Continuation Part 13: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Kauffer]

The one where you agree it hasn't been "formerly" [I presume you mean formally] admitted? I understand it very well thanks and I'm glad you agree.
So we must still wait for it to jump the hurdle, n'est-ce pas?

Nope, you haven't got it.

 

[carbonjam72]

Where exactly do you think you see the print? I've been trying to note places where Rudy likely left blood from his fingers/hand. So far, these include: vagina, knife blade imprint, pillow, wall, door handle, bathroom, downstairs, his own apartment. It seems likely that it would be on her pants and jacket as well.

Go back to Katy's pic oh how it was found. (Don't have it in front of me or I'd try to repost). But the first splotches from the bottom up, pretty much dead center of the jackets back.

The first lower splotch looks like a right thumb block print (ie the whole thumb), and the splotch above looks like the right index finger (printed on the thumb side, as though a bunch of fabric was pressed between the thumb and fore finger).

If it's still not clear to you I can try to do some image markup, but that would be later in the day. Dano seems to be able to snap these things out. Could ask Mach, bit I'm afraid he would find that Amanda had fingerpainted a confession).

 

[Diocletus]

Go back to Katy's pic oh how it was found. (Don't have it in front of me or I'd try to repost). But the first splotches from the bottom up, pretty much dead center of the jackets back.

The first lower splotch looks like a right thumb block print (ie the whole thumb), and the splotch above looks like the right index finger (printed on the thumb side, as though a bunch of fabric was pressed between the thumb and fore finger).

If it's still not clear to you I can try to do some image markup, but that would be later in the day. Dano seems to be able to snap these things out. Could ask Mach, bit I'm afraid he would find that Amanda had fingerprinted a confession).

I do see something on the sleeve, over to the right side, that looks like a thumb print. In the middle of the jacket, I also see a square shape that appears to correspond to the belt buckle that can be seen off to the left.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

I wonder how many currently-pending applications have been sitting at the admissibility stage for 15+ months? An even better question: what percent of cases that spend 15+ months before a decision on admissibility are ultimately declared inadmissible without a hearing? I think that as time goes by, the statistics are turning more and more in favor of communication and a hearing on the merits. And, once an Article 6 case gets to a hearing on the merits, the odds look very good that a violation will be found.

ECHR applications are prioritised and can be grouped, so for example I would imagine applications relating to events taking place in Ukraine would have a higher priority and would be fairly numerous, pushing back or at least stalling other applications. I still doubt anything will be heard either way about the application until after 25th March 2015.

 

[KarmaComing]

Nope, you haven't got it.

Err, what is it I haven't got precisely?

 

[js202]

My vote?

delete

 

[Diocletus]

ECHR applications are prioritised and can be grouped, so for example I would imagine applications relating to events taking place in Ukraine would have a higher priority and would be fairly numerous, pushing back or at least stalling other applications. I still doubt anything will be heard either way about the application until after 25th March 2015.

Really? You think Ukraine has stalled the whole ECHR?

When you say "heard," you mean "heard" by you? Probably true, if so.

 

[Bill Williams]

What is the possible upside for Italy to request Ms Knox's extradition if the verdict is confirmed? With a looming application to the ECHR, multitudinous claims of rights violations and their own advisers assuring them that Article 6 violations are sure to be found by the court, I think it unlikely.

But, I now think it more likely than not that Cassation will not confirm in March.

Who/where are these advisors?

I have been wrong in everything I have predicted, so I'm not going to predict if Italy fashions together an extradition request.

The pro-guilt lobby will obviously have a differing view of it, but from where I sit there simply is no upside to Italy doing so. Although not directly connected to the request about an American, part of it will be Raffaele's own questions about the way faux-evidence against Amanda is used against him - and he'll be the one in jail.

As he says in his appeals document (which guilters should actually read), the convicting Judge (Nencini) simply cannot cherry pick factoids out of a single piece of evidence.

For instance, if the court is going to use coerced statements from Amanda to convict her, then they cannot ignore that those statements say nothing about him.

If the convicting court is going to use cell-phone tower evidence against Amanda, then what's what got to do with him? (For Pete's sake, even some guilters are pointing that out about Nencini, his misuse/misunderstanding of cell-tower data!)

If Nencini is reversed, it will be because Cassazione recognizes that he uses the same item of evidence, to convict one but only by ignoring the implication for the other if it is accepted.

Add to this Nencini's speculations about motive. It is actually not what Machiavelli would have you believe - Nencini accepts Rudy Guede's story (the only source of it) that Amanda and Meredith were fighting about missing rent money. Well, on what basis does Nencini cherry-pick that factoid from rudy's story, when the totality of it is that Rudy also says that Meredith let him in because they were having a "date"?

It is not Italy's judiciary which makes an extradition request - so the urge to protect the party of the PMs, as well as the reputation of DNA labs will not be the same.

When considering extradition, the Italian political folks will need to chew over whether or not they want those kind of cherry-picking sins to be shown to the world. Or shown to the US State Department which ultimately decides if a US citizen will be allowed to disappear into such lunacy.

I don't think Italy will do it. (But then I've been wrong before!)

 

[Samson]

Who/where are these advisors?

I have been wrong in everything I have predicted, so I'm not going to predict if Italy fashions together an extradition request.

The pro-guilt lobby will obviously have a differing view of it, but from where I sit there simply is no upside to Italy doing so. Although not directly connected to the request about an American, part of it will be Raffaele's own questions about the way faux-evidence against Amanda is used against him - and he'll be the one in jail.

As he says in his appeals document (which guilters should actually read), the convicting Judge (Nencini) simply cannot cherry pick factoids out of a single piece of evidence.

For instance, if the court is going to use coerced statements from Amanda to convict her, then they cannot ignore that those statements say nothing about him.

If the convicting court is going to use cell-phone tower evidence against Amanda, then what's what got to do with him? (For Pete's sake, even some guilters are pointing that out about Nencini, his misuse/misunderstanding of cell-tower data!)

If Nencini is reversed, it will be because Cassazione recognizes that he uses the same item of evidence, to convict one but only by ignoring the implication for the other if it is accepted.

Add to this Nencini's speculations about motive. It is actually not what Machiavelli would have you believe - Nencini accepts Rudy Guede's story (the only source of it) that Amanda and Meredith were fighting about missing rent money. Well, on what basis does Nencini cherry-pick that factoid from rudy's story, when the totality of it is that Rudy also says that Meredith let him in because they were having a "date"?

It is not Italy's judiciary which makes an extradition request - so the urge to protect the party of the PMs, as well as the reputation of DNA labs will not be the same.

When considering extradition, the Italian political folks will need to chew over whether or not they want those kind of cherry-picking sins to be shown to the world. Or shown to the US State Department which ultimately decides if a US citizen will be allowed to disappear into such lunacy.

I don't think Italy will do it. (But then I've been wrong before!)

Bill, Sherlock Holmes is very exact about the bra clasp and the bath mat print. All the other discussions are irrelevant. For example the fact Meredith was definitely dead when Raffaele opened the Naruto cartoon. These facts need prioritizing. I am getting confused myself now about what really matters for Mr Sollecito when in his obedient manner he attends his execution in a few weeks.
ETA I just reread and realise it was Amanda this time under discussion, still, what I say stands.

 

[Wannaknow]

I don't agree - whatever the stain was, it had been stepped on as it had been smeared by shoe prints. That can't have happened while Meredith was lying on top of it. It also doesn't follow that she had to be "lying passive and injured" on the ground while being sexually assaulted. Guede could very well have threatened her into compliance initially (hence the small injuries to her hands and face).

The strongest support for your argument would be the blood spatter on the bra. Worth noting, though, that most of the blood was on the right strap, where the "minor" injury was, rather than on the left side, where the two larger injuries were.

Yes, that is strange. Furthermore, there was Meredith's shirt above the straps. Yet they were soaked in blood.

I think that the bra, or to be more precise, the straps, were laid in the victim's blood after the bra had been cut off. It must have lain there quite a time. Afterwards the bra was deposited in front of Meredith's foot.

So it's possible the bra was removed at some point during that final struggle, but either prior to or at the same time as the fatal injury.

No. It was removed after the fatal injury, because Meredith breathed blood onto it.

It doesn't in itself suggest postmortem sexual assault; if anything, it suggests she was already undressed to her bra when she was first stabbed.

I had this thought too. It is even possible that she was in bed already.
(though, in any case, I still wonder why there was no cover on the duvet). On the other side, there is Guedes DNA on the Adidas sweater. This points to Meredith's being fully clothed at the time of the attack.

Perhaps the bra was removed shortly before her death. In any case, the pillow was pushed under Meredith's body to facilitate the tearing or cutting off of the bra. Otherwise the clasp would not have been found under her back.

All the best

 

[Desert Fox]

Oh no!
This on top of the big bag of money Italy will have give Britney when the ECHR ruling comes down. Throw in the fears of Greek contagion and the armies of cloned Wolly Mammoths massing on the Armenian border (headed for the Dardanelles apparently) and what do you get. Market tremors leading to Global economic meltdown!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look, lots of decision makers and market analysts read this thread. Could you at least put predictions of this kind behind spoiler tags.

Look, I think Amanda and Raff are innocent based on the evidence. . . .Maybe you think they are guilty or maybe you are just being snotty.
In general, with wrongful convictions, every year imprisoned is about one million dollars. That is why Arkansas played games with the West Memphis Three.

 

[Bill Williams]

Bill, Sherlock Holmes is very exact about the bra clasp and the bath mat print. All the other discussions are irrelevant. For example the fact Meredith was definitely dead when Raffaele opened the Naruto cartoon. These facts need prioritizing. I am getting confused myself now about what really matters for Mr Sollecito when in his obedient manner he attends his execution in a few weeks.
ETA I just reread and realise it was Amanda this time under discussion, still, what I say stands.

There's truth. And then there's judicial truth. And then there's Italian judicial truth.

I've read Raffaele's appeals document in a very stilted Google-translate. I've checked key points with Italian speakers/readers.

I do not know what to say about the bra-clasp or the bath-mat track. For whatever reason, Bongiorno's strategy in going into THIS Cassazione session, is to attack Nencini's cherry-picking, but also a very well-defined kind of cherry picking.

Nencini makes guilt-sounding points by cherry-picking out of one item of evidence something he believes leads to an irresistable inference for guilt - for both of them, when that point tends to exonerate the other. Why? Because Nencini is clear that there is no separation of the two defendants (what convicts one, convicts the other), yet he relies on evidence which allegedly is damning to one, but which actually acquits the other!

Yet the cherry picking is as in the appeals document - if Nencini is going to use Amanda's confused statement to convict her, then he cannot just leave it at that, acc. to Bongiorno Nencini has to go further to explain why he'd use that which tends to exonerate Sollecito because there's no mention of him it it.

You see: the pro-guilt lobby want to sell this as Raffaele throwing Amanda under a bus. Bongiorno, in fact, is saying that the conviction against both of them is flawed, because of this cherry picking, and because of Nencini's insistence that the defences cannot be separated.

Nencini also does this in relation to motive. He cherry-picks the "rent money" motive from Rudy's story, while conveniently ignoring that Rudy also says that it was Meredith who let him it. That should destroy using "Amanda as keyholder", but in Nencini's mind it does not.

Cassazione is already on the record as a "judicial fact" that they cannot open up independent DNA analysis and call into question folk like Stefanoni, lest all convictions since 1986 be called into question.

So Bongiorno is taking another tack. If Cassazione confirms Nencini, then it becomes a judicial fact in Italy that cherry-picking by judges is allowed.

 

[lonepinealex]

Sorry for being dim, but how could Italy not at least look like they want to extradite Knox if they confirm the convictions next month?

Is there really a scenario in which they send Sollecito to jail and just... sort of forget about Knox? Seems unlikely to me, given it's all about her anyway.

 

[Desert Fox]

Sorry for being dim, but how could Italy not at least look like they want to extradite Knox if they confirm the convictions next month?

Is there really a scenario in which they send Sollecito to jail and just... sort of forget about Knox? Seems unlikely to me, given it's all about her anyway.

My understanding is that the Minister of Justice is a political figure and he could decide to deep six it.

 

[lonepinealex]

deep six?

 

[Bill Williams]

Sorry for being dim, but how could Italy not at least look like they want to extradite Knox if they confirm the convictions next month?

Is there really a scenario in which they send Sollecito to jail and just... sort of forget about Knox? Seems unlikely to me, given it's all about her anyway.

I don't think you are being dim. Not at all.

I am getting reports, echoing Vibio's on this very thread, that the Porta a Porta broadcast (on a major Italian network) was seen as generally very favourable to Raffaele. What played well, apparently, were the character statements from Raffaele's home town. The Bruno-interviewer was seen as very tough on Raffaele, so as to be seen not to be giving R. a free ride - probably similar to CNN's Chris Cuomo who lit in to Amanda Knox when she was on his show - but which left Cuomo (IIRC) quipping later that he was impressed with her and felt she was probably innocent.

There is a possibility here that Cassazione is looking for a solution to this that avoids sending a local, well-regarded Italian son to prison, while at the same time risking opening up the Italian "judicial truths" about all this to international scrutiny. (Then again Cassazione might not care about that!)

The thing which is hard to accept on my side of the Atlantic is that courts could be so swayed by internal public opinion. Here, "the public good" is factored into the charge process, not the final appeal-disposition!

Still none of this really deals with your question. One can only hope that Section 5 of Cassazione connects the dots the way you are doing.

 

[Bill Williams]

deep six?

Bury it. Put the request for extradition into a pile of paper, so that he can say he's dealing with it, but just never get around to filling out the right forms. Or "accidentally" make a mistake on one of the forms, giving the Americans an out - then the Italian justice minister calls in some medium level bureaucrat close to retirement, and fires him for the gaffe!

 

[christianahannah]

Yes, that is strange. Furthermore, there was Meredith's shirt above the straps. Yet they were soaked in blood.

I think that the bra, or to be more precise, the straps, were laid in the victim's blood after the bra had been cut off. It must have lain there quite a time. Afterwards the bra was deposited in front of Meredith's foot.


No. It was removed after the fatal injury, because Meredith breathed blood onto it.



I had this thought too. It is even possible that she was in bed already.
(though, in any case, I still wonder why there was no cover on the duvet). On the other side, there is Guedes DNA on the Adidas sweater. This points to Meredith's being fully clothed at the time of the attack.

Perhaps the bra was removed shortly before her death. In any case, the pillow was pushed under Meredith's body to facilitate the tearing or cutting off of the bra. Otherwise the clasp would not have been found under her back.

All the best

There was a discussion concerning this (the removal of Meredith's bra) some time back.

Meredith was not undressed down to her bra, she was still wearing the white shirt as it was described pushed up (I do not recall if it was on or off her arms but think it was on). The bra being cut/torn/ripped in three different areas (the two straps, and the band/clasp area) suggests to some that it was removed after Meredith was dead (you cannot remove her bra unless all three areas are cut with the white shirt being on her arms). Of course, if the shirt sleeves on not on her arms one wouldn't have to cut the three areas to remove the bra.

Interesting what you wrote about the pillow and the clasp being behind her back. I hadn't thought of that.

 

[Vibio]

I am getting reports, echoing Vibio's on this very thread, that the Porta a Porta broadcast (on a major Italian network) was seen as generally very favourable to Raffaele.

The editorial department of the show... the artistic direction.... was indeed favorable to Raff.

Raff's performance was quite another matter however: he was evasive, insincere, cocky. He sounded like someone lying.

BTW: this was not just a "major Italian network", it was on Italy's State run premier network.

What played well, apparently, were the character statements from Raffaele's home town.

True. Again: the editorial choices that the show made... the choice to film in his hometown, keeping the interviewees limited to old friends. And it was all indeed favorable to Raff.

The Bruno-interviewer was seen as very tough on Raffaele, so as to be seen not to be giving R. a free ride - probably similar to CNN's Chris Cuomo who lit in to Amanda Knox when she was on his show - but which left Cuomo (IIRC) quipping later that he was impressed with her and felt she was probably innocent.

Wrong on all counts. Wishful thinking.

Even though Vespa let his skepticism show through, he was, over all, very light on Raff...yet I think anyone watching the show would get the impression Vespa personally believes Raff is guilty.

Honestly this interview was not one of Vespa's better moments... I think he seemed somewhat uninterested.

On the second half of the show he interviewed the opera singer and TV personality Katia Ricciarelli... Ricciarelli and Sollecito... a tired, scrapping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel line up.

Also (as an aside): Vespa cannot be compared to Cuomo. There are no US TV journalists left that can compare to Vespa. The last was probably Mike Wallace.

 

[Bill Williams]

The Bruno-interviewer was seen as very tough on Raffaele, so as to be seen not to be giving R. a free ride - probably similar to CNN's Chris Cuomo who lit in to Amanda Knox when she was on his show - but which left Cuomo (IIRC) quipping later that he was impressed with her and felt she was probably innocent.

Wrong on all counts. Wishful thinking.

Even though Vespa let his skepticism show through, he was, over all, very light on Raff...yet I think anyone watching the show would get the impression Vespa personally believes Raff is guilty.


Also (as an aside): Vespa cannot be compared to Cuomo. There are no US TV journalists left that can compare to Vespa. The last was probably Mike Wallace.

If one ignores the, "Wrong on all counts. Wishful thinking.".......

The accounts I'm hearing from you and others seem to match. Probably the issue here is the evaluation of those accounts..... Vespa's skepticism showing through was also cited as a reason Vespa was hard on Raffaele.... and that Vespa's core audience would have expected nothing less.

So the detail can differ, and I'd differ with your assessment "wrong on all counts".....

But consider this a minor victory for communication, Vibio. We're pretty much on the same page!