We now know. US$4m is to be paid for Amanda Knox’s story of torture at the hands of Italy’s ‘professional’ classes. It is a lot of money. But then the publishers have calculated that the appetite for a tale of medieval habits sustained in a modern society is considerable. I reckon they will get their money back. Italy is something truly special.
More:
Here is Douglas Preston, who already wrote a book about Giuliano Mignini.
The FT seems to have fallen in love with Mario Monti since being granted an exclusive interview with him last week. The paper’s correspondents have both hailed a package of Monti reform measures, and asserted that Monti is making Italy’s path diverge from that of Greece.
This is premature. Much of the FT coverage has highlighted moves to end legislated rents enjoyed by groups like lawyers, notaries, geometras, and pharmacists. In reality, the biggest of these rents have been abolished already, while long-run economic weakness has forced professionals to give up many of their remaining minimum charges. Notaries could be squeezed further, but their last really juicy rent — the requirement to use a notary every time you buy or sell a car –went years ago. Lawyers and geometras were long since forced by the weight of their numbers and the weakness of the economy to either dispense with official fee schedules altogether or to operate at the bottom end of them. There is such a ridiculous number of lawyers, accountants and geometras in Italy that they have to bid each other down. The nominal level of professional fees in Italy is not the real problem.
What has destroyed the Italian economy is transaction costs — the nominal fee plus the time-and-aggravation cost of getting anything done. The Euro7,000 charge for our leaking roof case would have been unreasonable but for the fact the case took seven years for the magistrate NOT to reach a decision. Italy requires systemic change to create institutions that allow the economy to be more efficient.
The biggest necessary change is a functioning legal system. Monti has offered nothing on this front, save plans for a special business court to try to encourage foreign direct investment. This is remarkably third-worldy as a policy proposal. It is reminiscent of when a country like China sets up a ‘one-stop’ investment office for multinational companies or agrees to abide by international arbitration decisions in business cases. That kind of thing works for emerging economies if they have high growth rates, which are what attract investors. Italy has no growth. If any investors are to become active in the Italian market, foreign or domestic, they require a legal system that works. Mario should get on and propose one.
Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor in the Sollecito-Knox case, has had his conviction for abuse of office — relating to persecution of journalists and illegal investigations (details here under the 20 April 2010 entry) — quashed after the Florence appeal court ruled his case should have been heard in Turin.
In theory Mignini can be tried again. But it looks like his case can has been kicked way down the road.
Despite Mario Monti’s promises of ‘Change-Italy’, at ground level things look very much like business as usual.
The Italian press has barely touched on Mignini’s successful appeal. There is a short report here in Italian, and an even shorter one here in English.
With the publication of Monti’s ‘nation saving’ budget in Italy (here in Italian) and news that Frau Merkel and Sarko have agreed a ‘fiscal compact’ to save the Euro we can see the shape of a week that may postpone Italy’s exit from the Euro but which will surely make it yet more likely in the long run.
First, Monti’s budget looks like a classic Italian serving of pointless, bureaucratic complexity. There’s another expensive-to-collect tax on yachts, and one one private aircraft, which will doubtless raise a net of about 8 euros. There is the return of property tax on first homes, but at a pretty low level and with various possible exemptions. Note that there is no attempt at simplification of different house-related taxes by, say, merging the new levy with the tax on rubbish disposal (known by the acronym TARSU), and sacking half the people who collect these taxes. Monti, may be a technocrat in theory, but this looks like the standard, tried-and-failed fare of the left-of-centre parties. On that note, the Welfare Minister cried while announcing pension cuts (perhaps troubled by the enormity of her own salary).
Why not do tax like Italy does its food? Simple, digestible and to the point. And then apply the tax. You never get to leave a restaurant without paying.
Meanwhile Frau Merkel and Sarko are coming up with a scheme to sanction countries like Italy that don’t stick to budget targets. This plays to German political opinion, but completely misses the point.
It treats Italy as a debt problem. But it isn’t. Italy is a growth problem that can only be resolved with legal system, bureaucratic and labour market reforms that make growth possible. Italy needs to be made to work institutionally.
All this Merkel-Sarko deal is likely to do is to keep the fiscal squeeze on Italy and provide a temporary respite for the Euro. But if Italy cannot grow it will never be able to pay its debts, even at 5% interest.
What we are likely to get this week will be the worst possible outcome. There won’t be pressure for pro-growth reforms from Merkel. And Mario’s budget performance suggests he can’t produce institutional change either.
The Italian economy will just shrink away faster than cuts can be made and taxes levied.
More:
The FT (sub needed) on Merkel and Sarko’s agreement.
The trial of police officers involved in a wrongful 1980 conviction of 3 men for murder in Wales has collapsed on a technicality. The case has interesting parallels with the Sollecito and Knox case in Perugia. The three convicted men left no forensic/DNA evidence at the crime scene, despite a murder by 50 stab wounds. The man later convicted of the murder left plenty of forensic evidence, but police were obsessed with the other three suspects. As in Perugia, their theory was more important than the investigation.
It all looks rather Italian, as does the failure to complete a trial of the police officers alleged to have perverted the course of justice. However we must note that there have already been two enquiries into this case, and there will now be a third. That isn’t the same as Perugia, where the expectation is that there will be no enquiry, nothing will change, and police and magistrates will not even get a telling off.
In the finest traditions of the Italian judiciary, the presiding judge in the Sollecito-Knox appeal — Claudio Pratillo Hellmann — has been giving interviews to the press.
You can guess what he said: this has been a terrible mess, creating appalling trauma for innocent people, in particular the Kercher family. We really have got to get an independent prosecution service set up — like the CPS in the UK — and start following our rules about criminal investigations. Plus, we need a full public enquiry into the whole thing, not least the conduct of the police, why no tapes of the Knox interviews were ever produced, allegations of physical attacks on journalists, and so on. And don’t even get me started on Mignini…
But of course I am joking. What Hellman really said (let me stress I have not had time to read the original text in Italian but John Hooper is a serious correspondent) is that it is quite possible Sollecito and Knox were party to the murder, that Mignini is at the top of his game, and that the issues are really very complicated.
Many open-minded Italians will forgive Hellman because his brave decision to do the only sensible thing and have the forensic ‘evidence’ looked at by more serious people decided the outcome of the case. He is likely just covering his fanny, as they say in America. But in covering his fanny he is ensuring that everything will stay the same. Which means that people less interesting, less white, less attractive and less well funded than Sollecito and Knox will continue to get stitched up unnecessarily.
Knox is gone. Not only that, she flew — which is pretty compelling evidence she is a witch. Let those four years inside be a lesson to other young people thinking of taking a student holiday in Italy and smoking a bit of dope. Just as well Knox and Sollecito didn’t grow their own and end up dead in Perugia’s Capanne prison, like the hippie who built our kitchen.
I forgot to remind readers yesterday who have not done so already to watch this short interview with the chief investigator in the Sollecito-Knox case. Arthur Miller must be eating his heart out. His play was only based on a true story.
Other:
Writer Douglas Preston on Mignini and the case, and Mignini’s form with respect to the earlier Tuscan serial killer case. What Preston says is no doubt true, but the Mignini focus tends to draw attention away from what are really systemic problems in Italy. Mignini is a symptom. The incompetence of the magistrates compounds the incompetence of the police and unlike the UK — with the Crown Prosecution Service — there is nothing in the middle of them to act as a circuit breaker.
Before Mr Giobbi undertakes his next ‘exquisitely psychological’ investigation, he would do well to read this.
John Hooper does a Q&A in the Guardian that gives answers I would agree with to a number of obvious and important questions.
So Sollecito and Knox are out.
My immediate reaction is that this is consistent with the behaviour of a survivor institutional-retard state. It is another moment, to use the phrase which Lampedusa never quite used, when ‘everything must change so that everything can remain the same’.
Sollecito and Knox are free so that we can get back to business as usual. It’s a sort of mini Mani Pulite for the legal system.
Anecdotally, what stands out for me more than anything is ignorance. I have asked four separate Italian lawyers, two internationally renowned and two from my local town, what they think about the Sollecito-Knox case and each has said they are sure that in some sense they are guilty. But when you ask why, you realise they are ignorant of even basic facts in the case. A small dose of northern European puritan professionalism would go a long way in Italy. This is a society where no one is capable of saying ‘I don’t know’.
Worth paying attention to:
One of the great UK long-form journalists was in Perugia tonight:
10.31pm: Peter Popham of the Independent tweets:
The video in court is very Italian, lots of extras on camera. Sollecito, who as a local always seemed to accept that a life in jail might be his fate is more together. Knox, who stood up a the start of the appeal and took the fight to the jury, is spent at this point.
John Hooper toys with the Perugia is different angle.
I am not so sure.
Monday’s coverage:
The second part of this article highlights the position that Italian ‘justice’ has left the Kerchers in. Their suffering goes on because of the grotesque unprofessionalism of the investigation and trial. The Kercher family will hold a press conference this morning that will be blogged here by the Guardian. Their anguish remains focused on the idea that the use of two knives and the number of wounds in the murder must have required more than Guede. I can’t speak to this or to the behaviour of sex attackers who use knives. What everyone can speak to is the fact that there was no motive and no evidence to put Sollecito and Knox in the bedroom where Meredith Kercher died and a huge amount of forensic evidence — hair, hand prints, finger prints, semen, other DNA — to put Guede there. I wonder if at the presser the Kerchers will mention the fact that Guede can expecct to be out of jail in only seven or eight years after his sentence was reduced on appeal (largely, I would say, to ‘fit’ with the wrongful convictions of Sollecito and Knox). If you run a legal system like a bunch of adoloscents, there will be a price to pay. Laid-back Italy doesn’t seem so cool today.
The Perugia shock blog reminds us that Knox’s 3-year, Euro22,000 criminal defamation conviction for saying the black bar owner she knew had committed the crime is UPHELD. This is very important because it is tantamount to saying the police did not intimidate and hit her during the illegal all-night interrogation for which no tape recordings have ever been produced. I have blogged before that the obvious explanation for her accusation against the bar owner, Patrick Lumumba, is that the first clearly identifiable forensic evidence the police found at the crime scene was the hair of a black male (Guede). They knew they were looking for a black man before they got the DNA match to Guede’s police record. And, in the middle of the night, subjecting Amanda Knox to the kind of pressure and sleep deprivation that produces false confessions everywhere, they got their black man (a mild-mannered barman according to people I know who know him).
(Note that the Perugia Shock blog, written by an Italian non-native English speaker, sometimes slips into the kind of emotional language that is not helpful to understanding the case. However in general it provides excellent, fine-grained coverage that you will not find in a newspaper. The author is being sued for guess what — criminal defamation — by Mignini.)
Want to read the rest of the stuff I have written about the Sollecito-Knox case? Just click on the ‘Sollecito and Knox’ tag (subject Categories and Tags are all listed in the right hand border).
The Observer runs a long article to coincide with the start of summing up in the appeal case of Sollecito and Knox in Perugia.
The expectation of an acquittal is now such that journalists are moving on to the ‘What it all means’ phase. And this story is probably a taste of what is to come.
An unnamed source is quoted:
‘According to one local journalist with decades of crime reporting experience, the descent of American and British reporters on Perugia in the days after the killing “put pressure on local investigators to go too fast”.’
Only in Italy could a journalist — a person whose work is public by nature — insist on being quoted as an unnamed source. It is the measure of the society, and the shallowness of its professionals. Of course it is also shocking (and I think unusual) that The Observer would allow a journalist to be quoted as an unnamed source.
The import of the remark, of course, is straightforward. This is an early example of the aberration argument. It infers that this miscarriage of justice was unusual, explicable by its uniqueness, and partly the fault of foreign journalists.
Were the jailings of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four or the Maguire Seven in the UK aberrations that resulted from journalistic pressure on police? Or did these cases — and many more that were not terrorist-related — reflect systemic failings in the police and criminal justice systems?
The passage and application of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in the UK in 1984 is the answer to the question.
In Italy, there will be no gains from a monstrous miscarriage of justice. Instead, we are getting ready for face saving. The narrative of the professional class’s self-defence is under construction. It tells of a society incapable of self-improvement.
At the same time, inflaming those famous Italian tempers further, people around Berlusconi are suggesting that acquittal for Sollecito and Knox will prove that the police-judicial system is rotten to the core and therefore that cases against the premier are fabricated assaults. It is the little jump in logic that does not work. The system is a mess, but this is not reflected in the existence of cases against Berlusconi, it is reflected in the fact that justice is never done.
In northern Europe or the US Berlusconi would have been dealt with by the judicial system years ago. Here he gets to survive, with the only quid pro quo being that he must participate in the judicial circus. The latest gratuitous leaks and leaks from cases that have not been completed are surely a small price to pay for never actually having to pay for anything. Better still, the judiciary is a source of endless votes for Berlusconi, much of whose political support derives from popular frustration with Italy’s Third World legal system.
The attentive reader will recall that having been robbed for the second time on the Fiumicino airport-Rome trains on 16 July I contacted ‘Dottoressa’ Caccia, responsible for statistical data at Italy’s Railway Police (Polfer) and that she told me to send my written enquiries to the ‘scrivici’ (‘write to us’) web site of the state police. This site only allows a maximum 600 character (approximately 100 word) enquiry, so I had to be short and specific:
…
Sono stato rubato per la seconda volta a bordo il treno che porta a/dal l’aeroporto Fiumicino. Ho parlato con Dott. Caccia nel ufficio Polfer a Roma e vorrei avere i seguenti dati.
1. Il tot. annuale di denuncie di reato sulle linea Fiumicino-Termini e Fiumicino-Tiburtina nei ultimi 5 anni (meglio ancora dal 2004).
2. Una conferma che questi dati contengono TUTTE le denuncie fatte — o sul modulo in lingue straniere o sul modulo tradizionale in Italiano.
3. Vorrei sapere se mantenete dati per il numero di giorni al anno che le telecamere sul binario 26 della stazione Termini non funziano (per guasti or altri motivi.) Se ci sono dati pubblici, vorrei ottenerli.
…
Let’s be honest that the Italian is not great, but nor is it difficult to understand.
The big surprise was that a section of the state police did reply:
…
Gentile signor Studwell,
la ringraziamo per aver contattato il Dipartimento di Pubblica Sicurezza fornendo utili segnalazioni sui furti che avvengono sui cosiddetti “treni a rischio”, in particolare nella tratta Roma-Fiumicino.
Siamo molto spiacenti per i furti che ha subito in due diverse occasioni su tali treni, faremo sicuramente tesoro delle sue utili indicazioni.
Premettendo che il nostro Ufficio è preposto esclusivamente al contatto con i referenti dei media, vorremmo comunque darle alcuni elementi di risposta alla sua richiesta in merito ai dati sui furti in danno dei viaggiatori.
Dal 2004 al 2010 è stata registrata una diminuzione delle denunce di furto pari al 62% per quanto riguarda gli episodi di furto in stazione ed al 45% per quelli a bordo treno. Il periodo gennaio – luglio 2011, confrontato con l’analogo periodo del 2010, ha fatto registrare un ulteriore calo dell’8% per i furti in stazione e del 21% per i furti a bordo treno.
Infine vorremmo rassicurarla confermando che i dati sulle denunce comprendono anche quelle effettuate sui moduli in lingua straniera.
Rimaniamo a disposizione per ogni eventuale altro chiarimento.
Cordiali saluti
…
Note the introductory line that ‘Despite the fact we are supposed to deal exclusively with the media [in this office], we would however like to provide you a few elements of response…’
I specifically asked for data on reported thefts on the Fiumicino airport- Rome trains between 2004 and 2010. The reply states that reports of theft in stations and on trains fell respectively 62% and 45% between these dates, without saying where. There are further data about declining reports of theft this year.
The reply further states that the data include all reports filed on foreign language forms (the ones without reference numbers).
Since the press office failed to use a no-reply address (even Italians have tricks to learn) I asked for two clarifications:
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Grazie per la risposta. Vorrei chiarificare 2 cose.
1. Questi dati sulle denunce che fornite referiscono a quale linea di ferrovia? La prima volta che sono stato rubato ero sul treno Termini-Fiumicino. La seconda volta sulla linea Fiumicino-Tiburtina. Sono due linee diverse. Volete dire che c’e stato questo calo sulla linea Termini-Fiumicino, or Fiumicino-Tiburtina, o dove?
2. Come potete sapere che i dati sulle denunce comprendono quelle effetuati sui moduli in lingua straniera cuando quelli moduli non hanno numeri di protocollo? E perche non contengono numeri protocolli?
…
And here is the reply:
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I dati si riferiscono alle denunce di reati commessi “in stazione” oppure ” a bordo treno” nel loro complesso, ovevro senza distinzioni di linee o stazioni specifiche. è quindi da intendersi come dato complessivo.
il protocollo è inserito sulla nota di trasmissione della denuncia all’autorità giudiziaria.
nel nostro sistema giudiziario,infatti, tuttti i fatti di reato devono infatti essere comunicati all’Autorità Giudiziaria e per un lavoro più agevole si preferisce questo sistema, ma le confermiamo che tutte le denunce di reati vengono acquisite per i necessari studi sull’andamento della criminalità. siamo noi i primi quindi ad avere intreresse a ricevere denunce e segnalazioni per migliorare i nostri interventi.
Cordialità.
…
The first bit begins to concede that the data provided do not refer to the Fiumicino airport trains… in other words that my enquiry has not been answered.
The second part becomes more interesting, claiming that the police add reference numbers to foreigner reports of crime after the reports are received because the system is ‘piu agevole’, which I would translate as ‘more efficient’ (or you could use ‘smoother’).
I would say that the system is more efficient from the perspective of policemen who want to reduce the amount of reported crime by altering or losing crime reports (see the scans of the forms and discussion here).
But as usual I am wrong, and am reminded that in Italy there is a binding legal obligation on the police to report all crimes to the judicial authority. Moreover, the state police assure, they themselves want to know how much crime is being committed so that they can hone their crime-busting techniques.
…
I asked for a final clarification on the data about reported thefts:
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I dati che mi avete forniti, allora, sono di tutto l’Italia?
Se uno rilegge l’email originale, non siete stati chiari su questo.
Cordiali saluti,
…
And the final reply:
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Gentile Signor Studwell,
le confermiamo che i dati che le sono stati forniti sono nazionali.
Cordialità
…
So, yes, they gave me national rail crime report data — and avoided providing anything for the Fiumicino trains, (where Ms Caccia told me on the phone theft is down by ‘at least 85 percent’).
The national data also indicate a big drop in reported thefts.
Do I believe even these national data? I think that given the use of unregistered foreigner reporting forms — which my policeman was so insistent I fill out in preference to an Italian form with a reference number — and given the remarkable obfuscation by the police statistics office, it is very hard to do so. Anecdotally, I haven’t seen anything change in terms of policing at Italian stations and on Italian trains in recent years, so why would reported crime fall so sharply? As I wrote previously, riding back and forth on the airport trains after the July 16 robbery, I was able to watch pairs of extracommunitari wandering the carriages, seemingly looking for victims in the most nonchalant fashion.
In the absence of measurable evidence to the contrary, my guess is that a significant part of what is happening statistically is that crimes on trains are not being added to the statistics. I don’t have more time at present to go into this, but it would be very interesting to know when the foreigner forms were introduced.
