Points one to five, shown in highly abbreviated form above, are to my mind not strongly relevant to the question of Amanda and Raffaele's guilt in regards to the murder of Meredith. It's simply not the case that either they were perfectly honest and perfectly accurate in their recollection of events, or they murdered Meredith. Whether the alleged discrepancies are the result of lies on the part of the accused, errors, forced errors (like Amanda's coerced accusation of Lumumba), perceived errors or whatever, none of this puts them in the frame as murderers.
Nor did I say any such thing. So that need not detain us
I've never gotten a clear and convincing story as to exactly what about Meredith's injuries supposedly proved there were multiple attackers. Whenever I've tried to run such claims to ground it always seems to end in statements from the prosecution about Meredith's injuries being consistent with multiple attackers, which is not remotely the same thing.
As such my current view is that the available evidence does not support the theory that Meredith was attacked by more than one person.
Well you are entitled to your view, as ever. It is perhaps possible to argue that "consistent with multiple attackers" does not imply "inconsistent with one attacker" but you have to use english in quite a convoluted way to do it.
This particular line of argument I have seen before and I find it inane. We all know Amanda and Raffaele were found guilty, so anyone entertaining doubts about their guilt must presumably believe that they were not defended in court as well as they should have been. The argument "If X was true the defence would have proved it, the defence did no prove X was true, hence X is false" is not compelling to anyone who thinks that the evidence did not support a sound conviction.
You find it inane. Again you are entitled to your view. You would be correct if you had evidence which displaced the prosecution case, and which had not been presented. But by your own admission you don't. You don't have anything to place against the evidence of multiple attackers except a semantic game about the implications of "consistent with". There is no reason why you should have anything: you do not have the reports and neither do I. The reports were presented in court though: the court heard experts from both sides and the issue was fully explored. So now not only are the defence incompetent but so are the experts they called. Well if it pleases you do please cling to that view. Perhaps better evidence will be brought forth at the appeal and I am fine with that
But the fact remains that this is how it works, and your conclusion is odd.The accused are presumed to be innocent. The prosecution present the evidence against that presumption and they invite a conclusion based on that evidence. At that point it is for the defence to displace it. They did not do so. And that is all there is to it, for now. You do not have anything at all except your prior conclusion, so far as I can see.
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We don't, so 8 and 10 are taken care of immediately.
I accept that you don't. You have given no rational reason for not accepting it, but that is your privilege. Perhaps the new evidence/experts at the appeal will provide you with such a reason: and if they do then I will also accept it if it is strong enough. At present it does not exist in the public domain
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My understanding is that there is excellent reason to doubt that the bathmat print was RS's, because it's inconsistent with the known deformity of RS's foot. In fact I'd highlight this claim as one of the one's we've falsified which the Amanda-is-guilty camp keep popping back up like a whack-a-mole.
Your understanding is based on what? The fact is that the identification of the footprint by the prosecution was done with care and with careful measurements and pictures, all of which were presented in court. Against that is the assertion of a hammer toe which never touches the ground. No measurement that I have seen: no expert witness who could demonstrate that this toe never touches the ground. No relevant pictures presented in court. Nothing at all, in fact. Your assertion is not evidence. I am fully prepared to be shown to be wrong about this because I forget a great deal of the detail. So if you have the defence contention which was presented in court and which was convincing but somehow failed to convince then I would like to see it. Otherwise I think you are a little presumptuous in your claim to have falsified this item
The bra clasp I also find much less than compelling. Partially because Rudy cut Meredith's bra off with a knife, and hence there was no reason for anyone to be messing around with her bra clasp in the first place.
You accuse others of leaping to conclusions yet you assert that Rudy cut the bra off. Do you have any evidence for that? Or is this just a "it must have been so because that is all that fits my predetermined conclusion"? You know, that thing you accuse other people of doing. Things which might persuade me to that point of view would be evidence of Guede's dna on the clasp; or on the cloth around the clasp; or on some part of her body near where the clasp would have been;or some way of cutting off the clasp without leaving dna; evidence, or even an explanation, as to why RS's dna is on the clasp (like how it got there). Stuff like that
Partially because if RS was trying to wrestle her bra off then there should have been an excellent chance to find his DNA along with Rudy's on the bra or on Meredith's person, but it's absent from everything except the clasp.
Did anyone suggest he was trying to "wrestle her bra off"? Why do you think he did that? Why do you think his dna would be elsewhere? There are only three samples of guede's dna (if you include that which was inside her): two of his
on her person and one of RS's. Why do you find two damning and one implausible?
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Again this looks to me very much like a prosecution attempt to let the theory lead to the evidence, instead of the other way around. The same footprint "expert" who claimed that the bathmat print was RS's was also responsible for the other dubious claims about the luminol footprints: I don't think his opinion counts for much at this point. We know he's unreliable and told the story the prosecution wanted to hear.
You know no such thing. But carry on
This is the same argument I called inane before, and I stand by that position. It's simply a fact of DNA evidence that it tells you nothing about when the evidence was deposited except in the very crudest way. The fact that individual swabs picked up DNA from both Meredith and AK, taken from a bathroom they both used, proves absolutely nothing.
Well it was blood mixed with dna, not two samples of dna.So we can most certainly say that they were mixed after Meredith was bleeding. You assert that this could have happened because they share a bathroom. If this was as easy as you say then the defence should be able to demonstrate that very easily. Perhaps they will, at appeal. They have not done so yet. I think your argument is inane: so we are quits
My understanding is that the test that was done for blood on the blade was more sensitive than the test for DNA, and came up negative. So if we give those tests credence then there was none of Meredith's blood on the blade, yet her DNA was there. I find it hard to imagine clearer evidence for contamination (or falsification) being the cause of the positive DNA result - if the DNA did not get there in Meredith's blood, and we can rule than out, then how did it get there if not by contamination somewhere in the handling procedure?
Irrelevant.
Well, no. Even if the DNA test result on the knife was kosher and wasn't contradicted by the test for blood, once again DNA test don't show what time things happened. Amanda's DNA on the knife handle has a perfectly innocent explanation, and there's absolutely no reason to believe that said DNA had to be deposited at the same time Meredith's DNA got on the blade. At best the result could hope to show that the knife was the murder weapon, it can't implicate Amanda.
I presume this is based on a failure to reading comprehension. It has no relevance at all to what I posted
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It is up to you to dismiss whatever you deem to be unimportant. But you were arguing that others do not look at the whole picture and it seems to me that you are doing that quite a lot. No matter
As has been discussed recently nobody has a terribly compelling case about what happened with the window, but the prosecution case for how it was faked isn't any more believable than any other story. Because of Rudy's alleged involvement in housebreaking involving a rock on another occasion I say this fits his MO and the least worst story is that Rudy did it for some reason.
There is no credible story of him housebreaking involving a rock.
This is that same damn mole popping up again: We can have a high degree of confidence that Rudy left a bloody footprint in the bathroom after killing Meredith,
I await your detailed evidence, as noted above
hence he didn't go straight out the door. He went to the bathroom, almost certainly cleaned himself up a bit, and may have done all sorts of other things before finally departing.
Once you have established he went into the bathroom we can discuss this. At present we have his statement that he did, (twice) and that is all we have.
Another mole - the meme seems to have spread around that Rudy's footprints pointed away from the door or something, and in the PMF echo chamber it's achieved the level of believed fact. As far as I understand the actual evidence this is exactly backwards, and Rudy's foot was facing the door in exactly the kind of way you would expect it to. There is no anomaly there.
Interesting. Do you have evidence for that? I think it would be nice if you shared it.
Now we get to the positive case for AK and RS's innocence as requested, starting with that accusation against Lumumba you think is important.
Ok
Her accusation is a classic false, coerced confession.
You presume your conclusion
It took place after extensive interrogation
Can you specify what you mean by this? It is a nice emotive term but it is not one I would apply to what actually happpened so let us define some terms.
There was no physical abuse. Even if you accept that the taps to the head happened (and I am not averse to conceding that) they did not hurt her, at least according to her testimony.
she doesn't even claim to clearly remember it herself, she retracted it afterwards, it makes little sense if AK was guilty
What was that about relying on your subjective ideas about what someone might or might not do?
and it fits perfectly with what the police at the time were trying to prove.
They were trying to prove that Patrick Lumumba murdered Meredith Kercher? Do you really believe that? Why do you?
One of the few things I'm certain about in this case is that the Perugia police physically and verbally harassed AK until she came out with the statement they wanted her to come out with, and that her statement has no relation to the truth.
Ok, you are certain. There is neither evidence nor logic to support your certainty, but there it is.
Their attempts to sue her and her family for pointing this out are, in my view, utterly morally contemptible. This is a point about this case that I do feel strongly about.
Irrelevant
This is a point that ones whole interpretation of the case hinges on. The PMF people have put in a lot of effort trying to whitewash AK's forced confession into something she did completely voluntarily, but they have to do so without ever really addressing the core issue, which is that the vagueness of her confession is perfectly consistent with what we know of coerced confessions and if Amanda knew enough about the topic to credibly fake one she's a criminal genius, plus the confession miraculously fit the existing police theory while having no relation to reality.
I think it is you who is avoiding the facts rather than others who are avoiding the "core issue". She did not confess. Her account is not vague. The research I have looked at does not show that forced confessions are vague, though, so that is neither here nor there. (though I am interested in where you got that idea) What she said bore no relation to any existing police theory, unless you have some evidence to show that it did.
So let us look at what we know of false confessions: First, voluntary false confessions of the sort some people make by wandering into a police station and demanding to be heard
1. they are sometimes made by people who seek notoriety
2. They are sometimes made to protect someone else
3. They are sometimes made by people who feel guilty (rightly or wrongly) but for something unrelated to the crime in question
None of those apply here, presumably
Coerced confessions are different:
1. They may be elicited by torture or abuse. There is no such factor here
2. They can be be elicited through what is called "coercive persuasion" (aka brainwashing). This takes time (and a lot of other things)which the police did not have in this case
3. In Kassin's study of what I am calling coercive persuasion (and which he called "coerced internalised forced confessions") all cases had two features:
A vulnerable suspect, and false evidence. Vulnerability includes things such as mental illness/disability; suggestability; youth; alcohol or drug misuse; naivete etc. And it is true that Knox may have some of those features. Certainly her supporters seek to play those up. False evidence may include falsified lie detector tests; or the statement that an accomplice is said to have made; perhaps falsified forensic results. None of those seem to apply though, again, one can argue that the information that RS had blown her alibi comes under the aegis of false evidence: I don't think so but it is certainly something strongly argued by those who support her innocence. The problem with this is that another feature of this kind of thing is that it is persistent. The suspect internalises the story and comes to "remember" it. Knox does not fit that profile, as you said.
4. There are some who will make a false confession because they wish to escape a nasty situation: those who believe her to be guilty often think this is in play. It seems plausible to me, and I certainly don't think it takes a genius to act in that way. I see nothing odd about it unless Knox understood that accusing Lumumba would lead to her immediate arrest: but of course we cannot know.
5. There is the idea that some people are more open to suggestion than others: Gudgonsson seems to have done the primary work on this and there are articles which refer to his conclusions available (I linked one in the previous thread). This is primarily psychological research with all the attendant caveats usually required. And of course the incidence of false confession is unknown (estimates seem to range from 3.7% to 12%, with the latter figure obtained from prisoners) He identifes a number of risk factors for false confession: some in the situation and some in the person. In particular he stresses that some of the problems arise from a presumption that the accused is guilty before the interview begins (which may or may not be soundly based on existing evidence) That does not obtain in this case.
a. Youth: in a 2004 study 63% of false confessors were under 25. Other work has shown that suspects under 15 behave differently though older adolescents do not differ significantly from adults in their understanding of Miranda for example. However whether a person waives their miranda rights or not does not have an effect on the likelihood of false confession: except possibly in the case of those under 15 or with low intelligence
b.32% were mentally ill/disabled. Such people are said to be more open to suggestion and much of what applies to the very young also applies to the mentally disabled. Those with identifiable mental illnesses are more likely to make false confessions because they are not good at reality testing or are subject to mood disturbance, guilt or very high anxiety, for example. Knox is not mentally ill or disabled so far as I have read.
c. Antisocial personality disorder tends to increase the likelihood of false confession. However it also increases offending behaviour. There is no evidence that knox suffered from personality disorder, so far as I know:
d. Innocent people are more likely to waive their rights and it has been recorded that some innocent people will make false confessions because they have an unbounded faith in the criminal justice system and believe that the truth will out no matter what they say. Perhaps that applies to Knox but I do not think it is a very common phenomenon
Let us now turn to the features of the oppressive interrogation which have been identified: these are primarily isolation of the suspect: long hours; physical or mental abuse; minimisation/maximisation; sleep deprivation; deprivation of food, water or toilet facilities; and presentation of false evidence
The vast majority of police interviews in the uk and us last between 30 minutes and two hours. In false confession cases studied by Drizen and Leo the mean interrogation time was 16.3 hours. According to the training manual for US police over 4 hours is called coercive. Thus there is no reason to suppose that the interview was coercive in this case, at least in terms of duration. There was no deprivation of sleep, food, water or toilet. There was no false evidence presented. There was probably some use of maximisation and minimisation insofar as the police said that if she did not stop lying about who the text was sent to she would be jailed for a long time: and insofar as they asked her who she was protecting. It is a bit of a stretch to call it coercive but let me give you that: in the context of a 6 hour interview with direct accusations and no food and all the rest it might be enough to force a false confession: in this context and in the absence of vulnerability I think not. Do you have evidence which counters that?
There is no evidence at all of physical or mental abuse, but this is discussed above.
I don't think you can look at the facts without concluding that the Perugia police were engaging in culpably unethical behaviour to fit the evidence to their theory from a very early stage, and once you've drawn that conclusion the barrier to thinking it likely they falsified the DNA evidence on the clasp and knife is greatly lowered.
I think that is unevidenced nonsense: but I await the detail which supports it.
Apart from that DNA evidence, there simply isn't anything concrete to tie AK and RS to the murder. The footprint evidence has to my mind been totally discredited, there's no motive, there's no evidence the three accused knew each other remotely well enough to make the prosecution story plausible, there's simply nothing to make the prosecution fantasy credible.
If you will not look at the whole picture you are bound to come to that conclusion. However that is the charge you claim is mainly exhibited by those who disagree with you. In this part you focus almost exclusively on you subjective opinion and on your inability to determine motive. None of that is remotely relevant
That brings us back to Hume, and weighing up the relative improbability of competing narratives.
And I am still waiting for a narrative from you: which is what I originally asked for and which you have not given.
The prosecution narrative is highly unlikely,
If you are still imputing satanic ritual as narrative then you would think that. But as that is not their narrative I do not think you have made your case at all.
it hangs on DNA evidence which is questionable
No. It doesn't.
even if it's provenance is completely above-board, and said evidence passed through the hands of police we know to have been bent on supporting the aforementioned highly-unlikely story.
Mere subjective opinion disguised as fact: who was supposed to be doing that, again?
The alternative theory that Rudy murdered Meredith by himself and did a runner, possibly after making some effort to hide the body and make it look like a random break-in, is not a particularly unusual story as sex murders go. On balance, the reasonable person should go with the less unlikely theory.
Unless, of course, it did not fit the facts. Which it doesn't. In that case the reasonable person would dismiss this and find something that did fit the facts.
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