The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 24

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abaddon said:
Nope. You are proposing that, not me. You flat out stated that the entire Italian police force was in on your game.



And your answer is NO. The vast majority of the Italian police force neither knew nor cared.
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I find it difficult to work out whether it's low intellect on the part of so many pro-guilt commentators, or the blinding effect of bias, which leads to the near-ubiquitous pro-guilt false dichotomy:

"Either 1) Knox/Sollecito did it, or 2) all of the police detectives, police forensic scientists, prosecutors, prosecution experts, and (convicting) courts.... were all participating in an orchestrated conspiracy to frame Knox/Sollecito. Which of those two do you think is more likely, huh?! Huh?!!"

Of course, exactly similar "logic" could equally be applied to every single miscarriage of justice. For example, in a typical case of a convicted rapist ("Mr A") who, 20 years later, was exonerated when improved DNA analysis proved that a totally different man (who was subsequently convicted for other rapes) had committed the rape...... was Mr A's original false conviction similarly the product of a knowing conspiracy among detectives, forensic scientists, prosecutors, prosecution experts and convicting courts?

The truth, of course, is almost always much more nuanced and banal than the misleading and incorrect false dichotomy that pro-guilt commentators would like to present. In the Knox/Sollecito case, the truth is that a hubris-pumped Prosecuting Magistrate who was under professional pressure, coupled with a (state) police team who were viewed as incompetent and amateurish when it came to investigating serious crime (and who'd totally bungled a very similar murder investigation a year previously), suddenly found themselves in an international media spotlight in their quest to "solve" the Kercher murder.

As a result, the PM's over-imaginative and evidence-free "sleuthing", aided by huge dollops of confirmation bias and tunnel vision, led the PM and police to fixate upon the particular theory - and the police then went searching for "evidence" to support and "confirm" this theory (while at the same time - consciously or unconsciously - minimising, disregarding or misinterpreting evidence which contradicted their theory. And of course an important constituent of this "evidence" - and another disgraceful vestige of the inquisitorial system in Italy - was to extract "confessions" under enormous duress from those whom they'd decided were guilty. Which the police and PM duly did in this case.

And once they'd settled upon - and publicly announced, in a disgraceful show of triumphalist hubris, long before any meaningful forensic/physical evidence had even been processed - that they'd "solved the crime", they became inextricably wedded to that theory; to back down on their theory would have been to open themselves to ridicule and accusations of incompetence/ineptitude. With the help of incompetent and pliant police "experts" (most notoriously Stefanoni and the Rinaldi/Boemia combo), they came up with forensic "evidence" which superficially looked strong, but which was entirely based upon a toxic combination of incompetent analysis, pseudoscience, suspect-centric identification work, and gross misrepresentation of the evidence.

And when this assembly of "evidence" was presented to the court of first instance, the judge (and thus the whole judicial panel) played the old inquisitorial game of assuming that the prosecutor was a scrupulously fair, disinterested party, who was solely concerned with finding and presenting "the truth" about the crime - and therefore, if the prosecutor said the crime went down in such-and-such a way, the court should have little/no reason to disbelieve him (unless/until the defence team could actively disprove the prosecutor's theory). And so it went.............

And that is, in its own banal and understandable way, how the incompetent and false (provisional) convictions of Knox and Sollecito took place. It never required any sort of organised conspiracy of any sort - far less any sort of knowing plan to "frame" Knox and/or Sollecito. All it required was for the incompetent and in-the-spotlight PM and senior police team to decide they'd "solved the crime" ludicrously quickly, for them to extract "confessions" to "confirm" their theory, for them to announce triumphantly to the world that they'd "solved the crime", for them to seek out "evidence" to support (and only to support) their theory, and for them to present a misleading and misrepresented case to a compliant court.
 
acbytesla said:
I'm well aware of what Prisoner's dilemma is but I still don't buy it.


You can twist reality forever, but there is nothing unusual about two people sharing their interests and backgrounds with each other. That Raffaele had an interest in Manga and owned a couple of knives is hardly a sign that he was demented. Millions of people like Manga and I own more knives then Raffaele. You can say that all these little facts like watching Amélie were some attempt to deceive but that's only your theory which includes premeditation. An idea that ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THE JUDGES believe.

What we do know is Rudy was involved in the murder and that he isn't with Amanda or Rudy at 8:40 and up to that moment Raffaele has other plans. Raff had neighborly offered a ride that was no longer needed. We know that Amanda was going to be at work. There is no reason to believe that Meredith would even be at the cottage. And of course there is no known communication with Rudy.

What we see from Amanda and Raffaele is that they are kind serious students and zero evidence of anything else and nothing that ties them to this horrible crime. You can speculate that hidden from the whole world that they are crazies but there has NEVER been a shred of evidence before the murder or after that supports they are these psychotic antisocial human beings. In fact, the opposite seems to be evident.
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That was my null hypothesis, which I am afraid I have had to reject.
 
LondonJohn said:
I find it difficult to work out whether it's low intellect on the part of so many pro-guilt commentators, or the blinding effect of bias, which leads to the near-ubiquitous pro-guilt false dichotomy:

"Either 1) Knox/Sollecito did it, or 2) all of the police detectives, police forensic scientists, prosecutors, prosecution experts, and (convicting) courts.... were all participating in an orchestrated conspiracy to frame Knox/Sollecito. Which of those two do you think is more likely, huh?! Huh?!!"

Of course, exactly similar "logic" could equally be applied to every single miscarriage of justice. For example, in a typical case of a convicted rapist ("Mr A") who, 20 years later, was exonerated when improved DNA analysis proved that a totally different man (who was subsequently convicted for other rapes) had committed the rape...... was Mr A's original false conviction similarly the product of a knowing conspiracy among detectives, forensic scientists, prosecutors, prosecution experts and convicting courts?

The truth, of course, is almost always much more nuanced and banal than the misleading and incorrect false dichotomy that pro-guilt commentators would like to present. In the Knox/Sollecito case, the truth is that a hubris-pumped Prosecuting Magistrate who was under professional pressure, coupled with a (state) police team who were viewed as incompetent and amateurish when it came to investigating serious crime (and who'd totally bungled a very similar murder investigation a year previously), suddenly found themselves in an international media spotlight in their quest to "solve" the Kercher murder.

As a result, the PM's over-imaginative and evidence-free "sleuthing", aided by huge dollops of confirmation bias and tunnel vision, led the PM and police to fixate upon the particular theory - and the police then went searching for "evidence" to support and "confirm" this theory (while at the same time - consciously or unconsciously - minimising, disregarding or misinterpreting evidence which contradicted their theory. And of course an important constituent of this "evidence" - and another disgraceful vestige of the inquisitorial system in Italy - was to extract "confessions" under enormous duress from those whom they'd decided were guilty. Which the police and PM duly did in this case.

And once they'd settled upon - and publicly announced, in a disgraceful show of triumphalist hubris, long before any meaningful forensic/physical evidence had even been processed - that they'd "solved the crime", they became inextricably wedded to that theory; to back down on their theory would have been to open themselves to ridicule and accusations of incompetence/ineptitude. With the help of incompetent and pliant police "experts" (most notoriously Stefanoni and the Rinaldi/Boemia combo), they came up with forensic "evidence" which superficially looked strong, but which was entirely based upon a toxic combination of incompetent analysis, pseudoscience, suspect-centric identification work, and gross misrepresentation of the evidence.

And when this assembly of "evidence" was presented to the court of first instance, the judge (and thus the whole judicial panel) played the old inquisitorial game of assuming that the prosecutor was a scrupulously fair, disinterested party, who was solely concerned with finding and presenting "the truth" about the crime - and therefore, if the prosecutor said the crime went down in such-and-such a way, the court should have little/no reason to disbelieve him (unless/until the defence team could actively disprove the prosecutor's theory). And so it went.............

And that is, in its own banal and understandable way, how the incompetent and false (provisional) convictions of Knox and Sollecito took place. It never required any sort of organised conspiracy of any sort - far less any sort of knowing plan to "frame" Knox and/or Sollecito. All it required was for the incompetent and in-the-spotlight PM and senior police team to decide they'd "solved the crime" ludicrously quickly, for them to extract "confessions" to "confirm" their theory, for them to announce triumphantly to the world that they'd "solved the crime", for them to seek out "evidence" to support (and only to support) their theory, and for them to present a misleading and misrepresented case to a compliant court.
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I have to change my answer to Vixen when I said there was a conspiracy to convict Amanda an Raffaele. I said yes but since read the dictionary definitions of the word all which includes a 'secret plan' by a group to do something illegal or harmful. There was no secret about what they were doing, so no there was no conspiracy.. That there was a plan by a group to convict Amanda and Raffaele is no doubt. That it was harmful to them is also no doubt.

Was it nefarious and done in bad faith? I cannot answer that conclusively.
 
Vixen said:
Of course they cover for each other. What else can they do?

BTW Premeditation can be literally seconds. If you decide to go out to teach your friend a lesson and you grab a kitchen knife on the way there, then that becomes premeditation.

Amanda read her email from Patrick not to come in (sent by him 20:17) which she read circa 20:40 and immediately deleted her reply to him and switched off the phone.

Somewhere along the way either one of the pair grabbed Raff's kitchen knife, as hypothesised by the police, who are crime experts, after all.It looks like premeditation from here.
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But, but.....according to Mignini, who is a crime expert after all, Amanda carried the huge kitchen knife in her book bag around for self-protection. You know, the cloth book bag that revealed no cuts from said knife?

What "lesson" was she going to "teach" Meredith with a huge kitchen knife? Not to spend Halloween with her British friends? Not to make a "mean mojito"?
 
1,4-glycosidic bonds

Stacyhs said:
But, but.....according to Mignini, who is a crime expert after all, Amanda carried the huge kitchen knife in her book bag around for self-protection. You know, the cloth book bag that revealed no cuts from said knife?

What "lesson" was she going to "teach" Meredith with a huge kitchen knife? Not to spend Halloween with her British friends? Not to make a "mean mojito"?
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How to slice bread properly. That explains the starch.
 
Vixen said:
Next question: so why did Amanda cover up for Rudy?
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Thanks for reminding me! You never did address my post regarding this "cover up" for Guede.

Amanda "covered up" for Guede by:

1) removing all her own DNA from Meredith's room, but leaving Guede's.
2) removing all her own fingerprints, but leaving Guede's.
3) leaving the bath mat with his bloody footprint in the bathroom (even if it were Raffaele's, she or Raffaele would have removed it).
4) leaving Guede's bloody shoe prints going down the hallway.
5) leaving Guede's bloody shoe prints on the Meredith's pillow case.
6) leaving Guede's bloody handprint on the pillow under Meredith's body.

I guess we have totally different definitions on what "covering up" for someone entails.
 
Stacyhs said:
Thanks for reminding me! You never did address my post regarding this "cover up" for Guede.

Amanda "covered up" for Guede by:

1) removing all her own DNA from Meredith's room, but leaving Guede's.
2) removing all her own fingerprints, but leaving Guede's.
3) leaving the bath mat with his bloody footprint in the bathroom (even if it were Raffaele's, she or Raffaele would have removed it).
4) leaving Guede's bloody shoe prints going down the hallway.
5) leaving Guede's bloody shoe prints on the Meredith's pillow case.
6) leaving Guede's bloody handprint on the pillow under Meredith's body.

I guess we have totally different definitions on what "covering up" for someone entails.
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IIRC Amanda also listed Rudy as a person who had been to the cottage as well. The lens that Vixen views this through only allows her to see guilt.
 
acbytesla said:
IIRC Amanda also listed Rudy as a person who had been to the cottage as well. The lens that Vixen views this through only allows her to see guilt.
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No, she didn't. She referred vaguely to a 'South African' guy*. When surely she knew his name.

*This would be Rudy's own self-reference for the purpose of the Rugby World Cup Final, which he claims he watched at the same pub as Mez (and she was there with her friends, and he with his) between England and South Africa. He claims he exchanged banter with Mez at the pub and again on Halloween, saying he quipped, 'Will you be sucking my blood' as a reference to her vampire makeup and England losing.
 
The
Vixen said:
No, she didn't. She referred vaguely to a 'South African' guy*. When surely she knew his name.

*This would be Rudy's own self-reference for the purpose of the Rugby World Cup Final, which he claims he watched at the same pub as Mez (and she was there with her friends, and he with his) between England and South Africa. He claims he exchanged banter with Mez at the pub and again on Halloween, saying he quipped, 'Will you be sucking my blood' as a reference to her vampire makeup and England losing.
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You have no idea whether she remembered his name. I've forgotten people's names 5 minutes after I've been told their names on occasion.

Again, there is no reason to claim that Amanda covered for Rudy. None.
 
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acbytesla said:
The


You have no idea whether she remembered his name. I've forgotten people's names 5 minutes after I've been told their names on occasion.

Again, there is no reason to claim that Amanda covered for Rudy. None.
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It's an appeal to impossible perfection. I spent an hour and a half on a software demo just last Monday to a potential client. Beats me what the guys name was.
 
abaddon said:
It's an appeal to impossible perfection. I spent an hour and a half on a software demo just last Monday to a potential client. Beats me what the guys name was.
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Been there, done that. Have you ever stood there 15 seconds after someone told you their name thinking 'what the hell did he/she say their name was?' Way too many for me.
 
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acbytesla said:
Been there, done that. Have you ever stood there 15 seconds after someone told you their name thinking 'what did he/she say their name was?' Way too many for me.
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Ah yes. Followed by the excruciating exercise of avoiding addressing the person by anything other than impersonal pronouns.

This can work for a time, right up until someone else joins the conversation and introductions must be made. You have no idea how many times I have had to crawl under the carpet.
 
abaddon said:
Ah yes. Followed by the excruciating exercise of avoiding addressing the person by anything other than impersonal pronouns.

This can work for a time, right up until someone else joins the conversation and introductions must be made. You have no idea how many times I have had to crawl under the carpet.
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I knew a guy who purposely dated women who had the same name as his wife, just in case he conflated their names.
 
abaddon said:
Ah yes. Followed by the excruciating exercise of avoiding addressing the person by anything other than impersonal pronouns.

This can work for a time, right up until someone else joins the conversation and introductions must be made. You have no idea how many times I have had to crawl under the carpet.
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I think I have an idea. :o
 
Bill Williams said:
I knew a guy who purposely dated women who had the same name as his wife, just in case he conflated their names.
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Did you see the soccer star so excited in a post game interview after scoring two goals thanking his wife and his girlfriend!! Oooops.
 
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