So the verdict is apparently due in the Meredith Kercher murder trial today

[PortofinoRevisited]

BBC Link

The appeal after the overturned convictions. I hope this can all be brought to a close now.

Why you should never believe what you read in the DM papers.

The press treatment of Amanda Knox has been unbelievably vile - might as well just have her burned as a witch and be done with it.

As far as I understand it, extradition in itself is a grey area. Also, the treaty between the U.S. and Italy is old as these things go (1980s I read) so there is potentially more wiggle room. I think they will be under a lot of pressure to refuse extradition. I'd be surprised if she goes.

The whole thing now strikes me as a politcal pissng contest. Can't be seen to be wrong sort of thing.... I would not be surprised if it quietly goes away. No exciting news reporting to be had when the "culprits" stay away. Poor Meredith's family don't sell papers in the same way as a juicy "evil" AK photo.

Yes if it was Guede then it is easier to believe that the motive is sexual violence - it happens all the time. It does not happen all the time that three people who barely know each other, one a woman are motivated by sexual violence. I would have thought that this kind of relationship takes longer to develop - I mean a relationship between three people where they all decide to carry out a sexual murder.

Maryz, I utterly agree with your point about what she looks like. This trial drew so much media attention because she's a pretty girl. I think this was discussed earlier in the thread, so I won't drag it up again. As you say, nobody has seen justice in this case.

JennySense there are a few websites that have transcripts of the court case including the true justice for Meredith website. The websites tend to come from their own position on whether AK/RS are guilty or not but I don't know if that means they have deliberately mistranslated the documents iyswim (although Italian friends who have read some of the documents seemed to think they were accurate translations).

Almost every aspect of the case seems to have completely polarised opinions from the length of AK's interrogation (3hrs or overnight?) to whether she had an interpreter (yes according to the police and the interpreter: no according to AK); to whether the DNA evidence was conclusive, etc, etc.

I hope that at the end of this long process (which still isn't finished) that the Kercher family feel they have had justice.

They haven't been tried 3 times for the same crime. It is all part of the same process. There are quite a few appeal options as part of that. To both plaintiff and defendant. As we have under the common law system up to the House of Lords in the uk. There is a lot wrong with the Italian system not least the slowness of it but it is a sophisticated system of justice not a kangaroo court!

Looks pretty kangaroo from here. . .

Portofino You don't know me, I'm on my 12th namechange in 5 years get bored and namechange as much as I move my furniture around
but I remember Knox threads from years gone by on here and being forced to reevaluate my assumptions because you have always been so eloquent, rational and fair in responding to people's statements pertaining to evidence/guilt.

I was surprised by the verdict. I saw Knox on footage on bbc site here.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25978340 and thought how hard it must be when everyone insists they know you are guilty, a bit like a Not Proven verdict.

I am in Germany - I cannot for one minute imagine coping with questioning here without being lawyered up and I am not a young girl/boy being manipulated with ''RS/AK has said You Did It'' mind games at stupid o'clock.

Personally I think they were high/stoned and got scared when they found the crime scene. Scared of having drugs in their system/having scored drugs and then scared of not having contacted the police straight away and the ramifications of that.

But they cannot admit that now.
I think that RG acted alone and should have been served a life sentence.

There has been a lot of press coverage but let's not forget that one of the first steps taken by AK's family was to hire a PR company. I'm sure they thought that would help to control the media coverage but it also meant they provided a steady stream of AK stories to both broadcast and print journalists. The problem is once you put stories out or give interviews you can't then control what that story becomes. You also help to create an appetite for those stories.

Just like everyone else on here, I don't know if they are guilty or not. But I do think their haste to write books and conduct interviews was distasteful and disrespectful. Especially when I assume they did understand the legal process and realised there were further stages to complete before they would be entirely exonerated or found guilty.

I think it's an incredibly hard situation for Meredith's family to be in - aside from the obvious which is the devastating and cruel loss of their daughter and sister. I can only guess that they want to be able to trust in the judgements of the court, because why wouldn't you? That is where justice is supposed to be served. I think it would be hard for them to stand up and say they think the process has been wrong in its conclusions because they want, need and bloody deserve justice for Meredith. I don't know whether or not they have it, or ever will, and I really cannot imagine what it is like in their shoes.

It is them that lose, over and over again, conviction or not and that is what is so terribly sad here. I hope they find some peace.

According to Dh, the US are always extremely reluctant to extradite to countries without a jury system and Italy has an inquisitorial justice system. So an extradition for Knox is looking unlikely.

I feel for Sollecito though - who presumably can't leave Italy at all.

I also feel terrible for Meredith's family - I can't imagine what they've been through. Amanda Knox did lie, probably for reasons along the lines that TheseAreTheJokesFolks posted - but this has undoubtedly made the legal process more complex and drawn out than it could have been.

Their haste to write books - um there is one book written by Amanda, that is not even in free circulatioin in Europe. Re, the media coverage, would you say that overall that the Knox family have influenced the press in a way favourable to Amanda? I wouldn't.

Sollecito has Bongiorno as his lawyer who saved Berlusconi's orange arse on many an occasion and before him Andreotti on various occasions so I think he has had access to as good a defence as he could have had anywhere.

Now the books, I don't criticise, distasteful though it is to have them around. Lawyers cost money they haven't got, what else are they to do?

I feel for Meredith's family too. I think they caught and locked up the perpetrator of this crime back in 2007 (was it) and all the rest is smoke and mirrors and bollocks. Because they want to perpetuate the original premise of a sex game gone wrong, a theory put forward before they even identified RG, and one that they changed themselves to arguments over cleaning. Like you would rape and murder your flat mate because she got at you for not replacing the loo roll or something. It is ridiculous!

You know their phones were switched off for most of the night?

Is there any evidence that this was an unusual occurrence for them? Might they have done it before when using drugs?

If it was a one-off, it does seem incriminatory...

I find it very hard to believe they are guilty. I think there are explanations for any "bizarre" behaviour following the murder and the forensic evidence is scarce and not conclusive.

Also, MK & RS just had not known each other long enough to commit murder and then remain loyal to each other all this time. I don't think they'd be able to keep quiet throughout all this stress and pressure and time inside. One of them would have thrown the other under the bus for a plea bargain by now.

Does there absolutely have to have been more than one perpetrator?

But Meredith's family believe they are guilty I think (?) and I'll wait for the report in 90 days. Maybe there's new evidence.

There just seems to be more than reasonable doubt to say confidently two people should be jailed for neatly 30 years.

The portrayal of AK is so sexist.

i don't criticise hiring a PR company. I imagine that they were advised by their lawyers to hire one quickly. As soon as it became clear that there was going to be such an overwhelming media interest, you can hardly blame them for wanting to try to take some control over that. The media definitely has a huge impact on a case like this. AK's family would have had to have been incredibly niave to ignore that.

It just sounds bad, but it's not. It's common sense as far as I can see.

Yes, if the three acted together, their strength in maintaining their denials and not going cut-throat on the other two has been remarkable.

I think because the media decided AK was guilty - and lets be fair there was much less attention on RS - that everyone has interpreted every subsequent report from that view point. And the media reporting in this case has been dreadful. And a lot of stuff was fed to the press from the Prosecution. Photos, for example that gave a biased view.

Sabrina, "According to Dh, the US are always extremely reluctant to extradite to countries without a jury system and Italy has an inquisitorial justice system. So an extradition for Knox is looking unlikely."

But if they are reluctant to extradite to countries with this system and Italy have it, what can an extradition treaty with between the U.S. and Italy mean?