Famous Trial

Knox convicted again of 'sex game murder' case

Amanda Knox on ABC's Good Morning America in New York last Friday. She will probably have to wait several months for a definitive ruling in her case.

Rome - Amanda Knox, who was convicted by an Italian appeals court of murdering a British student in 2007, will probably have to wait several months for a definitive ruling in the case, a criminal lawyer said.

   Knox, 26, who returned to the United States two years ago as a free woman after a court tossed out her 2009 murder conviction, was sentenced in absentia by an eight-person jury last Thursday to 28 years and six months in jail for murder and slander. Her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, got a 25-year jail term.

   Last Thursday's verdicts are not final because lawyers for Knox and Sollecito said they will appeal to Italy's highest court.

   "It will take months. They may schedule it around October or November," said Mr Andrea Castaldo, a criminal lawyer and professor at the University of Salerno, about a possible hearing at Italy's top court.

   The defendants' lawyers must wait until the Florence appeals court publishes its reasons for last Thursday's verdict, which could take as long as three months.

   An eventual extradition filing by Italy to the US can be made after a final conviction by Italy's top court or sooner if authorities request "precautionary measures" such as an arrest, Mr Castaldo said.

   "It really hit me like a train," Knox, a Seattle native, told ABC's programme Good Morning America in an interview last Friday.

   "I will never go willing back to the place where... I'm going to fight this to the very end. It's not right and it's not fair."

   Knox and Sollecito were convicted of killing British student Meredith Kercher in 2007.

   Sollecito was located by police on Friday about 50km from the Italian border with Slovenia.

   After being notified of his foreign travel ban, he voluntarily followed policemen to a police station and was scheduled to be released once the paperwork was done, said police officer Glovanni Belmonte.

   Before the death of her housemate, Knox was an exchange student in Perugia, a university town of 170,000 in central Italy known for its Baci chocolates.

   She was originally sentenced to 26 years, and served almost four years in prison before the verdict was overturned in Oct 2011.

   Sollecito, now a 29-year-old computer studies graduate, was sentenced to 25 years in jail in the first ruling in 2009 and found not guilty on appeal in 2011.

   On March 26 last year, Italy's highest court approved a prosecutor's request to void the appeals court verdicts and try the pair again.

   Kercher, a 21-year-old London native and Leeds University exchange student, was found dead in her bedroom, half-naked and with her throat slashed on Nov 2, 2007 in the house she shared in Perugia with Knox and two other women.

   Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini said at the original trial that Knox had masterminded a drug-fuelled sex game involving Sollecito and Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast native who grew up in Italy, which turned violent, leading to the murder.

   Guede was found guilty in a separate "fast-track" trial in 2008 and sentenced to 30 years.

   His jail term was reduced to 16 years in a 2009 appeal.

   Like Knox, Sollecito has always denied any wrongdoing, saying all he and his girlfriend wanted at the time was to be isolated in their "little fairy tale".

Washington Post

This article is so poorly written, I can barely follow the story.  So, whats the point here?  Double indemnity, i.e., being charged twice for the same crime?

She was found guilty, her verdict overturned, and is now facing a new trial?  Was there new evidence found to support the case?  Why was her lover tried separately?  What is a "fast-track" trial?

They give no details on her original court trial or her appeal.  Did her appeal go to trial?  Was it overturned by a judge? 

If this really is from the Post, this is literally the worse article, in terms of quality and readability, that I have ever read from their publication.

PARIS - Twenty years after the Rwanda genocide, France opened its first trial against a suspected accomplice in the massacre that killed 800,000 people in 1994, accusing a former intelligence chief of crimes against humanity.

   Pascal Simbikangwa, 54, appeared in a court yesterday on the first day of the trial, in which more than 50 prosecution witnesses are expected to describe his alleged role in arming and directing Hutu killers.

   The three-month killing spree targeted ethnic Tutsis, but moderate Hutus were also caught in the violence.

REUTERS

I'd let Knox have a "sex-murder game" case with me if you know what i mean

British prosecutors conclude News Of the World trial

Evidence of phone-hacking detailed with revelations like Brooks-Coulson affair

LONDON - Prosecutors in one of Britain's most high-profile trials of recent times have wrapped up their case against Rebekah Brooks, mogul Rupert Murdoch's former British newspaper boss, and Andy Coulson, Prime Minister David Cameron's ex-media chief.

   During 13 weeks of testimony with occasional startling revelations including the disclosure that Brooks and Coulson had been having an affair, prosecutors detailed evidence of phone-hacking and other alleged crimes by journalists working for Murdoch's British titles.

   The jury will not return until Feb 17 when the prosecution will formally close their case and Brooks is expected to appear in the witness box to begin her defence. Verdicts are not expected before the middle of May.

   The case centres on widespread phone-hacking by journalists at the News of the World Sunday tabloid, which Mr Murdoch closed amid huge public anger in July 2011, and other allegations of crimes by staff on its sister daily paper The Sun.

   Brooks, Coulson, a former editor of the tabloid, and five other people are on trial for charges related to phone hacking, bribery of public officials and hiding evidence.

   On Wednesday, the court heard that Brooks discussed phone hacking with her ex-husband weeks before the closure of News of the World.

   "Hello, How are you? Need to talk to you about phone hacking at some point," Brook said in the email to Mr Ross Kemp in June 2011, read out by prosecution lawyer Andrew Edis.

   The jury has also heard that journalists and a private investigator employed by News of the World made 6,813 calls targeting 282 voice mail during 2005 and 2006, according to billing data analysed by police.

   Victims included the wife of future heir-to-the-throne Prince William, Kate, and his younger brother Harry.

   Brooks is also said to have approved an illegal payment for a picture of William wearing a bikini to a party.

   Although celebrities, politicans and sporting stars are among the hundreds said to have been targeted, glamorous witnesses have so far been limited to actor Jude Law and his former girlfriend actress Sienna Miller.

   The most dramatic testimony has come from Dan Evans, a former News of the World journalist who has pleaded guilty to hacking thousands of voicemail. He told the court that Coulson, who worked for Mr Cameron till 2011, was fully aware of hacking and that even the "office cat" knew it was going on.

   The most startling revelation though was that Brooks and Coulson had been having an affair lasting some six years.

   On Wednesday, the jury was allowed to read the full love letter Brooks wrote to Coulson in 2004 after he broke off to a six-year-long affair with her.

   Reading the letter, Mr Edis said that Brook wrote: "The fact is you are my very best friend... In fact without our relationship in my life, I am really not sure how I will cope. I'm frightened to be without you," the London Evening Standard reported.

REUTERS, BLOODBERG