Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[Chris_Halkides]

follow up

To follow up, I am less concerned with whether the investigators stayed within the letter of the law than I am concerned with whether their actions advanced justice. Likewise, I am less concerned with whether or not Amanda were hit than I am interested in whether or not she were interrogated in a way that would produce false statements.

To define abuse and to address these issues, I have been asking myself the following questions with response to the actions of the investigators:
Was the behavior likely to produce accurate information, or (intentionally or not) likely to produce an outcome where the person became confused or felt pressured to lie?
Was the behavior in accordance with the expectations of liberal democracies?
Was the behavior in the public interest?
Was the behavior proportionate to the alleged crime?

By some accounts all four (Knox, Lumumba, Prescott, and Spezi) were interrogated and/or held in ways that run counter to one or more of the four principles I have listed. Therefore, by this standard they were abused.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

problems

In this case, the evidence points to a simple rape and murder. The prosecution developed it into a three person conspiracy theory with a lot of problems. Here are a few examples:

1. RG, one of the conspirators barely knew AK. He had never met RS, the third conspirator. AK and RS had only known each other for about a week before the murder.

2. There are no phone conversations or email between RS and the other two suspects.

3. There is no motive for AK and RS to kill the victim.

4. Niether AK and RS have a history of violent behavior. Being fined for a loud party in college is the worst either of them had done.

5. After a drawn out struggle with the victim, RS and AK somehow manage to clean up the scene and remove all the trace evidence pointing to them while leaving plenty of blood splatters, fingerprints and DNA from RG.

Prosecutors sometime go off the deep end with conspiracy theories. Remember Jim Garrison's theories about JFK? Or the the McMartin preschool trail? Or for that matter, the prosecutor in this case and his Masonic Satanic cult conspiracy theory about the Monster of Florence killings?

Kestrel,

Well said. May I add a couple more off the top of my head?

6. Most sexual assaults are single-perpetrator events, but the prosecution wants to claim this is an exception.

7. Some would have us believe that this was a two-knife crime. Why throw away one knife and not the other? If one were going to keep it, why clean blood from the blade, but not clean fingerprints from the handle?

 

[stilicho]

Kestrel used the word “abused” in his/her original post (#2263). Fiona and Stilicho have used a different term, “brutality.” It is doubtful that everyone is talking about the same thing. Brutality may be construed to mean only physical coercion, and might even be taken to refer solely to illegal acts. However, abuse can certainly be verbal as well as physical. Moreover, some actions might be legal and yet still be abusive.

I would call Preston’s interrogation and Spezi’s solitary confinement abusive. This forum does not appear to agree on the facts with respect to Lumumba and Knox. However, by some accounts their interrogations were also abusive. Kestrel should retract nothing with respect to this issue.

We know that you would counsel Preston, Spezi, Lumumba and Knox all to claim they were abused, halides1. Who cares?

But Kestrel was simply wrong and was shown how and where he was wrong. I don't have to repeat Fiona's evidence because you've read it (or maybe you haven't). Kestrel provided his and it was amply refuted. That means he must reasonably retract his claims.

Capiche?

 

[stilicho]

Kestrel,

Well said. May I add a couple more off the top of my head?

6. Most sexual assaults are single-perpetrator events, but the prosecution wants to claim this is an exception.

7. Some would have us believe that this was a two-knife crime. Why throw away one knife and not the other? If one were going to keep it, why clean blood from the blade, but not clean fingerprints from the handle?

Hey, I can play this game. Here's mine:

8. They should have burned down the house. It's a lot harder for police to bust you then. Standing out on the porch with a mop nearby and a corpse inside a locked room and a faked burglary and mentioning the **** in the toilet over and over again in the hopes that RG will be the only one charged is hopeless and stupid.

Halides1, please face it: Your hero and heroine are very very stupid. And they got caught because of their stupidity.

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

By some accounts all four (Knox, Lumumba, Prescott, and Spezi) were interrogated and/or held in ways that run counter to one or more of the four principles I have listed. Therefore, by this standard they were abused.

"By some accounts".

Your standard appears to be based on which account you choose to accept. The real debate about this one aspect of the case focuses more on this than the "principles" you have enumerated.

You are well aware of that. Why do you pretend otherwise? No one has defended "abuse" beyond these "principles", even as vaguely as you have managed to word them. They have only questioned if it did actually ever happen.

The overall concordance of those "accounts" which survive serious scrutiny seem to show no real abuse even judged by your "principles". This would include some of the accounts by some of the defendants themselves.

You still play childish games. You still play them badly.

 

[stilicho]

Likewise, I am less concerned with whether or not Amanda were hit than I am interested in whether or not she were interrogated in a way that would produce false statements.

Get with the programme, halides1. It's not making simple false statements; it's injected false memories. Can you say "woo"?

 

[stilicho]

"By some accounts".

Your standard appears to be based on which account you choose to accept. The real debate about this one aspect of the case focuses more on this than the "principles" you have enumerated.

I challenge any of the Thaumaturgical Three to elucidate any "principles" they've conjured for AK that would allow a conviction in any trial for any reason anywhere.

 

[odeed]

Kestrel,

Well said. May I add a couple more off the top of my head?

6. Most sexual assaults are single-perpetrator events, but the prosecution wants to claim this is an exception.

...

Is the sexual assault (violence) charge in the trial against Knox and Sollecito based on evidence of a physical nature, or that they facilitated Guede by taking part in the murder and cover up afterwards? Was the jury asked to take the murder charge and sexual violence as two different verdicts for each defendant, or was it that the murder and sexual violence was treated as one conspiracy to commit a crime?

ETA: question not particularly aimed at halides1.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Quadraginta,

You wrote, “Your standard appears to be based on which account you choose to accept.” You are misreading what I said. The principles I suggested are independent of differences in various accounts. I noted the areas of disagreement right up front.

Your words are vague to the point of being meaningless. “This would include some of the accounts by some of the defendants themselves.” How about some specifics? Are you claiming that Preston spoke falsely about his interrogation or Spezi's confinement?

Calling someone names is evidence you don’t have a rational argument to offer. Why am I not surprised?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

magic solvent

I challenge any of the Thaumaturgical Three to elucidate any "principles" they've conjured for AK that would allow a conviction in any trial for any reason anywhere.

While we are on the subject of thaumaturgy, I would like to know what solvent and method of cleaning can remove blood and not remove DNA from a knife. I'll give you a hint. It's not bleach. One supplier of DNA reagents (Promega Corp.) has a technical bulletin which recommends a 2-3% dilution of full strength bleach for removal of unwanted DNA from surfaces.

 

[Prometheus]

Quadraginta,

<snip>

Calling someone names is evidence you don’t have a rational argument to offer. Why am I not surprised?

halides1, it does not help your argument at all to make such an obviously libelous implication. It's quite easy for any of us to scroll right up the page and see that Quadraginta did no such thing.

 

[Fiona]

Kestrel used the word “abused” in his/her original post (#2263). Fiona and Stilicho have used a different term, “brutality.” It is doubtful that everyone is talking about the same thing. Brutality may be construed to mean only physical coercion, and might even be taken to refer solely to illegal acts. However, abuse can certainly be verbal as well as physical. Moreover, some actions might be legal and yet still be abusive.

I would call Preston’s interrogation and Spezi’s solitary confinement abusive. This forum does not appear to agree on the facts with respect to Lumumba and Knox. However, by some accounts their interrogations were also abusive. Kestrel should retract nothing with respect to this issue.

Ok, lets do this dance. Kestrel certainly did use the word " abuse" and I forgot that we are not allowed to presume any degree of cooperation from any speaker at all in this debate: those who challenge our three apologists must be utterly precise; though curiously that standard is only applied one way. So let us look again at what Kestrel actually said: from upthread

I was questioned by five men and women, some of whom punched and kicked me," he claims. "They forced me on my knees against the wall and said I should be in America where I would be given the electric chair for my crime. All they kept saying was, 'You did it, you did it.'

Journalists Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi got similar treatment.

I took from this that Kestrel was saying Lumumba was punched and kicked (which I rendered as brutality). "Preston and Spezi got similar treatment" implied to me that they were punched and kicked. I thnk that is what most native speakers of english would have inferred and if anybody disagrees I will be very interested to hear from them. I think that meaning is inescapable.

This has been refuted in Preston's own words and in Lumumba's. There is not one statement adduced to show that Spezi ever made the claim or that Preston ever made the claim; and the evidence that Lumumba made it has been shown to come from two english speaking tabloid newspapers and that he denied he ever said it.

I do not know if Kestrel believed it when he said it. My doubt arises from the fact that he seems quite keen on Preston as a source and so I assume he has read what Preston had to say. But Preston has never made this claim.

So now we dance about with meaning and it seems to me that what we see is a very strong smear, with an element of (implausible) deniablity.

If the claim had not been challenged then what would the honest reader have understood to have happened? Would he have believed that Spezi and Preston were punched and kicked? I think they would have taken that from what Kestrel said. I do not think they would have thought "well Lumumba was punched and kicked but "similar treatment" probably means something quite different from that". In fact I think the propositons is laughable.

No amount of wriggling of the sort we see here changes that. It is a simple matter to acknowledge this claim was made and that it is false.

 

[quadraginta]

Quadraginta,

You wrote, “Your standard appears to be based on which account you choose to accept.” You are misreading what I said. The principles I suggested are independent of differences in various accounts. I noted the areas of disagreement right up front.

You noted ...

By some accounts all four (Knox, Lumumba, Prescott, and Spezi) were interrogated and/or held in ways that run counter to one or more of the four principles I have listed. Therefore, by this standard they were abused.

I agree you were right up front about picking and choosing which accounts you felt were useful to evaluate. You said so right there. That was my point.

Thank you for reinforcing it.

Your words are vague to the point of being meaningless. “This would include some of the accounts by some of the defendants themselves.” How about some specifics? Are you claiming that Preston spoke falsely about his interrogation or Spezi's confinement?

The only thing vague is your memory of very recent posts in this thread. Firsthand accounts in the defendants' own words have been cited to debunk these allegations of abuse. With links. How specific do you need?

Share with us whether your "principles" indicate abuse in those accounts. Your "standard" is obviously to consider only the versions which suit your needs.

And why are you referring to Preston as a "defendant". I am not aware that he had been put on trial during his unfortunate antics in a foreign country, although he may well have deserved it. Do you have references to that?

All I can see that has ever even been suggested is that the big bad man Mignini talked so mean to him that he peed his panties. (After bearding a brutal serial killer in his very lair. )

 

[shuttlt]

I just wanted to check my understanding about Mignini's current legal difficulties. I had previously understood that he had overstepped his authority by approving some wiretaps. Some of the posts I read last night made me wonder whether the charge isn't in fact only relating to where the budget to pay for the wiretaps came from rather than the approval of the wiretaps themselves.

Does anybody know of a reliable source on this?

 

[shuttlt]

While we are on the subject of thaumaturgy, I would like to know what solvent and method of cleaning can remove blood and not remove DNA from a knife. I'll give you a hint. It's not bleach. One supplier of DNA reagents (Promega Corp.) has a technical bulletin which recommends a 2-3% dilution of full strength bleach for removal of unwanted DNA from surfaces.

What do they recommend doing with the dilute bleach to remove unwanted DNA? Should you soak the contaminated article in it for one minute, or leave it there for an hour? Will putting the bleach on a cloth, wiping the article down and then running it under a tap do?

As for the DNA but no blood issue. Asside from your intuition, what reason do we have for thinking this is miraculous? Personally my intuition is surprised by the DNA but no blood, then again I'm not a forensic examiner. I guess tissue is more easily caught in flaws in the blade than blood, so perhaps this is not so surprising.

 

[Fulcanelli]

I just wanted to check my understanding about Mignini's current legal difficulties. I had previously understood that he had overstepped his authority by approving some wiretaps. Some of the posts I read last night made me wonder whether the charge isn't in fact only relating to where the budget to pay for the wiretaps came from rather than the approval of the wiretaps themselves.

Does anybody know of a reliable source on this?

Here's a summary in Mignini's own words.

Mignini tries to explain it here in his email to Lynda Byron:

Second point. I had told you that it is very complicated to explain to you the accusations which have been levelled against me. In summary, I have been accused of having favoured the position of Dr Guitarri, investigated in Genoa with two of his fellow workers for ideological untruthfulness (which never occurred) in the transcript of a tape recording of an interview between Dr Giuttari and Dr Canessa, who was holding forth to the former about the fact that the chief Prosecutor of Florence at the time was not a free man, in relation to investigations into the “Monster”. A Technical Advisory (TA) of the Prosecutor’s office attempted to attribute that phrase to Dr Guitarri without taking a
-3-
sound test from the latter, but only from Canessa. I held that it was only right that I too should seek a TA on that tape recording (of which I had a copy) during my trial, while I had the original of the transcript. I entrusted the TA to the Chief of the Sound Expert Group of Scientific Branch of the Carabinieri in Rome, Captain Claudio Ciampini. If Guitarri had told a lie this TA would certainly attest to this, but Captain Ciampini concluded that Canessa had said the phrase. Furthermore, this can clearly be heard. Then I decided to question the author of the TA during my investigations, because those being investigated were perfectly aware of the developments in the Guitarri investigation, and this fact could not be explained. The author of the TA from Genoa made statements which were not at all credible and I was forced to investigate him.

The (GUP) Judge of the preliminary investigation in Genoa, Dr Roberto Fenizia, in an uncontested verdict of 09/11/2006, acquitted Guitarri and his colleagues because the charges were not true. Thus I am accused, because by undertaking rigorous investigations, without imagining that it could be true, I avoided the conviction of innocent people. I leave it to you to make your own estimation of this. As far as the phone taps are concerned, they were all authorised and checked by the investigating judge,
You must explain to me how they can be considered illegal.
I still do not understand.

This in short is what the trial is about and I am certain that the truth will prevail. None of us has a guarantee of not being subjected to unfair trials especially when delicate and “inconvenient” investigations are being undertaken.

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?p=17394#p17394

 

[shuttlt]

Confusing stuff. That's certainly not the way it sounds when FOA discuss it. Still, in the interests of balance and fairness I'd like to be relying on sombody other than Mignini for an explanation of the charges he faced/faces.

 

[JihadJane]

Lunatics can attach themselves to anything

Meaningless psychological "woo".

 

[Fulcanelli]

Meaningless psychological "woo".

Was Fiona's comment rather a bit too close to home for you JihadJane?

 

[Fiona]

Meaningless psychological "woo".

Meaningless "sceptical" mantra, methinks. Care to say what you mean?