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Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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RWVBWL said:
Greetings treehorn,
After being at the beach for the last couple of days and getting caught up on my JREF reading, I just had to hit up this post of yours:



Treehorn, as an owner too of Barbie Nadeau's fine book "Angel Face",
written after all that time that she spent sitting in court covering the case for Newsweek from "start to finish", I also learned A LOT.
Since you brought it up, let's use " Angel Face" as a reference to examine Amanda Knox's intimate life that you described.
And then also see if Barbie Nadeau has anything to say about Meredith Kercher's intimate life too...

I'll start with page 27:
"Not long after they moved in together, the 2 young women went out to the Red Zone discotheque, where they met up by chance with Giacomo and his friend Daniel de Luna, a 22 year old student from Rome who often came to Perugia to visit the guys downstairs.
They all danced and flirted. Giacomo kissed Meredith for the 1st time on the dance floor, and she later confided to her British friends that this was romantic and "very Italian" and that she hoped it was a prelude to a more intimate relationship.
Amanda and Daniel connected more quickly; he would later brag to friends that he ended up in her room that night having sex.

I'll skip back to page 23+24
Giacomo and Meredith began sleeping together about 10 days before her death,
and Giacomo admited that they had gone so far as experimenting with anal sex, which Meredith didn't like.

Some great reporting here, treehorn,
don't you think Newsweek must have been proud of what their journalist uncovered during the trial? Hmmm...

But wait a sec, here's a bit more from page 27+28:

After she was arrested, the police set a trap for Amanda by telling her that she had tested positive for HIV. This sort of psychological trickery is commonly used by investigators in Italy to illict a confession. In this case. it lead a teffified Amanda to make a grave error that would permanently taint her image. She listed all of the men she had slept with recently, trying to decide who might have infected her. The prosecutors knew the press would jump at these salacious details of Amanda's sex life, and 1 of the detectives close to the case leaked the document to the British tabloid reporter Nick Pisa, who broke the story.

Amanda wrote in her prison diary:
"I don't want to die.
I want to get married and have children.
I want to create something good.
I want to get old. I want my time. I want my life. Why why why?
I can't believe this. I don't know where I could have got HIV from."

"Here is the list of people I've had sex with in Italy in general:
1. Kyle-also a virgin
2. James-checks regulary and always used a condom
3. Ross-a 1 night stand, pull out
4. DJ-condoms, Mom is a nurse, he would know
5. Elis-pull out-1 night stand
6. Daniele [sic]-condoms, 1 night stand
7. Raffaele-condoms, 1 time w/o."

and then on page 29,
Barbie Nadeau writes :
Consensual sex is not a crime.
<snip>
In his final arguments, the lead prosecutor hypothesized that as Amanda helped assault Meredith, she yelled,
"You are always behaving like a little saint. Now we will show you. Now we will make you have sex."

I don't know about you, treehorn, but from reading Barbie Nadeaus's fine book, it sounds like neither Miss Kercher, nor Miss Knox were saints
but were just young modern woman enjoying their sexuality...

What do you think?
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

PS-I DID learn something from reading these few quotes of "Angel Face":
1. Since they went to the Red Zone discotheque together, Meredith and Amanda were friends.
2. Meredith and Amanda liked being intimate.
3. Amanda Knox, at age 20, had only 7 different lovers in general, not in Italy.
4. The Italian police appear to be deceitful and "psychological trickery is commonly used by investigators in Italy to illict a confession."
5. The Italian police will, it appears, give out "salacious details" of 1's intimate sex life to the press without yet being convicted of a crime...
Click to expand...



1. Kyle-also a virgin
2. James-checks regulary and always used a condom
3. Ross-a 1 night stand, pull out
4. DJ-condoms, Mom is a nurse, he would know
5. Elis-pull out-1 night stand
6. Daniele [sic]-condoms, 1 night stand
7. Raffaele-condoms, 1 time w/o

(Page 28 Angel Face)


"although she did manage to bed a Greek, Albanian, and an Italian other than Raffaele during her first few weeks in Perugia." (Pg 31 AF)

"Two nights after Amanda and Raf got involved, she also hooked up once more with Daniel de Luna." ( Pg 34 AF)


Amanda gives out her deeply personal list and with in 3 pages Barbie Nadeau adds a Greek and Albanian.

Another 3 pages and she turns Amanda's one night stand with Daniel de Luna into a second time, but also stepping out on Raffaele now.

Also of note - No Federico of Train Fame on Amanda's list.


It looks like Barbie Nadeau has really taken some liberites in stating Amanda's bedding of men. Perhaps to make Angel Face more salacious ?

She wrote Amanda's HIV list on pg 28. How is it with in 6 pages she's forgotten what Amanda wrote? She could check her facts by turning a few of her own pages back.


RWVBWL, there is great opportunity to learn from Barbie indeed.
 
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Kevin_Lowe said:
You've never stayed up all night talking, or watching movies, or listening to music in the first week of a love affair?

If the biggest "lie" the prosecution can gin up is "They said they spent all night at home doing harmless activity X, but now we can prove once and for all that these scoundrels in fact spent all night at home doing harmless activity Y!" then that's a pretty sad state for them to be in if they want a justified conviction... and that's giving you a free kick by pretending that the logs in any way contradict their statements, which you simply have not shown and which I don't think you are going to be able to show.
(..) .
Click to expand...

If they are able to prove they spent the whole night doing harmless activity. Currently, the screensaver-related log - in the best optimistic interpretation - only would show they have some room to claim they they were both doing a harmless activity Y. And a preposteous alibi built seeking compatibility on the findings after a lie was revealed, is quite a different thing.

I may highlight again the logical implications of Sollecito's computer records:

1. There is evidence Sollecito lied, or better that either Amanda or Sollecito (or both) lied about their alibies, the computer evidence is not able to disprove the fact they lied. The lying in this context is circumstantial evidence of guilt.
(this adds with an incredible number of inconsistencies and red herrings in the whole set of their statements)

2. The computer record doesn't provide them an alibi . This is another fact, still valid with the additional defensive arguments: records don't give the prove of any alibi, and currently don't match their alibi.
 
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You can also activate the screensaver using a hot corner. On a MacBook, it's a simple flick on the trackpad to bring up a spiffy screensaver that moves in sync with the music currently playing (Of course, we still haven't seen the content of the screensaver.plist file to know which screensaver Raffaele was using).

Don't PCs have the equivalent functionality of hot corners to perform such common tasks? I would have thought such capabilities would be common knowledge.
 
Machiavelli said:
If they are able to prove they spent the whole night doing harmless activity. Currently, the screensaver-related log - in the best optimistic interpretation - only would show they have some room to claim they they were both doing a harmless activity Y. And a preposteous alibi built seeking compatibility on the findings after a lie was revealed, is quite a different thing.

I may highlight again the logical implications of Sollecito's computer records:

1. There is evidence Sollecito lied, or better that either Amanda or Sollecito (or both) lied about their alibies, the computer evidence is not able to disprove the fact they lied. The lying in this context is circumstantial evidence of guilt.
Click to expand...

This was exactly the silly argument I predicted: "Yes they were provably at home throughout the time in which Meredith was murdered... but they lied about the details of what they were doing at home!". Except that you have not yet proven that they lied, merely asserted it again.

(this adds with an incredible number of inconsistencies and red herrings in the whole set of their statements)
Click to expand...

Whenever we ask for specifics about these lies, in the past, they have always turned out to be inconsequential or the result of distortions of the facts by police or guilters.

If past experience is any guide to future phenomena, this will not change.

2. The computer record doesn't provide them an alibi . This is another fact, still valid with the additional defensive arguments: records don't give the prove of any alibi, and currently don't match their alibi.
Click to expand...

It seems to me that you are using some novel definition of "alibi" which is not the one that everyone else is using.

As we have been using the term, proof that they were at home when the murder happened is an alibi. It's a defense by an accused person of having been elsewhere at the time an alleged offense was committed.
 
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Machiavelli said:
They don't need to be both at the murder site to be guilty. It's enough if they cover the guilty one, or if they clean up the apartment.

What do you think of the Elisabetta Ballarin case:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6526927&postcount=13824

I recall other more extreme cases but couldn't find them since I don't remember the name: the case of a woman who was convicted for the murder of a man (her husband?): in the motivation document the court wrote they were not able to prove she did it, but there was enough evidence to determine that, if she didn't do it, yet she has to know ho did it.
This is enough for a court.
Click to expand...

I recall reading about that when it was posted. I also noted the date was before 2006 which was when the concept of 'guilty beyond a reasonable doubt' was formalized.

In this case I suspect that trying to prove 'guilty knowledge' or that they cleaned up and concealed it will be even tougher because it's so mundane and truly pointless for them to have gone through all this to 'lie' about that.

I find the idea funny that their alibi could be broken if it turned out there was proof they were where they said they were, but along with the smoking and the sex it appears one of them was on the computer too often. How will it be proven that with a hottie like Amanda that Raffaele definitely could have lasted longer than five minutes? :D

I also wonder if presenting the idea that someone would go to all the trouble of faking a computer log so they could clean up a murder site or keep it secret for a few hours might produce gales of laughter in a courtroom.
 
quadraginta said:
Most of the Windows versions I know about, like this one, let the user assign any number of different functions to different corners. including turning on your screen saver.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I figured it had to be there. PC's tend not to be more than a couple of years behind. I wasn't sure though since Machiavelli didn't seem to recognize the existence of such features..
 
Kaosium said:
I also wonder if presenting the idea that someone would go to all the trouble of faking a computer log so they could clean up a murder site or keep it secret for a few hours might produce gales of laughter in a courtroom.
Click to expand...


Wasn't there a discussion here that faking computer logs would leave telltale evidence because the block allocations would be out of sequence? Despite the macro behaviors that they sometimes exhibit, computers are quite predictable when it comes to minor details like filesystem housekeeping. An expert in computer forensics would know what is looked for and could possibly know how to fake it. But this is equivalent to knowing exactly what an expert would look for in terms of a staged break in and know how to place each piece of glass from a broken window to fool the expert.
 
Dan O. said:
Thanks, I figured it had to be there. PC's tend not to be more than a couple of years behind. I wasn't sure though since Machiavelli didn't seem to recognize the existence of such features..
Click to expand...

I'm lost. What do 'hot corners' and disabled screen savers mean? In small words so I can understand?

What does the 'six minutes' refer to, anyway? From what I read it seemed the defense was arguing there was no more than a six minute gap in activity all night long. Does that mean that someone interacted with the computer constantly and the longest it wasn't in use was six minutes? Or is that the longest the screen saver was on for?
 
Dan O. said:
Wasn't there a discussion here that faking computer logs would leave telltale evidence because the block allocations would be out of sequence? Despite the macro behaviors that they sometimes exhibit, computers are quite predictable when it comes to minor details like filesystem housekeeping. An expert in computer forensics would know what is looked for and could possibly know how to fake it. But this is equivalent to knowing exactly what an expert would look for in terms of a staged break in and know how to place each piece of glass from a broken window to fool the expert.
Click to expand...

I believe I recall something about that when reading this thread, the movie "Stardust" and the possibility of it providing an alibi was speculated upon. I must admit my eyes glazed over the technical computer jargon as that is not an interest of mine.
 
Dan O. said:
There could be a $million with your name on it. Have you ever thought of applying? :D
Click to expand...

I myself was wondering the other day if Giobbi claims he can spot a guilty person solely by their behavior, or whatever it was, why he doesn't apply for Randi's million and retire instead of helping to railroad innocent kids?

What percent do you think he'd need to be correct on for him to win the million?
 
Kaosium said:
I'm lost. What do 'hot corners' and disabled screen savers mean? In small words so I can understand?

What does the 'six minutes' refer to, anyway? From what I read it seemed the defense was arguing there was no more than a six minute gap in activity all night long. Does that mean that someone interacted with the computer constantly and the longest it wasn't in use was six minutes? Or is that the longest the screen saver was on for?
Click to expand...


For background, A screen saver is a program that takes over the entire screen and displays some random pattern so that a fixed image doesn't burn itself into the CRT phosphor if the computer is left unattended for long periods of time. Thus they literally "save" the screen. LCD displays don't have phosphor being struck by accelerated electrons so they aren't subject to burn in as the CRTs were but users have gotten used to having screen savers generating pleasing patterns as a high tech replacement for lava lamps.

Screen savers are programmed to activate automatically after a preset delay interval of no human interaction with the computer.

"Hot corners" refer to a programable action occurring when the user parks the cursor in one of the corners of the screen. That corner is said to be "hot". A typical action for a hot corner is to disable the screensaver for as long as the cursor is in that corner so the screen saver won't interrupt a video or some other non-interactive program. Another hot corner may be programmed to force the screen saver to activate immediately.

The existence of hot corners means that you cannot deduce the screensaver delay interval from the activation record of the screensaver alone.


The appeal says that during the night, the screen saver was never active for more than 6 minutes in any stretch. The screen saver activates automatically after a specific inactivity time period after the last user interaction on the computer (ie: mouse movements or key presses). The screensaver deactivates only when there is another human interaction. The gap between human interactions would be the sum of the inactivity delay interval and the time the screen saver was running.

However, it is also possible for applications such as movie players that expect there to be no human interaction for a long period to temporarily disable the screensaver. This can lengthen the time that the screensaver will stay deactivated. But once the screensaver activates, after the video has ended for instance, it still takes human activity to deactivate it.
 
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treehorn said:
Now I just spent a lot of time hunting down these posts at your request and I'm not sure what your grievance is, exactly.
[...]
Ergo knox's behavior (which included unprotected sex with some of these men) is, by any objective measure, not only promiscuous and reckless but entirely consistent with the signs and symptoms of antisocial PD.
[...]
.
Click to expand...

Look at this link:

http://www.scientificpsychic.com/workbook/person2.html

There are two columns. One is labled sociable characteristics. The other is labled dangerous characteristics. Compare Massie to both columns. Compare Amanda to both columns. Tell me who scores higher in your mind.

If you don't like that table, then search the entire internet. Find a table of social characteristics. Compare that table to both Amanda and Massei (or the police or the news). Tell me the results.

I don't think there is any argument about who wins this contest.
 
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Justinian2 said:
Look at this link:

http://www.scientificpsychic.com/workbook/person2.html

There are two columns. One is labled sociable characteristics. The other is labled dangerous characteristics. Compare Massie to both columns. Compare Amanda to both columns. Tell me who scores higher in your mind.

If you don't like that table, then search the entire internet. Find a table of social characteristics. Compare that table to both Amanda and Massei (or the police or the news). Tell me the results.

I don't think there is any argument about who wins this contest.
Click to expand...

You are seriously making an argument based on a table on a psychic website? Seriously?
 
Kaosium said:
I believe I recall something about that when reading this thread, the movie "Stardust" and the possibility of it providing an alibi was speculated upon. I must admit my eyes glazed over the technical computer jargon as that is not an interest of mine.
Click to expand...


It's not really computer jargon. Think of it as your local library. Every time someone checks out a book, the librarian records in the libraries record when the book was checked out. There is one special librarian that we like to call the Finder. This librarian helps people find books that they want to read. In addition to keeping the libraries record of when a book was last checked out, the Finder keeps its own record of the last time it found a book.

One night, in the 1st of November, Raffaele asked the Finder to get him the book Stardust. A few days later, Ilea went into the library and found stardust on the shelf and checked it out. After that, the library was closed, A few weeks later, the postman went through the libraries records to find all books checked out on the evening of the 1st and the morning of the 2nd. Stardust wasn't in that group because it was last checked out on the 6th. Raffaele's team however found the Finders records that show when Raffaele had asked for the book on the 1st.
 
Dan O. said:
The appeal says that during the night, the screen saver was never active for more than 6 minutes in any stretch. The screen saver activates automatically after a specific inactivity time period after the last user interaction on the computer (ie: mouse movements or key presses). The screensaver deactivates only when there is another human interaction. The gap between human interactions would be the sum of the inactivity delay interval and the time the screen saver was running.

However, it is also possible for applications such as movie players that expect there to be no human interaction for a long period to temporarily disable the screensaver. This can lengthen the time that the screensaver will stay deactivated. But once the screensaver activates, after the video has ended for instance, it still takes human activity to deactivate it.
Click to expand...

So if I understand this right, the prosecution will just claim they put the cursor in a 'hot corner' or played a movie to keep the screensaver from activating while they killed Meredith, and then they came back to play with the computer some more?

I'm trying to see how this provides an alibi. If it was six minutes I figured the prosecution would claim since it was only a minute and a half walk, that gave them three minutes to do the killing, more if they ran.
 
Dan O. said:
Are you seriously judging a web site by your preconception of one word in it's name?
Click to expand...

Did you have a look at the site? With psychic helpline adverts? That's as far as I looked. It was far enough for me.

ETA go to the Madam Flora Psychic page. She might be able to tell you the outcome of the appeal.
 
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