Very insightful point at the end there, Rose. I had not thought of it that way, since most people have taken either a "they tape everything, but threw this one away" or a "they did not tape this one, but should have" tack. The idea that they would have taped it just in case they needed it makes sense, especially with the translation issues.
Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case
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Very insightful point at the end there, Rose. I had not thought of it that way, since most people have taken either a "they tape everything, but threw this one away" or a "they did not tape this one, but should have" tack. The idea that they would have taped it just in case they needed it makes sense, especially with the translation issues.
MiloMinderbinder
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Don't forget that the police, as a matter of routine, will lie to people they are interrogating - they don't need multiple suspects to create lots of confusion and doubt.
First, they get you to waive your Miranda rights by telling you it's in your best interest by just answering a few questions so you can go home - no need to waste the time and expense of hiring an attorney. Not sure how that works specifically in Italy, but that's how it goes in the US.
Once they're interrogating you, you ARE the suspect, but you don't know it yet. They'll say anything to get you to confess, and will start with small lies that seem plausible and that starts to make you question your own memory and reality itself. Over the course of many hours, you get tired, confused, and are in no position to make any important decisions, but that is when they put the most pressure on you.
Then, once they have a confession, just about everyone in the world believes it's real because most people believe that only a guilty person would confess.
Even if the confession is thrown out, it's likely that the prosecution or police already have told the press and that everyone now thinks the person is guilty and that they're being helped by some legal technicality.
Anyway, that's why we have defense attorneys and why no one, especially an innocent person, should ever go to the police department for questioning without the support of an attorney.
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Paninaro
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Welcome back.
Please make some more exceptions and stay to discuss the case, instead of discussing what is being said here all the time, but in another place where everybody agree with you. I'm sure people will be mean to you, but it's after all just an anonymous discussion. I think you can take the heat.
The current state of things is a bit absurd.I'm sorry to be blunt but: I don't believe in the guilt of Guede as the lonely perpertrator because I'm a friend of Amanda Knox or because Guede is black. Why do you insist on making up strawmen like that and misrepresent peoples views on PMF? What's the point? I guess you call yourself a skeptic since you signed up for this place?
One thing that really puzzles me is that you think that the defense has given up on the lone killer theory. This theory is not only the most plausible one - which is why I believe it - it's also in reality the only alternative one that means Knox and Sollecito are innocent.
But more importantly it's the underlying theme in Knox's and Sollecito's appeal. To abandon that theory is certainly legal suicide for the defense and makes no sense. Of course the defense doesn't have to prove anything. There just have to be reasonable doubt.
How can there not be reasonable doubt if you don't know how Kercher was killed? You don't know the circumstances and nobody can longer place the pair at the scene of the crime at the night of the murder. There plenty of doubt about the alleged murder weapon. The prosecutor has no credible theory how things played out. Surely you must believe in the concept of reasonable doubt?
Is that why you insist that a lone killer theory is "impossible"? Because if it's possible, then there can be reasonable doubt? I can't for the life of me understand how a lone wolf theory can be "ruled out" beyond the shadow of a doubt. And that's the weakness in the prosecutions case.
codyjuneau
Muse
I was thinking about this discussion (a few pages back) regarding Amanda's retraction statement. During the discussion Stuttit became quite frustrated because he felt his arguments were being misunderstood due to biased interpretations by the readers. I can empathize but I also find it ironic. Over the last few years Raffaele's and Amanda's every utterance or communication including the one being discussed has been analyzed and nuanced to death. Most often by people trying to find guilt in every word of every phrase of every sentence. Imagine how frustrated they must get.
Rolfe
Adult human female
Seems to me the weakness of the prosecution's case starts with the medical evidence of time of death. Show me a plausible scenario where Knox and Sollecito could have killed Meredith around 9.20, and I'm listening. (And I don't mean, one of them could have snuck away while the other one was using the computer, I'm talking about a properly-worked-through case.) Without that, the rest is just spinning the wheels.
Rolfe.
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Although I agreed with most of your post, I feel the need to pull out this piece and comment. I do not agree that the lone wolf is the only alternative theory that means Knox and Sollecito are innocent. Knox and Sollecito are innocent because there is no proof of them being there at the time of the murder. If someone else was there with Guede, it does not affect this premise. Of course, there is no evidence anyone else was there with Guede either, but Knox and Sollecito have no reason to present the lone wolf theory to somehow prove they were not there -- all they have to do is show that there is no prove they are guilty. Which should be easy (underline should!).
Yes!!
Hi Rose, I have a question for you, as I very much respect your opinions. On the night of the interrogations, weren't there like 12 people taking turns interrogating Amanda? Also, weren't there some who travelled from Rome to attend this interrogation? This leads me to belive that she was a suspect before she was interrogated. Or is it normal practice in Italy to conduct interrogations with so many officials, including some from Rome. Amanda was heard screaming too. It all smells rotten to me.
Chris_Halkides
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Giobbi and the scream
Dr. Giobbi was from Rome, and he testified to hearing the screams. Frank Sfarzo had a good report at Perugia-Shock.
Poppy,
Dr. Giobbi was from Rome, and he testified to hearing the screams. Frank Sfarzo had a good report at Perugia-Shock.
moodstream
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I have gone over the conversation I participated in with Shuttlt, and I guess I could have been reading more into what he was saying than he meant. However, in my own defense I will say he rarely stakes out his position, which leaves me guessing.
That said, it seems to me that Knox’s statements at the interrogation either were or were not coerced. Coercion can be simply false information. For example, if the police lied to her by telling her they had evidence proving she was at the scene of the crime, even if spoken politely over tea and cakes. If Knox believed the lies then you must decide if Knox a) trusted the information to the extent that she doubted her own recollection, of b) she panicked that she was found out and tried to make the best of situation.
The arguments Shuttlt made were not overly convincing to me. He argued back by asking if I had never done anything spur of the moment. This is an example of the ‘could be’ standard that is often employed to find guilt. ‘You can’t show it could not be, therefore Knox is guilty’. One of the problems for the innocent camp is that the standard oscillates between ‘could be’ for guilt and ‘certain’ for innocence.
But if she was not coerced, the pro-guilt argument has really deep problems, from my perspective. Why, for example, would Knox go to all the trouble to stage the break in, and point the blame in the direction of either an unknown thief, or perhaps intentionally towards Guede, but then abandon it during the interrogation?
Shuttlt says Knox was influenced when Sollecito ‘folded’ and no longer supported her story. But this is a trick of words. It’s safe to say by now that either Sollecito is totally complicit or innocent, a fact a guilty Knox would know then. If the police told her the truth, that Sollecito says she was away from 9 pm to 1 am, then why would Knox put herself at the murder scene? That’s the worst Sollecito could do, and it’s not going to help her to get there first. But even if she did, why, given that Sollecito’s testimony against her wasn’t changing, would she abandon it in her memorial given the police the next day?
Of course, it all ‘could be’. It just takes a heck of a lot of faith based imputation to get there.
AmyStrange
Philosopher
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What an astute observation Cody,
and we don't put anyone in jail here for being confused and then saying something "incriminating", although we do sometimes tend to gang up on some people, but that's because we love them, but this is a subject for another thread, at some other time,
Dave
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AmyStrange
Philosopher
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I just found out that I'm getting Amelie from Netflix tomorrow. It actually does sound like an interesting movie and quite sappy and described by some as a "feel good" movie.
It'll be interesting to find out if after watching it, I don't get this overwhelming urge to kill my roommate,
Dave
I just found out that I'm getting Amelie from Netflix tomorrow. It actually does sound like an interesting movie and quite sappy and described by some as a "feel good" movie.
It'll be interesting to find out if after watching it, I don't get this overwhelming urge to kill my roommate,
Dave
Antony
Graduate Poster
Well of course he didn't know it to be the truth, because even the guilter crowd don't make it out to be the truth (and blame Amanda for the falsehood). Which illustrates a third element in the mix, after malice and stupidity: arrogance.
I think it's a bit simplistic to reason: "never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity"; I don't think the travesty was entirely down to malice, but then it wasn't a simple case of stupidity either.
I think fixing on Amanda, Raffaele and Patrick was more a panic reaction than just stupid, by a police team completely out of their depth in responding to a serious crime. Then when they found they had painted themselves into a corner, and they had to find a way of justifying themselves, it was a case of arrogance: they believed that the facts of the case would be whatever they chose to make them. Hence the almost comical way in which they went about the "investigation" - they were the actions of a group of individuals confident (perhaps with reason) that nothing they did would ever be scrutinised.
Rolfe
Adult human female
This is a phenomenon which intrigues me greatly. As a scientist, my entire training and practice is geared to finding out the objective facts, whether I like the results or not. To that end, anyone is free to pitch in if they have a useful insight to contribute. Also, older conclusions are by no means sacrosanct, and there's no time limit on challenging something that appears to be poorly founded.
What I keep coming up against in legal circles is the concept that judges and/or juries actually create or define reality. What a particular group of fallible human beings decided at a particular time is reality, and you better not challenge it. I can't get my head round that.
It's a particular instance of "appeal to authority". This is normally regarded as a logical fallacy, however it's remarkably prevalent among self-identified sceptics.
This refers to a case which Alt+F4 knows absolutely nothing about, or if she does, she has kept this extremely quiet. This is a common point of view. Someone who has extensive and detailed knowledge of the subject can just be dismissed by someone who knows nothing, because the particular authority of a court is regarded as defining reality.
Now I recognise this is an engraved invitation to the guilters to continue arguing for guilt even after an acquittal, but heck, they'll do that anyway. What is far more important, I believe, is to recognise that justice should be open and transparent, and if the case as presented cannot satisfy an informed observer as to guilt beyond reasonable doubt, then bland reliance on the fallible opinion of a court should not be the last word on the matter.
Rolfe.
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What is your source for that information? I've read it on PMF but it seemed like an obvious lie to me because it is totally contradicted by Mignini in his CNN interview. It would also be very weird for Italian law to have a rule against recording interviews/interrogations without a lawyer since that is actually exactly the kind of situation in which a recording would help the suspect the most.
I've read elsewhere that the early TOD is just a baseless fringe theory advanced by amateur internet sleuths. The Nov. 12 article that Katody linked to contradicts this notion.
Put this together with the 'suspicious' cellphone activity and it becomes pretty clear that Meredith was attacked shortly after arriving home. It's interesting that investigators went on to abandon early ToD after it became an obstacle to building their case against Amanda and Raffaele.
Justinian2
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The GOOD thing about all of the is that they actually have PROVED that Amanda innocent. No stone has been unturned. She hasn't just been proved not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. She has been proved innocent beyond any doubt.
Even the underhanded tricks like getting Amanda to list her sexual partners didn't reveal a relationship with Guede - the mythical accomplice.
And then there was the 'confession' that wasn't even a confession, but ,at best, signed police hearsay.
Even the underhanded tricks like getting Amanda to list her sexual partners didn't reveal a relationship with Guede - the mythical accomplice.
And then there was the 'confession' that wasn't even a confession, but ,at best, signed police hearsay.
Rolfe
Adult human female
I'm a veterinary pathologist with training and experience in forensic pathology. I have often appeared in court as an expert witness in relation to my pathology findings, including having to address time of death.
Once upon a time, a guilter approached me here, by PM I think. I think it was Stilicho, actually, though as I said it was a while ago. He implored me to take a look at the medical evidence in the Kercher murder case, because I was such a well-respected forum poster. At the time I had other, much bigger, fish to fry, and said so. I had no idea even of the nature of the medical evidence (all I'd read about was an allegedly staged break-in).
The guilter (Stilicho?) then appeared in a thread, saying that when someone like me was refusing to touch the evidence, "something was terribly wrong". I still have little idea what he meant by this. That I was part of some cover-up? I replied again that I didn't have time to get involved in the Kercher case as the Lockerbie case was so time-consuming.
ETA: Explained here. http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6886621
It was some considerable time later that I happened to read the details of the gastrointestinal contents findings at the post mortem. I was completely gobsmacked. It's a complete slam-dunk that Meredith died shortly after nine, on that evidence. It also seems to stand up to scrutiny, in that the PM was videoed and the pathologist can be seen to take the correct precautions to prevent artefacts.
That's why I came into this thread, to say that. It's completely beyond reasonable doubt.
Now Stilicho mocks me on PMF as a cow-doctor, and makes jokes about clipping dogs' toenails and suchlike. "Veterinarian" has become synonymous with ignoramus. PMF posters in general refer to this whole thing as a "google" diagnosis, although I personally haven't had to google a thing in this respect, and even if anyone has, the internet is a good source of medical information if one is intelligently selective with the references consulted.
Well, exactly. The guilters think the defence aren't going to address this aspect, because no additional evidence was admitted to the Hellman court. They think the ridiculous 11.40 ToD will therefore stand.
This is nonsense as far as I can see. No new evidence is needed, because the existing evidence, properly interpreted, says all that needs to be said. I would expect the defence to make a strong case for an early ToD later this month.
Rolfe.
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