Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kevin_Lowe]

On the contrary it was an argument regarding the nature of the exchanges in this thread, using as an analogy, other threads on JREF.

Have a look at the rest of this forum, especially the CT section, to see the point I making.
Are you familiar with the rest of this forum. ?

As to the general debate about innocence or guilt there may well be a good case (I don't believe so) to be made for an unsafe conviction.
However it has not been made here.

All I see on this thread is a mishmash of wild claims, conspiracy theories, arguments revealing a basic misunderstanding of the points under discussion, unpersuasive 'expert analysis' from amateurs, credulous arguments giving the benefit of the doubt to (2 of) the suspects, talking points etc all repeated over & over.

This argumentative tactic reminds me of a childhood strategy for playing checkers against a superior opponent - just mirror every move they make.

When we pointed out we had science on our side, they called us anti-science. When we pointed out that communities like PMF and TMJK behaved like cults, they called us cultists. When we pointed out that their "research" methods are identical to those of 9/11 deniers and moon landing deniers, they called us conspiracy theorists. When we pointed out that they are using tabloid articles and snippets taken out of context from on-line textbooks as their sources, they accused us of basing our arguments on Google and Youtube instead of "proper" sources (which turned out to mean "Massei", not the peer-reviewed scientific literature).

Now when every mole has been whacked thoroughly flat and there's nothing but scorched wreckage left of the sainted Massei's confabulated fairy story, they declare that all of our arguments have been proven wrong and the discussion is over.

That prerogative remains with the judicial authorities in Italy - hence my repeated references to the appeal.

In the meantime on this thread the skeptics can only point out the holes in the less that persuasive arguments as they reappear.

While I think of it... would it change your view of the case in any way if the appeal team turned out to be correct that there was computer activity on Raffaele's computer covering the entire period in which Meredith Kercher could have been murdered?

If you cling to the idea that she might have died at 23:30, just assume that the defence are correct and that computer activity continued until 0:100 the next day.

How will your view of the case change in that eventuality?

 

[Katody Matrass]

As for changing theories, it now seems RSs and AKs alibi has gone from "we were asleep" to "we were up most of the night on the Internet". So which is it?

That's news to me. Where did you learn about that "we were asleep" theory?

 

[Withnail1969]

Maybe he was high on weed, because people never forget comings and goings when smokin' the herb.

Comings and goings in your own house when there is nobody there except you and your very recent girlfriend.

I don't think I ever claimed smoking weed gave you a mental clock accurate to within 1 minute. Curatolo must have been on something stronger than weed if he saw them at 9:27 pm.

 

[Malkmus]

I didn't say anything in my post about the knife or the bra clasp. As for changing theories, it now seems RSs and AKs alibi has gone from "we were asleep" to "we were up most of the night on the Internet". So which is it?

My point is that exactly what they were doing is meaningless if they were at home, but that I can see how the argument will soon become all about how it was just Amanda and Rudy who killed Meredith. "We were asleep" or not, doesn't place them at the cottage.

 

[Withnail1969]

All this means is that sooner or later the guilters are going to resort to changing their theories entirely to explain how Amanda and Rudy alone killed Meredith. The problem is that the double DNA knife and bra clasp immediately disappear. It also destroys the witness testimony of Curatolo. And the scenario becomes even more bizarre and unlikely.

Curatolo's already destroyed. There were no disco buses, we know that for sure now.

 

[Malkmus]

Which trial did Cristian Tramontano testify in, Rudy's or RS/AK's? The Massei report doesn't say.

It's in Massei's report for Amanda and Raf's trial so I would assume he testified in that trial. Either way, you got what you asked for, so what difference does it make which trial?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Spader as seen by Fox

As the author of this "specious nonsense", I would like to point out that my reference to Steven Spader's trial in a discussion of the Meredith Kercher case is no more specious than your incessant parade of wrongful prosecutions. In fact, if you were to examine the details of Kimberly Cates' murder and the subsequent investigation and prosecution, you would notice some striking parallels.


On Monday, prominent criminologist James Fox blogged about the case:

"The big surprise in the Spader case was in the complete lack of physical evidence linking the defendant to the crime scene, even though this could be explained, as the prosecutor contends, by steps the accused may have taken to cover his trail."

"The rest of us may feel relieved that someone like Spader is kept off the street. At the same time, we should not be too thrilled about the means employed to achieve that end."

Fuji,

Thanks for the citation to the article by Mr. Fox and the clarification. My evaluation of the comparison between the Spader case and this one was primarily directed toward stilicho’s remarks. Claiming that because both Mr. Spader and LondonJohn discussed the presumption of innocence (that one is innocent unless proven guilty) indicates that they write in a similar tone is among the least convincing arguments I have seen in a while. One has to wonder about the reason for attempting such a comparison in the first place. I hold the same wonder for comparing Mr. Spader’s words to Kevin_Lowe’s, except that Mr. Spader is talking about facts and Kevin_Lowe is talking about logic, so the similarity is even fainter (message # 14264).

From what I gather of Mr. Fox’s article, Mr. Spader talked about (fantasized about?) killing many people. That is not remotely comparable to what one finds in Ms. Knox’s or Mr. Sollecito’s diary. One can find some things that hurt their cases. Your point about keeping quiet being the best course for a defendant is well-taken. However, the pro-guilt commenters sometimes misinterpret the diaries, as Mary_H pointed out. Moreover, the pro-guilt commenters are very selective in which portions they quote, and one can find other material that makes the pair look more favorable. That is one of the reasons why I have quoted other excerpts from their diaries in this and the preceding threads.

I will grant that the lack of much physical evidence is a similarity, but overall, the two cases are very different. To take a single example, the burglars in the Spader case were thought to be deliberately looking for a family to kill. No one is suggesting anything comparable in this case.

 

[platonov]

<snip>

There's an interesting phenomenon on the Internet, in which people who have never met Amanda think they have a better handle on what she is like than the people who have known her for many years.

There certainly is - which seems to be driving much of the supportive internet comment.

She is 'hot', white and American - and cruelly treated at the hands of evil foreigners.

Its brings to mind the 'white slaver' meme of bygone days

[and the fascination with convicted killers & 'celebities']

http://ohmygolly.tumblr.com/post/69185974/maidens-that-ive-rescued-on-the-internet

.

 

[Withnail1969]

..

 

[Withnail1969]

Fuji,

Thanks for the citation to the article by Mr. Fox and the clarification. My evaluation of the comparison between the Spader case and this one was primarily directed toward stilicho’s remarks. Claiming that because both Mr. Spader and LondonJohn discussed the presumption of innocence (that one is innocent unless proven guilty) indicates that they write in a similar tone is among the least convincing arguments I have seen in a while.

Yes. I mean, maybe it's just me, but i would imagine the presumption of innocence comes up quite often in discussion of criminal trials. Kind of like Eskimos discussing snow.

Bringing up the Spader case seemed like nothing more than a clumsy and unconvincing way to deliver an ad hominem.

 

[daydreamer]

In the Massei report she doesn't say where the locksmith was when she saw Rudy coming out of her office. I'm sure her son was with her but I hope no one is going to argue that Rudy was frightened by a 6 year-old boy. In fact the report mentions the locksmith, the boy and the "rep" being present after the police arrived.

Here it is again, evidentally form courtroom testimony (unless Massei made it up):
The witness stated that she was with her six year old son, with a smith [fabbro] who was there to do some work, and with a rep.

 

[Machiavelli]

It's the police chief of Naples, not me, who says this. Tell him he doesn't know what he is talking about.

You don't know what you are talking about.

I don't know these cases. I don't know what the prosecutor is saying exactly about them. I don't know if he criticizing anti-mafia laws or the inefficiency of some anti-maifia processes. I don't know if the "release" is about mafia indicted or mavia convicted. My knowledge is about mafia and terrorist murders cooperators who all had sentences between 12 and 20+ years, all my memory is of people who served terms longer than three years, these doesn't mean there can't be cases of people released after three years, maybe there are, probably they are not frequent because had they been frequent I would have probably noticed them but anyway the point is, I don't know these cases. I can have opinions only about things I know.

But you don't know anything of what you are talking about. The laws, the meaning of words and legal terms translated like "release", the state of processes, cases, the people, the crimes, the reasons like reasons for the release, the conditions, what exactly the prosecutor is complaining about and the actual stories.
You don't know absolutely anything of what you are talking about, so let alone comparisons.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

the lack of conflict between civil liberties and the judicial process

No political issue like civil liberties can interfere in the judicial process: the establishing of whether a person is guilty or not of a crime, must not be determined on contexts like if the police is corrupt or fascist or whether it a free society or not. Given the knowledge of context and the laws, the judges shall be able to see if there are elements to find the truth.

Machiavelli,

This is the second time you have written something that implies you see a conflict between civil liberties and determining the truth in a criminal case. Your earlier comment on the preparation that a lawyer might provide for a client facing a judge suggested the same thing to me. I see no conflict between respecting fundamental liberties and having a successful judicial inquiry. Exactly the contrary: respecting the rights of the defendants is necessary to obtain the truth. I offer Professor Geoffrey Stone's essay on hearsay evidence versus the right of cross-examination merely as an illustration.

 

[Withnail1969]

She never confessed to murder.

According to Machiavelli, she would have been charged with murder had the case gone ahead on the basis of her statement against Lumumba. So apparently, she did confess to murder.

 

[platonov]

This argumentative tactic reminds me of a childhood strategy for playing checkers against a superior opponent - just mirror every move they make.

When we pointed out we had science on our side, they called us anti-science. When we pointed out that communities like PMF and TMJK behaved like cults, they called us cultists. When we pointed out that their "research" methods are identical to those of 9/11 deniers and moon landing deniers, they called us conspiracy theorists. When we pointed out that they are using tabloid articles and snippets taken out of context from on-line textbooks as their sources, they accused us of basing our arguments on Google and Youtube instead of "proper" sources (which turned out to mean "Massei", not the peer-reviewed scientific literature).

Now when every mole has been whacked thoroughly flat and there's nothing but scorched wreckage left of the sainted Massei's confabulated fairy story, they declare that all of our arguments have been proven wrong and the discussion is over.



While I think of it... would it change your view of the case in any way if the appeal team turned out to be correct that there was computer activity on Raffaele's computer covering the entire period in which Meredith Kercher could have been murdered?

If you cling to the idea that she might have died at 23:30, just assume that the defence are correct and that computer activity continued until 0:100 the next day.

How will your view of the case change in that eventuality?

I'm not sure how to begin to respond to this.

I'm part of the conspiracy now ?? or of some 'guilter community' ??

For some reason the tone brings the following to mind .....

'First they came for the murderers\rapists ..& I did nothing.'



I have already 'briefly' answered your final Q -- it was posed by halides1 yesterday. You must have missed it.

.

 

[Chris C]

I didn't say anything in my post about the knife or the bra clasp. As for changing theories, it now seems RSs and AKs alibi has gone from "we were asleep" to "we were up most of the night on the Internet". So which is it?

Actually, I believe Sollecito's defense team are arguing that they have proof of computer activity during the times the prosecution claims AK/RS committed the murder. Also, IF i remember correctly didn't they claim they where watching a movie on the computer at the time the prosecution claims the murder happened and they can't remember the exact time they fell asleep. If thats the case how are they changing their alibi?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

There certainly is - which seems to be driving much of the supportive internet comment.

She is 'hot', white and American - and cruelly treated at the hands of evil foreigners.

Its brings to mind the 'white slaver' meme of bygone days

[and the fascination with convicted killers & 'celebities']

http://ohmygolly.tumblr.com/post/69185974/maidens-that-ive-rescued-on-the-internet

.

We point out that the guilter case is based largely on irrational and irrelevant attacks on Amanda and Raffaele's characters (ranging from the mild but factual claims about comic books, knives, casual sex and marijuana use to utterly baseless and frankly vile claims about hard drug addictions, psychopathy or sociopathy and so on) and they respond that the case for innocence must be based on an irrational desire to defend young white people and by implication racism directed at poor, misunderstood Rudy Guede.

This is despite the fact that you'll go a long, long way before you find a single racist attack on Guede based on his ethnicity in these threads. Yet you can barely swing a cat in the guilter forums without hitting someone claiming that Amanda is an emotionless, narcissistic, heroin-shooting psychopath, Raffaele is a deeply disturbed nutcase obsessed with sex murder, and that Rudy Guede was a very nice young man who had no history of violence and who would never have murdered a young woman and raped her as she died without someone like Amanda Knox leading him astray.

Needless to say, absent relevant supporting facts (like a professional diagnosis) these arguments are deeply flawed.

 

[Danceme]

Ok, sorry about that. Isn't the contention now that there was human activity on the computer the entire night?

Well, I think the idea is there are short enough intervals between periods of human activity to increase the probability that someone was tending to it over the course of the whole night.

Reading back through his diary, two passages describe his computer activity;

"I remember that I surfed the Internet for a bit, maybe I watched a
film and then that you had called me at the house or that anyhow you
sent me a goodnight message."

and,

"My real concerns now are two: one derives from the fact that
if Amanda that night remained all night with me could (and is an
extremely remote possibility) to have made love the whole evening and
night only stopping to eat ... A fine mess because there are no links
to other servers in those hours on my computer ."

What I find amazing about this is that last line. Raffaele is a computer scientist. Wouldn't he have the knowledge to say he doesn't need to worry because it is not the fact that there are no links to other servers that proves anything, there would be logs of all sorts that will prove he was on his computer. Just worrying about links to servers is something that someone unknowledgeable in computers might think but not someone who studies the subject and knows such logs exist and are retreivable.

The first quote doesn't even come close to describing a night mainly spent on the computer till all hours of the morning as the defence is claiming.

 

[Machiavelli]

Of course objective was the one who announced his 99% certainty, but was a bit vague about his reasoning

Since I didn't fully disclose the reasoning leading to my conclusion, you are able to conclude there is quite a possibility that a good objective reasoning is behind.

 

[Withnail1969]

You don't know what you are talking about.

I don't know these cases. I don't know what the prosecutor is saying exactly about them. I don't know if he criticizing anti-mafia laws or the inefficiency of some anti-maifia processes. I don't know if the "release" is about mafia indicted or mavia convicted. My knowledge is about mafia and terrorist murders cooperators who all had sentences between 12 and 20+ years, all my memory is of people who served terms longer than three years, these doesn't mean there can't be cases of people released after three yers, probably they are not frequent because had they been frequent I would have probably noticed them but anyway I don't know these cases. I can have opinions only about things I know.

But you don't know anything of what you are talking about. The laws, the meaning of words and legal terms translated like "release", the state of processes, cases, the people, the crimes, the reasons like reasons for the release, the conditions, what exactly the prosecutor is complaining about and the actual stories.
You don't know absolutely anything of what you are talking about, so let alone comparisons.

The police chief stated that notorious killers were released within 3 years. That seems clear enough to me. Who cares whether they are on probation or house arrest or whatever else? They aren't in prison.

Yet you no doubt think that life in jail for Amanda and Raffaele is quite fair. That's the point I'm making.