Continuation Part 11: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Machiavelli]

Razionalisti v Colpevolisti?

Rejected.

 

[Machiavelli]

I suggest "pro-human rights" versus "authoritarian".

Rejected.

 

[Bill Williams]

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Other than Raffaele's probable DNA on the bra hook (possibly from contamination), nothing that I really know of, but it is interestng (and worth noting) that Rudy's DNA was not found in the bathroom where many people say he went after the murder.

I think Mach is one of the people who brought that up.

It's a good question, but it's not that important to me, because it's not only the lack of DNA that makes them probably innocent, in my opinion,

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If the scenario is that Rudy had cuts on his hands and he washed his hands in the bathroom sink (since it is evident that someone did), and there is no drop or trace of his blood in the bathroom, nor his DNA in the sink and around the drain, what we have here is an inconsistency between the proposed scenario and the physical evidence.

Rudy has never disputed that he went into the bathroom.

 

[Kauffer]

Given that the police definitely had Knox's mobile phone records by around 3rd November, they would have known for sure that she had received a text message from a certain number at 8.18pm on the night of the murder and had sent a text message back to that same number at 8.42pm. And the police obviously would have known that this number didn't belong to Sollecito or to any of the housemates etc. In addition, IIRC Knox had not told them about this text dialogue in their early interviews with her.

So I believe the police and PM followed the following train of (poor) thinking: firstly, they already had Knox in their cross-hairs. Secondly, they interpreted her not telling them about the text message exchange (which they now knew had provably happened) as Knox deliberately hiding the exchange from them. And why would Knox want to hide the exchange unless it had something to do with the murder?

At this point, I'm open-minded on whether or not the police had managed to identify Lumumba as the owner of that mobile number. If they had done so, and especially if they also knew that Lumumba had changed his number immediately after the murder, then this could only have heightened their suspicions. But whether or not they knew Lumumba's identity prior to the Knox interrogation on 5/6 Nov, I believe they had already decided that the person to whom that number belonged was a key participant in the murder, and that Knox herself was also involved (hence why she had "hidden" the exchange of texts from the police up to that point).

Regarding the actual content of the texts in question, I believe it would have been impossible for the police to know the content until/unless they had interrogated either Knox's or Lumumba's handset. It's possible that they had read the infamous "see you later" message off Knox's handset previously, but I think it's more likely that they read it for the first time on the night of the 5th/6th interrogation. And if that IS when they first read it, then it would have seemed to them like perfect confirmation of their theory. I believe that they read the message, then calmly went out of the interrogation room, then whooped and high-fived and congratulated themselves on cracking the case. From then on it was only a case of going back in to the interrogation room and squeezing Knox until she "buckled" and "told them what they already knew to be correct".

So I find this odd. On 3rd November, the police were aware of the 8:18 and 8:42 text messages, but may not have known that they were connections with Lumumba's number. But it's the murder night, so they're on it in a shot. I'm no expert on telecoms, but isn't it more likely than not that within 48 hours they would have got this information? Or could Lumumba's sim have been an anonymous, non contract card (he had got this number recently hadn't he?)?

Secondly, why didn't the police simply ask to see Ms Knox's phone to check her contacts list at anytime between the 3rd and the evening of the 5th as part of a "normal", "routine" inspection? She would have gladly shown them!

I'm leaning towards a hypothesis that the cops "knew" Lumumba was involved before the 5th, "knew" Ms Knox was involved and pursued a confirmatory strategy in four stages. 1) Get Mr Sollecito to withdraw his alibi for Ms Knox 2) Get Ms Knox to name Lumumba 3) Arrest Lumumba 4) Work out the details later.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

I suggest "pro-human rights" versus "authoritarian".

Knox and Sollecito have been provisionally convicted only by arbitrary proceedings that have violated Italian and ECHR law - the fundamental rights of defendants.

The "authoritarians" appear to maintain that any court finding that punishes the chosen scapegoats are to be accepted as legitimate and valid.

By the authoritarian logic, the Dred Scott decision of the US Supreme Court would be valid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court,[2][3] and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. Dred Scott, an enslaved African American man who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom. In a 7–2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Court denied Scott's request. For only the second time in its history the Supreme Court ruled an Act of Congress to be unconstitutional.[4]

Although Taney hoped that his ruling would settle the slavery question once and for all, the decision immediately spurred vehement dissent from anti-slavery elements in the North, especially Republicans. Most scholars today (as did many contemporary lawyers) consider the ruling regarding slavery in the territories to be dictum, not binding precedent. The decision would prove to be an indirect catalyst for the American Civil War. It was functionally superseded by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave blacks full citizenship. As of 2007 it is widely regarded by scholars as the worst decision made by the United States Supreme Court.

Wow! You are attempting to link a case involving whether African Americans had any rights as human beings or were effectively property in 1857 America with a murder case 150 years later in Italy.

An incredible post.

Speaking of authoritarian decisions what about this case

US judge hears appeal on teen executed in 1940s

 

[Kauffer]

If the scenario is that Rudy had cuts on his hands and he washed his hands in the bathroom sink (since it is evident that someone did), and there is no drop or trace of his blood in the bathroom, nor his DNA in the sink and around the drain, what we have here is an inconsistency between the proposed scenario and the physical evidence.

So this "inconsistency between the proposed scenario and the physical evidence" will, logically, lead you to conclude that Amanda Knox was not in Ms Kercher's bedroom and did not kill her, yes? No? Why?

 

[Numbers]

Speaking of authoritarian decisions what about this case

US judge hears appeal on teen executed in 1940s

The judicial victim of this case was exonerated recently:

http://news.yahoo.com/executed-age-...s-202615054.html;_ylt=A0LEVvusYZdUj2UAepUPxQt.

There have been other "legal" lynchings or clear miscarriages of justice in the US. The quoted case is unique in the extreme youth of the victim (14 years of age).

There has also been a history of lynchings with no trial - killings by mobs in the US, of persons sometimes alleged to have committed crimes. From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching

The legal and cultural antecedents of American lynching were carried across the Atlantic by migrants from the British Isles to colonial North America. Collective violence was a familiar aspect of the early modern Anglo-American legal landscape. Group violence in the British Atlantic was usually nonlethal in intention and consequence but it occasionally shaded, particularly in the seventeenth century in the context of political turmoil in England and unsettled social and political conditions in the American colonies, into rebellions and riots that took multiple lives.[6] During the Antebellum, assertive free-Blacks, Latinos in the South West and runaways were the object of racial lynching.[7] But lynching attacks on U.S. blacks, especially in the South, increased dramatically in the aftermath of the Civil War, after slavery had been abolished and recently freed black men gained the right to vote. Violence rose even more at the end of the 19th century, after southern white Democrats regained their political power in the South in the 1870s. States passed new constitutions or legislation which effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites, established segregation of public facilities by race, and separated blacks from common public life and facilities. Nearly 3,500 African Americans and 1,300 whites were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968, mostly from 1882 to 1920.

 

[AmyStrange]

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If the scenario is that Rudy had cuts on his hands and he washed his hands in the bathroom sink (since it is evident that someone did), and there is no drop or trace of his blood in the bathroom, nor his DNA in the sink and around the drain, what we have here is an inconsistency between the proposed scenario and the physical evidence.

-

You're right. It does tend to discredit the proposed scenario that Rudy washed his bloody hands in the bathroom sink, but that doesn't prove it's impossible. After all, isn't it your theory that lack of DNA in a room doesn't mean the person wasn't in it?

d

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[Bill Williams]

If the scenario is that Rudy had cuts on his hands and he washed his hands in the bathroom sink (since it is evident that someone did), and there is no drop or trace of his blood in the bathroom, nor his DNA in the sink and around the drain, what we have here is an inconsistency between the proposed scenario and the physical evidence.

So this "inconsistency between the proposed scenario and the physical evidence" will, logically, lead you to conclude that Amanda Knox was not in Ms Kercher's bedroom and did not kill her, yes? No? Why?

Be prepared for sophistry.... however, the big difference is that Rudy Guede admits to being in both rooms, in Meredith's room during the murder as well as in the bathroom, a room he said he went into as a result of the murder.

People can draw their own conclusions I guess.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

The judicial victim of this case was exonerated recently:

http://news.yahoo.com/executed-age-...s-202615054.html;_ylt=A0LEVvusYZdUj2UAepUPxQt.

There have been other "legal" lynchings or clear miscarriages of justice in the US. The quoted case is unique in the extreme youth of the victim (14 years of age).

There has also been a history of lynchings with no trial - killings by mobs in the US, of persons sometimes alleged to have committed crimes. From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching

The legal and cultural antecedents of American lynching were carried across the Atlantic by migrants from the British Isles to colonial North America. Collective violence was a familiar aspect of the early modern Anglo-American legal landscape. Group violence in the British Atlantic was usually nonlethal in intention and consequence but it occasionally shaded, particularly in the seventeenth century in the context of political turmoil in England and unsettled social and political conditions in the American colonies, into rebellions and riots that took multiple lives.[6] During the Antebellum, assertive free-Blacks, Latinos in the South West and runaways were the object of racial lynching.[7] But lynching attacks on U.S. blacks, especially in the South, increased dramatically in the aftermath of the Civil War, after slavery had been abolished and recently freed black men gained the right to vote. Violence rose even more at the end of the 19th century, after southern white Democrats regained their political power in the South in the 1870s. States passed new constitutions or legislation which effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites, established segregation of public facilities by race, and separated blacks from common public life and facilities. Nearly 3,500 African Americans and 1,300 whites were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968, mostly from 1882 to 1920.

He was tried and executed within 83 days, exoneration!?

 

[Numbers]

Wow! You are attempting to link a case involving whether African Americans had any rights as human beings or were effectively property in 1857 America with a murder case 150 years later in Italy.

An incredible post.

In the Dred Scott case, first argued in Missouri State Courts, it was expected based on precedence that Scott would be freed. Cases such as his had been tried before with that result. From the Wikepedia article (italicized text):

Scott based his legal argument on precedents such as Somersett v. Stewart, Winny v. Whitesides,[9] and Rachel v. Walker,[10] claiming his presence and residence in free territories required his emancipation. Scott's lawyers argued the same for Scott's wife, and further claimed that Eliza Scott's birth on a steamboat between a free state and a free territory had made her free upon birth.

It was expected that the Scotts would win their freedom with relative ease since Missouri courts had previously heard over ten other cases in which they had freed slaves who had been taken into free territory.[3] But, in June 1847, Scott's suit was dismissed on a technicality: Scott had failed to provide a witness to testify that Scott was in fact a slave belonging to Eliza Emerson.


Scott and his backers found a witness to overcome the technicality, and the case was tried again in Missouri court:

Having produced a witness who testified that Emerson was the owner of Scott, the jury, following Missouri precedent, found in favor of Scott and his family. Unwilling to accept the loss of four slaves and a substantial escrow account, Emerson appealed to the Supreme Court of Missouri, although by that point she had moved to Massachusetts and transferred ownership of Scott to her brother, John F. A. Sanford.


The Supreme Court of Missouri overturned precedence based solely on a political consideration - that there was an anti-slavery movement now in the US, which was a threat to Missouri.

In November 1852, the Missouri Supreme Court reversed the trial court's decision, effectively overturning 28 years of Missouri state precedent. It held that the Scotts were still legally slaves and that they should have sued for freedom while living in a free state. Chief Justice William Scott declared:

Times are not now as they were when the former decisions on this subject were made. Since then not only individuals but States have been possessed with a dark and fell spirit in relation to slavery, whose gratification is sought in the pursuit of measures, whose inevitable consequences must be the overthrow and destruction of our government. Under such circumstances it does not behoove the State of Missouri to show the least countenance to any measure which might gratify this spirit. She is willing to assume her full responsibility for the existence of slavery within her limits, nor does she seek to share or divide it with others.[11]


In 1853, Dred Scott again sued his current owner, John Sanford,[1] but now in federal court. The grounds for taking the case to federal court were that Sanford was a resident of New York, having returned there in 1853, and that the federal courts could hear the case under diversity jurisdiction provided in Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution.

At trial in 1854, Judge Robert William Wells directed the jury to rely on Missouri law to settle the question of Scott's freedom. Since the Missouri Supreme Court had held that Scott remained a slave, the jury found in favor of Sanford. Scott then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Historians discovered that after the Supreme Court had heard arguments in the case but before it had issued a ruling, the President-elect James Buchanan wrote to his friend, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Catron, asking whether the case would be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court before his inauguration in March 1857.[12] Buchanan hoped the decision would quell unrest in the country over the slavery issue by issuing a ruling that put the future of slavery beyond the realm of political debate.

Buchanan later successfully pressured Associate Justice Robert Cooper Grier, a Northerner, to join the Southern majority in the Dred Scott decision to prevent the appearance that the decision was made along sectional lines.[13] By present-day standards, such correspondence would be considered improper ex parte contact with a court.

Perhaps others will see similarities to the case against Knox and Sollecito in this combination of legal and political maneuvers. Remember that precedence is considered law in common law jurisdictions and should not be overthrown for political motivations. I will refer interested persons to the Wikipedia article or other references because this post may be getting too long.

 

[Numbers]

He was tried and executed within 83 days, exoneration!?

He was exonerated recently. Obviously not of practical effect for him, but of moral benefit to his surviving family members.

And the State of South Carolina admitted in had made a terrible mistake in 1944. That has meaning.

 

[Desert Fox]

Speaking of authoritarian decisions what about this case

US judge hears appeal on teen executed in 1940s

Does not make it right but you do realize both England and Italy had the death penalty in 1944 right?

 

[carbonjam72]

He was tried and executed within 83 days, exoneration!?

Your interest in miscarriages of justice in the US, does tend to suggest you having a rooting patriotic interest in the present case, equating falsely in my view, that either the Kerchers win or lose, based on whether Amanda and Raf are convicted or acquitted - actual innocence not being a concern.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

He was exonerated recently. Obviously not of practical effect for him, but of moral benefit to his surviving family members.

And the State of South Carolina admitted in had made a terrible mistake in 1944. That has meaning.

That maybe so; but for me that places the comments in post #5152 in context. That was an authoritarian state in action all be it 70 years ago.

 

[sept79]

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Other than Raffaele's probable DNA on the bra hook (possibly from contamination) . . .

d

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If it's not contamination, why aren't the other males whose DNA was found on the clasp being diligently searched for? Also, didn't Conti-Vecchiotti tell judge Hellmann that his DNA could be found on the clasp?

 

[Samson]

If it's not contamination, why aren't the other males whose DNA was found on the clasp being diligently searched for? Also, didn't Conti-Vecchiotti tell judge Hellmann that his DNA could be found on the clasp?

It is also possible Nencini left his dna on it too, as he claims to have witnessed Amanda plunge the knife into Meredith.

 

[Numbers]

Wow! You are attempting to link a case involving whether African Americans had any rights as human beings or were effectively property in 1857 America with a murder case 150 years later in Italy.

An incredible post.

Attempting a short answer:

Knox and Sollecito won an acquittal on the merits and in accordance with law in the Hellmann court on all charges (except calunnia for Knox). This decision was overthrown by a higher court (CSC) for apparently political or other arbitrary considerations in a poorly reasoned motivation.

Knox and Sollecito have since been provisionally convicted by the Nencini court in accordance with the CSC direction and in a judgment that is arbitrary and contrary to evidence. The Nencini court trial, and that of the Massei court, were unfair on the basis of violations of Italian law and Constitution, and violations of the Convention and ECHR case-law.

Dred Scott and his family should rightly have been awarded his freedom based on precedence (Missouri case law). In fact, a Missouri trial court did award him and his family freedom based on their residence in a free (no slavery allowed) jurisdiction (the Wisconsin territory). But the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the precedents to find that Dred Scott and his family were still slaves for political reasons - to strike a blow against the anti-slavery movement that was gaining adherents in the US in the 1850's. When Dred Scott appealed to the US Federal courts, for political reasons, the US Supreme Court not only supported the Missouri Supreme Court decision, it found that Congress could not regulate slavery in the territories, and that persons of African descent could not be citizens. These decisions were all of a political nature and the result of arbitrary legal reasoning.

 

[Desert Fox]

But it's not accurate. Those whom you define "pro-innocence" are in fact either supporting a person, or supporting a conspiracy theory (in fact, mostly both), and they are also supporting a theory of a peculiar guilt of Rudy Guede.

Those aspect: theories about guilt of burglary and post-mortem rape of Guede, guilt of lying and conspiracy, leaks, fabricating false evidence etc. of prosecution, police, forensics, guilt of corruption of prosecution and courts; those things, and similar ones, are actually the aspects that strike me of the "pro-innocence" group, in fact those elements of their narrative are the reason why my attention was attracted by the case. Those are all elements of a belief about "guilt", those are not beliefs about "innocence".
I am not that comfortable calling "pro-innocence" someone who believes Rudy committed a burglary for which there is no evidence and raped a corpse, and that Mignini fabricated a statement on an illegal interrogation, and the police corrupted Anna Donnino to release a false testimony...

I believe Rudy Guede is most likely guilty of murder and sexual assault of Meredeth Kercher. Would I convict him if I was in a jury, I am not sure although I think that I would convict "beyond a reasonable doubt."

There are palm prints and dna evidence of him at the murder scene, bloody footprints, his story is nonsensical, and his actions after the attack point to guilt. In this case, it actually helps me that the Italian investigators first tried to pin the shoes on Raff.

I don't actually care much about the bathroom in this case. If his blood was in the bathroom, the missed it.

He took a plea of guilty in effect to in effect avoid a jury trial. I am in a death penalty state although I am anti-death penalty so I would never give "death" as a sentence.

I have gotten into tussles in small areas the size of the bedroom of Ms Kercher. As such, I consider it almost certain that people involved in a fight, especially if there were four people in that tiny room, would have left significant evidence. The idea of a selective clean up is also not credible. That is why I consider it unlikely for Ms Knox or Mr Sollecito to be involved.

Now, I actually would like to see a full scale mockup / live simulation (not computer) of the crime scene with fake blood using actors to show what is even possible.

When I first heard about the case, I assumed that it was simply a fight between Meredeth and Amanda, maybe over a boyfriend. Alright, fine, but that is not what we have but a crime never seen before.

 

[Diocletus]

If the scenario is that Rudy had cuts on his hands and he washed his hands in the bathroom sink (since it is evident that someone did), and there is no drop or trace of his blood in the bathroom, nor his DNA in the sink and around the drain, what we have here is an inconsistency between the proposed scenario and the physical evidence.

Well, his blood is on the pillow, the wall, the door, the purse, and in her vagina. Probably in the bathroom, too, just not where they tested.