Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Yes I think your analysis is very accurate here. I myself started out as one who believed in the guilt of Knox and Sollecito. This was based upon a very casual, low-level following of the first trial, knowledge of the result of the trial, and a reading of the book "Darkness Descending". A combination of these inputs led me to initially believe that Knox and Sollecito were correctly found guilty in Massei's court.
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I thought when Dave said he went back to the early days and articles he was talking about when the crime was committed. Darkness Descending appears to have been published in late 2009 or early 2010. My impression is that Dave was expressing an opinion of what it was like to follow the case well before you started.

I followed the case from day one and never bought the leaky, sex gamey prosecution case.
 
Grinder said:
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I followed the case from day one and never bought the leaky, sex gamey prosecution case.
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When I think about the case with an effort to develop arguments for guilt (I do this as a way of trying to test my own objectivity, something which is probably impossible) that is the thing that really stands out to me. You need to start with such an unlikely theory and build on it and that it is really hard to do.

Nonetheless, Meredith's DNA on a knife in Sollecito's apartment, mixed blood evidence in the bathroom, a confession, Knox;s statements that change many times, Sollecito's DNA on the bra clasp, video with clear images of Knox that contradict her statements all sound like evidence that is good enough to make us question our sense of what human beings do.

The fact that all the "evidence" against Knox and Sollecito has been shown to have been mischaracterized or just created out of whole cloth would have seemed like an unlikely possibility to me when this case got going. I would have believed the authorities more than I would have believed my own views about the limitations on what humans might do.
 
Diocletus said:
Why didn't Knox just say that the police in their statements misstated what she was saying during the interrogation? Both of the statements make perfect sense if you replace "I saw" (or similar) with "I imagine" in just a couple of places. And, "imagine" is what the police were actually asking her to do.

It's easy to believe that even a police interpreter would not have accurately translated the difference between something actually seen and something imagined (i.e., seen in the mind only).

Although, thinking this through, if her Italian was not great at this point, she would not have been capable of precisely understanding the 1:45 and 5:45 statements until after she got a lawyer, and obviously, by this time, she had written the "gift memo".

I just wonder why she's never said "I said that I imagined it, not that I actually saw it." Since the cops won't cough up the tapes, they could never disprove this contention.
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I have had a young family member go through a interrogation, that was so similar to this case.

It wasnt a murder interrogation, but the description of police wearing black snow-ski masks coming in threatening they would be put in jail, raped by their inside "connections" and how the only way out of this was to give up information the police wanted.
Then there was the good-cop who would approach from another angle etc...

all done without a lawyer or even an adult present.

my jaw dropped, as it was the first time I had ever heard of such craziness, and fear in a local police station. then this case, then some reading and there's article after article about it. The Guantanamo Bay incident with the tapes being leaked out.

But to actually go through it is unimaginable. What would you say? How would you react? How long could you last ebfore you said or did something stupid?
How desperate would you get, before you began playing mental games to please the interrogators, so you would be let go, be freed?

In my family's members experience they lied to the police interrogators, and then they were let go. They lied because they didnt know, they had no information for them.

So then when I read this case, and then no video tape, the burden was on the police to explain for me.

Then I searched for the explanation and Mignini says "budget issues".

But then I read in Dempseys book Colatone was recording them in the bugged rooms in the Questura Nov,2,3,4...etc... and they were recording the Edda and Amanda in prison....etc..etc..

So then I realized the Perugia police were lying, and Edgardo Giobbi was at the helm, with the other few big cheeses in the secret room.

But then you realize there's no way to ever prove this? It would be like a mini-Guantanamo Bay investigation, it would take one of the police or two to come forward for the defense. And this will never happen in this Perugia type environment, imo.
 
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billyryan said:
RandyN I have seen it written that Comodi is once again going to deal with the DNA evidence in the final arguments,interested after she is quoted as having said the the judge is against the prosecution,she would no doubt charge Nick Pisa with calumnia only for the tricky business of he having her on tape,not as easy to get rid of Pisa's tape as it was for the police to vanish the tapes of the interrogation,I expect the prosecution to stoop to new depts in an attempt to re-float their case over the next two days
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Hi Randy,
I totally agree with you. I have felt all along that the defense was too soft. They have quietly allowed the prosecution to do and say what they pleased. I want to see more anger and more attacking. There is no more time to play nice.
 
davefoc said:
When I think about the case with an effort to develop arguments for guilt (I do this as a way of trying to test my own objectivity, something which is probably impossible) that is the thing that really stands out to me. You need to start with such an unlikely theory and build on it and that it is really hard to do.

Nonetheless, Meredith's DNA on a knife in Sollecito's apartment, mixed blood evidence in the bathroom, a confession, Knox;s statements that change many times, Sollecito's DNA on the bra clasp, video with clear images of Knox that contradict her statements all sound like evidence that is good enough to make us question our sense of what human beings do.

The fact that all the "evidence" against Knox and Sollecito has been shown to have been mischaracterized or just created out of whole cloth would have seemed like an unlikely possibility to me when this case got going. I would have believed the authorities more than I would have believed my own views about the limitations on what humans might do.
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Dave - What I am trying to convey is how it was day-to-day for me starting Nov. 2nd.

At first, we were told that Meredith had been killed in a sex game, satanic killing. Here an early story:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-st...-ruling-on-meredith-suspects-115875-20079106/

Remember Raffaele was held on basis of his shoe prints. I don't recall the mixed blood being an early report but could be forgetting. The bra didn't become evidence for a month and half and given that it only was found after the shoe prints were shown not to be Rafs it seemed highly suspicious at the time that they would go back 47 days after and find one piece of a bra and voila Raf's DNA.

Here's another early story: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/24505

The police chief and his famous we made her buckle and tell the truth made me suspect the prosecution and police thenceforward.

I'm not aware of video that showed her lying.

Obviously some read the early reports and took the other path. I think it came down to a basic trust in LE versus being skeptical.
 
Rolfe said:
That's interesting. *I've come across so many cases where the cries of "wolf" were all too justified, that I initially imagined Mumia was going to be another one. *Well, of course it wasn't.

I don't know how things are in the USA, but in Britain (mainly England) I can reel off a dozen or more erroneous murder convictions without stopping to think. *Sion Jenkins, Barry George, Sally Clark, Angela Cannings, Donna Anthony, Stefan Kizsko, Paul Esslemont, the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven, the Birmingham Six, David Asbury. *All these were finally reversed on appeal. *And Michael Stone and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi have not (so far) had their convictions overturned, but clearly should not have been convicted on the evidence before the courts.

So I have to say I tend to start from a position where I'm inclined to give quite a lot of credence to suggestions of a wrongful conviction. *Which doesn't mean to say that all such claims stack up, of course.

Rolfe.
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I understand where you are coming from, in my mind it is basic math that at any given time there must be a large number of innocent people in jail. Every year there are about a half a million homicides worldwide, so even if prosecutions were correct an amazing 99.99% of the time that still leaves for a horribly vast number of wrongful convictions.

However, when I've looked into a few cases that people talked about a lot (where I am from) I have discovered incredible dishonesty. In this regard Mumia represents the tip of the iceberg for a very serious problem in America. There are doubtless numerous truly innocent people in the U.S. prison system but their number has been obscured by (guilty) people who were promoted as victims of injustice for purely politically symbolic reasons by the American far left. The Seattle UW element of PMF is a great example of how insane they can be.
 
Grinder said:
Dave - What I am trying to convey is how it was day-to-day for me starting Nov. 2nd.

At first, we were told that Meredith had been killed in a sex game, satanic killing. Here an early story:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-st...-ruling-on-meredith-suspects-115875-20079106/

Remember Raffaele was held on basis of his shoe prints. I don't recall the mixed blood being an early report but could be forgetting. The bra didn't become evidence for a month and half and given that it only was found after the shoe prints were shown not to be Rafs it seemed highly suspicious at the time that they would go back 47 days after and find one piece of a bra and voila Raf's DNA.

Here's another early story: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/24505

The police chief and his famous we made her buckle and tell the truth made me suspect the prosecution and police thenceforward.

I'm not aware of video that showed her lying.

Obviously some read the early reports and took the other path. I think it came down to a basic trust in LE versus being skeptical.
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Here is a link to an Italian forum that gives the news stories in chronological order so you can get a feel of how things were developing. Thanks to Fine for providing the link to this wonderful resource.

http://translate.google.com/transla.../archivio/vai-a-9-vf121-vt5088.html?start=120
 
Grinder said:
Dave - What I am trying to convey is how it was day-to-day for me starting Nov. 2nd.

At first, we were told that Meredith had been killed in a sex game, satanic killing. Here an early story:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-st...-ruling-on-meredith-suspects-115875-20079106/

Remember Raffaele was held on basis of his shoe prints. I don't recall the mixed blood being an early report but could be forgetting. The bra didn't become evidence for a month and half and given that it only was found after the shoe prints were shown not to be Rafs it seemed highly suspicious at the time that they would go back 47 days after and find one piece of a bra and voila Raf's DNA.

Here's another early story: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/24505

The police chief and his famous we made her buckle and tell the truth made me suspect the prosecution and police thenceforward.

I'm not aware of video that showed her lying.

Obviously some read the early reports and took the other path. I think it came down to a basic trust in LE versus being skeptical.
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My view on this facet of the case is based mostly on a thread I happened on where a lot of this evidence was being put forth and it was not heavily challenged and on some of the early articles on the case like you linked to. What one's initial perceptions of the case are going to be depend on when they first heard of the case, and as you suggest, their personal degree of skepticism about the reliability of the authorities.

Certainly there were some people that developed skepticism early on, but if you had any tendency to trust the authorities you were going to form a very strong impression that they were guilty and that this case was over. In the US defense attorneys lie and misrepresent so often that it is reasonable I think to be very skeptical of any pro-defense information that is made available.

I should have included the bloody foot print in my list above. The existence of the bloody footprint of Sollecito is enough to have made me think this case is over and it's time to move on, Some kind of weird sex thing gone wrong and now some cynical defense attorneys are going to try to twist the facts so that the guilty can get off.

However, at the time any of the publically available "evidence" began to unravel I would have joined you pretty quickly, I think, on the skepticism side. All of a sudden there was positive evidence that the prosecution was grossly exaggerating their evidence and it would have been difficult to put a limit on how far they would go once this became apparent. And then a little more reading about the nature of the prosecution's theories and the amazing unlikelihood of them would have been enough to make it clear that the beyond a reasonable doubt threshold in this case couldn't be met.

As time as gone on, I have joined the almost certainly innocent crowd. I didn't think this was going to happen. When there is a controversy the evidence and arguments on both sides often seem strong enough to make me unsure of what the truth is. In this case, we seem to have moved to the point that the innocence of these people is almost provable and we are just faced with one more time when over zealous prosecutors find it impossible to admit they are wrong.
 
Rose thanks for the history of articles link.

Is there such a list for English language stories?
 
Dave,

Completely agree with your assessment of timing. Which discussion board did you read early on?

Although I'm not sure that they are innocent for sure, I am sure that the prosecution has not presented a case beyond a reasonable doubt.

If one doesn't believe that Amanda made up the Patrick statement but rather told them the truth as the police were sure it had happened, then there is next to no "evidence" that is even close to proving a connection to the crime.
 
curi0us said:
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However, when I've looked into a few cases that people talked about a lot (where I am from) I have discovered incredible dishonesty. In this regard Mumia represents the tip of the iceberg for a very serious problem in America. There are doubtless numerous truly innocent people in the U.S. prison system but their number has been obscured by (guilty) people who were promoted as victims of injustice for purely politically symbolic reasons by the American far left. The Seattle UW element of PMF is a great example of how insane they can be.
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Exactly, the existence of this nonsense is enough, I think, to be skeptical of a lot of the pro innocence stuff. Especially when there is a death penalty involved. I don't know if your characterization of these people as far left is accurate. I think they are just anti-death penalty people who think that lies and misrepresentations to prevent the execution of somebody are justified. They may be mostly left leaning people but taking part in this kind of thing is not necessarily an element of being on the left politically.
 
Teddy2007 said:
Yesterday they aired a 1 hour 4 min discusion on Rai about this case.

http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-6f179f02-9dc8-4423-81b1-3f8f5324ec0f.html

It started out well for the defence, with Amanda's father talking. Then they brought on a series of guest speakers, including Maresca, Giuseppe Castellini (the newspaper reporter that "helped" the police), some judge named Simonetta Matone, an editor of Oggi magazine, a pyschologist, and a lady (forget her name) that was in favour of the defence.

All I can say, is that if this program is the general feeling in Italy, and of the court in this case, Amanda and Raffaele are in trouble.

First of all, we are lucky that the judge Simonetta Matone is not presiding over this case - she was disgracefully in the prosecution's corner on this. Incredibly that stupid newpaper reporter was allowed to speak and hypothesise longer than anybody else on the show - he talked such ******** that even Maresca had to correct him on one thing (the footprint). The Pychologist claimed it was not so strange for two young people in love to commit such a crime.

On the other hand, the two people in favour of the defence were weak, and spoke little.

Curatolo was interviewed and fortunately the Oggi editor managed to mention about the problems in his testimony.

There was constant reference to there being lots of evidence, and not just the DNA - but what evidence? They didn't say much about it.

No discussion on why false accusations/confessions occur.

Dubious statements made about footprints and Amanda's DNA in the bathroom.

Very little discussion about Rudy Guede's role in this, and even a few minutes spent on his testimony placing Amanda and Raffaele at the scene as it if it were reliable. No discussion about his previous break-ins, about the smashed window, although it was mentioned that he didn't know AK and RS hardly at all.

No mention of Mignini the egomaniac, of course.

Overall, a very disappointing and worrying account of the events of this case.
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What is Curatolo saying? Anyone? 1.28.30.
 
From the DailyMail today:

Stephanie said: 'In this whole case over the last four years Meredith has been completely forgotten but we need to find justice for her, the truth.

This must be devastating for two web sites.
 
christianahannah said:
I have not seen the interview of the Kerchers on Porta a Porta but have read this from Meredith's mother:

http://www.tgcom.mediaset.it/cronac...-prove-che-hanno-inchiodato-i-colpevoli.shtml
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RoseMontague said:
Thanks. I have a feeling Google is not being very accurate with these comments. The basic thing that I get is her questions about what happened to the evidence in the first trial that is now no longer valid, and her statement that she will accept what the court decides. It seems to me that she is saying she does not know who killed her daughter and she leaves that to the court to decide. She wants justice for her daughter.

This seems to be a bit different from Mr Kercher's previously stated stance. Maybe someone can give this a decent translation (or has the original English version-I assume it was translated into Italian).
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I thought that as well to be fair, as I believe John Kercher is wedded to the prosecution 'case' much more BUT, having read Arline in today's Daily Mail, she actually seems to be pointing to Amanda - DISAPPOINTED at Arline but we did fear the prosecution and/or Maresca using tricks like this on the eve of closing arguments....BOLDING and underlining in her quote is mine.



''...Whoever killed Meredith knew her well, she had her trust but that was betrayed. That’s what I can’t understand. My daughter was killed in her home. Not in a park or on the road, her body wasn’t found dumped somewhere.''

''...In these four years we have never stopped thinking about her. It’s as if she was here with me still. I’m not bothered about the names of who was convicted - Rudy, Amanda, Raffaele. What counts for me is that my daughter was murdered by someone who in the first trial was found guilty and sentenced. There was a lot of evidence in that trial, but now I’m asking myself where has that all gone?''

''They are focusing on just two elements, but what about the other stuff? What has changed from the first trial? I accepted the verdict of the first trial and I will accept the verdict of the appeal but what I want is justice for my daughter.''

Link below:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...h-Kerchers-family-speaks-appeal-restarts.html
 
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mixed DNA in this case

davefoc said:
So halides1 point that there was no evidence of mixed blood appears to be correct and the general point that there is no probative value to this "evidence" appears to still be correct. Why is it that the people who have argued for guilt here have not responded to halides1 post on this? Is it because they are not prepared to acknowledge any facts that don't support their views?
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davefoc,

There is a new post up on the mixed DNA samples.
 
Surfing the Pro Migninni Fan site...the Porta Porta show has Maresca on it..

Maresca answers that RG recently did tell the truth, in Court. He said RS and AK were in the cottage at the time of the murder. Castelfranco says RG is not reliable and nobody believes what he says. Maresca responds she does not know about this - that they will see on this point when court gives verdict.

What is going on?
Did Mig's and his favorite puppet, make another deal where Rudy gets out in 2 yrs if he really helps them convict Amanda?

Is this the surprise? Rudys going to have a big surprise that Amanda and Raffaele did it , not him.

Maresca is so obsessed with winning this big case, it seems, he is even willing to befriend the one who raped and stabbed Meredith.
 
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