Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Scorpion NITE]

Dr. Waterbury has Part III up and it is the best yet.

http://www.sciencespheres.com/2010/10/through-motivation-report-part-iii.html

Hi RoseMontague,

I am usually so busy reading and trying to digest all the posts here and elsewhere that I often forget my manners and don't thank some great contributors for their input. Once again, I nearly clicked on your link immediately to educate myself a little more but thankfully, this time, I remembered that I should show some simple courtesy and acknowledge you.

So, THANK YOU for the link on this occasion and also, thank you for all the others I have usually rushed off to read.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have an appointment with Dr. Waterbury...

 

[Katody Matrass]

Someone had asked for that summary of the Mignini/Comodi appeal (the one asking for a longer jail term for Amanda) that Catnip posted at PMF. The document I have on my docstoc page is in Italian. Here is the link to Catnip's summary:

http://www.perugiamurderfile.org./viewtopic.php?p=55733&sid=c8b49845b4d4f1d75d46aa3b62769af2#p55733

Thanks Rose!

I must say I am Absolutely STUNNED at the weakness of these 'grounds for appeal'. Those grounds for appeal are an embarrassment, and insulting.

 

[Katody Matrass]

And more seriously - Amanda's fine for loud party and Raffaele's replying to Popovic "in cold tone" are stellar reasons for appeal. Convicted criminal (as platonov calls him) Mignini really have outdone himself.

 

[christianahannah]

I would suggest that in the larger scheme of things, this is a dead end. The fact that Amanda made the call does not incriminate her, and the fact that she claims not to remember the call does not incriminate her. The series of calls Amanda made between noon and the time the body was found are entirely consistent with someone who was concerned and was trying to figure out what was going on.

I agree Charlie. Unless there is testimony or a prison conversation to the contrary, I don't see how it could incriminate or was used to incriminate Amanda.

I'm just curious as to why emphasis is placed on this questioning of Amanda by the prosecution because I honestly don't see what some see.

 

[RoseMontague]

Thanks Rose!

I must say I am Absolutely STUNNED at the weakness of these 'grounds for appeal'. Those grounds for appeal are an embarrassment, and insulting.

You are cracking me up, I had forgotten about that comment. In all fairness, Massei makes incredible leaps of faith and unreasonable bounds of logic, followed by unfathomable depths of duplicity to find them guilty, then proceeds to lessen the sentence based on what I can only describe as cruelty disguised as sympathy. The appeal is actually pretty well written in comparison to the Massei report itself.

 

[Dan O.]

I don't have the answer for why Edda was perplexed about the phone call. It could be because Amanda didn't remember the phone call. Perhaps a transcript of the prison conversation may help to better answer that question. I assume the only things not having happened were the phoning of the police and the discovery of Meredith's body. Edda's advice, according to her testimony, was for Amanda to call the police.

Amanda did not make a phone call at NOON! What is there for her to remember! Edda is perplexed because she was told her daughter called before anything had happened. Amanda is perplexed because the first call she remembers was 47 minutes later after lots of things happened. Comodi is the liar that caused this.

I think both Edda and Comodi were puzzled about Amanda's forgetting the phone call. The first call to Edda was made before the door was broken down and Meredith's body discovered; subsequent calls to Edda after the door was broken down. Comodi being a prosecutor is going to question Amanda more extensively about this forgotten call.

Edda was puzzled because Comodi had lied to her about the first call. Comodi is not puzzled. Comodi had all the documentation and knew exactly when the calls were made and had the statements from the postal police concerning what had happened by the time the call was made. Comodi simply lied to create this confusion and lied again to present it in court.

Dan O I would love to review your answers, however, you have quite a few posts under your name and this topic is rather long. Can you give a summary of your answers concerning this subject or point me in the general direction of your posts?

I haven't posted that much since piktor popped this mole up again so my posts on this topic shouldn't be that hard to find. The simple facts are: Amanda didn't make a call to her mom at noon. Amanda didn't remember making a call at noon. Therefore, Amanda's memory of the call at noon is correct.

ETA: Did I forget to mention that Comodi is a liar?

 

[Justinian2]

http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=241393&catid=62

An Italian judge Tuesday delayed until next year the defamation trial of American parents whose daughter is serving a 26-year prison sentence for murder.

[...]

The libel suit was filed on behalf of five police officers who were present at Knox's interrogation. The five say the parents defamed them in a June 2008 interview in which they said their daughter told them she had been threatened and hit during her questioning. Amanda went on to contradict her parents' statements at her trial.

[...]

The Post-Intelligencer said the question comes down to whether language protected as free speech in one country can be deemed as defamation in another if the story is online and read in the nation where the allegedly defamed individual lives.

Maresca said Italian law says yes, but it's not clear how a court may look at such a charge, the online newspaper said.

A ray of sunshine...

 

[Fulcanelli]

Thanks Rose!

I must say I am Absolutely STUNNED at the weakness of these 'grounds for appeal'. Those grounds for appeal are an embarrassment, and insulting.

Then you should be equally stunned at the mitigation granted by the court, since the prosecution appeal is aimed solely at the reasons for that mitigation and they have a case in stating there is undue leniency.

For example...do you buy that Amanda and Raffaele showed genuine remorse for what they'd done by their actions during the staging?

Do you dispute that Meredith's murder took place for anything other then trivial reasons?

Do you dispute that Meredith's murder was aggravated?

If the answer is no, then it is in accord with the prosecution and that is the basis of their appeal.

And to properly answer this question, you need to put aside your all out faith that Amanda is innocent, in contrast to the view of not only the prosecution but the court. You need to answer it from their perspective. If Amanda and Raffaele, along with Rudy murdered Meredith what are the answers to those questions? For those answers decide what sentence they actually should receive.

The defence may have grounds for their appeal...but so do the prosecution.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Dr. Waterbury has Part III up and it is the best yet.

http://www.sciencespheres.com/2010/10/through-motivation-report-part-iii.html

Beautiful!

I love especially how Dr. Waterbury's observations about Rube Goldbergesque quality of the motivation converge with mine

 

[christianahannah]

Amanda did not make a phone call at NOON! What is there for her to remember! Edda is perplexed because she was told her daughter called before anything had happened. Amanda is perplexed because the first call she remembers was 47 minutes later after lots of things happened. Comodi is the liar that caused this.




Edda was puzzled because Comodi had lied to her about the first call. Comodi is not puzzled. Comodi had all the documentation and knew exactly when the calls were made and had the statements from the postal police concerning what had happened by the time the call was made. Comodi simply lied to create this confusion and lied again to present it in court.




I haven't posted that much since piktor popped this mole up again so my posts on this topic shouldn't be that hard to find. The simple facts are: Amanda didn't make a call to her mom at noon. Amanda didn't remember making a call at noon. Therefore, Amanda's memory of the call at noon is correct.

ETA: Did I forget to mention that Comodi is a liar?

Thanks for answering Dan O. I'll give it a try and look up your prior posts on the subject.

I think it was in the prison conversation of November 10 that Edda is said to have been surprised about Amanda not remembering the call she forgot. Do you have the transcripts of that conversation? There are partial quotes from Amanda's testimony (Maresca questioning Amanda) and in the motivations of the prison conversation between Amanda and her mother. I don't know that a time is given for that call in that conversation.

I don't think Edda testified in court to being surprised about the first call, however, I have seen only a partial transcript of her testimony so that may have occurred later.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Then you should be equally stunned at the mitigation granted by the court, since the prosecution appeal is aimed solely at the reasons for that mitigation and they have a case in stating there is undue leniency.

Hello, Fulcanelli
Could you remind me what was the reason that there is absolute zero traces of Amanda in Meredith's room, on her body and belongings?

 

[Mary_H]

I could be wrong but the slander case is not a criminal case but a civil case raised by the Perugian Flying Squad officers against Amanda and her parents; can anyone confirm?

Nice to see you back, Coulsdon; I was just thinking of you recently. I don't have an answer to your question, but I have some news for you and for anyone else, such as colonelhall, who used to post on Bill Edelblute's articles on the examiner. Remember how we could never read more than one page at a time of comments? Now they have fixed it so you can look up an article and read every single comment that was made on it.

 

[lane99]

...25 percent correlation.

Less than 25%. Even if we accept the prosecution's lurid fantasies, the situations and dynamics are fundamentally dissimilar.

As for comparisons between Knox and Ellard, well, they are both females. That's pretty much were the similarities end.

It is simply an ignorant and/or incompetent argument to claim there is a strong correlation between Knox and Kelly Ellard. Ellard has been a vicious person since childhood and has a long history of violent outbursts and attacks. For example, while she was out on bail awaiting trial on the luring and murder of Renna Virk, she was arrested for luring an elderly woman to a park one evening, where Ellard and one of her punk friends beat the hell out of the woman.

That true believers in Knox's guilt can not come up with a single example of an uncontroversially proven case that would parallel the conspiracy that Knox and her boyfriend were supposedly part of, should give any sensible person reason to question their guilt.

 

[Mary_H]

Then you should be equally stunned at the mitigation granted by the court, since the prosecution appeal is aimed solely at the reasons for that mitigation and they have a case in stating there is undue leniency.

For example...do you buy that Amanda and Raffaele showed genuine remorse for what they'd done by their actions during the staging?

Do you dispute that Meredith's murder took place for anything other then trivial reasons?

Do you dispute that Meredith's murder was aggravated?

If the answer is no, then it is in accord with the prosecution and that is the basis of their appeal.

And to properly answer this question, you need to put aside your all out faith that Amanda is innocent, in contrast to the view of not only the prosecution but the court. You need to answer it from their perspective. If Amanda and Raffaele, along with Rudy murdered Meredith what are the answers to those questions? For those answers decide what sentence they actually should receive.

The defence may have grounds for their appeal...but so do the prosecution.

So it isn't a trial de novo?

 

[christianahannah]

Hi, christianahannah

you wrote previously


Sorry for asking you again for sources about it, but I just reread the relevant part of the transcript and I cannot see anything like that. Could you quote Comodi asking about "why Amanda doesn't remember the call" or something similar?

You wrote now:
Comodi being a prosecutor is going to question Amanda more extensively about this forgotten call.

Could you quote Comodi questioning extensively about the forgoten call, because I again can't find anything like it in the transcript. To the contrary, Comodi is not at all interested in answers and she drops the line of questioning as soon as she's done with the plan. The plan to push a falsehood about Amanda having a foreknowledge about the crime and calling her mother at 12:00 "when nothing happened yet".
She even sarcastically misquote Edda:

MC: Even your mother was amazed that you called her at midday, which was three or four o'clock at night, to tell her that nothing had happened.​

I think the sole purpose of Comodi was to inject the lie that Amanda simulates not remembering because the call was made with the foreknowledge but before the discovery of the suspicious facts.

Hello Katody Matrass.

I'm sorry. It was a combination of Comodi, Massei and Maresca who asked Amanda about the reasons for not remembering the call. And that question may have been in transcripts read from the prison conversation of Amanda and her mother.

It would be very serious if Comodi and members of the court conspired to push a false impression of the facts and put them forth in the record as evidence against Amanda. Do you know if the appeal addresses this?

I had read the transcript of Comodi questioning Amanda and Amanda's answers and never gave it more thought than Amanda had forgotten a call made to her mother. I am now questioning what more it could be.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Edda is perplexed because she was told her daughter called before anything had happened. Amanda is perplexed because the first call she remembers was 47 minutes later after lots of things happened. Comodi is the liar that caused this.

Thanks Dan O.

The hypothesis that the lie about a "call before anything had happened" was planted as early as 10 Nov 2007 fits the picture and is coherent with what Machiavelli wrote about ILE tactics of deceit.

I have another question. From the trial transcript it occurred to me that the defense lawyers strengthen some other possible paths of attack ( related to the Nov 10 bugged conversation, the Dec 17 interrogation etc. ) by asking preemptive questions. But it is not so regarding that forgotten phone call. It appears that they were unprepared for such an attack and they hadn't rehearsed it with Amanda.
Do you think it was an undisclosed ace in the sleeve of the prosecution, or were there some clear indications earlier that they will attack in this direction?

 

[Justinian2]

Dr. Waterbury has Part III up and it is the best yet.

http://www.sciencespheres.com/2010/10/through-motivation-report-part-iii.html

This is the part I liked. She is called "The White Queen of DNA".

“The gloves were “changed, in the course of the search, every time an object was touched that was particularly soaked with blood, and when it was obvious that the gloves would be soiled; ‘…otherwise, it is just an ordinary object… I can move it, but this does not lead to my DNA remaining, let’s say, attached.’” P - 203

By her own account, Stefanoni didn’t bother to change gloves between handling most evidentiary items, but only if one happened to be “particularly soaked” in blood. Little effort was made to prevent the transfer of DNA from item to item other than to avoid getting large smears of blood on them. From this statement it even appears that not even blood stained objects merited a glove change, an item actually had to be “particularly soaked.” The video documentation of evidence collection clearly shows item after item being handled without any changes in gloves.

Stefanoni’s belief that contamination is only a problem when liquid materials are present had a practical outcome. She did little or nothing to avoid contamination as long as there wasn’t a visible, liquid, blood stain.

 

[katy_did]

Sorry for asking you again for sources about it, but I just reread the relevant part of the transcript and I cannot see anything like that. Could you quote Comodi asking about "why Amanda doesn't remember the call" or something similar?

You wrote now:
Comodi being a prosecutor is going to question Amanda more extensively about this forgotten call.

Could you quote Comodi questioning extensively about the forgoten call, because I again can't find anything like it in the transcript. To the contrary, Comodi is not at all interested in answers and she drops the line of questioning as soon as she's done with the plan. The plan to push a falsehood about Amanda having a foreknowledge about the crime and calling her mother at 12:00 "when nothing happened yet".
She even sarcastically misquote Edda:

MC: Even your mother was amazed that you called her at midday, which was three or four o'clock at night, to tell her that nothing had happened.​

I think the sole purpose of Comodi was to inject the lie that Amanda simulates not remembering because the call was made with the foreknowledge but before the discovery of the suspicious facts.

Yes, great points.

I just don't see how it's possible to read that section of the transcript and come to the conclusion Comodi's focus is Amanda's forgetfulness. Her focus is clearly on the 'fact' Amanda had called her mother unnecessarily when "nothing had happened yet", thus implying she had advance knowledge of the crime. She even asks Amanda "why did you do it?" (i.e. call her mother): that's a question about motive, not memory. And Massei obviously understands this to be Comodi's point too, since he then follows up by asking "Did you have the habit of calling her at that time? Did it happen on other occasions?" He makes the point even more explicit in the sentencing report (even as the inclusion of the actual time of the call makes his argument nonsensical).

I too would be interested to read an argument that Comodi's focus was only on Amanda's forgetfulness, using the actual transcript of Comodi's questions.

 

[katy_did]

I believe that the whole "science" of this sort of footprint evaluation has been thoroughly debunked. It belongs in the same file as graphology or polygraph testing, as unverifiable pseudo-science, which should hot be put before a court of law as hard evidence.

There was a very good article on the front page of JREF a couple of days ago about the Willingham case, which has been mentioned here a few times. The following caught my eye as somewhat reminiscent of Rinaldi's application of 'science' here...

The kind of make-believe science that convicted Todd Willingham is nothing but divination – it is tea-leaf reading, with the tea leaves replaced with ash and soot. It is the kind of subtle witchcraft that only a very specialized kind of expert could recognize as such, and without quick-learning, impassioned journalists like Mr. Grann stalking the planet, we may never have learned of it.

Another interesting part of the article (actually, pretty much its central subject) is the way in which the case first received attention: through an article published in the New Yorker. As the JREF author says, "the science that may exonerate Mr. Willingham has existed for a long time. It was a piece of creative nonfiction that propelled his case into the spotlight". In other words, it was a journalist with no scientific credentials (he's a journo and creative writer, from his bio) who brought the 'science' of the case to general attention, which may well lead to the (unfortunately now executed) man being exonerated.

I dare say some would argue he didn't have the scientific knowledge to comment...

 

[RoseMontague]

There is a recent series of articles that go into the Willingham case from a blogger I admire. If you have an interest check these three articles out.

http://reharmonized.an-earful.com/2010/07/todd-willinghams-witch-trial-investigation/
http://reharmonized.an-earful.com/2010/08/todd-willinghams-witch-trial-prosecution/
http://reharmonized.an-earful.com/2010/08/todd-willinghams-witch-trial-the-dreadful-defense/