Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
In its “motivations report” in the Knox-Sollecito case, Italy’s supreme court seems to have parroted uncritically a long list of assorted assertions by the prosecution. The SC completely ignored the fact that most of those claims were demolished during the…
I thought the Russian justice system was bad – well it’s obviously true since it’s non-existent as a justice system: the courts with a few exceptions aren’t for real. They tend to be just rubber-stamping bodies. Politically motivated trials tend…
Not only was the 2009 Italian earthquake predictable. The Italian judge who sentenced four scientists to prison for not predicting it knows how to do the trick. On the basis of a technical assessment, Grieco wrote that the quake could…
In trying to solve the Road Hill House murder of 1860, local police applied the latest advances in psychology, namely: Some thought Gough [the nursemaid] didn’t weep enough in the days after her charge’s death. She became the local police’s…
Here’s the text: The authors of “Justice Flunks Math” (March 26, 2013) misrepresent facts of the case and Judge Hellmann’s reasoning. He could not order new tests as court-appointed independent experts determined there was no DNA available for testing. Here’s the…
I was disappointed to hear that Italy’s Supreme Court had sent the Knox-Sollecito-Kercher case to another appeals court for reconsideration. (The SC’s motivations are not out yet.) Judge Hellmann, who presided in the second-level trial which freed the couple, did…
If any of the wrongs that Russia’s government has recently committed merits international interference or protests, it has to be the conviction of Svetlana Bakhmina, a former corporate lawyer with YUKOS, for “embezzlement” and “tax evasion.” The convicted mother of…
As you might have heard, 39 young men and women are on trial in Moscow for having, non-violently in essence, seized a presidential administration office in central Moscow last December. They are charged with no less than “organizing mass riots”…
The right to defend ourselves (following up on the previous post) The court ruled, following — oddly — the prosecutor’s line, that the cabbie was trying to force his passenger to perform oral sex on him. He must have thought…
I won’t comment on the the nine-year sentence slapped on Mikhail Khodorkovsky yet; instead, here are two law and order-related sketches. One. A week or two ago, a son of Sergei Ivanov, the Russia defense minister, ran over an old…