Continuation Part 19: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Machiavelli]

Look at me. Machiavelli accepts the challenge, finds a reference, but he says it's from one of the imprecise outlets. Yet he reverses field by saying it got one thing precise!

Is it too late to ask for a precise outlet? Surely there is one.

What I quoted is a clear enough article, that allows you to verify that the press did report content of the SC ruling.
In my opinion all internet newspapers in Italy are badly written, with very few exceptions, and those exceptions who have well.paid journalists only offer a limited coverage. Those journalists who actually took the time of reading the SC ruling are not among the well-paid ones, they read it and wrote about it quickly, yet you can see the content is clear.

 

[acbytesla]

Law is international these days. Of course you can take out a suit. For example, Lockerbie. You can claim unlawful death.

Of course the Kerchers could sue. In fact they did sue. And lost.

Is that a non sequitur?

 

[Machiavelli]

Almost forgot about Mignini. While Machiavelli is here he might tell us what he thinks of Mignini's censure. My bet is that he'll find another imprecise outlet..... perhaps even from Andrea Vogt.

Yes, I can tell you what I think about Mignini's disciplinary session, but I decided to deal with one topic at a time. Now I'm dealing with the content of the SC ruling.

 

[Machiavelli]

Of course the Kerchers could sue. In fact they did sue. And lost.

Is that a non sequitur?

They still can.

 

[Machiavelli]

I point out that the article on Quotidiano.net is written by an excellent journalist, Erika Pontini.
It's one of the longest and most detailed articles you can find on that piece of news.
She gets everything correct - not just one detail - it is ony "badly written", by saying this I only mean not "beautifully written", it seems to have been written quickly and thus not edited, it's not the best way of writing. This is why you find this mention of Patrick Lumumba in reference to the Knox's story addressed by the SC, without a full elaboration (a bit like me writing on the forum) but you can understand very well what it means.
I said "imprecise" but I put quotation marks on the word.

 

[Vixen]

Hollow? Certainly year jest. You must not undertstand the idiom. Raffaele would be in prison today and Amanda would be fighting extradition. Instead, both are free to live their lives. Amanda is prospering and Raffaele is succeeding greatly having written a second book and being paid a considerable amount of money to write a software app. In the meantime Mignini is being censured

Don't you get it Vixen? Everything after acquitted is as irrelevant as these posts.

This proves the point. We were not talking about prison reform or even 'fighting extradition' - although, that cannot be fought in respect of the upcoming calunnia case in January, as a bog standard felony - we were talking about justice.

Think of those Russian athletes who cheated in the London 2012 Olympics. Sure they got gold medals and wealth. However, their "victories" are worthless and tarnished in terms of integrity.

So the kids got off on bending the law. Pyrrhic victory as they won't get compo and nor are they 'exonerees', even if Raff did buy a Porsche last year and Amanda flirts with Innocents Projects.

I guess you subscribe to the Madoff School of Thought: "So what? Who cares?"

 

[bagels]

Pro-Knoxes often project on me their own circular thinking, or think that I am obsessed by a person's charachter (they have instead a charachter projection on Mignini and Stefanoni etc.).
But Amanda Knox's and Sollecito's lies are not charachters features, lies are just objective evidence. And so I don't look into anyone's "evil" eyes - I don't even believe "evil" beings exist. This is your projection on me, and you portraying what you imagine as a circular reasoning, because you fail to see the things that instead I see.
It is just correct: multiple perpetrators is not obvious to you. But it's because you don't see it. And thus, you imagine that I am motivated by something else.
The reason why you don't see it is that you don't look at it. You don't look at the evidence. Not in the way it should be looked at, that is, assume evidence is a piece of logical inference. The word "logical" here means developed from a concept of opposinge alternatives.
For example, pick your statement: you urge me to "accept that perhaps the blood negative DNA negative luminol prints ... aren't related to the crime at all". One of the problems with this statement - only one of them - is that "not related to the crime" is not a plausible alternative, it's not something, here there is only the negative hypothesys (not blood, not crime) but not the positive one (what is it? how was it produced?). Therefore the option is illogical, because it lacks the logical alternative; it is also implausible, because the alternatives (how do you produce isolated bare foot prints) would be intrinsically improbable scenarios.
It has to be rejected as weak also on many other grounds anyway, including reasons like the fact that it does not explain its capability of forming a system with other pieces of evidence, that is its analogies with bathmat prints etc.

The physical evidence that a scenario needs to respond to is not limited to luminol prints, there is a large number of physical elements of this kind that have implications between each other.
Try to lock a door without turning your feet towards the door for example; or look at the many drops on the pillow located underneath the body. The bath stains etc. Just examples. It's many physical details, they require some overall plausible dynamic. And the information related to the autopsy report, obviously.

But you can't answer how the prints were produced from Meredith's blood. There is a bright luminol reaction suggesting strong traces of haemoglobin, and yet TMB, which readily reacts to such traces, tested negative, repeatedly, in the eight places it was tried.

So these stains aren't blood, but you carry on as if they are because your theory requires it. I have no such requirement so I treat them as they should be treated, as irrelevant.

I think your approach to reconstructing the crime from the minutiae of traces and the physical state of the scene is an exercise in uncertainty. The stochastic factors involved are innumerable. The possible chain of events that result in a particular trace or particular object placement cannot be counted. Rudy could walk out the door, turn around at the locked entrance, come back for the keys, or he could have walked out and gone downstairs which there is some evidence to support, then come back, he could even have walked off entirely, hit up the dance club, then decided it was risky leaving the door open and gone back to lock it, or even have pivoted his upper torso to turn and lock the door with his left foot pointed down the hall which is physically possible even if improbable. All of these scenarios present a range of possible solutions to your problem in varying degrees of likelihood.

But you take standard background stochasticity and use it to construct a theory of the crime that is even more implausible and then act as if this solves your scene. Rudy walking out the door and then returning at some point seems slightly unexpected, ergo two students helped him butcher their friend.

 

[acbytesla]

They still can.

Really? Who would they sue and where would they do this? My experience is courts don't revisit complaints that have already been adjudicated.

 

[Bill Williams]

Yes, I can tell you what I think about Mignini's disciplinary session, but I decided to deal with one topic at a time. Now I'm dealing with the content of the SC ruling.

Fair enough. There's bound to be more legal/professional trouble for Dr. Mignini, so we can talk about it then.

 

[dropzone]

The only problem is that you get dumber the longer you hang out here.

I do try to fit in.

 

[acbytesla]

This proves the point. We were not talking about prison reform or even 'fighting extradition' - although, that cannot be fought in respect of the upcoming calunnia case in January, as a bog standard felony - we were talking about justice.

Think of those Russian athletes who cheated in the London 2012 Olympics. Sure they got gold medals and wealth. However, their "victories" are worthless and tarnished in terms of integrity.

So the kids got off on bending the law. Pyrrhic victory as they won't get compo and nor are they 'exonerees', even if Raff did buy a Porsche last year and Amanda flirts with Innocents Projects.

I guess you subscribe to the Madoff School of Thought: "So what? Who cares?"

Of course they did not bend the law, they won in court. You have a special gift for twisting the truth.

Also, your analogies are absurd. The two were facing spending more than a decade more in prison. Not only don't you understand what a "hollow victory is, you dont understand what a Pyhrric victory is either. No one would describe their victories as Pyhrric.

Both Amanda's and Raffaele's lives are significantly better as the result of being acquitted. One only needs to spend any time incarcerated to know that a day being free is far better.

 

[bagels]

This proves the point. We were not talking about prison reform or even 'fighting extradition' - although, that cannot be fought in respect of the upcoming calunnia case in January, as a bog standard felony - we were talking about justice.

That Italy can drag someone into an unrecorded interrogation, slap them around, and then charge them with a felony if they have the nerve to complain about it, doesn't instill a neutral observer with any sense of justice actually.

 

[Grinder]

Perhaps one of the Italian speakers could translate at least some of the article Mach linked to. Both Google and Bing leave at lot to be desired. It does seem as if it does interpret the ruling similar to Mach's contentions. Regardless, it boggles the mind how the justices write these reports.

 

[Planigale]

When the PIP's trot out this banal soundbite, I am minded of the epitaph on an ancient tomb*:


"And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully." 2 Timothy 2:5 (KJV)

Given Bruno-Marasca did not exonerate the kids, nor declare them "innocent", contemplate on why their victory is hollow, from the clue I have provided.

*Thorsten Stålhandske, brother of Elin.

Vixen why do you always exaggerate? This is a 17th century tomb - early modern in historical terms - not ancient.

 

[Planigale]

Pro-Knoxes often project on me their own circular thinking, or think that I am obsessed by a person's charachter (they have instead a charachter projection on Mignini and Stefanoni etc.).
But Amanda Knox's and Sollecito's lies are not charachters features, lies are just objective evidence. And so I don't look into anyone's "evil" eyes - I don't even believe "evil" beings exist. This is your projection on me, and you portraying what you imagine as a circular reasoning, because you fail to see the things that instead I see.
It is just correct: multiple perpetrators is not obvious to you. But it's because you don't see it. And thus, you imagine that I am motivated by something else.
The reason why you don't see it is that you don't look at it. You don't look at the evidence. Not in the way it should be looked at, that is, assume evidence is a piece of logical inference. The word "logical" here means developed from a concept of opposinge alternatives.
For example, pick your statement: you urge me to "accept that perhaps the blood negative DNA negative luminol prints ... aren't related to the crime at all". One of the problems with this statement - only one of them - is that "not related to the crime" is not a plausible alternative, it's not something, here there is only the negative hypothesys (not blood, not crime) but not the positive one (what is it? how was it produced?). Therefore the option is illogical, because it lacks the logical alternative; it is also implausible, because the alternatives (how do you produce isolated bare foot prints) would be intrinsically improbable scenarios.
It has to be rejected as weak also on many other grounds anyway, including reasons like the fact that it does not explain its capability of forming a system with other pieces of evidence, that is its analogies with bathmat prints etc.

The physical evidence that a scenario needs to respond to is not limited to luminol prints, there is a large number of physical elements of this kind that have implications between each other.
Try to lock a door without turning your feet towards the door for example; or look at the many drops on the pillow located underneath the body. The bath stains etc. Just examples. It's many physical details, they require some overall plausible dynamic. And the information related to the autopsy report, obviously.

The problem is that it is the prosecution's responsibility to create a coherent case, not the defence. The defence merely have to sow doubt. The reason for this is the inequity in resources between prosecution and defence. The defence do not have to put every piece of evidence into an alternate reconstruction.

But the requirement for a logical case remains for the prosecution. You create a straw man argument here. You say the accused must be guilty because they cannot provide an explanation for the bloody prints in the hall linking them to the locking of MK's bedroom door. But there is no evidence to say the bloody prints have or need to have any relationship to the locking of the door. There is no time print to show the temporal relationship between the two. If the prosecution wish to link the two they must provide evidence to link them, mere assertion does not make it so.

You exhibit a common failing in human thinking, you fail to apply the same standards to assessing evidence that supports your beliefs as to evidence that opposes it. You say that defence witnesses are allowed to lie in Italian courts (this in itself is something that needs reform if true), therefore they must be assumed to be lying. This then allows you to ignore the defence case. Yet even when given evidence (e.g. Stefanoni's statements to court) that prosecution witnesses told the court things that were untrue you refuse even to consider that the prosecution witnesses may have lied or been incompetent. This is literally a double standard.

The bathmat footprint is a good example. You have paid consultants for the defence who are fingerprint specialists reporting on a footprint, which should be done by a forensic anthropologist or podiatrist. They admit to not knowing the anatomy of a foot. The results they give are impossibly accurate. They could not have been derived from 'blind' measurement of the bathmat print. But even their measurements actually exclude Sollecito as being the source of the footprint. Yet they give a ridiculous opinion identifying him as the source. Even giving them the benefit of the doubt they should have given as the strongest finding that they could not exclude Sollecito as the source.The defence analysis which objectively is better done is ignored as being by a paid defence consultant with no genuine attempt to engage with the argument made. Why is a paid prosecution consultant intrinsically more reliable than a paid defence consultant? it should be the argument made that should be addressed not the person making it. Just because a thief says stealing is wrong does not make stealing right.

 

[LondonJohn]

In England, it can still be considered defamatory, even if true, from what I recall of a journalist course. For example, a well known person successfully sued a hack for describing her as being fat. (She was.) You need to be careful how you describe people here, but generally speaking, "the truth" is a defence, when referring to character.

The other defence is "fair comment" (opinion). You will need at least £50K to bring a libel suit and if you lose, expect massive costs. (See "plebgate".)

Err... justification (i.e. showing to the court's satisfaction that the statement is/was true - or even substantially true) is, AFAIK, an absolute defence in E&W libel law. As such, I suspect that you are talking absolute bollocks.

 

[LondonJohn]

Against whom, and in what jurisdiction?

Some rag may print that but it's not bloody likely.

The Kerchers would be very well advised to let all this drop - and on top of this, I genuinely don't believe that they have the collective character to bring any sort of further action.

Because if they do bring civil action against Knox or Sollecito in UK, US or Italy (or even some sort of civil action against the Marasca verdict in Italy?), they risk placing themselves in the hole for even more money than they already owe that showman Maresca (unless he's done the decent thing and mitigated some or all of his huge fee....), and they will be doing the equivalent of a man with toothache being unable to resist touching his aching tooth to repeat the pain. On top of that, I feel (sadly, for them) very confident that they will never get anywhere near reaching a "balance of probabilities" verdict in their favour against Knox or Sollecito in any US or UK court, for reasons which should be pretty clear to everyone with his/her eyes open and no axe to grind. God knows what might or might not happen in Italy - it seems almost impossible to predict outcomes in their crazy, arcane and thoroughly unfit-for-purpose justice system.

 

[LondonJohn]

Vixen why do you always exaggerate? This is a 17th century tomb - early modern in historical terms - not ancient.

I do think it's fair to say that these sorts of mistakes or exaggerations - while obviously not directly relevant to the case in any way - can reasonably lead to any observers detracting from the credibility of Vixen's arguments about the case. So much for exhaustive, exacting research, huh......?

 

[Machiavelli]

Really? Who would they sue and where would they do this? My experience is courts don't revisit complaints that have already been adjudicated.

They can sue even Knox & Sollecito if they want.
They can also sue other subjects who have much more money, and I'd recommend them to do so. But they can also still sue K & S as well.
As for Italian jurisprudence, the SC annulment or acquittal on 531.2 do not prevent nor prejudice civil actions. The civil case is not adjudicated.

 

[Desert Fox]

Err... justification (i.e. showing to the court's satisfaction that the statement is/was true - or even substantially true) is, AFAIK, an absolute defence in E&W libel law. As such, I suspect that you are talking absolute bollocks.

The two U.K. civil cases I have looked at in some detail seem to have worked that way.

One was covered in a documentary called "Holocaust on Trial" where Deborah Lipstadt was sued by David Irving. He defense team absolutely proved that the Holocaust was real.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd

The second was when British Chiropractic Association sued Singh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Chiropractic_Association_v_Singh
At one point the so-called "quacklash" resulted in 500 formal complaints in 24 hours to the BCA and, before the case closed, a quarter of all members of the British Chiropractic Association were under formal investigation.