• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

Status
Not open for further replies.
What I find perplexing is that there seems to be an excuse for absolutely everything that Amanda and Raffaele said or did. From a reasonable point of view, there is a lot to be concerned about. I can accept a few things being out of sinc, but everything? Being mixed up about phone calls can perhaps be explained away, but forgetting the phone call to mom is *surprising*. It was made at the time that Amanda was not confused, Meredith 's murder had not being discovered, so no trauma.
 
1) Amanda knows that Meredith has 2 phones but only calls one. Two possible reasons: Amanda is in a hurry or Amanda knows that both phones are in the same place.

A lot of your points here are based around the incorrect notion that there was some sort of manhunt going on for Meredith (and your hindsight in knowing that Meredith was murdered). Until Amanda and Rafaelle returned to the cottage and saw the broken window and Meredith's locked door there wasn't much reason to think anything sinister had happened to her. This is also backed by Filomena and Amanda's testimonies that show their first conversations were primarily about the unusual state of the cottage, not "Where the h*** is Meredith?".

But, anyway, to address your first point... Those aren't the only two reasons Amanda would only have called one of Meredith's phones. Again, you're thinking in terms of Meredith being missing and that Amanda didn't do all she should have to locate her. In reality, and according to her testimony, upon leaving the cottage the first time her instinct was to get a hold of one of her roommates to let them know what she found, of which she had three. She tried Meredith first, since they were closest. Meredith didn't answer, so she immediately calls the next roommate in line, Filomena who tells her Laura is in Rome. This is perfectly logical.

2) Amanda didn't want Filomena to know that she had already called Meredith first and doesn't want the rest of us to know this either.

A baseless assertion. You only think this because you think she's guilty. As I've mentioned above, Meredith was not a conversation piece at that point. And it also makes no sense that Amanda wouldn't know "we" would find out about all the calls she made.

It's hard to believe that their discussion of trying to locate Meredith wouldn't have caused Amanda to remember that she just called Meredith.

Their discussion was not about trying to locate Meredith.

Meredith's Italian phone was registered in Filomena's name, so if the phones had been found there would have been a chance that Filomena already knew that something had happened to Meredith before Amanda called her. Calling one of Meredith's phones would have been a way to find out whether they had been found (going over to the garden would have been too risky).

This one is kind of confusing. Are you saying that because the phones may have been found already that calling both would somehow not be incriminating, or that by calling one she was able to establish that the phones hadn't been found (when actually they had been)? I'm sorry, you'll have to explain this one better.

3) Amanda claims that one of the Meredith's cellphones rang for a little and then there was a "disturbance". She claims that the other phone "just kept ringing". For Amanda's story to be believable, we would have to believe that both phone companies had problems with their voicemail at the same time. It would be easier to believe that one company had a problem with their voicemail and there was something wrong with the other phone, so it would have been in Amanda's best interest to mention the "out of service" message. Amanda's actions and statements are consistent with someone who hung-up as soon as the phone calls went through, but her story implies that she was not able to get to Meredith's voicemail. This one should be obvious.

Hers tory is the same as Filomena's:

"I tried to call Meredith right away. One of the phones rang but no one
answered. The other was turned off,"
said Filomena.

Also, the police had removed the sim card from one of the phones which, according to a quick google search, will stop service of voice mail or result in an "out of service message", depending on the provider.

4) If Amanda had revealed that she waited until after Filomena had called her to call the police (and waited 17 minutes - and Raffaele was with her, so excuses like she didn't speak Italian well or that she didn't know how the police in Italy work aren't credible), she would have to explain why after discovering that the cottage was broken into she neither called the police nor any of her roommates.

Rafaelle called his sister who was the police. She advised him to call 112 so someone could be dispatched. Filomena called minutes within them returning to the cottage and discovering the broken window and locked bedroom door. If you're going to criticize delayed reactions and hesitation to immediately call the police then you have to also find fault with Filomena's slow response times as well.

Amanda's poor memory was not confined to phone calls. She also "forgot" that Raffaele had not slept in until ten. And she "forgot" that she and Raffaele had eaten dinner around eight the previous evening rather than the ten or eleven that she claimed. One would think that she could remember at least a few of the things correctly.

And this proves that what? She has all-around poor memory? The problem with all of your points is that none of them actually prove anything since her actions all have positive and (barely) negative connotations, depending on how you look at them. It's not like we're talking about Casey Anthony who didn't report her child missing for a month. We're talking about a difference of a few minutes over what you think should have been a reasonable response time to certain events, and mistakes in memory that another roommate has proven to have been just as guilty of.
 
What I find perplexing is that there seems to be an excuse for absolutely everything that Amanda and Raffaele said or did. From a reasonable point of view, there is a lot to be concerned about. I can accept a few things being out of sinc, but everything? Being mixed up about phone calls can perhaps be explained away, but forgetting the phone call to mom is *surprising*. It was made at the time that Amanda was not confused, Meredith 's murder had not being discovered, so no trauma.

Haven't we discussed the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy? It's not the defence's job to explain exactly how every bullet ended up in that precise spot on the wall of the barn, nor if they cannot immediately do so does it follow that the Texas Sharpshooter aimed that bullet there.

If you cross-examined any group of people on exactly what happened when during a stressful event days ago I'm sure you'd find a host of errors in their recollections. The more irrelevant minutiae you scrutinise, the more errors you'll find. Of course there's an "excuse for everything", because it's the same damned "excuse" in every case. These supposed gotchas are meaningless and prove nothing except that human memory is fallible. In no case are they evidence Amanda and Raffaele murdered Meredith. That's the "excuse", and it pretty much ends the discussion.
 
What I find perplexing is that there seems to be an excuse for absolutely everything that Amanda and Raffaele said or did. From a reasonable point of view, there is a lot to be concerned about. I can accept a few things being out of sinc, but everything? Being mixed up about phone calls can perhaps be explained away, but forgetting the phone call to mom is *surprising*. It was made at the time that Amanda was not confused, Meredith 's murder had not being discovered, so no trauma.

And what I find perplexing is why you think the discrepancies are incriminating. Sure, she forgot one of the two phone calls she made to her mother. What does that prove? Both calls were made within 37 minutes of each other when a lot was going on. It seems like she remembers them as one call. The same thing happened with Filomena who thinks she told Amanda to call the police during their first phone call, but was apparently during their second, if at all. If you're going to contend that she was hiding the first phone call because she told her mother something suspicious, then why pretend like she forgot it? Why not just lie and say what apparently it was about, which was the condition of the cottage? It's not like she didn't remember calling her mom at all. It was, after all, one forgotten call out of 11 total within an hour and a half.

I could understand your position if all the slight "mistakes" she made were actually indicative of some sort of malicious/deliberate behavior.
 
Haven't we discussed the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy? It's not the defence's job to explain exactly how every bullet ended up in that precise spot on the wall of the barn, nor if they cannot immediately do so does it follow that the Texas Sharpshooter aimed that bullet there.

If you cross-examined any group of people on exactly what happened when during a stressful event days ago I'm sure you'd find a host of errors in their recollections. The more irrelevant minutiae you scrutinise, the more errors you'll find. Of course there's an "excuse for everything", because it's the same damned "excuse" in every case. These supposed gotchas are meaningless and prove nothing except that human memory is fallible. In no case are they evidence Amanda and Raffaele murdered Meredith. That's the "excuse", and it pretty much ends the discussion.

Not to mention practically everyone involved in the case has conflicting statements of what happened and in what order: The postal police and the CCTV don't agree on their arrival. Batistelli and Luca don't agree on what happened when the door was kicked down. Quintavalle disagrees with a co-worker and himself on what he saw. Filomena and Paola don't agree on her telling Amanda to call the police. Curatolo gets his dates wrong, etc.
 
Look at ALL the discrepencies, look at the WHOLE picture. Doesn't anything seem out of sinc, here guys? ANYTHING??
 
Haven't we discussed the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy? It's not the defence's job to explain exactly how every bullet ended up in that precise spot on the wall of the barn, nor if they cannot immediately do so does it follow that the Texas Sharpshooter aimed that bullet there.

If you cross-examined any group of people on exactly what happened when during a stressful event days ago I'm sure you'd find a host of errors in their recollections. The more irrelevant minutiae you scrutinise, the more errors you'll find. Of course there's an "excuse for everything", because it's the same damned "excuse" in every case. These supposed gotchas are meaningless and prove nothing except that human memory is fallible. In no case are they evidence Amanda and Raffaele murdered Meredith. That's the "excuse", and it pretty much ends the discussion.

Exactly. And that's why in highly circumstantial cases the defence often has a distinct natural advantage over the prosecution - which is just as it should be in a good system of justice. The burden of proof is very onerous, and it is entirely placed upon the prosecution, whereas the defence merely has to show the jury/judicial panel that reasonable alternatives are plausible (i.e. the defence does not have to supply proof that these alternatives actually happened).

And, to my mind, that's exactly the situation in this case. There's no smoking gun, and no direct evidence whatsoever. Not only that, most of the circumstantial evidence is (in my view) weak and open to challenges and/or other interpretations. The prosecution has to prove its case beyond any doubts that a reasonable person would consider appropriate - the defence only has to pick sufficient holes in that case to provide reasonable doubt.
 
Not only that, most of the circumstantial evidence is (in my view) weak and open to challenges and/or other interpretations. The prosecution has to prove its case beyond any doubts that a reasonable person would consider appropriate - the defence only has to pick sufficient holes in that case to provide reasonable doubt.

sorry, shall mean:
The circumstantial evídence was strong and could not been challengend by the defense. The prosecution proved the case beyond all doubts and the unanimous verdict for both of the accused was : Guilty.

Now at the upcoming appeal the defense will try to find sufficient holes in that case to provide reasonable doubt - and the prosecution will try to strenghten the verdict.
**
 
Last edited:
sorry, shall mean:
The circumstantial evídence was strong and could not been challengend by the defense. The prosecution proved the case beyond all doubts and the unanimous verdict for both of the accused was : Guilty.

Now at the upcoming appeal the defense will try to find sufficient holes in that case to provide reasonable doubt - and the prosecution will try to strenghten the verdict.
**

I didn't really understand that.
 
I see that "The Murder of Meredith Kercher" is currently listed as one of the "See also" links on the Wikipedia "Miscarriage of Justice" page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice

It's entirely inconsequential to the situation of course, and actually the Kercher case shouldn't really be linked from that page, since no miscarriage has yet been shown.... but it's interesting nonetheless. Perhaps that link will soon be removed though - I'm sure someone will be on the case in due course.
 
Look at ALL the discrepencies, look at the WHOLE picture. Doesn't anything seem out of sinc, here guys? ANYTHING??

Yeah. The whole premise seems out of synch with reality. I can't imagine people like Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito deciding, on the spur of the moment, to hook up with Rudy Guede to kill someone they had no motive to kill.

I thought from the very start, when I heard the police theory on Nov. 6 2007, this is a very unusual case that I should follow. I never believed the "sex game" malarkey. I had the vague idea that all these people were addict/dealers sharing a house where their peers came to buy and use crack or heroin, and someone got killed.

But over time, it became clear that none of the women living in the house - Amanda, Meredith, Filomena, Laura - were at all like that.

I also realized that at the time the police made their initial accusation, they had no evidence to support it. I could see they were scrambling to come up with something really convincing, but they never did. So they had to spin a lot of bogus evidence as though it really means something. And that is a very familiar pattern to me, because I've seen it in a lot of other cases.

That is the big picture from my point of view. I didn't fall into an anchor trap. I started with a vague presumption of guilt and followed the case for several months before I realized that presumption was not supportable by the facts.
 
I believe that the criminal convictions of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito may be unsafe. I don't say (and have never said) that they definitely are unsafe, but that they may be. My opinions on this case are 100% independent. I have never had any kind of contact or affiliation with Doug Preston, David Marriott, nor anyone connected in any way with the Amanda Knox or Raffaele Sollecito camps. Nor have I ever, for that matter, had any contact with anybody whatsoever affiliated to this case in any way. I have never been dishonest in voicing my opinions on this case, or in how I have represented myself personally. Furthermore, I have never called anyone "evil" in an email exchange, and I used the term "nastiness" in response to a truly revolting comment from the person who sent me the email. I'm receiving advice on data protection issues, which are ongoing in the UK and the US. Since I have been deliberately prevented from having any right of reply on the forum which is constantly attacking me (strangely, since I only post on JREF), I hope that the JREF mods will allow me this one statement on the subject.
 
Good day LondonJohn,
I noticed with suprise, dismay, and finally disgust yesterday that a few members of PMF,
who even sometimes post here, were trashing your identity moniker,
and even digging up a persons identity, claiming it to be you and supposedly 'outing' you.

Rude, and very lame, on a forum where Meredith Kercher,
who was brutally murdered, is supposed to be the focus of discussion...
RWVBWL
 
Last edited:
So, that's a "No".

How, therefore, can you make the statement that the report is a load of garbage when you don't even have a proper translation?

If only you'd bothered to read the post you were responding to when you first asked the question....

Google translator is far from perfect, but you can get a general sense of what the main conclusions are. No PMF translation can redeem such lunacy.

But I suppose you got some enjoyment out of asking a pointless question several times...
 
So, that's a "No".

How, therefore, can you make the statement that the report is a load of garbage when you don't even have a proper translation?

Bob, your point is taken. I don't really know. Maybe, when properly translated, this document will prove to be a tome of sparkling clarity and trenchant reasoning. Or maybe not. Let's take this up again when it is ready.
 
Just hypothetically...

As a thought exercise, imagine that something untoward has happened near your home (hopefully not a murder, but maybe a car break-in or something along those lines), and you somehow fall under suspicion. How could you prove your innocence, and how could anything you say be used against you? If you couldn't prove definitively that you were somewhere else, like working the night shift in a convenience store across town, what's left? Maybe your neighbors told police that they saw you walking along the street where the break-in occurred (never mind that it's the main road in the neighborhood and you walk down it every day). The police question you, and you say you came home after work, watched television and then went to bed. But you watch a lot of TV and you don't remember exactly what was on at what time, and you're not sure when you went to bed. You say, "Maybe midnight," but your neighbor swears she saw your lights on at 2 a.m. You made several phone calls, but you don't remember in what order. And since the police don't know the exact time of the crime, your simple admission that you were home near the scene works against you by itself. Your wife/husband/roommate turned in early and can't help you ("if he slipped out for a little while I just wouldn't know . . ."). The police don't find your fingerprints around the car, but they say you must have been wearing gloves. And they find a pair of gloves in your house! Etc.

How easy would it be to build a circumstantial case against you if someone wanted to, and how hard would it be for you to refute it? In the case under discussion here, it sounds a lot like the authorities started with a premise, then set about proving it, rather than gathering evidence with an open mind and following it where it led.
 
Last edited:
As a thought exercise, imagine that something untoward has happened near your home (hopefully not a murder, but maybe a car break-in or something along those lines), and you somehow fall under suspicion. How could you prove your innocence, and how could anything you say be used against you? If you couldn't prove definitively that you were somewhere else, like working the night shift in a convenience store across town, what's left? Maybe your neighbors told police that they saw you walking along the street where the break-in occurred (never mind that it's the main road in the neighborhood and you walk down it every day). The police question you, and you say you came home after work, watched television and then went to bed. But you watch a lot of TV and you don't remember exactly what was on at what time, and you're not sure when you went to bed. You say, "Maybe midnight," but your neighbor swears she saw your lights on at 2 a.m. You made several phone calls, but you don't remember in what order. And since the police don't know the exact time of the crime, your simple admission that you were home near the scene works against you by itself. Your wife/husband/roommate turned in early and can't help you ("if he slipped out for a little while I just wouldn't know . . ."). The police don't find your fingerprints around the car, but they say you must have been wearing gloves. And they find a pair of gloves in your house! Etc.

How easy would it be to build a circumstantial case against you if someone wanted to, and how hard would it be for you to refute it? In the case under discussion here, it sounds a lot like the authorities started with a premise, then set about proving it, rather than gathering evidence with an open mind and following it where it led.

Timothy Masters would be a good person to ask... it's not a hypothetical for him. He got convicted on the strength of doodles in a notebook and a knife collection.

It becomes even easier to build a phony circumstantial case if the crime takes place in your own home. In the Meredith Kercher investigation, they came up with lots of DNA evidence that supposedly incriminates Amanda Knox... but none of it was in the room where the murder took place.

This kind of thing never happens with car prowls, however. It only happens with the big, shocking murder cases, usually the murder of a child or a woman. The police are under pressure to deliver results, and so they do.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom