Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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That does make sense...

Diocletus said:
I respect your approach.

When I look at the issue, I see differences, too.

As to motivation, the Kerchers are motivated by vengence--to see someone punished who they think has done their daughter wrong. That's a pure motivation. The guilters, at least the most evident of them, are motivated by hate. That's dirty.

Both are wrong about the case.

As to the magnitude of harm they have caused, I think we have to say that the Kerchers through Maresca did some damage (that we can't quantify). The guilters are a bunch of people on the internet who might have contributed some negative PR, but probably had less of an effect on the wrongful imprisonment of the defendants.

So, we get this:

Kerchers = Pure motive, but wrong. Hurt innocent people.

Guilters = Hateful and wrong. But less likely to have accomplished actual harm.

It's an interesting comparison in terms of intent and magntitude of harm.
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...and thank you for clarifying your thought processes further. Like I said, it does make sense, except that I think in the beginning Harry the machine's (and so many others) propaganda of hate was so prevalent around the internet (with no real counter-arguements at the time, not like today anyway) certainly didn't help. They were everywhere (and still are) and did much to influence public opinion, IMHO. But, that is just me.

Anyway, thank you again for your clarification,

Dave

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LondonJohn said:
That's a good point, but I am not even sure that such a motion would be possible in an appeal trial: I think that it's possible in the first trial owing to that trial's original purpose as a preliminary trial. In other words, if the case somehow made it to the preliminary hearing in spite of there being no decent case for guilt, the defence could move to dismiss.

However, the appeal trial is obviously a different kettle of fish. And even if evidence that helped to show guilt in the first trial is successfully challenged, I think it's incumbent on the court to conduct the full trial and reach a proper verdict. And I also personally think that's the right thing to do anyway. The prosecutors must be allowed to argue their case, and the court must reach a properly-informed decision.

I would also add at this point that there is indeed other potentially-incriminating evidence against Knox and Sollecito that needs to be addressed. I'm mainly thinking about the mixed DNA traces in the bathroom sink, the partial print on the bathmat, the testimony of Quintavalle, the time of death, and the issues around the "staging" of the break-in. All of these need to be debated and placed in the proper context - as indeed will happen during the argument phase in September. Merely throwing out the knife/clasp/Curatolo does not necessarily automatically exonerate Knox/Sollecito, and I think it's important to remember that.
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Why do you predict this with such confidence? Are you a judge?

My only experience with the court is that they usually surprise me and only do what I considered logical about half the time and never if I'm pro se against a lawyer. My lawyer usually gives himself as many ways to win as possible, is very careful and very uncertain about what will happen.

This judge has so far been predictably logical, which is good.
 
I wonder if someone wouldn't mind catching me up on a few things?

So when Knox is acquitted are the folks who claimed to be going by the jury's opinion (since they had access to some information we didn't) going to agree she must be innocent?

Are the conspiracy theories developing that the appeal judges are going to acquit her due to political pressure?

And have the findings about the DNA by the court appointed experts been dismissed yet by the Justice for Kercher folks in the thread, or have any of them admitted it is what some of us felt about the DNA evidence all along?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I wonder if someone wouldn't mind catching me up on a few things?

So when Knox is acquitted are the folks who claimed to be going by the jury's opinion (since they had access to some information we didn't) going to agree she must be innocent?

Are the conspiracy theories developing that the appeal judges are going to acquit her due to political pressure?

And have the findings about the DNA by the court appointed experts been dismissed yet by the Justice for Kercher folks in the thread, or have any of them admitted it is what some of us felt about the DNA evidence all along?
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We've been told that the expert's report is ****neutral at best****. Many of them are in total denial and think things are going swimmingly, believe it or not.
 
It's all going to be fine after the prosecution have had a chance to demonstrate how flawed and biassed the experts' report was.

No, really.

They did some googling and decided the experts didn't know what they were talking about and Stefanoni had done everything by the book - her book, that is, which was the correct book for use in these circumstances, not anything the experts cited.

And there's still overwhelming evidence of guilt anyway, so it'll all be fine.

And the only people laughing in court were Amanda's family, who did this on purpose so they could then run to the journalists and say there was laughter in court. All spiced up with juvenile sarky names for everyone on the opposing side, together with risible misrepresentations of the points being made in this thread.

It's a one-sided mutual admiration society, perilously close to delusional.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
It's all going to be fine after the prosecution have had a chance to demonstrate how flawed and biassed the experts' report was.

No, really.

They did some googling and decided the experts didn't know what they were talking about and Stefanoni had done everything by the book - her book, that is, which was the correct book for use in these circumstances, not anything the experts cited.

And there's still overwhelming evidence of guilt anyway, so it'll all be fine.

And the only people laughing in court were Amanda's family, who did this on purpose so they could then run to the journalists and say there was laughter in court. All spiced up with juvenile sarky names for everyone on the opposing side, together with risible misrepresentations of the points being made in this thread.

It's a one-sided mutual admiration society, perilously close to delusional.

Rolfe.
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They are also hinting that the FOA/Defense are colluding with the experts. Here is one such example. Fair use:
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8,885 posts since 2008! That's an average of seven posts every single day for three and a half years (plus all the posts he's made at other fora) - all on the one subject.

I wonder what he'll fill his time with when Knox & Sollecito are released?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I wonder if someone wouldn't mind catching me up on a few things?

So when Knox is acquitted are the folks who claimed to be going by the jury's opinion (since they had access to some information we didn't) going to agree she must be innocent?
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Only one seems to be Lionking who has apparently ondicated that he'll accept the jury's verdict.

Are the conspiracy theories developing that the appeal judges are going to acquit her due to political pressure?
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Probably more likely that they were paid off by the huge PR machine that is FOA.

And have the findings about the DNA by the court appointed experts been dismissed yet by the Justice for Kercher folks in the thread, or have any of them admitted it is what some of us felt about the DNA evidence all along?
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There are already claims that they were paid-off by FOA, or that they are just ivory tower intellectuals who have no experience in the real world, and that the police experts were far more versed in what should and shouldn't be done at a crime scene and so they'll be shredded on cross as their inexperience and lack of understanding of the case is brought forward.
 
I started to read it to see what was going on with Fiona, because as I said I'd always had a high regards for her reasoning capacity and couldn't see why she would be supporting the guilt side unless there was better evidence than I was aware of. But I have to say, you guys were right.

It's turning into a multiple version of a folie a deux. They're quite divorced from reality, but because they only talk to each other, and re-interpret everything they read to each other so conforms to their world-view, they remain delusional.

I think it's quite funny that one of them came here and announced that what had been posted on PMF would "inform and shape the debate", apparently seriously believing the prosecution would be reading the discussion and gratefully basing their arguments on these penetrating insights and devastating revelations. And they urge each other to contact journalists and newspapers who publish articles they don't like to "correct" them, and dictate the proper spin that should be applied.

They're like a bunch of primary school kids who get their kicks from pretending to be important, and sneering at the "other lot".

Rolfe.
 
I don't quite know why Stilicho keeps saying that posters here believe the time of death was 20.15. I thought it was a typo when I first saw it, but he keeps doing it. I mean, Meredith was seen alive half an hour after that, wasn't she?

I remember him making a big deal about why wasn't I taking a position on the case, maybe a year ago. Something about my being a respected poster, and if I wasn't saying anything, something was "terribly wrong". He PMed me, I think, urging me to weigh in, and I told him I had no idea about the specifics of the case and was frying other fish anyway. He seemed to think I would support guilt and that if I wasn't, then I'd been got at or something.

So when I finally did take an interest, and didn't take his side, now I'm the "resident veterinarian" whose patients have four stomachs so what do I know, I'm just a cow-doctor with straw coming out my ears.

It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
I don't quite know why Stilicho keeps saying that posters here believe the time of death was 20.15. I thought it was a typo when I first saw it, but he keeps doing it. I mean, Meredith was seen alive half an hour after that, wasn't she?

I remember him making a big deal about why wasn't I taking a position on the case, maybe a year ago. Something about my being a respected poster, and if I wasn't saying anything, something was "terribly wrong". He PMed me, I think, urging me to weigh in, and I told him I had no idea about the specifics of the case and was frying other fish anyway. He seemed to think I would support guilt and that if I wasn't, then I'd been got at or something.

So when I finally did take an interest, and didn't take his side, now I'm the "resident veterinarian" whose patients have four stomachs so what do I know, I'm just a cow-doctor with straw coming out my ears.

It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

Rolfe.
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Ah this one is a weak (some might say pathetic) attempt to demean/discredit our ToD analysis by making the following "argument": since our research shows that the median lag time for healthy adults is in the region of 80 minutes, therefore our analysis indicates that Meredith most likely died at around 8.00-8.30pm, therefore our analysis is wrong since Meredith was alive at 8.30pm

Seriously, this is his "argument". Since I suspect that he might know at least a little about distributed probability curves and conditional probabilities , I can only conclude that he is deliberately (and mendaciously) using sophistic sleight-of-hand to try to convince others that our ToD analysis is wrong.

Just for the record, the entire point about the usefulness of the stomach/duodenum contents in determining ToD in this particular case is that we have an extremely useful addition datum point: we know that Meredith was alive at 8.55pm. And given that we can be pretty sure that Meredith's pizza meal started before 6.30pm, we can use these two pieces of information to narrow down the ToD window considerably.

Had Meredith last been confirmed alive at 7pm, the ToD window would be any time between then and around 10pm - with the more likely ToD at around 8-8.30pm. In other words, we would have a wide ToD window (some three hours), with the mid-point more likely that either end-point. But the fortunate fact that Meredith was definitely alive at 8.55pm means that the ToD can only realistically be between 8.55pm and 10.00pm (and most likely before 9.30pm).
 
Yeah, I thought it was something like that. It's childish.

It's totally bizarre. What's in it for them, anyway? I find miscarriages of justice interesting, but I don't spend a lot of time foaming at the mouth against people I think were rightly convicted.

Rolfe.
 
Matthew Best said:
8,885 posts since 2008! That's an average of seven posts every single day for three and a half years (plus all the posts he's made at other fora) - all on the one subject.

I wonder what he'll fill his time with when Knox & Sollecito are released?
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Hey, just don't look to too closely at my posting history on the Pan Am 103 case over the past two years! :o

And I freely admit now that if that verdict is ever quashed, then I'll find something else to be obsessive about. I might write a book first though.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Hey, just don't look to too closely at my posting history on the Pan Am 103 case over the past two years! :o

And I freely admit now that if that verdict is ever quashed, then I'll find something else to be obsessive about. I might write a book first though.

Rolfe.
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Keep in mind this guy had something like 2500 posts on the Amanda Knox threads here as well.
 
By the way, while I retain a strong intrigue about the motivation and psychology of many pro-guilt commentators, I'd agree that this subject is peripheral to the real issue at hand, and often veers off-topic as a result. However, it's worth noting that I do think that it's entirely valid and within the MA to discuss and/or rebut arguments made on other internet sites, just as it's valid to discuss journalistic commentary on this case.

But I think a much more important and interesting area to discuss - in the light of what's likely to transpire in the appeal - is the motivation and psychology of Massei and his court. Ever since his motivations report was published (courtesy of PMF), it's been glaringly obvious that there was some desperately bad reasoning made in Massei's court, coupled with some equally bad judicial rulings. I wasn't following this case at the time of the first trial, but it didn't take me long after I started following it (in March 2010 - before I'd even known the Massei Report was available) for me to work out the numerous significant flaws in the guilty verdicts.

So what I want to know is this: how was Massei (and his fellow jurors) so misled by the DNA evidence? How was he so misled on ToD - when the evidence was right in front of his face? How and why did he accept Curatolo as a credible prosecution witness? How and why did he allow the back-door admission of Knox's 5/6 Nov police statements, by ruling that the Lumumba slander trial could take place concurrently? How and why did he take the prosecution argument on the bathmat partial print, the post-crime clean-up, the "staged" break-in, the luminol footprints and the mixed DNA in the bathroom sink?

I very much hope that when all the dust settles on this whole sorry business, there is some call for a proper inquiry into how the first court made so many bad errors of judgement, reasoning and process. I'd also like to see the Perugia police investigated properly for their role in all this, and for Stefanoni to face official censure. As for Mignini, I think he has already cooked his goose. He'll attract a huge amount of justified criticism for his "starring role" in this fiasco, and he'll likely have his conviction for abuse of office confirmed by the Supreme Court. And if that happens, he'll effectively be sacked. Couldn't happen to a better public servant :)
 
Rolfe said:
Ow! How can you read that?
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You click "White PMF" either "#1" or "#2" in the options bar at the top of the page - but beware! The PMF.net options currently route you to PMF.org (!) HumanityBlues's example comes from .net.

You can get the other colour schemes on PMF.net by adding the argument "&style=1" or "&style=6" to the URL.
 
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