I would agree that your logic is suspicious.
You are starting with a premis, specifically the second statement, that is not generally accepted. The third statement is only valid if the premis is valid so the forth statement is jumping to a conclusion that is not supported.
...I'm talking about the police investigation. How they got from A to B. It doesn't matter what happened later in court: that is irrelevant here. As cited
stilicho, Amanda placed herself at the crime scene and claimed Patrick was the killer. The police now had two contradictory stories. Now if you read what I wrote carefully I concede the possibility her statement was coerced. As you point out the statement was thrown out of court. But we are talking about the initial investigation here: and if you forget for a minute we are talking about the Amanda Knox case and all the baggage that goes with it and look at what the police had to work with, you will see that what I have said is logically valid.
You are new to this board so you may not be aware that when links are posted the forum will underline the link to highlight it for the readers. Posters will offer use this feature to provide links inline with the text so as not to break the flow with long "http://www... " links
I am not new to these boards. I signed up to these boards in January 2003. I have been here four years longer than you. I have been here longer than nearly every single participant in this thread. Since you appear to be quite new to this board, I thought I would point out that it is very bad form to use the quote box to quote somebody and to change the context of their quote. I didn't write a list, yet you quoted me as having made one.
Kaosium said:
Your answer didn't address his question, in part because it appeared you made erroneous assumptions regarding the 'admission.' That's why I suggested you read what that 'admission' amounted to. Also it appeared the main thrust of his question was something that has puzzled me for a long time regarding those who think her guilty: how did they go from that 'confession' of covering her ears in the kitchen to having her hold down Meredith whilst Patrick raped and murdered her without a single iota of evidence she was at the scene? The forensics wouldn't be completed for another week or two, yet they've already assigned her a 'role' in the killing of Meredith based on...what?
They based it on magic. Thats how police departments work, didn't you know? All around the world police departments stare into crystal balls, and a genie pops up and gives them the answer!
Or, maybe, you know, the police did what police do, and investigated the crime. They looked at the evidence, and tried different scenerios to see how they fit. You may disagree with the approach the police had, but it is the same approach nearly every single police department uses when investigating a crime. Again: you have leaped from the scenerio we were discussing: how the police got from A to B, to how did those who think she was guilty got from A to B. It is very difficult to have a conversation when we are always talking about different things.
Once the contamination/secondary transfer/imagination/fabrication was found on the 'murder knife' they then elevated her role to rendering the killing blow, yet still they had zero traces of her at the scene.
She had placed herself at the crime scene. Remember: the fact that her statement was later thrown out of court has no bearing on the knowledge the police had at the time she made it. I have acknowledged several times that the confession may have been coerced. We are simply talking about how the police got from A to B. You are viewing this with nearly four years of hindsight. At the time the police were working the clues as they discovered them.
The 'murder knife' was found in Raffaele's drawer where it was for the entirety of the tragic event. Once Rudy was traded for Patrick, Amanda became the impetus of the event, again with no evidence presented to back that theory. What I do not understand is how those who think her guilty can swallow these absurd leaps of logic without question. I know I couldn't, and I initially thought her likely to be guilty myself--after all she'd been convicted!
When I started following this case, I thought that Amanda was innocent. After having read the "cartwheels" thread, I am firmly convinced she is guilty. Isn't it amazing how two people can look at the very same facts and come to different conclusions!
Her testimony, her 'gift' note, her bugged conversations with her mother, and--most importantly--that they arrested Patrick on the basis of those ridiculous 'statements.' Read them and tell me that is the sort of 'evidence' one arrests a man on and keeps them in prison for two weeks despite people coming forward within days to corroborate his alibi.
Well, here is the statement again for everyone to read:
wish to relate spontaneously what happened because these events have deeply bothered me and I am really afraid of Patrick, the African boy who owns the pub called “Le Chic” located in Via Alessi where I work periodically. I met him in the evening of November 1st 2007, after sending him a reply message saying “I will see you”. We met soon after at about 21.00 at the basketball court of Piazza Grimana. We went to my apartment in Via della Pergola n. 7. I do not clearly remember if Meredith was already at home or if she came later, what I can say is that Patrick and Meredith went into Meredith’s room, while I think I stayed in the kitchen. I cannot remember how long they stayed together in the room but I can only say that at a certain point I heard Meredith screaming and as I was scared I plugged up my hears. Then I do not remember anything, I am very confused. I do not remember if Meredith was screaming and if I heard some thuds too because I was upset, but I imagined what could have happened.-
Well holy crap.
Amanda just admitted to being at the crime scene and claimed Patrick was the killer!
By what basis do you claim that this is a "ridiculous 'statements?" Why on earth, if you were the police, would you dismiss this statement? You have already conceded that you believe if the police coerced Amanda they did it unintentionally. So how on earth could you dismiss this statement, and why wouldn't you act on it as soon as possible?
was trying to subtly remind you of something: police conducting interrogations are well aware the subject may attempt to lie and place blame elsewhere. They don't just 'go away' because the suspect has decided to tell them someone else did it, especially when they are the process of attempting to get a confession from them. They have to be convinced that they are getting the truth from who they are interrogating, they don't just start taking orders on whom to arrest on the basis of a suspect's initial admission.
I do my best to make sure everything I say is as true and as accurate as possible. When you start to say I am suggesting something, it is much much easier to rely on what I actually said. If I have said anything that you can prove to be incorrect I will happily concede.
Would a citation do any good? You're asking for common knowledge of the case. In response to your last post I dug up one and offered easy instructions on how to find other official information that would have been helpful to your understanding of the things you were posting about, and it appears you didn't bother to read any of them.
There is no such thing as common knowledge of this case. On this very board alone there are three massive threads with thousands of posts and hundreds of links. Sometimes a request for a cite is just a request for a cite. If I were to ask you to provide me a list of all things that are "common knowledge" for this case, how long would that list be? If I asked
stilicho what was common knowledge of the case, do you think his list would be the same or different to you?
understand that, which is why I not only honored your request I told you where you could find additional information relevant to what you were posting about, and the points I was making. I didn't actually expect you to read all of her testimony before posting again, but I wished you to have it handy. I was kinda expecting you to read the two statements though, like I said, click on page 5 and scroll down until you see all the gray and there they'll be.
I appreciate that and apologize for how I came across. I may have come off snarkier than I intended. Had a bad morning down under...
Having said that, I reserve the right to use snark later on in this post!
t was about a year between the time Amanda was arrested and the beginning of her trial. The two statements and the interrogation were thrown out by the Italian Supreme Court as they were not obtained in compliance with the law. Thus they could not be admitted into court, however Patrick Lumumba filed a calunnia charge against Knox and that trial ran concurrently which led to Amanda taking the stand about the interrogation in the summer of '09. Thus by the time it came up it had been eighteen months since her arrest and during that time the paparazzi and tabloids, seeded by police leaks, turned her into 'Foxy Knoxy' and that's all they talked about for the most part.
The 'case closed' statement I linked in the last post had all but been forgotten, and of course no one would actually know until the end of the trial that it turned out that much of what the police had claimed they had as evidence didn't actually exist. Early in the thread a list was made of all the mistakes/lies fed to the press by the police.
I would actually love to see the primary source here. I do appreciate you linking to the Mirror article: but looking at some of the quotes from other participants it seems apparent that many of them have been translated, so I would love to see the original statement in context. But no matter.
ncidentally, if you wish only to converse with PhantomWolf perhaps you should do so by PM. If you post publicly evil creatures such as myself might pounce on your innocent post and reply to it, whether you wish them to or not, whether you ask them to or not. No one gets immunity from the other sinister denizens of the forum just because they replied to a particular person's post.
I have no problems at all with people commenting on my posts: I've been debating hot topics on the internet since 1999. However my post addressed a very specific circumstance: how the police got from A to B. If you want to argue C thats fine, but I see nothing wrong in pointing out that what you have said is irrelevant to my post. Now having said that, again I appreciate you responding, I hope you have a better idea of where I'm coming from now, and apologize for the snark.
bri1 said:
I think you've missed PhantomWolf's point which I thought was this:
If the police approached this investigation with an attitude of 'let's find out the truth, and make sure that anyone involved is charged appropriately for their involvement' (as opposed to 'let's see how many charges we can pin on anyone, no matter how they were involved and what they actually did') then the jump from AK being scared and confused and covering her ears in another room and sufferiong amnesia as a result of her trauma to charging her with being the ringleader of the crime is a big one which would need to be explained.
But the police didn't act as you say, and IMHO did their best to do as you wished.
Obviously, there are laws in Italy which make it illegal not to help someone in danger, but whether someone would be charged in that kind of instance, would depend, one would think, on how reasonable it was for them not to try and help (i.e. would trying to help place the individual in significant danger themselves, was this made explicit by some kind of threat or intimidation by the perpertrator). So what evidence did the police have that could make them think that if she had been there as described in the statements made on 5th/6th, then it wasn't under these circumstances?
The police really didn't know what had happened. Any police department rarely has 100% knowledge. It is a battle to put together the truth from fragments of information. In this case the police were initially told by Amanda she wasn't at the crime scene. She then told them that she was. This in itself is enough cause for suspicion, regardless of whether or not the statements she made were later thrown out of court.
The only answer to this relates to the hypothetical that I started this post with- the police didn't give two hoots about what actually happened in the cottage that night.
Aha! Conspiracy! We are in the right forum. What evidence do you have that the police didn't give two hoots about what actually happened in the cottage that night? Was it only this crime they didn't care about? Do you have any other evidence that this particular police department doesn't give a hoot about any other particular crime?
Their attitude was 'let's see how many charges we can pin on anyone, no matter how they were involved and what they actually did'.
Alas, this isn't what is shown by what the police actually did, and what the Motivations Report spells out. But you are free to keep on believing what you believe.
This displays a clear bias toward their own agenda (making charges), instead of what was in everyone's interests- namely truth and justice.
What a strange statement. Again, you've provided no evidence for any of this, but you can hold whatever opinion you like.
It's a bit rich calling this a 'lie' that baldly, then mentioning science in the same paragraph isn't it? Internalised false confessions are recognised and documented by science. According to the a lot of the literature (much of it discussed in this thread and the Continuation thread) there are certain vulnerabilities that can result in these kinds of 'confessions' and Amanda at that particular moment in time, displayed many of them.
C'mon, read the literature- it's psychology, not rocket science!
Now this is funny. After a rant where you complain about the police being biased towards their own agenda and ignoring evidence you proceed to bring up Internalized False Confessions. Now how long have IFC been in vogue here at Randi, about a month? Now if Amanda's lawyers present evidence in court for this I'll take notice: however I am not going to take the analysis of a bunch of internet sleuths trying to make complex psychological evaluations of someone sitting in a prison on the other side of the world seriously. And I suggest you look up the meaning of the phrase "its not rocket science."
And with that I believe I have used up my allotted ten posts to Randi a year! Back to real life and the occasional lurking...
