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Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

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I never said it couldn't happen here. But I know it didn't happen the way the judge's said. Their description of the event is stupid.

Why? Why do you say it's "stupid"?

"This is stupid. There's no way it could have happened that way." <---argument from incredulity.

Again, that you find the Judges' scenario "stupid" doesn't mean it didn't happen that way. This is merely argument from refusal to accept something as true - aka argument from incredulity.
 
Why? Why do you say it's "stupid"?

"This is stupid. There's no way it could have happened that way." <---argument from incredulity.

Again, that you find the Judges' scenario "stupid" doesn't mean it didn't happen that way. This is merely argument from refusal to accept something as true - aka argument from incredulity.

Look, if that's what you want to call it, fine. If you can keep a straight face reading their description, then what can I do? It's a stupid scenario. If you just accept everything you read as true, fine by me. But the scenario is stupid. Not my fault.

Edit: You've reworded my thought. I'm not saying "this is stupid, there is no way it could have happened that way." I'm saying, there is no evidence to support this scenario. It's stupid.
 
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Maybe the discussion is best for another thread honestly. Or you can PM me. I'm not dismissing your questions, and it is an interesting topic, but I don't think it's going anywhere on this thread.

It is somewhat relevant. I object to the characterisations of any of the three of those convicted of the murder as depraved or somehow deficient. I think it is relevant when people bring up any of the usual arguments about diminished capacity, especially regarding possible drug or intoxicant use.

I also find it relevant that none of the court testimony focused on any of these things. I was personally wondering why Amanda's defence team didn't even bother to dig up any expert to establish the psychological trauma that caused her to become so confused that she couldn't remember anything for this one short period in her life when, at the same time, her roommate happened to be murdered.

I have no problems dropping it but this issue of "what-is-a-murderer" has come up before.
 
I also find it relevant that none of the court testimony focused on any of these things. I was personally wondering why Amanda's defence team didn't even bother to dig up any expert to establish the psychological trauma that caused her to become so confused that she couldn't remember anything for this one short period in her life when, at the same time, her roommate happened to be murdered.

I think they did have a similar kind of expert come towards the end of the defense case.
 
What, you think Rudy is some sort of monkey or something? You think the evidence points to Rudy seeing Amanda and Raffaele petting each other and found it impossible to control his member so he decided to go take it out on Meredith because it was just too much to control?

That's not persuasive, that's a dirty old man fantasy.


Dang it, HB, you made me laugh out loud again!
 
Look, if that's what you want to call it, fine. If you can keep a straight face reading their description, then what can I do? It's a stupid scenario. If you just accept everything you read as true, fine by me. But the scenario is stupid. Not my fault.

Edit: You've reworded my thought. I'm not saying "this is stupid, there is no way it could have happened that way." I'm saying, there is no evidence to support this scenario. It's stupid.

What is wrong with the scenario from an evidence standpoint? What makes it "stupid" rather than just "wrong"?
 
It is somewhat relevant. I object to the characterisations of any of the three of those convicted of the murder as depraved or somehow deficient. I think it is relevant when people bring up any of the usual arguments about diminished capacity, especially regarding possible drug or intoxicant use.

I also find it relevant that none of the court testimony focused on any of these things. I was personally wondering why Amanda's defence team didn't even bother to dig up any expert to establish the psychological trauma that caused her to become so confused that she couldn't remember anything for this one short period in her life when, at the same time, her roommate happened to be murdered.

I have no problems dropping it but this issue of "what-is-a-murderer" has come up before.

All I'll say is depraved isn't the same as diminished capacity. In a general sense, the law is mostly concerned with whether you can tell the difference between right and wrong.
 
What is wrong with the scenario from an evidence standpoint? What makes it "stupid" rather than just "wrong"?

It's stupid because the judges are using their own story of what happened to support their argument for what happened.

All the judges know of what happened at the crime scene is that Rudy left a bunch of DNA and fingerprints, Meredith was sexually assaulted (or maybe not, according the medical examiner), and she was attacked and murdered by maybe one person or maybe more than one person.

From that they speculate on an imaginary scenario that includes Amanda and Raffaele doing something that even the most marginal students would never do. HB is right -- it's just a dirty old man's fantasy.
 
It's stupid because the judges are using their own story of what happened to support their argument for what happened.

All the judges know of what happened at the crime scene is that Rudy left a bunch of DNA and fingerprints, Meredith was sexually assaulted (or maybe not, according the medical examiner), and she was attacked and murdered by maybe one person or maybe more than one person.

From that they speculate on an imaginary scenario that includes Amanda and Raffaele doing something that even the most marginal students would never do. HB is right -- it's just a dirty old man's fantasy.
Do you have evidence of that, or is that just your opinion on the matter?
 
Do you have evidence of that, or is that just your opinion on the matter?

I thought I just gave you evidence. We know what evidence they had. We know what their conclusions were. The missing link is conspicuous by its absence.
 
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I thought I just gave you evidence. We know what evidence they had. We know what there conclusions were. The missing link is conspicuous by its absence.

Exactly what is the missing link here?

We know Meredith was sexually assaulted by Rudy. We know Amanda and Raffaele were involved.

You prefer to think Rudy sexually assaulted Meredith while Amanda/Raffaele held her, fine.

But, that, in and of itself, does not make the Judge's scenario a "dirty old man's fantasy". ;)
 
The goodwill and compassion of the jurors is being misinterpreted, I think. I don't go along with the judgment scenario. I think there was an argument between the girls and Amanda put her hands on Meredith. JMO

The jurors looked at all the evidence of depravity and tried to find the kindest interpretation. So did I, but that's why it isn't quite right. They tried to ignore the evil.
 
Mary H said:
That all happened later. How did the authorities come to announce to the press that the three suspects had together committed a rape and murder?

That didn't all happen 'later', they had all that against them from the night of the 5th (and the stuff regarding Patrick's phone and his lack of alibi they had by the time they appeared in court on the 8/9th.

The police didn't announce all three committed rape and murder, they announced they had those responsible for it in custody. There's a difference.
 
HumanityBlues said:
What, you think Rudy is some sort of monkey or something? You think the evidence points to Rudy seeing Amanda and Raffaele petting each other and found it impossible to control his member so he decided to go take it out on Meredith because it was just too much to control?

That's not persuasive, that's a dirty old man fantasy.

Why not? You people are arguing essentially exactly the same thing...that while burglarising the cottage he saw Meredith and found it too much to control himself and so sexually attacked her, leading to murder. So what's the huge difference? At least Massei offers a sexual stimuli to get Rudy going rather then just the mere sight of Meredith walking about which you people assert was plenty enough to turn Rudy into a rapist and murderer.

I'm not saying I accept Massei's scenario by the way. But I certainly don't see it being any less credible then yours.
 
HumanityBlues said:
There is a great deal of debate actually over whether rehabilitation is possible. Many legislators here in the US have decided that jail is only for a retributive function.

If you murder someone, you have psychological issues. They can be influenced by conditions beyond one's control, by one's environment, or by depraved conditions, but it is not something any ol' individual is just going to do.

Can people change? Yes. That doesn't mean there's not something wrong with them.

Nobody has actually argued that there isn't something wrong with Amanda and Raffaele up in the head. Indeed, there has been much talk from their families these past two years of their each suffering from psychological problems.Of course, they do so in the tone that they've been caused purely 'by' their incarceration, but they are no experts capable of evaluating if those mental problems began 'before' or not. Certainly, right from the beginning before their arrest Amanda was displaying strange behaviour. Therefore, you can't rule it out.
 
HumanityBlues said:
It's not argument from incredulity. There's no reasonable justification for that scenario. It's a stupid scenario plain and simple. I don't need a better explanation to say how stupid the judge's explanation is. It's stupid.

More stupid then Rudy mountaineering up through the window, laying eyes on Meredith and immediately turning into a sex monster at the mere sight of her?
 
HummanityBlues said:
Edit: You've reworded my thought. I'm not saying "this is stupid, there is no way it could have happened that way." I'm saying, there is no evidence to support this scenario. It's stupid.

Say for arguments sake the scenario is true, that it happened that way, what evidence 'would' there be for it...what tangible evidence for it would you 'expect' to see that is not present here?
 
I'm just the opposite.

I cannot figure out an acceptable scenario--without employing torture--where a completely innocent person goes from standing by her original story, making love, discussing lesbianism, having a shower, cooking fish, noticing blood on Raffaele's hands, etc, etc, etc, to an entirely different one where she is standing in the cottage, covering her ears to avoid hearing Meredith's screams, while Patrick is sexually assaulting and ultimately knifing her.

The problem isn't just having her shrug off the suggestion that RS wasn't backing up her alibi. She doesn't just answer: Who cares what Raffaele said? He's lying. She makes up another elaborate scenario that has absolutely no resemblance to the original one. She doesn't 'crumble' and confess. She creates a completely different story.

Do you have any examples of that happening in your false confession library? I have read most of those presented here and there's nothing quite like it.

By-the-by, I see the usual shenanigans have been going on since I was last here......

Your point is a re-presentation of something that you and others have said before. You say that, in this case, that you can't conceive of a situation where an "innocent" AK would go from talking in a somewhat carefree and scattergun fashion (as you imply) about her alibi one moment, to breaking down and confessing the next moment.

This implies two things: firstly, that AK's change of story was more-or-less instantaneous; and secondly that it was entirely voluntary and of her own free will. I'd argue that neither of these things are correct.

You state that any rational (and innocent) person would have responded to the news that RS no longer supported her alibi with a simple cross-accusation of RS ("he's lying"). But I contend that the situation is infinitely more complicated than that. She had been confronted with an unexpected and emotionally devastating u-turn from someone whom she'd always assumed was unequivocally "on her side" (and I don't mean that in an "accomplice" way, merely in an emotional way). She was also most likely simultaneously informed that the police were certain she was lying about any meeting with Lumumba, and could well also have been informed that other evidence pointed firmly to her guilt.

In those circumstances, when you add in a dose of fear of being feeling increasingly in the police spotlight, even rational and innocent people CAN and DO react in unusual and often self-incriminating ways. And AK not only "makes up another elaborate scenario that has absolutely no resemblance to the original one". She in fact makes up (or confirms under suggestion...) another elaborate scenario which not only implicates her, but which implicates another person who had nothing to do with the crime.

My "library" of false confessions is currently closed for a re-indexing of all the titles. But I can tell you without fear of contradiction that I could find you all sorts of examples where people who were subsequently proven totally innocent went, during the course of a police interrogation, from denying involvement to a full or partial confession.

And I re-iterate, just for the avoidance of any doubt: I'm not asserting that AK's dramatic change of position during this interrogation was DEFINITELY down to coercion, and that it (and all insinuations arising from it) MUST therefore be completely disregarded. What I'm arguing is that many of the factors present in historical false confessions appear to be present in this particular situation. That - together with the indisputable fact that many parts of AK's "confession" are demonstrably false in themselves - leads me to believe that, on balance, there's a lot more to this "confession" that meets the eye. We shall see.
 
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