Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[LondonJohn]

I am sorry, but I do not understand your dilemma.

A 20-year old student of Washington University, educated in a highly exclusive Jesuit preparatory school, is not able to answer the simple question:

Whom did you send this message?
What about saying: ah,wait a minute, yes, I sent it to Patrick, he is the owner of the pub, where I work sometimes a week. He sent me a SMS that I didn't need to go to work on the evening of the 1st November - and this was my answer.

The police would have checked this and found it true.
End of story.

I don't think it was anything like this simple. I believe that AK did fairly quickly confirm that the text message was to Lumumba, and that it was indeed a confirmatory text following his (unsaved) text to her telling her not to come into work. However, the fact is, the police had almost certainly already decided that her pidgin-Italian phrase in the text which translated as "see you later" actually indicated a planned meeting between AK and Lumumba on the murder night. It was this which AK vehemently denied, and which the police took to be straight lies. And, in the police's minds, AK's denial of a meeting with Lumumba (which they were convinced the text message indicated) implied that the meeting did not have an innocent outcome. After all (in the police's minds), why else would AK lie to them and deny the meeting?

Incidentally, I think I'm right in saying that when the police had Lumumba in custody, they searched his cellphone and couldn't find any trace of the texts that he'd sent to AK. If I remember correctly, they immediately thought this to be a highly suspicious and deliberate act by Lumumba. But then someone realised that Lumumba's cellphone was actually set to not save any sent texts (as are many people's phones)..................

 

[LondonJohn]

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

I think you've massively underestimated the importance of the point that the police had seemingly convinced themselves that the AK's text indicated a meeting with the recipient on the evening it was sent: November 1st. This is because they had misinterpreted AK's poor use of Italian, and believed "see you later" (in its Italian translation) to mean that AK had made an appointment to meet up.

For me, this changes everything. For me, the crucial point is that AK would have (correctly) denied that she'd arranged to meet anyone that evening, and that this wasn't what the text meant. The fact that she may not have immediately remembered who the text was sent to is reasonable (in my view), given that the text was merely a throwaway end-of-conversation remark with no identifying details. But by this time I believe that the police had convinced themselves that a) AK was lying about the meaning of the text, and b) she was deliberately withholding the name of the recipient because of the gravity of the "arrangement to meet up" that the police had convinced themselves existed. So I believe that they then made the next logical leap, which was that whoever the text was sent to was likely involved in the murder, and also that AK knew an awful lot more about the murder than she was letting on. Cue accusations/coercion/suggestion...........

Also, I think I remember reading that AK's post-midnight interview didn't start until RS's interview had finished - or at least at any rate it didn't start until after RS changed his alibi testimony. However, you've said that the police only found out about the RS alibi change at some time mid-way through their interrogation of AK. Is there any evidence to support your view?

 

[LondonJohn]

I think that an important point about AK and the text message might be being missed.

Firstly, it's now an established fact that the text sent from AK on the evening of the 1st a) was to Lumumba b) was in reply to a text that he'd sent her telling her not to bother coming into work, and c) contained poor Italian in her translation of the throwaway American English valediction "see you later". None of this is in any way incriminatory to either AK or Lumumba.

I can't therefore see any reason why AK wouldn't have told all of this information to the police during her questioning on the 6th - if she'd been able to remember it. After all, what possible help could it be to her to "deliberately" fail to remember information which she knew to be totally innocent and non-implicating to either herself or Lumumba?

So I believe that if the police did ask her "who did you send this text to?" and she did reply "I don't know", it can only have been because she genuinely didn't remember. And, as I've also said in another post above, I could understand why she might not remember who she'd sent that particular message to - it was a vague and non-specific sign-off message with no content to indicate the identity of the recipient.

However, it's my belief that the police would have interpreted any of AK's recall problems as deliberate lies, since this would fit neatly with their existing belief that the message was part of an arrangement by AK to meet the text's recipient. So I believe they thought that AK's "I don't know" actually meant "I do know, but I'm not going to tell you because then you'll also know who I met up with that night".

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Oh, and this Mafia guys story that in prision - couldn't possible of happened. If his brother and a friend killed Meredith and took her keys, How did Rudy leave the bloody footprints? - Merediths door would be locked, you need the keys to do that.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

four points on Amanda's interview

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.

9. ...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?

1. Dr. Giobbi gave the order to bring them both in to interview both of them that night. That is what the police were expecting to do. It seems as if Amanda did not know this, but that is a separate question.

2. The previous thread debated extensively what yoga stretches/acrobatics she did on her own versus what she did at the behest of an officer with whom she spoke. My interpretation is that the officer was looking for an "in," a way to start a conversation with her to gain her trust.

3. The fact that Dr. Giobbi was present leads me to believe that the police were following his instructions.

9. A version of the events, where the police merely transcribe Amanda’s version, is at odds with what she told her mother about the internview on 10 November. In response to police suggestions, Amanda would say, no, that did not happen. Yet the police wrote down their own suggestions, anyway.

I’ll leave other points to other commenters.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

I think you've massively underestimated the importance of the point that the police had seemingly convinced themselves that the AK's text indicated a meeting with the recipient on the evening it was sent: November 1st. This is because they had misinterpreted AK's poor use of Italian, and believed "see you later" (in its Italian translation) to mean that AK had made an appointment to meet up.

For me, this changes everything. For me, the crucial point is that AK would have (correctly) denied that she'd arranged to meet anyone that evening, and that this wasn't what the text meant. The fact that she may not have immediately remembered who the text was sent to is reasonable (in my view), given that the text was merely a throwaway end-of-conversation remark with no identifying details. But by this time I believe that the police had convinced themselves that a) AK was lying about the meaning of the text, and b) she was deliberately withholding the name of the recipient because of the gravity of the "arrangement to meet up" that the police had convinced themselves existed. So I believe that they then made the next logical leap, which was that whoever the text was sent to was likely involved in the murder, and also that AK knew an awful lot more about the murder than she was letting on. Cue accusations/coercion/suggestion...........

Also, I think I remember reading that AK's post-midnight interview didn't start until RS's interview had finished - or at least at any rate it didn't start until after RS changed his alibi testimony. However, you've said that the police only found out about the RS alibi change at some time mid-way through their interrogation of AK. Is there any evidence to support your view?

Read her testimony again, LJ. She, herself, never mentions that she told the Police who the text was from, nor that it was innocent. Rather, she obstructed their questioning with the "I don't know" and "I can't remember" lines until blurting out that Patrick was guilty.

That's what she said happened.

You can spin the meaning of the text and the mistranslation/misinterpretation however you would like, it does not change that she was not being as forthcoming as many suggest.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

I think that an important point about AK and the text message might be being missed.

Firstly, it's now an established fact that the text sent from AK on the evening of the 1st a) was to Lumumba b) was in reply to a text that he'd sent her telling her not to bother coming into work, and c) contained poor Italian in her translation of the throwaway American English valediction "see you later". None of this is in any way incriminatory to either AK or Lumumba.

I can't therefore see any reason why AK wouldn't have told all of this information to the police during her questioning on the 6th - if she'd been able to remember it. After all, what possible help could it be to her to "deliberately" fail to remember information which she knew to be totally innocent and non-implicating to either herself or Lumumba?

So I believe that if the police did ask her "who did you send this text to?" and she did reply "I don't know", it can only have been because she genuinely didn't remember. And, as I've also said in another post above, I could understand why she might not remember who she'd sent that particular message to - it was a vague and non-specific sign-off message with no content to indicate the identity of the recipient.

However, it's my belief that the police would have interpreted any of AK's recall problems as deliberate lies, since this would fit neatly with their existing belief that the message was part of an arrangement by AK to meet the text's recipient. So I believe they thought that AK's "I don't know" actually meant "I do know, but I'm not going to tell you because then you'll also know who I met up with that night".

So she went from innocently not remembering, to not just remembering, but actually fingering the recipient?

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Errrrrr....once again, I'm being "replied" to on a completely different subject to the one that I was actually talking about. The term "straw man" is becoming a huge cliche on this thread, but is certainly well-deserved here. Very strange.

In my post that you quote in your reply, I was addressing the false notion that the police "barely had time to set up the chairs" by the time AK "blurted" out her false confession/accusation. I was arguing that, instead, the known facts indicated that the police in fact had plenty of time to interrogate AK in some depth. I was not arguing whatsoever in this post as to what the nature of that interrogation might have been. I was merely seeking to show that there was more than enough time for certain things to have taken place. And I was therefore seeking a removal of the "barely time to set up the chairs" mantra - which is clearly intended to imply that there was no time for the police to put pressure on AK, even if they'd wanted to.

Well, let's see - you mentioned that you felt Amanda had been under pressure for an hour or so. I was responding to the pressure issue - you expect people to believe she was under immense pressure for an hour, when all it would take was her telling the truth to end that pressure? She was under pressure for an hour because she couldn't remember the name of the recipient? Reread my message with that angle in mind.

 

[Bob001]

What about the big picture?

A digression here. In these long threads about the minute details of this case, there has been little broad discussion of the terrible nature of the crime itself. The prosecution contends, and persuaded a jury, that two young college students who had known each other less than two weeks and a small-time thug who may previously have met one of the students one time brutally murdered a third student during some kind of a demented sex game gone wrong. Is that plausible? I've been out of college a long time, but I don't remember hearing about a lot of sex murders in the dorms. (Sex yes, murder no.) And how often does one young woman help a man rape another young woman? Especially after she and her boyfriend have spent the evening smoking dope? Since when does marijuana inspire bloodlust? The thug has already been convicted on the basis of overwhelming physical evidence he left behind as he fled the country. Is it more likely that a burglar/robber acting alone committed an ordinary crime of opportunity, or that three people conspired to commit a crime of a nature rarely seen or even imagined? The oft-repeated JREF mantra, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof," applies here, and no extraordinary proof has been forthcoming.

Author Doug Preston's take, including his own experience with prosecutor Mignini (an interview before the trial):
http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/archives/131443.asp

 

[Mrs.Columbo]

@halides1
2. The previous thread debated extensively what yoga stretches/acrobatics she did on her own versus what she did at the behest of an officer with whom she spoke. My interpretation is that the officer was looking for an "in," a way to start a conversation with her to gain her trust.

**
As an newcomer to this matter I try to imagine, how the things could have happened.
So Ms. Knox was in the waiting room, doing her homework, when at some time she felt to relax herself with some cartwheels and splits (was she still dressed with the white skirt?) - ahem, yoga-stretchings - when a policeofficer saw this he asked her to perform some more of this.
Ms. Knox - 20 year old University-student - did not refuse, but was willing to follow this request.
Can I assume that has happened like this or did I misunderstand something.?

*
I think, we must always consider, that all this happenend on a very serious murder-investigation, a young woman (Meredith) gruesome butchered, raped and stabbed died an agonizing death, suffocating on her own blood.
The whole police force on highest alert! Not the time for velvet gloves, with murderers out there!
Of course they ask tough questions - and the reason, why they repeatedly interrogated Amanda and Raffaele, was that their answers are different at any time. Not much, perhaps, but much enough to raise the interrest and the wish to clear this out. Thats what the police do everywhere in the world.
Nothing to fear for innocent people!
**
I am curious to know if anybody sees this like me.

 

[RWVBWL]

YA!
Excellant work, C. Dempsey!
Nope, it's not Clint Dempsey, from Team U.S.A. who just tied the score aginst England in the highly anticipated World Cup soccer battle that is currently in play,
but Candace Dempsey, the author of "Murder in Italy", an excellant read that I am currently enjoying while learning more details of what transpired in the brutal murder of Meredith Kercher...
RWVBWL

Go the U.S.A.!

 

[Fine]

Oh, and this Mafia guys story that in prision - couldn't possible of happened. If his brother and a friend killed Meredith and took her keys, How did Rudy leave the bloody footprints? - Merediths door would be locked, you need the keys to do that.

_________________

Excellent point Sherlock.

Maybe Rudy ---as a "known criminal" type---had his lock-picking tools in his pocket and so was able to enter Meredith's bedroom after the murder. And Rudy wouldn't wish to mention that detail in his version of events.

///

 

[RWVBWL]

Oh, and this Mafia guys story that in prision - couldn't possible of happened. If his brother and a friend killed Meredith and took her keys, How did Rudy leave the bloody footprints? - Merediths door would be locked, you need the keys to do that.

Hi Mr Holmes,
Excellant point there Sherlock!

If I recall correctly, before he ever changed his story and included Amnada Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in it, Rudy Guede said there were 2 men in the apartment when he came out of the bathroom. After they left, he says that he tried to save Miss Kercher by using towels to staunch the flow of blood, and then he left her.
IIRC once more, Rudy Guede said in a story that I have read of before, that he saw 1 or both of the guys later on that night when he was out in the clubs and 1 of them gave him money to split town. Maybe 1 of these guys came back later to see if Miss Kercher was still alive, and put the duvet over her then and then locked her door before leaving...

A question for you Mr. Holmes, since I feel that you Sherlock have an open mind:

Because she was tired, Miss Kercher went home early after hanging out with the English girls the evening she died. Do you think the murder happened around 11:30pm as the court seems to think or do you think that the murder happened much earlier after she arrived home at her apartment?

I tend to think it happened much earlier, since I believe that Miss Kercher, being tired after a very late night out the evening before, probably just wanted to put her pajama's or nightgown on this chilly Nov. evening and crawl under the covers of her bed and read herself to sleep with the history book she had borrowed from her friend, fellow student Robyn Butterworth.

So Miss Kercher, I believe, should have had her pajamas or her nightgown on when she was found the next day. But she didn't. So that make me think that the murder happened much earlier than the court says it did, when she still had her pants on.
Your thoughts?
Thanks,
RWVBWL

 

[Mary_H]

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 take it you haven't read Steve Moore's latest piece on injusticeinperugia. He describes clearly how the interrogation was coercive, including the fact that it was extraordinary that twelve officers or detectives were available in Perugia in the middle of the night. http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/FBI7.html

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.

What was wrong with the answers she had given them previously? They had interviewed her several times already and typed up her responses. By your own claim, they had not called her to the police station. I would think the officers would welcome a much-needed break from barking up the wrong tree by again interviewing someone who had nothing to do with the murder.

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.

That "significant thing" certainly must have changed the tone qualitatively. One would think that would have been the time to start recording.

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.

Amanda testified that the police asked her who she was protecting. That is much more bewildering than just asking who the text was sent to.

8.<snip> ....It is a funny story but it serves to illustrate that there may be some cultural differences in what is acceptable.

Amanda's supporters are well aware of this fact. It would be nice if her detractors kept it in mind.

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.

That it went on at all would have been overwhelming for Amanda. On the TV crime shows, the person who is being interviewed in an adversarial way is usually guilty. As Amanda testified, she was essentially blown away by how hard the cops were being on her.

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?

Dream on. Give the police credit for having made some headway in their investigations. They at least knew they were looking for a man, and apparently did not think it was Raffaele. If they were going to be surprised by anything Amanda had said, they would have been all over the place with questions, not focused on the one text.

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

Your comments express a great deal of denial, rationalization and bias, Fiona. You consistently excuse and minimize the cops' behavior as understandable and benign, while just as consistently reading evasion and non-cooperation into Amanda's. Based on what little I know about you, I get the feeling that if you supported the person who had been interrogated and coerced, your arguments would be completely reversed. Hence, your arguments come across, to me, at least, as weak, ineffective and personalized.

Here is one argument among many that is particularly apologetic on behalf of the police: "And this did not go on for very long at all in the scheme of things."

It would be great if you would apply the same reasoning to Amanda. None of the ways Amanda was presented in the media or by the prosecution represented the totality of her personality or history. One might even say they were insignificant "in the scheme of things" -- yet they got her convicted of murder. It's all in how you want to look at it.

 

[katy_did]

I suggest you read it again

Read her testimony again, LJ. She, herself, never mentions that she told the Police who the text was from, nor that it was innocent. Rather, she obstructed their questioning with the "I don't know" and "I can't remember" lines until blurting out that Patrick was guilty.

OK, now I'm confused. I keep hearing claims that AK repeatedly said she didn't remember who the text message was sent to, and various other claims that are supposed to have been said in her own words, but I can't find anything like that in her testimony. This seems to be the main part where she describes the interrogation:

AK: Yes. Um, the interrogation process was very long and difficult. Arriving in the police office, I didn't expect to be interrogated at all. When I gotthere, I was sitting on my own doing my homework, when a couple of police officers came to sit with me. They began to ask me the same questions that they had been asking me days...all these days ever since it happened. For instance, who could I imagine could be the person who killed Meredith, and I said I still didn't know, and so what they did is, they brought me into another interrogation room. Once I was in there, they asked me to repeat everything that I had said before, for instance what I did that night. They asked me to see my phone, which I gave to them, and they were looking through my phone, which is when they found the message. When they found the message, they asked me if I had sent a message back, which I didn't remember doing. That's when they started being very hard with me. They called me a stupid liar, and they said that I was trying to protect someone. [Sigh] So I was there, and they told me that I was trying to protect someone, but I wasn't trying to protect anyone, and so I didn't know how to respond to them. They said that I had left Raffaele's house, which wasn't true, which I denied, but they continued to call me a stupid liar. They were putting this telephone in front of my face going "Look, look, your message, you were going to meet someone". And when I denied that, they continued to call me a stupid liar. And then, from that point on, I was very very scared, because they were treating me so badly and I didn't understand why. [Sigh] While I was there, there was an interpreter who explained to me an experience of hers, where she had gone through a traumatic experience that she could not remember at all, and she suggested that I was traumatized, and that I couldn't remember the truth. This at first seemed ridiculous to me, because I remembered being at Raffaele's house. For sure. I remembered doing things at Raffaele's house. I checked my e-mails before, then we watched a movie. We had eaten dinner together, we had talked together, and during that time I hadn't left his apartment. But they were insisting upon putting everything into hourly segments, and since I never look at the clock, I wasn't able to tell them what time exactly I did everything. They insisted that I had left the apartment for a certain period of time to meet somebody, which for me I didn't remember, but the interpreter said I probably had forgotten.

Is it the bit in bold that people are talking about when they say she repeatedly said she didn't remember who she sent the SMS to (even though you would think the recipient would be listed on her phone as 'Patrick')? Or am I missing something from another bit of the testimony?

Because to me, it looks from this that she just couldn't remember sending the SMS in the first place. I'd be quite surprised if, once she knew the content of the message and that it was in her 'Sent' folder under the name 'Patrick', she'd go ahead and tell them she didn't know who the message was to. Can someone point me to the area in her testimony where she says she did this? And the police's accusations that she was lying seem to have come about when she (a) denied that she was trying to protect someone; (b) denied that she was going to meet someone; and (c) denied she left Raffaele's house. If she said she didn't remember doing any of that because she didn't do any of it, how is that obstructing the police?

 

[Mary_H]

Yes, but she didn't just say "well, I got the message from Patrick. I suppose he could have done it."

She said: "It's him. It's Patrick. He did it. He's a bad man." Those are her words.

(Incidentally, this is the part of her testimony I was referring to previously.)

She readily admitted that the Police were asking her repeatedly to remember to whom she had sent the text. When she responded with "I don't remember", I don't find it illogical for the Police to say "Remember." And then after repeated "I don't remember" and "I don't know" responses, to ask whom she was protecting that she was stonewalling. That is not intense interrogation techniques. That's, really, pretty standard. It's the same thing a parent would do when asking their kid who stole the cookies from the cookie jar and the kid repeatedly responds with those same answers.

I mean, to believe this was a coerced accusation (confession only by accident) means we must believe she became distraught/stressed because the Police asked her repeated questions because they didn't believe her when she claimed to not know who the message was sent to. That it was innocent of her to "not be able to remember" to whom she had sent the text, only to not just remember to whom she had sent the text, but to wrongly actually finger the recipient. That smacks of Amanda looking for an "out". Once she'd taken the step toward the out, she had to come up with a good reason to know it was Patrick. Maybe her story was suggested by the Police - but she sure didn't fight their story, tell them it was wrong. It isn't so hard to believe that she made the accusation trying to shift the blame, only to find herself needing a narrative for how she knew - so she let the Police write the narrative themselves.

However the narrative was reached, it is beside the point that Amanda, out of the blue, blamed Patrick. There is no other way to see this based on her own testimony.

In Amanda's testimony, we see her say over and over again that the police suggested the path she was to take. Her accusation of Patrick was not spontaneous at all. People who are reading your comments should know that your description of Amanda's testimony is at odds with her actual testimony.

Also, please cite specifically where in her testimony she said, "It's him. It's Patrick. He did it. He's a bad man."

 

[Fiona]

I take it you haven't read Steve Moore's latest piece on injusticeinperugia. He describes clearly how the interrogation was coercive, including the fact that it was extraordinary that twelve officers or detectives were available in Perugia in the middle of the night. http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/FBI7.html

I don't know what interrogation he is talking about but it wasn't this one

From that article:

Amanda Knox was interrogated for 8 hours. Overnight. Without food or water.

All completely untrue

<snip>

By a dozen different officers

No evidence for that

The Inquisition Amanda Knox experienced in Perugia was no more legally or morally defensible than the Salem Witch Trials.

Appeal to emotion based on preceding falsehoods

But that night, Amanda was interrogated all night. And by not just one or two detectives, but by a dozen (12) detectives.

Repetition of falsehood

It was not a spontaneous interrogation. It was pre-planned, and pre-planned to be an all-nighter.

At odds with Knox's own testimony and the testimony of the police officers.

f you are going to have 12 detectives available all night for an interrogation, you need to let them know well in advance.

Mere assertion: he has no idea at all what the staffing situation is there in a murder investigation and none about how many of the police officers were detectives: none about how many questioned her. At least he does not cite any

hey planned this interview well in advance, and INTENTIONALLY overnight

Nothing to back this up at all. It is at odds with Knox's testimony. It is at odds with the police testimony. Is there any reason we should accept anything this man says when he is clearly making up facts to suit himself? I think not.

<snip>

That "significant thing" certainly must have changed the tone qualitatively. One would think that would have been the time to start recording.

For the perugian police, as for the police in the UK, the time to start recording is when there is evidence that a person has been involved in a crime. We have been through this ad nauseam and there is no more to be said.

Amanda testified that the police asked her who she was protecting. That is much more bewildering than just asking who the text was sent to.

She certainly did. They asked her that after she said she did not know who the text was to. They did not believe her. They were right not to believe her. But the question itself does not suggest they suspected her of murder but rather or perhaps knowing more than she had revealed. Nothing odd about that IMO

<snip>

That it went on at all would have been overwhelming for Amanda. On the TV crime shows, the person who is being interviewed in an adversarial way is usually guilty. As Amanda testified, she was essentially blown away by how hard the cops were being on her.

I am sure she was scared. Guilty or innocent that is what one would expect. Overwhelming enough to lead her to accuse an innocent man? You obviously think so: I don't

Dream on. Give the police credit for having made some headway in their investigations. They at least knew they were looking for a man, and apparently did not think it was Raffaele. If they were going to be surprised by anything Amanda had said, they would have been all over the place with questions, not focused on the one text.

How did they know they were looking for a man? Why do you think they would not be surprised to hear Amanda place herself at the murder scene as a direct witness? I rather think it is you who may be dreaming MaryH

Your comments express a great deal of denial, rationalization and bias, Fiona. You consistently excuse and minimize the cops' behavior as understandable and benign, while just as consistently reading evasion and non-cooperation into Amanda's. Based on what little I know about you, I get the feeling that if you supported the person who had been interrogated and coerced, your arguments would be completely reversed. Hence, your arguments come across, to me, at least, as weak, ineffective and personalized.

Project much?

Here is one argument among many that is particularly apologetic on behalf of the police: "And this did not go on for very long at all in the scheme of things."

We are asked to believe that Knox, a perfectly able young woman who was neither mentally ill; mentally disabled; intoxicated; nor subject to previous trauma was coerced into making a completely false accusation against an innocent man in the course of less than two hours of questioning. We are asked to believe that she started to imagine that she was repressing memories in that time frame. I think it is not only unlikely: I think it is at odds with every case of false confession we have seen so far. I think it is at odds with common sense. I think it is at odds with reality. Frankly I think it smacks of desperation

It would be great if you would apply the same reasoning to Amanda. None of the ways Amanda was presented in the media or by the prosecution represented the totality of her personality or history. One might even say they were insignificant "in the scheme of things" -- yet they got her convicted of murder. It's all in how you want to look at it.

She was convicted of murder on the basis of the evidence. Her personality and her history had nothing to do with it.

 

[Nogbad]

Oh, and this Mafia guys story that in prision - couldn't possible of happened. If his brother and a friend killed Meredith and took her keys, How did Rudy leave the bloody footprints? - Merediths door would be locked, you need the keys to do that.

Producing the keys and knife, ideally with both Meredith and his brother's DNA on them, would be a start - otherwise it is just so much noise.

Part of me finds it hard to believe that an intelligent young student like Amanda would do something like this but Meredith is undeniably dead and alibis are poor and stories less than illuminating. The case against her is not cast iron but neither is the case for the defence.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

the yoga stretches

@halides1
2. The previous thread debated extensively what yoga stretches/acrobatics she did on her own versus what she did at the behest of an officer with whom she spoke. My interpretation is that the officer was looking for an "in," a way to start a conversation with her to gain her trust.

**
As an newcomer to this matter I try to imagine, how the things could have happened.
So Ms. Knox was in the waiting room, doing her homework, when at some time she felt to relax herself with some cartwheels and splits (was she still dressed with the white skirt?) - ahem, yoga-stretchings - when a policeofficer saw this he asked her to perform some more of this.
Ms. Knox - 20 year old University-student - did not refuse, but was willing to follow this request.
Can I assume that has happened like this or did I misunderstand something.?

*
... Thats what the police do everywhere in the world.
Nothing to fear for innocent people!
**
I am curious to know if anybody sees this like me.

Mrs. Columbo,

Amanda was doing some stretches or yoga poses when an officer commented on her flexibility. According to her, he asked her something along the lines of whether she could do a cartwheel. Others on the previous thread may have accepted that the officer commented on her flexibility but did not believe that he asked her to do any other gymnastics moves. All of this is to the best of my recollection, and please bear in mind that this whole question is disputed.

On the previous thread Kestrel provided a link to a good videotaped lecture on why the innocent should be careful when talking to the police as well.

 

[LondonJohn]

OK, now I'm confused. I keep hearing claims that AK repeatedly said she didn't remember who the text message was sent to, and various other claims that are supposed to have been said in her own words, but I can't find anything like that in her testimony. This seems to be the main part where she describes the interrogation:



Is it the bit in bold that people are talking about when they say she repeatedly said she didn't remember who she sent the SMS to (even though you would think the recipient would be listed on her phone as 'Patrick')? Or am I missing something from another bit of the testimony?

Because to me, it looks from this that she just couldn't remember sending the SMS in the first place. I'd be quite surprised if, once she knew the content of the message and that it was in her 'Sent' folder under the name 'Patrick', she'd go ahead and tell them she didn't know who the message was to. Can someone point me to the area in her testimony where she says she did this? And the police's accusations that she was lying seem to have come about when she (a) denied that she was trying to protect someone; (b) denied that she was going to meet someone; and (c) denied she left Raffaele's house. If she said she didn't remember doing any of that because she didn't do any of it, how is that obstructing the police?

I agree.

It seems to me that some people see what they want to see in many different areas of this case. But nothing surprises me any more. Perhaps it's others who should be reading AK's testimony again before posting.......