[Marxism] In defence of the presumption of innocence (this time is Italy)

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am disappointed that these two articles by former NYT reporter Timothy
Egan appear only as items on a personal blog, and not as opinion pieces in
the print edition. (Yes, Virginia, print still matters.) Personally they
tilt me toward judging Amanda Knox and Raffaele Solecito not guilty of the
murder charges against them. (Supposedly as a "thrill killing" inspired by
marijuana (shades of "Reefer Madness."

Unlike the OJ Simpson case, in this case, another person has already been
convicted of the murder, and only after his conviction and the arrest of
Knox and Solecito has he attempted to throw the blame on them.

The articles below show the police and prosecutorial misconduct that has
made this case live, despite the inadequacy of the core evidence. 

Much is made, apparently, of the fact that Knox did handstands in the police
station where she was to be questioned (in a manner clearly illegal in this
country, though increasingly permitted anyway). This apparently shows that
she felt "no remorse" about killing her friend, and thus proves her guilt.
Note that if she did not kill her room-mate, there is no reason why she
should have felt remorse about not doing so.

Frankly, I have a certain respect for her self-centered (but not for that
reason homicidal) refusal to let the trap closing keep her from maintaining
her exercise schedule. Don't let the bastards grind you down!
Fred Feldman

Two articles by New York Times blogger Timothy Egan
http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/the-knox-trial-continued/

June 10, 2009, 10:00 pm 
An Innocent Abroad

Daniele La Monaca/Reuters
 
Amanda Knox, an American college student accused of murder, attended a trial
session in Perugia April 18, 2009.
For five months now in the Umbrian hill town of Perugia, an American
exchange student called "Angel Face" by the tabloid press has been on trial
for the murder of her roommate. On Friday, for the first time, that student,
Amanda Knox will testify on her own behalf.

The case against Knox has so many holes in it, and is so tied to the career
of a powerful Italian prosecutor who is under indictment for professional
misconduct, that any fair-minded jury would have thrown it out months ago. 

That is not to say the Italian courts are not fair-minded. We kill innocent
Americans often enough through our legal system, kill them because of shoddy
police work or racial prejudice. Knox's fate is in the hand of six jurors,
two judges among them, who meet two days a week and will soon take a long
summer break before reaching a verdict in the fall. 

But this is not about whose system is better. This is about a high-spirited
British student, Meredith Kercher, found strangled and stabbed in November
of 2007 in the Perugian cottage she shared with Amanda Knox. Justice must be
done. And in fact, a man has already been convicted of her murder - more
about that in a moment. 

But it is also about Amanda Knox, an equally high-spirited student whose
life has been nearly ruined by this collision of predatory journalism and
slipshod prosecution - "the railroad job from hell," as one outside expert
hired by CBS News concluded. 

Amanda Knox was 20 years old, a Jesuit-educated student from a Seattle
family without money, when she arrived in Italy for a term abroad. She had
worked three jobs while attending the University of Washington to save money
for this trip. She had no criminal record, was an athlete whose soccer
tricks had earned her a grade school nickname of "Foxy Knoxy," a lover of
theater and the written word. And she was also a "little spacey," in the
words oft-used by friends to describe her.

She started seeing an Italian student, Raffaele Sollecito, the son of a
prominent doctor. They spent the night of the murder at his apartment, she
said, and no reliable witness or credible evidence has ever placed them at
the crime scene. But within days of the killing, these two would be painted
across Europe as thrill-seekers who killed a woman in a drug-fueled orgy.

That may sound like a preposterous motive for a murder by college kids, but
it's a recurring obsession for the prosecutor in the Knox case. 

"Case closed," the Italian authorities said in those first days of November,
2007, even though they had yet to arrest the only man who has ever been
found guilty of the murder. 

As it happened, my daughter was studying in Italy at the same time - like
Knox, una studentessa di Seattle. They did not know each other. But after
the tabloid fallout, any female exchange student from Seattle was suddenly
cast in a dark light. 

After my daughter wrote about her experience for this newspaper, she found
the paparazzi camped outside her room in Bologna. For all of that, our
family consider ourselves honorary Italians; we lived there for a short
while, our kids went to grade school there, and we love the country dearly.

Knox may not feel the same way. She spent nearly a year in jail without
being charged. This, despite the fact that the only physical evidence found
on the murder victim's body was from someone else - a drifter with a drug
problem named Rudy Guede. 

Shortly after the crime, Guede fled Italy for Germany. His prints and his
DNA were found in Kercher's room and on the body. After being arrested, he
underwent a fast-track trial and was found guilty last fall of complicity in
the murder, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

That should have been the end of it. Guede initially told one story: that he
had sex with Kercher and then went into the bathroom, plugged in his iPod,
and came out to find a strange man standing over her with a knife. 

Then, months later, Guede changed his story: he said that strange man was
now Sollecito, assisted by Amanda Knox in a sex game that went wrong.
Neither of them had been named by him before. Guede denied being the killer.


But if Knox and Sollecito had killed Kercher, and were in that
blood-splattered room, why is there no physical trace from them on the body?
A print? A swap of DNA somewhere? After all, Kercher had died after a brutal
strangulation, evidence of considerable struggle, with knife pokes in the
neck. 

"In every murder, the killer always leaves something behind and always takes
something with him," said Anne Bremner, a former prosecutor and prominent
attorney, a member of International Academy of Trial Lawyers, who is
assisting the Knox family, pro-bono - though she has no role in the actual
defense. "All the forensic evidence points to Rudy Guede."

The prosecution says at least one of the college students did leave
something behind. They said they found a bra clasp with Sollecito's DNA on
it. But they discovered Kercher's clasp nearly six weeks after the murder -
a highly suspect and tainted piece of evidence from a contaminated crime
scene. 

Knox and Sollecito were arrested in large part because of what they said
under duress by interrogation of the prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini. Remember
that name. After being questioned all night without an attorney or a
professional translator, Knox said some things in response to a series of
hypothetical questions. This was initially trumpeted as a contradiction, or
worst - a confession. A higher court later threw out the most damning
statements.

Lurid details were leaked to a press corps that trolled through Knox's
college sex life - something they would never do to a man. Her social
network computer pictures, showing the usual 20-year-old drinking faces,
were splashed across front pages. 

The Brits, in particular, had a field day. Locked from her house in the
first days after it became a crime scene, Knox went to a store one day with
Sollecito to buy emergency underwear. The British tabs bannered this as a
g-string celebration of remorseless killers.

Little wonder that an Italian television poll found Amanda Knox a bigger
personality than Carla Bruni. 

Still, Knox's statements were troubling. She and Sollecito gave different
versions of what they had done the night of the killing, their memories
clouded no doubt because they'd been smoking hashish. And Knox raised the
possibility that a bar owner with an airtight alibi could have been
involved.

The authorities later claimed they found the murder weapon, a kitchen knife,
at Sollecito's house. The knife had Knox's DNA on the handle - no surprise,
considering how much time she spent with her boyfriend. But it was also
described, after repeated and highly questionable testing, as containing a
tiny amount of DNA that might match that of the victim. 

That DNA, according to several outside experts, was of such trace amounts,
and was available only after numerous enhancements in the testing, that it
could belong to many people. Also, the knife did not match the bloody
outline of a knife at the crime scene.

So why push forward against Knox and Sollecito? They had no motive. The
evidence is flawed and flimsy. 

One explanation comes from Douglas Preston, a prominent best-selling
American author who lived in the Florentine hills while researching a book
about a serial killer never found, "The Monster of Florence," co-authored by
Italian journalist Mario Spezi. 

After the serial murders stopped, a prosecutor decided to reopen the case.
His theory was that the killer or killers were Satanists from an ancient
cult that harvested body parts. That prosecutor is the same one in the Knox
case - Giuliano Mignini.

"One day I'm walking down the streets of Florence when my cell phone rings,"
said Preston in an interview. "They say, 'This is the police - we're coming
to get you.'" For three hours, the author was interrogated by Mignini about
possible connections to the case. His phone calls with co-author Spezi had
been wiretapped, and Mignini asked him to explain things. Preston said he
was told he must confess to perjury or obstruction of justice.

"I'm not the kind of person who could be broken down," said Preston. "But
now I'm terrified. My wife and kids are out having lunch, and I'm thinking
I'm never going to see them again."

Preston is indicted - Mignini has that power - but then told he can go free
if he leaves Italy. The author departs the next day, banished, humiliated
and deeply troubled. 

Fast forward to the Amanda Knox interrogations. She's 20, hardly a world
sophisticate, who spoke only passable Italian at the time. Mignini used the
same methods - a pattern now coming to light in the misconduct case against
him, in which he is accused by a Florentine judge of intimidation and
wiretapping journalists and other perceived enemies. He has denied any
misconduct. When Preston looked at the case against Amanda Knox, he saw a
rogue prosecutor and a miscarriage of justice.

"There was no evidence," he said. "I realized it was all bogus. Mignini
believes that Satan walks the land and anyone who is against him must be
working for the other side."

One more thing about this case: a civil suit by the victim's family and the
wrongly accused bar owner is going forth at the same time, meaning that
highly prejudicial information that a criminal jury would not usually hear
is being aired, before the same people. 

Amanda Knox faces 30 years in prison if convicted. For Mignini, what is at
stake is his reputation, his honor - no small things in Italy. I'm haunted
by an observation from Rachel Donadio, my Times colleague in Rome. In last
Sunday's paper, in trying to explain Silvio Berlusconi, she wrote:

"In Italy, the general assumption is that someone is guilty until proven
innocent. Trials - in the press and in the courts - are more often about
defending personal honor than establishing facts, which are easily
manipulated."

All trials are about narrative. In Seattle, where I live, I see a familiar
kind of Northwestern girl in Amanda Knox, and all the stretching, the funny
faces, the neo-hippie touches are benign. In Italy, they see a devil,
someone without remorse, inappropriate in her reactions. 

In the end, of course, this is about the victim. Meredith Kercher is gone, a
daughter no more, leaving behind the "brutality, the violence, and the great
sorrow it has caused," as her mother said in court last week. 

But one life taken should not keep anyone from asking the right questions
before ruining two others.

June 12, 2009, 4:36 pm 
The Knox Trial, Continued
Amanda Knox took the witness stand Friday in the trial in which she is
accused of killing her roommate in Perugia, Italy, Meredith Kercher. After
nearly a year and half of being painted as a wild party girl, it will be
intriguing to see how the European press treats her first appearances in
court. Judging by the comments posted in response to my piece on the case,
many people have a very harsh view of her, and there's a racial component,
which I'm not sure I understand. 

"This is their O.J. Simpson trial - it's that big," said Paul Ciolino told
me Friday, a private investigator, who counsels for the Innocence Project, a
group advocating on behalf of those they believe are wrongfully convicted.
Ciolino was also an investigator for CBS, and called this case "the railroad
job from hell." He said he's been subject to all manner of abuse from people
who think he's wrong. I wish people would try to look at the evidence in
this case, but that's what happens when tabloid journalism meets the
judicial system. 

Many readers said I was raising questions about the prosecution because Knox
is blue-eyed and pretty. I never mentioned her looks, except to say the
tabloids call her "Angel Face" and seem fascinated with her looks. People
took me to task for mentioning that she was "Jesuit-educated," as if that
gives her a pass. It does not, of course. But the tabloid image of her as a
promiscuous party girl seems to cry out for some balance - hence the
"Jesuit-educated." Her family is not rich. Parents are divorced. The mother
was a teacher. The father works on the financial side at Macy's. They've
maxed out credit cards and mortgages to pay for legal defense. 

The one man who has been found guilty in this case, Rudy Guede, who is
black, from the Ivory Coast, is the reason why people are looking at this
case through a racial lens. Knox never named Guede. And Guede never named
Knox, until he changed his story months after his arrest. Changed it
completely. 

Most of the media accounts from Friday's testimony described her as calm and
well-spoken, talking in Italian and English. She said the police struck her
in the head and she was called "a stupid liar" during the all night
interrogation shortly after the killing, in November of 2007. 

The duress argument is crucial in this case. Knox, who is 21 and a
study-abroad college student from the University of Washington in Seattle,
was subject to an all-night grilling without a lawyer or a professional
translator. The transcript, if one does exist, of that interrogation has
never been made public. We have only the word of a prosecutor who is now on
trial for his own misconduct in unrelated cases. And we now have Knox's
testimony. Knox maintains that the police, led by that prosecutor Giuliano
Mignini, pressured her into saying things that were contradictory and
accusatory of another man, a bartender named Patrick Lumumba.

Lumumba has an airtight alibi, and was cleared. How did his name come up?
Both sides say it originated with a cell phone message from Knox to Lumumba.
Knox worked for him, a bar owner. She told him good night, see you later - a
typical Italian send off - ci vediamo. The police, in that night of
questioning, implied that this message meant Knox, her boyfriend and Lumumba
were all going to get together later and go after Kercher. That's what the
prosecutor announced when he said the case was closed. 

I'd like to comment on some of the general points made by readers to the
post. First, the headline: "An Innocent Abroad." Many people took this to
mean that I believe she is innocent. I'm not sure what happened to Kercher,
but I do know there so many holes in the prosecutor's case as to raise
reasonable doubt, at the least. The headline was supposed to be vague in a
literary way - an allusion to Mark Twain's book, "Innocents Abroad." Maybe I
should stay away from literary allusions, particularly when they can get
lost in translation. 

One commenter asked, "What's your agenda, Egan?" Others suggested that I
know the family, or live nearby. I have never met the family. My daughter,
who is the same age as Knox, went to a different school in Seattle, where we
live, and they never knew each other, never met, never traveled in any of
the same circles. So, I have no agenda. I came to this story cold. I was in
Italy, visiting my daughter, just as this unfolded, and like many, I read
the Italian and the English press and assumed this girl was trouble, to say
the least.

But over the last month, I started fresh, as any reader should do, and
looked at the case, as thoroughly as I could. 

The two points I tried to make are:

1) They already have a man, Rudy Guede, who's been found guilty of the
crime. His bloody hand print was in the room. His DNA was on the body. Even
if the DNA is suspect, Guede fled the country. And he admitted to being in
the room with Kercher the night she was killed. He also said he had sex with
Kercher, though he denied the killing. None of that evidence applies to
Knox. This is very strong stuff, very compelling, and the anti-Knox crowd
has to look at this without being so dismissive.

2) Reasonable doubt. Knox had no motive - unless you buy the prosecutor's
absurd Satanist-inspired thrill kill, a point he raised in a hearing. If she
was the killer, would she have have stuck around, unlike Guede? Wouldn't her
prints be in the room, her DNA be on the body? Wouldn't they have disposed
of the murder weapon? The police say a kitchen knife, found in plain sight
at the house of Knox's boyfriend, was used. But it doesn't match the
puncture wounds or the blood outline at the crime scene. 

Knox explained on Friday that she gave inconsistent accounts of the night of
the murder because of the pressure she was under by police. I would
challenge anybody to undergo an all-night interrogation in a foreign country
and emerge unscathed. People say they know in their gut that Knox is guilty.
Why? Because she was kissing her boyfriend later. How inappropriate. I think
one commenter had it right when he wrote, "Inconsistencies and inappropriate
behavior are not synonymous with guilt. " 

I think part of the problem between the American view and the Italian view
is that - to be frank - many American exchange students don't put the best
face on our country while abroad. Italians complain about the hordes of
drunken, entitled American college kids parading around their monuments,
cluttering their piazzas. They don't like American arrogance, and that
applies to views on the judicial system. These are valid points. I was
appalled while in Bologna to see so many Ivy Leaguers treating their year
abroad like nothing but an extended party, day and night. One Brown student
told me he had not attended a class in a month. That image may be one reason
why Italians were quick to condemn Amanda Knox.

Others are quick to condemn the Italian legal system. One commenter wrote,
"I live in Italy and the incompetence, bungling and unprofessionalism of the
judicial system is legendary." I lived in Italy as well, and can't speak
about the system. But I do think it is very relevant that this prosecutor
has a pattern of harassing people, and has raised devil motives in other
cases. 

Many other readers said, as one post had it, "Not a normal girl." Perhaps.
The question here is guilt in a murder case. 

I got quite few messages from Italy saying that no matter what the evidence
is, Knox will be found guilty - her goose is cooked, regardless of the facts
in the case. I prefer to believe otherwise.



________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu