Posted on 01/30/2014 1:13:40 PM PST by Uncle Chip
Amanda Knox was found guilty of murder today by an Italian court, the latest twist in a murder case that goes back to 2007.
The verdict reached by the two judges and six jurors came after several hours of deliberations at the Florence courthouse.
The judge sentenced Knox to 28 years in prison. Her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and co-defendant was sentenced to 25 years.
Two Italian judges and six jurors began deliberations earlier today. If Knox and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito are found guilty, the court is also expected to pronounce a prison sentence.
The prosecutor has asked for a 26 prison term for the murder for Knox and Sollecito, plus another four years for Knox on a related libel conviction.
This is the fourth time Knox faced a verdict on the 2007 murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher while they were roommates in Perugia, Italy. Knox, now 26, and Sollecito, 29, were convicted in 2009.
After serving four years in prison they were freed in 2011 when an appeals court threw out the murder conviction. But Italy's supreme court ordered another appeals court to rehear the case. Kercher's sister Stephanie and brother Lyle were in the courtroom for the verdict.
Knox, who is sporting a new, short haircut, remained in her hometown of Seattle for the latest trial. Sollecito was in court today earlier today, but was not present for the verdict....
(Excerpt) Read more at gma.yahoo.com ...
There’s a very good chance she is guilty, if you read her initial statement it makes no sense whatsoever.
Well, they think ours is screwy to. They seem to have a lot less crime then we do.
Its not double jeopardy. Different system.
An excellent book. I highly recommend it. It is a good read for anyone interested in true crime stories, old school investigative journalism and most of all for understanding Mignini, his mindset and motives and how the Italian “legal” system works (or doesn’t).
Giuliano Mignini is a corrupt, inept and very vindictive prosecutor. He is more interested in saving face when he makes prosecutorial mistakes or is questioned about his prosecutions and methods and his wild unsupported conspiracy theories than he is in seeing any actual justice served. Not to mention he is obsessed with “satanic cults”, “secret societies” and “ritualistic sex orgy murders” even when there is no evidence to support such claims.
This BTW was Mignini’s first version of the murder of Kercher; that Knox was “demonically possessed” and part of a wide ranging underground satanic cult with many accomplices (and he doesn’t like Americans very much BTW, thinks they (we) are all sex crazed and “demonic”) and that she and Sollecito and Guede attempted to force Kercher into some sort of “satanic sex game” and when Kercher refused, Mignini alleges that is when and why Kercher was murdered. In this latest trial, he abandoned this theory as the appeals court overturned the conviction and his lack of physical evidence and basis for his theory of the crime, so he then replaced it with yet another “theory”; that “Kercher was murdered because she complained about the cleanliness of her roommates and their “friends”.
What he did to American crime and mystery author Doug Preston and Italian crime journalist Mario Spezi and all the other innocent people he falsely jailed and prosecuted over the last 20 years in the yet unsolved Monster of Florence case was in its self a crime. All they (Preston and Spezi) did was investigate the long and yet unsolved Monster of Florence murders write some articles and the next thing they knew, they were accused by Mignini of actually having been involved and complicit in the crimes themselves.
Preston was interrogated for many hours on end and threatened with never being ever able to leave Italy or ever seeing his wife and children again and Spezi was jailed for a time before finally being ordered by a judge to be released do to the complete lack of evidence against him. When Mignini finally had to let Preston go for lack of evidence and face his prosecutorial errors, Preston was told by Mignini to never come back to Italy else he would “get him” the next time. So what did Mignini do next? He sued them both for liable just as he sued Knox’s parents for only and merely repeating their daughter’s court testimony just has he has sued for liable, anyone and just about everyone who ever disagrees with him.
And just as in the Monster of Florence case, the physical evidence, the chain of evidence was grossly mishandled by both the police and Mignini’s office in this case as well.
While some are citing the DNA and physical evidence, the truth is that the evidence was so poorly handled that in the US it would be deemed inadmissible.
And Knox and Sollecito were interrogated for hours, days without end and without benefit of an attorney; Knox admits that she changed her story and at one point implicated someone else but that she claims that she did so under duress after many hours of interrogation and without sleep in order to tell the Italian police and Mignini what she thought she had to tell them in order to make the interrogation stop. Perhaps that wasn’t the right thing to do but who is to say what any one of us would do in a similar circumstance.
As far as the supposed DNA evidence, there was no DNA; no blood, saliva, sweat, semen, skin cells, etc. belonging to Knox (or Sollecito) found on Kercher’s body or her clothing or her bedding. The only DNA found there belonged to Guede. The only DNA from Knox was a very, very small, minuscule amount that was found on a kitchen knife which was allegedly but not proven to be one of the murder weapons and which would not be surprising since she shared an apartment with Kercher.
As far as Guede; of course he implicated Knox and Sollecito in the crime. He (who’s DNA was all over the crime scene and on and in Kercher’s body and her clothing and bedding), did so in order to get a lighter sentence. He also lied and changed his story several times. Yet Guede was convicted and was sentenced to 16 years for actually murdering Kercher, yet today Knox and Sollecito were sentenced for 26 years for being accomplices. Why are they sentenced to 10 more years for being an accomplice to murder? Because Mignini asked to have the additional years added to their sentence for their “liable” against him.
Yes; mounting a defense and proclaiming your innocence seems in Italy to be equal to perpetrating “liable” against the prosecutor should you be convicted.
This whole case was a joke from the get go and totally embarrassing to Italy. It is very clear to any detective with a thinking brain it was Rudy who killed Meredith. It’s a classic break-in/rape/murder that are quite common all over the globe since forever. The simple answer is the correct one.
Amanda’s so-called confession wasn’t even a confession and was clearly a false statement that didn’t match any evidence. False statements happen all the time, especially among young people. It seems crazy, but it happens all the time, and in America detectives are now more educated. Italy is still behind the times. also these interrogations were not videotaped. How convenient! In America detectives would be laughed out of court if they didn’t video the interrogation.
There was a freaking knife print of the murder weapon that left a very clear impression and doesn’t match the so-called murder weapon that they took from Sollecito’s kitchen. Sollecito’s kitchen knife doesn’t match any of the wounds. How can this even be considered the murder weapon? They took Sollecito’s kitchen knife so they could cook up some evidence. I wouldn’t even trust any of the evidence.
Now Knox is back to claiming she was in Sollecito’s apartment all night on Nov. 1 — with no evidence to support that story, but witnesses, phone and computer records contradicting it. Her only alibi witness is her co-defendant, Sollecito, and he’s already told the police that he has lied for her.
Based on the wounds on Meredith’s body, investigators conclusively determined that she had multiple attackers.
Actually, Amanda didn’t show up that night at the police station until nearly 11 p.m. for a voluntary interview with Raffaele. When she told the cops she was present during Meredith’s murder and she knew who the murderer was, yes, they did want to chat a bit longer,
Until that night, Amanda had been lying to the police, claiming she was at her boyfriend’s apartment all night the evening Meredith was murdered. It was only when Amanda found out Raffaele was no longer backing her alibi that she turned around and accused an innocent man of murdering Meredith.
Knox’s effort to frame an innocent man was nothing but a desperate attempt to throw suspicion off herself. In the process, she inadvertently revealed that she knew something only the police knew about the murder: that Meredith had also been sexually assaulted.
Police first came to the house the day after the murder to investigate a burglary in the bedroom of another roommate, Filomena Romanelli, that had been reported by Knox and Sollecito.
But the break-in turned out to be staged. Among many other reasons, glass from the broken window was on top of the piles of clothes thrown on the floor. (Always remember to break the window before trying to stage a burglary!)
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2011/09/07/amanda_knox_the_new_mumia!/page/full
Among the evidence for her guilt is that the murder weapon was found — freshly bleached — in the apartment of Amanda’s boyfriend with Meredith’s DNA on the blade and Amanda’s DNA on the handle.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3003994/posts
Knox’s knife DNA casts doubt on murder weapon
A court-appointed expert testifying in U.S. student Amanda Knox’s third murder trial in Italy said Wednesday that a new trace of DNA found on the handle of the knife alleged to have been the murder weapon belongs to Knox and not the victim.
That testimony bolsters the defense, which claims the kitchen knife was not the weapon used in the bloody 2007 slaying of Knox’s British roommate, 21-year-old Meredith Kercher.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3088190/posts
Try to keep up, Ann, you and your gig are getting old.
Does he really need a focus group? Isn't it really as simple as this for Nobama and Holder, Black she stays White she goes.
You did think O.J. was innocent right?
Would you like to hear about the many injustices of the U.S, justice system?
I agree. The immediate reports after the murder convinced me, I followed the case in the early days and I believe she is guilty. Even if they could prove the boyfriend did it, she certainly watched. That was a weird and awful case.
Forensics showed there were more than one attacker? Who was that attacker?
You realize you have become a combination of William Kuenstler and Alan Alda. You should try to get all the murderers off death row. The evil system falsely convicted all criminals.
“We invented concrete. We made things out of it. Aquaducts, Coliseums.....shoes....”
You forget ancient Chinese Sakrete?
The Left has its murderer heroes, we’re not worse. Add to it an element of chauvinism and misguided patriotism, the system that freed O.J. Simpson and handed Ph.Ds to the Manson gang members is still according to the Joe Palookas best in the world, and poor Amanda maybe a murderess but she’s OUR murderess. Too many bad thriller movies and TV melodramas and everyone’s an expert on detective work, laws and courtroom procedures everywhere in the world.
It changes by the minute. One minute the Knoxites say there was no sexual assault, which proves she is innocent. The next minute someone else confessed to the sexual assault, which also proves she was innocent.
Yes, they both said they were at his place at first. When she was confronted with phone records that showed that wasn’t true she changed her story. She lied about texting her boss and when she was confronted with proof that she did text him, she said she was there when the boss raped and killed Meredith.
That's because they have a lot less to steal.
Your facts are wrong. She did not say she saw the killer in her initial statement. In her initial statement, she was somewhere else completely. In her third statement she said she saw her boss, who was later cleared, murdering raping Meredith. Her constant lying is not evidence of her innocence.
Why the sudden interest in going all left wing?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.