Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Dougm]

Is the Michelle Moore story for sure? Nadeau seems to have pulled down the tweet and Shay's is the only reference to it that I can find.

Are there any Italian stories about it?

I searched for news and found the same nada as you did. Seems fishy to me, maybe it never happened.

 

[LondonJohn]

Is the Michelle Moore story for sure? Nadeau seems to have pulled down the tweet and Shay's is the only reference to it that I can find.

Are there any Italian stories about it?

Who knows. One thing's for sure though: if she did say it (and if she did, then she was stupid, irresponsible and disrespectful to do so in a courtroom), it will have absolutely zero impact upon the outcome of this trial. Heck, even if Edda and Curt were to lower their trousers and show their bare backsides to the court, it wouldn't have any effect on the trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Knox and Sollecito are being tried based purely on the evidence and testimony relevant to the case. Anything else is a sideshow that might have repercussions for others, but not for the defendants in the main trial.

And in this regard, it's actually useful that Hellmann and Zanetti are part of the judicial panel who are deliberating and deciding the case. They will know full well that sideshows like the alleged Michelle Moore incident should have no bearing on the Knox/Sollecito trial, and they will also be able to make sure that the popular judges know this too. And in the same way, Hellmann and Zanetti will quickly and easily be able to cut through all the appeals to emotion that seemingly have been employed by every single lawyer for the prosecution or civil parties in closing arguments. This case will be decided on arguments that are based on evidence and testimony. And there's nowhere near enough of that to come anywhere near proof of guilt. That sort of grandstanding emotional behaviour in closing argument might conceivably have an improper effect on a common law jury of 12 ordinary people, but it won't have any effect whatsoever on a judicial panel headed and controlled by two competent professional judges.

 

[Rolfe]

Not sure if this article has already been discussed http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...chers-friend-Perugia-can-be-a-dark-place.html. Nonetheless it is the views of Miss Hayward who knew Meredith maybe 3 or 4 weeks longer than Amanda did. Of course some may conclude “well she would say this or that” for this reason and that reason, but unlike most of us she was actually there.

Yeah. If being a bit irritating so that your roommate bitched a bit about you behind your back was a mark of a murderer, I must have a string of corpses in my past....

The Kerchers are, sadly, extremely invested in the notion that Amanda and Raffaele are vicious killers. Their friends are likely to be taking the same line, doesn't surprise me at all. And the length of time that Miss Hayward knew Meredith doesn't seem all that relevant to me. It's the accuracy of her character assessment of Amanda that's the important thing, and I don't think overblowing the catty chit-chat of a group of girls barely out of their teens is of much use in proving a motive for murder.

Rolfe.

 

[Grinder]

My feeling is that the defence teams will concentrate mainly on demolishing, piece-by-piece, each and every item of evidence that the prosecutors/Maresca have used in their attempt to demonstrate guilt. They will also have to address evidence that doesn't even seem to have been touched by prosecutors/Maresca in the appeal - such as Quintavalle's testimony or the phone evidence - since the court can consider these things totally independently. And I think that coupled with that will be an argument that a demolition job on the characters of the defendants is not an argument for guilt on the specific charges. And I think they will finish by pointing towards the evidence that tends to suggest not only that Guede committed this act alone, but also that Knox and Sollecito were very likely nowhere near the cottage at the time of the murder.

I'm sure they have the time. I'd go back to the beginning and show how the ILE got it wrong step by step. They must deal with the police mindset from the beginning. They must show that the interrogation pushed Amanda to say what they wanted.

They need to point out that when the evidence wasn't there that they expected, they created the cleanup with no evidence of a cleanup. They need to point out the mistakes made beyond those pointed out in the C & V report. (We could prove the computer was used late into the night but the police destroyed it.)

They should point out what Mignini and Commodi have said to the press (maybe she, the witch, controlled the murder from outside, the judges and independent experts are against us).

I think they should exploit the witch remarks and point out this is the first witch trial in 450 years and the first in Perugia in 650 years.

And more...

 

[Grinder]

Who knows. One thing's for sure though: if she did say it (and if she did, then she was stupid, irresponsible and disrespectful to do so in a courtroom), it will have absolutely zero impact upon the outcome of this trial. Heck, even if Edda and Curt were to lower their trousers and show their bare backsides to the court, it wouldn't have any effect on the trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Knox and Sollecito are being tried based purely on the evidence and testimony relevant to the case. Anything else is a sideshow that might have repercussions for others, but not for the defendants in the main trial.

And in this regard, it's actually useful that Hellmann and Zanetti are part of the judicial panel who are deliberating and deciding the case. They will know full well that sideshows like the alleged Michelle Moore incident should have no bearing on the Knox/Sollecito trial, and they will also be able to make sure that the popular judges know this too. And in the same way, Hellmann and Zanetti will quickly and easily be able to cut through all the appeals to emotion that seemingly have been employed by every single lawyer for the prosecution or civil parties in closing arguments. This case will be decided on arguments that are based on evidence and testimony. And there's nowhere near enough of that to come anywhere near proof of guilt. That sort of grandstanding emotional behaviour in closing argument might conceivably have an improper effect on a common law jury of 12 ordinary people, but it won't have any effect whatsoever on a judicial panel headed and controlled by two competent professional judges.

Not so sure as you. It seems that the case has had a lot decided on less than the facts to date.

I would say that if it is to be decided on the facts that there not enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.

Not challenging but I think Mignini knows how to win there and he set up the media PR stuff and now this MM story would fit.

 

[Rolfe]

Gosh; this happens in country A that happens in B (unless your name is Troy Davis, in which case no motive, DNA evidence or physical evidence was required for his execution) and in the UK everything is hunky-dory except of course the bit we never talk about in the 1970’s where the Guildford four and Birmingham six where framed. As we all know this case is taking place under Italian jurisprudence, no other country no other jurisdiction is relevant so to my rather simple mind that is the legal context!

There probably isn't a country where this sort of thing hasn't happened. England with the cases you mention, also the Maguire Seven, the Sally Clark/Angela Cannings/Donna Anthony sequence, Sion Jenkins, Paul Esslemont, Stefan Kiszko, Barry George, and I've probably missed some. Oh yes, Michael Stone. Scotland with David Asbury, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and a couple of others I can't call to mind at the moment.

I'm sure others can fill in the cases from their own countries.

However, that doesn't make what is going on in Perugia at the moment any less egregious. The defects in the process and the abuse of process are quite horrifying, even by the standards of that ignominious list above.

Rolfe.

 

[LondonJohn]

Yeah. If being a bit irritating so that your roommate bitched a bit about you behind your back was a mark of a murderer, I must have a string of corpses in my past....

The Kerchers are, sadly, extremely invested in the notion that Amanda and Raffaele are vicious killers. Their friends are likely to be taking the same line, doesn't surprise me at all. And the length of time that Miss Hayward knew Meredith doesn't seem all that relevant to me. It's the accuracy of her character assessment of Amanda that's the important thing, and I don't think overblowing the catty chit-chat of a group of girls barely out of their teens is of much use in proving a motive for murder.

Rolfe.

Not only that, but all the friends' testimony in this area suggests that it was Meredith who was getting annoyed with Knox, and not the other way round. In fact, this testimony only tends to support the notion that Knox was a laissez-faire type of individual, who might not have been appropriately aware of the impact of her behaviour on others. It certainly doesn't suggest that Knox was the type of person who might fly off into a rage - let alone one that would end in a vicious murder. It seems not many pro-guilt commentators have paused to consider this aspect very much. All they seemingly see is this: any criticism of Knox = grist to the mill of her culpability in Meredith's murder.

In addition to the above, Natalie Hayward had known Meredith for all of two months by the time of the murder, and would hardly have known Knox at all. By the sounds of this interview, it appears that Hayward barely even met Knox. And saying "she was actually there" is only true up to a very general point: she was a fellow student in Perugia, and she knew Meredith Kercher. But she couldn't have been privy to any deeper dynamic of the relationship between Knox and Meredith. She wasn't at the girls' house where Meredith went to watch the DVD and eat pizza on the evening of her murder. And she wasn't "there" on the day after the murder when the body was discovered.

Apart from all that, pretty much everything said by Hayward in this interview (the "weird behaviour" of Knox at the police station, Knox's supposed knowledge of details of the murder, her views on the Knox "accusation" of Lumumba, and so on) can be viewed as post-facto rationalisations. What would have been extremely interesting to know, for example, is what someone like Hayward might have been thinking abd saying contemporaneously: what, for example, did she tell her family in the UK in phone calls or emails, or even after she arrived home from Perugia (seemingly before Knox was arrested)? If I were a betting man, I'd be willing to place a large bet on her not having had these suspicions of Knox at that time. I think that she has - perhaps understandably - bought into the idea of Knox's guilt, and has then gone back and rationalised everything to fit in with that belief.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

Yeah. If being a bit irritating so that your roommate bitched a bit about you behind your back was a mark of a murderer, I must have a string of corpses in my past....

The Kerchers are, sadly, extremely invested in the notion that Amanda and Raffaele are vicious killers. Their friends are likely to be taking the same line, doesn't surprise me at all. And the length of time that Miss Hayward knew Meredith doesn't seem all that relevant to me. It's the accuracy of her character assessment of Amanda that's the important thing, and I don't think overblowing the catty chit-chat of a group of girls barely out of their teens is of much use in proving a motive for murder.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

The length of time and the depth of their friendship has been raised from time to time by Raffaele and Amanda’s supporters, chocolate festivals classical music concerts and no doubt Tb of photo’s chronicling their friendship ; the truth is that none of the students directly or indirectly involved had know each other that long and most were of a similar age; as for motive as far as I know it is not a legal requirement in Italy, UK or America for example so why do believe people tend to mention the lack of motive as though it is a legal requirement in any of the aforementioned countries?

 

[LondonJohn]

Not so sure as you. It seems that the case has had a lot decided on less than the facts to date.

I would say that if it is to be decided on the facts that there not enough to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.

Not challenging but I think Mignini knows how to win there and he set up the media PR stuff and now this MM story would fit.

No: the Massei trial was decided on arguments based on relevant evidence. The problem was that Massei and his court accepted (seemingly with total credulity and lack of proper reasoning) the arguments of the prosecutors that used the evidence/testimony to build a case for guilt. To take one example, prosecutors argued that the evidence/testimony related to Filomena's room proved a staging. The defence argued (weakly, in my view) that the evidence/testimony did not support any sort of staging. Massei's court ruled that the evidence/testimony did indeed support a conclusion of staging. But the same thing happened in almost every area of the prosecution argument in the Massei trial.

So Massei's court didn't find for guilt because it bought into the character assassinations. It found for guilt because it chose - utterly illogically - to conclude that the evidence/testimony from the crime scene, autopsy, police, witnesses and defendants supported a sufficient argument for guilt beyond all doubt based in reason.

Hellmann has already adequately demonstrated that his court shares none of Massei's court's credulity, bias or low reasoning powers. The appeal trial will make its ruling based on its conclusion about where the available evidence and testimony leads. And all the available evidence and testimony leads in only one direction: there's nowhere near enough of it to form an argument capable of proving the guilt of Knox or Sollecito beyond a reasonable doubt. And since that is the only test that matters in Hellmann's court, there is therefore only one possible verdict: acquittal.

 

[charlatan]

Not sure if this article has already been discussed http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8786940/Meredith-Kerchers-friend-Perugia-can-be-a-dark-place.html. Nonetheless it is the views of Miss Hayward who knew Meredith maybe 3 or 4 weeks longer than Amanda did. Of course some may conclude “well she would say this or that” for this reason and that reason, but unlike most of us she was actually there.

I never found Meredith's English friends very credible. For one, they didn't live in the house -- Neither Laura nor Filomena testified that Amanda and Meredith had anything other than a friendly relationship. It's also not clear if they spent any time in the house hanging out at the various get-togethers the flatmates and the boys downstairs had. If I recall correctly, it was Amanda who first introduced Meredith's boyfriend to the English girls, and this only happened after the murder.

Notably, Sophie Purton testified that Meredith felt 'guilty' that she hadn't asked Amanda to join the group for their Halloween festivities. We also know that Amanda and Meredith spent a fair amount of one-on-one time together at various events. None of this is suggestive of a bad relationship between the flatmates. To me it sounds like the English girls were living in a little expat bubble and were somewhat resentful of Meredith's diverse group of friends and acquaintances. I have a diverse group of friends myself, and sometimes get an earful from Group A about how someone from Group B is 'weird'.

To that group Amanda was the outsider and thus an easy target for gossip.

 

[katy_did]

3) After all measurements are taken, the examiner should then take out the reference prints - which should preferably be anonymised in order to minimise suspect bias. The reference prints should firstly be compared for general shape and size with the bathmat print, and included or excluded on that basis.

It's at this point particularly that the defence say Rinaldi got it wrong, since they say that the morphological comparison should take place first, before any dimensional comparison is made. So in this case, for example, the fact the print from Raffaele's big toe shows a break in continuity with the main part of the foot while the big toe of the bathmat print is continuous would in itself be enough to exclude him. Rinaldi should have looked at the structural features of Raffaele's foot for a 'preliminary comparison', and this before looking at the measurements, but instead he only did the latter

 

[Rolfe]

The length of time and the depth of their friendship has been raised from time to time by Raffaele and Amanda’s supporters, chocolate festivals classical music concerts and no doubt Tb of photo’s chronicling their friendship ; the truth is that none of the students directly or indirectly involved had know each other that long and most were of a similar age; as for motive as far as I know it is not a legal requirement in Italy, UK or America for example so why do believe people tend to mention the lack of motive as though it is a legal requirement in any of the aforementioned countries?

I was only addressing your point about Natalie Hayward. I don't think she had anything of substance to contribute. As LJ says, she wasn't there at the crucial times, and she seems barely to have known Amanda.

I don't know if you have ever been part of a group of girls in their early twenties, but I can assure you that it's perfectly possible to be on friendly terms with someone, but at the same time to find some of their mannerisms irritating and to bitch about them behind their backs. Meredith could easily have been in this situation with respect to Amanda. Or, as some PMF posters have suggested, she might have decided that she preferred the company of the English girls and was trying to cool it a bit with Amanda.

All this is commonplace as part of the group dynamic of young adult females. None of it has any bearing at all on whether one of them is going to murder one of the others. If anything, I'd have expected the one who was professing her irritation to be marginally more likely to take up the carving knife.

Again, LJ points out that apart from the irrelevant tittle-tattle, the bulk of Natalie's comments are stock guilter talking points, not anything she had personal knowledge of.

Rolfe.

 

[komponisto]

Rolfe

The length of time and the depth of their friendship has been raised from time to time by Raffaele and Amanda’s supporters, chocolate festivals classical music concerts and no doubt Tb of photo’s chronicling their friendship ; the truth is that none of the students directly or indirectly involved had know each other that long and most were of a similar age;

What is your point here? That if we accept that the chocolate festivals show that Amanda and Meredith were on good terms, then we also have to accept Hayward's belief that Amanda killed Meredith?

as for motive as far as I know it is not a legal requirement in Italy, UK or America for example so why do believe people tend to mention the lack of motive as though it is a legal requirement in any of the aforementioned countries?

Because it's rational evidence against guilt. Nothing to do with any "legal requirement"; just that an innocent person is more likely to lack a motive than a guilty one is.

 

[Dougm]

I never found Meredith's English friends very credible. For one, they didn't live in the house -- Neither Laura nor Filomena testified that Amanda and Meredith had anything other than a friendly relationship. It's also not clear if they spent any time in the house hanging out at the various get-togethers the flatmates and the boys downstairs had. If I recall correctly, it was Amanda who first introduced Meredith's boyfriend to the English girls, and this only happened after the murder.

Notably, Sophie Purton testified that Meredith felt 'guilty' that she hadn't asked Amanda to join the group for their Halloween festivities. We also know that Amanda and Meredith spent a fair amount of one-on-one time together at various events. None of this is suggestive of a bad relationship between the flatmates. To me it sounds like the English girls were living in a little expat bubble and were somewhat resentful of Meredith's diverse group of friends and acquaintances. I have a diverse group of friends myself, and sometimes get an earful from Group A about how someone from Group B is 'weird'.

To that group Amanda was the outsider and thus an easy target for gossip.

Also, read that article, and there is not one thing that Hayward says in there that would lead me to think that, even if it is all true, that Amanda was the least bit likely to murder Meredith. When I was in college, almost every girl I knew had bigger issues with some other girl than anything mentioned. There was not one bit of real evidence or logical cause and affect in that article, just gossip. And, as mentioned earlier, it is all about Meredith being annoyed iwth Amanda, not the other way around.

 

[Grinder]

Rolfe

The length of time and the depth of their friendship has been raised from time to time by Raffaele and Amanda’s supporters, chocolate festivals classical music concerts and no doubt Tb of photo’s chronicling their friendship ; the truth is that none of the students directly or indirectly involved had know each other that long and most were of a similar age; as for motive as far as I know it is not a legal requirement in Italy, UK or America for example so why do believe people tend to mention the lack of motive as though it is a legal requirement in any of the aforementioned countries?

For some it is not the legal argument but rather trying to make some sense of the crime if Amanda was involved.

This is why the PGP need to make her craaaaazy with wild parties needing dozens of police cars to control (one moderator even claimed the party was big talk on campus, yeah right), nasty pranks (from one comment on a blog) or the supposed "my people killed your people" comment attributed to her by an unnamed barista.

 

[charlatan]

It's the accuracy of her character assessment of Amanda that's the important thing, and I don't think overblowing the catty chit-chat of a group of girls barely out of their teens is of much use in proving a motive for murder.

Oh god, this too. This week they're best friends, next week they're not on speaking terms and the week after that they're best friends again. It makes party-planning a nightmare!

 

[AmyStrange]

SORRY, but I respectfully disagree...

Not good

________________
Quote:
BLNadeau Maresca: #meredithkercher didn't have defense wounds, it means she was held by more than one aggressor #amandaknox
2 minutes ago

BBCDanielS Now Kercher family lawyer is showing photographs of Meredith Kercher dead, with her throat slit to #amandaknox

I still say Rudy surprised her while she was taking her coat (sweatshirt) off and her hands were still trapped in the sleeves. This would explain the lack of defensive wounds. The original condition of the coat (sweatshirt) when it was found were that the sleeves were inside out.
Am I wrong here?
Dave

Unnecessary hypothesis.
It's possible he just pulled it down to restrain her arms during the assault.
Lack of defensive wounds is sufficiently explained by Meredith being compliant to the last moment.

-

Katody Matrass and London John,

unnecessary hypothesis? I don't think so. If the Defense tries to use your "compliant until the end" hypothesis, here is how I would counteract that if I was the Prosecution or Maresca:

"Sure she may have been compliant after Rudy showed her the knife, but once he started cutting her and/ or stabbing her, reflex and instinct would have taken over."

And THEN, I would throw a wadded up piece of paper at any one of the lay-judges or Hellmann himself or pretend to throw something.

99 out of a hundred times, that person will try to block the object.

"In order to be compliant you need to be rational, but once someone starts cutting or stabbing you, you stop acting rational and that's when reflex and instinct take over. You WILL reflexively ward off the knife blows just like you reflexively tried to ward off what I threw at you."

Here is another example. Suppose I hold a gun on you and tell you to not move while two guys beat the crap out of you. You fall to the ground and they start kicking you, wouldn't you reflexively curl into ball and try to defend against the blows no matter how much the guy with the gun told you not to do it?

You DEFINITELY need to show why she doesn't have defensive wounds, NOT that it's "possible" that Rudy could have forced her to be "compliant to the end".

Are you willing to take the chance they don't do this, especially considering the defense can't rebut the prosecution's rebuttal,

Dave

 

[RandyN]

Not only that, but all the friends' testimony in this area suggests that it was Meredith who was getting annoyed with Knox, and not the other way round. In fact, this testimony only tends to support the notion that Knox was a laissez-faire type of individual, who might not have been appropriately aware of the impact of her behaviour on others. It certainly doesn't suggest that Knox was the type of person who might fly off into a rage - let alone one that would end in a vicious murder. It seems not many pro-guilt commentators have paused to consider this aspect very much. All they seemingly see is this: any criticism of Knox = grist to the mill of her culpability in Meredith's murder.

In addition to the above, Natalie Hayward had known Meredith for all of two months by the time of the murder, and would hardly have known Knox at all. By the sounds of this interview, it appears that Hayward barely even met Knox. And saying "she was actually there" is only true up to a very general point: she was a fellow student in Perugia, and she knew Meredith Kercher. But she couldn't have been privy to any deeper dynamic of the relationship between Knox and Meredith. She wasn't at the girls' house where Meredith went to watch the DVD and eat pizza on the evening of her murder. And she wasn't "there" on the day after the murder when the body was discovered.

Apart from all that, pretty much everything said by Hayward in this interview (the "weird behaviour" of Knox at the police station, Knox's supposed knowledge of details of the murder, her views on the Knox "accusation" of Lumumba, and so on) can be viewed as post-facto rationalisations. What would have been extremely interesting to know, for example, is what someone like Hayward might have been thinking abd saying contemporaneously: what, for example, did she tell her family in the UK in phone calls or emails, or even after she arrived home from Perugia (seemingly before Knox was arrested)? If I were a betting man, I'd be willing to place a large bet on her not having had these suspicions of Knox at that time. I think that she has - perhaps understandably - bought into the idea of Knox's guilt, and has then gone back and rationalised everything to fit in with that belief.

I think the Heyward story was another release timed by Maresca for full effect on this appeal. Sad, cheap and phony as a three dollar bill.

I wish I had the confidence in these judges that LJ has. Personally Id like to have seen them interject a bit more during some of the more outrageous statements made by Prosecutors and company... The witch thing seems a perfect example of salacious material that has no place in a dignified court of law. The fact that it is allowed shows me that the court is not dignified and does not consider itself as such simply by allowing such comment...A WITCH???? come on now....

Italy your treatment of women is showing!!!

 

[charlatan]

Also, read that article, and there is not one thing that Hayward says in there that would lead me to think that, even if it is all true, that Amanda was the least bit likely to murder Meredith. When I was in college, almost every girl I knew had bigger issues with some other girl than anything mentioned. There was not one bit of real evidence or logical cause and affect in that article, just gossip. And, as mentioned earlier, it is all about Meredith being annoyed iwth Amanda, not the other way around.

Oh absolutely. Gossip is absurdly prejudicial should have no bearing on a civilized court. I was merely pointing out that Hayward's claims don't stand up to reason even if we do lose our minds and accept them as evidence.

 

[RandyN]

-

Katody Matrass and London John,

unnecessary hypothesis? I don't think so. If the Defense tries to use your "compliant until the end" hypothesis, here is how I would counteract that if I was the Prosecution or Maresca:

"Sure she may have been compliant after Rudy showed her the knife, but once he started cutting her and/ or stabbing her, reflex and instinct would have taken over."

And THEN, I would throw a wadded up piece of paper at any one of the lay-judges or Hellmann himself or pretend to throw something.

99 out of a hundred times, that person will try to block the object.

"In order to be compliant you need to be rational, but once someone starts cutting or stabbing you, you stop acting rational and that's when reflex and instinct take over. You WILL reflexively ward off the knife blows just like you reflexively tried to ward off what I threw at you."

Here is another example. Suppose I hold a gun on you and tell you to not move while two guys beat the crap out of you. You fall to the ground and they start kicking you, wouldn't you reflexively curl into ball and try to defend against the blows no matter how much the guy with the gun told you not to do it?

You DEFINITELY need to show why she doesn't have defensive wounds, NOT that it's "possible" that Rudy could have forced her to be "compliant to the end".

Are you willing to take the chance they don't do this, especially considering the defense can't rebut the prosecution's rebuttal,

Dave

Dave,

Meredith has several stab wounds on her hands. I would characterize these as defensive.