Not if you believe that any country where the natives arent blue-eyed blondes and used to sport moustaches is, by definition, corrupted.
So, apparently, there’s a TVmovie about the case that’s going to be broadcasted in 4 days (February 21, 2011).
When you read the summary of the case on wiki, the murder itself is very vague. Even Guede, who confessed to the murder doesnt seem to have told exactly how it happened (or correct me if I’m wrong, Ive never seen a “summary” of the night’s events), yet the movie goes for this (as Arline Kercher says)
(from Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy - Wikipedia )
Weird choice. Wonder how the Knoxites on this thread will react if the Knoxes decide to sue for slander…
Because then far fewer would come forward with accusations of abuse - whether they are true or not.
The average person likely to have - interactions - with the police which may give rise to acusations of abuse, is not the sort of person likely to be able to afford lawyers and the like to defend themselves against a charge of “criminal libel”.
Adding that possibility deters anyone - truthful or not - from making accusations in the first place. Which is very likely to increase the possibility of abuses.
That’s why “libel chill” isn’t good, and is less good when the “chill” is put on by public officials. How would it be, if the gov’t took to charging every person who criticized its actions with “criminal libel”, forcing them to go to court, hire lawyers, etc.? Good idea or bad? It would sure make the news less bulky. 
Aren’t lawyers provided by the courts?
Even if not, I don’t see how a little bit of Italy’s libel laws can’t be applied. We need not implement the whole thing, but some kind of recourse for government officials should be given to prevent false allegations.
As things stand now, you could go to any newspaper, magazine, or website that would listen and make almost any kind of claim against a public figure or government official. They could sue you, but they’d have to hire a lawyer and the suit wouldn’t be tried in criminal court anyway, making free speech more of a reality for those with money.
I’d like to balance out a little bit of the power these people have and prevent that kind of wanton abuse of free speech. Maybe no punishment can be extracted. How about if they accusers fail in court to defend their claims, they are forced to read a prepared statement criticizing the validity of their own claims?
This kind of shit affects national policy, but we take it for granted and accept it because we’re used to it. Forget what you may think about the president, if every Tea Bagger had to retract their statement and Glen Beck couldn’t mention any lies about Obama, don’t you think his policies would gain greater traction? If lies derail presidential agendas and cause unworthy scum to be elected, doesn’t that harm us more than forcing someone to shut up about their stupid 9/11 conspiracies or birther nonsense?
Our hostile polical climate right now is evidence of the actual harm that would come from letting unfettered lies gain traction in the public sphere. It would be better if people could not make these allegations without some kind of proof
Agree with that. In the case of the French girl detained in Mexico I mentioned previously, the result of the campaign in her favor so far has been that her case is now widely known in Mexico (while it would probably have slipped under everybody’s radar otherwise), the Mexican public is pissed off, and as a result, even if it wanted to, the Mexican government would now be unable for obvious PR reasons to grant a pardon or agree with her transfer to a French jail, which were the intended goals.
Basically, it’s pretty sure she’s going to spend some decades in a Mexican jail because her relatives and France have tried too hard to push around the Mexican legal system while a more discreet approach might have gotten her (rightly or wrongly) a get out of jail card (transfer to France, reduced sentence for good behavior, discreet presidential pardon after some years behind the bars).
On the other hand, in the French “Omar m’a tuer” case (a very mysterious murder case where the victim was found dead, locked from inside in her basement, with a message written with her own blood on the door accusing her supposed murderer. Plenty of people believed that she couldn’t have written the message, but nobody either could explain how someone could have written it, left the basement and locked it from the outside. Some tried to come up with Sherlockholmesque scenarios or ingenious mechanisms to explain it). The convicted murderer was a Moroccan citizen. Morocco didn’t make a big fuss about it, but had him transfered to Morocco some years later when the heat had cooled down, and the king immediately pardoned him.
Well.. I would cut some slack to the parents. A normal parent will probably do anything and state anything to avoid a murder conviction of their child. Even if it ends up being counter productive. And I would guess they aren’t going to be easily convinced that their adorable kid is an hateful monster. So, quite a high level of antagonism is to be expected.
Quick clarification: in an Italian criminal libel case, would I be correct to assume that the prosecution must prove that the accusation was false? Or groundless? Or somewhere in between?
Right, in America and the UK, we prefer to bankrupt them, potentially make them lose their home, their job, their marriage and so forth for “making an accusation”. Oh yeah, given the extortionate price that hiring a libel lawyer in the UK costs, this probably also happens before the trial even begins. When you (finally) get to trial, the prosecution merely has to show on the “preponderance of evidence”, a standard inferior to that used in criminal trials, that the accusation was libelous. At least the Italians are being consistent in applying the same standard of evidence to libel actions as they do to criminal ones.
There’s no civilized country on Earth where making an unsubstantiated accusation isn’t potentially going to get you into shit. A few here are making out like they’ve never heard of libel. “It was only an accusation!” Bullshit. In Italy they jail you, in the UK and US they bankrupt you on vastly inferior standards of evidence (aside from the aforementioned states that still have criminal libel on the books). Trying to claim that the UK and US systems are “better” here is a load of shit.
Call me weird, but aren’t most interrogations videotaped? Or at least some stuff videotaped? And then sealed? And at no point on these tapes (hell, make it audiotapes) does she make any reference to being denied things? Or suspicious (or video of) beating-like sounds?
The point, obviously, being that many people in the US won’t trust the Italian Police to deal with that sort of investigation due to them being the Italian Police and no amount of “how insulting is that?” or “because the US Police are so whiter than white” is going to change their minds.
Personally, it all reminds me of that British nanny that got the manslaughter conviction in the US a decade or so ago. Much like this, there were very different interpretations of events based on which side of the pond you got your news from.
Yes, the libel case wouldn’t have been opened if the previous investigation into the claims had proven that they were correct.
If the claims had been proven to be partially correct there might still be a case (there is a big difference between “Pam pinched Beth once” and “Pam beat the living shit out of Beth”), but it’s relatively unlikely that it would have been opened; the prosecutors might still have had to open it officially in order to be able to officially record “there’s no way in Hell this would pass, case closed”, but without any intent to actually get to a trial.
That’s because we place a high societal value on freedom of speech. the inevitable result is having to put up with a lot of false speech.
I seriously doubt that one would get less partisanship if one gave the party in power the ability to use public resources to criminally charge members of the party not in power with “criminal libel” if they are seen as overstepping the line.
But yeah, encouragement of public disorder has been one major reason why freedom of speech has had its opponents over the centuries.
Except that, for the very reasons mentioned above, persons making accusations about public officials are protected from the full weight of libel here by the so-called “qualified privilege”. This makes it difficult to sustain a civil lawsuit for libel against (say) a person accusing a policeman of abuse.
The US and UK systems may not be “better”, but they certainly are more supportive of freedom of speech. It is I suppose a matter of opinion as to which value - freedom of speech or public order - is “better”.