Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Dougm]

I think the matter has been reviewed by several and confirmed that Pisa had this one qouted correctly. Too bad no one sent this news article to the attention of the judge. I mean after all somehow the judge got Steffi Kerchers letter, and he got to listen to Rudys letter...it seems only fair that he hear about the Comodi statement.

When I try to step back from all I know about what has happened before, and just stick to the facts of what is happening now, it looks to me like Hellmann is taking a no-nonsense, laser beam approach to the case. He may or may not be aware of the published Comodi comments (it is hard to believe it escaped his attention completely), but he may also not want to make this case a larger circus than it already is. It feels like what might be happening is "yes, I noticed that, but let's get to bottom of this case, and leave the side issues to the side".

It's not a trivial issue, but there have been so many comments thrown out in this case by so many, that maybe he just wants to cut to the chase.

 

[LondonJohn]

By the way, some people elsewhere seem confused about the provenance of this "cat trod on phone" thing. While I am equally baffled about where this comes from, I do know one thing: it wouldn't have been said in this trial. There was no new evidence entered into Hellmann's court in this area, and the defence teams have not even begun to argue their case yet. It wasn't in either of the defence appeal submissions. And it wouldn't ever have arisen in any defence objections during the prosecution closing argument. So I can only reasonably conclude that either a) this was said by a defence lawyer in the Massei trial, b) that it was said more recently by a defence lawyer, but out of court, or c) Comodi pulled it out of her derriere. I wonder which one it is?

 

[LondonJohn]

When I try to step back from all I know about what has happened before, and just stick to the facts of what is happening now, it looks to me like Hellmann is taking a no-nonsense, laser beam approach to the case. He may or may not be aware of the published Comodi comments (it is hard to believe it escaped his attention completely), but he may also not want to make this case a larger circus than it already is. It feels like what might be happening is "yes, I noticed that, but let's get to bottom of this case, and leave the side issues to the side".

It's not a trivial issue, but there have been so many comments thrown out in this case by so many, that maybe he just wants to cut to the chase.

I've actually had the same feeling. I think it's very possible that Hellmann just wants to conclude the trial as quickly as possible, and that therefore he wants as few complicating factors getting in the way as possible. He's already indicated this desire through other rulings and statements, and I think his instinct is to get the trial done first, then deal with any related issues later. And if that's the case, then again it tends to support Hellmann's leaning towards acquittal.

 

[Dougm]

By the way, some people elsewhere seem confused about the provenance of this "cat trod on phone" thing. While I am equally baffled about where this comes from, I do know one thing: it wouldn't have been said in this trial. There was no new evidence entered into Hellmann's court in this area, and the defence teams have not even begun to argue their case yet. It wasn't in either of the defence appeal submissions. And it wouldn't ever have arisen in any defence objections during the prosecution closing argument. So I can only reasonably conclude that either a) this was said by a defence lawyer in the Massei trial, b) that it was said more recently by a defence lawyer, but out of court, or c) Comodi pulled it out of her derriere. I wonder which one it is?

I wonder if it could be a version of "c", where she is giving the cat example as an analogy to any explanation other than that Sollecito turned it on himself. A comparison to "the dog ate my homework" so to speak.

 

[JREF2010]

Well, to deal with your last point first, the prosecution rebuttal right at the end is only allowed to rebut the argument made by the defence. Prosecutors cannot introduce new elements of their own arguments at this final rebuttal stage: they have to be made in the closing argument itself or they can't be made at all.

So what we have seen over the past two days is essentially the entire prosecution case for guilt. And it is, to use the vernacular, total pants. I think the defence should focus strongly on showing the court that there is simply no coherent, reliable evidence pointing to guilt. The one thing the defence has to be wary of is that in Italian criminal justice one remnant of the inquisitorial system is that the court can arrive at its own conclusion totally separate from that proposed by the prosecution, defence or any other party. For example, even though it appears that prosecutors didn't even bring up Quintavalle's testimony in their closing arguments, there is technically nothing to stop Hellmann's judicial panel examining this testimony independently, considering it reliable, and considering it a factor in determining Knox's guilt. They won't do that of course, as Quintavalle's testimony is also the proverbial pants (which is why prosecutors didn't seemingly bring it up today or yesterday), but the point is that it's technically possible in a way that's not possible in anglo-saxon common law courts.

I therefore think the defence should try to address all of the contentious evidence/testimony - regardless of whether or not prosecutors used it in their closing arguments. I think they just need to remain tightly focussed on the goal: to demonstrate that there is quite clearly insufficient evidence pointing towards Knox or Sollecito as participants in Meredith's murder.

Interesting post, and a issue thats been amazing in this trial has been the bizarre, and completely insane at times, Judges reports and "visions".

But I must be missing something large, because The Harry Machine said they will be convicted and the fix is already in, so anyway.... no need for discussion I guess....

Skimming over PMF they claim another huge victory in this case and that the V of C, is not even worthy to be in a courtroom and is really nothing, then they spoke of how credible and upstanding a citizen Curatolo is.

the contrast is amazing.

 

[AmyStrange]

This sounds more like the Keystone Cops than anything! Where was the coherent case for guilt? The prosecution seems to have been flapping around like a beached flounder. What exactly are Knox and Sollecito said to have done, and when? Do they think that simply throwing a strop about the DNA evidence was enough? Where was the incisive argument that if we agree that the DNA evidence has not been discredited, then this is what we allege this means?

Last time, as I understand it, there was a detailed explanation of how the kitchen knife was supposed to have arrived at the murder scene, and what was done with it. There were allegations of a selective clean-up by the accused, and the witness evidence was pulled together to support a time of death which was woven into the narrative. Where did all that go? I thought the arguments from the Massei court were not imported into the Hellman court, so where does that leave us?

I'm just astonished about what seems to have been left out. No argument at all about time of death? No explanation about what the accused are supposed to have done? Is Amanda the wielder of the knife, or was she outside the door egging the two men on? If she wasn't in the room, how do the prosecution know she wasn't in the kitchen with her hands over her ears?

Instead of dealing with that, we got a lot of irrelevant dreck about Amanda having a vibrator (hell, I have a vibrator, and I have the most boringly virtuous life you could possibly imagine), and condoms, and wait, did they forget to mention that she didn't always flush the loo and wasn't too great at doing her share of the cleaning?

And even more dreck about please convict these two anyway in memory of Meredith, and wouldn't it be so unfair to lay all the blame on the man whose DNA was all over the crime because hey, he's black and underprivileged blew his chances with the rich family who sponsored him.

And what happened to the case against Sollecito? What is going on here?

The thing that concerns me is that this is so amorphous it might actually be difficult to counter. The defence almost have to present their own scenario for innocence, because what else is there to do? It's risky to do no more than repeat that the DNA was ruled to have been subject to contamination, and the rest is irrelevant.

And then, the prosecution actually gets a second bite here. Is it at all possible they're saving saying anything even half-way coherent for the last word? Maybe delivered by the lead guy whose name I can't even remember? To give the defence no chance to come back on it?

I really don't understand what is going on.

Rolfe.

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Rolfe,

it's sooooo interesting (to me anyway) that pro-guilters say that many arguements for not guilty are complicated and don't make sense, but they never look at their own arguements and see how overly complicated they are also and make even less sense, the clean up, staged break in, meeting up with and planning a three way orgy murder with an almost total stranger, time of death arguement, no DNA in the room that was the scene of a vicious struggle and bloody murder, and Rudy's various story changes.

The reasonable and simple arguement that makes the most sense is that Rudy acted alone.

Most of the convoluted and psychological arguements used to refute this just don't make sense when you actually do real research into false confessions (proof positive LE sometimes do shady and shoddy work in the name of justice) and also open your mind to the weird and bizarre behavior they themselves have probably seen (if not practiced themselves) at funerals, wakes, and receptions for loved ones who have died,

Dave

ETA: the interesting arguements that Rudy saw A&R kill Meredith and then left, and Rudy then went in to save her life is equally silly, because IF (big freakin' IF) there was a clean-up the next day, how did they even know Rudy had been in and left DNA in the room and thus know to not clean up his DNA and to protect him when they didn't even know he had been in the room?

Anyway, I don't ever recall in the history of murder that a clean up like this has ever been proven or even implied? Anyone?

And why bother doing a selective clean-up and then not implicate the person you are selecting to not clean-up. In that circumstance, if you're going to make up a name out of the blue, why not Rudy? Why Patrick instead? There is so much of the pro-guilt arguement that is convoluted and even makes a whole lot less sense.

 

[Rolfe]

I was reading PMF.org where they seemed to have a bit more information and note that the prosecution is still claiming that Knox wielded the knife. In spite of earlier suggestions that she was orchestrating from outside? So they're definitely going for that DNA trace being legit. I think that may be unwise.

Also that the bathmat smudge is definitely Sollecito. Now that's just ridiculous. But could someone explain what the guilters are on about with this comparison? I can see that the second toe is missing from one of the prints, but I'm not clear which print is said to be which.
http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewto...6a956c15f96b35342b21be997a53&start=250#p99830

I still don't understand when they're claiming the murder happened though.

Rolfe.

 

[Grinder]

The only person that has changed his story more than Rudy is Mignini.

I hope we see plenty of press interviews Mignini gave introduced by the defense. Perhaps they will also mention the Commodi quotes about the judges and the independent experts.

Italian court practices are certainly interesting.

 

[Kaosium]

My take on this is that Hellmann's court was just agreeing with the High Court that their ruling had nothing to do with Raffaele's case.

Do you suppose that will be the end of this particular talking point? I rather hope not, it was one of my favorites. At its best it was nothing but an admission of how unfair this process is, (if it actually worked that way) at its worst it revealed just how stupid Mignini, Maresca and (now) Comodi thought people really were, especially those who repeated it ad infinitium in support of guilty verdicts.

 

[JREF2010]

Curt Knox, the defendant's father, said her daughter had reacted well to the prosecutors' request, which had been expected.

"She was actually fine. She said today was easier than yesterday, mainly because today was technical," he said. "Yesterday it was kind of character assassination that they tried."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/24/amanda-knox-trial-appeal_n_978983.html

Monday will be more character assassination, if the past predicts the future.

 

[RandyN]

It's long since time to nail this rubbish about Meredith's supposed karate training somehow proving that Guede couldn't have been a lone assailant. A 57kg medium-height woman against a probably 85kg above-average-height athletic male is a mismatch in any context. But when you add in the fact that the male in this scenario was brandishing a large knife, the mismatch is even larger.

And the other fundamental thing to remember is that we have the benefit (not that that's really the most appropriate word) of knowing that the confrontation ended with Meredith's death. But in a real-time situation, it's highly likely that Meredith didn't believe that Guede was going to harm her. This belief, coupled with raw fear, would naturally lead anyone in such a situation to be compliant, since it would be wholly logical for a victim to reason that compliance and theft (or even perhaps some form of sexual assault) would be preferable to resistance and murder.

There are countless examples of where single assailants have managed to control even groups of people by using this psychological methodology. For example, Dennis Rader, the so-called BTK Killer, persuaded households of up to five people to tie themselves up using nothing more than a knife and the threat of violence. Once everyone was tied up, he was then free to carry out his real intention of torture and murder. But if he had announced his intention to torture and murder from the very outset, he would obviously have been met with resistance, and would very possibly even have been overpowered. The sad truth is that none of Rader's victims really suspected his true intentions, so they were initially compliant instead of fighting for their lives.

In the same way, I strongly suspect that Guede probably indicated to Meredith that he wanted her to keep quiet and not try to escape, and used the knife as a threat. Perhaps Meredith thought that Guede intended to find her keys (so that he could exit via the front door), and perhaps also steal money and portable valuables from the cottage. If that is indeed what she thought the limit of Guede's intentions were, then it's entirely logical that she would have been passive and compliant. I think that when it becaome clear to Meredith that Guede also had the intention of sexually assaulting or raping her, she switched from compliance to resistance. I think that this sadly cost her her life.

Oh and by the way, disregard padron's argument totally. It has no basis in logic, and is unsupported by the known facts. And he has no comprehension of the implications of Guede's Supreme Court judgement either.

Not only do I agree but I will add that OJ Simpson overpowered 2 persons by himself and with a knife. One person Nicole was approximately the size of Meredith. The other person was a large athletic younger male named Ron.

To argue that somehow Guede could never overpower Meredith on his own is ludicrous! That she had 40 some odd wounds takes into account bruises and such and is perfectly in line with an attack lasting 5 minutes or less which I expect is the case given the conditions found in the murder room.

If there were three attackers then where is the evidence of the other two in the room where the murder took place? You know...footprints, fingerprints, DNA, blood, hair, etc. And please don’t insult anyone’s intelligence by saying that evidence was cleaned up...

 

[Kaosium]

By the way, some people elsewhere seem confused about the provenance of this "cat trod on phone" thing. While I am equally baffled about where this comes from, I do know one thing: it wouldn't have been said in this trial. There was no new evidence entered into Hellmann's court in this area, and the defence teams have not even begun to argue their case yet. It wasn't in either of the defence appeal submissions. And it wouldn't ever have arisen in any defence objections during the prosecution closing argument. So I can only reasonably conclude that either a) this was said by a defence lawyer in the Massei trial, b) that it was said more recently by a defence lawyer, but out of court, or c) Comodi pulled it out of her derriere. I wonder which one it is?

I suspect it came from the same place the 'turnip juice' came from, which is the same place Raffaele was tempted to put that turnip to his friend if you read that blog entry of his....

 

[katy_did]

Here we go, finally proper clarification on the document the prosecution wanted admitting! From Nadeau:

Supreme court ruling in #amandaknox case: prosecution wanted to enter a document outlining precedent where an appellate court ruled against supreme court, which would be the case if this appellate court ruled against supreme court ruling on Rudy Guede that three were involved. #confusedyet

 

[Dougm]

Not only do I agree but I will add that OJ Simpson overpowered 2 persons by himself and with a knife. One person Nicole was approximately the size of Meredith. The other person was a large athletic younger male named Ron.

To argue that somehow Guede could never overpower Meredith on his own is ludicrous! That she had 40 some odd wounds takes into account bruises and such and is perfectly in line with an attack lasting 5 minutes or less which I expect is the case given the conditions found in the murder room.

If there were three attackers then where is the evidence of the other two in the room where the murder took place? You know...footprints, fingerprints, DNA, blood, hair, etc. And please don’t insult anyone’s intelligence by saying that evidence was cleaned up...

I have always found this insistence on multiple attackers a key weak point of the pro-guilt scenario. In fact, the minute they admit that it would have been possible for one person to have killed Meredith, their entire argument falls apart, because there is no evidence there was anyone else there.

This is part of the circle, like the staged break in:

* There were multiple attackers so it must have been somebody
* Who else would it be??

Meredith was a petite young woman, and could easily have been controlled by Guede alone, with or without a knife. I tend to agree with the idea that she may have tried the passive route at first, but then when she realized that Guede wanted to sexually assault her, she may have screamed and fought back, and that resulted in a violent overreaction on his part.

We probably won't ever know exactly, but the idea it took 3 people to subdue and kill her makes no sense, and is not supported by the evidence.

 

[LondonJohn]

Here we go, finally proper clarification on the document the prosecution wanted admitting! From Nadeau:

Not clarification at all, unfortunately. If this were true, it would mean that the prosecution wanted to admit a document that would only potentially serve to help the defence! I think that Clouseau really doesn't know what's going on here.

 

[katy_did]

Not clarification at all, unfortunately. If this were true, it would mean that the prosecution wanted to admit a document that would only potentially serve to help the defence! I think that Clouseau really doesn't know what's going on here.

Depends on what it says; it could outline a case where the appellate court ruled against the Supreme Court in certain restricted conditions, for example, conditions which might not apply in this case. What seems certain anyway is that it was the prosecution who wanted the document to be admitted, a document the defence didn't have (hence Dalla Vedova objecting), and that the Judge refused to admit it.

 

[ForTruth]

I've been wondering... what was the surprise that Migini promised yesterday. So far my only surprise is that they are just rehashing the previous closing arguments without virtually nothing new...
Maybe the surprise was the dramatic arrest of Frank Sfarzo???

 

[komponisto]

Supreme court ruling in #amandaknox case: prosecution wanted to enter a document outlining precedent where an appellate court ruled against supreme court, which would be the case if this appellate court ruled against supreme court ruling on Rudy Guede that three were involved. #confusedyet

Not clarification at all, unfortunately. If this were true, it would mean that the prosecution wanted to admit a document that would only potentially serve to help the defence! I think that Clouseau really doesn't know what's going on here.

Exactly, and I'm not surprised, since that's pretty much been the pattern from the beginning.

I wanted to make a quip about dolls, but for politeness' sake I'll just say that I don't consider it to be headline news whenever Barbie turns out to be suffering from confusion.

 

[charlatan]

Seems to me the prosecutors made three critical errors in their closing arguments:

1) They opted for a disjointed and even contradictory series of presentations instead of laying out their theory of exactly what happened that night in plain Italian.

2) They assailed the fitness and competency of the independent experts in the most inflammatory terms possible -- I'm surprised they didn't also give Hellmann the finger while they were at it.

3) They tried to rehabilitate Curatolo's testimony, which only reminded everyone just how sketchy that testimony is. Comodi also helpfully reminded everyone that Meredith's cell phone activity that night undermines this very testimony.

I suspect posters here could have made a much more compelling argument for guilt.

 

[AmyStrange]

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OMG!!! I was on the floor laughing when I read this line by Frank:

FROM: http://perugiashock.com/2011/09/23/in-heroin-we-trust/
"He’s still there with the window is unclimbable (for him, maybe)"

Dave