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Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Dan O. said:
We may actually have the same opinion of the evidence. While I have not seen evidence that proves (or even strongly suggests) guilt, I have also not seen evidence that proves innocence. Where you equate these two and come up with "undecided", I apply the overriding rule of presumption of innocence and come up with "not proven guilty".

The presumption of innocence is necessary for balance. Where the prosecution is in control of gathering the evidence and can formulate any hypothetical scenario of guilt consistent with that evidence, the defense must defend against any scenario that the prosecution may choose and for a large part using the evidence that the prosecution provides....
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Very nicely written Dan O.
 
Katody Matrass said:
Beloved Leader ordered a full scale retreat, I mean a tactical regroup :)
And I get a honorable mention, I'm flattered. Does it mean I'm declared a "suppressive person" now? Should I expect an investigation of my identity and subsequent stalking :cool:?
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For me, my absence is due to the fact the JREF moderation team dislikes my participation. They are probably right, the meaning of my writing as a poster and my positions in this case cannot be expresed freely in this forum, and a discussion under JREF forum spirit with most of you makes little sense to me, given the actual goals of the participants. I think I can write a post sometimes with the feeling it is not bad just to remind people that all the arguments presented here, till now, are ineffective and appear irrelevant to an observer. By reading my posts you can be certain that at least one person in Italy is totally unimpressed by the arguments you belive to be so important, and, to this person, all innocentisti discussions appear devoid of argument and weight.

But I also owe replies to these people: Katody Matrass, katy_did, Mary H, RoseMontague, and I think I will write comments on their latest points soon or later.

For people interested in the topic - like Charlie Wilkens - I am about to post a little research on the bathmat print: not here, but on Perugia Murder File, probably in the next hours. I say this For those who may be interested in discussing this material.
 
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Machiavelli said:
For me, my absence is due to the fact the JREF moderation team dislikes my participation. They are probably right, the meaning of my writing as a poster and my positions in this case cannot be expresed freely in this forum, and a discussion under JREF forum spirit with most of you makes little sense to me, given the actual goals of the participants. I think I can write a post sometimes with the feeling it is not bad just to remind people that all the arguments presented here, till now, are ineffective and appear irrelevant to an observer. By reading my posts you can be certain that at least one person in Italy is totally unimpressed by the arguments you belive to be so important, and, to this person, all innocentisti discussions appear devoid of argument and weight.

But I also owe replies to these people: Katody Matrass, katy_did, Mary H, RoseMontague, and I think I will write comments on their latest points soon or later.

For people interested in the topic - like Charlie Wilkens - I am about to post a little research on the bathmat print: not here, but on Perugia Murder File, probably in the next hours. I say this For those who may be interested in discussing this material.
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I have learned from your posts Machiavelli. You explain your reasons for what you believe in a logical easy-to-understand manner. While I respect your decision on participation in this forum, I will miss what you have to offer in discussing the case here.
 
hey Dan o

i understand entirely what you are saying. The only problem is that they were found guilty in a court. No one here was privvy to the facts as presented in the court. We can hypothesise about motives for prosecution or defence doing or not doing certain things but thats all. If I was a member of the "jury" i would have to make a judgement, however difficult that may be. We are not in that position and i personally am glad about that.

A good example for me is the tod as decided by stomach contents. I have seen cites here both stating different ideas about how reliable this method is and have looked into it myself a little. Im afraid that the conclusion has to be that it is not an appropriate way to get a tod. Just the fact that it is so disputed goes a little way to showing this. The problem with tod in this case is that it cannot accurately be determined and no amout of declarations of belief in the reliability or non reliability can change that. we can cite and counter cite all year long but it gets the argument no where.

So why cany both parties at least acknowledge that the tod is too disputed to have any real value. Unfortunate but unavoidable imo.

I agree that you have to prove guilt. but, whether safe or unsafe, they were found guilty by people with more access to first hand info than any of us. So unfortunately the onus is now on them to prove the vedict wrong.

lxxx
 
Before modern forensics, video cameras and computers, convictions were very difficult. Law enforcement and the public must have grown very exasperated because the vast majority of murderers were never apprehended.

So fear was used. When a guilty person was found, they would make a big show of his conviction. The death penalty was used. This made people think twice about committing a crime for fear of being caught. Heck, it even made sense to the less noble in government to convict a few innocent people to increase the conviction rate. Fear of punishment and ridicule would control those inclined to murder. Furthermore, they would be elected because they put criminals behind bars.

Today we don't have to convict innocent people and throw them in jail just to throw the fear of 'God' into the majority. Is this the reason why some people act like their lives depend on the continued incarceration of AK and RS?

I would let my daughter be AK's roommate. I would let my son date AK.
 
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s_pepys said:
A good example for me is the tod as decided by stomach contents. I have seen cites here both stating different ideas about how reliable this method is and have looked into it myself a little. Im afraid that the conclusion has to be that it is not an appropriate way to get a tod.
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I don't think anybody has said that stomach contents is an accurate way of determining the time of death. They seem to be a somewhat inaccurate way, capable only of narrowing down the potential tod to a range of some hours.

However, if (as in this case) they narrow the possibility down to a period of, say, three to four hours and you know the victim was alive for the first two or three of those hours, using stomach contents becomes a useful tool.
 
The court had 90 days to express the reasons why the court found their verdict. If theree was compelling evidence for guilt it would have been expressed in that document. It is no longer valid to say we were not privy to the arguments and evidence presented in court because we have everything that was found relevant has been condensed into that 400+ page motivations document.(a smile belongs here to express what I think of the motivations)


The issue of stomach emptying after a meal has been extensively studied. In all the studies found there is a large but measured uncertainty in the time when the stomach starts to empty. In none of the studies was a time of 5 hours remotely reasonable. Even the 2.5 hours from when Meredith is known to have begun that last meal to when she left the company of Sophie is at the outside range. This gives us the very high confidence that Meredith was attacked very soon after getting home. Of course, it leaves open the possibility of an earlier attack but nobody has seriously investigated this alternate track.
 
guys

here we go again with the stomach contents thing. no thanks.

Massei is exactly that, a MOTIVATIONS report. dont confuse the judges report with the full proceedings.

look all im saying is lets be a bit more open to other factions ideas, not to get entrenched in ct or dogmatic style thinking, in the spirit of peace and love. :)

lxxx
 
s_pepys said:
guys

here we go again with the stomach contents thing. no thanks.

Massei is exactly that, a MOTIVATIONS report. dont confuse the judges report with the full proceedings.

look all im saying is lets be a bit more open to other factions ideas, not to get entrenched in ct or dogmatic style thinking, in the spirit of peace and love. :)

lxxx
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While it is fortunate to have this report for discussion, it in no way can include every item of evidence entered into the court record (or the evidence which was not considered). It does allow us a glimpse into the mind of the court and how it came to its verdict. That does not happen in most trial cases.

Perhaps I am in the minority but I have found the motivations, for the most part, to be logical in the weight it gives certain items of evidence.
 
Dan O. said:
The court had 90 days to express the reasons why the court found their verdict. If theree was compelling evidence for guilt it would have been expressed in that document. It is no longer valid to say we were not privy to the arguments and evidence presented in court because we have everything that was found relevant has been condensed into that 400+ page motivations document.(a smile belongs here to express what I think of the motivations)


The issue of stomach emptying after a meal has been extensively studied. In all the studies found there is a large but measured uncertainty in the time when the stomach starts to empty. In none of the studies was a time of 5 hours remotely reasonable. Even the 2.5 hours from when Meredith is known to have begun that last meal to when she left the company of Sophie is at the outside range. This gives us the very high confidence that Meredith was attacked very soon after getting home. Of course, it leaves open the possibility of an earlier attack but nobody has seriously investigated this alternate track.
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The time of death in this case is only important to validate the alibi. Of course a valid alibi at the ToD crushes the prosecution's case against AK and RS.

The ToD does not in itself provide any evidence of guilt or innocence of AK and RS. The ToD does verify the Guede confession.

Enlighten me if you have other facts or logic.
 
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Machiavelli said:
For me, my absence is due to the fact the JREF moderation team dislikes my participation. They are probably right, the meaning of my writing as a poster and my positions in this case cannot be expresed freely in this forum, and a discussion under JREF forum spirit with most of you makes little sense to me, given the actual goals of the participants. I think I can write a post sometimes with the feeling it is not bad just to remind people that all the arguments presented here, till now, are ineffective and appear irrelevant to an observer. By reading my posts you can be certain that at least one person in Italy is totally unimpressed by the arguments you belive to be so important, and, to this person, all innocentisti discussions appear devoid of argument and weight.

But I also owe replies to these people: Katody Matrass, katy_did, Mary H, RoseMontague, and I think I will write comments on their latest points soon or later.

For people interested in the topic - like Charlie Wilkens - I am about to post a little research on the bathmat print: not here, but on Perugia Murder File, probably in the next hours. I say this For those who may be interested in discussing this material.
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Sorry, I just can't understand this at all. Why would it matter to you at all what the JREF moderation team thinks about your participation in other forums? When did they get the right to tell you which forums they "approve" of you posting upon? Post here if you personally want to; don't post if you don't personally want to. It's that simple. Or are you on some sort of payroll or contract?

I also think it's totally out of order to write things like:

"...just to remind people that all the arguments presented here, till now, are ineffective and appear irrelevant to an observer."

That is your opinion, and you're perfectly entitled to it. But it is not fact, however much you might want to present it as fact.

In the final analysis, though, the fact that you seem to feel the need to act upon the implicit instructions of a person (whom you've presumably never met and have no relationship with) who runs another forum (and who clearly has.....issues), rather than think for yourself, tells me a lot about who you are, and means that I'm very glad you're leaving. Thanks for stopping by :rolleyes:
 
s_pepys said:
guys

here we go again with the stomach contents thing. no thanks.

Massei is exactly that, a MOTIVATIONS report. dont confuse the judges report with the full proceedings.

look all im saying is lets be a bit more open to other factions ideas, not to get entrenched in ct or dogmatic style thinking, in the spirit of peace and love. :)

lxxx
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It's not really a question of that, though - in my opinion. If there was a debate to be had on what the stomach/intestinal contents said about the time of death, I'd be extremely happy to have it. And I'd like to think that I personally am very open-minded about this and all other issues in the case.

But there is simply no getting away from the fact (not opinion, but medical fact) that if we have accurate information about the state of Merediths' stomach/intestinal contents at the post mortem, then she almost certainly died within three hours (or 3.5 hours at the very maximum) of starting her last meal. This means she certainly died before 10.00pm, and most likely before 9.30pm.

If someone can produce scientific or medical literature, or the testimony of a medical professional, which can correlate Meredith's stomach/intestinal contents with a ToD over 4.5 hours after the start of the last meal, then I'm very happy to modify my opinion. But this evidence is not forthcoming, and I know why: I don't believe it exists (and I've looked for it myself).

And if the ToD is before 10.00pm, the whole case against Knox and Sollecito changes. The ToD is not an insignificant factor in this case - it's pretty important. Change the ToD to 9.00-10.00pm, and you discredit most of the prosecution witness testimony, and - much more importantly - you change the whole dynamic of Knox and Sollecito's possibility of involvement. After all, Knox was at Sollecito's apartment at 8.45pm, and had a lucid conversation with the "luggage girl", and Sollecito was there at the same time having a lucid telephone discussion with his father. And there's evidence of computer video files being opened not only at 9.10pm, but also at 9.26pm.

Clearly, if the ToD is 9.30-10.00pm (and actually most likely before 9.30pm), the prosecution would have a very hard time convincing the judicial panel that Knox and Sollecito went from sober normality at 8.45pm, through to a mind-altered killing mentality by 9.15pm, before even considering the computer files opened at 9.10pm and 9.26pm.

So this is not just some narrow discussion, with a refusal to consider alternative viewpoints. What's more, it actually dovetails with other known facts of the case - the strange decision of Meredith not to call her mother back after the aborted 8.56pm call; the laundry left in the washing machine; the curious key-pressing activity on Meredith's phone around 10.00pm; and the seemingly changed location of Meredith's phones by 10.13pm. All of this, plus the stomach/intestinal post-mortem evidence, points very strongly (to me) towards a ToD before 9.30pm, with the initial confrontation occurring shortly after Meredith arrived home at around 9.00pm.

And if that's true, then I think it's highly unlikely that either Knox or Sollecito was involved in the attack and murder of Meredith Kercher.
 
s_pepys said:
guys

here we go again with the stomach contents thing. no thanks.

Massei is exactly that, a MOTIVATIONS report. dont confuse the judges report with the full proceedings.

look all im saying is lets be a bit more open to other factions ideas, not to get entrenched in ct or dogmatic style thinking, in the spirit of peace and love. :)

lxxx
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By the way, the term "motivations" report is a clumsy translation from the Italian "motivazione". It's meant to set out the reasons why the judicial panel reached its decision. So, in that respect, it's meant to contain all the areas of evidence which the judicial panel felt showed guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, together with the reasons why the judicial panel felt that these areas DID show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

So while it's correct to say that the Massei Report would be a "condensed" or "subset" version of the evidence presented in the trial, it most certainly shouldn't have left out any of the evidence which the court judged was significant in determining the guilt or innocence of Knox and Sollecito. And I understand that it's meant to be much more of a "why we reached the verdict" document than a "what happened in the trial" document. In that respect, it falls well short in my view. Time after time, Massei says, in effect, that "the prosecution said one thing and the defence said another thing, and we believed the prosecution". There's scant explanation of WHY the judicial panel chose to take the prosecution's version.

Having read the Massei Report, and most other available literature and reporting on the case, I simply fail to understand how the Massei Report sets out a convincing case for convicting Knox and Sollecito of the crime of murder (with sexual elements), to the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
 
Dan O. said:
We may actually have the same opinion of the evidence. While I have not seen evidence that proves (or even strongly suggests) guilt, I have also not seen evidence that proves innocence. Where you equate these two and come up with "undecided", I apply the overriding rule of presumption of innocence and come up with "not proven guilty".

The presumption of innocence is necessary for balance. Where the prosecution is in control of gathering the evidence and can formulate any hypothetical scenario of guilt consistent with that evidence, the defense must defend against any scenario that the prosecution may choose and for a large part using the evidence that the prosecution provides.

The bias in evidence gathering we saw early in the case. In one example, the prosecution received and analyzed survailence video from street cameras on the route that Amanda and Raffaele would have taken to reach the cottage. But when the defense asked to see those videos within a week or two of the crime they had already been destroyed. There were two two street cameras along that route that I was able to identify and both would have had a view of the outside of the store where Amanda supposedly stopped to buy cleaning supplies on the morning of the second. We don't have this evidence to confirm or deny anything because the prosecution decided in the first week that there was nothing they could use.
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Exactly right. Defendants in criminal trials are not required to prove their innocence. If they can do so, then so much the better for them, but there's zero requirement for this to happen for a "not guilty" verdict to ensue.

Conversely, modern systems of justice place the entire burden of proof onto the prosecution. They have to convince a court - to the exclusion of reasonable doubt - that the defendants committed the crime(s) with which they are charged. If there's any doubt whatsoever (provided they are the sort of doubts that a reasonable person might be expected to have), then the defendants MUST be found not guilty.

And, like you, I don't believe that the prosecution met its burden of proof in the trial of Knox and Sollecito. Whether or not they actually WERE involved in the murder becomes somewhat moot (from a legal perspective) at this point - if the prosecution can't prove in court that they committed the crime, they should have been found not guilty.

And that's still my predominant position. I'm primarily concerned that Knox and Sollecito may have been wrongly convicted. Further investigation has led me to go further and believe that they actually might not have had anything to do with the murder, but it's strictly not necessary for me to believe that in order for me to believe that they were wrongfully convicted.
 
but they were found guilty. correctly or not, as you say, is moot point. They were "proven" guilty by a court from that same judicial perspective.

lxxx
 
LondonJohn said:
And that's still my predominant position. I'm primarily concerned that Knox and Sollecito may have been wrongly convicted. Further investigation has led me to go further and believe that they actually might not have had anything to do with the murder, but it's strictly not necessary for me to believe that in order for me to believe that they were wrongfully convicted.
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If Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder, then they were not wrongly convicted.
 
s_pepys said:
but they were found guilty. correctly or not, as you say, is moot point. They were "proven" guilty by a court from that same judicial perspective.

lxxx
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Ah no, I'm not saying that whether the finding of guilt was correct or not is moot. I'm arguing that the court was likely incorrect in finding them guilty. And I'm then saying that to find them "not guilty" does not mean that they are or are not actually culpable of the crimes - that's the part which I referred to as moot.

In other words, it's perfectly possible that Knox and Sollecito actually DID participate in Meredith's murder, but that they should be found not guilty in a court because the prosecution has not met its burden of proof*. Some people would find this situation distasteful, but it's a central tenet of modern jurisprudence.

* Although, as I said before, I currently lean towards the thinking that Knox and Sollecito are actually non-culpable of the crime.
 
s_pepys said:
but they were found guilty. correctly or not, as you say, is moot point. They were "proven" guilty by a court from that same judicial perspective.

lxxx
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This is a system where 1/3 of all cases of this sort are overturned on appeal. I believe from what I have read the circumstances of the first trial led to an erroneous conclusion by the court, this is the exact kind of case likely to be overturned. The more I looked the more I found the evidence against them to be scant or contrived, which is exactly what you'd expect if they were in fact innocent.

Have you read the online reports of the retired FBI agent? You can also see clips of him on TV shows if you search. He looks especially convincing to me, and he's the sort who would know what he's talking about. Here's his report:

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/FBI.html

I'd be happy to discuss with someone open minded what they think of his presentation. What he says makes sense to me, and he's got the credentials. He's not the only one either whose come forward, earlier in the thread I posted a link to the open letter of nine experts on this basic subject.
 
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