Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[LondonJohn]

1) May I also ask if you are feeling well since:
A) Your question to me seems strangely motivated and positioned in a civil and polite discussion ?
B) If you were also 'feeling well' when someone requests a link that you erroneously omit, it would indicate to most casual observers that this someone has 'been bothered to read back' the one cite you correctly posted and sought supplemental materiel to read from the one you erroneously omitted.

2) Without descending to a futile definition of the word 'is' type of parsing your personally seemingly significant difference between 'commenting on other posters' versus 'engaging in debate', may I ask you to consider:

A) How many of the 'debates engaged in here' today have not been exhaustively elaborated upon and considered from every possible point ad infinitum and repeatedly so, here in the past.
So much so that engaging for the sake of engaging or engaging just to satisfy you is neither a productive nor efficient use my time.

B) If the part of your argument about putting me on ignore is either a threat or incentive for me to argue on this 'evidence based lively discussion site' *only* when and where and how *you* prefer...please do put me on ignore at once.

What a strange response....

No, the part about putting you on ignore was that I'm only really interested in listening to people who spend most of their effort on this thread posting about the actual case. But, yes, your response above pretty much confirms to me what I already suspected. Do let us all know if you plan to say anything concrete about the case, though.

 

[Kaosium]

I find this assertion of yours to be an extremely dubious one.

I find it a helluva a lot more believable than there was no physical evidence of the attacker at the scene, perhaps there would be less because there was no struggle and she might have been covered, but the same basic rules apply. I still suspect the fault here might lie in the collection, and its perceived necessity to the case.

I cannot imagine a district attorney in 2010 - prosecuting the most shocking and horrible crime to hit their state in living memory - willingly forgoing an opportunity to procure as much physical evidence (especially genetic) as possible to secure a conviction. In the absence of said physical evidence, the prosecution had to rely upon the direct evidence provided by the testimony of Spader's co-defendants.

Any competent prosecutor would be aware of the increased likelihood of successful appeals in such cases. And anyone familiar with the work of the Innocence Project would be well aware of the not insignificant possibility of injustices occurring in cases which depend upon the testimony of criminals in the absence of physical evidence.

I looked for an hour or two, googled about and found reports of only two NH State Troopers there collecting basically what I posted, did you find that they employed more assets? Perhaps they thought they'd get more out of the waterlogged bag than they got? There was no problem convicting him, and I don't think the judge seemed worried about an appeal the way she sentenced him. I'm sure they wanted more from the initial search, they just didn't get it, and I'm guessing someone decided they didn't need it. Did you hear of them going back to try to collect more and not finding it?

I can't help but think that if Steve Moore was way off base here one of Pepperdine's criticisms might have been 'Geez Steve, the criminology professors are having a fit with the stuff you're making up' or one of his buddies still in the FBI would have told him to 'stifle it with the imaginary stuff,' or at least someone of standing would come out and say 'what on earth is he talking about!' The old forensics maxim is the opposite of how Steve Moore puts it in this case, it's the same as it is in logic: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

However these days with modern technology there are cases like Meredith's room where the close quarters, the violent struggle, blood spraying to the walls, the participation of three assailants, the fact that the room was gone over not once, but twice, you can pretty much eliminate the idea they missed anything of Amanda and Raffaele's that could be evidence of murder. That they actually presented the bra clasp as such pretty much seals the deal.

Perhaps you are right, that New Hampshire will regret not calling in the FBI or spending days if not weeks with their limited personnel giving that unhappy home a thorough going-over. Perhaps he actually was turned on by his compatriots and that's the reason there was no evidence found of his in that room. Someday the Innocence Project or something like it will come along and spring young Spader simply because there wasn't any forensic evidence of him found at the scene.

 

[Kestrel]

OK. There have been posts within the last week or so complaining about the police lying to Knox. There was some discussion that the police lied to Sollecito about what Knox was saying. The only that I can find off-hand is Kaosium two days ago:

"I was wondering if you could post the list of 'lies' Amanda and Raffaele are accused of telling. I keep hearing about them but the ones I've seen posted by those thinking them to be evidence of guilt always seem to be inconsequential or a response to lies told to them. I've never seen an actual list so I could judge them as a whole."

You are new here and probably missed the extended discussion of coercive interrogation techniques and false confessions.

This lecture by Sam Kassin is a good overview of the problem.


Frontline: The Confessions is about a real criminal case that ended up with a series of false confessions.

BTW: Welcome to JREF.

 

[LondonJohn]

Sounds like a big parade to me. Do they have to hit all four corners of Perugia to consider it a parade? The point is made regardless of how you are defining driving around Perugia or parade.

I can't get the Argument sketch out of my head now........

 

[odeed]

As Josef Goebbels once said, if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

I want to make it clear that I am not invoking Godwin's Law at this point.

Sounds like a big parade to me. Do they have to hit all four corners of Perugia to consider it a parade? The point is made regardless of how you are defining driving around Perugia or parade.

From my reading the police convoy was going to the police station after arresting Lumumba, in which case the number of vehicles, with sirens blaring, would be normal.

 

[Machiavelli]

What a pile of rubbish.

No, you're right. You don't arrest someone you think is innocent. But when you stand in front of the media the next day, you tell the media whom you've arrested, and the circumstances of the arrest. And pretty much nothing more than that.

And you're on a different planet if you think that "avoiding trouble" and "getting along with the media" is more important to Perugia's most senior policemen than serving the interests of justice.

Your untenable defence of De Felice in this instance is, unfortunately, indicative of your complete refusal to view things through an objective lens. Whether De Felice's words had a detrimental effect on the judicial process is near-impossible to gauge, of course. But to suggest that it was all ok, and "part of the game" is both wrong and perverse.

(This reminds me of the day that Dennis Rader (the BTK killer) was arrested: the Wichita Chief of Police held a presser where he announced "Bottom line: BTK is arrested". This attracted a certain amount of criticism, despite the fact that Rader had fully confessed, an incriminating computer disc had been conclusively linked to Rader's work computer, and the police had DNA confirmation of Rader's involvement in some of the killings.)

No, I'll better explain you: I don't defend De Felice, I don't care about defending De Felice. And I don't care attacking De Felice. I don't care at all what De Felice told to the press. This has nothing to do with innocence of the defendants. Police behaviour with the media is no usable argument to me. He can tell whatever pile of fairy tales he wants, I don't give any serious weight to the early conclusions of the questura, in any case. The point is not in stating it was part of the game and all ok: the point is it is out of the game. Patrick Lumumba, an innocent, is the only one who could complain of it for there is a direct implication with his situation alone. It is pointless to bring it up when the two people we are talking about were being accused by a judge and by a prosecutor (soon after by other two judges and another prosecutor).

Amanda and Raffaele were accused of having taken part to a murder in a sexual context because these were the evidence against them, in the view of all investigators, not because De Felice thought it too.

 

[RoseMontague]

From my reading the police convoy was going to the police station after arresting Lumumba, in which case the number of vehicles, with sirens blaring, would be normal.

Eventually they have to get to the police station, before one of them runs out of gas I guess. That would be their destination, I suppose. I think it's not how they got there that is the point. It is what they did while getting there that is out of norm and totally unprofessional.

 

[Kermit]

Sounds like a big parade to me. Do they have to hit all four corners of Perugia to consider it a parade? The point is made regardless of how you are defining driving around Perugia or parade.

I think that Odeed was saying to LondonJohn that LondonJohn's links made no mention about parading Amanda around Perugia, which is what he had been stating previously, quoting only Candace Dempsey.

 

[Kestrel]

From my reading the police convoy was going to the police station after arresting Lumumba, in which case the number of vehicles, with sirens blaring, would be normal.

The police use sirens when chasing a suspect, accompanying an ambulance to the hospital, or answering an emergency call. But there is zero reason to run hot if you are just taking a suspect back to the station.

You are grasping for an excuse.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Ahh, but if woolly-thinking people are told (or tell themselves) enough times that "Amanda actually repeated her accusation of Lumumba - and confirmed her own presence during the murder - in her written statement of the following day", then this becomes received "wisdom" to them.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Thats one of the things about this case thats so hard to understand. Right when you think you've heard something one way, someone else comes along and tells you the opposidte. Here I was believeing that she actually said that she 'stands by my statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrick'

I know she said both of these in her 'Gift', by why does one side only quote the parts they want to hear?

 

[RWVBWL]

Looking for something else I came across this at
http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/s...9T00:29:00-08:00&max-results=20Perugia Shock:

"Raffaele Sollecito questioned:
Q: Why you still had a knife?
A: I was so smoked that when they've taken me to questura I didn't take it away from my jacket."

Is he saying he went to the police station stoned on hash?

Going to the police station to be questioned about a murder?

Geez, I'm going to bust a gut here! No wonder he can't ever remember anything!

Hi Kaosium,
On the fatefull night of Novemeber 5, 2007,
Raffaele and I believe Amanda Knox both were stoned when they were called into the questura.
I too was dumbfounded when I finally found that out!

From page 137 in "Murder in Italy" I learned that Amanda and Raffaele were at the apartment of a friend of his who lived near Raffaele,
and they were having dinner with them, trying to be normal, according to what Amanda said later.

The police called Raffaele around 10 pm, and asked him/them to come in once again.

It bet it must have sucked, for if these 2 are innocent of any involvement in Meredith Kercher's murder,
I can only imagine that they must have started to feel A LOT of harrassment from the police.

Let's see, you're hangin' out with a few friends, smokin' out, tryin' to relax from all the stress of the last few days,
and have started to eat dinner when the cops call you.
What does Raffaele do?
He answers the phone!
(Why did he answer it?
Why didn't he just let it go to voicemail?
This is not something a guy, guilty of participating in a bloody, bloody murder a few days earlier, and currently stoned would do, in my humble opinion!!!)

Speaking with the police, they asked him/them both to come in again.

What does Raffaele do then?
He then asks the police for more time to finish dinner!

Now I don't know about you guys and gals here, BUT if these 2 were guilty of any involvement whatsoever in the bloody murder of Miss Kercher, and they were heading over to the police station, you would think that these 2 people would have coordinated their alibis to match perfectly! Especially after continuously speaking with the police.

But Raffaele is sooo stoned that he forgot he even had his knife on him...
Think about this for a moment.
This guy,
-(when told to come to the police station for further questioning in a murder where the killer had used not a gun, but a knife to take the life of a woman he knew),
brought his own knife with him when he went to the police station for further questioning, while high! Wow!

1 has to wonder, how high was Amanda?

Though I have been smokin' out for about 34 years,
I can not even imagine how heavy it must have been to deal with all the cops interrogating and also yelling at them late at night while they were buzzed.

No wonder the cops got what they wanted before Amanda's Mom arrived in town the next day and they both finally lawyered up!

Now you folks will have to excuse me, it's gettin' dark where I live and so I am gonna head over to some bro's pad,
drink a few beers and for the 1st time in this year 2010, blaze a bowl of some fine herb that I know 1 of my friends will have,
all along with what I just typed out 1 finger at a time definately in the back of my mind...
Peace,
RWVBWL

 

[odeed]

The police use sirens when chasing a suspect, accompanying an ambulance to the hospital, or answering an emergency call. But there is zero reason to run hot if you are just taking a suspect back to the station.

You are grasping for an excuse.

When the police arrest a suspected murderer who is possibly dangerous, they take them from their home to police station where he/she can be properly secured as quickly as possible.

 

[Machiavelli]

Eventually they have to get to the police station, before one of them runs out of gas I guess. That would be their destination, I suppose. I think it's not how they got there that is the point. It is what they did while getting there that is out of norm and totally unprofessional.

Unprofessional? Yesterday Antonio Iovine was arrested. He has been a fugitive for 14 years. Look at the police behaviour.

http://www.youreporter.it/video_Arrestato_Antonio_Iovine_1

 

[Machiavelli]

When the police arrest a suspected murderer who is possibly dangerous, they take them from their home to police station where he/she can be properly secured as quickly as possible.

When police cars transport a suspect they do not always use sirens, but they always use flash lights. They do so when they are in convoy and in order to avoid stopping at traffic lights and crossings.

 

[platonov]

Thats one of the things about this case thats so hard to understand. Right when you think you've heard something one way, someone else comes along and tells you the opposidte. Here I was believeing that she actually said that she 'stands by my statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrick'

I know she said both of these in her 'Gift', by why does one side only quote the parts they want to hear?

Sherlock, I refudiate completely that suggestion if it is applied to me.

I actually quoted the piece I as accused of omitting , just didn't bold it - the point is that the suspect AK was having it both ways [and I might add, everyone familiar with the case knows that]

halides1 was quoting selectively and claiming PL should not have been arrested as AK recanted. I merely showed this was not the case with a short extract & indeed in my 1st post I said read or post the whole 'gift'

I'm confident halides1 had seen the complete doc, so he obviously forgot or ignored the rest of the statement to make his point - but one cant use that to imply the cops should also have done so.

ETA I presume your familiar with the idea that the truth doesn't always lie midpoint between 2 opposing arguments.

.

 

[Kermit]

It's a long way to Tipperary

If the only proof that Amanda was paraded through the streets of Perugia is because Candace Dempsey says so, well, we can tick that item off the list.

 

[platonov]

If the only proof that Amanda was paraded through the streets of Perugia is because Candace Dempsey says so, well, we can tick that item off the list.

Not necessarily, as Connolly Orwell said - just because its in the Telegraph doesn't mean its wrong.

Although he lived in simpler times - in this case extreme skepticism is probably a fair starting point.

The Orwell ref might not (?) be so amenable to google so hopefully we wont have the same derail we had with Python

.

 

[Kaosium]

OK. There have been posts within the last week or so complaining about the police lying to Knox. There was some discussion that the police lied to Sollecito about what Knox was saying. The only that I can find off-hand is Kaosium two days ago:

"I was wondering if you could post the list of 'lies' Amanda and Raffaele are accused of telling. I keep hearing about them but the ones I've seen posted by those thinking them to be evidence of guilt always seem to be inconsequential or a response to lies told to them. I've never seen an actual list so I could judge them as a whole."

I wasn't actually complaining, I was pointing out some of these 'lies' did not happen in a vacuum, and I fully understand that a good strategy in an interrogation is for police to tell them something like there's evidence of them being at the scene and how they could explain that--even if there isn't. (yet) They might just 'fess up and tell police how they did it and lead them to all the evidence to convict, which saves all sorts of time and gets criminals off the street.

However there's also going to be times where innocent people lie because they're scared or angry, and police have to differentiate between an innocent person doing so for foolish or petty reasons, and a guilty person doing so to prevent from being caught. If you tell a young man his new girlfriend he might have become infatuated with just implicated him in a murder, he might just get pissed off and lie back about it trying to hurt her back. It doesn't mean he's guilty of murder though.

 

[Machiavelli]

The reports from nov 6. (morning) give no names about the "paraded" suspects, "three people arrested" (Nov. 6.)

http://www.pupia.tv/notizie/0001604.html

http://cronacaeattualita.blogosfere.it/2007/11/meredith-fermate-tre-persone-per-lomicidio-la-coinquilina-il-suo-fidanzato-e-un-congolese.html


http://www.corriere.it/cronache/07_novembre_06/perugia_studentessa_meredith_questura_uccisa.shtml


Afternoon. The first info with the names of the suspects comes after the press conference of the Questura. Still quite anonimous (nov 6.):

http://qn.quotidiano.net/cronaca/2007/11/07/45722-meredith_ribello_alle_violenze.shtml

http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/Italia/2007/11/omicidio-perugia-arresti.shtml?uuid=7dab5fe0-8c72-11dc-bade-00000e251029&DocRulesView=Libero

A sexual motive is "realistic" [verosimile] (Nov. 6.):

http://www.repubblica.it/2007/11/sezioni/cronaca/perugia-uccisa/in-questura/in-questura.html

The first news with a "charachter info" about the suspects: speaks only about Raffaele Sollecito, barely mentions Amanda Knox (Nov 6.):

http://www.corriere.it/cronache/07_novembre_06/sollecito_scheda.shtml

Nov 7. The journalist Carlo Bonini doesn't believe Amanda's accusation on Patrick, nor the police scenario, and he writes "Amanda is a liar":

http://www.repubblica.it/2007/11/sezioni/cronaca/perugia-uccisa/ricordo-amanda/ricordo-amanda.html

 

[platonov]

I wasn't actually complaining, I was pointing out some of these 'lies' did not happen in a vacuum, and I fully understand that a good strategy in an interrogation is for police to tell them something like there's evidence of them being at the scene and how they could explain that--even if there isn't. (yet) They might just 'fess up and tell police how they did it and lead them to all the evidence to convict, which saves all sorts of time and gets criminals off the street.

However there's also going to be times where innocent people lie because they're scared or angry, and police have to differentiate between an innocent person doing so for foolish or petty reasons, and a guilty person doing so to prevent from being caught. If you tell a young man his new girlfriend he might have become infatuated with just implicated him in a murder, he might just get pissed off and lie back about it trying to hurt her back. It doesn't mean he's guilty of murder though.

Retrocausality issues again I'm afraid - leaving aside the fact that cops in a murder inquiry are often skeptical types (professional hazard) less inclined than some here to give suspects [even 'hotties'] the benefit of the doubt when they change their stories.

.