Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[LondonJohn]

I did an ETA, which you must have missed. and explained that I had misread your comment.

I honestly do not understand you saying there is no evidence of a cleanup. And, why would Rudy have lied about the amount of blood in the bathroom and corridor? What would be the point? He talks also about how much blood there was in Meredith's bedroom.

I was writing my post while you were editing yours.

I have no idea why Guede might be lying (or even honestly mistaken). Why don't you write to him in prison and ask him......?

 

[LondonJohn]

By the way, what evidence do you think there is of a clean-up?

 

[Justinian2]

I agree. It makes no sense to me why anyone, on either side of the debate, would try to bolster their position with the words of Rudy Guede.

He is certainly NOT a witness from which one would hang on his every word.

I think that there are a few nuggets of information in his many rantings.

Unfortunately, his statement appears to me a mixture of what he was told by his lawyers and the people doing the interrogation.

Is there any witness that we can trust? I think the cross examination of a witness in court can be revealing.

Now that Guede's case is settled, he may provide some useful statements while on the witness stand.

Fellow prisoners have said that Guede told them Amanda was innocent. Fellow prisoners seem to not only believe Amanda, but seem to adore and applaude her.

 

[Jungle Jim]

I seem to recall that a bedsheet was mentioned as the article that had significant amounts of blood on it, but a mattress cover (which is like an additional bottom sheet) might be mistaken for a bedsheet. Plus, this article is ambiguous, since it deals with Tagliabracci's criticisms of Stefanoni, and asserts that there was human DNA on the mattress cover, whereas Stefanoni reported that the article tested negative for human DNA. Of course, even if there were human DNA, this could have come from sweat, shed skin cells or semen - the article doesn't mention whether there was a test for human blood conducted (it mentions a positive test for cat blood), let alone whether such a test came back positive or negative.

If the test came back positive for cat blood, it could not have been human blood, no?

 

[Justinian2]

I agree. It makes no sense to me why anyone, on either side of the debate, would try to bolster their position with the words of Rudy Guede.

Guede has the potential to totally resolve this case if he decides to stop being deceptive and if he isn't totally confused and insane.

Now that his case is totally resolved, he may be motivated to help. The worrysome part is that he did nothing to help MK, did he? Guede's urge towards sadism may be greater than his urge to help.

 

[snook1]

Guede has the potential to totally resolve this case if he decides to stop being deceptive and if he isn't totally confused and insane.

Now that his case is totally resolved, he may be motivated to help. The worrysome part is that he did nothing to help MK, did he? Guede's urge towards sadism may be greater than his urge to help.

Guede won't say a thing. His lawyers announced that they're going to Strasburg with his case, so he still got plenty to lose.

 

[LondonJohn]

Oh, as an aside: the appeal court will of course be re-evaluating the prosecution's claim that the break-in was staged (as part of its re-evaluation of the entire case in a trial de novo). Hellmann et al appear to have decided for the moment that they don't require any additional expert witnesses to assist them in their re-evaluation of this area of the case. But they will be re-evaluating it. It is incorrect (and misleading) to suggest that the appeal court will not be looking at the break-in, and/or that it will not be making its own assessment as to whether the prosecution can convincingly show that the break-in must have been staged.

One really would hope that most people might understand what last Saturday's ruling was all about by now, but seemingly not. To re-iterate: even if defence requests for new investigations in certain areas were flat refused by the appeal court on Saturday*, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the court re-evaluating these areas of the case - it only means that it will be conducting its re-evaluation based purely upon evidence and testimony gathered in the course of the first trial.

* and, in any case, it appears that the appeal court has reserved the right to order new investigations or allow other expert witnesses once the DNA issue has been clarified.

 

[capealadin]

By the way, what evidence do you think there is of a clean-up?

I am not going to bore everyone here with what has being discussed at length. If ou choose to believe that Rudy was lying about there being a lot of blood in the bathroom and corridor, so be it. I don't understand why he would lie about something like that, if, as you say, there was no cleanup. He admits to being there. He has nothing to gain, in saying that.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

citing 10,000 pages is not a weighty argument

You would have to read the 10,000 pages of evidence, testimony and expert reports to understand Massei.

Massei has the backing of a professional and thorough investigation. He's no molecular scientist, as you note, but his conclusions are based on fact and evidence.

Is the Rome Supreme Court any wiser? They just convicted Guede on the same investigation used by Massei to convict Knox and Sollecito.

ETA: It is the whole narrative that convicts, not one or two or three DNA charts.

piktor,

10,000 pages, or even 100,000 pages is not going to change bad reasoning into good. Your argument to the effect of Massei's being backed by a "professional and thorough" investigation is much like your previous one about the 10,000 pages of documentation. I sometimes call it the argument from intimidation, and one only has to hold one's ground to see how insubstantial it is. If we are agreed that the reasoning about the DNA on the bra clasp is flawed, then we can move on to examining the rest of the case.

You have fallen back on the "whole narrative" argument before. OK, how about answering the question that Kevin_Lowe has asked the pro-guilt commenters here, to reconstruct the what happened that night based on all of the evidence?added

 

[Justinian2]

Guede won't say a thing. His lawyers announced that
they're going to Strasburg with his case, so he still got plenty to lose.

The European Court of Human Rights (French: Cour européenne des droits de l’homme) in Strasbourg is a supra-national court, established by the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides legal recourse of last resort for individuals who feel that their human rights have been violated by a contracting party to the Convention.

Is he appealing because he feels he is a victim of racial discrimination?

Some heads have rolled...

 

[Chris_Halkides]

conviction

Read the Massei Report. It is graphic and detailed.

piktor,

Reading Massei is indeed a good idea. The more one reads, the less supportable the conviction becomes.

 

[LondonJohn]

Guede won't say a thing. His lawyers announced that they're going to Strasburg with his case, so he still got plenty to lose.

Every time I read about Guede potentially taking his case to Strasbourg, it reminds me of this (1:20 into the clip) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SQvhpE_1_A

PS The old quarter and Cathedral area of Strasbourg is stunningly beautiful at Christmas time!

 

[daydreamer]

......

I honestly do not understand you saying there is no evidence of a cleanup. And, why would Rudy have lied about the amount of blood in the bathroom and corridor? What would be the point? He talks also about how much blood there was in Meredith's bedroom.

I was writing my post while you were editing yours.

I have no idea why Guede might be lying (or even honestly mistaken). Why don't you write to him in prison and ask him......?

Do you know when that statement was taken? If it is after Rudy's "interrogation", he may have been told a number of lies and exaggerations by the interrogators. Based on that info he may have tried to conjure up some story. I assume Rudy's interrogation was similar to Amanda's.

 

[LondonJohn]

Is he appealing because he feels he is a victim of racial discrimination?

Some heads have rolled...

I would imagine that Guede might have more luck taking his case to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg rather than the ECHR in Strasbourg. It's the ECJ which is the "overlord" court for European Union member states. I hope Guede's attorneys know what they're talking about!

 

[daydreamer]

Oh, as an aside: the appeal court will of course be re-evaluating the prosecution's claim that the break-in was staged (as part of its re-evaluation of the entire case in a trial de novo). Hellmann et al appear to have decided for the moment that they don't require any additional expert witnesses to assist them in their re-evaluation of this area of the case. But they will be re-evaluating it. It is incorrect (and misleading) to suggest that the appeal court will not be looking at the break-in, and/or that it will not be making its own assessment as to whether the prosecution can convincingly show that the break-in must have been staged.

One really would hope that most people might understand what last Saturday's ruling was all about by now, but seemingly not. To re-iterate: even if defence requests for new investigations in certain areas were flat refused by the appeal court on Saturday*, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the court re-evaluating these areas of the case - it only means that it will be conducting its re-evaluation based purely upon evidence and testimony gathered in the course of the first trial.
* and, in any case, it appears that the appeal court has reserved the right to order new investigations or allow other expert witnesses once the DNA issue has been clarified.

In the Masssie report he states that there were no "scuff" marks on the exterior wall of the cottage. We have all seen the photos of marks on the wall. Were these photos not presented at the 1st trial or is Massie just ignoring them. Could they be presented as new evidence in the appeal trail?

 

[Katody Matrass]

What I'm taking note of, Chris is this. * How could Amanda have taken a shower, when THE BATHROOM and corridor..WITH ALL THAT BLOOD ?

It seems Rudy is describing a scene like that when he left, so , what happened to all the blood, he describes. Who cleaned up? Because in the pics, there is not much blood in the bathroom and corridor>

I think Rudy could be very well alluding to the pink horror bathroom photo. Wasn't it all over the media by that time? When he asks "how could she have taken shower" he merely repeats after the media.

It it clear that he tries to direct suspicion away from him, and his "diary" is meant to be read by the investigators. AK and RS were in jail and all over the TV and press. That makes them obvious decoy. But he knows they were not there and has no idea that ILE won't realize it's a dead end, that's why he also mentions some drug dealer, who he knows from Corso Garibaldi (I bet there really was one who really had a white car).

 

[LondonJohn]

Do you know when that statement was taken? If it is after Rudy's "interrogation", he may have been told a number of lies and exaggerations by the interrogators. Based on that info he may have tried to conjure up some story. I assume Rudy's interrogation was similar to Amanda's.

It was written in his German prison diary, I believe - which he wrote while in prison in Koblenz awaiting extradition to Italy. By this time he would have been interviewed by both German and Italian police/prosecutors in depth, and would clearly have been apprised of many of the details of the investigation - including the situation regarding Knox and Sollecito who were by this time already in custody in Perugia.

In addition to this, of course, Guede would have had access to various media sources (not least via the internet) while he was on the run in Germany, and could therefore have easily learned of Knox's shower etc via the prosecutors' leaks to the media between 6-20 November (Guede was arrested in Germany on the 20th). He might even have seen the leaked photos of the bathroom (with the misleading phth pink staining).

 

[LondonJohn]

In the Masssie report he states that there were no "scuff" marks on the exterior wall of the cottage. We have all seen the photos of marks on the wall. Were these photos not presented at the 1st trial or is Massie just ignoring them. Could they be presented as new evidence in the appeal trail?

I suspect that the majority of these photos have already been entered into evidence, but that for some reason or other Massei chose to overlook them.

What's perhaps more interesting is the photos which don't appear to have been entered into evidence: photos which the police might (or, more accurately, might not) have taken of the ground below Filomena's window on 2nd November 2007. Since Massei only refers to oral testimony about the condition of the ground and the absence of glass on the ground, one can only conclude that the police neglected to photograph the ground sufficiently - if indeed at all. Massei makes no reference either to any sort of detailed search of the ground below the window - the police should have been doing a grid-marked fingertip search of the ground to identify or eliminate the possibility of there being very small pieces of glass there.

 

[nopoirot]

Greetings all. I wonder if sufficient attention has been devoted to Raffaele's betrayal of Amanda. As I follow the timelines, Raffaele and Amanda attend classes on the morning of Nov. 5. That evening, they dine together, and present themselves at the police station somewhere around 10:15. While Raffaele is being questioned, Amanda whiles away the time with exercises. Around 10:30 or so (I don't know that the exact time is here important), Raffaele begins to change his testimony. There is much dispute about the nature of this change. Raffaele's diary is hardly a model of lucidity, but in his entry of Nov. 12 he says ". . . in the first statement I made I said that Amanda had stayed with me all night long . . . (trans. Clander.) This leaves little room for doubt that the "big cabbage" came in the second version. One of the cabbage leafs is the claim that Amanda had induced him to "talk crap," another that Amanda had parted from him that evening to go to Le Chic. Some strained attempts have been made to propose that the "big cabbage" did not catch Amanda from the blind side, but I think them unpersuasive. What prompted Raffaele to throw it? On what theory would he substitute a lie for the truth, or one lie for another? What persuasive evidence militates against the commonsensical inference that, having had a couple of days to study on the dangers of perjury, he decided to "come clean"? It did not take him long to realize, of course, that he had dropped himself into a pot of boiling water, but that is beside the point. Amanda, poleaxed with news of Raffaele's betrayal, was thrown into a state of panic and shock. Like Thurber's squirrel, she darted this way, that, "lost her head" and ran right into the tire. Another cuff on the head might well have induced her to confess to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. It has been plausibly argued, here and elsewhere, that her first "confession" came as early as 1:45. She made herself "roadkill" with that statement, and from it all else flowed. It may not be admissible, in a court of law, but Amanda could hardly have known that. It did not take her long to realize that, in addition to making a most imprudent accusation against Lumumba, she had implicated herself in one of the most lurid crimes of recent memory. I don't know that we need a theory of coercion to account for her subsequent statements. They are but attempts to mitigate the admission that she had been untruthful twice over. In the vernacular, she was "crawfishing." And now she gives to understand that her troubled psyche is throwing up images that may or may not be grounded in reality--you know, like in one of those Jason Bourne movies. Were I the judge, I would be disinclined to spring the door of her cage unless she comes forward with a reasonably plausible account of the facts.

 

[capealadin]

I think Rudy could be very well alluding to the pink horror bathroom photo. Wasn't it all over the media by that time? When he asks "how could she have taken shower" he merely repeats after the media.

It it clear that he tries to direct suspicion away from him, and his "diary" is meant to be read by the investigators. AK and RS were in jail and all over the TV and press. That makes them obvious decoy. But he knows they were not there and has no idea that ILE won't realize it's a dead end, that's why he also mentions some drug dealer, who he knows from Corso Garibaldi (I bet there really was one who really had a white car).

I have no idea if Rudy saw the bathroom pics, which looked very gruesome, after it had been sprayed. From a logical point of view, though, he mentions all the blood in the bedroom, and then all the blood in the bathroom and CORRIDOR. I don't see how mentioning the bloody bathroom and corridor directs suspicion away from him. He has already mentioned all the blood in the bedroom, where he admits to being in. Also, the bathroom, to get the towels. As to the drug dealer, whatever, there may have been an ulterior motive in mentioning it.