Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[Dan O.]

Anna Donnino, another interpreter, testified that she was called at her home around 11:00-11:30pm 4th/5th and asked to come in to the police station as her expertise were needed. She lives about 1/2 hour away and testified that after she arrived she spent the entire night in the same room as AK and acted as the interpreter. It was shortly after she arrived and started working with AK and the police that AK was shown the text messag by Lumumba, she was simply asked "did you see this sms? did you respond?" and Donnino testified that she will NEVER forget the reaction.. AK broke down, shocked, and put her hands on her head and said "its him, its him, he did it" etc etc. The interpreter testified that the statement came spontaneously by AK

No need to encourage her to "imagine" anything really. Just lies

This is something new. Will you please share with us the exact wording of the text message Lumumba sent to Amanda that night.

 

[stilicho]

Knox said she was hit, in court, under oath.

No, as a defendant she was not under oath. You ought to know simple facts like this by now, Kestrel. Defendants are not required to swear an oath to testify on their own behalf.

@Bob: You too!!?!

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EDIT: Uh-oh, Fiona--you too? Are you tired and imagining things? :O

 

[Kestrel]

No, as a defendant she was not under oath. You ought to know simple facts like this by now, Kestrel. Defendants are not required to swear an oath to testify on their own behalf.

@Bob: You too!!?!

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EDIT: Uh-oh, Fiona--you too? Are you tired and imagining things? :O

The point is that Knox did say she was hit, and identified the person who hit her in court.

 

[stilicho]

Reading her statement, this part makes it quite clear that her statements were made under duress. She doesn't believe it is real. You conveniently leave that out when quoting her.

We're all quite clear about her voluntary "gift" from the morning of 06 NOV 2007. It was that note that was allowed in court and proved irretrievably damaging to AK.

I cannot see how we can both read that and not understand that she deliberately accused a man who she knew to be innocent of sexual assault and murder. I can certainly understand that she was under duress but not quite for the same reasons you do.

In court, the defence was never able to substantiate the claim of abuse levelled by AK against the authorities. This is why, from the same post of mine that you use as a reference, she has to answer to additional charges of defamation and slander.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

The point is that Knox did say she was hit, and identified the person who hit her in court.

And the hits were so incredibly unsettling that she broke down in tears and was unable to continue her testimony?

Didn't think so.

So if she was able to continue her testimony unfazed, what makes it plausible that the cuffs during the interrogation were able to faze her?

 

[Kestrel]

I ran across an interesting paper on police interviews.

Interviewing suspects: Practice, science, and future directions:

Crime suspects in the USA are typically questioned in a two-step process aimed, first, at behavioural lie detection during a pre-interrogation interview, followed by the elicitation of a confession during the interrogation itself (in Great Britain, the practice of investigative interviewing does not make this sharp distinction). Research conducted on the first step shows that police investigators often target innocent people for interrogation because of erroneous but confident judgments of deception. Research on the second step shows that innocent people are sometimes induced to confess to crimes they did not commit as a function of certain dispositional vulnerabilities or the use of overly persuasive interrogation tactics.

This quote from Edgardo Giobbi certainly shows confidence in his ability to judge deception.

We were able to establish guilt by closely observing the suspect's psychological and behavioral reactions during the interrogations. We don't need to rely on other kinds of investigation as this method has enabled us to get to the guilty parties in a very quick time.

So are the Italian investigators overconfident of their abilities?

 

[lector]

Originally Posted by Stilicho
But, although they diverge on several points, he has decided that Introna and Torre agree. They don't.

No, exactly, they don't agree on anything...aside from the fact that the defendants didn't do it and really, what else is a defence expert going to say? But the fact that they differ wildly on how the murder actually occurred says it all on the strength of their testimony. I can imagine there was much swearing by t6he defence lawyers in their chambers after.

Actually, I wonder about that - the defense lawyers' being unhappy with contradictory expert testimony. Having two different scenarios as to how the murder occurred might be construed as undermining the prosecution's scenario more severely than just one. It might have been a deliberate effort to create reasonable doubt.

 

[stilicho]

This quote from Edgardo Giobbi certainly shows confidence in his ability to judge deception.

Quote:
We were able to establish guilt by closely observing the suspect's psychological and behavioral reactions during the interrogations. We don't need to rely on other kinds of investigation as this method has enabled us to get to the guilty parties in a very quick time.

So are the Italian investigators overconfident of their abilities?

Yes.

And we don't need your phoney attempts at 'research' to figure that out, Kestrel. They thought, on the morning of 06 NOV 2007, that they had the three culprits they were looking for. They were wrong.

They spent about a week trying to sort out Mr Lumumba's alibis, the problems with his phone records, and a couple other things I can't recall off-hand.

They were deceived. Of course they were.

Now who successfully deceived them? If only for a time, there was one single individual responsible for their overconfidence. Who was that, Kestrel? Who managed to fool investigators into thinking they had the right people?

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EDIT: From your source:

As a general rule, individuals with high scores on interrogative suggestibility also tend to exhibit poor memories, high levels of anxiety, low self-esteem, and a lack of assertiveness.

Apart from the interval of the evening of Meredith's murder, AK exhibited a keen memory (details about the unflushed toilet, specifics about how she hopped with the bathmat, how she cleaned her ears, etc), little anxiety (doodling, grinning widely, etc during her court appearances, an ordinarily highly stressful situation), high self-esteem, and a reputation for assertiveness.

So the subject appears to be practically immune to suggestibility. Sollecito is a slightly different case but he's the one who threw AK under the bus first. What else could she do except to lie through her teeth?​

 

[stilicho]

Actually, I wonder about that - the defense lawyers' being unhappy with contradictory expert testimony. Having two different scenarios as to how the murder occurred might be construed as undermining the prosecution's scenario more severely than just one. It might have been a deliberate effort to create reasonable doubt.

There's more on the experts at PMF (just use their search function and type in the surname of Introna, Torre, Tagliabracci, etc). It really looks like all of them put together a road show for the case, took their $50,000 cheques, and that's the last they're heard of.

Fulcanelli might know more but I recall that one of Sollecito's lawyers even came down with a sudden mysterious illness on the day the decision was read and the sentence handed down. I think it was Bongiorno.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say that all of them were in it for the payday alone and couldn't care less about putting any real effort into a case so flush with rock-solid evidence against their clients. What were they thinking when they let Edda testify? The mind boggles.

 

[katy_did]

You know that Amanda was there because she said she could hear the screams. (Never mind that we don't have any context for this statement).

Hi Kestrel, another long-time lurker here. Actually we have the context from Amanda's trial testimony:

CP: Signorina Amanda, listen. On the evening of November 1, 2007, did you
hear Meredith, poor Meredith, scream?

AK: No.

CP: In the interrogation of November 6, 2007, at 5:45, you declared that before
she died, you heard Meredith scream. How could you know that Meredith
screamed before she was killed? Who told you?

AK: So when I was with the police, they asked if I heard Meredith's scream.
I said no. They said "But if you were there, how could you not hear her
scream? If you were there?" I said "Look, I don't know, maybe I had my ears
covered." So they said "Fine, we'll write that down. Fine."

CP: [louder] But I can tell you that on November 6, the police did not know
that Meredith screamed before she died, so why would they suggest it to you?

AK: I imagine that maybe they were imagining how it might have been.

It seems the police were the ones with such outlandish imaginations that they imagined someone might have screamed while being stabbed!

 

[katy_did]

Not because she knew that it was Meredith, but because she knew the position of the body 'before' it had been moved and knew what her injuries were, what they were caused by and that it took her a long time to die, by bleeding to death.

Ah yes, that famous insider knowledge Knox had when she told everyone at the police station the body had been found stuffed into the closet with a foot sticking out. No wonder the police were suspicious when she made a statement of such stunning accuracy (or do we think Rudy really had stuffed the body in the closet at some point?)

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The policewoman

From the new afterward to Douglas Preston’s book The Monster of Florence, pp. 325-326:

“A few moments later a timid and exceedingly nervous young woman approached [journalist Mario Spezi].
“I’m a fellow journalist here in Perugia,” she said quietly. Could I speak with you a moment?”
Spezi invited her to sit at his table.
She looked about furtively, as if to check if she were being followed. Then she lit a cigarette with a trembling hand and, stumbling over her words, blurted out, “I hope they don’t see us together.”
“Excuse me, Spezi asked, but who is ‘they’?”
“Them, the police. Mignini’s men.”
“And why can’t we be seen together? What are you afraid of?

[Ms. Bene describes a story of hers on the murder of Meredith Kercher. Mr. Spezi notes that the story died.]

“I’ll tell you what happened. “ Francesca Bene looked around again. “The very day I published that story, I was summoned to the prosecutor’s office and interrogated by Mignini’s men—in particular that big policewoman, the same one who interrogated Amanda Knox.” (The one Amanda says struck her.” “She’s violent; she scares me.”
“What was there to interrogate you about?” Spezi said. “You say your story was corroborated by many witnesses who went on the record.”
“Of course. But that didn’t stop them from indicting me for the crime of inciting public alarm by publishing false information.”


This incident means that it is possible to identify the Italian policewoman whom Ms. Knox alleges hit her. It also says something about Mignini and the power of the prosecutors in Italy. When Mr. Spezi was indicted and held in isolation for five days, the Committee to Protect Journalists said that their, “research and interviews with Italian journalists, some of whom asked to remain anonymous for fear of official retaliation, show a pattern of official harassment against Spezi in connection with his investigation of the ‘Monster of Florence’ case.” Thus the CPJ report substantiates Ms. Bene’s concerns.

http://cpj.org/2006/04/crime-journalists-imprisonment-raises-alarm.php

Chris

 

[Fiona]

No, as a defendant she was not under oath. You ought to know simple facts like this by now, Kestrel. Defendants are not required to swear an oath to testify on their own behalf.

@Bob: You too!!?!

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EDIT: Uh-oh, Fiona--you too? Are you tired and imagining things? :O

Oops sorry: I should have worded that better certainly: th others were under oath: Knox, of course, was not. My apologies

 

[Kestrel]

Ah yes, that famous insider knowledge Knox had when she told everyone at the police station the body had been found stuffed into the closet with a foot sticking out. No wonder the police were suspicious when she made a statement of such stunning accuracy (or do we think Rudy really had stuffed the body in the closet at some point?)

From the source I provided earlier:

Reviewing the statements provided by thirty-three confessors in the USA who were ultimately exonerated, Garrett (2008) found that all but one contained specific, accurate, allegedly ‘non-public’ details about the crimes at issue, details that detectives said ‘only the perpetrator could have known’

It's how you sell a false confession, or in this case a false implication of guilt to a jury. (Did Knox ever state that she shoved a knife into Meredith's throat?) Several times in this case, the police alleged she knew details that only the murderer would know. For example, they claimed that Knox couldn't have known that Meredith's throat had been cut.

'At this time Knox and Sollecito were not here. They were away from the scene. Romanelli's boyfriend (Luca Altieri) gave the door three kicks and it opened - I was behind him and heard a scream.

'I looked and when I saw the scene I told everyone to get out. There was blood everywhere, a lot but I did not go in. I then called the operations room.'

Inspector Battistelli added: 'I had some idea of how she died because I could see the marks on her neck and the blood but I didn't speak to anyone about it.'

Prosecutors Giuliano Mignini and Manuela Comodi claim that when Knox was at the police station waiting to be questioned she had spoken of the injuries to Meredith's body which they say ''only the killers would know about.'.

BTW - Three witnesses said Inspector Battistell did in fact enter the room.

 

[tsig]

Just to bring you up to speed.

Amanda signed two statements during one night. The first at 1:45 AM and the second at 5:45 AM. Her interrogations were not recorded and Amanda did not have a lawyer present. Later that same day, she wrote a letter disclaiming the second statement.

It's that second statement Fiona is so fond of quoting. The one made at 5:45 AM on a night where Amanda got little if any sleep.

I always hang around in houses with dead friends in locked doors and blood everywhere.

 

[Kestrel]

I always hang around in houses with dead friends in locked doors and blood everywhere.

In other words, you believe that anyone who lives at a house where someone is murdered is automatically guilty?



ETA: Or perhaps you are one of the people sucked in by the fake bloody bathroom photo.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

false confessions

From Amanda’s testimony:

“LG: Then, at midday, or one o'clock, we don't know exactly, they brought you a
paper called an arrest warrant. When they served you this warrant, it must
have been around twelve, one o'clock. Do you remember?

AG: So, all papers they brought me to sign, at that point, they were all the same
to me, so I can't even say what I had to sign, arrest warrant, declarations,
whatever, because at a certain point, I just wanted to sign and go home.” (emphasis added)

These words are almost eerily similar to what people who have made false confessions say, as reported by the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/weekinreview/08SAUL.html

What happens over time is that the suspect gets tired, and there is an intensification of techniques. The suspect is getting the message that denial is not the escape, so they offer something else."
Professor Kassin said that when false confessors are later asked why they confessed, the No. 1 answer is "something like `I just wanted to go home.' "
[Endquote]

 

[Chris_Halkides]

police

They spent about a week trying to sort out Mr Lumumba's alibis, the problems with his phone records, and a couple other things I can't recall off-hand.

They were deceived. Of course they were.

Now who successfully deceived them? If only for a time, there was one single individual responsible for their overconfidence. Who was that, Kestrel? Who managed to fool investigators into thinking they had the right people?

Maybe the police should have waited until the forensics came back and Mr. Lumumba's alibi could be checked before arresting him.

 

[Kestrel]

Maybe the police should have waited until the forensics came back and Mr. Lumumba's alibi could be checked before arresting him.

Confirming that Patrick wasn't a match for the bloody handprint found at the scene shouldn't have taken more than a day.

Lumumba was locked up for two weeks. Immediately after his arrest, several college students came forward and said Lumumba was at his bar on the night of the murder. Even after Roman Mero vouched for Lumuba being at his bar, it took the prosecution a week to release Patrick. He wasn't formally cleared of the crime for six months.

It's also interesting to note that the police claimed cell phone evidence proved Lumuba was in the vicinity of the cottage.

 

[katy_did]

It's how you sell a false confession, or in this case a false implication of guilt to a jury. (Did Knox ever state that she shoved a knife into Meredith's throat?) Several times in this case, the police alleged she knew details that only the murderer would know. For example, they claimed that Knox couldn't have known that Meredith's throat had been cut.

Yes, I agree with you. My point was that for all this supposed insider knowledge Amanda had, little of it was actually accurate. She told people at the police station the body was stuffed into the closet with just the foot sticking out the door, something which was obviously wrong, and which seems rather unlikely to have happened at any stage. It's odd that this has somehow been spun as 'insider knowledge' when it's so obviously wildly off-base.