Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

a day late and a dollar short

I find it amusing that some people can't tell the difference between these two things:

1) Evidence containing DNA, which was collected in a proper and timely fashion, then stored in sealed, sterile containers for an indefinite number of years (even 30-40 years) before the DNA was analysed and identified.

2) Evidence containing DNA which was left at the crime scene, moved around on a dirty, dusty floor, placed within a pile of clothes, bags and other detritus, left in that condition for 47 days, then collected in an improper fashion and analysed.

Ironically, a failure to differentiate between these two things is truly asinine.....

LJ,

I agree with your points and would add:

2b) Evidence collected after the suspects were paraded through town and incarcerated.

2c) Evidence collected after another piece of evidence (a shoeprint) could no longer be attributed to the same suspect.

These last points would make it more challenging for any forensic worker to maintain objectivity, and I would argue that they make it impossible to maintain the appearance of objectivity.

I also agree with the comments here to the effect that the real or seeming lies attributed to Amanda or Raffaele keep coming up in discussions with those who lean strongly toward their guilt.

 

[RoseMontague]

Raffaele lied in the hope that by providing an explanation for a given forensic result, he might secure his freedom. It was unwise, but it proves nothing with regard to his guilt. His reason for believing that such evidence existed was simply that the police told him about it.

Charlie, I have to say your responses are most often very reasonable. I believe Rafaelle lied too and there is no translation misunderstanding about whose hand he was referring to in his story.
I also agree it does not prove his guilt but I really find it a stretch to think an intelligent 24 year old man would even write something so incriminating and obviously false if he was completely innocent of any wrongdoing. I would think, in writing in his own personal journal, away from the police station, an innocent man would vehemently deny this so-called evidence and continue to avow it simply wasn't possible and that there must be a huge mistake or contamination at the lab. He wrote the story as if he was recounting an incident that really happened. There was no conjecture.

The prosecution also writes a story as if recounting an incident that really happened. They should have said it simply was not possible and admitted they made a huge mistake.

 

[christianahannah]

LJ,

I agree with your points and would add:

2b) Evidence collected after the suspects were paraded through town and incarcerated.

2c) Evidence collected after another piece of evidence (a shoeprint) could no longer be attributed to the same suspect.

These last points would make it more challenging for any forensic worker to maintain objectivity, and I would argue that they make it impossible to maintain the appearance of objectivity.

I also agree with the comments here to the effect that the real or seeming lies attributed to Amanda or Raffaele keep coming up in discussions with those who lean strongly toward their guilt.

Is there video available of the suspects paraded around town and was their treatment different than that of other suspects of similar cases?

Is this the same shoe print that was discarded as evidence against the suspect in May 2008 when Rudy confessed that the shoe print probably belonged to him (are there transcripts of this confession)? Wasn't most evidence collected before this date?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Charlie, I have to say your responses are most often very reasonable. I believe Rafaelle lied too and there is no translation misunderstanding about whose hand he was referring to in his story.
I also agree it does not prove his guilt but I really find it a stretch to think an intelligent 24 year old man would even write something so incriminating and obviously false if he was completely innocent of any wrongdoing. I would think, in writing in his own personal journal, away from the police station, an innocent man would vehemently deny this so-called evidence and continue to avow it simply wasn't possible and that there must be a huge mistake or contamination at the lab. He wrote the story as if he was recounting an incident that really happened. There was no conjecture.

Thank you for the compliment.

Raffaele was in a situation

where the truth wasn't working for him. He'd have said he was abducted by aliens if he thought it might get him out of jail.

Interestingly, however, Amanda was also keeping a journal, and she wrote exactly what you think you would have written:

It's impossible that Meredith's DNA is on the knife because she's never been to Raffaele's apartment before.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

It helps to remember that while prosecutors, police and crime lab technicians are presumed to be working to ensure justice, their actual motivation is often winning the case to please their boss. And when your boss is certain that the suspect is guilty, why not shade the truth to make sure a guilty person goes to jail?

I think that is what Stefanoni did in testing the knife blade. It was also she who rubbed the bra fastener like a magic lamp, hoping a genie would pop up in the lab, as indeed one did. But it could have been a fluke.

In the US, a guy named Fred Zain had a long run of success, until someone checked his work and discovered he was a phony who kept his job by making prosecutors happy.

 

[Danceme]

I find it amusing that some people can't tell the difference between these two things:

1) Evidence containing DNA, which was collected in a proper and timely fashion, then stored in sealed, sterile containers for an indefinite number of years (even 30-40 years) before the DNA was analysed and identified.

2) Evidence containing DNA which was left at the crime scene, moved around on a dirty, dusty floor, placed within a pile of clothes, bags and other detritus, left in that condition for 47 days, then collected in an improper fashion and analysed.

Ironically, a failure to differentiate between these two things is truly asinine.....

Well I'm glad we've got that cleared up!

It helps to remember that while prosecutors, police and crime lab technicians are presumed to be working to ensure justice, their actual motivation is often winning the case to please their boss. And when your boss is certain that the suspect is guilty, why not shade the truth to make sure a guilty person goes to jail?

To please their boss?????? Now I've heard everything. Since when is Mignini their employer?

The prosecution also writes a story as if recounting an incident that really happened. They should have said it simply was not possible and admitted they made a huge mistake.

There's a HUGE difference Rose. It is the prosecution's job to create a scenario for the court which, to them, fits the evidence and they can have no way of knowing the whole truth of what happened in all it's intricacies. This is what happens in trials. It is the sole job of an innocent person to refute evidence against himself, not tie it up in a nice neat little package incriminating himself with falsehoods and relaying them as truth. If you are innocent you don't write stories explaining why the evidence is correct ie: 'yes Merediith's DNA is on the knife and it is there because I pricked her once with that knife' knowing full well the story is complete rubbish. He lied to explain away why the DNA was there instead of saying 'hey, that's impossible'. Plus he wasn't under duress, it was his own journal.

 

[Dan O.]

Dan, when I look at the guy in the police t shirt standing on the porch in front of the planter I can tell that if he stood atop that planter and leaned way over to open the shutter he would fall.

That may be true but it's totally irrelevant.

That photo doesn't convince me but perhaps Charlie has others.

Charlie has lots of photos. He has one taken from the back deck showing that the road is visible over the top of the roof on the 2nd building. But you believe based on no evidence at all that the deck is obscured by that building. How can photographic evidence compete with that?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

How do you know it's a mistranslation? Are you fluent in Italian?

I've read multiple translations: The most literal ones make it obvious that Raffaele used an ambiguous pronoun to identify the person he claims he touched with the knife. However it has been mistranslated in some instances to make it appear that he unambiguously identified Meredith as the person touched.

No, in context it's quite clear that Raffaele was referring to Meredith's hand.

This is simply false. I have read the relevant passage in context, thank you very much, so you cannot bluff me on that point. The sentence in question is ambiguous, but it makes perfect sense if it refers to Amanda and makes no sense at all if it refers to Meredith.

You have ignored the points I made earlier: It is ludicrous to believe that RS decided to claim out of the blue that Meredith had been at his house when he was cooking with that knife, when nobody has ever suggested before or since that Meredith was ever at his house. Whereas it is uncontested that Amanda was at his house frequently, and could conceivably have picked up DNA from Meredith on her hand at some point. It's not a plausible source for the DNA on the knife based on what we know now, but based on what RS had been told it presumably seemed to him the least implausible story that explained the facts.

Kevin, just by you saying it is a total mistranslation doesn't make it true. I've read several translations by native Italian speakers who say he is referring to Meredith's hand. It is the only conclusion which makes sense given the context around the quote so I believe them, sorry.

One again I've read that context, and it simply does not say what you claim it says, unless the "context" is being "helpfully" interpolated by the translator.

RS is a bad writer, and wrote an ambiguous sentence. I've marked enough student essays to know that many university students can't specify the subject of a sentence unambiguously even when they are writing on a word processor for assessment purposes, rather than just filling out a diary. If every student who screwed up their grammar that way was a murderer then there would be a massacre on campus every semester.

Until you can show a quote from RS indicating that we really did mean Meredith at the time he wrote that sentence, there's no evidence of guilt or deception in that passage.

 

[Antony]

Police behaviour

I am new to this discussion, and I freely admit that people here are better informed than me - some of the threads about access to the broken window have left me far behind.

I started taking an interest in this only after the conviction of Amanda and Raffaele; so I picked up the details sporadically, often from snippets on the numerous discussion boards on news items. As soon as it became clear to me that Amanda and Raffaele came to the attention of the police at the murder scene when the victim was discovered, I was convinced that it was a frame-up. I know of too many other cases where police have built a dodgy case against the first people they have come across, and then made it stick in court essentially by getting their assertions treated as fact.

In this case everything I have read since has confirmed that first impression. Key to me is the behaviour of the Perugia police and the conduct of the investigation; it seems that they:

1. announced at the start that they didn't need any evidence to know that the pair were guilty;
2. interviewed Amanda for an excessive amount of time without safeguards;
3. gathered, handled and analysed evidence improperly;
4. leaked distorted information to the media.

On the other hand, there are numerous claims that the 2 of them "lied and changed their stories", and that Amanda "accused an innocent man". Is there any basis for these stories that is independent of the Perugia police? This isn't meant as a rhetorical question - I would like to know how to respond to posters who repeat these claims.

My other question is that I've read in some blogs that the police took Amanda's laptop and wrecked the hard drive (suggesting that they were deliberately destroying evidence). Is this true? (I haven't been able to find confirmation of it in the Injustice in Perugia website or elsewhere.)

Finally, is there an easily-downloadable version of the judges' motivation report in English translation? I have asked this elsewhere and been pointed to various sources, which aren't really easy to use.

 

[Fine]

I think that there most definitely was a confessional element to Knox's statements of the 6th November, in addition to a false accusation. Whether one believes that the confessional part of the statements was true or false (owing to coercion etc) is a finer point.

How one can say that Knox's statements contained no element of confession is bemusing to me. After all, in these statements she confesses to a number of serious criminal offences, including assisting a murderer, failing to aid a victim, and giving false statements to police during their earlier investigations. While I'm not certain of Italian statute regarding these sorts of offences, I'd be astonished if these sorts of acts didn't in some way constitute criminal offences on the statute books. Certainly, in the UK and the US, these sorts of offences typically carry substantial custodial sentences upon conviction.

So, can we agree that Knox's statements do constitute both a confession and an accusation? The fact that the confessional part is not a confession to the act of murder itself is irrelevant. And we know for sure that the accusational element was false. I strongly suspect that the whole of the statement was false, and that it was made in reaction to suggestion and coercion from the police.

________________________

Well, whether or not her statements constitute a confession, according to her testimony in court Amanda sure didn't think she was confessing to a serious crime. Asked in court why she signed the statement accusing Patrick of the murder, she said she did so because she wanted to "go home." She may have been naive about police practices in Italy, but surely she knew that you don't confess to the cops---anywhere in the world---and then go home.

///

 

[Kestrel]

Finally, is there an easily-downloadable version of the judges' motivation report in English translation? I have asked this elsewhere and been pointed to various sources, which aren't really easy to use.

A scan of the judges report in Italian can be found online here, but to the best of my knowledge a good English translation of the complete document is not currently available.

Also, welcome to JREF.

 

[Fine]

Apparently although it used to be thought that false confessions were only made by people with learning difficulties, psychological problems and so on, in fact various personality characteristics are more important (high trust in authority, suggestibility) and also situational factors (a high pressure interrogation late at night, being interviewed in a foreign language, unscrupulous techniques used by the investigators).



A few more interesting quotes from the same article:



That last one sounds oddly familiar...

_______________________

Thanks for the link.

This also from the same article:

"This led him to produce the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scales (GSS), which are now used throughout the world when the issue of false confessions arises."
So if it's not malice, and not mental pathology, that led to Amanda's confession/accusation, is it then her "suggestibility"? If true why hasn't she been given this test? If that is the explanation you'd think her defense attorneys would be offering such evidence of the fact. Or maybe she was given the test, but her attorneys didn't like the results????

///

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

On the other hand, there are numerous claims that the 2 of them "lied and changed their stories", and that Amanda "accused an innocent man". Is there any basis for these stories that is independent of the Perugia police? This isn't meant as a rhetorical question - I would like to know how to respond to posters who repeat these claims.

The basis for the claim that Amanda "accused an innocent man" is the statement she made at the end of a lengthy interrogation session involving physical abuse by Perugia police, where she said that she wasn't even sure she really remembered it, but maybe she kind of remembered being on the couch in her house with her hands over her ears while her employer, a guy called Lumumba, murdered Meredith.

One possibility, I suppose, is that is that Amanda was sufficiently knowledgeable about the phenomenon of internalised false confessions that she could produce a fake one, but she was simultaneously ignorant of the fact that lots of people get convicted after making such confessions and thus ignorant of the fact that making one is a really bad idea. That seems weird, but whatever.

The other possibility is that she was making an internalised false confession, a well-documented possibility for someone after lengthy and sometimes violent interrogation.

The Amanda-is-guilty posters really, really need Amanda's statement to have been entirely voluntary make any kind of case against her, since otherwise there's no evidence of substance that ties her to the murder at all. However since it reads exactly like an internalised false confession and was produced under the conditions that lead to internalised false confessions, a phenomenon which as far as we know Amanda had no knowledge of, I don't find that position very credible.

As for the claims that AK and RS "lied" or "changed their stories" all you can ask people to do in that situation is specify what change they think they made, or what lie they told. You'll find that it usually boils down to misinterpreting perfectly natural lapses of memory as attempts to deceive, misinterpreting RS and AK's attempts to reconcile claimed police evidence with what they knew to be true as admissions that the evidence was sound, or taking the statements of dubiously credible witnesses as Gospel truth when they contradict AK and RS's statements.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

shoe print and parade

Is there video available of the suspects paraded around town and was their treatment different than that of other suspects of similar cases?

Is this the same shoe print that was discarded as evidence against the suspect in May 2008 when Rudy confessed that the shoe print probably belonged to him (are there transcripts of this confession)? Wasn't most evidence collected before this date?

Christiana,

I believe that one of Sollecito's family members first pointed out that the shoe print had the wrong number of rings to be from his shoe. I don't have a citation in front of me, so maybe someone else can help.

The improvised parade happened on 6 November, and one resident of the city said that the only time he could recall anything similar was when a mafia leader was arrested. This is discussed in Murder in Italy. By the time the clasp was collected, Amanda's photo had been hanging in Rome in the LE offices for roughly a month. These actions, along with the police leaks, were (to say the least) unhelpful toward the forensic police maintaining the appearance of objectivity, IMHO.

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

Charlie has lots of photos. He has one taken from the back deck showing that the road is visible over the top of the roof on the 2nd building. But you believe based on no evidence at all that the deck is obscured by that building. How can photographic evidence compete with that?

Are you suggesting that the deck is equally as visible from the road as is the window to Filomena's bedroom? I haven't seen any photos which would suggest that, yet. Quite the opposite in fact. Please share.

Do you believe that someone on the deck of the apartment, seen from the viewpoint of passing traffic (if seen at all), would be as noticeable as someone scaling the sheer wall to the second floor? If they were noticed do you believe that it would be considered equally out of place?

Should the headlights of an approaching vehicle cause concern that they might be seen, all someone on that deck would have to do is sit down at the table while it passed. This would not normally be viewed as a suspicious activity. OTOH, doing the Spiderman thing up a wall which presents itself to oncoming traffic very much like the screen at a drive-in movie might be reason for some remark. Especially if it is being done two or three times in succession, as has been suggested by some hypotheses.

I have seen nothing convincing yet to suggest that a burglar would choose Filomena's window as a preferred means of entry, and more than a little that he would not. We have as at least one given that the burglar had no reluctance to force entry, and quite noisily as well. Why would one decide against the easy access of windows and, even better, patio doors at a convenient height, and instead choose to indulge in acrobatics on the single most publicly exposed side of the building?

I am not persuaded by speculation that Guede noticed Filomena's shutters were not fully closed, and decided to break in there as a result. For one thing, it is only conjecture that they were not closed enough that it would be noticeable to begin with. We only know that they were not latched. Then it is still conjecture that this condition actually was noticed, and worst of all, none of that would necessarily make the window that much more attractive an entry point. After all, this apartment is not an impregnable fortress, nor are those window shutters the gates of Troy, even when latched. Someone whose plan was to gain entry, and who was unconcerned about either damage or noise would have little trouble getting in under any circumstances.

 

[Danceme]

That may be true but it's totally irrelevant.

Why is it irrelevant? Isn't it the scenario you are proposing, that Rudy stood on the planter, leaned way over and opened the shutters, got down to throw the rock and then back to the top of the planter to lean way over again, hang by his fingers with a foot on top of the lower window casing and somehow from this position extending his arm through the hole of broken glass to open the latch, open the window and hoist himself up and through the window?
Isn't this the scenario you proposed a page or so back?????

 

[Chris_Halkides]

lack of independence

To please their boss?????? Now I've heard everything. Since when is Mignini their employer?

No one said Mignini is Stefanoni's boss; you are refuting an argument that was not made. The problem of forensic science departments being less than independent of LE has been discussed already, and cites were given.

 

[quadraginta]

My, my. I just don't know what to think. What was Sollicito up to when he wrote about the knife?

Charlie says,

<snip>

Raffaele was in a situation where the truth wasn't working for him. He'd have said he was abducted by aliens if he thought it might get him out of jail.

<snip>

Kevin says,

<snip>

It is ludicrous to believe that RS decided to claim out of the blue that Meredith had been at his house when he was cooking with that knife, when nobody has ever suggested before or since that Meredith was ever at his house.

<snip>

And this is from two of his staunchest defenders.

Yet the idea that he simply tried to come up with an explanation that might pass muster because he had his own, less innocent reasons to know Meredith's DNA could have been found on the knife is somehow utterly implausible.

 

[Kestrel]

I have seen nothing convincing yet to suggest that a burglar would choose Filomena's window as a preferred means of entry, and more than a little that he would not. We have as at least one given that the burglar had no reluctance to force entry, and quite noisily as well. Why would one decide against the easy access of windows and, even better, patio doors at a convenient height, and instead choose to indulge in acrobatics on the single most publicly exposed side of the building?

As I stated before, Filomena's window is on the side of the cottage away from the nearest streetlight. At night it is in the shadows. Trees on that side of the house block the view from most sections of the road. Someone driving past on the road would have to look sideways at the right time to see a person climbing into the window.

Describing it as the single most publicly exposed side of the building is simply false.

The balcony is not only lit by the nearby streetlamp, it's also positioned almost directly ahead for cars traveling South on the road. Headlights of cars will light up anyone on the balcony. And as Dan O. pointed out, anyone standing on the balcony breaking a window or forcing patio doors has no place to hide if someone in the cottage should suddenly wake up and turn on the lights.

Regardless of this, your argument is based on the premiss that any burglar would have to choose the route you decided is optimal. A rather astounding leap of logic.

But apparently you have to keep pretending that Rudy, who has a history of entering buildings where he doesn't belong via windows, could not possibly have entered the cottage via a window. For the prosecution conspiracy theory to hold, he must have been let in by Amanda.

 

[christianahannah]

Christiana,

I believe that one of Sollecito's family members first pointed out that the shoe print had the wrong number of rings to be from his shoe. I don't have a citation in front of me, so maybe someone else can help.

The improvised parade happened on 6 November, and one resident of the city said that the only time he could recall anything similar was when a mafia leader was arrested. This is discussed in Murder in Italy. By the time the clasp was collected, Amanda's photo had been hanging in Rome in the LE offices for roughly a month. These actions, along with the police leaks, were (to say the least) unhelpful toward the forensic police maintaining the appearance of objectivity, IMHO.

Chris,

I do understand that to be the case with regards to the shoes that were taken from Raffaele, however, the police probably assumed he wasn't limited to owning one pair of shoes (I don't know how many shoes were taken from Raffaele). It wasn't until later in the investigation/Rudy's interrogation that the shoe print could be assigned to Rudy rather than Raffaele. I might be wrong with regards to my timeline, however, I don't believe the police were trying to fabricate evidence to keep Raffaele in prison.

I don't want to assign ulterior motives to the forensic police without questioning and knowing why something was done. Why was a photo of Amanda hanging in the Rome offices? Were not the tests done on the clasp after December 18? The results of those tests were attributed to Raffaele, not Amanda. So the photo didn't influence those results against Amanda.

I also, don't believe the forensic police were influenced by the hoopla surrounding the case or because they were corrupt and wanted to get Amanda at all costs. I do realize corruption can exist in law enforcement, however, I don't believe that to be the case in this matter.