Amanda Knox's parents to go on trial in Perugia

(CBS) At the end of March, Amanda Knox's parents will go on trial in Italy. Yes, you are reading that correctly - her parents.

Pictures: Amanda Knox Appeal
Pictures: Amanda Knox Personal Photos

Knox, herself, is the Seattle student who spent four years in prison for a murder an Italian court found her innocent of last October.

In 2009, Amanda Knox was convicted of murdering British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. Last year, an Italian Appeals Court freed Knox ruling her earlier conviction "was not corroborated by any objective element of evidence."

Though their daughter may be out of the slammer, Amanda's parents, Edda Mellas and Curt Knox, could now find themselves sentenced to prison. In 2009, they were charged with criminal slander in Perugia. Eight Perugia police officers claimed they were slandered when Amanda's parents told a British newspaper that their daughter was physically abused during a police interrogation. If convicted, Edda Mellas and Curt Knox could be sentenced to up to three years in prison in Italy.

Their trial will start March 30th in Perugia; but perhaps Perugia - at least when it comes to Knox-related matters - would be better named Paranomia - a fictional chain of islands. Last November, Gian Antonio Stella, writing in Milan's Corriere della Sera newspaper, compared Italy to the islands depicted in the 1901 utopian novel, Riallardo, the Archipelago of Exiles. The fictional isles of the Riallardo archipelago, Stella wrote, "Offered asylum to the misguided."

Stella's article mentioned one particular chain of islands where, according to the novel, people were "exiled for some craze they had developed on the subject of law." Those islands were called Paranomia. According to the book, Paranomia had its own prosecutor-judges, called Justitiomaniacs, "who were not happy unless engaged in dealing out justice." Endless trials proved a constant source of merriment. But, there was always the fear that Paranomia would run out of "real flesh-and-blood criminals to try, cases with a vein of tragedy running through them."

The solution for Paranomia: prosecute the innocent. After all, "where lay the talent or ability," asks the novel, in finding the guilty, guilty? In Paranomia, "there was something of true genius in convicting an innocent man and getting his friends to feel there was something wrong about him."

Edda Mellas and Curt Knox face a prosecution that could be straight out of the century-old fantasy novel. Amanda's parents are charged under Articolo 368 Codice Penale, Libro Secondo, Titilo III. It's the Italian law that defines criminal slander.

In June 2008, Knox's parents did an interview with London Sunday Times correspondent John Follain. They told Follain what their daughter had told them; namely that during Amanda Knox's interrogation by Perugia police in November 2007, she was abused both physically and verbally and that she was hit in the back of the head.

This wasn't a scoop for either Follain or the Sunday Times. Seven months earlier, the London Daily Telegraph had first reported Amanda Knox's police brutality charges. There was no comment from the Perugia police in either story. So by June 2008, Curt Knox and Edda Mellas had reason to believe their daughter's version of events. And that is a critical fact under Italian law.

The Italian Supreme Court has consistently ruled, as recently as January 25th, that criminal slander only happens when "the person making the false accusation has acted intentionally and with the awareness and with the certainty of the innocence of the accused." Cutting through the legalese, slander in Italy is when you are accusing a person of doing something you know, for certain, they didn't do.

So why are Curt Knox and Edda Mellas being prosecuted? Perugia police could have, and by Italian law should have, recorded Amanda Knox's interrogation. But so far, no recording has surfaced. So how can anyone say, with certainty, that the brutality charges are slander? And more importantly, how could Curt Knox and Edda Mellas know, with certainty, that the Perugia police are telling the truth when the cops say they didn't brutalize their daughter during the interrogation in 2007.

Back with the Justitiomaniacs in Paranomia, the answer is both obvious and alarming. The novel says, "They rather preferred an innocent man for their experiments in justice."

During Amanda Knox's trials, a lawyer told the Perugia court that Amanda Knox was "a satanic, diabolic, she-devil given to borderline behavior."

Could that characterization be considered slander in Italy? Stealing a line from Corriere della Sera's Gian Antonio Stella:

"That would be in a serious country, not Paranomia."

This story was reported by CBS News' "48 Hours Mystery" producer Doug Longhini, who has covered the Amanda Knox case for several years.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57398361-504083/amanda-knoxs-parents-to-go-on-trial-in-perugia/

Thanks AnnaEsse.....I bet the Italian Police were miffed that Amanda was found not guilty and are trying to get their own back. Trouble is, it's a
bit like the Cipriana case except that Amanda didn't have any evidence . Since the Police don't have any reports, how will this case be decided ?

Panda wrote:

Thanks AnnaEsse.....I bet the Italian Police were miffed that Amanda was found not guilty and are trying to get their own back. Trouble is, it's a
bit like the Cipriana case except that Amanda didn't have any evidence . Since the Police don't have any reports, how will this case be decided ?

With difficulty possibly, though we should remember that CBS was a staunch supporter of Amanda Knox.

Amanda Knox Ruling Cites 'Sex Game' Theory

The top Italian court that ordered the retrial of Amanda Knox says Meredith Kercher might have died in a sex game gone wrong.

11:37am UK, Wednesday 19 June 2013


Amanda Knox during her trial in Italy

Meredith Kercher was Knox's flatmate

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Italy's top criminal court has said its decision to order a retrial of Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend in the murder of Meredith Kercher was made because their acquittals contained shortcomings and contradictions.
The Court of Cassation also said the possibility that Briton Miss Kercher was killed in a sex game that had got out of hand needs to be revisited.
Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were initially found guilty of killing the 21-year-old Leeds University student, but both were cleared on appeal in 2011.
In March of this year, however, Italy's top court overturned the acquittals and ordered a retrial. That court has only now issued its written reasoning for doing so.
Knox was convicted in 2009
It picked apart the lower court's judgment freeing Knox, saying it contained "shortcomings, contradictions and inconsistencies" and "openly collides with objective facts of the case".
The high court's 74-page document also said the judges who freed Knox undervalued the fact that the American had initially accused a man of committing the crime who had nothing to do with it.
Miss Kercher's body was found in November 2007 in her bedroom of the house she shared with Knox in Perugia. Her throat had been slashed.
Knox and Sollecito have denied any involvement, saying they were not in the apartment at the time.
Raffaele Sollecito was Knox's boyfriend at the time of the murder
A young man from Ivory Coast, Rudy Guede, was convicted of the killing in a separate proceeding and is serving a 16-year sentence.
But Guede is not believed to have acted alone.
The high court judges said the retrial would serve to "demonstrate the presence of the two suspects in the place of the crime".
They said hypotheses that must be considered involve "a group erotic game that blew up and went out of control", and urged the retrial to conduct a full examination of evidence to resolve the ambiguities.
No date has been set for the retrial.
Knox, who left Italy a free woman after her 2011 acquittal, is back in Seattle and is not expected to attend the new trial.
Italian law cannot compel her to return as defendants can be tried in absentia.
She has recently released a book titled Waiting To Be Heard.
Knox was emotional in Seattle after her 2011 acquittal
Sollecito has spent time in Switzerland trying to start a new life, but it has emerged that his residency permit has been revoked by the Swiss authorities.
In his application, he failed to mention his involvement in a criminal case, Italian news reports said.

Home»News»World News»Europe»ItalyRaffaele Sollecito: Amanda Knox and I are 'victims'
The former boyfriend of Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito says the couple are "victims", after a retrial was ordered into the 2007 killing of British student Meredith Kercher.
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4:59PM BST 01 Jul 2013
The former boyfriend of Amanda Knox has repeated his innocence as he prepares to face a retrial over the murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher.

Raffaele Sollecito denies any involvement in the killing of the Leeds University student who was found with her throat slashed in the bedroom of the house in Perugia in central Italy that she shared with American Miss Knox in November 2007.

The 29-year-old Italian, who is appealing for money to fund his new court battle, also defended himself against claims that he and Miss Knox had made money out of the tragedy.

He said he wanted Italian prosecutors to read his book to find out the facts about the case.

"I have to make money in order to defend myself. I cannot get a real job and, even if I had a real job, there is not enough money there," he told ITV's Daybreak.

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Asked about the prospect of a retrial alongside Miss Knox, who has since returned to the US, Mr Sollecito said: "It is not about facing the nightmare again together, because we are no longer together as a couple. We are friends. All of these kinds of unfair things are happening in Italy. I am Italian, she is American, that is the difference."

Italy's highest criminal court, the Court of Cassation, ruled in March that an appeals court in Florence must re-hear the case against Miss Knox and Mr Sollecito for the murder of 21-year-old Miss Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey.

The pair were found guilty in December 2009 of murdering Miss Kercher, with Miss Knox sentenced to 26 years in prison and Mr Sollecito 25.

But after an 11-month appeal in a Perugia court, both convictions were thrown out in October 2011.

Rudy Guede, 26, from the Ivory Coast, is the only person who remains behind bars over the case in Italy, where he is serving a 16-year sentence for sexually assaulting and killing the British student.

Mr Sollecito has always admitted visiting Miss Kercher's home on the night of the murder but denied involvement.

He's gonna spill the beans if found guilty....mark my words.

He said he wanted Italian prosecutors to read his book to find out the facts about the case.



What a ridiculous thing to say.....