Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[komponisto]

Since you have solicited my opinion, I don't think that, if by "think that" I mean "think that you are a lawyer".

I said that Treehorn thought that you were a lawyer.

The fact that you and Treehorn have less evident familiarity with trial processes than educated laypeople and avidly echo each other's uninformed opinions on court matters leads me to think it much more likely that you have approximately the same amount of courtroom experience as Treehorn does. If you were the real deal I would have expected you to bust Treehorn before we did: real lawyers in my experience are not pleased when non-lawyers pretend to be lawyers on the internet.

On balance I think it most likely that Walter Mitty fantasies of making Amanda Knox break down and confess in a Perugia courtroom are the closest either of you have ever come to actual trial experience.

You asked for my opinion and now you have it.

I think I would be somewhat less surprised if it turned out that treehorn and TomM43 were actually lawyers. There are an awful lot of lawyers out there, greatly varying in their beliefs, with competence levels presumably as subject to a bell-curve distribution as those of any other profession. (Treehorn, in my opinion, also exhibits some evidence of arguing for a position he doesn't really believe (*), which is something a lawyer would be more likely to do than the average person.)

What would surprise me more would be if they were practicing criminal-defense lawyers. (It still wouldn't knock me out of my seat, however.)

(*) To be specific: in addition to writing with what strikes me as a somewhat mischievious tone, treehorn seems capable of understanding the objections to his position, yet seldom addresses them directly; in contrast to e.g. lionking and loverofzion, both of whom seem honestly uncomprehending of probability theory in the way you would expect of someone who genuinely believed in guilt.

 

[RoseMontague]

I think I would be somewhat less surprised if it turned out that treehorn and TomM43 were actually lawyers. There are an awful lot of lawyers out there, greatly varying in their beliefs, with competence levels presumably as subject to a bell-curve distribution as those of any other profession. (Treehorn, in my opinion, also exhibits some evidence of arguing for a position he doesn't really believe (*), which is something a lawyer would be more likely to do than the average person.)

What would surprise me more would be if they were practicing criminal-defense lawyers. (It still wouldn't knock me out of my seat, however.)

(*) To be specific: in addition to writing with what strikes me as a somewhat mischievious tone, treehorn seems capable of understanding the objections to his position, yet seldom addresses them directly; in contrast to e.g. lionking and loverofzion, both of whom seem honestly uncomprehending of probability theory in the way you would expect of someone who genuinely believed in guilt.

I don't think lionking is firmly on the side of guilt, it seems to me that there is still some doubt there although he rarely gives an opinion on this. In any case I am glad to see the other side still represented here and they do add to the discussion. I don't feel that speculation on who is a lawyer (or doctor, etc) or not is really appropriate or that important.

 

[komponisto]

I don't feel that speculation on who is a lawyer (or doctor, etc) or not is really appropriate or that important.

I'd have to agree.

 

[LondonJohn]

I don't think lionking is firmly on the side of guilt, it seems to me that there is still some doubt there although he rarely gives an opinion on this. In any case I am glad to see the other side still represented here and they do add to the discussion. I don't feel that speculation on who is a lawyer (or doctor, etc) or not is really appropriate or that important.

I totally agree. I think that anyone's posts should be treated entirely on the merit (or otherwise) of the post itself.

I will add, though, that there are many ways of defining the word "lawyer". In the UK at least, most lawyers are desk-bound solicitors, who deal almost exclusively in contract law. This category includes conveyancing (usually around the buying and selling of property), other personal legal work such as wills or financial agreements, and commercial contract law. I've come into contact with a very large number of commercial contract lawyers myself (in fact, I am having a meeting with one on Thursday), and they spend their time either stuck to a desk writing near-impenetrable legal documents (offer prospectuses, bid documents, fundraising documents etc.) if they're junior, or if they get to a fairly senior level they get to schmooze clients and get involved in origination.

A smaller proportion of those who call themselves lawyers are involved in litigation work - whether commercial, civil or criminal. I've been in the High Court for several competition lawsuit hearings - and I can assure everyone that they are about the dullest experiences imaginable, apart perhaps from the relatively minute amount of time just before and after the judge's ruling. They usually consist of weeks (and sometimes months, and even years) of incredibly tedious legal argument, heavily punctuated by long recesses and other pauses.

After all these lawyers have been taken into account, the proportion of lawyers who actually argue serious criminal cases in front of a judge and jury (in the UK, except for in certain circumstances these lawyers have to also be qualified as barristers) is somewhat small, relative to the universe of lawyers as a whole. So I can well imagine that some lawyers who spend most of their time dealing with insurance claims, divorce settlements or contract disputes (let alone those who spend their time drafting 600-page legal documents) might fantasise from time to time about conducting a "withering cross" on a murder suspect, and being carried out of court on the shoulders of the victim's family........

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

On to a new topic then: What exactly is a "rape prank"? How plausible is the claim that Amanda Knox and company would have come up with the idea of a "rape prank", how are "rape pranks" typically carried out, how often are they carried out and so on?

Treehorn's justification for the idea that this is a plausible narrative was that you could Google "rape prank" and get lots of hits, but on the first page or so there's nothing that's obviously analogous. There's a comic video mislabeled "rape prank", there are lots of references to prank phone calls of one kind or another, there's a rather unfortunate skit from an Italian Candid Camera-style show where a woman is approached by a naked man while she is in her car in a garage, there's a news story about four people who sodomised a male friend with a dildo while he was passed out from drink, and by then we're on to page three of the Google results where we see (surprise, surprise) a Knox guilter posting in a HuffPo comments section "Amanda confessed to instigating the 'rape prank'" with no citation. This thread is slightly lower down the same page, giving you an idea of how widespread the phenomenon is.

A bit later there's this, a story about three young men who held a girl down and threatened to rape her, whose lawyer was running the defence that it was a "prank". That's getting a bit closer, but it's still pretty questionable.

I was not able to find a single example of anything resembling a young woman and two accomplices setting out specifically to "rape prank" a female friend by the time the links started getting clearly irrelevant.

So that's the pro-guilt side's first attempt at a citation run to ground... now what?

Do "rape pranks" even exist, or are they solely the invention of the fevered imagination of pro-guilt believers grabbing at imaginary straws?

The chatter at PMF seems to be that the "rape prank" could also be "hazing", so I'll take a look at that next.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

DNA discussions

I see that the latest groupthink mantra is that this thread is going round in circles and has nothing new of value

And I'd have to agree: over just the past week, apart from a number of new and illuminating discussions concerning:

- a mistranslation in the Massei report
- the actual evidence of Knox's and Sollecito's prior drug use
- the actual evidence concerning who saw Knox and Guede together, and how many times
- the true nature of the wounds and marks found on Knox's body in the autopsy
- what "reasonable doubt" means
- how Bayes' theorem can be usefully employed to help analyse the crime
- how and why John Douglas came to give his opinion on the case

there really has been nothing of value added in this thread....



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ

LondonJohn,

That is a good summary. There has also been a discussion of the DNA on the bra clasp and on the kitchen knife.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Now "hazing" was much more fruitful as an area of inquiry, although here too nothing strictly analogous leaps out.

This site looks like it is trying to collect all major hazing incidents in one place, and it's frankly some ugly reading. The overall theme seems to be that if you are in a sporting team in a US high school, particularly wrestling or football but also including basketball and others, there's some chance that you are going to be sexually assaulted in one way or another by your older teammates.

While there's nothing I can see that resembles a figure for what percentage of students are sexually assaulted in hazing rituals, and I imagine the percentage is very low, if Meredith had been a new boy in a US school football team and Amanda, Raffaele and Rudy were all senior members of the team and it was alleged they sodomised her with a broomstick as a "hazing" thing I wouldn't call it an extraordinary claim in need of extraordinary evidence. Regular old evidence would do me, if that were the case.

There were also a lesser number of incidents involving women, and a lesser number involving university-age attackers, so while the age and sex of the claimed participants seem to make a "hazing" theory less likely there isn't grounds to rule it out on that basis.

However what isn't leaping out are examples of random groups of non-sporting university students "hazing" their friends. "Hazing", just like you'd expect, seems to be something done by in-groups to initiate new members of the in-group, not something done by the in-group to random friends or acquaintances, and not something done by a group that isn't an in-group (Rudy, Amanda and Raffaele were not a sporting team, gang or similar in-group in any way, shape or form).

Nor were knives a common feature: the only hits on the aforementioned page for "knife" were an incident where a softball player had their ponytail cut off with a knife, and an incident where someone had a plastic knife inserted into their rectum. No evidence yet that there is any kind of cultural tradition of "rape pranks" or "hazing" rituals where multiple people threaten their victim with knives.

I'll keep digging but criminologically, sexual assaults that get filed under "hazing" just don't seem to have anything to do with the murder of Meredith Kercher either.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

So where does this leave us?

"Rape pranks" in the sense that the pro-guilt community seem to mean them just don't exist as far as I can establish. Maybe the pro-guilt community know something I don't but on a first pass through the internet I just can't find any examples of mock rape with knives as a "prank" happening, ever. It's nonexistent.

"Hazing" involving rape is unfortunately a much more real occurrence, but it's confined to athletic, military and social groups "hazing" inductees into the group. It seems to be a cultural ritual very much tied up with initiation into a new in-group. I couldn't find any evidence of random housemates, friends or what-have-you being "hazed" by random groups of people who were not in any kind of in-group with a hazing tradition.

So am I missing something, or is this whole "rape prank"/"hazing" meme just a way of putting a plausible-sounding label on what is still just as much of a zebra hypothesis as the initial zebra hypothesis they are trying to rehabilitate?

If it turned out that "rape pranks" or "hazing" friends with rape was a real thing, that would go some way towards decreasing the improbability of Meredith Kercher being murdered as part of some kind of "hazing" ritual or "rape prank", but it doesn't look to me like that is the case. At this stage it looks to me that the "rape prank"/"hazing" talking point is at best, in Bayesian terms, no different to no talking point at all. The improbability of the pro-guilt theory after you invoke the "rape prank"/"hazing" talking point is exactly the same as it was before.

They might as well say "Knox, Sollecito and Guede all got together to farfle Meredith. Haven't you heard of farfling? Well, they wanted to farfle her and that's the explanation". "Rape prank" and "hazing" in this context aren't terms that point to any relevant social or criminological phenomenon as far as I can tell right now.

Back to the drawing board? Or back to the "drug/sex party gone wrong" theory?

 

[RoseMontague]

On to a new topic then: What exactly is a "rape prank"? How plausible is the claim that Amanda Knox and company would have come up with the idea of a "rape prank", how are "rape pranks" typically carried out, how often are they carried out and so on?

Treehorn's justification for the idea that this is a plausible narrative was that you could Google "rape prank" and get lots of hits, but on the first page or so there's nothing that's obviously analogous. There's a comic video mislabeled "rape prank", there are lots of references to prank phone calls of one kind or another, there's a rather unfortunate skit from an Italian Candid Camera-style show where a woman is approached by a naked man while she is in her car in a garage, there's a news story about four people who sodomised a male friend with a dildo while he was passed out from drink, and by then we're on to page three of the Google results where we see (surprise, surprise) a Knox guilter posting in a HuffPo comments section "Amanda confessed to instigating the 'rape prank'" with no citation. This thread is slightly lower down the same page, giving you an idea of how widespread the phenomenon is.

A bit later there's this, a story about three young men who held a girl down and threatened to rape her, whose lawyer was running the defence that it was a "prank". That's getting a bit closer, but it's still pretty questionable.

I was not able to find a single example of anything resembling a young woman and two accomplices setting out specifically to "rape prank" a female friend by the time the links started getting clearly irrelevant.

So that's the pro-guilt side's first attempt at a citation run to ground... now what?

Do "rape pranks" even exist, or are they solely the invention of the fevered imagination of pro-guilt believers grabbing at imaginary straws?

The chatter at PMF seems to be that the "rape prank" could also be "hazing", so I'll take a look at that next.

The only support I have seen offered for this theory is SB's claim that she received an e-mail from an anonymous source claiming that AK participated in a prank like this previously. I don't really know how one can rely on this, but the claim has been made.

I am not sure I even give that one rumor status, although it does seem to spread as other rumor's of Amanda's behavior do.

 

[komponisto]

The only support I have seen offered for this theory is SB's claim that she received an e-mail from an anonymous source claiming that AK participated in a prank like this previously. I don't really know how one can rely on this, but the claim has been made.

If it were true, there's absolutely no way that that would be the only source of the information.

Witnesses would have appeared on news magazine shows (possibly with their faces hidden and voices disguised).

In fact, if AK had participated in such a thing, so would other people at other places, and 48 Hours or some similar program would have run a whole story on the "disturbing trend of extreme sex games among college students".

(ETA: In the spirit of LondonJohn's earlier link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixrQcGQ6o-w)

Instead, it's hard to find any record of anything similar anywhere on Google. What does that tell you?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

The only support I have seen offered for this theory is SB's claim that she received an e-mail from an anonymous source claiming that AK participated in a prank like this previously. I don't really know how one can rely on this, but the claim has been made.

I am not sure I even give that one rumor status, although it does seem to spread as other rumor's of Amanda's behavior do.

Once I figured out that SB was Skeptical Bystander over at the PMF forums, I got to this post here on our forums from Piktor (with bonus unfounded claim that Amanda won a prize for a rape-themed essay in prison), which led to identical text at PMF, which led to the original 2007 claim in the comments on an on-line article.

Apparently Skeptical Bystander sent a follow-up email to "Joh" who repeated their story.

So the sum total of the evidence is that in 2007, with the witch hunt in full swing, an anonymous internet denizen made a claim which has never been confirmed or corroborated in any way, shape or form except that when asked the anonymous internet denizen repeated the same story.

This would seem to be the actual origin of the guilter meme that "rape pranks" were a thing that existed, as opposed to a thing that just does not exist. One anonymous commenter's unsupported claim.

I think I'm about ready to declare this mole flat. We've established "rape pranks" don't exist, "hazing" rapes don't fit the crime in any way, and the original source of the claim has been tracked down and found to be without evidentiary merit. Have we missed anything?

Conclusion: We were all far too generous to Treehorn/Michael's "rape prank" theory. While at first it appeared to be an improvement over no theory at all, because the idea of a "rape prank" was not prima facie implausible, it turns out that "rape pranks", like unicorns and farfling, are imaginary. They don't actually exist, and hence they don't count as an explanation of otherwise puzzling phenomena.

 

[Justinian2]

The Original Prosecutorial Sins

http://www.sciencespheres.com/

Filomena “did not think that she had actually closed them” in the Court’s words, and yet, the conclusion was “it must be held” that she closed them. Why? Because, the Motivation says, the wood was old and swollen, and it was difficult to close them. Anyone who has ever pulled closed an old door or shutter knows about this. You pull it kind of shut but it doesn’t really close all the way because it is swollen and doesn’t close right. So it is left partly open. Yet the Court concluded the opposite, in spite of Filomena testifying that she did not think she had actually closed the shutters. This conclusion, trivial on the face of it, is the first of many sequential and improbable conclusions – improbable conclusions culminating in convictions and years in prison.

Let’s call this Improbable Conclusion #1. Filomena did not think she had closed the shutters; therefore, they were closed.

Improbable Conclusion #2 is that because the shutters were closed, they would have had to be opened in some way.

The fable of a staged break-in has been told again and again by the PMF cult.

The break-in was disproved from the start with the statement that the shutters were left open (I don't think they were shut). However, the master brain washer - given far too much time and leeway - probably extorted the opposite belief under the threat to continue with the brain-washing until "Hell freezes over".

Without the fact of a staged break-in, Amanda and Raffaele are NOT guilty.

So even though Filomena didn’t think she had closed the shutters, and was at the minimum not certain that she had, an elaborate line of reasoning was born based entirely on the conclusion that the shutters were closed.

Since the break-in was staged, there HAD to be help from Amanda and Raffaele, thus there was a conspiracy of three.

This immensity of absurdity has only been equaled a few times.

 

[Kaosium]

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.

Do you think this is something the Prosecution could explore, perhaps to have Raffaele Sollecito take the stand in this trial? Their last theory apparently considered that statement irrelevant as they had him out murdering Meredith with Amanda during that time.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

what happened is unclear

A bit later there's this, a story about three young men who held a girl down and threatened to rape her, whose lawyer was running the defence that it was a "prank". That's getting a bit closer, but it's still pretty questionable.

Kevin_Lowe,

The charges in the case you mentioned were dropped. One of the three young men was not in the room at the time of the incident. What actually happened is not clear to me, but it appears to fall short of being criminal.

 

[komponisto]

http://www.sciencespheres.com/



The fable of a staged break-in has been told again and again by the PMF cult.

The break-in was disproved from the start with the statement that the shutters were left open (I don't think they were shut). However, the master brain washer - given far too much time and leeway - probably extorted the opposite belief under the threat to continue with the brain-washing until "Hell freezes over".

Without the fact of a staged break-in, Amanda and Raffaele are NOT guilty.

Since the break-in was staged, there HAD to be help from Amanda and Raffaele, thus there was a conspiracy of three.

This immensity of absurdity has only been equaled a few times.

Those interested in seeing an application of probability theory to the staged break-in (by way of illustrating a more general lesson) may want to read my Less Wrong post Inherited Improbabilities: Transferring the Burden of Proof.

Summary: if the break-in was staged by Amanda and Raffaele, then Amanda and Raffaele are almost certainly guilty of the murder -- from which it follows that the claim that the break-in was staged is just as extraordinary as the claim that they killed Meredith, requiring the same level of extraordinary evidence to be believed.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Raffaele's appearace before Matteini

Do you think this is something the Prosecution could explore, perhaps to have Raffaele Sollecito take the stand in this trial? Their last theory apparently considered that statement irrelevant as they had him out murdering Meredith with Amanda during that time.

kaosium,

On the first thread BobTheDonkey wrote, "So, even though he can't make up his mind where he (and by extension, she) was that night...we should just believe the last thing he tells us?

Again: If I tell you my name is Bob, then tell you what I'd said before is bollocks, then tell you that I was lying the second time and my name really is Bob...am I still credible?"

Darkness Descending erroneously refers to Raffaele's atatement on 11-5-2007 as a confession. Obviously, it is not; Mr. Sollecito has never said that he even went out that night, and BobTheDonkey is probably not the only person who is confused about this. Moreover based on the transcript, Mr. Sollecito did not say that Amanda went out even for five minutes.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Kevin_Lowe,

The charges in the case you mentioned were dropped. One of the three young men was not in the room at the time of the incident. What actually happened is not clear to me, but it appears to fall short of being criminal.

Thanks for the update, I guess we can cross even that off the list.

 

[Fuji]

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.

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

However often you post it, "I refuse to acknowledge the significant possibility that Amanda Knox deliberately lied in her purported internalised false statement" will not become a rational, skeptical or scientifically informed position.

 

[Fuji]

So you're classifying John Douglas as a "gun for hire", and thereby dismissing his opinion, yet you're not according the same level of critical scrutiny to Clint Van Zandt, whose opinion you cited at the beginning of this exchange?

I must say, I can't fault your logic here. It's breathtaking

With regards to the different levels of scrutiny appropriate to Douglas's and Van Zandt's respective opinions: cui bono?

 

[Fuji]

If it were true, there's absolutely no way that that would be the only source of the information.

This is a completely unsubstantiated assertion.

Witnesses would have appeared on news magazine shows (possibly with their faces hidden and voices disguised).

As is this.

In fact, if AK had participated in such a thing, so would other people at other places,

And this.

and 48 Hours or some similar program would have run a whole story on the "disturbing trend of extreme sex games among college students".

As well as this.