Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kaosium]

Neither defence teams formerly requested that the knife should be dismantled in the appeal their submissions, the fact that they didn’t could be view as either a lack of confidence or more likely a missed opportunity. Indeed, it was the court appointed experts that made the request not the defence teams.

Coulsdon, the defense didn't want the knife opened up, they knew it wasn't the murder weapon from the beginning:

Amanda: Yeah, when I was in the room with him I said what? ... (Laughs) and then when I returned to my bedroom I was crying. I’m very, very worried for this thing about the knife... because there is a knife from Raffaele ...

Curt: Well, here, here, here are the facts… we talked yesterday with the lawyer and asked him about the knife. Every time that they have to review an item we have an expert there that will review it with them. This is an example of... this knife of which they are talking about, they have never notified anything about the knife.


E: So, it’s BS!


A: Is it BS?


E: It’s BS.


C: It’s complete BS. It’s a total fabrication.

E: That's what they're doing now. They are simply lying.

C: It's all a fabrication...

E: Yes, to make someone break down.

It was just a psychological ploy. They hit her with the 'clear cut' CCTV video saying they had proof she was at the scene, the HIV test, and the knife from Raffaele's drawer all about the same time. She was supposed to break down and confess, but she didn't because she was innocent.

The defense already knew the knife was garbage on every single ground imaginable, they didn't need the knife opened and thus never asked, just like the forensic DNA expert's letter said. Just like the C&V report says.

The only benefit could have been to the prosecution. Maresca jumping up like he juiced his drawers just proved he knew what the defense lawyers knew and everyone else cogent did: the knife never left the drawer that night. So why did he lie about it, Coulsdon? What else do you suppose he and the ones who promoted that lie are lying about?

 

[Matthew Best]

Watch it and weep.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ViaDellaPergola#p/u/4/UyUh5y_8efE

Well, it didn't quite make me cry, exactly, but it is spectacularly stupid, I agree. (I guess your threshold for weeping at the sight of stupid videos is a little lower than mine.) Nevertheless, thanks for bringing it to my attention - it seems to back up Knox's story rather well, and confirms that the person making these videos accusing her appears somewhat demented. (I presume it's no-one who posts here?)

 

[LondonJohn]

I don't object to Rolf stating his 10% "Vacant Duodenum Hypothesis" if that is his best guess; in fact I'm glad he is willing to do so. Rolf is versed in Bayesianism, and (presumably) understands that merely refusing to reveal one's best guess does not allow one to avoid having such a guess. This is something I appreciate, because being explicit about our beliefs makes the discussion much more interesting and informative.

I understand what you're saying here, and I agree in principle. But all the same, there's a big difference between a) a "best guess" percentage, based on at least some information and reasonable hypotheses, and intended to serve as an iterative starting point, and b) a seemingly totally arbitrary percentage seemingly based on nothing more than placing a moist finger into the air.

In fairness, this is not at all clear from the relevant passage in Massei-Cristiani; one has to read the (untranslated) Sollecito appeal to find it out, and then only by implication:

Yes, but again if one is intending to delve this deep into the subject - to the degree of assigning quantitative probabilities - then I'd have thought that a bit more research was warranted.

 

[LondonJohn]

I think whoever made that video *unconsciously* believes Amanda is innocent of falsely accusing Patrick, because that video makes a very strong case indeed for exactly the opposite of what it is trying to promote. The average high school student can tell the difference between when Amanda is referring to her memorandum and when she is referring to the interrogation.

Don't the guilters ever ask why the police did not think they might have made a mistake when they arrested Patrick on the word of a so obviously confused suspect? Don't they ever ask why the police clung so tenaciously to the word of a suspect they believed to be a liar?

And why does Amanda sometimes talk in normal-sized white letters and other times talk in GIANT RED LETTERS?

That video is indeed a case study in ignorance, stupidity, pre-judgement and confirmation bias. It might as well have started with a title screen reading "This is taken from a court conversation between the lawyer for Patrick Lumumba and the evil, scheming, she-Devil, vicious, sex-obsessed, lying murderer Amanda Knox". I can't decide whether the author is deliberately trying to deceive when misapplying Knox's testimony about the circumstances surrounding her "gift" statement to those surrounding her initial written statements of 1.45am and 5.45am, or whether the author is genuinely so stupid that (s)he has actually made an "honest" mistake.

Of course, it's also amusing and very telling that pilot padron chooses to use this ridiculous video to try to bolster his/her argument. Yes pilot, I know exactly what Knox said in her testimony to Pacelli, and it's entirely consistent not only with her constant version of events, but also with a reasonable analysis of the available evidence:

1) The police read Knox's text message to Lumumba, and the time it was sent, and rushed to the conclusion that Knox had met with Lumumba that night.

2) Since Knox was claiming to have been at Sollecito's apartment from the time of that text message onwards that night, the police therefore rushed to the judgement that the Knox/Lumumba meeting was for nefarious purposes - purposes that Knox now wanted to hide from the police.

3) The police interrogation of Knox and Sollecito that night was clearly aimed at confirming all this - which the police now believed to be "the truth".

4) Knox was told (mendaciously) by the police that they had solid physical evidence placing both her and Lumumba at the cottage at the time of the murder, and placing Lumumba as the killer.

5) Knox was told that the trauma of events in the cottage had probably caused her to blank out her memory of the events: this traumatic memory loss was preventing her from recalling what had happened that night.

6) Knox was told that she had to now try very hard to recall things "correctly", since by doing so she would help the police (and Meredith's family) catch the killer (Lumumba), and she would also help protect herself from the evil Lumumba by helping the police get him into swift custody.

7) Under these circumstances, Knox forced herself to "remember" the scenario the police instructed her to remember: that she'd met up with Lumumba, taken him to the cottage, then remained in the kitchen while Lumumba sexually assaulted and killed Meredith.

8) Within hours of signing two statements to this effect, Knox was already doubting that she'd had any kind of traumatic memory loss: this doubt was reinforced by Knox realising that she could actually remember specific things that had occurred in Sollecito's apartment that evening/night.

9) Knox therefore wrote the "gift" statement, in which she clearly stated her intense confusion, but in which she also stated that her reason for writing the "gift" was that she now believed that she really was at Sollecito's apartment all evening/night: she was therefore calling into question the very validity of the earlier statements that she had made in response to police "suggestion" (my euphemism).

 

[Dan O.]

Is Patrick Lumumba the true evil mastermind!!!?

• Why does he send a text to Amanda shortly before Meredith is to arrive home on the night she is murdered?
• What is in that text that Amanda would erase it immediately?
• What is he doing in the vicinity of the cottage when he should be working at his bar in town?
• Why does he change the SIM in his cell phone before anyone is even supposed to know about Meredith's murder?
• Why when he supposedly has a bar full of patrons does he use a stranger from another country as his only alibi?

Don't look at me, I'm just asking the questions. If you don't like the answers, that's your problem.

 

[bri1]

Hi BucketofTea,
Re:

Most of us know how many sexual partners Amanda Knox has had in her lifetime, as we do so with Raffaele Sollecito.

Do you know, BoT, how many sexual partners that Rudy Guede had in his sexual history?
If not, why do you think that it is unknown, especially as it is almost 4 years now after Meredith Kercher's brutal murder?

If I recall correctly, it was Rudy's DNA that was found in Miss Kercher's vagina...



Nicely written post Bri1,
well put, IMHO...
RW

Thanks, RWVBWL
I actually think this case is built on misogyny. I think that Amanda didn't conform to the Italians' view of how a woman should behave, and they punished her for it, and have been punishing her ever since.
Statistics on violent crime towards women all over the world are shocking (even countries like the UK- 1 in 4 women raped, 1 in 4 women subject to 'domestic' violence- British Crime Survey). All perpertrated by men. When you imagine these statistics applied to any other 'minority' group, you can see how appalling they are. Recently, there was a murder of a YWW (young white woman) in the city I live in which was reported in national news extensively, which took about a month to get an arrest on. Women were told that they should not walk alone at night. You can see why- until the police knew who did it, or why, they knew there was the possibility of no connection between the perp and the poor woman who was killed, that it was random, and so they issued a warning. All very sensible and understandable. But imagine if there was a violent criminal who targeted a particular racial group, and the police issued a warning to that part of the community. Don't go out alone at night. Then there would be real discussions about what the police could and should be doing to protect that community. But when it's women, there's an unspoken assumption that we will always be targeted, there's not a lot that can be done. Don't go out alone at night is a permenent state of affairs...
To bring this back to Amanda, I believe that we will see more and more cases of women being accused of sexually motivated or violent crime, such as in the Scazzi case, on flimsy evidence, when there is an obvious male perpertrator, especially in countries like Italy where the culture is so conflicted about women. You've got SB possibly paying for sex with underage sex workers, masses of guilt coming from the strong associations with the Catholic Church, the madonna / whore complex, exterior and interior feminist pressures (including bits and bobs of EU legislation on equality).
This is a complex mix of social pressures, and I think that we're seeing one expression of it here and with the Scazzi case, which seem to amount to a insistence by the male-dominated legal system, that 'look, it's not just us, women can be violent and lustful, too'. When in fact, although there's always isolated incidents, this kind of crime is almost always inflicted by men. That's one of the facts the guilters can't get their heads around at all, that for a woman (especially a well-educated woman with no problems with drugs, or involvement in the criminal world or prostitution) to be involved with a crime like this would be an extremely rare occurence - an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof. Of course, the usual standard of proof has to exist in the legal setting, but the fact that even this burden has not been met by the prosecution is, in my view, especially egregious given the extraordinarily rare type of crime.

 

[RoseMontague]

Thanks, RWVBWL
I actually think this case is built on misogyny. I think that Amanda didn't conform to the Italians' view of how a woman should behave, and they punished her for it, and have been punishing her ever since.
Statistics on violent crime towards women all over the world are shocking (even countries like the UK- 1 in 4 women raped, 1 in 4 women subject to 'domestic' violence- British Crime Survey). All perpertrated by men. When you imagine these statistics applied to any other 'minority' group, you can see how appalling they are. Recently, there was a murder of a YWW (young white woman) in the city I live in which was reported in national news extensively, which took about a month to get an arrest on. Women were told that they should not walk alone at night. You can see why- until the police knew who did it, or why, they knew there was the possibility of no connection between the perp and the poor woman who was killed, that it was random, and so they issued a warning. All very sensible and understandable. But imagine if there was a violent criminal who targeted a particular racial group, and the police issued a warning to that part of the community. Don't go out alone at night. Then there would be real discussions about what the police could and should be doing to protect that community. But when it's women, there's an unspoken assumption that we will always be targeted, there's not a lot that can be done. Don't go out alone at night is a permenent state of affairs...
To bring this back to Amanda, I believe that we will see more and more cases of women being accused of sexually motivated or violent crime, such as in the Scazzi case, on flimsy evidence, when there is an obvious male perpertrator, especially in countries like Italy where the culture is so conflicted about women. You've got SB possibly paying for sex with underage sex workers, masses of guilt coming from the strong associations with the Catholic Church, the madonna / whore complex, exterior and interior feminist pressures (including bits and bobs of EU legislation on equality).
This is a complex mix of social pressures, and I think that we're seeing one expression of it here and with the Scazzi case, which seem to amount to a insistence by the male-dominated legal system, that 'look, it's not just us, women can be violent and lustful, too'. When in fact, although there's always isolated incidents, this kind of crime is almost always inflicted by men. That's one of the facts the guilters can't get their heads around at all, that for a woman (especially a well-educated woman with no problems with drugs, or involvement in the criminal world or prostitution) to be involved with a crime like this would be an extremely rare occurence - an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof. Of course, the usual standard of proof has to exist in the legal setting, but the fact that even this burden has not been met by the prosecution is, in my view, especially egregious given the extraordinarily rare type of crime.

Well said bri1. The only thing I would add is that the media play this black widow thing up as it seems to be good theater and the public just laps it up and begs for more. It is a reinforcement of the fantasy.

 

[bri1]

Is Patrick Lumumba the true evil mastermind!!!?

• Why does he send a text to Amanda shortly before Meredith is to arrive home on the night she is murdered?
• What is in that text that Amanda would erase it immediately?
• What is he doing in the vicinity of the cottage when he should be working at his bar in town?
• Why does he change the SIM in his cell phone before anyone is even supposed to know about Meredith's murder?
• Why when he supposedly has a bar full of patrons does he use a stranger from another country as his only alibi?

Don't look at me, I'm just asking the questions. If you don't like the answers, that's your problem.

I bet you could do this (as the prosecution did with Amanda and Raffaelle) with most people peripherally involved with Meredith or the cottage. Twist every fact and statement to make them look suspicious. If they have an alibi, well, just accuse the people providing the alibis, too! A few lies leaked to the press early on, to make them look guiltier, and to get the torrent of confirmation bias flowing. And voila! Filomena (and / or her boyf), Giacomo Silenzi (or any of the boys downstairs), Laura (and / or her boyf), etc, etc, could've been in AK and RS's position right now.
Nice post, Dan O

 

[RoseMontague]

Rose,

Here's a better photograph of the lamp cord and bra clasp, the clasp as re-discovered on December 18.........

[qimg]http://www.perugiamurderfile.org/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&album_id=48&image_id=3751[/qimg]

///

Thank you, this is very clear. It is a wonder there weren't 10 or more profiles found on that bra clasp.

 

[bri1]

Well said bri1. The only thing I would add is that the media play this black widow thing up as it seems to be good theater and the public just laps it up and begs for more. It is a reinforcement of the fantasy.

Absolutely, Rose. Had the police caught Rudy quickly, figured out his criminal background, and characterised the crime correctly, it would've made the national news in Italy (and probably the UK too), but no more than that. From the press' point of view, a male burglar raping and stabbing a woman is nothing new. No real story there. And that's sad in itself. Indeed, in my city (and in fact, 2 streets away from me) last year a guys broke into a woman's house, was in the process of robbing her when there was a confrontation, at which point he raped her and stabbed her repeatedly, before setting the house on for and making off with his loot, leaving her for dead. She managed to crawl out of the house, and despite suffering life-changing injuries, survived. It wasn't reported in the national media.

But once you add a twist- a woman involved, a ritualistic element, a luciferina, then the media suddenly has a story that will sell papers. What makes an honours student kill? And a girl, no less? You've added an element of mystery to the story, that will keep people hooked, rather than a grim sociological reality, and the banality of evil.
Ugh.

 

[bucketoftea]

What is (perhaps) fair is criminal history, not sexual history. Sex is not a crime. Not even in large quantities. It would be different if the accused had previously committed sexual crimes. It is fundamentally unfair to infer a tendency toward criminal behavior directly from sexual activity.



I don't see any difference; sexist reasoning does not become non-sexist just because the person it is applied to is accused of a crime (sexual or otherwise).

Your position is analogous to believing that racism is bad when applied to a victim, but okay when applied to a defendant -- a stance that no one in their right mind would endorse.

Not at all. I think this is too subtle for you all? Think in terms of how a suspect who collects combat knives and enjoys violent porn might throw up red flags in the investigation of a stabbing murder with sexual assault/rape. Or even someone who posts their own rape fantasy stories on their facebook/myspace page. All pieces of the puzzle. Why wouldn't you expect this questiong in such a case? I believe it happens even in the USA.

Does anyone know any more about the cocaine dealer whose number was in Knox's phone? (in the form of contact both before and after the murder) I haven't seen anything other than just the one news report published with the detail I refer to.

 

[bucketoftea]

Why is Sollecito letting Knox take all the flak? Why doesn't he tell the court that Knox was with him all night? Or give the court the innocent explanation for his bloody bathmat footprint?

 

[komponisto]

Not at all. I think this is too subtle for you all? Think in terms of how a suspect who collects combat knives and enjoys violent porn might throw up red flags in the investigation of a stabbing murder with sexual assault/rape. Or even someone who posts their own rape fantasy stories on their facebook/myspace page.

This is changing the subject. We were talking about deducing criminality from the failure to "disdain multiple frequentations".

Whether something is evidence depends on its base rate within the population. Roughly speaking, it would need to be both common among perpetrators and uncommon among non-perpetrators. Just one of those two isn't enough.

Why doesn't [Sollecito] tell the court that Knox was with him all night?

Well, why doesn't he? It isn't illegal to lie in a spontaneous statement, and according to you (unless I'm confusing you with every other guilter on the planet) Knox and Sollecito "do not disdain" lying -- so doesn't your theory predict that he would have leapt at the chance?

 

[LondonJohn]

Why is Sollecito letting Knox take all the flak? Why doesn't he tell the court that Knox was with him all night? Or give the court the innocent explanation for his bloody bathmat footprint?

What is this obsession that you (and so many other pro-guilt commentators) have with equating Sollecito exercising his right to silence with a) some sort of personal guilt for Sollecito and b) Sollecito "pushing Knox under the bus"?

Sollecito has made his position perfectly clear, through his lawyers. His position is that both he and Knox were in his apartment from at least 8.30pm right through until around 10.30am the following morning - at which point Knox went back to the cottage while he stayed in his apartment. If you had any experience (or knowledge) of courtroom law, you would realise that it's almost certainly in Sollecito's best interests to not submit himself to examination in court - even if he is entirely innocent. Maybe you can ask a trial lawyer if you still don't understand this very simple and easily-understandable concept.

Your last sentence cleverly manages to combine ignorance with confirmation bias . Not only do you not seem to know that is it not in Sollecito's interests to testify in relation to the bathmat partial print*, but you are also seemingly operating under the belief that the print is indeed provable as Sollecito's. You're wrong on both counts.

* If Sollecito had indeed made that print (which he didn't), then there is no way that he could admit to that in testimony, yet offer an innocent explanation for how it got there (after all, his position is that he had shoes on at all times on 2nd November, and that he didn't go into Meredith's room at all - which is the only place where there would have been enough blood present by the morning of the 2nd to make the print). On the other hand, if it wasn't his foot making the print, then he has nothing to gain by testifying about the print on the stand. All that is necessary is for his defence lawyers to tell the court that Sollecito did not make that print, and to challenge prosecutors to prove that the print was Sollecito's (and not Guede's or anyone else's).

PS: Dowch 'laen Cymru! 13-9, with 15 minutes to go

 

[Kestrel]

I actually think this case is built on misogyny. I think that Amanda didn't conform to the Italians' view of how a woman should behave, and they punished her for it, and have been punishing her ever since.

Amanda's behavior wasn't far from the norm for young Italian women. Her Italian roommates were also having premarital sex and smoking pot. The clash was between reality and how Italian society pretended young women behaved.

 

[LondonJohn]

Amanda's behavior wasn't far from the norm for young Italian women. Her Italian roommates were also having premarital sex and smoking pot. The clash was between reality and how Italian society pretended young women behaved.

Exactly. Either of the Italian girls in the cottage or Meredith's boyfriend could just as easily (or perhaps even more easily) had their characters assassinated by a prosecutor with a vested interest to do so. Just imagine, for example, what an unscrupulous prosecutor could have made of a girl having sex with the guy that came to fix the washing machine, or a boy growing high-strength marijuana in large amounts for personal use and small-scale dealing among friends.

Now 16-9, with 45 seconds left and a Hook penalty attempt! And it's over!! We win! hehehehehehe

 

[Chris_Halkides]

a subtle distinction

Not at all. I think this is too subtle for you all?

bucketoftea,

I objected to the "multiple frequentations" rationale for keeping Ms. Knox in prison prior to the trial of first instance. It is not difficult to understand unless one is trying not to understand it.
EDT
If Sollecito testified that he and Knox spent the Night of 1 November together, would you believe him?

 

[Onofarar]

Thanks, RWVBWL
I actually think this case is built on misogyny. I think that Amanda didn't conform to the Italians' view of how a woman should behave, and they punished her for it, and have been punishing her ever since.
Statistics on violent crime towards women all over the world are shocking (even countries like the UK- 1 in 4 women raped, 1 in 4 women subject to 'domestic' violence- British Crime Survey). All perpertrated by men. When you imagine these statistics applied to any other 'minority' group, you can see how appalling they are. Recently, there was a murder of a YWW (young white woman) in the city I live in which was reported in national news extensively, which took about a month to get an arrest on. Women were told that they should not walk alone at night. You can see why- until the police knew who did it, or why, they knew there was the possibility of no connection between the perp and the poor woman who was killed, that it was random, and so they issued a warning. All very sensible and understandable. But imagine if there was a violent criminal who targeted a particular racial group, and the police issued a warning to that part of the community. Don't go out alone at night. Then there would be real discussions about what the police could and should be doing to protect that community. But when it's women, there's an unspoken assumption that we will always be targeted, there's not a lot that can be done. Don't go out alone at night is a permenent state of affairs...
To bring this back to Amanda, I believe that we will see more and more cases of women being accused of sexually motivated or violent crime, such as in the Scazzi case, on flimsy evidence, when there is an obvious male perpertrator, especially in countries like Italy where the culture is so conflicted about women. You've got SB possibly paying for sex with underage sex workers, masses of guilt coming from the strong associations with the Catholic Church, the madonna / whore complex, exterior and interior feminist pressures (including bits and bobs of EU legislation on equality).
This is a complex mix of social pressures, and I think that we're seeing one expression of it here and with the Scazzi case, which seem to amount to a insistence by the male-dominated legal system, that 'look, it's not just us, women can be violent and lustful, too'. When in fact, although there's always isolated incidents, this kind of crime is almost always inflicted by men. That's one of the facts the guilters can't get their heads around at all, that for a woman (especially a well-educated woman with no problems with drugs, or involvement in the criminal world or prostitution) to be involved with a crime like this would be an extremely rare occurence - an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof. Of course, the usual standard of proof has to exist in the legal setting, but the fact that even this burden has not been met by the prosecution is, in my view, especially egregious given the extraordinarily rare type of crime.

Another nice post br1 from a perspective that probably half of the posters here don't have . Not to take anything away from or in any way diminish the significant contributions here of Rose, Mary H and Christianahannah (and Alt+F4 when he/she was her and claimed to be a woman before she claimed to be a man).

 

[Onofarar]

Why is Sollecito letting Knox take all the flak? Why doesn't he tell the court that Knox was with him all night? Or give the court the innocent explanation for his bloody bathmat footprint?

Err ...hmmm - because its not his footprint?
BTW your confirmation bias is showing

 

[LondonJohn]

SA has just posted a lengthy narrative of the crime on .org. I highly recommend it as a prime example of unsupported conjecture, poor thinking, confirmation bias, circular reasoning and factual ignorance. Quite apart from the number of florid, unsupportable contentions within the narrative, the whole thing is blown apart by just one provable fact: Meredith Kercher was not killed at 11.30pm. It is physiologically impossible for the attack and murder to have occurred at that time (or, for that matter, any time later than 10.30pm). In fact, all the evidence* clearly indicates that Meredith was almost certainly attacked and killed at some point between 9pm and 9.30pm - and probably very shortly after arriving home at around 9pm.


* The stomach/intestinal contents; the otherwise-inexplicable failure of Meredith to call her mother again; the shoes and jacket that she was wearing when attacked; the mysterious button pushes on her phone at around 10pm which are entirely inconsistent with Meredith holding the phone at that time; the wet laundry not having been removed from the machine; the position of the UK handset some distance from the cottage by 10.13pm; the cancellation of the incoming MMS message at 10.13pm; the midpoint ToD estimate of the properly-adjusted Henssge Nomogram (based on residual body temperature) using correct body weight and environmental conditions.