Continuation Part 14: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[lonepinealex]

I think that I have precisely zero interest (far less any motivation) in trying to sway public opinion. I also find it very hard to understand why anyone who wasn't intimately connected with Knox/Sollecito or their families would be emotionally motivated to try to influence public opinion.

To put it bluntly: why do you care if certain online articles are artificially given undue prominence by nutter pro-guilt commentators? Why do you care if nutter pro-guilt commentators flood twitter and comments sections with mendacious nonsense? Why should you care if some sections of the wider public read that stuff and are swayed by it?

The short answer is that you shouldn't care about any of that. I doubt that Knox or Sollecito themselves care about it (at least, I hope they don't), except for if it reaches criminal or civil-defamatory levels, in which case they have the machinery of the law to use to defend themselves. Who cares what the general public thinks? Something like 40% of Americans (IIRC) still think there was some sort of conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK, after all.....

Agreed, let the guilters waste their time, if that's what they're up to. I don't believe the general public has much, if any, interest in the case now anyway. Only we obsessives are still talking about it!

 

[Numbers]

{Highlighting added to quote.}

1. No, you are misrepresenting my position. She was a suspect. So was Raffaele. They were effectively detained and subjected to high-pressure interrogation. You - and, more importantly for the case, the PLE (no offense to you) - are mixing up theory (legal formalisms) and practical reality (what the ECHR looks at, such as whether questioning is an "interview" or an "interrogation"). (A hint on the difference: people don't cry during interviews, they do during interrogations.)

2. No, they (PLE etc.) are misrepresenting ECHR case-law. See Brusco v France.

ETA: Excerpt, Brusco v France:
47....The argument that the applicant was heard as a witness is irrelevant, as purely formal, since the judicial and police authorities had kind as to suspect him of involvement in the offense.

Numbers is substantially correct. Yet it doesn't matter whether ILE had sufficient cause to treat her as a suspect before 5th Nov interrogations. The plain fact of the matter is that she was a suspect. We know this is true because amongst other reasons, Ficcara, Mignini and Hellmann told us. It's in the record of all the trial courts including the calunnia convicting court.

All of Amanda's procedural rights in Italian and International law were denied. The Gemelli court conducted a tortuous reasoning and concluded that in Italian law, some of Amanda's statements could be used to incriminate her for calunnia and some for murder. Yet, in the absence of a lawyer and a valid waiver, nothing, with reference to ECHR's post Salduz case law, which , within the constitution is the supreme source of law in Italy, is useable. Gemelli ignored the convention - in fact subordinated the convention to his interpretation of Italian law, whereas, the constitutional court decreed that he should have done the opposite.

The ECHR using Brusco v France is the final legal authority for the designation of suspect status. It's an objective test. But it's not really needed. For years, people have been trotting out that Amanda was a mere witness or person with knowledge etc. before 1:45. It's utter nonsense.

Kauffer,
Thanks for adding support and clarifying my points.
As you point out and we all may recall, the Hellmann court motivation report stated that Amanda was a suspect:

The obsessive length of the interrogations, carried out during [both] day and night, by more than one person, on a young and foreign girl who at the time did not speak Italian at all well, was unaware of her own rights, did not have the assistance of an attorney (which she should have been entitled to, being at this point suspected of very serious crimes), and was moreover being assisted by an interpreter who — as shown by Ms. Bongiorno — did not limit herself to translating, but induced her to force herself to remember, explaining that she [Amanda] was confused in her memories, perhaps because of the trauma she experienced, makes it wholly understandable that she was in a situation of considerable psychological pressure (to call it stress seems an understatement [appare riduttivo]), enough to raise doubts about the actual spontaneity of her statements; a spontaneity which would have strangely [singolarmente] arisen in the middle of the night, after hours and hours of interrogation: the so-called spontaneous statements were made at 1:45 am (middle of the night) on 11-6-2007 (the day after the interrogation had started) and again at 5:45 am afterward, and the note was written a few hours later.

{Emphasis added.}

ETA: Source: https://hellmannreport.wordpress.com/contents/reasons-for-the-decision/calumny/

 

[LondonJohn]

Agreed, let the guilters waste their time, if that's what they're up to. I don't believe the general public has much, if any, interest in the case now anyway. Only we obsessives are still talking about it!

Yes.

I certainly have an academic interest in trying to figure out why pro-guilt commentators believe what they believe, and what motivates them to campaign for guilt (and, as they see it, "on behalf of the victim" - even though this is a horribly logically-flawed concept in itself).

I also think that from the point of view of a debate about the case (such as we're having here), it's understandable to address pro-guilt arguments explicitly, since they do form part of the wider debate.

But both of those things are very different indeed to "waging war on the front line" of things like twitter and comment sections - as if this is some sort of fight for hearts and minds that must be won. I view that sort of thing as pointless (and, indeed, a touch unhealthy), given the current state of events.

 

[sept79]

It's funny that professor Milani is willing to trash his reputation by asserting that it is 'certain' there was physical interaction with the computer at 10.04 without considering cats, wind, earthquakes, slamming doors etc. when these are all apparently equally obvious explanations for the observed phenomena. It's also funny that, AFAIK, there has been no evidence in rebuttal from the ILE ...

Maybe the cartwheels were done with such force that the landings generated vibrations precipitating the observed phenomena--i.e., keystrokes on Raf's computer . . .

 

[analemma]

Yes.

I certainly have an academic interest in trying to figure out why pro-guilt commentators believe what they believe, and what motivates them to campaign for guilt (and, as they see it, "on behalf of the victim" - even though this is a horribly logically-flawed concept in itself).

I also think that from the point of view of a debate about the case (such as we're having here), it's understandable to address pro-guilt arguments explicitly, since they do form part of the wider debate.

But both of those things are very different indeed to "waging war on the front line" of things like twitter and comment sections - as if this is some sort of fight for hearts and minds that must be won. I view that sort of thing as pointless (and, indeed, a touch unhealthy), given the current state of events.

I can see avoiding all their tweets and comments and not caring if they have tantrums.
I think that the LEGAL aspects of this case are far from over.
I think that the media reporting and public perception of the case preceeding the decision was a significant factor in the final ISC decision, particularly in Italy.
When there remain no articles on the google search that discuss the acquitals, does that mean there was not an acquital?
"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

 

[carbonjam72]

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=555&pictureid=9734[/qimg]

Never gets old. I love the keyboard cat. (Even Steven Colbert fears Keyboard Cat).

But record of a physically depressed key stroke while Raf was in station seems pretty incriminating that police committed that act.

Any testimony to this effect? Were the police ever asked this question, or ever respond to it?

 

[carbonjam72]

I think that I have precisely zero interest (far less any motivation) in trying to sway public opinion. I also find it very hard to understand why anyone who wasn't intimately connected with Knox/Sollecito or their families would be emotionally motivated to try to influence public opinion.

To put it bluntly: why do you care if certain online articles are artificially given undue prominence by nutter pro-guilt commentators? Why do you care if nutter pro-guilt commentators flood twitter and comments sections with mendacious nonsense? Why should you care if some sections of the wider public read that stuff and are swayed by it?

The short answer is that you shouldn't care about any of that. I doubt that Knox or Sollecito themselves care about it (at least, I hope they don't), except for if it reaches criminal or civil-defamatory levels, in which case they have the machinery of the law to use to defend themselves. Who cares what the general public thinks? Something like 40% of Americans (IIRC) still think there was some sort of conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK, after all.....

Don't get me started...

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Shocked about Stardust

Any testimony to this effect? Were the police ever asked this question, or ever respond to it?

Check the appropriate Perugia Shock entries. See also this report from Andrea Vogt:
"Specifically, a computer engineer who analyzed Sollecito's computer and Internet provider records testified that his review indicated someone navigated on Sollecito's computer while he and Knox were being questioned by police. Specifically, the computer revealed that the movie "Stardust" had been downloaded, and then a few hours later, at 1 a.m. and 2:47 a.m., someone surfed the Web twice and viewed a story about Kercher's killing on the Italian wire service news agency ANSA.

"We aren't saying who it was, but you can imagine," said Sollecito's attorney, Luca Maori during a break in the trial, noting that Sollecito left his computer at home and went into police headquarters 21:40 p.m. on November 5 for questioning, leaving the keys to his house with police. He has been in jail ever since."

 

[Dan O.]

I find the need to add a few clarifications in the preeceeding cat and mouse posts. I have seen no mention of any cat in Raffaele's apartment. I also do not recall any mention of a mouse and it is not necessarily true that Raffaele would have a mouse on his laptop because the MacBook pro has a very nice trackpad.

If the computer was running BitTorrent then it wouldn't be sleeping. The display would sleep and the disk would spin down but the computer would stay up and stay connected to the Internet.

"Web" access is a subset of Internet access. Italy's Pisanu law requires that Internet access providers record web access (http protocol on TCP port 80). BitTorrent uses different TCP ports 6881 through 6889 so would not be called web access and would not be recorded by the provider.

 

[Dan O.]

<duplicate>

 

[Dan O.]

...

"We aren't saying who it was, but you can imagine," said Sollecito's attorney, Luca Maori during a break in the trial, noting that Sollecito left his computer at home and went into police headquarters 21:40 p.m. on November 5 for questioning, leaving the keys to his house with police. He has been in jail ever since."

The hard drive did not get fried at this time so it couldn't have been the postal police

 

[Bill Williams]

Agreed, let the guilters waste their time, if that's what they're up to. I don't believe the general public has much, if any, interest in the case now anyway. Only we obsessives are still talking about it!

If the reaction in the U.K. to the Winterbottom film is any indicator, the canary in the mine flew away years ago.

 

[Bill Williams]

I posted this on JREF, or whatever it is called now.

Bruce
I am new here and I agree with you about the need to stop feeding the guilters.
I have noticed a very disquiting trend that involves the sequence of the news articles appear on the case when sorted by relevance that we probably need to address as a group.
I have noticed that the horrible "thin line" article has now become #2 on the selection list under the Google Search for "Amanda Knox"
I have already suggested that the guilters are clicking this article a thousand times a day as a tactic to keep their cause alive and if the article rises abover the Amanda Knox Wiki the public will select it and read it and believe it and the perception of guilt will remain forever.
If this ultimately happens I contend that the guilters will have won the perception battle, even though the guilters have lost the court and factual battle, snaching victory form the jaws of defeat.
What I propose is everybody on this forum and every advocate click a half dozen defined innocence sites every day in hopes of keeping these lies off of the top of teh google selections.
Once again, I agree about not arguing with them and ignoring them, but if they are AT THE TOP OF THE SELECTION I do not see how they can be ignored.
What does everyone think?

Analemma - with respect, you have a very poor estimate of "the public's" intelligence. Then again, PT Barnum said no one ever went broke with their estimates of "the public's" gullibility.

Still, unless it direct impacts people, so?

 

[Grinder]

No, I think it can be interesting to analyse pro-guilt commentators' posts, in order to a) address and refute their arguments, and b) try to understand more about the psychological mindset driving their position.

But that's very different from directly engaging with them in some sort of hand-to-hand combat on things like newspaper comments sections or twitter. My point is that I think many pro-innocence/pro-acquittal commentators feel some sort of "need" to engage in the public arena at the source of the pro-guilt commentary, seemingly in order to try to sway public opinion back from the pro-guilt comments. I am arguing that there's no such need (and that even if there were a need, that should be up to Knox/Sollecito and their advisers), and that most pro-guilt commentators are looking for - and thrive upon - just this sort of "combat". That's why I think it's futile and maybe even counterproductive to engage in these back-and-forth battles.

glad to hear.

 

[Grinder]

The hard drive did not get fried at this time so it couldn't have been the postal police

I would add that I find it hard to believe that the PLE whether the PP or others could organize a break in of Raf's and not be noticed by neighbors or leaving something behind (Locard) or some more obvious signs of computer use.

Not that I could possibly enter the deep debate but if Raf didn't have a cat could the the mouse or keyboard have been moved or "used" by a real mouse.

Maybe he had a trained mouse that did the interaction the night of the murder

 

[Strozzi]

This is the most important point.

The windowserver.log file shows that the keyboard was used. This requires physical depression of the keys on the keyboard.

Torrent programmes basically work (assuming that Sollecito (in this case) has the torrent programme up and running in the background on his machine) by telling other users that Sollecito (in this case) has a particular file (whether a movie, software, etc) available for others to grab from his machine. If another user decides that (s)he wants this file, then the torrent programme will automatically start a file copying process from Sollecito's machine to the other user's machine.

That's the only way in which torrent programmes can make certain processes - explicitly the copying of files from the hard drive - start without any prompting or interaction. But importantly, it has nothing to do with keyboard interactions.

The evidence of keyboard activity on Sollecito's computer around 10pm on 5th November can only mean one of two things:

1) The windowserver.log file is corrupted and simply wrong;
2) There were physical depressions of keys on Sollecito's computer keyboard at that time.

If we assume for a moment that we can disregard (1), then (2) can only have happened by a force on the keyboard. In turn, this can only have happened by

a) something inanimate happening to fall onto the keyboard, thus depressing some keys;
b) something aminate (cat?) stepping onto the keyboard;
c) the laptop perhaps falling, and the impact causing depression of one or more keys;
d) a human pressing keys on the keyboard.

Of the four options, I'd suggest that (d) is the most likely under the circumstances. If so, we have a human pressing keys on Sollecito's laptop keyboard within his apartment at around 10pm on 5th November. And since Sollecito (and Knox) was en route to the Police HQ at that point, and nobody else (bar perhaps the cleaner, who'd have had no reason to be there at that time) had access to Sollecito's apartment, it's entirely reasonable to suppose that someone gained covert entry into Sollecito's apartment at that time and pressed certain keys on that laptop keyboard.

And then you need to ask who would have had the means, motive and opportunity to do such a thing. Who, for example, would have know that Sollecito would not have been present? Who, for example, would have had the necessary skills and equipment to pick the lock of Sollecito's apartment door? Who, for example, might have stood to benefit from accessing Sollecito's laptop on that particular day?
And the answer is.....................................

• Who do you think was listening to Sollecito's and Knox's phone conversations in those several days?
• Who do you think might have been surveilling them in those several days?

And the answer is......................................

 

[anglolawyer]

I would add that I find it hard to believe that the PLE whether the PP or others could organize a break in of Raf's and not be noticed by neighbors or leaving something behind (Locard) or some more obvious signs of computer use.

Not that I could possibly enter the deep debate but if Raf didn't have a cat could the the mouse or keyboard have been moved or "used" by a real mouse.

Maybe he had a trained mouse that did the interaction the night of the murder

If the police enter my neighbour's house right now, or later this evening, I will know nothing about it. Please supply the scale plan and photographs showing the apartment, the neighbouring dwellings and means of access to which you must be referring in forming your judgement of the improbability of covert entry.

And I don't see the relevance of Locard here given that no one would ever be checking for signs of unlawful entry.

 

[Grinder]

If the police enter my neighbour's house right now, or later this evening, I will know nothing about it. Please supply the scale plan and photographs showing the apartment, the neighbouring dwellings and means of access to which you must be referring in forming your judgement of the improbability of covert entry.

And I don't see the relevance of Locard here given that no one would ever be checking for signs of unlawful entry.

I have no plan but have always wanted to see more of Raf's location and neighbor situation. My apologies to Locard.

It would be interesting to know if there is video nearby and how the PLE got there (by car) and did they "suit up" before entering his space. If the grand frame job was in action by then why didn't they pour a little bloody water down the drain and add a few hundred picograms of blood to the "murder" knife? Just a wipe from a piece of bloody clothing or some wiped from Mez' floor would have done just fine.

 

[anglolawyer]

I have no plan but have always wanted to see more of Raf's location and neighbor situation. My apologies to Locard.

It would be interesting to know if there is video nearby and how the PLE got there (by car) and did they "suit up" before entering his space. If the grand frame job was in action by then why didn't they pour a little bloody water down the drain and add a few hundred picograms of blood to the "murder" knife? Just a wipe from a piece of bloody clothing or some wiped from Mez' floor would have done just fine.

As I said a couple of pages back, some think they did just that. Not me though. There was nothing on that knife at any time. But just because we may not know the precise intention it doesn't mean there wasn't anything. They may simply have wanted to look at Raf's computer for anything incriminating, or look around for stuff. Who knows? What we know is that a computer expert (in fact a team of experts) found evidence of activity at a time when no one was home.

 

[Strozzi]

Blimey. I don't know how hard people slam their doors in your apartment building, but the sheer level of force required to transmit sufficient vibration through to a neighbouring apartment as to cause an external mouse to physically move (unless that mouse is resting on glass covered in oil perhaps....) is waaaaaay above that which could be generated by slamming a door. You can do an experiment to check this if the spirit moves you.

[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

Nara heard it. Curatolo saw it. Mignini thought it was staged.