Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kaosium]

I think any family would do their upmost to help their son or brother. However, any help or assistance should be within the context of the law, if during the trial their attempts to help Raffaele are proven to have broken any laws then they should face the consequences of their actions. I don’t believe their sincere belief in Raffaele is innocent means they can do whatever it takes to get him released. It would appear that wiretapping or the degree of wiretapping in Meredith’s murder case is not unusual in Italy, I guess with its history of corruption, organised crime and fascism it’s not that surprising.

What did they actually do? Blaming them for angry words at such a bizarre charge strikes me as the height of absurdity itself. Filing charges on them is yet another cruelty inflicted upon innocents in this bungled 'investigation.' How many charges have actually been filed so far 'investigating' this crime? I've lost count, it's well over a dozen extra people at this point. Is there nothing that will shame the lynch mob screaming for vengeance? Is there no charge petty enough, even invading the home of the girl's parents to charge them with defamation for repeating to a British reporter what their daughter said on the stand?

 

[Fuji]

Ummm, do you not think it's just behaviour or treatment, or fair and reasonable that a person should be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of a crime before they are convicted (and, in this case, incarcerated for a very long time)?

If not (and it appears from your posts that you believe not), then what standard would you prefer to apply in your concept of "justice"? "We reckon they done it"? "We can't find anyone else who might have done it"?

I am tired of this pedantic exercise of yours, so let us have done with it.

This was the initial Q&A:

LJ = "Do you think people should be found guilty and imprisoned, even if the case against them cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt - regardless of whether they committed the crime or not?"

Me = "No. That said, I can still find it regrettable on a personal level if someone, in my estimation, escapes justice. I hardly think that this is a unique viewpoint."



From this very simple exchange has now sprung a running dialogue whereby you impute to me no end of ignorance in regards to understanding concepts of justice in general, and of judicial process in particular. Either make your final "A-HA!" accusation and get to the point or stop arguing in evident bad faith with me about this. I will not respond to you again on this topic.

 

[LondonJohn]

I am tired of this pedantic exercise of yours, so let us have done with it.

This was the initial Q&A:

LJ = "Do you think people should be found guilty and imprisoned, even if the case against them cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt - regardless of whether they committed the crime or not?"

Me = "No. That said, I can still find it regrettable on a personal level if someone, in my estimation, escapes justice. I hardly think that this is a unique viewpoint."



From this very simple exchange has now sprung a running dialogue whereby you impute to me no end of ignorance in regards to understanding concepts of justice in general, and of judicial process in particular. Either make your final "A-HA!" accusation and get to the point or stop arguing in evident bad faith with me about this. I will not respond to you again on this topic.

So "justice" - whether in the strict legal definition or the wider, more colloquial definition - has boundaries and standards. It's neither morally nor legally fair (in an advanced society) to punish someone for a crime until and unless they have been definitively proven - in a proper and fair court of law - to have committed that crime.

And there my "dialogue" on this topic will stop as well........

 

[Fuji]

But my point is that if it were proven to be a staging (which, as I say, I can't find to be a credible position), it's not in itself directly incriminating towards Knox and/or Sollecito in the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Yes, it is.

As I explained in an earlier post, there is a feasible reason why Guede, as a lone assailant, might have had both motive and opportunity to stage a break-in, if he had in fact been let into the cottage by Meredith.

No, there isn't. Maybe you should pay a little attention to what Draca said recently:

"Once a burglar is caught in the act, or if he decides that the opportunity of rape has presented itself, the burglary is really over for all intents and purposes. He either flees, or commits the rape and flees. Burglars know that the longer they spend in a location, the greater their chance of being caught."

In order to convict Knox and/or Sollecito of the murder, the prosecution/court will need to show evidence which is far more closely correlated to the actual murder itself.

No, it doesn't (but it will anyway).

Evidence which - it seems - is currently in the process of evaporating into the ether...

I think the essential evidence is strong enough to support their convictions. You appear to think the opposite. As I've repeatedly said, we'll see in a few weeks.

 

[Fuji]

So "justice" - whether in the strict legal definition or the wider, more colloquial definition - has boundaries and standards. It's neither morally nor legally fair (in an advanced society) to punish someone for a crime until and unless they have been definitively proven - in a proper and fair court of law - to have committed that crime.

And there my "dialogue" on this topic will stop as well........

Thank you for the thoughtful response. To the limited meaning you use here, I am in basic agreement. However, I still think that you missed my earlier point about real, moral (as understood by the subject) justice. I do not endorse vigilantism, but I do understand the natural motivation for it. The law is, in modern society, all that saves us from anarchy, and so it must have the final say.

 

[Antony]

I honestly don't know know what else to say other than if my house was invaded, I'd hope that someone sharing your approach to crime scene analysis would NOT be performing the investigation.

Are you saying you'd be happy if it was investigated with the same approach taken in the case under discussion?

Unless, that is, I was attempting insurance fraud, in which case I'd hope you'd be the lead investigator.

Your attempt at humour doesn't make your quasi-religious faith in the "staged" break-in any more true.

This one deserves its own response:



In what room was Guede surprised?

Guede broke in between 8:30 and 8:45pm by throwing a rock through the window and climbing up, using the grating on the lower window as a ladder. While still deciding what to do next, he felt the urgent need to relieve his bowels. While he was sitting on the toilet, he heard Meredith coming into the cottage (between 8:55 and 9pm), so he decided to get away as quietly as possible through the front door, which was why he didn't flush the toilet. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the front door didn't shut properly without being locked from the inside, so he found himself trapped. The confrontation with Meredith followed, with tragic results.

This sequence of events has been pointed out many times by others in this forum, and it fits all the evidence at the crime scene, including debris left by the original break-in. There is no reason to postulate any involvement by others, much less by the 2 college students who called the police to the house the next day.

You, for reasons I can only guess at, want to claim (among other unlikely assertions) that the break-in was "staged". When you make an extraordinary claim like this, you need extraordinary evidence. What you have is an extraordinary lack of evidence, as with all the other details of the prosecution scenario.

 

[Justinian2]

Justinian's just plain wrong as far as I'm aware.
The platters are still fine, the original court just ruled that since the evidence on the hard drives might benefit the defence and might benefit the prosecution, that there was no reason to repair them. A curious line of reasoning from my perspective.

About what?

Massei says that cloning was attempted on 5 drives (two of Raffaele's, Amanda's, Meredith's and Patrick's). Raffaele's Mac and Patrick's drives were successfully cloned while the other three were destroyed. No changes were made to the setup when switching between drives.

If the platters were fine, then the drives were not totally destroyed, were they?

I've cloned drives before. One computer with three drives and a specialized program is all it takes.

To fry three drives requires too much stupidity to be a viable supposition. Nobody is that stupid. The guy's boss can't be that stupid either. Therefore the drives had to be deliberately destroyed. Stupidity is NOT an option. That much stupidity is six sigma below normal stupidity.

 

[capealadin]

As the topic has moved on..I shall leave it for everyone to come to their own conclusions. There is nothing to interpret here. It's in black and white. It was very tactful of you, Kaosium, to insert, probable..and from Chicago etc.

What I find interesting, though, is the inability to acknowledge that whoever gave the information to Oggi, and those that have repeated it, as the truth, cannot admit that they were wrong. That it was a lie. And, I won't give the definition of what a lie is, as everyone here is intelligent enough to know what it is. If this was just heresay, that's one thing. However, we have direct testimony, from someone on YOUR side, saying it's not true. Going so far as to laugh and MOCK those believing and repeating it. I can understand skepticism, had it come from the guilter side. Then the norm is to immediately deny it.

I'm going out on a limb here, ( I don't like the safety of sitting on fences, Kevin) when I can back something up with cites..and say that any one here with half a brain, knows that a disservice has been done here to Nara. That it is proven, that she is not nearly deaf, or a nut.

It remains to be seen, as to how her testimony will hold up. My point here is solely how things get twisted, in order to discredit a witness. It's not as if if Nara said she saw Raf and Amanda..( then I'm sure to some she would have been as blind as a bat so, it doesn't seem from her point of view that she is a witness against the two.

i can see the point here, though. When someone lies, their credibility comes under increased scrutiny. Paul and Candace would have done far better, imo, to simply retract their statements. It would, I think, give whatever else they may have to say, credibility..and not seem so entrenched in their position, no matter what comes to light. It does take quite a big person to admit when they're..simply wrong.

 

[Kaosium]

This is the conclusion you drew from that post?

Perhaps your standard of "freshness" is less stringent than mine, or perhaps you are untroubled by offering such blatant misrepresentation. More charitably, perhaps you see what you want to see, and this deficiency precludes your ability to read and grasp what was actually written.

I quite clearly stated in that post that it was the PR which prompted my desire to learn about the case in more detail. Quite clearly not that I was "convinced" by it that Knox and Sollecito were guilty.

I am not even yet "convinced", in spite of every effort by so many passionate Knox advocates to shoehorn me into the "other" side.

I just erased the rest of my point-by-point 'rebuttal' with your own words, anyone can read the post and make their own determination, 'twas not my intention to humiliate you. You're welcome to characterize them any way you want, after all you wrote them. However that sort of thinking was what I was referring to.

Now, lest we forget, this tangent started when you wanted to talk about cartwheels, or at least their legacy in this forum, rather than the substance of my post mocking the insertion of the cartwheel overshadowing what the state police actually said. The irony is not lost on me.

 

[Justinian2]

We have to add into this the fact that the hard drives were apparently examined by specialist police computer technicians at the Police HQ of the capital of Umbria. Not only that, this was an extremely high-profile murder case, so it's reasonable to suggest that matters were being directed from the highest levels within the police department (and, by extension, one might imagine that the senior officers assigned their "best men" to the case - or at least not their "worst men").

Yet we're supposed to believe that this potentially critically important evidence was mishandled by a numpty who didn't even realise that hot-plugging the drives could damage them considerably. It just doesn't add up.

Too much exculpatory evidence was destroyed, overlooked or ignored to be a coincidence. Couple that with the invented inclupatory evidence and the case becomes a crime scene where the authorities are the criminals. Then add the leaks and the non-probative DNA evidence being used as evidence and, in the words of a Meatloaf song "Paradise by the dashboard light" --- STOP RIGHT THERE!

There is a perfectly good explaination. Guede was an informant. They made Amanda the patsy to distract the world from the truth. And she was willing - she talked too much. Raffaele was charged in order to remove Amanda's alibi.

No other explaination makes as much sense.

 

[Justinian2]

From Wikipedia:

Informants are commonly found in the world of organized crime. By its very nature, organized crime involves many people who are aware of each others guilt, in a variety of illegal activities. Quite frequently, confidential informants (or criminal informants) will provide information in order to obtain lenient treatment for themselves and provide information, over an extended period of time, in return for money or for police to overlook their own criminal activities. Quite often someone will become an informant following their arrest.

Informants are also extremely common in every-day police work, including homicide and narcotics investigations. Any citizen who aids an investigation by offering helpful information to the police is by definition an informant[citation needed].

The CIA has been criticized for leniency towards drug lords[4] and murderers [5] acting as paid informants, informants being allowed to engage in some crimes so that the potential informant can blend into the criminal environment without suspicion.[5], and wasting billions of dollars on dishonest sources of information. [1]

In a justice system built to imprison the MAFIA, wouldn't informants the modus operendi?

Why did Guede get caught committing at least three break-ins and perhaps six before the murder? Don’t you believe some of the break-ins were successful? How many? Maybe twenty, thirty, forty? And he got away. The police let him go. Why unless he was an informant?

 

[Kaosium]

My feelings, although admittedly not thoroughly researched at this point, are that in the US it would be quite commonplace indeed, and in no way 'bizarre' to obtain a Court ordained wiretap if the Family of a murder suspect publicly stated that their money and/or influential friends could go so far as to "make water run uphill" and intended to use any and all such tactics to distort and/or destroy upcoming judicial proceedings.

Those documented words and threats, would constitute sufficient 'involvement' for any US Judge IMHO to authorize a wiretap in a heartbeat.

Personally I doubt it, I can imagine the scenario and I see the judge rolling his eyes and saying 'So the family is pissed off, eh? Stop wasting my time.'

I'm willing to be corrected if anyone can come up with a US case where a judge ordered a wiretap on a family of a suspect where there was no chance they were involved and the suspect was in custody. In fact, off the top of my head I can think of a couple cases where the guy was on the run and apparently the family wasn't wiretapped, when in that case it makes perfect sense.

And BTW those identical words and threats were sufficient to obtain an indictment of criminal activity...or, if you prefer "involvement".
The trial outcome of which will be the ultimate arbitrator of our argument

I put that on the same level I do all the 'investigations' that Mignini undertook during the Monster of Florence case. In fact, I think these are even more egregious abuses of power, and will come back to haunt him even more so.

Additionally, please accept my assurances that the reference to 'talking points' was in no way intended to be ad hominem.
I'm sure your 'supervisors' are well aware, as am I, that you do an excellent job here arguing your contentions

I was joking, my 'bad Italian police' is, of course, ad hominem and calling Raffaele a 'kid' was an 'appeal to emotion.' I was accusing myself in JREF terms!

I'll let them know you think highly of my efforts, I don't know how that will be received though.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

tainted

I have seen the list, and even if I accepted it as true in its entirety, it does not obviate a finding of guilt with regard to Knox and Sollecito. Harry Potter books and alleged bleach receipts are not why the pair are in prison.

Your final question is almost charming in its naïvete. By that reasoning, you would chide me for not taking the side of the lowlifes ensnared by that lying liar, Chris Hansen.

Fuji,

You did not answer the question. With which of Charlie’s and Malkmus’s entries do you disagree and why? Moreover, you are trying to deflect attention away from ILE’s lies and change the subject to one of guilt or innocence. You wrote, “Agreed. If one chooses to side with proven liars, then the defense is definitely the way to go.” I pointed out that the list of things about which ILE lied is rather long (not just the Harry Potter book or the bleach receipts), whereas the list of undisputed lies told by Raffaele and Amanda is much shorter. There are even a few lies that are not included in the links I provided. If you agree that ILE lied about a number of things on the list, then what do you conclude about their credibility?

Your analogy to Chris Hansen does not work for me. I infer that you feel it is OK when law enforcement lies to a suspect in order to catch him or her. That is not the issue here. These lies were told to the media after the suspects were incarcerated. I recently responded to CoulsdonUK with a discussion of some of the parameters that should govern what police and prosecutors should and should not say publicly. Lying after the suspects are in custody is so far out of these bounds as to make me wonder what you are thinking.

Nor does your argument that these lies were not what convicted them remain unscathed under close scrutiny. From your Chris Hansen link: “Steven Kohm[36] used it [the reality show] as an example to situate ‘mass-mediated humiliation within broader trends in criminal justice and popular culture.’” In my judgment ILE’s lies were also directed toward the public, and this inevitably means tainting future lay judges. Moreover, if one excluded the evidence about which lies were told, much of the forensics would be gone.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

not mendacity

I find this link far from convincing.

The only elements examined are the pattern of glass spray in Filomena's room, and the lack of glass fragments on the ground outside. In the first case, Sfarzo ultimately bases his argument upon witness mendacity:

"I should remember that the famous pieces of glass on the clothes are not documented at all, they don't appear in any police picture. So, how do we know were there?
It's just because someone said that. Giobbi and Filomena, indeed, said to have seen pieces of glass on the clothes."

In the second case, he only considers the initial impact in questioning the lack of glass found below. No mention at all is made of the extreme unlikelihood of an intruder leaving most of the sill covered in glass, or the implied likelihood that glass brushed aside should be found below.

Fuji,

The link I provided was only one of several I found that discussed Pasquali’s results. The biggest problem I have is that if the glass distribution is consistent with one rock-trajectory, position of the window, etc., then it is not consistent with a different one. My understanding of Massei’s argument may not be correct, but I cannot envision how Knox and Sollecito could have created the same distribution with the window having been swung open. The window will be in a different position, the trajectory of the rock will be different, and so forth.

Witnesses making mistakes (as I believe Filomena has done) is not the same as witnesses being mendacious. Filomena herself changed the appearance of her room by retrieving things (twice, IIRC), and there is no guarantee that she remembers it before she changed it, as opposed to afterwards.

My comment on your not responding was provisional and based upon your seeming disappearance. Perhaps I should have made that idea clearer. In any case I am happy to see you here.

 

[Kaosium]

As the topic has moved on..I shall leave it for everyone to come to their own conclusions. There is nothing to interpret here. It's in black and white. It was very tactful of you, Kaosium, to insert, probable..and from Chicago etc.

What I find interesting, though, is the inability to acknowledge that whoever gave the information to Oggi, and those that have repeated it, as the truth, cannot admit that they were wrong. That it was a lie. And, I won't give the definition of what a lie is, as everyone here is intelligent enough to know what it is. If this was just heresay, that's one thing. However, we have direct testimony, from someone on YOUR side, saying it's not true. Going so far as to laugh and MOCK those believing and repeating it. I can understand skepticism, had it come from the guilter side. Then the norm is to immediately deny it.

I'm going out on a limb here, ( I don't like the safety of sitting on fences, Kevin) when I can back something up with cites..and say that any one here with half a brain, knows that a disservice has been done here to Nara. That it is proven, that she is not nearly deaf, or a nut.

It remains to be seen, as to how her testimony will hold up. My point here is solely how things get twisted, in order to discredit a witness. It's not as if if Nara said she saw Raf and Amanda..( then I'm sure to some she would have been as blind as a bat so, it doesn't seem from her point of view that she is a witness against the two.

i can see the point here, though. When someone lies, their credibility comes under increased scrutiny. Paul and Candace would have done far better, imo, to simply retract their statements. It would, I think, give whatever else they may have to say, credibility..and not seem so entrenched in their position, no matter what comes to light. It does take quite a big person to admit when they're..simply wrong.

I was the one who tried to chase this down and got an earful from Frank for my troubles, not to mention being on the receiving end of his wit the whole rest of the page. He's still on me for suggesting it might have been Paul Ciolino as the ultimate source, so I paid my dues!

Yes, credibility of sources is important, but something like this--which amounts simply to characterization--is not, in my opinion. From the both of them we actually learn more, meaning that whatever problems Nara might have had after the death of her husband, they're not interfering with her ability to function now, thus will likely do a better job than Curatolo, for instance, did on the stand the second time. If it comes to that, and it might not, as you note she's a rather peripheral witness, basically an equal-opportunity scream for whatever time of death her bladder is capable of--if that's even what woke her up.

Thus if you take the important part of Paul Ciolino's presentation, the lack of corroborating witnesses to a scream at that time coming from that building on that day, the police's failure to canvass the area, the improbability of hearing people running over leaves at that distance through glass, and her failure to come forward until many weeks passed, then you still have valuable information that's not invalidated by the way he described her previous problems, the unlikely claim, and the failure to remember exactly when she read about it. Then add Frank's interpretation and his final point is valid: there's entirely too many smears going on in this case, and in any event Nara is not the one responsible for the disaster inflicted upon Amanda and Raffaele.

Which is why I bothered to ask him first before saying anything about it, for all the good it did me!

 

[Chris_Halkides]

not certain

The broken glass is heavily disputed by those who don't take Filomena at her word. Having no reason to believe otherwise, I am inclined to believe her testimony.

I agree with you as to the absence of DNA.

As to the lack of stolen items - what room was Guede in when Meredith arrived home?

Fuji,

It is possible that Filomena's computer had glass on it which ended up on her clothes after she retrieved it. I am not certain about which room Guede was in, but he might have been in the bathroom.

 

[capealadin]

Thank you for your reasoning, Kaosium. I shall leave it that at the least, it was very mean spirited, to assert and promote these false statements. It would have been a good things all round, for Paul and Candace to simply disavow them. The fact that at this stage they still have not done so, speaks volumes.

Being called a nut case, and insulted, is quite unnecessary, for someone who reported hearing a scream..at a certain time. If this is disproved, then all to the good. However, to further an attack on a defenceless old woman, just because one doesn't like what she reported, and because one sees her against Raf and Amanda, is beneath contempt.

 

[Chris C]

Clearly Raffaele and Amanda were under suspicion fairly early after Meredith was discovered; as for Filomena and Laura how do we know their phones weren’t tapped?

I am not debating whether wiretapping by the police in the context of a murder case is right or wrong more whether it is unusual behaviour in Italy, none of the judges or magistrates have ruled them as inadmissible.

Why would the defense want them inadmissible? There was nothing incriminating in the wiretaps. Of course the prosecution did leak to the press how they heard a wiretap conversation where she was trying to find a new home after the murder.(something to that effect) When actually it was filomena asking her about getting a new place and something about a deposit. Yet as you can see my point, within 3 or 4 days of the Murder the police are already wiretapping Knox's phone. So its obvious before they ever brought her into the interrogation room they already deemed her a suspect. Though by Italys standard of suspects, it wasn't one that deemed her worthy of a lawyer. So do you think Monica Napoleoni just wanted to have a friendly chat with her again on the night in question that she gave her statement or do you think they needed her 10th witness statement? Though I do find it odd that they would confront Knox with her hash use and that she had been lying to police about her involvement in Meredith's murder and still not consider her an actual suspect until after they beat her into saying Patrick did it.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

we have claims that appear to conflict

capealadin,

It seems to me that we really do not know very much about Nara. Neither Frank nor Paul is a mental health specialist; therefore, neither are entirely competent to pass judgment on her mental state.* It is possible that she received some form of care (perhaps after the death of her husband). I see no reason to reject Oggi's claim at this point. Given the incomplete state of our knowledge, I am happy to remain on the fence for a while longer, thank you very much.
*the same goes for Nara's relatives, who are the source of Paul's claim to the best of my knowledge.

 

[capealadin]

capealadin,

It seems to me that we really do not know very much about Nara. Neither Frank nor Paul is a mental health specialist; therefore, neither are entirely competent to pass judgment on her mental state.* It is possible that she received some form of care (perhaps after the death of her husband). I see no reason to reject Oggi's claim at this point. Given the incomplete state of our knowledge, I am happy to remain on the fence for a while longer, thank you very much.
*the same goes for Nara's relatives, who are the source of Paul's claim to the best of my knowledge.

I expect nothing less from you Halides.

It's too bad that you see no reason to reject Oggi's claim. That goes to your mind set, and the inability to admit you're wrong.

I'm sure many people need some kind of care (caring) when a loved one dies. I didn't know that that equalled being called a mental case.

I really don't know HOW MUCH MORE information you could possibly need. One of your own has had numerous conversations with Nara. And said she's absolutely fine.

I suppose, in your world, everyone you know, family and friends, need to be assessed by a health professional, to know FOR SURE that they're sane.

Is Frank, do you think, not capable of understanding, when someone is not deaf? appears normal? Should he be tested, to see what's wrong with his cognitive skills?

You do yourself a disservice, imo, continuing this stance.