Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[quadraginta]

I have tried to find numbers of murder cases where a PR company is hired, and murder cases 'overseas' where a hometown PR company is hired. If anyone has done any work on this could you post your 'finds'? This is an unusual aspect of the case, though I realize many may not be interested. Just looking for help if anyone has found anything along these lines.

The defense did in the Anthony case I mentioned above. Unfortunately for them the dude turned out to be a con-artist sleazeball with enough disreputable baggage that they had to boot him off the team in disgrace.

I don't think the practice is all that unusual in high-profile cases in the U.S. I believe are even (legitimate) outfits geared up specifically for consultation in the specialty. What I think is unusual is for it to be done under the aegis and direction of the defendant's family, rather than the actual legal defense team itself. This case has done a lot to help me understand why.

 

[stilicho]

No, actually, I ignored your response because I thought it was obviously stupid. You ducked the question of whether the mat actually had a rubber bottom, you've got no idea whether that particular mat could be scooted around on that particular floor, and even if for some bizarre reason Amanda was lying or misremembering on that point it makes no damned difference to the fact that there is no evidence tying her to the actual murder.

I didn't duck anything. You handwaved away the mat then called "moon landing hoax" on anyone who thought it was relevant to the murder case. This is far below the standards here at the JREF and you should know better.

The bathmat is not scootable. Amanda herself explains it in her own words both in her email and in her testimony. I don't have the cites for you regarding the exact type of mat. I know you can find out more about it at the PMF.

Bully for all of you. It's not relevant to fact that there is no evidence tying her to the actual murder.

There is a mountain of evidence against Amanda, Raffaele and Rudy. They all had trials. The first two were represented by elite lawyers and lost their case by a unanimous vote. There is plenty of evidence tying her to the murder.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here, and I think it's probably due to the less-rigorous standards over at PGF where you Amanda-is-guilty people hang out.

I am an old-timer JREF'r, Kevin. We've debated a number of things here long before this case became important to either of us. The standards at the PMF include (but not limited to) Italian language experts, forensics experts and legal experts. Almost everything that has been translated and made available in English is through the standards set by the hardcore team at the PMF.

From what I saw of that place, it's not nearly as rigorous as the JREF forums when it comes to fact-checking. As Fulcanelli has found out this is a fairly hostile environment for false factual claims and they tend to get shot down fairly quickly. Over there I can easily see nonsense like "Rudy had no criminal history" or "there wasn't that much evidence of Rudy's guilt" getting echoed around and taking root.

Rudy had a criminal history? Prove it. Show us his rap sheet. We have rigorous standards of evidence here at the JREF.

So when you come here from there you discover something many people over the years have discovered here at the JREF forums, which is that your beliefs aren't as well-founded as you thought they were.

I have found nobody on our JREF forums who even speaks Italian. Nobody here has read any of the data in the original tongue. You, for example, use Wikipaedia as your main source of information. Then you look for the links at the base of the Wiki page and post news stories (many of which are based on hurriedly-published information) and claim victory.

You haven't "corrected" anyone on the bathmat issue, you've just contradicted us without providing evidence. You're also ignoring the major points which I have made, probably because they are too hard to argue with, in favour of trivia about bathmats.

The bathmat issue is covered by the trial testimony and should be included in the Massei Report. I know you'll be among the first to go over to the PMF to read it once they've done the translation and proofreading work for you.

The major points:

1. There is no convincing explanation for how Rudy could have left so much evidence at the murder scene, that incontrovertibly ties him to the murder, yet Amanda and Raffaele left nothing or almost nothing.

2. There is no convincing explanation for why Amanda or Raffaele would commit this rape and murder in the first place, nor any explanation of how they teamed up with a near-total stranger (Rudy) to commit this rape and murder. So we've got a ludicrous prosecution narrative combined with a total lack of relevant evidence to support it.

3. The competing narrative where Rudy just committed a robbery which fitted his known M.O., then committed an impulsive rape and murder, then fled covers all the murder room evidence just fine, plus the wound on his hand which makes no sense at all if Amanda and Raffaele were doing all the stabbing.

4. The prosecutor is known to be prone to irrational conspiracy theories and the police definitely forced a false confession out of Amanda. There can be no question about that as far as I can see. (Charging her with defaming the police for saying this is the cherry on the cake of police misconduct). That doesn't prove they also falsified the forensic evidence, but clearly ethical conduct and competent investigative methodology were not the strong points of the investigating team. I find it perfectly plausible that someone on the team falsified the DNA evidence on the clasp and the "second murder weapon", given that they had already coerced a false confession, the DNA evidence could not be double-checked, and the DNA evidence miraculously saved a seemingly doomed pet theory. Not certain, of course, but plausible. More plausible than the competing claim that Amanda and Raffaele comm-itted the crime leaving no trace except the bra clasp and knife DNA, at the very least.

1. This is what Amanda's lawyers will argue on appeal. But they cannot do it too strenuously because Rudy will turn on them if they break their tacit agreement.

2. You spend too much time on motive. That's a Columbo approach to the crime of murder. You also paint the relationships among the three in a curious way considering none of them knew each other for more than a week before they teamed up to murder Meredith.

3. This is completely untrue. There is a mass of evidence that is not explained by the lone wolf theory. You can start wherever you like but it includes the staged burglary, the medical examiner's report, and the DNA evidence.

4. "There can be no question..." I agree that the only alternate explanation (the only rational one) would be the falsification of evidence. I told you that several pages ago. If that is proved then I will congratulate you on a job well done. Until then we will go with Stefanoni's expert testimony and her world-class credentials which includes forensics work in the aftermath of the 2004 Asian tsunami. I am quite sure she'd risk it all just to put that pesky kid from Seattle behind bars for 26 years.

But the floor is yours. Prove that falsification of evidence and I'll take it all back.

 

[Fulcanelli]

From page 32 of Massei's report:

Ahh, 'like' those found in buses to break glass. I don't see how we can conclude Rudy had it to break windows, you don't need a hammer for that...
you can use anything hard, even your fist wrapped in your coat. You don't need a specialist tool to break windows. They are only needed on buses because the windows are rather thicker then standard windows and of course, if the bus crashes and rolls over, you're not going to be able to lay your hands on a rock or something lying around inside a bus like you would uf you were outside.

 

[Fulcanelli]

So basically, either Massei relied on a discredited witness and didn't bother doing any research into the original context of Barrow's remarks, which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence as to the thoroughness and accuracy of the rest of his reasoning; or Barrow is reliable and Guede was known to hassle women. I can see why neither option appeals.

He couldn't do research. Barrow couldn't be found to give testimony. But the point is, it doesn't really matter since it made no effect on verdict. The only effect it has is to benefit those on message boards who want to quote Massei to use for their 'Demonise Rudy Guede' propaganda.

 

[Fulcanelli]

Since I have no opinion, whatsoever, on this debate, perhaps you could help as well by summarizing your own position.

My position? I have followed the case from the very beginning. My interest was always to find out the truth of what happened to poor Meredith that night and hopefully see her family get justice and closure. I feel that the ILE have carried out a professional investigation and prosecution with a genuine intention of establishing the truth. Having seen all the events as they've unfolded and viewed all the evidence, I am of the opinion that all the accused received a fair trial and were correctly convicted. Mu position, is that it's a tragedy for all concerned with many lives destroyed. There are no winners.

 

[stilicho]

And, for this reason, I argue that there may be sufficient reason to reverse their guilty verdicts upon appeal - if some of the evidence that originally helped to convict them is overturned.

It won't be so you can safely store away your "concern".

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I'd add something more here: certain other posters seem still to be wedded to the view that police requests for voluntary DNA (or other bodily) samples are ONLY (or - being generous to them - mainly) used in a DIRECT search for suspects. In other words, if the police recovered (for example) semen DNA from the body of a murder victim, they could use the voluntarily-obtained samples to cross-check to see whether any of their volunteers was the culprit.

And this is indeed SOMETIMES the reason for a voluntary request for DNA etc. For example, this was exactly the reasoning behind the mass voluntary DNA request in the World's very first DNA case - The Colin Pitchfork conviction in 1988.

BUT..........often (and in fact probably more often than not), voluntary provision of DNA, prints and/or hair is for a very different purpose. It's NOT in order to either "eliminate from the inquiry" or "put in the frame" the sample volunteers. Instead, it's to enable the police to quickly check whether evidence that they collect at the crime scene is worthy of further investigation.

That's it exactly. Population sweeps, like the one done in the Pitchfork case, give rise to legitimate privacy concerns. But separating innocent DNA from perp DNA is a different kind of procedure. Usually the police only need to get samples from a few people, and usually those people are more than happy to comply with the request.

I don't want to make too much of this. It was a procedural oversight, but its practical importance is negligible. The mishandling of evidence at the crime scene is of far more importance. Poor procedures very likely changed the results of forensic testing, and those procedures are on record.

 

[stilicho]

Dollars? By whom was this translated?

Probably by the same means that made Dan O think Meredith was sleeping on the floor in her room.

 

[LondonJohn]

I'm familiar with them. The overwhelming majority of knife owners do not murder people. This too is a dumb attempt to demonise the accused in lieu of proper evidence.


No prior history of violent crime or sexual assault, true, just (in Rudy's case) a history of harassing women and armed housebreaking with a M.O. that fits the crime scene.

I would agree with pretty much everything you said elsewhere in this post (which I haven't quoted from), but I wanted to point out a couple of things regarding these two specific quoted paragraphs:

Firstly, it's actually wrong to argue as you did in the first paragraph above. The key relevant statistic is NOT that only a very small number of knife owners murder people. We must instead go back to Bayesian conditional probability theory to look at things in the right way.

The correct question here, therefore, is this: Given that someone is murdered with a knife, what is the probability that his/her murderer has a prior known fascination with knives?

Now, I don't claim to know the statistics that would enable us to answer this question. However, I do SUSPECT that only a very small proportion of knife murders are carried out by someone with a prior knife fetish (and/or knife "collection"). This is because many break-and-enter and/or sexual-assault criminals (or potential criminals) carry knives with them - either for their own protection or to threaten/attack others during the commission of the crime. And it doesn't take a criminal to be a knife fetishist in order to follow this logic.

So, if I am correct in my attempt to apply numbers to the logic, then just because a) Meredith was killed with a knife and b) Raffaele was known to have a fascination with (and a collection of) blades, Bayes' theorem suggests that this doesn't make Rafaelle more likely than not to have been the one who attacker her with the knife. Far from it, in fact.

Parenthetically, in passing, Rudy obviously DID have a prior history of arming himself with a knife - and to my knowledge he's never been linked with a fascination with blades. This would tend to support my "guess at the numbers" above. But that's actually irrelevant in discussing the narrower issue of Sollecito and the relevance (or otherwise) of his knife fascination.

Secondly (and mercifully more briefly!), the second paragraph of yours that I've quoted DOES lend itself to similar conditional probability analysis. Here, the relevant question is: Given that a woman was sexually assaulted and killed, what is the probability that her rapist/killer had a prior history of sexual deviancy (however minor)? And again, while I don't have any precise figures to hand, I am 100% certain (in this instance) that WELL OVER 50% of men who violently rape women who are not their partner (let alone kill them as well) have such prior history (e.g. peeping tom behaviour, minor sexual harassment).

"Aha!" I hear certain people cry, "But Raffaele had a porn fetish, with tendencies to extreme and/or violent porn at that!" But I believe that the statistics would support the fact that "prior history" in this instance would have to involve acts against (or at least involving) women in person (as opposed to women in the pages of a magazine or on a computer monitor). And a certain Rudy Guede DID have demonstrable "form" in areas such as harassment......

 

[stilicho]

The English translation of the Massei Report seems to be being held up as a) some near-superhuman labour of love from certain members of PMF; b) some sort of either intellectual or moral oneupmanship on behalf of certain members of PMF; c) a report which, when it's "published" in translation will settle the case and confirm AK's/RS's guilt ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Do you know how many hours a professional translator would have to put into a 400 page document? I do and essentially you can live well for at least half a year on the proceeds. If you don't know what professional translators cost in terms of time and money you can locate one easily on the internet.

I'd say it's also extremely probable that a professional English language translation was prepared within days for the benefit of AK and her family. The fact that "Team AK" haven't released an English copy of the report into the public domain cannot be interpreted as a sign that either a) they haven't had a translation done, or b) they don't like what they read in the report, and are therefore unwilling to publicise it. It seems instead to me far more likely that the defence have got their act together since the first trial verdict (in matters of the legal system and the appeal, at least).

It's not only not "extremely probable that a professional English language translation was prepared within days" but it borders on the impossible.

They really don't like what they know from the report. It's not going to make their appeal easy.

 

[capealadin]

Hi, Belz. I agree with Falconelli,s brief summation. To add insult to injury, long after Amanda has served her sentence, there will remain the fact that this is a person, with no empathy for the victim, has been callous to an extra-ordinary degree,i.e. *********** bled to death*, allowed an innocent man to be thrown in prison, has never offered condolences to the victim,s family. (how hard was that to do?) especially as she made it such a point to call Meredith a friend?) Just listening to her testimony, and written words, would for most people raise the biggest flag ever. Especially for police who are trained in getting the TRUTH.

Edited by LashL: 

Please see Rule 10 regarding masking profanity.

 

[Amazer]

I would agree with pretty much everything you said elsewhere in this post (which I haven't quoted from), but I wanted to point out a couple of things regarding these two specific quoted paragraphs:

Firstly, it's actually wrong to argue as you did in the first paragraph above. The key relevant statistic is NOT that only a very small number of knife owners murder people. We must instead go back to Bayesian conditional probability theory to look at things in the right way.

The correct question here, therefore, is this: Given that someone is murdered with a knife, what is the probability that his/her murderer has a prior known fascination with knives?

Now, I don't claim to know the statistics that would enable us to answer this question. However, I do SUSPECT that only a very small proportion of knife murders are carried out by someone with a prior knife fetish (and/or knife "collection"). This is because many break-and-enter and/or sexual-assault criminals (or potential criminals) carry knives with them - either for their own protection or to threaten/attack others during the commission of the crime. And it doesn't take a criminal to be a knife fetishist in order to follow this logic.

So, if I am correct in my attempt to apply numbers to the logic, then just because a) Meredith was killed with a knife and b) Raffaele was known to have a fascination with (and a collection of) blades, Bayes' theorem suggests that this doesn't make Rafaelle more likely than not to have been the one who attacker her with the knife. Far from it, in fact.

Parenthetically, in passing, Rudy obviously DID have a prior history of arming himself with a knife - and to my knowledge he's never been linked with a fascination with blades. This would tend to support my "guess at the numbers" above. But that's actually irrelevant in discussing the narrower issue of Sollecito and the relevance (or otherwise) of his knife fascination.

My oh my.... that's a lot of assumptions there. And will wonders never cease? They all add up to trying to whitewash Raffaele. Sorry, not buying it.

Secondly (and mercifully more briefly!), the second paragraph of yours that I've quoted DOES lend itself to similar conditional probability analysis. Here, the relevant question is: Given that a woman was sexually assaulted and killed, what is the probability that her rapist/killer had a prior history of sexual deviancy (however minor)? And again, while I don't have any precise figures to hand, I am 100% certain (in this instance) that WELL OVER 50% of men who violently rape women who are not their partner (let alone kill them as well) have such prior history (e.g. peeping tom behaviour, minor sexual harassment).

"Aha!" I hear certain people cry, "But Raffaele had a porn fetish, with tendencies to extreme and/or violent porn at that!" But I believe that the statistics would support the fact that "prior history" in this instance would have to involve acts against (or at least involving) women in person (as opposed to women in the pages of a magazine or on a computer monitor). And a certain Rudy Guede DID have demonstrable "form" in areas such as harassment......

Rudy Guede did? Care to show your evidence for this? I hope that you aren't thinking of that discredited witness that was mentioned a little earlier but instead will provide us one (or more) of his female victims... probably too much to hope for though.

 

[stilicho]

Firstly, it's actually wrong to argue as you did in the first paragraph above. The key relevant statistic is NOT that only a very small number of knife owners murder people. We must instead go back to Bayesian conditional probability theory to look at things in the right way.

The correct question here, therefore, is this: Given that someone is murdered with a knife, what is the probability that his/her murderer has a prior known fascination with knives?

Fortunately for you, this is not a concern in the conviction of all three. Logic and evidence drove the verdict and the sentencing rather than the probability of Raffaele both owning a weapon and using one to commit murder. (Which, incidentally, turns out to be 100% in this case).

 

[LondonJohn]

You do have a vivid imagination. If at some later point you want to act like a reasonable adult and engage with what I've actually written, instead of posting your fevered fantasies about what I'd do in hypothetical situations of your own devising, come right back. Until then go sit under a bridge with the other trolls.



If your opinion in and of itself was important to me, I'd be concerned. Since it isn't, come on back if you want to engage with the actual discussion instead of just proclaiming that you don't believe it.



Appeal to authority, failure to engage with the actual arguments.



Yet another straw man. Nobody ever said that.

My point, which I stand by, is that your behaviour is symptomatic of irrational partisanship. You find reasons to attack everything stated by Amanda-is-innocent people, even if your attacks make no sense and are irrelevant to Amanda's innocence or guilt. You take everything to be obvious evidence of Amanda's guilt, even if the matter is manifestly irrelevant as we can see with the bathmat business.

It's very much like the moon landing conspiracy theorists who think that everything about the moon videos is evidence that it's all faked.



Appeal to authority, failure to engage with the actual arguments. If we believed that courts were infallible we wouldn't be having this discussion. I don't believe the Italian court system to be infallible. Get over it.



Don't let mere facts get in the way of labelling people and dismissing their arguments based on an appeal to association.



I (incorrectly) assumed that you were familiar with Rudy's documented background, and that of Amanda and Raffaele. Mea culpa. You acted like you knew something about the case, so I guess I was fooled.



I already posted the citations and quotations for Bob, who tried this line on us. Sorry, but the evidence is there in black and white.

I do wonder what drives you people to defend Rudy though. Everyone here, as far as I know, agrees that he raped and murdered Meredith Kercher, we just differ on whether or not he had accomplices when he did so. We all should therefore agree that he's an evil piece of garbage who should rot in jail for the rest of his life. Yet you vigorously defend him to the point of accusing mainstream news sources of lying (or in Bob's words spewing twisted hearsay)... just because rehabilitating Rudy's reputation makes Amanda look a little bit worse in your eyes. I find that really weird and frankly disturbing.



One more time: The evidence outside the bedroom doesn't prove that Amanda and Raffaele killed Meredith. The evidence inside the bedroom should prove that they killed Meredith, if they did so, but there's not a skerrick of good evidence to be had.



More fantasising. Please don't waste electrons on this rubbish, it contributes to global warming and makes intelligent discussion harder to track.



More straw. Will you please stop misrepresenting the posts of everyone you talk to?

Motive is not top of the list by any means, but when the prosecution's story about motive is manifestly loopy and no more sane alternative can be found it's cause for serious concern about their narrative.



Feel free, but you had better provide proper citations for every factual claim at every step of the way. Based on your track record I'm through trusting your word about any factual matter pertaining to this case, because you've been caught misrepresenting the provable facts far too often now.

("Raffaele's" footprint, the bra clasp DNA, Rudy's background... need I go on? I'm sure I could find more).



That's the prosecution's story, however other credible sources maintain that one knife of the type shown by the bloodstain on the sheet could perfectly well have inflicted all three wounds, thus there is no need for a second knife to explain the wounds. Similarly the claim that her bruises show multiple attackers is as far as I can tell perfectly consistent with one attacker attempting to restrain her from behind.



Oh please... I've already responded to this knife business, you clearly aren't even reading the thread.



I'm generally ignoring the stupider contributions to this thread, but since you're harping on it, here's my response:

Stick to the facts and the arguments. I know you'd love to derail the thread into a discussion of whether I personally am irrational or not, but I decline to play your game. The question of what hypothetical evidence I would accept as proof of Knox's (and Raffaele's) guilt is irrelevant and I am not interested in discussing it. I'm interested in discussing the evidence that does exist. If you don't like it, too bad.



I am not a lawyer but if I had to take a guess I'd say they would tell their client: "Regardless of what the truth is, changing your story again at this point won't help you. Shut the hell up and let us win this one with the forensic evidence where we've got the facts on our side".

I seriously suggest that you do as I am doing, and simply refuse to engage with certain posters. Their behaviour has consistently gone way beyond what's acceptable (with objective affirmation of that point of view, I might add). I know that ignoring them means that you often (at least at first) have to bite your tongue and watch while misinformation and misrepresentation gets spread around with gay abandon. And I also realise that a failure to address these often-egregious tactics (via an enforced silence) might sometimes be incorrectly interpreted as a sign of silent "agreement", "defeat" or even "acquiescence". But I personally am prepared to take that risk, and it makes posting on here a lot more pleasant - and intellectually satisfying.

 

[LondonJohn]

This third point is what, I suppose, makes the first two somehow meaningful. I couldn't agree with it less.

The "public record" of which you speak is usually the record as presented by the over-all media coverage. Perhaps even more so for English speakers following this case who aren't also fluent in Italian. My experience has been that when I search more deeply into primary sources concerning instances which ... as presented in the media ... seem to exemplify egregious error on the part of the judicial system they are more often than not misrepresented, misinterpreted, misunderstood, or just blatantly lied about. I think that, rather than your assertion that only more of the same is to be expected it is possible, if not even likely that many of the areas of dispute encountered here can be cleared up. As a general rule it is the accumulation of those journalistic misses that are the impetus for most of the disagreement in the first place.

It may be that this will not be the case this time, but I see no reason to dismiss the possibility out of hand as you are doing, because my own experience has established that the opposite result is quite common.

Ummmmmmm.........

Notwithstanding the fact that I found this quite difficult to read, I believe that (for one reason or another...) you might have misunderstood what I had written. The "public record" of which I spoke was directly related to the actual trial court proceedings. This doesn't (and never did) require any form of "filtering" by any media outlet. The trial transcripts were and are directly available.

However, as an aside, the media COULD - in the specific instance of court reporting - be relied upon to accurately reflect what had happened in the courtroom. To do otherwise could (and would) have been seen as a contempt of court - and one which would be extraordinarily simple to prove. So newspapers and TV pretty much ALWAYS cover court proceedings with strict levels of accuracy.

I believe that in your argument to me (which of course in no way involves a man constructed from the dried stalks of cereal plants), you've contended that I'm referring to ANALYSIS of the case, rather than factual reporting of the trial itself. If that was your interpretation of my position, then you were wrong.

 

[LondonJohn]

Perhaps I am not getting your point correctly. You seem to be suggesting that "beyond reasonable doubt" is the same thing as "absolute certainty".

A notional "5 per cent" doubt of guilt would equate to reasonable doubt, in my opinion. I think that any trial judge - if told by a juror (or judicial panel etc etc) that (s)he harboured a quantified 5% doubt in the guilt of the accused - would instruct that juror to acquit. Do you think that is an incorrect opinion?

 

[LondonJohn]

My oh my.... that's a lot of assumptions there. And will wonders never cease? They all add up to trying to whitewash Raffaele. Sorry, not buying it.


Rudy Guede did? Care to show your evidence for this? I hope that you aren't thinking of that discredited witness that was mentioned a little earlier but instead will provide us one (or more) of his female victims... probably too much to hope for though.

Nahh - I don't care what you think about what I wrote. I care what people who want to engage in an open debate (and who want to argue from a position of open-mindedness and fair representation) think. So excuse me while I don't "provide" you with one of Guede's "female victims".

 

[stilicho]

Nahh - I don't care what you think about what I wrote. I care what people who want to engage in an open debate (and who want to argue from a position of open-mindedness and fair representation) think. So excuse me while I don't "provide" you with one of Guede's "female victims".

So no victims and no rap sheet. We thought RG was supposed to have a modus operandi. Or did he not have that either?

 

[capealadin]

Forget the open-mindedness and fair representation excuse, LJ. You can,t *provide* because you can,t. Admit it, in all fairness.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

But does the locked door issue take you from 50/50 to 100/0 in favour of guilt? Because even if it takes you up to 95/5, you'd have to vote to acquit if you were on the judicial panel for this trial....

Good question. The locked door only takes me to 70% / 75%, but if I'm on that jury and I'm 75% sure she did it. I vote Guilty. I wonder how many others would do the same.

The thing is, I may not agree with everything the prosecutor says or the defence is saying, but as a member of the jury, I have to vote as I myself have viewed the evidence.

I'm the type of person though, that is almost never 100% sure of anything.