Imagine that you and a co-defendant are accused of murder,
and your co-defendant, a student at another school who once attended the same party you did, pleads "no contest."
The no contest plea requires your co-defendant to stipulate or agree to a set of facts put forth by the prosecution. Those facts, which implicate you, are now legally regarded as “the truth.”
Next imagine that when your own case comes to trial, a higher court directs your judge to find you guilty – because of the “facts” that the co-defendant stipulated to when he pleaded “no contest” -- for a reduced sentence -- in his own murder trial.
This is the legal trap that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito have found themselves in. A third defendant – Rudy Guede, a known burglar whom Raffaele had never even met – left his DNA in and on the victim’s body, along with other physical evidence. He agreed to a “fast-track” trial in Italy, which required him to stipulate to the prosecution’s “facts” in order to get his reduced sentence. Those “facts” implicated Amanda and Raffaele.
Amanda and Raffaele were found “innocent” in their appeals trial due to “lack of evidence” against them. Then the Italian high court (Court of Cassation) tossed out that verdict and ordered a new appeals trial. And they ordered the new judge to take into account all the “facts” that had already been determined to be true – by stipulation – in Rudy Guede’s trial. A trial that Amanda and Raffaele did not participate in.
Rudy Guede also provided a written statement as evidence in Amanda and Raffaele’s trial, but they were not allowed to have their attorneys question him – by Italian law. In the US, a fundamental right is the right to face your accusers. This is also supposed to be a right in Italy but in this case it was outweighed by Rudy Guede’s right to keep silent – even though he submitted a written statement at their trial.
Interestingly, when he was asked to read his own handwritten statement out loud, he couldn’t. The prosecutor had to do it for him.
This is how Amanda and Raffaele could have been found “innocent” in their first appeals trial and “guilty” in the second appeals trial. The Court of Cassation ruled that the judge and jury in the first trial were wrong not to accept all the “facts” that were established in Rudy Guede’s fast track trial, including the unquestioned testimony of the murderer himself.
The current status of the case: The judge in the second appeals trial, the one in which Amanda and Raffaele were found guilty, has to produce a written report called a "Motivation" explaining the guilty verdict by the end of this month. The prosecution's current theory of the crime no longer involved sex-games but centered around poop in the other roommates' toilet. There were two bathrooms in the cottage; one belonging to Amanda and the victim Meredith, and the other belonging to two other roommates. The prosecution argued that after Meredith found Rudy Guede's poop in the other two roommates' toilet, she became very upset with Amanda and Raffaele, and they, in turn, rose up and murdered her.
I kid you not.
The appeals court judge writing the Motivation doesn't have to accept the prosecution's poop theory to find Amanda and Raffaele guilty; he has the option to substitute his own theory of the crime.
After the Motivation is written, it will go to the Court of Cassation for another review. The Court of Cassation is expected to ratify the guilty verdict, whatever the Motivation says, since the CC more or less directed a guilty verdict in a previous ruling, based on the set of facts stipulated to in the Rudy Guede trial.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Funny how it segued from "sex games gone wrong" to "poop!"
Thanks for the update, pnwmom!
