Continuation Part 12: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Planigale]

Why are you so agressive ?

I am the only one who is of the opinion that calling the victims family members "lunatic" is not acceptable ?


Greetings

I think it is not acceptable to call anyone lunatics. Especially victims or their friends and family.

 

[Diocletus]

I think it is not acceptable to call anyone lunatics. Especially victims or their friends and family.

Well, to be honest, I was really thinking of "misguided, obtuse, irresponsible, foolish and crass," but I settled for the catch-all "lunatics," which maybe isn't properly descriptive.

 

[Bill Williams]

Laura Mezzetti is a court witness who was undergoing a cross questioning.

Authors and journalists reporting their opinions and stories are not witnesses.

There is no symmetry, legal moral or logical, between a court witness, and a person outside the court who is not a witness and is cross-questioned.

Laura Mezzetti's statement belongs to the trial papers.


Your assertions - or even others alleged assertions - about "satanic" theories or "ritualistic killing" scenario, are just disproven by the court papers.

What you do is you cherry pick the Halloween comment from the prosecution arguments, and you completely omit the rest of the arguments, which presents a theroy which is not a ritualistic killing theory, which is not a satanic theory, but a scenario completely different and incompatible with your (or others') allegations. And also, where the actual meaning of the Halloween comment and the actual place of it in the scale of importance is explained, showing how it is only describing a possible theme inspiring the "party", maybe just about the date of its taking place.

In fact, this is your peculiar MO as a poster. You just shun from direct facts, what you really intend and love to do is to "use" indirectly statements of others, statements which you often interpret yourself and you "attribute" (in fact crooking or twisting them).

You have no intention of admitting that your allegations are unsubstantiated and are unsupported by the trial papers. You simply like to use allegations of others (that you even attribute yourself without quoting them).

I want to repeat: what you say about the "ritual killing" scenario is disproven by the actual prosecution arguments. But not only that: your assertion that the prosecution pushed a premeditated murder is shown to be false, obviously false based on reading the simple legal structure of the charges presented by the prosecution. The prosecution always presented a non-premeditate murder scenario, and never a "ritualistic killing".
Moreover, the word "rito" doesn't even exist in the prosecution arguments.

These are facts, facts from the papers, from inside the curtroom, not alleged comments from people made outside the trial.

And the assertion that Massei presented a "Rudy's lust alone" motive as opposed to the prosecution's theory, is also disproven, by simply reading Massei's statements about Knox and Sollecito at pages 393, 399 and 405, where you can obviously see how your interpretation, about the implication you chose to attribute to the paragraph "Rudy didn't need encouragement to pursue his lustful action", is a wrong implication.
Your interpretation is proven to be your own arbitrary twisting and false. But you have a peculiar attitude, a way of thinking; not just about this or that passage, but overall strange ideas about what you think a motivations report should talk about or what "evidence" and "motive" is.

Yup, I was right. A rhetorical escape route.

What is clear us that most of this is, "line in the sand" stuff for you. I thought that perhaps you'd gotten a nosebleed typing all that out.

Esp. the ad hominem bit about my M.O., which allows you to skirt issues.

Oh well. The only thing which stands out is your rank hypocricy for me daring to make mention of Nick Squires - when your whole fantasy about Amanda trading sex for drugs with Rudy is based on newspaper reports.

I hope your moral outrage gets better soon. It's always telling when someone plays the man in these things.

We're close to dangerous things for Mignini, aren't we.

 

[Kaosium]

Laura Mezzetti is a court witness who was undergoing a cross questioning.

Authors and journalists reporting their opinions and stories are not witnesses.

There is no symmetry, legal moral or logical, between a court witness, and a person outside the court who is not a witness and is cross-questioned.

Laura Mezzetti's statement belongs to the trial papers.

Let's see that testimony then. Here's a man who would have heard it, Giancarlo Massei, the convicting judge in the trial of the first instance. Here's what he had to say on the subject of Amanda being wounded:

Amanda was not wounded; in the days following no one spoke of wounds that she might have had; the examination which was carried out on her when measures restricting her personal freedom were taken ruled out the presence of wounds.

So either Laura didn't say it, didn't say it before Massei, or if she did then Massei disregarded the testimony as erroneous because of the pictures Bill and DF posted which show it was just a hickey. Massei also references the examination Amanda underwent when consigned to prison.

After all, how many times would Laura have seen Amanda after the murder and before Amanda was incarcerated? Their cottage was a crime scene and no one was staying there, Amanda stayed with Raffaele. Laura probably only saw the mark briefly and misremembered what she saw, which is what the pictures say.

 

[Desert Fox]

I think it is not acceptable to call anyone lunatics. Especially victims or their friends and family.

Passions do get high, something we should likely try to forgive

 

[Planigale]

How did it occur that no DNA of Guede was under Meredith's fingernails ?

By the way, why should there be Amandas DNA under Meredith's fingernails, if Guede held Meredith and Amanda stabbed her ?

Greetings

This is an interesting circular discussion. I started it by saying that Stefanoni's claim that Knox's DNA on the knife indicated she used it in a stabbing motion was self evidently nonsense. This unsubstantiated statement by Stefanoni was then used by Nencini to say that the fatal injury was struck by Knox. I said provocatively even Mach recognised this was a fallacious argument. Mach came back essentially saying that whilst that may be true for the DNA on the handle the much smaller trace on the blade was blood and was deposited at the time of the murder. (The origin of this misapprehension is the use of the term 'biological fluid' - what this references is the biological material is extracted into a liquid.) So Mach attributes the misattributed biological fluid as coming from a deep scratch on Knox's neck. To be fair Mach then says he mis-remembered the actual testimony and the translation is awkward, perhaps it was a scab?. But all accept that the formal forensic examination of Knox did not reveal a scratch. Wannaknow then circles back to the beginning by saying Knox stabbed MK; when the whole discussion started with saying this was an utterly ridiculous and fallacious interpretation of the physical evidence. It shows how specious factoids persist. It shows why skeptic groups are needed to constantly challenge woo. This case is full of pseudoscience woo.

 

[Kaosium]

Yup, I was right. A rhetorical escape route.

What is clear us that most of this is, "line in the sand" stuff for you. I thought that perhaps you'd gotten a nosebleed typing all that out.

Esp. the ad hominem bit about my M.O., which allows you to skirt issues.

Oh well. The only thing which stands out is your rank hypocricy for me daring to make mention of Nick Squires - when your whole fantasy about Amanda trading sex for drugs with Rudy is based on newspaper reports.

I hope your moral outrage gets better soon. It's always telling when someone plays the man in these things.

We're close to dangerous things for Mignini, aren't we.

Bill, have you seen how Follain described it? Here's his article:

Italian prosecutors yesterday accused Amanda Knox of stabbing to death the Leeds Univeristy exchange student Meredith Kercher in a satanic ritual with the complicity of her former boyfriend and an Ivory Coast drifter.

 

[sept79]

I believe the following need to be periodically re-posted:

From Numbers:

"As you are probably aware, the raw data - electronic data files - from the DNA testing were withheld from the defense. Furthermore, contamination of some controls - positive and negative - was observed in the quantification data provided by the police forensic lab. Possibly they had not noticed it.

In addition, results from a large number of DNA samples has been withheld from the defense. These include many of the results of key importance, such as most of the rape kit findings, and finding from a purported semen stain on a pillow that had been under the victim's body. Presumably these results have been withheld because they are exculpatory.

The so-called inculpatory DNA evidence is clearly contamination."



From MichaelB:

"Of course fraud was discovered by Bongiorno and the Knox lawyers. It was finally revealed all the luminol prints and blobs had tested negative for blood, 36B failed to register in the Qubit and Steffi had lied her ass off about 36B "being in the order of a few hundred picograms" and assessed with Real-Time PCR and her RTIGF report had been falsified.

The trial should have ended then. She would have been out of a job and under investigation if that happened in the US. Every case she ever worked on would have been re-examined and people given new trials."

 

[Anode]

This is an interesting circular discussion. I started it by saying that Stefanoni's claim that Knox's DNA on the knife indicated she used it in a stabbing motion was self evidently nonsense. This unsubstantiated statement by Stefanoni was then used by Nencini to say that the fatal injury was struck by Knox. I said provocatively even Mach recognised this was a fallacious argument. Mach came back essentially saying that whilst that may be true for the DNA on the handle the much smaller trace on the blade was blood and was deposited at the time of the murder. (The origin of this misapprehension is the use of the term 'biological fluid' - what this references is the biological material is extracted into a liquid.) So Mach attributes the misattributed biological fluid as coming from a deep scratch on Knox's neck. To be fair Mach then says he mis-remembered the actual testimony and the translation is awkward, perhaps it was a scab?. But all accept that the formal forensic examination of Knox did not reveal a scratch. Wannaknow then circles back to the beginning by saying Knox stabbed MK; when the whole discussion started with saying this was an utterly ridiculous and fallacious interpretation of the physical evidence. It shows how specious factoids persist. It shows why skeptic groups are needed to constantly challenge woo. This case is full of pseudoscience woo.

I did notice that Planigale. My head is still spinning.

 

[Bill Williams]

Bill, have you seen how Follain described it? Here's his article:

My view is that by the time Follain released his book, he purged any reference to it, for obvious reasons.

He avoided being named in the Curt/Edda defamation charge for seeing it Mignini's way.

 

[Numbers]

Bill, have you seen how Follain described it? Here's his article:

The article quotes Raffaele Sollecito's defense lawyer Luca Maori as quoting the allegations of the prosecution as the crime being some kind of satanic ritual, like a scenario from a crime novel. Publication was 19 Oct 2008.

The full text is apparently only available to subscribers. Does anyone have more information on this to confirm that the prosecution clearly stated it was satanic, so that Mach can be reassured that the devil is indeed in the details - of what the prosecution really stated?

 

[LondonJohn]

The reason is that we asked the lawyers. (as individuals, not as PMF).

Oh right. It's just that if I, as a normal private citizen with no connection whatsoever to the case, contacted a lawyer connected to (for example) the recent conviction of Lewis Daynes for the murder of Breck Bednor here in the UK, and asked for copies of documents etc, do you know what the answer would be? Well, I probably wouldn't even get an answer. It's none of my business, you see, and it's a waste of the lawyers' time to be providing it to me. Unless, of course, that lawyer is not as ethically proper as (s)he should be, and that lawyer sees some sort of advantage from providing me with those documents etc.......

(Which comes back to my point from a while back: either those requesting and receiving this information are much more than the "concerned private citizens" they pertain to be, or the lawyers providing this information are playing a very interesting game.)

Maybe you see it as an online debate. I see it as a pro-murderers propaganda campaign. Not to forget how the currently suspected and provisionally convicted parties have taken advantage financially from the murder through book deals, how they try to de-legitimize the court findings through defamatory campaigns, and how the Kercher legal representatives were supporting the guilty scenario and the public prosecutions. It is obvious that we ate considered friends of the Kerchers, while the pro-Knox are not.

I don't care how you see it. I care what might be the incentive for those lawyers taking the time (unbilled, presumably) and the trouble to interact with "ordinary Joe" random strangers. And the incentive and motivation for the Kercher family to authorise these interactions, if they indeed have done so.

 

[Bill Williams]

The article quotes Raffaele Sollecito's defense lawyer Luca Maori as quoting the allegations of the prosecution as the crime being some kind of satanic ritual, like a scenario from a crime novel. Publication was 19 Oct 2008.

The full text is apparently only available to subscribers. Does anyone have more information on this to confirm that the prosecution clearly stated it was satanic, so that Mach can be reassured that the devil is indeed in the details - of what the prosecution really stated?

LOL! I almost tripped reading that. Thanks alot!

 

[LondonJohn]

My view is that by the time Follain released his book, he purged any reference to it, for obvious reasons.

He avoided being named in the Curt/Edda defamation charge for seeing it Mignini's way.

The Micheli transcripts make it perfectly clear that Mignini was offering a ritualistic explanation as a genuine possibility for a pre-planned act involving sexual elements and violence. Whether or not he was claiming that this was some sort of "ritual sacrifice" is not important (and it's a strawman to argue against this anyhow).

The transcripts show clearly, to me, that Mignini sought, in court, to explain what (he thought) had happened by proposing that Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba/Guede had deliberately chosen to instigate a sex-and-violence ritual upon Kercher, and that the date was very deliberately chosen for that reason (he even states that it "would have" been Hallowe'en, but inconveniently Kercher was not available for this sex-and-violence act on that night, so the following night had to suffice, and that was OK (per Mignini) because the following night still fell within the scope of the Day of the Dead etc.). It's beyond question that Mignini was linking the religious and pagan festivals around 31st October and 1st November to the murder, and that this indeed was the entire catalyst for the pre-planned action carried out by the "murderers".

It's irrelevant whether or not Mignini was suggesting that they went there with the explicit intention of killing Kercher (and I don't believe he was). It's relevant that he was suggesting that they went there to carry out some form of "sex-and-violence" ritual upon Kercher, and that this somehow escalated and got out of control, culminating in Kercher's death.

The real mystery should be why Mignini (and Machiavelli) now appears so desperate to dissociate himself from having put forward these theories. Perhaps he realised - or was told - that making those sorts of claims made him seem even more weird, religion-obsessed and conspiratorial than he already was........

 

[Bill Williams]

The real mystery should be why Mignini (and Machiavelli) now appears so desperate to dissociate himself from having put forward these theories. Perhaps he realised - or was told - that making those sorts of claims made him seem even more weird, religion-obsessed and conspiratorial than he already was........

that's what I meant by line in the sand. My view is that Machiavelli is not here, really, to prosecute Knox, but to defend Mignini.

The only mystery is why.

 

[carbonjam72]

The Micheli transcripts make it perfectly clear that Mignini was offering a ritualistic explanation as a genuine possibility for a pre-planned act involving sexual elements and violence. Whether or not he was claiming that this was some sort of "ritual sacrifice" is not important (and it's a strawman to argue against this anyhow).

The transcripts show clearly, to me, that Mignini sought, in court, to explain what (he thought) had happened by proposing that Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba/Guede had deliberately chosen to instigate a sex-and-violence ritual upon Kercher, and that the date was very deliberately chosen for that reason (he even states that it "would have" been Hallowe'en, but inconveniently Kercher was not available for this sex-and-violence act on that night, so the following night had to suffice, and that was OK (per Mignini) because the following night still fell within the scope of the Day of the Dead etc.). It's beyond question that Mignini was linking the religious and pagan festivals around 31st October and 1st November to the murder, and that this indeed was the entire catalyst for the pre-planned action carried out by the "murderers".

It's irrelevant whether or not Mignini was suggesting that they went there with the explicit intention of killing Kercher (and I don't believe he was). It's relevant that he was suggesting that they went there to carry out some form of "sex-and-violence" ritual upon Kercher, and that this somehow escalated and got out of control, culminating in Kercher's death.

The real mystery should be why Mignini (and Machiavelli) now appears so desperate to dissociate himself from having put forward these theories. Perhaps he realised - or was told - that making those sorts of claims made him seem even more weird, religion-obsessed and conspiratorial than he already was........

It seems like a bit of bait and switch with Mignini and the Italians here. They say whatever they need to say, or want to say, in front of the judge to keep the defendants in prison under harsh conditions.

Then the allegations are reported in the press and media, and the public gets primed to want to know, "what happens next"? Will the allegations hold up or not?

Then a conviction is obtained on other terms, so the allegations are disproven, but the defendants are guilty for other reasons, which the prosecution can then embrace as justifying their prosecution. The prosecution was "right" in the sense that the defendants are guilty. Rejecting their own earlier theories of guilt is a way of preserving their victory over the defendants. They can't be "wrong" in any way.

And the kicker, is that the context of the story THEN shifts in the the public's point of view. Now the question isn't whether there was a satanic ritual killing, but only are the defendants guilty of the acts for which they have NOW been convicted.

So the prosecutions original story is rejected by the courts, but the defendants guilt is affirmed on other grounds - even grounds entirely fabricated by the judges.

It's a moving goal post. A game of darts on a merry-go-round. The lies told to one judge are "good enough", until other bogus evidence and witnesses can be manufactured for the next judge. And the public tunes in for the next installment like some sick soap opera, where believability or evidence is totally an extravagance.

Is it entertaining? Does it make the authorities look good? Seems like that's all that matters, and we're rubes to expect any more from them. Not even Hellman had the freedom to call the cops criminals, although he says now that he wished he had.

Italy has systemic problems with the judiciary. This case isn't a one-off.

 

[carbonjam72]

Well, to be honest, I was really thinking of "misguided, obtuse, irresponsible, foolish and crass," but I settled for the catch-all "lunatics," which maybe isn't properly descriptive.

The Kerchers have clearly been advocating for guilt of two innocent people, and they have 10 million reasons to do so, otherwise known as euros.

They may well be blinded be grief. But It's hard not to see them as also blinded by the prospect of financial gains, however unjustly acquired.

The Kercher's grief doesn't justify injustice against the innocent. Fairly obvious to say. But those who won't think through the case, can't be expected to grasp the injustice.

I think the UK government should do more to help the Kerchers understand they have made a terrible mistake. The Kerchers need to hear it from someone they can trust.

 

[js202]

This is good, as far as it goes...

Maybe you see it as an online debate. I see it as a pro-murderers propaganda campaign. Not to forget how the currently suspected and provisionally convicted parties have taken advantage financially from the murder through book deals, how they try to de-legitimize the court findings through defamatory campaigns, and how the Kercher legal representatives were supporting the guilty scenario and the public prosecutions. It is obvious that we ate considered friends of the Kerchers, while the pro-Knox are not.

Which is *nowhere*. Your opinions are those of an anonymous, online crank, and matter not at all. Needless to say, the Kerchers would be far better off to make friends with the likes of Dr. Peter Gill than your ilk.

 

[LondonJohn]

Hilarious aside #3275:

1) Seattle-based stand-up comedian tweets humorously about the "special guests" for his upcoming one-man stand-up night, one of whom is Amanda Knox

2) A certain internet commentator finds this tweet (God knows how, since it's not even hashtagged to Knox - this particular commentator certainly must be extremely (and disturbingly) obsessed with tracking mentions of Knox on the internet......).

3) Said internet commentator broadcasts the "news" as a serious advertisement of Knox appearing on a TV show of some sort in Seattle. Clearly even the most rudimentary research skills are beyond this individual....

4) Other internet commentators react in a mixture of astonishment and disgust at this "news" (which, remember, was nothing more than a very obvious joke from the very start)

5) Some internet commentators even go so far as to identify this "news" as evidence of a "Knox PR campaign" in the run-up to the Italian Supreme Court ruling in March

6) Other internet commentators still seem unsure as to whether it's a genuine interview with Knox or what it actually is: a humorous tweet written in the style of a TV chat show host, to advertise an upcoming one-man stand-up show. They err on the side of vilification


I suppose that vindictiveness, hatred and low levels of common sense are good bedfellows.........................

 

[Desert Fox]

I suppose that vindictiveness, hatred and low levels of common sense are good bedfellows.........................

I think Amanda would be glad to be Amanda Knox, college graduate. . . . Will never happen though although this storm will eventually die.