Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Mrs.Columbo]

We are only at the end of the beginning of this affair, odds are Amanda and Raffaele will be freed before it comes to that. Their innocence is far easier to ascertain in this day and age than Dreyfus' was, and far more obvious to the casual observer, thus chances are it won't go much further.

You cannot compare the Dreyfus affair with the Knox case. Dreyfus was not accused and convicted having butchered one of his fellow military man whilst under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
He was accused of beeing a spy, giving informations of new artillerie weapons to the Germans. Betrayal of military secrets is one of the highest crime in every country.
**
Knox-case:

While reading up available media informations about this case I noticed that right from the beginning (mostly) the U.S. media claimed that the italians have created a witch hunt against Ms. Knox, headed by pm Mignini with his alleged claims of satanic rituals. Until now I could not find things like that in the italian press.
**
That is the whole dilemma:
for the italian media the headline was: Omicidio Meredith,
while the U.S. media claimed: U.S. student Knox accused.
**
And now the Knox-supporters seems to be in a hole, where it is hard to come out without loosing face. But seeing the evidence and testimonies as they exists, and not twisting around and insert other meanings into it, could be a good base for debate with regard to the upcoming appeals.
**


Thank you for listening.

 

[Kaosium]

Kaosium: "Their innocence is far easier to ascertain in this day and age than Dreyfus' was, and far more obvious to the casual observer, thus chances are it won't go much further."

Thanks for this Kaosium. I thought that the appeal would be judged by people who are acquainted with the facts of the case.

Now I understand that "casual observers" are to make a difference. This must be why there is so much shaky opinion posted on this site. Those "casual observers" must have been really convinced of their innocence at one stage. Unfortunately for poor Raff and Mandy, Some Alibi comes along and puts them right.

All he showed was the weakness of the case against them. A bunch of irrelevancies twisted by sophistry to appear 'suspicious.' That against the actual evidence which shows they couldn't have done it. It's silly to think the former could win in the end.

They're already starting the movies, and it's still the first stage of the process in the Italian system. Those trolling messageboards and comments sections aren't going to make much difference then. The media blitz will begin again, and the tabloid trash angle is played out, no one will really believe it.

 

[LondonJohn]

Not necessarily. By the time he gets back to his apartment, the blood on his pants would have dried enough so it wouldn't be dripping and if he was wearing gloves he wouldn't leave traces from his hands until he got into his bathroom to properly wash up. Even blood on shoes from steping in a pool of blood will wear off after several blocks to the point where it cannot be traced even with Luminal.

Possibly correct, but he would still have had to wash blood from his hands and arms, and I very much doubt whether all the blood on his clothing would have dried so much as to leave no traces whatsoever.

Anyhow, I think there's a very logical reason why Guede would have claimed that he went home still covered in Meredith's blood - even though it's a no-brainer to guess how risky a tactic that would have been. It seems to me that Guede needed to give the impression that he wasn't feeling guilty or responsible for the murder itself. This is obvious, since his position has always been that others committed the murder, and he came across the scene and actually tried to assist Meredith.

Had he admitted to cleaning himself of blood before leaving the cottage, this would have given weight to the contention that he had something to hide or be worried about. In addition, he needed to give the impression that he was in a state of panic about "discovering" the dying Meredith, and that this is why he didn't call for assistance. Admitting to taking time out to clean himself up within the cottage would rather contradict this. Thus I believe he felt that claiming he left the cottage without removing any blood was "in his favour", even if it wasn't true.

Of course, if Guede really was in a state of panic and disarray after "discovering" Meredith dying with blood gushing from her neck - so much so that he was unable to summon assistance and worried about being falsely accused of being the murderer - then he would most likely have get back to the safe haven of his apartment as soon as possible and laid low, contemplating the situation. Instead, of course, he went out dancing in the clubs, where many people saw him acting entirely (perhaps even overtly) "normally". This in itself, to me, tends to disprove his whole version of events regarding that night.

I think it's most likely that he killed Meredith, cleaned himself up to avoid having to get home covered in blood (which naturally would have looked very suspicious if he were spotted), got home, and decided to go out dancing in order to attempt to create some sort of alibi. Then, when he came to terms with things the following day, and got a sense of the intense police activity, he decided to get far out of town. The dancing and the flight to Germany can't be identified as much other than the actions of a very guilty man, in my view.

 

[treehorn]

Internalized False Confessions

That's nice. The fact is that police typically induce them thinking that they are genuine confessions, and the police then take a great deal of persuading otherwise (if indeed they can ever be persuaded otherwise at all).

Lowe,

You've made much of the "internalized false confession" as a means of explaining away Knox's statements to police, but, in making this claim, you've elided a great deal of the literature in respect of this phenomenon.

A good place for you to start is an article published in 1999 by R.P. Conti in the JCAAWP. It provides a brief survey of key findings in respect of IFC's and suggests that people at risk for IFC tend to fall into one (or more) of these 4 categories:

1) children

2) the "mentally retarded";

3) the "feeble-minded"; &

4) the "exceptionally introverted."

You'll note that Amanda Knox does not fit into any of these categories.

 

[treehorn]

Consider the film "The Thin Blue Line." There is one Vidor, TX policeman who clearly knows that Randall Adams is not the shooter and David Harris is. Yet even he does not come out and say so on camera, he just implies it.

That is an excellent documentary.

However, the fact that wrongful convictions have occurred in certain jurisdictions in the past is, in no way shape or form, proof that a wrongful conviction has, in fact, occurred in the case of Knox, Sollecito & Guede.

 

[Kaosium]

You cannot compare the Dreyfus affair with the Knox case. Dreyfus was not accused and convicted having butchered one of his fellow military man whilst under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
He was accused of beeing a spy, giving informations of new artillerie weapons to the Germans. Betrayal of military secrets is one of the highest crime in every country.

The connection is they were both railroaded, and in fact the crime they were accused of is even more bizarre than something mundane like selling secrets. That was the invention of the prosecutor, and he's the real story here, just as the real story of the Dreyfus affair was not really Captain Dreyfus, but the actions of the Third Republic in convicting him. That's why he is remembered, not for what he was accused of.

**
Knox-case:

While reading up available media informations about this case I noticed that right from the beginning (mostly) the U.S. media claimed that the italians have created a witch hunt against Ms. Knox, headed by pm Mignini with his alleged claims of satanic rituals. Until now I could not find things like that in the italian press.
**
That is the whole dilemma:
for the italian media the headline was: Omicidio Meredith,
while the U.S. media claimed: U.S. student Knox accused.
**
And now the Knox-supporters seems to be in a hole, where it is hard to come out without loosing face. But seeing the evidence and testimonies as they exists, and not twisting around and insert other meanings into it, could be a good base for debate with regard to the upcoming appeals.
**


Thank you for listening.

I understand, and what I am saying is when people actually look at it closely, the 'evidence' against Raffaele and Amanda is ridiculous, and the actions of the prosecutor absurd. How many people has he filed charges against that criticized him? The tally is up to a dozen or so now, isn't it? Some are just writers and bloggers overseas! Italians have to live with this guy, I can't see them deciding they want much to do with a guy whose delusional and throws innocent people in jail just because they criticize him.

 

[colonelhall]

Kaosium" All he showed was the weakness of the case against them."

Even your "casual observers" will laugh at this! Ho! Ho!

It was good to see some well reasoned comments on the case and I hope that SomeAlibi will be back again in the future. Oh! Oh! Here comes Kevin with his mole whacker. I wondered were he had been.

 

[LondonJohn]

Just to clarify something: I've never posted a single comment on the Evening Standard website. In fact, I've never posted a single comment on a single newspaper website. Ever. You see, I don't feel the need to promote my opinion onto any of the media coverage on this case. I don't view this as a crusade (unlike many, who clearly are on a mission to flood comments sections in some sort of attempt to "convince" readers of a particular viewpoint).

As I've said before, I don't care whatsoever about public opinion regarding this criminal case. And I find it hard to understand why others think it is so important. There's clearly an organised effort going on to pick up on every piece of media commentary, together with a somewhat warped effort to dig into the backgrounds of the people involved in writing or broadcasting these commentaries. It's not about the Kercher case at this point: it's about something else, something far stranger.

2+2=5, indeed.

 

[LondonJohn]

Lowe,

You've made much of the "internalized false confession" as a means of explaining away Knox's statements to police, but, in making this claim, you've elided a great deal of the literature in respect of this phenomenon.

A good place for you to start is an article published in 1999 by R.P. Conti in the JCAAWP. It provides a brief survey of key findings in respect of IFC's and suggests that people at risk for IFC tend to fall into one (or more) of these 4 categories:

1) children

2) the "mentally retarded";

3) the "feeble-minded"; &

4) the "exceptionally introverted."

You'll note that Amanda Knox does not fit into any of these categories.

Watch this:

http://www.yourdiscovery.com/video/secrets-of-interrogation-admission-of-guilt/

Which of these four categories does this guy fit into?

 

[Chris C]

However, I know the hall was, and the print of Amanda's outside Meredith's door was, I think, the only one found between Meredith's room and the bathroom.

There are a few problems with the print you are referring to.
1. No Knox DNA.
2. No Meredith DNA.
3. Not compared to anyones but Knox's foot.
4. Not even a positive match, only possible.
5. 2 other females living in that apartment. No reference samples taken.

 

[Chris C]

Watch this:

http://www.yourdiscovery.com/video/secrets-of-interrogation-admission-of-guilt/

Which of these four categories does this guy fit into?

Fear is a powerful incentive.

 

[Kaosium]

Kaosium" All he showed was the weakness of the case against them."

Even your "casual observers" will laugh at this! Ho! Ho!

It was good to see some well reasoned comments on the case and I hope that SomeAlibi will be back again in the future. Oh! Oh! Here comes Kevin with his mole whacker. I wondered were he had been.

People can see the difference between a real discussion of the issue and a kook farm. A week or so ago I visited a couple sites at the exhortation of a posting in the comments section, I wanted to see what everyone had to say. What I saw was a troll's nest with a paranoid version of reality, where nothing outside the party line was permitted to be posted and they encouraged each other to troll other sites and comments sections.

Do you have any idea of how that comes across? People have seen it before, all over the net.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

fitting the bathmat image to the references

Have you seen this post on PMF, Chris? Piktor seems to have inadvertently shown that the print matches Guede much better than Sollecito, though I'm not quite sure that was his/her intention, LOL. The outline of the big toe is a much closer match for Guede, while the mark on the mat extends above and below Sollecito's print. That would be even clearer if Piktor hadn't drawn a random blob under RS's big toe which isn't there on the actual footprint (I think this is to accommodate the arrow Rinaldi's drawn), which would have shown that the clear break between his toe and forefoot isn't there on the bathmat print. The mark the defence argued was the second toe is outside the line of both prints, thus supporting their argument. I don't see how it could possibly be from the big toe, looking at piktor's diagram; as the defence say, it would make it completely abnormally shaped. The curve of the instep is closer to the shape of Guede's foot, while the left side of Sollecito's foot doesn't match either (it bulges out too much, instead of extending straight down as on the bathmat print and on Guede's foot). Also notice just how far outside the actual width of the big toe print Rinaldi had to measure to get his 'millimetre-precise' measurement.

Surprisingly little comment about it on that forum.

Katy_did,

I agree, but kudos to Piktor for making the attempt. The 99 mm measurement looks particularly suspect. Also, Piktor positioned the purple outline of Guede's foot more to the right than I would have done.

 

[colonelhall]

Kaosium: "People can see the difference between a real discussion of the issue and a kook farm."

My point, exactly!

 

[Kaosium]

Kaosium: "People can see the difference between a real discussion of the issue and a kook farm."

My point, exactly!

 

[Chris_Halkides]

appeal

Kaosium" All he showed was the weakness of the case against them."

Even your "casual observers" will laugh at this! Ho! Ho!

It was good to see some well reasoned comments on the case and I hope that SomeAlibi will be back again in the future.

colonelhall,

I think that SomeAlibi is one of the most intelligent commenters at PMF, and I, too, hope he returns. The fact that I found his arguments not very convincing on the whole gives me greater optimism for the appeal than I have felt in some time.

 

[colonelhall]

halides1

It is always good to feel optimistic. I guess that the only ones who are likely to change their minds about this case are the "casual observers" and in my opinion, they will probably be more open to the reasoned arguments of SomeAlibi than the "kook farm" brigade. I know that down on the farm they believe that the "casual observers" are going to be sitting on judgement at the appeal, but I still believe that there are proper judges who will make these decisions.
I am not surprised that you found his arguments "not very convincing" as views on this case are so entrenched. However, if there are any visitors here who had any doubts, one way or another, I would think that SomeAlibi's weekend on JREF would have given them some pause for thought. I would also think that there would have been some neighing and braying down on the farm this weekend.

 

[Fuji]

... it's probably safe to say that Knox did not have an extremely wide variety of clothing and footwear in her possession by November 1st 2007.

Agreed.

Knox's Italian flatmates would have seen her practically every day for the six weeks before the murder, and I strongly suspect that they would have seen most of Knox's limited clothing and footwear during that time.

Agreed.

And unless Knox changed into some sort of special "murder outfit", she was most likely wearing the kind of clothes and shoes that she wore every day on the evening of the 1st.

Agreed (though the existence of a "murder outfit" has been neither established nor disproven).

Yet nobody can remember a piece of clothing or footwear that they'd seen Knox wearing previously that was no longer accounted for.

Tentatively agreed (not having an intimate knowledge of all the evidentiary and testimentorial minutiae in this case, I am not certain).

I'd say that's fairly interesting.

Strongly disagree.

Given that there is no way to establish a definitive inventory of Knox's clothing, before and after the murder, your proposition "nobody can remember a piece of clothing or footwear that they'd seen Knox wearing previously that was no longer accounted for" is completely irrelevant.

Perhaps if an unusually noteworthy item of clothing (e.g. the yellow dress she wore when pictured behind the machine gun) were to have gone missing, that might be noteworthy. Otherwise, this is a completely pointless line of discussion.

 

[Kestrel]

People can see the difference between a real discussion of the issue and a kook farm. A week or so ago I visited a couple sites at the exhortation of a posting in the comments section, I wanted to see what everyone had to say. What I saw was a troll's nest with a paranoid version of reality, where nothing outside the party line was permitted to be posted and they encouraged each other to troll other sites and comments sections.

Do you have any idea of how that comes across? People have seen it before, all over the net.

Do you consider those of us who support Knox part of the kook farm? That seems to be your implication. The idea that somehow courts and prosecutors are always right and anyone who disputes this is a nut case.

What you seem to have missed is that the prosecutor in this case sees complex conspiracies where more rational minds see only simple crimes. He saw the Monster of Florence case not as the work of a serial killer, but as a conspiracy by a Satanic cult operation out of a Masonic Lodge collecting body parts for rituals. His version of this conspiracy also included a cover up of the cult by high ranking security official within the Italian government. The CT included a body swap to make a murder look like a suicide. When that body was exhumed and DNA proved the body had not been swapped, Mignini didn't back down. He claimed the body had been swapped twice. After the Italian courts threw out his entire case as bunk, and cleared all the defendants, Mignini stuck to his guns. Claiming that only he understood the complex nature of crime.

Take away his title as prosecutor and Mignini would be quickly recognized as a CT nut. He shows the classic sign of never backing down. When part of his theory is shown to be wrong, he just expands his conspiracy theory.

In the Knox case, he didn't see a burglary that turned into rape and murder. He saw a conspiracy to rape and murder by two young lovers who had only met eight days earlier. Two young people with no prior history of violence or mental illness. Who we are expected to believe recruited a third person into this conspiracy one of them barely knew and the other had never met.

As the case progressed, misleading and false information was leaked to the press to damage the reputation of the two suspects. We saw a phony photo of a blood soaked bathroom, heard about washing machines running when the police arrived, head that the suspects called the police after the police had already arrived, heard about video evidence that didn't exist. None of these errors were corrected in the tabloid style reporting of this case. We find them repeated to this day all over the web.

But to some, it's easier to call anyone who disputes the Italian prosecutor a kook. Redefining sanity as "taking the side of the authority figure".

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

You cannot compare the Dreyfus affair with the Knox case. Dreyfus was not accused and convicted having butchered one of his fellow military man whilst under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Nor was he accused of sexually molesting toddlers in a church basement. So why did I mention Dreyfus and Kelly Michaels in the same post? ANSWER: because both were victims of wrongful prosecution by authorities who cared only about vindicating their public statements.