Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[Dancing David]

She reportedly gave a confession while in police custody for 30 hours with no lawyer present, so I'm not sure how trustworthy that would be.

They have a different system, and that is going to be part of the critique.

But then parts of the US judicial system are also sort of using unbounded confessions (some extracted under duress) to possibly convict people.

If this is accurate, then it is worse than i would have thought:http://www.justlanded.de/english/Italy/Articles/Visas-Permits/Legal-System

I mean worse in the sense that it does not seem rational to me, but it is their system.

 

[Eddie Dane]

I haven't followed the story recently.
But I get from the posts here that that Congolese bloke was completely cleared.

If she wove a story around him being the perp, that's very fishy.
She has no consistent story of what happened that night? Fishy.
Claiming she all confused because she smoked dope? Fishy.

However, these things may be caused by a bad and intimidating interview method on the part of the police.

We had a couple of cases here in the Netherlands where people gave false confessions after many hours of being questioned in threating manner. Confessing to raping and killing a child, in one case. The guy turned out to be completely innocent.

A forced confession will also lead to an inconsistent story. So, I'm still not sure about this case.

 

[maxpower1227]

I was unaware that there was any DNA evidence found in the room. In fact, I had heard that there was no physical evidence whatsoever linking Knox to the bedroom where the murder occurred.

I still want to know what her motive was supposed to have been, and how Rudy Guede fits into a coherent narrative that has Knox also participating in the killing.

Her behavior seems very bizarre and aloof, but that does not constitute physical evidence of guilt. And if her false accusation was coerced while she was in police custody, then I wouldn't see it as especially damning either. In any case, a false accusation is not physical evidence anyway. There should still be SOME of that.

 

[Matthew Best]

so long as one ignores absolutely everything that indicates she may be guilty, then yes, it is quite easy to see this as a blatant miscarriage of justice against an innocent woman.

I haven't been paying enormous attention to this case as it progressed through the court so I've probably missed the mountain of evidence that indicates she may be guilty. The only things I can remember off-hand are (a) the testimony of the man who was already found guilty of the crime (though since his testimony was also that he was innocent there must be a doubt as to how reliable he is as a witness); (b) DNA on a knife that may possibly have been the murder weapon but this has not been demonstrated with certainty and as it was a knife from the shared home of the victim and alleged perpetrator there may be an innocent explanation for the presence of her DNA); and (c) fingerprints on something or other (ditto).

Could anyone give a quick rundown of what the rest of the evidence is, please?

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

I was unaware that there was any DNA evidence found in the room. In fact, I had heard that there was no physical evidence whatsoever linking Knox to the bedroom where the murder occurred.

Here is an ABC News rundown of the evidence in the case.

It appears correct that there was not any physical evidence (or witnesses) placing Knox in the bedroom. Some of her boyfriend's DNA, however, was found on the clasp of the victim's bra, so that would seem to place him at the scene -- though that clasp was apparently misplaced by the police, found, and then tested some 40+ days later.

 

[Cavemonster]

Giuliano Mignini is a prosecutor who just falls in love with conspiracy theories. Nothing is simple. Nothing is what it seems.

Let me give you an example of this. My co-writer Spezi and I believe the Monster of Florence is a lone psychopath. He killed seven couples, fourteen people. He mutilated the women and cut off their sex organs. Really horrifying.

A psychological profile prepared by the American FBI of the Monster stated that he is a lone killer. All the Italian forensic psychologists stated he was a lone killer. And all the evidence gathered at the crime scenes pointed to a single perpetrator.

But this is too simple for Mignini. He believes the Monster killings were the work not of a lone killer but a satanic sect dating back to the Middle Ages. His theory, based on nonexistent evidence, supposition and conspiracy logic, was that this sect was operating in high places in government and they needed female body parts to perform Black Masses.

The conspiracy theory sounds pretty out there, but remember this is being written by a novelist who makes his living by finding the drama in stories. This quote isn't great evidence of what Minini really believed.

As for FBI profiling, it's pretty full of woo and contradicting it isn't the same as contradicting evidence, see the article in the skeptics dictionary.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

The conspiracy theory sounds pretty out there, but remember this is being written by a novelist who makes his living by finding the drama in stories. This quote isn't great evidence of what Minini really believed.

True, but here is a direct Mignini quote on the Knox case:

The murder, Il Tempo newspaper reported him telling the court, “was premeditated and was in addition a ‘rite’ celebrated on the occasion of the night of Hallowe’en. A sexual and sacrificial rite ... In the intention of the organisers, the rite should have occurred 24 hours earlier” – on Hallowe’en itself – “but on account of a dinner at the house of horrors, organised by Meredith and Amanda’s Italian flatmates, it was postponed for one day. The presumed assassins contented themselves with the evening of 1 November to perform their do-it-yourself rite, when for some hours it would again be the night of All Saints.”

And here and here are BBC articles from 2004 talking about the "Satanic Cult" theory in the serial killer case. They don't quote Mignini directly, but he is/was the prosecutor in charge of the case.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

No way, it fits perfectly.

Oh wait, they convicted the girl instead of the Congolese dude she tried to frame for the murder? Never mind. [qimg]http://www.lethalwrestling.com/upload/redface.gif[/qimg]

That is not what occurred.

And, in fact, the actual murderer was convicted and is in jail in Italy at the moment. There was overwhelming physical evidence he was guilty.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Ok, maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought the case against Knox sounded extremely shady. Particularly the fact that, as I understand it, prosecutors were sure they had their killers within days, only to pick up a vagrant months later who had fled to Germany, who was tied to the crime scene by DNA evidence, and who claimed that while he was making out with Kercher, he went to the bathroom due to eating some bad food, was listening to his iPod while in the bathroom, and came out to find Kercher dying. That seemed extremely shady to me, and I never heard a plausible motive for Knox to have murdered Kercher (the whole "thrill sex murder" or whatever term they used seemed horribly contrived). I was unaware of any physical evidence tying her to the scene.

Was the case against her more solid than I'm understanding it to be?

No, it was not.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not quite sure that I'd go as far as to say she was found guilty because of a cartwheel, but (with my very limited knowledge of Italian law) I do think that the intense media attention, coupled with an non-sequestered jury, is a tailor-made appeal.

Sorry, I was referring to the initial act that possibly made the police believe certain things. Of course there were many many factors involved in this case.

The cartwheel symbolizes the cultural misunderstandings. The police seemed to have decided Knox's behavior in the police station suggested she was guilty. I half to wonder if a cross cultural mis-read of behavior wasn't one of the things which set the rest of everything into motion.

After reading Douglas Preston's book The Monster of Florence, I don't have the best impression of Italian police, so I probably have some bias. The prosecution case didn't make a lot of sense to me, from what I've read of their theory for motive and how the victim was actually killed. On the other hand, Amanda Knox's stories don't seem to make a lot of sense either (though on Nightline today, one of her lawyer's seemed to claim the police literally fed her the story of being home and covering her ears, etc. but who the heck knows).

We can make a reasonable assessment of this very public trial just as the public mostly knows OJ Simpson was guilty in that very public trial. Knox's initial interview makes sense in that we have examples of many people who've signed false confessions after intense police interrogations. Such false confessions are a well known-phenomena.

 

[Molinaro]

Yep. If Joe's DNA is on the shoe, and Bill picks the shoe up, then that magically converts Joe's DNA to Sam's. Which is also what OJ's lawyers argued. Sadly, the idiot jury in that case bought it.

That's not the kind of contamination they are talking about. The knife being called the murder weapon was collected 3 weeks after the murder. There's no reason to think it wasn't handled at all during that time for normal use.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Having not heard of this before, the biggest red flag that I can see is the 'DNA contamination' silliness that OJ used. If the sample is of poor quality it won't come back with a match. Of course it could actually be a plant, so who knows.

Other than that, I'm having trouble finding much verifiable besides the media divide of American media saying she's innocent and Italy the opposite.

Except in the OJ trial some of the contamination was supposedly purposeful. The claim the glove was planted and the fact the detectives carried OJ's blood around in their pocket after collecting it thus giving them a sample to use to spill on things are examples.

There was additional overwhelming evidence in the OJ trial so the two cases here are not comparable.

One thing that did compare was a film of the crime scene evidence collection in which many errors of procedure are found.

How Strong Is the Evidence Against Amanda Knox?

Video footage from the crime scene of British student Meredith Kercher's murder flickers on a laptop screen as Bremner points out what she deems critical flaws in the collection of evidence. After placing rulers on the sides of a bloody shoeprint, for example, a blue-rubber-gloved hand reaches down with a piece of white cloth and scrubs the bloody mark off the tile floor before putting the cloth into an evidence tube. This happens three times for three separate footprints. In film footage taken at least a day later, another team of investigators attempts, using photographs, to place where the footprints had been. "They should have lifted the tile," Bremner says, shaking her head.

As for Knox's DNA on the murder weapon:

The prosecution, she says, is most likely relying on a knife found at the house of Knox's then boyfriend and fellow accused Rafaelle Sollecito. That knife has Knox's DNA on the handle and what some forensic scientists say is Kercher's DNA on the tip. But Bremner dismisses the idea that it is the knife that killed Kercher: "They never found the murder weapon." Bremner claims that a bloody print on the bed linens conveys the shape of the actual murder weapon and that the knife in question "doesn't match an outline of the knife on the bed." Additionally, Bremner says, expert testimony has already indicated that at least two of the wounds on Kercher's neck couldn't have been made by that particular blade. That aside, she points out, it's not surprising that Knox's DNA would be on its handle; she prepared dinner with Sollecito in his apartment.

It was Kercher's DNA on the knife that was questionable, not Knox's. And Kercher's blood was everywhere at the crime scene so contamination of the supposed murder weapon was very possible.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I wouldn't call it that, and that's kind of the point. Or my point, at least. I haven't followed the case all that closely. But skeptigirl's OP is hardly an exercise in skepticism. She links to an article that cites numerous items of evidence of Knox's guilt, yet concludes that Knox was found guilty "all because of a cartwheel," citing a unnamed reporter's opinion that the prosecutor is biased.

The article I linked to in the OP was just to get the thread going. I didn't put anything else there including the evidence supporting my conclusions. And I explained why I put the cartwheel in the thread title in a post above.

I find it, as a separate but related issue, fascinating to read the reactions in the thread which seem more concerned with attacking me as somehow not really knowledgeable about the case rather than discussing the actual case.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

The cartwheel symbolizes the cultural misunderstandings. The police seemed to have decided Knox's behavior in the police station suggested she was guilty. I half to wonder if a cross cultural mis-read of behavior wasn't one of the things which set the rest of everything into motion.

So, what exactly is a cartwheel in a police station supposed to mean in American culture?

(this ought to be good)

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Once again, I find myself wondering exactly what the "skepti" in "skeptigirl" stands for.

Granted, there are questions about the prosecution's motivations here. However, they have DNA. And far more damningly, they have a woman who not only blatantly lied about what happened, but tried to frame another man in the process!

The DNA is not what it seems. See my last post.

It might be nice if people paid more attention to what I actually said in my OP:

"I'll look for some more links with the rest of the story." IE, of course I didn't yet post all the facts in the case.

AND:

"The cartwheel BTW, for those of you not familiar with the case, was what Knox did in the police station when she was being questioned. That made the police think she was too casual and made her guilty." IE the cartwheel symbolized the cross cultural influence that is part of what I think has influenced the trial. It's the key reason this case deserves to be discussed in a skeptic forum.

Any miscarriage of justice might be worthy of a thread. But this one in particular has all sorts of "why people believe strange things" permeating through it. I think we can add some preconceived feelings about skeptigirl to the list in terms of how some people have replied in the thread so far.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I think we can add some preconceived feelings about skeptigirl to the list in terms of how some people have replied in the thread so far.

Now that our musical interlude is over, care to inform/entertain us with your theory on what a cartwheel in a police station means in American culture?

 

[WildCat]

The cartwheel symbolizes the cultural misunderstandings.

I'm American, and doing cartwheels in a police station after you've been brought in for questioning in a murder case is quite bizarre behavior IMHO.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

So, what exactly is a cartwheel in a police station supposed to mean in American culture?

(this ought to be good)

It means that Knox's behavior was not what the Italian culture expects of an innocent roommate after a murder such as this.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I'm American, and doing cartwheels in a police station after you've been brought in for questioning in a murder case is quite bizarre behavior IMHO.

I think it means you're innocent.

Generally, at that point, the police will usually drop the charges. At least in America.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm American, and doing cartwheels in a police station after you've been brought in for questioning in a murder case is quite bizarre behavior IMHO.

I totally agree and it's hard to imagine the circumstances where one would have done the cartwheel. It conjures up images that are easy to draw all sorts of conclusions from. Yet the conclusions could easily be false.

OTOH, it is also not so hard to imagine what one culture expects in terms of behavior can easily be misread when observing the reaction of someone from another culture. Much of this trial has been based on cultural misreading of cues and assumptions drawn from cultural misunderstandings. When one sees a MiddleEastern man in a courtroom for example, who doesn't speak English, all sorts of false conclusions can easily be drawn simply because of the expectation of behavior based both on the concluder's culture and on the concluder's biases of belief based on the culture of the suspect.