Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Bruce Fischer]

For a long time, the Wikipedia article simply echoed the lies about the case that were printed in early tabloid reports. Even today, the rules for what is considered a "reliable source" by Wikipedia get in the way of an accurate account of what is known about the case. Many of the reporters left after Amanda testified. Only fragments of the long detailed debunking of the prosecution's case by the defense showed up in the newspapers.

Some Knox supporters working on the Wikipedia page are not really helping her cause. They don't understand the necessity of finding sources to back up a change in the text. Or the importance of sticking to the neutral language of an encyclopedia.

I think both sides have issues with neutrality. I agree with you about Wikipedia's guidelines for sources. If the media gets a story wrong, so does Wikipedia. We can present actual court documents showing DNA test results and Wikipedia will not view it as credible unless the document was previously discussed on CNN or printed in the New York Times.

 

[Justinian2]

Quotes from:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6947549.ece

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, was drawn into the battle to overturn the verdict on the grounds that it was a miscarriage of justice and the result of Italian anti-Americanism.

Senator Maria Cantwell, from Washington state, the Knox family's home state, said that there were serious questions about the Italian justice system and that she feared the judge and jury had been influenced by anti-American feeling.

"The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Miss Knox was guilty," the senator said. "Italian jurors were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Miss Knox."

She said that Knox had been the victim of "harsh treatment", a reference to claims – denied by Italian police – that she was put under pressure during 53 hours of interrogation after the murder and twice struck on the head.

Giuliano Mignini, the chief prosecutor in Perugia, said he stood by his prosecution of Ms Knox, 22, who was given 26 years in prison, and Raffaele Sollecito, 25, her Italian former boyfriend, who was given a 25-year sentence.
"My conscience is clear," Mr Mignini said. "This senator should not interfere in things she knows nothing about."

Mr. Mignini should not interfere in things he knows nothing about.

He said that he resented accusations from the other side of the Atlantic that the investigation had been superficial and that no proof had been found to prove the defendants' guilt. This was unacceptable, he said

.

Amanda was guilty because she turned her hips, used drugs and did a cartwheel. Absence of evidence is not enough, the guilty have to prove that they did not do it. And by the way, Mignini destroyed the evidence they needed for absolute proof of innocence (the computer drives)

Mr Mignini said the evidence had been weighed not only by the judge and jury during the 11-month trial but also by investigators and the pre-trial judge. He said Ms Knox's accounts of what happened had changed several times and had been "implausible from the very beginning".

That's Mignini's strongest argument? And Italy supports him? And the USA is an accomplice to this by doing nothing?

I know some very bright Italians. That is why I believe this is beyond mere stupidity. There must be another reason.

 

[Justinian2]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/us-italy-tunisia-idUSTRE73J2H920110420

And more recently:

(Reuters) - Italy Wednesday deported a Tunisian former inmate at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo bay, accusing him of being part of an extremist cell.

Italian authorities accompanied Adel Ben Mabrouk back to Tunisia by plane, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

[...]

The ministry did not say whether Mabrouk was involved in that specific plot.
Mabrouk was recently released from detention in Italy, where he had been held on suspicion of abetting international terrorism.

The ministry said he had been expelled because of concerns over public order and state security.

The USA has released three Guantanamo bay prisoners to Italy since 2009. I wonder if any of this has to do with Amanda. Certainly I think it's within Mignini's character to extort the USA were he told to by a government official.

I think something's rotten somewhere. People don't just frame innocent people because they are merely super stupid.

Oh, by the way, Hillary hasn't been seen for a few days.

 

[spartacus]

This is a plain vanilla Nifong situation. Mignini needed this conviction and he is too far backed into a corner now to change. Murder is so rare in Perugia that they didn't know how to do a proper crime scene investigation. The difference in my opinion is that there isn't enough flexibility in the Italian system to reverse, and they are very sensitive to outsiders looking in and judging their system. Someone internal will have to arise to champion the case. Until then I think most Italians think she is guilty because she is the Whore of Babylon and don't want to spend serious time thinking about it or being challenged about it. Even my American friends who speak Italian and work in Perugia get super pissed off if you even talk about the case.

 

[Justinian2]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/22/world/22italy-190.jpg

Italy exchanged five Taliban for this journalist in 2007. They have done trades before. Italy's prisons are so crowded they don't want to keep people if they don't have to.

 

[Justinian2]

This is a plain vanilla Nifong situation. Mignini needed this conviction and he is too far backed into a corner now to change. Murder is so rare in Perugia that they didn't know how to do a proper crime scene investigation. The difference in my opinion is that there isn't enough flexibility in the Italian system to reverse, and they are very sensitive to outsiders looking in and judging their system. Someone internal will have to arise to champion the case. Until then I think most Italians think she is guilty because she is the Whore of Babylon and don't want to spend serious time thinking about it or being challenged about it. Even my American friends who speak Italian and work in Perugia get super pissed off if you even talk about the case.

Let them wear red coats and march through Lexington.

 

[moije2]

Hello and welcome, Moije!

Does Curatolo really have much credibility left to challenge? It could be they brought him in so he'd be clean and sober for the proceedings, drilling him on his lines so he doesn't bollocks them up again as embarrassingly as last time. It could be pure coincidence and merely the result of relying on testimony from that strata of society.

This is a plain vanilla Nifong situation. Mignini needed this conviction and he is too far backed into a corner now to change. Murder is so rare in Perugia that they didn't know how to do a proper crime scene investigation. The difference in my opinion is that there isn't enough flexibility in the Italian system to reverse, and they are very sensitive to outsiders looking in and judging their system. Someone internal will have to arise to champion the case. Until then I think most Italians think she is guilty because she is the Whore of Babylon and don't want to spend serious time thinking about it or being challenged about it. Even my American friends who speak Italian and work in Perugia get super pissed off if you even talk about the case.

Perhaps your American friends get pissed off when you bring this case up because they are afraid their phones and emails might be intercepted or monitored and they don't want to make themselves a target. I know I wouldn't want to take any chances, and even a couple hours from Perugia I was carefull to keep my mouth closed. I can't imagine actually being in Perugia. It would be interesting to hear some front line reports. I have often wondered what kind of reception the friends and family members of Amanda Knox get. Both from the general public and officials.

 

[Justinian2]

I think both sides have issues with neutrality. I agree with you about Wikipedia's guidelines for sources. If the media gets a story wrong, so does Wikipedia. We can present actual court documents showing DNA test results and Wikipedia will not view it as credible unless the document was previously discussed on CNN or printed in the New York Times.

There are three sides here. The most powerful, influential and stupid is the government - the prosecutor, the police, and others largely unknown. Perhaps we should also add the prejudiced media to this group. Then there is the side of the guilter - the person that has never read a book but gives his opinion of guilt with every opportunity. Then there is the side that has studied the case and has read everything factual that they could.

There are other sides too. There are the silent majorities of both sides. By the way, for the last month I have been continually jetting back and forth between states. My job as a contractor makes me a gypsy.

 

[RoseMontague]

For the record, this is finally over. When this finally, after many years, and at least one change in prosecutor, went to the prosecutor and judge for a decision of "prosecute or not" (the prosecutor and judge in Italy act much as the grand jury does in the USA), based on the fact it had been pending for years, it was immediately thrown out.

So I'm told the person involved regards it as over. This is after substantial expense, some personal injury to the person, a few nights in the hospital, quite some time in a jail without access to council, interrogations, forced to assume "stress positions", etc.

I presume recovery for this is out of the question, but I don't know for sure.

I just mention this to be clear that the issue was finally resolved.

Thanks for the update and I am glad it is over.

 

[RoseMontague]

1) I can't remember ever seeing a cellular coverage map of that area of Perugia, showing the base stations / node Bs and their sectors/ranges of coverage. It would be very interesting to see one, but I suspect that only the mobile operators' network engineering departments actually accurate maps of this information. If I were one of the defence lawyers, I'd be requesting those maps from the network operators.

And that is exactly what happened. Both the prosecution and defense had maps. It would be interesting to compare the two.

The experts of the scientific police:
· formulated approximate hypotheses on the radio-electric coverage, displaying a map on which they reported the direction of radiation only of the cells engaged by the investigated phones and, in order to define the area served by these cells, traced ‘circles’ of position and radius without taking into account either the technical characteristics of the system of the telephone operator, or the orography of the territory, or any model of a scientific propagation, or the interaction of the neighbouring cells;
· only performed measurements on the field strength of the signals emitted by the cell phone network, without acquiring any of the elements transmitted by the network which condition the choice of cell involved, nor making reference to the selection criteria adopted by the cell phones;

Dr. Pellero, Sollecito’s defence consultant:
· acquired detailed data on the radio-electric coverage of the cells at the time of the crime directly from the source, the cell phone operators. This allowed it to be demonstrated to the Court, on the basis of objective data, that the area of coverage of each cell is far from a regular geometric shape. Taking into account the technical characteristics of the systems, the orography of the territory and an appropriate model of scientific propagation, the telephone operator makes the area of coverage of each cell adopt the dimensions and the shape most able to serve its own customers, both in terms of quality and of density of traffic. This allowed the production of a detailed map, based on objective data which, also taking into account the interaction of all the cells present in the area of investigative interest, shows – with best approximation – the coverage area of each cell, or rather, the area within which, with maximum probability, the device which connected with each cell would be found;
· carried out field strength measurements of the signals emitted by the cell phone network, taking care to also acquire the elements transmitted by the cell phone network which condition the choice of which cell will be connected with, with reference to the selection criteria adopted by the cell phones (objective criteria fixed by binding Technical Regulations – ETSI Standards – knowledge of which was given to the Court, and which clearly indicate that the choice of cell is not solely a function of the field strength measured by the cell phone);

I would love to see the defense expert's report.

 

[LondonJohn]

And that is exactly what happened. Both the prosecution and defense had maps. It would be interesting to compare the two.

I would love to see the defense expert's report.

Gosh - I'd missed this. I would love to see the source data: it's actually something I know a fair bit about professionally.

And those quotes make it sound like all that police did was to draw perfect circles of coverage and take spot measurements of signal strength. As the second quote says, the proper approach would be fourfold:

1) to study the operators' own maps of coverage, based on their own field data;

2) to take hundreds of measurements of signal strength around each area of contention, in order to validate the operators' coverage maps;

3) to examine the network protocol algorithms that would determine the points where a handset would typically hand over from one base station to another, and to test this experimentally in the field;

4) to examine network traffic from the night in question, to check whether any of the cells was operating at or near capacity (which would have resulted in a handover to a more distant cell, even if the signal was much weaker) - this is unlikely to have happened between 9pm and 12am on 1st/2nd November, but it should be checked for the sake of completeness.

Only then can one assign relative probabilities to a certain handset being in a certain location at a certain time. Again, I hope that the defence teams have retained a mobile networks expert for the appeals (if it gets that far), so that they can argue the likelihood of Meredith's UK handset (which roamed onto the Wind network, IIRC) being in the cottage at 10.13pm when it received the GPRS message alert (and probably an aborted message download). My estimate is that they should be able to show with a pretty high degree of confidence that the handset was some way from the cottage when this network activity occurred.

 

[christianahannah]

Conti and Vecchiotti ask the court for more time to review data and to submit their report (which is due May 9).

http://www.umbrialeft.it/notizie/meredithperizia-dna-potrebbe-slittare-consegna-dei-risultati

 

[LondonJohn]

Ahhhh another open letter! The respected CPJ got completely duped by the behemoth that is the Knox PR machine! You can certainly fault the reasoning and the general level of intellect of the "open letter" crowd, but you can't fault the self-importance..... *

By the way, regarding Guede's faeces in the large bathroom: it's very well-documented that burglars sometimes defecate in the premises that they're burgling (or "burglarizing" if you're a colonial ). I have written about it before, and debated it extensively on JREF (far from not providing any reply or information):

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6082559#post6082559.

There are a further number of posts after this one that carry on the argument. The bald truth is that it's far from unknown for burglars to open their bowels, owing to either heightened fear levels (leading to a release of adrenaline, one of whose effects is to encourage the subject to empty his bowels), or to a complex psychological "territory marking" display. As I said in the post above, google "+burglar +defecate" if you want to see how well-documented this phenomenon is, both in terms of examples and analysis.

* ETA: I just noticed the distribution list for this open letter - it makes quite some reading, and takes self-importance to whole new heights! I'm sure the President of the EU and the US Secretary of State will have a 5,000 word letter written by a frog at the top of their in-trays

 

[LondonJohn]

Conti and Vecchiotti ask the court for more time to review data and to submit their report (which is due May 9).

http://www.umbrialeft.it/notizie/meredithperizia-dna-potrebbe-slittare-consegna-dei-risultati

Hmmm I wonder if that has any significance, other than the fact that it's just generally taking them longer than they had thought.

At least they won't be able to use the Royal Wedding as an excuse - that's the catch-all excuse for delays around here at the moment

 

[CoulsdonUK]

Ahhhh another open letter! The respected CPJ got completely duped by the behemoth that is the Knox PR machine! You can certainly fault the reasoning and the general level of intellect of the "open letter" crowd, but you can't fault the self-importance..... *

By the way, regarding Guede's faeces in the large bathroom: it's very well-documented that burglars sometimes defecate in the premises that they're burgling (or "burglarizing" if you're a colonial ). I have written about it before, and debated it extensively on JREF (far from not providing any reply or information):

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6082559#post6082559.

There are a further number of posts after this one that carry on the argument. The bald truth is that it's far from unknown for burglars to open their bowels, owing to either heightened fear levels (leading to a release of adrenaline, one of whose effects is to encourage the subject to empty his bowels), or to a complex psychological "territory marking" display. As I said in the post above, google "+burglar +defecate" if you want to see how well-documented this phenomenon is, both in terms of examples and analysis.

* ETA: I just noticed the distribution list for this open letter - it makes quite some reading, and takes self-importance to whole new heights! I'm sure the President of the EU and the US Secretary of State will have a 5,000 word letter written by a frog at the top of their in-trays

An article from TJMK.

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/open_letter_to_cpjs_joel_simon_in_new_york_this_is_the_fact_finding/

 

[Matthew Best]

Holy Moly! Does he really expect anyone from the CPJ to actually read the whole of that screed? How many pages did it print out as?

I'm afraid it reads like the insane ramblings of an obsessed stalker.

 

[LondonJohn]

Holy Moly! Does he really expect anyone from the CPJ to actually read the whole of that screed? How many pages did it print out as?

I'm afraid it reads like the insane ramblings of an obsessed stalker.

May I refer the honourable member to the best-known phrase of Francis Urquhart...

 

[Mary_H]

.......You can certainly fault the reasoning and the general level of intellect of the "open letter" crowd, but you can't fault the self-importance..... *

* ETA: I just noticed the distribution list for this open letter - it makes quite some reading, and takes self-importance to whole new heights! I'm sure the President of the EU and the US Secretary of State will have a 5,000 word letter written by a frog at the top of their in-trays

!!!

 

[Matthew Best]

It's the "Very sincerely, Kermit" at the end that really puts it over the top into the realms of great comedy.

 

[Mary_H]

It's the "Very sincerely, Kermit" at the end that really puts it over the top into the realms of great comedy.

Did he actually not put a last name? I gotta go find this thing.

ETA: OMG, could it be any longer?