The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
 By Alice Giannini
Alice Giannini is a fourth-year law student at the University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy. “The primary responsibility in the fight against terrorism lies with the member states. However, the EU can and should play a supportive role that helps respond to the cross-border nature of the threat.” This is one of the first statements made in a presentation of the European Council’s policy on the fight against terrorism, a plague that has been taunting the European continent in the past several years like never before. [1] In the spirit of the words pronounced during that meeting, held in February 2015 after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in Paris, the heads of state of EU members declared that they would strive to “further reinforce action against terrorist threats” by focusing on four main areas of action: ensuring the security of citizens, preventing radicalization, safeguarding values, and cooperating with international partners. [2]
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 By Alice Giannini
Alice Giannini is a fourth-year law student at the University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy. Freedom of speech, and therefore of the press, is recognized and protected as a fundamental right by every democratic state. But what is considered to be “truth” by the media has to coexist with the constant search for a substantial truth as determined by judicial courts. Both truths are essential components of democracy but must stay distinct in their roles and in their functions: information cannot forget its social function and start serving justice. [1] This is a problem that, in Italy and abroad, concerns mostly criminal cases. The so-called “cirque médiatico-judiciaire” (media-judicial circus), as identified by Daniel Soulez Larivière in 1992, is nowadays part of our cultural background, a fact that has never been as evident as in the case of the murder of Meredith Kercher. [2] On the night of November 1, 2007, Meredith Kercher (a student from England) was found dead in her house in Perugia, Italy. Amanda Knox (Meredith’s housemate), her Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Guede were quickly named as suspects and then arrested for her murder. In 2009, a chaotic sequence of events consisting of contradictory judgments that ended up lasting for eight years began: Guede was condemned in a “fast-track” trial to 30 years for participating in the murder, while Raffaele and Amanda were also condemned for the murder but by a first instance court. They all appealed and Guede was condemned with a definitive sentence to 16 years, but things went differently for Amanda and Raffaele: in 2011 they were acquitted. In 2013, the Italian Court of Cassation (which represents the last instance of appeal in the Italian judicial system) annulled the 2011 sentence and ordered a retrial to the Court of Appeal for the decision. In January 2014, another twist appeared when Amanda and Raffaele were condemned respectively to 28 and 25 years of jail time. The last piece of the puzzle arrived in June 2014, when the Court of Cassation found that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Amanda and Raffaele’s guilt beyond any reasonable doubt and acquitted them permanently. |
