Meredith Kercher has no justice done

[Jeneral2885]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/oct/04/kercher-family-amanda-knox-live-updates?intcmp=239

I won't say which side I'm for but clearly the whole case leaves the murder of an innocent victim unsovled.

[oldironside]

1. Haven't you heard of Rudi Guede?

Justice will be done the moment they reinstate Guede's original 30-year sentence.

With a decent police investigation and a competent prosecutor, this would have been an open and shut case. It was a sordid sex murder committed by the drug dealing drifter with the record for breaking and entering, who was a known knife carrier, who left his DNA all over the crime scene and who fled to Germany straight after the fact.

As it is he will be out when he is in his late thirties and will still be a danger to young women.

[Jeneral2885]

2. yes

But his setence is reduced to 16 years right? And judginf from the case, no matterhow flawed the evidence, it can't be just him.

[oldironside]

3. Why not?

Why would it be impossible for one man with a knife to rape and kill a defenceless woman?

And one of the things we can be sure of is that Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Solecitto weren't there. There was absolutley no sign whatsoever of Knox in the room, and the only thing the police could come up with to connect Sollecito was a microscopic trace on a bra clasp that had been kicked around the room by police size nines for forty six days after the murder. It was so contaminated they could have found Lord Lucan's DNA on it.

It would be a scientific impossibility to clear away two people's DNA and leave two others (i.e. murderer and victim) intact. Absolutely impossible. That would be impossible under laboratory conditions, never mind a couple of stoned students frantically looking over their shoulders for the rozzers.

Ergo they weren't there. Ergo they didn't do it.

Guede's sentence was reduced to 16 years because he spun the prosecutor the web of bullshit he wanted to hear and said that, while he was present, Knox wielded the knife.

So, what sounds more likely?

Scenario A: Three people who'd known each other for a matter of days (two of whom had absoulutely no criminal history) getting together to murder a young woman for kicks, then cleaning up the scene sufficiently to only leave evidence of one of them (and the least guilty of the three, according to the prosecutor). He then flees the country while the other two hang around waiting for the Bill to descend on the place looking for clues.
Scenario B: A small time drug dealer and burglar whose DNA was found all over the crime scene committed rape and murder and then fled the country.

(edited for punctuation)

[Jeneral2885]

4. So

You're supporting Amanda?

[oldironside]

5. This is not Amanda vs Meredith.

This is justice vs injustice.

A horrible crime was committed. The police and the prosecutor bungled the investigation from day one. They decided who was guilty and set out to look for evidence that would support their thesis. This is certainly not how Sherlock Holmes would have worked. Observe and make deductions. Look at that crime scene and all you can see is Guede, Guede, Guede, in spite of the police's best efforts to the contrary.

Banging Sollecito and Knox up for a quarter of a century would have nothing to do with justice for Meredith Kercher. What possible good can imprisoning the innocent do? It certainly can't help Meredith's family achieve closure. They say they still don't know what happened to her, in spite of the overwhelming evidence. You can blame the prosecutor and the police for that, not Sollecito and Knox.

The Italian justice system has done the right thing by releasing them. Now it has an obligation to punish the real murderer, also to try to rehabilitate him (this is not the Middle Ages), but above all to keep him out of mainstream society until they are certain he won't do it again. Would you trust him with your sister? Wife? Daughter?

[oldironside]

6. I've just come across something in the Grauniad which sums it up.

Readers were invited to submit questions. Here is the crux.

]"Much fuss was made about the disputed DNA evidence on the bra clasp and the knife blade. But even if this evidence had been solid, wouldn't the prosecution still have had to explain how one suspect (Guede) left semen, finger prints and lots of other forensic evidence on Ms Kercher's body and in her room, while the other two left no traces at all despite being just as actively involved as Guede? How can three people sexually assault and murder a woman - a struggling woman - and only one of them leave any reliable forensic evidence? In other words, I'm suggesting that the DNA evidence presented against Sollecito and Knox looks awfully like a desperate measure to support a much trumpeted hypothesis of what happened. Was this protracted court hearing an effort to save face by securing a conviction?"

John Hooper said:

I think you've hit a key point -- if not the key point -- and it got buried in the first trial, though Sollecito's lawyer did try to highlight in her summing-up by saying that the only creature that could have achieved what Knox and her client were meant to have achieved was a dragonfly. For a British or US court, this would probably be decisive. BUT -- a key point -- Italian justice gives greater weight to circumstantial evidence, and there was (and is) unquestionably compromising circumstantial evidence in this case.

Just about sums it up for me.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/oct/04/amanda-knox-verdict-we-answer-your-questions

[dipsydoodle]

7. In the event of a second appeal at the Supreme Court in Rome ,

which now appears likely , issues with dna evidence will become incidental. They won't be taken in consideration as they were part of the first appeal : not the original trial.

[truebrit71]

8. The murder was solved, and someone was found guilty and is serving time...

...the whole concept that "we don't know the truth/there is no justice done" is frankly a bunch of bullshit...they got the guy, they convicted the guy and the guy is in jail...ergo "Justice" has very much been "done"....

[oldironside]

9. Spot on.

It's unbelievable how otherwise rational people are indulging in 'angels on the head of a pin' arguments about such an open and shut case. It's also deeply depressing.