The high court ruling was bizarre, even by Italian standards, because it all but directed the new appeals court to return a guilty verdict. (“This evaluation by osmosis will be decisive […] in demonstrating the presence of the two accused at the scene of the crime.”
But its philosophy of what constitutes evidence — also bizarre to Anglo-Saxon ears — was consistent with the way many Italian prosecutors and judges think and act. What they are interested in are less the facts themselves than the narrative they can build from their
interpretation of those facts. They see themselves akin to poets, aspiring to a greater truth beyond the accumulation of evidence and dusty piles of official documentation. Their principal tools are rhetorical persuasion, instinct and artistic creativity. When they talk about
logic, as Mignini and many of the other lawyers in the Kercher case have, they mean constructing a story that fits the predetermined view that the defendants are guilty.