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Pair found guilty of Kercher murder

Last Updated: Friday, 04 December 2009, 21:34 GMT

Pair found guilty of Kercher murder

The family of Meredith Kercher's murderer Amanda Knox are to immediately begin the process of appealing her guilty verdict, their spokesman has said.
American Knox, 22, from Seattle, was found guilty of stabbing the British student to death after what started as an extreme sex game.
She was sentenced to 26 years in prison. Her Italian former lover, Raffaele Sollecito, 25, was also found guilty of the murder, and sexual assault, and was jailed for 25 years.
Knox's parents, Curt Knox and Edda Mellas, said in a statement after the verdict: "Amanda is innocent and we will continue to fight for her freedom. We are extremely disappointed in the verdict rendered... against our daughter.


"While we always knew this was a possibility, we find it difficult to accept this verdict when we know that she is innocent, and that the prosecution has failed to explain why there is no evidence of Amanda in the room where Meredith was so horribly and tragically murdered."
Prosecutors say Sollecito held the 21-year-old Leeds University student down while Knox cut her throat with a six-inch kitchen knife.
They committed the killing in Perugia, Italy, with small-time drug dealer Rudy Guede, 22, who was jailed for murder and sexual violence last October for 30 years.
Knox's parents criticised the media for the way their daughter had been portrayed, alleging this swayed the judges and jurors. They said in their statement: "It appears clear to us that the attacks on Amanda's character in much of the media and by the prosecution had a significant impact on the judges and jurors and apparently overshadowed the lack of evidence in the prosecution's case against her."
Knox and Sollecito were told they must pay a total of 4.4 million euros to the Kercher family as compensation for Miss Kercher's murder. Knox was told she must also pay 40,000 euros compensation to Patrick Lumumba for defaming the local barman when she falsely accused him of the murder.
The semi-naked body of Miss Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, was found in a pool of blood with her throat slit, in her room in Perugia in November 2007. She had been sharing a house with Knox, who was also a student, on her year abroad in the Umbrian hilltop town.

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Wonder what the sentence for this crime would have been in the UK? Also wonder how much time these people will actually serve in Italy or if they will be moved to their home countries to serve their sentences?

Lizx

CNN (in Canada we get the actual US version) is of course pitching a 24/7 fit about this.

They've been trying so hard to explain it all to an "American audience", who of course just can't understand the dreadful way these things are done in strange foreign places like Italy.

Some of their invited experts haven't been playing along, though. They've pointed out that evey though they may believe it was a wrongful conviction, there are wrongful convictions in the US all the time.

And if she had been in the US, she would likely have got the death penalty, in those states that have it (37 of 50 states, plus federally), and if not, life without parole.

I know very little of the details of the case, but I would assume that if convicted of first degree ("planned and deliberate") murder in Canada she would have got imprisonment for life, which is defined as the minimum punishment. The person is then eligible to *apply for* parole after 25 years. (For second degree murder, it can be 10 to 25 years before parole eligibility, and the jury can recommend.)

At present there is a complicated process, called the "faint hope clause", wherby a person can apply to be eligible to apply for parole after 15 years, and this requires that a provincial chief justice agree to refer the application to a jury, which decides. As part of its vile, counter-productive, right-wing "law and order" platform, the present Conservative federal government here is trying to eliminate the faint hope clause.


As I understand it, there would be a mandatory life sentence for murder in the UK as well. It appears to be very similar to Canada; the sentence includes a "tariff", how much time must be served before eligibility to apply to the Parole Board. The "normal" tariff now seems to be 15 years.

The sentences here seem to vary so much Janey, and most of the time, end up being a fraction of the time given. and then of course, there are the appeals like the one I mentioned recently - will nudge the thread. I don't think the killing of Meredith Kercher was necessarily premeditated to any great extent but who knows what goes in in the minds of killers, crazed on drugs sometimes.

Lizx


Janey C. look at Such arrogance thread of mine!

I should check out the story more, although I have to say it hasn't caught my interest.

Apparently what's interesting is to follow it from the two different perspectives.

In the US, and the US media, they are all firmly convinced that this Amanda is completely innocent, that the evidence against her was trumped up (the CNN experts were pointing out that there are convictions in the US on evidence no stronger), that the Italian justice system is a travesty, etc. etc.

And in the UK, it has been all baying for Amanda's blood, no doubt about her guilt, and so on.

Leaving the Italian justice system in a no-win situation! and us total foreigners bemused ...


Often, what would rightly have been a "premeditated" murder becomes something else after the charge is laid, commonly because of a plea bargain. Someone pleads guilty to a lesser degree of homicide, to avoid the mandatory sentence, and the plea is accepted to avoid the risk of acquittal.

But for someone actually convicted of the top degree of murder, the UK does have a mandatory life sentence that will involve serving quite a long term in most cases.


On the question of deals, you may have heard of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. It's what this current event brought to my mind.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/bernardo/

Husband and wife team who abducted, tortured and murdered young women -- starting with Homolka's sister. Homolka gave Bernardo up, claimed battered woman syndrome, etc, and got two years in return for her testimony. Prosecutors believed this was the only way to be assured of a conviction against him, with her testimony, and that they could not risk him going free. (It later transpired that he was also the person responsible for a string of sexual assaults against women in their homes in the Toronto area, including one that someone else had been convicted of.)

Virtually the next day, it was discovered that Bernardo's lawyer had been able to remove concealed videotapes from their home that showed her as a very active participant in the atrocities. She had taken her small window of opportunity and beat the system. She's been out of prison for some time now. Many people believe she is in truth a very dangerous psychopath.

I dunno, cops and courts aren't angels or god. No perfect knowledge, no perfect solutions, in most cases.

That's a very scary situation Janey, with that evil woman on the loose to maybe do more vile things. I am horrified that people can be so wicked and do such awful things to each other, especially those done as premeditated acts, not 'crimes of passion' or sudden assaults causing death of others, even those you know well.

I am sad for the young couple in the news at the mo, both of them around my son's age or a little younger, only married a short time, and he goes missing while her body is found in their garage, she had been strangled. The Police were asking on tv for anyone who had seen the husband to call them, don't know the ins and outs but he is now in custody.

Such a dreadful shock for both families, and Christmastime will never be the same for them.

Lizx

Well I'm certainly sad for her. It doesn't sound like I'm going to need to feel sad for him.

Unless he tries something like the famous tale of the fellow convicted of murdering his parents, who said: you can't put me in prison! I'm an orphan!

Men killing their intimate partners. That is the most common killer of murdered women: their husband, estranged husband, boyfriend ...

You may remember Inside The Line, one of my fave Brit police dramas. Did it have another name at home? ... Yes, Betwen the Lines. In one episode, a senior cop was suspected of killing his wife, in a cold, very premeditated murder. It was looking like he would get off with the lesser charge of manslaughter if they couldn't prove the premeditation. (Eventually it turned out he'd taken the whole scenario from some previous case.) Maureen wrote on the board:

manslaughter
man's laughter

Killing the person you profess to love, quite a trick.

Janey, they showed their wedding photos from the summer on tv, and they both looked happy, just feel sad that things must have gone so horribly wrong and the lad did that to her.

Lizx