Continuation Part 10: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[anglolawyer]

What I'm thinking is that it wasn't Bonassi's room that was locked, it was silenzis. So the comforter wasn't behind a locked door.

It would have been more helpful if the cops had "found" a wounded cat somewhere. But alas, kitty is nowhere to be found.

Yesterday there were suddenly two cats, or did I miss something?

 

[Diocletus]

Yesterday there were suddenly two cats, or did I miss something?

Nobody knows. Except Silenzi and he's not talking due to advice of counsel.

 

[Diocletus]

So what conclusion have you reached?

It's not cat blood.

 

[anglolawyer]

Nobody knows. Except Silenzi and he's not talking due to advice of counsel.

This got off to a bad start when the witness turned out to be called Silenzi. Where are Bullcrappi and Ifuggetti?

 

[Machiavelli]

I liked Mach's speech directed at Kevin Lowe about how the rules are everything because they provide context. I never knew that. There are rules and other rules, though, like the ones about not interrogating strongly suspected people through the night without a lawyer. By one set of rules, that is not allowed but a second set trumps the first set and provides that nobody is a suspect until the PM waves his magic wand ...

I have read elsewhere some posters talking about me, suggesting I had proposed the new legal category "strongly suspected". I want to say - maybe my warning is preemptive - please do not suggest that I created legal categories, in particular I never proposed a category such as "strongly suspected".

As for what I know about this case, no procedure rule was violated. Sollecito's interrogation, Knox's interrogation and her spontaneous statement do not violate any law.
In any event, even a potential violation (there wasn't any) would not make Amanda Knox become immune from responsibility and would not make the false testimony evidence disappear.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

the putative semen stain and the cuts on Rudy's hand

Chris,
Judge Nencini* said, in a different wording, "Amanda gave the final stab to the jugular", this statement is a fantastic deviation from his norm of intelligence and moderation if it is not supported by more evidence.
You'll have to do the same farfetched step to prove that there was a criminal move of Rudy on Meredith, and that he was not a regular person in a panic, in a double bind of helping and fleeing, considering his low credit profile.
I'm not saying, the burden is on you, because i will study it more closely and report here.
*I mean no disrespect for judge Nencini, i was amazed by the humaneness and intelligence of Italian judges, carabinieri, prison guards.
The defence slinging mud on Italian officials created a Golem.

Eric,

Several of us have listed the evidence against Guede in the last day or so. In response to your comment, I would like to highlight the cuts on his hands that are consistent with wounds made by stabbing someone. I would also point out that the stains on the pillowcase may be argued to be semen stains on the basis of their appearance, as Professor Vinci has done (though obviously further testing was warranted). And if Rudy really wished to help Meredith, nothing prevented him from making an anonymous call to 112.

Where are the cuts on Amanda's hands, or Raffaele's hands? Why are there no bloody shoe prints or palm prints from them? Where are their bloody clothes? Why is there no CCTV footage of them leaving Raffaele's apartment? Why is there no communication between Rudy and the pair? There is too much evidence that should be there but is not for the prosecution's tale to hold water.

 

[anglolawyer]

I have read elsewhere some posters talking about me, suggesting I had proposed the new legal category "strongly suspected". I want to say - maybe my warning is preemptive - please do not suggest that I created legal categories, in particular I never proposed a category such as "strongly suspected".

As for what I know about this case, no procedure rule was violated. Sollecito's interrogation, Knox's interrogation and her spontaneous statement do not violate any law.
In any event, even a potential violation (there wasn't any) would not make Amanda Knox become immune from responsibility and would not make the false testimony evidence disappear.

You did say they were already 'strongly suspected' when they arrived at the questura on the night of 5th which, if true (as it clearly is) means they were unwittingly in need of and entitled to protection from abuse regardless whether Mignini had filled out the appropriate paperwork. We already know that the Italian justice system is incapable of applying its own laws fairly on this point and must accordingly await a ruling from the ECHR.

ETA I have never said you invented a new legal category. But it is interesting that when I started repeating what you had let slip, posters over at PMF assumed I was the one who had made this statement. They called me an idiot or some such. I thought that rather funny and still do.

 

[Diocletus]

This got off to a bad start when the witness turned out to be called Silenzi. Where are Bullcrappi and Ifuggetti?

They're cops.

 

[Diocletus]

In any event, even a potential violation (there wasn't any) would not make Amanda Knox become immune from responsibility and would not make the false testimony evidence disappear.

Um, yes, actually that's just what would happen.

 

[anglolawyer]

Um, yes, actually that's just what would happen.

Ah Diocletus, Diocletus. So innocent! You forgot the special rule which renders the inadmissible statement admissible for the purpose of proving she gave a false alibi. This actually only really makes sense in Italian but through prolonged osmotic reflection I have come to grasp it sufficiently. You also forgot three more rules:

• the one which allows you to inform the press and public of the content of the statements immediately at a press conference and
• the other one where you run a civil trial in which Lumumba gets to sue over the statement, and
• the one where you charge her with calunnia and, shucks, are obliged to place the statement before the court hearing the murder charge anyway

Happily, there is no conceivable way the judges could be unfairly influenced by any of this and I am sure this will be Italy's main argument in the ECHR.

 

[Diocletus]

As for what I know about this case, no procedure rule was violated. Sollecito's interrogation, Knox's interrogation and her spontaneous statement do not violate any law.

For a guy who's all about "the rules", you don't seem to know much. Unfortunately, these particular rules aren't the kind that disingenuous Italian judges, rogue prosecutors and corrupt cops can make up as the go along.

 

[Desert Fox]

I have read elsewhere some posters talking about me, suggesting I had proposed the new legal category "strongly suspected". I want to say - maybe my warning is preemptive - please do not suggest that I created legal categories, in particular I never proposed a category such as "strongly suspected".

As for what I know about this case, no procedure rule was violated. Sollecito's interrogation, Knox's interrogation and her spontaneous statement do not violate any law.
In any event, even a potential violation (there wasn't any) would not make Amanda Knox become immune from responsibility and would not make the false testimony evidence disappear.

Even assuming that all the procedures were followed correctly on a technical basis, does it really matter if innocent people are convicted of crimes that they did not commit. I believe in the spirit of the law. The spirit is that guilty people are convicted and innocent people are not.

 

[acbytesla]

[QUOTE = Chris_Halkides; 10288023] Eric,Your earlier comment implied That pro-innocence commenters were applying two sets of standards to the evidence, one for Rudy and one for Amanda and Raffaele. At least we now know where you stand. If you can debunk the evidence against Rudy using similar arguments to Those That the PI commenters use, or if you can Shops provide a self-consistent narrative / timeline for what you think Happened (One That does not contradict well-established facts), I would be interested in what you have to say.

Chris,
Judge Nencini* said, in a different wording, "Amanda gave the final stab to the jugular", this statement is a fantastic deviation from his norm of intelligence and moderation if it is not supported by more evidence.[/QUOTE] You can't be serious Eric. I don't see any norm of intelligence or moderation from Nencini. But I do agree that statement is fantastic...totally absurd. How does anyone recreate how the murder went down? Particularly saying that Amanda did this when there is not a shred of evidence that puts Amanda in that room.

You'll have to do the same farfetched step to prove that there was a criminal move of Rudy on Meredith, and that he was not a regular person in a panic, in a double bind of helping and fleeing, considering his low credit profile.
I'm not saying, the burden is on you, because i will study it more closely and report here.
*I mean no disrespect for judge Nencini, i was amazed by the humaneness and intelligence of Italian judges, carabinieri, prison guards.
The defence slinging mud on Italian officials created a Golem.

I'm really not sure what this means Eric. Actually recreating any crime is difficult if not impossible. This is why the standard of proof is "reasonable doubt" as opposed to all doubt.

I cannot recreate how the crime went down and certainly wouldn't want to do it in a motivation. What I can say unequivocally is that Rudy is easily proven guilty based on his own voluntary statements and the many pieces of physical evidence that he left at the crime scene. Or are you suggesting otherwise?

1. Rudy had no known reason for being there that evening.
2. Rudy left his shoe prints in Meredith's blood.
3. Rudy left his palm print in Meredith's blood.
4. Rudy left his DNA in Meredith's vagina.
5. Rudy left his DNA in Meredith's purse.
6. Rudy had broken into the nursery in Milan days before.
7. Rudy had a laptop and phone that was stolen from a law office a few blocks from his apartment weeks before.
8. Rudy said he had a date with Meredith. There is nothing other than Rudy's word to prove this.
9. Rudy said that he made the date with Meredith on Halloween. This is something Meredith's friends DENY.
10. Rudy arrives at the cottage almost a full hour before Meredith. (Who does that for a date?)
11. Rudy goes dancing.
12 Rudy flees the country.
13. Rudy tells story on Skype phone call that is absurd.

This is enough Eric for me to believe that Rudy killed Meredith. I have seen little that shows he had an accomplice. Certainly not Amanda or Raffaele.

 

[Diocletus]

Ah Diocletus, Diocletus. So innocent! You forgot the special rule which renders the inadmissible statement admissible for the purpose of proving she gave a false alibi. This actually only really makes sense in Italian but through prolonged osmotic reflection I have come to grasp it sufficiently. You also forgot three more rules:

• the one which allows you to inform the press and public of the content of the statements immediately at a press conference and
• the other one where you run a civil trial in which Lumumba gets to sue over the statement, and
• the one where you charge her with calunnia and, shucks, are obliged to place the statement before the court hearing the murder charge anyway

Happily, there is no conceivable way the judges could be unfairly influenced by any of this and I am sure this will be Italy's main argument in the ECHR.

This is all the fault of a Euro screw-up.

Over here, we made our fair trial thing a part of the Constitution, so whenever some prosecutors and judges get crazy, the defense lawyer can just stand up and shout "Yer Honor, but that's Un-constit-TOO-tional"! And then people get hot and bothered and stuff happens.

Over there, you foolishly called your fair trial thing a "Convention." So the lawyer would have to say "Muh Lawd, that's . . . unconventional." Obviously, no one wants to say such a silly thing and so fair trial rights are freely trodden on.

 

[Machiavelli]

You did say they were already 'strongly suspected' when they arrived at the questura on the night of 5th which, if true (as it clearly is) means they were unwittingly in need of and entitled to protection from abuse regardless whether Mignini had filled out the appropriate paperwork. We already know that the Italian justice system is incapable of applying its own laws fairly on this point and must accordingly await a ruling from the ECHR.
.

But this is just not true. And btw it is not near what would be of interest to the ECHR. Amanda Knox was suspected about telling a false story to cover up for somebody, she was not suspected of murder neither she was suspected of calunnia. The police were investigating for murder and that was the predominant interest. Raffaele Sollecito was not believed either, she was suspected of covering up for Amanda. But nobody thought they had specific and clear evidence that would incriminate them for murder yet.
It is also false that choosing a precise moment for declaring someone a suspect is a rigid matter, it is not true that the "police" needs to be precise, if they are late in acknowledging the factual situation that someone is suspect, the code has a tolerance and admits this possibility. It is also not true that it is up to the police to decide, and the process of deciding the status of formal suspect is not immediate, there is a procedure that of assessment and formality that may take time.
It is also false that a correct timing for police procedure would consequently determine an unfair tria proceedings. The ECHR does not say that because a police applies incorrect procedure the trial must be considered unfair, neither that all evidence disappears.
But back to the point of procedure, there is no violation. Not true that they were forced to arrest them for murder on their arrival at the police station.

 

[Dan O.]

Do you have a hallway/key pic from nov 3?

There are 10,000 pages in the case file. when each and every one of them turns up we can start talking about what is missing.

 

[Diocletus]

But I thought the conspiracy was supposed to be that we weren't supposed to know about suspicious blood in locked rooms etc but here it is in the newspaper.

You have to follow along. This is a multipart conspiracy.

Part 1 was that they actually thought on Nov. 2 that one of the guys downstairs was a perp.

Part 2 was that they discovered on Nov. 3 that all of the guys downstairs had good alibis.

Part 3 was that they needed to make the downstairs crime scene go away so no one (in particular Matteini) would get the idea that there was a real burglar around as opposed to a resident stager/cleaner-upper. Thus:

Il Giornale, 5 Nov. 2007
Investigations are still going on the trail of blood on the apartment below the one occupied by Kercher, where they lived four students results unrelated to the crime because they were not even in Perugia on the night between Thursday and Friday. The scientific police must, inter alia, establish whether it is human-like. The apartment was in fact kept a cat and it is possible that the blood can be his. The apartment below the one where she was found dead student was found regularly closed by investigators.

Corriere, 6 Nov. 2007
The Turning Point - But the investigators how they got to the detention of the three suspects? A first turning point in the investigation there was Monday night [i.e., the 5th] when the results came from the laboratories on blood stains found by the ERT, experts tracking service traces of forensic science, in the apartment on the first floor, where he lived under that Meredith, occupied by four boys. Determine if the blood had been the student was crucial to the investigation, an affirmative answer would enter the circle of suspects also the 4 young people, all of whom had provided an alibi for the night of the murder. Tests have established that those tracks are instead of animal blood, that is, a cat who lived in the apartment. Excluded any involvement of the four students, and returned to "prime" the position of the friends of the student. "It was obvious that someone was around," says a source.

Having succeeded in throwing Matteini off the scent, now it was time to make use of the "discovery," during the Mobile Squad's unsupervised pillaging of the flat on Nov. 6, of the keys to the downstairs apartment right there in Amanda's room (well, really the hallway, where the cops had probably placed them).

Part 4 was to revive the cat's blood, that hadn't been mentioned to Matteini--see Perugia Shock entry dated Monday, November 12, 2007 (can't find it right now).

Part 5 was to link together Amanda, the keys, and the downstairs blood:

Republic - November 14, 2007 Page 17 Section: CHRONICLE [1] (Google translation)
PERUGIA - Two keys connected with a ring. For the investigators have a 'further proof of the guilt of Amanda Knox, accused with Raffaele Sollecito and Patrick Lumumba' s murder of Meredith Kercher. Are key 'apartment below the one where the young Englishman was killed in the evening between the' one and two November. On that ground, with three other boys, lives Giacomo Silenzi, Meredith's boyfriend, on 3 November he had told police: "Before leaving for Porto San Giorgio I gave the keys to my house asking Meredith to disinfect one of my two cats that had injured her ear. " On 6 November, the two keys were found in the chamber of Amanda Knox. Not a clue just because the room of Stephen, one of the three tenants of silence were discovered traces of blood. The four students have vowed to clean the stains left by the injured cat el 'entire house before leaving for vacation of the Bridge of the Dead. I do not know how to explain the traces of blood on the duvet of Stephen - said James Silenzi - just remember that the blood there 'was, and that Stephen had locked the room. " Those traces of blood could be part of the screening, according to investigators, enacted by Amanda and his accomplices to dribble suspects. Even these mysterious bloodstains are finished to the laboratory of the forensic team in Rome, where began the analysis of findings.

 

[anglolawyer]

But this is just not true.

I assume you mean the second part of my post, not the part about you saying they were strongly suspected and which you have been rowing back from ever since, as now.

And btw it is not near what would be of interest to the ECHR. Amanda Knox was suspected about telling a false story to cover up for somebody, she was not suspected of murder neither she was suspected of calunnia.

How do you know what she was suspected of? Where is this in the trial record? Mignini is on record as saying they were not suspects. Comodi said the same on the BBC3 documentary. And how could they possibly think she was covering up for someone without being involved in the crime if only as an accessory after the fact - an extremely serious crime

The police were investigating for murder and that was the predominant interest. Raffaele Sollecito was not believed either, she was suspected of covering up for Amanda. But nobody thought they had specific and clear evidence that would incriminate them for murder yet.
This is not the test for suspicion. It's the test for proof beyond reasonable doubt.

It is also false that choosing a precise moment for declaring someone a suspect is a rigid matter, it is not true that the "police" needs to be precise, if they are late in acknowledging the factual situation that someone is suspect, the code has a tolerance and admits this possibility. It is also not true that it is up to the police to decide, and the process of deciding the status of formal suspect is not immediate, there is a procedure that of assessment and formality that may take time.

Straw man. I never said any such thing. There is a boundary. It may not always be clear but we both agree it had been crossed by 10.00 p.m. on the night of the 5th-6th.

It is also false that a correct timing for police procedure would consequently determine an unfair tria proceedings. The ECHR does not say that because a police applies incorrect procedure the trial must be considered unfair, neither that all evidence disappears.

Another straw man. There is, however, clear authority that the right to a far trial includes pre-trial matters which in turn include access to legal advice at the right time. Amanda Knox did not, in my opinion, receive a fair trial because the prejudice sustained in the interrogation was not corrected in the course of the proceedings. On the contrary, it was compounded.

But back to the point of procedure, there is no violation. Not true that they were forced to arrest them for murder on their arrival at the police station.

Another straw man.

You seem to be slipping Mach.

 

[Dan O.]

Yesterday there were suddenly two cats, or did I miss something?

It's something I've always known. The issue simply hasn't come up so has never been posted in these threads.

01:22, 1 February 2010 Dan O. (Talk | contribs | block) (2,805 bytes) (Created page with 'Those keys for a staging Category:News (Kercher) Republic - November 14, 2007 Page 17 Section: CHRONICLE [http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2007/11…')​

 

[Diocletus]

But this is just not true. And btw it is not near what would be of interest to the ECHR.

You're right. The ECHR is only going to be interested in what the court of assizes said about the interrogation in affirming the conviction of Knox:

[the interrogation was of] obsessive length. . . , carried out during [both] day and night, by more than one person, on a young and foreign girl who at the time did not speak Italian at all well, was unaware of her own rights, did not have the assistance of an attorney (which she should have been entitled to, being at this point suspected of very serious crimes), and was moreover being assisted by an interpreter who . . . did not limit herself to translating, but induced her to force herself to remember, explaining that she [Amanda] was confused in her memories . . .

Ruh-Roh.