Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Moss]

Ahem, unconscionable lies? I think that is indeed again a matter of perspective.
What besides Amanda's testimony implicated him directly in the murder case? It seems pretty reasonable that he feels betrayed by her.
It seems to me someone is indulging is in what I consider highly annoying through the whole case discussion(also including discussions of Amanda and Raffaele that is): speculating about the mental conditions of people. That is problematic even for skilled therapists and psychologists with direct access to the person in question.
Unless you had an idea how fragile Patrick was before he was falsely accused and imprisoned I'd rather suggest to refrain from suggesting anything. It's pretty easy for some people to lose their sense of security over minor issues while others are able to endure a lot of abuse. The slight suggestion he might just be in it for the money (which he, unless I am mistaken, somehow does not deserve because it's more than he should gotten through "honest work")is... well, let's just call it not very nice.
Tarnishing Patrick does not help Amanda and Raffaele in the least in my book.

And as for no evidence left: we shall see. I'm pretty curious of what the judge makes of the different interpretations of the objects in question.

 

[Moss]

The first time that question was asked on this forum, I looked at my own screensaver settings and found that they were set to 20 minutes. The text message from his father was received on Raffaele's phone at 6:02 AM indicating a break in his activities at that time when he turns his phone on. The screensaver activated at 6:22 AM. From this, I deduce that Raffaele also has his screensaver set at 20 minutes. I believe 20 minutes is the default setting and it is also a reasonable value in my view. Since both the defense and prosecution have copies of this drive as it was in November 2007, either of them can look at what the actual setting was. I'll believe it was most likely 20 minutes until someone provides more information.

Sounds like a pretty reasonable assumption. Though that might get a bit annoying while watching movies.

 

[Dan O.]

Sounds like a pretty reasonable assumption. Though that might get a bit annoying while watching movies.

I see it kick in occasionally when streaming imbedded movies from the net. It just takes a flick of the track pad to clear it. If you use the quicktime player I believe but have not verified that it will override the screensaver until the movie finishes (no need for a screen saver if there is a full screen moving picture).


ETA: A quick test on my system showed that the screen saver is in fact held off for the time that the Quicktime player is running a movie. We don't know if Raffaele was using Quicktime or another player. I prefer QT because it allows me to quickly scrub through a movie and step one frame at a time in the important bits but that isn't what Raffaele was doing.

It's also possible to define a hot corner that disables the screensaver when the cursor is parked there. This works regardless of the movie player used.

 

[Kaosium]

Ahem, unconscionable lies? I think that is indeed again a matter of perspective.

Did you follow the link? Did you read the whole story? Do you still believe the whole 'Foxy Knoxy' character you can see in its infancy there? Patrick helped kick that off, right there, with juicy quotes for the Daily Mail.

What besides Amanda's testimony implicated him directly in the murder case? It seems pretty reasonable that he feels betrayed by her.

Well, originally the Perugian police said they had a kinky black hair that had been in Meredith's hands when they discovered the crime scene. That didn't show up in evidence at court apparently, but it would not surprise me it was decided not to remind anyone of their embarrassing arrest of Patrick, and of course they hardly needed it to convict Rudy Guede. They also were suspicious of his cell phone records.

It seems to me someone is indulging is in what I consider highly annoying through the whole case discussion(also including discussions of Amanda and Raffaele that is): speculating about the mental conditions of people. That is problematic even for skilled therapists and psychologists with direct access to the person in question.
Unless you had an idea how fragile Patrick was before he was falsely accused and imprisoned I'd rather suggest to refrain from suggesting anything. It's pretty easy for some people to lose their sense of security over minor issues while others are able to endure a lot of abuse. The slight suggestion he might just be in it for the money (which he, unless I am mistaken, somehow does not deserve because it's more than he should gotten through "honest work")is... well, let's just call it not very nice.

I think you misunderstood. What I'm wondering is why he has continued to blame Amanda Knox for all this, I find it puzzling. She didn't arrest him, she didn't close his bar down for something like six months under the absurd reasoning it was a 'crime scene.' He also must have found out long ago, like at the trial and everything, that it wasn't a case of her just waltzing in there and dropping his name to get revenge on him for something that never happened. There has to be a reason he's behaving as he has right up until this point and I wonder what it is.

Tarnishing Patrick does not help Amanda and Raffaele in the least in my book.

I think you misunderstand my interest in this case. I am fascinated by the whole ordeal. I have no illusions that anything I type here will 'help' Amanda and Raffaele in the slightest, and nothing I write here will 'tarnish' Patrick, his own actions do that. I want to get to the bottom of what really happened, the whole story as it were, and this is a curious facet I've not seen much discussion on.

I am generally more inclined to defend Amanda and Raffaele against accusations and smears I believe to be untrue or misinterpreted, as those two have spent more than three years in jail and I think the outrageous investigation conducted against them made them less likely than anyone in Perugia that day to have murdered Meredith Kercher. However I am pretty sure my irreverent manner has caused some who also believe they are innocent to gnash their teeth reading my posts on occasion, which is too bad, but that's not the reason I'm posting here either.

Patrick, on the other hand, spent two whole weeks in jail, not more than three years, and helped initiate one of the most reprehensible smear campaigns I have ever seen, and the victim was not a politician or a celebrity of any sort, but a 20 year-old girl who just happened to rent the wrong room when she came to Perugia to study. He then chose to sue her for 'slander' and help defame her again in the eyes of the unsequestered jury by bringing the 'confession' into play, which just so happened to work in the favor of the prosecution. He continues this vengeful behavior right to the eve of her appeal, and I don't think his two whole weeks in jail martyr him to the point I can't look askance at what he's been doing.

And as for no evidence left: we shall see. I'm pretty curious of what the judge makes of the different interpretations of the objects in question.

Do you believe the bra clasp and the 'murder weapon' will survive the review, and if those are thrown out which 'objects' do you believe point to their guilt?

 

[Malkmus]

I see it kick in occasionally when streaming imbedded movies from the net. It just takes a flick of the track pad to clear it. If you use the quicktime player I believe but have not verified that it will override the screensaver until the movie finishes (no need for a screen saver if there is a full screen moving picture).

I use a macbook and when watching movies in fullscreen mode it overrides the screensaver. But I've only been using it since 2008.
I could also see a scenario where Raf might have been downloading a large movie file via torrent, which could take all night, and impatiently checking it's progress every several minutes.

 

[Malkmus]

What besides Amanda's testimony implicated him directly in the murder case? It seems pretty reasonable that he feels betrayed by her.

I wonder if Patrick knows that the way he was implicated by Amanda was through the police insisting they knew she had met up with him that night over misinterpretation of the text and when that didn't work, insisting she was traumatized and simply didn't remember, then giving her a storyline that she agreed with out of desperation.

 

[moodstream]

As for the size of the knife, we know it is compatible with at least some of the wounds, also the cop who collected it had seen the body and claimed he collected it because it matched his visual impression of the wounds.

No, he said the knife matched the wounds as they had been described to him.

That’s unlikely to be true, as you can read in the links to early reports below:

detectives continued to search for a murder weapon, which they believe to be a knife or possibly a shard of broken glass. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2801150.ece

Luca Lalli, a pathologist who carried out a post-mortem examination, said Miss Kercher was killed with a penknife. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...h-student-had-sex-with-killer-say-police.html

Police found Meredith on her bed covered by a duvet and wearing only a T-shirt, her throat cut by a sharp object or knife thrust just once in an upward motion with great force. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/nov/04/italy.ukcrime

And from Lalli’s testimony as reported in Massei:

As to the means which caused the cluster of lesions , Dr. Lalli discussed a single-bladed cutting tool with a point, and assumed that those injuries were consistent with a virtually infinite number of instruments provided they had a blade with only one cutting margin,

Here from Massei is Dr Lalli specifically on the kitchen knife:

He recalled that in the Questura he was shown a pointed knife compatible with the wounds that was in an envelope; he thought he had not manipulated [the object] since he had not taken note of any specific feature of that knife

-not a ringing endorsement. And an upward motion with great force would be incompatible with the kitchen knife, according to Massei

 

[Moss]

I wonder if Patrick knows that the way he was implicated by Amanda was through the police insisting they knew she had met up with him that night over misinterpretation of the text and when that didn't work, insisting she was traumatized and simply didn't remember, then giving her a storyline that she agreed with out of desperation.

I've seen multiple interpretations of what happened. Neither of them seems to be more valid than the other. Especially the motive as to why she implicated Patrick in the end is prone to be speculated upon. But unless we are suddenly able to discern her motive at that time in retrospect that is and probably stays open to debate. I don't think the evidence for "she only implicated him because the police left her no other choice" is stronger than for "she implicated him because he made a good fall guy at that moment". And those two are not the only possible variants.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

what Dr. Giobbi heard

I've seen multiple interpretations of what happened. Neither of them seems to be more valid than the other. Especially the motive as to why she implicated Patrick in the end is prone to be speculated upon. But unless we are suddenly able to discern her motive at that time in retrospect that is and probably stays open to debate. I don't think the evidence for "she only implicated him because the police left her no other choice" is stronger than for "she implicated him because he made a good fall guy at that moment". And those two are not the only possible variants.

Moss,

Dr. Giobbi testified that he heard Amanda screaming on the night of the interrogation. What do you make of that?

 

[shuttlt]

It's a good thing that what a person could be or could do is not as important as the evidence against him or her. If you raise an objection every time someone says the evidence shows that Amanda is innocent, you are showing bias toward guilt.

Nonsense. It really isn't my job to decide if she's innocent or guilty. I don't have particularly strong opinions on the matter. She could be guilty or not, and I really wouldn't care. I guess my gut tells me she's not been honest from the start (this is my personal impression which I have no intention of defending in any kind of detail and I wouldn't be shocked to the core if I was wrong), and that makes it easier to believe everything else.

As to what a person could, or could not be.... I've been thinking about that lately because there seem to be quite a few people who feel, based on what they know of her as a person, that she could not be involved. She'd have phones the police in such a situation, she'd have trusted the authorities, etc... I don't know her and as far as I'm concerned she, and that Italian boy we all find less interesting, could be capable of anything.

 

[RoseMontague]

Ahem, unconscionable lies? I think that is indeed again a matter of perspective.
What besides Amanda's testimony implicated him directly in the murder case?

Matteini says Patrick changed cell phones during the day to throw off the detectives. He had no receipts at his bar up until about 10:30, Matteini thinks he killed Meredith and went back to reopen the bar to establish an alibi. The message from Amanda did mean see you later(that night), he had intended to close the bar and spend the night with Meredith and changed that plan after the murder. Something else about the cell phones as well, IIRC, and a witness who said the bar was closed during the time before 10:30.

Similar stuff to the evidence against Sabrina Misseri, mostly speculation and fitting any facts to the current theory as well as a bad witness.

Fortunately for Patrick, he was able to prove his innocence.

Fortunately for

 

[shuttlt]

'Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained by sheer incompetence.'

Stonewalling, CYA and scapegoating aren't conspiracy, they're what happens when institutions screw up bigtime but think they can still lie their way out of it with perhaps a little slight of hand.

Don't argue with me. I'm not claiming conspiracies. You're presumably not denying plenty of posters have claimed that the evidence was manufactured deliberately?

Nah, no real frame-up, in fact I think Mignini actually believes Amanda was guilty. Most of the cops probably do too, even the ones who might have played with the evidence a little, so as not to 'confuse' the jury.

Could be. Do you mean that the cops and the lab are all doing this independently?

 

[Matthew Best]

It actually refers to marijuana.
.

No, it actually refers to cigarettes.

And now we have two competing theories, each with as much evidence to support it as the other.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

I don't get it

I don't know her and as far as I'm concerned she, and that Italian boy we all find less interesting, could be capable of anything.

shuttlt,

Perhaps we sometime focus on Ms. Knox more than Mr. Sollecito, but I was wondering about something yesterday. Ms. Knox was pilloried for her alleged promiscuity. In these pages at least, Mr. Sollecito was criticized for his alleged sexual/romantic inexperience. Paradoxical.

 

[Moss]

Did you follow the link? Did you read the whole story? Do you still believe the whole 'Foxy Knoxy' character you can see in its infancy there? Patrick helped kick that off, right there, with juicy quotes for the Daily Mail.

Juicy quotes? Rightly embittered? Again, pretty ambiguous. There's been so much spin about Amanda in either direction that I honestly don't give two tucks on... wait, I shouldn't quote Transmetropolitan here.
Suffice to say that I found it pretty interesting that the victim received remarkably less attention either way. I mean: she isn't mentioned in the title of this thread nor in the tags. But well, I said that way back and even then the case seems to fall and hang with Amanda Knox for good or ill.

Well, originally the Perugian police said they had a kinky black hair that had been in Meredith's hands when they discovered the crime scene. That didn't show up in evidence at court apparently, but it would not surprise me it was decided not to remind anyone of their embarrassing arrest of Patrick, and of course they hardly needed it to convict Rudy Guede. They also were suspicious of his cell phone records.

I heard the kinky black hair story a few times. I wonder where it actually originates. What I find slightly curious: why would that embarrass the police? If it had been found it might have been another piece of evidence against Rudy.

I think you misunderstood. What I'm wondering is why he has continued to blame Amanda Knox for all this, I find it puzzling. She didn't arrest him, she didn't close his bar down for something like six months under the absurd reasoning it was a 'crime scene.' He also must have found out long ago, like at the trial and everything, that it wasn't a case of her just waltzing in there and dropping his name to get revenge on him for something that never happened. There has to be a reason he's behaving as he has right up until this point and I wonder what it is.

Maybe he is indeed still pissed. It happens. I'm not sure if your notion that the whole manner in which his name came into play (which I as indicated in my post before find ambiguous) excuses her in his eyes. I suppose that really depends on the individual.
I for one am not sure if I would ever stop being angry with someone that implicated me in a crime I had nothing to do with. I know it's hard to resist authorities (Milgram experiment et al pretty much show how hard it is), but then again I do hold my acquaintances and myself to the standard to do the right thing. Even if it gets me into trouble.

I think you misunderstand my interest in this case. I am fascinated by the whole ordeal. I have no illusions that anything I type here will 'help' Amanda and Raffaele in the slightest, and nothing I write here will 'tarnish' Patrick, his own actions do that. I want to get to the bottom of what really happened, the whole story as it were, and this is a curious facet I've not seen much discussion on.

I am generally more inclined to defend Amanda and Raffaele against accusations and smears I believe to be untrue or misinterpreted, as those two have spent more than three years in jail and I think the outrageous investigation conducted against them made them less likely than anyone in Perugia that day to have murdered Meredith Kercher. However I am pretty sure my irreverent manner has caused some who also believe they are innocent to gnash their teeth reading my posts on occasion, which is too bad, but that's not the reason I'm posting here either.

I am as of yet undecided whether or not they have been involved.
There are some things that might imply they were and some that imply they weren't.
I tend to enjoy the notion that they may be innocent but acted in such a manner that led the police to suspect them. (Or to put it bluntly: They were young, stupid and knackered. And accidentally managed to push all the wrong buttons when it comes to the instincts of policemen.)
Therefore I'm trying to neither condemn nor champion them. I just can't make up my mind either way.
There are still things that I think are quite counterproductive, for example allegations of a police conspiracy that even involves Patrick. There just does not seem to be enough evidence of that either that does not need a lot of speculation on the motives of the police. I think I have repeatedly asked: how much of this is playing it by the standard procedure? I've yet to see the baseline from which this case supposedly deviates.

Patrick, on the other hand, spent two whole weeks in jail, not more than three years, and helped initiate one of the most reprehensible smear campaigns I have ever seen, and the victim was not a politician or a celebrity of any sort, but a 20 year-old girl who just happened to rent the wrong room when she came to Perugia to study. He then chose to sue her for 'slander' and help defame her again in the eyes of the unsequestered jury by bringing the 'confession' into play, which just so happened to work in the favor of the prosecution. He continues this vengeful behavior right to the eve of her appeal, and I don't think his two whole weeks in jail martyr him to the point I can't look askance at what he's been doing.

See above for part of the answer for this. You view it as an attempt at slander. His motive may be that he still feels wronged by her. We can only guess. I'm not sure which guess could be remotely correct.
The "confession" was relevant to his case. Should it have been left out? Why?
I can understand that the timing worked against her, but it was her own writing that made her look bad, not something arbitrary.

Do you believe the bra clasp and the 'murder weapon' will survive the review, and if those are thrown out which 'objects' do you believe point to their guilt?

I have tried to follow the arguments about them as time permits and read up on some points. But I still get the feeling that I lack the general knowledge to put what I read in context. That's why I'm glad that there are more experts weighing in on them. My hope is that this clarifies some points. But I suspect it will end up as it has ended here. Diametrically opposite opinions on the validity which for my lay understanding are hard to judge.

 

[Moss]

Moss,

Dr. Giobbi testified that he heard Amanda screaming on the night of the interrogation. What do you make of that?

I make of that that I do lack the context. Would you be so good as to provide me with it? It's hard to make sense of it else wise.

 

[Moss]

Matteini says Patrick changed cell phones during the day to throw off the detectives. He had no receipts at his bar up until about 10:30, Matteini thinks he killed Meredith and went back to reopen the bar to establish an alibi. The message from Amanda did mean see you later(that night), he had intended to close the bar and spend the night with Meredith and changed that plan after the murder. Something else about the cell phones as well, IIRC, and a witness who said the bar was closed during the time before 10:30.

Similar stuff to the evidence against Sabrina Misseri, mostly speculation and fitting any facts to the current theory as well as a bad witness.

Fortunately for Patrick, he was able to prove his innocence.

Fortunately for

Err, was that before the interrogation of Amanda? I admit to sometimes being a bit stumped because I have hard time keeping my mental timeline of what happened when straight.

 

[shuttlt]

Even if Amanda had borrowed the knife from Meredith's flat earlier in the week, I'm not sure that would have helped the defense as that places the knife in Amanda's purse for a moment. For all we know, that could have been Meredith's favorite knife.

Then by withholding this Amanda put herself at the mercy of the other housemates recognizing the knife. If your story is true, she is lucky this didn't.

The reason for testing the other stuff is to see if contamination wasn't coming from the lab itself.

To test if the contamination is coming from the lab they should take additional items from the crime scene? I don't think that that can be correct.

The knife is ABSOLUTELY necessary. Guede has been found guilty of Meredith's murder.

When, not before the knife and the DNA was discovered.

1.) Amanda and Raffaele have to be proven to have conspired with Guede for scientific proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Not a shred of evididence shows that either Amanda or Raffaele cared one iota about Guede.

Prove they were involved and who cares what kind of agreement whether formal, informal, ad hoc, accidental, coincidental or not at all there may have been.

2.) Scientific investigations happen anywhere. Scientific investigations happen millions of light years away and at the sub atomic level. Science doesn't always happen in a lab. Applied science happens everywhere. Engineers and lab technicians use applied science.

Absolutely they use applied science, but that is different to exploratory science. Applied science works in the here and now with whatever physical limitations apply in the moment and must cope with that as best it can. Exploratory science can be cautious and wait for replication. Experimental science has the luxory to wait for the next eclipse to refute whatever objections and counter examples people come up with, but if a bridge has to be built then experimental science must do the best job it can.

3) The double DNA knife is the only support for the supposition that Amanda, Guede and Raffaele conspired together AND the only thing that suggests that Amanda was involved.

Nonsense. Anything that is counted as evidence that they were involved is proof, if such is needed, that the conspired, to whatever degree is needed in order for them to have been involved.

 

[shuttlt]

http://projects.nfstc.org/property_crimes/Crime_Scene_Procedures_III.pdf

The collection of liquids? OK. It does not say anything about taking other objects if the sample is transportable. If it isn't it says get a sample from the "stain" and one from somwhere unstained. The material was supposed to be in the scratch on the knife. Why not swab the scratch and elsewhere on the knife?

Is this and Steve Moore all injusticeinperugia have managed to find? Surely something comfirming what people keep claiming, that other items not believed to be associated with the crime are routinely taken to act as controls.

 

[shuttlt]

I don't quite follow what you're getting at. What would they trying to 'prove?' That she saw Patrick rape and murder Meredith?

I hope this isn't that you can't imagine a situation where Amanda is guilty of something.

If she was involved, presumably she was lying about her involvement the whole time. She probably would have lied about where she was, what she was doing and when quite a bit. I'm sure there are other things she would have lied about as well, were she involved.

If she wasn't involved, she could still have lied about stuff at an earlier stage for whatever stupid reasons made it feel sensible at the time. Who knows?