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

[Desert Fox]

Well what exactly was that mistake they made?
Did they think it was so obvious that the break in was staged that they believed they had found proof that Amanda did the the fake broken window and she did this after killing Meredith, and it was obvious that she did this to make it look like someone who did not have a key could get in there?

Rudy was in jail up in Germany. If they decided to throw him to the wolves he would talk about how they got him out of the jail in Milan so he could go to Perugia and kill Meredith.

The mistake is that they honed in on Amanda Knox early own. You could call the interrogation where they got something like a confession an "interview" but it was an interrogation.

There is a well known phenomena called doubling down where when you are faced with evidence that you are wrong, you double down instead of accepting your mistake. Good example is with religious doomsday groups - Jehovah Witnesses for example with repeated never occurring Armageddon prophecies. Instead of discarding Amanda Knox, they doubled down.

Now, there is definitely some obvious lying on the prosecution side. I think this can be explained though by the idea that they think that Amanda Knox is guilty but just they know they have no good case. The prosecutor with the West Memphis Three and Norfolk Four both still think they are guilty as well.

I think if they knew from the beginning that Rudy was he rapist and murder, they would have thrown him under the bus even assuming that he was an informant. The problem is that by the time they knew he was involved, they could not make the U turn and admit that Amanda was not involved. They could not let go.

If Patrick did not have an armor clad alibi, I actually think there would have been four defendants - Ruby, Patrick, Amanda, and Raffaele - found guilty.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

You, too, can be part of the team

I'd love to read that but all I get is a page that says it's a restricted site and that I need to be an authorised subscriber to read it. How did everyone else manage to read it? Are you all subscribers to Lawyers Weekly?

Yeah, a subscription and a week in St. Croix are just two of the many perks when you work for Marriott as part of the PR supertanker. I print out the articles because they make good beach reading.

 

[acbytesla]

Yes. The key psychological elements underpinning the Reid Technique (and other similar interrogation techniques) are specifically designed to elicit these sorts of responses and behaviours. That's precisely why they are grotequely improper and misleading so regularly.

In these sorts of techniques, the suspect is basically told that it's a given fact that they committed the crime (usually accompanied by a (often false) claim that the police have all the evidence they need to prove this). The basis of the interrogation then becomes not if the suspect committed the crime, but why. Once the suspect fails to realise the inherent assumption behind the "why" line of questioning (the assumption being that the suspect did in fact commit the crime), then it becomes progressively easier for the interrogator to subconsciously convince the suspect that yes, (s)he really did commit the crime, and the only question remaining is why.

Indeed, police using these sorts of techniques often (and erroneously) reason that if they ask a question like "What was going through your mind when you stabbed Mr X?" and the suspect doesn't vehemently reply with something like "But I didn't stab Mr X", this in itself is a pointer to guilt. In other words, if the response to that question is something like "I don't know, I don't remember any of this", many interrogators see this as some sort of positive indicator of guilt.

These techniques then go on to use a battery of psychological tricks and bluffs to bamboozle, confuse and lead a suspect. For example, once suspects are sufficiently disoriented, they are often given "lesser of two evils" choices (e.g. "Do you regret stabbing Mr X, or are you still really glad you did it?"). In addition, these techniques are pretty much always framed with elements of catharsis ("You'll feel so much better when you get all this off your chest") and ways to present the crime to the suspect in a manner that appears to excuse or minimise the suspect's psychological guilt (e.g. Mr X goaded you until you just snapped, didn't he? I bet most people in your shoes would have reacted as you did by stabbing him"). And any deviation from the required path towards confession is carefully closed off, with the suspect quickly steered back onto the "correct" path.

Of course, as proper psychiatrists and psychologists know all too well, the potent combination of fear, intimidation, deference to authority figures, placement in unusual surroundings, and the sheer gravity of the situation, all add up to the very real prospect of suspects under interrogation - particularly those who have had no prior dealings with law enforcement investigations - becoming malleable and ultimately horrifically coerced. Most people who have produced false confessions as a result of these interrogation techniques say much the same thing in retrospect:

a) they felt they had no choice but to say they did it;

b) they became convinced that things would actually be better for them if they did say they did it;

c) they became convinced that they must have done it (usually because of deference to the authority of the interrogators who claim proof of their guilt), and therefore became convinced that their mind was playing tricks on them (i.e. that they actually had "false memories" of not having committed the crime!);

d) they felt that at least one of the interrogators was on their side, and that they (they interrogators) were actually helping them (the suspect) to get the best possible outcome for them (the suspect);

e) they felt a palpable sense of relief when they confessed;

f) they felt that they had acted entirely of their own free will.


And all of the above is, in a nutshell, why the Reid Technique, and all similar interrogation techniques, are an appallingly unreliable and improper way to interrogate suspects. Its defenders say that such techniques are extremely effective at getting genuinely guilty people to confess - and this is absolutely true. But they are also very clearly effective in getting a significant proportion of wholly-innocent people to make false confessions. Therefore, it's more-or-less irrelevant how good these techniques are at getting guilty people to make true confessions. The fact that they also regularly get innocent people to make false confessions means that they are categorically unfit for purpose, and must not be used under any circumstances.

The Reid interrogation technique reminds me so much of the Tom Hopkins sales techniques. (Which I hated) Pretty much 75 percent of my working life has been in sales ..the other 25 percent working in restaurants and construction. During that time I have done about a dozen different sales courses. Zig Ziglar, Dale Carnegie, Strageic Selling, Tom Hopkins and others.

I hated Tom Hopkins the most because it is about getting the customer to think as if he already owns whatever it is your selling. It focuses on word play and what I think is more trickery than anything. Reading about the Reid technique reminds me so much of high pressure tactics that some car dealers would practice. Where they would get you in a room...then leave you alone for a while and basically play mind games with you.

If you have ever bought a car in this fashion, than you know what I mean.

 

[Strozzi]

The mistake is that they honed in on Amanda Knox early own. You could call the interrogation where they got something like a confession an "interview" but it was an interrogation.

There is a well known phenomena called doubling down where when you are faced with evidence that you are wrong, you double down instead of accepting your mistake. Good example is with religious doomsday groups - Jehovah Witnesses for example with repeated never occurring Armageddon prophecies. Instead of discarding Amanda Knox, they doubled down.

Now, there is definitely some obvious lying on the prosecution side. I think this can be explained though by the idea that they think that Amanda Knox is guilty but just they know they have no good case. The prosecutor with the West Memphis Three and Norfolk Four both still think they are guilty as well.

I think if they knew from the beginning that Rudy was he rapist and murder, they would have thrown him under the bus even assuming that he was an informant. The problem is that by the time they knew he was involved, they could make the U turn and admit that Amanda was not involved. They could not let go.

If Patrick did not have an armor clad alibi, I actually think there would have been four defendants - Ruby, Patrick, Amanda, and Raffaele - found guilty.

As I've said before, this case will be examined for decades to come by Italian and other historians, law school professors and students, grad students, et al who will recognize it as persecution of innocents, corrupt scientific police and prosecutor withholding of evidence, evidence tampering and fabrication, crony judges covering for their colleagues, etc. I predict 50 years from now Amanda and Raffaele will be honored in Italy for having persevered in exposing this in their case, and that it will contribute to a movement to reform Italy's justice and forensic systems.

This is almost certainly the first time that Stefanoni has been challenged on her evidence techniques and analysis. She obviously lies about what she does in her lab. Which is why she suppressed documentation.

 

[acbytesla]

Delete Duplicate

 

[acbytesla]

Delete Duplicate

 

[xinonix]

This is based on the Spanish inquisition technique, do everything you can to force the suspect to confess. If he is innocent God will give him the strength to resist.

They always knew Amanda was innocent.
My idea is to apply a new approach, instead of assumung the police were doing their job, assume they wer'nt . Try this, temporarily believe the cops were doing the opposite of what they should have been doing. Then review the case. I think you will find that a lot of things just fall into place.
Thus their problem was the postal police started the investigation. That wasn't the way they planned things would happen.
If their guys were the 1st police to get there, they would have brought back some fake fingerprints and DNA samples. Then they would use these to do the investigation. The fingerprints and DNA would not match anybody and the crime would go unsolved. When Rudy was arrested his DNA and fingerprints would not match anything at the crime scene, and he would get away.
They would have liked to have thrown Rudy under a bus, but he was in jail in Germany, so they couldn't. What Rudy could have done is rat them out, so they had to make a deal with him.
Maybe you think that the police must be respected, but these are Italian police and the girl they framed is an American. If we allow these Italian police to get away with this, the police in other countries will think that you can kick Americans around and get away with it.

 

[acbytesla]

This is based on the Spanish inquisition technique, do everything you can to force the suspect to confess. If he is innocent God will give him the strength to resist.

They always knew Amanda was innocent.My idea is to apply a new approach, instead of assumung the police were doing their job, assume they wer'nt . Try this, temporarily believe the cops were doing the opposite of what they should have been doing. Then review the case. I think you will find that a lot of things just fall into place.
Thus their problem was the postal police started the investigation. That wasn't the way they planned things would happen.
If their guys were the 1st police to get there, they would have brought back some fake fingerprints and DNA samples. Then they would use these to do the investigation. The fingerprints and DNA would not match anybody and the crime would go unsolved. When Rudy was arrested his DNA and fingerprints would not match anything at the crime scene, and he would get away.
They would have liked to have thrown Rudy under a bus, but he was in jail in Germany, so they couldn't. What Rudy could have done is rat them out, so they had to make a deal with him.
Maybe you think that the police must be respected, but these are Italian police and the girl they framed is an American. If we allow these Italian police to get away with this, the police in other countries will think that you can kick Americans around and get away with it.

I don't believe that they think Amanda was innocent. I think they are totally convinced or were convinced of her guilt. Not that their thinking was right or justified just that they convinced themselves of this. That this is what motivates them to see around the evidence and potentially plant evidence. Combine this with their own arrogance and need to save face has turned this into a farce and a legal travesty.

I'm reminded of this scene from the movie LA Confidential between the captain of the force Dudley Smith played by James Cromwell and the up and coming ambitious Ed Exley played by Guy Pearce.

Captain Dudley Smith: Edmund, you're a political animal. You have the eye for human weakness, but not the stomach.
Ed Exley: You're wrong, sir.
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to plant corroborative evidence on a suspect you knew to be guilty, in order to ensure an indictment?
Ed Exley: Dudley, we've been over this.
Captain Dudley Smith: Yes or no, Edmund?
Ed Exley: No!
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to beat a confession out of a suspect you knew to be guilty?
Ed Exley: No.
Captain Dudley Smith: Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back, in order to offset the chance that some... lawyer...
Ed Exley: No.
Captain Dudley Smith: Then, for the love of God, don't be a detective. Stick to assignments where you don't have to make those choices.

 

[Bill Williams]

This is based on the Spanish inquisition technique, do everything you can to force the suspect to confess. If he is innocent God will give him the strength to resist.

They always knew Amanda was innocent.
My idea is to apply a new approach, instead of assumung the police were doing their job, assume they wer'nt . Try this, temporarily believe the cops were doing the opposite of what they should have been doing. Then review the case. I think you will find that a lot of things just fall into place.
Thus their problem was the postal police started the investigation. That wasn't the way they planned things would happen.
If their guys were the 1st police to get there, they would have brought back some fake fingerprints and DNA samples. Then they would use these to do the investigation. The fingerprints and DNA would not match anybody and the crime would go unsolved. When Rudy was arrested his DNA and fingerprints would not match anything at the crime scene, and he would get away.
They would have liked to have thrown Rudy under a bus, but he was in jail in Germany, so they couldn't. What Rudy could have done is rat them out, so they had to make a deal with him.
Maybe you think that the police must be respected, but these are Italian police and the girl they framed is an American. If we allow these Italian police to get away with this, the police in other countries will think that you can kick Americans around and get away with it.

I want to say first and foremost, that I am not against coercive interrogation techniques. 98% of the time, the cops have the real perp in front of them, and coercive techniques, upto and including the cops lying... I actually have no trouble with.

And it's with this said that an interrogation IS NOT about eliciting further information. It's about confession. Why do you who claim knowledge of law enforcement not acknowledge this.

What's at issue are a couple of things: one is that whatever technique is used, Reid Technique or others, what is the check and balance within it which guards against the 2% - guards against simply eliciting a false confession? American law enforcement claims that since the lessons of the Central Park Five false confessions; they now take special care to be as coercive in their questioning, while at the same time looking for the telltales signs that the questioners themselves are not causing the result they've set out to want falsely.

The trouble I have with the Sollecito/Knox/Lumumba interrogations is not thatthey were coercive - it's that they were illegal.

None of them had lawyers. Machiavelli went through dietrological gyrations here to position Amanda Knox as "all but suspected", because Machiavelli knows that for Knox to make "spontaneous statements", she cannot do them while already suspected. For Knox to be denied a lawyer she cannot be denied one while already being suspected. For Knox to be denied a competent translator (ie. one who would not act as a mediator!) she cannot be denied one while already being suspected.

Yet, guilters and Machiavelli alike need to also show that (especially) Knox was corrected suspected from the beginning. The bit about the alleged "staging of the crime scene" was supposed to have uniquely pointed to Knox from Nov 2 onwards.... John Follain writes a book with the subtext that the PLE was right to suspect Knox from the beginning, etc, etc, etc, and on cop says that at interrogation, "she buckled and told us what we already knew."

The illegal part of this is the error, not the coercive part of it. Not videotaping it (ie. flipping the switch)made the thing unusable, yet could slipinto court against Sollecito and Knox because of Lumumba's parallel calunnia charge, adjudicated at the same time by the same court.

Everything about the interrogation said that the cops had the wrong people. Knox had lied about the drug use in the upstairs of the cottage - but then again so did everyone else, except for Filomena who at trial had to admit she "had sinned". Filomena knew the score on that with her legal career ahead at stake.

It was the patent illegality of the interrogation which is the problem - virtually admitted to by Mignini himself in the 2010 CNN interview with Drew Griffin. Mignini said he'd quoted the law to Ficarra which forced him to shut down the interrogaiton leading to the 1:45 am statement, then incredibly Mignini tells Griffin that he continued.... all to effect a second "spontaneous" statement at 5:45 am. That statement betrays the importance of all this by even putting that word right at the front of the 5:45 am statement.

Mignini said he'd not coached or asked a single question - and we're to believe that a 20-year-old foreigner who did not speak the language or understand the subtleties of Italian interrogation law remembered to put that in!!!!???

What was going on that night was illegal and Mignini knew it. His behaviour that night and explanations to Griffin in 2010 prove it.

Mignini is a criminal. Demonstrably so.

But..... in theory interrogations are just fine, coercive or not. No one would have complained if they had got Guede to confess using these means.

 

[Desert Fox]

This is almost certainly the first time that Stefanoni has been challenged on her evidence techniques and analysis. She obviously lies about what she does in her lab. Which is why she suppressed documentation.

I want to be clear that I do agree that Stefanoni lied on the stand.


Of note, watching a roundtable discussion on the West Memphis Three.
The prosecutor was part of the discussion. He was not the original one.
One of his arguments for guilt was that two juries found them guilty. Same thing the pro-guilt side argues in this case.

 

[acbytesla]

I want to say first and foremost, that I am not against coercive interrogation techniques. 98% of the time, the cops have the real perp in front of them, and coercive techniques, upto and including the cops lying... I actually have no trouble with.

And it's with this said that an interrogation IS NOT about eliciting further information. It's about confession. Why do you who claim knowledge of law enforcement not acknowledge this.

What's at issue are a couple of things: one is that whatever technique is used, Reid Technique or others, what is the check and balance within it which guards against the 2% - guards against simply eliciting a false confession? American law enforcement claims that since the lessons of the Central Park Five false confessions; they now take special care to be as coercive in their questioning, while at the same time looking for the telltales signs that the questioners themselves are not causing the result they've set out to want falsely.

The trouble I have with the Sollecito/Knox/Lumumba interrogations is not thatthey were coercive - it's that they were illegal.

None of them had lawyers. Machiavelli went through dietrological gyrations here to position Amanda Knox as "all but suspected", because Machiavelli knows that for Knox to make "spontaneous statements", she cannot do them while already suspected. For Knox to be denied a lawyer she cannot be denied one while already being suspected. For Knox to be denied a competent translator (ie. one who would not act as a mediator!) she cannot be denied one while already being suspected.

Yet, guilters and Machiavelli alike need to also show that (especially) Knox was corrected suspected from the beginning. The bit about the alleged "staging of the crime scene" was supposed to have uniquely pointed to Knox from Nov 2 onwards.... John Follain writes a book with the subtext that the PLE was right to suspect Knox from the beginning, etc, etc, etc, and on cop says that at interrogation, "she buckled and told us what we already knew."

The illegal part of this is the error, not the coercive part of it. Not videotaping it (ie. flipping the switch)made the thing unusable, yet could slipinto court against Sollecito and Knox because of Lumumba's parallel calunnia charge, adjudicated at the same time by the same court.

Everything about the interrogation said that the cops had the wrong people. Knox had lied about the drug use in the upstairs of the cottage - but then again so did everyone else, except for Filomena who at trial had to admit she "had sinned". Filomena knew the score on that with her legal career ahead at stake.

It was the patent illegality of the interrogation which is the problem - virtually admitted to by Mignini himself in the 2010 CNN interview with Drew Griffin. Mignini said he'd quoted the law to Ficarra which forced him to shut down the interrogaiton leading to the 1:45 am statement, then incredibly Mignini tells Griffin that he continued.... all to effect a second "spontaneous" statement at 5:45 am. That statement betrays the importance of all this by even putting that word right at the front of the 5:45 am statement.

Mignini said he'd not coached or asked a single question - and we're to believe that a 20-year-old foreigner who did not speak the language or understand the subtleties of Italian interrogation law remembered to put that in!!!!???

What was going on that night was illegal and Mignini knew it. His behaviour that night and explanations to Griffin in 2010 prove it.

Mignini is a criminal. Demonstrably so.

But..... in theory interrogations are just fine, coercive or not. No one would have complained if they had got Guede to confess using these means.

The problem in the US Bill, is that we have thousands of different police and judicial jurisdictions where the word hasn't gotten out about "guarding" against false statements and confessions. Otherwise Ryan Ferguson and many others wrongful convicted would not have spent years behind bars.

 

[Planigale]

The mistake is that they honed in on Amanda Knox early own. You could call the interrogation where they got something like a confession an "interview" but it was an interrogation.

There is a well known phenomena called doubling down where when you are faced with evidence that you are wrong, you double down instead of accepting your mistake. Good example is with religious doomsday groups - Jehovah Witnesses for example with repeated never occurring Armageddon prophecies. Instead of discarding Amanda Knox, they doubled down.

Now, there is definitely some obvious lying on the prosecution side. I think this can be explained though by the idea that they think that Amanda Knox is guilty but just they know they have no good case. The prosecutor with the West Memphis Three and Norfolk Four both still think they are guilty as well.

I think if they knew from the beginning that Rudy was he rapist and murder, they would have thrown him under the bus even assuming that he was an informant. The problem is that by the time they knew he was involved, they could not make the U turn and admit that Amanda was not involved. They could not let go.

If Patrick did not have an armor clad alibi, I actually think there would have been four defendants - Ruby, Patrick, Amanda, and Raffaele - found guilty.

There is an even more interesting phenomenon. I linked previously to an interesting BBC slide presentation Injustice in Reyjavik (or similar title), both quite artistic and illuminating. Almost certainly people were convicted of murder on the basis of false induced confessions. What is interesting is many years later even they are not sure of their innocence, the false memories have become incorporated. The significance of this case is one of the detectives involved was Gisli Gudjonsson, who retrained in forensic psychology and literally wrote the book on false confession. He has redefined how police interrogations are carried out in the UK to avoid false confessions, and in a recent article emphasised the less recognised but equally real concept of induced allegations.

If anyone wants me to repost links I'll be happy to do so, or just check my previous posts.

 

[Desert Fox]

This is based on the Spanish inquisition technique, do everything you can to force the suspect to confess. If he is innocent God will give him the strength to resist.

They always knew Amanda was innocent.
My idea is to apply a new approach, instead of assumung the police were doing their job, assume they wer'nt . Try this, temporarily believe the cops were doing the opposite of what they should have been doing. Then review the case. I think you will find that a lot of things just fall into place.
Thus their problem was the postal police started the investigation. That wasn't the way they planned things would happen.
If their guys were the 1st police to get there, they would have brought back some fake fingerprints and DNA samples. Then they would use these to do the investigation. The fingerprints and DNA would not match anybody and the crime would go unsolved. When Rudy was arrested his DNA and fingerprints would not match anything at the crime scene, and he would get away.
They would have liked to have thrown Rudy under a bus, but he was in jail in Germany, so they couldn't. What Rudy could have done is rat them out, so they had to make a deal with him.
Maybe you think that the police must be respected, but these are Italian police and the girl they framed is an American. If we allow these Italian police to get away with this, the police in other countries will think that you can kick Americans around and get away with it.

Where to start and where to go with this
The US is only part of the world. Do I think they may be hammering home because of previous situations (Cavalese cable car disaster, Giuliana Sgrena incident, and the Imam Rapito affair), very possible. As well, the Prosecutor has had run in with US author Douglas Preston with the Monster of Florance and Mr Preston effectively cannot return to Italy. As well, Germany wants Jens Söring back but the US Virginia will not return him.

As far as framing, they are doing a really poor job of trying to frame them if they are. Find a female inmate who they can persuade to say that Amanda spoke in prison about murdering Meredeth, planting a few DNA traces, etc.

 

[Dan O.]

I guess the only place to go in this back and forth is this - would you want ALL interrogations made illegal, meaning, a sit-down session where some sort of technique is used to get the person in front of them to confess?

That's what an interrogation is, as distinct from a police interview.

You have a right to remain silent. You have a right to have an attorney present durring any questioning. Any technique the police use to get around these rights should be unacceptable, period.

 

[Desert Fox]

There is an even more interesting phenomenon. I linked previously to an interesting BBC slide presentation Injustice in Reyjavik (or similar title), both quite artistic and illuminating. Almost certainly people were convicted of murder on the basis of false induced confessions. What is interesting is many years later even they are not sure of their innocence, the false memories have become incorporated. The significance of this case is one of the detectives involved was Gisli Gudjonsson, who retrained in forensic psychology and literally wrote the book on false confession. He has redefined how police interrogations are carried out in the UK to avoid false confessions, and in a recent article emphasised the less recognised but equally real concept of induced allegations.

If anyone wants me to repost links I'll be happy to do so, or just check my previous posts.

I remember reading it. . . .There could be no confession however and the defendant still be railroaded. Look at the case of Russell Faria. No confession, no injuries, no blood on clothes, alibi for the crime, etc. . . .

 

[Dan O.]

Huh? If 'the list' shows a call was made to her phone on the afternoon of the 2nd but the phone itself does not retain a record of it doesn't that mean it was deleted on or after the afternoon of the 2nd?

If that were the case, we would not have been told that there might have been some deletions after the phone was seized. We would have been told explicitly which messages were deleted. Without such details I discard such speculation.

 

[Bill Williams]

I guess the only place to go in this back and forth is this - would you want ALL interrogations made illegal, meaning, a sit-down session where some sort of technique is used to get the person in front of them to confess?

That's what an interrogation is, as distinct from a police interview.

You have a right to remain silent. You have a right to have an attorney present durring any questioning. Any technique the police use to get around these rights should be unacceptable, period.

There is no "technique" to get around these constitutional guarantees, other than lying.

The Reid Technique, for instance, does not have a step within it which says, "make sure you deprive the suspect of a lawyer, and that you do not videotape the proceedings." That sort of thing is thought up by dishonest, criminal cops, which has nothing to do with any of the techniques used.

So..... all that you say is true, it just does not describe the problem. The problem is that there are sometimes people in a room (which they do not even know is an "interrogation room") where they think all that they are doing is helping the police investigate.

These people tend not to insist upon their rights, being it doesn't occur to them that they need to. The young and naive fall into this category.

The hardest thing for an innocent person to do, I would imagine, is to stop the proceedings and say, "I want a lawyer."

Canadian nurse Susan Nelles, unbeknownst to her, was being investigated for baby deaths in her neonatal ward. When things went south on her, and the eventual Royal Inquiry was called to figure out why she'd been wrongfully suspected...

..... the arresting cop was asked when he actually made up his mind that she was guilty. The cop said (without smiling) that it was when she finally asked for a lawyer.

The Royal Inquiry judge went ballistic when he heard that. You could see the veins popping out of the judge's forehead. (Some of us were sure the cop had said this on purpose, because he knew the judge was prone to a stroke.)

It occurs to me that there was actually no wide ranging conspiracy with Mignini, Stefanoni, Mattieni, Micheli, Napoleoni etc. etc. etc..... this was just business as usual for these tin-pot dictators in their little kingdom. Until the world took notice of their little fiefdom, who was to know that justice has a "perugian-tinge" to it?

The Italian Supreme Court has decided to protect this way of doing things, rather than look at evidence.... which, they're not supposed to do, except when it comes to protecting this way-of-life up in the hills of Perugia.

No wonder the ISC wrote in their motivations following the March 2013 reversal of the acquittals:

Also well founded is further criticism raised by the public plaintiff, according to which the signs of the experts were passively incorporated, as to the mere inadequacy of the investigations carried out by the Scientific Police, who were not renewed, the experts having considered inadequate the two samples in question ( 36 and 165 B) for the detection of the genetic profile and due to the fact that it could not be ruled out that the result was derived "from contamination phenomena occurring at any stage of sampling and/or handling and/or analytical processes made” . From p. 75 p. 82 the Court adopted the arguments developed in the assesment that, indeed, had been the subject of severe disagreement with both Prof. Novelli that Prof. Torricelli, consultants of the Procurator General and the civil parties, whose authoritative voices were completely neglected. Prof. Novelli had agreed that there are protocols and recommendations, but added that first of all the operator had to contribute his common sense (ud. 6.9.2011, p. Transcription 59.), otherwise it put in question all the DNA analysis done from 1986 onwards....​

The ISC is signalling that it is a mode of "protecting the status quo" even if it is of the Perugian variety.

 

[Planigale]

Current Directions in Psychological Science February 2011 vol. 20 no. 1 33-37

Suspect Interviews and False Confessions
Gisli H. Gudjonsson1 and
John Pearse2
+ Author Affiliations
1King’s College, London
2Forensic Navigation Services Ltd.
Gisli H. Gudjonsson, King’s College, London, Department of Psychology (PO 78), Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London, SE 5 8AF, England. E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract

In this article, we review two influential methods of police interviewing practice and their associations with false confessions. These are the Reid technique, which is commonly used by police forces in the United States, and the PEACE model, which is routinely used in the United Kingdom. Several authors have recently expressed concerns about the guilt-presumptive and confrontational aspects of the Reid technique and its association with false confessions and recommend that it be replaced by the PEACE model. Anecdotal case studies and DNA exonerations have shown that false confessions are more common than previously thought and are typically associated with two main causes: manipulative/coercive interrogation techniques and suspects' vulnerabilities in interviews. The main challenge for the future is to develop interview techniques that maximize the number of noncoerced true confessions while minimizing the rate of false confessions. In the meantime, the electronic recording of police interviews, which provides invaluable transparency and accountability, is the single best protection against police-induced false confessions.

 

[acbytesla]

You have a right to remain silent. You have a right to have an attorney present durring any questioning. Any technique the police use to get around these rights should be unacceptable, period.

I've always wondered about what I would do if I was in a situation where I was suspected of a murder that I didn't commit. How would I handle an interview/interrogation. I think at the age of twenty they would have made mincemeat out of me and I could have ended up mistakenly saying something that could be seen as incriminating.

Today, I think I could handle it. But maybe that is just arrogance speaking. I do believe that the moment you say you won't talk you become suspect number one. As people who are innocent don't actually think that anyone could believe them to be guilty. After all they know they are innocent and talking can only help put this behind them. This is what I see was going through Amanda and Raffaele's mind when they chose to answer the police's questions in interview after interview.

But this might be a fair warning to any and every one. It might be one thing to answer the police's questions the first time. Maybe at the scene of the crime or in your own home on your own turf but the moment they ask you to police hq and start asking you questions in a tiny room, it's time to shut up and just ask for a lawyer. (If that time wasn't earlier)

 

[Planigale]

I have full text but it is too long to post.