Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[tsig]

Or, you could check the CV (if they have one) of the people criticizing her. Thereafter, the appropriate targets of derision I suspect would become clear.

Candace Dempsey is a good writer and has done a lot of interesting work on this story. I'll bet she's also a pretty good cook, too. Though I haven't had the pleasure of being able to speak on that from personal experience.

Well if the rule is that you've got to have equal or better qualifications to criticize someone this thread is done.

 

[lane99]

Speaking of Tales from the Kitchen...

In addition to the kitchen knife that the learned judge imagines that Knox was carting around for protection in her girlie bag, I wonder if it's possible she was also carrying around a cast iron skillet?

If their theory is she was arming herself for protection, seems to me, a huge kitchen knife in one hand, and a heavy skillet in the other, would say no to potential accosters with a capital "N!".

And since testing failed to find any blood in the hallway footprints, if she'd been coming and going with an iron skillet shedding microscopic iron particles everywhere, that could explain the luminol reaction there.

 

[Katody Matrass]

What lie did the police tell Amanda? All I know they said was that her boyfriend would not back her alibi which was the truth.

IIRC they told her they have hard evidence she was at the cottage.

Here's what she wrote the morning after:

The police have told me that they have hard evidence that places me at the house, my house, at the time of Meredith's murder. I don't know what proof they are talking about, but if this is true, it means I am very confused and my dreams must be real.​

 

[Katody Matrass]

In addition to the kitchen knife that the learned judge imagines that Knox was carting around for protection in her girlie bag, I wonder if it's possible she was also carrying around a cast iron skillet?

If their theory is she was arming herself for protection, seems to me, a huge kitchen knife in one hand, and a heavy skillet in the other, would say no to potential accosters with a capital "N!".

And since testing failed to find any blood in the hallway footprints, if she'd been coming and going with an iron skillet shedding microscopic iron particles everywhere, that could explain the luminol reaction there.

Given that she had access to multitude of kitchen utensils and her bag was large enough to conceal such a dangerous tool we cannot exclude this. Also her boyfriend was an avid cook, so it is possible and in fact probable he persuaded her to carry one for protection.

 

[katy_did]

In the US it's OK for the police to lie:

During interrogations, police who use this tactic may lie about the facts of a case. For example, where you have an 18 year old male who has a 15 year old girlfriend, the officer will tell him that they have evidence that he raped her, when in fact, they do not. The 18 year old tells the officer that they had consensual sex and that there was no rape involved; now the officer has a confession as to Statutory Rape that came straight from the mouth of the suspect

http://www.criminalattorney.com/blog/police-can-lie-to-you/

We don't have any proof the Italian police even lied to Amanda.

The police are allowed to lie to suspects in some countries (e.g. the U.S. and Italy) but those lies can lead to false confessions, hence the reason they are not allowed to do so in other countries (I think in the U.K., for example). The type of lies the police told Amanda are specifically associated with coerced internalized confessions. On the other hand, lies about, for example, the suspect never being allowed to see their family again are associated with coerced compliant confessions (i.e. telling the police what they want to hear out of fear).

In a post a while ago, TomM noted the second type of police lie and its association with a particular kind of false confession (IIRC he called this type of lie 'extrinsic') but didn't note that 'intrinsic' lies - e.g. telling the suspect you have evidence they were at the crime scene when you don't - are also associated with false confessions.

 

[LondonJohn]

The reason for this is easy for everyone to see. AK and RS were suspects from the beginning. They surely would not need 12 interrogators to hear a witness statement.

No, no, no! The police said they were witnesses, so they were witnesses! Never mind that they had their phones tapped on around 3rd/4th November, or that most of the Perugia Flying Squad turned out in the middle of the night to hear their "witness" interviews........

PS. Just back from the new Cirque du Soleil show (Totem) at the Albert Hall. Try to catch it if/when it comes to your part of the world - it's amazing!

 

[LondonJohn]

The police are allowed to lie to suspects in some countries (e.g. the U.S. and Italy) but those lies can lead to false confessions, hence the reason they are not allowed to do so in other countries (I think in the U.K., for example). The type of lies the police told Amanda are specifically associated with coerced internalized confessions. On the other hand, lies about, for example, the suspect never being allowed to see their family again are associated with coerced compliant confessions (i.e. telling the police what they want to hear out of fear).

In a post a while ago, TomM noted the second type of police lie and its association with a particular kind of false confession (IIRC he called this type of lie 'extrinsic') but didn't note that 'intrinsic' lies - e.g. telling the suspect you have evidence they were at the crime scene when you don't - are also associated with false confessions.

The police are allowed to lie to suspects in the UK, within certain boundaries. For example, they're allowed to lie about the existence of evidence, or about the testimony/confession/accusation of another suspect.

 

[Malkmus]

No, no, no! The police said they were witnesses, so they were witnesses! Never mind that they had their phones tapped on around 3rd/4th November, or that most of the Perugia Flying Squad turned out in the middle of the night to hear their "witness" interviews........

...Or that the police had announced to the media that one of these "witnesses" would be turned into a suspect within a few hours. What luck that that actually came true!

 

[LondonJohn]

...Or that the police had announced to the media that one of these "witnesses" would be turned into a suspect within a few hours. What luck that that actually came true!

....or that the Perugia Police Chief stated in the press conference on the 6th November that the police had known the "correct" version of events (i.e. the one with Knox and Sollecito - and Lumumba - participants in the murder) before Knox even sat down for her interrogation the previous night.......

 

[RoseMontague]

What lie did the police tell Amanda? All I know they said was that her boyfriend would not back her alibi which was the truth.

ETA: goalpost move noted. First assertion: police lying to witness wrong and illeagal
Second assertion: police can lie but not too much.

The problem is that those being interrogated sometimes don't know that this is a common police tactic. They tend to believe the police. It is important to tell your kids if you ever have any dealings with the police make sure you are educated as to what your rights are, make sure you know what they legally can and can't do, and make sure you get representation so you wont screw up.

Both Amanda and Raffaele failed miserably in this regard. The police need to make sure that when they use such tactics they take care to verify that the result makes sense and they should have as much doubt about an admission after they use such tactics as they would about denials.

 

[RoseMontague]

Or, you could check the CV (if they have one) of the people criticizing her. Thereafter, the appropriate targets of derision I suspect would become clear.

Candace Dempsey is a good writer and has done a lot of interesting work on this story. I'll bet she's also a pretty good cook, too. Though I haven't had the pleasure of being able to speak on that from personal experience.

Here is a link to a fine cookbook. The name of the author escapes me for some reason.

http://www.amazon.ca/Florence-Eat-Barbie-Nadeau/dp/0762749199

 

[Poppy1016]

Here is a link to a fine cookbook. The name of the author escapes me for some reason.

http://www.amazon.ca/Florence-Eat-Barbie-Nadeau/dp/0762749199

Good one Rose I'll be sure to get my copy real soon lol.

 

[Kaosium]

What if they offer a deal?

Something I've been thinking about recently is what happens if the appeal trial goes badly for the prosecution, but not entirely, and in the end the jury finds them 'responsible' in some small regard for the murder--or convict her on the calunnia charge--and they have the option of either appealing to the Supreme Court or just going home with time served?

As I understand it, the prosecution can also appeal to the Supreme Court, and if it works like it did for the first appeal, then they can also ask for a larger sentence, so this is where the 'deal' would come in: the prosecution would agree not to appeal to the Supreme Court, while the defense agrees not to as well, and out of it the prosecution gets at least some conviction, whilst the defense doesn't have to risk anything gained and thus Raffaele and Amanda go home.

Do you think the defense would take the deal, and should they if something like this were to come about? I'm inclined to think Amanda and Raffaele should stick it out for a full exoneration, but then again I'm not the one sitting in jail.

 

[komponisto]

Something I've been thinking about recently is what happens if the appeal trial goes badly for the prosecution, but not entirely, and in the end the jury finds them 'responsible' in some small regard for the murder--or convict her on the calunnia charge--and they have the option of either appealing to the Supreme Court or just going home with time served?

As I understand it, the prosecution can also appeal to the Supreme Court, and if it works like it did for the first appeal, then they can also ask for a larger sentence, so this is where the 'deal' would come in: the prosecution would agree not to appeal to the Supreme Court, while the defense agrees not to as well, and out of it the prosecution gets at least some conviction, whilst the defense doesn't have to risk anything gained and thus Raffaele and Amanda go home.

Do you think the defense would take the deal, and should they if something like this were to come about? I'm inclined to think Amanda and Raffaele should stick it out for a full exoneration, but then again I'm not the one sitting in jail.

As I understand it, "appeals" in the Italian system are just stages in a standard process that plays out in every case. Yes, they could be foregone, but that doesn't seem to be common, certainly not in serious cases like this, and certainly not by the defense. Full exonerations at the Appello or Cassazione level are, however, common enough from what I understand. This case is a textbook wrongful conviction; there's no reason they shouldn't try for an outright reversal. I've gone on record estimating their chances of that at the Appello level at 60%, now that we know there will be expert review of the DNA.

Apparently the prosecution have said they won't appeal the decision of the Appello court. I'll believe it when I (don't) see it. After the first-level verdict, they said they wouldn't appeal; but after Massei and Cristiani failed to express enough hatred for the defendants to satisfy them, they changed their mind.

(Think that's harsh of me? Read Mignini and Comodi's appeal document; it sounds like TJMK in Italian.)

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

This snark contibutes nothing to rational debate. However, it is an example of the tone of discourse that has driven many good posters away from this thread (or the JREF forum entirely).

That's your opinion. Mine is that the fact that the facts and arguments for the pro-innocence case are now so strong and well-developed that pro-guilt posters are giving up and retreating to their own echo chambers for comfort.

I do not need your assistance. I can reason quite well on my own.

It is sophistry to assert that being "far more knowledgable..." and being "a complete, barking idiot" are not in fact mutually exclusive.

Well no, obviously you can't reason quite well on your own, because you keep making errors like this. You don't know what a false dilemma is, you don't know what sophistry is, you can't parse a logical argument, and you don't know the difference between a logical contradiction and something that is merely highly improbable.

It is not a logical contradiction to state of a human being "they know X" and "they did something which would be incredibly stupid if they knew X". It's improbable that these two statements are both true, but it's not impossible because humans are sometimes irrational and sometimes do stupid things.

If you don't understand something ask about it. Pretending you understand and taking a guess at what might be a rational rebuttal is about as likely to succeed as pretending you understand Japanese and trying to respond to a Japanese speaker by making noises that you think sound like they might be Japanese.

Was she developmentally delayed? Was she mentally ill? Was she cognitively impaired? Did she have a poor memory? Did she exhibit low self-esteem? Did she exhibit a lack of assertiveness? Was she a juvenile?

I already explained to you that you got these terms from a cherry-picked and now outdated subset of the literature, and that the correct understanding of the phenomenon is that those characteristics are by no means necessary for a person to make an internalised false statement. The Norfolk Four were by and large normal too.

Again with the contentless snark. Is it possible for you to reply to a post from someone with whom you disagree without doing this?

I resent the implication that my snark is contentless - I present rigorous arguments and accurate appraisals of failures to be rational, and the snark is a bonus.

No, this is not proper skeptical enquiry. If the video is of, let us say, a white-headed duck which is observed at a rate of 30% or 50% within a given population, then a simple video of said duck would suffice as evidence for a rational observer to conclude that you more than likely did see a white-headed duck. However, at your rate of one-in-a-thousand for orange-headed ducks, if you produce a video which purports to show one, a rational observer is going to demand more information before concluding that an orange-headed duck is actually what you saw. Was there possibly a lens artifact? Was there some peculiar lighting at the time? Is it fact orange paint, not plumage, which is observed? Has the video been altered in any way? And so on.

What you seem to me to be doing is taking a mental sheet of paper and writing at the bottom "Everything Kevin says is therefore wrong!". Then you go back up to the top and try to make up something that sounds logical that will fit your predetermined conclusion.

The simple fact is that in your everyday life you will quite happily accept far weaker evidence of far more unlikely claims. What percentage of people went to see the latest play at your local theatre last night? I'll use Brisbane figures just for fun. Some local, amateur shows perform to houses of forty or so people. There are two million or so people in Brisbane. So the odds that any randomly selected person saw that show could be naively assumed to be on the order of one in fifty thousand. Yet if a workmate says to you "I saw that show at that theatre last night, it was okay" you will accept this as almost certainly true despite the fact that it is fifty times more unlikely than my story about the orange-headed duck.

You would not, I think, assume that he was a liar and demand time-stamped video of his attendance to scrutinise for signs of fakery.

(Since our city is a bit moist right now the actual odds of anyone seeing a show last night are a lot closer to 0%, but the general point remains).

That is not what I am saying. I am saying that: 1) internalized false confessions are rare, 2) her statements do not even satisfy all the criteria which scientists observe in actual internalized confessions.

How many of the 300 or so documented cases satisfy all the criteria you just listed? This is an absurd standard.

Moreover, I also know quite a bit about the case and base my judgments of whether her statements are genuine internalized confessions upon that knowledge as well. I disagree with you about most of your interpretations of the facts of this case, but I will at least recognize that you are knowledgable about the case. I would appreciate the same consideration.

If you go back and read what I actually said, that particular bit wasn't snark, it was Bayesian reasoning. If you know nothing except that Amanda confessed, the odds of it being an internalised false statement are indeed very low. If you know the circumstances under which she made her statement, the odds of it being an internalised false statement are very high.

The move you are trying to make in response is to say that if you know the full story of the case then the odds of it being an internalised false statement go way down again.

That would be a legal move if you actually had any coherent reason you could explain to us to believe that Knox was guilty. As we've established by now there is no remotely coherent pro-guilt theory and no pro-guilt poster who can even give us a coherent summary of why they believe Knox and Sollecito to be guilty. So at this stage you don't get to say that Knox is guilty and hence that the odds of her statement being an internalised false statement go down again.

"No shortage of documented examples?"

from Leo:

"... only a small number of alleged false confessions contain the independent case evidence or circumstances that allow the confessor to prove his innocence beyond dispute. Nevertheless, researchers have documented approximately 300 proven false confessions in recent decades."

300 cases out of a universe of how many interrogations? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

As Halides1 pointed out, while the absolute rate of internalised false confessions is very low, the rate in known miscarriages of justice is vastly higher.

It's also 300 more cases than anyone can point to as previous examples of university student lovers with absolutely no history of violent behaviour teaming up with a local crook one barely knows and the other doesn't know at all to rape and murder one of their housemates. Like "rape pranks" and unicorns, such crimes don't appear to exist in the real world.

If it's an internalised false confession or a unicorn, rational people don't choose to believe that the suspect saw a unicorn.

Yes - they told her it was the trauma of the event. And she did not contradict them or offer any other explanation for her selective amnesia.

So is this your argument?

1. Internalised false confessions only happen if the police give the suspect some plausible reason to believe they could have had amnesia.
2. The police told Amanda Knox that she had amnesia because of the stress of witnessing a murder.
3. The fact that Amanda found this plausible can only be because she actually witnessed a murder.

I don't think step 3 works. How do you rule out:

3a. The fact that Amanda found this plausible could have been because Amanda found it plausible that someone might get amnesia from the stress of witnessing a murder.

...?

 

[RWVBWL]

Here is a link to a fine cookbook. The name of the author escapes me for some reason.

http://www.amazon.ca/Florence-Eat-Barbie-Nadeau/dp/0762749199

Oh my goodness!
Barbie Nadeau is a cookbook author!?!
RoseMontague, that is pretty friggin' funny!
Now which member of the pro-guilt community has been harping, for ages, on Candace Dempsey, author of "Murder in Italy", for being a food blogger?

Cooking and a murder mystery.
I for 1 would luv to someday sit at a huuuge dinner table with some of my fellow innocentista's and some of the members of the pro-guilt community, drink some fine red wine, eat some delicious Italian food made by these 2 fine authors, and discuss in person the quirks of this brutal murder we debate.
Now that would be funny!
See ya, RWVBWL

PS-Speaking of funny, I am just amazed that Antonio Curatolo is being charged for heroin distribution only now, 3 murder trials + many years later. TOO FUNNY! Kinda makes a guy think, as others here have pointed out, that the cops in Perugia were using him.
Add in the fact that Dr. Stefanoni needed special permission to collect and also test evidence, well I wonder if the cops in Perugia were trying to limit any fallout damage to the city's reputation as a safe place for foreign students to come and study. Blame it not on drug dealin' type of men who actually do follow + stab women, but on the murdered gals' female friend + housemate and her new geeky, so to say, boyfriend of 6 days, who wanted to experience extreme sensations...
Never mind what the evidence says.

But wait, whom am I missing. Oh yes, Rudy Guede.
It would not suprise me to find out that Rudy Guede was indeed a police informant...
L8, RWVBWL

PSS-I can't wait to read what Frank Sfarzo of Perugia Shock writes next about Antonio Curatolo.
I bet that Mr. Sfarzo walks a very fine line when writing his postings. I wonder if Mignini will someday sue him too?

 

[RWVBWL]

So back in May 31 0f 2010 we hd a pretty interesting discussion about Antonio Curatolo:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176868&page=8
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176868&page=9

And I recall stating that I found it hard to believe that a guy who had been a witness in another murder trial did not come forth to report that he saw Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito the night before on November 1, 2007.
That is something I have always found very odd.

Now I might finally have an answer why:
Maybe Antonio was out and about possibly picking up more smack to sell...
Or maybe Antonio was out and about selling his junk, helpin' 'em get their fix...
Or maybe Antonio didn't think this info was that important, and so he decided to just go out cruizin' the neighborhood, his neighborhood, diggin' into other people's garbage...

It couldn't be that he just did not even see Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox the night before, could it?

So let's see, it's a few months after Miss Meredith Kercher was brutally murdered, and the cops need more eye- witness evidence to fit their theory of the crime. I wonder if it is really that hard to visualize the cops, who had already busted Antonio Curatolo back in 2003 but strangely did not press charges against him for heroin distribution, possibly approached him and handed Antonio, -(he who likes to read late into the evening on cold, windy November nights), the same type of Hollywood style script that some actor friends I know read from, that made mention of the exact time(!) of 9:27 pm that he saw Raffaele and Amanda hangin' out and that he saw those disco buses too?

The guy has been a witness in not 1, but 2 previous murder trials!

How come he did not come forward immediately and give the police the information that he saw a young man and woman standing outside at 9:27pm the night before? How could he not remember, after participating in 2 previous murder trials,
that his help might be needed once again?
Does anyone in the pro-guilt community have a logical explanation why Antonio Curatolo DID NOT approach the police investigating Meredith Kercher's death that day? Or do so the next day, or even the next?
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

PS-For some of the newcomers here, I will re-post 3 links to Perugia Shock that detail a little more info on Antonio Curatolo.
http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2009/03/blog-post.html
http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2008/04/you-too-superwitness.html
http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2008/04/toto-witness.html
Enjoy.

 

[RWVBWL]

Re-reading the last link I posted above, Frank Sfarzo made mention that Antonio Curatolo had "Already in 2001 he testified against a a Tunisian (who allegely killed his girl by the swimming pool) and he got him condemned."

So maybe that goes to show that Antonio came forward of his own free will and kind spirit before he was even busted slingin' dope!

But yet the same article also states that "he keeps leaving in the street and dealing with pushers, they don't even arrest him anymore."

In Mr. Sfarzo's sometimes cryptic writing style, I am now left wondering if Antonio was still selling heroin over the last few years? Or did he stop and change his ways? Hmmm, I wonder about this 'Super Witness'...
L8, RWVBWL

PS-More to hate me by:
Gosh, it's a warm night here by the beach in Santa Monica,
the North winds are blowin' a bit offshore, and my truck temp says it's 71 degrees F right now at 10:23pm!
Heck the report for a well known beginner surf spot called Sunset has the temp at 71 also!
http://sunsetsurf.com/
Stay warm wherever you are...

 

[moodstream]

So back in May 31 0f 2010 we hd a pretty interesting discussion about Antonio Curatolo:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176868&page=8
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176868&page=9

And I recall stating that I found it hard to believe that a guy who had been a witness in another murder trial did not come forth to report that he saw Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito the night before on November 1, 2007.
That is something I have always found very odd.


How come he did not come forward immediately and give the police the information that he saw a young man and woman standing outside at 9:27pm the night before? How could he not remember, after participating in 2 previous murder trials,
that his help might be needed once again?
Does anyone in the pro-guilt community have a logical explanation why Antonio Curatolo DID NOT approach the police investigating Meredith Kercher's death that day? Or do so the next day, or even the next?
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

PS-For some of the newcomers here, I will re-post 3 links to Perugia Shock that detail a little more info on Antonio Curatolo.
http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2009/03/blog-post.html
http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2008/04/you-too-superwitness.html
http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2008/04/toto-witness.html
Enjoy.

Those are very interesting reads.

I have a concern that when Curatolo's testimony is removed, the primary impact will be to allow the court to consider that the tod occurred earlier than the Massei court allowed. The fact that nobody saw Knox/Sollecito travel to the cottage Nov 1 does not mean they did not do it.

After all, it's not as if the court has been trying to figure out *if* Knox/Sollecito are guilty. The only interest so far judging by Massei is, given the facts that they have before them, how do those facts best demonstrate the guilt of Knox, and Sollecitio

 

[Bob001]

... It is important to tell your kids if you ever have any dealings with the police make sure you are educated as to what your rights are, make sure you know what they legally can and can't do, and make sure you get representation so you wont screw up....

Possibly helpful: the ACLU "bust card" in a wallet format --

http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/bustcard_eng_20100630.pdf