Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Alt+F4]

That's not much of a whack. As I have stated many times previously, lawyers very rarely if ever lie about matters of fact in court documents, and if they do then they get in very serious trouble if they are caught at it.

Who said they were lying? You believe the court can be wrong (as you wrote below) but you don't think the defense can be as well. Quite the double standard. If we took lawyers at their word without evidence then we wouldn't even need courts and juries.

A common position of convenience amongst pro-guilt posters is to decide arbitrarily, every now and then, just when it suits them, that nothing is true unless the court in question has already decided that it is true. This is such a nonsensical manoeuvre that it's hardly worth dissecting, since the court has already been proven wrong about many very important issues, and since the same people inevitably also put forward all sorts of ideas which have not been proven true by the courts.

Yet you believe this computer claim without the slightest bit of evidence to back it up.

 

[daydreamer]

What we ought to see is some trace that they were in that room. It would be virtually impossible to have participated in that murder without leaving a single trace IMO.

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

IIRC, Rudy's DNA was found on cuffs of MK's blue jacket. The prosecution's theory is that AK and RS held MK down by the arms while Rudy assulted her. Wouldn't you expect to find the DNA of AK and RS on the cuffs or sleeves instead of Rudy's?

 

[Alt+F4]

Sorry, you're right. I haven't kept up with the latest news about the Bible.

You're not missing much. I think it was Rev. Lovejoy that called it a "2,000 page sleeping pill".

 

[Justinian2]

OK. Quick poll for the improvement of both our understandings. Does anybody think that it is a demonstrable fact, based solely on the evidence available on the Internet that Amanda and Raffaele are guilty beyond reasonable doubt?

I'm so happy to learn that non of the pro-guilt group (guilters for short) thinks that Amanda and Raffaele are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (solely on on the evidence available on the Internet)

I'm not quite sure of your meaning. In an abstract sense, clearly he would be physically capable of killing her alone. There are claims I think that she must have had both her hands restrained while she was stabbed, which makes the whole thing a little harder to visualize, but still it may well not be impossible for him to have killed her, in the manner in which she was killed, without assistance.

I'm glad you think that Guede could have killed her without assistance.

Again, I struggle to understand you. You think the starting point is a theory about Satanism, from which people conclude that multiple people were involved. Surely, if there is/was a theory about Satanism, it is brought in to explain the involvement of the participants? You lose the Satanism, you still have the multiple participants that you were using the Satanism to account for.

No. It's the other way around. If the pro-guilt group lose the Satanism, the pro-guilt group still has the multiple participants that they were using the Satanism to account for.

Is it quite impossible? He doesn't seem to have been obviously repulsive, or clearly a violent sex-killer prior to the murder. I don't feel I know him, Amanda or Raffaele now, or as the were in late 2007 well enough to say.

Really? I thought Guede was known for being aggressive with women. We don't know if Guede had a happy childhood with loving parents (a lot of killers don't) and we don't know if Guede had a happy, healthy relationship with women before this incident. Furthermore, we don't know what crimes Guede committed before this incident. (the phrase we don't know merely means I don't want to take the time to source those statements)

 

[Mary_H]

You're not missing much. I think it was Rev. Lovejoy that called it a "2,000 page sleeping pill".

LOL. Yeah, especially if they're going to stop calling women sinners.

 

[Alt+F4]

We don't know if Guede had a happy childhood with loving parents (a lot of killers don't) and we don't know if Guede had a happy, healthy relationship with women before this incident. Furthermore, we don't know what crimes Guede committed before this incident. (the phrase we don't know merely means I don't want to take the time to source those statements)

Well that street goes both ways. Poor Amanda, child of divorce. Poor Raffaele, mother died when he was young. We have no idea what crimes they both committed before this incident.

 

[Justinian2]

So peer pressure got Amanda to go along with the group. Thanks for clearing that up.

The idea that this was a 'gang bang' or group activity is a prerequisite for the crime as a person can't be murdered twice.

So what is the proof that there was a group?

I would appreciate it if you cleared this up.

 

[shuttlt]

Really? I thought Guede was known for being aggressive with women. We don't know if Guede had a happy childhood with loving parents (a lot of killers don't) and we don't know if Guede had a happy, healthy relationship with women before this incident. Furthermore, we don't know what crimes Guede committed before this incident. (the phrase we don't know merely means I don't want to take the time to source those statements)

If you can't be bothered coming up with arguments against what I said, I certainly can't be bothered arguing against you.

 

[Dan O.]

He gets his arm pits on the sill and dives in!

I still think he needs something to grab once the climber gets his arm pits on the sill. Maybe not. He then does a push up on the sill and dives in. Realize that that is more than a push up because when you do a push up, your toes are on the floor supporting your weight. You also wouldn't want glass on the sill where your stomach slid.

In the video he reaches in to grab the inner window sill. He uses his arm like doing a chin up to pull his body into the window until his center of mass is over his hands. (Note that in Rudy's case there is no glass in the center of the window, only in the corner under where his arm crosses. His arm is not going to contact the glass there because of the high frame that the window is inset in.) With his body weight over his hands, he needs only to do a push up to raise his body up to where he can get a knee or foot on the sill. (If you can still do a pushup. Try it with your hands on a bathroom scale and see how much of your body weight you are already lifting.)

Now, if you want a real laugh, imagin Mignini trying to climb in through that window

 

[Justinian2]

If you can't be bothered coming up with arguments against what I said, I certainly can't be bothered arguing against you.

Is it quite impossible? He doesn't seem to have been obviously repulsive, or clearly a violent sex-killer prior to the murder. I don't feel I know him, Amanda or Raffaele now, or as the were in late 2007 well enough to say.

There are a couple of books, one being "Murder in Italy" that quote witnesses as saying that Guede used to corner women in bars with them up against the wall and him with an arms on either side against the wall. Women feared him. He would never take 'no' for an answer.

He had a broken childhood and his foster parents were about to sever connections with him. He had a history of three previous break ins that were similar. He was a second story man with a history of carrying knives, stealing, and callousness around women.

These allegations have not been refuted as far as I know.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Sample 177 in Filomena's room

There were some faint peaks, but nothing that could be fairly regarded as the profile of an unknown subject. It seems they found Meredith's DNA in two spots on Filomena's floor, and Amanda's DNA was in one of those samples.

Amanda's profile was also visible in the other sample, but the peaks were below the threshold used in all the DNA tests except that for the knife blade.

Here are the relevant e-grams:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/kercher_profile.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/knox_profile.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/rep_176_luminol_stain_filomena_room.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/rep_176_luminol_stain_filomena_room_color.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/rep_177_luminol_stain_filomena_room.gif
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/rep_177_luminol_stain_filomena_room_color.gif

Charlie,

I agree that there is not a complete profile of a third person. However, there are some other peaks in item 177, as you say. In the D19S433 locus, four alleles are marked: 12, 13, 16, and 16.2. There are unlabeled alleles at 14 and 15 or 15.2. The allele at 14 (120 to 150 RFU in height) is not part of Raffaele’s profile (I do not have Guede's reference profile). I am not sure that it matters whether or not Filomena were the donor of the allele at 14. If one acknowledges that it might have been deposited at some other time than the murder, then one must also acknowledge the same possibility for Amanda's DNA. In my mind this unknown peak slightly weakens the evidentiary value of this sample, which was not strong in the first place.

 

[daydreamer]

In the video he reaches in to grab the inner window sill. He uses his arm like doing a chin up to pull his body into the window until his center of mass is over his hands. (Note that in Rudy's case there is no glass in the center of the window, only in the corner under where his arm crosses. His arm is not going to contact the glass there because of the high frame that the window is inset in.) With his body weight over his hands, he needs only to do a push up to raise his body up to where he can get a knee or foot on the sill. (If you can still do a pushup. Try it with your hands on a bathroom scale and see how much of your body weight you are already lifting.)

Now, if you want a real laugh, imagin Mignini trying to climb in through that window

Also note that Filomena's window is wider and the "sheet climber" has no lower window grid to use as a push-off point (definitely an advantage for Rudy).

 

[Justinian2]

In the video he reaches in to grab the inner window sill. He uses his arm like doing a chin up to pull his body into the window until his center of mass is over his hands. (Note that in Rudy's case there is no glass in the center of the window, only in the corner under where his arm crosses. His arm is not going to contact the glass there because of the high frame that the window is inset in.) With his body weight over his hands, he needs only to do a push up to raise his body up to where he can get a knee or foot on the sill. (If you can still do a pushup HA HA. Try it with your hands on a bathroom scale and see how much of your body weight you are already lifting.)

Now, if you want a real laugh, imagin Mignini trying to climb in through that window

I know, the idea of Magnini climbing through that window is absurd.

However, the climber has to get his center of gravity over the window or the push up will cause him to fall backward. I think the climber has to support his total body weight plus the friction of his body sliding over the sill. I think push downs are a little easier than push-ups.

 

[shuttlt]

Yes, yes. The fact remains that it's unlikely any murder resembling that theorised by the prosecution could be committed with two of the three participants leaving no trace.

Is it? Not that it's the be all and end all, but was this ever argued by one of the experts in court? In any case, as I've said before, why should there by a single unique scenario of the murder defined by the known facts. Given that the scenario isn't unique, any particular scenario may well necessarily contain elements that are unlikely simply on the basis that it is one arbitrarily chosen story amongst many. Perhaps the lack of DNA detected at the scene associated with Amanda and Raffaele leads you to prefer a different scenario for Amanda and Raffaele's involvement in the killing?

I'm getting tired of trying to explain this kind of reasoning, since it's so consistently and creatively misunderstood by the-community-formerly-known-as-guilters. Possibly this is because it's a difficult idea for laypeople and they don't make the effort to try to understand it, and possibly it's because if they understood logic and probability they wouldn't be members of the-community-formerly-known-as-guilters in the first place.

One last time then.

If Ted is guilty if and only if A and B are true, then to convict Ted you need to have proof beyond reasonable doubt of A and B.

If Ted is guilty if and only if A or B are true, then to convict Ted you need to have proof beyond reasonable doubt that (A or B) is true.

I'm certain that I've explained exactly the same thing several times myself. I am not in the least confused about it.

For Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito to be guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher a number of independently unlikely things all need to be true. They need to have been physically present (unlikely due to computer evidence),

I don't see that the computer records make it either likely or unlikely as they currently stand.

there needs to have been a staged break-in,

I guess, though how one assesses the odds of a staged break in isn't clear to me. The break in being staged, or not stage doesn't seem trivial to prove one way or the other looking purely at the breakin itself.

there needs to have been a clean-up,

Does there?

they need to have left no trace of a clean-up nor trace in the murder room and so on.

If there was a cleanup and no trace was detected, then I guess so.

These are neither redundant nor optional, so a rational person needs to see proof beyond reasonably doubt of each of these propositions before they can even conceivably conclude that the probability of them being guilty rises to the level of proof beyond reasonable doubt.

But you take them in isolation. You have to include in that that for Amanda and Raffaele to be innocent the knife and the bra clasp have to be due to contamination. Certainly for you this is a given, but it is not so for everybody.

If you're thinking "No fair! You can do that to prove any murderer should be found not guilty, by arbitrarily deciding that you need proof beyond reasonable doubt of every little thing!" then you haven't understood what I have just wrote and you need to think about it some more.

I understand probability and statistics. Do not talk down to me. I have posted at length about all this in the past few weeks. Your first obvious error is that the staged break in and the cleanup are clearly not independent events. The computer records, we are waiting on the appeal to find out more about. The odds of them leaving little evidence doesn't seem to me, even in the prosecutions scenario to be particularly remote, then there are other scenarios, like my one where it is quite likely.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Who said they were lying? You believe the court can be wrong (as you wrote below) but you don't think the defense can be as well. Quite the double standard. If we took lawyers at their word without evidence then we wouldn't even need courts and juries.

You seem to be confused. Did you think that you read something written by me saying "the defence cannot be wrong"? I don't recall writing any such thing.

The defence can be wrong. The court can be wrong. Rational people decide whether they are or not on a case-by-case basis.

When lawyers make a straightforward factual claim about something recorded in ones and zeroes on a backed up hard drive, I think it is highly likely that their claim is correct. It is not 100% certain, but it is highly likely.

Yet you believe this computer claim without the slightest bit of evidence to back it up.

We obviously have different definitions of evidence, because I know you are aware of the defence claims and of the details they have released about the error logs, and I know you are aware that Amanda and Raffaele claimed that they were watching Stardust that night and handed the computer with the proof over to the police who erased the relevant data and then destroyed the hard drive, yet you claim that there is not the slightest bit of evidence.

I'm not sure quite what your definition of evidence might be.

 

[shuttlt]

When lawyers make a straightforward factual claim about something recorded in ones and zeroes on a backed up hard drive, I think it is highly likely that their claim is correct. It is not 100% certain, but it is highly likely.

They aren't making a factual claim. They are saying what they claim the evidence shows, the same as the prosecution say that the DNA on the knife shows it was involved in the murder. It remains to be seen what the facts actually are.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Is it? Not that it's the be all and end all, but was this ever argued by one of the experts in court? In any case, as I've said before, why should there by a single unique scenario of the murder defined by the known facts. Given that the scenario isn't unique, any particular scenario may well necessarily contain elements that are unlikely simply on the basis that it is one arbitrarily chosen story amongst many. Perhaps the lack of DNA detected at the scene associated with Amanda and Raffaele leads you to prefer a different scenario for Amanda and Raffaele's involvement in the killing?

This is more of a random collection of sentences than a coherent paragraph so I am not sure how to respond.

However I'm still quite sure that it is not a solution to the problem that not one remotely plausible prosecution scenario exists to say "Well I'm sure there are lots of wildly improbable ones that could work".

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito murdering Meredith Kercher is a wildly unlikely event in the first place. Now you're piling on top of it additional highly unlikely conditions, since you have admitted that you have no theory of the crime that is not in itself wildly unlikely. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but where's the evidence for this extraordinary murder committed in an extra-extraordinary way?

I don't see that the computer records make it either likely or unlikely as they currently stand.

You don't see that, I know. However you don't see that the story you favour is wildly unlikely in the first place, even when confronted with the fact that you have no remotely plausible story about how it could take place, so I'm not emotionally invested in changing how you see things. I'll settle for demonstrating to my satisfaction that you see things in a highly irrational way.

I guess, though how one assesses the odds of a staged break in isn't clear to me. The break in being staged, or not stage doesn't seem trivial to prove one way or the other looking purely at the breakin itself.

The staged break-in is a vital part of any coherent prosecution narrative - unless you have cooked up a plausible story where Rudy broke in by throwing a rock through Filomena's window in order to rob the house and then Amanda and Raffaele showed up and pitched in to help him sexually assault and murder Meredith? I didn't think so.

Yet there's zero sound evidence for the claim. You can't get to proof beyond reasonable doubt if a vital link in the chain is of very low probability.

But you take them in isolation. You have to include in that that for Amanda and Raffaele to be innocent the knife and the bra clasp have to be due to contamination. Certainly for you this is a given, but it is not so for everybody.

Contamination or falsification, certainly. You are acting like this is a problem for my analysis, but you have not explained why you think so.

You seem to be arguing that it's more implausible that a lab with no certification, inadequate precautions against contamination and demonstrably poor methodology came up with a false result, than that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito committed an incredibly unusual murder for no reason. This is a very strange view to hold seeing as you have yourself admitted that you have no theory of the crime which is not absurdly unlikely.

If we count up the number of times DNA labs have made a mistake on one hand, and the number of times two university students with absolutely no history of violence or antisocial behaviour team up with a local crook they do not know to brutally sexually assault and murder a friend of theirs for no reason, which count do you think will be higher? Which option should a rational person believe to be more probable?

I understand probability and statistics. Do not talk down to me. I have posted at length about all this in the past few weeks. Your first obvious error is that the staged break in and the cleanup are clearly not independent events. The computer records, we are waiting on the appeal to find out more about. The odds of them leaving little evidence doesn't seem to me, even in the prosecutions scenario to be particularly remote, then there are other scenarios, like my one where it is quite likely.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It seems to have led you to a high degree of certainty about a proposition that the correct application of probability and rationality should have told you was ridiculously implausible.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

They aren't making a factual claim. They are saying what they claim the evidence shows, the same as the prosecution say that the DNA on the knife shows it was involved in the murder. It remains to be seen what the facts actually are.

This is a curious characterisation of the situation.

The defence are claiming that a Naruto file was opened at 21:26 and that human interaction continued sporadically throughout the night. Those are hard facts.

I am quite happy to take personal responsibility for my judgement about what this evidence shows, specifically that it shows that Raffaele and Amanda were at home when Meredith Kercher was murdered (most likely between 21:00 and 21:30), and throughout the rest of the night.

 

[Fine]

The Mole That Would Not Die

nopoirot,

Precisely what do you mean that Amanda helped spin the web? You have focused heavily on the question of Amanda's whereabouts on 11-1. OK, let’s start by assuming that Raffaele was entirely truthful during his interrogation. Amanda left between 9 and 1 but he stayed put. If that were true, the prosecution’s case is in shambles, because they assign him an active role in the crime. Perhaps you would counter by saying, he could be guilty but trying to save his own skin. My answer to that would be if that were the case, he could have stuck to the story that she went out and saved himself a minimum of 3+ years in custody.

I have just finished rereading Candace Dempsey’s account of the interrogation on pages 138-153 of Murder in Italy. She also gives an account of their appearance before Matteini on pp. 198-199, and her account is similar to one found in Darkness Descending. I have previously quoted extensive passages from both books in this and the previous thread. Raffaele said that “the police had interrogated him very forcefully, repeatedly saying ‘don’t give us ****,’ and ‘be careful what you say.’ Later they’d written down he’d said ‘sack of ****.’ It had all been a nightmare.” (p. 199)

Based on these passages, my interpretation is that the police pressured and confused Raffaele into saying that Amanda left between 9 and 1 on 11-1, although that may have actually referred to the previous night. He remembered their eating dinner, discussing the broken pipe, watching a movie, and going to sleep. It is hard to see all of thses things happening with a four hour gap in the evening.

Finally, I note that you have been silent (to the best of my knowledge) on the large number of police misrepresentations and falsehoods. I find this extraordinarily puzzling.

__________________________
halides,

Raffaele has already said in his Diary ---and before Judge Matteini ---that Amanda had persuaded him to say she left him. And it also appears from his retraction-of-blame statement in his Diary and the Amanda's-poor-Italian comment he made before Matteini, that he soon realized that he had misunderstood Amanda's instructions (or what he thought were her instructions). At no time over the last three years has Raffaele said or written that the cops coerced him to say anything. On the contrary, in his retraction-of-blame statement in his Diary he wrote explicitly that all he said to the cops was said of his own free will. (Or did the prison guards force him to write that?!) The claim that Raffaele was coerced to say anything to the cops is a pure invention of the Innocentisti, contradicted by Raffaele himself.

Besides, even if we suppose that the cops had implanted some false confession/accusation into Raffaele's psyche, this is not what the cops wanted to hear. There'd been a sexual assault and murder, so the cops thought a male had been responsible. So what they would have "implanted" would have been Raffaele incriminating himself in commission of the murder or incriminating another male. At the time, girls were not even contemplated as suspects...as Amanda said in her court testimony that during her days of interrogation, prior to her arrest, the cops didn't want to hear about girls who knew Meredith or girls who had been to the cottage.

The cops didn't force him to say anything. And if they had, this is not what they would have forced him to say.

///

 

[Alt+F4]

The defence are claiming that a Naruto file was opened at 21:26 and that human interaction continued sporadically throughout the night. Those are hard facts.

It's a hard fact that the defense made this claim. It's not a hard fact that the computer was used by a human being sporadically throughout the night. That is yet to be proved.

I am quite happy to take personal responsibility for my judgement about what this evidence shows, specifically that it shows that Raffaele and Amanda were at home when Meredith Kercher was murdered (most likely between 21:00 and 21:30), and throughout the rest of the night.

Even if the defense's claim is proven correct it only hurts, not helps them. Human interaction does nothing to back up Amanda's alibi and just makes them both look like liars. How come neither of them brought this up to the police, or their lawyers during questioning or at the trial? Seems like a pretty important fact to leave out. Amanda is a chatty woman, yet nothing about an all night computer session or Japanese animation in her alibi e-mail or trial testimony.

So they either lied about being asleep during the night, or (he at least) is lying about being on the computer. Which is it?

EDIT: Also, why would Raffaele want to stay up all night on the computer when they had plans to go on a day trip the next morning? And they were planning to leave in the morning, Amanda mentioned it (the word morning) twice in her trial testimony.