Just stopping by to see what the current JREF consensus was. I just followed a trail of articles highly supportive of Knox. I wondered if I wasn't being misled because articles and comments tend to link to other stuff that supports their views and perhaps I haven't gotten a balanced sense of the actual situation.
At this point there's basically only one group of people arguing on the internet who knows anything about the case that still believes in their guilt, and many of them have been following the case for more than three years now and had decided she was guilty long before her verdict, some of them before the trial even started. They apparently had some sort of internal falling out so there are now
two versions of the original messageboard, and this is the other
website.
Right now, based on a brief review of what may be biased sources I think the following is true.
1. The first prosecutor seems like a bit of a nut case. Lots of problematic stuff like conviction for illegally investigating reporters who had written critical articles and previous prosecutions based on fanciful theories.
Yeah, that pretty much sums up Giuliano Mignini. Incidentally it wasn't just journalists he was illegally investigating, but also former police chiefs and basically everyone who thought digging up bodies comparing pants sizes looking for Satanic cults to 'investigate' murders twenty and thirty years old was ridiculous. He thought instead that meant they were part of the cabal.
2. The DNA experts that recently testified, seem to have pretty much shattered the previous DNA testimony.
Yes, considering how circumspect and reserved most scientists are, the report is rather shocking in its bluntness in certain areas of the body of the report. I believe you've been provided a link to the translation in progress, which is almost complete at this point, thanks to the efforts of Katy-Did and Komponisto.
3. The evidence is strong and incontrovertible against the black guy that was convicted but no significant evidence exists against Knox and her boyfriend if the original DNA testimony is eliminated.
They introduced other 'evidence' at the trial of course, but it amounts to things like
this bathmat stain, which you can see for yourself compared against Raffaele Sollecito's and Rudy Guede's print, luminol prints that tested negative for blood with TMB tests and DNA, the results of which the prosecution tried to hide and was discovered by accident but still produced in court as 'bloody footprints,' and the theory that the break-in was 'staged' the 'evidence' for which is dubious, undocumented, and kinda silly once the burglar was arrested.
I am not sure what to make of the fact that Knox seems to have lied initially and blamed somebody who she knew to be innocent. Did she really do that or is that a controversial issue also?
Tell you what, take a
look at what was produced during that fateful overnight session on November 5th and 6th. It started at 10:15 PM on the fifth, the statements are timed at 1:45 AM and 5:45 AM November sixth, and she wrote the
note directly afterward. It was the culmination of 52 or so hours spent with the police starting with when she and Raffaele reported the murder, 40+ of which were spent at the police station, at least 14 or so being actively interviewed/interrogated. This is a time span of about 90 hours from ~1:00 PM November second.
Note that she didn't
write either of those official statements, she signed them in a language she barely read, and as a result of them the cops arrested Patrick Lumumba, interrogated him all day without a lawyer or any tapes of the proceedings, then in a ten car convoy with sirens blaring and lights flashing paraded through Perugia and announced 'case closed.' Police chief Arturo De Felice
said: "Initially the American gave a version of events we knew was not correct. She buckled and made an admission of facts we knew were correct and from that we were able to bring them in. They all participated but had different roles."
If you read the statements you might note that outside Patrick Lumumba being 'involved' there's about no 'facts' that they could have considered 'correct.' However in court, the
Polizia di Stato said they'd never even considered Patrick Lumumba in relation to the crime, that they were 'shocked...
shocked' that she just blurted out something to the effect of 'it's him...he's the
murderer!' when they were going through her phone, and then they spent some seven hours feting her with cupcakes and tea to produce those statements which they used to arrest them all, make that big display of themselves, then two days later--without allowing any of them lawyers in the interim--produced them in front of Judge Matteini and said Amanda had held down Meredith while Raffaele and Patrick raped her in some sort of ritualistic rite. There could have been absolutely no 'evidence' outside those statements it occurred, that being impossible as the
Polizia Scientifica hadn't even finished the forensics. Mignini just made that up out of whole cloth, much like his theory of pants sizes 'proving' body swaps attempting to link the suicide of that doctor named Narducci or somesuch with the long-cold Monster of Florence case that he was eventually disciplined for.
A week later they'd 'find' the DNA on the knife in Raffaele's drawer (so they could dine with their kill!) and then have Amanda delivering the killing blow, without ever finding anything whatsoever of Amanda in Meredith's room, or anything on Amanda or her clothes suggesting she was involved in a desperate death struggle. Oh, wait. They
claimed before Judge Matteini they couldn't find the sweatshirt she was wearing the night of the murder. Turns out it was
on her bed, right where she said she left it. Note that CCTV camera video in that Nick Pisa article turned out to be bogus too, it was probably Meredith returning home the night of the murder.
At any rate, I find the police 'story' of the interrogation and what caused them to arrest Patrick to be entirely implausible, even more so when later on in the trial elements were disputed by Edgardo Giobbi, the SCO officer from Rome officially running the interrogation, and of course the fact that after she testified to her version they charged her with
calunnia in which
twelve police were eligible to file for (only eight did thought) completely discrediting the idea that Amanda's 'interview' was a spontaneous happening that amounted to a friendly chick-chat where she all of a sudden just accused Patrick out of the blue.
I think a reasonable reading of those materials suggests there's no accusation even intended, huge clues are provided by lines like:
"I find it difficult to remember those moments..."
"I vaguely remember..."
"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."
"In regards to this "confession" that I made last night, I want to make clear that I'm very doubtful of the verity of my statements..."
"But I've said this many times so as to make myself clear: these things seem unreal to me, like a dream, and I am unsure if they are real things that happened or are just dreams my head has made to try to answer the questions in my head and the questions I am being asked."
"But the truth is, I am unsure about the truth..."
"...but I want to make very clear that these events seem more unreal to me that what I said before, that I stayed at Raffaele's house."
And especially:
"Who is the REAL murder [sic]? This is particularly important because I don't feel I can be used as condemning testimone [sic] in this instance.
The police in Perugia (will eventually) claim they arrested Patrick on the basis of this sort of 'accusation'
and absolutely nothing else, despite the fact two days later they'd present a litany of 'evidence' against him in Matteini's court, and that her statements had matched "facts we knew were correct."
I think instead they took a stoned Raffaele in that backroom, confused the hell out of him on which night was which, (what he tells police bears resemblance to what had happened Halloween, and not November first) got him to 'admit' he called the
Carabinieri after the Postal Police arrived--something conclusively proven untrue by cameras and cell phone evidence as well as simple common sense--and then they took Amanda into that little room and went at her for hours telling her they had 'hard evidence' she was at the scene at the time of the murder, that Raffaele had said she left that night and asked him to lie for her, (not quite what he said) and that they 'knew' she was covering for someone or had 'repressed' the memory. What the hell is she supposed to think? She can spend hours denying it, but eventually she might well assume they must be right, after all why would she think the cops would lie to her about that? She starts imagining what must have happened, as they encouraged her to, and eventually it becomes almost real, and as they won't even 'treat her like a person' until she signs a statement, she eventually is compelled to succumb to their suggestion.
However, as it soon becomes apparent, Patrick has an ironclad alibi: thus the police either admit to the mistake or they just blame her for it, and as they've conjured up the knife as 'evidence' they still think she must be involved, and as the papers have gone hog-wild over it and are creating the 'Foxy Knoxy'/'Evil Fox' mythology, it becomes easy to just lose the tapes of the interrogation (required by Italian law) and blame her for it all. They still think she's guilty and have placed their reputations on the line, why take the rap for the 'lies' of a murderess?
Incidentally, these 'confessions' were deemed inadmissible by the Italian Supreme Court, however Massei--the judge in the trial of the first instance--decided the prosecution could still use the part about Patrick, which they did, by cherry picking lines out of context and ignoring all the qualifiers I listed above.
And where is the JREF consensus right now? Have some of the guilt advocates been moved at least to insufficient evidence for a guilty verdict? Do the people who have been critical of the first verdict tend to believe in the actual innocence of Knox or just in the insufficiency of evidence for guilt? Perhaps somebody could provide a quantitative overview of the JREF consensus divided between guilty, not guilty by reason of insufficient evidence, not guilty even by a preponderance of the evidence standard and actual innocence.
Most of the ones believing in guilt have retreated from the forum, you can find them at the links above, the ones still participating that is. They've claimed that the mods here conspire against them and that
innocentisti are just a bunch of meanies. Oh, and that the new judge and his experts have been 'gotten to' by the sinister Gogerty-Marriott PR supertanker, which is one way of explaining why events aren't proceeding like they'd assumed.
My guess is most believe Amanda and Raffaele totally innocent, though they can answer for themselves. The time of death in the first trial is scientifically unsupportable, the most probable one is about 9:15, for which they still have an electronic alibi, and regarding that the defense claims they've managed to recover files that escaped the over-writing of the computer records caused by the incompetent police which would show human interaction with the computer through even the original scientifically impossible time of death.
As for me, my position is that of all the people who could have possibly been at the cottage that night, Raffaele and Amanda are the
least likely to have been involved, being as they've been put through the wringer and not a single iota of evidence stands scrutiny or doesn't have a more plausible innocent explanation. The fact that there's no reason to complicate what is pretty apparently the result of a burglar breaking in and being surprised by Meredith's return and then killing her simply adds to the likelihood they're totally innocent in my mind, as does the numerous indications of incompetence and corruption by the police in this case.
After a while it becomes pretty damned obvious the police had mistaken or coincidental reasons to think Amanda was complicit with Patrick in the murder thus they put the screws to her until she freaked out and then arrested them all for bogus reasons. By the time Rudy had been caught they'd convinced themselves Amanda and Raffaele had to have been involved, plus they'd invested their reputations and integrity on the idiot theory Mignini just made up so they just traded Rudy for Patrick and pretended they still had it right.
Thanks, admittedly the answers to my questions probably exist in the preceding gazillion posts but my interest level falls a little below the amount justified to read all of them. My apologies in advance for my laziness.
Then you probably didn't make it down this far!
I did make it and thanks to you and others for the thoughtful summaries.