Guardian,UK: "Amanda Knox is a witch? Sorry, are we living in 1486?"

[pnwmom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/27/amanda-knox-witch-hunts-italian-court?newsfeed=true


Here are the news headlines for 1486: in the fair city of Perugia, a she-devil hath falsely accused an inn-keeper of murder most vile … Sorry, let me start again. This isn't the 15th century, when "witches" were being hunted all over Europe, tortured into confessing and burned at the stake. In 2011, no one seriously believes that women go mad with lust and sell their souls to the devil – or do they?

Astonishingly, exactly that accusation has been made in an Italian court this week by a lawyer called Carlo Pacelli. He used the occasion of an appeal by the American student Amanda Knox against her conviction for the murder of a British student to call her an "enchanting witch" and attack her in terms that would be instantly recognisable to a mediaeval witch-finder.

The idea that women are natural liars has a long pedigree. The key document in this centuries-long tradition is the notorious witch-hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches, which was commissioned by Pope Innocent VIII. The book was written by two Dominican monks and published in 1486. It unleashed a flood of irrational beliefs about women's "dual" nature. "A woman is beautiful to look upon, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep," the authors warned. They also claimed that "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable".

It's not difficult to see these myths lurking behind Pacelli's description of Knox: "She was a diabolical, satantic, demonic she-devil. She was muddy on the outside and dirty on the inside. She has two souls, the clean one you see before you and the other." The lawyer's claim that she was motivated by "lust" could have come straight from the Malleus, which insists that women are more "carnal" than men.

SNIP

_________________________

Note: I like this article, but it does make the mistake of repeating the claim that Amanda "accused" the bar owner Patrick of murder. She did not. She consistently said she did not know what happened to Meredith. The police told her, during an overnight interrogation (with no attorney or translator present) that they KNEW she and Raffaele had been involved and that the bar owner was too. (They had seen on her cell phone a text from her to the bar owner that said "see you later" - and they took it literally.) Finally, she broke down enough to sign a statement saying that she'd had a vision of being in the kitchen with her hands covering her ears while Patrick was with Meredith in her room. A few hours later, she changed her mind, writing a note saying that that vision didn't seem real to her -- that her earlier recollection of being with Raffaele the whole time was more real. This first statement is what has been called a "confession" or an "accusation" depending on the context; in either case, the Italian Supreme Court ruled it inadmissible because of the lack of an attorney.

[hlthe2b]

1. Good heavens...This crap in Italy?

Misogyny makes its worldwide reemergence...:mad:

[seabeyond]

3. they have a lot of this crap in italy. i suggest even more than most places.

color me surprised being lectured about europes progressive attitudes to sex only to find that really.... not so much. more misogyny than anything else.

ah, the lectures.

[hlthe2b]

5. Yes, but I was referring to the hate-filled forme of misogyny...

Sexist and boorish behavior among Italian men is not a new phenomenon to me at all. But this seems to be rising towards the rhetoric of Palin's Kenyan witch-hunting pastor, Muthee.

[pnwmom]

7. "The Fatal Gift of Beauty" is a recent book that discusses the Perugian culture

from the perspective of the Knox case; very interesting.

[hlthe2b]

9. hmmm.. will have to check it out..

thx for the rec

[Common Sense Party]

2. Wait--a witch? I thought she was a voluptuous wife of a cartoon rabbit. ???

I'm so confused.

[truebrit71]

4. ...so if she weighs as much as a duck, she must be a witch....BURN HER!!!!

:evilgrin:

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. This is surprising?

We live in a country where reading Harry Potter teaches kids how to practice magic, and playing Dungeons and Dragons drives teens to murder.

Religious insanity is the same everywhere.

[Odin2005]

8. This is the same country that is trying geologists for not predicting an earthquake.

Western Society is reverting to superstition.

[Selatius]

10. Well, compared to France, Germany, or even Norway, Italy is pretty backward in many ways.

Their political system is unstable at best, and they suffer from a hideously centralized news media owned by Silvio Berlusconi. It appears Christian fundamentalism or superstition is also a problem.

[msanthrope]

11. Pacelli is not a prosecutor. He is the attorney for the African Knox accused of murder.

Ms. Knox declared that she had to cover her ears as Mr. Pacelli's client, Patrick Lumumba, killed Ms. Kerchner. This confession of complicity was not used in court against Knox, because Knox did not have a lawyer present, but she did implicate, falsely, Mr. Lumumba.


http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/04/italy.amanda.knox.evidence/index.html


I wonder at Ms. Knox--murderer of a mixed-race person who had no problem falsely accusing an African.

[pnwmom]

12. Wrong on several counts. There is no evidence she murdered anyone of any race.

She didn't "accuse" the African bar owner of anything. She did have a "problem" with what the police wanted her to say. But she finally broke down around 4 a.m., after an exhausting night of intense police questioning, with no attorney present (and no food or even water), and agreed to sign a statement saying that she could envision being in the kitchen while he was in the other room with Meredith. After a few hours of sleep, she corrected her statement, saying that the vision didn't seem as real to her as her initial recollection that she'd been at home with Raffaele the whole time.

The Supreme Court ruled that this statement could not be used against her in the criminal trial; but the judge allowed the jury to see it anyway, as part of the concurrent civil trial.

You are right that Lumuba's attorney is not a prosecutor. But the prosecutor, MIgnini, was the first one who brought the Satanic witchcraft scenario into the case. This civil attorney is just the latest one expressing it.

[msanthrope]

13. She accused the African who had fired her of murdering her mixed-race roommate,

with whom she had had serious conflict. There's DNA, Luminol evidence, emails, witness sightings, and the faked burglary attempt. It's all out there in the Massei Report.

If I was dealing with those facts, I might hire a PR firm for my daughter, just like the Knoxes did.

Pacelli is not a prosecutor. But I will bet the jurors will never forget the exhibit he showed yesterday.

[pnwmom]

14. I just explained to you that she didn't accuse him. She always

said that she didn't know what happened. The most she did, after breaking down during an exhausting overnight interrogation, was agree to a statement pushed on her by the police in which she envisioned Patrick in another room with Meredith while Amanda was off in the kitchen, covering her ears. A few hours later, she wrote another statement saying that that "vision" didn't seem real to her; that what seemed real to her was her initial belief that she had been with Raffaele at his apartment the whole time.

And she had never had any serious conflict with her roommate. There wasn't one piece of evidence introduced in the first trial or the second showing any conflict. That's why the prosecutor MIgnini just said in his summation that she had NO MOTIVE for the crime. If you think they had serious conflict, you're getting your ideas from the tabloids.

And as you perfectly well know, but for some reason want to pretend you don't, the Massei report you cite was written by the first judge at the end of the initial trial. Since that time, there has been a long appeals trial that has undermined all the key points of that report. Judge Massei himself said, in that report you claim to have read, that the whole case rests on the DNA results. But in the appeals case, the experts appointed by the new judge demolished the report done by the police lab and said that the DNA results linking Meredith to a kitchen knife (that never fit the wounds) and Raffaele to the bra clasp are invalid. No DNA results means there is NOTHING that puts either student in the room where the murder occurred. The room, however, was full of evidence that was traced to the third defendant. It is impossible that Amanda and Raffaele joined in the vicious attack and left not a single piece of physical evidence behind, while the third party left dozens of pieces of evidence, including DNA in and on the victim, hair, fingerprints, and footprints.

The luminol footprints in the hall could have equally belonged to one of the other roommates, since neither of them ever had their feet measured for a match. And the luminol footprints could have been many things -- except forblood, because they specifically tested negative for blood (a fact the police lab withheld till near the end of the first trial).

There were no witnesses, unless you count a heroin addict who could only testify to Amanda's presence on Halloween, not on the night of the murder; and a deaf woman who claimed to have heard footsteps, but not to have seen who they belonged to.

The fake burglary idea was nothing but an attempt to rationalize why it looked so much like a burglary -- including missing money and finding Guede's DNA in the victim's purse (Guede being the real murderer, in case you never heard of him, either.) The crime did begin as a burglary, by a man with a history of carrying knives while burglarizing properties. And the real travesty is he might be out of prison in only a few years, while all this attention has been on two innocent students.

As to the Knoxes mortgaging their homes in order to pay for attorneys, travel, and P.R. costs, if I had a loved one falsely accused of murder and being smeared every day by the tabloids -- and their millions of drooling followers -- I hope I would work as hard to free him or her as Amanda's and Raffaele's families have done.