Miley did an incredible amount of research with respect to this reduction and I am going to pull it over
02-06-2011, 06:26 PM
miley
Registered User Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 251
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nova
"would be in line" does not necessarily mean "was reduced to match." It may be the lawyer was merely defending the reduced sentence as not unreasonable. (I assume we are dealing with a translation, but if the English is unclear, we have no way of knowing whether the Italian was clearer.)
If this is the only evidence as to why RG's sentence went from 30 to 24 years, then that reduction remains a mystery.
At the time Francesco Maresca said all of this, Rudy's sentence had just been cut from 30 to 16. Apparently no one understood why...Maresca says "would be line" because he is speculating on why Rudy's sentence was reduced. Everyone was speculating because the court of appeals had not handed down their explanation.
Yesterday's decision to uphold his conviction but cut his sentence so drastically has left some legal observers bewildered. "Either he was party to the murder, along with Knox and Sollecito, or he wasn't," a lawyer told The First Post last night. "The reduced sentence seems to suggest that the court believes Guede might have been an accessory to the murder, but not a prime instigator of Meredith's killing."
Read more:
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/57772,...#ixzz1DDau7jZz
I think at the time a lot of people (including me) took Maresca's word for it and thought Rudy's sentence was reduced because he opted for the 'fast track,' plus dropped to match A & R's etc. until the court handed down their explanation and it came out about the apology letter.
The initial argument was over whether or not the apology letter had anything to do with Rudy's sentence being reduced - it does. It's not the only reason, like Malkmus said but it definitely played a part.
BBM
In it's 56-page explanation the judges of the appeals court wrote that Guede "participated fully" in the sexual assault and murder "not only as the perpetrator of the sexual assault, but also for having held down the victim's left hand" while she was being slashed. Guede's DNA was found on Kercher's left sleeve.\
The judges for the Perugia court of appeals also explained the reasons they granted Guede attenuating circumstances that led to a substantial reduction of his sentence. These include the fact that he had no previous police record, the fact that he did not wield the knife that killed Kercher, that he voluntarily returned to Italy after running to Germany in the days after the murder, his young age, and the "acute stress" that led him to flee the scene without rescuing the victim.\
The judges also mention Guede's difficult childhood without a mother and with a father who was often absent.
In explaining the attenuating circumstances, the judges also mention the fact that Guede is the "only" one of the defendants to have said he was sorry to the Kercher family, "even if it (the apology) was only for not having been able to save Meredith," and not for his role in her killing.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/AmandaKno...0169888&page=2