Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Started reading from the first thread by SG and found this gem from a 2007 news article about the confession/Lumumba accusation -

Kercher, who watched the movie "The Notebook" with a friend across town on her last night alive, is believed by the investigating judge to have returned home at 9:30 to find Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba waiting. "Initially the American gave a version of events we knew was not correct," Perugia police chief Arturo de Felice told reporters. "She buckled and made an admission of facts we knew were correct and from that we were able to bring them all in. They all participated but had different roles."

wow is all I can say.

ETA: I see Kaosium posted that earlier today
 
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mushy said:
Its funny to read back to the first post of the inital thread 2 years ago. When skepticgirl claimed that amanda was wrongly imprisoned and would be released on appeal in 2 years.

This was followed by all the apparent "skeptics" on here mocking here, claiming that they didnt understand why she had skeptic in here name. Despite the fact she had clearly researched the case, and those mocking hers knowledge went as far as, she was found guilty, therefore she must have done it.

It only goes to prove what i have said here all along, this place isnt for skeptics, its for people to dismiss and mock people who suggest anything other than the official version of events. Despite the fact they know nothing about the subject at hand.
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You are confusing two things. The process , and the conclusion from the process.
One can be right in the end, and use the wrong process, or base their judgment on emotion or whatnot. I did not visit that thread a lot (once ? twice ?), so I can't say which is which, but very often I see people confusing one for the other.

By the way I did not follow today either, was she innocented ? or did she only won her appeal and was acquitted ? There is quite a difference, but I saw both mentioned.
 
confessions versus accusations

Micromegas said:
All it's missing is a mention of internalized false confessions where the person incriminates someone else and not himself.

So maybe it's not a duck after all.

-Mike
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Micromegas,
Some quotes from this site, whose host is Alan Hirsch:

"Today the Supreme Court hears arguments in the case of a 9-year-old girl removed from her classroom and questioned at length about whether her father had sexually abused her. She allegedly broke down and falsely incriminated him. The issue is whether the Fourth Amendment required the authorities to obtain a warrant before questioning the girl without her mother's consent. Because false accusations are a close cousin of false confessions, this case should be watched closely."
(highlighting mine)
And,

"Note, too, that this shaky confession also fingered someone else, a useful reminder that false confessions sometimes involve false accusations of others as well."

I applaud your going to one of Saul Kassin's articles. He is one of the main researchers into this field, from what I can gather.
 
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bolint said:
Carlo Dalla Vedova in Porta a Porta (around 42 min)
http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-4eb31be0-b058-48f9-b272-2416c155440d.html#p=0


He says:


So even he is unsure, but expects "formula piena" (530.1)
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Yes, he's adding that qualification because it needs to be formally ratified, and he is the lawyer of one of the accused. It would be inappropriate for him to pre-empt the formality of the written confirmation. But the wording clearly indicates 530.1. From my knowledge of Italian law in this area (which I would freely admit is far from perfect, but which I would strongly argue is sufficient to take a point of view), I am certain that Knox/Sollecito were acquitted of all of the charges A, B, C and D on a 530.1 ruling that there was no evidence of the accused committing the crime, while they were acquitted of charge E (the staging) also on 530.1, as the crime did not take place.

And not that this unduly influences my thinking, but I have yet to see anything challenging this belief in the Italian (or international) media. I am sure that certain sections of the Italian media are very well-versed in the whole 530 issue, and none of them have concluded anything other than that these are 530.1 acquittals.
 
christianahannah said:
Well, he does speak of the burden of judges...
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Yes, I believe he is saying that in the PM's opinion there was suspicious activity and that is all that is required for him to investigate someone, and he would have done the same under the circumstances. He doesn't really speak to any of Mignini's other actions, probably for a reason. I think the motivation will be very critical of Massei's reasoning.
 
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halides1 said:
"Today the Supreme Court hears arguments in the case of a 9-year-old girl removed from her classroom and questioned at length about whether her father had sexually abused her. She allegedly broke down and falsely incriminated him. The issue is whether the Fourth Amendment required the authorities to obtain a warrant before questioning the girl without her mother's consent. Because false accusations are a close cousin of false confessions, this case should be watched closely."
(highlighting mine)
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Facepalm.gif


We're not talking about victims making false accusations, we're talking about someone who was trying to deflect suspicion away from herself with a false accusation. And not for nothing, but at least Hirsch's site makes the distinction between false accusations and false confessions, which you & others here seem unwilling to do.

-Mike
 
icerat said:
Started reading from the first thread by SG and found this gem from a 2007 news article about the confession/Lumumba accusation -

Kercher, who watched the movie "The Notebook" with a friend across town on her last night alive, is believed by the investigating judge to have returned home at 9:30 to find Knox, Sollecito and Lumumba waiting. "Initially the American gave a version of events we knew was not correct," Perugia police chief Arturo de Felice told reporters. "She buckled and made an admission of facts we knew were correct and from that we were able to bring them all in. They all participated but had different roles."

wow is all I can say.

ETA: I see Kaosium posted that earlier today
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Oh we've been talking about this De Felice statement for a very long time now. However, it can't be used for any appeal to the Supreme Court, since it relates to findings of fact and not points of law. But if the slander charge is referred back to the appeal court, I suspect that it will be a very significant piece of evidence.

And that leads on to another point: I don't think that Knox's lawyers made much of a concerted effort at all to defend against the criminal slander charge during the Hellmann trial. It appears that virtually all the efforts of her lawyers were focussed on the murder charge. I think that this might well even have been a conscious decision - i.e. don't try and divert attention away from what is by far the most important element: the murder charge.

I also suspect that neither Knox nor her lawyers would be unduly concerned if the criminal slander guilt verdict was confirmed by the Supreme Court: the ramifications for Knox will be relatively low compared to the ramifications of a murder conviction and a further 15 years behind bars. But I still expect Knox's lawyers to make a forceful submission to the Supreme Court, and if they win that appeal, I would predict that acquittal would probably follow in an appeal-level retrial.
 
Micromegas said:
[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Facepalm.gif[/qimg]

We're not talking about victims making false accusations, we're talking about someone who was trying to deflect suspicion away from herself with a false accusation. And not for nothing, but at least Hirsch's site makes the distinction between false accusations and false confessions, which you & others here seem unwilling to do.

-Mike
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At least you are saying and others rather than everybody.

So you believe she is guilty because of the false accusation and you believe the false accusation was to deflect suspicion because she was guilty?

Is there another reason you have that makes you think she is guilty?
 
Could the supremes rule that the calumnia charge shouldn't have been tried at the same time and order that charge to be retried?
 
Aepervius said:
....
By the way I did not follow today either, was she innocented ? or did she only won her appeal and was acquitted ? There is quite a difference, but I saw both mentioned.
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According to English interpretations of the Italian judges' ruling, they found her and her boyfriend specifically innocent of the crime.
 
no smiles from me

Micromegas said:
[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Facepalm.gif[/qimg]

We're not talking about victims making false accusations, we're talking about someone who was trying to deflect suspicion away from herself with a false accusation. And not for nothing, but at least Hirsch's site makes the distinction between false accusations and false confessions, which you & others here seem unwilling to do.

-Mike
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Micromegas,

I infer from the quote I provided that this nine year old girl was not a victim of anyone, but there is no link to the story itself. I agree that this child was not under suspicion for having committed a crime. However, your use of the phrase "deflect suspicion" is an unwarranted assumption. I respectfully suggest that you check your premises.
ETA
What I said previously is that there is no bright line between false confessions and false accusations. That is not the same thing as what you said.
 
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LondonJohn said:
Oh we've been talking about this De Felice statement for a very long time now.
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Yes, as I said I encountered it from reading from the first thread on this case back in 2009! I thought it worth highlighting for those, like myself, who are latecomers.

Given that statement is actually referring to Lumumba (not Guede) as the third party it's an eye opener into the police perspective at the time.
 
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icerat said:
Yes, as I said I encountered it from reading from the first thread on this case back in 2009! I thought it worth highlighting for those, like myself, who are latecomers.

Given that statement is actually referring to Lumumba (not Guede) as the third party it's an eye opener into the police perspective at the time.
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You (and others) might be interested in the Mignini/Comodi CT thread where this is discussed at great length without the requirement of wading through some 50k posts. It is an interesting theory.
 
halides1 said:
What I said previously is that there is no bright line between false confessions and false accusations. That is not the same thing as what you said.
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I'm saying there's a perfectly valid distinction. If you accuse someone else of a crime, that's not a confession.

Regardless of whether Knox just wanted to get out of the police station or whether the police "planted a false memory" in her, I blame the inhumane treatment she received from the Italian police for the false accusation of Lumumba. That still doesn't make it a confession.

-Mike
 
Grinder said:
Could the supremes rule that the calumnia charge shouldn't have been tried at the same time and order that charge to be retried?
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Yes. That is one of the two points of law that I think form valid grounds for appeal to the Supreme court. Massei was completely wrong (in my view) to rule that the criminal slander charge should be considered in direct continuance with the murder charge. By doing so, he was essentially saying that the two alleged offences were inextricably linked: i.e. that the criminal slander couldn't have taken place in isolation from the murder. But in my opinion, that's totally and utterly incorrect. Knox could feasibly have committed the murder but not the slander, and she could have feasibly have committed the slander but not the murder. And she could have committed both offences, or neither.

Judges usually rule that charges are linked (and should therefore be tried together) on only two bases: a) two people are accused of joint participation in the same crimes (as was the case with Knox and Sollecito here); b) the charges relate to alleged offences that all took place within the same general act. An example of the correct application of point (b) is the linking of the theft charges (money and phones) to the murder charges: these were both clearly part of the same umbrella act.

But the alleged criminal slander took place four days after the murder, and it can in no way be considered a continuance of the acts of the night of 1st November 2007. Massei improperly confused the fact that the alleged slander concerned the murder with his ruling that the alleged slander was linked to the murder. And not only that, the linking of these charges also improperly opened the judicial panel(s) to "cross-pollination": it's entirely possible that once the Massei judicial panel decided Knox was guilty on the murder charge, this influenced their judgement of guilt on the slander charge.

All in all, I think that Knox's defence lawyers have an extremely valid case for the Supreme Court here.
 
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Micromegas said:
I've said several times I believe Knox was innocent of Kercher's murder.

-Mike
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Excellent. We may be very close in our opinion on this. Fiona described it this way:

My understanding is this: AK went voluntarily to the police station when RS was asked to go in. She waited for him. At some point they decided to talk to her too, presumably because he changed his story and so they wanted to ask her about it: and since she was there why not now? They had suspicions: I think they may have thought she was shielding someone and knew far more than she was saying. But RS was now saying she went out: and the message on the phone appeared to confirm that because it appeared to arrange to meet someone, in normal Italian. It did not, in fact, mean that, as it was not very good Italian: but to them is seemed to. She was unlucky here, as she was over the postal police and the phones. So they asked her who she was meeting. I think they still thought she was shielding someone, and so pushed her a bit on this. I think they were astonished when she accused Patrick directly and said she was there. But once she did I cannot think that any police force in the world would not instantly arrest him: you cannot leave a sexual murderer on the street when you have a direct accusation from someone who says they were there. I don't think that she had to give details that "only a perp would know": I do not think it is a risk any police force would take in those circumstances.

I think that AK did not realise she was confessing to a crime: I think she believed that she was portraying herself as a terrified victim and that they would let her go home. I think that might have been true in this country and in the US: but Italian law is different and that is where it came unstuck. I also believe her when she says she did not understand they were arresting her: because she was still founding on her understanding of US law (as reported on TV): at first I think she probably assumed she was held for her protection: and the truth gradually dawned over the course of the rest of the night. I think that is why she volunteered her statement: to make sure they understood that she was still traumatised and still a victim and once they had picked PL up she should be allowed to leave the questura: because by then she had begun to have doubts that it was going down they way she thought it would: and she left some wriggle room for that reason too

Just speculation: but to me this fits the facts we have and like everyone else, I like a narrative. Doesn't make it true, though
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I disagree with a few points she makes but I believe she has come close to a good explanation here. From my view, the cops were not surprised at all about Patrick's name, they were making rather strong suggestions in that regard. This is backed up by her testimony on this topic.

I also don't agree that most cops would proceed to arrest Patrick. Not on such a vague statement lacking any details only the killer would know. And of course, I see it from the standpoint of innocence, Amanda was terrified and scared and tired and wanted to go home.
 
Machiavelli said:
By now, she can be called a person convicted for a felony in Italy. But there the point is about youf beliefs. If you already think she is innocent, you anticipate the conviction will be overturned. Otherwise she is just convicted by now.
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But Machiavelli, you have accused - in thousands of posts - not only one but two persons wrongfully of committing the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Shouldn't you be punished for this and doesn't this make you as bad as Amanda accusing Patrick?

And Patrick has accused Amanda - through his lawyer - of quite literally being a witch. Surely that is defamation. Why is he any better than Amanda?
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
According to English interpretations of the Italian judges' ruling, they found her and her boyfriend specifically innocent of the crime.
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Actually going to the knox thread by curiosity maybe I should stop torturing myself, but still I inflicted that.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7644546&postcount=10641

Which is more in line of what I know of the french right and german right, baring iron cast alibi, you are acquitted in appeal (not enough proof), not innocented. The Italian article seems to say innocent.

*shrug* not that I care any way.
 
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