Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[smkovalinksy]

So what will you do in the event of a conviction? This, of course, is a hypothetical question, just as the one to Platonov was.

One might well ask, "What will you and others do in the case of acquittal?" I doubt anyone will commit suicide, or lose their will to live. I think what poppy1016 answered is apt: One would place hopes in the high court, or perhaps some US intervention (highly unlikely, I think) and in the end, if all of that did not work, with much sorrow for Knox and Sollecito, move on.

 

[lionking]

One might well ask, "What will you and others do in the case of acquittal?"

I answered that in #8892.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I do know about Platonov, but I'm on record as saying I would accept it (with a shrug). But I'm absolutely certain you won't accept confirmation of a conviction, either next week or at the final appeal. So what after that? Another JREF poll? Trial by internet? Further fruitless posts on internet forums?

Will the time ever come when you will say "I've had a crack, but the full process of a first world judicial system has made a decision after examining all available evidence, and maybe it knows better than me"?

Of course not. We're skeptics. We change our minds when presented with evidence and only when presented with evidence, not with the word of an authority. How do you think skepticism works? Do you think skepticism is believing whatever a cop or a court says even if it flies in the face of scientific fact?

 

[lionking]

Of course not. We're skeptics. We change our minds when presented with evidence and only when presented with evidence, not with the word of an authority. How do you think skepticism works? Do you think skepticism is believing whatever a cop or a court says even if it flies in the face of scientific fact?

So you will never accept that the court may just know better than you? That investigation via google and an internet forum may be inferior?

 

[smkovalinksy]

I answered that in #8892.

So you did. I do not believe you.

 

[komponisto]

There isn't a Knox booster left with an IQ over 70 that's still asserting that she's "innocent" - the best they can do (with a straight face) is argue that the RD standard can't be satisfied.

Exactly.

There are those who comment, and don't know the details of available evidence, and their commentary appears as though their IQ would be less than 70. Then there are those where it probably is indeed, less than 70.

What I don't understand, is the people that appear to be well-educated, who know the details of the evidence available, and believe in Amanda's innocence. These people would be more believable if they would argue for the disjointed bits and pieces of reasonable doubt, rather than for her complete innocence.

Surely, not all of them do it for pecuniary motives nor for motives regarding infamy? What would possess many reasonably intelligent people (a judge, journalists, lawyers) to become swallowed up in the innocence fairy tale?

Do you think there could be a human element that has nothing to do with money or fame? Perhaps the development of a relationship with the Knox/Mellas family after listening to their plight, and consequently sympathizing with them? That this human bond could negate skills of logical reasoning?

If the latter is so, then I'm a bit nervous about any jury. However, the great thing about the Italian system, is that there are 2 experienced judges on the jury that (one would think) have excellent reasoning skills that could hopefully, influence the others, at least with using skills of logical reason.

This comment is actually somewhat interesting to me, because it is almost an exact mirror image of my own thoughts. I find it genuinely perplexing that an intelligent educated person who is informed about the case could possibly even have any suspicions about Amanda Knox or Raffaele Sollecito, let alone being certain that they are guilty.

I think I've actually resolved the conundrum in many cases. Some people believe in guilt because it allows them to show off their cosmopolitanism or cynical wisdom; others have authoritarian sympathies and/or get a rush of morally-superior satisfaction from condemning criminal defendants; still others hate Amanda Knox because she's both "pretty" and "weird", as one insightful newcomer to this thread pointed out; a few have mental halos around Meredith Kercher and her family, and think that crusading for the pro-guilt position shows their sympathy. And of course, speaking of "human bonds" undermining "logical reasoning skills", we musn't forget the psycho-social pressures that develop when you spend four years in a community built around a particular point of view. PMF has by this point become something like a political party or a religious sect, and reacts to evidence undermining their beliefs in approximately the same way.

But anyway, for the benefit of whoever posted the above comment (I haven't checked), here are what I think are the most important reasons why my belief differs from yours:

1. I don't think Amanda and Raffaele's behavior is incriminating. I think it is very common for innocent people to say and do the kind of things that you people point to as evidence of guilt. I don't think the statements you call "lies" are actually lies, but even if I did, lying is much more common than murder. (If you're tempted to say "but there was a murder!", then you're committing what I call the First Fundamental Error of this case: reasoning as if we didn't know about Guede.)

2. I don't trust law enforcement and other authorities as much as you do. While I expect them to get things right most of the time, I also expect there to be occasional episodes of incompetence or malfeasance. When the police accuse very unlikely suspects of a very unusual crime, I regard it as well within the bounds of possibility that a mistake has been made. At which point something as damning as the Conti-Vecchiotti report pretty much means game over. (And in a case where there is already a plausible alternative theory of the crime -- in this case, that Guede acted alone -- it's not even a contest.)

 

[smkovalinksy]

This comment is actually somewhat interesting to me, because it is almost an exact mirror image of my own thoughts. I find it genuinely perplexing that an intelligent educated person who is informed about the case could possibly even have any suspicions about Amanda Knox or Raffaele Sollecito, let alone being certain that they are guilty.

I think I've actually resolved the conundrum in many cases. Some people believe in guilt because it allows them to show off their cosmopolitanism or cynical wisdom; others have authoritarian sympathies and/or get a rush of morally-superior satisfaction from condemning criminal defendants; still others hate Amanda Knox because she's both "pretty" and "weird", as one insightful newcomer to this thread pointed out; a few have mental halos around Meredith Kercher and her family, and think that crusading for the pro-guilt position shows their sympathy. And of course, speaking of "human bonds" undermining "logical reasoning skills", we musn't forget the psycho-social pressures that develop when you spend four years in a community built around a particular point of view. PMF has by this point become something like a political party or a religious sect, and reacts to evidence undermining their beliefs in approximately the same way.

But anyway, for the benefit of whoever posted the above comment (I haven't checked), here are what I think are the most important reasons why my belief differs from yours:

1. I don't think Amanda and Raffaele's behavior is incriminating. I think it is very common for innocent people to say and do the kind of things that you people point to as evidence of guilt. I don't think the statements you call "lies" are actually lies, but even if I did, lying is much more common than murder. (If you're tempted to say "but there was a murder!", then you're committing what I call the First Fundamental Error of this case: reasoning as if we didn't know about Guede.)

2. I don't trust law enforcement and other authorities as much as you do. While I expect them to get things right most of the time, I also expect there to be occasional episodes of incompetence or malfeasance. When the police accuse very unlikely suspects of a very unusual crime, I regard it as well within the bounds of possibility that a mistake has been made. At which point something as damning as the Conti-Vecchiotti report pretty much means game over. (And in a case where there is already a plausible alternative theory of the crime -- in this case, that Guede acted alone -- it's not even a contest.)

Bravo, well said.

 

[smkovalinksy]

So you will never accept that the court may just know better than you? That investigation via google and an internet forum may be inferior?

I think it is a bit more than investigation by google and forum. Think on it; there is a bit more , isn't there?

And sometimes the court does not know best. So long as justice and courts are human, they are fallible. People have been executed who were innocent; doctors have misdiagnosed, nations have pursued paths diametrically opposed to their genuine well being. Courts can and do sometimes function badly. The errors of history, of religions and nations, are legion. Why should we doubt our own senses, our own powers of deduction? In any case, even acquittal could possibly be an error.

 

[Bruce Fischer]

So you will never accept that the court may just know better than you? That investigation via google and an internet forum may be inferior?

Information has been made available to you that goes far beyond a "google" investigation, but you have chosen to ignore it. The information that you ignore makes it impossible for those who do not have blinders on to accept anything less than the full exoneration of Amanda and Raffaele.

I think its funny that you hang out on an online forum all day questioning the intelligence of those who like to discuss the case on online forums.

 

[lionking]

I think its funny that you hang out on an online forum all day questioning the intelligence of those who like to discuss the case on online forums.

Show me where I have questioned the intelligence of anyone? The zealotry, certainly.

 

[Dougm]

When the police accuse very unlikely suspects of a very unusual crime, I regard it as well within the bounds of possibility that a mistake has been made. At which point something as damning as the Conti-Vecchiotti report pretty much means game over. (And in a case where there is already a plausible alternative theory of the crime -- in this case, that Guede acted alone -- it's not even a contest.)

I am in total agreement. In short we have:

* A proposed theory of the crime that is so unusual as to have no parallel in the history of crime
* Two suspects that, if they were to commit any murder at all, would be unsual in itself. A murder that follows the prosecution theory, even more unusual
* No forensic proof that said suspects were at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder
* "Evidence" consists mostly of behavioral observations that are debatable as to what they indicate
* Alternative authorities (C&V, and others that have experience in crime and the law) that strongly disagree with the prosecution theory of the case

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

So you will never accept that the court may just know better than you?

Don't change the subject. It's not about the court knowing better than me, it's about the court "knowing better" than scientific fact.

That investigation via google and an internet forum may be inferior?

No matter how many times you try to spin reviewing the scientific literature as "investigation via google and an internet forum", it's still going to be reviewing the scientific literature.

If the only argument you've got is to totally misrepresent the basis of other side's case I submit that you don't have any worthwhile arguments at all.

 

[Malkmus]

So you will never accept that the court may just know better than you? That investigation via google and an internet forum may be inferior?

Internet aside, you're neglecting that to most of us the defense's narrative simply makes more sense.

 

[smkovalinksy]

From my academic days, of the study of philosophical jurisprudence, one of the most inspiring essays I have ever read concerning court verdicts. I predict that Judge Hellman is a man of "the judgement intuitive", and will guide the rest accordingly:

Joseph C. Hutcheson, Jr., "The Judgment Intuitive: The Function of the ‘Hunch’ in Judicial Decision", 14 Cornell Law Quarterly 274-88 (April, 1929).


Many years ago, at the conclusion of a particularly difficult case both in point of law and of fact, tried to a court without a jury, the judge, a man of great learning and ability, announced from the Bench that since the narrow and prejudiced modern view of the obligations of a judge in the decision of causes prevented his resort to the judgment aleatory by the use of his "little, small dice" he would take the case under advisement, and, brooding over it, wait for his lunch.

To me, a young, indeed a very young lawyer, picked, while yet the dew was on me and I had just begun to sprout, from the classic gardens of a University, . . . [this was baffling].

I had been trained to expect inexactitude from juries, but from the judge quite the reverse. I exalted in the law its tendency to formulize. I had a slot machine mind. I searched out categories and concepts and, having found them, worshiped them.

. . .Like Jurgen I had been to the Master Philologist and with words he had conquered me.

I knew, of course, that some judges did follow "hunches,"--"guesses" I indignantly called them. I scorned these...

[Now, however,] after eleven years on the Bench following eighteen at the Bar, I, being well advised by observation and experience of what I am about to set down, have thought it both wise and decorous to now boldly affirm [the judgement intuitive] . . .

Thereafter I proceed "to understand and resolve the obscurities of these various conflicts" I decide the case more or less offhand any by rule of thumb. While when the case is difficult or involved, and turns upon a hairsbreadth of law or of fact,... after canvassing all the available material at my command, and duly cogitating upon it, give my imagination play, and brooding over the cause, wait for the feeling, the hunch--that intuitive flash of understanding which makes the jump-spark connection between question and decision, and at the point where the path is darkest for the judicial feet, sheds its light along the way.

And more, "lest I be stoned in the street" for this admission, let me hasten to say to my brothers of the Bench and of the Bar," my practice is therein the same with that of your other worships.

For let me premise here, that in feeling or "hunching" out his decisions, the judge acts not differently from but precisely as the lawyers do in working on their cases, with only this exception; that the lawyer, having a predetermined destination in view,--to win his suit for his client--looks for and regards only those hunches which keep him in the path that he has chosen, while the judge, being merely on his way with a roving commission to find the just solution, will follow his hunch wherever it leads him. . .

 

[Kaosium]

I may start obsessing about a woman (white, english speaking obviously) I have never met who is implicated in a murder [Rose West or whoever] and post incessantly on JREF, with ill concealed fury, about arguments posted elsewhere on the web whilst insulting her victim.

Why do you ask ?

I was just wondering.

But while you are here an answer to a Q you posed recently ...





I believe the term is 'the groundhog has jumped the cartwheel' - it's similar to one you introduced a while back about sharks waxing surfboards & it happened on this thread about 65k posts ago.

ps IIRC a previous post of mine caused some confusion* - the Belka referred to was ( obviously ) Smyslov's cat.
And while she was reputed to be able to clear the queenside with a majestic if surreptitious swipe of her tail she seldom, if ever, operated a mobile phone.

* I try to dumb it down [see Simpsons ref] but one has limits of imagination apparently.

We're up to 70k now, do keep up.

 

[Kaosium]

I do know about Platonov, but I'm on record as saying I would accept it (with a shrug). But I'm absolutely certain you won't accept confirmation of a conviction, either next week or at the final appeal. So what after that? Another JREF poll? Trial by internet? Further fruitless posts on internet forums?

Duct tape and rusty hacksaws?

Will the time ever come when you will say "I've had a crack, but the full process of a first world judicial system has made a decision after examining all available evidence, and maybe it knows better than me"?

Then they can log on to JREF and convince me!

 

[Justinian2]

If the convictions are confirmed, then what has the appeal been for?

You prove to the court what they wanted to know and they still find against you? What type of sick joke would that be?

 

[Dougm]

Will the time ever come when you will say "I've had a crack, but the full process of a first world judicial system has made a decision after examining all available evidence, and maybe it knows better than me"?

Is the concept supposed to be that a person here is supposed to accept an authority's ruling, even when that authority has been unable to produce facts that will convice them?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

shrug

I do know about Platonov, but I'm on record as saying I would accept it (with a shrug). But I'm absolutely certain you won't accept confirmation of a conviction, either next week or at the final appeal. So what after that? Another JREF poll? Trial by internet? Further fruitless posts on internet forums?

Will the time ever come when you will say "I've had a crack, but the full process of a first world judicial system has made a decision after examining all available evidence, and maybe it knows better than me"?

lionking,

What does the shrug mean? Does it mean that if the verdict is acquittal, that you will say that the judicial system knew better than you?

 

[Dougm]

Sounds like Barbie got blacklisted.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...x-trail-awaits-verdict-on-october-3-2011.html