So ILE doesn't have a Meredith Kercher/FoxyKnoxy murder thread yet?

Criminal justice in Europe is generally a disaster. Defense attorney culture was wiped out in WWII, and the inquisitorial legal system has become over the decades a rubber stamp for the State's Attorneys. This is not that big a deal where the SAs are professional and serious people -- but that will differ from province to province, let alone nation to nation -- and sentences are generally lighter than in the Anglo-American system, so that the unofficial but real tendency is to convict where there is any doubt in absolute innocence, because what's the harm? The harm is that the tendency towards heavier punishment is solidly on the march throughout Europe, and that common law countries have to figure out what to do with conviction from other nations they have treaties with that would never have been convictions in the common law country.

Americans berating the legal system of other countries is a constant source of hilarity

http://politicalblindspot.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/17.jpg
"I know, right?"

Yes, Yes, Florida's acquittal of George Zimmerman disqualifies all Americans from criticizing one of our citizens from being tried three times, and acquitted once, by a kangaroo court that allowed psychic testimony and already has the murder behind bars. We get it, blah blah blah blah

...the murderer behind bars...

dang, Bill pretty on point here

i wasnae thinking of one trial tbh

any criticisms of the Kercher case - and i'm sure there are many valid ones - ought to be made from a standpoint that doesn't try to compare Italy's justice system with yr own morally corrupt, racist, murderous justice system tho. ours is reasonably morally corrupt and racist too tbf

there's also a fair leap from "these trials have been conducted in such a way as to make any conviction completely unsafe" and "yay Knox is totally innocent no question", so to say "the murderer is behind bars" is a bit of a stretch

well, there's innocence before the law and innocence in the sense of whether or not you did commit the crime

"Americans berating the legal system of other countries is a constant source of hilarity"

So's your red nose, floppy shoes, and rainbow wig, you clown.

1. I haven't been an American for over a decade. 2. I spent a year on a Robert Bosch Fellowship studying comparative criminal law, including internships with a private defense attorney and at the German Justice Ministry, and was the negotiation team for the Germans in negotiations on an EU criminal law cooperation treaty. 3. I am specifically contrasting the civil law legal systems of continental Europe with common law systems such as the US, the UK, canada, etc. 4. In most of Europe, Zimmerman would never have been brought to trial, following a years'-long and terribly expensive "investigation". 5. Wannabe progressives who think criminal prosecutors are allies in the fight for justice are, consciously or unconsciously, white supremacist elitist dopes. 6. Your rainbow wig isn't actually that funny.

again: i agree there are serious problems with the legal system in many European countries. to contrast the US and UK as models of "getting it right" is pretty fucken laughable to me

Goody for you! Who's suggesting that?

any criticisms of the Kercher case - and i'm sure there are many valid ones - ought to be made from a standpoint that doesn't try to compare Italy's justice system with yr own morally corrupt, racist, murderous justice system tho.

yeah I think everyone has just been pointing what is fucked up, not holding up anyone else's as an ideal

I mean unless you want to go on about the positives of the Italian justice system and how this is an amazing outlier and how it is better than other systems

5. Wannabe progressives who think criminal prosecutors are allies in the fight for justice are

Who did you have in mind here?

If the clown shoe fits...

ach, maybe we're all deliberately misreading each other's tone

maybe

I do think a criminal justice system is best measured on the quality of its defense bar and have a personal bias that convicted innocents are worse than acquitted bad guys. That's really the only point where I would say the US system is the best in the world, which is sadly not the same thing as saying it's any good.

But if you're guilty and want to confess, pretty much anywhere else but the US has a better criminal justice system.

maybe instead of talking about the relative merits of western criminal justice systems, which is sort of boring, we could talk about whether we think sollecito and knox dun it or not (which could involve the criminal justice system, of course; there are many many ppl out there who think the justice system has been stacked in favour of knox and sollectio, fwiw, ibid the aforementioned kook-town sites with encyclopedic knowledge of the various justices assigned to the case and their supposed ties to the mafia)

the other thing i want to talk about is how sollecito has transformed over the years!! he started out as, in knox's words, "an italian harry potter" and looks like a kind of thick-necked iron-pumpin' good ol' boy

i mean he NOW looks like a thick-necked iron-pumpin' good ol' boy. the change is remarkable

honestly i'm happy to know next to nothing about this case

Maybe Knox had a wildly differing image of Harry after reading the books.

for what it's worth TWU i also prefer a system that errs on the side of the defendant, and if i made my initial snipe after you posted that was mainly because i've read a lot lately that has a tone of condescencion to the Italians or fails to distinguish between an unsafe conviction and innocence

and my half-reading of your comment was the trigger, i shd add

the details are SO CRAZY though goole. i just go down a rabbit hole with it. there is a crazy amount of physical evidence. DNA on a knife. a set of bloody footprints. a different bloody (bare) footprint in the bathroom. an unflushed shit in the toilet. a seemingly staged break-in. WHERE IS KALINDA WHEN YOU NEED HER.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01240/perugia2_1240580c.jpg

http://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video/__NEW/tdy_mor_sollecito_140131.standard.jpg

ha i had to google that name

xp

xp -- Fair enough, NV, there is still bad feeling about the Zimmerman thread and my strawmanning thereon, so I came out aggressive.

there was a guy who broke into the apartment and robbed them who pleaded guilty to murdering her. The evidence against him was, i think, stronger than against knox.

I thought Guede didn't plead guilty?

I mean, I thought he'd admitted to being present when the murder was committed, not to the murder itself?

tracer i get you, i love a good rabbit hole. but this whole thing just reads like nancy grace explaining a christopher nolan movie to me

sorry to trivialize a real actual murder but all the world is text etc

I tried to read the Wikipedia on this but could not understand any version of what supposedly happened.

Have you ever considered a role in the Italian judiciary?

tracer i get you, i love a good rabbit hole. but this whole thing just reads like nancy grace explaining a christopher nolan movie to me

goole bringing his classic sense of wordplay, hats off to you, sir

I tried to read the Wikipedia on this but could not understand any version of what supposedly happened.

― ryan, Tuesday, February 4, 2014 1:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Have you ever considered a role in the Italian judiciary?

― Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Tuesday, February 4, 2014 1:42 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He'd be overqualified.

hope to god three word username isn't going to law school

Drop dead, you hateful little weasel.

substance of TWU's posts otm

Am I seeing things?

http://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/20190/homepage_large.49b6343b.jpg

No, you're right

http://www.arenbergschouwburg.be/content/dam/arenberg/Agenda/Seizoen%2013%20-%2014/Nina-Persson.jpg

this is good (UK only i'm afraid)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03wd39x

what's it doing on BBC3 then?

It's a programme for kidz obv.

court says the murder was likely not result of sex game gone wrong, but of an attempt to bully and humiliate meredith kercher, possibly after knox had stolen her rent money

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/29/world/europe/italy-amanda-knox/

"There is nothing against me and nothing very strong against Amanda," Sollecito recently told CNN. "And in my case, I really did nothing wrong, and I don't want to pay for someone else's peculiar behavior."

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/26/world/europe/italy-knox-ex-boyfriend/?hpt=bosread

new vid from that night:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/may/06/amanda-knox-alibi-new-cctv-footage-video

The figure in the CCTV video has a very herky jerky walk, while the video of Amanda shows that she has a smooth, purposeful strut.

Andrea Vogt
‏@andreavogt
Both raffaelle Sollecito and #amandaknox convictions have been fully overturned. Cries of joy in courtroom from sollecito's family
Rome, Lazio