Referring to these defendants as “boys” and “teenagers” is disingenuous. The use if these terms to describe young criminals seems to be common in the liberal press. The intent appears to be to sway our sympathies in favor of the accused, or perhaps provide “clickbait”. These are serious charges, and these men were both of age at the time as far as I can tell.
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Something just hit me, someone said "drugs are a victimless crime" with extreme sarcasm, and obviously the illegal drug trade is not victimless in any sense of the word. Taking Tylenol for a headache is pretty much victimless, so the statement alone does need clarification.
But "crimes are a victimless drug", is certainly something we'd all agree was false, right? And it seems to me these two young drug-seeking Americans were actually addicted to crime. I believe they figured, "here we are in what Americans know as the home of the Mafia (not the Yakuza, Irish Mob, or others). Why not act all gangster like, take a knife to a drug dealer and his low-level cronies, get our money back, and have a heck of a true crime story?"
This is conjecture but it's obvious that these young men are guilty of various crimes, and I hope that Trump doesn't step in and try to pardon them, which is his victimless drug or something.
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How do you know the two Americans stabbed the policeman, or that they ever owned or possessed the knife?
What is the source and support of this info?
Planting fake murder weapons in farcical show trials seems to be a national sport in Italy.
Dear Jimbo,
How do you know anything otherwise? I'm conjecturing here, like all of us.
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@Dan Stackhouse wow there are some BROAD assumptions in your statement that come off as very ignorant and naïve. Just because someone is seeking drugs doesn't mean they are out "looking for a crime". I'm still trying to wrap my head around how you just created a whole assumed scenario in your head that has no basis in reality.
2
Difficult case, but I do wonder, when accosted by strangers after a failed drug deal, why would it be necessary to stab one repeatedly, until he died? Why not just run, yelling for help?
Either way, it's pretty clear that these teenagers were exceptionally foolish to be meeting up with someone they knew to be a drug dealer, alone, at night, for a mere $87. I hope justice is done here, but it's hard to tell so far what the right verdict might be.
4
Why were they walking around Italy with an American Military Kbar. They aren't even legal in most US states to carry.
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Two tourists kill a citizen of another county over a less-than-$100 drug-deal gone wrong. That dead citizen happened to be a Police Officer within the country they were visiting.
Very poor decision making on the part of the tourists that will drastically change their future. Ciao.
[Note: if being under the influence of alcohol or drugs is a “get-out-of-jail card” then the Court sentencing might be more lenient.
Unfortunately they’ll have many years to learn Italian the hard way. So sad.]
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This will be an interesting trial. Clearly, the officers were unprepared . . . no weapon, handcuffs. Whether either of them had or flashed a badge is still and open question.
What is difficult to imagine, that these kids didn't under carabinieri, or maybe they said, polizei, as well.
The kids acted irresponsibly in the first place going for illegal drugs, especially in another country, and what were they doing carrying a knive like that , again, in another country?
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“This tragedy never should have happened,” said one of the mothers. You think? Your kid just stabbed a man to death over €80. What a fine young man you raised. Ugh. Americans.
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No matter what the verdict is, the story will always be about the misbehavior of two, entitled, spoiled American teens, abroad on their own, looking for trouble and not just drugs. It was no pen knife they carried, it was no accident that they had it. The cops were bumbling and unprofessional, the kids were easy marks. But they put themselves at risk, by going out looking to score and acting tough.
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Surely they can plead "American Exceptionalism" in keeping with past American state practice when its comes to unlawful acts of violence, murder, torture, and theft.
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Police in 1980's Venice held me once for several hours, along with other tourists, apparently because all of us crossed a rail track at the wrong place in the station. I think they expected me to pay them off but they spoke little English and were unable to explain to me what they wanted, so eventually let me go about midnight. I'm not suggesting it's an excuse for murder but predatory activities like this can have consequences, for me it's never going back again.
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@Paul you are misrepresenting your incident. I know Venice SMN station well and it has unmistakable concrete platforms between the tracks. No way to mistake the correct route, you jumped the tracks (a major safety concern). This wasn’t an Italian police shakedown, you broke the law and got caught.
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@Paul One less tourist in Venice, a small victory.
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Does it really matter if they didn't know the cops were undercover, they still stabbed a man to death.
In the US, they'd also be tried for murder. Let their lawyers defend them, not the state dept.
Americans behaving bad/ criminally, in other people's countries. I see it in Barcelona all the time.
I bow my head in shame.
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@Bocheball Exactly! This article makes it sound like stabbing a random person to death is OK. My bet is that these two have been getting away with bad behavior for years -- why? because they are rich.
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@Liz How do you know they are rich? And, what does that matter?
rich or poor...
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@Bocheball A couple of years ago, on a train trip to Prague, I had the less-than-wonderful experience of watching a bunch of British kids loudly refuse to leave seats they hadn't paid for, mouth off to and disobey the women ticket takers, block the restroom doors, etc. When we toured Prague, I got to see more young backpackers, many British, none American, staggering around drunk and, well, not being wonderful citizens. From this I did not conclude that all young travelers from the UK are rude jerks. I concluded that sometimes teens on their own in foreign countries aren't gracious guests. The guys in this article? They stabbed someone to death over 80 euros. They're beyond terrible (and simply no equivalency with drinking too many lagers and stumbling around Prague). Even so, it doesn't follow that every American tourist is a badly behaved criminal just as it didn't follow that every young British backpacker is one. There is this thing Americans do -- they criticize other Americans endlessly, vehemently, as if to prove to Europeans (who actually don't care) that they are not Americans; they are really Europeans! Read Henry James. Then notice that non-Americans are occasionally not at their best in foreign countries.
3
Everyone should know to never buy illegal drugs in a foreign country.
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Aw well I've done that and been fine. It should be noted though to do so only with extreme caution, and never to try to go back and get money back from a failed deal. If people want to buy weed and wind up with oregano, they ought to just write it off rather than seek compensation.
2
With the caveat that all I know is what I just read in this article, it sure sounds a lot like the Amanda Knox case, which was really no case at all. (After watching the documentary on her, I couldn't believe how skewed our view had been at the time.)
I hope I'm wrong.
2
@RF1965 No it is not at all like the Amanda Knox case. In the Knox case, you had a semi-crazed prosecutor who harbored borderline hallucinogenic mass orgy gone wrong killing fantasies that were completely unsubstantiated by the evidence. Here, we have extremely good physical & video surveillance evidence that these two, how should I politely put it, "youths" decided to kill a police officer when the two officers were trying to arrest them. This is as close as you can get to an open-and-shut case. The issue of whether the kids understood Italian, or the tactics of the cops deviated from procedure, is irrelevant. These two killed a cop when he was trying to arrest them. They deserve the harsh sentence that is likely to be given them.
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In the Know case you had the accused, Knox, repeatedly lie to the police and then repeatedly refuse to cooperate. Big difference.
@Lotzapappa That is very good to know. Thank you for the information.
This article refers to these individuals as "boys" twice. Once a person turns 18, they are no longer a boy or a girl but an adult. Children and teens need to be taught that in the eyes of the law, their childhood ends when they turn 18.
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good luck getting a fair trial in Italy... Already the details of the case are so absurd and the behavior of the police so unacceptable that in most other European countries this case would never even go to a trial.
6
@gus True - they have no double jeopardy protection and precious few pretrial protections for the criminal defendant. They try their cases in the press and then expect the actual criminal "trial" to just follow the preordained outcome announced in the newspapers. I was there 3 times from 2001 to 2005, but after the Knox fiasco, I will never again set foot in Italy, and I hope my kids don't either. (If they want to see where their great grandparents came from, I will tell them to visit Ellis Island, and be satisfied with that.)
1
@Tom Renda Not sure where you get the idea that defendants can be tried multiple times for the same crime. The Italian justice system (like the U.S. justice system) has an appeals process; once appeals are exhausted, a judgment becomes final. If exculpatory evidence emerges after a final verdict, a review of the trial is possible. For those focused on the A. Knox case, it's worth noting that she was ultimately freed after her appeal reached Italy's highest court, which essentially said there was insufficient evidence to support a conviction. Not saying the system is perfect, but if we're going to criticize, it's important to base our criticism on facts.
4
Having had the pleasure of living in Rome for five-years during the 1990s, I have followed this case since it occurred. This article fails to mention the problematic past of the two defendants; they were not merely students on holiday, but were instead long-term and hard-core drug abusers who were on a drug-fueled high when the killing took place; Mr. Elder brought the fatal weapon with him from California, because he was expecting trouble.
The hapless police officers, unfamiliar with the crime that we are accustomed to in the United States and more accustomed to genuine tourists, never expected to be immediately assaulted and stabbed multiple times by drug-crazed adolescents . . . hopefully, the American media will not canonize these two defendants into the victimhood afforded to Amanda Knox.
105
All opinions and prejudices aside, those two officers should have followed procedures and maybe this tragedy wouldn’t have happened. Bringing up the Knox case here makes me nauseas. Plainclothes cops should not act like renegades. Much more to come in this case. My guess is that they will serve a few years in prison.
8
Bravo. A real risk, given how little American media grasped the situation.
5
@Paul I've followed this case too (I live in Italy, but not in Rome), and sorry to break it to the parents, but these two are going to be spending many years in an Italian prison. They stabbed a Carabiniere police officer to death in a botched drug deal while trying to evade arrest. The evidence that they were the culprits is iron clad. If you're some hapless hippie going out to buy hashish you don't bring a military-grade blade with you.
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Drugs a victimless crime.......
From the article it looks like the police messed up and are covering their Behinds, From the Americans looks like engaging in illegal activity can has profound life changing (or ending) consequences,
What’s not clear is the actual killing, there is tons of detail everywhere except the actual killing which simply state the officer was stabbed repeatedly by one of the Americans,
Where did the knife come from? And I’m sorry if you have to bring a knife to protect you from what you think are bad people then you should have stayed home and lost your $80.00 now a man is dead and his family is shattered, and for what so 2 obnoxious Americans in a foreign county could get high....
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