all-seeing eye.
American media is blindly supportive of Americans over foreigners. See also, well, anything from, well all of American history. But for the most obvious, watch NBC's coverage of the Olympics.
Yeah, I'm not saying it's at all surprising (or even unjustified). But, at least people won't complain.
Huh? The First Amendment is of absolute importance here, because of exactly who brings the case forward. In a civil suit, the plaintiff is the injured party, seeking remuneration for the damage done to them by the person's false and either malicious or reckless speech. In a criminal trial, the prosecution is done by the government through its courtroom agent, the prosecutor. This simple fact is why criminal libel laws have been held to be an unconstitutional prior restraint of free speech.