Translation by Teddy from the Injustice Anywhere Forum
Claudio Pratillo Hellmann is a judge in retirement. Not just any judge:
on 3rd October 2009 (sic) he had read out the verdict (annulled the day
before yesterday by the Supreme Court) in which Amanda Knox and Raffaele
Sollecito were acquitted for not having committed the murder of
Meredith Kercher. At the time Pratillo was the president of the Appeal
Court of Assizes of Perugia, called to decide upon the brutal crime
against the English student found dead 2nd November 2007. To appeal were
the defendants, convicted in the first trial to 25 and 26 years of
imprisonment. Last Monday, in going over the case in the Supreme Court,
to undo the acquittal decided by the Appeal Court, the General
Prosecutor Luigi Riello used strong words: “The Judge that took this
decision lost his way”, that acquittal verdict “is a mass of violations
of law and of logic”.
Well, here is what the Judge who allegedly
lost his way thinks: “The Prosecutors have their opinion, but it’s the
Judge who casts the verdict. And so it’s in the motivations of the
Supreme Court that we will have to read whether the Court that I
presided over had lost reason. In any case, the Prosecutor General will
have read and interpreted the facts differently from us, but the words
he used against us seem somewhat excessive. And above all, which law
would we have violated?”.
Exactly,
President, can you tell us: were there violations of law? Is it true
the story about pressure exerted by America because they wanted Amanda
to return home as a free citizen?
Absolutely not. Just
consider that we inherited a case already finished, in which we only had
to evaluate the evidence. We didn’t request any additional
investigation, the only action we initiated was to ask for an evaluation
of the genetic evidence, both the prosecution and the defense
considered the DNA on the exhibits the decisive evidence to win the
case.
In other words, in essence
you based your findings on the same evidence of the Judges of the first
court that inspired exemplary convictions, of 26 and 25 years in prison,
but for you indicated full acquittal?
Exactly. We
examined that evidence, that in our judgment was not convincing. It
wasn’t convincing above all in light of a careful re-reading of the
Penal Code of Law, which requires “an absolute certainty, beyond any
reasonable doubt”, that -in this case – Knox and Sollecito were guilty.
For this my conscience is clear. That is true for all of us. We were
aware of going against the protests that indeed occurred the same
evening outside the Tribunal, or against different interpretations like
those of the Supreme Court. But we acted in accordance with our
consciences.
Do you think Amanda and Raffaele are innocent?
This
is not the point. We searched for the “legal truth”, which doesn’t
mean it coincides with the objective truth, but which surely requires
certain proof. In this case there were not certain proofs. There were
only clues and they were also tenuous.
What were these tenuous clues that in the first trial considered overwhelming proof?
It
was all centered around the knife found in Sollecito’s home and the bra
clasp of the victim recovered, in a second visit, at the scene of the
crime. All the other elements against them were nonsense [sciocchezze,
silly, of no value].
The DNA of the defendants on the murder weapon and on Meredith’s underwear weren’t proof?
No.
I’ll explain why. The Judge of the first trial had not considered
necessary a technical evaluation [of the genetic evidence]. He based his
findings on the work of the Scientific Police. For the prosecutors it
was sufficient to close their case, but when the defense of the accused –
in the second trial – focused on the challenges of the incongruities
resulting in that evaluation, we decided to ask for an independent
review. The professors, in our view the best available, completely
dismantled the biological evidence.
It wasn’t the DNA of the defendants?
Yes,
but on the blade of the knife the traces were so tenuous that the
genetic map of DNA to whom they could have belonged was too wide. Those
minor traces – other than Knox and Sollecito – could have been
attributed even to me, in other words compatible with the DNA of the
President of the Court.
And Meredith’s bra clasp?
It’s
true that there was DNA that could be attributed to Sollecito, but
there were also the DNA of three other men, demonstrating that it had
been compromised by the contamination at the crime scene. That exhibit,
photographed on the first day of the investigation, had been left there,
in the bedroom. Only a month and a half later did they decide to
recover and analyze it. But it was immediately noticeable that, compared
to the photographs of the crime scene, the bra had been moved by more
than a meter and had ended up under a mat.
However,
even if the other three male DNA could have been of the police officers
who entered later during the course of the month without the white
protective clothing, the traces of Sollecito were in any case on the
bra.
But Sollecito frequented that house. He was the
boyfriend of Knox, who was the flatmate of Kercher. And indeed on the
day of the crime he had lunched in the house on Via della Pergola.
But he wouldn’t have touched the underwear of a flatmate of his girlfriend.
No-one
says he did. DNA traces can be deposited even from fragments of skin
cells. Infinitely small organic substances, that can be transported onto
that bra clasp in a second moment. From the shoe of a police officer
entering the house in that month and a half or even by a gust of air.
And
Amanda’s famous memorandum from where it seems the Supreme Court will
request to restart? The confession written where she accused Patrick
Lumumba?
It wasn’t in the court records and I don’t know its contents.
Indeed
the memorandum was not included in the court records, the Judge of the
first trial held that it was inadmissible. Another unclear point.
I
didn’t even know it existed. But if this memorial was so important, the
prosecutors would have requested to include it in the Appeal.
According
to the General Prosecutor, and maybe also of the Supreme Court who
agreed to the request to re-do the trial, the accusations against
Lumumba would be proof of Amanda’s guilt. If innocent, one doesn’t
accuse another person.
In convicting Knox of slander, we
explained that the girl was put under a hard interrogation by the
Police. Without a lawyer. Without sleeping and with an interpreter who
encouraged her to put an end to that long confrontation. In that
context, she said the name of Patrick. It didn’t come from nowhere, but
only after she had been challenged about an exchange of SMS with him.
Lumumba was her boss, and for that they had written to each other.
Accusing him could have seemed to her a way out to escape from that
tight spot. Remember that Amanda was a very young girl, recently arrived
in Italy and she didn’t speak our language very well. For me it was
logical that in that context she could say the wrong things. Let’s wait
for the motivations of the Supreme Court to understand what didn’t
convince those Judges.
