Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Mary_H]

Stellafane, I'm going to cut your post down a bit to save space. Let me know if you think I've taken out of context.

....But then it occurred to me that I can in fact add something of possible value to the discussion: I may serve as an example of the type of person who must be persuaded in sufficient numbers in order to provide the kind of groundswell of public support that may help Amanda Knox walk free.

I agree with you that a groundswell of public support is what is needed. The media helped get Amanda convicted and the media will help get her acquitted.

.....to assume Knox is innocent you have to accept a highly implausible and convoluted scenario in which extremely unlikely events occur, police and legal officials engage in a corrupt (and seemingly motivationless) conspiracy, and defendents are impossibly unlucky and/or inexplicably lie when the truth would save them. Try as I might, I just can't conceive a tortured, bizarre plot that both fits the evidence and exonerates Knox. Argue about arcane evidentiary points all you like, but until someone comes up with a viable alternative story that doesn't require a priori assumption of Knox's innocence, her supporters really have nothing to offer.

Why should someone have to come up with a viable alternative that doesn't require an a priori assumption of Amanda's (and Raffaele's) innocence? The law doesn't require it; in fact, the law recommends we do assume a priori that Amanda is innocent. This seems to be a very difficult concept for some people to grasp.

It is regrettable that so many people approach the pieces of evidence as if they objectively occurred outside of the context and circumstances in which they were found, that is, that they are what put Amanda and Raffaele in jail. The actual facts objectively contradict that assumption; that is what we have been trying to examine in this forum.

This segues into my second point. Throughout this thread, Knox's supporters frankly have behaved much like conspiracy theorists. Like CTers, they focus on minutia, and ignore the "big picture."

Is there anything more minute than the times phone calls were made? As far as I can tell, that's about all the guilters have had to offer as their side of the debate.

Perhaps this is not the intent of Knox supporters. All I can say is that many of them have acted in a way perfectly consistent with the scenario I have described above -- in short, like CTers, like people more concerned with winning an argument than in determining the truth. To change this perception, I'd suggest that if Knox supporters are really interested in persuading people like me, people who avoid knee-jerk responses and look beyond the superficial before making up their minds, you must jettison your usual tactics and work on devising a coherent, comprehensive, and above all plausible theory about what really happened to Ms. Kercher; a theory that encompassess all the facts without cherry picking and tossing out the inconvenient ones. If you really make a good faith effort to do this (as I did -- and recall, I was originally leaning more towards Knox's innocence than guilt), you may well find yourself questioning your own convictions and beliefs.

We have seen tacit consistencies in the behavior of the Perugian officials that suggest certain values are at stake. That is culture, not conspiracy. If you think we are conspiracy theorists, then maybe you think sociologists and historians are conspiracy theorists, too.

Your belief that "a coherent, comprehensive, and above all plausible theory about what really happened to Ms. Kercher" must be devised to prove the defendants' innocence is mistaken. The alternate explanation you are looking for is about where Amanda and Raffaele were the night Meredith was murdered. As they told the police many times over the course of four days, they spent the night together at Raffaele's apartment.

 

[christianahannah]

Mary-H wrote:

Your belief that "a coherent, comprehensive, and above all plausible theory about what really happened to Ms. Kercher" must be devised to prove the defendants' innocence is mistaken. The alternate explanation you are looking for is about where Amanda and Raffaele were the night Meredith was murdered. As they told the police many times over the course of four days, they spent the night together at Raffaele's apartment.

Mary do you have their prior statements to compare against their November 5-6 statements?

 

[Stellafane]

Who said anything about all the key evidence being the result of contamination? Not me. And much evidence can be made to point in a number of differing ways - so to state that it all "points one way" is disingenuous and misleading.

Evidence can be made to point multiple way, sure. But all the evidence has one thing in common: the most consistent scenario is "she did it." That, in my view, is pointing a certain way.

It isn't the job of the defence to present an alternative scenario which explains away all of the prosecution's evidence. I thought you might know that, from the surety of language used in your post. It's the job of the defence to construct reasonable alternative explanations for enough areas of the prosecution's evidence so as to introduce reasonable doubt in the case as a whole.

I don't agree. Just casting reasonable down on a piece or two of the evidentiary puzzle doesn't make the whole thing collapse. If you still have an abundance of evidence proving Knox did it, casting doubt on say the knife won't save her. To do that, you'd need at least one piece of evidence that proves Knox couldn't pssibly have done it. "Well, maybe Exibit F can be interpreted this other way" doesn't cut it.

And ultimately, we're not in a court of law, we're here on the internet. Aren't we, as discussion forum participants, more concerned with the truth than we are with courtroom theatrics?

As an example, let's say that Mr A was on trial accused of murdering his wife. Mr A worked in an office 5 miles away from his home, and his wife was killed at 11am on a working day (time established definitively). Let's say that the prosecution offers only two pieces of evidence against Mr A (for the sake of simplicity), which comprise two witnesses:

Witness 1 lives opposite Mr and Mrs A's house. He says that he was mowing his front lawn that morning between 10.30am and 11.30am. He's sure of the time, since he went out to start mowing as soon as his favourite daily soap opera (which he never misses) finished at 10.30, and he knows that his front lawn takes an hour to mow. He says he saw Mr A arrive back at his house by car 20 minutes after he started mowing, and then he saw Mr A leave the house by car 15 minutes after that. He saw nobody else arrive at the house either by foot or vehicle during the period he was outside.

Witness 2 is a restaurant waiter who says that he overheard Mr and Mrs A arguing loudly and bitterly in his restaurant the evening before the murder. He says he heard Mrs A say that she was going to divorce Mr A and take him for everything she could get.

Now, let's say that the defence manages to successfully discredit Witness 2 (maybe they can show that his shift started after Mr and Mrs A had already left, so he must have seen another couple arguing). But if they can't discredit Witness 1's testimony in any way, it's quite likely that a jury would find Mr A guilty of murder. After all, Witness 1 provides strong evidence that Mr A returned to his wife's location exactly over the time of her murder, and left shortly after, and that nobody else was seen to come or go to/from the murder house over this period.

However, imagine if the opposite happens: the defence manage to successfully discredit Witness 1 (maybe he was elderly and had confused his days; maybe the defence finds a local council employee who can prove that he was mending a street light outside Witness 1's house on the day of the murder between 10am and 10.50am and who can testify that Witness 1 was not mowing his lawn on that morning). But in this scenario, the defence cannot discredit or refute the testimony of Witness 2.

In this second scenario, the defence have once again discredited one area of the prosecution's evidence, but not the other. But this is where the relative importance of evidence comes into play. Without a witness who can place Mr A as the only person entering or leaving the murder house over the time period when Mrs A was killed, the prosecution's case sinks. Witness 2's testimony is interesting, but it's not any kind of proof of murder. Mr A would almost certainly be acquitted by a jury in this scenario.

Can you see now how it's not necessary for the defence to demonstrate fallibilities in each and every piece of the prosecution's case in order to show reasonable doubt in the case as a whole?

Of course I can. But when you've got a case based on more than two measly facts, your analogy quickly breaks down. As I said, when you have an array of facts aligned against you, it isn't enough to cast conceivable doubt on one or two. You're going to have to explain away the story told by all the other facts upon which you can't cast reasonable doubt.

And again, this is courtroom stuff, where legal definitions of innocence and guilt may or may not conform with the truth (although in this case, I believe it does.) Aren't you more concerned with finding out what really happened to Meredith Kercher, rather than whether or not Knox's legal team have enough courtroom tricks at their disposal to get her off? I sure am.

 

[LondonJohn]

Evidence can be made to point multiple way, sure. But all the evidence has one thing in common: the most consistent scenario is "she did it." That, in my view, is pointing a certain way.



I don't agree. Just casting reasonable down on a piece or two of the evidentiary puzzle doesn't make the whole thing collapse. If you still have an abundance of evidence proving Knox did it, casting doubt on say the knife won't save her. To do that, you'd need at least one piece of evidence that proves Knox couldn't pssibly have done it. "Well, maybe Exibit F can be interpreted this other way" doesn't cut it.

And ultimately, we're not in a court of law, we're here on the internet. Aren't we, as discussion forum participants, more concerned with the truth than we are with courtroom theatrics?




Of course I can. But when you've got a case based on more than two measly facts, your analogy quickly breaks down. As I said, when you have an array of facts aligned against you, it isn't enough to cast conceivable doubt on one or two. You're going to have to explain away the story told by all the other facts upon which you can't cast reasonable doubt.

And again, this is courtroom stuff, where legal definitions of innocence and guilt may or may not conform with the truth (although in this case, I believe it does.) Aren't you more concerned with finding out what really happened to Meredith Kercher, rather than whether or not Knox's legal team have enough courtroom tricks at their disposal to get her off? I sure am.

I'm interested in both, to be honest. And if you think that people should be convicted and sent to prison on charges that haven't been proved beyond reasonable doubt, that's your prerogative, but I suspect that you'd be better off in Stalin's Russia than in a modern Western democracy.

And my example deliberately used only two pieces of evidence for the sake of simplicity. Again, if you can't see that the principle I illustrated in this example can equally be applied to a case in which there are many different pieces of evidence (some of which, as in my example, point more heavily towards culpability than others), then again that's your prerogative.......

 

[christianahannah]

Stellafane makes some good points. Personally, I felt exactly the same way for a long time in this case. If the fact that I am now leaning towards the innocent side of things makes me consider that there may have been some intentional efforts to send two innocent people to jail a possibility, then be it so. Labels are just that, I am interested in the truth. If the search for the truth results in me finding a conspiracy, I do not intend to hide me head under the umbrella of conspiracy theory shame.

Rose I would be curious as to what tipped you over?

 

[Mary_H]

No one disputes that Guede was involved, so I'm not sure what you're hoping to prove by presenting evidence of his guilt as a counter to my post. Your statement "Under my scenario, the evidence against Amanda and Raffaele is either the result of contamination or else meaningless forensic data that would have been present even if no crime had occurred" may neatly dismiss all the evidence you don't like, but it's really not the sort of thing anyone else should take very seriously. And you haven't addressed at all why Knox and Sollecito lied. And we're not talking about trivial details either; Knox accused her ex-boss of being the murderer, while Sollecito made up some story about a previous visit Kercher made to his apartment during which (now here's a rotten piece of luck) she just happened to cut herself with a knife on which her blood was later found.

As I suggested in my previous post, it is not as simple as just saying "Amanda and Raffaele lied," as if that also means they committed murder. The belief that the defendants lied is always the first argument people unfamiliar with the case will use, and sometimes they are surprised to find they have been misled. In your own comments about lying, you seem to have cited only two lies -- one for each defendant. The misstatements made by Amanda and Raffaele have to be looked at in context, which is what we have been trying to do here. I presume that is what you meant by your suggestion that we examine the Gestalt.

So in your scenario Knox is the innocent victim of a bizarre and incredibly improbable concoction of incompetent forensics, corrupt police, horrible bad luck, and her own inexplicable habit of lying when she'd be vastly better off telling the truth. In my scenario...she did it. Occam's razor and all that.

Sorry, but what you've presented is exactly the kind of argument I was talking about when I said that what finally persuaded me that Knox is guilty is both the story told by the evidence, and the weak and implausible scenarios offered by her supporters. Yours, I'm afraid, is typical of the genre: convoluted and unconvincing.

Occam's Razor suggests Amanda and Raffaele spent the night together at Raffaele's apartment. The evidence that is being used to disprove that reality is what is convoluted, unconvincing, bizarre and incredibly improbable. One's interpetation of it depends on the direction of one's point of view.

 

[Mary_H]

Mary-H wrote:

Mary do you have their prior statements to compare against their November 5-6 statements?

The only thing we have is the e-mail Amanda wrote to her family and friends. I assume that if the defendants had said anything different, they woudl have been arrested earlier.

 

[Mary_H]

....In this new and ingenious development, the fact that van der Sloot and Knox both played soccer (football in proper language, hehe) at high school, both went to private schools, both were honors students, and both spoke foreign languages, somehow implies that Knox is as culpable as van der Sloot may be. Forget evidence and that kind of thing* - the shared passion for soccer, private education and language ability are the clincher!

If my husband watches one more World Cup game, I may commit a crime myself.

 

[Stellafane]

I agree with you that a groundswell of public support is what is needed. The media helped get Amanda convicted and the media will help get her acquitted.

You see, this is precisely what I'm talking about. The media of course did not get her convicted -- that happened in a court of law, based on an abundance of evidence that cannot be dismissed with "nah-uhh!!" arguments -- and baldly stating as much as uncontested fact instantly evaporates your credibility, so much so, my first impulse was to not even bother with the rest of your post. Unless Knox supporters grasp how nonsense like this comes across to the "rational undecideds" (as I considered myself when I first heard of this case) they will continue to do Ms. Knox's cause irreparable harm.

Why should someone have to come up with a viable alternative that doesn't require an a priori assumption of Amanda's (and Raffaele's) innocence? The law doesn't require it; in fact, the law recommends we do assume a priori that Amanda is innocent. This seems to be a very difficult concept for some people to grasp.

Actually, what you seem to not be grasping is the fact that we're not at square one anymore. Knox has been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, based on solid evidence that tells a consistent and compelling stoy. If you're going to get that conviction overturned, you're going to have to discredit it. And if you're going to convince anyone outside a courtroom, you'd damn well better come up with a viable alternative that explains all the facts in the case. So far, Knox supporters haven't done this at all, and thus have presented no reason whatsoever why anyone else should believe the evidence is wrong and Knox is in fact innocent.

It is regrettable that so many people approach the pieces of evidence as if they objectively occurred outside of the context and circumstances in which they were found, that is, that they are what put Amanda and Raffaele in jail. The actual facts objectively contradict that assumption; that is what we have been trying to examine in this forum.

Come off it. Putting the facts "in context" is exactly the point I made in my original post; in other words, looking at them not as disconnected events but rather as pieces of a consistent story. Knox supporters seem to do their best to avoid that, focusing instead on endlessly trying to come up with conceivable alternatives to individual factoids rather that plausible scenarios that take all of them into account. The problem for them is, none of these alternatives can be strung together into a coherent narrative, save one: she did it. This is in fact what got Knox convicted, the clear and consistent story told by the evidence. And that story, I believe, is the main obstacle that needs to be surmounted before Knox goes free -- or at a minimum, before you convince people like me that she should.

Is there anything more minute than the times phone calls were made? As far as I can tell, that's about all the guilters have had to offer as their side of the debate.

Again, more nonsense. This is precisely what I was talking about when I spoke of graffiti, content that does nothing at all to advance an argument, but instead is designed to make the real arguments harder to find among the background noise.

We have seen tacit consistencies in the behavior of the Perugian officials that suggest certain values are at stake. That is culture, not conspiracy. If you think we are conspiracy theorists, then maybe you think sociologists and historians are conspiracy theorists, too.

I'm not sure why anyone would want to hide a conspiracy theory behind their personal bigotry, but I suppose if that's the only arrow in your quiver, that's the one you shoot.

Your belief that "a coherent, comprehensive, and above all plausible theory about what really happened to Ms. Kercher" must be devised to prove the defendants' innocence is mistaken. The alternate explanation you are looking for is about where Amanda and Raffaele were the night Meredith was murdered. As they told the police many times over the course of four days, they spent the night together at Raffaele's apartment.

They also lied and said Knox's ex-boss committed the murder, so forgive me if I require a bit more than "we didn't do it!" before I toss out the preponderance of evidence that says they did.

 

[LondonJohn]

One small thought:

A constant refrain in some quarters is that the victim, Meredith Kercher, gets overlooked or forgotten in this whole circus. And yes, this is true. Regrettable, but true.

I suggest that the people making this complaint stop for a moment and think about, for example, the case in Milwaukee which came to trial in 1991, which concerned the brutal murder, torture, dismemberment and cannibalisation of a number of young men.

You know: the Jeffrey Dahmer case.

How many of the people who complain that Meredith has been forgotten in all the analysis of the case can recall the names of the poor victims of Jeffrey Dahmer? Do the names Stephen Hicks, Steven Tuomi, James "Jamie" Doxtator, Richard Guerrero, Anthony Sears, Eddie Smith, Ernest Miller, David Thomas, Curtis Straughter, Errol Lindsey, Tony Hughes, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Matt Turner, Jeremiah Weinberger, Oliver Lacy or Joseph Bradehoft spring readily to their minds when thinking about or discussing the "Jeffrey Dahmer case". Because these are the young men whom Dahmer killed. They were all real people, with real lives and real aspirations. And they all have grieving relatives, all of whom are deserving of our utmost sympathy.

Like it or not, most high-profile murder cases focus on the perpetrator/defendant rather than the victim (unless, as with the OJ Simpson case, the victim is remembered because of her inextricable link to the defendant). I suspect that this may be partly because people are naturally more inclined to wonder why a perpetrator would commit such a crime, rather than wanting to put themselves into the position of the victim. I might be wrong in that, but regardless, it's usually the killer who gets remembered and discussed, and the victim gets forgotten.

Perhaps some people should ask themselves why they don't recall even the names (less still the lives and aspirations) of the Dahmer victims - or the Ted Bundy victims, the Yorkshire Ripper victims, the Black Panther victims, the Harold Shipman victims, the Son of Sam victims, the Zodiac Killer victims, the Hillside Stranger victims, the Boston Strangler victims, the Jack the Ripper victims.................................

 

[Stellafane]

As I suggested in my previous post, it is not as simple as just saying "Amanda and Raffaele lied," as if that also means they committed murder. The belief that the defendants lied is always the first argument people unfamiliar with the case will use, and sometimes they are surprised to find they have been misled. In your own comments about lying, you seem to have cited only two lies -- one for each defendant. The misstatements made by Amanda and Raffaele have to be looked at in context, which is what we have been trying to do here. I presume that is what you meant by your suggestion that we examine the Gestalt.

Oh, I love that: "misstatements." How antiseptic. Knox accused an innocent person of murder. That's more than a "misstatement"; that's a cold-blooded, calculated attempt to destroy the life of another person, a destruction that, had it been successful, would by itself be a form of murder (if not in the legal sense, certainly in the moral one in that it would have ended the victim's life as he knew it). What "context" is going to mitigate or explain this utterly disgusting, reprehensible act? None, that I can see, save the same pesky one that, unfortunately for Knox supporters, keeps popping up for every other piece of evidence as well: "she did it."

Occam's Razor suggests Amanda and Raffaele spent the night together at Raffaele's apartment. The evidence that is being used to disprove that reality is what is convoluted, unconvincing, bizarre and incredibly improbable. One's interpetation of it depends on the direction of one's point of view.

Sorry, but simply stating something, however confidently, doesn't make it true. You need to back up such statements with facts and evidence. You haven't.

 

[LondonJohn]

You see, this is precisely what I'm talking about. The media of course did not get her convicted -- that happened in a court of law, based on an abundance of evidence that cannot be dismissed with "nah-uhh!!" arguments -- and baldly stating as much as uncontested fact instantly evaporates your credibility, so much so, my first impulse was to not even bother with the rest of your post. Unless Knox supporters grasp how nonsense like this comes across to the "rational undecideds" (as I considered myself when I first heard of this case) they will continue to do Ms. Knox's cause irreparable harm.

As I said earlier, I agree with you that it's neither rational nor desirable (in my opinion) to have the aim of winning the "hearts and minds" argument via internet forums. And that's not why I personally take part in the debate here. But I think it's overdoing things to suggest that "they will continue to do Ms Knox's case irreparable harm". I think that what is said on these sorts of forums is very largely inconsequential one way or the other. And I'd add that if it's not inconsequential, then there's probably something very wrong with the Italian justice system*.

* And before anyone has the genius thought of pulling out part of that last sentence and misusing it out of context, I'll remind them that I'm saying here that I don't think there is a problem with the Italian justice system - quite the opposite in fact. But then, all articulate and rational people already knew that was what I'd said, didn't they....

 

[Stellafane]

One small thought:

A constant refrain in some quarters is that the victim, Meredith Kercher, gets overlooked or forgotten in this whole circus. And yes, this is true. Regrettable, but true.

I suggest that the people making this complaint stop for a moment and think about, for example, the case in Milwaukee which came to trial in 1991, which concerned the brutal murder, torture, dismemberment and cannibalisation of a number of young men.

You know: the Jeffrey Dahmer case.

How many of the people who complain that Meredith has been forgotten in all the analysis of the case can recall the names of the poor victims of Jeffrey Dahmer? Do the names Stephen Hicks, Steven Tuomi, James "Jamie" Doxtator, Richard Guerrero, Anthony Sears, Eddie Smith, Ernest Miller, David Thomas, Curtis Straughter, Errol Lindsey, Tony Hughes, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Matt Turner, Jeremiah Weinberger, Oliver Lacy or Joseph Bradehoft spring readily to their minds when thinking about or discussing the "Jeffrey Dahmer case". Because these are the young men whom Dahmer killed. They were all real people, with real lives and real aspirations. And they all have grieving relatives, all of whom are deserving of our utmost sympathy.

Like it or not, most high-profile murder cases focus on the perpetrator/defendant rather than the victim (unless, as with the OJ Simpson case, the victim is remembered because of her inextricable link to the defendant). I suspect that this may be partly because people are naturally more inclined to wonder why a perpetrator would commit such a crime, rather than wanting to put themselves into the position of the victim. I might be wrong in that, but regardless, it's usually the killer who gets remembered and discussed, and the victim gets forgotten.

Perhaps some people should ask themselves why they don't recall even the names (less still the lives and aspirations) of the Dahmer victims - or the Ted Bundy victims, the Yorkshire Ripper victims, the Black Panther victims, the Harold Shipman victims, the Son of Sam victims, the Zodiac Killer victims, the Hillside Stranger victims, the Boston Strangler victims, the Jack the Ripper victims.................................

Yeah, but Dahmer didn't have an army of supporters blindly insisting that he was a nice guy and ought to go free. Thus the sympathy shown to "poor Amanda" seems rather out of place when one considers the final moments of the woman she helped kill.

 

[Mary_H]

Originally Posted by Stellafane
I've been kind of hesitant to post in this thread -- after thousands of posts by people far more knowledgeable about the particulars of the case, what could I possibly add that would be new and relevant?

Prescient Insight of the Day:

Nothing.

You had us at "far more knowledgeable," Stellafane.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Of course I can. But when you've got a case based on more than two measly facts, your analogy quickly breaks down. As I said, when you have an array of facts aligned against you, it isn't enough to cast conceivable doubt on one or two. You're going to have to explain away the story told by all the other facts upon which you can't cast reasonable doubt.

But what is the story told by the facts, other than "she did it," which doesn't explain anything? How is it that Amanda left damning forensic evidence in the bathroom, in the hallway, and in Filomena's room, but none in the room where the murder took place?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Let's look at my first point. I know that vast amounts of time have been spent in this thread examining minutia and offering ideas and speculation on what each piece of evidence could mean, how it might differ from what the police maintained happened, and how it could be open to interpretation. But ultimately, that's a rather sterile and short-sighted approach. Instead, I think one needs to look at the "gestalt" of the evidence, and consider the overarching story it may be telling.

This is what I've recently been talking about - the tendency to think that a lot of bad evidence or bad arguments can be taken together to make up a good argument. Reality doesn't work that way.

Most of the prosecution "evidence" doesn't count as evidence, because it's irrelevant or questionable.

And in my view, it's no contest. On the one hand, you can interpret the evidence as pointing very strongly -- beyond a reasonable doubt -- that Knox is guilty. On the other hand, to assume Knox is innocent you have to accept a highly implausible and convoluted scenario in which extremely unlikely events occur, police and legal officials engage in a corrupt (and seemingly motivationless) conspiracy, and defendents are impossibly unlucky and/or inexplicably lie when the truth would save them.

Nope. This is just wrong. To conclude that Knox (and Solecito) should not have been convicted (which is not the same as assuming they are innocent) you have to accept that this was a misguided police railroading like many that have occurred in the past. This is not an extraordinary claim on the level of thinking that aliens did it. Misguided convictions have occurred many times in the past because police decided one particular person did it and got tunnel vision, and they probably will occur again in the future.

There's nothing terribly implausible or convoluted about it that I can see. All it takes is some groupthink amongst the prosecuting and police team to convince themselves that Amanda and Raffaele did it and that they need to bend the rules to get them.

In fact, I think any rational person has to conclude based on rock solid evidence that the prosecution team did bend the rules to try to get them: the obvious examples being the constant leaking of false or biased information, the physical abuse used to elicit Amanda's false statement, lying to Amanda that she had tested positive for HIV to get her to list her sexual contacts, the misrepresentation of the footprint data and so on. Whether or not you think they were guilty, I don't think there's any question that the prosecution were bending or outright breaking the rules to brew up public support and achieve a conviction.

Whether that extended to falsifying the trace DNA evidence (the bra clasp and the knife blade) we do not yet know, but I don't think it's beyond the realm of the plausible.

This segues into my second point. Throughout this thread, Knox's supporters frankly have behaved much like conspiracy theorists. Like CTers, they focus on minutia, and ignore the "big picture." They attach importance to possibilities, rather than likelihoods. They repeatedly raise issues that have been previously discussed and addressed. They make statements and then appear to put the onus on others to disprove them.

It's called the presumption of innocence and the need to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Great -- then explain why Knox and Sollecito both told whopping lies (Knox about her ex-boss being the murderer; Sollecito about Kercher being in his apartment and getting cut with knife). In your scenario, they lied due to some unexplained neurological disorder, or because they were frightened, or for the hell of it, or because they were incredibly stupid, or some other similarly weird cause. In my scenario, it was for the obvious and logical reason: they were guilty and tried to deflect the guilt away from themselves.

See, this is what it always comes down to, Knox supporters trying to pick and choose the evidence, focusing only on what they think they can plausibly explain away and ignoring what they can't. Sorry, it doesn't work like that.

All of this is completely wrong and these moles have already been whacked.

Knox was a victim of the well-known and documented tendency for psychologically vulnerable people to break down under intense interrogation and tell their interrogator whatever they think they want to know. Her statement is perfectly consistent with this: it's vague, it expresses confusion about whether the events she is recounting actually happened or not, and she recanted it as soon as she had some downtime to get her head straight. False confessions are a psychological reality, there is nothing implausible about this.

Raffaele did not say that he had cut Meredith with his knife - that's a PMF talking point with no basis in reality. He made a grammatically ambiguous statement that said he touched "her" with the knife, where "her" could linguistically have been Meredith but in context was obviously Amanda, and he made this statement after having been told by police that they found Meredith's DNA on his knife. He was trying to construct any possible scenario where that DNA could have been there, and the only one he could come up with was that Meredith's DNA had been on Amanda's hand when he touched Amanda with the kitchen knife accidentally.

No it's not very plausible, but then again there is no plausible story for how that DNA got there at all other than contamination by the police.

Um, I already have, in the first sentence of the second paragraph of my original post. Here, I'll quote it:

"She did it."

Thus there is no "challenge" to which to rise.

I'm sufficiently familiar with this thread to know the drill for what happens next. Knox supporters will attempt to turn the discussion back to minutia and trivialities, offering alternate explanations to individual pieces of evidence. What they don't seem to realize -- or in fact do realize, but simply choose to ignore -- is that each alternative to "she did it" adds yet another layer of complexity and implausibility. Here, let me demonstrate. (And bear in mind that since Knox from day 1 pegged her innocence on Sollecito's, anything that implicates him implicates her. I'm sure Knox supporters don't like that situation much, but take it up with her, not me.)

* DNA on bra clasp: Contamination, or conspiracy, or bad luck, or...she did it.

Contamination or conspiracy. Given that we know the clasp was mishandled, conspiracy isn't needed.

* Blood on knife: Contamination, or conspiracy, or alternate reality in which Kercher actually did visit Sollecito's flat, or...she did it.

There was no blood on the knife. The knife was tested for blood and came back negative, using a test more sensitive than the DNA test. There was DNA on the test sample, but not blood.

* Knox lying to implicate ex-boss: Psychotic break with reality, or (shucks, I really don't really know what else), or...she did it.

Or just a well-known and well-documented response on the part of a vulnerable person to intense interrogation.

Spot any trends there?

Yes. You don't actually understand the Amanda's-conviction-was-unsafe case and you're responding to a straw man version of it.

 

[LondonJohn]

Yeah, but Dahmer didn't have an army of supporters blindly insisting that he was a nice guy and ought to go free. Thus the sympathy shown to "poor Amanda" seems rather out of place when one considers the final moments of the woman she helped kill.

Not really the point. But if that's the issue:

The Guildford Four were a group of four Irish people who were convicted (in 1975) of murders which were the result of bombs placed in the"Horse and Groom" pub in the UK town of Guildford in 1974. Some 15 years after their convictions, new evidence came to light which showed massive elements of police fabrication of statements. Their convictions were overturned and they were released as free people.

The Guildford Four had many passionate (and ultimately victorious) advocates - mostly within human rights groups - for many years before the miscarriage of justice was declared. However, I doubt whether many of those advocates, nor the people who continued to believe in their guilt, nor the wider British public, could remember any of the "characters" in the case beyond the Guildford Four themselves. Virtually nobody would be able to recall the names of the poor five people killed in this bomb attacks. They were four soldiers (two female) and a civilian plasterer, Paul Craig.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Oh, I love that: "misstatements." How antiseptic. Knox accused an innocent person of murder. That's more than a "misstatement"; that's a cold-blooded, calculated attempt to destroy the life of another person, a destruction that, had it been successful, would by itself be a form of murder (if not in the legal sense, certainly in the moral one in that it would have ended the victim's life as he knew it). What "context" is going to mitigate or explain this utterly disgusting, reprehensible act? None, that I can see, save the same pesky one that, unfortunately for Knox supporters, keeps popping up for every other piece of evidence as well: "she did it."

People, especially young people, can be pressured to say almost anything when the police put the screws to them. Have you ever heard of Christopher Ochoa? He confessed to a murder he didn't commit, and he accused another innocent man as well. They spent 12 years in prison, and while they were there, the man Ochoa accused was attacked and suffered permanent brain damage.

Perhaps the most bizarre case of recent times is that of the Norfolk Four. Here's a summary:

Suspect 1 (Danial Williams) is arrested and makes confession, naming no accomplices. But perp DNA doesn't match Suspect 1. So...

Suspect 2 (Joseph Dick) is arrested and makes confession, naming Williams as his accomplice. But perp DNA doesn't match Suspect 2. So...

Suspect 3 (Eric Wilson) is arrested and makes confession, naming Williams and Dick as his accomplices. But perp DNA doesn't match Suspect 3. So...

Suspect 4 (Derek Tice) is arrested and makes confession, naming Williams, Dick, and Wilsom as his accomplices. But perp DNA doesn't match Suspect 4. So...

Three more suspects are arrested, none of whose DNA matches the perp, but they refuse to confess.

Eventually, the guy who did it, who is in jail for something else, confesses. His DNA matches the perp. So...

The authorities mount a full-court press to convict ALL their suspects, because to do otherwise would be to admit they made a mistake. And that is one thing they will not do. It took a long time to get those guys out of prison.

 

[Stellafane]

Prescient Insight of the Day:

Nothing

You had us at "far more knowledgeable," Stellafane.

Heh, again with more insults. Not unexpected however; I have enough experience with conspiracy theorists to know that if you attempt to engage them in any meaningful discussion, they quickly exhaust what little ammunition they have and in frustration their "arguments" inevitably devolve into personal insults. So although I'm a bit surprised with the alacrity with which my expectation came to pass, I can't really say I'm surprised by it.

 

[Stellafane]

People, especially young people, can be pressured to say almost anything when the police put the screws to them.

Sorry, this is total nonsense. Knox wasn't pressured into a damn thing; she in fact volunteered her "information." Face it, what Knox did was totally despicable and disgusting. Whatever you may think of Knox's guilt or innocence concerning the murder, you're going to have to deal with the fact that this is what she did, it was horrible and hideous, and the most plausible explanation for it is that she's guilty and tried to deflect blame elsewhere. Hand waving it away isn't going to change that fact one bit.