Slayhamlet
Master Poster
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2007
- Messages
- 2,423
Well, I can understand the reluctance to get involved in a thread that's already hundreds of pages long, and I suppose if you feel like you have only so much time and can't be bothered with a case that is already being questioned vociferously by others, so be it. I just thought perhaps that you could offer some valuable insight if you did indeed decide to look into the details of the case, considering you've shown a good deal of interest in things like investigative and prosecutorial misconduct, media-driven character assassination of defendants, etc. One really needn't dig too deeply to find these things in the Knox/Sollecito case, as I said, in spades.
I'm not sure I follow. They've already been convicted. Do you mean the outcome of the pending appeal? It's unlikely that any groundbreaking new evidence will come to light in the appeal, if that's what you're getting at. Rather, the appeal will almost certainly involve a re-examination of the prosecution's case, which is, to put it mildly, so full of holes that many of us wonder how it got through in the first place (until we recall the media smear-campaign). New revelations are hardly necessary. Pretty much all the evidence required to determine reasonable doubt is available to anyone who has an Internet connection and the time and inclination to look into it. Of course a lot of it is originally in Italian, but interested persons have translated most of it into English. One merely has to read Judge Massei's motivations report to see the obvious flaws in the narrative. To those of us who feel the conviction was a travesty of justice, and I submit that there are a fair few of us, there's a pretty universal feeling that the defence dropped the ball and let the prosecution get away with what amounts to, essentially, a framing.
Well, to myself and to a number of others who have considered the case rationally, the miscarriage of justice apparent in the Knox/Sollecito conviction is also blatant and obvious. All the obvious signs of a serious railroading job are there, running the whole gamut from destruction of evidence by police, accusations of a coerced confession, dishonest media leaks from the police used to tarnish Knox's reputation, to an absurd theory of how the crime took place and an even absurder motive, all of which was thought up and engineered by a chief prosecutor (who is also in charge of the investigation) who has been known to invent absurd theories, among them that a Masonic conspiracy was behind the monster of Florence serial killer case, and who was even convicted, in relation to that same case, for abuse of his office when he wiretapped journalists who questioned his theories. I'm just sayin'.
Incidentally, the Barry George case has come up in the discussion as a parallel.
I find this statement a bit perplexing, as I thought you'd admitted to not really looking into the case. I'm curious what exactly gave you the impression that it's not clear-cut. I hope you haven't simply decided that since there's been a lot of discussion and controversy one side can't be utterly wrong. It would be rather naïve to assume that both sides of the discussion must have equally good arguments simply because the discussion is taking place on a skeptics' forum. For one thing, a lot of the people participating in the thread aren't regular members here, and a good number even hail from a site dedicated to defending the conviction at all costs (mainly by spreading lies and innuendo about Knox and her family). Not to mention that, well, sometimes skeptics aren't all they're cracked up to be. You've experienced that for yourself, have you not? Even some of the same characters are involved (*cough* Alt-F4).
If you want to see what critics of the case are on about you can read a summary of the case from their perspective here. Now I would expect that you, taking (for the moment) these arguments at face-value, would agree that the issues involved here are not so very different from those in the other cases you've mentioned, would you not? Of course it's also true that InjusticeInPerugia is a biased source. That's unavoidable. Perhaps everything they say is just crap made up, as some might have you believe, by an American media PR machine in the pay of Amanda's family. But there's a simple way of testing whether their summary is by and large correct as regards the police investigators' conduct and the narrative put forth by the prosecution.
You could spend hours perusing the Knox thread looking for answers, but everyone knows its mostly a trainwreck as far as establishing some sort of "consensus" is concerned; really more of a merry-go-round than a thread. Considering all the disinformation out there this is to be expected. Consequently no one is going to expect that someone new to the discussion read pages and pages of mostly repetitive tripe. Around 50% of it is just irrelevant innuendo brought up again and again by people who were convinced by tabloidish media reports about how guilty Amanda Knox looks/acts and what a horrible, horrible person she must be for having a sex life. They've bought that line and aren't about to rethink it.
On the other hand, you could simply take any one of the more damning points mentioned in the summary and ask, Hey, is this true? Is this indeed what the prosecution argued, or is it a gross misrepresentation? Is this really how the case unfolded? Did the Perugia police really fail to...etc., etc. No one will begrudge you this. Knowledgeable, reasonable people want to convince other reasonable people to come to their side, after all, and it will give them another chance to flesh out some of the most damning aspects of the case, rather than having to address more boring, repetitive innuendo. More revealingly, you'll soon discover that not many "guilters" will contest the meat and potatoes of how the investigation went down and what the prosecution's narrative was as presented in the summary article. They'll disagree about particular points of argument made, yes. They'll say "you can't prove it was an internalized false confession". This is true. Though the police recorded and wiretapped a number of supposed witnesses, according to the police no recording of Amanda's interrogation was made. They'll insist "you can't prove she wasn't lying in order to frame Patrick Lumumba," despite it making absolutely no sense for her to accuse a man she knew couldn't be at the scene if she were involved, instead of accusing the guy eventually convicted separately in a fast-track trial who she barely knew but apparently conspired to commit a spontaneous sex offense/murder with. Some of them even say they think the Massei report is wrong on important details, yet insist Amanda is still guilty without explaining how or trying to reconcile all the nonsense in the guilt narrative.
And so on and so forth. I won't go into any more details as this is already a massive enough derail.
ETA: To explain myself further, this wall o' text was principally a result of my feeling that there are such striking and obvious parallels between the Amanda Knox case and other cases which are widely believed to be miscarriages of justice that I'm having trouble understanding how someone like you, of all people, doesn't see it. And I mean that in the nicest way possible, believe me. I have followed many of your Lockerbie threads and found your arguments and dedication admirable. I realize you are frustrated by the lack of discussion or even interest in debating that subject here and elsewhere. I myself haven't contributing anything to it, mainly because I have nothing of worth to offer other than a digital petition signature (if that's worth anything). Nonetheless I have a genuine interest in your take on the Knox case, as I believe you probably do have some valuable insight to add to that discussion. Even if your honest opinion is that you doubt there was a miscarriage of justice, I'd be interested to know why.
If you still can't be bothered, that's fine, too, I guess.
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