@gungasnake,
gungasnake wrote:Knox and her friend were acquitted by an appellate court in 2011 citing lack of evidence and the government appears to be acting illegally in trying them a third time since they don't like the appellate court's decision.
The retrial (if it could be called a trial, more on that in a minute) was ordered by a higher level court.
The higher court ruled (contrary to evidence) that there was more than one person involved in the crime, and ordered the lower court to find and convict those other people. They did not give the lower court any ability to look at anyone other than Amanda or Raffaele when looking for those other people.
This "trial" was actually a circus even by third-world Italian standards. Not counting opening and closing arguments, the court was only in session
for two days.
One of those two days (the saner of the two) was devoted to spending millions of Euros on laboratory tests proving that Amanda sliced carrots with a knife that everyone can see is completely incompatible with Kercher's wounds.
The other one of those two days was the one I call "clown day at the court".
Here is part of one of my old posts where I described what transpired:
Quote:There are witnesses that the prosecution might hope would establish guilt if only they could somehow become credible.
There are witnesses that the defense hopes would establish innocence if only someone would pay attention to what they have to say.
And then there is Luciano Aviello.
Luciano Aviello is a fairly unremarkable mobster who is serving a long prison term for some sort of undecipherable mafia activity. His brother was a mobster who ran afoul of rival mobsters and is off on an extended stay with Jimmy Hoffa.
Luciano Aviello claims that his now-dead brother helped to murder the Kercher whore. His claims have no credibility whatsoever. He can't even describe the crime accurately.
Luciano Aviello also says he wants to be a woman, and that he will testify for whatever side agrees to pay for his sex change surgery.
(Personally I think the entire thing is just him being a clown because he has nothing better to do in prison, but whatever.)
Of all the witnesses they could bring in to hear testimony from, the only person that the freaks, sorry I mean Italians, decided to hear from is: Luciano Aviello.
They had a big show where a long train of prison vehicles brought him to the courthouse with lights flashing and sirens blaring, and he strode into court all dressed up in women's clothing, looking quite a bit like Corporal Klinger from an old episode of MASH.
Upon taking the stand, he told the court all about a seance where the ghost of his dead brother had confessed to helping to kill the Kercher whore.
Then the long train of prison vehicles took him back to prison.
That's it. Expensive and pointless tests on a knife that does not match Kercher's wounds, and a talk with a transvestite about seances,
are the sum total of this entire retrial.
I expect that the fact that this retrial was a complete farce is not too important however. The higher court ordered the lower court to ignore all the evidence and just find people guilty no matter what. I'm sure they're going to follow their orders.
A small chance, perhaps, that the judges have the ethics to thwart their orders and come up with an excuse to acquit. But more likely we will just have to wait for the European Court of Human Rights to sort everything out.
