Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[Charlie Wilkes]

Yes, I've heard of this case before. Thanks for the link though. The case is a tragedy on so many levels, not least because of the irreversible brain injury suffered by one of the wrongly-convicted men while in prison. The story of the redemption of Ochoa is indeed uplifting though.

And yes, it illustrates very succinctly just how people can confess to very serious and grave crimes that they didn't actually commit - quite contrary to the seeming logic against making such a confession. I'd repeat, however - for balance - that just since it happened in the case you've quoted doesn't of course imply that it happened in the Kercher case. But many of the same factors are present in the AK "confession"; and, as I've said, my personal belief is that her "confession" could likely be ruled wholly invalid as a result. But, again, a "confession" is only one strand of evidence pointing to guilt, particularly in this case. As I previously said, even if the confession-related evidence is successfully challenged on appeal, it's for the appeal judges to decide whether the "rope" is still strong enough to convict without this strand in place (of course, other strands of the "rope" might also be removed in the appeal...).

This case is a little like one of those magic eye pictures. Once you see it, there's no mistaking it. But some people have trouble seeing it.

What makes this case pretty clear to me is, first of all, if these kids had been involved, they would have confessed, or at least they would have admitted to being there, and they would have named Guede.

Aside from that, Amanda Knox is just not someone who would kill her roommate, not for money, not for sex, not because of a grudge, not for any reason whatsoever.

And finally, to ice the cake, take a look at the theory and the evidence. Which came first? They announced they had solved the case - Meredith was killed by three people because she didn't want to participate in group sex. How did they know that? Amanda and Raffaele may have implicated themselves when they were interrogated, but neither of them said anything about a "sex game" or group sex. Moreover, none of the forensic evidence that has been so important to the prosecution's case - the knife, the bra fastener, the luminol footprints - was available at the time the police announced their theory. So how did they know? The answer is, they didn't know. It was pure speculation, but once it was public, they had to make good on it. Lumumba is damn lucky he had alibi witnesses, or he would still be in jail and the police would be talking about four killers.

 

[Amazer]

If your boss had been arrested for a crime you had nothing to do with, would you tell the police that your boss was innocent even though you haven't got a clue about what your boss was doing that night?

Why do you conveniently leave out that Patrick was arrested for a crime that Amanda said he had committed?

Besides, if Amanda wasn't present during the murder AND if she doesn't have a clue what her boss was doing that night; She very well cannot claim that Patrick murdered Meredith as if she was present.

She did tell them, in writing, the very next morning, that her statements during that interview were not reliable.

Which is not quit the same as saying "Sorry, but I lied yesterday".

What more could she have done?

She could and should have said that she knowingly lied.

By the time the trial started, Amanda had already been in jail for over a year and had probably heard the stories of what her former boss had been saying about her. Why should she feel sorry for someone that has their freedom?

She shouldn't feel sorry for people that have their freedom... she should have been sorry being the cause that Patrick was implicated in a murder.

 

[Dan O.]

OK, he had blood on his shoes, he had blood on at least one hand, the hand he used to open the door from the inside, the blood on the side of door came from either his bloody hand, or blood on his close that brushed up against it.

He would have to of used his other hand to pull the door shut and used the bloody hand to lock it.

His bloody foot prints would have been pointing directly at the door to do this, then turned and go out the front door. They don't show that at all, his prints by the door would have been thicker and faded towards the front door.

Plus why in the world would he care to lock it in the first place - he has no reason. He has no reason to close the other door either, Filomena's or the front door.

The crucial point that you left out is that rudy would not have known that the key was in fact the one that would lock Meredith's door. Before closing the door to lock it, he would have tested the key to make sure it was the right one.

As to why he would lock the door, he has taken Meredith's credit cards. If he plans to use then, he needs to insure that the body isn't discovered for a day or two. He returns to the basketball court in the morning and can see that the police are already on the scene. If Amanda and Raffaele hadn't called the police, Rudy would have known it was safe to make a quick trip out of town for a buying spree and return quickly to reestablish his alibi thus proving that the murderer had left town and thereby sending the police on a wild goose chase.

Later, when he remember the crap that he left behind that would point a dirty finger back at him, he leaves the country.

Another part you are overlooking: what was Rudy doing while Amanda and Raffaele were supposedly doing the boogie-hop to the bathroom? Does all this take place while Rudy is sitting on the toilet? What was he contemplating?

 

[Dan O.]

Why do you conveniently leave out that Patrick was arrested for a crime that Amanda said he had committed?

Amanda did not say patrick committed the murder. Patrick was implicated by the police during Amanda's interrogation. The police laid out the scenario starting from the text message exchange and told Amanda that she probably doesn't remember because she was traumatized. Amanda was only agreeing with the police when she acknowledged that Patrick was involved. That in itself was very traumatizing for Amanda as her cries could be heard down the hall in the police station. In her current state of being virtually without sleep for four days and emotionally broken, she was then fully open to suggestion as the police built upon this fantasy.

Patrick's arrest was 100% the fault of the sloppy interrogation techniques of the Perugia police.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Amanda and Patrick in November 2007

One thing that those who tend toward innocence and those who tend toward guilt should agree upon is that once Amanda was arrested, she could only hurt her own legal position by talking to police. That even goes for her discussing Patrick with them. Her lawyers told her to stop talking to police during this period, if my recollection of Ms. Dempsey’s book is correct, and that is just good lawyering 101. Edda made a statement to the effect that Amanda did not think that Patrick was involved during this period.

The police could have questioned Patrick, checked into his alibi, and put him under surveillance until the forensics came back. To put it another way, once she was arrested, Patrick’s detention was effectively out of Amanda’s hands. Ms. Dempsey reported that Amanda apologized at the end of November, IIRC, and it is unclear to me why some here expected an additional apology at the trial.

 

[Danceme]

I don't think one can determine precise movements from the shoe prints. He only had blood on one part of the sole of one shoe. He left quite a few shoe traces in the kitchen, quite close together. What was that all about?

It would be interesting to know if he could have turned the key on the inside to set the latch, removed the key, and then pulled the door shut behind him, or if he would have had to shut the door and then insert the key to set the lock from the outside.

Re: the blood on the inside door handle using some of Rudy’s story as a base;

Rudy rushes in to see what happened to Meredith, steps in blood as he knelt beside her, ran for towels, then one hand held her up and got covered in blood while the other hand which held the towel was somewhat protected from blood. Then when he pulled the door open to leave the room he got blood on the inside lever, but using the opposite unbloodied hand to pull it closed he did not get any blood on the outside lever. He held the key with the bloody hand while locking it, taking the key away with him.

What doesn’t make any sense to me is this; why the door was even closed when he had just rushed in to help her, rushed out to the bathroom for towels, then rushed back in, then rushed out of there altogether. Is it even conceivable to think he thought to close the door behind him any one of those times? This doesn’t make sense if he was the sole killer, alone in a locked house with Meredith. If he performed the savage attack on her in the first place why would he do all this instead of just hightailing it out of there straight away?

On the other hand, perhaps he didn’t close it after he first rushed in but he did after he saw what had happened and went to get the towels. By now his hand would probably be bloody and he would be very afraid of the “Italian man” whom he had encountered in the kitchen and so he locked the door from the inside to keep him out in case he should come back and try to kill Rudy too. When he left he had to unlock the door from the inside, close it and relock it from the outside. This only works if there really was an “Italian man”.

I do not think he stopped off to wash his shoe then left bloody shoeprints anyway.

This is just one example in this case of why its so difficult to be 100% certain of what really happened?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

The crucial point that you left out is that rudy would not have known that the key was in fact the one that would lock Meredith's door. Before closing the door to lock it, he would have tested the key to make sure it was the right one.

As to why he would lock the door, he has taken Meredith's credit cards. If he plans to use then, he needs to insure that the body isn't discovered for a day or two. He returns to the basketball court in the morning and can see that the police are already on the scene. If Amanda and Raffaele hadn't called the police, Rudy would have known it was safe to make a quick trip out of town for a buying spree and return quickly to reestablish his alibi thus proving that the murderer had left town and thereby sending the police on a wild goose chase.

Later, when he remember the crap that he left behind that would point a dirty finger back at him, he leaves the country.

Another part you are overlooking: what was Rudy doing while Amanda and Raffaele were supposedly doing the boogie-hop to the bathroom? Does all this take place while Rudy is sitting on the toilet? What was he contemplating?

How many keys could she possibly have on the ring? And furthermore, if there is more than one, why didn't he lock the front door as well? At best he has two to chose from, I think he doesn't need to try them out first.

If he ever planned on using Merediths credit cards, that night in the nightclub would have been the perfect time, wouldn't it?

Rudy left after Amanda and RS, if RS was even there to begin with. RS came back with Amanda many times later that night to stage and set up - those two got no sleep that night.

 

[Amazer]

Amanda did not say patrick committed the murder. Patrick was implicated by the police during Amanda's interrogation. The police laid out the scenario starting from the text message exchange and told Amanda that she probably doesn't remember because she was traumatized. Amanda was only agreeing with the police when she acknowledged that Patrick was involved. That in itself was very traumatizing for Amanda as her cries could be heard down the hall in the police station. In her current state of being virtually without sleep for four days and emotionally broken, she was then fully open to suggestion as the police built upon this fantasy.

Patrick's arrest was 100% the fault of the sloppy interrogation techniques of the Perugia police.

Wrong

 

[Matthew Best]

Thanks for that insightful and convincing dismantling of Dan O's post.

 

[LondonJohn]

Were the two confessions/declarations that Amanda gave at 1:45 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. on November 6 allowed into evidence or allowed to be used against her? I thought they weren't since she did not have representation during those times. I believe her November 6 memorandum was allowed but I am not so sure of the other two.

The memorandum from the morning of Nov 6 was indeed allowed into evidence, while the verbal and written "confessions" from the middle of the night were ruled inadmissible. This ruling however meant that AK was still obliged, to a certain extent, to defend her actions and statements from that whole night. And the judicial panel was left in no doubt that at best she'd exhibited confusion about her activities on the murder night, and that at worst she'd implicitly admitted to at least being in the house while the murder took place. The legally inexplicable decision to allow Lumumba vs AK's slander trial to take place concurrently complicates the issue yet further, since AK's early-hours "confession" statement was deemed admissible for that trial.

Of course, it's well worth remembering that in addition to what was or wasn't allowed as evidence in the courtroom, the entire judicial panel would almost inevitably have been aware of AK's verbal and written confessions through their pre-trial exposure in the media. So the subliminal thought can't help but to have been placed into their minds that AK had confessed and had implicated an innocent man. One would hope that a mitigating factor would be the presence of professional judges on the judicial panel (who should be able to filter out all inadmissible evidence regardless of whether they've heard it through other channels). But the fact that these "confessions" were in existence at all can only have been damaging to AK, particularly in a country with such lax sub-judice rules.

 

[christianahannah]

One thing that those who tend toward innocence and those who tend toward guilt should agree upon is that once Amanda was arrested, she could only hurt her own legal position by talking to police. That even goes for her discussing Patrick with them. Her lawyers told her to stop talking to police during this period, if my recollection of Ms. Dempsey’s book is correct, and that is just good lawyering 101. Edda made a statement to the effect that Amanda did not think that Patrick was involved during this period.

The police could have questioned Patrick, checked into his alibi, and put him under surveillance until the forensics came back. To put it another way, once she was arrested, Patrick’s detention was effectively out of Amanda’s hands. Ms. Dempsey reported that Amanda apologized at the end of November, IIRC, and it is unclear to me why some here expected an additional apology at the trial.

I'm not sure an apology at trial would have been an additional apology. I believe Amanda was asked (during her June 2009 court appearance), "Did you ever say you were sorry to Patrick?" and she replied, "No." Amanda may have told her mother or attorney she was sorry for the predicament Patrick was in and maybe they relayed that information to Patrick (in November).

 

[LondonJohn]

Thanks for that insightful and convincing dismantling of Dan O's post.

Hehehehe. Succinct, but fair I think. Let's hope that sarcasm is an international language...

 

[LondonJohn]

Amanda did not say patrick committed the murder. Patrick was implicated by the police during Amanda's interrogation. The police laid out the scenario starting from the text message exchange and told Amanda that she probably doesn't remember because she was traumatized. Amanda was only agreeing with the police when she acknowledged that Patrick was involved. That in itself was very traumatizing for Amanda as her cries could be heard down the hall in the police station. In her current state of being virtually without sleep for four days and emotionally broken, she was then fully open to suggestion as the police built upon this fantasy.

Patrick's arrest was 100% the fault of the sloppy interrogation techniques of the Perugia police.

I'd agree pretty much entirely with the first paragraph. However, I'd suggest a modification of the second paragraph. I think the police most certainly had a duty to investigate Lumumba, given what they thought (erroneously, as it turned out) that they knew about his actions from the fateful text message.

If what you (and I) believe happened in AK's interrogation, the police and prosecutors should have realised that there was at least an element of circularity in AK's naming of Lumumba. I suggest that police and prosecutors should not have leaped upon AK's "confession" as a reason to seize Lumumba (in a pretty brutal incursion into his house in front of his wife and child, let's never forget).

Instead, in my view, Mignini and the police should have tempered their zeal since they would have known (if you and I are correct in our assertion that the police essentially placed Lumumba's name in AK's mouth) that her "confession" shouldn't, in and of itself, have constituted exceptional evidence against Lumumba. They still of course had what they thought was an incriminating text message, so these two pieces of evidence placed together certainly constituted a reason to see Lumumba fairly urgently.

In my view, they could and should have visited Lumumba first thing the next morning - but not in the "dawn raid" that they somehow deemed necessary just a few hours after AK's naming of him. They could have asked him to come to the station for questioning. If he'd refused, they could then have sought an arrest warrant, since a refusal to cooperate would also be potentially incriminating in itself. I strongly suspect, however, that Lumumba WOULD willingly have attended the police station. And the rest might have turned out very different both for Lumumba and the police.

As an addendum to this, the way the police went about the arrest of Lumumba on the 6th is in itself very instructive of the way the Perugia force went about its business in general, and I'd argue that it doesn't paint them in a good light at all. Whilst of course they were dealing with a high-profile case of the highest gravity, there was no justification whatsoever for the raid they launched on Lumumba's house in the early hours of the 6th November. After all, Lumumba himself was demonstrably not a flight risk at that point (otherwise he'd have left Perugia already).

Further, regardless of what they'd learned - or thought they'd learned - during the previous night (text message, AK "confession"), they could have been certain that Lumumba himself could not have got any wind of their suspicion of him. After all, AK and RS were securely in custody, so they couldn't have warned him in any way, and the only other people who knew of the new "evidence" against Lumumba were the police themselves. In addition to that, Lumumba had no prior history of violent conduct (am I right to suggest that he'd never been arrested before either?). All in all, a completely unjustified way in which to bring a person in Lumumba's position into custody, I'd argue.

 

[LondonJohn]

Don't worry, none was taken, but I thought I might have missed something you said so I reread your last few posts several times to be sure.

You reread my last few posts several times and you managed to stay awake?!

 

[Mary_H]

Are you suggesting that such tactics would be unheard of in, say, a U.S. court? They wouldn't, you know. I could provide examples ad nauseum, but I don't think I need to.

The idea that an Italian jury is a priori more sexually repressed or more easily swayed by titillation and sexual innuendo is really quite humorous. I suspect that the U.S. is more accurately portrayed as the prudes of the western world than any country in Europe. The Clinton/Lewinski furor is a great example. While we were bringing our government to a standstill for months and going to the proverbial wall with preidential impeachment proceedings over a single casual dalliance the rest of the world was essentially wondering what the big deal was....

...Would you care to explain in more detail exactly what this "cultural bias" in Italy consists of, and how it specifically contributed to an unfair conviction? It was this allegation as much as any of the other thinly (and not so thinly) veiled xenophobic rants in our media which caused me to question the reporting on the case to begin with.

Nobody that I know of has claimed that the Italians are sexually repressed, nor would they, given the publicity about their own president's many dalliances.

Regardless of references to sexuality and sexual acts, sexism is a cultural bias. It is alive and well in most civilizations around the world, including the United States. However, cultural awareness and state's equal rights amendments will ensure that here you will not hear a lawyer argue what Lumumba's lawyer, Carlo Pacelli argued about Amanda:

"Is Amanda Knox the angelic [person] we see here?" said Mr Pacelli, turning to point fiercely at Knox. "Or is she a diabolical she-devil, an explosive concentrate of sex, drugs and alcohol? She is both. But the latter is the Amanda we saw on November 1, 2007." This is the date that Miss Kercher was murdered...

"Mr Pacelli repeatedly described what he called Knox's poor hygiene habits – the fact that she sometimes did not flush the toilet, and that she brought home lovers and kept condoms and a vibrator in a transparent beauty case in the bathroom. "Amanda Knox was unclean on the outside because she was dirty on the inside," he said..."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-shedevil-by-murder-trial-lawyer-1829882.html

It seems to me that every time someone tries to highlight some fundamental cultural or structural difference in the Italian system to explain why such a supposed failure of justice as the conviction of Knox could occur it turns out that conditions here are really no better and often arguably worse. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I think that she may be fortunate she was in Italy. I don't see her chances of conviction here as significantly less likely, and there is no doubt in my mind that the consequent sentence could have been far more severe. An American DA would have aimed for nothing less than LWOP.

I have read and seen several pundits with legal expertise argue that Amanda would not have been arrested in the United States. Do you know more than they do?

 

[Mary_H]

So, I concluded, you have not, in fact, provided good reason to think that the cops cleaned up shoeprints of Rudy except those labeled and photographed by the cops. And there is exactly ONE such shoeprint of Rudy, labeled and photographed, outside of Meredith's door.

Okay, so that is the crux of the matter. Why did Fulcanelli say there were no footrpint's of Rudy's in front of the bedroom door?

 

[stilicho]

One thing that those who tend toward innocence and those who tend toward guilt should agree upon is that once Amanda was arrested, she could only hurt her own legal position by talking to police.

We had a vigorous conversation a long time ago about this and whether innocent people should retain lawyers when talking to the police. My recommendation to Sollecito would have been not to visit the police station at all without representation and Knox after the initial interview. RS didn't live there and had no reason to be called in unless there was something wrong. AK lived there so it wouldn't have been unwarranted for her to answer the simple questions.

But they thought they could lie themselves out of trouble and clearly didn't understand that their lies would come back to haunt them.

So it's not only after the arrests that they screwed up.

 

[Mary_H]

I'd agree pretty much entirely with the first paragraph. However, I'd suggest a modification of the second paragraph. I think the police most certainly had a duty to investigate Lumumba, given what they thought (erroneously, as it turned out) that they knew about his actions from the fateful text message.

If what you (and I) believe happened in AK's interrogation, the police and prosecutors should have realised that there was at least an element of circularity in AK's naming of Lumumba. I suggest that police and prosecutors should not have leaped upon AK's "confession" as a reason to seize Lumumba (in a pretty brutal incursion into his house in front of his wife and child, let's never forget).

Instead, in my view, Mignini and the police should have tempered their zeal since they would have known (if you and I are correct in our assertion that the police essentially placed Lumumba's name in AK's mouth) that her "confession" shouldn't, in and of itself, have constituted exceptional evidence against Lumumba. They still of course had what they thought was an incriminating text message, so these two pieces of evidence placed together certainly constituted a reason to see Lumumba fairly urgently.

In my view, they could and should have visited Lumumba first thing the next morning - but not in the "dawn raid" that they somehow deemed necessary just a few hours after AK's naming of him. They could have asked him to come to the station for questioning. If he'd refused, they could then have sought an arrest warrant, since a refusal to cooperate would also be potentially incriminating in itself. I strongly suspect, however, that Lumumba WOULD willingly have attended the police station. And the rest might have turned out very different both for Lumumba and the police.

As an addendum to this, the way the police went about the arrest of Lumumba on the 6th is in itself very instructive of the way the Perugia force went about its business in general, and I'd argue that it doesn't paint them in a good light at all. Whilst of course they were dealing with a high-profile case of the highest gravity, there was no justification whatsoever for the raid they launched on Lumumba's house in the early hours of the 6th November. After all, Lumumba himself was demonstrably not a flight risk at that point (otherwise he'd have left Perugia already).

Further, regardless of what they'd learned - or thought they'd learned - during the previous night (text message, AK "confession"), they could have been certain that Lumumba himself could not have got any wind of their suspicion of him. After all, AK and RS were securely in custody, so they couldn't have warned him in any way, and the only other people who knew of the new "evidence" against Lumumba were the police themselves. In addition to that, Lumumba had no prior history of violent conduct (am I right to suggest that he'd never been arrested before either?). All in all, a completely unjustified way in which to bring a person in Lumumba's position into custody, I'd argue.

These points have been argued previously in this forum. The response has been similar to Amazer's recent response to Dan O: "Wrong."

I will be impressed if you can sway anyone with the more descriptive way you have explained it.

 

[stilicho]

My personal belief is that this particular confession WAS false and coerced.

They scarcely had enough time to set up the chairs, get the translator, go over the information already gathered, finish with the basic interview routine, and finally advise her that RS had turned on her, before AK blurted out that Patrick had murdered Meredith.

It has none of the earmarks of the false/coerced statements:

• AK is not mentally handicapped.
• This was either the third or the fourth interview with the suspect.
• The interviewers were under no particular time restraints; the investigation had started only a few days earlier.
• AK was unable to identify those who verbally coerced her; she has always stated only that she was confused.
• There is no evidence she was physically coerced.
• She did not really confess; she blamed the murder on someone else.
• AK was rested and well-fed.

There are several other points on this but without further evidence we will have to concur this was not a false or coerced confession.

 

[stilicho]

I'd agree pretty much entirely with the first paragraph. However, I'd suggest a modification of the second paragraph. I think the police most certainly had a duty to investigate Lumumba, given what they thought (erroneously, as it turned out) that they knew about his actions from the fateful text message.

.....

So you agree that when an eyewitness to murder names a suspect that he should be arrested but just more politely.

Gotcha.