Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[samba]

The guilter community appear to be under some kind of delusion that false confessions only come after physical torture. They won't even watch videos such as this one that demonstrates the techniques employed...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJcqjPxtIXc

Very enlightening. That's actually tough to watch.

 

[Mary_H]

Thank you. Could someone just provide even one case where someone was convicted of murder based on a confession that they were only present at the scene of the the murder but did not participate in that murder?

Amanda wasn't convicted of murder based on the false statements made in her interrogation, because nothing in her false statements could be shown to be true. She was only arrested based on her false statements. The only part of her false statements that remained to be used to implicate her at trial was her accusation of Patrick, which, in the minds of the prosecutors and the judges, contributed to the perception that she was a liar and of poor character.

 

[Mary_H]

Here you go guys.

Says it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_hq8lgw4vA

This is invaluable, Scorpion; thanks. One is left to wonder whether all the Perugians have been pronouncing the K in Knox for the past three years.

 

[Mary_H]

Some day you are going to need to learn to count. That is only 2 versions with the aberration in the middle brought on by the intensive interrogation that was quickly corrected when his rights under Italian law were granted.

That's why the Freudian slip appeared in her list, Dan:

So, the three statements---or his versions of events that November 1st night---told to the cops are, apparently:

1. Amanda stayed all night. (Version of November 2, 3, and 4)
2. Amanda left. (Version of November 5/6)
2. Very Likely Amanda stayed all night. (Version subsequent to his arrest)

 

[Mary_H]

On the contrary. You should have searched everything she said, the discussions she had on her blog, her praxis as a jounalist of deleting and editing her own pages and posts time after she wrote them. Her way of participating to discussions and handling arguments. Her actual knowledge of topics she claims knowledge of, and above all the facts and details she is used to miss completely. Her stereotypes on Italian culture and local colour attitude towards characthers and reality of the story.

Ah, so now we know what you are using instead of math and science.

 

[Kaosium]

The words of Raffaele are taken from his Prison Diary, where he recounts his interrogation, see HERE (scroll down to bottom of page)

Thank you, that makes for interesting reading. However I was hoping there would be a transcript of the actual interrogation available. I'd like to see what Raffaele referred to as "psychological torture." If the judge referred to it then I assume it must have been deemed admissible in court, and therefore there must be a transcript?

 

[Mary_H]

<snip>
Frankly I don't find it logical at all. A non-culpable Sollecito IMO would have breathed a sigh of relief and thanked his lucky stars Rudy was caught so the police could concentrate on the 'real killer'. His diary would have expressed this relief and the certainty this would all be cleared up soon. He would have expressed his anxiousness to go home and possibly to see Amanda again now that this horrible mistake would soon be cleared up.

Keep in mind that by the time they caught Rudy, Raffaele had been betrayed many times over. He writes in his diary about the staff member at the prison asking him why he hadn't been released since Rudy had been apprehended. I am sure Raffaele was wondering exactly the same thing. He expresses a great deal of anger in the diary at how so much false information and so many false moves had been held against him. He had the right to be cynical by that point.

The police had said they found the murder weapon in Raffaele's kitchen a week before Rudy came into the picture. For all Raffaele knew, Rudy might eventually have been exonerated, leaving Raffaele and Amanda still holding the bag of fake evidence against them.

 

[Dan O.]

Very enlightening. That's actually tough to watch.

I might have to play it again when I'm feeling stronger. I walked away about half way through and haven't looked at the sequels.

 

[Mary_H]

___________________

Raffaele didn't blame any police coercion for changing his story. Instead, he blamed Amanda. In his own words (again):

"I said that Amanda persuaded me to talk crap [dire
cazzate] in the second version, and that she [quella] had gone out to go to the bar where she
worked, Le Chic."

///

You are overlooking the context found in the whole passage:

Nov 12 2007
The facts are taking their course and slowly I am realizing that according to the fact which you, dad, that night sent me a message of 'goodnight' and also for the fact that the first statement made by me saying that Amanda was all the night with me, I must say that 90% I said the fat cavolata [cavolo = cabbage... garbage/crap?] in my second statement. And that is:

1 that Amanda brought me to say something stupid and I have repeated that over and over again in the court of the squadra mobile;

2 reconstructing I am realizing that Amanda was actually very likely with me all night, never leaving. And I certainly wouldn't mind to help in the investigation and put freely in all the troubles. Indeed, for me it would be fabulous if Amanda had done nothing, as it becomes impossible to find whatever trace on my shoes and my knife and this story will have a happy ending for me and for you ...

Raffaele was in the same position as Amanda -- in the presence of the police, they both were led to say what the police wanted to hear. Later, they both realized that what they said in the presence of the police did not represent reality, so they tried to retract it, and their retractions were not accepted by investigators. It just took Raffaele longer to get to that point, probably because he was among his countrymen, while Amanda never knew what hit her and didn't feel the same loyalty to authorities that Raffaele did.

Item #1 is the "garbage" that he now realizes was false. He is taking back his earlier statement to the police that Amanda "made" him lie, which is obviously what the police encouraged him to say when they interrogated him,

All of this has everything to do with being confused, coerced and trying to straighten things out, and very little to do with "lying." If you don't have anything more than this petty, irrelevant minutiae to put forward, then you don't have much of a case.

 

[Mary_H]

What you say is strange, because in his diary he writes he is not sure about this correction. And he counts three versions. He also does this while writing under his full rights and never denied what he wrote.
Moreover, there was no suspending of Raffaele's rights in his last police interrogation as far as we know. He claimed no coercion, no threat, no mental confusion.

Raffaele reported this about the night of his interrogation:

In police headquarters they tortured to me psychologically, put to me in shackles and made me strip in front of the scientific, I was even barefoot.

The reason we never heard Raffaele say more about what happened to him during his interrogation is because he probably had a better sense that it is verboten than Amanda had when she spoke of hers. He was deprived of counsel, however, which in itself speaks of coercion.

The Massei report states that Raffaele was deprived of his legal right to counsel when he was interrogated by the Magistrate (presumably Mignini). His attorneys wanted the interrogation nullified, but they filed too late, according to the report.

At the hearing of January 16, 2009 the Defence for Sollecito, in limine litis, inferred the nullity of the interrogatory session by the magistrate to which the defendant had been subjected because of the violation of his right to assistance – it was affirmed that the Prosecutor, when Sollecito had been subjected to police arrest, had deferred the exercising of the right to confer with his Defence, without however issuing the required decree with the report on the grounds for arrest, as is evidenced by the physical unavailability of the provision of Article 104 section 3 of the criminal procedure code, not present in the acts; for this reason the inefficacy of the remand measure taken out against Sollecito is pleaded consequent to the nullity of the interrogatory session taken at the hearing for the ratification of the arrest; the violation of the right to a defence is inferred, in so much as the obligation to [5]deposit the acts of the investigation before the admission of the interrogatory session itself....

...The nullity of the type of the interrogatory of the person arrested must thus be pleaded, at the risk of forfeiture, within the terms governed by Article 182 paragraph 2, previously cited, and thus before the formalities of the opening of the act, the interrogatory, which the party was attending (cf. Supreme Court of Cassation section 4, judgement number 39827/07 in the trial of Recchia). In the case cited the inference was late and the nullity – particularly regarding the Magistrate’s interrogatory – was found to have been repaired.

(Motivations, pages 17-18)

The documentation that is available to us paints a picture of the night of the interrogations. The kids were isolated, pressured, coerced, physically threatened. Both were subjected to interviews with Mignini after their initial interrogations with police. Both were imprisoned (Raffaele on the 5th, Amanda on the 6th) without ever having spoken to a lawyer. Their mental confusion is apparent in what they wrote in the days following their arrests.

 

[Diastole]

Apparently there can be trace amounts of blood present in urine, it's perfectly normal, and it can trigger luminol reactions.

That is true, Danceme. However, in my clinical experience, benign microhematuria does not occur with sufficient frequency to be a probable explanation for the luminol reactions seen at Sollecito's apartment. Occult gastrointestinal bleeding would be even less common.

As others have commented, the luminol findings at Sollecito's are an interesting "internal control" for the interpretation of similar findings at the murder scene.

 

[Fine]

You are overlooking the context found in the whole passage:




Raffaele was in the same position as Amanda -- in the presence of the police, they both were led to say what the police wanted to hear. Later, they both realized that what they said in the presence of the police did not represent reality, so they tried to retract it, and their retractions were not accepted by investigators. It just took Raffaele longer to get to that point, probably because he was among his countrymen, while Amanda never knew what hit her and didn't feel the same loyalty to authorities that Raffaele did.

Item #1 is the "garbage" that he now realizes was false. He is taking back his earlier statement to the police that Amanda "made" him lie, which is obviously what the police encouraged him to say when they interrogated him,

All of this has everything to do with being confused, coerced and trying to straighten things out, and very little to do with "lying." If you don't have anything more than this petty, irrelevant minutiae to put forward, then you don't have much of a case.

_____________________

Hmmm. Mary, I wasn't quoting Raffaele to illustrate an example of his lying. I quoted him to contradict the claim of DanO---and LondonJohn, too--- that Raffaele had merely told the cops some trite truism about being sound asleep and so not aware of Amanda'a whereabouts.

Not sure exactly what you're saying Mary. My interpretation of the relevant sections of the Prison Diary is this. Raffaele---on the night of his November 5/6 interrogation---told the cops:

"Amanda left me that night to go to her workplace, Le Chic."
And---as an aside---Raffaele mentions to the readers of his Diary that Amanda had brought him to say this crap to the cops.


___________

Are you, instead, interpreting Raffaele's Diary as saying that during the same interrogation session Raffaele told the cops:

"Amanda wants me to say that she left me that night, but that's crap"?



Or... are you interpreting Raffaele as saying in his Diary that on this night of his interrogation he made both statements to the cops:

First he said to the cops: "Amanda left me that night to go to her workplace, Le Chic." But later during the same interrogation session, he withdrew that statement and said: "Amanda wants me to say that she left me that night, but that's crap."?

///

 

[Dan O.]

When I read a quotation where "I said" is inside the quotes, I interpret that to mean he literally said "I said".

 

[Kaosium]

"Amanda left me that night to go to her workplace, Le Chic."
And---as an aside---Raffaele mentions to the readers of his Diary that Amanda had brought him to say this crap to the cops.

Are you, instead, interpreting Raffaele's Diary as saying that during the same interrogation session Raffaele told the cops:

"Amanda wants me to say that she left me that night, but that's crap"?

Or... are you interpreting Raffaele as saying in his Diary that on this night of his interrogation he made both statements to the cops:

First he said to the cops: "Amanda left me that night to go to her workplace, Le Chic." But later during the same interrogation session, he withdrew that statement and said: "Amanda wants me to say that she left me that night, but that's crap."?

///

None of the above. He says in the second statement that he told the cops that Amanda had asked him to lie for him, (and say she was with him all night) and instead went to Le Chic, but that was untrue.

From the context of the whole diary it appears the cops lied to him and told him Amanda had lied about him, and he got pissed and lied back saying she'd asked him to cover for him and not tell the cops she went to Le Chic. She never asked him that, but in anger that's what he told the police.

The second paragraph from later in the diary kinda clears it up.

The judge questioned me today and he told me that I gave three different statements, but the only difference that I find is that I said that Amanda persuaded me to talk crap [dire cazzate] in the second version, and that she [quella] had gone out to go to the bar where she worked, Le Chic.

<...>

I must admit
[dire] that I said a 90% really stupid thing [grossa cavolata] in my second statement. And that is:

1 that fact that Amanda persuaded me to say something is not true [è una cazzata] and I have said so repeatedly to the judge and to the Squadra Mobile;

2 reconstructing [the events] I realize that it is actually very likely that Amanda was with me all night long, never going out. And I will certainly not be the one to lie in order to help the investigation and get everyone into trouble for no reason [gratuitamente]. Or better still, it would be fabulous for me if Amanda has done nothing, since it is [diventa] impossible that they find any traces on my shoe and on my knife and this story will have a
happy ending for me and for you...

 

[Mary_H]

_____________________

Hmmm. Mary, I wasn't quoting Raffaele to illustrate an example of his lying. I quoted him to contradict the claim of DanO---and LondonJohn, too--- that Raffaele had merely told the cops some trite truism about being sound asleep and so not aware of Amanda'a whereabouts.

Not sure exactly what you're saying Mary. My interpretation of the relevant sections of the Prison Diary is this. Raffaele---on the night of his November 5/6 interrogation---told the cops:

"Amanda left me that night to go to her workplace, Le Chic."
And---as an aside---Raffaele mentions to the readers of his Diary that Amanda had brought him to say this crap to the cops.

___________

Are you, instead, interpreting Raffaele's Diary as saying that during the same interrogation session Raffaele told the cops:

"Amanda wants me to say that she left me that night, but that's crap"?


Or... are you interpreting Raffaele as saying in his Diary that on this night of his interrogation he made both statements to the cops:

First he said to the cops: "Amanda left me that night to go to her workplace, Le Chic." But later during the same interrogation session, he withdrew that statement and said: "Amanda wants me to say that she left me that night, but that's crap."?

///

We don't have a record of what Raffaele actually said to the cops, do we? Where are you finding these various quotes?

My understanding is that the cops urged Raffaele to agree with them that he could not have known where Amanda was when he was asleep. Somehow, although we don't know how, they conveyed to Raffaele that Amanda had been lying and now she was being implicated in the crime. Under those circumstances, Raffaele said that what he had told the cops before (i.e., his original alibi) was just a bunch of lies that Amanda had persuaded him to believe.

He wrote on the 7th, "Today the court questioned me and said that I gave three different statements, but the only difference that I find is that I said that Amanda brought me to say crap in the second version, and that was to go out at the bar where she worked, Le Chic. But I do not remember exactly whether she went out or less to go to the pub and as a consequence I do not remember how long she was absent. What is all my difficulty? I do not remember this, for them, important detail, therefore I don't break and we're investigating her."

Going by that passage, it appears Raffaele did not concur with the police that Amanda had gone to Le Chic, that is, it is not apparent from what Raffaele wrote that HE was the one who stated unequivocally that Amanda went to Le Chic. The second version he refers to, in my opinion, was the version in which the cops told Raffaele that Amanda had gone out to Le Chic, and he agreed that for their version of events to be true, Amanda must have lied to him, and he had repeated her lies, without knowing they were lies.

You may be referring to the alleged interview from Corriere della Sera, in which Raffaele is reported to have said, "'At 9pm I went home alone and Amanda said that she was going to Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends. We said goodbye. I went home, I rolled myself a spliff and made some dinner.'

"He goes on to say that Amanda returned to his house at around 1am and the couple went to bed, although he couldn't remember if they had sex."

http://www.perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=49

But who is to say whether that report is reliable, and how the newspaper could have come into possession of that material?

 

[Mary_H]

Upon reflection

Here is the rest of the passage I quoted in my previous post:

I do not remember this, for them, important detail, therefore I don't break and we're investigating her. I tried to help in the investigation trying to remember and now I've brought myself to this place, better I did nothing and limit myself to say that I remained at my house and I would be spared so much unrest. We speak of something other that is better ...

It suggests Raffaele initially might have been informed that he was being detained as part of the effort to inculpate Amanda. Interestingly, that is the same impression Amanda was under the day after her interrogation -- that she was being detained as part of the effort to inculpate Patrick.

 

[quadraginta]

This is a very silly and quite blatant misuse of statistics on your part.

Suppose I was looking out a window and I said to you (you not being able to see out the window) "Oh look, I see an albino pigeon".

If you were skeptical of this claim, the intelligent thing to do would be to get up and look out the window.

What would be very foolish would be to sit on your bottom, refusing to look out the window, and say "Your claim is completely useless unless you provide me with statistics as to the prevalence of albinism in pigeons. If it turns out albinism is very uncommon I plan to fix the belief that you have not seen an albino pigeon, because the odds of picking an albino pigeon by pure chance out of the pigeon population would then be very low".

This would be very foolish for two reasons. Firstly, you can tell an albino pigeon by the fact that it's white. Secondly, the reason this particular pigeon was noteworthy in the first place was because it was an albino pigeon.

What you are trying to pull here is exactly analogous: Amanda Knox's confession has the specific characteristics of an internalised false statement - it's an albino pigeon. We are examining it precisely because there is strong evidence in this case that the conviction was a miscarriage of justice - we are looking at it because it's an albino pigeon.

This is the wrong forum in which to try bluffing with fallacious statistical arguments. The Knox case was not randomly selected for examination from the complete pool of all court cases, and Knox's false statement has specific characteristics indicative of an internalised false confession.

Well done, Kevin. A response entirely comprised of straw.

Leaving aside that, and the fallacies internal to your monologue, and the naked disregard for fact (It is only your assertion that "Knox's confession has the specific characteristics of an internalised false statement", whatever the hell that is. Seems like a lot of letters to waste in a futile effort to avoid the word "lie".), not a single word of your post addresses the simple truth that anecdote is not evidence.

No amount of dancing around the fire will change this. Even your fellow partisan Matthew Best agrees.

Anecdote avalanche is a common rhetorical tactic. We see it all the time in "opinion pieces" on "news journals". Politicians are fond of it when they are trying to use hysteria and misdirection in an effort to get laws enacted which would not otherwise withstand informed scrutiny, or to get themselves re-elected. It is edifying to understand that it is a tactic most often employed when argument based on reason and fact is not forthcoming.

 

[quadraginta]

I simply do not understand the terrifying certainty with which guilters make claims like this.

How can anyone pretend that they know what young people they have never met, under circumstances they have never experienced, would say and do with such precision?

When these sorts of claims start sounding logical I really think that you need to take a big step back, take a few deep breaths, and consider that just maybe you are deep in the grip of confirmation bias gone rabid.

Stellar advice. I took the liberty of striking out the extraneous and transparently prejudicial introductory sentence.

The remainder are words which many could benefit from. In particular I would suggest that you yourself transcribe them onto a couple of Post-It notes, and affix one to your monitor, and one to your mirror.

Better late than never, right?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Well done, Kevin. A response entirely comprised of straw.

I remain of the belief that it's an entirely pertinent response to your demand for irrelevant statistics.

Leaving aside that, and the fallacies internal to your monologue, and the naked disregard for fact (It is only your assertion that "Knox's confession has the specific characteristics of an internalised false statement", whatever the hell that is. Seems like a lot of letters to waste in a futile effort to avoid the word "lie".),

We have been over this mole many, many times now. Regurgitating a police theory along with expressed confusion about whether the facts in the statement are real or imaginary, and retraction shortly afterwards of a statement produced after lengthy interrogation by trusting or otherwise vulnerable subjects are known qualities of internalised false statements, and we have been beating people over the head with citations of all these facts since well before this second thread began.

I struggle to believe that having participated in this thread as long as you have done that you are genuinely in ignorance of the multiple citations to back these points up - they have been the specific subject of many of the posts just in the last day or so, in fact. So at this stage of the game claiming that it is merely my assertion as opposed to scientific fact is rather curious.

It is, however, reminiscent of the equally hilarious meme that it was merely my assertion (as opposed to scientific fact) that t(lag) in a healthy young woman under relaxed circumstances who had not been drinking alcohol, eating a small-to-moderate sized meal could be said with reasonable medical certainty to be less than four hours. That was pretty funny.

not a single word of your post addresses the simple truth that anecdote is not evidence.

No amount of dancing around the fire will change this. Even your fellow partisan Matthew Best agrees.

Anecdote avalanche is a common rhetorical tactic. We see it all the time in "opinion pieces" on "news journals". Politicians are fond of it when they are trying to use hysteria and misdirection in an effort to get laws enacted which would not otherwise withstand informed scrutiny, or to get themselves re-elected. It is edifying to understand that it is a tactic most often employed when argument based on reason and fact is not forthcoming.

The prosecution has the burden of proof here. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and was found in situations where one could reasonably expect to find a duck, then it's the prosecution's job to prove it wasn't an internalised false statement duck.

We've established that it walks, looks and quacks like an internalised false statement and was produced under circumstances known to produce an internalised false statement. That's our job done, and case studies are just fine for that job.

What evidence do you have that it wasn't an internalised false statement? What qualities do you think it has that are absent in internalised false confessions? What information in the statement could not have been fed to an innocent Amanda by police (and please don't bother trying out the magic ears/magic scream routine, that mole is very flat too)?

If you don't have any such evidence, reasonable doubt is established and we move right along.

Demanding statistics for the exact percentage of birds which are ducks at that point is at best a waste of our time.

 

[RoseMontague]

How can there be a comparison to the Amanda Knox case and these other 39 cases when none of those cases involve someone being convicted of murder or rape based on a false confession of only being present at the scene of a murder but not participating in it?

Several of these involved admitting being present but not participating and numerous ones involved falsely accusing others of participating. I am not sure exactly what you are saying but maybe this quote from the study will help:

Seventeen of the forty exonerees not only falsely inculpated themselves but also falsely inculpated others, eleven of whom were later also exonerated by postconviction DNA testing. Paula Gray’s testimony in the “Ford Heights Four” case, which implicated Kenneth Adams, Verneal Jimerson, Willie Rainge, and Dennis Williams, is an example. In still other cases, additional innocent people implicated by one suspect’s false confession themselves also falsely confessed. As a result, some of the false confessions studied here occurred in related cases.
In the five Central Park Jogger case confessions of Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, and Kharey Wise, each implicated others as the primary assailant. In the “Beatrice Six” cases, four defendants—James Dean, Ada JoAnne Taylor, Debra Shelden, and Thomas
Winslow—variously implicated each other as well as two others who did not confess, Kathy Gonzalez and Joseph White. Alejandro Hernandez and Rolando Cruz both reportedly confessed to the same crime. Finally, Marcellius Bradford
and Calvin Ollins both confessed and also implicated two others who did not confess.