Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[CDHost]

First, I agree any court action in the USA is probably going to nowhere for the Kerchers - including any effort to enforce foreign judgements against US assets / cash flow.
My question was specifically about what could happen in Europe especially on the Continent since it is all civil law (Great Britain & Ireland excepted they are comon law states).
I read your response to be "I don't know Europens laws but I think..."
My opinion based on business experience not law is that the Kerchers will prevail in the end in Europe proper (not necessarily where common law is used). One possible avenue - get a court to allow the books to be impounded until the case is sorted out - AE or whoever will have their prospectives profits on the line and will negotiate to get the books back rather than risk losing not just their gross margin but the investment (publishing cost) in the books themselves. That is just one scenario - there are others.

How would the Kercher's prove AE's connection with Amanda Knox? There is no contractual agreement with her at all.

But OK assuming you are right. Take AE out of the picture. Print the books in Germany and give them to a German distributor to handle Italy. If they hand them off to Italian distributors do it in smallish quantities, so the shipments break before they hit Italy. Same problem?

Otherwise how do you explain all the funds expended by the Kerchers' to pay Maresca's fees?

I don't know the Kerchers so in Massei fashion I'm going to take a wild ass guess...

I think they believe Amanda and Raffaele killed their daughter and they want them to suffer. I think they are appalled with the idea that Amanda,Raffaele and Rudy are not going to be spending the rest of their life behind bars. I think they want to go after Amanda when she gets out and keep her in a lifetime of poverty. And I think they believe their silly judgement is going to accomplish that.

Like many Europeans who live in countries that have strong international ties, and don't have a traditional of isolationism that enjoys majority support they fail to understand US law or the way it is applied. Again, I don't know the Kerchers, but knowing Europeans, I do think they may really believe a US judge is going to identify more with an Italian judge than US politicians. Heck, you read the discussion on TJMK/PMF and there is total failure to understand the FOA are liberal pro-European Democrats. The people who don't agree with Senator Cantwell do so because they think she is a mamby liberal internationalist that wants to sell America out to effete Europhiles. Her opponent was quite literally going to be the senator from Liberty Mutual Group who was running to stop European healthcare from coming here. In other words they really would rather put in bullet in Amanda and are trying to do so by proxy without understanding Marasca is going to be ineffectual in ever collecting money.

The second reason is Marasca probably gives them a feeling of more control and that likely is a great comfort.

 

[Withnail1969]

Hi, Alt+F4,
The photo of the knife in Frank's most recent blog is the same photo that he showed in December 2007, imo.

http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2007/12/all-possible-theories.html

You're right. It's a zoomed in version of that photo which was taken by the Polizia Scientifica themselves just in case anyone has any ridiculous theories about the photo being doctored or the dirt being added later.

 

[Katody Matrass]

No, this is plain wrong. I still cannot agree the fabric was torn and not just cut with a not so very sharp blade, causing a small amount of fraying and exposing the bit of batting used inside the seam for comfort.

I'm not arguing that the fabric was torn. It was the seam that let go.

A bra clasp is not a separate piece sewn onto a backstrap. It contains the end of the backstrap, folded in, and additional reinforcing fabric containing the hooks then sewn over it.

From the bra clasp photos it looks like it was exactly a separate piece. I guess there are various designs. Looking at the bra clasp the straight line doesn't look like a result of cutting to me. It coincides with the seams, with leftover pieces of thread clearly visible. Looking at the strap where the clasp is missing I see a hem line exactly where you think there is a straight cut.

These gave way to the force of trying to pull the bra, however he had to resort to sawing at the strap with the knife.

Here's a pic that will illustrate the way the backstrap and clasp of a bra is constructed. You can see the reverse side of the hook section here.

http://tinyurl.com/backstrap

Honestly in the pic it looks like a separate piece sewn onto the strap, too.

I think Meredith's bra size being on the smaller side, was not that "reinforced". It let go easily enough to not leave any persistent marks on her body. It was torn off after the stabbing, not cut, that's why it is soaked with blood but there are no traces of cutting it with a bloody knife.

 

[Kaosium]

Nobody on that side of the debate seems to want to discuss the fact that the knife has not been cleaned as we were told it had been. In fact we were told that the reason Stefanoni was looking for nanometric scale residues in a tiny scratch on the blade was because the murderers had so thoroughly cleaned the knife.

Yes, I remember reading that as well. Here's what I wonder, if it was in the drawer you'd think it would be clean. What might they have happened to it in the interim to make it come out filthy?

 

[Justinian2]

One thing I've wondered about is just how many of the calunnia charges are there per year? Is this some relic that was dug out of the past just to slap on Amanda, or is it a relatively common occurrence? I wouldn't think the latter as the lawyers would know better you'd think...

Good point.

Isn't there a law against vexatious litigation whereby the lawer filing too many complaints can be prevented from filing any further litigation?

From Wikipedia:

Vexatious litigation is legal action which is brought, regardless of its merits, solely to harass or subdue an adversary. It may take the form of a primary frivolous lawsuit or may be the repetitive, burdensome, and unwarranted filing of meritless motions in a matter which is otherwise a meritorious cause of action. Filing vexatious litigation is considered an abuse of the judicial process and may result in sanctions against the offender.

A single action, even a frivolous one, is not enough to raise a litigant to the level of being declared vexatious, though repeated and severe instances by a single lawyer or firm can result in eventual disbarment.

Perhaps the prosecutor should be disbarred.

 

[Chris C]

You're right. It's a zoomed in version of that photo which was taken by the Polizia Scientifica themselves just in case anyone has any ridiculous theories about the photo being doctored or the dirt being added later.

Does anyone know if they scraped the crack of the knife and tested?
I can't remember for sure, but I thought they only tested 3 spots on the knife.

 

[Withnail1969]

Does anyone know if they scraped the crack of the knife and tested?
I can't remember for sure, but I thought they only tested 3 spots on the knife.

I don't think so because Stefanoni claimed the knife had been cleaned so was somehow unable to see the obvious dirt.

 

[Chris C]

In Washington State the "son of sam" law applies to criminals and their "representatives".

If it goes to the US Supreme court that law will get struck down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_&_Schuster_v._Crime_Victims_Board

It would violate Knox's parents 1st Amendment right. They could sue for any money that Knox herself made, however, any money her parents made is protected by the 1st Amendment. Of course they first would have to get a judgement in America to even prevent Knox or her parents from profiting. Which apparently hasn't happened after 3 years. No judgement and no profiting.

 

[CDHost]

In Washington State the "son of sam" law applies to criminals and their "representatives".

I'm not sure you are right about Washington's laws. But...

U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1991, Simon & Schuster Inc. v. New York State Crime Victims Bd. held these sorts of laws were unconstitutional.

Keenan v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County 2002 showed that these laws even if narrowed still don't pass.

Nevada followed suit after Keenan striking down Nevada's law in 2004.

Arizona in Gravano allowed for direct civil suits but not restraints on speech.

So if Washington had such a law it will be almost impossible to use.

Further, the jurisdiction with the son of sam law is the state in which the crime occurred. This generally applies to criminals in prison. Amanda's legal residence is not in Italy she can still conduct business in Washington, and Washington is not going to pursue its rights even if they have such a law.

The whole point is that the Kercher's are screwed as long as Washington is on her side. That is not at all the situation where Washington is going after her, then they just transfer the Italian judgement over and attack everything, as per O.J. Simpson's civil suits.

 

[Chris C]

I'm not sure you are right about Washington's laws. But...

U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1991, Simon & Schuster Inc. v. New York State Crime Victims Bd. held these sorts of laws were unconstitutional.

Keenan v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County 2002 showed that these laws even if narrowed still don't pass.

Nevada followed suit after Keenan striking down Nevada's law in 2004.

Arizona in Gravano allowed for direct civil suits but not restraints on speech.

So if Washington had such a law it will be almost impossible to use.

Further, the jurisdiction with the son of sam law is the state in which the crime occurred. This generally applies to criminals in prison. Amanda's legal residence is not in Italy she can still conduct business in Washington, and Washington is not going to pursue its rights even if they have such a law.

The whole point is that the Kercher's are screwed as long as Washington is on her side. That is not at all the situation where Washington is going after her, then they just transfer the Italian judgement over and attack everything, as per O.J. Simpson's civil suits.

Actually in OJ's case they had to use Florida laws concerning civil suits, since he was apparently a legal resident of that state.

 

[Draca]

Raffaele's inherited property

Yeah and at some point he is going to die and RS might inherit. Which is not at all unlikely a quarter century more from now. This was a discussion about attackable assets in an inheritance, Seriously, you need to start reading the thread and not just grabbing lines out of context.

My understanding is that Francesco Sollecito told the court that Raffaele had already inherited properties from his mother in order to show that he had no reason to steal money from MK. His mother died when he was a teenager.

I've seen posts online that the property is worth a lot - in the 2 million Euro range, but don't know if that's the correct figure.

 

[Justinian2]

Compare this investigation to that of the Craigslist killer. The Boston police didn't indite the fiance of Philip Markoff. There was no mixups. The case was handled quickly and effectively.

The Italians criticize American justice and think their justice is superior?
How audacious!

 

[Kaosium]

I think Pacelli was Patrick's lawyer. He is the one who called Amanda a she-devil. Nice to know that misogyny is alive and well in the twenty first century.

The truly saddest thing is he could get away with that because of the conditions created by the police leaks and tabloid smears. I came across another one recently that I had missed the first time around or had forgotten about. It was a piece by Nick Pisa that relied on leaks of conversations between Amanda and her mother, at the jail I presume. It was based on the fact that Amanda had said that her cellmate and a 'warder,' which I figure is probably some kind of guard, had propositioned her for sex because 'she was so pretty.' Yet it was spun as Amanda being narcissistic for daring to be frightened that she might be sexually abused in the prison.

There was something going on there in Perugia I think, a zeitgeist of sorts where they created a monster in their minds and Amanda wasn't even human and thus everything they came across had to be more 'evidence' of 'Foxy Knoxy' if they 'read between the lines.' I notice Pisa's more recent pieces are more insightful, I wonder if he feels anything like Shirer did when he looked back at his reporting of Hitler's receiving the 'blank check' from the homeless Reichstadt?

 

[Fine]

In Washington State the "son of sam" law applies to criminals and their "representatives".

___________________

But the law applies only to crimes committed within the State of Washington...



§ 7.68.200. Payment for reenactments of crimes -- Contracts -- Deposits -- Damages

After hearing, as provided in RCW 7.68.210, every person, firm, corporation, partnership, association or other legal entity contracting with any person or the representative or assignee of any person, accused or convicted of a crime in this state, with respect to the reenactment of such crime, by way of a movie, book, magazine article, tape recording, phonograph record, radio or television presentation, live entertainment of any kind, or from the expression of such accused or convicted person's thoughts, feelings, opinion or emotions regarding such crime, shall submit a copy of such contract to the department and pay over to the department any moneys which would otherwise, by terms of such contract, be owing to the person so accused or convicted or his representatives. The department shall deposit such moneys in an escrow account for the benefit of and payable to any victim or the legal representative of any victim of crimes committed by: (i) such convicted person; or (ii) such accused person, but only if such accused person is eventually convicted of the crime and provided that such victim, within five years of the date of the establishment of such escrow account, brings a civil action in a court of competent jurisdiction and recovers a money judgment for damages against such person or his representatives.

///

 

[RWVBWL]

For your consideration:

Hi all,
If any of you read my post that I wrote after viewing Moodstream's video link again,
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6799904#post6799904
well I'd like to ask you something:
If that is not a black guy, but is a white guy in that CCTV video clip, following and intercepting Meredith Kercher as she went home that night, how would it change your own theory?

I ask this because when we had formulated our own theories of what we think had happened to Meredith that night she was brutally killed, well I do not think any of us had ever heard the report of a female foreign student in Perugia getting followed and then apparently stabbed and robbed by a knife wielding assailant.
http://alternatetheories-perugiamurder.blogspot.com/2011/01/post-159-female-students-account-of.html
Had you?

I am reminded of this phrase:
When rational people discover new facts, they revise their beliefs to fit these new facts.
Have you folks given any possible thought that Meredith was followed, accosted, and then killed by someone other than Rudy Guede?
Or are you like the police investigators who worked the Kercher murder case, sticking to the same old facts because you feel that you know what happened?

Below are some of the problems that I have with this murder we discuss:

I've always had a hard time believing that Rudy Guede 1st beat up, then stabbed Meredith Kercher in the throat 3 times and and as she lay dying, he went and retrieved towels from the bathroom, to possibly help save her. That just doesn't make sense.

I also have a problem with the cell phones.
Weren't they free of fingerprints? What about traces of blood? None was found, correct?
Rudy Guede seems to have left his feces at the apartment, drank from an orange juice container and also probably left some of his semen there. There was blood left on the inside of Meredith's door handle, his prints or DNA on her purse, but he didn't seem to care.

So why would he then care to wipe Meredith Kercher's cell phones free of his fingerprints if he did toss them?

If someone else did follow Meredith, intercepted and accosted her, I can see that person taking her cell phones from her before she was stabbed to death. And afterwards wiping them clean of his fingerprints before tossing them out the window of a car into the woods on the side of the road...

Another thought:
If the front door was left open when Rudy Guede 1st split,
does anyone else give thought that maybe, just maybe someone else did enter the girls apartment that night, and checking out the pad, upon seeing Meredith dead, they screamed loud enough in shock that Nara actually did hear it, along with those running footsteps?

I've wrote that I have thought that it is possible that Rudy Guede came back later, revisiting the scene, so to say, to see what was going on. I also wrote this last year on Bruce Fisher's website too. If Rudy had spent any length of time in the apartment, and he did masturbate over Meredith's body, I would think his chances of being caught were much greater at 9:30pm then at 3:00am. Don't you? Why would he hang out if other people might walk in at any time? What would he do, kill them too?

Here's another question I have wondered about:
Why did Rudy Guede throw such a heavy, 8.8lb rock thru the window?
To make a larger hole in the window to climb through? To help open the shutters, if they were even closed? Why not just throw a smaller rock?
Throwing such a large rock would surely make a lot more noise and also probably create a loud thunk as it hit the floor.

If anyone was home, they would surely investigate the noise. I bet the boyz downstairs, if anyone of them had even been home, might have come outside wondering what the noise was. From what I recall, there were no fingerprints found on the rock. If Rudy Guede did not kill Meredith Kercher, why did he throw the rock thru the window? Might he have done so if he came back later on after leaving the Domus nightclub, to possibly awaken any of her housemates and draw their attention that Meredith was lying hurt, but possibly, for all he knew, still alive in her bedroom? When no one did so, for some reason I can see Rudy entering the pad, checking on Meredith, finding her dead, looking in the other rooms for $$$, and then doin' what he did. He even have found Meredith's keys, and locked her door. Did he have Giacomo's downstairs key too? Did Rudy Guede enter the boyz downstairs apartment? Who was it that got the cat's blood on the lightswitch(s)? I believe this incident is connected to the night Meredith was murdered. Do you?

I ask these questions because from all that I have read, Rudy Guede seems like a wuss, even in prison. Is he that gnarly of a dude who was capable of shoving that knife into Meredith Kercher's throat, again and again, and then sexually assaulting her, hanging out in her pad, using the john, and raiding the fridge while not being worried about anyone else coming home to their apartment? Or did Rudy come back a few hours later?

As you can see I still wonder of many things.
But 1 thing I do not wonder about is Raffaele Sollecito's or Amanda Knox's involvement in the horribly brutal, bloody death of Miss Meredith Kercher.
They are innocent and I hope that they see their freedom soon...

 

[CDHost]

My understanding is that Francesco Sollecito told the court that Raffaele had already inherited properties from his mother in order to show that he had no reason to steal money from MK. His mother died when he was a teenager.

I've seen posts online that the property is worth a lot - in the 2 million Euro range, but don't know if that's the correct figure.

Wow, great point. That makes it even clearer, for Marasca it is RS' money that is the focus, RG and AK for different reasons are terrible targets.

 

[Kaosium]

Good point.

Isn't there a law against vexatious litigation whereby the lawer filing too many complaints can be prevented from filing any further litigation?

You'd think there would have to be, however I recall reading that there are so many cases waiting to be heard in the Italian system sometimes 'time runs out' on their version of the 'Statute of Limitations' thus many never got to trial. I read that Raffaele's lawyer garnered her reputation by using that to defend something involving a former leader of Italy whose name reminded me of an Indy driver when he was up on charges. I also recall Frank saying something like that when he was trying to get people to back off Mignini when I read the Shock archives.

From Wikipedia:

Perhaps the prosecutor should be disbarred.

LOL!

That might just be in his future...'Whom Gods destroy...'

 

[Chris C]

Hi all,
If any of you read my post that I wrote after viewing Moodstream's video link again,
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6799904#post6799904
well I'd like to ask you something:
If that is not a black guy, but is a white guy in that CCTV video clip, following and intercepting Meredith Kercher as she went home that night, how would it change your own theory?

Actually is there a better quality video? Because that one that was linked to, looked like a white guy wearing a motor cycle helmet.
Between the 24 second and 26 second mark the person turns their head to the right and you see a white face with what looks like a person wearing a helmet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tH-klo4nGQ

 

[LondonJohn]

Your argument is convincing.

So then, assuming the bra was cut at the clasp, was the knife bloody when the cut was made (based on the pictures we have seen)?

When I look at the picture of the bra on the floor of MK's room, I see no sign of blood on the large part of the backstrap, in the region of the assumed cutting. Other parts of the bra appear to be soaked in blood.

When I look at the picture of the clasp, I see something that could be blood in the frayed batting material at the edge of the clasp. Or it could just be dirt from being on the floor, pushed around, stepped on, handled with dirty gloves, etc.

Personally I think the pictures are inconclusive either way because the bra was both pulled and cut. But the cut was not made with a very bloody knife. And she was wearing the bra when her throat was cut. Hmmmm.

I don't know about US bra design, but I looked at three M&S* bras today, and in all three there is a distinctly separate piece of material on the hook side of the clasp, which is stitched to the back strap. In other words, the material on which the hook is mounted is totally different from the material of the main back strap - it's not merely a loop-and-stitch reinforcement of the back strap. There is a clear stitching joint.

From the photos, Meredith's bra clearly looks to have a similar design. To me, therefore, it's entirely possible that the hook material was torn free from the main back strap at the point of stitching, rather than cut free.

* M&S (Marks & Spencer) is by a massive distance the major retailer of underwear (men's and women's) in the UK.

 

[el buscador]

Actually is there a better quality video? Because that one that was linked to, looked like a white guy wearing a motor cycle helmet.
Between the 24 second and 26 second mark the person turns their head to the right and you see a white face with what looks like a person wearing a helmet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tH-klo4nGQ

I don't think the head looks big enough for a motorcycle helmet, but perhaps some kind of billed hat?