First,what I'd like to do right now is correct something that I've failed to acknowledge thus far on this blog. When all is said and done this story is about justice for murdered Meredith Kercher. In the end, wasn't that what all this was suppose to be about? As a father of two teen girls, the idea of sending one of them to college, only to have her murdered horrifies me. The horrific murder of Meredith Kercher is a tragedy that rends the heart. Compounding that tragedy is the poor way that the investigation into her murder proceeded. Say what you will about Amanda Knox and Rafael Sollecito, it was the police early on that brought Lumumba into the investigation on little more that a text message on her phone. Getting Knox a 19 year old girl, in a foreign country with only a moderate handle on the language, in shock over the bloody death of her roommate to confess and name an accomplice would seem to be a moderate task for veteran police intimately familiar with interrogation techniques.
Unfortunately, after two weeks they were begrudgingly forced to release Lumumba due to lack of evidence and an air tight alibi. So much for "case closed". It was the investigators who were unbelievably bragging to the press about how they closed the case in record time. They were the ones coming up with suspects without forensic evidence to justify their "hunches". To put it plainly, they screwed the pooch with their cavalier attitude and macho bravado, and had the temerity to brag about how good they were and pat themselves on the back for "a job well done." In the end, when it comes to why true justice for Meredith Kercher seems unlikely THEY are the ones to whom that responsibility fell. That's not a treatise on the Italian justice system, that's cold hard FACT. If one were to try to find the point where this became less about finding justice for a murdered girl, and a salacious media circus focused on an attractive American college student, this was it.
For surely, if they'd acted like police professionals, played their cards close to the vest and waited till all the forensic results came in they could have convincingly solved the case just two weeks later, put Rudy Guede behind bars and been heroes.
As it stands now, at best they look like fools, and the justice for Kercher seems painfully unreachable as the injustice of Knox and Sollecito's conviction prevents Kercher's family from finding any peace. For surely, if the evidence was properly collected, and analyzed would we be questioning it now? It was the Italian police who left the bra clasp in kercher's bedroom for 47 days, and they were the ones who had a lab tech use unsupported methods to amplify low copy DNA on a blade that doesn't exactly MATCH Kercher but can't exclude her and presented these to the press as the "smoking gun."
Finally, they were the ones that continually leaked information to the press, most of it never making it to trial in an effort to smear Knox and make her look like some type of she devil temptress American teenager gone wild in a foreign country.
Initially, when the verdict came it, although I disagreed with it, criticizing the entire Italian justice system for the inane actions of certain officials seemed off the mark. Now, after more reading on the subject, I am not so sure that questioning the justice system that Knox now finds herself irrevocably entangled so extreme.
Statistically, 1 in 3 convictions are overturned on appeal. Ouch! That's certainly a big waste of resources. Shouldn't they take their time and get it right the first time? According to a November poll by Euromedia Research Group, only 16 percent of Italians fully trust it; just two years ago, the figure was 28 percent. And Italian civil rights groups are intense in their criticism of what they view as kangaroo courts.
If the Italians don't have confidence in their own justice system, why should we?
It was the actions of the Italian officials that brought sharp criticism to this trial,for surly the strength of the trial and the convictions that resulted are only as good as the investigation that preceded it, yes?
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