Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Justinian2]

This article, if correct, places the quote into its surrounding context and helps to explain what Knox was referring to:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/20080641295262

If this report is accurate, then what Knox actually said, in context, is this:

"It's stupid, because I can't say anything else. I was there and I can't lie about that, I have no reason to."

This makes it pretty clear that "I was there" does not refer to Knox being at the cottage at the time of the murder. Otherwise she most definitely would have a reason to lie about it. It therefore almost certainly refers to her being at Sollecito's apartment, or there's also a small possibility that it refers to her being at the cottage at some time other than the time of the murder.

I've seen other pro-guilt people grab at that phrase to prove their case. If they have to misquote the defendant to make the case for a big powerful government causing deliberate harm and injury to a teenage girl then they are pretty [use your own adjective]

Thanks for the info.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I'm not trying "displace" anything - I'm making a good faith effort to discuss the case with you.

I was not trying to argue that any of the behavior of RS or AK amounted to a clear indicator that, before Nov. 1, 2007, either one was clearly "the type to commit a sex murder."

I was addressing, in a very specific way, your assertion that neither accused had a history of "antisocial behavior."

By any objective measure, that's not accurate.

So in other words you are quite well aware that this digression of yours has no bearing on whether Amanda and Raffaele are guilty, but you've been banging on about it for pages anyway?

For the record my intention when I wrote "antisocial behaviour" was to refer to the kind of antisocial behaviour that would make a rational person more likely to think they would commit murder - violent crime, theft, a hard drug habit perhaps. Even with hindsight I think this could have been picked up from context and I think as a matter of fact most people got it, but whatever.

While your interpretation of my words seems to have been strategically chosen to give you something to disagree with, I concede that you can within the English meaning of the words count marijuana use as "antisocial", or watching one animal porn video once and showing it to friends as "antisocial", or being present at a rowdy party and being the one who talked to the police as "antisocial"... although now I write down those three examples they're really a bit of a stretch however you parse "antisocial".

Anyway I think that's enough electrons wasted on this diversion. Back to things that actually matter...

Your claim was, "Rudy and Amanda smoked dope together on several occasions." While I greatly appreciate you providing citations from the Massei report, they did not substantiate that claim.

Mary_H has you bang to rights here. The sections you quoted did not establish that "Rudy and Amanda smoked dope together on several occasions", despite the fact that you were representing them as evidence for this claim.

So are you going to retract this post and this post and this post and this post?

You see there is a very good reason why we here at the JREF forums play what you dismissively refer to as "the citation game". It's to catch and filter out bad information before it takes root in a discussion, exactly as we have just done.

In forums like PMF and TMJK where nobody forces posters like yourself to "play the citation game", all sorts of total codswallop gets passed around as fact because nobody ever checks.

 

[quadraginta]

I take your point, Mary, but my point is that the wild statements by likes of Kenneth Moore are often taken as fact by many Knox supporters. The 40 hours of non-stop interrogation, that was close to "waterboardiing'. You know what I am talking about.

I think that Treehorn has made his point and that Kev once again pops up and attempts to cloud the issue. Not at all convincing, in my opinion.

Has anyone here unquestioningly claimed that Amanda was interrogated for forty hours straight and that it was close to waterboarding? If so, this would be the place to address that poster's claim. Otherwise, the thing to do would be to address Steve Moore directly.

I expect that someone here probably has at some point or another. Likely more than once, since we have such a wealth of posts to choose from. Not that it really matters, since the sophomoric 'tag team' tactics of mutual disassociation would simply lead to the claim "Well, that's not what I said, anyway."

More importantly, what can we conclude about your faith (or anyone else's, for that matter) in the reliability of Moore's authority and professionalism when he is willing to offer public opinions based on such outright misrepresentation and lies? Is he simply ignorant of the actual facts, and just providing his services as a sadly deluded mouthpiece, or does he know full well that he is grossly misrepresenting the facts, and intentionally basing his "professional" opinion on simple dishonesty?

There can be no question that he is either deceived or deceitful. Either way it does not make him a very good source.

 

[treehorn]

Yes,
I have served on 3 juries, 1 criminal and 2 civil. I can only speak for what the juries addressed. My understanding is that in the Italian system a motivations report should give everything the judge and jury considered important in arriving at the decision they made. If your argument is that they wouldn't consider past use of LSD and cocaine on the part of Raffaele as important, I am interested in hearing your reasoning on that.

Evidently, the triers of fact elected NOT to use the evidence submitted in respect of RS's past drug use as a 'make-weight' in the scales of justice.

I am not making any claims about 'hidden' or 'secret' evidence - I'm simply reminding you that the translation you are looking act is an incomplete document and, as a result, you do NOT have all of the information that the triers of fact were privy to.

 

[quadraginta]

Most of us here on JREF also understand that weed was classified as a narcotic for political rather than scientific or medical reasons. Regardless of that, using the term "illicit narcotics" instead of a more precise description such as "marijuana" is deceptive. Your intent was not to inform, but to confuse the issue.

Are we mind-reading now? You know for certain what treehorn's "intent" was?

I don't know whom you presume to be speaking for, but I was not confused. When a lawyer uses the phrase "illicit narcotics" specifically with regard to a legal case there isn't much room for confusion.

If we are going to start piling up on people here for no other reason than spurious claims of hyperbole in language then it might be appropriate to point out the large number of glass houses in the neighborhood.

 

[treehorn]

Mary_H has you bang to rights here. The sections you quoted did not establish that "Rudy and Amanda smoked dope together on several occasions", despite the fact that you were representing them as evidence for this claim.

So are you going to retract this post and this post and this post and this post?

You see there is a very good reason why we here at the JREF forums play what you dismissively refer to as "the citation game". It's to catch and filter out bad information before it takes root in a discussion, exactly as we have just done.

In forums like PMF and TMJK where nobody forces posters like yourself to "play the citation game", all sorts of total codswallop gets passed around as fact because nobody ever checks.

Well, there, then, now.

Tell us, Kevin, what DO the Court's findings and Knox's trial testimony tell us about Amanda and Rudy?

By any objective measure they do NOT support YOUR assertion that Amanda did not know Rudy.

(You made an IRRATIONAL over-simplification when you tried to intimate that Rudy was an unknown crook that had nothing whatsoever to do with the lives of the students living in the cottage. Admit it.)

 

[RoseMontague]

Evidently, the triers of fact elected NOT to use the evidence submitted in respect of RS's past drug use as a 'make-weight' in the scales of justice.

I am not making any claims about 'hidden' or 'secret' evidence - I'm simply reminding you that the translation you are looking act is an incomplete document and, as a result, you do NOT have all of the information that the triers of fact were privy to.

Correct me if I am wrong but your first statement assumes there is evidence, yet your second statement says you are not making claims about this undocumented evidence.

 

[Kestrel]

Evidently, the triers of fact elected NOT to use the evidence submitted in respect of RS's past drug use as a 'make-weight' in the scales of justice.

I am not making any claims about 'hidden' or 'secret' evidence - I'm simply reminding you that the translation you are looking act is an incomplete document and, as a result, you do NOT have all of the information that the triers of fact were privy to.

The PMF translation of the Massei report didn't include 2 pages out of 427. As I recall, Dan O. posted the Italian text of the 2 missing pages a couple weeks back. Are you claiming the smoking gun is in those two pages of Italian text, or that Massei managed to write 427 pages without mentioning the key evidence that seals the case?

 

[Katody Matrass]

Evidently, the triers of fact elected NOT to use the evidence submitted in respect of RS's past drug use as a 'make-weight' in the scales of justice.

I am not making any claims about 'hidden' or 'secret' evidence - I'm simply reminding you that the translation you are looking act is an incomplete document and, as a result, you do NOT have all of the information that the triers of fact were privy to.

If we had all the information, the miscarriage of justice would be even more obvious.

 

[treehorn]

Correct me if I am wrong but your first statement assumes there is evidence, yet your second statement says you are not making claims about this undocumented evidence.

Yes, I am assuming the prosecution adduced evidence in respect of Sollectio's past drug use because they referred to it during their closing argument (per A. Vogt's Seattle PI article).

 

[treehorn]

The PMF translation of the Massei report didn't include 2 pages out of 427. As I recall, Dan O. posted the Italian text of the 2 missing pages a couple weeks back. Are you claiming the smoking gun is in those two pages of Italian text, or that Massei managed to write 427 pages without mentioning the key evidence that seals the case?

No.

 

[Mary_H]

I expect that someone here probably has at some point or another. Likely more than once, since we have such a wealth of posts to choose from. Not that it really matters, since the sophomoric 'tag team' tactics of mutual disassociation would simply lead to the claim "Well, that's not what I said, anyway."

More importantly, what can we conclude about your faith (or anyone else's, for that matter) in the reliability of Moore's authority and professionalism when he is willing to offer public opinions based on such outright misrepresentation and lies? Is he simply ignorant of the actual facts, and just providing his services as a sadly deluded mouthpiece, or does he know full well that he is grossly misrepresenting the facts, and intentionally basing his "professional" opinion on simple dishonesty?

There can be no question that he is either deceived or deceitful. Either way it does not make him a very good source.

Steve Moore probably knows much more about the case now than he did when he first spoke out about it. He has given many interviews since his first one, and I presume he has been studying the case closely since then. There is no doubt he is aware of the criticism that has been leveled at him from PMF and TJMK.

You raise an interesting question, though. I wonder how much it matters if Steve Moore makes mistakes. The fact that he keeps getting invited back for more interviews tells me this is the angle the media now want to push, in part because they recognize that the majority of the American public want Amanda to be innocent.

It's anybody's guess how much research any of the journalists who have interviewed him have done; they could very well be mistaken about the facts, too. But how stupid do we think they are? Do we think they really are stupid enough -- all of them -- to be fooled by the Knox-Marriott PR Machine? Do we think they really cannot recognize -- all of them -- who are the nuts and who is rational?

According to the pro-guilt side, Steve Moore gets away with a lot of mistakes. Why haven't the colpevolisti dredged up some expert to debate him in public?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Evidently, the triers of fact elected NOT to use the evidence submitted in respect of RS's past drug use as a 'make-weight' in the scales of justice.

I am not making any claims about 'hidden' or 'secret' evidence - I'm simply reminding you that the translation you are looking act is an incomplete document and, as a result, you do NOT have all of the information that the triers of fact were privy to.

Before the Massei report was translated it was "Just you wait until the Massei report is translated! All of the sooper sekrit evidence that has never been revealed in English anywhere will be in there, and it will prove that Amanda and Raffaele did it!".

Then when it was being translated it was "Just you wait until you read what we are translating! It has proof that one of Raffaele's knives was used to kill Meredith! This is so kickass! Victory is coming!".

Now it has actually been translated we get "Well obviously they left all the best evidence out of the Massei report, I mean duh, you can't possibly form a rational judgment about the case just based on the stupid old Massei report, you weren't there. Only someone who was there is entitled to an opinion, unless that opinion is that Knox and Sollecito are guilty".

However they don't specify what this super-duper, knockdown evidence was. We'll probably never know. I think we can safely say that it was so awesome that it caused the pens of every watching journalist to literally explode any time they tried to write down what it was.

It's a puzzle though. Normally you start by examining the best and most important evidence, which is the least vulnerable to error or misinterpretation, such as properly collected forensic evidence. Then you work through the less-good evidence which is more unreliable, more physically or temporally removed from the crime and so on. Subjective impressions about a person's facial expressions, tone of voice and so on when testifying in court months or years after the events in question would seem in the normal course of events to be of far less evidentiary importance than, say, hard disks collected at the time or autopsy evidence gathered at the time. So it's a real puzzle what this magical super-evidence could be...

 

[quadraginta]

lionking,

I would not say that I am incapable of being convinced; I hope that I am capable of thinking for myself and deciding when one particular jury gets it wrong. I just finished "The Wrong Guys" about the Norfolk [Virginia] Four over the holidays, and that is surely a miscarriage of justice. Gary Leiterman's conviction in Michigan defies reason and is a great example of DNA contamination, BTW.

RoseMontague said that reading a bad translation of the Massei report convinced her that the court was in error. I think it is a point in Italy's favor that a motivation report is part of the process. Few if any of us condemn the Italian system as a whole; like the American or Australian systems, Italy is bound to have some wrongful convictions.

It's comments like this that cause me to wonder from time to time if I am reading the same threads as the people who make them.

I expect I'll get a detailed explanation about the use of the qualifier (i.e., weasel word) "few", but pretending that a constant overtone and occasionally a full-fledged embrace of xenophobia has not been an essential element of this case from the very beginning is laughable.

It was exactly those sorts of over-the-top, jingoistic attempts at persuasion by appeals to bigotry which prompted me to begin investigating the details of the case in the first place. Otherwise I would have blithely accepted the conventional wisdom as presented by our U.S. media and assumed that the poor little innocent was simply being railroaded by the Italian Inquisition for the crime of being pretty, a girl, and American.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Yes, I am assuming the prosecution adduced evidence in respect of Sollectio's past drug use because they referred to it during their closing argument (per A. Vogt's Seattle PI article).

They clearly took that evidence out of their own backyards, since none of it ended up in the motivation. Massei didn't think twice before including mangha comics there. What do you think stopped him this time?

 

[Katody Matrass]

Before the Massei report was translated it was "Just you wait until the Massei report is translated! All of the sooper sekrit evidence that has never been revealed in English anywhere will be in there, and it will prove that Amanda and Raffaele did it!".

Then when it was being translated it was "Just you wait until you read what we are translating! It has proof that one of Raffaele's knives was used to kill Meredith! This is so kickass! Victory is coming!".

Now it has actually been translated we get "Well obviously they left all the best evidence out of the Massei report, I mean duh, you can't possibly form a rational judgment about the case just based on the stupid old Massei report, you weren't there. Only someone who was there is entitled to an opinion, unless that opinion is that Knox and Sollecito are guilty".

However they don't specify what this super-duper, knockdown evidence was. We'll probably never know. I think we can safely say that it was so awesome that it caused the pens of every watching journalist to literally explode any time they tried to write down what it was.

It's a puzzle though. Normally you start by examining the best and most important evidence, which is the least vulnerable to error or misinterpretation, such as properly collected forensic evidence. Then you work through the less-good evidence which is more unreliable, more physically or temporally removed from the crime and so on. Subjective impressions about a person's facial expressions, tone of voice and so on when testifying in court months or years after the events in question would seem in the normal course of events to be of far less evidentiary importance than, say, hard disks collected at the time or autopsy evidence gathered at the time. So it's a real puzzle what this magical super-evidence could be...

Spot on, Kevin_Lowe!

sorry for another LOL, but this thread is great fun today

 

[treehorn]

So in other words you are quite well aware that this digression of yours has no bearing on whether Amanda and Raffaele are guilty, but you've been banging on about it for pages anyway?

For the record my intention when I wrote "antisocial behaviour" was to refer to the kind of antisocial behaviour that would make a rational person more likely to think they would commit murder - violent crime, theft, a hard drug habit perhaps. Even with hindsight I think this could have been picked up from context and I think as a matter of fact most people got it, but whatever.

While your interpretation of my words seems to have been strategically chosen to give you something to disagree with, I concede that you can within the English meaning of the words count marijuana use as "antisocial", or watching one animal porn video once and showing it to friends as "antisocial", or being present at a rowdy party and being the one who talked to the police as "antisocial"... although now I write down those three examples they're really a bit of a stretch however you parse "antisocial".

Digression?

As can be deduced from the list, there are some pretty clear indications (to wit, "antisocial behaviors") that Knox and Sollecito were/ are not well from a medical point of view.

Indeed, many of their behaviors appear to be consistent with the characteristics of a number of psychiatric conditions including, but not limited to, antisocial PD.

How is a discussion of this aspect of the case irrelevant to a determination not only of their factual guilt, but of their legal guilt?

 

[Mary_H]

Before the Massei report was translated it was "Just you wait until the Massei report is translated! All of the sooper sekrit evidence that has never been revealed in English anywhere will be in there, and it will prove that Amanda and Raffaele did it!".

Then when it was being translated it was "Just you wait until you read what we are translating! It has proof that one of Raffaele's knives was used to kill Meredith! This is so kickass! Victory is coming!".

Now it has actually been translated we get "Well obviously they left all the best evidence out of the Massei report, I mean duh, you can't possibly form a rational judgment about the case just based on the stupid old Massei report, you weren't there. Only someone who was there is entitled to an opinion, unless that opinion is that Knox and Sollecito are guilty".

However they don't specify what this super-duper, knockdown evidence was. We'll probably never know. I think we can safely say that it was so awesome that it caused the pens of every watching journalist to literally explode any time they tried to write down what it was.

It's a puzzle though. Normally you start by examining the best and most important evidence, which is the least vulnerable to error or misinterpretation, such as properly collected forensic evidence. Then you work through the less-good evidence which is more unreliable, more physically or temporally removed from the crime and so on. Subjective impressions about a person's facial expressions, tone of voice and so on when testifying in court months or years after the events in question would seem in the normal course of events to be of far less evidentiary importance than, say, hard disks collected at the time or autopsy evidence gathered at the time. So it's a real puzzle what this magical super-evidence could be...

Very precise summary, Kevin. I might add that we were also warned that Mignini's arguments in court were going to contain some bombshells that nobody had heard about prior to the trial.

 

[treehorn]

Spot on, Kevin_Lowe!

sorry for another LOL, but this thread is great fun today

Another great contribution to the discussion.

 

[katy_did]

According to the pro-guilt side, Steve Moore gets away with a lot of mistakes. Why haven't the colpevolisti dredged up some expert to debate him in public?

Now now Mary, you've clearly forgotten about Statement Analysis Dude. I'm sure the public debate will be happening any day now.