Prove It

The judge who presided at the trial of Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, has reportedly said they may be guilty after all.

Speaking just two days after he and his fellow judges handed down a full acquittal on appeal, Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann, said the court's verdict "is the result of the truth that was created in the proceedings. But the real truth may be different. They may be responsible, but the evidence is not there."
~ from Amanda Knox Judge Says She May Have 'Been Responsible' After All by John Hooper ~

When I was younger, I often had a problem with my dad's chosen profession. You see, he's a criminal defense lawyer who specializes in capitol murder cases. Over the years, he has defended more than one client who has killed another person and, through my dad's work, the defendant won an acquittal. Put in layman's terms, this means the client did the crime, but not the time.

"How can you defend these SOBs?" I would ask my father. He would explain that, for our system of justice to work as intended, each person needed quality representation. The defense team needs to push the prosecution to PROVE its case in a court of law. This is crucial because, without it, the work of the police and DA gets sloppy and there becomes a much greater chance that innocent people will be arrested and charged simply to clear the case off the books.

The more I thought about this rationale, the more I understood it. (These days I am very proud of the work my father continues to do...into his late 70s.)

If the prosecution team is not forced to prove their cases legally in court, they will cut as many corners as possible. They won't be as careful with evidence as they should be. They won't track down all leads. They won't interview all witnesses. They won't look at the case from a multiplicity of angles. No, they will find path of least resistance -- too often, some poor person who fits the "profile" -- and try to wrap up their case with the smallest amount of time, energy and resources invested.

Of course, by forcing the prosecution to prove their case, it sometimes means a guilty party gets to walk. While that's not the greatest of outcomes, it's far better than locking up people who are completely innocent of the crimes they've been charged with.

As my father has often noted, when a guilty party is acquitted, it is usually because the police and/or prosecutor got lazy. They didn't do all the things needed to do to convince a judge or jury of the client's LEGAL guilt.

In the case referenced above, the judge is suggesting that Amanda Knox may well have been guilty of participating in the murder of Meredith Kercher, but it was not proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in a court of law. If this is true, then the onus of the court's decision falls squarely on the police and prosecutor. They simply were not able to prove the truth.