Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Justinian2]

I'll bet the pre-tax annual salary of a teacher that the percentage of murderers among people that enjoy writing rape stories and/or that enjoy collecting and wearing flick knives between bouts of watch animal porn (to the point where their college activates a "monitoring" program in respect of them) is higher than the percentage of murderers among people that would never enjoy/ engage in such behaviors.

These days? Are you kidding me?

I'll bet they are both +/- 1 sigma of the norm.

http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/bio.html

The author of twilight said:

I woke up (on that June 2nd) from a very vivid dream. In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that A) they were falling in love with each other while B) the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately. For what is essentially a transcript of my dream, please see Chapter 13 ("Confessions") of the book.

Stephenie Meyer got excited about the idea of a woman having a romantic encounter with a man that could kill her. That scenario, as I recollect from the interview, inspired her books.

 

[Dan O.]

She was charged with falsely accusing Patrick of murder, and she claimed that the police put words in her mouth. I don't see how it matters whether the police knew his name or not. The issue focused upon at this juncture of the trial was who first wrote or spoke the name, Patrick.

Is there something magic about incanting a persons name? Patrick's identity had already been established by the interrogators when they requested the name of the author of the text message. The prosecuting is simply playing a game by pretending that saying the name is somehow special.

Or do you still believe those stories that Amanda was texting and calling Rudy Guede before and after the murder?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

It has been suggested that these "false memories" were implanted when an officer related to Amanda a tale of having repressed memories of a painful injury, and invited her to reflect on whether she was similarly repressing memories of the crime. It seems obvious enough to me that this is but a ploy to allow Amanda to change her narrative while avoiding the embarrassment of admitting that she had been deliberately untruthful. I suppose her statements following the 1:45 statement (which could plausibly be attributed to hysteria) could be seen as an attempt to retract her initial accusations, in such a way as to avoid the admission that she had not been truthful. But then on top of this is positioned a convoluted rationalization for Sollecito's testimonial flip-flops. It's a house of cards, and with Sollecito refusing to take the stand . . .

It doesn't matter how many times you post variations on the same idea.

However often you post it, "I refuse to acknowledge the scientific literature regarding internalised false statements exists, and therefore I think Amanda Knox lied in her internalised false statement" will not become a rational, skeptical or scientifically informed position.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You're ranting.
Assuming it is actually as low probablility as you say, that does not negate the fact that these three were convicted unanimously on the strength of the evidence.
Who cares how rare an occurrence this might be. Statisticians only, probably.

Thanks for illustrating my point.

A rational examination of whether it's a likely hypothesis that Amanda, Raffaele and Rudy ganged up to cut Meredith's throat and then sexually assault her as she lay dying will conclude that this is a wildly unlikely hypothesis to begin with. It's a zebra hypothesis, given that we have a known criminal with a history of very similar crimes leaving bloody prints all over the murder scene.

This extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence to make it believable to a rational person. Note, I said to a rational person.

So what do we have by way of "extraordinary evidence"? We have junk like "Raffaele Sollecito collected knives!". This isn't strong evidence because knives like Sollecito's are mass-produced consumer items sold by the tens of thousands to mostly law-abiding citizens. The overwhelming majority of people who buy such knives never kill anyone, so the probability of someone being a killer after you know they collect knives is only trivially higher at best than the probability of someone being a killer before you know that.

So it goes for the entire "mountain of evidence". The character assassination evidence is all of very low to zero evidentiary weight. The "evidence" for staging or a clean-up is pitifully weak. The DNA evidence is deeply flawed in both relevant cases both in its collection and its analysis. The prosecution "superwitnesses" are clearly lying or mistaken since their testimony is incompatible with Meredith dying at 21:05 or so. The claimed lies and inconsistencies in the accused's statements are nothing unusual once you know that internalised false statements are a well-known scientific phenomenon and that human memory is very fallible.

If you start with a wildly unlikely hypothesis, then follow it up with evidence that at best should nudge a rational person very slightly in the direction of thinking Amanda and Raffaele guilty, you end up with a wildly unlikely hypothesis.

Also, have you ready the Massei report? Claiming that Amanda and Raffaele were convicted on the strength of the evidence is hilariously incorrect as a reading of that document will show. They were convicted on the strength of wild supposition, blatant logical fallacies, shaky evidence, prosecutorial misconduct and an internalised false confession.

 

[Justinian2]

Kev: "The totality of the evidence clearly inclines a rational observer to the belief that the murder was committed by a single attacker with a single knife. I don't think there is anything more to be said."

Apart from the fact that the prosecution put forward a convincing argument that this was not the case. This was accepted unanimously by the jury. How many "rational observers" was that?

I guess that your definition of "rational observers" is those people who support your theories and speculations.

My profile for killers would include the profiles of Massei, Mignini, and Guede.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Some commentary about the recent flush of excitement here and elsewhere about the "rape prank"/"hazing" theory:

Humans like solving jigsaw puzzles. It's fun to take a disparate set of pieces and make a picture out of them, or make a story out of them.

Humans also get irrationally attached to their creations. Once you've made a story out of a disparate bunch of pieces of evidence it's all too human to fall in love with that story and want it to be true, especially if the story strikes you as particularly clever or it confirms some prior belief of yours.

Rationalists and scientists, as opposed to enthusiastic amateurs with limited critical thinking skills, are rational because they can get over this irrational attachment. A rational person might be pleased with their story, but they are completely prepared to take it all apart again to see if some other story is a better fit, and they do not confuse their own aesthetic pleasure with their storytelling creation with an objective assessment that the story is probable.

Earlier attempts at putting the jigsaw pieces together, both by Massei and by the guilter community, relied on blatant cheating. Trying to claim "Nara would not have said she heard a scream unless she did" or "Amanda probably had a huge knife with her, because her boyfriend was into knives and she had a big bag" is like jamming jigsaw pieces together regardless of whether they fit or not.

So we gave Treehorn/Michael a pat on the head for at least trying to start the jigsaw puzzle without cheating for once. The "hazing"/"rape prank" theory has no excuse for pretending to be plausible, since no evidence supports it at all, and they haven't actually fitted any of the pieces together yet, but they've described in very rough terms how they see the completed puzzle looking. It's something.

However all Treehorn/Michael have done is started. They haven't actually put one piece next to another yet. They have no timeline, they have no explanation for the lack of evidence Amanda and Raffaele were involved in the murder, they have no explanation for the computer evidence, and based on past performance it will only be a matter of days at most before they start going on about mops, lamps, bad cocaine, amateur diagnoses of psychopathology based on woo-woo "statement analysis" and all the usual tosh they obsess over in the non-evidence-based community they have going.

It is not yet a coherent theory. It's just a vague plan for what a coherent theory they could be happy with might look like.

The challenge to come up with an actual coherent theory still stands, and all they've got is a sketch of a candidate theory, but it's a small step in the right direction. Of course when they try to turn their sketch into a coherent theory they are going to run into all sorts of problems, which is of course the point.

Then if they ever present a coherent theory (I'll pretend this might happen) we go to the next stage, which is weighing up the completed "hazing"/"rape prank" theory against the "lone wolf" theory to see which is more probable. If the "hazing"/"rape prank" theory turns out to be true beyond reasonable doubt (I'll pretend this might happen) then it will be a happy day for the guilter community because they will have justification for their beliefs. However if it doesn't, or they can't come up with a coherent theory in the first place, well, that will be sad for them because they will not have justification for their beliefs and some serious soul-searching about the years of vile abuse and harassment they have served up to the families of Knox and Sollecito and those who defended them on the internet would definitely be in order.

 

[nopoirot]

Not sure why you think anyone is saying "everything the police have said about the interrogation is a malicious fabrication". As I said, I think it would have been pretty straightforward to get Raffaele to say Amanda might have left the flat that night: he was always certain that he himself hadn't left, and so never changed his story in that respect; but his memory was hazy and so he couldn't say for certain that she was there the entirety of the time as well. Easy enough for the police to pick up on that uncertainty, to tell him they had evidence she had left (why would he have suddenly volunteered that information otherwise?) and from there for him to convince himself that she really had left. A similar process to Amanda's account of her own interrogation, only a lot less dramatic.

I doubt it will be significant at all in the appeal - surely, if the jury are swayed by anything, it would be Amanda's interrogation and not Raffaele's. The only way I can see it playing a part at all would be if the prosecution or jury decided to go with the theory that Amanda left the flat while Raffaele stayed. Then it might become important, and then maybe Raffaele would testify. But I doubt the prosecution will go down that road.

I'm not sure what you mean about an application to the Supreme Court. If you read Raffaele's appeal, though, it's very strongly supportive of Amanda and the claim that both of them were together all night (as someone said on PMF, if you didn't know it was Sollecito's appeal you could be forgiven for thinking it was Amanda's).

On another note, the fact that the police claim (very implausibly) that they didn't record either interrogation and that there are no transcripts (from what Charlie says) surely has to be seen as a bit suspicious. What are they hiding? Shouldn't we be giving the accused the benefit of the doubt on those grounds alone? Relying on the police statements as evidence of what happened during the interrogations is like trying to determine the truth behind a tabloid newspaper headline; it's impossible without the broader context.

Only Judge Matteini's ruling of 11-9-07 leaves little doubt that Sollecito's changes in testimony were rather more dramatic. According to the judge, he started off by saying that he and Amanda had spent the entire evening together, then recanted this version, saying that she had left to go to Le Chic. I believe this to be consistent with his diary entries and the account of his statement released to the media. Judge Matteini goes on to note that, at the hearing, Sollecito again recanted, and affirmed his first version of the facts, with the qualification that he just wasn't sure of his memory. There is also language in the opinion to the effect that he had claimed that Amanda had persuaded him to say certain things. I relate this to the second version.

There is no real evidence here of coercion. Perhaps Sollecito was telling the truth (and I can think of a very good reason why he might want to do that), or perhaps he was trying to save his own skin. The prosecution certainly isn't going to suggest the former, because that would destroy its theory of the case. The crucial thing is the impact all this has on credibility. You would have to try this case in Kyrgyzstan to find jurors who haven't been exposed to these revelations. In any event, they are set forth in Judge Matteini's opinion (which says, incidentally, that Sollecito's "declarations" may be used against Amanda.) The upshot of all this is that both defendants will be perceived as having changed their tales twice and thrice over, and there goes the "benefit of the doubt" on close questions.

I really can't see the defense even hinting at the "suspicious" failure to record Sollecito's declarations, because that would simply focus more attention on them.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Matteini had it wrong

I don't like to make assumptions myself, and I am quite unable to divine from your comment whether you are conceding that Sollecito did in fact tell the police that Amanda had gone to Le Chic that night, as opposed to grudgingly admitting that, having failed to keep watch over her all night, he couldn't for fact certain deny that she might have slipped away for a few minutes. I will point out that, if all the jury has to go on is Judge Matteini's report, they will have in front of them her finding that Sollecito told the police Amanda had gone to Le Chic, not to return until 1:00 am or so. And Sollecito has no way, short of taking the stand, to air the theories proposed here (including 'internalized false memory') about how he was "coerced." Well, I take that back. He has gone on at some length about being relieved of his shoes.

nopoirot,

Raffaele said words to the effect, “I do not remember exactly,” when Judge Matteini asked him whether Amanda went out on the evening of 1 November. The account that I read does not make it clear what amount of time Judge Matteini had in mind, and it is possible that her question was ambiguous in this regard. That point noted, it is difficult to see how Amanda and Raffaele could have done the things that they said they did with her being gone for four hours.

First Magistrate’s hearing in front of Judge Matteini (8 November 2007)
page 210, Darkness Descending.
“Judge Matteini said, ‘There are several points, Mr. Sollecito, that differ between your version of today and your version of events as related on the evening of 5 November just three days ago. Can you explain whether you were with Amanda Knox that evening or not?’
Now it was make-or-break time. Matteini had posed the million-dollar question. The one Mignini had been waiting for.
His pay-off was unexpected, effectively an explosive retraction of his initial confession.
Raffaele said, ‘I’m sorry I told you that crap about not being with Amanda. We were together that evening.’
…But now on the key point of the night in question, he was sticking to her like glue again. Backing her up… ‘I can confirm that I spent the night with Amanda Knox.’”

A Murder in Italy, page 198
“Then the judge asked the Italian student what he did remember, prompting a long, dull discussion about the broken pipe under the sink, which he had showed Amanda, discussing with her the probable cause of the leak, a perennial problem in that flat. He also remembered eating dinner with her, watching a movie, working on his computer, getting tired, and going to sleep. Yes of course they slept together. He just couldn’t remember what time they did each action, because he’d been stoned, in a holiday mood, and not punching a time clock.”

Based on these two accounts, I would say that Raffaele has disavowed what he said on 5 November, and that he is implying that she might have left for a few minutes but not the entire evening. I am not sure why any person would take anything said in the Matteini report as being worth more than a plugged nickel, given that she thought Patrick was involved. Besides, I am not aware that this report carries any legal weight any longer.

 

[Chris C]

She was charged with falsely accusing Patrick of murder, and she claimed that the police put words in her mouth. I don't see how it matters whether the police knew his name or not. The issue focused upon at this juncture of the trial was who first wrote or spoke the name, Patrick.

Thats funny you should mention who first wrote or spoke the name, Patrick. The interrogators first wrote the name and apparently there is no recording of the interrogation.

 

[Malkmus]

Tom, you know very well that Patrick never would have been brought up unless the police asked her who the text was from. And it would never have been insisted upon that she met up with him if it weren't for their misunderstanding of the meaning of the text.

 

[treehorn]

nopoirot,

Raffaele said words to the effect, “I do not remember exactly,” when Judge Matteini asked him whether Amanda went out on the evening of 1 November. The account that I read does not make it clear what amount of time Judge Matteini had in mind, and it is possible that her question was ambiguous in this regard. That point noted, it is difficult to see how Amanda and Raffaele could have done the things that they said they did with her being gone for four hours.

First Magistrate’s hearing in front of Judge Matteini (8 November 2007)
page 210, Darkness Descending.
“Judge Matteini said, ‘There are several points, Mr. Sollecito, that differ between your version of today and your version of events as related on the evening of 5 November just three days ago. Can you explain whether you were with Amanda Knox that evening or not?’
Now it was make-or-break time. Matteini had posed the million-dollar question. The one Mignini had been waiting for.
His pay-off was unexpected, effectively an explosive retraction of his initial confession.
Raffaele said, ‘I’m sorry I told you that crap about not being with Amanda. We were together that evening.’
…But now on the key point of the night in question, he was sticking to her like glue again. Backing her up… ‘I can confirm that I spent the night with Amanda Knox.’”

A Murder in Italy, page 198
“Then the judge asked the Italian student what he did remember, prompting a long, dull discussion about the broken pipe under the sink, which he had showed Amanda, discussing with her the probable cause of the leak, a perennial problem in that flat. He also remembered eating dinner with her, watching a movie, working on his computer, getting tired, and going to sleep. Yes of course they slept together. He just couldn’t remember what time they did each action, because he’d been stoned, in a holiday mood, and not punching a time clock.”

Based on these two accounts, I would say that Raffaele has disavowed what he said on 5 November, and that he is implying that she might have left for a few minutes but not the entire evening. I am not sure why any person would take anything said in the Matteini report as being worth more than a plugged nickel, given that she thought Patrick was involved. Besides, I am not aware that this report carries any legal weight any longer.

Why would a rational person base anything on an account from Dempsey?

Knox's mother and sister were photographed while they attended Dempsey's book signing!

Did you not read Dempsey's slanted amateur blog before it became a slanted amateurish book?

On what basis could anyone reasonably claim that that blog was an exercise in objectivity?!

The woman is rabidly biased in favor of the Knox clan (presumably a condition that had to be met before Dempsey was given access to the family, and the case file, for the purposes of her pro-Knox book project.)

A 'rational person'/ true 'skeptic' would NEVER turn to a source like that. Not for a New York minute.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Yup.

But he is a gun-for-hire now, so ...

I just hope that he won't tarnish his reputation (and the Bureau) in the process of 'consulting' for Team Knox.

Like Hal Holbrook's character, Lou, in the movie 'Wall Street' said:

"The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don't want to do."

Do you have any information to support your claim that John Douglas has been engaged as a consultant or that he has taken any money in connection with this case?

I have information on this subject that I believe is reliable. My understanding is that Douglas has not been hired nor has he taken money. As far as I'm aware, the only thing he has gotten is the evidence, which he studied carefully before publicly expressing his opinion.

Perhaps you know something I don't. I have forwarded your comments to seek clarification on this point.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Tom, you know very well that Patrick never would have been brought up unless the police asked her who the text was from. And it would never have been insisted upon that she met up with him if it weren't for their misunderstanding of the meaning of the text.

Nothing of any real evidentiary significance hangs on this: We know very well that Amanda was specifically pressured to name the person who sent the text, and that the police knew at the time they specifically pressured her to do so that Lumumba sent the text.

Mignini was engaging in pure legal sophistry in his attempts to get Amanda to state that she named Lumumba first. He knew very well that Amanda had been browbeaten into naming Lumumba but he wanted to give the court the impression that her giving the police the name they were specifically after was a deliberate and spontaneous attempt to frame Lumumba on her part.

It's a funny thing how TomM43 keeps needing this kind of thing spelled out for him. Treehorn seemed to think TomM43 had decades of trial law experience, but then again PMF seems to have a few "lawyers" with little evident legal knowledge, "doctors" with no evident medical knowledge, "academics" who wouldn't know a citation from a hole in the ground and others whose claimed personal authority is remarkable and whose evident expertise is less so. I wonder why this would be, in a community so obsessed with status, authority, and prying into the lives of others to see whether they were lying about their own status and authority?

 

[Poppy1016]

Why would a rational person base anything on an account from Dempsey?

Knox's mother and sister were photographed while they attended Dempsey's book signing!

Did you not read Dempsey's slanted amateur blog before it became a slanted amateurish book?

On what basis could anyone reasonably claim that that blog was an exercise in objectivity?!

The woman is rabidly biased in favor of the Knox clan (presumably a condition that had to be met before Dempsey was given access to the family, and the case file, for the purposes of her pro-Knox book project.)

A 'rational person'/ true 'skeptic' would NEVER turn to a source like that. Not for a New York minute.

No offense but do you feel that you are more qualified to speak about the case then people like Candice Dempsey or Bruce Fisher?

 

[Poppy1016]

Treehorn, please give me your expert opinion on why AK's Picture was hung next to mob leaders before she even went to trial? Also, why weren't RS and PL or RS photos hung there? Just curious.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

A 'rational person'/ true 'skeptic' would NEVER turn to a source like that. Not for a New York minute.

...for that value of "rational person" used by Treehorn.

You really need to follow some of the links you've been given to Less Wrong. For better or for worse, you have to be rational to be entitled to an opinion about what rational people would do.

Fortunately, as the name of the blog suggests, rationality is a continuum not a binary switch. If you have a spark of rationality you can use it make yourself incrementally less wrong over time, but it takes actual work to do so.

 

[Chris C]

Why would a rational person base anything on an account from Dempsey?

So are you saying the book is irrational and that anyone that reads it is irrational?

Knox's mother and sister were photographed while they attended Dempsey's book signing!

This a crime?

Did you not read Dempsey's slanted amateur blog before it became a slanted amateurish book?

So what qualifications are required to not be an amateur?

On what basis could anyone reasonably claim that that blog was an exercise in objectivity?

Could not the same be said about all blogs.

The woman is rabidly biased in favor of the Knox clan (presumably a condition that had to be met before Dempsey was given access to the family, and the case file, for the purposes of her pro-Knox book project.)

You call her biased and yet you refer to the Knox Family as the "Knox Clan".

A 'rational person'/ true 'skeptic' would NEVER turn to a source like that. Not for a New York minute.

I guess according to you a true skeptic wouldn't try to get all sides of the story. Then again would not approaching the "KNOX CLAN" be the very thing you would do, if you wanted the whole story. Just the same as reading Dempsey's book would be about getting the whole story. New York Minute is still 60 seconds. History used to be referred to as, what was written by those that conquered. True Skeptics listen to all opinions/facts before drawing a conclusion.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Darkness Descending and Matteini; Daily Telegraph

Treehorn,

Do you also reject the accuracy of the description of Raffaele's appearance before Judge Matteini in Darkness Descending? if so, why?

The Daily Telegraph reported, "Clearly it is possible to contest that Sollecito Raffaele, in the audience with judge, affirmed that he passed the entire night between November 1 and 2 with Knox Amanda.[…]
The presence of Sollecito in Meredith's room can be confirmed by the footprint found underneath the duvet which her body was covered with. […]"
(hilite added)

 

[treehorn]

No offense but do you feel that you are more qualified to speak about the case then people like Candice Dempsey or Bruce Fisher?

I am more qualified to speak on the legal aspects of the case than any non-lawyer you can name.

However, I am no more 'qualified' than anyone else when it comes to matters entailing speculation about a trial that I did not attend daily, and that was not conducted in my native language (what the autopsy video may have shown; what, exactly, various witnesses testified to; who is lying; who is credible; etc.).

Alas, the point I am trying to make in respect of the amateur bloggers you've listed is that, as a matter of common sense, you cannot take their word at face value when they are known to be associates of the family of one of the accused.

If you cannot see that, then you are not really JREF material.

 

[nopoirot]

nopoirot,

Raffaele said words to the effect, “I do not remember exactly,” when Judge Matteini asked him whether Amanda went out on the evening of 1 November. The account that I read does not make it clear what amount of time Judge Matteini had in mind, and it is possible that her question was ambiguous in this regard. That point noted, it is difficult to see how Amanda and Raffaele could have done the things that they said they did with her being gone for four hours.

First Magistrate’s hearing in front of Judge Matteini (8 November 2007)
page 210, Darkness Descending.
“Judge Matteini said, ‘There are several points, Mr. Sollecito, that differ between your version of today and your version of events as related on the evening of 5 November just three days ago. Can you explain whether you were with Amanda Knox that evening or not?’
Now it was make-or-break time. Matteini had posed the million-dollar question. The one Mignini had been waiting for.
His pay-off was unexpected, effectively an explosive retraction of his initial confession.
Raffaele said, ‘I’m sorry I told you that crap about not being with Amanda. We were together that evening.’
…But now on the key point of the night in question, he was sticking to her like glue again. Backing her up… ‘I can confirm that I spent the night with Amanda Knox.’”

A Murder in Italy, page 198
“Then the judge asked the Italian student what he did remember, prompting a long, dull discussion about the broken pipe under the sink, which he had showed Amanda, discussing with her the probable cause of the leak, a perennial problem in that flat. He also remembered eating dinner with her, watching a movie, working on his computer, getting tired, and going to sleep. Yes of course they slept together. He just couldn’t remember what time they did each action, because he’d been stoned, in a holiday mood, and not punching a time clock.”

Based on these two accounts, I would say that Raffaele has disavowed what he said on 5 November, and that he is implying that she might have left for a few minutes but not the entire evening. I am not sure why any person would take anything said in the Matteini report as being worth more than a plugged nickel, given that she thought Patrick was involved. Besides, I am not aware that this report carries any legal weight any longer.

Perhaps we've been talking past each other. I'm simply trying to hone in on how Sollecito's changes in his version of the facts is likely to influence perceptions of his credibility. Your quotes from Judge Matteini's order seem to me to confirm that those changes were material.

I now see that Judge Massei, on 1-16-09, ruled that Sollecito's "declaration" of 11-5 is admissible.