Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

rubber hoses are not necessary

What the defense really needs if for a couple of credible witnesses to step forward and say they saw the cops whaling away with rubber truncheons on Raf's backside.

If this erudite panel can think of no way, short of putting Raf on the stand, to argue to the court that Raf's admission that Amanda had indeed gone to Le Chic that night was somehow improperly procured, who am I to propose otherwise? Where do we suppose the prosecution will go with this?

Don't tell me, Mary, that this weighty colloquy has been taking place on a purely "philosophical," as opposed to "evidentiary" plane.

nopoirot,

You seem to have a very narrow view o what constitutes degrading, inhumane treatment or even torture. Even forced nudity, depending on the circumstances, is extremely problematic. Consider, for example, forcing a Muslim man to be nude in front of a woman. It may depend on his specific religious beliefs, but for some muslims, this would be a terrible humiliation or degradation. PM me if you wish to discuss this point further, inasmuch as it may be off topic.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Why not, and like what? It's not as if they are great lumps of Rudy strewn all over the room.

A bloody palmprint and multiple DNA traces on and within her person are very strong evidence of his presence and involvement.

Quibbling I know, but you presumably mean a trace that is both detected and is uniquely associable with the murder. Presumably there is DNA from Amanda in the room if only one were to look hard enough for long enough. Perhaps also for Raffaele? There was once a lot of talk that perhaps the DNA on the clasp was due to kicking around in dust off the floor.

Going back more than 6 months there was a lot of talk, particularly from a poster called Fiona about how upon looking into the matter it turned out that we didn't leave traces of ourselves from crime scene investigators to find half as readily as one might have supposed.

Fiona posted all sorts of things. Not all of them, in my view, demonstrated sound research or reasoning.

It's possible for three people to engage in a struggle to the death in a confined space with a fourth without two of them leaving any traces. It's possible for three people to hold down a fourth so she can be raped and murdered (as portrayed in the prosecution's CGI cartoon) without two of them leaving any traces. It's possible that the three wounds on Meredith's neck were inflicted by three different people with three different knives.

However it's unlikely, to say the least, and chaining together a series of wildly unlikely claims and then proclaiming the chain to be proof beyond reasonable doubt is intellectually unsustainable.

This gets us back to the elephant in the room, the total lack of anything resembling a coherent narrative of guilt from you or anybody else that conforms with the facts as we now know them. Your first attempt was justifiably dismissed as ridiculous, and I find your recent attempts to reintroduce it without addressing the criticisms originally made of it rather curious.

As I think I have said before, the "Satanic rite" fairy story and the "drug sex party gone wrong" theory, while both very silly, at least tried to come up with some plausible reason why two previously harmless university students would participate in the savage rape and murder of a friend by a stranger.

The central absurdity of the pro-guilt claim at the moment is that such a crime is incredibly unlikely, literally unprecedented, and yet the evidence in favour of it is incredibly flimsy. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not a fragile chain of unsupported supposition and blatant absurdity that at best aspires to establishing the mere physical possibility that Knox and Sollecito had something to do with the murder.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Spezi and the Committee to Protect Journalists

Many thanks once again, Fiona, for all your hard work.

Quadraginta,

I agree that Fiona's research tenacity is admirable, but I disagree with a number of points in her summary. Her language suggests the the Sardinian theory and the cult-coverup theory of the Monster of Florence case are equally absurd, but I cannot agree. Perhaps most importantly, she gives short shrift to the mistreatment meted out to Mr. Spezi. The Committee to Protect Journalists protested his treatment and noted:

“Mignini filed a request with the preliminary investigation judge of Perugia, Marina De Robertis, to invoke a rarely used law under Italy's criminal code to deny Spezi access to a lawyer for five days, Spezi's lawyer Alessandro Traversi told CPJ. The law is typically applied to the most dangerous criminals, yet Judge De Robertis authorized the measure, and for five days Spezi was denied legal counsel and held incommunicado.”

 

[Poppy1016]

Very good post. I couldn't have said it better.

 

[stilicho]

A moderately problematic aspect of the case would be some kind of evidence conflicting with Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito's alibi. However there isn't any apart from the testimony of Curatolo which is also going to undergo review.

You must be fresh to this case. Welcome to the debate.

Curatolo's testimony is not undergoing review. The court ruled that some bus company employees may be interviewed and their testimony assessed. This helps the court understand how important a precise memory is. In the courtroom, Curatolo pointed to the two people he saw the evening of 01 NOV 2007 in Piazza Grimana and verified the times and date he saw them by referencing costumes, a bright nearby clock, some buses, and the appearance of investigators near the cottage the next day, on 02 NOV 2007.

At stake in the new evidence is whether the buses were the disco buses or some other type of vehicle. The presence of Knox and Sollecito, at the time and date he saw them, and the appearance of the investigators in the area the next day are not being re-examined. Nor is Curatolo required to appear to repeat his testimony.

This is what's known as grasping at a final straw. The defence can only hope that the court cannot read because Knox displayed remarkable memory deficiencies:

Did I go home? I can't remember.

I don't know the times very precisely, above all during that interrogation.

I don't remember the exact words...

After dinner, I don't know what time it was.

Uh, I don't remember the time.

And I didn't even remember that I had written him a message. But okay, I must have done it.

PM: Now, on the evening of November 1, do you remember if Raffaele received any phone calls while you were at his house?

Amanda Knox: At Halloween?

PM: The evening of the 1st.

Amanda Knox: I don't remember.

PM: Did Meredith have a lamp like that in her room?

Amanda Knox: I don't know.

Hm. Okay. I don't remember that phone call. I remember that I called her to tell her what we had heard about a foot. Maybe I did call before, but I don't remember it.

If I didn't do these things with him, then he's probably innocent, but I only know the things that I actually do know, about what I myself did. About what I actually said about him, it was not true. It was a mistake. But -- I don't know -- I don't know anything any more...

I can't remember if I brushed my teeth before or after taking a shower. I think...before...I don't remember

PM: But do you remember if this document, this act was translated into English?

Amanda Knox: I don't remember.

Pacelli: Do you remember when [you told your lawyers that you knew Patrick was innocent]?

Amanda Knox: I don't know the dates.

PM: Did you check the money?

Amanda Knox: I don't remember.

PM: Did you open your shutters or were they already open?

Amanda Knox: I don't remember.

PM: And did the police talk to you about the scream or not, when they interrogated you on the 2nd, the 3rd or the 4th. Did they talk to you about the fact that she screamed?

Amanda Knox: I don't remember.

Amanda Knox: Yes. Two plain clothes policemen came.

Ghirga: Did they arrive together?

Amanda Knox: Yes.

Ghirga: Marsi and Battistelli?

Amanda Knox: I don't know their names.

(The last one is pretty funny. Ghirga isn't the PM; he's her own lawyer. And he's asking Knox if she recognises two police officers who introduced themselves in court and testified against her.)

This is what bringing the bus company employees in will focus the court's attention upon. The University of Washington must be proud of an alumnus whose memory is actually worse than that of a homeless man who might have been mistaken about the make and purpose of a vehicle near his park bench. By contrast, and as evidenced by this very brief anthology of Amanda Knox's public statements, the honours student can't even remember if her own lamp belongs to her. She can't remember the names of the two Postal Police officers who embarrassed Sollecito and her outside the cottage. Yet she was careful to tell them, around noon of 02 NOV 2007, that she remembered clearly that Meredith always locked the door to her room.

Oh, sorry, that wasn't Knox remembering. That was her caught lying to get them out of the cottage so she could continue to manipulate the investigation into the death of the woman she helped kill.

 

[Mary_H]

I don't suppose I could trouble you for a link. I am genuinely trying and it would be helpful to my understanding of the whole "Satanic" meme to get such an early reference.

I'm not sure that anybody denies that Mignini believed there were some ritualistic elements. It's some distance from that to saying that it was a Satanic ritual.

I must concede, I have not been able to find a link from before 2008. As I mentioned before, it would be helpful to know whether the reference came from the actual charges filed by the prosecutor or were just hearsay. I had thought the ritualistic aspect was talked about in the press immediately, but I must have been mistaken.

Oh, I was certainly deliberately gratuitously introducing terminology and in no way would actually describe her in those terms.

Too late.

It seemed to me though that if one were to attribute the claim to Mignini that it was a Satanic ritual based purely on the fact that he is Catholic and hence must necessarily regard the murderers as being inspired by an actual entity called Satan and thereby any ritualistic elements are Satanic rituals, then one might similarly say that from many Biblical perspectives Knox is a whore. Perhaps it's a bit of an awkward fit if she isn't religious herself. If Raffaele is a Catholic (presumably some of the defence lawyers are in any case) the statement about Knox could be put to him. Does that make some kind of sense? Attributing statements to people that have objective connotations (like "satanic ritual") to people based purely on their religious affiliation and what you decide they must then necessarily believe seems to me silly. Particularly when most of the people reading the comments won't be thinking of the term with respect to what ever bit of Catholic dogma you are working from.

Chris and I were trying to see it from Mignini's traditional perspective. We weren't trying to say that because one is Catholic, one essentially adheres to all the tenets of the religion. One can only adhere to what one knows about the religion, or how own uses the religion in one's own life. Given what seems to have been Mignini's interest in Satan in the past, it seemed applicable. Add to that the evidence that he actually may have written the words, at least according to Luca Maori.

On the other hand, for someone to call Amanda a whore, whether or not based on Biblical perspectives or any other set of mores, is completely irrelevant to the case. It says nothing about Amanda, it reflects only on the speaker.

My mother is a Catholic and certainly doesn't believe that Satan is abroad getting people to do bad things in day to day life, certainly not in an literal way. Come to think of it, she originally trained as an anthropologist and, while I've heard her use the word "ritual", I can't remember her ever having described a ritual as being satanic, despite her Catholicism. Perhaps she's a bad Catholic.

If your mother were an Italian magistrate, she might have a different interpretation of Catholicism.

 

[Mary_H]

I don't have a copy of the Massei report. I've just been assuming that it must be in the record, if it wasn't suppressed. Mary-H says it is referred to on pages 17-18 of the report (# 23154.)

That part of the Massei report deals only with the question of the lawyer; it doesn't recount the statement.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You must be fresh to this case. Welcome to the debate.

Curatolo's testimony is not undergoing review. The court ruled that some bus company employees may be interviewed and their testimony assessed. This helps the court understand how important a precise memory is. In the courtroom, Curatolo pointed to the two people he saw the evening of 01 NOV 2007 in Piazza Grimana and verified the times and date he saw them by referencing costumes, a bright nearby clock, some buses, and the appearance of investigators near the cottage the next day, on 02 NOV 2007.

At stake in the new evidence is whether the buses were the disco buses or some other type of vehicle. The presence of Knox and Sollecito, at the time and date he saw them, and the appearance of the investigators in the area the next day are not being re-examined. Nor is Curatolo required to appear to repeat his testimony.

This is what's known as grasping at a final straw.

This seems more like blind cheerleading than rational argument. If it turns out that Curatolo could not possibly have seen disco buses on the night of the murder, then it is truly an act of faith to believe that he was right about the date on which he claims to have seen Amanda and Raffaele.

Whether he is innocently conflating two different nights or (as I think more likely but not certain) he was perjuring himself to curry favour with the police and over-egged his lies, either way he loses a great deal of credibility.

If Curatolo did not definitely see them on the night of the murder, there is nothing at all for the prosecution to contest their alibi with.

This is what bringing the bus company employees in will focus the court's attention upon. The University of Washington must be proud of an alumnus whose memory is actually worse than that of a homeless man who might have been mistaken about the make and purpose of a vehicle near his park bench. By contrast, and as evidenced by this very brief anthology of Amanda Knox's public statements, the honours student can't even remember if her own lamp belongs to her. She can't remember the names of the two Postal Police officers who embarrassed Sollecito and her outside the cottage. Yet she was careful to tell them, around noon of 02 NOV 2007, that she remembered clearly that Meredith always locked the door to her room.

Oh, sorry, that wasn't Knox remembering. That was her caught lying to get them out of the cottage so she could continue to manipulate the investigation into the death of the woman she helped kill.

I don't think spamming out-of-context quotes is going to impress anyone around here.

It is not evidence of guilt that a person cannot remember some details of events that happened long ago under stressful circumstances. If anything it's evidence of honesty, and an attempt made in good faith to relate only what they know to be true.

Wouldn't it be a nice world if we could all attempt in good faith to state only what we know to be true, Stilicho?

 

[Mary_H]

Actually, Mary, I'm not at all surprised that the issue of Raffaele's admissions has not loomed large on this board. It confirms a predisposition to ignore or gloss over some very problematic aspects of the case. Amanda's alleged accomplice, her lover, tells the police that, contrary to what the two of them have been saying for days, she went to Le Chic the night in question. On what line of reasoning does this not go directly to the issue of where Amanda was that night, and what she was up to?

The line of reasoning that says that Amanda and Raffaele were together at the cottage killing Meredith.

 

[Mary_H]

This is what's known as grasping at a final straw. The defence can only hope that the court cannot read because Knox displayed remarkable memory deficiencies:

(The last one is pretty funny. Ghirga isn't the PM; he's her own lawyer. And he's asking Knox if she recognises two police officers who introduced themselves in court and testified against her.)

It is routine for lawyers to advise their clients to answer that they don't remember, as opposed to trying to guess at a precise answer. It prevents the other side from jumping all over tiny errors as evidence of something or another.

This is what bringing the bus company employees in will focus the court's attention upon. The University of Washington must be proud of an alumnus whose memory is actually worse than that of a homeless man who might have been mistaken about the make and purpose of a vehicle near his park bench. By contrast, and as evidenced by this very brief anthology of Amanda Knox's public statements, the honours student can't even remember if her own lamp belongs to her. She can't remember the names of the two Postal Police officers who embarrassed Sollecito and her outside the cottage. Yet she was careful to tell them, around noon of 02 NOV 2007, that she remembered clearly that Meredith always locked the door to her room.

You are misrepresenting. Amanda was asked if Meredith had a lamp like that, not if it was Amanda's lamp. Amanda and Raffaele were not embarrassed by the postal police officers; they were surprised by them, which has been documented many times. The report that Amanda said Meredith's door was always locked is based on hearsay; looking at the testimony about it, it also seems to be based on a language gap. Amanda says several times in her testimony that she was aware only that Meredith sometimes locked her door.

Oh, sorry, that wasn't Knox remembering. That was her caught lying to get them out of the cottage so she could continue to manipulate the investigation into the death of the woman she helped kill.

shuttlt wants to know if you are arguing that you can prove that.

 

[Justinian2]

Do you mean he might have brought it with him? Hmmm (as RWVBWL would say).

I have always thought Rudy went in the front door, although I don't think it's impossible he went in through the window. Not with any high-end accessories, though.

What a great accessory a crutch or cane would make when entering a 2nd floor window! Once the window is open, you could place it in kitty-corner or across the window. The square end would keep it from spinning in your hand. The rubber end would give it traction. You could grab it anywhere. You could hold it with your back pack when climbing. It would be inconspicuous while walking. It would fend off dogs. It's an inconspicuous weapon.

Once in the position of the lawyer, with the window open, insert the cane sidewise and walk the brick facade to the window. The rubber on either end provides support for some upward pull/vector.

A completely athletic guy or gymnist wouldn't need a crutch, but it would sure help me!

 

[Justinian2]

By the way Justinian, one of the things that I think makes your position, that you don't have to prove it, harder is that in that case I think you probably need to be arguing against somebody who believes they can prove that Amanda is a killer. Who on this board are you arguing with who holds that position? I'm certainly aware of people who think she is a killer, but I'm unclear if anybody currently posting claims that they are able to prove that Amanda is a killer. If no such person is posting then I wonder whether anybody is actually trying to prove anything to anyone. We could be in the bizarre situation of one side believing that the argument isn't provable in this forum, while the other side say it isn't up to them to offer proof, but rather to attack the proof offered by the first side. Deadlock (or more properly livelock), no?

It's plausible that people think Amanda is a killer, yet can't prove it.

What I don't understand is why people think that Guede had to work with anyone to kill MK. Since the Satanic ritual theory has evaporated, what other theory holds the three together for cooperation in any type of activity?

Has anyone suggested that Guede was such a great guy and they just wanted to be with him for friendship or sex?

 

[Fine]

The case certainly can be discussed on a purely evidentiary plane; I'm sure many of us would prefer that. Subjective questions such as, "Does withholding information from the suspect amount to coercion?" can be more fun, however, and seem to be what keep many people sticking around.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but the question of whether Raffaele's interrogation was coercive has never been one to loom large in the debate. It's kind of irrelevant, since we don't know what he said and since it's not being used against him as Amanda's has been used against her.

______________________

I think you are mistaken, Mary. As I read the Massei Report, pages 17 and 18, Raffaele's attorneys during a preliminary hearing attempted to keep records of Raffaele's appearance before Judge Matteini out of the "case file." His attorneys failed. In his appearance before Judge Matteini, on November 8, 2007, Raffaele had confirmed elements of his police interrogation, including his statement that Amanda had left him the night of the murder.

So, during the murder trial, the court---the judges and jurors---were familiar with what Rafffaele had said before Judge Matteini, and so, clearly, what he'd said before the cops, and repeated before Matteini, was used against him.
///

 

[Justinian2]

A bloody palmprint and multiple DNA traces on and within her person are very strong evidence of his presence and involvement.



Fiona posted all sorts of things. Not all of them, in my view, demonstrated sound research or reasoning.

It's possible for three people to engage in a struggle to the death in a confined space with a fourth without two of them leaving any traces. It's possible for three people to hold down a fourth so she can be raped and murdered (as portrayed in the prosecution's CGI cartoon) without two of them leaving any traces. It's possible that the three wounds on Meredith's neck were inflicted by three different people with three different knives.

However it's unlikely, to say the least, and chaining together a series of wildly unlikely claims and then proclaiming the chain to be proof beyond reasonable doubt is intellectually unsustainable.

This gets us back to the elephant in the room, the total lack of anything resembling a coherent narrative of guilt from you or anybody else that conforms with the facts as we now know them. Your first attempt was justifiably dismissed as ridiculous, and I find your recent attempts to reintroduce it without addressing the criticisms originally made of it rather curious.

As I think I have said before, the "Satanic rite" fairy story and the "drug sex party gone wrong" theory, while both very silly, at least tried to come up with some plausible reason why two previously harmless university students would participate in the savage rape and murder of a friend by a stranger.

The central absurdity of the pro-guilt claim at the moment is that such a crime is incredibly unlikely, literally unprecedented, and yet the evidence in favour of it is incredibly flimsy. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not a fragile chain of unsupported supposition and blatant absurdity that at best aspires to establishing the mere physical possibility that Knox and Sollecito had something to do with the murder.

I think juries in the USA would frequently contain people that would hang the jury. When it comes to majority rule in a jury that has deliberated for months and is motivated to go home, who knows? That is the problem.

Peer pressure got me to walk along a 2000 foot precipice on Machu Picchu - and I thought I was an acrophobic that was immune to peer pressure! Conformity to the group and not knowing the way back causes one to make life threatening decisions (or at least that's the viewpoint of this acrophobic).

 

[Dan O.]

A completely athletic guy or gymnist wouldn't need a crutch, but it would sure help me!

Here is a video of someone climbing into a second story window. Notice how easy it is once he can get ahold of the inside window sill.

 

[lionking]

I think juries in the USA would frequently contain people that would hang the jury.

Sigh. Would you please stop referring to the US legal system.

 

[Mary_H]

______________________

I think you are mistaken, Mary. As I read the Massei Report, pages 17 and 18, Raffaele's attorneys during a preliminary hearing attempted to keep records of Raffaele's appearance before Judge Matteini out of the "case file." His attorneys failed. In his appearance before Judge Matteini, on November 8, 2007, Raffaele had confirmed elements of his police interrogation, including his statement that Amanda had left him the night of the murder.

So, during the murder trial, the court---the judges and jurors---were familiar with what Rafffaele had said before Judge Matteini, and so, clearly, what he'd said before the cops, and repeated before Matteini, was used against him.
///

I don't know, Fine. I still think it's a non-issue. Raffaele's claim that Amanda went out incriminated Amanda briefly, but that was useful only for coercing Amanda into imagining she wasn't with Raffaele. Raffaele's claim about Amanda going out is not ultimately useful for the prosecution, because it separates the two defendants on the night of the crime, and the prosecution wants the two of them to have been together committing the murder.

Raffaele's statement is not useful for the defense, either, because the two defendants are being tried together. The defense could have argued that Raffaele told police that Amanda went out and he was not with her, but they didn't. Maybe it was because at first they believed the investigation had actually turned up some incriminating evidence against Raffaele (e.g., the shoe prints).

I don't have all the details on how Raffaele's statements to the police contributed to his arrest. It's hard to understand why his lawyers were not able to prevent the yearlong pre-trial detention of Raffaele, considering the lack of evidence against him.

 

[quadraginta]

Surely it's perfectly possible and by no means necessarily improper for somebody to be convicted of murder without physical evidence of them at the crime scene? You are presumably discounting the physical evidence. OK. But what about circumstantial evidence, is circumstantial evidence necessarily "useless gibberish"?

It is certainly possible, and not even particularly uncommon. People can even get convicted when there is no direct evidence that a murder occurred at all, like having a victim's body.

That circumstance p) is definitely unusual, which I believe is a good thing, but it isn't at all unheard of. Here's one article on the topic.

I thought these two paragraphs were particularly interesting, especially the second one, which can address the constraints (and possible strengths) of circumstantial evidence in general.

Circumstantial Strength Though they lack more direct physical evidence, missing-body cases, some lawyers say, ultimately can be stronger than standard murder cases with bodies and are more likely to withstand appeals. Because the body is missing, prosecutors must worry more about their case being thrown out before or during trial because of a lack of sufficient evidence. These obstacles, along with the fact that they have to prove there was a death by murder make prosecutors present a more efficient case.


“Circumstantial cases can often be stronger than direct evidence cases whereas the evidence you present is less susceptible to tampering,” says Joshua Marquis, who successfully prosecuted a missing-body case in Oregon in 1993. “You don’t have all the baggage that may come if police are not as careful as they should be at the scene of a crime. And I don’t worry about these cases being overturned on an appeal. Most judges won’t let you get past [the defense’s request for] a directed verdict of acquittal at trial if you don’t present a strong case. You combine that along with the fact that you convinced a jury to convict, it’s unlikely an appeals court will overturn the verdict.”

 

[quadraginta]

nopoirot,

You seem to have a very narrow view o what constitutes degrading, inhumane treatment or even torture. Even forced nudity, depending on the circumstances, is extremely problematic. Consider, for example, forcing a Muslim man to be nude in front of a woman. It may depend on his specific religious beliefs, but for some muslims, this would be a terrible humiliation or degradation. PM me if you wish to discuss this point further, inasmuch as it may be off topic.

I don't see why it would be off topic, since it is addressing the possibility of coercion in Sollecito's interrogation, but I think that the analogy is pretty fatuous, unless you are suggesting that Sollecito was a Muslim, and the strip search was conducted by women with the express intent of offending his religious sensibilities.

It's darn hard to conduct a strip search without taking someone's clothes off. Yes, it might be embarrassing to some with extreme body modesty, but if it constitutes "degrading, inhumane treatment or even torture" then there's an awful lot of that going around. Even in airports these days, it would seem.

Trying to compare a strip search to torture is one heck of a stretch, even for these discussions.

 

[Dan O.]

Next we will have homeopathic justice.