• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Continuation Part 22: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

Status
Not open for further replies.
Vixen said:
HELLO!!! He's a flippin' policeman, not Brad Pitt.
Click to expand...
It is getting better;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/making-a-murderer-italian-style-amanda-knox-doc-proves_us_57f2d93ae4b0f482f8f0bb30
Making A Murderer, Italian Style: Amanda Knox Doc Proves She Was Framed
The author talks about Magnini and Magnini is NOT Commended.
'However, watching the film, and seeing the interviews with Knox, co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, and most of all, lead prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, my opinion swung to that of a total frame-up....
And it gets worse, MUCH worse;
There are no facts, no eye witnesses, and no hard evidence to illustrate a definitive time line of events that led to the death of Meredith Kercher, yet somehow, this guy managed to put together a murder case based solely on conjecture; featuring contaminated DNA, questionable testimony given by Rudy Herman Guerde ― the only one of the three with a prior criminal record ― and his own twisted assumption that she was a blood-thirsty, American whore. Can you say “Agenda”?
I AM JUST LOVING THIS....................
 
analemma said:
It is getting better;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/making-a-murderer-italian-style-amanda-knox-doc-proves_us_57f2d93ae4b0f482f8f0bb30
Making A Murderer, Italian Style: Amanda Knox Doc Proves She Was Framed
The author talks about Magnini and Magnini is NOT Commended.
'However, watching the film, and seeing the interviews with Knox, co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, and most of all, lead prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, my opinion swung to that of a total frame-up....
And it gets worse, MUCH worse;
There are no facts, no eye witnesses, and no hard evidence to illustrate a definitive time line of events that led to the death of Meredith Kercher, yet somehow, this guy managed to put together a murder case based solely on conjecture; featuring contaminated DNA, questionable testimony given by Rudy Herman Guerde ― the only one of the three with a prior criminal record ― and his own twisted assumption that she was a blood-thirsty, American whore. Can you say “Agenda”?
I AM JUST LOVING THIS....................
Click to expand...

30 million people liked Saddam.
 
Vixen said:
30 million people liked Saddam.
Click to expand...

30 million people SAID they liked Saddam..which is what you do when, if you say otherwise, you and your family disappear.
Mignini just loves filing lawsuits against anyone who criticizes him. I believe his lawsuits, in this case alone, stand at 12. Lawsuits are used in Italy as an intimidation tactic.
 
Last edited:
Vixen said:
Actually that is an intelligent comment. Do you really think that Mignini is going to make a ridiculous comment that *only* a woman would ever do that?

This underlines the thrust of his reasoning, that whoever did it had some familairity with the victim as a person. Therefore, he reasoned, the body was covered by the same person who staged the burglary.
Forensic evidence proves that Rudy exited Mez' room, straight out of the front door. He went home, changed and went to a nightclub.

Therefore, the only remaining suspect would be one of the housemates, and Amanda was the only one around that weekend.

It is not so Mignini had a fixation on Amanda, for at that stage, Filomena was equally in the frame and was questioned closely.
Click to expand...

The thing is whatever Mignini said, the fact is he is a lawyer. His opinion on the behaviour of murderers is of no more worth than mine. On a quick look at the literature it does not seem to be supported by published studies. I note the suggestion that an expert profiler / forensic psychologist from the US says this is more characteristic of first time murderers. At least that person is an 'expert' entitled to give an opinion. There seems in this case to have been a great deal of 'amateur' psychological interpretation by the police and prosecutor but no attempt to get a qualified expert.

The whole case is riddled with this sort of thing, from fingerprint experts opining on footprints, to Steffanoni's inept crime scene investigation when her expertise is in the laboratory, to the non evidence based assertions on staging, and location of telephone calls. As the ISC said the quality of the investigation was irredeemably bad, precluding a further review of evidence at appeal court level.

What i have never understood is why none of those who believe Knox was guilty can say the investigation was of poor quality (and if it had been better irrefutable evidence of her guilt would have been found). The steep lawrence case in the Uk hinged on fibre transfer, no attempt to look for fibre transfer was made in this case.
 
Planigale said:
The thing is whatever Mignini said, the fact is he is a lawyer. His opinion on the behaviour of murderers is of no more worth than mine. On a quick look at the literature it does not seem to be supported by published studies. I note the suggestion that an expert profiler / forensic psychologist from the US says this is more characteristic of first time murderers. At least that person is an 'expert' entitled to give an opinion. There seems in this case to have been a great deal of 'amateur' psychological interpretation by the police and prosecutor but no attempt to get a qualified expert.

The whole case is riddled with this sort of thing, from fingerprint experts opining on footprints, to Steffanoni's inept crime scene investigation when her expertise is in the laboratory, to the non evidence based assertions on staging, and location of telephone calls. As the ISC said the quality of the investigation was irredeemably bad, precluding a further review of evidence at appeal court level.

What i have never understood is why none of those who believe Knox was guilty can say the investigation was of poor quality (and if it had been better irrefutable evidence of her guilt would have been found). The steep lawrence case in the Uk hinged on fibre transfer, no attempt to look for fibre transfer was made in this case.
Click to expand...


Exactly. And IMO this feeds back into the improper levels of power and equally improper measures of accountability that seem to pervade the Italian criminal justice system. In such an unfit-for-purpose system, where judges are predisposed to taking the prosecutor's version at face value - unless or until the defence can actively disprove the prosecutor's version - it's hardly surprising that these sorts of things can evolve. Prosecutors come to believe that they have Holmes-like sleuthing powers, since whatever nonsense they come up with is usually accepted wholesale by the courts, and they "win" almost every case they bring before the court, practically by default.

I think it's also worth expanding on what Marasca's court said (correctly) about the "what if" around the proper and competent collection of evidence. The point is that if the crime scene had been properly and professionally processed, and if the various pieces of physical evidence had been handled, stored and tested properly, and if the pathologist had been given proper access to the victim's body at the right time (which would probably have enabled a much more accurate window for ToD), and if potential witnesses had been handled properly and evaluated properly (and so on.....), then who knows, the police might have found credible, reliable evidence of the participation of Knox and/or Sollecito (though personally, I highly doubt it). Similarly, the police might have found credible, reliable evidence of someone else completely participating alongside Guede, or they might have found irrefutable evidence that Guede acted alone. The point is that we (both the courts and the public) will never know, since the police and PM botched the investigation so spectacularly.

It's a little bit akin to a person claiming to have seen fairies dancing in his back garden one afternoon, but without any (credible, reliable) evidence to support his claim. The fact that his claim is unsupported by evidence does not necessarily mean that there factually never were fairies dancing in his back garden. But in the absence of proper evidence, then the correct and proper conclusion for others to draw is that there were not fairies dancing in his back garden. However, had the person been able to record credible, reliable evidence of what happened in his garden that afternoon, then it would be possible to know exactly what he did or didn't see. Imagine if there were a reliably time-stamped HD camera with high-quality sound recording which covered the whole area of the man's small back garden. It would then be possible to determine with very high confidence whether fairies had appeared in his garden that afternoon (since their presence would have to have been recorded via the camera) or whether no fairies had actually appeared (since no images of fairies were captured on the camera for the whole of that afternoon).
 
Planigale said:
The thing is whatever Mignini said, the fact is he is a lawyer. His opinion on the behaviour of murderers is of no more worth than mine. On a quick look at the literature it does not seem to be supported by published studies. I note the suggestion that an expert profiler / forensic psychologist from the US says this is more characteristic of first time murderers. At least that person is an 'expert' entitled to give an opinion. There seems in this case to have been a great deal of 'amateur' psychological interpretation by the police and prosecutor but no attempt to get a qualified expert. The whole case is riddled with this sort of thing, from fingerprint experts opining on footprints, to Steffanoni's inept crime scene investigation when her expertise is in the laboratory, to the non evidence based assertions on staging, and location of telephone calls. As the ISC said the quality of the investigation was irredeemably bad, precluding a further review of evidence at appeal court level.

What i have never understood is why none of those who believe Knox was guilty can say the investigation was of poor quality (and if it had been better irrefutable evidence of her guilt would have been found). The steep lawrence case in the Uk hinged on fibre transfer, no attempt to look for fibre transfer was made in this case.
Click to expand...

The comments relevant to the highlighted parts are what is so good about the Italian Supreme Court motivations report which annulled Nencini's convictions - such that the kids were exonerated.

The Supreme Court author(s) of the report pick up on a theme begun with the 2013 Supreme Court panel which, back then, annulled Judge Hellmann's acquittals. Part of the reason for doing that was that, back then, The Supreme Court said that a fact-finding, lower court was not allowed to totally farm out evidence-decision-making. This was in relation to the, then, untested Exhibit 36I - potential DNA material on the knife blade.

In 2015, the new Supreme Court panel gives a summary of the issue, and cites one bit of what I assume is case law.

It turns out that (implicitly) Judge Massei's 2009 court was wrong to disallow independent DNA evaluation of Patrizia Stefanoni's work. Implicitly, Massei was wrong in law.

Massei simply substituted his own untrained opinions about DNA evidence - as did Nencini in rejecting the independent DNA analysis which the 2011 Hellmann court heard. So, legally speaking, acc. to the Supreme Court of Italy:

1) Massei was wrong not to seek the opinion of an independent DNA analyst.
2) Hellmann was wrong to allow Conti & Vecchiotti to make the de facto legal decision about whether or not testing Sample 36I should be done.
3) Nencini was wrong to discount Conti & Vecchiotti on the basis of the judge's own opinions and guesses.​
You may have to read it a couple of times, but here is how the final Supreme Court frames the debate:

Marasca-Bruno Section 7 said:
This question, specific as it is, forms part of the lively theoretical debate on the relationship between scientific evidence and criminal trials, in search of a problematic balance between a theory – not insensitive to certain suggestions of interpretive stances from beyond our borders – that tends to put an increasing amount of weight on the contributions of science, even if not validated by the scientific community; and a theory that insists on the primacy of law and postulates that, in deference to the rules of criminal procedure itself, only those scientific experiments validated according to commonly accepted methodological canons may be allowed to enter.​
Click to expand...

"(T)the lively theoretical debate on the relationship between scientific evidence and criminal trials"...... That debate exposes the traditional role of Italian judges as being anachronistic:

Marasca-Bruno Section 7 said:
(This) proposes to critically reexamine the now-obsolete and dubiously credible notion of the judge as “peritus peritorum” [expert of experts]. Indeed, this old maxim expresses a cultural model that is no longer current, and is in fact decidedly anachronistic, at least to the extent that it expects to assign to the judge a real ability to master the flow of scientific knowledge that the parties pour into the proceeding;​
Click to expand...
Then to the meat of why Nencini faled in this regard:

Marasca-Bruno Section 7.1 said:
(The whole point) is, rather, about ascertaining what value in the trial the genetic investigations can have when performed in a context when the analysis and findings are not at all respectful of the regulations approved by international protocols and those which, ordinarily, must take inspiration from the scientific method.

In making implicit reference to judicial interpretation of legitimacy, the judge a quo [of the trial from which this appeal is being heard] didn’t hesitate to attribute evidentiary value to the aforementioned results (f. 217).

The assumption cannot be shared.​
Click to expand...
The 2015 Supreme Court then, further, criticises the Nencini court for accepting "judicial truth" too easily. Even a Judge cannot simply accept a scientific postulation, just because a previous court has said so:

It is the belief of this Court that the Scientific truth, however elaborated, cannot automatically be transferred into the trial to be transformed, eo ipso [of itself], in judicial truth.​
Click to expand...
So Planigale is correct - not just for the prosecutor (Mignini or Crini), but for what The Supreme Court of Italy regards as the proper way of bringing modern-day evidence into an Italian court.

What is clear is that Nencini convicted, by ignoring all of this. So says The Italian Supreme Court. So the highest court in the land exonerated the pair.
 
LondonJohn said:
Exactly. And IMO this feeds back into the improper levels of power and equally improper measures of accountability that seem to pervade the Italian criminal justice system. In such an unfit-for-purpose system, where judges are predisposed to taking the prosecutor's version at face value - unless or until the defence can actively disprove the prosecutor's version - it's hardly surprising that these sorts of things can evolve. Prosecutors come to believe that they have Holmes-like sleuthing powers, since whatever nonsense they come up with is usually accepted wholesale by the courts, and they "win" almost every case they bring before the court, practically by default.

I think it's also worth expanding on what Marasca's court said (correctly) about the "what if" around the proper and competent collection of evidence. The point is that if the crime scene had been properly and professionally processed, and if the various pieces of physical evidence had been handled, stored and tested properly, and if the pathologist had been given proper access to the victim's body at the right time (which would probably have enabled a much more accurate window for ToD), and if potential witnesses had been handled properly and evaluated properly (and so on.....), then who knows, the police might have found credible, reliable evidence of the participation of Knox and/or Sollecito (though personally, I highly doubt it). Similarly, the police might have found credible, reliable evidence of someone else completely participating alongside Guede, or they might have found irrefutable evidence that Guede acted alone. The point is that we (both the courts and the public) will never know, since the police and PM botched the investigation so spectacularly.
Click to expand...

Our posts crossed - but I was reading IN Marasca-Bruno what you'd typed above. Marasca-Bruno (The final Supreme Court verdict which acquitted) put it a little bit differently, but it is as you say.....

(This) proposes to critically reexamine the now-obsolete and dubiously credible notion of the judge as “peritus peritorum” [expert of experts]. Indeed, this old maxim expresses a cultural model that is no longer current, and is in fact decidedly anachronistic, at least to the extent that it expects to assign to the judge a real ability to master the flow of scientific knowledge that the parties pour into the proceeding;​
Click to expand...
 
Vixen said:
Both correct. You'll find Pat really knows his stuff about this case.
Click to expand...

He does Vixen. But he's completely blind.

I honestly believe this. If all of a sudden tomorrow, Rudy came clean and admitted he committed the murder alone, you in would no way believe him.
 
Planigale said:
What i have never understood is why none of those who believe Knox was guilty can say the investigation was of poor quality (and if it had been better irrefutable evidence of her guilt would have been found). The steep lawrence case in the Uk hinged on fibre transfer, no attempt to look for fibre transfer was made in this case.
Click to expand...

This is not specifically directed at you but I wonder if there is anybody who believe that they may be guilty but the case is just so screwed up that the case should have been just dismissed?
 
Desert Fox said:
This is not specifically directed at you but I wonder if there is anybody who believe that they may be guilty but the case is just so screwed up that the case should have been just dismissed?
Click to expand...

It strange you mention this. I read something a while ago about the Steve Avery case, where there was an impassioned/reasoned argument that Avery was in jail unjustly....

..... but that there was plenty of reason to believe that he'd killed Teresa Halbach. IIRC the reasoning was that the police had acted illegally in coercing a confession from Brendan Dassey, and didn't bother with other evidence once they'd got that confession.

Dassey has now been released, and this writer thought that Avery would be released by December.

That's about as close as I can get to your question, D.F. As it relates to the bungled investigation of the Kercher case, I read one person, also a while ago, who thought that listing a bunch of "questions for Knox that only she can answer about this case" would explain why she should have been acquitted, but that there was smoke there suggesting she'd got away with it.

However, I'm getting the feeling that this Netflix documentary is a page turner - even though the whole thing has not played big here locally at all, there was a thing in a local newspaper about the Netflix thing calling Nick Pisa the most hated man in this whole, almost decade debacle.
 
Sergei Walankov said:
Instructive reading on how the anti-Knox cultists appear to those whose interest has been piqued by the Netflix documentary.

http://moviepilot.com/p/amanda-knox-truthers-guilty-innocent/4111460
Click to expand...

If I'm following at all correctly some of the twitter stuff and what it links to.......

........it is heartening to see the avalanche of people who seem to be quickly figuring this out:

Raffaele and Amanda are innocent.

Nick Pisa and Giuliano Mignini are morons

The fake-wiki is, indeed, fake; based on a "truther" approach to elevating factoids over reason.

The guilt nutters who run guilt websites are, pardon the repitition, nutters. I found three or four mentions of Peter Quennell and his obsessive minutiae about this as "creepy" and other equivalents. One even tried to dig into this claim Quennell has made of 100s of lawyers. That one said all they could find was untraceable pseudonyms plus a genuine conveyance lawyer.

No one as yet has migrated to ISF, way over here in a part of that universe in the doldrums.

But it is gratifying to see the avalanche of people figuring this out so quickly. Marriott couldn't have paid them all!!!!
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom