Continuation Part Eight: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[Bill Williams]

It is probably a breach of the MA to be discussing Grinder rather than the points he makes. Some are quite good some of the time. It is useful not to be allowed to make statements you can't back up and to be reminded of this occasionally is beneficial. That said, I completely agree with Randy's elephants. The case reeks of corruption. Dreyfus indeed.

And those points are...... ?

 

[anglolawyer]

And those points are...... ?

A superb example concerns the mis-use by the ISC of Massei's mistake about the kiosk closing when the last disco buses leave to readjust Curatolo's evidence to an 11.30 p.m. (or 23.30 p.m. if you prefer ) end point for A & R being in the piazza. That is a brilliant point.

Another good one is the suggestion that if the defence put up a drugged up bum living across the street from Raf who swore he could see them at home all evening through their open window everybody would laugh him out of court.

Grinder makes some excellent forensic points and quite often some (IMHO) not so great ones but they can't all be good.

 

[Grinder]

Thanks Katy for the verification from Amanda's book that her attorneys feared or assumed they were being recorded while discussing her defense in court.

Bill the question about Follain was specifically how he knew what the police were discussing among themselves. This was the point challenged way back. She didn't say "I was there" only to her mother, her father was there as well since he was the one that told her to stop talking. The fact that conversations between Amanda and her parents wasn't at issue anyway.

Randy, mostly I'm of the mind that focusing on the bad evidence and the bad case is what we should be doing. I think people bringing up something that has not been adequately proven, for instance the whole gold watch fable account, repeatably doesn't help the case for the defense. Making statements about Rudi's crime wave fall into the same category for me.

You spend much time figuratively jumping up and down screaming about the Italians in way that to my mind isn't productive. Below is a tame example:

Those real problems center around a ridiculous, baseless case proceeding for almost 7 years now in spite of the elephants standing all over the place...no matter where one looks...there are elephants... Interrogation, arrest, interrupter, lawyer elephants. DNA, computer, recording elephants. Missing evidence, destroyed crime scene, non-investigation elements elephants. Withheld evidence discovery, false control data, lying scientist elephants...​

None of the above do I or have I disputed. I don't argue over the DNA being bad evidence. I don't dispute anything about the computers. You and I agree about the poor job by the defense attorneys.

There is no case made by the ILE for guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but that doesn't mean that pro innocent posters running with specious arguments helps the cause as you see it.

Btw, I think that in addition to keeping the kids locked up for a year the fact, disputed here, that the lawyers didn't feel free to talk to their client is very significant.

 

[Bill Williams]

A superb example concerns the mis-use by the ISC of Massei's mistake about the kiosk closing when the last disco buses leave to readjust Curatolo's evidence to an 11.30 p.m. (or 23.30 p.m. if you prefer ) end point for A & R being in the piazza. That is a brilliant point.

Another good one is the suggestion that if the defence put up a drugged up bum living across the street from Raf who swore he could see them at home all evening through their open window everybody would laugh him out of court.

Grinder makes some excellent forensic points and quite often some (IMHO) not so great ones but they can't all be good.

Just trying to improve the ratio.

For a guy who leads the league in demands for citations; he's very vulnerable to innuendo-like ad hominem. Not bad stuff, but he sure plays the man a lot.

 

[anglolawyer]

Just trying to improve the ratio.

For a guy who leads the league in demands for citations; he's very vulnerable to innuendo-like ad hominem. Not bad stuff, but he sure plays the man a lot.

Your post is ad hominem and probably in breach of the MA (not that I care but the mods might).

 

[JREF2010]

the foggy memory of a Nazi-like Interrogator named AD

GM: This interview, how did it turn out? Was it a spontaneous declaration?

AD: Absolutely yes. She had been asked, it was already deep night, we were all tired enough and she was asked if she wanted to make spontaneous declarations and if she wanted to recount what she could remember, what had happened, she said yes because she also wanted to do this last act before going to bed.
****************************************
GM: How was she in terms of behavior?

AD: She was rather exhausted, certainly, she was rather exhausted, she was shocked; although she was also as if she were freed of a weight.

*****************

CDV: I would like it recorded that she may refer only to facts, without any kind of coloring, nor even less any personal interpretations, because we are not here making an evaluation.

AD: OK, I’ll stop.

GCM: It can be difficult separating the two things but it needs to be done, the witness must report.

GM: She continued to cry, she continued to repeat these gestures?

AD: Absolutely yes, yes.

GM: Then at a certain point the statement was finished.

AD: Yes.

GM: What happened afterwards?

AD: After, she had said to me that she wanted to rest, she wanted to rest a bit, and so it was done, in the sense that there was a little armchair, we made her seat herself, I myself had carried over a chair, she had rested her feet on the chair and she had almost fallen asleep for a little while.

*************************************
AD: This came to be acknowledged, they came to be said, if I’m not mistaken, although I have to repeat a great deal of time has passed by since then so the details of the questions I’m not able to refer to with the requisite precision.

***************************
CDV: No. no. wait I haven’t finished the question. I wanted to understand this emotional shock was caused by the message, by the reading of the message, or by the fact that it was displayed or was there some other element of fact relative to the analysis?

AD: I can tell you straight away because I remember it distinctly, she said she hadn’t replied to the message. Once though her message was shown to her obviously that was a plain lie!
******************************

AD: But if I keep on saying I don’t remember, I can’t…

CDV: I understand. On the question from Counsel, you at one point referred to someone having asked her if she had wanted a lawyer…

AD: Yes.

CDV: How come this had not been put into the statements, the two declarations?

AD: I can’t really say, Counsel, it wasn’t me who typed up the statement.

CDV: Do you remember who made this suggestion, this offer, who had said to Amanda: “if you want you can have a lawyer”?

AD: Inspector Ficcara.

CDV: Do you remember if it was before 1:45?

AD: Counsel, again, I don’t remember the time.

CDV: Or was it in the morning, when it was already daylight?

AD: No, no, I didn’t look out the window, I was concentrating on other things, I don’t remember if it was light outside.

CDV: You don’t remember if someone had said to her: “at this time a lawyer is worse for you, having a lawyer is worse for you”?

AD: I don’t understand.

CDV: That someone had said to her: “at this time a lawyer is worse for you, having a lawyer is worse for you”?

AD: To Miss Knox?

CDV: Yes.
*******************************************

The hate mongers want to defend the interrogation again, a trial run for the ECHR and Appeal Judges?

 

[acbytesla]

Randy, mostly I'm of the mind that focusing on the bad evidence and the bad case is what we should be doing. I think people bringing up something that has not been adequately proven, for instance the whole gold watch fable account, repeatably doesn't help the case for the defense. Making statements about Rudi's crime wave fall into the same category for me.

This may be a fable to you, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. In fact, there is every reason to believe that it did. Everything in this case has been debated to death and yes, the main source for this is a writer, but I have never read anyone dispute it but you. And the story has been out for a very long time.

Vogt or Follain would have disputed it for sure if it was false especially considering that both Raffaele and Amanda have referenced it. I can see why the court wouldn't accept it...but I still believe it happened.

 

[Grinder]

This may be a fable to you, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. In fact, there is every reason to believe that it did. Everything in this case has been debated to death and yes, the main source for this is a writer, but I have never read anyone dispute it but you. And the story has been out for a very long time.

Vogt or Follain would have disputed it for sure if it was false especially considering that both Raffaele and Amanda have referenced it. I can see why the court wouldn't accept it...but I still believe it happened.

The one and only reason is an account of one True Crime Novelist. Did the defense (Italian lawyers not US PR) bring up this in or out of court? You find this important but apparently not the defense lawyers. Why not bring this woman out and make a case for the crime wave?

Now why would Follain or Vogt bother to dispute this as it is rarely discussed outside of these echo chambers. Now that RW gave us the Spanish people's account it appears that Rudi may have been more of a fence than a burglar. Why would Rudi have gone to the lawyers and make the case he hadn't done the burglary? How would that help him? While people here wish to believe parts of his testimony they discount this event which happened before the murder. If he was an informant protected by the police why did he go to the lawyers? The most straightforward analysis combining this known interaction with the horde of laptops is that he was a fence.

You contacted Nina and I thought something was on its way to verify the watch story. Even if the account of Nina's was totally correct, we still wouldn't know if Rudi broke in or only was fencing the watch.

Yell at Anglo, for he is the only one that believes the police deleted the text. Or the people that believe that the police recognized Rudi's MO immediately and began framing the kids. Occam's razor - she deleted it. Occam's razor - the police were incompetent.

Bill if you need a citation from me just succinctly ask for it.

 

[Strozzi]

Almost certainly they were recording things with abandon. My conspiratorial mind says that the source behind True Crime author John Follain is these kind of sources. How else would Follain even pretend to be able to know details of conversations between Amanda and her mother, even in the months into the detention?

My other completely conspiratorial thought is that if there had been ANYTHING remotely incriminating in this taping, it would have made its way to court. The irony is that the only thing they had, really was the "I was there" comment by Amanda to her mother, meaning that Amanda said she was at Raffaele's.

This got spun.... as per everything else that got spun in the media, up to and including Andrea Vogt reporting on it in the Seattle newspapers as if this was a confession (with no retraction), and Machiavelli spun it here in these very JREF threads as part of "mafia code" between Amanda and her mother.

The very nature of the overwhelming surveillance and the paucity of anything gleaned relevant to the crime is really all one needs to consider.

Of course the authorities recorded and reviewed conversations between the defendants and their lawyers, just as they did between the defendants and their families. The meeting rooms contained listening devices so the equipment was in place. The prison authorities brought in the prisoners and their visitors. Certainly the family members and lawyers were screened/searched. It was a simple matter of pressing the record button.

It would have been a disaster for the police and prosecution (and obliging judge-cronies) if the defendants and their families or the defendants and their lawyers had and were preparing to reveal solid proof that the defendants are innocent. With the intense media attention, the PLE could not take the chance of being publicly repudiated and humiliated. Their self-protection would have driven the authorities to record and monitor every conversation they could between the defendants and their families and lawyers, whether it was legal to do so or not.

In this entire case, many police and prosecution actions are driven more by the need for damage control than to obtain a strategic legal advantage.

Remember, when the prosecution learned from monitoring Raffaele's father's, uncle's, and sister's phone conversations that the family had located a matching shoe model and was making preparations to reveal the shoe on live TV news, Steffanoni mobilized her lab staff in Rome together with police support in Perugia to return to the cottage to find/collect something (bra clasp) incriminating against Raffaele. She collected it in mid-December, analyzed (amplified) the DNA shortly thereafter, and the Perugia prosecution disclosed it just hours before Raffaele's father appeared on live TV with the shoe model on a day in January. This shows, and is proof of, the extent the police and prosecution were willing to go to in order to protect themselves from public revelation and humiliation that the police and prosecution ********** up and the defendants are innocent.

Edited by zooterkin: 

Edited for Rule 10. Do not attempt to evade the autocensor.

 

[acbytesla]

The one and only reason is an account of one True Crime Novelist. Did the defense (Italian lawyers not US PR) bring up this in or out of court? You find this important but apparently not the defense lawyers. Why not bring this woman out and make a case for the crime wave?

They probably weren't allowed to Grinder. Is there any real evidence tying Rudy to this crime other than proximity? I think most judges that are predisposed to the prosecution wouldn't allow it.

Now why would Follain or Vogt bother to dispute this as it is rarely discussed outside of these echo chambers.

Because it was published in a book and repeated by the media as well as the defendants. Because it makes the police and prosecution look bad and the apologists and slanderers are always out in force. The ability to show up another writer is often irresistible.

Now that RW gave us the Spanish people's account it appears that Rudi may have been more of a fence than a burglar. Why would Rudi have gone to the lawyers and make the case he hadn't done the burglary? How would that help him? While people here wish to believe parts of his testimony they discount this event which happened before the murder. If he was an informant protected by the police why did he go to the lawyers? The most straightforward analysis combining this known interaction with the horde of laptops is that he was a fence.

You are the only person that I have EVER heard theorize that Rudy was a fence. THE ONLY ONE. And believe me, I've read just about everything about this case. Maybe I've missed it...if you found it elsewhere, please correct me Grinder...and provide a cite.

You contacted Nina and I thought something was on its way to verify the watch story. Even if the account of Nina's was totally correct, we still wouldn't know if Rudi broke in or only was fencing the watch.

Nina, said she was going to write a story about the war on the internet between the guilters and the innocenti and that it would be in that.

Yell at Anglo, for he is the only one that believes the police deleted the text. Or the people that believe that the police recognized Rudi's MO immediately and began framing the kids. Occam's razor - she deleted it. Occam's razor - the police were incompetent.

Frankly, ...no offense to Anglo, but I have never cared about who deleted the text.... I'd almost bet that no one actually knows. I also don't buy that the police recognized Rudy's MO either and started framing the kids either. If they did any framing of the kids, it wasn't until a while down the road and probably wasn't a "they" but more likely no more than one or two people who went over the top

 

[JREF2010]

Rita can't remember much

Rita "the Liar" Ficarra: Since it was other colleagues who went to seek him, while I had … I don’t recall, honestly, I don’t know how to place it [in time] because I don’t recall. Maybe I had the door closed and I didn’t see the precise moment in which he came in.

MDG: You did not proceed with [deal with] the notification of arrest with regard to Lumumba?

RF: The notification, yes.

MDG: Then at least with reference to the notification you can tell us.

RF: In reference it was first the one for Amanda, if I don’t remember wrongly, but I don’t remember well.
***********

I'll stop posting these clips from the translation snippets of the Hate Mongers, but it does get my blood moving a bit.(though I like the translations)

Rita cant remember well.... funny how this works.
The hypocrite ways, how one person forgets something they are lying murder's but when the Nazi like regime can't remember its of course, allowed without slander.

Donnio contradicts Rita, Rita contradicts the clock (or cant remember),,,,the lawyer was offered to Amanda , yes, no, Rita cant remember....

We all must believe in Rita, she is the goddess of truth...er....well that was before her and Monica were given the boot for being lying bullying cops.
Right?

 

[Strozzi]

duplicate post deleted

 

[Planigale]

Thanks Katy for the verification from Amanda's book that her attorneys feared or assumed they were being recorded while discussing her defense in court.

Bill the question about Follain was specifically how he knew what the police were discussing among themselves. This was the point challenged way back. She didn't say "I was there" only to her mother, her father was there as well since he was the one that told her to stop talking. The fact that conversations between Amanda and her parents wasn't at issue anyway.

Randy, mostly I'm of the mind that focusing on the bad evidence and the bad case is what we should be doing. I think people bringing up something that has not been adequately proven, for instance the whole gold watch fable account, repeatably doesn't help the case for the defense. Making statements about Rudi's crime wave fall into the same category for me.

You spend much time figuratively jumping up and down screaming about the Italians in way that to my mind isn't productive. Below is a tame example:

Those real problems center around a ridiculous, baseless case proceeding for almost 7 years now in spite of the elephants standing all over the place...no matter where one looks...there are elephants... Interrogation, arrest, interrupter, lawyer elephants. DNA, computer, recording elephants. Missing evidence, destroyed crime scene, non-investigation elements elephants. Withheld evidence discovery, false control data, lying scientist elephants...​

None of the above do I or have I disputed. I don't argue over the DNA being bad evidence. I don't dispute anything about the computers. You and I agree about the poor job by the defense attorneys.
There is no case made by the ILE for guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but that doesn't mean that pro innocent posters running with specious arguments helps the cause as you see it.

Btw, I think that in addition to keeping the kids locked up for a year the fact, disputed here, that the lawyers didn't feel free to talk to their client is very significant.

I used to think that the defence had done a poor job. But I have been working my way through the testimony. They covered the bases. There is unopposed expert testimony from a neuropsychologist about induced memories and false confessions, there is unopposed expert testimony about the broken window, there is excellent expert testimony about the shoe and foot prints, about the injuries, about the DNA testing, etc.

I do not think that it is the defences' fault that the judge felt able to ignore / overrule the expert opinion especially when unopposed. It is also interesting to see how the prosecution deals with the experts, frequently interrupting and preventing them from completing a reply and then leading them off at a tangent. For instance asking the ballistics expert who testified on the broken window about hairs found on the window - irrelevant to the window breaking and out of his expertise.

I think that in the UK or US if a judge in the first trial just ignored the unopposed expert testimony coming to a contrary opinion then the appeal court would have no hesitation in at minimum directing a retrial.

 

[carbonjam72]

Any source on this?

Rita "the Liar" Ficarra: Since it was other colleagues who went to seek him, while I had … I don’t recall, honestly, I don’t know how to place it [in time] because I don’t recall. Maybe I had the door closed and I didn’t see the precise moment in which he came in.

MDG: You did not proceed with [deal with] the notification of arrest with regard to Lumumba?

RF: The notification, yes.

MDG: Then at least with reference to the notification you can tell us.

RF: In reference it was first the one for Amanda, if I don’t remember wrongly, but I don’t remember well.
***********

I'll stop posting these clips from the translation snippets of the Hate Mongers, but it does get my blood moving a bit.(though I like the translations)

Rita cant remember well.... funny how this works.
The hypocrite ways, how one person forgets something they are lying murder's but when the Nazi like regime can't remember its of course, allowed without slander.

Donnio contradicts Rita, Rita contradicts the clock (or cant remember),,,,the lawyer was offered to Amanda , yes, no, Rita cant remember....

We all must believe in Rita, she is the goddess of truth...er....well that was before her and Monica were given the boot for being lying bullying cops.Right?

Is this actually true? Did Napoleone and Ficarra lose their jobs?

I had heard they were under investigation, BUt I hadn't heard if anything came of it. I'd love to see any hard sourcing if you know of any. (or should I just poke around the MMK.com site?)

Mignini was actually convicted, and those charges have apparently been tabled in Turin. So he skates...for now.

 

[kwill]

CDV: No. no. wait I haven’t finished the question. I wanted to understand this emotional shock was caused by the message, by the reading of the message, or by the fact that it was displayed or was there some other element of fact relative to the analysis?

AD: I can tell you straight away because I remember it distinctly, she said she hadn’t replied to the message. Once though her message was shown to her obviously that was a plain lie!
******************************

How about an alternative theory, there, AD? Maybe your victim's emotional shock was due to the dawning realization that people like yourself were determined to misinterpret her every gesture and facial expression?

Could that have been it? Would it be possible for a foreign student to suddenly realize NOT that she'd been caught in a (pointless) lie but rather to see all at once that your team was seriously accusing HER of participating in a murder?

Would that realization cause an emotional shock like the one you describe?

Gahhhh, I so despise these people for what they did to her and Raffaele. I really do.

 

[anglolawyer]

Rita "the Liar" Ficarra: Since it was other colleagues who went to seek him, while I had … I don’t recall, honestly, I don’t know how to place it [in time] because I don’t recall. Maybe I had the door closed and I didn’t see the precise moment in which he came in.

MDG: You did not proceed with [deal with] the notification of arrest with regard to Lumumba?

RF: The notification, yes.

MDG: Then at least with reference to the notification you can tell us.

RF: In reference it was first the one for Amanda, if I don’t remember wrongly, but I don’t remember well.***********

I'll stop posting these clips from the translation snippets of the Hate Mongers, but it does get my blood moving a bit.(though I like the translations)

Rita cant remember well.... funny how this works.
The hypocrite ways, how one person forgets something they are lying murder's but when the Nazi like regime can't remember its of course, allowed without slander.

Donnio contradicts Rita, Rita contradicts the clock (or cant remember),,,,the lawyer was offered to Amanda , yes, no, Rita cant remember....

We all must believe in Rita, she is the goddess of truth...er....well that was before her and Monica were given the boot for being lying bullying cops.
Right?

Where's Briars? We have another example of someone not remembering whether a door was open or closed. Must be lying.

 

[anglolawyer]

Closing speech

I have been reading the excellent IIP wiki. Grinder will find the recent defence closing speech especially interesting. It seems to be all about motive. Anyway I picked this bit about the virgins

This [story of Amanda and Meredith arguing] is derived from some statements of the British friends brought by the Prosecution [as witnesses], all of them coached, they all went back home to London, made the rehearsals with the lawyers, in the way they do there, they train you … all of them regimented, none of them looking [at you], they were all canned. And always the same questions and always the same answers, again a sum of zeroes, in an attempt to deceive [that] since there are eight girls saying that perhaps the two girls did not go along well. We even arrive to hatred, let us remember this. In the closing arguments during the [first] Appeal, they come to a motive linked to hatred. Today we get a motive linked to a condominium quarrel, borne out of the flushing of the toilet.

It's news to me that we have a 'way' of coaching witnesses. Witnesses usually don't have or need lawyers. What a strange submission to make.

 

[anglolawyer]

More defence closing

On Rudy/ Rudi

"But why Guede does not say anything of Amanda? One who finds himself in such a situation and who wants to improve his absolutely critical position in the trial, with evidence nailing him, why does not he say “Amanda killed her”? The truth is that he is a drifter, in a sense, he had a difficult life, so he has his justifications. But I believe that concerning Amanda and Sollecito, he knows they are not involved and hence he never dared to say it [to say they killed Meredith]. He could tell it even now. And it is astounding, even with some bitterness, that the Supreme Court limits itself to that letter written three days before, in 2011, at the Appeal. But how is it possible? They give credit to that instrumental letter, where one says “poor Meredith”. He had already been [definitively] convicted. “Poor Meredith”? You killed her, you are the guilty one today. It’s an entirely hypocritical letter, what is the reason for which it was written? […] One cannot but think that in a trial like this one there are other interests behind all that. So how can one neglect all that I just told about the behavior at the time of Guede and instead refer to a letter and say “the ruling of the Perugia Appeal did not duly consider both the ruling [Guede’s one] and above all this letter”? […] Guede always had this parallel, marginal, a bit ambiguous position, because his trial went through quickly. And there are peculiar aspects, I agree with the Prosecutor General [Crini] when he highlights the reduction [of sentence] from thirty to sixteen years on Appeal."

Isn't this interesting? Closing submissions by innuendo. I don't know who the speaker is (the wiki doesn't tell us but it can't be Dalla Vedova) but as I read this he is insinuating that Rudy's accusation was part of a cynical deal to get a reduced sentence.

 

[anglolawyer]

The lamp!

'Another argument used by the Prosecution is the cleaning, that is this hypothesis that the kids were able to delete their own traces, at the same time leaving those belonging to Guede. The impossibility of such a selective cleaning indeed results from the 460 analysis made by the Scientific Police, since many of them are in that room. If I have to delete a bloody trace, how do I do it? The idea of the lamp is creative, but be careful, the lamp was not even plugged in. I delete the traces with a Q-tip or a swab at the light of the lamp, because this is the Prosecution’s reconstruction and then I unplug the lamp but I leave it there? […] Then there is another signature of the killer, namely the blood on the [internal]handle of the door [of Meredith’s room] and there is also the notorious bathmat. But how, how can one think? I spend all the night doing the work of a surgeon, using the light, and then I leave the handle full of blood? How can I know, if I am the murderer, that my DNA is not there? [The same can more or less be said for the bathmat.]'

 

[Desert Fox]

'Another argument used by the Prosecution is the cleaning, that is this hypothesis that the kids were able to delete their own traces, at the same time leaving those belonging to Guede. The impossibility of such a selective cleaning indeed results from the 460 analysis made by the Scientific Police, since many of them are in that room. If I have to delete a bloody trace, how do I do it? The idea of the lamp is creative, but be careful, the lamp was not even plugged in. I delete the traces with a Q-tip or a swab at the light of the lamp, because this is the Prosecution’s reconstruction and then I unplug the lamp but I leave it there? […] Then there is another signature of the killer, namely the blood on the [internal]handle of the door [of Meredith’s room] and there is also the notorious bathmat. But how, how can one think? I spend all the night doing the work of a surgeon, using the light, and then I leave the handle full of blood? How can I know, if I am the murderer, that my DNA is not there? [The same can more or less be said for the bathmat.]'

If I was trying to clean up the crime scene, I would not try anything fancy. I would just try to clean up everything. Most likely, I would fail however. I don't have any confidence in my ability to clean up the crime scene. Still, I would much rather just leave a mystery and keep my mouth shut.

If I was Amanda and Raff, I would have then packed my bags that night and went on the trip that I she suggested she was going to do (in her book.) Attempt to let somebody else discover the crime scene.

I still think a simulated attack should have been staged (tests done outside Italy) in a simulated room of that size with the objects in the room. Maybe use police fake blood bags. Then ask the actors to try to clean the signs of two people while leaving the third. Finally, send a forensics class through simulated crime scene.