OK - so now you concede that it is not common for burglars to defecate at the scene, merely that it's "not unknown". Thus, even though you hold that it's unlikely for any given burglar to do so, you think that in this case, Rudy did. Why?
Let's go for another trip around the repetition roundabout. The defence's job is not to prove that they know exactly why the Texas Sharpshooter put every bullet exactly where it landed. It is merely to demonstrate that the bullet's location is not proof beyond reasonable doubt that the accused did it.
We have demonstrated that sometimes burglars leave stools at the scene of a crime. It is therefore not extraordinary that Rudy did so in the process of a burglary, and it is not evidence that some alternative story where Rudy was not a lone housebreaker is true. Our job is done.
Actually, no. That's an additional theory, not an alternative one. There is no "alternative theory" to AK's false statements - they are demonstrably false statements. The best one can do is to charitably attribute all of the misstatements to "memory lapses" or "temporary amnesia" or "false memories".
Or statements taken out of context, or statements made in an attempt to make sense of being told that there was DNA where it shouldn't have been, or that witnesses had claimed to have seen them where they had not been.
Good catch, Mr.D. I'd also note that the paragraph before the discussion of youth as a factor goes into more detail regarding dispositional vulnerabilities:
I've seen no evidence that Amanda was especially eager to please others and avoid confrontation. I've also seen no evidence that she is mentally retarded or particularly suggestible. Finally, I've seen no evidence that she was highly anxious, fearful, depressed, delusional, or otherwise psychologically disordered. This citation does not appear to support the "coerced false confession" theory.
This isn't bingo, and you don't need to tick every box to win. Perfectly normal people can crack and make false statements too, those are just conditions that predispose people to do so and Amanda was subject to some of those conditions (youth, naivety, possibly drug use, probably sleep deprivation and almost certainly innocence of the crime in question).
It should also be noted, yet again, that in Amanda's case it was NOT a false confession at any rate, but rather a false accusation. The given citation is completely silent with regard to false accusations. Or false statements. The title of the piece is "False Confessions: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for Reform", which I note that Kevin_Lowe neglected to mention in his post.
It's funny that you aren't from PMF, because this is one of their favourite talking points and it's also totally meaningless. I deliberately avoid characterising Amanda's statement as a "false confession" myself, as opposed to a "false statement", to head off PMFers who want to head down that tangent.
So in response: Firstly, you have not shown the existence of some natural point of cleavage in human neurology such that circumstances which can provoke a false confession can not produce other false statements. Secondly, we have already cited case studies of people hauled in by police making false statements that incriminated themselves and other innocent people, just as Amanda's statement is taken to do by guilters. Therefore I conclude that this is a semantic argument in the pejorative sense: an attempt to muddle the waters with irrelevant word games.
I'm always amused by the "In my experience I never ..." sort of statements which pop up in Internet discussions because they are so often promptly contradicted by someone whose experience is entirely different.
I'll field this one. I've rented several furnished apartments (mostly in college towns) and any number of 'extended stay' units while working on out-of-town projects. All of the ones which provided kitchen cutlery as part of the "furnishings" quite pointedly noted that they had been inventoried, and made me sign a document acknowledging such before allowing possession of the unit.
There. My experiences meet your experiences. I guess that makes it a wash.
If you want to read and respond to what I actually wrote, I said "I have never yet encountered a landlord who
regularly inventoried the contents of the cutlery drawer". Neither have you, from what you have stated. At worst a guilty Amanda and Raffaele would have to have replaced the knife by the time they moved out of the apartment. There was no immediate threat of discovery by means of an ill-timed fork inventory, which was the claim I refuted.
