The evil afoot in Perugia: prosecutors seek life sentences for Knox and Sollecito

(Note: This entry was posted Monday afternoon, September 26. Then, sometime Monday night, it disappeared from the site, or rather its main text disappeared and the entry went into offline “draft” status, which I only realized on Tuesday night, as explained here. After I posted about the problem last night, a reader found and recovered the cached text at Google. I have made a few further revisions, and am re-posting the entry.)

Leave aside for a moment the fact that there is no evidence—zero evidence—that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were involved in the sadistic murder of Meredith Kercher on November 1, 2007.

Instead, just ask yourself this. Which of the two following possibilities is more likely, and by how large a factor of likelihood?

One, that the low level black hoodlum Rudy Guede, who had previously been arrested burgling other establishments in Perugia (including one incident in which he broke into a second story window) but had been let go by police, broke into the girls’ flat to commit burglary and unexpectedly encountered Meredith, whereupon he sexually assaulted and killed her?

Or, two, that the two white college students, the middle-class Amanda and the rich Raffaele, formed a satanic sex cult or sexual torture trio with the black burglar Rudy Guede on the spur of the moment, and the three of them together sexually assaulted, brutalized, and killed Meredith?

Number two is what the Italian prosecutors say happened, and what all people who believe in Amanda and Raffaele’s guilt believe happened. On the basis of zero evidence. Guede’s DNA is all over the murder room. Knox’s and Sollecito’s DNA is not in the murder room. The footprint which was said to be Sollecito’s is not his. The knife in Sollecito’s kitchen, which was such a big deal in the initial investigation and trial, does not have enough DNA to serve as evidence. Amanda’s famous confession to the police—one of the greatest single marks against her in the minds of prosecutors and the Italian public—was not a confession, but an imaginary, highly ambiguous scenario she was pushed into adopting at the end of several days of intermittent interrogation and sleeplessness, the last session going on all night, and which she denied was an admission of guilt. The police and prosecutors who subjected her to that interrogation which amounted to torture are the ones who should be in jail, not her.

The truth is so obvious that no one sees it. Liberalism prevents even Amanda and Raffaele’s defenders from stating it plainly.

The black hoodlum murdered Meredith, as thousands of black thugs have murdered thousands of whites in America, Britain, and the rest of the West since the black liberation of the 1960s. Black thugs raping and murdering young white women is a common crime in today’s world. But the Italian prosecutors and media, having found a perfect “Great White Defendant” in the person of Amanda Knox, and having turned her into a witch, and having committed innumerable monstrous abuses of justice to prove her guilt, will not now admit that they were wrong. Instead, in the appeals trial which is going on now, they are seeking to increase Amanda’s and Raffaele’s respective 26 and 25 year sentences (ten years longer than that of the actual murderer, Rudy Guede) and keep these two innocent people in prison for life, rather than admit that they were wrong. Like Macbeth, the prosecutors are in blood stepped so far, that should they wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.

And the threat hanging over Amanda and Raffaele is not coming only from the vindictive prosecutors. The Italian criminal justice system is so geared against defendants that it’s very possible that the conviction of Amanda and Raffaele will be upheld, notwithstanding the absence of any actual evidence of their guilt.

What, then, is the belief in their guilt based on? On the prosecutors’ baroque fantasy of a satanic sex cult, plus the fact that Amanda did such things as perform a cartwheel after waiting for hours in a police station, and smile at her relatives when she saw them in court, thus proving beyond a doubt that she was a witch utterly lacking in remorse for the murder that she had supposedly committed.

The Daily Caller reports on September 24:

Italian prosecutors double down, seek life sentence for Amanda Knox in murder appeal hearing

The second day of closing arguments in the appeals trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito concluded with drama: Prosecutors asked that the pair, currently sentenced to 26 and 25 years, respectively, receive life sentences for the murder and sexual assault of British foreign exchange student Meredith Kercher.

They also asked the court to impose an additional sanction of six months in isolation for Amanda and two months for Raffaele.

Earlier on Saturday, prosecutors reviewed the case against Amanda and Raffaele, focusing on a supposed bloody footprint they claim Sollecito made. The evidence is in doubt, however, because the footprint is 7 centimeters (2.75 inches) too large for Sollecito’s shoe size.

Prosecutors also defended their decision not to test Kercher’s pillow for semen—physical evidence that could have produced definitive proof of whether—and, possibly, when—Kercher was sexually assaulted, and by whom.

Prosecutor Manuela Comodi tried to discredit an independent court-appointed experts’ report. She exposed mistakes experts made during their careers and read aloud portions of judges’ findings in which their reports had been dismissed and criticized.

Comodi also defended the controversial practices of Italian forensic investigators, explaining why she believes evidence contamination was highly unlikely, urging the court’s jury and its two judges to ignore the independent experts—whom she called “inexperienced” and side with Patrizia Stefanoni and her team of what the Italians refer to as scientific police.

Comodi’s harshest criticism was reserved for the media; she claimed repeatedly that reporters do not fully understand the process of gathering and analyzing DNA evidence.

In a moment of high drama, Comodi brought her own bra into court and waved it around to depict how Sollecito supposedly cut off Kercher’s bra with the help of another man, Rudy Guede, who pled guilty to the murder. This bit of theatre provided Comodi’s explanation for how Sollecito’s DNA was found on the hook of Kercher’s bra clasp.

- end of initial entry -


Eric G. writes:

I too believed that Knox and Sollecito were likely innocent at first, but after reading the book Barbie Nadeau’s “Angel Face” I have doubt. From Knox and Sollecito’s bizarre behavior after the murder to the drug fueled lifestyle they were leading. Sollecito claimed that he was high the majority of every day. Knox was no stranger to drugs and hard alcohol either.

The fact that their stories changed several times, Knox showing up at a local store at 7 a.m. to buy cleaning supplies the morning after the murder, the broken window in Kercher’s room that appeared to have been staged. Sollecito’s fascination with knives. There were many things that, according to the book, the American press didn’t cover so that the Knox family would keep doing interviews with them.

Knox at first said she was at Sollecito’s apartment all night the night of the murder, then she changed her story and said that she had gone home to change clothes and seen her boss, Lumumba entering Kercher’s room, prompting police to arrest Lumumba. [LA replies: This is simply false. Amanda did not “change her story.” After being interrogated and kept sleepless for several days by the police who kept pushing her to imagine some scenario that might have occurred, she came up with this scene in which she was hearing Patrick Lumumba commit the murder. She was out of her head with several days sleeplessness and emotional abuse by police when she said this, and stated immediately afterward that this was not a confession that she had done it. She was also without a lawyer during this interrogation, and the police, against the law, did not keep a recording of it. The fact that you would report the line that “Amanda changed her story” illustrates the ignorance and propaganda on which A&R’s supposed guilt is based.]

He was quickly able to provide an alibi as he was at his bar at the time. Rudy Guede was Knox and Sollecito’s drug connection and hanger-on. [LA replies: There’s no proof that they knew Guede beyond a passing acquaintance.] I believe they were all high when they went to Knox’s apartment and encountered Kercher. From there it’s hard to say exactly how it happened but I believe that they were all acting in concert. [LA replies: On what evidence do you base this belief? On zero evidence. On a fantasy of something that the prosecutors and you and others imagine might have happened.]

It was an interesting book that really shed some light on the Italian justice system and Perugia itself, which makes even the wildest U.S. college campuses look like a convent.

Carol Iannone replies:

Oh brother. All lies and fabrications. Eric G. should read what Bruce Fisher details about Barbie Nadeau in his book “Injustice in Perugia,” and what Mark Waterbury says in “The Monster of Perugia.” I too was at first taken in by Barbie, until I looked further.

Knox did not buy cleaning supplies, that has been completely debunked. They smoked marijuana, nothing more. It was a real break-in by Rudy, nothing was staged. The media was absolutely brutal to Amanda, sensationalizing her as a sex-crazed demon so that the Knox family understandably tried to control that. Maybe they weren’t wise in all they did, but it was understandable. The two were together all night. In the morning Knox went home to shower and change clothes and get a mop to mop up a leak at Raffaele’s. The business about Lumumba was terrible but it was the result of the abusive interrogation that she underwent at the hands of twelve detectives who kept at her all night. Usually interrogations are recorded or filmed but for some reason no record has emerged of this interrogation. She should have had a lawyer but they told her to ask for a lawyer would make things worse for her and that if she didn’t come across with something she would go to prison for a long time.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 28, 2011 10:45 AM | Send
    

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