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Italy Exists To Make Me Thankful For Fair Prosecutors … Like Mike Nifong

Sep 21, 2011
By .
Law

Seven Italian seismologists are facing manslaughter charges, for failure to predict an earthquake.

Victoria University Geophysics Professor Euan Smith says a conviction would be “outrageous and unjust”, and earthquake prediction isn't possible to that degree of accuracy.

No, it would be business as usual in Italy, where members of the government encourage hooligans to throw bombs at disfavored minorities, while still higher officials molest young girls with impunity.

Speaking of which, Amanda Knox is undergoing a retrial despite the conclusion of every non-Italian expert to have reviewed her case that the forensic evidence, which is the only thing tying her to the murder of Meredith Kercher, "fell below international standards".   To put it mildly.

We're hard on American prosecutors and police here, and justly so. But it's good now and then, with a little help from our friends abroad, to keep things in perspective.

Last 5 posts by Patrick Non-White

6 Comments
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6 Comments

  1. Corporal Lint  •  Sep 21, 2011 @3:46 pm

    The case is a little more complicated than it appears. The prosecutor alleges that a group of seismologists made a misleading and scientifically unsupportable claim that the small tremors the area was experiencing made a big earthquake unlikely. This statement supposedly led to a false sense of calm and more deaths when the big earthquake occurred. The prosecution is still ridiculous — basically, one guy made a stupid, off-the-cuff statement, and his six co-defendants had no part in it. But the case looks like gross overreach by a prosecutor rather than pure insanity.

    As for Italian politics, when I talk to my Italian friends about Berlusconi their rants sound precisely like those of lefty Americans going on about Bush circa 2003, with the main difference being that every one of their raving fantasies about Berlusconi seems to be entirely true.

  2. Patrick  •  Sep 21, 2011 @4:15 pm

    That actually makes the story WORSE than I initially thought it to be.

  3. Marc  •  Sep 21, 2011 @4:37 pm

    In one much-quoted interview, Bernardo De Bernardinis, then vice-chief of the technical division of the Civil Protection Agency, responded casually to a question about whether residents should just sit back and relax with a glass of wine. "Absolutely – a Montepulciano Doc," he replied.

  4. Marc  •  Sep 21, 2011 @4:40 pm

    Hmmm… I thought that the cite="" was to hold a URL… Apparently not. Here's the link I meant to add to my previous post: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/scientists-go-on-trial-for-failing-to-warn-public-about-laquila-quake-2358188.html

  5. Patrick  •  Sep 21, 2011 @4:47 pm

    So an Italian advocated laziness and wine-guzzling in the face of a potential crisis.

    I didn't realize that Italian prisons were so overcrowded.

  6. Roho  •  Sep 22, 2011 @6:26 am

    Not to mention the Google conviction, for not pre-emptively blocking upload of a video that violated Italy's standards.