Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[shuttlt]

I don't think Fisher means that others are emotionally invested or ought to be; I think he means rather that for many there is a concern that an actual injustice of a considerable degree of gravity has occurred, and philosophically and intellectually, they seek to illuminate this, and want to see it righted.

I don't see that posting here is going to right anything. Also, if someone is motivated to do something because of a perceived injustice, I suggest they are emotionally invested. It would be an odd kind justice campaigner who had no particular emotional attachment to the fight either way.

 

[LondonJohn]

I've said several times over the past couple of days that guilt/innocence doesn't interest me. It's not my purpose to trick people into arguing with me.

That's ludicrous. It would be like actively participating in one of the JREF homeopathy threads, and exclaiming that you had no interest in whether or not homeopathy worked at at physiological level.

Why the hell are you participating on these threads (or even reading them) if the guilt/non-guilt/innocence of Knox and Sollecito doesn't "interest you"? Strange indeed....

(For example, I have no interest in the debate over the existence of the Bigfoot/Yeti (I am satisfied that no such animal exists). So I therefore have no interest in visiting the JREF threads that address and debate this subject - let alone actually posting on those threads. Simple, huh?)

 

[Rolfe]

I don't see that posting here is going to right anything. Also, if someone is motivated to do something because of a perceived injustice, I suggest they are emotionally invested. It would be an odd kind justice campaigner who had no particular emotional attachment to the fight either way.

I guess it does become emotional. Once one has realised that someone who had nothing to do with a crime has been accused and convicted on a highly partisan and biassed reading of the evidence, one cannot help but imagine how it must feel to be in that position. And it doesn't matter if their name is Amanda Knox or Raffaele Sollecito or Abdelbaset al-Megrahi or Sion Jenkins or Paul Esslemont or Sally Clark or Barry George or Stefan Kizsko.

One has to reach the conclusion that these people are innocent before this kicks in, though.

Rolfe.

 

[smkovalinksy]

I don't see that posting here is going to right anything. Also, if someone is motivated to do something because of a perceived injustice, I suggest they are emotionally invested. It would be an odd kind justice campaigner who had no particular emotional attachment to the fight either way.

I am sure the emotional investment is on the other side as well. And of course there is the sense that illumination and awareness are accomplishing something on some level. It is a universal human intuition. In any event, outside of the question of justice, I must admit this case would be very difficult for me personally to maintain any interest in. I understood even as a student of philosophy that to be only objective and disinterested was not human, and I hold to Epictitus who said, "Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering."

 

[Rolfe]

Come on, guys, Shuttit can post in the thread if he likes. His motives for doing so are his own affair, even if we find his standpoint a little odd. There's no percentage in dissecting this.

Rolfe.

 

[LondonJohn]

And the point that most convinces me of the ~9:30 murder time stamp is the cell connection to Merediths phone at 10:13pm.

Meredith made 4 cell calls early Nov 1 from inside the cottage, all the calls connected using the same tower.

At 10:13pm the tower used was a different one. This to me proves her cell phone had left the cottage.

So logic has to be either:

A) the murderer took off, out of the cottage with her stolen cell phone.

B) Meredith went outside at 10:13pm and allowed her cell phone to receive a text.

Massei Report- very poorly done on the cell tower info, making numerous mistakes (or the translation was wrong)

[350] As previously explained, the following and last [item] highlighted by the Wind [phone record] printout concerns the traffic registered at 22.13.29 hours on 1 November 07, where the cell providing the coverage was ..30064 on Strada Vicinale Ponte Rio Monte la Guardia, whose signal, as the on-the-spot measurements carried out by Chief Inspector Latella prove, can be received both at the level of Meredith’s bedroom window and in the courtyard of the cottage on Via della Pergola 7
Meredith's Vodafone-
In the cottage used base transceiver stations .25620 and .25621 for the previous calls she dialed inside. For the one at 22:13 it used 30064 which covers the courtyard of the cottage

14:31:43 2:31 PM MK, UK phone, Nov 1 GPRS G 25621 Piazza Lupattelli Via della Pergola 7
15:01:58 3:01 PM MK, UK phone, Nov 1 G 25621 Piazza Lupattelli Via della Pergola 7
15:48:56 3:48 PM MK, UK phone, Nov 1 G 25621 Piazza Lupattelli Via della Pergola 7
15:55:03 3:55 PM MK, UK phone, Nov 1 G 25621 Piazza Lupattelli Via della Pergola 7
15:55:57 3:55 PM MK, UK phone, Nov 1 G 25621 Piazza Lupattelli Via della Pergola 7

20:56:00 8:56 PM MK, UK phone, Nov 1 > Mom F No data (Phone memory only, no data on Wind Co. print out)
Neither section listed a tower and did not say no
data
21:58:00 9:58 PM MK, UK phone, Nov 1 > voicemail 901 F No data (Phone memory only, no data on Wind Co. print out) ?

22:00:00 10:00 PM MK, UK phone, Nov 1 > UK Bank, ABBEY F No data (Phone memory only, no data on Wind Co. print out) ?
22:13:19 10:13 PM MK, UK phone, Nov 1 < GPRS, TEXT MESSAGE 9 G 30064 Strada Vicinale Ponte Rio Monte la Guardia
Park S. Angelo near garden

You're absolutely correct. And both Massei and the "crack" Postal Police team didn't actually know what they were talking about in regard to this issue.

The important point is this: if the handset is close to a base station, it will almost always lock on to that base station, even if it is technically within range of other base stations (coverage areas always overlap, for obvious reasons). In the case of the girls' cottage, there was an almost adjacent base station at Piazza Lupattelli, which has a direct line of sight to the cottage and is only around 150m from the cottage by line of sight. By contrast, the Strada Ponte Rio Monte La Guardia base station is outside Perugia, in the hilly area near Sig.ra Lana's house (where the handsets were found the following day), and around 1000-1200m from the cottage. Any signal received from this base station at the cottage would have been weaker than the signal from the Piazza Lupattelli base station by many orders of magnitude.

Therefore, everything else being equal, Meredith's handset would virtually always have connected to the Piazza Lupattelli base station rather than the much further-away Strada Ponte Rio base station. The only practical way in which a handset at the cottage would choose to connect to the much further-away base station would be if the Piazza Lupattelli base station was either faulty at that moment or was full to capacity. It would be easy to have interrogated network traffic records to check this, but I'm guessing that it's too late to do so now.

The important point, though, is that in this instance, it's simply not sufficient to say that just because a handset inside the cottage (or on the driveway of the cottage) was capable of seeing a signal from the Strada Ponte Rio base station, this is somehow good evidence that this is where the handset was. It's far, far more likely that the handset was en route to Sig.ra Lana's house when it connected to this base station. It would also be instructive to see a fuller history of which base stations Meredith's UK handset connected to while she was in the cottage. I suspect that virtually all of the connections would have been to the Piazza Lupattelli base station, since it was very near and with a direct line of sight. I further suspect that none of the connections was to the distant Strada Ponte Rio base station.

Incidentally, we are fortunate to be able to attach a particular level of certainty to the base station connectivity in this instance. This is because the cottage was a stand-alone building with a direct line of sight to a nearby base station. This is in stark contrast to Sollecito's apartment, which was buried in a jumble of four-storey buildings and narrow streets, where cellular connectivity can be a lottery depending on signal reflections, interferences and shadows. That's why it's hard to pin down a direct 1-to-1 relationship between Sollecito's apartment and any one particular base station, while it is eminently possible to do so for the girls' cottage due to its very different position and topography.

 

[LondonJohn]

Come on, guys, Shuttit can post in the thread if he likes. His motives for doing so are his own affair, even if we find his standpoint a little odd. There's no percentage in dissecting this.

Rolfe.

Absolutely. My observational point was merely that it seems strange in the extreme to be posting here if one has "no interest" in the guilt/non-guilt/innocence of Knox and Sollecito. Each to his/her own though, I guess.

 

[shuttlt]

That's ludicrous. It would be like actively participating in one of the JREF homeopathy threads, and exclaiming that you had no interest in whether or not homeopathy worked at at physiological level.

I have participated in them, and it really isn't as if the debate is really about whether or not homeopathy actually works. The topic, like the Randi's million dollar prize is a MacGuffin. All the posters except the loon that starts the thread aren't in any doubt that it's nonsense. Whether homeopathy works or not may notionally be the topic, but it's not as if the question in itself can be what motivates most posters. Same with the Yeti threads and the evolution threads. It's not even as if more than one time in a thousand the loon is convinced that they were wrong, so "winning" in that sense isn't the motivation either. Many posters think the fact that some people promote a belief in magic water has wider importance, but that's different to being interested in whether magic water is really magic. They aren't, just as I'm not interested in whether Knox is actually guilty.

Why the hell are you participating on these threads (or even reading them) if the guilt/non-guilt/innocence of Knox and Sollecito doesn't "interest you"? Strange indeed....

It's not important that you find an answer to any question, unless you answering it makes a difference to the world. Why is it important to you to be sure whether Knox is innocent or not and once you're sure to post about it endlessly? Does it serve any productive function?

 

[smkovalinksy]

Come on, guys, Shuttit can post in the thread if he likes. His motives for doing so are his own affair, even if we find his standpoint a little odd. There's no percentage in dissecting this.

Rolfe.

Never said he was not welcome to post; just addressing his words to me.

 

[Grinder]

I think I understand what Shuttlt is saying as I too am not invested in any particular guilt or innocence. I believe that the case against RS and AK is not sufficient for conviction. I would be interested in the truth coming out, whatever that might be.

I find the way this case was handled the main point of interest.

It seems that most pieces of evidence were evaluated using the least likely logic. TOD is based apparently on the shaky testimonies of Curatolo and Nara. If the body hadn't been found for a few days and no temperature analysis could have been used, it is clear that all other evidence points to a death before 10:18 and more likely before 9:30. ( I brought up the question of whether the heat had been turned on in the cottage and in MK's room back in the Shock days. I never received information that it had not been turned on, is that now established?)

Clearly the knife has only one characteristic that would make anyone suspect it and that is the poor DNA evidence. It would never have been considered otherwise.

No one would tie RS to the crime from the bath mat print. As I mentioned before, if his reference print along with 20 other similar references, much less a thousand, had been compared, there is no way that anybody could have said with reason that his was the match.

The fact that Amanda's light was used is meaningless since it was in the room next door.

No tape of the key interview with Knox stretches credulity beyond the breaking point.

Turning off phones was part of the plan, when leaving them on and at Raf's would have made way more sense.

The statement of Amanda's saying the bathroom was clean is used against her. If she were involved and we know she was aware of the blood, why on earth would she make that statement? If she had had the nosebleed the PG people often speculate why wouldn't she have made her ear bleed to have an injury to point at?

Anyway, I hope the defense concentrates on the TOD and the interrogation. The interrogation is what sets the table for the whole case and they need to show that the police had the preconceived "truth" and questioned her until "she buckled".

 

[shuttlt]

The interrogation is what sets the table for the whole case and they need to show that the police had the preconceived "truth" and questioned her until "she buckled".

I don't think establishing blame for the 1:45am statement is necessary. Her actions on that day strike some people as odd. Doubtless there are all kinds of explanations. It's a gamble of course, but I've always thought she'd be better off saying "I panicked and said something that I knew wasn't true". Even if the truth is more complicated than that. It pulls the rug out of all the pro-guilt analysis of her behavior. I just don't think shifting what ever blame there may be for having said what she said is worth the the long explanation that goes with it.

 

[Rolfe]

Many posters think the fact that some people promote a belief in magic water has wider importance, but that's different to being interested in whether magic water is really magic. They aren't, just as I'm not interested in whether Knox is actually guilty.

I don't accept that analogy. If I were in any doubt about whether magic sugar pills have any physiological activity (above and beyond ordinary sugar pills), that would be my first interest in participating in the threads. It's only once one has looked at the theory and the evidence and decided that they don't, that the wider aspects come to be the motivation for continuing the discussion.

If it's possible that "the loon who started the thread" might actually be right, it's a very different dialogue.

Rolfe.

 

[shuttlt]

I don't accept that analogy. If I were in any doubt about whether magic sugar pills have any physiological activity (above and beyond ordinary sugar pills), that would be my first interest in participating in the threads. It's only once one has looked at the theory and the evidence and decided that they don't, that the wider aspects come to be the motivation for continuing the discussion.

If it's possible that "the loon who started the thread" might actually be right, it's a very different dialogue.

It wasn't me that brought up those threads. I was trying to highlight the fact that many people in the JREF are interested in posting in threads that were dismissed as pointless for a wider variety of reasons than seemed to be being acknowledged.

It can be a different dialog I suppose. But how many hundred thousand posts are we on now? Most of the posters here seem pretty sure who is right and who isn't. Sure there's an initial phase when you investigate the issue and come to what ever conclusions you are going to come to, but that's not what has sustained the thread this long. This thread has long since reached the point where it's much different to a thread about homeopathy. I don't mean that as a dismissal of the case as just arguing about "magic water". Homeopathy is even an important issue in it's own right. People have died from it and NHS money been spent on it after all. I don't think it's necessarily an unworthy subject, just as I don't think this is an unworthy subject.

One of the key characteristics of homeopathy threads, and Yeti threads, and I Have Proof That The Bible Is Literally True threads is that there is normally only one or two people posting on one side who get beaten up and mocked for their silly views, but persist anyway. Almost everybody shares a broadly similar truth. Some people try to engage the person with the silly views, others don't. Often the majority end up having discussions amongst themselves because the loon either doesn't post often enough, goes off in a huff, or doesn't make enough sense to feed the discussion. It looks very similar to me.

 

[Rolfe]

It seems that most pieces of evidence were evaluated using the least likely logic. TOD is based apparently on the shaky testimonies of Curatolo and Nara. If the body hadn't been found for a few days and no temperature analysis could have been used, it is clear that all other evidence points to a death before 10:18 and more likely before 9:30. ( I brought up the question of whether the heat had been turned on in the cottage and in MK's room back in the Shock days. I never received information that it had not been turned on, is that now established?)

As I understand it, the temperature analysis was very far from conclusive and only indicated a wide band. In addition, the bodyweight was estimated rather than the body being weighed. Any variation in this would materially affect the conclusions. I find this astonishing, anyway. It's SOP to weigh every body as the first thing you do when you start a post mortem. Where I work, anyway.

There are so many variables involved in post mortem regression to ambient temperature, I don't see how this can possibly over-ride other evidence, especially when there is a significant delay in measuring the core temperature.

Clearly the knife has only one characteristic that would make anyone suspect it and that is the poor DNA evidence. It would never have been considered otherwise.

Which makes one wonder why this knife was chosen to be tested in the first place, if indeed it wasn't just one of a dozen knives tested from both homes.

No one would tie RS to the crime from the bath mat print. As I mentioned before, if his reference print along with 20 other similar references, much less a thousand, had been compared, there is no way that anybody could have said with reason that his was the match.

Nobody could be conclusively matched to that print. I don't believe footprint identification is a science that is advanced enough to be useful in this context anyway.

The fact that Amanda's light was used is meaningless since it was in the room next door.

I have no idea what the presence of the lamp means, and I suspect neither has the prosecution.

No tape of the key interview with Knox stretches credulity beyond the breaking point.

Certainly, their excuses for not having such a tape are extremely lame.

Turning off phones was part of the plan, when leaving them on and at Raf's would have made way more sense.

Another example of interpreting everything in the light of the assumption the defendants are guilty.

The statement of Amanda's saying the bathroom was clean is used against her. If she were involved and we know she was aware of the blood, why on earth would she make that statement? If she had had the nosebleed the PG people often speculate why wouldn't she have made her ear bleed to have an injury to point at?

Define "clean". Especially from the point of view of a girl whose standards of housekeeping have been criticised in other contexts. It would be easy to miss that smear of blood unless you were Kim and Aggie doing their "two months later" re-visit. It's entirely possible Amanda considered the bathroom to be "clean" by her standards, and didn't even notice the blood because let's face it, she isn't Kim and Aggie.

Anyway, I hope the defense concentrates on the TOD and the interrogation. The interrogation is what sets the table for the whole case and they need to show that the police had the preconceived "truth" and questioned her until "she buckled".

I'm also extremely interested in the bizarre order in which the situation developed. Police immediately suspect a couple of extremely unlikely people, based on quite astonishing and frankly ridiculous inferences from quite unremarkable behaviour. THEN forensic evidence emerges, which turns out to be of very questionable provenance.

That's a huge warning light all on its own.

Rolfe.

 

[Grinder]

I don't think establishing blame for the 1:45am statement is necessary. Her actions on that day strike some people as odd. Doubtless there are all kinds of explanations. It's a gamble of course, but I've always thought she'd be better off saying "I panicked and said something that I knew wasn't true". Even if the truth is more complicated than that. It pulls the rug out of all the pro-guilt analysis of her behavior. I just don't think shifting what ever blame there may be for having said what she said is worth the the long explanation that goes with it.

Well, we disagree. I think that all the rest of the case is nothing if the judges see the accusation in the light that the police had their version of the truth and wouldn't stop until she agreed. The police have made it clear that they knew the truth before she said it. She has already stated on more than one occasion that she didn't believe she had spoken the truth and in a sense had panicked (I'd say succumbed ) during the overnight session.

I would make the case that tehre was no need for 6, 9, 12 policemen to tag team this "witness" late into the night. I would make the case that once the police declared case closed the rest of the cards had to fall into place. I'd go on to explain how the knife was such an unlikely one to be the murder weapon, that TOD used by GM just doesn't make sense and how the witnesses were discovered to fit the police initial theory.

 

[shuttlt]

Well, we disagree. I think that all the rest of the case is nothing if the judges see the accusation in the light that the police had their version of the truth and wouldn't stop until she agreed.

Oh! If the judge can be made to believe this, certainly. I just don't think it's neccessary that the judge believe it.

The police have made it clear that they knew the truth before she said it. She has already stated on more than one occasion that she didn't believe she had spoken the truth and in a sense had panicked (I'd say succumbed ) during the overnight session.

I think a more straightforward version of that would be better.

I would make the case that tehre was no need for 6, 9, 12 policemen to tag team this "witness" late into the night. I would make the case that once the police declared case closed the rest of the cards had to fall into place. I'd go on to explain how the knife was such an unlikely one to be the murder weapon, that TOD used by GM just doesn't make sense and how the witnesses were discovered to fit the police initial theory.

And maybe that would work. I just don't think spending time focusing on what Knox said/signed and why is a good idea unless you are certain to be convincing. Otherwise you've just spent time getting everybody to focus on why they found Knox suspicious and a plausible murderess in the first place.

 

[bri1]

I don't think establishing blame for the 1:45am statement is necessary. Her actions on that day strike some people as odd. Doubtless there are all kinds of explanations. It's a gamble of course, but I've always thought she'd be better off saying "I panicked and said something that I knew wasn't true". Even if the truth is more complicated than that. It pulls the rug out of all the pro-guilt analysis of her behavior. I just don't think shifting what ever blame there may be for having said what she said is worth the the long explanation that goes with it.

ShuttIt, I get what you're saying, but the fact is that saying Patrick wasn't there is as incriminating as saying he was (which is what she'd be saying if she said she knew her 'accusation' wasn't true).
I think that to think of Amanda's statements as being made with the knowledge that they were not true is too inaccurate and misleading. Because of the many lies ILE told in the interrogation (like that they had solid, physical evidence of her being at the cottage) she didn't know what was true, and didn't even know whether her memories of being at Raffaelle's that night were accurate because of the mistrust of her own memories (a mistrust purposively engineered in her by the police).
She had no reason not to trust the police, and when they seemed to suspect Patrick, she probably genuinely thought that they had good reasons to suspect him.
When people criticise her 'retractions' (why didn't she somehow ensure that Patrick was released by issuing a more forceful retraction?) they neglect to think about the fact that she might not have realised that the police's suspicion of Patrick had no grounds, and by speaking out forcefully she might (as well as incriminating herself further- how could she know he wasn't there, if she wasn't there) inadvertently be the cause of Meredith's killer going free.
But I get what you're saying. The complex nature of an internalised false confession, is apparently too difficult for the guilters to understand properly. But unfortunately, there is no simpler explanation, and by trying to simplify we just get into territory of misleading inaccuracy, IMO.
Plus, I don't think giving the long-winded explanations (of coercion and lies leading to a internalised false confession) are given primarily as a way of trying to shirk the blame, but more as a way of providing an explanation of why someone would say something that turned out to be false, as a genuine alternative to people thinking that there's no reason to say those things unless there was some truth to them (which is in fact the way most guilters think about the 'confession' of the 5th/6th Nov).

 

[shuttlt]

ShuttIt, I get what you're saying, but the fact is that saying Patrick wasn't there is as incriminating as saying he was (which is what she'd be saying if she said she knew her 'accusation' wasn't true).
I think that to think of Amanda's statements as being made with the knowledge that they were not true is too inaccurate and misleading. Because of the many lies ILE told in the interrogation (like that they had solid, physical evidence of her being at the cottage) she didn't know what was true, and didn't even know whether her memories of being at Raffaelle's that night were accurate because of the mistrust of her own memories (a mistrust purposively engineered in her by the police).

I think this is again starting to be a longer explanation than it needs to be. There is a risk that people will not believe the whole induced-false-memory thing. Again, if you're confident that they will believe it, then fine, otherwise this explanation will leave them feeling that they're being lied to.

She had no reason not to trust the police, and when they seemed to suspect Patrick, she probably genuinely thought that they had good reasons to suspect him.
When people criticise her 'retractions' (why didn't she somehow ensure that Patrick was released by issuing a more forceful retraction?) they neglect to think about the fact that she might not have realised that the police's suspicion of Patrick had no grounds, and by speaking out forcefully she might (as well as incriminating herself further- how could she know he wasn't there, if she wasn't there) inadvertently be the cause of Meredith's killer going free.

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. It's perfectly possible for her to retract everything she said completely and straightforwardly without making any kind of positive statement about whether Patrick was or was not involved unless her explanation is so long and rambling that it is left unclear quite what she is asserting.

But I get what you're saying. The complex nature of an internalised false confession, is apparently too difficult for the guilters to understand properly. But unfortunately, there is no simpler explanation, and by trying to simplify we just get into territory of misleading inaccuracy, IMO.

Fine. Then I would keep as far away from the topic in the court as possible.

Plus, I don't think giving the long-winded explanations (of coercion and lies leading to a internalised false confession) are given primarily as a way of trying to shirk the blame, but more as a way of providing an explanation of why someone would say something that turned out to be false, as a genuine alternative to people thinking that there's no reason to say those things unless there was some truth to them (which is in fact the way most guilters think about the 'confession' of the 5th/6th Nov).

The problem is if it plays as lying about the lie. Perhaps that's not how this court will read it.

 

[Rolfe]

Is courtroom evidence immune from calumny charges?

Rolfe.

 

[smkovalinksy]

Does anyone happen to know where I could find links to Italian legal commentators who are proclaiming Knox and Sollecito are done for, as touched on in this post below???

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Conspicuous By Their Absence Now: Legal Commentators For Sollecito And Knox
Posted by Peter Quennell

There is a marked sharp contrast now between how various reporters without legal backgrounds and various real lawyers are seeing the state of play in the appeal.

The post below shows how flavor-of-the-month reporters like Nick Pisa are still reporting happy talk from Knox and her entourage, while, within their professional constraints, we see more and more lawyers realisng Sollecito and Knox really are cooked.

Half a dozen of the main posters on TJMK who are lawyers (they identify themselves as such when they post) have explained how tough is the real case. Various Italian lawyers continue to offer us insights and tips from Perugia and Rome. And we continue to see maybe half a dozen lawyers a week getting in touch by email or signing up, a trend that shows no sign of fading out.

In contrast all of the lawyers and legal commentators who were once suggesting the process in Perugia had taken a wrong turn have gone quiet, and no new legal voices for Solllecito and Knox are speaking up. The CNN legal shows devote almost no air time to the appeal, and Geraldo Rivera, Dan Abrams, John Q Kelly, Lis Wiehl and others have wound down their commentaries to brief equivocations or nothing at all.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php

Edited by Loss Leader: 

Edited for Rule 4 and Rule 5.