If Amanda was coerced into making the statement, do you still believe it was her fault that Patrick was arrested? In other words, do you hold the maker of a coerced confession responsible for their statement, or the police?
I see no reason to believe Knox was coerced in any way. I would like those who take that view to explain what aspect they believe to be coercive in this interview.
I will lay out what we seem to know and maybe some can tell me where we differ:
1. Knox went to the police station of her own free will because she wished to support RS; or because she was afraid to be alone. Or both. This is on the basis of her own statements.
2. While she was waiting she was asked some questions in the waiting area and she did some homework. There is no reason to believe that the atmosphere was oppressive in any way. She then did some cartwheels and she got a row for that. That does not seem surprising to me in the circumstances at all.All of that is based on her own words and on the testimony from some of the police officers.
3. Sometime around midnight they took her into an interview room and they asked her some of the same questions they had asked her before. Given that she was there, and that some officers were presumably free to do that, I can see nothing at all odd about that: they wanted to interview her again in any case, I imagine (and indeed the information that Giobbi wanted to interview the two together confirms that: they did not follow his instruction, clearly, and a separate interview still did not meet his wishes: but if they had further questions or points of clarification I see nothing wrong with what they did). In fact it is possible that the delay was due to waiting for the interpreter, though I do not know if that is the case.
4. During that interview the police who were conducting it were informed that RS no longer supported her alibi. That is a significant thing and it seems to me that this would change the tone of the questioning anywhere in the world. But it does not mean that they assumed she had committed murder. Just that they would want an account of where she was and what she was doing.
5. Knox denied she had gone out. Now of course RS could have been lying. They would wish to test that. It is not surprising if they did not accept her denial at face value, but were rather inclined to push the issue
6. They found the text. They misunderstood it because in Italian it means that she was making a definite arrangement to meet someone on the night of the murder. Yet when they asked her who the text was sent to she said she could not remember. Would you, as a police officer, readily believe that? I do not think so. I think you would believe she was being obstructive in those circumstances. I think at the very least you would push it.
7. The police did not suggest Patrick's name to her, for they did not know who the text was addressed to. This is also in Knox's testimony. I am perfectly comfortable with the idea that they insisted she tell them who she sent it to, and that they told her she was stupid or a liar when she said she did not remember. I cannot see that as brutal: it seems perfectly normal to me. I think it is perfectly possible that at that point they believed she knew more than she was saying: and even that she may have been protecting someone and may have been afraid of that person. This is in line with what Knox says they said. It would have been scary, and it would have been uncomfortable: I do not think that surprising during an interview where the police have reason to believe you are not cooperating. I think it is perfectly possible they were frustrated, and that the basis if that frustration was a perception that she was putting herself and others at risk through fear. Again we were not there so we cannot know: but nothing in Knox's testimony is at odds with that
8. I am prepared to accept that she was tapped on the head twice, as she said. That should not have happened but it is not police brutality. As she said: she was not hurt; though she was scared. If she was innocent she would have been scared because RS was telling lies: and because the police were not accepting whatever she said, as they did in previous interviews (again from her own testimony). Does that really strike other people as unusual? Or apt to produce a false confession? As coercive? Is it really true that the police should always accept every statement at face value? That they should not challenge very robustly on occasion?
I am not of that persuasion. I will say this though: I have challenged what I thought to be lies very robustly at times in the course of my work. I am not someone who shouts at folk: but they sometimes say I was shouting. The direct accusation of a lie is an aggressive act which people do not actually experience very often: it is quite hard to do it actually. And because it is aggressive people experience it as such: and sometimes that is remembered and expressed as shouting etc.
Of course they may well have been shouting at her: I remember a piece by an Italian reporter living in London which I heard on the radio some time ago. He recounted a story. He said that he had parked his car and someone else had blocked him in (or perhaps bumped his car by parking too close- I cant remember the details and it does not matter). He said that he wrote a stiff note and left it under the other car's windscreen wiper. And when he got home he thought about that and decided he had to go home because he was losing his identity: a stiff note is just not the italian way, he felt. It is a funny story but it serves to illustrate that there may be some cultural differences in what is acceptable. In the same vein there is an advert on tv for a site which helps you negotiate insurance: it plays on the same stereotypes of UK incapacity to be robust in haggling and makes much the same point.
Such a difference, if it exists, does not show that she did not feel the approach was coercive: a difference like that would be hard on her even if it was perfectly acceptable within the Italian culture. But even recognising that, this is not unheard of in America: I have seen such interviews portrayed in those SVU type programmes, for example. We know that Knox watched those types of things. So it would not have been a complete shock. And this did not go on for very long at all in the scheme of things.
9. What happened then showed the police were right: she did know who she sent the text to and she told them. But she also accused the recipient of murder. I think that may have been quite a surprise. But whether or no, what do people expect the police to do next? What I expect is for them to ask her detailed questions about what happened, and what she saw. And once they had her account down on paper, and signed, to formally make her a suspect and end the questioning: and go and arrest Lumumba. But if that is not what you expect what should they have done?
In short I do not see anything at all odd or coercive about this: like others I cannot see there was anything like sufficient pressure to lead her to accuse an innocent man. As to the idea that she accepted the possibility of repressed memory in the space of this interview: I think that is frankly ridiculous
