Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[LondonJohn]

As an aside: the obvious reason why Knox wouldn't have mentioned her "bathmat shuffle" in her November 4th email to friends was that it was totally irrelevant to the information she was trying to impart in that email. The whole purpose of that email would have been to inform her friends and acquaintances about what had happened over the previous few dreadful days. It's therefore entirely consistent that Knox would have mentioned that she first properly noticed blood on the bathmat when she stepped onto it to dry her feet; but there's no reason whatsoever why Knox would have felt it necessary to describe in that email her method of ambulation back to her room after the shower. That detail would have been entirely irrelevant to the situation Knox was aiming to recount. In fact, I'd argue that if Knox had specifically mentioned her "bathmat shuffle" in that email, this would be a highly suspicious and extraneous detail for her to have included: and a reasonable conclusion would have been that Knox was consciously (and conspicuously) trying to establish a particular position regarding the bathmat and footprints in an email where that information should have been irrelevant.

It was only when the police confronted Knox with their "evidence" from the hallway that Knox found it necessary to address the method by which she'd moved from the bathroom to her bedroom after her shower. The fact that she hadn't mentioned it up until that point is utterly non-incriminating (unless you are a poor thinker who is riddled with angry confirmation bias.....)

 

[LondonJohn]

As another aside: It was essentially mandatory for Knox to testify in the criminal slander trial, which (inexplicably, and probably unlawfully) was conducted in the midst of the murder trial. This is because although Knox was the defendant in this trial too, she had been accused of making false accusations of criminal conduct against Lumumba. It was therefore incumbent upon her to explain the circumstances surrounding her accusation.

A criminal defamation case/trial is the only instance where the defendant has some burden of proof as part of his/her defence. In every other criminal trial, the burden of proof rests entirely with the prosecutor (or plaintiff). It would therefore have been near-inconceivable for Knox not to have testified in her own defence in the criminal slander trial, given that she had pleaded not-guilty.

And it doesn't change in any way the fact that Knox and Sollecito would very clearly best serve their own interests by declining to testify in the murder trial - regardless of whether or not they were factually culpable. To suggest otherwise is ignorant and, frankly, quite stupid.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

It was only when the police confronted Knox with their "evidence" from the hallway that Knox found it necessary to address the method by which she'd moved from the bathroom to her bedroom after her shower. The fact that she hadn't mentioned it up until that point is utterly non-incriminating (unless you are a poor thinker who is riddled with angry confirmation bias.....)

That's not quite right. The interview in which Amanda mentioned the "bathmat shuffle" took place on December 17, 2007, a day before police performed the luminol tests that revealed the footprints in the corridor. And the "bathmat shuffle" wouldn't account for these footprints in any case.

Amanda did not offer this detail to explain away incriminating evidence. She need not have mentioned it at all. She did so because she was trying to be as meticulous as possible in describing her activities on the morning of November 2.

 

[snook1]

The translations/excepts are from the transcripts of testimony on 14 September 2009, matching the date in Frank's post I outlined in my first post (Too Low).

This is the point the where Massei decides enough with the discovery stuff, the prosecution gets to keep the advantage of not turning over the documents the defense needed to properly dispute Ms Steffi's work.

Thank you.

 

[katy_did]

That's not quite right. The interview in which Amanda mentioned the "bathmat shuffle" took place on December 17, 2007, a day before police performed the luminol tests that revealed the footprints in the corridor. And the "bathmat shuffle" wouldn't account for these footprints in any case.

I would have thought it quite easily could account for them (one foot on, one off the bathmat etc), at least if they could've been made in the way Massei suggests, in very weakly diluted blood. As you say though, the footprints were only discovered after she spoke about the bathmat business, so one would have to resort to retrocausality to suggest she invented it to explain them.

 

[LondonJohn]

That's not quite right. The interview in which Amanda mentioned the "bathmat shuffle" took place on December 17, 2007, a day before police performed the luminol tests that revealed the footprints in the corridor. And the "bathmat shuffle" wouldn't account for these footprints in any case.

Amanda did not offer this detail to explain away incriminating evidence. She need not have mentioned it at all. She did so because she was trying to be as meticulous as possible in describing her activities on the morning of November 2.

Ah yes, I'd forgotten that. And as others say, it actually strengthens the argument that Knox wasn't trying to invent a bogus scenario to account for any potential evidence in the hallway. It would appear that Knox gave this account of her transition from the bathroom to her bedroom simply in response to a specific question asking her to detail her exact movements in the cottage on the morning after the murder.

And I'd reiterate that there's absolutely no reason why an innocent Knox would have mentioned this detail in the 4th November email - and actually every reason to believe that a culpable Knox (who thought she might have left incriminating foot print evidence in the hallway) might have mentioned it in that email.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

following good advice

And it doesn't change in any way the fact that Knox and Sollecito would very clearly best serve their own interests by declining to testify in the murder trial - regardless of whether or not they were factually culpable. To suggest otherwise is ignorant and, frankly, quite stupid.

LondonJohn,

I would put it slightly differently. They should follow the advice of their lawyers, which will probably be to decline to testify. It is frankly weird for those who think the pair are guilty to suggest that they testify, or even to claim that one could infer guilt if they did not. Would anything that either Raffaele or Amanda said on the stand cause them to change their minds?
EDT
Kestrel first brought this video to my attention. It explains better than I could why the innocent can do themselves great harm when being interviewed by the police. Same principles apply to the courtroom. MOO.

post script
From a lawyer, "Sometimes you'll have a witness you won't want to testify because they're just terribly, terribly, awfully bad on the stand. You wouldn't believe how bad some people can be on the stand. I had a case two weeks ago with a woman who, by the end of her cross examination, probably would have admitted to her involvement in the Kennedy assassination because she couldn't specifically remember not having been in Dallas that day. This wasn't even a criminal case - we were probating a will."

A lawyer wrote on his blog, "In our society we have been taught to be highly suspicious of people who appear to be nervous and are fumbling for words when they speak. Obviously this nervousness and fumbling, therefore, tends to cause juries to believe that you are lying and the prosecutor will take advantage of this."

 

[AmyStrange]

In memory of Tang

Hi PDiGirolamo, LondonJohn and others.
Thanks for the condolences, I sincerely appreciate it. We are kinda like a family here, even if some of us people are strange, as an old Doors song mentions. I know that I am.

[...]

PS - I shed many a tear today, in private and in the company of my brother and sister, though you might not know it by reading my postings today. Didn't do so in front of the friends I was with tonight though, just kept kinda jokin' around, though I let them know that my lil doggie Tang had died.
I guess we all have different ways of publicly dealing with our grief. Sound familiar?

Thanks again everyone!
RW

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I am so sorry for your loss RW. Losing a close friend like you just did is never easy, but if you believe in karma (and I do), then you have to believe that Tang almost immediately searched Meredith out and is right now getting a scratching behind the ears and a hug that is probably making him/ her as happy as (s)he's been since the last time you and (s)he romped in the water together.

For some reason Meredith just seemed like that kind of person to me.

Tang is in good company and with good people now,

Dave

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[komponisto]

I am hoping one of our Italian readers can help me with this passage, it seems to me they are suspecting some more fishiness on the computers:

Quick and dirty translation:

IV) EXAMINATION BY THE [INDEPENDENT] EXPERT APPOINTED BY THE GIP [=preliminary judge, i.e. Matteini] PROFESSOR BERNASCHI REGARDING THE ANALYSIS OF THE HARD DRIVES TAKEN INTO CUSTODY

Prof. Massimo Bernashi was appointed as an [independent] expert in the course of the preliminary investigation with the following request: "After viewing the computers and acquiring the records that you deem necessary, extract the data present in the memories of the computers taken from Raffaele Sollecito [and] Amanda Knox, as well as the computer belonging to Meredith Kercher, and recover from the corresponding hard disks all the data therein present by creating a clone of the individual hard disk, [and] on suitable magnetic support, also ascertain however the causes of the block that occurred on the computers" as described in the report of March 21, 2008 by Prof. Massimo Berneschi to GIP Dr. Claudia Matteini (? 12).

Prof. Bernashi testified at the evidence hearing on April 8, 2008, and illustrated his conclusions concerning the electric shock which "burned" [the computers] in an irredeemable manner, indicating some of the causes that could have provoked this technical [? gusto, lit. "taste"]. He was nonetheless able to clone the hard disks of Kercher and Sollecito, while that of Knox could not be cloned. The contents of the hard disks mentioned were not analyzed.

The defense maintains that it is necessary to consider the expert examination in light of the contrasting statements made at trial by witnesses from the Postal Police regarding the transfer and the analyses of the personal computers taken from the defendants, in particular the testimony of Marco TROTTA and Claudio TRIFICI of March 14, 2009, and Mirko GREGORI. Use of the Logic Cube machine, as reported by the witnesses mentioned, is not described in the report of Prof. Massimo Bernaschi of March 21, 2008, [just] as the activities of the witnesses during the examinations at Prof. Massimo Bernaschi's institute are not described.

We therefore request that the expert, Prof. Massimo Bernaschi, be called to testify by this honorable Court.

 

[Kaosium]

That's not quite right. The interview in which Amanda mentioned the "bathmat shuffle" took place on December 17, 2007, a day before police performed the luminol tests that revealed the footprints in the corridor. And the "bathmat shuffle" wouldn't account for these footprints in any case.

Amanda did not offer this detail to explain away incriminating evidence. She need not have mentioned it at all. She did so because she was trying to be as meticulous as possible in describing her activities on the morning of November 2.

You know, someone with a nasty suspicious mind might even wonder if they did cake that floor with Luminol just to see if they could pick up anything they could use against Amanda, having gotten no confession and having to dig up more evidence against Raffaele anyway when the mindless shoeprint error was exposed. The thing is though, if (some of) those prints were highly diluted, perhaps from blood from the bathmat, they'd have had to play with the picture program as they wouldn't have shown up as brightly lit as they did in the crime scene photos. I know absolutely nothing about that, outside this: when I try to enlarge a picture--like for my avatar--that started clearly defined it tends to get all fuzzy, kinda like how those footprints look in the photo. Of course they'd also have been walked on repeatedly....

That would also mean the police used 'evidence' gathered in the second trip to the cottage they must have known wasn't involved in the murder. Kinda like they did with the knife in Raffaele's drawer.

 

[cuki777]

Elementary

That is very interesting - as I keep reading more and more about this case, I find more and more people who now believe that the two were involved to some extent, but didn't actually commit the murder - and if this is the case, what would a fair outcome be? For me, it would be time served already, except they haven't come clean and it is probably too late for that thanks to their lawyers and parents, plus who would believe them now anyway. So they can serve out their 26 and 25 year sentences and dream about what life would have been like if they hadn't listened to their lawyers and parents. Sad in a way, because I think Amanda was really close to telling all in the beginning.

Nice post, Sherlock. I'm one of those people and have been for about three years. Don't know if there's more and more of us. If a bit more truth leaks out then maybe . . .

 

[Antony]

That is very interesting - as I keep reading more and more about this case, I find more and more people who now believe that the two were involved to some extent, but didn't actually commit the murder - and if this is the case, what would a fair outcome be? For me, it would be time served already, except they haven't come clean and it is probably too late for that thanks to their lawyers and parents, plus who would believe them now anyway. So they can serve out their 26 and 25 year sentences and dream about what life would have been like if they hadn't listened to their lawyers and parents. Sad in a way, because I think Amanda was really close to telling all in the beginning.

Nice post, Sherlock. I'm one of those people and have been for about three years. Don't know if there's more and more of us. If a bit more truth leaks out then maybe . . .

The only way anybody could think that AK and RS were "involved" but not killers is if they hadn't told the truth about their movements on the night of 1-2 November. The trouble with this view is that there is no more "evidence" of their alleged "lies" than there is that they were allegedly present at the time of the killing: none.

Alongside this, there is massive evidence of police and prosecution lies, destruction of evidence and manipulation of evidence, including of AK and RS's statements up to and after their wrongful arrests. The conclusion has to be that they told the truth: they were at Raff's place the entire night of the crime, and that Amanda's statements on 5-6 November were the result of police mistreatment.

ETA: if the 2 of you think that the accused's statements suggest they were "involved" in some way, then I suggest you start giving the statements and behaviour of the police the same sort of sceptical scrutiny.

 

[Kaosium]

Nice post, Sherlock. I'm one of those people and have been for about three years. Don't know if there's more and more of us. If a bit more truth leaks out then maybe . . .

My suspicion is as more truth leaks out there will be less and less of you. Just let me get my hands on the transcript of what Napoleoni, Ficarra, Zugarini and Domino said in court about the interrogation, every precious, ridiculous little lie. They can redact everything they said regarding the damned 'cartwheel' and with the other half of the pages left pretty much the only reason anyone would have left to suspect them of anything becomes a fart in the wind....

Or better yet, bacon burgers...


What do you honestly think is evidence against Raffaele and Amanda? Doesn't it bother you to ignore every last proven instance of corrupt practices and outright lies by the cops which were all significant to either the defaming of, or verdict against, Raffaele and Amanda? I don't want to chase you off or anything, I just don't get it.

 

[cuki777]

Raffaele had spent the night at his own house on the other side of the city with his girlfriend, Meredith's American flatmate Amanda Knox, 22.
He said: "It was a normal night. Meredith had gone out with one of her English friends and Amanda and I went to party with one of my friends."

Sunday Mirror 4th November 2011

 

[AmyStrange]

Raffaele had spent the night at his own house on the other side of the city with his girlfriend, Meredith's American flatmate Amanda Knox, 22.
He said: "It was a normal night. Meredith had gone out with one of her English friends and Amanda and I went to party with one of my friends."

Sunday Mirror 4th November 2011

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Got a link Sherlock?

There's more evidence that Curatolo and Rudy worked together to kill and rape Meredith than there is that Amanda and Raffaele worked with Rudy to do it,

Dave

P.S. Found the link, but it also says this so it's not really a reliable source:

FROM: http://www.mirror.co.uk/sunday-mirror/2007/11/04/italy-murder-details-emerge-98487-20058122/

" ...As Amanda, from Washington DC, stepped into house she could tell there was something terribly wrong.... "

Amanda is not from Washinton DC, but Washington state.

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[lionking]

My suspicion is as more truth leaks out there will be less and less of you. Just let me get my hands on the transcript of what Napoleoni, Ficarra, Zugarini and Domino said in court about the interrogation, every precious, ridiculous little lie. They can redact everything they said regarding the damned 'cartwheel' and with the other half of the pages left pretty much the only reason anyone would have left to suspect them of anything becomes a fart in the wind....

Or better yet, bacon burgers...


What do you honestly think is evidence against Raffaele and Amanda? Doesn't it bother you to ignore every last proven instance of corrupt practices and outright lies by the cops which were
all significant to either the defaming of, or verdict against, Raffaele and Amanda? I don't want to chase you off or
anything, I just don't get it.

Yup, the grand conspiracy again. Things don't hang together without it.

 

[cuki777]

Hi Amy

I'm CUKI not Sherlock. I'm too new to post links but google 'sunday mirror 4 november 2007 raffaelle party'

My position is 'involvement' not 'kill and rape'

RIP Meredith and closure for her family.

 

[AmyStrange]

ToD?

Yup, the grand conspiracy again. Things don't hang together without it.

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Lionking,

what do you think the time of Meredith's death was and what evidence do you have to support it? And don't forget to explain Rudy's Skype call (where he says he heard her scream at about 9:20) while you're at it,

Dave

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[lionking]

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Lionking,

what do you think the time of Meredith's death was and what evidence do you have to support it? And don't forget to explain Rudy's Skype call (where he says he heard her scream at about 9:20) while you're at it,

Dave

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What do you think of a conspiracy of police, prosecutors and forensic scientists which has hung together for years without a whistleblower?

 

[AmyStrange]

Hi Amy

I'm CUKI not Sherlock. I'm too new to post links but google 'sunday mirror 4 november 2007 raffaelle party'

My position is 'involvement' not 'kill and rape'

RIP Meredith and closure for her family.

If you say so, but read my whole post where I give the link and also supply another quote feom the same article a couple sentences later where the "Mirror" makes another mistake about Amanda being from Washington DC (she's from Washington state) so not a really reliable article in my opinion.

Got anything else?

Dave

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