POST: "Amanda Knox and Italy's 'Carvanalesque' justice system," by Olga Khazan, published by the Atlantic on January 31, 2014.
GIST: "When Amanda Knox was first acquitted in 2011, four years after she
was originally arrested for Kercher's murder, Italian newspaper Il Giornale titled its story about the case, "Amanda and Raffaele Acquitted: It's the Magistrates Who Should Be Convicted." Now, exasperation with Italy's legal system is likely to flare once
again, at least among Americans who support Knox. Apparently,
this layer-cake appeals process and these reversals of earlier verdicts
are nothing unusual for Italy's big cases. "It's one of the many failings of Italian justice that it never delivers conclusive, door-slamming certainty," wrote journalist Tobias Jones in The Guardian
shortly after the 2011 verdict. "What usually happens is that the door
is left wide open to take the case to the next level, first to appeal
and then to the cassazione, the supreme court."........."Nobody here's good at their job." In
fact, judging from media reports, the entire ordeal—from the discovery
of Kercher's stabbed, half-naked body to this latest conviction—has been
an illogical, clumsy disaster. Prosecutors lacked a motive or any clear evidence linking Knox to the
scene of the crime. Knox didn't know she was a suspect even as she was
signing her confession. Nathaniel Rich's excellent 2011 story about the case in Rolling Stone provides a chilling look at some of the other myriad flaws in the
investigation that put Knox behind bars for four years of her initial
26-year sentence: Sollecito called the carabinieri -- the Italian military police --
and the couple went outside to wait. Two officers soon arrived. They
weren't carabinieri, however -- they were postal police, a sleepy,
junior-varsity unit of the state police responsible for investigating
crimes like Internet fraud and stolen phones....For starters, the carabinieri would have prevented anyone from
tramping through the crime scene. The two postal-police officers,
however, allowed themselves to be led through the house in search of
clues by a band of child sleuths out of Scooby-Doo...Italy's carnivalesque judicial process, where there is never order in
the court, the lawyers and defendants constantly interrupting the
proceedings with groans and catcalls and wild gesticulations, while the
press in the gallery yammers away like the kids in the back of the
classroom. The prosecution's failure to establish motive or intent ("We
live in an age of violence with no motive," said one prosecutor). And
the fact that prosecutors did not immediately drop the case against Knox
and Sollecito after the bloody fingerprints and footprints came back matching a 20-year-old petty thief named Rudy Guede..........To be fair, Perugia, where the murder and early trials took place, is
a small university town and seemed to lack the kinds of hot-shot
lawyers and judges that might be involved in a similarly important case
in a larger city. The prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, told journalists
that while it brought him little joy to send a young woman to jail for
decades, "things are often touched by Satan" and referred to Knox as a
"sex-and-drug-crazed she-devil." "Nobody here's good at their job," Frank Sfarzo, a local blogger who has followed the trial more obsessively than anyone, told Rolling Stone. "If they were, they wouldn't be in Perugia."
The entire post can be found at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/amanda-knox-and-italys-carnivalesque-justice-system/283487/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com
