Category Archives: Criminal Injustice

O.J.-Like Evidence Could Exonerate Noxious Knox

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Europe, Foreign Policy, Justice, Law

O.J.-LIKE EVIDENCE CONVICTED NOXIOUS (AMANDA) KNOX, which, due to US pressure on the Italians, could well mean that O.J.-like evidence might exonerate her of the murder of Meredith Kercher, the English girl with whom Knox had shared student accommodation in Perugia, Italy. Her throat slit, Meredith had expired in slow agony.

At the time I wrote the following:

Knox, Sollecito and Rudy Guede, a local drifter born in the Ivory Coast and known to Knox, were convicted of the murder and sexual assault of Kercher. CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, on and on—all have united in advocating for Amanda, “An Innocent Abroad.”

Going against the grain of American-style boosterism, Barbie Nadeau of Newsweek stuck with “journalism” to detail the ample evidence against the pair, downplayed or downright suppressed in the American media. For one, “Neither suspect [had] a credible alibi for the night of the murder, and both told a variety of lies about that night.” Knox changed her alibi, not once or twice, but several times. In the process, she accused Patrick Lumumba, a Congolese bar owner, of the crime. Based on the convincing yarn Knox spun, Lumumba spent time in jail before being released.

After Knox had cast her pal Lumumba aside, she tried to implicate her lover of two weeks, venturing: “I think it is possible Raffaele went to Meredith’s house, raped her, then killed her and then when he got home, while I was sleeping, he pressed my fingerprints on the knife. …

“Theatrics aside,” wrote Newsweek’s Nadeau, “the Amanda Knox trial comes down to forensics. … Among the most damning evidence against Sollecito is his DNA on the metal clasp of the bra that was cut from Kercher after she died.”

Also revealed with Luminol was a bloody footprint at the crime scene that matched Sollecito’s. “Key forensic evidence against Knox includes her footprint in blood in the hallway outside Kercher’s room. There [were] also mixed traces of Knox’s DNA and Kercher’s blood on the fixtures in the bathroom the girls shared. And a knife was found in Sollecito’s apartment with Knox’s DNA on the handle and … Kercher’s DNA in a groove on the blade.”

Like the original “Dream Team,” defense attorneys for Knox, “who at one time admitted to being at home when the murder took place,” alleged contamination (even though the crime scene was sealed off in-between searches), character assassination and insufficient amounts of DNA (it’s the type of DNA that matters, not the amount).

[SNIP]

The latest from Perugia, Italy, via CNN is that the “American … has won a major victory Saturday in her appeal of the murder conviction in the death of her British roommate when an Italian appellate judge granted approval of independent forensic reviews on two key pieces of evidence.”

“Why do you need to review the forensic evidence when this conviction is based on much more than the knife and the bra clasp?” Prosecutor Manuela Comodi argued before the court began deliberating.
She then reminded the court that Knox and Sollecito don’t have an alibi for the night of the killing, adding that there was “ample” evidence of a staged break-in.
Francesco Maresca, an attorney for the Kercher family, said he was “disappointed” with the decision, suggesting that the ruling was political in the face of pressure from the United States.

Condomed By Law

Criminal Injustice, Europe, Feminism, Justice, Law, Sex

Swedish women are more knavish than their American sisters. And Swedish sexual harassment law is more diabolical than anything American feminist jurist Catharine Mackinnon could dream up in her sweetest dreams—Mackinnon’s baleful influence on American and Canadian jurisprudence cannot be underestimated.

The San Francisco Chronicle:

Apparently having consensual sex in Sweden without a condom is punishable by a term of imprisonment of a minimum of two years for rape. That is the basis for a reinstitution of rape charges against WikiLeaks figurehead Julian Assange that is destined to make Sweden and its justice system the laughing stock of the world and dramatically damage its reputation as a model of modernity….
The women here are near to and over 30 and have international experience, some of it working in Swedish government embassies. There is no suggestion of drugs nor identity concealment. Far from it. Both women boasted of their celebrity connection to Assange after the events that they would now see him destroyed for….
The phenomena of social networking through the internet and mobile phones constrains Swedish authorities from augmenting the evidence against Assange because it would look even less credible in the face of tweets by Anna Ardin and SMS texts by Sofia Wilen boasting of their respective conquests after the crimes.

In the case of Ardin it is clear that she has thrown a party in Assange’s honour at her flat after the “crime” and tweeted to her followers that she is with the the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing!”. Go on the internet and see for yourself. That Ardin has sought unsuccessfully to delete these exculpatory tweets from the public record should be a matter of grave concern. That she has published on the internet a guide on how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends ever graver. The exact content of WilÃ’s mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Neither Wilen’s nor Ardin’s texts complain of rape.

MORE.

UPDATED: "Rational Profiling: Cabbies Do It Too"

Affirmative Action, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Law, Race, Racism

So I wrote in a column so titled on June 2, 2006:

“According to the authors of ‘Streetwise: How Taxi Drivers Establish their Customer’s Trustworthiness’ (TLS, May 12), it transpires that in deciding whether to ‘stop for a fare,’ cabbies give preference to ‘whites’ over ‘blacks.’ But they also select older over younger passengers; women over men; individuals over multiple passengers, wealthier over poorer; callers over hailers; and ‘friendly and calm over aggressive and agitated.’ As it is in the taxi driver’s economic interest to refuse ‘as few fares as possible, they can no more be guilty of racism than they are of reverse sexism or ageism because they prefer older and female passengers,’ say the authors.”

“Since there is no way of knowing whether those passengers the drivers screened out were in fact dangerous, it’s difficult to assess the effectiveness of these strategies. Still, not even the most ardent rights-violator would dare suggest cabdrivers be penalized for their prudence. For one, it could cost the driver his life.”

And it did. “Chilling video released yesterday by police shows a life-and-death struggle between a gunman and livery driver moments before the thug shot the cabby in a botched robbery in Queens.
The dramatic confrontation was caught on a surveillance camera installed in the gold Chevy Impala being driven by Trevor Bell, 53, in South Ozone Park on Saturday night. Bell was critically wounded in the attack. …”

“The head of the New York State Federation of Taxi drivers is encouraging racial profiling,” reports ABC.COM:

“Sometimes it’s good that we are racially profiled, because the honest to God truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics,’ Fernando Mateo said.”

The law, of course, proscribes the life-preserving measures advised by Mr. Mateo. These poor cabbies are expected to throw open the cab door to the Grim Reaper himself.

UPDATE: As you can see, Mateo, the man advocating racial (or rational) profiling, is a member of a minority as well. The victim, I believe, is black

Insider Trading Laws = Information Socialism

Business, Criminal Injustice, Economy, Fascism, Law, Political Economy, Regulation, South-Africa, The State

The following is from my new column, “Insider Trading Laws = Information Socialism,” now on WND.COM:

“It’s easy to be thrown off scent when trying to divine the vague, ill-defined, unconstitutional laws under which the Securities and Exchange Commission hunts for corporate prey. Suffice it to say that the SEC operates with the understanding that competition in capital markets must proceed from a level playing field. All investors are entitled to the same information advantage irrespective of effort and abilities.

In a word, information socialism.

In their latest efforts to bring ruin to capital markets, SEC blood hounds have ensnared some of the country’s most powerful hedge-fund firms. Indictments are replete with SEC cloak-and-dagger.

There is a Don, ‘Don Chu,’ which is how the accused, Don Ching Trang Chu, is called. A co-conspirator is ‘CC-1.’ And a cooperating witness: ‘CW-1.’ The companies violated, allegedly, are Atheros Communications, Inc. (‘Atheros’), Broadcom Corporation (‘Broadcom’), and ‘Sierra Wireless’—aka ‘The Tech Company.’

… Then there is the ‘The Firm.’ … The ominous entity at the center of the investigation. ….”

The complete column is “Insider Trading Laws = Information Socialism,” now on WND.COM.

Some of you are waiting for, and have been asking about, the publication of Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa. The wait is worse for South Africans who are in the thick of the events my book documents and analyzes—Into The Cannibal’s Pot is a Burkian polemic, steeped in history, reality, fact, and the classical liberal political philosophy.

When I completed the book some months back, the number of Boers murdered was just over 3000. The death toll now stands at 3,756.

The manuscript is currently under consideration. If all fails, fear not (with your help), someone will see to it that the true story of the New South Africa (“Rambo Nation”), as detailed in Into The Cannibal’s Pot, is told. Not everyone inhabits the solipsistic universe in which most American “writers” (and publishers) are mired. Five magnificent men (as writers, thinkers, and human beings) have returned high Praise For The Cannibal. Thank you; you know who you are.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.