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Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

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Frankly I don't think the italian justice system is very well designed.

Specifically the nonsense where the jury
a) each contributes a possible penalty or acquittal (e.g. acquittal, 5 years, 10 years) etc.
b) then votes starting from highest penalty to lowest penalty.
c) when one of these penalties has a majority vote yes then that is the result.

I'm sure someone with awesome math skills can describe how this is going to create bias.

Add in all of the oddities with the prosecutor in this case and it seems broken.

Not to mention the fact that it's considered "normal" for people to get convicted on "the first go around" and then get released on appeal after spending years in jail.

Can you say broken?
 
plumjam said:
Look at the stuff you've been saying. Particularly the parts I bolded.

What knowledge do you have of Italian culture?

If you have any, what is it in Italian culture which means cartwheeling in a police station when you're under suspicion of murder would be interpreted any differently in Italy than in the USA?

Are there any cultures on the planet where cartwheeling in such a circumstance would not be viewed as unusual by police?

I'd be interested to know what substance you have behind your description of the Italians as 'a bigoted population'.

And your attempt to compare this in some way to blacks being lynched in the southern states is just bizarre.
Maybe we should join hands and sing a few verses of "We Shall Overcome".

The final quote is the most telling. I think it's you showing the preconceived biases here.
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Plumjam, skeptigirl might have completely bollocksed up the way she framed this case, but that hardly proves Knox's guilt. This looks like a pretty shonky case--regardless of one's general opinion of the Italian justice system.
 
plumjam said:
I'd be interested to know what substance you have behind your description of the Italians as 'a bigoted population'.
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You been to Italy?

The final quote is the most telling. I think it's you showing the preconceived biases here.
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Note to PJ: blacks were not the only victims of lynch mobs in the US, just in case you were unaware.

DR
 
NewtonTrino said:
I'm astounded that people think that a cartwheel is anything but a young girl who is nervous acting a little weird. The facts of this case are pretty clear. There is simpy zero evidence that she was involved in the murder. They have another guy in jail that was clearly tied with physical evidence.

I'm shocked about how people are reacting to this without looking at the evidence which is simply non-existent.
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This is a classic case of pop psychology woo. Society is full of people who believe they can pick out guilty people by looking them in the eye, or seeing behavior that doesn't follow a script for how people behave under stress.

People behave differently when under extreme stress. Some roll up into a ball and whimper, others can't keep still. That Amanda Knox was part of the later group doesn't prove her guilt.
 
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skeptigirl said:
OK, now that is an interesting take and if there really was evidence of Knox's guilt you might be right. But in this case, you are not.
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So the police, prosecutor, jury and judge saw absolutely no evidence of her guilt, but went ahead and convicted her anyway?

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the jury deliberation room:

Juror 1: There's no evidence whatsoever to place her at the murder scene.
Juror 2: Not only that, she had no motive!
(all jurors nod in agreement)
Juror 3: It's pretty clear the evidence was contaminated
Juror 4: I think it was planted!
(all jurors nod in agreement)
Jury Foreman: Let's take a vote - all those who think she is guilty please raise your hand
(all hands go up)
Jury Foreman: Guilty as charged!

:crazy:
 
Yoink said:
Plumjam, skeptigirl might have completely bollocksed up the way she framed this case, but that hardly proves Knox's guilt. This looks like a pretty shonky case--regardless of one's general opinion of the Italian justice system.
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Fair enough. Though I'm not commenting on her possible guilt/innocence. I'm more pointing up how it's unjustified to, among other strange statements, use one moot judgment to liken the Italian population to southern states bigots lynching blacks on trees.
 
maxpower1227 said:
Ok, so we're still left with no motive and no physical evidence. You seem content to condemn her based on a cartwheel though. I had really come to expect more of posters at this site.
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I'm not condemning her for the cartwheel. However, the OP wants to let her go free for the very same thing!
 
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Philip said:
Regarding Amanda's cartwheel, if I may be judgmental for a second, I think it's evidence of her being a little ditzy, not evidence of her being a murderer.
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No one is arguing that it is evidence for a murder. I think we've pretty much decided that it is odd. So did the Italians. "Skepti"-girl has said that was a cultural misunderstanding. We're simply waiting for an explanation of where exactly in America turning cartwheels in a police station after being arrested for murder is considered "normal".
 
The Central Scrutinizer said:
I'm not condemning her for the cartwheel. However, the OP want to let her go free for the very same thing!
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She might have made a better impression on the cops if she'd done the splits.
It might have got her off.

It might have gotten the cops off.


If she wasn't wearing panties ...
Scrut said:
We're simply waiting for an explanation of where exactly in America turning cartwheels in a police station after being arrested for murder is considered "normal".
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On the set of the movie Police Academy Eleven.
 
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At first glance, I would take the cartwheel incident as evidence she was hopped up on something. Am I wrong?
 
Skeptigirl I have absolutely no preconceived feeling against you (refering to a post on page 1) or on the case. But you gotta kidding me if you base your opinion on journalist stuff on the case. If you have access to a full copy of the process and evidence, I bow down to your better informed assessment of the case. Otherwise you are reduced to opinion like every single one of us. You should be really skeptic of what journalist say on a case like this, as they most certainly had no access to the real evidence case.
 
skeptigirl said:
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.
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Okay, I understand your point. I disagree that this is a cultural issue. The issue of how to interpret emotional reactions to stressful situations is one that pops up in cases like this everywhere. A good example is the JonBenet Ramsey case: The Ramseys were pilloried in the press (and by the police) for not acting enough like "true victims." They didn't cry enough in public, they made sure they had a lawyer (because no victims could ever want ensure their legal rights were protected!), etc. This was all perceived as evidence of their guilt.

The reality is, people react differently in stressful situations. Some people are very emotional or even hysterical, and some people react (at least outwardly) very cold and unemotional. Some people do strange things (like, maybe, cartwheels). I was probably the only member of my family who didn't cry at my grandfather's funeral. I'm sure someone would try to interpret that as meaning I didn't care (which couldn't be farther from the truth), whereas the reality is that I just don't cry a lot -- never have.

It is, IMO, awfully difficult to psychoanalyze someone's emotional reaction to a stressful situation and come up with a meaningful conclusion. But that doesn't stop people from doing it. And people do it in the U.S. just as they do it in Italy, unfortunately.
 
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Slayhamlet said:
At first glance, I would take the cartwheel incident as evidence she was hopped up on something. Am I wrong?
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Sleep deprivation + the stress of police interrogation + lack of food? If it were me, I'd probably be bouncing off the walls at least figuratively, if not literally.

Personally, I haven't seen anything that references the context the cartwheel was done in. Was she alone in the interrogation room at the time, and maybe attempting to keep herself awake or otherwise occupy herself? Was she in the process of being interrogated and just hopped up off a chair and started to do cartwheels with no provocation at all? Did she say something during interrogation that spurred the police to ask for a demonstration of her agility? If it was the first one (alone at the time), it doesn't seem quite so odd to me. If it was the third one, also, not quite so weird. If it was the second one, alright fine, that's weird. But given the length of time and the conditions of her stay in interrogation, even that could be excused as going a bit crazy from lack of sleep/food.
 
Darth Rotor said:
You might want to read what Scrut wrote

before you get all a-lather about your expectations. ;)

Scrut has been giving SG the business over her dishonest thread title since he joined in. Even if her thread title was false advertising, the case is intriguing, and educational for some of us Yanks as we get to learn a bit about the Italian justice system.

Can I blame a one-armed man? I can't run like I used to ...

DR
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My dishonest thread title? You've got to be kidding!

It was a symbolic literary device. I have explained that several times. It represented the cultural bias that this case is permeated with.

And Scrut's posts have been personal throughout the thread, deserving of the reply maxpower posted.
 
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skeptigirl said:
It represented the cultural bias that this case is permeated with.
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People are noticing that you continue to avoid answering this question:

The Central Scrutinizer said:
We're simply waiting for an explanation of where exactly in America turning cartwheels in a police station after being arrested for murder is considered "normal".
Click to expand...

I think we all know why. :cool:
 
plumjam said:
Look at the stuff you've been saying. Particularly the parts I bolded.

What knowledge do you have of Italian culture?

If you have any, what is it in Italian culture which means cartwheeling in a police station when you're under suspicion of murder would be interpreted any differently in Italy than in the USA?

Are there any cultures on the planet where cartwheeling in such a circumstance would not be viewed as unusual by police?

I'd be interested to know what substance you have behind your description of the Italians as 'a bigoted population'.

And your attempt to compare this in some way to blacks being lynched in the southern states is just bizarre.
Maybe we should join hands and sing a few verses of "We Shall Overcome".

The final quote is the most telling. I think it's you showing the preconceived biases here.
Click to expand...
While I've only been to Italy once. I was not aware of the cultural issues until this case. But if you look at the evidence and reports which have been abundant over the last 2 years, you will find this is a general consensus, it is not my original idea.

You are guilty of the crime you imagine I am guilty of, that is reading an awful lot into comments without enough fact gathering in the first place. You are assuming I know little about this case as were some of the first thread comments which suggested I was going by a single reporter's view.

This about me, the person who posts about 50% of the time on cross cultural issues and the unreliability of the news media. In fact the right wing faction of this forum attack my views on a regular basis as one of the "blame America" crowd despite the fact this is a superficial version of my views on the subject as well.
 
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