Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[The Central Scrutinizer]

This about me, the person who posts about 50% of the time on cross cultural issues...

And yet you aren't able to explain where exactly in America turning cartwheels in a police station after being arrested for murder is considered "normal".

Perhaps you should spend 50% of your time posting about something else. Clearly, cultural issues aren't your area of expertise.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

So the police, prosecutor, jury and judge saw absolutely no evidence of her guilt, but went ahead and convicted her anyway?

Actually, yes, that is the opinion of more than a few people who have looked at the actual case, including me.

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!

How do you think most innocent people are convicted?

The Causes of Wrongful Conviction

As the pace of DNA exonerations has grown across the country in recent years, wrongful convictions have revealed disturbing fissures and trends in our criminal justice system. Together, these cases show us how the criminal justice system is broken – and how urgently it needs to be fixed.

We should learn from the system’s failures. In each case where DNA has proven innocence beyond doubt, an overlapping array of causes of has emerged – from mistakes to misconduct to factors of race and class.

Countless cases
Those exonerated by DNA testing aren’t the only people who have been wrongfully convicted in recent decades. For every case that involves DNA, there are thousands that do not.

Only a fraction of criminal cases involve biological evidence that can be subjected to DNA testing, and even when such evidence exists, it is often lost or destroyed after a conviction. Since they don’t have access to a definitive test like DNA, many wrongfully convicted people have a slim chance of ever proving their innocence.

The Innocence Project has found evidence exonerating 245 people as of the web site's report today. It is only a tiny fraction of the estimated % of wrongfully convicted persons in US jails today. While I don't know what the stats are in Italy, there is more than enough information about the Knox case to confirm there was not a substantial case against her despite the conviction.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

Guede, whose DNA and bloody handprint was found in the murder room, originally didn't implicate Knox or Solecito, but at the opening of his appeal he implicated Knox. He said he was with Kercher but fell ill and went to the bathroom. He said that while there he heard Knox and Kercher arguing and then heard Kercher scream. He said he then came out, and saw an unidentified man who tried to attack him. Guede said he backed into the hallway and then "heard footsteps leaving the house and looked out of the window, where he saw a silhouette that he later identified as Knox's".

This is what makes me at a bit skeptical of this case. They have a guy who was definitely at the murder scene. His DNA was all over the room. They have his handprint. He is convicted. There isn't much evidence of anyone else having been there.

Then you have a prosecutor (with past history of conspiratorial thinking) who comes up with a theory that killing was really a "Satanic rite" involving three people sacrificing a victim to the devil on Halloween

They start trying to build evidence to prove that theory. Ultimately, they (smartly) drop the "Satanic rite" bit and just go with a vague, mostly undefined motive for three people conspiring to kill someone.

 

[maxpower1227]

I'm not condemning her for the cartwheel. However, the OP wants to let her go free for the very same thing!

Maybe I phrased that badly, but you do seem, based on your first post in this thread, to believe that Knox is guilty. Am I wrong about that? And if you do believe she is guilty, on what do you base that assumption?

 

[Agatha]

She might have made a better impression on the cops if she'd done the splits.
It might have got her off.

She did do the splits as well as cartwheels, if one believes the BBC.

Police and friends testified that Knox had performed cartwheels, done the splits and giggled with Sollecito.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8390909.stm

I do not know whether Knox is guilty or not, I am not party to all the evidence and I think that those who were - the judge and jury - are better qualified than I to determine that.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

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.

Then you took my comments and applied them to the whole of Italy when they only applied to the jury and a fair number of people in the town who sided with the prosecutor in spite of the evidence.

One of the issues here was the fact Knox was vilified in the Italian press. That has been reported in numerous discussions of this case. It is an undeniable fact and the difference between Knox's portrayal in the US vs the Italian media is indeed a reflection of the difference between the South and the North in the US prior to about 1970. Of course I am in no way implying the Knox case rivals the scale of the Southern treatment of blacks here.

But you seem upset I mention this aspect of the case when it is an overwhelming aspect of this case. And that is not just my opinion, it is a common opinion.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Maybe I phrased that badly, but you do seem, based on your first post in this thread, to believe that Knox is guilty. Am I wrong about that? And if you do believe she is guilty, on what do you base that assumption?

I have no opinion on the case. I haven't really followed it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not condemning her for the cartwheel. However, the OP wants to let her go free for the very same thing!

I think there have been sufficient links now provided in this thread for you to reassess this view. Otherwise you are just continuing to .

But suit yourself.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

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.

Where do you get the impression I have only based my opinion on "journalist stuff"?

Media Literacy (a favorite topic of mine) is about taking the information we do get from various media sources and determining the credibility of that information. It's not like the various forms of media information from blogs to interviews to news reports to scientific research are all useless but the latter. There are ways to gather information from the news and other information sites and draw reasonable conclusions. There is a wealth of information available about this case just as there was a wealth of information available about the OJ case whether you watched every minute of the trial or not.

 

[Darth Rotor]

My dishonest thread title? You've got to be kidding! It was a symbolic literary device.

That's the most interesting synonym for "falsehood" I've seen in a while.

I have explained that several times.
It represented the cultural bias that this case is permeated with.

SG, imagine this title: Amanda Knox guilty, due to cultural bias.
States your position clearly, even if you are or aren't right about it. Nothing misleading about that, is there?

How to Write A Topic Sentence seminars are offered once per month, on Thursdays ...

And Scrut's posts have been personal throughout the thread, deserving of the reply maxpower posted.

Yes, Scrut has been giving you the business, but max seems to have confused who was claiming what, and also missed the sarcasm in Scrut's posts.

All this bickering aside, I'm glad you started the thread as I'd lost track of Foxy Knoxy's case. Also, Philip offered some worthwhile insights.

DR

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

.... I half to wonder ....

Gag, a typo too late to edit.

 

[Brainster]

I found this article in Vanity Fair the most interesting and fact-filled, although it's from a year plus ago. The writer sees little evidence against Amanda:

The Italian police may have had their reasons for holding 20-year-old American Amanda Knox in connection with the “extreme sex” murder last November of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher: her callous reaction, changing story, and unsettling MySpace page among them. What they don’t seem to have is a case.

But the article also notes some details that I have not seen in the other articles I've read. For example, it has been suggested that Amanda's oddly inappropriate behavior was caused by the long interrogation and conditions in the police station. But what explains her behavior here?

The next day (after the murder was discovered), Amanda and Raffaele went shopping at Bubble, a fashionable clothing store on Via Calderini. In its brightly lit window were an assortment of flashy skirts and shoes. There the couple purchased two pairs of thong underwear, at which point Carlo Scotto di Rinaldi, the store’s bi-lingual owner, tells me, they kissed and embraced, and Raffaele told Amanda, “ ‘We can have wild sex tonight!’ Sesso selvaggio.” As Amanda was only his second girlfriend, Raffaele was pretty new to sex in all of its forms, according to his voluble lawyer, Marco Brusco. “Selvaggio, he learned from her,” the lawyer says, raising his hands, while speculating on the number of Amanda’s previous lovers, which he believes to be unnaturally high. What can you expect? “È americana!”

All of the couple’s amorous behavior was caught on closed-circuit camera. The shop owner, taken aback when he recognized Amanda’s face on the local news, mentioned what he had seen to a friend on the police force. A few days later, police retrieved the tape and handed it over to Perugia’s deceptively mild prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, whose position is roughly equivalent to that of a U.S. district attorney. Within days, the tape was released to the rest of the world. On television and Web sites everywhere, the couple’s passion over the thong underwear was played and replayed.

And what about this?

From Robyn Butterworth, one of Meredith’s closest friends in Perugia, he learned that, just hours after the girl’s mutilated corpse was discovered, Amanda was boasting about “having seen Meredith’s body by the closet with a cover or a sheet over her.” Butterworth got the feeling that Amanda “seemed proud to have been the first to have found her.”

How could Amanda have known such vital details? Mignini wondered. The door to Meredith’s bedroom had been locked when police arrived. It had been forced open by police, but then quickly closed. If Amanda had seen the corpse of her housemate, Mignini decided, it could mean only one thing: she had watched Meredith die.

Or it could mean that she's a BSer, you never know. But it's certainly strange. Note as well that her boyfriend had already cooled on her quite a bit when the story was first written:

“I never want to see Amanda again,” Raffaele has told police. His father, Francesco Sollecito, a prominent urologist from Bari, in southern Italy, is particularly agitated on the subject of the young American girl’s pernicious influence on his only son.

“She is a strange girl. I think we can agree on that,” he says. “I have my doubts about her truthfulness. What happened the night of the murder? Every time she talks a different truth comes out of her mouth. There are so many truths and versions of the truth that it is hard to know what she is saying!”

 

[newton3376]

And yet you aren't able to explain where exactly in America turning cartwheels in a police station after being arrested for murder is considered "normal".

I'm waiting for that onemyself....

I am really curious how a cartwheel connects to a "cultural misunderstanding"...

I'm an American and I don't know of any "cartwheels in a police station are perfectly acceptable and are, in fact, expected" rule.

I guess they would have to take the handcuffs off first...kind of like you get a phone call....you also get one cartwheel.

Maybe I missed when the "right to perform a totally awesome cartwheel in a police station" law was passed....

 

[Darth Rotor]

She did do the splits as well as cartwheels, if one believes the BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8390909.stm

I do not know whether Knox is guilty or not,

perhaps guilty of not wearing panties, or, maybe guilty of wearing jeans while doing tumbling maneuvers in a police station!

It is puzzling to see the coverage that presents the case as lacking evidence to convict her. So, I wonder, what did the prosecution present, and what did the jury consider?

DR

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

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.

Might be a bad example. The Ramseys did exhibit behaviors that were indicative of guilty persons. I don't think one can say there are no such things as telling behaviors, or chalk it up to individual differences in reaction to a tragedy.

It's just my opinion that the cartwheel(s) would be one of many things that might be interpreted differently across two cultures than within a culture. I was not trying to imply it was the only behavior the Italian police might have misinterpreted, or that without context it looks like a guilty behavior in and of itself.

There has been much discussion in the media and elsewhere about the view of Knox within Italy and the view of her outside of Italy. It would be nice if we had any Italian forum members that could give us some insight here.

 

[Darth Rotor]

I'm waiting for that onemyself....

I am really curious how a cartwheel connects to a "cultural misunderstanding"...

I'm an American and I don't know of any "cartwheels in a police station are perfectly acceptable and are, in fact, expected" rule.

I guess they would have to take the handcuffs off first...kind of like you get a phone call....you also get one cartwheel.

Maybe I missed when the "right to perform a totally awesome cartwheel in a police station" law was passed....

Italy ain't like the US ... so when in Perugia, do as the Romans!



(And rape a Sabine woman!)

(Reference to a famous work of art, and legend ...)

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I have no opinion on the case. I haven't really followed it.

And the prosecutors, police, jury and judge all say she's guilty.

Fancy that. To think that you might*** be wrong.


***Are

 

[Bill Thompson]

And the prosecutors, police, jury and judge all say she's guilty.

Fancy that. To think that you might*** be wrong.


***Are

I heard that there was no physical evidence linking her. How can someone do this crime without leaving any physical evidence? Magic?

Something fishy is going on here. I don't know if it is anti-americanism or what.

 

[Darth Rotor]

I heard that there was no physical evidence linking her. How can someone do this crime without leaving any physical evidence? Magic?

Something fishy is going on here. I don't know if it is anti-americanism or what.

This is just nuclear fallout from the recent CIA agent case, obviously!

 

[plumjam]

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're being very vague. You said a few times that there was some cultural misunderstanding over the cartwheel, you've been asked about that a few times, but haven't answered.

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.

Not at all.

This about me, the person who posts about 50% of the time on cross cultural issues and the unreliability of the news media.

And you are basing your views on anything other than what you've seen in the news media? If so, what?
Of course miscarriages of justice happen, but I'm reluctant to second-guess verdicts made by judges or juries who have sat for weeks listening to all the evidence, and then spent many hours deliberating over it.

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.

I'm aware of your political views, and I agree with many of them. Not with your approach here though.

Then you took my comments and applied them to the whole of Italy when they only applied to the jury and a fair number of people in the town who sided with the prosecutor in spite of the evidence.

Your own words were "a bigoted population", in the context of your accusations of cross-cultural misunderstandings, and your metaphor of the southern lynchings...
So now it's just the jury and some people in that town... I see..
Shifting, shifting.

One of the issues here was the fact Knox was vilified in the Italian press. That has been reported in numerous discussions of this case. It is an undeniable fact and the difference between Knox's portrayal in the US vs the Italian media is indeed a reflection of the difference between the South and the North in the US prior to about 1970.

But you did not mention that it was press treatment you were supposedly referring to when introducing the southern lynchings. Rather, you introduced it in your description of the "bigoted population"
So you're shifting again.

Of course I am in no way implying the Knox case rivals the scale of the Southern treatment of blacks here.

Then why introduce the topic at all, and link it to your view of the Italian population as being bigoted?

But you seem upset I mention this aspect of the case when it is an overwhelming aspect of this case. And that is not just my opinion, it is a common opinion.

How do you know this was an overwhelming aspect of the case?
How do you know the jury took negative press coverage into account in their decision?
Defendants are vilified by the press during court cases in all kinds of cultures all over the world. That doesn't make their host populations bigoted.
(I also wonder what kind of bigotry this is supposed to be. White Italians being bigoted against white Americans? Or what?)