Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[LondonJohn]

Just like there is "zero requirement" for the prosecution to show/ prove 'motive' for a 'guilty' verdict to ensue.

Absolutely. Who said it was necessary to prove motive? Determination of motive only ever has any relevance whatsoever in terms of sentencing, not in the finding of guilt.

 

[treehorn]

One has to look no further than the Milgram experiment to find a plausible reason for her lapse.

The court intimidates. She was probably paid by the prosecution/persecution.

Your post is so far afield from the Milgram experiment, and involves so many erroneous assumptions about the nature of criminal proceedings, that I don't even know where to begin.

Why on earth would a UK-based psychologist feel "intimidated" by a civil servant in Perugia, Italy?

Why on earth would civil servants in Italy bother to use tax payer $$$ to pay a psychologist in the UK (or any other foreign country, for that matter) to write an article for an English paper?

On what ground do you conclude that Dr. Covington would ditch her professional ethics (and, presumably, basic human decency) in exchange for $$$ from an Italian prosecutor?

 

[Katody Matrass]

I'm not sure of the TJMK source, but theirs sounds like the original English, while the Massei version is obviously translated into Italian from English (and then back again in the PMF version).

The source is the trial transcript. Maresca reads the part of the bugged conversation and Vedova adds one sentence he left out.

 

[LondonJohn]

I think the first problem with discussing the intercepted conversation is that we only have short extracts from it, which means there's little context to judge it (especially given that other quotes have been distorted and taken out of context on occasion, like the "I can't lie, I was there" quote). I had a look back at the quotes we do have; first, here's the longer extract, from TJMK:



Having read this properly, I don't think Edda is suggesting this phone call was made at a strange time; I think she's clarifying for Amanda that this first phone call took place before any activity happened in the house - before the police and Filomena's friends arrived, before the door was broken down, before Meredith's body had been discovered - but after they'd discovered the things that had 'shocked' them (the door, the blood, the broken window). In doing so, she's also distinguishing this phone call from the following two phone calls, which took place after these other things had happened.

Edda's questioning of Amanda here isn't about the timing of the call, it's about her forgetting it: "Why would that be?" (Why might you have forgotten it?). She's not suggesting Amanda didn't have enough reason to call - something which would make no sense anyway, given she told Amanda to call the police.

The second extract from the conversation is the one Massei quotes:



At first I thought this must have been from another part of the conversation, and that it sounds more incriminating for Amanda than the TJMK extract (i.e. Edda asking Amanda why she was shocked since 'nothing had happened'). But the odd thing is it sounds very like Edda's words in the TJMK extract:



I wonder if this is a mistranslation, in which the translator thought both Edda and Amanda were speaking when in fact it was only Edda. The TJMK version of this conversation certainly makes more sense than Massei's one, with its odd outburst from Amanda mid-sentence and Edda's sentences trailing into nothing. I'm not sure of the TJMK source, but theirs sounds like the original English, while the Massei version is obviously translated into Italian from English (and then back again in the PMF version).

If so, it's a pretty unfortunate mistranslation, since it gives the impression Edda is asking Amanda why she was shocked given that "this was before anything happened", and therefore that the timing of this call was suspicious - a mistranslation then picked up and embellished by Comodi, and used by Massei in the sentencing report.

(Wonder if it was that German translator? I bet it was).

Exactly. I think the context makes it pretty clear that "nothing had happened" is most likely to refer (euphemistically) to the discovery of the body and the ensuing heightened drama.

But, if you look hard enough, and you think you know what you're looking for, it's possible to convince yourself that Edda believed Amanda had placed that first call before she (Amanda) had any concerns. It's also possible to deduce that Amanda and Edda both wanted to close down any mention of this first call, on account of incriminating matters having been discussed within it.

But fortunately we have a name for this sort of analysis: it's called confirmation bias.

 

[katy_did]

The source is the trial transcript. Maresca reads the part of the bugged conversation and Vedova adds one sentence he left out.

Ah OK, thanks. Is that in the trial testimony?

ETA: No worries, found it. Hmmm... Why does Massei quote something different (but similar) in the report, then, and not the one referred to in Court? I think the one Maresca quotes is the full transcript of the 'incriminating' bits.

 

[katy_did]

Exactly. I think the context makes it pretty clear that "nothing had happened" is most likely to refer (euphemistically) to the discovery of the body and the ensuing heightened drama.

But, if you look hard enough, and you think you know what you're looking for, it's possible to convince yourself that Edda believed Amanda had placed that first call before she (Amanda) had any concerns. It's also possible to deduce that Amanda and Edda both wanted to close down any mention of this first call, on account of incriminating matters having been discussed within it.

But fortunately we have a name for this sort of analysis: it's called confirmation bias.

Yes, I think that's especially a danger when all you have is the transcript, and can't hear the tone in which words are spoken. I think it's even more of a danger when there's a language barrier, and things get translated in ways which are sort of but not quite similar (or mistranslated entirely, which seems to have been a problem in this case).

 

[treehorn]

as indicated elsewhere, it's been established that her party friends re-imbursed her for the fine, since they knew that Knox had taken the rap but hadn't personally caused the disturbance.

Oh?

Perhaps you could direct me to the place where this has been "established."

BTW, how many other lessees were there?

Why weren't THEY issued citations as well?

Did any of them go on to abuse street drugs to the point of memory loss and become the focus of criminal trials?

(I think Knox was far from a "well-adjusted" college girl who was so kind as to take the rap for her friends. I think you do, too: I can see that you're smart enough to know that citations of this kind are not issued pursuant to an unconstitutional 'strict liability' provision.)

 

[christianahannah]

Ah OK, thanks. Is that in the trial testimony?

ETA: No worries, found it. Hmmm... Why does Massei quote something different (but similar) in the report, then, and not the one referred to in Court?

Access to the prison transcripts (pages 35-36 from which Maresca speaks) and the section that Massei refers to (RIT 397/08, of November 10, 2007) would tell us if this is the same conversation or the same subject but spoken at two different times in the course of the conversation.

Massei summarizes quite of bit of Amanda's trial testimony so I can't be sure if what he includes on page 94 is verbatim. I assumed it was because the reference is in quotation. I also assume Maresca is quoting verbation from pages 35-36 but would not know for sure not having access to that transcript.

 

[katy_did]

After reading about the case, I have doubts that her cousin Sabrina was involved. At the very least, no evidence has come forth that strongly implicates her. I consider the case to be pertinent to this discussion.

I think so too. I haven't read enough about it yet to make any judgment of her guilt/innocence, but it worries me that exactly the same kind of reporting is going on here as was the case for Amanda in the early days of the case. Maybe this girl is guilty as sin, but what if she isn't? There seems to be a general presumption of guilt, not innocence.

 

[katy_did]

Access to the prison transcripts (pages 35-36 from which Maresca speaks) and the section that Massei refers to (RIT 397/08, of November 10, 2007) would tell us if this is the same conversation or the same subject but spoken at two different times in the course of the conversation.

Massei summarizes quite of bit of Amanda's trial testimony so I can't be sure if what he includes on page 94 is verbatim. I assumed it was because the reference is in quotation. I also assume Maresca is quoting verbation from pages 35-36 but would not know for sure not having access to that transcript.

Thanks Christiana. Yes, I'm not sure either, but it does seem pretty odd to me that the two quotes are so similar (in fact, given that Massei's version is more incriminating, you would think that would have been the one used in Court and not the other).

Another question is whether Maresca was using the original or a translation. He was talking to Amanda, so perhaps he was reading in English, while Massei would have been using the translation I imagine. Perhaps that's the reason for the difference (always assuming of course that they're not different parts of the conversation). Difficult to say without reading the transcript or hearing what was said in Court.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Just to chime in on the whole phone call debate, I'd be interested in knowing what Katody et al think Edda meant by saying "...but nothing had happened yet" when taped conversing with Amanda about the call. Why did Edda describe the call this way?

One of possible explanations proposed by Dan O. is in this post.

Could it be because when Amanda called her she told her mother only very little of the strange things she found at the house. Perhaps she had not mentioned the broken window at this point, or much else besides finding an open door and a couple of blood stains in the bathroom, hence her mother saying"...nothing had happened yet". If she had told her mother all this it's unlikely to be described as "nothing had happened yet", when in fact plenty had happened.

It's possible but we have to take into account her earlier phone call with Filomena. Why on earth would she not mention it to her mother if minutes earlier she was referring it with details in another phone conversation to Filomena?

Also, Amanda's insistence on her utter lack of memory of this call could simply be because she and her lawyers were unwilling for her to be questioned on its content, on exactly what she told Edda in that call to leave her mother thinking that nothing had happened yet. Edda's own testimony on the stand about this call makes one wonder why she would ever have described it as 'before anything had happened yet' given the amount of detail she says Amanda relayed in an 88 second call.

Edda, possibly because of the ILE's cue, asked about the first call and Amanda started talking about the call she made after the body discovery. Edda notes the discrepancy and after some exchange finally says "Okay, you called me first to tell me about some things that had shocked you. But this happened before anything really happened in the house."
The fact that Edda knows Amanda reported things that "shocked her" indicates that the illogical "anything happened yet" part was cued to her. She really meant "before the door had been broken" and was referring to the undisclosed earlier part of the conversation when Amanda asked about first phone call started talking about the second one. People often unconsciously repeat the phrases directed to them by someone and Edda did just this.

The call, if able to be described as Edda described it as "...but nothing had happened yet", really could be the beginnings of trying to establish an alibi.

I think my explanation above is as good if not better

There's always two ways of looking at something and it seems that what one believes about this call is completely entrenched in one's view of innocence or guilt. The 'innocentisti' only see it as Comodi deliberately attempting to mislead the jury, even though Amanda's lawyers have prepared her for her testimony, and even though they know all evidence to be presented in advance through discovery, and even though they have wads of paper relating to the evidence sitting on the tables in front of them, no one catches the evil tactics of Comodi that serve to let the jury think Amanda made this call some 47 minutes before she did, at a time when "nothing had happened yet".

I think Amanda's lawyers were unprepared for this line of attack and failed to coach Amanda on this. The fact that they didn't "disarm" that bomb in their own questioning time which was earlier, confirms it strongly.

On the other side, Amanda won't admit to this call because it would probably incriminate her to be examined on it, it was her feeble attempt at creating the start of an alibi, and Edda lied on the stand to cover for her daughter because she's the only person other than Amanda who knows exactly what Amanda said in that phone call to her mother, when she should have been calling the police instead.

I can't see how it could incriminate her. Could you elaborate on this?

 

[christianahannah]

I think the first problem with discussing the intercepted conversation is that we only have short extracts from it, which means there's little context to judge it (especially given that other quotes have been distorted and taken out of context on occasion, like the "I can't lie, I was there" quote). I had a look back at the quotes we do have; first, here's the longer extract, from TJMK:



Having read this properly, I don't think Edda is suggesting this phone call was made at a strange time; I think she's clarifying for Amanda that this first phone call took place before any activity happened in the house - before the police and Filomena's friends arrived, before the door was broken down, before Meredith's body had been discovered - but after they'd discovered the things that had 'shocked' them (the door, the blood, the broken window). In doing so, she's also distinguishing this phone call from the following two phone calls, which took place after these other things had happened.

Edda's questioning of Amanda here isn't about the timing of the call, it's about her forgetting it: "Why would that be?" (Why might you have forgotten it?). She's not suggesting Amanda didn't have enough reason to call - something which would make no sense anyway, given she told Amanda to call the police.

The second extract from the conversation is the one Massei quotes:



At first I thought this must have been from another part of the conversation, and that it sounds more incriminating for Amanda than the TJMK extract (i.e. Edda asking Amanda why she was shocked since 'nothing had happened'). But the odd thing is it sounds very like Edda's words in the TJMK extract:



I wonder if this is a mistranslation, in which the translator thought both Edda and Amanda were speaking when in fact it was only Edda. The TJMK version of this conversation certainly makes more sense than Massei's one, with its odd outburst from Amanda mid-sentence and Edda's sentences trailing into nothing. I'm not sure of the TJMK source, but theirs sounds like the original English, while the Massei version is obviously translated into Italian from English (and then back again in the PMF version).

If so, it's a pretty unfortunate mistranslation, since it gives the impression Edda is asking Amanda why she was shocked given that "this was before anything happened", and therefore that the timing of this call was suspicious - a mistranslation then picked up and embellished by Comodi, and used by Massei in the sentencing report.

(Wonder if it was that German translator? I bet it was).

The motivations has this to say about the voice recordings:

Page 20:

In the meantime the Court had initiated, at the request of the Sollecito defence and in agreement with the Prosecutor, the expert task of a joint nature for the transcription of the tapped telephone conversations and voice recordings arranged by the Office of the Public Prosecutor in Perugia in the course of the preliminary investigations, the transcription of which had been requested.

(These voice recordings were made at Police Headquarters in Perugia, appropriately prepared, where the co-tenants of Meredith Kercher, the boys of the apartment below that one occupied by the murdered girl, and the English girlfriends of the English student involved in the Erasmus Programme, had gathered on the afternoon of November 2, 2007. Other voice recordings were made during meetings in prison between Amanda and her parents. Finally, phone tappings had been made of the fixed and mobile phone services of the family of Raffaele Sollecito.)

I assume Amanda's defense had prior access to these recordings/transcripts and hopefully input if they felt the transcription was not accurate, but I don't know.

I'm not sure who you mean by German translator.

 

[treehorn]

Statistically unlikely (few precedents):

Young people with no criminal background committing murder

What is the basis for this (highly dubious) assertion?

Additionally, RS had a criminal record for possession and AK had been convicted for "Residential Disturbance" pursuant to a police-issued citation in connection with a rock throwing incident.

Both also admitted to abusing street drugs to the point of memory loss.

Both also appear to have had an unusual interest in the subject of drug-related rape and/or rape-at-knife point (authoring and publishing short stories about rape/ stalking, rumors about a UW "rape prank", collecting knives, animal porn and Manga comics depticing rape at knife point).

It's absurd to suggest there were absolutely NO antecedents.

It just isn't true.

Have you got a criminal record for possession? Have the police issued you a citation to appear in court for rock throwing? Have you got a knife collection? Do you like animal porn and rape comics? Have you abused controlled substances to the point of memory loss? Are people in your home town still gossiping about a "rape prank" that you are alleged to have instigated? Have you authored or published any short stories about rape?

Pre-homicide, AK and RS were about as "wholesome" as RG.

All 3 appear to have a 'dark side' and were engaging in various forms of antisocial behavior (unlawful or otherwise) before Nov. 1/07.

What happened is an unexpected/ statistically unlikely shock, but it is flat out wrong to assert that any of the 3 accused/ convicted were without signs and symptoms of deeper problems that arguably evince a propensity for participation in a rape-prank gone awry.

 

[katy_did]

The motivations has this to say about the voice recordings:



I assume Amanda's defense had prior access to these recordings/transcripts and hopefully input if they felt the transcription was not accurate, but I don't know.

I'm not sure who you mean by German translator.

All depends on whether they checked them all, I suppose; it's not as if they would've known which ones were going to be picked up on in Court. Doubt they went through them line by line. They certainly don't seem to have prepared Amanda very well for a question about the phone call, in any case, so I guess they can't have anticipated it.

The German translator was the one who was mentioned during Amanda's testimony as present during Amanda's December interrogation; apparently it had to be re-translated, and the words of the translator themselves had to be translated.

ETA: If you search "Giulia Clemish" in Amanda's testimony you'll find it. She's German-speaking but actually Austrian, apparently.

 

[katy_did]

The motivations has this to say about the voice recordings:

I assume Amanda's defense had prior access to these recordings/transcripts and hopefully input if they felt the transcription was not accurate, but I don't know.

I just noticed that this is about the transcripts, not the translations. Do you know if there's any info about those? (I'm assuming they would transcribe it in English first rather than translate it straight over, so as to have a record of the original, though I don't know for sure).

 

[Justinian2]

Your post is so far afield from the Milgram experiment, and involves so many erroneous assumptions about the nature of criminal proceedings, that I don't even know where to begin.

Why on earth would a UK-based psychologist feel "intimidated" by a civil servant in Perugia, Italy?

Why on earth would civil servants in Italy bother to use tax payer $$$ to pay a psychologist in the UK (or any other foreign country, for that matter) to write an article for an English paper?

On what ground do you conclude that Dr. Covington would ditch her professional ethics (and, presumably, basic human decency) in exchange for $$$ from an Italian prosecutor?

I stand pat.

 

[Antony]

I think so too. I haven't read enough about it yet to make any judgment of her guilt/innocence, but it worries me that exactly the same kind of reporting is going on here as was the case for Amanda in the early days of the case. Maybe this girl is guilty as sin, but what if she isn't? There seems to be a general presumption of guilt, not innocence.

Let's not say things like "maybe as guilty as sin" until we know there is real evidence. If you were to type "maybe there is genuine evidence" then I'd agree with the approach to the question.

What was in the report that was quoted is an alleged confession of the victim's uncle after a 15-hour interrogation, and the police's belief that the accused girl was involved, without mention of any supporting evidence.

The parallels with the Knox-Kercher case are not just the media reporting, but the approach to the investigation, which appears to be "suspects first, evidence later". This is what told me at the beginning that the Perugia verdict was a miscarriage of justice, before I even knew anything else about the case.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

It seems to me that the first pre-requisite for analyzing the print on the bathmat is an accurate outline of its shape. Drawing it by hand is too subjective, in my opinion, but extracting the shape with a graphics program is a slightly tricky process.

I used Gimp to create an outline that I believe is as close to being accurate as we can get, and I have posted it at:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/footprint_outline.jpg

This is a composite of several iterations to show the method I used. On the left is the Crimescope photo of the footprint from a pdf of the police forensics report, enlarged to about twice the native resolution of the pdf. It is the basis of my outline.

Next is the image I got when I further enlarged the crimescope photo, and then selected pixels by color value with a 25% tolerance on the initial selection, reduced to a 10% tolerance to pick up the edges. I used an edge detect filter to reduce the image to a grayscale negative, which I inverted to produce the first iteration shown in my composite.

Next, I filled the area around the footprint in white, and filled the inside of the footprint in gray, using a high enough tolerance to produce the solid mass that is the second iteration in my composite.

Finally, I used the edge detection filter again and inverted the result to produce a dark line with a white background.

 

[LondonJohn]

It seems to me that the first pre-requisite for analyzing the print on the bathmat is an accurate outline of its shape. Drawing it by hand is too subjective, in my opinion, but extracting the shape with a graphics program is a slightly tricky process.

I used Gimp to create an outline that I believe is as close to being accurate as we can get, and I have posted it at:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/footprint_outline.jpg

This is a composite of several iterations to show the method I used. On the left is the Crimescope photo of the footprint from a pdf of the police forensics report, enlarged to about twice the native resolution of the pdf. It is the basis of my outline.

Next is the image I got when I further enlarged the crimescope photo, and then selected pixels by color value with a 25% tolerance on the initial selection, reduced to a 10% tolerance to pick up the edges. I used an edge detect filter to reduce the image to a grayscale negative, which I inverted to produce the first iteration shown in my composite.

Next, I filled the area around the footprint in white, and filled the inside of the footprint in gray, using a high enough tolerance to produce the solid mass that is the second iteration in my composite.

Finally, I used the edge detection filter again and inverted the result to produce a dark line with a white background.

Interesting work. It certainly beats free-hand sketching of an outline - especially sketching which inexplicably extends left and right to make the big toe print seem wider than it actually is.

 

[katy_did]

Let's not say things like "maybe as guilty as sin" until we know there is real evidence. If you were to type "maybe there is genuine evidence" then I'd agree with the approach to the question.

I was only using that phrase hypothetically, to emphasize that it really doesn't matter at this point whether she's guilty or not - she could still be guilty, but that wouldn't make the coverage of the case acceptable. Whether someone is guilty or innocent, they still have a right to a fair trial. Obviously I wasn't saying that she actually was 'guilty as sin', since as I said I haven't read enough about the case to comment on it.

What was in the report that was quoted is an alleged confession of the victim's uncle after a 15-hour interrogation, and the police's belief that the accused girl was involved, without mention of any supporting evidence.

The parallels with the Knox-Kercher case are not just the media reporting, but the approach to the investigation, which appears to be "suspects first, evidence later". This is what told me that at the beginning that the Perugia verdict was a miscarriage of justice, before I even knew anything else about the case.

Yes, I agree that there are a lot of interesting parallels, not just the media reporting. Not having paid a lot of attention to the case till a few days ago, it's the sensational coverage of it that has struck me most (and the strong similarity to the early coverage of the Kercher case) so I haven't really gotten into the details of it yet. That's why I focused more on the reporting in my reply to Rose. But from what I've read so far, it seems she's been arrested on the strength of her dad's implication of her, as you say, rather than any direct evidence.

Very good point about the suspects before evidence approach. It does seem as if the approach taken by the investigation is similar in both cases.