02/07/2010 3:00 am
POV
Amanda Knox's Abusive Prosecutor, By Judy Bachrach
Reporting from Italy, our writer wonders who else sees the injustice connected to Knox's prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini
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Editor’s Note: Judy Bachrach writes for Vanity Fair, and is the creator of thecheckoutline.org, an online advice column for friends and relatives of the terminally ill.
You’d think that the moment the prosecutor in the Amanda Knox trial was himself convicted and handed a 16-month prison sentence that maybe someone somewhere in Italy would scratch his head and say, "Hmmm … Could be that the American girl convicted of murder actually got railroaded … Maybe she didn’t rape and murder her roommate."
It would not be an unnatural surmise. Last week Giuliano Mignini, Knox’s nemesis, was convicted of what the Italians call "abuse of office" – a devastating verdict that arose out of an entirely different murder case. Mignini, it was discovered (to no one’s surprise), had secretly tapped the phones of journalists and cops. He says, his conscience is "clear" and he’s appealing that decision.
Mignini is no special friend to journalists. One Italian reporter who especially upset the prosecutor a while back was thrown into prison — in isolation. An American journalist who was that reporter’s friend was interrogated so harshly that, fearing incarceration himself, he hopped the next plane back to the United States, where he started a campaign (ultimately successful) to free his friend. Their crime? They were critical of Mignini.
From the start, Knox’s rights had been so seriously abrogated that the highest Italian court (analagous to our Supreme Court) declared her first so-called confession should be thrown out. She was interrogated without a lawyer present. (She told her parents early on that when she asked for an attorney she was informed, "A lawyer would only complicate things.") She was grilled night and day by police, and when she insisted at first that she was innocent, she said she was slapped on the head – twice – by a policewoman, who ordered her to start remembering that she was the murderer of Meredith Kercher. Interestingly, there is no tape recording of these proceedings. In Italy there doesn’t have to be.
Amanda was also told if she didn’t confess she would get the maximum – 30 years in prison. And – oh yes – at a time when, having just arrived in Italy, she spoke pitifully little Italian, she wasn’t provided with a translator.
Aside from that, the interrogation, arrest and incarceration of Amanda Knox was absolutely by the book.
Mignini, of course, wasn’t responsible for the assaults or even the non-existent tapes of her supposed confession. But he sure was responsible for the trial, a magic show filled with testimony about Amanda’s vibrator and condoms, and empty of proof.
But in Italy, even a prosecutor convicted of illegal phone taps is still … a prosecutor. Capable, in other words, of sending 22-year-old Amanda Knox to jail for decades.
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Something that might interest some people. Watch this timeline carefully. At 0447 on November 2, 2007 Amanda Knox’s mother wakes up to aphone call. Her mothers describes the call: “Amanda - “I’m back at my house,and I want you… first I know I’m okay.” And I said, “Okay, you know, what’sgoin’ on?” And she said, “Well, I was at Rafael’s last night… and I’ve comehome now and I think somebody’s been in my house…” And she told me, “We can’tfind Meredith. We can’t get a hold of Meredith. And her room is locked.” And Isaid, “Hang up and call the police.” Phone records confirm this call. It lasteda minute and a half. Later, Amanda denies to her mother she made this call,claims to have no recollection of it. When cross examined in court she gotirritated and said: “Okay, va bene”” Why did she change her story over this?Well the fact is that like Raffaele’s call to the police, which he claimed he’dalready made, it was made when the postal police were already at the scene. Itwas 1247 in Perugia. Edda’s testimony, supported by the police and phonerecords, shows a straightforward link from the call she received at 0447Seattle time (1247 in Perugia) to the calls that Raffaele makes to his sister(1250) and the police (1251 and 1254). That whole process takes just eightminutes. CCTV footage in the car park shows a black Fiat Punto (the same as themodel driven by the policemen) arriving at 1225. The police themselves recordedtheir arrival at the cottage at 1230.
Judy,
You must be thickest journalist on the planet.
The police were not required to provide Amanda Knox with a lawyer because she was questioned as witness and not a suspect on 5 November 2007.
Amanda Knox wasn’t grilled night and day. Her questioning on November 2007 was stopped at 1.45am when she implicated herself.
You omitted to mention that Amanda Knox’s handwritten confession on 6 November 2007 was not thrown out by the Italian Supreme Court, and that it was accepted as evidence by Judge Massei at her trial. This confession was almost identical in content to the two statements that were thrown out.
You weren’t present when Amanda Knox was questioned, so you don’t know that she was slapped twice on the head by a policewoman or that she was told she would get 30 years in prison if she didn’t confess.
All the witnesses who were actually present when Amanda Knox was questioned, including her interpreter, testified under oath that she wasn’t hit and that she was treated well. The judges and jury had to decide whether to believe the corroborative testimony of numerous upstanding witnesses or the word of a compulsive liar who has lied repeatedly. It would have been an easy decision to make.
In case you didn’t know, Amanda Knox claimed on four separate occasions that Diya Lumumba had killed Meredith. Common sense should tell you that it would be extremely foolish to accept anything that Amanda Knox says as the gospel truth.
wow, thanks for the comment Mr. Mignini. or did you get a secretary to comment for you.
"Common sense" should tell you it is extremely foolish to accept anything the Italian legal system says as truth. or its lawyers.
One feels compelled to agree with all the above answers. The Knox family obviously does not know their daughter, or do they! Why any family would permit a daughter her age to go to Italy to study is beyond me as a mother of many daughters who, in fact, visited their 4 tops college choices ad nauseum over a period of 8 years! There are far too many ? and "ifs" in the case, period.
Equally important is that, at least it appears, Italian Justice is being viewed as that of a 3rd world nation, and it isn’t. The prosecutor has been cited in what is far less time that any US prosecutor would have been, and the actual facts of the case seem to say that Ms. Knox has been affected by illicit, dangerous drugs far longer than her self-proclaimed one-night-stint. The brain deteriorates, and the personality evidences such destructive influence of drugs a long time before that.
If any justice system is "Third World" it is ours and shamefully so and if anyone really wants an "insider" look at it they should get a copy of Wendy Murphy’s And Justice for Some which details how corrupted our entire system has become.
http://andjusticeforsome.com/Home_Page.html
I am more concerned with the guilty in this country who sometimes are not even charged - I am tired of the "hidden agendas" of the "crusaders" of the "innocent" who usually are convicted on hard evidence which the "bleeding hearts" have blinded themselves to. Poor innocent Amanda Knox was not so innocent to begin with. If she was framed, she framed herself. In reality, she merely exposed herself. In the process of trying to frame someone else.
I refuse to support the Innocence Project for the same reason but also because one of the founders sat there are the defense table smirking while those truly horrendous words "If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit" were uttered. Let’s talk innocence. Let’s talk Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. Let’s not talk about OJ Simpson. And let’s no praise those who defended them. No matter how altruistic we believe they have become. To do so is to demean their victims. And Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman were the victims of the attorneys who defended OJ Simpson just as much as they were victims of OJ Simpson. Such insanity in this country. And such abject amorality.
If I am not mistaken, did AK not go to study abroad?
Why on earth was she working as a bartender? The drugs? The "aquaintances"? Perhaps if this young lady had kept her nose in her books and enjoyed the sight seeing in limited doses, as most students studying abroad do, she would have kepts her nose clean. Natalee Holloway followed the same lines of drinking and irresponsibility, and look where it has gotten her and her poor family. Considering what happened to Ms. Kercher, the family should be thankful that their daughter is alive.
This is a cautionary tale here, one that all young girls and young men should heed: If you invite trouble in for dinner, you will have your just desserts.
Yes, but … there’s never a reason anyone should be harmed; that being observed, we all know that the worst things often happen to those who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, there are many true victims. Youth haven’t a modicum of common sense now it seems, but drugs (including alcohol, and all substances) has clotted their brain tissues most before the age of 15, and few parents know, or if they do, don’t act. And, I’m not blaming parents - at some point, everyone makes choices, and in that regard I cannot see why the world has to be constantly confronted with their problems.
But in Italy, even a prosecutor convicted of illegal phone taps is still … a prosecutor.
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I have to ask if this is about his tapping the lines of journalists or about the guilt or innocence of a young American woman?
Were you around while Rudy Giuliani trampled the constitutional rights of Harry and Leona Helmsley? Were you one of the few who protested or one of the many who contributed to their "trial by tabloid?"
Just as a prosecutor can twist and turn the truth,so an a journalist. And both do. And my impression of the situation of Amanda Knox is that both have. That doesn’t equate to her innocence.
We have a similar story unfolding in Texas over a man named Todd Willingham who was convicted of murdering his children by setting his house on fire. The controversy is whether the "science" used to determine the fire was arson was "scientific" and yet the one thing that probably resulted in his conviction and his being sentended to death is the fact that as the windows of the bedrooms began popping out he asked someone to help him move his car before it caught fire.
Demeanor sometimes gives away a lot. And Amanda Fox’s demeanor apparently did just that. Sorry but some cannot see the forest for the trees. Particularly journalists who just know things. When in fact they don’t.
Harry Rag says:
”You omitted to mention that Amanda Knox’s handwritten confession on 6 November 2007 was not thrown out by the Italian Supreme Court, and that it was accepted as evidence by Judge Massei at her trial. This confession was almost identical in content to the two statements that were thrown out.”
Typical of the way corrupt practices infect the whole system. As chief priosecutor of the case, Mignini was responsible for the management of the interview at which this confession was made. Therefore, you are dealing with a confession made by Amanda during an interview managed by someone who subsequently has been tried and sentenced to 16 months in prison for tapping and recording the telephone conversations of senior police officials.
So what is this confession worth? She should be retried, this time without the press input from people like Harry Rag and by a prosecution team who are law-abiding citizens.
JW BRAVO!
She should be at least retried. At best, released. I still don’t get it. How is it possible an American student with no criminal history, or crazy histrionics is suddenly a knife weilding lunatic, stabbing her lovely roomate to death. WHY?
The Italian bent for drama, has made a "fair trial" impossible for this young woman. We NEED to get this kid out of prison and back home. US parents should make it a priority - before sending their kids to Italy for school or for any further tourism by kids or parents.
This was NOT a "fair trial".