Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[bolint]

Hellmann clarified later that the acquittals were under 530.1.

Source?

He didn't even need to do so though, as he was absolutely explicit in his courtroom verdict announcement that the acquittals for A, B, C and D were on account of the accused persons not committing the crimes, and that the acquittals for E were on account of the crime not having been committed at all. That made it completely obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the Italian penal code that these acquittals were all under 530.1.

So we are back to square one.

I'm sorry that you are unable or unwilling to understand this though. Guess some of us don't like being wrong.....

I agree.

PS: I would have suggested that you ask pro-guilt commentator "Yummi" over on .org

I no longer post there.

for confirmation on this issue: he was actually there last night, and heard Hellmann's clarification. He also appears to be clear on the 530.1 issues in ways that you are not.

I read it, I think he is wrong in this. I read other jurists who do not say so.

But I fear that he is now so immersed in increasingly-bizarre conspiracy theories

Well, I'm not into CT.
I'm into the Grand Unified Conspiration Theory.
http://humorix.org/10428

 

[LondonJohn]

Really find that piece offensive, especially the "PR campaign" and "favorable political climate" points. Knox and Sollecito were wrongfully accused and convicted; Hellman was objective, fair, and unbiased; and the truth came out. Should happen more often, in courts, and in life in general. It is called justice. Guess journalists are still trying to milk the Knox saga as they cannot think of things to write for their weekly pieces.

Jeeeeez. That whole article is wrong on so many levels. As Halides has pointed out, it's deeply relevant that the author of the piece is Graham Johnson, who is also the co-author of Darkness Descending. That book now looks stupid and wrong in the light of what we now know to be true. It therefore tends to demonstrate that a) Johnson is an inadequate investigative reporter/journalist, and b) that he almost certainly has a vested interest in minimising the enormity of yesterday's acquittals. He's another one that can be firmly placed in the "ignorant fool" waste basket.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Heh...I guess I can't blame you for being a bit smug at the moment; I'm sure I would be in a similar position.

I wouldn't be if I hadn't been so thoroughly trashed for my position in the OP. Vindicated is a closer description than smug.

 

[smkovalinksy]

Not only that: to argue on a point that is demonstrably wrong is bizarre and irrational. Knox and Sollecito were categorically definitely acquitted under section 530.1 of the code. There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever of that fact.

Yes. Hellman actually declared what penal code the ruling was under. Do they really think an esteemed and seasoned appellate judge would have global media present for a supremely high-profile case ruling, and then with the whole world watching, be dumb enough to go under the wrong code, wrong article? Reminds me of Obama bashers who believe his birth certificate was wrongly written up, rendering his presidency null and void. Sigh. Self-delusion is a psychological ailment of our era.

 

[Cainkane1]

I doubt if Amanda will ever return to Italy. I wonder if she'll ever even return to ill she be safe from further prosecution since Italy seems to lack a double jeopardy clause in its justice system?

 

[Diocletus]

Micromegas,

I would not have used those terms for at least one reason. But I would not have used the word "knowingly," either. Amanda's false confession/accusation comes up very frequently when people who are pro-guilt explain their views. However, it actually does not make sense for a hypothetically guilty Amanda to name Lumumba, whereas it makes perfectly good sense for an innocent but pressured Amanda to name him. I would also point to kaosium's comments on the subject of Amanda's statements as evidence of her confusion. I may be able to say more this evening, but perhaps others would like to flesh out this discussion earlier.

Here is a quote from Thoughtful at PMF, which I think is well put, so I took the liberty of copying it:

Why are you sure that the calunnia conviction means this? Couldn't it mean that, while the court agrees that there was pressure on Amanda at the moment she named Lumumba (i.e. they do not believe that her act was entirely gratuitous) they nevertheless consider that she acted badly, went far beyond what the pressure would have normally elicited as a reaction, and caused great harm deserving of punishment? The conviction seems like a message meant to say: being under pressure is not an acceptable reason for placing innocent bystanders in serious danger.

I agree that this is likely what has happened.

This will tee up for appeal the issues of (i) how much pressure is too much, and (ii) who has the burden of proving the pressure (defense or prosecution). I think that Knox would have been acquitted of this charge if she had had an expert in false confessions/accusations testify.

 

[LondonJohn]

Yes. Hellman actually declared what penal code the ruling was under. Do they really think an esteemed and seasoned appellate judge would have global media present for a supremely high-profile case ruling, and then with the whole world watching, be dumb enough to go under the wrong code, wrong article? Reminds me of Obama bashers who believe his birth certificate was wrongly written up, rendering his presidency null and void. Sigh. Self-delusion is a psychological ailment of our era.

I dunno - tell it to Bolint. I'm tired and bored of having to explain the same thing over and over to him/her. I wonder what dog (s)he has in this fight? The stubborn refusal to accept certain truths certainly tends to suggest something more than a mere passing interest.

 

[Keeper]

Here is point 9: "The Italian appeals process offers more guarantees to defendants than any other legal system in the world, whereby only the weakest evidence is treated, not the whole case. Knox's team only had to attack the DNA evidence against her to undermine the whole edifice of the original trial. Italy has one of lowest prison populations in the world because of its lenient appeals process."

The reason that you do not understand it is that it makes precisely no sense. The DNA was the only decent forensic evidence against the pair. IMO, it constituted the strongest, not the weakest piece of evidence. The writer has also forgotten about Curatolo*, the only witness who supposedly broke their alibi. Why the writer thinks that the Italian appeals system only treats the weakest piece of evidence is completely mysterious.
*The writer did discuss Curatolo but not in the context of the appeal.
EDT
The author of Darkness Descending, Graham Johnson wrote in point 3, "The evidence of Rudy Guede against Knox was also confusing." Once I saw that Johnson had written this article, all became clear.

Ok thanks. Thought it was something I'd missed.

 

[bolint]

I think it is counterproductive of certain parties to cling to technicalities in the face of a ruling of an appellate court rendered by a seasoned and esteemed judge.

Then why are you clinging to technicalities?

 

[davefoc]

I was very happy about the verdict yesterday and thought I'd tune in to the JREF AK/RS thread to see a few of your thoughts.

I hadn't realized that Skeptic Ginger was behind the start of this. I smiled a bit at that.

I thought the Kercher's belief in the guilt of RS/AK was intriguing. The coordinated publicity dance involving the family and a friend of Meredith Kercher's towards the end of the trial was a little unsettling. Not only had they developed a deep apparently unfalsifiable belief in the guilt of RS/AK they were willing to take an active role in seeking the conviction of RS/AK.

I was also interested in the discussions about the ethics of the various players in this. It seems like the people that were involved in the prosecution of RS/AK had true beliefs in the guilt of RS/AK. Judging them guilty of ethical violations is a little dicey given that. The most problematic, I think, was Stefanoni. Her role is to be a neutral evaluator of the evidence. Clearly she failed at that but did she fail consciously or was she a true believer without sufficient introspection to retain her objectivity? I don't know. She has been accused of lying in this thread. If she knew RS/AK were guilty is lying to assure their conviction a moral or an ethical violation? Did she lie in provable way?

I was also interested in the discussion between LondonJohn and Bolint about whether the court acquitted based on 530.1 or 530.2. The situation didn't seem to be quite as clear cut as LondonJohn suggested. Bolint is making two claims: 1. Hellman did not specifically mention 530.1. 2. Current Italian law does not allow a distinction between not guilty guilty verdicts. LondoJohn counters that Hellman specifically said they didn't do the crime so he was acquitting based on 530.1. As an outsider I don't have a clue. It would seem pretty straightforward that Italian law either allows two kinds of not guilty verdict or it doesn't. It would seem like the fact that Mignini was talking about 530.1 and 530.2 suggests that Bolint was wrong on his second point (Why is Mignini talking about it if the distinction doesn't exist) but perhaps I'm confused.

And lastly on the issue of the appeal: Here Bolint goes in a surprising direction, at least from the viewpoint of an American, with regard to the issue of an appeal. It's been said over and over that this appeal is only on procedural grounds and so far the only procedural grounds mentioned is the highly suspicious claim that the defense didn't request a DNA review soon enough. This sounds like prosecution noise to me and even if there was some technical justification for it the idea that the Italian Supreme Court is going to reverse a court decision on this point seems to be in the wildly unlikely range.

 

[smkovalinksy]

Then why are you clinging to technicalities?

I am not. The court has spoken, the defendants were freed, and it is over. I am just passing the time as I have too much free time right now. I have psychologically already begun to lose interest in this case. It feels passe already.

 

[Keeper]

Jeeeeez. That whole article is wrong on so many levels. As Halides has pointed out, it's deeply relevant that the author of the piece is Graham Johnson, who is also the co-author of Darkness Descending. That book now looks stupid and wrong in the light of what we now know to be true. It therefore tends to demonstrate that a) Johnson is an inadequate investigative reporter/journalist, and b) that he almost certainly has a vested interest in minimising the enormity of yesterday's acquittals. He's another one that can be firmly placed in the "ignorant fool" waste basket.

Shame it's on the BBC site though rather than Mail etc.

 

[Grinder]

Can Amanda sue Patrick and his attorney either in the US or elsewhere for what they said to the press and in court?

If they sued in the US in Seattle it would cost PL a pretty penny to defend himself.

 

[Grinder]

double

 

[Micromegas]

Hi Mike,
Just wanted to explain that Amanda incriminated herself, as well as incriminating Lumumba in the 'confession'.

No, she didn't. She just said she was at the house (since the cops falsely claimed they had evidence placing her there), cowering in fright while Lumumba killed Meredith.

I don't want you to think I believe this means Knox herself killed Kercher. But neither do I believe the woo-soaked notion that the police brainwashed her into fabricating an accusation against Lumumba. As for the cops exploiting Knox's trauma and nightmares, let's not be hypocritical here. The UK tabloids were wrong to revile Knox for not being sufficiently torn up about Kercher's death; if her behavior didn't betray trauma, that doesn't mean she was guilty. But it doesn't mean she was traumatized, either.

I'm just trying to make it clear that it's not so wacky to have been skeptical of Knox's innocence, given behavior like accusing an innocent man of a brutal murder. Are we allowed to be skeptical?

-Mike

 

[Bruce Fischer]

Okay. I just wondered why it's "freakish and frankly inexcusable" to harbor suspicion toward someone who would knowingly accuse an innocent man of a heinous crime.

-Mike

Your question highlights why the court did a great job of saving face. If you look at the facts of the case, Amanda did not knowingly accuse an innocent man of a heinous crime but by claiming she is guilty of that one point, the court allows all involved to just walk away from their actions.

The important thing is that Amanda and Raffaele are free. They lost 4 years of their lives, now all they ask is for a little privacy. It is time for the healing to begin.

I am still hopeful that those involved in this injustice will eventually pay for their actions. Confirming Mignini's conviction in November will be a good start. He will receive no jail time but he will never prosecute a case again if the conviction is confirmed.

 

[NoahFence]

now all they ask is for a little privacy

They're going to be granted their privacy. Just after their (paid) appearances on Nancy Grace, The View, 60 Minutes, TMZ, The Colbert Report, Sesame Street, etc..etc...etc....

 

[smkovalinksy]

Excerpts:

LA TIMES: OP-ED
The scapegoating of Amanda Knox
Nina Burleigh

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-burleigh-knox-20111004,0,2921659.story

October 4, 2011
Amanda Knox is nothing if not a good story. The pretty young American who headed to Italy for her junior year abroad, fell for an Italian boy and then landed in the dock with him, accused, convicted and then exonerated on charges of murdering another young woman in a sex game gone wild.

Knox was never one of the usual suspects. Her roommate, Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student, was found on the night after Halloween 2007, raped, with her throat slit, in the Perugia apartment they shared. According to the European Council, 1 in 5 European females are victims of a sexual assault at some point in their lives. Ninety-eight percent of their aggressors are male.

When I went to Perugia in 2009, as Knox's testimony began, to research a book on the case, I didn't know whether she was guilty as charged, but I was certainly willing to believe it. [. . . ]

In person, in prison and in the media, Knox was subjected to all manner of outlandish, misogynistic behavior. A prison "doctor" (he has never stepped forward publicly) tested a sample of Knox's blood and then informed her she was HIV-positive, prompting Knox to list every man she'd had sex with. Authorities passed the names of seven men to reporters from the British tabloid pack, who printed it. Soon thereafter, Knox was told the doctor was mistaken and she didn't have AIDS.

Outside prison walls, Italian criminologists were opining in the media and eventually on the witness stand that because the body had been covered with a blanket, the killer was surely female because such an act was evidence of feminine "pieta."

Finally, there were the prosecution's operatic closing arguments, repeated almost verbatim in the appeal that ended last week. Knox was a "luciferina" — a she-devil — capable of a special, female duplicity. She was "dirty on the inside." Always, even from the defense lawyers, the closing arguments ended with appeals to God, in a medieval courtroom with a peeling fresco of the Madonna on the wall and a crucifix hanging above the judge.

The prosecution's "angel-faced killer" had arrived in Italy a few months after turning 20, a high school ugly duckling who blossomed into a beauty in college and was still testing her effect on men. She appeared outwardly confident, but, according to people I interviewed, she was deeply averse to conflict. She was also a compulsive diarist, explaining herself in rounded handwriting filling hundreds of journals. She thought of herself as a writer.

But that penchant for unfiltered self-expression hastened her demise.

[. . .]

In Perugia, reporters found people to talk about how the young American had attracted sexual desire and attention from men — willfully and not. She may have been doing only what liberated, self-absorbed young American girls do — having fun. [. . . ] To the Italian authorities, her careless seductiveness juxtaposed with the ghastly scene inside her house were clues to the witch, the deliberate player of men: Their theory was that she was not only a murderer but a murderous mastermind.

Knox was put through an extreme version of the test many young women face. She was endowed with compelling, mysterious powers. The focus on her sexuality suggests that civilization can easily tip backward to the primeval era when the feminine was classified, worshiped and feared in the form of powerful archetypes: Madonnas and Dianas, virgins and whores. Knox inadvertently fed these archetypes by the ways she behaved in public and advertised herself on the Web and, eventually, in her own compulsive writings.

In the end, however, it was precisely because she wasn't that monster, because she hadn't perfected that persona in the world, that she could do so little to defend herself. Knox had barely defined herself; she didn't possess the language or the maturity to match, let along overcome, the authority of other people's notions.

[. . . ]

The young woman who first went to jail at age 20 was a cipher onto whose photogenic, smiling face some Italians whore and, in whose pale eyes, others saw a psychopath. She was arrested at a time and in a place where young sexually active women are endowed in the minds of grown men, and maybe women too, with propensities for fantastic adult kink that few possess. The gaunt, tense woman defending herself on appeal bore barely any resemblance to the fresh, pretty girl photographed kissing her boyfriend outside the murder scene. Only now, having lost the power to bewitch and beguile, has she been revealed as human — and also, apparently, not guilty of murder.

Nina Burleigh's book on the Knox case, "The Fatal Gift of Beauty," was published in August.

 

[Diocletus]

What would be very interesting is if the court in its Motivation says that the 1:45 statement was the product of illegal coercion, but that this coercion should have dissipated by the time of the 5:45 statement, and that therefore, the slander conviction is based solely on the 5:45 statement.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

What would be very interesting is if the court in its Motivation says that the 1:45 statement was the product of illegal coercion, but that this coercion should have dissipated by the time of the 5:45 statement, and that therefore, the slander conviction is based solely on the 5:45 statement.

Good point. I am not sure that the logical underpinnings of the guilty verdict are sound, besides having other doubts.