Continuation Part 14: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Bill Williams]

In the words of Machiavelli, using Machiavelli's own deceptive stile:

... my position is that Amanda was a prostitute and Guede was her pimp.

Nice try. No cigar!

Yet it is true that it is plausible that Machiavelli once said this. It is just that there is no in context posting which has him saying this.

 

[Machiavelli]

Nice try. No cigar!

Yet it is true that it is plausible that Machiavelli once said this. It is just that there is no in context posting which has him saying this.

I just never said this. Nor thought it. It would make no sense to think 21yo Guede was a pimp.

It tells more about your minds actually. How they are ready, maybe designed to make up and believe myths.

 

[Machiavelli]

Now, now. Let's be fair. Apparently students singing is a thing in Italy just as it is in the USA. And on one of her first nights out, Amanda didn't know she was in the presence of people so easily scandalized.

She was not singing in a bar with friends. She was singing alone.

Imagine you are in a public or social place, like on a bus, at a restaurant or sitting with friends, and you suddenly start laughing alone.
People around you won't feel exactly confortable. They would immeditaly perceive you as possibly crazy, odd, isolated.
It's not singing or laughing. It's the doing that alone thing.

 

[AmyStrange]

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Let's make clear that I can say Knox suffers from narcissistic personality disorder every other day without giving any particular explanation, as long as I am talking with people who state without any proof that Mignini is corrupt, that this or that guy violated the law, that the media did this or that, that doctors performed fake HIV tests, that Stefanoni lied or that she doesn't have a PhD.

-

Yes, both sides of the case insult the other side constantly.

The only real problem I have with Mignini is that he is not honest nor is he out for real justice. If he were, he would have made sure the interrogation was taped, not because he had to, but because it would have been the right thing to do. That would have been honest and real justice.

He also would have made sure he had more than enough proof (tons of pictures and videos) to prove that his gut feeling that the break-in was staged was right.

He wouldn't have waited to have the temperature taken. He would have ordered it taken immediately.

He wouldn't have allowed PL to be arrested the way he was. He would have investigated first.

This is just some of the things that seem to say to me that Mignini doesn't really care about being honest and isn't looking for real justice. The whole case is based on confirmation bias and Mignini is full of it.

To me, that all spells corruption.

And oh yes, by the way, confirmation bias is a form of narcissism and you got it bad,

d

-

 

[Dan O.]

Nice try. No cigar!

Yet it is true that it is plausible that Machiavelli once said this. It is just that there is no in context posting which has him saying this.

I gave fair warning that there was deception. But I also include the context. Hover over the ellipse to see it.

 

[Dan O.]

-


-

Yes, both sides of the case insult the other side constantly.

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We aren't trying to insult them. We are only tapping them on the back of the head when they don't remember properly.

It would be so much friendlier if they would stick to arguing the evidence instead of injecting their beliefs. With evidence we can dig to the source of that evidence and analyze it together to find the truth. With beliefs we end up digging into them personally and nothing resembling the truth can come from that.

 

[kwill]

Imagine you are in a public or social place, like on a bus, at a restaurant or sitting with friends, and you suddenly start laughing alone.
People around you won't feel exactly confortable. They would immeditaly perceive you as possibly crazy, odd, isolated.
It's not singing or laughing. It's the doing that alone thing.

Here's the problem, Mach. All you have to back up your assertion that Knox was pathological is the testimony of the English women. And all they said was that she bothered them because she sang one time during dinner and she was unsympathetic at the police station, and that Meredith had told them she was strange. Everything else seems to be you painting your own canvas and completely ignoring what other people who knew her better than the English women knew her had to say.

Why does the word of the guys downstairs mean nothing? Why does what the Italian women upstairs said not add to the portrait?

It's like, if someone says something negative about Knox, they're seeing the real her. If someone says something neutral or positive, she's fooling them. When you add the fact that her life before Perugia and after Perugia includes not one soul who has described this pathology, it ought to give you pause.

I know it won't.

I think that's because you're so invested in this creation you've been nurturing for years, but that's on you. It's got nothing to do with Amanda.

 

[MichaelB]

In fairness, I do not believe Machiavelli ever said this. I, too, once claimed he did and thought I had read him posting this on IIP.... but I cannot find it.

He didn't quite say that. He told me in a PM that the cottage was a brothel and Rudy was a client who went there for sex that night.

 

[Dan O.]

She was not singing in a bar with friends. She was singing alone.

Imagine you are in a public or social place, like on a bus, at a restaurant or sitting with friends, and you suddenly start laughing alone.
People around you won't feel exactly confortable. They would immeditaly perceive you as possibly crazy, odd, isolated.
It's not singing or laughing. It's the doing that alone thing.

The failure of the friends to join in shows antisocial behavior on their part. Haven't they learned any social skills.

 

[Dan O.]

He didn't quite say that. He told me in a PM that the cottage was a brothel and Rudy was a client who went there for sex that night.

That sounds like something one would have to learn from first hand experience. Machiavelli hasn't told us how long he has been in Perugia. Prior to the Italian girls moving in around August/September 2007, we don't know what was happening in that cottage. There was one mention of a person climbing up to the window which would later be Filomena's room to meet his girl. There have been unsourced rumors that the cottage had been occupied by drug dealers. It's entirely possible that Rudy went to that cottage to hook up with a prostitute. But how would Machiavelli know if he wasn't there.

 

[griffinmill]

The failure of the friends to join in shows antisocial behavior on their part. Haven't they learned any social skills.

She covers for this in her book the same way you cover for her. Whatever she did was perceived as weird, attention grabbing, and not normal. It was apparently significant enough that she feels a need to explain it.

So you either believe a bunch of people think she acted strangely, or you believe that AK was just culturally misunderstood as she claims.

And before it gets said, this is not evidence of guilt or innocence.

 

[griffinmill]

Let me address some of the issues brought out above by Bill and acby.

The ECHR is a multinational organization, part of the Council of Europe, which is a confederation of 47 States spanning the European subcontinent, devoted to the promotion of human rights and democracy. As some of us have stated in previous posts here, Ukraine, Russia, Italy, and Turkey are the States with the highest number of pending cases at the ECHR. The ECHR has in its judgments found Italy in violation of the Convention many times. I am not aware of any information that claims that the ECHR has ever shown favoritism for or against any State. Before becoming too concerned about such issues, one should check for any indication of favoritism or bias in the history of the ECHR.

In terms of the selection of case-law, there is a misunderstanding about that. It may be that guilters simply don't wish to invest the time and effort at educating themselves, or have a different agenda, but if one looks into how the ECHR functions, one can understand that there is no "cherry-picking" of judgments. The ECHR starts adjucation with the Convention and with its extant case-law, a certain sense of what are internationally accepted judicial procedures and defendant's rights, and proceeds to judge cases based on common law principles, including following precedent but adapting or evolving law to meet new situations. These concepts are actually not that complicated, although perhaps they are more familiar to persons living in the US, UK, and other common law countries.

Take, for example, the issue of someone under interrogation. The case of Salduz v Turkey [GC] 36391/02 27/11/2008 established that information derived from such a person, who was not provided with counsel during the interrogation, could not be used to convict that person of a crime. Previously, the ECHR had hinted at such ideas, but not really stated them. In fact, the original Chamber judgment in Salduz did not find the lack of a lawyer during the interrogation a violation. It was only after the appeal to the Grand Chamber that this position became case law.

If one starts with the Guide on Article 6: Right to a Fair Trial (criminal limb), available at:
http://echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=caselaw/analysis&c=#n13693846752619364551309_pointer

one can begin to learn the cases and the case-law. One can say that the ECHR has cherry-picked the cases. Additional cases can be found at HUDOC, which is the ECHR library search data-base.

In terms of counter-example cases, those wishing to find them are free to do so. That such counter-example cases have not been presented by guilters may be considered evidence that the counter-examples do not exist.

There seems to be a misunderstanding. I never suggested the ECHR cherry picks anything. I suggested YOU cherry pick ECHR decisions to bolster your arguments.

I also suggested it would help your credibility if you posted ECHR decisions which rejected claims of Art 6, or the various other claims that might arise in AK's case. That way, we would see the nuances of their decision process, not just the limited prisms of Salduz or other selected cases you have pointed out.

If I am going to be persuaded by your arguments, I want to see how the ECHR has rejected similar claims in the past, undoubtedly made by many defandents, so I can compare those cases to AK's.

 

[AmyStrange]

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She covers for this in her book the same way you cover for her. Whatever she did was perceived as weird, attention grabbing, and not normal. It was apparently significant enough that she feels a need to explain it.

So you either believe a bunch of people think she acted strangely, or you believe that AK was just culturally misunderstood as she claims.

And before it gets said, this is not evidence of guilt or innocence.

-

I personally believe she acted oddly, Raffaele also, but I myself have been called odd and creepy, and I admit that many times I have acted weirdly like singing at work, all 8 hours of it, and very loudly, and I have been told many times to stop or lower my voice.

I still kept doing it.

I'm crazy like that, but I never killed anyone, but none of you know that for sure. Only I can know that with a 100% certainty. Confirmation bias will make you think you are 100% sure of something that you could not possibly know with such certainty.

In short, I agree with griffinmill. This is not evidence of guilt or innocence,

d

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[Kaosium]

You know what?
You are making up that "the prosecution must have rebutted". This is you inventing the rules.

LOL! No, I was guessing that the prosecution wouldn't just let that stand. Are you saying they did? Dr. Sarah Gino said that the prosecution had given false information in court and the prosecution just let it stand?

That's...not making them look any better, Machiavelli. Or less like they lied to the court.

Obviously not. Why should a statement before Micheli undermine something?

Nevermind, when I wrote that I'd forgotten just why that was brought up originally

It's pure ridicule. Nobody has a "duty" of some kind to state a rebuttal of an alleged expression of a defence expert. And that anyway is completely irrelevant since the trial papers are made of transcripts that contain the direct testimony of Stefanoni, they are not made of interpretations and statements by Sarah Gino. Only what Stefanoni stated matters to the point. Sarah Gino matters zero.

Massei quoted Dr. Sarah Gino on this point saying the prosecution had given information contrary to the truth in court, obviously he thought Dr. Gino's opinion mattered for something.

Expert witnesses are also paid to provide opinions and their expertise. If you think that she is “corrupt” or that such opinion is a “lie” it’s up to you to prove it. You may say that, as long as you prove it. The facts are that Stefanoni told about false negatives on confirmatory tests on the luminol prints immediately in her first 2008 questioning; she also said that “normally we don’t do confirmatory tests on latent prints” because they expect them to turn out negative. To be fair, she doesn’t speak about TMB tests explicitly. So you may still claim that she didn’t mention specifically TMB tests. But nothing else.

There were TMB tests done on the luminol hits, Dr. Stefanoni omitted them from her RTIGF and gave the court, including the convicting judge, the impression that she said they just laid luminol where they'd also done TMB tests which were negative. Regarding your claim, TMB tests are not confirmatory tests neither is her contention that failing to do confirmatory tests acceptable forensic practice. Thus both incompetent and corrupt.

Somehow you managed to miss the number of times that I corrected all of you on this forum. So let’s repeat what stays unchallenged like before: TMB tests are logically irrelevant because TMB is less sensitive and less specific than luminol, and also because they react to the same array of false negatives: there are no substances known to be reactive to luminol but not to TMB, certainly there is no substance with such property is known as probable or plausible good to explain bare footprints.

That's simply not true and it has been debunked several times with cites from scientific literature and forensics textbooks. It's also kinda stupid considering you're arguing that standard practice of the Polizia Scientifica was 'logically irrelevant.' So again, incompetent and corrupt--for the win!

Hearing may 23, 2009, pages 148-149

Here's how that comes out with google translate:

QUESTION - I point the laser pointer with a point between the 3 highlighted on the floor and the door jamb of Meredith's room, the victim, of the samples were carried out there?
ANSWER - was made only of the luminol test there.QUESTION - So there were made of samples in front of the door, that is, in other words ...
ANSWER - No, in front of the door is the 3, excuse me, the 3 ... APPLICATION - Next to the door, the laser pointer shows me my ... here, this door here.
ANSWER - Yes, but the door excuse me end here, I unfortunately have the pointer that I do not tip, here, the door starts here and ends here, so 3 is pretty much in the middle.
APPLICATION - All right, were made of ...
ANSWER - Yes, and also a little bit more inside the door. QUESTION - Samples of luminol?
ANSWER - No, both samples of luminol and this sampling is that it is the third, but also something that is more inside, maybe we can even see ...
QUESTION - Where exactly was carried out this type of biological sampling before luminol?​

They're talking about where they laid luminol in front of Meredith's door and it looks like Stefanoni says just the luminol test was done. Does it read differently in Italian? At any rate if it wasn't this excerpt specifically it doesn't matter because in the final analysis that's not a refutation of Massei quoting Sara Gino on this point without rebuttal from the prosecution (in his report) and now you have given the impression the prosecution didn't rebut, they just let it stand.

Stefanoni was never caught lying. You are making u stuff. As for Vecchiotti, I can’t guess what you attempted to quote, but the only evidence of lying you will find in the C&V report in there will be Vecchiotti’s lying.

No, those links lead to pages where Vecchiotti and Conti gave copious evidence of Stefanoni's lies on the evidence.

The fact that the sample was in the magnitude of hundreds of picograms is absolutely true, that happens to be a correct esteem. But in fact Stefanoni’s response was much more articulate and full of caveats. She also stated from the beginning that it was a low template sample, and I mean from the beginning. Your false narrative calling her a person “caught lying” is just making up stuff, nothing but stupid and childish invention.

"From the beginning" means before judge Micheli in 2008, page 21: Stefanoni is asked whether she thinks that peaks of the knife chart are “very low”, under what she would consider “at risk”, she answers “yes, yes, yes”. In the same Oct. 2008 hearing, just after the line when she answers the defense question about the magnitude (“hundreds of pictograms”) she is asked by the defence “this made think you think it could be a low copy number?” she answer “Yes it’s possible, of course!” (hearing of Oct. 8. P. 178).

Stefanoni already stated it was a low copy number, the esteem about hundreds of pictograms is correct (based on the Fluorimeter sensitivity and volume) and she did not say that in the way C&V report that, since previously she pointed out many caveats about the amount, saying she didn’t know. Dut the defence attorney wanted to know a rough esteem whether she thought it was like in the magnitude of pictograms or nanograms, and she said (correctly) she thought magnitude was the hundreds of pictograms.

A sample that was described as 'hundreds of picograms' was by definition not low template, the definition of that generally being 100 pgs with 200 being the highest I've ever seen. What she had was lab contamination from a sample that quantified negative with 'peaks' as low as 15 RFUs and only a handful exceeding 50 RFUs. If you look at the NIST trials you find that's consistent with the 10 pg samples in the trial. She had no basis whatsoever to claim the sample was 'hundreds of picograms' and the 'very low peaks' ought to have clued her in on that. So again, incompetent and corrupt is the most likely explanation.

Come on you are smart enough, you can understand. You can understand it makes absolutely no sense to lie about the method of quantification telling about a more sensitive method, given that the truth is that the profile was extracted with an instrument which is less sensitive, so it must have been even bigger, necessarily bigger than the minimum concentration threshold to be detected by the Fluorimeter.

Machiavelli it wasn't detected by the Qubit, there's no reason to think there was any biological material from the knife in that sample, just contamination from her lab, quite possibly the Speed Vac machine. Her pretending that she'd quantified it with Real Time PCR and it was 'hundreds of picograms' came in October of 2008 when the defense had none of that documentation that would show she was lying. They didn't get that until July 30, 2009. You have claimed before that turning over the SALs and other records is not usually done, thus when she said that in October of 2008 she had the expectation the data that would show she was lying would never be revealed.

Well you should use his work not only to read what his opinions of Stefanoni are, but also consider it as a trial paper which he has signed, what he said and what he didn’t say is on the records, and he certainly had the possibility to witness all what Stefanoni did, hence, by definition Stefanoni did not hide any action she performed.

From what he saw he freaked, wrote a scathing report and others asked for more data but Stefanoni begged the judge not to let him have it so the defense had to make due without it.

No, she wrote that there are extra alleles. But anyway, she made clear that her list of extra alleles and stutters was her interpretation and her own opinion, and she gave the chart – including the peaks heights - to be discussed before the judge.

That chart omitted all the peaks outside Meredith's and Raffaele's in defiance of the standards she testified in court that she was aware of and observed. That's what those links to C&V show, I even walked you through it once, electropherogram by electropherogram.

Well, you are lying. You went through this, but you didn’t succeed in making any valid point.

LOL! No, I'm not lying. I linked the requisite page from C&V and then showed you exactly what they meant.

The truth is Stefanoni had already provided the chart with all the peaks heights before the hearing of Oct. 8. 2008. This is evident from her testimony at pages 98-99-100.

Machiavelli, the links I keep posting to C&V (and in the post I linked) demonstrate what you're saying is untrue, both by quoting from the trial record and linking the electropherograms so you can see for yourself what she submitted as of Oct 8, 2008. There are no peaks heights, that causes Pascali to ask for the 'lot files.' Here's the electropherogram without peak heights, that's what he's talking about here:

Question (Prof. Pascali): “There a lot of peaks with neither a name nor a number of R.S.U.[=R.F.U.?]; can you give us the lot files so we can interpret them?”

She discussed with the other experts and she points out that there are peaks heights indicated on the charts, and she points out that “this is the information I was requested to write in the chart”.

Yes, Stefanoni was caught and had to cough up more info, I'm not sure why you think that means she was right to hide it!

I will conclude my post stating again in the most adamant fashion that all your allegations you brought here against Stefanoni are false. The fact that everything is made up is manifest, this response of mine alone includes quotes which belie you completely on a series of points, itself should show how your entire system of beliefs about the allegations on Stefanoni is false. You claim you took the time to read things, in fact it looks like you never got near to trial papers. What you do is a grotesque, nonsensical attempt of cherry picking and twisting, coupled with an adamant denial of the fact that it is obvious that Vecchiotti is a liar.

Let's sum up just a few of your errors:

- You ignore and you deny Stefanoni presented the whole charts of profile including the height peaks.

- You ignore the implications of the fact that Potenza took part to the porforming of the DNA tests on the knife.

- You falsely stated that Stefanoni attempted to make it look like a high template, while you denied and you ignored the truth that Stefanoni stated it was a low template sample already in 2008.

- You falsely asserted that Stefanoni maintained they didn't make any test in the corridoor, "only luminol" (while she actually carefully restricted the observation only to one specific point near the door, and discussed with the defence to understand the location they were asking about).

- You stated that the prosecution or Stefanoni were "caught lying", when there is absolutely zero trace of this in the papers, it's completely made up.

- You stated that the prosecution attempted to "hide" laboratory records, saying they released information only because were "ordered" to, while facts are the prosecution themselves let them know about the documentation and they themselves stated they were ready to give it to the defence.

- You omit and forget that the "differences" (omission in the report) like the TMB test not reported, has not been "discovered" by the defence but is insted information that was provided by Stefanoni and the prosecution temselves (you refuse to draw the due implications from that). Thus, it is nothing but a documental failure/imprecision, has nothing to do with fictional "catching" people "lying".

- You make up that the prosecution has a "duty of rebuttal" of Sarah Gino's statements, otherwise according to you they become "true" even thought they don't exist in the trial record, and that is complete making up stuff.

- You don't realize how your Vecchiotti-based accusation of "lying" about the "hundred of picograms" not only was shown to be incorrect, because through later calculation of the detection threashold of fluorimeter and volume it came out the esteem of magnitude was correct, but also above all because it is completely irrelevent, since it would make no sense as a "lie" (given the lower sensitivity of fluorimeter, given that Potenza was there during the test, and given that she had stated multiple times it was a low cop number).

This reads like a meltdown. Are you expecting bad news later today?

As for this, that's utter nonsense. The best that could be determined is the highest it possibly could have been and still have gotten a 'too low' reading on the Qubit. That's not evidence at all of how much it actually was, all we know from the 'too low' is that it was too low for the Qubit to detect.

 

[Numbers]

There seems to be a misunderstanding. I never suggested the ECHR cherry picks anything. I suggested YOU cherry pick ECHR decisions to bolster your arguments.

I also suggested it would help your credibility if you posted ECHR decisions which rejected claims of Art 6, or the various other claims that might arise in AK's case. That way, we would see the nuances of their decision process, not just the limited prisms of Salduz or other selected cases you have pointed out.

If I am going to be persuaded by your arguments, I want to see how the ECHR has rejected similar claims in the past, undoubtedly made by many defandents, so I can compare those cases to AK's.

griffinmill,

You are totally free to do the research that you are interested in. Here are some starting points for you in your efforts:

1. http://www.echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=home&c=

2. http://www.echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=caselaw/analysis&c=

3. http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/Pages/search.aspx#{%22documentcollectionid2%22:[%22GRANDCHAMBER%22,%22CHAMBER%22,%22DECISIONS%22]}

Please come back with some counter-examples of the cases I have found, some of which were actually selected by the ECHR to illustrate their case-law.

I would recommend starting with the Guide on Article 6: The Right to a Fair Trial (criminal limb), which is available at the 2nd web site. Both the 2nd and 3rd sites are accessible from the 1st (ECHR home page). There are also collections of important case-law judgments for each calendar year, also available from site #2.

griffinmill, I don't know if you are familiar with US Supreme Court decisions, but there is a famous one, Miranda v Arizona, from 1963, which established rights of a person under interrogation in the US. If you understand common law precedent, you will understand that there is no US case since Miranda that has contradicted its principles. Similarly, you will find no ECHR case since Salduz v Turkey which has contradicted its principles. These principles were more fully explicated with allowed limiting considerations in Ibrahim et al v the UK. But you are welcome to try to find contradicting ECHR cases.

Good luck on your search. I welcome hearing back from you when you have some concrete results.

 

[kwill]

It was apparently significant enough that she feels a need to explain it.

Um, yeah. Because significance was attached to it by people who saw it (and still do) as evidence of pathology. She can't win here. If she talks about it, she's adding to its importance. If she doesn't talk about it, she's leaving out there unanswered the story that she was just a very bizarre person.

So you either believe a bunch of people think she acted strangely, or you believe that AK was just culturally misunderstood as she claims.

Cultural misunderstanding and being perceived as strange are not mutually exclusive, are they? I think the Venn diagram of those two things would have a massive overlap.

And before it gets said, this is not evidence of guilt or innocence.

Right. It's evidence that the British women didn't like it when Amanda sang all by herself at the pizza joint on the night they went there shortly after they all got to Perugia. How that fact relates to Meredith's murder is beyond me.

 

[griffinmill]

griffinmill,

You are totally free to do the research that you are interested in. Here are some starting points for you in your efforts:

1. http://www.echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=home&c=

2. http://www.echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=caselaw/analysis&c=

3. http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/Pages/search.aspx#{%22documentcollectionid2%22:[%22GRANDCHAMBER%22,%22CHAMBER%22,%22DECISIONS%22]}

Please come back with some counter-examples of the cases I have found, some of which were actually selected by the ECHR to illustrate their case-law.

I would recommend starting with the Guide on Article 6: The Right to a Fair Trial (criminal limb), which is available at the 2nd web site. Both the 2nd and 3rd sites are accessible from the 1st (ECHR home page). There are also collections of important case-law judgments for each calendar year, also available from site #2.

griffinmill, I don't know if you are familiar with US Supreme Court decisions, but there is a famous one, Miranda v Arizona, from 1963, which established rights of a person under interrogation in the US. If you understand common law precedent, you will understand that there is no US case since Miranda that has contradicted its principles. Similarly, you will find no ECHR case since Salduz v Turkey which has contradicted its principles. These principles were more fully explicated with allowed limiting considerations in Ibrahim et al v the UK. But you are welcome to try to find contradicting ECHR cases.

Good luck on your search. I welcome hearing back from you when you have some concrete results.

Again, I think you misunderstood. I will not be dedicating my life to researcing the ECHR as you have.

So if your rebuttal is that I have to prove you wrong, you win.

But I thought you were interested in truly understanding the ECHR case law. In that case, you would obviously want to review cases that both support and don't support your opinion.

I have only seen cases like Salduz, and to a lesser extent Dorigo, which support you claims.

If I am going to believe you, I want to see cases where defendants were rejected by the ECHR so I can understand the differences. Surely you've seen those cases in all your research. Share them with us.

 

[Numbers]

Freedom

Again, I think you misunderstood. I will not be dedicating my life to researcing the ECHR as you have.

So if your rebuttal is that I have to prove you wrong, you win.

But I thought you were interested in truly understanding the ECHR case law. In that case, you would obviously want to review cases that both support and don't support your opinion.

I have only seen cases like Salduz, and to a lesser extent Dorigo, which support you claims.

If I am going to believe you, I want to see cases where defendants were rejected by the ECHR so I can understand the differences. Surely you've seen those cases in all your research. Share them with us.

Mr. or Ms. griffinmill, you are, as far as I know, a free person. You are free to believe what you wish to believe. You claim you want to see cases where defendants were rejected by the ECHR. I have offered you the tools to do that research. You are free to do that research or not, as you desire. It is your belief you are concerned with, after all, so it must be your search.

Your approach is something like that of someone who does not believe that "heat" flows from a "hotter" object to a "colder" object. One demonstrates that heat (as measured by temperature, for example) does flow that way, by showing that over time, the two objects, if close to each other or touching, reach the same temperature (in an isolated environment). Someone objects that in order to believe this observation, a counter-example must be shown. Very well, then that doubter should create and carry out an experiment that provides the counter-example that the hot object gets hotter and the cold object gets colder.

There are about 70 cases that reference Salduz v Turkey in the HUDOC database. They are available to be accessed by anyone who wishes to read them. If your position is, as you state: "I will not be dedicating my life to researcing {sic} the ECHR as you have," I can only say that I have no desire to dedicate my life to following your whims.

But go ahead, let your fingers and your eyes do a little work and research the ECHR case-law, and come back with your findings. Or alternatively, continue in your particular beliefs. Note that neither your beliefs nor mine will be of any influence on the ECHR judges, since they rely on the Convention (the text of which is available from the ECHR home page) and the ECHR case-law (likewise publicly available) to form their judgments.

 

[codyjuneau]

Shut up or put up

.
Does anybody know of some venue where we could arrange to legally bet on the outcome of the ECHR judgments? One where the money is held in trust, and paid out by an independent source so that the bettor cannot weasel out of the bet.

I would relish winning some easy money from the guilters. I would also like to see how many guilters are willing to put their money where their mouths are, rather than other peoples lives where their mouths are. I suspect it would be very few, if any.

Cody
..

 

[Numbers]

Precedent: a useful essay

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griffinmill, I don't know if you are familiar with US Supreme Court decisions, but there is a famous one, Miranda v Arizona, from 1963, which established rights of a person under interrogation in the US. If you understand common law precedent, you will understand that there is no US case since Miranda that has contradicted its principles. Similarly, you will find no ECHR case since Salduz v Turkey which has contradicted its principles. These principles were more fully explicated with allowed limiting considerations in Ibrahim et al v the UK. But you are welcome to try to find contradicting ECHR cases.

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Here's an essay on Precedent as applied in common law:

Precedent

A court decision that is cited as an example or analogy to resolve similar questions of law in later cases.

The Anglo-American common-law tradition is built on the doctrine of Stare Decisis ("stand by decided matters"), which directs a court to look to past decisions for guidance on how to decide a case before it. This means that the legal rules applied to a prior case with facts similar to those of the case now before a court should be applied to resolve the legal dispute.

The use of precedent has been justified as providing predictability, stability, fairness, and efficiency in the law. Reliance upon precedent contributes predictability to the law because it provides notice of what a person's rights and obligations are in particular circumstances. A person contemplating an action has the ability to know beforehand the legal outcome. It also means that lawyers can give legal advice to clients based on settled rules of law.

The use of precedent also stabilizes the law. Society can expect the law, which organizes social relationships in terms of rights and obligations, to remain relatively stable and coherent through the use of precedent. The need is great in society to rely on legal rules, even if persons disagree with particular ones. Justice louis d. brandeis emphasized the importance of this when he wrote, "Stare decisis is usually the wise policy, because in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right" (Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393, 52 S. Ct. 443, 76 L. Ed. 815 [1932]).

Reliance upon precedent also promotes the expectation that the law is just. The idea that like cases should be treated alike is anchored in the assumption that one person is the legal equal of any other. Thus, persons in similar situations should not be treated differently except for legally relevant and clearly justifiable reasons. Precedent promotes judicial restraint and limits a judge's ability to determine the outcome of a case in a way that he or she might choose if there were no precedent. This function of precedent gives it its moral force.

Precedent also enhances efficiency. Reliance on the accumulation of legal rules helps guide judges in their resolution of legal disputes. If judges had to begin the law anew in each case, they would add more time to the adjudicative process and would duplicate their efforts.

The use of precedent has resulted in the publication of law reports that contain case decisions. Lawyers and judges conduct legal research in these reports seeking precedents. They try to determine whether the facts of the present case precisely match previous cases. If so, the application of legal precedent may be clear. If, however, the facts are not exact, prior cases may be distinguished and their precedents discounted.

Though the application of precedent may appear to be mechanical, a simple means of matching facts and rules, it is a more subjective process. Legal rules, embodied in precedents, are generalizations that accentuate the importance of certain facts and discount or ignore others. The application of precedent relies on reasoning by analogy. Analogies can be neither correct nor incorrect but only more or less persuasive. Reasonable persons may come to different yet defensible conclusions about what rule should prevail.

The judicial system maintains great fidelity to the application of precedents. There are times, however, when a court has no precedents to rely on. In these "cases of first impression," a court may have to draw analogies to other areas of the law to justify its decision. Once decided, this decision becomes precedential.

Appellate courts typically create precedent. The U.S. Supreme Court's main function is to settle conflicts over legal rules and to issue decisions that either reaffirm or create precedent. Despite the Supreme Court's reliance on precedent, it will depart from its prior decisions when either historical conditions change or the philosophy of the court undergoes a major shift. The most famous reversal of precedent is brown v. board of education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954), in which the Supreme Court repudiated the "separate but equal" doctrine of plessy v. ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 41 L. Ed. 256 (1896). This doctrine had legitimated racial Segregation for almost sixty years but finally gave way in Brown, when a unanimous court ruled that separate but equal was a denial of Equal Protection of the laws.

Source: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Precedent