"UPDATE NOV. 23, 2013
Monday and Tuesday the prosecution and civil parties will make their cases in the Florence court of appeals, which is currently hearing the appeal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. It is the second appeals trial in this case. The first appeal, which resulted in acquittal, was annulled by Italys Supreme Court in March 2013. The court remanded the case back down to appeal, in another jurisdiction outside Umbria.
On the eve of the prosecutions case to the Florence court of appeals this coming Monday comes news that an
internal review is being conducted of the appropriateness of of spending 182,000 euros ($240,000) in public monies to create a 23-minute high definition animated video used in the first Amanda Knox trial, in which she was convicted. The 23-minute high-definition video was approved by prosecutor Manuela Comodi, who curated the forensic aspect of the trial. Those in the video/tv/graphics business know HD graphics can be very costly, costing up to thousands of euros per minute.
But $240,000? It simply seems too much. And Comodi is being asked to justify this expense to the National Council of Magistrates in December. But as with almost every story that breaks on this case, there is more to the story than meets the eye. A review of the facts shows it was
an anonymous group of Perugia citizens who filed a denuncia (formal complaint) with the Umbria audit office regarding the costly video and who it was awarded to and why (worth considering: who were these anonymous citizens and were they in any way related to the media group who did not get the bid?). An important detail might be the fact that the
invoice for video services incorporated a much larger documentation project that included the animated video, but also a number of other media services, including video recording of witnesses testimony and key court hearings and presentations.
Prosecutors in Perugia apparently thought it necessary to have a master file of recorded trial testimony on file as part of the case record. Hence the price tag is for much more than just the animated video.
For the record, the animated video shown on the final day of closing arguments, as I reported from court here and mentioned again in this more broad analysis of the trial, was not a particularly effective tool for making the prosecutions case. The oversexualized cartoon reenactment featuring badly-stereotyped avatars and seemed trivial and silly compared to the more compelling original testimony of police and witnesses, which jury members heard in the trial of first instance, but not in the appeal. A waste of money? Probably."
http://thefreelancedesk.com/front_featured/amanda-knox-appeal-2/
