oped: All I can advise is for the defense team look into the facts and present them as they are...Criminal Justice 101...the prosecution failed miserably in their job...there is no evidence supporting their claim of guilty...in fact the only evidence points to the only defendant that is truly guilty and acted on his own..
Rudy Guede who reduced his sentence by becoming a prosecution witness...End of Story folks the oldest game Known, as deal making!
See: http://sharlaslabyrinth.blogspot.com/2014/01/re-visiting-injustice-in-perugiaitaly.html
By COLLEEN BARRY
MILAN (AP) — Italy's justice
minister on Monday announced an investigation into comments to the
Italian media made by the judge who read the guilty verdicts against
Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito.
The newspapers quoted Florence
judge Alessandro Nencini as saying, among other things, that Sollecito's
decision not to testify on the witness stand deprived the defendant of a
voice. The judge also commented on the difficulty of reaching a
verdict, due to the vast amount of evidence as well as the intense media
attention, and acknowledged that assigning a motive for the 2007 murder
of British student Meredith Kercher was one of the most "controversial"
aspects of the case.
A
Sollecito attorney, Luca Maori, said earlier Monday that the comments on
the defense strategy are "serious" and could form part of their appeal
to Italy's highest court on last week's verdict. Maori said the defense
team would seek an investigation into the judge's comments with the
ministry, as well as the magistrates' oversight body and the high Court
of Cassation.
"This is not a vendetta because a judge handed down a verdict other than what we expected," Maori said by telephone on Monday.
Knox
defense lawyer Carlo Dalla Vedova said in an emailed statement that the
interviews were "not appropriate," but he reserved comment on any
action until the court's reasoning for the verdict is issued, expected
within 90 days of the sentence.
Knox's
defense also is planning to appeal the verdict. "She feels that it is a
mistake and she will continue fighting for her innocence," Dalla Vedova
said.
Members of the
magistrate's governing body also said they will request an inquiry,
saying Nencini had violated the secrecy of deliberations, anticipated
arguments in the yet-published reasoning, and made comments on the
defense trial strategy that suggest "partiality," the news agency ANSA
reported.
Disciplinary measures could include a transfer or monetary penalties.
Nencini was the presiding judge
on a panel that deliberated for nearly 12 hours on Thursday before
upholding a lower-court's guilty finding against Knox, 26, and
Sollecito, 29, in the 2007 murder of 21-year-old Kercher. Kercher, who
shared an apartment with Knox in the university town of Perugia, had
been sexually assaulted and her throat slit. The case made its way to a
second appeal after Italy's highest court vacated a Perugia appellate
court's 2011 acquittal, challenging its failure to include some evidence
as well as its logic.
Knox
remained in the United States for this trial, having been freed on the
earlier appeal. In his ruling, Nencini did not issue any precautionary
measures against Knox, noting she was legitimately in the United States.
He ordered Sollecito's passport to be revoked.
In
the comments published on Saturday, Nencini told the Corriere della
Sera and il Messaggero newspapers that the judicial reasoning will
comment on why the court decided not to separate the positions of Knox
and Sollecito in their deliberations and verdict.
Nencini said one clear difference
in the Knox and Sollecito defenses is that Sollecito had never been
questioned directly, besides during the investigation, even by the
prosecution, according to il Messaggero. "The ability not to be heard in
a trial is a right, but it deprives the subject of a voice," il
Messaggero quoted Nencini as saying.
Sollecito's
defense lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, had requested in her closing argument
that the jury not consider Sollecito as an extension of Knox, but look
at him in his own right. The two defense teams, nonetheless, remained
very close in their arguments and maintained a common alibi that the
couple had spent the night of the murder together in Sollecito's
apartment.
Maori pointed out that the prosecution never requested Sollecito's testimony.
Nencini
on Monday denied having made any judgment on the defendants' legal
strategy. "If my words generated a misunderstanding about the absolute
legitimacy of the choice of a defendant to make voluntary statements, I
regret it," the news agency ANSA quoted him as saying.
He
said he had spoken "casually" with journalists he ran into in tribunal
corridors and who had presented him with "rumors and inferences" about
the deliberations.
"My intention was to clear up possible misunderstandings," Nencini was quoted as saying.
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