Joe Studwell's blog

In the finest traditions of the Italian judiciary, the presiding judge in the Sollecito-Knox appeal — Claudio Pratillo Hellmann — has been giving interviews to the press.

You can guess what he said: this has been a terrible mess, creating appalling trauma for innocent people, in particular the Kercher family. We really have got to get an independent prosecution service set up — like the CPS in the UK — and start following our rules about criminal investigations. Plus, we need a full public enquiry into the whole thing, not least the conduct of the police, why no tapes of the Knox interviews were ever produced, allegations of physical attacks on journalists, and so on. And don’t even get me started on Mignini…

But of course I am joking. What Hellman really said (let me stress I have not had time to read the original text in Italian but John Hooper is a serious correspondent) is that it is quite possible Sollecito and Knox were party to the murder, that Mignini is at the top of his game, and that the issues are really very complicated.

Many open-minded Italians will forgive Hellman because his brave decision to do the only sensible thing and have the forensic ‘evidence’ looked at by more serious people decided the outcome of the case. He is likely just covering his fanny, as they say in America. But in covering his fanny he is ensuring that everything will stay the same. Which means that people less interesting, less white, less attractive and less well funded than Sollecito and Knox will continue to get stitched up unnecessarily.

Knox is gone. Not only that, she flew — which is pretty compelling evidence she is a witch. Let those four years inside be a lesson to other young people thinking of taking a student holiday in Italy and smoking a bit of dope. Just as well Knox and Sollecito didn’t grow their own and end up dead in Perugia’s Capanne prison, like the hippie who built our kitchen.

I forgot to remind readers yesterday who have not done so already to watch this short interview with the chief investigator in the Sollecito-Knox case. Arthur Miller must be eating his heart out. His play was only based on a true story.

Other:

Writer Douglas Preston on Mignini and the case, and Mignini’s form with respect to the earlier Tuscan serial killer case. What Preston says is no doubt true, but the Mignini focus tends to draw attention away from what are really systemic problems in Italy. Mignini is a symptom. The incompetence of the magistrates compounds the incompetence of the police and unlike the UK — with the Crown Prosecution Service — there is nothing in the middle of them to act as a circuit breaker.

Before Mr Giobbi undertakes his next ‘exquisitely psychological’ investigation, he would do well to read this.

John Hooper does a Q&A in the Guardian that gives answers I would agree with to a number of obvious and important questions.

So Sollecito and Knox are out.

My immediate reaction is that this is consistent with the behaviour of a survivor institutional-retard state. It is another moment, to use the phrase which Lampedusa never quite used, when ‘everything must change so that everything can remain the same’.

Sollecito and Knox are free so that we can get back to business as usual. It’s a sort of mini Mani Pulite for the legal system.

Anecdotally, what stands out for me more than anything is ignorance. I have asked four separate Italian lawyers, two internationally renowned and two from my local town, what they think about the Sollecito-Knox case and each has said they are sure that in some sense they are guilty. But when you ask why, you realise they are ignorant of even basic facts in the case. A small dose of northern European puritan professionalism would go a long way in Italy. This is a society where no one is capable of saying ‘I don’t know’.

Worth paying attention to:

One of the great UK long-form journalists was in Perugia tonight:

10.31pm: Peter Popham of the Independent tweets:

Weird mood in Perugia’s medieval heart, thugs baying for Amanda’s blood, robbed of the witch they wanted to burn.

The video in court is very Italian, lots of extras on camera. Sollecito, who as a local always seemed to accept that a life in jail might be his fate is more together. Knox, who stood up a the start of the appeal and took the fight to the jury, is spent at this point.

John Hooper toys with the Perugia is different angle.

I am not so sure.

Monday’s coverage:

The second part of this article highlights the position that Italian ‘justice’ has left the Kerchers in. Their suffering goes on because of the grotesque unprofessionalism of the investigation and trial. The Kercher family will hold a press conference this morning that will be blogged here by the Guardian. Their anguish remains focused on the idea that the use of two knives and the number of wounds in the murder must have required more than Guede. I can’t speak to this or to the behaviour of sex attackers who use knives. What everyone can speak to is the fact that there was no motive and no evidence to put Sollecito and Knox in the bedroom where Meredith Kercher died and a huge amount of forensic evidence — hair, hand prints, finger prints, semen, other DNA — to put Guede there. I wonder if at the presser the Kerchers will mention the fact that Guede can expecct to be out of jail in only seven or eight years after his sentence was reduced on appeal (largely, I would say, to ‘fit’ with the wrongful convictions of Sollecito and Knox). If you run a legal system like a bunch of adoloscents, there will be a price to pay. Laid-back Italy doesn’t seem so cool today.

The Perugia shock blog reminds us that Knox’s 3-year, Euro22,000 criminal defamation conviction for saying the black bar owner she knew had committed the crime is UPHELD. This is very important because it is tantamount to saying the police did not intimidate and hit her during the illegal all-night interrogation for which no tape recordings have ever been produced. I have blogged before that the obvious explanation for her accusation against the bar owner, Patrick Lumumba, is that the first clearly identifiable forensic evidence the police found at the crime scene was the hair of a black male (Guede). They knew they were looking for a black man before they got the DNA match to Guede’s police record. And, in the middle of the night, subjecting Amanda Knox to the kind of pressure and sleep deprivation that produces false confessions everywhere, they got their black man (a mild-mannered barman according to people I know who know him).

(Note that the Perugia Shock blog, written by an Italian non-native English speaker, sometimes slips into the kind of emotional language that is not helpful to understanding the case. However in general it provides excellent, fine-grained coverage that you will not find in a newspaper. The author is being sued for guess what — criminal defamation — by Mignini.)

Want to read the rest of the stuff I have written about the Sollecito-Knox case? Just click on the ‘Sollecito and Knox’ tag (subject Categories and Tags are all listed in the right hand border).