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Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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CoulsdonUK,

No, that is not even close to what I said or meant. I do think it is worth pointing out the police, in great likelyhood, had Raffaele in mind as a suspect before they brought him in on 5 November. In other words, they did not believe what he first told them. He might have feared that the police would not believe him still, and it is clear that he found his arrest and incarceration to be traumatic. As for Rudi, I think he had been in Italy since he was five years old, so it is not as if he were a stranger in Perugia. MOO.
Hi halides1, and others,
If a guy is a murderer, why wouldn't he immediately lawyer up?
If a guy is a murderer, why would he continuously go to the police station of his own free will? Wouldn't he be suspicious when the police kept asking too many questions?
If a guy is a murderer, why, after spending the previous 4 days dealing with the cops and answering their questions, would he even answer a phone call at 10:00pm on a Monday night while having dinner with his new girlfriend at a friends apartment. Especially after smoking out and getting high?

The cops called to tell Raffaele to come on down, your the next person we want to talk to, once again, as we investigate the brutal, bloody murder of your new girlfriend's housemate and friend. Edgardo Giobbi, from the violent crime squad in Rome, was mathematically sure that he gave the order to bring both students in. "At that moment our attention was on Amanda and Raffaele. I decided that we needed to hear them together in order to study their reactions".

In some wierd twist of fate, though it was late, Raffaele, after asking if he could finish eating dinner, agreed to come back in to the Questura, once again. And he did so, as always, without a lawyer.

Why not ask the cops to do it in the morning?

Let's see, you helped kill a girl.
The cops are harrassing you. They call you late at night to come on down. And that doesn't send alarm bells a-ringin' in your head?!?
What more could they ask that couldn't be asked in the morning?
Ask yourself this, please, for the sake of discussion,
Is this is a sign of a man guilty of murder?

When he came to the police station, Raffaele brought along Amanda, who, after her housemate, -(who slept mere feet/meters from her), was brutally stabbed to her death, surely must have beeen frightened to be alone. She also did not have another place to stay. So what should she have done. Go and hang out at Raf's place by herself? Stay at Raf's friends apartment? I surely would not thinks so, especially with a cold-blooded murder on the loose!

So Raffaele show's up at the Questura late at night.
He didn't call a lawyer before he arrived. Why not? Wasn't he in the least bit suspicious of having been summoned late at night to come back in.
Wouldn't you be if you had done anything vicious or destructive?
Raffaele, was, by all accounts, a friggin' NERD. A naive nerd! Not some street hardended criminal!
Did Raffele even call his Father, -(whom he spoke to a few times every day), to tell him he was summoned, once again, to the Questura?

The cops have called him/them in "hear them together in order to study their reactions".
But for some reason they decided not to audio tape this interview. Nor do they even video tape it, though when it's Amanda's turn, -(who did not speak Italian as her native 1st language), they must have remembered, from all of the previous interviews with her, that this would present a problem when tryin' to undertand what the heck she means as she answered their questions...

Once more, I have to ask:
Is this what a man guilty of murder, who also allegedly tried to clean up his participation in a bloody murder, would do?...
 
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You are wrong to say that I made any claim, I only asked for evidence that the claim was true, asking that I should prove it did not happen is an appeal to ignorance.

I haven't been following this thread all that closely, so maybe I'm wrong. But I seem to recall Halides referencing two sources for his claim. You disagreed with those sources, but without anything to back it up with. I'm not getting your logic. It seems like you simply don't want to believe what has been claimed and cited by others.
 
let's deal with one issue at a time

You are wrong to say that I made any claim, I only asked for evidence that the claim was true, asking that I should prove it did not happen is an appeal to ignorance.

odeed,

Your statement above is false. In message 16078 you wrote, "Yes, I believe the that Dempsey's story of Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba being paraded/driven around Perugia on the 6th November to be false." That is not the same as asking for evidence; it is your claim. What is your evidence?
 
Italy brought us Enrico Fermi, Galileo Galilei, Guglielmo Marconi, Enzo Ferrari, Justinian and others. Now they bring us the legendary Massi who deduced that Amanda and Guede colluded because Amanda was accustomed to the consumption of drugs.

From page 367 of the Massei translation:

Therefore it may be deduced that, accustomed to the consumption of drugs and the effects of the latter, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito participated actively in Rudy’s criminal acts aimed at overcoming Meredith’s resistance, subjugating her will and thus allowing Rudy to act out his lustful impulses; and this is considered to have happened because, for those [i.e. for people] who did not disdain the use of drugs (Amanda has stated that on that evening, before “making love”, they had consumed drugs watching films and reading comic books in which sexuality is accompanied by violence and by situations of fear, disregarding the concept of sexuality as an encounter of [two] persons moved by reciprocal and free emotion (see the comic books seized from Raffaele Sollecito and the statements […]

Does the entire reputation of the Roman empire rest on one man's prejudice against drug users?
 
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odeed,

Your statement above is false. In message 16078 you wrote, "Yes, I believe the that Dempsey's story of Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba being paraded/driven around Perugia on the 6th November to be false." That is not the same as asking for evidence; it is your claim. What is your evidence?

It is not a claim, it was an opinion (thus "I believe...") I made based on the evidence that was posted at the time by the poster I originally asked for evidence, which I went on to explain did not show the same thing he claimed.

I fail to see why it is a problem in trying to find out if this story is true or not by asking for evidence from those who repeat it, if there is no corroboratory evidence I will assume the story is false. You can be reassured that I do not intend to repeat this story when there is no evidence to support it.
 
I think the rational way for Raffaele to respond would have been to express relief the real murderer was finally caught.


Do you really have a rational for thinking that? Or are you just rationalizing to justify a continued belief in guilt.


Here was Rudy, unemployed, black, a drifter, caught while on the run, a polar opposite of himself, the very upstanding young son of a prominent Urologist preparing to graduate from university.


How much would Raffaele know about Rudy at the time he makes the statement?



Even with the shoe print and the knife he surely would have been hopeful this horrible misunderstanding would soon be cleared up with Rudy's arrest. If on the other hand he already knew Rudy had been there that night and Rudy knew Raffaele was too, he would be afraid, as he wrote he was IMO.


What has changed with the arrest of Rudy? They already knew about the bloody fingerprint that proved somebody else was there at the time of the murder and yet they were still holding Raffaele. Putting a name and face to the creator of the fingerprint does not in any way change the picture of who was at the cottage. Bringing Rudy in does however change the prospect that Rudy could try to shift the blame to Raffaele. That is something an anonymous suspect on the run could not have done.
 
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language barrier

So Raffaele show's up at the Questura late at night.
He didn't call a lawyer before he arrived. Why not? Wasn't he in the least bit suspicious of having been summoned late at night to come back in.
Wouldn't you be if you had done anything vicious or destructive?
Raffaele, was, by all accounts, a friggin' NERD. A naive nerd! Not some street hardended criminal!
Did Raffele even call his Father, -(whom he spoke to a few times every day), to tell him he was summoned, once again, to the Questura?

The cops have called him/them in "hear them together in order to study their reactions".
But for some reason they decided not to audio tape this interview. Nor do they even video tape it, though when it's Amanda's turn, -(who did not speak Italian as her native 1st language), they must have remembered, from all of the previous interviews with her, that this would present a problem when tryin' to undertand what the heck she means as she answered their questions...

Once more, I have to ask:
Is this what a man guilty of murder, who also allegedly tried to clean up his participation in a bloody murder, would do?...

RWVBWL,

Good questions and a good post.
 
... Raffaele, after asking if he could finish eating dinner, agreed to come back in to the Questura, once again. And he did so, as always, without a lawyer ...

Just a question here: Raffaele returned to the police station repeatedly, even late at night, without "lawyering up." What is the common Italian perception of lawyers and when to get one? In the U.S., we know/imagine from "CSI," "SVU" etc. that we need a lawyer if a police officer so much as says "Good morning, sir." How do they feel in Italy? Raffaele is a university student and the son of a doctor. He would have known how to get a lawyer if he thought he needed one, and his father certainly would have had some ideas about what to do. But would getting a lawyer have raised suspicions? Would that have been unusual in Italy, like announcing "I've got something to hide?" Would a lawyer have been permitted to sit with him and guide him during a "voluntary" interview? Could a lawyer have said "My client is done talking. You may only communicate through me . . ."? And if he had refused to come to the station "voluntarily," could the cops have dragged him out of his house in the middle of the night? And suppose Raffaele and/or Amanda had had the foresight to take their own tape recorders to their police interviews? Would that have been permitted? I have no doubt that Amanda and Raffaele were railroaded, but I think some of our discussion of what they coulda/shoulda done is based on our understanding of US/UK legal procedures. How do innocent (or guilty) people deal with the cops in Italy?
 
reticence

Bob001,

There is a crime roughly translated as "reticence," that Douglas Preston mentions with respect to the time that Mignini interviewed him. I am not sure whether it means an outright refusal to answer or answering in a way deemed insufficient.
 
Just a question here: Raffaele returned to the police station repeatedly, even late at night, without "lawyering up." What is the common Italian perception of lawyers and when to get one? In the U.S., we know/imagine from "CSI," "SVU" etc. that we need a lawyer if a police officer so much as says "Good morning, sir." How do they feel in Italy? Raffaele is a university student and the son of a doctor. He would have known how to get a lawyer if he thought he needed one, and his father certainly would have had some ideas about what to do. But would getting a lawyer have raised suspicions? Would that have been unusual in Italy, like announcing "I've got something to hide?" Would a lawyer have been permitted to sit with him and guide him during a "voluntary" interview? Could a lawyer have said "My client is done talking. You may only communicate through me . . ."? And if he had refused to come to the station "voluntarily," could the cops have dragged him out of his house in the middle of the night? And suppose Raffaele and/or Amanda had had the foresight to take their own tape recorders to their police interviews? Would that have been permitted? I have no doubt that Amanda and Raffaele were railroaded, but I think some of our discussion of what they coulda/shoulda done is based on our understanding of US/UK legal procedures. How do innocent (or guilty) people deal with the cops in Italy?

When I grew up, I never thought an adult could fail at anything or be immoral. Bad guys were bad. They were angry, wore black hats and stole things. Good guys were always competent, smart and moral.

I never was worried about ever being falsely accused of a crime or of not being believed by an adult. I would talk to the police and explain myself out of trouble.

Over the years, I learned more and more about adults and life. Now I believe that all adults are capable of evil even as they are basically good. Now I would NEVER trust a cop, lawyer or court for any competent decision.

I thought this cynical attitude came with the knowledge of increasing age, but I've seen some octogenarians that still think like I did when I was young.

I think Amanda and Raffaele thought as I did when I was young. I think now that they are mature beyond their years.
 
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I accept that it may not have been “what you said or meant”. Nonetheless, in the extract of Raffaele’s diary entry he is expressing fear or concern of what someone you all state he had never met would say “strange things”; I do not know the wider context of the extract what appears to be concluded by others is more than what is quoted.
He might have feared that the police would not believe him still, and it is clear that he found his arrest and incarceration to be traumatic.

That maybe true but he doesn’t state that, these are not my conclusions or my words but a quotation from Raffaele’s diary and he doesn’t make any of the statements that you and others are attributing to him.

As for Rudi, I think he had been in Italy since he was five years old, so it is not as if he were a stranger in Perugia. MOO.

It is fair to conclude that Raffaele’s and Guede’s lives would have been demonstrably different. Raffaele by all accounts comes from wealthy background, whereas Guede’s life experience of Italy was very different one of hustling for his rent allegedly selling drugs and break-in’s who was known to the police whilst the other a life in comparison of privilege, for sure their Perugian experiences would have been very different, is this fact in dispute?
 
Hi halides1, and others,
If a guy is a murderer, why wouldn't he immediately lawyer up?
If a guy is a murderer, why would he continuously go to the police station of his own free will? Wouldn't he be suspicious when the police kept asking too many questions?
If a guy is a murderer, why, after spending the previous 4 days dealing with the cops and answering their questions, would he even answer a phone call at 10:00pm on a Monday night while having dinner with his new girlfriend at a friends apartment. Especially after smoking out and getting high?

The cops called to tell Raffaele to come on down, your the next person we want to talk to, once again, as we investigate the brutal, bloody murder of your new girlfriend's housemate and friend. Edgardo Giobbi, from the violent crime squad in Rome, was mathematically sure that he gave the order to bring both students in. "At that moment our attention was on Amanda and Raffaele. I decided that we needed to hear them together in order to study their reactions".

In some wierd twist of fate, though it was late, Raffaele, after asking if he could finish eating dinner, agreed to come back in to the Questura, once again. And he did so, as always, without a lawyer.

Why not ask the cops to do it in the morning?

Let's see, you helped kill a girl.
The cops are harrassing you. They call you late at night to come on down. And that doesn't send alarm bells a-ringin' in your head?!?
What more could they ask that couldn't be asked in the morning?
Ask yourself this, please, for the sake of discussion,
Is this is a sign of a man guilty of murder?

When he came to the police station, Raffaele brought along Amanda, who, after her housemate, -(who slept mere feet/meters from her), was brutally stabbed to her death, surely must have beeen frightened to be alone. She also did not have another place to stay. So what should she have done. Go and hang out at Raf's place by herself? Stay at Raf's friends apartment? I surely would not thinks so, especially with a cold-blooded murder on the loose!

So Raffaele show's up at the Questura late at night.
He didn't call a lawyer before he arrived. Why not? Wasn't he in the least bit suspicious of having been summoned late at night to come back in.
Wouldn't you be if you had done anything vicious or destructive?
Raffaele, was, by all accounts, a friggin' NERD. A naive nerd! Not some street hardended criminal!
Did Raffele even call his Father, -(whom he spoke to a few times every day), to tell him he was summoned, once again, to the Questura?

The cops have called him/them in "hear them together in order to study their reactions".
But for some reason they decided not to audio tape this interview. Nor do they even video tape it, though when it's Amanda's turn, -(who did not speak Italian as her native 1st language), they must have remembered, from all of the previous interviews with her, that this would present a problem when tryin' to undertand what the heck she means as she answered their questions...

Once more, I have to ask:
Is this what a man guilty of murder, who also allegedly tried to clean up his participation in a bloody murder, would do?...
This is the quote attributed to Raffaele "Papa is relieved but I am afraid he may invent strange things". 12 words by my count and from those 12 words you conclude all of the above?

Are these words an accurate quote?

In his own words Raffaele expresses fear, not of the police but of Guede.
 
Do you really have a rational for thinking that? Or are you just rationalizing to justify a continued belief in guilt.

I stated my rationale, as did you. So they differ, surprise surprise. Your rationale has no greater validity than mine. We are both basing our opinions on our own expectation of human behavior in certain conditions, given the life experiences we have to date to inform that opinion.


How much would Raffaele know about Rudy at the time he makes the statement?

That he was a drifter, that he was an immigrant from the Ivory Coast, that he was black....everything the news had reported he likely knew.


What has changed with the arrest of Rudy? They already knew about the bloody fingerprint that proved somebody else was there at the time of the murder and yet they were still holding Raffaele.

They also surmised multiple attackers, so why let Raffaele go until they knew for sure he wasn't one of them.

Putting a name and face to the creator of the fingerprint does not in any way change the picture of who was at the cottage. Bringing Rudy in does however change the prospect that Rudy could try to shift the blame to Raffaele. That is something an anonymous suspect on the run could not have done.

Why would Raffaele believe Rudy would try to shift the blame to him instead of feeling relief as his father did? How many instances of something like this have ever happened in order for him to think this was de rigeur instead of the police now being able to sort it out and let him go?
 
evasive maneuvers

You are wrong to say that I made any claim, I only asked for evidence that the claim was true, asking that I should prove it did not happen is an appeal to ignorance.

odeed,

As I said before, I am not certain that the Daily Mail was wrong. However, they have gotten several things wrong in this case; therefore, their track record does not inspire perfect confidence. We will have to agree to disagree about whether you made a claim or not. However, I backed up my claim with a citation from the book, "Murder in Italy." I do not expect reporters or authors to witness everything about which they write. I expect that they do research, which may include interviewing people. I would expect that the cameraman witnessed more than what a few seconds of video showed. I never said that Elio Bertoldi wrote a story on this incident. I attempted to contact him, but he did not reply. Therefore, I have shown you evidence, but we cannot go any further. I cannot force you to accept the evidence; that is up to you to decide.

You are still evading my question: Do you ask all book authors or reporters for the names of their sources? Here is another: When you do ask a reporter for his or her sources, what do you conclude when the source wishes to remain anonymous? Yet the bigger problem is that you are trying to change the subject away from the real story, which is that ILE got way ahead of the facts of the case. This raises the possibility of confirmation bias in the forensics and other aspects of the investigation. ILE also behaved inappropriately when Amanda's picture was hung in a hallway near Dr. Giobbi's office within weeks of the arrest and nearly a year before formal changes were brought.
 
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I accept that it may not have been “what you said or meant”. Nonetheless, in the extract of Raffaele’s diary entry he is expressing fear or concern of what someone you all state he had never met would say “strange things”; I do not know the wider context of the extract what appears to be concluded by others is more than what is quoted.

That maybe true but he doesn’t state that, these are not my conclusions or my words but a quotation from Raffaele’s diary and he doesn’t make any of the statements that you and others are attributing to him.

This claim is in error. Nobody is attributing statements to Raffaele. I don't know where you got that idea.

We are disputing Sherlock's claim that it necessarily follows from Raffaele's concern about what Guede might say that Raffaele is guilty. We are suggesting plausible hypotheses for why an innocent Raffaele might be concerned about what Guede would say.

This is the quote attributed to Raffaele "Papa is relieved but I am afraid he may invent strange things". 12 words by my count and from those 12 words you conclude all of the above?

I urge you to make a greater effort to remain consistent, if you want to be perceived as a rational and impartial participant in this discussion.

You cannot swallow Sherlock's folk-psychological guesswork whole and then choke on equivalent guesswork from RWVBW. Either we can make up folk-psychological theories from our armchair and count them as evidence or we can't. (I tend to think we can't). If we can, both sides can do it equally.

Why would Raffaele believe Rudy would try to shift the blame to him instead of feeling relief as his father did? How many instances of something like this have ever happened in order for him to think this was de rigeur instead of the police now being able to sort it out and let him go?

We're not trying to prove Raffaele must have felt one way or another. To refute Sherlock's argument (which hardly needs a response anyway since it handwaves away all of the hard evidence in favour of psychological guesswork and is hence utterly irrational) we merely need to show that it's possible an innocent Raffaele might be concerned about what stories Guede might make up.

Why wouldn't a guilty Guede try to throw an innocent Raffaele under the bus to try to get a lesser sentence?
 
And no doubt you have these mind reading powers, perhaps all FOAKer's have them, I don't know, I'm not a FOAKer by any stretch, and I concede that you guys (and girls) may actually be right, though really highly unlikely, but common sense says 'NO - they are Guilty to some degree'.

Actually no, common sense says two college students probably didn't have anything to do with the raping and murdering of a known break-in artist. One needs to suspend disbelief initially to even contemplate such a thing, in the expectation that evidence will be produced to justify such a bizarre explanation for this crime. I suspect some have forgotten just how unusual this occurrence actually would be were it true, and have allowed a conviction in the first trial of the Italian system to dispel the inherent unlikelihood of the initial crime as prosecuted.

However I do understand the feeling that under all this smoke there must be something resembling fire. I got to the same point when reading through all this initially, how could everything be wrong? Then I realized something, that's exactly what you'd expect if they were gathering 'evidence' of innocent people. If they went to court they had to have something to offer to the court, and in the case of the innocent ones all of it is going to be bogus, misunderstood, or coincidence. That's a pretty neat description of what happens when you look closely at all the 'evidence' collected against Raffaele and Amanda.


Honestly, I would really like to know how many FOAKer's actually believe that they are guilty and are here just to argue because looking at all the facts of this case and how you guys (and girls) have to twist and distort so many of them to have it work into their favour is really unbelievable. Also, I really do not believe even the parents deep down inside believe they are innocent, and they have a lot more information on this crime than all you guys combined.

If they are innocent then everything is naturally twisted and distorted and needs to be 'untwisted' and put into context to be understood properly. If that process looks like it's being done in their 'favor' it's probably because it is but that's simply because it's necessary as a result of being applied mistakenly as evidence against them. If I were to tell a lot of lies about you, Sherlock, your correcting them might appear to be self-serving justification for each and every point, but it would also be the truth wouldn't it? It just so happens a lot of lies were told about Amanda and Raffaele, and that's in part why they were convicted.

I often have a similar reaction to as yours, except in the opposite direction: I wonder just how many of those who believe them guilty actually believe it and how many just like tweaking the passionate 'crusaders' for their cause or have some other interest. I have that thought sometimes because I've difficulty comprehending how someone who can parse a diary looking for 'suspicion' in a handful of words can overlook the blatant and pernicious police and prosecutor misconduct in this case, starting at the very beginning. Don't the lies about the interrogation and the missing tapes cause you to wonder at all?

That's where all this started, that's the reason they tried to put together a case against Raffaele and Amanda. It wasn't any legitimate evidence they found that caused them to arrest Raffaele and Amanda, it was the result of an overnight interrogation session which eventually produced two statements in Italian that said Amanda 'vaguely' and 'confusedly' 'remembered' Patrick killing Meredith. What does that have to do with the case eventually assembled against them? Nothing! Patrick didn't rape and murder Meredith, nothing assembled against any of the three as 'evidence' in the Court of Freedom survived the real trial:

Frank Sfarzo said:
First Patrick and then Amanda and Raffaele, they couldn’t have been more nailed, according to the information they were giving to us, and to the judges. There were plenty of clues and precise confirmations:

Amanda and Patrick made plans according to the famous sms. He changed his cellphone in order to destroy traces of the message. He approached Amanda, to keep her silent.
The cell network was placing Patrick at the basketball court, and not in the pub, where he said he was. A witness, indeed, confirmed the pub was closed. And there weren’t any bills before 10:30.
There was a black man hair in Meredith’s hands.

Amanda and Raffaele had called the 112 after the police arrived.
There was Raffaele’s shoe print in the room.
Amanda disposed of the sweatshirt she was wearing during the crime.
They had washed all their clothes with plenty of bleach in the washing machine, which was still spinning when the police surprised them.
Amanda was in a public laundry together with a Moroccan.
There was a bleach receipt.
A CCTV camera recorded Amanda...

They sure thought it was 'evidence' though, didn't they? They gathered all sorts of bogus items, misunderstandings and coincidence and took it into court and tried to make a case against all three. They were wrong then, just as they were wrong later. That's why it's so easy for some to see just exactly what happened in this case, they did the same thing over and they got the same result because Amanda and Raffaele never had anything to do with Rudy's crime! They were arrested because the police suspected Amanda of complicity with Patrick in the murder, and the forensics when completed should have borne that out--but they didn't! Instead they found massive indications of Rudy Guede at the scene and nothing of Raffaele or Amanda. Nothing!

Now, what are the odds Amanda and Raffaele could be arrested on the basis of totally untrue information in complicity with one 'assailant' and then actually be guilty (of anything at this point) of conspiring with another man when virtually everything points to Rudy committing the crime all by his lonesome? The only reason they were arrested was under a bizarre theory of the crime, when the mundane answer of a break-in gone bad screams itself from the rooftops it's time to start reclaiming your lost 'suspension of disbelief.' If you were to focus that nasty suspicious mind of yours on the ones doing the interrogating and the 'evidence' collecting you might actually find something truly suspicious in this matter outside incredulity that someone could fear the integrity of a rapist-murderer with his neck halfway in the noose.
 
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Have I seen the belief of guilt diminish in some over the last four months?
Or is it the banishment of the most profane?
Perhaps a little of both?
 
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