• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

Status
Not open for further replies.
Kevin_Lowe said:
That does make more sense, and if so it's going to make it even more difficult to come up with any story whatsoever where Amanda and Raffaele were anywhere but Raffaele's house when Meredith was killed.
Click to expand...

Not everyone believes Amanda has to be with RS to be guilty, ya know....
 
For some reason, students don't count in Italy when it comes to providing alibis. There were several students in Patrick's bar that knew him and attested that he was in the bar that night. But it took a professor from another country to get him released.
 
quadraginta said:
Even Matthew Best understands this, and he is arguing for the Knox defenders.
Click to expand...

I fail to see what difference it would make. The fact of whether Knox's "confession" is false is unaffected by the number of other false confessions there may be.
Click to expand...


quadraginta said:
And I agree with this statement.

My point is as simple as that.
Click to expand...

I agree too, however your stating the probability of a false internalized confession doesn't really apply in my mind. At this point it is kinda like a diagnoses--we know something is wrong here, we have to find out what it is. It appears to me the odds of an Internalized False Confession is higher than the possibility that 'confession' was a 'lie' deliberately told to deceive by a guilty Amanda. Or for that matter a truth in one respect; that being that Amanda was there and knew what was happening to Meredith and is thus culpable along with Raffaele.

That's because to make all the known factors square with each other, I think you have to describe behavior far more bizarre and unlikely than that freak-out in the police station, and while you may sneer at 'anecdotes' posted by Kevin Lowe and others, as well as Halides' statistics from the Innocence Project on the prevalence of that phenomena amongst those wrongfully imprisoned, it just so happens that relatively rare condition is currently higher in my mind than the odds someone can provide a rational explanation within the bounds of known science that Amanda and Raffaele actually committed the crime.

I know that because no one has yet, not even eighteen magistrates of Italy's finest who according to the bold boast of the guilt faction all signed off on the Massei Report. Though since you've made the claim I hope to see you do what I couldn't do: make a believable scenario out of the facts and events available, however at this juncture just the interrogation.

Presented on its own, what we actually know about the Knox questioning does not provide us with enough data to draw the conclusion that she was coerced in any fashion beyond what would constitute standard law enforcement interview techniques generally acceptable even in the U.S. and U.K. Beyond that we have been offered hyperbole, distortion, and the insinuation and innuendo incited and bolstered by these anecdotes. Knox's own words, taken as a body and not scissored into conveniently manipulable bites, suggest that there was not any such brutal coercion.
Click to expand...

Brutal? No, I would be amazed to find out anything more than she was whupped upside the head a few times, enough to intimidate, enough to raise already heightened anxiety levels, but not enough to cause harm, or in and of themselves cause what happened to happen. It was not physical violence in my mind, thus I would not use the word 'brutal,' but a breaking of the will did occur in my opinion, thus in that sense it was unbearable.

The initial play on this meme was that she was held continuously for ~fifty hours without food, water, rest, or even sanitation. This did not withstand even casual scrutiny, and the vectors of the meme quickly (and repeatedly) retreated to presumably more defensible exaggeration.
Click to expand...

I know, I read that argument, there was a poster named something to the effect of shlttlt who calmly and rationally disputed that claim and as far as I'm concerned presented a better argument. However, forty or fifty hours is hardly necessary to produce the conditions required for an Internalized False Confession. All that was needed was the time to prepare, Raffaele and Amanda together at the police station from 10-11 PM or whatever it was, and police staffed up and ready to go all night long if they had to.

They were like lambs to the slaughter, you can read it all over their diaries and in Amanda's note the next day or so after the 'confession.' Like so many who embrace the guilt argument now they had no idea how interrogations work, they'd never heard of, let alone done the math, on the Prisoner's Dilemma. It probably never occurred to them that the policemen would lie to them. They trusted these policemen and believed their threats in my opinion, and that the only record we have of that is from them is hardly their fault.

Argument by anecdote has become a new tactic of choice, but it no more defensible, just marginally less transparent.
Click to expand...

However it's a more worthwhile endeavor than trolling and sophistry, which is all that seems to be left of the guilt argument. I've asked and asked, when I finally created an account here I was fairly sure of innocence for various reasons, but my mind was open to an argument that actually explained things. I ask you because you're basically the last one left whom I read on this capable of putting together a cogent argument that makes guilt even possible that hasn't already demurred. Plus you did made the claim below. :)

The sad reality is that regardless of such clever verbal constructs as "internalized false confession", using only the facts at hand concerning her individual case, the simplest and thus (as has been often pointed out in these threads for many different reasons) most likely explanation is that Knox lied.
Click to expand...

Oh, I read them too, but the conditions of the debate have changed since. When I first heard about this issue sometime in early July, there was still material to work with, and not all defense arguments had been refined and sourced to my satisfaction. There was, however, much talk about the Massei Report which was due to be done getting translated to English in a few months, and having decided at that point there were still unanswered questions of substance, I stopped reading and came back about a month ago to see what that revealed and to revisit the entire issue.

It was a much different atmosphere. One site I read extensively had degenerated into the Hate Club for Memes. I'd google and find posters who once made arguments and defended them scoring 'own goals' with virtually each and every messageboard or comments section trolled, as a 'Mary H' or someone else would post right beneath them with the whole truth; which discredited not only their argument, but in time, their position. Then as I got to the later ones it degenerated into vicious (well, as much as words on a computer screen can be) hateful rants which were so counter-productive it occurred to me might not even be from people convinced of guilt, but others trying to make them look bad.

I am still open to conjecture as to why she may have chosen to lie, but I am not convinced by the unrelated anecdotal arguments alluding to coercion. No matter how many of them are posted.
Click to expand...

I am not entirely certain what occurred here either, though I've suspicions what did. I am hopeful you might provide insight, however I've tried to do this myself and as honestly as possible, when guilt was still a realistic possibility in my mind, but trying to make an argument that made her look more guilty than the ones interrogating her was beyond my capability. I wanted all the facts to count and for it to be understandable without biasing it. The Lone Wolf theory incorporating an Internalized False Confession takes in just about everything and makes sense, there has to be one as good for guilt in my mind.

However this is where it starts, at this point everything still makes sense on both sides. They find a kinky black hair at the crime scene, they think at first glance there must have been more than one attacker, Lumbada was the boss of both Meredith and Amanda and thus knew them both, Giobbi thinks Amanda was acting suspicious and has been watching and wiretapping her, an overnight session with cops from Rome has been scheduled, Amanda has already been interrogated at length, and Raffaele is in the other room. The police have legitimate suspicions and they're going to act on them.

So, what do you think happened, and why does it make sense to you according to all the information available? Discounting something needs a credible reason, and I'll play fair but won't be cheated, because in the end I am fascinated by this whole ordeal and want to figure it out as best I can. :)
 
Last edited:
Dan O. said:
For some reason, students don't count in Italy when it comes to providing alibis. There were several students in Patrick's bar that knew him and attested that he was in the bar that night. But it took a professor from another country to get him released.
Click to expand...

Are. you. kidding. me.
 
Malkmus said:
Pretty sure that if Raf is found to have been home all night and he states Amanda was with him that gives her an alibi.
Click to expand...


I just got done reading Raffaele's diary and he states a number of times he can't remember what happened that night. He then also later states he's almost sure she was with her. I think Raffaele either smoked entirely too much hash or was prevaricating.
 
Draca said:
This is not a problem. The murder occurred after Raffaele's computer activity late at night. Toto had already come back to the park bench after the Disco buses parked for the night. Amanda needed the kitchen knife to cut the chocolate cake she made that was at the cottage. This murder did not happen because of reefer madness or a sex game gone wrong. It was becasue of pot munchies. They just had to have chocolate cake! They ran into rudy and he wanted some also. They met up with him when he was coming home from the Disco.
Click to expand...

All they have to do is move the time of death. ;)

For some reason I'm just not believing this. I want to so very badly, but something always tells me that's a bad thing. :(
 
Originally Posted by Katody Matrass
It's a misunderstanding
I wrote it's missing because it's not among the scans on the website. I'm sure the defense have them and filed them When you read the scans you realize there is a sentence cut in half on the page about screensavers, and right after that comes a page beginning with the last part of the log, so most of the logs are not there, probably because they're not interesting to an average reader.​

RoseMontague said:
Thanks for your help. It seems now that there are logs and they show continuous activity until late that night? Is that where this stands now? We need a translation to be certain.
Click to expand...

Those Italian documents are in image format, so I can't feed them into my translator.
And they are gone?

http://www.tgcom.mediaset.it/cronaca...lo495359.shtml

http://www.tgcom.mediaset.it/fotogal...ry8914.shtml?1
 
Last edited:
From http://salem-news.com/articles/november042010/amandaknox.php

Computer activity and data retrieval

Raffaele’s appeal shows a 20 minute video was activated at 9:26 p.m. on his computer. It doesn’t prove they stayed to watch the video, but it does place them in his apartment at 9:26 p.m. to activate the video, which makes the eye witness account of the park bench witness unreliable because he claimed they both were at Piazza Grimana at that time. The hard drives of Amanda and Raffaele’s computers were damaged during police testing.​

If MK was stabbed before 9:30, as seems probable, RS and AK would have to travel and kill very fast.

If the screen saver logs are as mentioned, then alibi is solid. However, I haven't seen the data yet!
 
Justinian2 said:
Originally Posted by Katody Matrass
It's a misunderstanding
I wrote it's missing because it's not among the scans on the website. I'm sure the defense have them and filed them When you read the scans you realize there is a sentence cut in half on the page about screensavers, and right after that comes a page beginning with the last part of the log, so most of the logs are not there, probably because they're not interesting to an average reader.​



Those Italian documents are in image format, so I can't feed them into my translator.
And they are gone?

http://www.tgcom.mediaset.it/cronaca...lo495359.shtml

http://www.tgcom.mediaset.it/fotogal...ry8914.shtml?1
Click to expand...

Links on previous page are still good, I have copied if it goes away.
 
Danceme said:
I hate to interfere with your gloating LJ but Frommer's Italy says Gradisca is only open on Thursdays and Saturdays.

http://tinyurl.com/Frommers-Italy-2008

Did you actually call the discos to find out for sure. I couldn't find their opening hours on their websites, perhaps you can pinpoint it please.
Click to expand...

It was a typo/mistake. Here's the 2010 edition:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...wBDge#v=onepage&q=perugia disco buses&f=false

(apologies for the absurdly-long link)

"It's (Gradisca) only open Saturday 9pm to at least 5am."

And, in any case, logic would mitigate heavily against a club like this being open every Thursday as well. I doubt an out-of-town club would do much business on a Thursday night, when there is work and college the following day. If Gradisca were to be open on two nights per week, then the other night would clearly be Friday.

Interestingly, it seems to me that one of the key reasons why Halloween has become so popular in Italy (despite the opposition by the Catholic church) is that there is always a day off after Halloween (either a public holiday for All Saints' Day if Nov 1st falls on a weekday, or a weekend day if Nov 1st falls over a weekend). Therefore, the clubs can always count on a good crowd for Halloween parties - unlike in the UK and US, where Nov 1st is not a holiday.
 
Last edited:
So it looks pretty certain that the disco buses only ran on a Saturday night or for one-off special events such as the Halloween party on October 31st. Therefore, by extension, it also seems pretty certain that the disco buses were not running on the night of Thursday 1st November 2007. Therefore, by extension, it appears that Curatolo was - at best - mistaken in his dates if he remembers disco buses on the night that he saw Knox and Sollecito near the basketball court.

I note that this is all mentioned in the appeal, and I trust that it will be argued strongly and with appropriate evidence by Knox's/Sollecito's defence teams. Although (and I know I've said it before) it doesn't reflect well on their efforts in the first trial that they didn't sort this whole matter out at that time.

As an aside, didn't Curatolo also mention at one point that there were people wandering around in costumes and masks etc on the night in question? This of course leans even more strongly towards some sort of recollection of 31st October - Halloween - rather than 1st November. Although I also seem to remember some ludicrous "observation" by a biased "man on the ground" on PMF who claimed that there were always people in masks and costumes out and about in Perugia on the evening of 1st November as well. Not.
 
I have a couple of questions for the guilters.

If you take away the theoretical double DNA knife and the theoretical bra clasp DNA, then what probability of guilt would you assign to Amanda and Raffaele?

If you also take away the thought that the breakin was staged, then what probability of guilt would you assign to Amanda and Raffaele?
 
RoseMontague said:
Links on previous page are still good, I have copied if it goes away.
Click to expand...

It would be great for someone competent in Italian to look at them, as there seems to be some info on Curatolo, too.
I managed to decipher with help of a dictionary the meaning of the screensaver (salvaschermo) part, but I'm not qualified to translate it word for word.

Regarding the PC, their argument is that ILE used only the "last accessed" data for files from the disk. Obvious problem with it is that on Nov 6 when they switched it on, over 520 files were accessed, thus erasing the vital info.
But the "last accessed" data also doesn't cover playing music from CD drive (a music CD was found in the drive) nor playlists that could access files repeatedly.

And most importantly, ILE disregarded completely the windowserver.log - a file containing the log of events, with dates and times. Those events detail various activities of the user and the system. Among them occurrences of activating the screensaver.
We know the PC was switched on all night, so if there were no films played and no user interaction it would be on the screensaver all the time - that is not the case.
Unfortunately most of the log that the defense filed is not on the website, but they summarize it, saying that the longest duration of screensaver activation during the night was 6 minutes.
In the end the defense bashes Polizia Postale and calls for a review by real experts.


Note: 6 minutes doesn't mean they fumbled with the PC all the time. First, there's a preset period of inactivity required for the screensaver to activate. Second, any playing of a film will prevent the screensaver from activating.




BTW I think there is some logic in filing this so late. They ask for an analysis of the macbook and they have new and very good arguments for it. If they revealed it earlier, who knows what accidentally might have happened to the original data. There are floods, electricity surges, things get lost or stolen from time to time.

Where I live, there was a high profile murder case. It is currently investigated by a special parliamentary commission. There is strong suspicion of police involvement and cooperation with the murderers, and as some say, potential involvement of ex-regime communist security service and some politicians. It is interesting to see to what lengths can a cover up go:
First the police truck delivering lots of case files was stolen. Then the archive with the rest of the files and evidence was flooded by a leaking sewage pipe. In the meantime 3 initially convicted people committed suicides in prison. Attorneys in the case and members of the parliamentary commission are burglarized on the regular basis, getting their papers and files stolen etc.

Italy is a more developed country, and maybe less corrupt, and there is obviously not that much at stake in the Kercher case, but I can imagine some actions to cover the screw-up might take place.
 
There is another important point the defense made:
Massei's conclusion that there was no activity on the macbook is groundless.
It's based solely on the lack of files with "last access" between 18:00 Nov 1 and 8:00 Nov 2.
But the laptop was in use after that period before Postale imaged it's drive on Nov 13.
Files were repeatedly accessed, some could have been deleted.


Massei's conclusion about PC activity is wrong, and further testing proves it wrong.
 
Machiavelli said:
The conclusion is: there is simply [no] ground and no reason to say there was an interrogation by Mignini before Sollecito waas granted legal assistance. This claim is absurd in this trial, not because of the law itself, but because any claim of the contrary is missing. And doing the contrary would nonsense for Mignini: if he did this interrogation, this would be useless, it would be nullified. Would be wasted work. A person in custody cannot speak to the prosecutor before having spoken to the GIP, and cannot speak as a suspect to a magistrate without a lawyer present. No interrogation like the on you claim ever took place, and to claim it is nonsense.
Click to expand...


If it happened to Amanda, it could happen to Raffaele. And it did happen to Amanda. Mignini accepted a statement from her at 5:45, whether it was "spontaneous" or came as the result of questioning. Remarkably, what you would call wasted work was nullified, yet STILL ended up in the trial, for all to hear. Did Mignini ever really have anything to fear about breaking the rules?

I am not holding tight and fast to a firm claim that Mignini interrogated Raffaele on the 5th or 6th. I am saying there are suggestions it is a possibility. We have already seen that Raffaele's lawyers missed a deadline to file against the decree; maybe they missed a deadline to file against the interrogations, too, and decided to let sleeping dogs lie.

On the other hand, as we have seen in Amanda's case, it is not in a defendant's best interests to accuse the police of misbehavior in one's initial trial. Maybe accusing a lead prosecutor of misbehavior could lead to even more serious consequences.

When you write things like this (and you have written many similar things in the past), I wonder if you still believe in Santa Claus:

The interview with the prosecutor never took place because it is the law that provides so, and nobody ever claimed the contrary. An interrogation of a person under arrest by a prosecutor could not take place before the interrogation by a GIP. And an interrogation of a suspect by a magistrate cannot take place without the presence of an appointed attorney.
Click to expand...


Would the entire population be demoralized if they knew a magistrate broke the law? If so, that in itself would be a reason not to reveal it in court documents.
 
Mary_H said:
When you write things like this (and you have written many similar things in the past), I wonder if you still believe in Santa Claus:



.
Click to expand...

Well, there goes your last ounce of credibility, first you say Amanda's innocent, now your saying there is no Santa Clause, whats next, The Easter Bunny too???? :)
 
Sherlock Holmes said:
Well, there goes your last ounce of credibility, first you say Amanda's innocent, now your saying there is no Santa Clause, whats next, The Easter Bunny too???? :)
Click to expand...


I'm so sorry, Sherlock! But if you read between the lines, you will see that I didn't come right out and say it -- so there is still a possibility. :relieved:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom