Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[christianahannah]

I have no doubt the Kerchers would far rather have Meredith back than any sum of money. Maresca is in the courtroom and he is participating. It is reasonable to discuss and critique his words and actions. But let's leave the Kercher family out of it. Please. They have had their loved one savagely murdered and they have had to hear about it on TV and read about it in papers for more than three years now. They are hurting, and we need to leave them alone.

Thank you Charlie. I feel one can discuss this case without characterizing those on the family/friend periphery as demons or having ulterior motives.

I also feel the same about the harsh rhetoric/critique of the families of Amanda and Raffaele. They are doing what they feel right for their loved ones and I think they truly believe in their innocence.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

CoulsdonUK,

Besides the examples I have already noted, here is another. Mr. Kercher wrote, “Sollecito told police there had been no theft. But how could he have known? There is more relating to Knox and Sollecito's constantly changing alibis and witness statements relating to their whereabouts on that night.” For starters, Sollecito was incorrect. There was theft of money and credit cards; therefore, the argument is a nonstarter. More importantly, both Knox and Sollecito have had two basic stories about what happened that night, what they said on the night of 5-6 November and what they said on all other occasions. Mr. Kercher’s words go to the question of their truthfulness, therefore to the question of their characters. In my view he summarized the situation inaccurately.

Haildes1

Okay I assume the highlighted section is the focus of your post.

Hopefully we can agree that shifting alibis are contested by both sides just as much of the evidence is, can we agree the contention exists between those who believe in Amanda and Raffaele innocence and those who do not? In addition, there is contention of the whereabouts on the night Meredith was murdered none of these are disagreement that will be resolved in the appeal.

You and others may not agree with Mr Kercher’s views of the case but this is not demonization, far from it in my opinion given that his daughter was tortured stabbed and left to die a slow painful death for no apparent reason! Imagine the pain of recalling the detailed brutal death of your child then magnify it. National news in Italy, Pan European then international news, multiplied by the years of people pouring over the minutia of her murder, that is context Mr and Mrs Kercher will have to live with for the rest of their lives, Meredith will never coming home.

I completely agree with Mr Wilkes, let’s leave the Kercher family alone.

 

[Draca]

The Monster of Perugia - The Framing of Amanda Knox

The Monster of Perugia - The Framing of Amanda Knox
Mark Waturbury

Now available on Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Perugia-Framing-Amanda-ebook/dp/B004KZPJZC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1296090557&sr=1-1

 

[babycondor]

Kaosium

Agree the Italian jurisprudence is different.

I find it extraordinary that someone can be found guilty sentenced then is given two further attempts to prove their innocence, automatically! In addition, even if they lose all their appeals and their conviction and sentenced are confirmed they receive, here’s that word again, automatic reductions in their sentence for good behaviour whilst in prison!

There is an ancient idea that it is better to let 10 guilty people go free than convict one innocent person. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_formulation)

And where are the victim’s rights in all of the above? How does the victim or their family piece their lives back together again?

Unjustly imprisoning innocent people does not help the victim. Imprisoning innocent people just makes them victims too.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I think the problem with a lot of what you write above is that it's just one interpretation of the evidence, rather than the only possible interpretation of it. I don't believe we can be anywhere near as certain about the way the murder happened.

I believe we can be reasonably certain in this case. This crime is easier than most to reconstruct. It took place inside a small white box with a grid marked on the floor. I have not seen any detailed reconstruction that diverges significantly from what Hendry has mapped out. Massei reached his conclusions by assigning an arbitrary meaning to isolated observations, without any effort to fit the pieces together into a whole.

For example, there seems no irrefutable evidence that a sexual assault occurred after the fatal wounds were made, or nothing that couldn't equally well be interpreted differently. You say that Meredith was still wearing her blue jacket when she was stabbed, that the killer even used it as a 'handle' to drag her. Yet the jacket could equally have become bloody by lying in blood on the floor, and in fact the bottom left of it is soaked in blood, a long way from the neck area. If the clasp was indeed cut prior to the wounds being made, as the lack of blood on the clasp area would indicate, then it seems unlikely Meredith was wearing her jacket at that point, since the attacker would have needed to lift her shirts to get access to the bra. It would be much easier to remove the jacket beforehand.

Here are pictures of the jacket, which I just uploaded:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/blue_jacket_front_view.jpg
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/blue_jacket_rear_view.jpg

Hendry's conclusion is that she was wearing it when she was attacked, and the assailant removed it before removing the rest of her clothing.

As another example, it's possible the 'drag' marks on the floor were made by Meredith herself struggling to get up (perhaps indicated by the bloody fingerprints on the wardrobe) rather than because someone dragged her. According to Sollecito's defence, this was noted in Dr. Camana's report analyzing the blood traces, in which she says that Meredith "dragged herself or was dragged" along the floor (all sides accepted Camana's findings).

Similarly, assuming that Meredith was rolled over onto her back, it's only an assumption that the perpetrator did this in order to carry out a sexual assault. I'm more inclined to think that Rudy - having, after all, entered the house as a petty thief and facing the reality of leaving it as a murderer - panicked at this stage, and that there is some truth to his story about fetching the towels in an attempt to halt the bleeding. This would also explain why what appears to have been an attempted rape stopped at a manual assault - the obviously fatal injuries halted the assault.

In summary, I think there are a number of possible interpretations of the evidence in the room, and that while your theory is certainly possible, it's not the only way it could have happened.

If there is another theory that explains the evidence as convincingly as Hendry has done, I have yet to see it. Hendry was careful. When he concluded she was dragged, he based that on the appearance of the bloodstains on the floor. He was able to tell the difference between the streaks of blood that were deposited when she was crawling and attempting to rise in front of the wardrobe, versus the streaks between that location and the spot where her body was found. He was able to determine specific contact points between the floor and Meredith's body, and it all fit with what is visible in the photos.

The aspirated blood droplets on the bra, on her exposed breasts, and on the doors and side of the wardrobe show the sequence of events - aspirating wound inflicted in front of wardrobe, moved to side of wardrobe while still aspirating bood, on back wearing bra while still aspirating blood, on back with bra removed while still aspirating blood.

To some extent, Hendry drew his conclusions on the basis of what is most likely as opposed to what theoretically might be possible. It is possible, in theory, that the jacket could have been on the floor and somehow picked up bloodstains consistent with it being worn during the attack and used to drag the victim. It is possible, in theory, that someone with an immensely muscular forearm could have stood in front of Meredith, inserted a large kitchen knife about halfway into her neck, and made a lateral cut that perfectly imitated the kind of wound that would be made by an assailant holding her from behind and cutting with a smaller knife plunged in up to the hilt. But, each of these possibilities is less likely than a different, more likely hypothesis. And the way to test the hypotheses that seem most likely is by placing them in a narrative timeline. Does each proposed element fit into the narrative? With Hendry's analysis, it does. It's not arbitrary, or one interpretation among several that are reasonable. It is very specific. I spent hours quizzing this guy. His analysis makes sense.

I don't for one second believe Guede had any interest in helping the victim he had just fatally wounded. The towels were not wrapped around her neck. One was found next to her body, and another was found beneath her body along with a pillow. Putting a pillow under Meredith's buttocks did nothing to help her, but it may have facilitated a sexual assault.

My impression is that Ron Hendry formed his opinion on the bra clasp from looking at pictures of it, rather than from seeing how easy or difficult it would be to actually tear that part of the bra. Observable details are one thing, but whether something can be done in practice is another question. Having said that, I'd also be interested to see a clasp that had been cut versus one that had been torn off in order to make a comparison.

It would be a useful experiment.

 

[Fine]

The Monster of Perugia - The Framing of Amanda Knox
Mark Waturbury

Now available on Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Perugia-Framing-Amanda-ebook/dp/B004KZPJZC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1296090557&sr=1-1

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_401664d40c7d486472.jpg[/qimg]

______________________

So, that's something else we can all agree on.........Doug Preston's description that this is an "ultimately infuriating book."

 

[Kaosium]

Kaosium

Agree the Italian jurisprudence is different.

I find it extraordinary that someone can be found guilty sentenced then is given two further attempts to prove their innocence, automatically! In addition, even if they lose all their appeals and their conviction and sentenced are confirmed they receive, here’s that word again, automatic reductions in their sentence for good behaviour whilst in prison!

I think it's a dysfunctional system personally. I suspect they try to paper over that with well-intentioned reforms that merely expose it to further hazards. 'The Law of Unintended Consequences.'

Don't think I'm delighted with our own though:

"Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game."

Plus we have how many lawyers in proportion to the rest of the world? Like maggots feeding off a corpse!

And where are the victim’s rights in all of the above? How does the victim or their family piece their lives back together again?

Exactly, it just gets drawn out forever. It's been three years now, and what do we have? Two innocent people in jail, the real murderer looking to get out by about the time he's thirty, and the victim's family unable to rest.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

contested areas

Haildes1

Okay I assume the highlighted section is the focus of your post.

Hopefully we can agree that shifting alibis are contested by both sides just as much of the evidence is, can we agree the contention exists between those who believe in Amanda and Raffaele innocence and those who do not? In addition, there is contention of the whereabouts on the night Meredith was murdered none of these are disagreement that will be resolved in the appeal.

You and others may not agree with Mr Kercher’s views of the case but this is not demonization, far from it in my opinion given that his daughter was tortured stabbed and left to die a slow painful death for no apparent reason! Imagine the pain of recalling the detailed brutal death of your child then magnify it. National news in Italy, Pan European then international news, multiplied by the years of people pouring over the minutia of her murder, that is context Mr and Mrs Kercher will have to live with for the rest of their lives, Meredith will never coming home.

I completely agree with Mr Wilkes, let’s leave the Kercher family alone.

CoulsdonUK,

The point of these three threads is to test the quality of the case. All of the areas you mentioned (innocence vs. guilt, how much did their alibis change, and where they were) are indeed contested. It is my hope that some of them may be resolved by the appeal. Mr. Kercher is not alone in his view of the case, and it is better to discuss the viewpoints independently of exactly who said them. I would not wish any sort of further harm or pain on him or his family. They have suffered a tragedy the depths of which the rest of us can only attempt to fathom.

post script
Demonization was never my choice of words, and I should have clarified that it is not an apt description of the family's actions, in my view. I put the Kercher's in roughly the same category as Stacy Kuykendall, former wife of Cameron Todd Willingham. Both have had to suffer through no fault of their own.

 

[CDHost]

However that looks like Hayden playing Hayden, nothing like what I've seen of Amanda.

I agree, I guess my expectations are low because, well, this is Lifetime. But they do pretty good made for television movies. They did a good Brandon Teena, which was good but nothing like "Boys don't cry".

I thought it was a weird casting choice, but I've gotten used to it from the stills. Hayden is too conventionally pretty, Amanda is damn cute but .... On the other hand Amanda's best feature by far is her eyes, they are absolutely haunting; and Hayden's eyes are just vacuous. Also I can't picture Hayden pulling off Amanda's quirky:

Kristian Stewart (think her Joan Jett more than Brenda) would have been amazing as Amanda. Of course the actress who Amanda would probably most want is also perfect:

Hopefully Emma Watson goes for it when they do the upcoming feature film... Emma has the brains too, and she wants controversial.

 

[Onofarar]

John Kercher hasn't been shy about announcing his belief in the ludicrous Massei report, dodgy witnesses, contradictions, illogical leaps of faith and cherrypicking evidence notwithstanding.

It all boils down to money. The Kerchers and Maresca have a big investment in Amanda and Raffaele being found guilty, but mainly Raffaele. He's worth 2 million euros in his own right, and they want it. Hence the opposition to opening up the knife, or anything else aimed at getting to the truth of this case.

Totally agree.
I went thru four years of hell as co-executor of my wife's aunt's estate. Some (but not all fortunately) heirs in the guise of being concerned for what the deceased aunt would want (in addition to the clear instructions in her will) really wanted their money and they wanted it now. From the experience I adopted the following adage:
"Its never about the money EXCEPT its ALWAYS about the money"
Needless to say I lost a lot of my faith in my fellow man (and woman)
Maybe that experience is why Amanda's naivete resonates with me.

 

[CDHost]

CDHost

An emotive post for sure.

May I suggest this; follow the appeal see what evidence is produced try to objectively determine what that may mean in the context of the appeal process. Worst case scenario for Amanda and Raffaele is they walk out of prison in 10 or 12 years probably less, whilst successive generations of the Kercher family visit Meredith’s grave.

Scarred lives verse’s no life.

No worst case scenario is they die in prison, which happens quite frequently. The sentence could get extended. And even if not I don't see how you are getting worst case is 10-12.

Given the choice between being in a grave or being in a cell for a quarter century, it ain't even a tough choice. Anyway I want to wrap this up, we've gone far afield.

Your original claim was that the Amanda's defense should not explore the sexual aspects of the murder and the illogic in the prosecution's case out of respect for the Kercher's in that they didn't want the case discussed. I think its been shown that:

a) They most certainly did want the case discussed when the discussion was being used to demonize Amanda and Raffaele. They actively supported a government led propaganda campaign which involved extensive discussion of the sexual aspects of this crime. They object merely to the defense doing the same.

b) To a limited extent they themselves feed the frenzy.

I certainly feel bad for the Kercher's. Meredith is dead. Nothing can be done to fix their situation. Their desire for revenge is completely understandable and justified.

The question now is whether to deliberately destroy all, one or none of the other 3 kids that Mignini wants destroyed. And if saving a few lives requires that John Kercher not get his wish that Mignini/Massei's theories, including sexual theories, be shown for how silly they are, I'm OK with that. I'm not willing to kill (even effectively) people so that people who were wronged in some other way, aren't offended.

 

[Onofarar]

No he hasn't. Like AK and RS he is considered innocent until his appeals are concluded.

Try reading all the posts Alt+F4 - Nails was pointing out to Coulsdon a flaw in his argument that AK and RS are in jail during their appeals and Mignini is not.

 

[CDHost]

Haildes1
I completely agree with Mr Wilkes, let’s leave the Kercher family alone.

You do remember you are the one who introduced them to this thread yesterday? You have been the one driving the Kercher conversation. I think we'd all like to leave them out of it. But that means leaving them out of it, completely not a the Kercher's get to veto the defense by playing the "think about the family" card anytime we start treating Meredith a normal murder victim.

 

[Onofarar]

AK and RS are convicted murderers, on appeal. I will continue to refer to them that way. Sick, depraved murderers at that.

Nice of you to clarify your double standard.

 

[Kaosium]

Haildes1

You and others may not agree with Mr Kercher’s views of the case but this is not demonization, far from it in my opinion given that his daughter was tortured stabbed and left to die a slow painful death for no apparent reason! Imagine the pain of recalling the detailed brutal death of your child then magnify it. National news in Italy, Pan European then international news, multiplied by the years of people pouring over the minutia of her murder, that is context Mr and Mrs Kercher will have to live with for the rest of their lives, Meredith will never coming home.

I completely agree with Mr Wilkes, let’s leave the Kercher family alone.

What I keep in mind is just exactly where Mr. Kercher would be getting his information. That would be Maresca and Col Garafano who have either already profited off this case or stand to. Add that to the Italian court finding them guilty and he's surrounded by elements telling him that Amanda and Raffaele are guilty, and no doubt infuriated it's always in the news.

So what the hell would people expect him to think?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

John Kercher hasn't been shy about announcing his belief in the ludicrous Massei report, dodgy witnesses, contradictions, illogical leaps of faith and cherrypicking evidence notwithstanding.

It all boils down to money. The Kerchers and Maresca have a big investment in Amanda and Raffaele being found guilty, but mainly Raffaele. He's worth 2 million euros in his own right, and they want it. Hence the opposition to opening up the knife, or anything else aimed at getting to the truth of this case.

You think its all abput money for the Kerchers? My God....

 

[Mary_H]

All you have to do is start with the incompetence, which I actually think was in part due to unfortunate circumstance of them seeming to have 'evidence' of Amanda and Patrick at the murder site.....<snip>

The rest of them? In for a penny, in for a pound. No one was checking any of this stuff out, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito had been found guilty by the paparazzi and tabloids thus there's probably many of those cops--perhaps even all the ones who lied--who believed she was guilty and they just 'helped' it along to punish the Monster, Foxy Knoxy and her attendant boytoys. They 'knew' they wouldn't get caught if they did anything, hell they all got medals for doing such a fine job instead! The court? It rubber-stamped just about everything due to perjuries, and the conditions created by the media which made everyone sure they were guilty somehow, even if the case presented had obvious holes in it. That is why when reading the Massei Report and how it was compiled, most come to the conclusion it's closer to proving innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than guilt.

That's how you can end up where ...Every cop is a criminal, and alllllll the sinners saints! To end this tale, just call me Kaosium...

Excellent summary, Kaosium.

 

[Onofarar]

All you have to do is start with the incompetence, which I actually think was in part due to unfortunate circumstance of them seeming to have 'evidence' of Amanda and Patrick at the murder site. The kinky black hair, (that never showed up in evidence) the pure coincidence of Patrick changing his SIMS card the day of the murder causing them to think he was 'lying' about his whereabouts that day, the video they had from the CCTV camera which caused them to think it was Amanda, with the final 'confirmation' of a 'smoked' college student who probably agreed with police their version of events of a night he was also stoned on hash was likely correct.

Thus they take Amanda into that little room and put the screws to her and several hours later they get a 'confession' that she was at the scene. In their triumphalism they overlooked the fact Amanda's statement is pure gibberish, but caught in the throes of confirmation bias they think they've solved the murder! They take Raffaele's shoes and notice a similarity between his treads and Rudy's shoeprints at the murder site, and that's just further evidence in their minds that they're on the right track. As the forensics come in they continue to see what they want to see, being at this point they think they have a 'confession' and all this 'evidence' so their bizarre theory must actually be true! After all, they've found 'evidence' of it everywhere now!

The 'murder weapon' that never left Raffaele's drawer is just the icing on the cake, Stefanoni finds Amanda's DNA on the handle from cooking with it, and expends extra effort looking and lo and behold either due to bizarre transfer or contamination she 'finds' Meredith's DNA on the blade, and to go with all the rest of the 'evidence' above--which you'll note is all going to turn out to be bogus--this must be absolute proof. The fact the whole idea of it being the murder weapon is absurd due to where they found it, the fact it doesn't match the outline left on the bed or at least one and probably two of the three major wounds is lost because they have captured cretins capable of any monstrosity, even celebrating their 'kill' by dining with the knife they killed with.

This in part is due to the fact that shortly after the arrests, in which they make a huge display of themselves, it is announced that Patrick, Raffaele and Amanda all sexually assaulted Meredith and killed her. You can see that 'announcement' in the Fox/Times compilation piece that's been posted a few times, one place I know you can find it is around page 400 of the last thread. As you can imagine, this announcement drew the sleaze merchants like flies to offal, who then took this and extrapolated beyond reality and started the mythology of 'Foxy Knoxy,' as I suppose to them the pretty girl seemed the most marketable of the poor people caught up in this tragedy of errors.

Remember, they took this nonsense into one court and got permission to pursue the prosecution of Amanda, Raffaele and Patrick as the killers of Meredith Kercher. Thus we know that incompetence led to the unjust imprisoning and eventual attempt to prosecute an innocent man in this debacle. It was just Patrick's good fortune that Rudy Guede was caught, which caused them to re-evaluate at least that part of their absurd fantasy, but in the end I guess they'd convinced themselves of the guilt of the other two and continued on, even once the shoeprints were revealed to be a mindless confirmation bias error on the part of police.

At this point I think things start to become awfully suspicious. When Raffaele's family reveals that the shoeprint doesn't actually match, the next day they rush out to the murder site, where Dan-O has pointed out a number of times there's something fishy about the 'containment' of the site from the videos. They 'find' the bra clasp that can clearly be seen in the the videos of the initial sweep of the murder site, yet now it has mysteriously migrated and we see it being passed around by the forensics team like it was a joint at a Pink Floyd concert and put back on the floor. This is also when the luminol footprints are revealed, and will be presented in court as probably being blood, until it is revealed that they did indeed do confirmation tests for blood that came out negative, but not until the damage had been done in the case against Raffaele and Amanda.

Now, as for the witnesses. That's easy: pure John Edward. Instead of 'I'm getting an 'M'...' we instead have 'Do we have a bleach receipt?' You see they needed a clean-up, as without one the odds that Raffaele and Amanda could have been physically involved in that room killing Meredith are remote even with that 'DNA evidence.' However, that clean-up couldn't have occurred and left no traces of the clean-up as well as Raffaele and Amanda, while leaving intact all the mess Rudy made, especially with all the footprints. So they eventually had to drop it, though Mignini insisted on it throughout from what I recall, but this was one of the few instances he didn't get his way in that court.

However, eventually Quintavalle, after being prodded by a local journalist, 'came forward' to regale the police with his story of Amanda lurking about his bleach the morning after the murder. At this point the prosecution knows there was no bleach clean-up, they know Raffaele had two bottles of bleach at his house anyway, and that they'd questioned him shortly after the murder and the contemporaneous records of the officer involved indicate he'd seen nothing of the sort--but they use him anyway! The two other people with him at the time deny he'd seen anything of the sort, but the court accepts it anyway.

Then we have the scream. If you go back and look at that Fox/Times compilation piece you'll see they had 'reports' of a scream at 1 AM or so the night of the murder, which is announced before they've calculated a time of death. So instead here we have from John Edward 'Do we have a scream?' and eventually the old lady is trotted out and as I recall the time of her scream is fixed by estimating her bladder capacity, which is awfully convenient as Curatolo's rambling story goes and gives Amanda and Raffaele an 'alibi' for the latest scientifically possible time of the murder, so Mignini has to extend the 'time of death' an hour in his closing remarks.

Which brings us to Curatolo...where do we start? The fact his story as noted above makes no sense as he has Raffaele and Amanda just loitering around in the basketball court on that cold November night for over an hour instead of getting trashed like they were supposedly doing, or the fact he's testified in three murder trials in the past four years at this point, and we now find out the cops had photographic evidence of him dealing heroin? Or is it the fact his story specifically includes disco buses that weren't running the night of the murder?

Did you ever look into Mignini? His history in the Monster of Florence case? I'm not talking about the weird satanic cult stuff he bought into in that instance, but his 'partner' in that debacle, his good friend who was busted along with him for abuse of power. I posted a link to Lionking a few pages back that includes a site named The Ridiculous Case Against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, and I'm pretty damn sure it's there that if you go looking for information about Mignini you'll find that one of his friend's favorite tricks was to round up the vulnerable people in society, those that might be amicable to 'helping' the police out with testimony in tough cases.

They didn't invent this trick, if you look into you'll find Jim Garrison did the same thing prosecuting Clay Shaw. It just so happens that if you want to badly enough if you can find 'witnesses' to anything in a big murder trial, which is why honest police often spend more time discrediting the people that come forward than accepting their testimony--because most of them want to make sure the right people get prosecuted.

Why would they want to do this? What would make them follow through on this absurd miscarriage of justice? There's probably several reasons, but the main ones are some of them--despite all this--came to the conclusion they had to be correct in their theory, they just couldn't assemble the right proof. Giobbi admitting that they think just by judging behavior they can presume guilt is an admission of this. They thought the hippy-dippy chick from Seattle was acting funny and that was thus 'evidence' of her guilt.

Another huge factor was this case caused such a firestorm of publicity due to its nature, a monster was created: Foxy Knoxy. The police soon learned any little tidbit of trash would be broadcast all throughout Italy, and through the complicity of the British tabloids and others that picked this up, eventually the four corners of the earth. Googling around I found stories from places like Pakistan and Japan that became interested in this trial! Thus, knowing they had a marginal case they were able to leak recorded conversations, dubious indications of 'suspicions,' and other bilge and create the conditions where so many things that were not true became fixed in people's minds as 'evidence' of guilt, both to the people of Perugia and the majority of people following the case elsewhere. Those that disputed it were dismissed as friends or family members of Amanda or Raffaele.

The police and prosecution eventually figured out they could get away with just about anything, which is the only explanation for Monica Napoleoni going into that courtroom and lying through her teeth about the whole interrogation. She said things provably false, but which wouldn't come up in the trial as the 'witness statement' had been thrown out by the Italian Supreme Court. Thus her account simply pretends it didn't happen! She and her two co-perjurers pretend that Amanda's interrogation is just a nice little chick-chat where Amanda, who wasn't even invited to the interrogation, breaks down when going through her cellphone and 'accuses' Patrick of the crime. Days later Giobbi refutes part of that story, not long afterward they file the calunnia charge on Amanda revealing there were twelve officers involved in the interrogation. No one really notices, after all the 'story' was 'Foxy Knoxy gets hers!'

The rest of them? In for a penny, in for a pound. No one was checking any of this stuff out, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito had been found guilty by the paparazzi and tabloids thus there's probably many of those cops--perhaps even all the ones who lied--who believed she was guilty and they just 'helped' it along to punish the Monster, Foxy Knoxy and her attendant boytoys. They 'knew' they wouldn't get caught if they did anything, hell they all got medals for doing such a fine job instead! The court? It rubber-stamped just about everything due to perjuries, and the conditions created by the media which made everyone sure they were guilty somehow, even if the case presented had obvious holes in it. That is why when reading the Massei Report and how it was compiled, most come to the conclusion it's closer to proving innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than guilt.

That's how you can end up where ...Every cop is a criminal, and alllllll the sinners saints! To end this tale, just call me Kaosium...

If there was a Pulitzer Prize for best blog - I would nominate this one.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

So Filomena checked Meredith's door everytime she left? That sounds creepy.
There was also glass under her clothes. How is that possible if Filomena didn't touch anything in her room.

He did drop the ball on not weighing the body. However, your saying Dr. Lalli didn't tie the small intestine at various points. Yet the prosecution witness claiming this, didn't even watch the autopsy. So you have speculation by a prosecution witness on something he never witnessed. Why couldn't the prosecution produce a witness that could testify to this after watching the autopsy video?

Chris, your not understanding what I am saying here, the list was just a small example of some of the things I've heard FOAKers say, that list though, can only be made by Foakers, and not by any one of them alone, one could start it but others have to add to it. In no way am I saying I believe any single one of them but even I will admit not all of them could be true either.

 

[Kaosium]

I thought it was a weird casting choice, but I've gotten used to it from the stills. Hayden is too conventionally pretty, Amanda is damn cute but .... On the other hand Amanda's best feature by far is her eyes, they are absolutely haunting; and Hayden's eyes are just vacuous. Also I can't picture Hayden pulling off Amanda's quirky:

The odd thing I noticed about all the pictures I've seen of her is she seems to look like a different girl in just about every each one! Her hair seems to change color too! How does she do that? In that top one you posted she looks like Evangeline Lilly from "Lost."

Actually I was referring more to Hayden's demeanor, it didn't seem anything like what I've seen in clips of Amanda, more like her character on "Heroes." It was like there wasn't any attempt to actually 'act' the part.

Hopefully Emma Watson goes for it when they do the upcoming feature film... Emma has the brains too, and she wants controversial.

Truthfully I don't keep track of young actresses well enough to make a suggestion. I saw the first Harry Potter movie just to see what the fuss was all about and I will admit that outside Alan Rickman's role I thought the little girl was the most engaging character, I thought she was hilarious, I guess she's all grown up now.