Continuation Part 14: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[platonov]

Really really.




How could I? I learned it from these threads (and from the informative sources linked to herefrom).




Counts as zero, for obvious reasons already amply discussed in these threads.

Not even 60%

You are obviously not an Italian cop.

 

[acbytesla]

And all courtesy of the Italian police and PM, who inexplicably kept his place of business in Perugia closed for almost six months under the ludicrous pretence that it was a "crime scene", thus virtually ensuring he went bust the evil Amanda Knox, who was improperly and unlawfully coerced into agreeing with the police's/PM's pre-determined theories cruelly and deliberately accused poor Lumumba out of the blue, much to the surprise of the kindly police officers looking on

I actually do feel sorry for Patrick even though I don't respect him. The Perugian authorities put him in an untenable position. First they swept him up without really investigating. Then they arrest him and closed his bar and cut him off from his source of income. The man had a family and no way to provide for them. And don't say he could get another job. This is Italy during a world wide recession. Unemployment in Italy was over 20 percent and even higher for blacks. Then the Daily Mail offers him a big payday for some juicey quotes so he gives in and gives them what they want. I don't like what he did to Amanda but I definitely think he was a victim of this whole sordid affair. But the person to blame is not Amanda

 

[LondonJohn]

I actually do feel sorry for Patrick even though I don't respect him. The Peruvian authorities put him in an untenable position. First the swept him up without really investigating. Then they arrest him and closed his bar and cut him off from his source of income. The man had a family and no way to provide for them. And don't say he could get another job. This is Italy during a world wide recession. Unemployment in Italy was over 20 percent and even higher for blacks. Then the Daily Mail offers him a big payday for some juicey quotes so he gives in and gives them what they want. I don't like what he did to Amanda but I definitely think he was a victim of this whole sordid affair. But the person to blame is not Amanda

He gave the interview to the Mail within days of being released from custody, at the end of November 2007. I don't doubt that the Mail encouraged him to be as inflammatory and as vindictive as he liked in that interview. But this was long before he ever knew that the police and PM were going to effectively put him out of business.

And again, if we assume for a moment that Lumumba really did say those accusations against the police and PM contained in that interview, I think that we may also reasonably conclude that Lumumba was telling the truth with those accusations. It would appear hugely difficult to conceive of a logical reason why Lumumba would want to make false - and therefore hugely defamatory - accusations against the police and PM. I am therefore highly inclined to believe that those things truly did happen to Lumumba*. On the other hand, I think it's reasonable to question many of his accusations against Knox from that interview - there was little or no risk of comeback from Knox even if some or all of Lumumba's accusations against her were false: Knox at that time was sitting in a prison cell, accused of the sexual murder of Kercher and of criminal slander against Lumumba.

* ETA: In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if the Mail interviewer, Antonia Hoyle, had listened to Lumumba make those extreme accusations of physical and racial abuse against the police, and had then specifically asked Lumumba whether he meant to say those things and was prepared to stand behind them. After all, the Mail could potentially have got into legal trouble for simply printing those accusations if they had been false and defamatory.

 

[Myriad]

You are obviously not an Italian cop.

I'm far from perfect, but still, that's very kind of you to say. Thank you!

 

[Desert Fox]

RoseMontague,

Arline Kercher said that she was shocked. I have not seen any direct quotes from Stephanie, Lyle, or John Kercher.

While nothing may change, give them some time. I suspect that their lawyer will now drop them like a hot potato and many on the pro guilt side will fade way. There are cases where wrongfully accused and the victims later become friends.

 

[moije2]

I can't say that I believed in her guilt for very long. But certainly they must have some very compelling evidence since they arrested her...so I thought. Then I read that it was a Satanic ritual. WTF!!!! Seriously I thought? This middle class 20 year old girl from Seattle Prep. was engaged in Satanism? That never washed for me or that it was a sex orgy gone awry. It all sounded like bull. Then I went to TJX And it sure sounded like she was guilty. But they always had problems answering my questions..even beino offended by then. I always found that to be suspicious. I mean if you truly are an intellectual, you don't shy away from questions, you welcome them. Eventually like many of you I was banned. But this didn't make me 100 percent believe in their innocence, just that I didn't have enough information or had yet to comprehend the data. I then went to IIP, but while they didn't shy away from any of my questions, I was afraid that was too one sided as well. Then I found JREF, where the issues were debated in detail and for the most part with very little name calling. I found a home. A place where I could really learn what happened in Perugia. Back then it was much more balanced. There was more guilters that would try to debate the points. But over time they disappeared or converted knowing that their arguments didn't hold up. Machiavelli, is really the last who actually tried. He just could never see how barrel hiso logic actually was. Frankly, I want to thank those who helped me understand the case, particularly the DNA. That was always the hardest part.

I remember all the back and forth regarding use of the word Satan. Mr. Grinder was involved heavily in that challenge if I remember correctly. I followed a similar path on my knowledge of the case. I always look back to my very early days and I traded a couple posts with Harry Rag. Very quickly I replied to him - me still getting my feet on the ground with the basics, and he a full fledged guilter - that he would make his case better if every time a novice like me received a "pointer" from him, if I didn't very quickly realize that he was only putting out partial truths. And I pointed out something. He curtly dismissed me as being brainwashed by Bruce Fisher. So I looked up Bruce....

Anyway... the Satan thing. I always wanted to point out that from a secular person's viewpoint, and I think this many of us here, we don't have a well developed system of ideals concerning Satanism. When I hear about Halloween rituals with Celtic (Mignini said something else, I don't remember right now) that to me is all the same thing. Weird hocus pocus superstition stuff. Go ahead and use the "S" word as far as I am concerned. Machiavelli could go on and on differentiating the origins and meanings of various esoteric philosophies. And this was also part of the appeal and quite frankly amazement for me of these people who could manufacture in their minds a BARD scenario of these accused 3 conspiring together. Medieval thinking right in front of us to examine! Oh well, why not? AK was away from home so why not just cut loose a little bit and have fun... Right.

 

[Numbers]

I doubt it too, but for a reason that I doubt you will comprehend . She will want to move on and unlike in Italy defamation suits are very rarely filed.. (plaintiffs almost never win them here because the standards of proof . Also Amanda is considered a "public person" therefore, she would also have to not only prove that these people maligned her but they did it with malice. So, while I think that she could prove that they were wrong, she would have a difficult time proving the malice.

Anglo or other lawyers would know better, but I think Amanda would have a much stronger case in the UK for a slander claim.

But I agree that I doubt either Amanda or Raf wants to spend any more time in a courtroom. I think the novelty has worn off.

I am not overly familiar with the defamation laws of individual American States but from what I read it seems free speech is prized more highly over there than it is here. Amanda would encounter problems suing here, though. We have recently liberalised defamation law and made 'libel tourism' a bit harder too. I can't imagine that pursuing irrelevant, anonymous guilters will be high on her list of priorities. She is probably happily unaware of their pathetic activities. She surely has bigger fish to fry: getting her life back to normal and securing compensation from Italy are both much more important.

If the guilters' activities spill over into her real life and if she acquires the means and will to do so, she will be able to make an example of a few of them to discourage the others. Being ruined by litigation is not fun. Ask her family and Raffaele's. If I were a guilter I would be very careful.

If you want to learn more about US laws about defamation Anglo, I'd suggest reading about the most important case "New York Times v Sullivan. It explains in great detail why it would be extremely difficult for Amanda to win a defamation suit in the US.

There may be more to this issue of defamation than Amanda being a "public person" and thus not in a position to sue in the US. There is a difference between being a public person voluntarily, and being made into one, essentially against your will. A voluntary public person would be, for example, a politician or government office-holder or a "celebrity" who chooses media exposure. An involuntary public person would be, for example, someone who was a private citizen, not seeking media attention, but who was involved in a divorce case, or who was falsely charged or convicted of a crime but exonerated. And even voluntary public persons are fully protected from blatantly and knowingly false defamatory statements made with "reckless regard for the truth". (This applies to federal law. State law may vary.)

 

[platonov]

Enough is enough - I’m voting UKIP.

I actually do feel sorry for Patrick even though I don't respect him. The Perugian authorities put him in an untenable position. First they swept him up without really investigating. Then they arrest him and closed his bar and cut him off from his source of income. The man had a family and no way to provide for them. And don't say he could get another job. This is Italy during a world wide recession. Unemployment in Italy was over 20 percent and even higher for blacks. Then the Daily Mail offers him a big payday for some juicey quotes so he gives in and gives them what they want. I don't like what he did to Amanda but I definitely think he was a victim of this whole sordid affair. But the person to blame is not Amanda

You mean the time when he raped and murdered that young woman and falsely accused Amanda.

That’s black Africans for you – there are not as civilized as we you are.

 

[anglolawyer]

If you say so – you are the lawyer.

If you were asking whether 'litigation' denotes civil proceedings, the answer is no. There is criminal and civil litigation. If you were asking something else I did not understand. Why not just ask what you want to know?

 

[LondonJohn]

If you were asking whether 'litigation' denotes civil proceedings, the answer is no. There is criminal and civil litigation. If you were asking something else I did not understand. Why not just ask what you want to know?

I think it was Pope who gave us the wise aphorism: "a little learning is a dangerous thing". It applies nicely to people who think they understand the meaning of the term "litigation" from TV shows and an incomplete understanding of law, then make a point of "correcting" someone else's perfectly good usage of the word

 

[LondonJohn]

While nothing may change, give them some time. I suspect that their lawyer will now drop them like a hot potato and many on the pro guilt side will fade way. There are cases where wrongfully accused and the victims later become friends.

Maresca will indeed probably drop the Kerchers tout-de-suite. They cannot in any way afford to pay even a fraction of the fees they owe him already (on paper at least), let alone the costs of any future legal representation.

That (to me and, I think, to many/most other pro-acquittal commentators) is one of the additional tragic factors in this sorry case. If Maresca has any decency, he will write off the entirety of his work for the Kercher family.

 

[Numbers]

There may be more to this issue of defamation than Amanda being a "public person" and thus not in a position to sue in the US. There is a difference between being a public person voluntarily, and being made into one, essentially against your will. A voluntary public person would be, for example, a politician or government office-holder or a "celebrity" who chooses media exposure. An involuntary public person would be, for example, someone who was a private citizen, not seeking media attention, but who was involved in a divorce case, or who was falsely charged or convicted of a crime but exonerated. And even voluntary public persons are fully protected from blatantly and knowingly false defamatory statements made with "reckless regard for the truth". (This applies to federal law. State law may vary.)

From: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/defamation-law-made-simple-29718.html

In the landmark 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court held that certain defamatory statements were protected by the First Amendment. The case involved a newspaper article that said unflattering things about a public figure, a politician. The Court pointed to "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open." The Court acknowledged that in public discussions -- especially about public figures like politicians -- mistakes can be made. If those mistakes are "honestly made," the Court said, they should be protected from defamation actions. The court made a rule that public officials could sue for statements made about their public conduct only if the statements were made with "actual malice."

"Actual malice" means that the person who made the statement knew it wasn't true, or didn't care whether it was true or not and was reckless with the truth -- for example, when someone has doubts about the truth of a statement but does not bother to check further before publishing it.

Later cases have built upon the New York Times rule, so that now the law balances the rules of defamation law with the interests of the First Amendment. The result is that whether defamation is actionable depends on what was said, who it was about, and whether it was a subject of public interest and thus protected by the First Amendment.

Private people who are defamed have more protection than public figures -- freedom of speech isn't as important when the statements don't involve an issue of public interest. A private person who is defamed can prevail without having to prove that the defamer acted with actual malice.

 

[acbytesla]

He gave the interview to the Mail within days of being released from custody, at the end of November 2007. I don't doubt that the Mail encouraged him to be as inflammatory and as vindictive as he liked in that interview. But this was long before he ever knew that the police and PM were going to effectively put him out of business.

And again, if we assume for a moment that Lumumba really did say those accusations against the police and PM contained in that interview, I think that we may also reasonably conclude that Lumumba was telling the truth with those accusations. It would appear hugely difficult to conceive of a logical reason why Lumumba would want to make false - and therefore hugely defamatory - accusations against the police and PM. I am therefore highly inclined to believe that those things truly did happen to Lumumba*. On the other hand, I think it's reasonable to question many of his accusations against Knox from that interview - there was little or no risk of comeback from Knox even if some or all of Lumumba's accusations against her were false: Knox at that time was sitting in a prison cell, accused of the sexual murder of Kercher and of criminal slander against Lumumba.

* ETA: In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if the Mail interviewer, Antonia Hoyle, had listened to Lumumba make those extreme accusations of physical and racial abuse against the police, and had then specifically asked Lumumba whether he meant to say those things and was prepared to stand behind them. After all, the Mail could potentially have got into legal trouble for simply printing those accusations if they had been false and defamatory.

Frankly, I don't trust the Daily Mail at all. I remember the article they wrote about the noise ticket and party. I am 100 percent convinced that it was a total exercise in creative writing. The author took the police report and then built a wild story around it, 90 percent which could never be disputed since the only actual quotes were unnamed or were from the incident report. I know for a fact that the author never actually spoke to the officer, so how would he know any of the unnamed party goers? The answer is he didn't and couldn't. It is more than enough proof for me that it was a sleazy but typical tactic of the Daily Mail. They did a similar thing when they wrote a story about how George Clooney's fiance's family was not happy about the marriage.

 

[Desert Fox]

My understanding with the Daily Fail is that they accept being sued as part of doing business and that they will often just try to settle and pay out. I suspect that they make enough money that it does not really matter to get sued on occasion.

 

[Bill Williams]

I remember all the back and forth regarding use of the word Satan. Mr. Grinder was involved heavily in that challenge if I remember correctly. I followed a similar path on my knowledge of the case. I always look back to my very early days and I traded a couple posts with Harry Rag. Very quickly I replied to him - me still getting my feet on the ground with the basics, and he a full fledged guilter - that he would make his case better if every time a novice like me received a "pointer" from him, if I didn't very quickly realize that he was only putting out partial truths. And I pointed out something. He curtly dismissed me as being brainwashed by Bruce Fisher. So I looked up Bruce....

Anyway... the Satan thing. I always wanted to point out that from a secular person's viewpoint, and I think this many of us here, we don't have a well developed system of ideals concerning Satanism. When I hear about Halloween rituals with Celtic (Mignini said something else, I don't remember right now) that to me is all the same thing. Weird hocus pocus superstition stuff. Go ahead and use the "S" word as far as I am concerned. Machiavelli could go on and on differentiating the origins and meanings of various esoteric philosophies. And this was also part of the appeal and quite frankly amazement for me of these people who could manufacture in their minds a BARD scenario of these accused 3 conspiring together. Medieval thinking right in front of us to examine! Oh well, why not? AK was away from home so why not just cut loose a little bit and have fun... Right.

From this post-complete-exoneration vantage point, I am still unclear of the status of these two screen-shots I got from a since-deleted YouTube video on something loosely titled, "Satanism and the Law".

​

If there are any hardcore guilters left, even they have to admit the optics of this look bad. Like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, the kid says to his mom, "Who are you going to believe: me, or your lying eyes?"

Machiavelli gave an explanation, including a claim of a more precise definition of what this thing even was. I don't want to use the excuse of his absence from here to misquote him (!!) but he also said (I potentially stand to be corrected) that Mignini's part of this presentation was to admit that perhaps Satanism is something a prosecutor should look into if appropriate...

.... but that in his experience he's never seen it or used it in a case.

Like I say, the optics of that YouTube video, complete with audio in Italian (that I never got translated) could not have been worse for someone fighting what he fought in the Monster of Florence thing, and what is alleged to have been brought-forward into the Kercher-murder prosecution..... I hope it is right to translate the text on one of the slides as, "In the name of Satanism".

 

[acbytesla]

From: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/defamation-law-made-simple-29718.html

In the landmark 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court held that certain defamatory statements were protected by the First Amendment. The case involved a newspaper article that said unflattering things about a public figure, a politician. The Court pointed to "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open." The Court acknowledged that in public discussions -- especially about public figures like politicians -- mistakes can be made. If those mistakes are "honestly made," the Court said, they should be protected from defamation actions. The court made a rule that public officials could sue for statements made about their public conduct only if the statements were made with "actual malice."
Ù
"Actual malice" means that the person who made the statement knew it wasn't true, or didn't care whether it was true or not and was reckless with the truth -- for example, when someone has doubts about the truth of a statement but does not bother to check further before publishing it.

Later cases have built upon the New York Times rule, so that now the law balances the rules of defamation law with the interests of the First Amendment. The result is that whether defamation is actionable depends on what was said, who it was about, and whether it was a subject of public interest and thus protected by the First Amendment.

Private people who are defamed have more protection than public figures -- freedom of speech isn't as important when the statements don't involve an issue of public interest. A private person who is defamed can prevail without having to prove that the defamer acted with actual malice.

Thanks Numbers, but if you read more about the court decision, you will find that people indicted for high crimes are considered "public citizens". Seems unfair but it is true.

 

[LondonJohn]

Frankly, I don't trust the Daily Mail at all. I remember the article they wrote about the noise ticket and party . I am 100 percent convinced that it was a total exercise in creative writing. The author took the police report and then built a wild story around it, 90 percent which could never be disputed since the only actual quotes were unnamed or were from the incident report. I know for a fact that the author never actually spoke to the officer, so how would he know any of the unnamed party goers? The answer is he didn't and couldn't. It is more than enough proof for me that it was a sleazy but typical tactic of the Daily Mail. They did a similar thing when they woe a story about how George Clooney's fiance's family was not happy about the marriage.

But it's critically important to take into account the relative risk - legal and (to a lesser degree) reputational - here. I don't doubt that the Mail invented huge chunks of that Seattle party story. But their target - Knox - was at the time a mere private citizen who was sitting in a prison cell in Italy under suspicion of murder. That's a wholly different kettle of fish from printing serious, within-quotes accusations of physical and racial abuse by Perugia law enforcement personnel.

I personally know (and work with) plenty of people within the UK media industry (though most of them are in broadcast media or higher-end printed media), and even during the worst excesses of the British tabloid press (and 2007 was probably in the middle of the worst period), they simply would not lay themselves open to high-profile defamation cases by the likes of the police and prosecutors in Italy. And it's a given that printing untrue accusations of physical and racial abuse by such individuals would carry a very high likelihood of just such an outcome. So I feel hugely confident that any media outlet - including the Mail - at any time - including 2007 - would have absolutely checked at the very least that Lumumba really had spoken those words before printing them. And as I also just said, I wouldn't be surprised if they also double-checked with Lumumba that he stood behind those words before putting them into print.

 

[Kauffer]

Killers have walked before and will walk again.
Must be hard to take for the Kercher family.


I see some posters are wondering what to do now. The option of attacking the ‘guliters’, cops, witnesses etc and more importantly the victim’s family and the victim herself long into the future is always available.

Now why would the Kerchers find this hard to take? Whenever they spoke they said they were waiting for the Italian Justice system to reveal to them what happened to their daughter - they have a lot of faith in that system too, they said.

They are on a search for the truth, aren't they? Well, yesterday's verdict takes them further towards that goal and they will now surely be relieved to learn that Amanda and Raffaele had nothing whatsoever to do with Meredith's death.

Indeed, now that the Italian justice system has spoken definitively on this matter, they are free to contact both the former defendants in order to console them as a result of the utter nightmare of their having had their lives turned upside down by mendacious police officers, incompetent scientists and nut job prosecutors for more than seven years.

Because of their faith in the Italian justice system, they must be feeling very bad for Amanda and Raffaele right now.

 

[Numbers]

From: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/defamation-law-made-simple-29718.html

...
Later cases have built upon the New York Times rule, so that now the law balances the rules of defamation law with the interests of the First Amendment. The result is that whether defamation is actionable depends on what was said, who it was about, and whether it was a subject of public interest and thus protected by the First Amendment.

Private people who are defamed have more protection than public figures -- freedom of speech isn't as important when the statements don't involve an issue of public interest. A private person who is defamed can prevail without having to prove that the defamer acted with actual malice.

From: http://injury.findlaw.com/torts-and-personal-injuries/defamation-law-the-basics.html

Social Media and Defamation

With the rise of social media, it’s now easier than ever to make a defamatory statement. That’s because social media services like Twitter and Facebook allow you to instantly “publish” a statement that can reach thousands of people. Whether it’s a disparaging blog post, Facebook status update, or YouTube video, online defamation is treated the same way as more traditional forms. That means you can be sued for any defamatory statements you post online.

 

[Bill Williams]

Frankly, I don't trust the Daily Mail at all. I remember the article they wrote about the noise ticket and party. I am 100 percent convinced that it was a total exercise in creative writing. The author took the police report and then built a wild story around it, 90 percent which could never be disputed since the only actual quotes were unnamed or were from the incident report. I know for a fact that the author never actually spoke to the officer, so how would he know any of the unnamed party goers? The answer is he didn't and couldn't. It is more than enough proof for me that it was a sleazy but typical tactic of the Daily Mail. They did a similar thing when they wrote a story about how George Clooney's fiance's family was not happy about the marriage.

Other than these things, I don't understand why you would criticize the Daily Mail?