On the night of November 1st 2007 in Peruglia Italy, Meredith Kercher was murdered by being stabbed in the neck. Kercher’s roommate, Amanda Knox had returned home on the morning of November 2nd, from spending the night with her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito. Later, Knox returned to Sollecito’s apartment and explained that she had observed small speckles of blood in the bathroom, the front door ajar, and Kerchers bedroom door locked. Kercher’s body was found half naked, and under a duvet after police broke down the door to Kercher’s bedroom. Knox was interrogated on multiple times without an attorney present. She was slapped on the back of the head and forced to visualize a probable scenario, of which the police took as an admission of guilt and had her sign a statement to the vision. DNA was retrieved from the crime scene, but only pointed to one suspect, Rudy Guede, who had fled Italy on the night of the murder, arrested in Germany, admitted to being in Kercher’s apartment that night, and was later found guilty. No DNA evidence was recovered to implicate either Knox or Sollecito as to being present at the time of the murder. In 2009 Knox and Sollecito were found guilty and sentenced to 25 and 26 years. In 2011 an appeals judge repealed Knox and Sollecito’s sentence based on no proof of their guilt. Knox returned home in the U.S. In 2013 Italy’s Supreme Court, the Court of Cassation, ordered a retrial. Knox and Sollecito were then found guilty of Meredith Kercher’s death. Italy has since called for the extradition of Amanda Knox, but it is still being appealed. The Italian legal system is that of civil law. According to Abadinsky civil law is based on written laws and statutes dictated by legislation and must be strictly adhered ... ... middle of paper ... ...re given false information throughout the whole incident which would lead the Italian people to believe their judicial branch. The prosecution leaked outright lies of the case to the local presses which sought to paint Knox as a cold-blooded, American beauty. Works Cited Abadinsky, Howard. Law and Justice: An Introduction to the American Legal System. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2008. Print. "Knox Verdict: How the Italian Legal System Works." Channel 4 News. N.p., 13 Jan. 2014. Web. 11 Feb. 2014. Koerner, Brendan. "When Do Judges Sequester Juries?" Slate Magazine. The Slate Group, n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2014. Rufe, Cynthia M., and Scott P. Sigman. "Trial of Amanda Knox Highlights the Differences Between the United States and Italian Legal Systems." - American Inns of Court. American Inns of Court, Mar.-Apr. 2012. Web. 11 Feb. 2014.
Pagan writes a captivating story mingled with the challenges of the Eastern Shore legal system. This book gives a complete explanation backed up by research and similar cases as evidence of the ever-changing legal system. It should be a required reading for a history or law student.
On June 16, 2008 Caylee Anthony was last seen leaving her grandparents house with her mother, Casey. In exactly one month, Cindy Anthony, her grandmother, calls the police to report that Caylee has been missing. Casey did call the police, however, to tell them that the babysitter had kidnapped Caylee. July 16, 2008, Casey was arrested for child neglect and false information. It would be hard to indicate that a person was guilty if there was no body found to prove that. On December 11, 2008 the remains of a little girl were found and sure enough it was the body parts of Caylee Anthony. The evidence and surroundings of her death pointed at her mother, however, at the end of the case she was proved to be not guilty for the murder of her child.
Linking this back to my previous statement, the accused needed to be trialed. The first problem that arises is the fact that the judges can rule how they please towards the accused. We all have times when we feel better than others and this can affect our reasoning as well as our attitude towards certain aspects of life. This statement also applies to the judges when they are in court. Naturally they are supposed to determine whether the accused is guilty of the crime that has happened and come up with a reasonable and suitable punishment but some judges let their personal affairs get in the way. While this might sound strictly unjust to the accused, the judge displays signs of inequality when he or she lets signs of weakness from the victim affect their final verdict. The judge is there to assign a verdict as well as give out the proper punishment that is associated with the crime that was committed. If the judge changes their decision based on their point of view as well as how they feel towards the accused this means that the judge is bias. This creates an inequality between the accused members because if different people have been accused of the same crime and get the same judge they might get different verdicts depending on what the judge thinks and feels about them. Beccaria states that ‘‘we see the same court
Gigilio was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for passing forged money orders at a local bank. Mr. Robert Taliento is the local bank teller, alleged co-conspirator, and the only witness linking the appellant to the crime. It was Taliento who supplied Giglio with the customer’s bank signature card and it was Taliento who cashed the forged money orders. During the trial defense counsel cross-examined Taliento in regards to him receiving prosecutorial leniency in exchange for his testimony. Both Taliento and the Government attorney denied that any such deal existed. It was only after the appellant was convicted and sentenced to prison did the evidence of Taliento’s deal come to light.
Jost, Kenneth. "The Federal Judiciary." CQ Researcher 8.10 (1998). CQ Researcher. SAGE Publications. Web. 01 Mar. 2011. .
Oliver, N. E. (2006). Influences on Judicial Decision Making. In N. E. Oliver, The Public Policy of Crime and Criminal Justice (pp. 371-374). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Kafka’s The Trial delves into the life of Josef K., a bank worker who gets himself tied up in an unknown trial, against an indefinable and ultimately unaccountable legal system. While the piece is a work of fiction it parallels many of the legal problems in existence during the period in which Kafka was writing and to an extent gives a fictitious account of many real events going on. Many parallels can be seen in the trials of Alfred Dreyfus, Oscar Wilde, John Scopes and Nikolai Bukharin in various ways. The book indirectly questions legal principals such as an accessible system and a clear understanding of the process. Fundamentally these principles are missing from the other real trials in question, and represent in most cases a serious miscarriage of justice.
In closing, the criminal trial process has been able to reflect the morals and ethics of society to a great extent, despite the few limitations, which hinder its effectiveness. The moral and ethical standards have been effectively been reflected to a great extent in the areas of the adversary system, the system of appeals, legal aid and the jury
Remy, Richard C., Gary E. Clayton, and John J. Patrick. "Supreme Court Cases." Civics Today. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe, 2008. 796. Print.
Hall, Kermit L, eds. The Oxford guide to United States Supreme Court decisions New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Garrett, Brandon. Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2011. 86. Print.
Columbia Law Review, 104, 1-20. doi:10.2307/4099343. Reynolds, S. (2009). The 'Standard'. An interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Convictions. Now Juries Expect the Same Thing – and That's a Big Problem.” U.S. News
“ ….Judgments, right or wrong. This concern with concepts such as finality, jurisdiction, and the balance of powers may sound technical, lawyerly, and highly abstract. But so is the criminal justice system….Law must provide simple answers: innocence or guilt, freedom or imprisonment, life or death.” (Baude, 21).