Continuation Part 18: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[LondonJohn]

"By the PIP"? Anyway, I very much do recognize Cheli as having insights vastly better than my own, and is vastly a better source.

But also as better that LondonJohn's? Maybe, maybe not. Both deserve a listen.... and it is actually not a competition.

Exactly. Paradoxically, the adversarial approach is not a good way* to seek enlightenment, truth and progress in this sort of environment. Rather, a sceptical inquisitorial process is far preferable. It's not "one or the other".

There are numerous credible sources (both academic and journalistic) which make it very clear indeed that the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, as it exists on the written page in 2015, is a dreadful and unfit-for-purpose piece of code which was the progeny of the well-intentioned - but half-baked and hugely resisted within much of the Italian judiciary - reforms of the late 1980s. And one of the clumsy mash-ups is Section 530, which didn't bother to properly replace the old ways of acquittal with accurate and fit-for-purpose ones. Then, Italy being Italy, they've just muddled along with this half-baked scenario ever since.

It's a shambles. And it's one of the very many reasons why Italy's criminal justice system is so fundamentally broken. However, while Italy's executive and legislators continue to have neither the teeth, the appetite, the mandate nor the will to change things, and while powerful reactionary elements in the judiciary express their resistance to any more change or meddling on "their" turf, nothing is likely to change any time soon. It's a fiasco.


* Though it's demonstrably and provably the best (and least bad) way to administer criminal justice.

 

[Grinder]

I am confident only because you are confident."

 

[Dougm]

Unfortunately for Rudy, Amanda and Raff, they are the ones under discussion, not me.

An Italian newspaper published clips of this grainy footage. Period.

This is not about you personally. Just asking about what seems to me to be an inconsistent point of view in what you are saying.

One person, Amanda Knox, is told something by her lawyer, and tells other people that her lawyer told her that (which is true). It appears, based on what we have now read, that what her lawyer told her is not true, at least not 100 percent true. So you call her a liar. OK, we have established that is your point of view.

Why is that different than posting things that are not true, that you cannot provide any evidence for?

If I posted, for example, that there was video footage, blurry or not, that showed a man that looked like Lumumba sharing a kabob with Rudy, I suspect people on this thread would ask me to prove that, because they have never heard of it before. If I were unable to provide a source, people would disbelieve me, not only on that point, but on other points I put forth. I personally think that would be an odd thing for me to do, but it would be even more odd, and entirely inconsistent from a logical argument point of view, for me to then vehemently accuse someone else of being less than truthful, since I was doing the same thing, in a much more blatant way, myself.

I only ask this because I observe human behavior, and one of the things I find interesting is when a person criticizes others for doing the exact same thing that person has just done! Like when Mach rants about Amanda Knox slandering people, and in the paragraph right above, calls her every bad name he can think of, with little to no evidence it is actually true.

 

[LondonJohn]

What do you think "not proven" means? It's much like paragraph 2.

NO. IT'S NOT LIKE 530.2 AT ALL. It used to be, before 1989, but it's not now. There is no Italian verdict since 1989 which is in any way equivalent to a Scottish "not proven".

You really ought to disabuse yourself of that notion. A good place to start would be the part of the Marasca Report which states unequivocally that Knox and Sollecito were acquitted "because they did not commit the crimes". Not "because they might have committed the crimes, but there wasn't enough evidence to prove it sufficiently".

 

[acbytesla]

Sadly, that's all the pro-Amanda lobby have got. Ad hominem attack, for they have no real explanation for all the lies, subterfuges and fraudulent statements of Amanda and Raff, so they attack innocent policemen and lab scientists instead.

So we have a parallel universe wherein all the cops, prosecutors and upright decent citizens are the criminals and liars.

Please explain how any of my remarks can be construed as ad hominem attacks? And out of curiosity, what do you think calling Amanda a liar is? A compliment?

 

[bagels]

You cannot claim to know what's inside their heads. Making excuses for inexcusable behaviour just comes across as rationalisation of the irrational.

Likewise? You cannot claim to know what went on inside the interrogation because the police did not record or make a single note of it. We can make some inferences. The statements Amanda signed were written in Italian by the police. They don't make a single mention of waiving a right to a lawyer. The statements are vague and use phrases like "I don't remember" "I confusedly remember" "I vaguely remember." The statements aren't consistent with the crime scene, most notably totally neglecting the break-in. The police admit through their own words that they got Amanda to "buckle" and tell them what they "knew to be correct" which was "case closed" and that they told her she couldn't clearly remember being at the crime because she may be blocking the memories through temporary traumatic amnesia. The second Amanda was out of the interrogation room she wrote that she's not confident in what she stated, that she felt confusion and doubt in her testimony, that the police yelled at her and hit her which caused her anxiety.

On the other hand, a guilty Amanda may have decided to place herself at the crime scene and admit to being a participant in a staged burglary covering a murder because the police are asking her about text messages with her boss she never met that night.

 

[Vixen]

No its false. Made up in the mind of the guilters to explain what they couldn't explain with actual evidence.

I challenge you to present actual COURT EVIDENCE...not tabloid trash of any of the following guilters lies.

1. Amanda was jealous of Meredith.
2. Amanda felt slighted because Meredith didn't invite her to accompany her with her English friends.
3. That Amanda had ever engaged in group sex and the murder was the result of a sex orgy gone awry.
4. That Rudy ever contacted or was ever contacted by either Amanda or Raffaele before or after the murder.

There are so many many things you get wrong about this case . I'd like to see you prove just one thing in the way an actual lawyer does.

Just one.

Please read Mignini's closing submissions wherein he actually quotes the series of pleas Amanda sent Mez.

Mez and her English friends had reservations about Amanda's uninhibited behaviour. I concede that could just be cultural as the English do not like "showing off".

I have never seen any claim Amanda took part in orgies.

The position Mez' body was found indicates a desire to imply a rape scene. (i.e., it was staged.).

The fact Amanda went to great lengths to conceal the crime and point the finger at someone else is highly incriminating. Nobody, including Raff himself, believes for a minute she was at Raff's all evening, as cellphone pings show otherwise.

Turning their phones off for the duration of the crime (Jodi Arias did the same) and having 101 different explanations for it, doesn't inspire confidence in their truthfulness.

Her mixed DNA and footsteps in Mez' blood is not explained away by her living there.

 

[Dougm]

Please read Mignini's closing submissions wherein he actually quotes the series of pleas Amanda sent Mez.

Mez and her English friends had reservations about Amanda's uninhibited behaviour. I concede that could just be cultural as the English do not like "showing off".

I have never seen any claim Amanda took part in orgies.

The position Mez' body was found indicates a desire to imply a rape scene. (i.e., it was staged.).

The fact Amanda went to great lengths to conceal the crime and point the finger at someone else is highly incriminating. Nobody, including Raff himself, believes for a minute she was at Raff's all evening, as cellphone pings show otherwise.

Turning their phones off for the duration of the crime (Jodi Arias did the same) and having 101 different explanations for it, doesn't inspire confidence in their truthfulness.

Her mixed DNA and footsteps in Mez' blood is not explained away by her living there.

You DO realize Mignini put forth a series of speculations in his closing arguments, right? Things that were not supported by any facts, they were just his, "this seems like how it could have happened" theories? And those things are not proven?

 

[Vixen]

This is not about you personally. Just asking about what seems to me to be an inconsistent point of view in what you are saying.

One person, Amanda Knox, is told something by her lawyer, and tells other people that her lawyer told her that (which is true). It appears, based on what we have now read, that what her lawyer told her is not true, at least not 100 percent true. So you call her a liar. OK, we have established that is your point of view.

Why is that different than posting things that are not true, that you cannot provide any evidence for?

If I posted, for example, that there was video footage, blurry or not, that showed a man that looked like Lumumba sharing a kabob with Rudy, I suspect people on this thread would ask me to prove that, because they have never heard of it before. If I were unable to provide a source, people would disbelieve me, not only on that point, but on other points I put forth. I personally think that would be an odd thing for me to do, but it would be even more odd, and entirely inconsistent from a logical argument point of view, for me to then vehemently accuse someone else of being less than truthful, since I was doing the same thing, in a much more blatant way, myself.

I only ask this because I observe human behavior, and one of the things I find interesting is when a person criticizes others for doing the exact same thing that person has just done! Like when Mach rants about Amanda Knox slandering people, and in the paragraph right above, calls her every bad name he can think of, with little to no evidence it is actually true.

The tactic of pro-Amanda fans is to call people who suspect her, "liars, because you called our idol, a liar, then we'll call you one".

Amanda slandered respectable policemen and her boss. It's a fact. The thread is about the Meredith Kercher murder, not about me.

 

[LondonJohn]

Strangely 530 doesn't seem to be mentioned.

Seriously? Your statement to me was this:

"I'm sure the Italians would welcome you informing them their laws are written incorrectly."

The academic article I linked to in reply makes just this point numerous times. Here are just a few (my bolding):

While this new procedure has “moved the Italian system in the direction
of the American adversarial system much more than any other civil law
jurisdiction,” scholars have also been highly critical of it. Part of the
criticism stems from the inability to place the Italian hybrid into either an
adversarial or inquisitorial mold. Others take issue with the fact that
the Italian system failed to fully transplant the adversarial model, and
instead only creates an “acoustic imitation,” failing to achieve many of
the protections the new criminal procedure code sought to guarantee.

Italy had high expectations for its new (1989) criminal procedure code, but the reception in Italy was decidedly mixed. Over the last thirty years the code has struggled to maintain force in the face of Constitutional Court
decisions, Parliamentary legislation, and judicial activism. Within four years of enactment, Italy’s criminal procedure code was being systematically un-done by the Constitutional Court and Parliament. The Italian Constitutional Court undermined much of the separation between the preliminary investigation and trial phases with decisions that allowed hearsay and out-of-court statements to be admitted, and found the criminal procedure code’s exclusionary rules to be unconstitutional. Furthermore, the Italian legislature mounted numerous attempts to amend the criminal procedure code in reaction to increased and deadly attacks by the Mafia in the 1990s. These attacks led to widespread calls for justice and resulted in legislation that “increased the exceptions to the rule that the only evidence admissible was that collected at trial.” However, by 1999 Italy again focused on reforming its criminal proceedings, this time for good.

Even with these adversarial reforms finally firmly in place, adversarial
procedures still face significant difficulties when judges apply them in
practice. Italian judges who have traditionally “conceived of their role as
one of seeking the truth” have struggled with their new passive roles and
have generally sought to maintain as much power over the trial process as
possible. In particular, Italian judges have seized on Article 507 of the
criminal procedure code, which authorizes judges to examine proof
suasponte “after all the evidence has been produced in court. As con-
ceived, Article 507 was meant to be a narrow exception, used sparingly by
the courts. In practice, judges, given their history with an inquisitorial
structure for criminal proceedings, have interpreted Article 507 broadly,
“effectively turn[ing] the provision into an avenue for extensive judicial
inquiry.” In all, judicial activism remains highly prevalent in Italy’s sys-
tem, with the country struggling more than expected to install neutrality
and passivity

 

[Vixen]

Please explain how any of my remarks can be construed as ad hominem attacks? And out of curiosity, what do you think calling Amanda a liar is? A compliment?

She is a liar, and it is relevant in assessing her honesty, or lack thereof.

 

[Bill Williams]

The tactic of pro-Amanda fans is to call people who suspect her, "liars, because you called our idol, a liar, then we'll call you one".

Amanda slandered respectable policemen and her boss. It's a fact. The thread is about the Meredith Kercher murder, not about me.

Agreed, it is not about you.

It is about the things you claim. For starters, can you cite one person who has called Amanda Knox, "our idol"?

No? I thought not.

 

[Bill Williams]

She is a liar, and it is relevant in assessing her honesty, or lack thereof.

You have admitted twice on this thread to getting things wrong. Other posters here have cited copious proofs that other things you have claimed have been totally bogus.

Is it then fair to conclude that you are not a very well informed contributor to this thread?

 

[bagels]

The tactic of pro-Amanda fans is to call people who suspect her, "liars, because you called our idol, a liar, then we'll call you one".

Amanda slandered respectable policemen and her boss. It's a fact. The thread is about the Meredith Kercher murder, not about me.

I don't think you're lying. What would be the point? It doesn't accomplish anything or change the truth. When you say something self evidently false like Amanda's footprints were found in Meredith's blood it's just part of the whacky belief system that makes up the typical PGP ideology. If Amanda left footprints in Meredith's blood she would currently be serving the 8th year of her prison sentence, and this thread wouldn't exist, and we wouldn't know each other. Far out

 

[Vixen]

You DO realize Mignini put forth a series of speculations in his closing arguments, right? Things that were not supported by any facts, they were just his, "this seems like how it could have happened" theories? And those things are not proven?

That's because in Italy, prosecutors have to provide a reconstruction of the crime and likely motive. Of course, this will often be educated conjecture, but it doesn't make a perp innocent, just because the cops don't get all the details right.

 

[LondonJohn]

You have admitted twice on this thread to getting things wrong. Other posters here have cited copious proofs that other things you have claimed have been totally bogus.

Is it then fair to conclude that you are not a very well informed contributor to this thread?

I think it's a true fact that Mignini sent a whole load of pleading text messages to Massei during the first trial, begging to go out for a drink with Massei. Massei of course accepted the invitation enthusiastically

 

[Bill Williams]

What do you think "not proven" means? It's much like paragraph 2.

What do **I** think it means? I think it means that the prosecution did not prove their case, and whoever it was they were passing judgement on was stone cold innocent, as they'd always been throughout the process.

Does "not proven" for you mean, "not guilty but with shadows"?

In Scotland:

Historically, the two verdicts available to Scots juries were that the case had been "proven" or "not proven". However, in a dramatic case in 1728 the jury asserted "its ancient right" to bring in a "not guilty" verdict even when the facts of the case were proven (see jury nullification). As the "not guilty" verdict gained wide acceptance amongst Scots juries, Scots began to use "not guilty" in cases where the jury felt the "not proven" verdict did not adequately express the innocence of the person on trial. Shrewd defence then further encouraged this interpretation in order to persuade juries unwilling to bring in a "not guilty" verdict that the "not proven" could be brought in as a lesser or "third verdict".

The result is the modern perception that the "not proven" verdict is an acquittal used when the judge or jury does not have enough evidence to convict but is not sufficiently convinced of the accused person's innocence to bring in a "not guilty" verdict. Essentially, the judge or jury is unconvinced that the suspect is innocent, but has insufficient evidence to the contrary. In popular parlance, this verdict is sometimes jokingly referred to as "not guilty and don't do it again".

Out of the country, the "not proven" verdict may be referred to as the Scottish verdict, and in Scotland itself it may be referred to colloquially as the bastard verdict, which was a term coined by Sir Walter Scott, who was sheriff in the court of Selkirk.​

So as long as this conversation continues as the level of perception, you can perceive anything you so wish.

 

[Ken Dine]

I believe there was one witness that said he bothered women. Rudi had until very recently before the murder been living with a woman in Milan, how do you know he was any more frustrated than the average Joe?

The average guy doesn't grope women, even when drunk.

Oh course we don't have any verification that he desperately needed money. It seems his foster mom was still helping him and he had been doing some work. I guess you're not in the school of thought that it was Rudi that stole the 2000 from the Nursery

Guede was in arrears on his rent and his landlady wanted confirmation that he had employment, which he apparently didn't have.

Do you have a citation to prove Guede's "former foster mom was still helping him" on his rent? Even if true, Guede also needed food and carousing money, so was she helping fund that, too?

Yes Rudi is just like the Night Stalker

Few people are as pure evil as the Night Stalker was. Just saying, that some deviants do burglar, rape and murder. If Guede had experienced the same thrill in killing Meredith, then it's a good thing Guede was stopped before he had the chance to strike again.

These types of sexual crimes often start small and then the perps gradually progresses to much more serious offenses.

Of course, Guede may have been sickened by what he did to Meredith and he may have never murdered again? Who knows?

We also don't know the full extent of Guede's criminal history since many crimes go unsolved, so Guede may have successfully committed other crimes without being caught?

 

[Dougm]

That's because in Italy, prosecutors have to provide a reconstruction of the crime and likely motive. Of course, this will often be educated conjecture, but it doesn't make a perp innocent, just because the cops don't get all the details right.

Legally, it kind of does.

 

[Vixen]

Agreed, it is not about you.

It is about the things you claim. For starters, can you cite one person who has called Amanda Knox, "our idol"?

No? I thought not.

"Bill", you must admit the pro-Knox lobby has strong features recognisable as cult behaviour. Extreme hatred of anyone who suspects Amanda and Raff are indeed guilty, personal abuse of same, in the face of incriminating behaviour or evidence, they stonewall, rationalise it and carry on as though they were not aware of the evidence, or of its significance.

The pro-Knox lobby cannot accept people have a right to their opinion. They see themselves as a club with special knowledge. Every so often, their "leader" pops up to issue directions on how they should behave and whom they are not allowed to talk to.

Anyone with a different opinion is reported to the mods as "slow flooding" "trolls".

Sounds like a clique to me.