Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[RoseMontague]

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Rose,

Yeah. There's a thread discussing just this issue.

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I have posted there but recently it seemed to be doing better. Good to know that I am not the only one of the Knox clan having some degree of difficulty with this.

So how does Massie come up with the bare footprint in the corridor that contains both Meredith's and Amanda's DNA? Mistake or intentional? The Machine's continued claims in this area?

 

[cuki777]

Hi PW

I know you only tossed this out with little thought, but it suffers from a serious flaw, one that the prosecution never actually seemed to address.

At the time of the murder, Amanda was hardly able to speak Italian, remember that she required an Interpreter on the night of the 5th, and that she wasn't able to read the "Confessions" which were in Italian. Rudy on the other hand has little to no grasp of English.

As a result, any narrative that requires these two people to be able to communicate on more than a very basic level is doomed to failure from the start since such communications were impossible.

Appreciate the tone of your reply. Yes, I'm not nailing my colours to the mast on this scenario but I'm sure someone with more time and knowledge than me could find a few scenarios of involvement but not guilty of murder. People are strange, cunning, devious, foolish, impulsive. I think the language issue is valid but not insurmountable. Having an Italian boyfriend would help with this and AK also was able to communicate to RS that she would like to speak an international body language with him. I'm off travelling now so will have to leave you with any last word if you reply. Best.

 

[cuki777]

Queensland to Perugia

It's been said before that the most fundamental question of epistemology, and hence the one that it's most important you get right, is "What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?".

You think you know that Raffaele and Amanda exhibited odd behaviour at a rate so far above the base rate that most human beings would think that it is evidence. Why do you think you know this?

Bear in mind that you have been exposed to data which has been carefully cherry-picked from everything these two people have done or said for four years, not to a representative sample of everything these people have done or said in four years.

. . . is a long way. I'm guessing you have no first hand knowledge yourself of any of this. We are all making judgement calls with a lot of subjectivity in the mix. I'm off travelling now so will have to leave you with any last word if you reply. Best.

 

[cuki777]

Interesting

katy_did once mapped out how there was pretty much the same amount of evidence against Filomena as there was against Amanda, if one wanted to look at it with a guilt bias. katy, would you be able to direct us to that post?

Sounds like quite a stretch. I'm off travelling now so will have to leave you with any last word if you reply. Best.

 

[cuki777]

Hi K

Hi Cuki! Welcome to JREF.

I think you have it backwards though. Your involvement-o-meter requires you to take either the cops word as utterly authoritative and beyond question (regarding the interrogation) and ignore the notable discrepancies in it, the abuse to logic and plain common sense, and the fact the statements were thrown out by the Italian Supreme Court. Oh, and also the fact there's no tapes which is a violation of article 141-bis of the Italian code, that's not an argument for those skeptical of the police in this regard, quite the opposite actually.

Regarding the 'no theft' statement, again you must maintain with absolution that the only interpretation of that implicates Raffaele and Amanda in some kind of involvement in the crime. That would be ignoring the numerous scenarios where it is actually exculpatory to some limited degree or entirely meaningless either way. At the same time you must ignore with absolution the numerous indications that the cops messed up and that Mignini is a screwball who last made the news in Italy digging up corpses to check their pants sizes and haircuts in pursuit of a famous murder case almost twenty years cold.

As of his CNN interview this spring he still believes he was right in that endeavor. I can't help but wonder if the fact the body was underwater for some time before discovery and had been buried several years might explain why the pants size differed, and if he was actually interested in the truth of the matter before he dug up his second corpse he might have tried some DNA testing as that works too sometimes...

You are a bit too brainy for me. In the UK we have lay people (like me) to sit on a jury and decide stuff. Set against words like 'authoritative' and 'absolution', my lay persons response is - this case and nearly everything about it is a mess. Almost any interpretation is now possible, mine is still: they were not guilty of actual murder but were somehow involved. I'm off travelling now so will have to leave you with any last word if you reply. Best.

 

[RoseMontague]

You are a bit too brainy for me. In the UK we have lay people (like me) to sit on a jury and decide stuff. Set against words like 'authoritative' and 'absolution', my lay persons response is - this case and nearly everything about it is a mess. Almost any interpretation is now possible, mine is still: they were not guilty of actual murder but were somehow involved. I'm off travelling now so will have to leave you with any last word if you reply. Best.

Having an opinion of them being "somehow involved" means nothing more than you suspect something. Which comes back to the behavior and acting "suspiciously". As evidence that they should have been considered "suspects" it might work. Or they could have been charged with suspicious activity rather than murder. The cartwheel ought to be good for some community service at the local gymnastics center.

 

[cuki777]

Hi Bri

I'm interested in you reasoning here, in characterising the 'totally innocent' position as similar to or the same as a religious approach.
I actually think anyone who allows for a reasonable possibility for guilt or any involvement is taking a 'religious' approach. Here's why: it follows the path of revelation, followed by faith. The truth is 'revealed' through the fact of the prosecution, the judgement of the court, and the Motivation document. Faith comes into play whenever exculpatory evidence comes to light, and the guilter has to reject the most straightforward, simple, and connected (to other bits of behaviour and scientific fact) theory in favour of an extremely unlikely and complicated one.
It reminds me of dinosaur fossils being considered a test of our faith.
The majority of pro-acquittal posters-who-are-also-convinced of innocence, have no text of revealed truth (a la the Massei document)- the C & V report wouldn't count, as it merely confirmed (by independent experts with no agenda) the conclusions that many of them came to on their own through extensive consideration of the evidence. The approach has been (on the most part) evidence and logic-led and this doesn't jibe with a 'religious' approach.
I think what you're implicitly doing here is comparing an almost radical skeptic position with a normal skeptic position. Pro-innocence positions are 'normally' skeptical- they withhold judgement until all the facts are considered impartially. Radical skepticism on the other hand requires one to consider all
logically-possible but extremely implausible theories, and requires one to keep them open as 'possibilities' unless they can be actively ruled out.
The first is a very good methodology, and is appropriate within the context of criminal proceedings. The latter is not.
I teach philosophy to undergrads and this is very difficult for them to grasp- one of the first topics on the syllabus is Descartes' 'evil demon' argument, a radically skeptic argument that has a very specific purpose in Descartes' methodological approach to metaphysics. After they learn this, they try and apply it to other philosophical topics, but in doing so forget it's instrumentality, and it's lack of productivity (in itself) in truth-seeking.

Thanks for thoughtful response. Following my car metaphor, if I get accused of being the actual drink driver killer because I've been acting oddly about this whole car thing then a 'religious' person is outraged and comes to my defence cos they know I wasn't driving. The 'religious' person takes it too far and starts defending me against accusations that I even lent the car without permission. I'm off travelling now (not by car) so will have to leave you with any last word if you reply. Best.

 

[Justinian2]

When they brought the Green River killer (Gary Leon Ridgway) in for questioning the first time, he sat quietly in the back seat of the police car on the way to the station. He asked NO questions.

Why didn't he ask questions? Because he knew why he was picked up. He knew what was happening. It is logical that a guilty person would be more silent whereas an innocent person would ask questions like "Why am I going with you?"
Amanda talked, as plausibly would any innocent and naïve person. Ridgway remained silent as it is plausible that any guilty person would.

I just watched the story of the Green River killer on ID Discovery.

 

[RoseMontague]

When they brought the Green River killer (Gary Leon Ridgway) in for questioning the first time, he sat quietly in the back seat of the police car on the way to the station. He asked NO questions.

Why didn't he ask questions? Because he knew why he was picked up. He knew what was happening. It is logical that a guilty person would be more silent whereas an innocent person would ask questions like "Why am I going with you?"
Amanda talked, as plausibly would any innocent and naïve person. Ridgway remained silent as it is plausible that any guilty person would.

I just watched the story of the Green River killer on ID Discovery.

It's a good point. However, when I was on the side of guilt I compared Anita and Biff to the suspects on a Columbo TV show. They would keep coming up with such interesting explanations for things that could not be explained. LOL. The smart thing for anyone to do, guilty or innocent, is to get a lawyer.

 

[Justinian2]

It's a good point. However, when I was on the side of guilt I compared Anita and Biff to the suspects on a Columbo TV show. They would keep coming up with such interesting explanations for things that could not be explained. LOL. The smart thing for anyone to do, guilty or innocent, is to get a lawyer.

Once I tried to lie to protect another. It was tough. My story kept seeming implausible to me, so I kept changing it. One needs to make a plausible partly true story even if lying. When lying, it's better to say something true and not reveal all. The CIA calls it plausible deniability.

Getting a lawyer immediately is the first step. The lawyer can make the story and all you have to do is stick to it. Of course when I was in that predicament - after my son was cleared - I let the total truth rip and had the court laughing because I said things everybody else wanted to say. I got off completely and the cop was made the fool by the judge. Once the fear of my son's involvement was finished, I became fearless and truthful with excellent results.

Amanda is a perfect example of a naive truth teller without a lawyer.
Guede is a perfect example of a guilty person with a lawyer (I assume).

 

[Rolfe]

Kind of removes your veterinary credentials from the argument then.

That makes me wrong, then?

For goodness sake, what's so hard about it? The state of Meredith's digestion shows she was killed within about three hours of her last meal. That doesn't change no matter how many degrees you have or haven't got.

What is amusing are the attempts by people who have no medical or scientific knowledge at all to google up specious arguments in their desperate attempts to refute the bleedin' obvious. And in that I include the attempts to rubbish the expert report into the DNA findings, as well as the risible sophistry about the time of death.

Rolfe.

 

[komponisto]

Kind of removes [Rolfe's] veterinary credentials from the argument then.

No, because all else being equal, "you don't need any fancy degrees" carries more weight coming from someone who does have fancy degrees (even if those who don't are sometimes right to say it).

 

[Onofarar]

Thanks, Onofarar
I have no expertise in any of the main areas called for in this discussion- biology (ToD, forensics), computing (alibi), communications (cell phone data).

But I am a philosopher, so I'm glad to add some comments about reasoning, critical thinking (on which I'm currently writing a book proposal), and logic when I can, as well as areas such as the philosophy of science, theory-building, and philosophy of neuroscience and psychology, which are my areas of expertise.
I think one of the main problems in this case has been a lack of understanding of how reasoning does work, and how reasoning should work. Massei's document displayed important logical errors that a five year old should be able to spot, IMO.

Exactly, doncha' just love his standad reasoning statement - "it is possible therefore probable..."

 

[Antony]

It's a good point. However, when I was on the side of guilt I compared Anita and Biff to the suspects on a Columbo TV show. They would keep coming up with such interesting explanations for things that could not be explained. LOL. The smart thing for anyone to do, guilty or innocent, is to get a lawyer.

I find TV detective dramas utterly nauseating. Needless to say they give a completely false idea of how people behave in situations like this, and arguably are responsible for all of the "innocent people don't do that!" attitudes we've seen in comment on this case. Equally needless to say, they don't generally include much content based on police screwing up, beating up suspects or accusing people without evidence. (One of the biggest ironies I've seen in this debate was when I was arguing that Amanda's statements from the all-night interrogation were obviously coerced, and my antagonist came back accusing me of having watched too many TV police dramas!)

The most laughable aspect of them is when the the cast assemble at the end of the episode to hear the detective character recount his/her solution to the crime, facing repeated interruptions (which s/he calmly rebuts) from the character who turns out to be the culprit, culminating with the policeman stepping in to put the handcuffs on when the solution is announced. How can anyone imagine that this represents a real-life situation?

 

[Onofarar]

Is anyone else having constant connection problems about this time on a regular basis?

Yes - early morning very day about 7 - 9 am EDT.

 

[Rolfe]

Deal Frees ‘West Memphis Three’ in Arkansas

This is overwhelming. It's hard to even imagine what it is like to be freed after 18 years behind bars without guilt.
wm3.org

Bruce's new article:

What do the West Memphis Three and Amanda Knox Have in Common?

I read the article, and again I'm struck by the similarities with the wrongful conviction of Stefan Kiszko. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lesley_Molseed

West Yorkshire Police quickly formed the view that Kiszko fitted their profile of the sort of person likely to have killed Lesley Molseed even though he had never been in trouble with the law and had no social life beyond his mother and aunt. Kiszko also had an unusual hobby of writing down registration numbers of cars that annoyed him, which supported police suspicions. The police now pursued evidence which might incriminate him, and ignored other leads that might have taken them in other directions.

[....] During questioning, the interviewing detectives seized upon every apparent inconsistency between his varying accounts of the relevant days as further demonstration of his likely guilt. Kiszko confessed to the crime after three days of intensive questioning. Prior to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, suspects did not have the right to have a solicitor present during interviews, and the police did not ask Kiszko if he wanted one. His request to have his mother present whilst he was being questioned was refused and, crucially, the police did not caution him until long after they had decided he was the prime – indeed, only – suspect. [....]

He said correctly that he had never met Molseed and therefore could never have murdered her and claimed he was with his Aunt tending to his father's grave in Halifax at the time of the murder before visiting a garden centre and then going home. His denials of murder were not believed by most of the jury, nor were his claims that the confession was bullied out of him by the police. When asked why he had confessed, Kiszko replied that "I started to tell these lies and they seemed to please them and the pressure was off as far as I was concerned. I thought if I admitted what I did to the police they would check out what I had said, find it untrue and would then let me go".

You could practically write the script.

The good outcome from the Kiszko case was that the police had to accept that Kiszko was not the murderer, and re-opened the inquiry. The real murderer was convicted in 2007, OVER THIRTY YEARS after the murder took place, due to DNA evidence collected in relation to another investigation providing a "direct hit".

Rolfe.

 

[Mary_H]

. . . is a long way. I'm guessing you have no first hand knowledge yourself of any of this. We are all making judgement calls with a lot of subjectivity in the mix. I'm off travelling now so will have to leave you with any last word if you reply. Best.

Not all of us.

 

[Mary_H]

Sounds like quite a stretch. I'm off travelling now so will have to leave you with any last word if you reply. Best.

How convenient. I had hopes you would stick with this.

 

[Alt+F4]

Is anyone else having constant connection problems about this time on a regular basis?

Yes, yes, yes.

 

[Rolfe]

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=205484