Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Scorpion NITE]

In the USA, the only way you can bring up charges of police misconduct is to have a video of their misconduct. In the USA, the police know how to induce you to touch them. And then they know how to file A & B charges against you. Like Italy, is it not? If you don't have that video, you will just spin your wheels getting out from under A & B charges. You will never get to actually file misconduct charges against the police unless you have a video.

However, in the USA, you hardly ever go to jail for two years for A & B on a cop unless you really mangle them or have many priors.

Cops in the USA "lie like troopers". Every hear that expression? Troopers are state cops.

Italy and the USA are not that different. The trial is better in the USA and the appeal process is better in Italy. Cops lie in both countries. There is police misconduct in both countries. There are farcical laws in both countries. There are bad forensic scientists in both countries.

The difference may be that the Italians may not know how flawed the system frequently is because too many slander suits (calumnia?) are filed.

I only like American lawyers that agree with my viewpoint. Many/most do.

You can add the UK to that list too.

 

[icerat]

She falsely and willfully accused an innocent person, willfully obstructing an investigation on the murder of her roommate.

I'm sorry, but I'm relatively new to this whole debate and I haven't seen any evidence to support this assertion, indeed the exact opposite. I see a young women desperately trying to help the police and ending up, under extreme duress (ie NOT willful) and with the police clearly operating in violation of the law, giving them what they wanted, as per the Police Chief's statement, in order t get the duress to stop.

Once that duress was removed she virtually immediately clarified that her statements were hypotheticals in response to police question and that she herself did not believe them to be true.

To claim as you do is to willfully ignore reality.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

trusting in Mignini

I think that at this stage the fact that Mignini said something should be taken at best as meaningless and at worst as evidence that whatever Mignini said is in fact factually false.

Indeed. A commenter at websleuths said after finding out about the Monster of Florence case, "I wouldn't trust in the evidence of a fly he prosecuted for landing on food."

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The judge did not really listen

Machiavelli,

Patrick Lumumba told the truth to Judge Matteini, and yet he did not get released. Raffaele Sollecito told the truth to Judge Matteini, and yet he did not get released. Instead Judge Matteini cooked up a lurid story that had nothing to do with reality. Amanda was right not to speak. And keeping a person from his or her lawyer when his or her freedom is at stake is bad legal philosophy, no matter what its rationale.

 

[Kaosium]

No, the timeline is the following:

Knox made oral statements during the questioning, at the presence of Anna Donnino, accusing Patrick Lumumba. In the first part of the interrogation she denied all police suspicions/allegations that she was lying and covering somebody. Then she was told that Sollecito had withdrawn from her alibi. When she was aksed about the sms message, and understood the police got focused because of its Italian wording, that they thought she was lying about it and thought she had met with someone that night (the unknown recipient of the msg), Knox suddenly accused Lumumba. Crying, covering her ears wth her hands, saying "he's bad" and said they went home together, they wanted to have fun, he wanted her and asaulted her in her room. The police stopped the questioning due to self-incriminating statement, as the qustioning shifted her status to that of a a formal suspect. She signed the minutes of this questioning at 01:45

Then she was given a chamomille tee.

At a time that we can roughly place about 3:00 (very approx.) Mignini came and told her about her status of formal suspect, told her about her rights, and told her that he would not interrogate her but if she wanted to provide them with information so to arrest Lumumba, she could make further statements.

Amanda released an oral statement that was not recorded but verbalized at the presence of the magistrate, the interpreter Anna Donnino and other officers. The statement was finished at 5:54 am and Amanda signed it.

Later in the morning, at about 8:00, Amanda asked for paper and a pen, she wrote herself a two pages memoriale which she gave to Rifa Ficarra saying "it's a gift". She later claimed she wrote this hand written note by her decision, voluntarily, and she gave it voluntarily to the police.

Two days later, on nov 8., Amanda appeared before GIP Claudia Matteini. Because the hand written statement was partly retracting and contradicting the previous statement, while still producing evidence against Patrick Lumumba and also against Raffaele Sollecito, she was asked if she wanted to answer questions by the judge. She decided not to answer. She also decided to not release further spontaneous statements to clarify the previous ones.

Amanda did not make any further statement - nor written nor oral - to clarify anything about her false accusation of Patrick Lumumba, she kept her silence for about 20 days until Guede was arrested.

Amanda was interrogated again on Dec 18., this time by the Public Minister. In this occasion, when she was asked questions about her false accusation of Lumumba, she burst in tears and was unable to answer, and pleaded her right not to answer.

Heh, what happened to Monica Napoleoni's little fantasy Machiavelli? I don't see much reference to what Zugarini and Ficarra said either. However the benefit of that is it contains more truth!

In fact, outside some quibbling on how you spaced-time regarding when it started to put Domino there at the 'beginning' like they pretended, and that Mignini is lying and 'walked her through' the little fantasy--probably to get more 'detail'--it looks like everything there matches what I got, except you actually do have to put Napoleoni, Ficarra, Zugarini and the other eight or so personnel back in for the flavor so you'll have 5-10 police chaotically walking around at times getting all worked up, enough so that Ficarra can get 'emotional' enough--or however Mignini put it--to give her a couple whups.

 

[curi0us]

She was obviously a suspect from minute one since the police arrived at the cottage and discovered the staged break in. This if you mean "suspect" in the common meaning of the term that is a person who attracts suspicion, on which people are investigating and collect information. This is absolutely obvious, and means absolutely nothing. You can abandon this argument forever.

You think your word games aren't obvious to everyone here? When exactly Knox became a suspect is certainly debatable, but the point is once she was in a police interrogation room being accused of lying about her involvement in the murder she was obviously a suspect by any possible definition. And by your own timeline that happened well before 1:45.

You have no right to demonize AK for "lying" during an interrogation were she was crying and screaming when you so casually lie in the comfort of your own home for no reason at all. She was having a emotional breakdown during an intense interrogation where her interpreter broke protocol and started suggesting to her that she was repressing memories of the crime . . . If you think you would hold up so much better than Knox during an interrogation what is your excuse for all the false statements you have made accusing two innocent people of murder for the last few years?

There is no point in asking and answering these questions. They are unnecessary.

My questions and their answers are absolutely critical to understanding what happened during the interrogation. Something you have made great issue of yourself. My questions are not unnecessary, they just force you to speak about the interrogation with factual details that disrupt the dishonest version you have been presenting.

Knox was found guilty of willfully falsely accusing an innocent, without coercion and without possibility of justifying, beyond reasonable doubt.

Except she was also found innocent of the crime she supposedly was trying to avoid blame for . . . doesn't make much sense does it? Why would an innocent person implicate themselves and another person in a crime they didn't commit?

The most likely answer is there was coercion involved and my questions were designed to ascertain the intensity of that coercion. I actually want to know what happened while I get the impression you just want to convince people the Mignini version is what happened.

This is because the information we have about is sufficient to infer this conclusion inequivocably.

No, it's not. For years those who thought they were guilty have used their false statements as evidence of their guilt in the murder, but Hellman's ruling ( and the facts) showed that conclusion false. So now you honestly have to consider why they made the false statements and ask yourself if the statements now might actually be evidence against the police. Of course you can do whatever you want with your time, but I didn't force you to talk about the interrogation, I just asked you pointed questions because you were misrepresenting it.

If she wanted to clarify many of these points, like when and why she started screaming and crying, she could have given all these details herself. For the rest, there are seven witnesses.

If you want to describe to others what happened during the interrogation you should know the details already, particularly if there were actually signed "minutes" as you said before. I take your failure to address that part of my post as admission that you were wrong about there actually being minutes of the interrogation.

As for "seven witnesses" you just made a great argument for why interrogations should be recorded and suspects provided a lawyer. Because if seven witnesses decide to agree to tell a false story aren't they always going to be more compelling then a single lone witness who is also a suspect in a major crime? What evidence would you need before you believed an interrogation by the police was abusive if the police decided to lie about it? It doesn't even seem to exist as a possibility in your mind.

Why didn't you answer the question about wether you believe Mignini when he said they didn't record the interrogation due to budget problems?

Among things we know later, we know that there was no interrogation before her 05:54 statement, that was a sponteneous statement; it was found to be perfectly legal, not suspicious, not coerced, not falsified.

The Italian Supreme Court says you are wrong.

The rest of what you say is just nonsense to me.

Nothing I wrote was nonsense, maybe it seemed that way because you have a hard time being rational.

 

[LashL]

Maybe, because it's irrelevant. The interpreter tried to help the parties communicate, she said things, and so what? Who cares? Should that produce any critical consequence?

No, it's not irrelevant at all, and yes, it does have critical consequences.

An interpreter's job is to interpret, and to only interpret, not to become an agent of the police in their efforts to coerce a suspect into saying things that the police want to hear for their own purposes.

The reality is that the police and prosecutors in this case set out to obtain a coerced accusation and/or a coerced confession from Ms. Knox using the well known (and thoroughly impugned) Reid Technique, and they got what they wanted with the help of the "interpreter" who went way beyond the remit of a legitimate interpreter. Ms. Donnino, apparently willingly, became an agent of the state in order to try to help the police railroad a suspect. That is simply unacceptable in any rational justice system.

Recall, by now Knox is just a proven liar.

Oh, please. Recall, the Perugian police and prosecutors are proven liars.

She falsely and willfully accused an innocent person, willfully obstructing an investigation on the murder of her roommate.

I'd dispute your use of the word "willfully" here. Does the concept of voluntariness mean nothing in Italy? I would think it does, as it's not a third world country. Ms. Knox told the police what they wanted to hear after being subjected to many hours of interrogation over several days, and given that she was a 20 year old girl in a foreign country at the time, I'm surprised it took as long as it did, really, for the Perugian police and prosecutions to coerce her into saying what they wanted her to say.


In addition, it appears that Ms. Knox did not knowingly "falsely" accuse Mr. Lumumba; rather, it appears that she just caved in and told the police and Mignini what they claimed to "know to be true" after days of interrogations and, in particular, after a grueling 12 member tag team interrogation on the night of November 5/morning of November 6, 2007. It appears that Ms. Knox didn't know whether Mr. Lumumba was involved or not, but since that's what the police were insisting upon, and since she believed that the police were the "good guys" at the time (notwithstanding their mistreatement of her), it's not surprising that she was coerced into saying what she said.

This kind of coercion is one of the hallmarks of wrongful convictions around the world. It has happened many times. I'm a little surprised that you - and police and prosecutors in Italy - seem so reluctant to acknowledge what the rest of the world knows, which is that in every single one of our countries, these things happen.

The appropriate response would be to correct the problem at the source, not to deny that the problem exists.

 

[LashL]

I have a great idea that will settle this whole dispute. How about if we review the interrogation recordings of AK, RS, and Patrick. Oops

Indeed.

It's really too bad that the Perugia police and prosecutors had - according to Mignini - such 'budget constraints', doncha' know, that they couldn't record the interrogations, even while they were busily surreptitiously recording conversations of 'non-suspects' all over the Questera and busily recording tens of thousands of private telephone conversations of 'non-suspects'.

It really doesn't get much more ludicrous than that.

 

[LashL]

This is an issue only in the scope of professional ethics of translators and interpreters.
It is not an issue in the case. Personal anecdotes don't have the power to take control of people's minds and force them into telling false stories.

Moreover, I want to add a little point on interpreter/translator as a job: it is not true that an interpreter's job is merely to translate a language into another word by word (that is not an interpreter but a translator). An interpreter, in a certain degree (but it is very a careful and dificult topic) is also a facilitator and a mediator (or you say negotiator?), has to facilitate communication, sometimes by explaining to a client some points of possible misunderstanding between foreigneers or about points concerning cultural differences and contexts.
The professional profile of Anna Donnino in Italy is called facilitatore linguistico, this is the functions by which interpreters are mostly hired.

This is complete and patent nonsense. An interpreter called into a criminal investigation has an obligation to interpret only. Not to become an agent of the state as Ms. Donnino did. The minute she started being a "negotiator", "facilitator", or "mediator" at the behest of the police, in an interrogation, she abdicated her responsibilities as an independent interpreter and became an agent of the police.

Properly trained and appropriately professional translators know their duties when they are hired by different people and/or agencies. It is well and good for a translator to insert himself or herself in certain translation duties, such as non-litigious matters, but when hired by the police to take part in an interview or an interrogation, an interpreter's duty is to interpret only. Ms. Donnini should have known that her duty, when hired by the police in this instance, was to honestly interpret the words of the person being questioned in a criminal matter and nothing more. She should have known that inserting her own added commentary and her own added stories of her personal life in an effort to help the police get what they wanted, was entirely inappropriate.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Peanut butter and chocolate

Statement Analysis agrees with Nancy Grace. Why am I not surprised?

 

[Dan O.]

And on another issue do you have any insight into how the hard disks came to be damaged? As I understand it no data was ever recovered from one of the hard disks. Do you have some thoughts as to why? Was the hard disk ever submitted to a data retrieval center for analysis? If it wasn't do you have some thoughts as to why not?

Raffaele's hard drive was never damaged. Meredith's drive and another were fried but almost fully recovered. Amanda's drive was fried. The first attempt to recover by swapping the logic card probably screwed it up more. The drive was then sent out to two data recovery services which is evidenced in the aftermath when it is photographed with their labels. The defense offered to pay to have the manufacturer attempt recovery. Massei rejected this offer.

As for how this started in the first place, my reconstruction from the available documentation points to the most likely cause being that ILE was hot swapping the drives.


ETA:

Was the hard disk ever submitted to a data retrieval center for analysis? If it wasn't do you have some thoughts as to why not?

No it wasn't. Yes I do know why.

The accuracy that we've come to expect.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

taunts and insults from the host of Statement Analysis

The Statement Analysis blogger wrote, "To this [Nancy Grace's theory that Amanda did not wield the knife but egged on her boyfriend], the statements made by Amanda Knox (and email) agree. Amanda Knox was guilty, in concert, of the murder. Her legion of male love lorn supporters now rejoice, while Meredith's family's pain goes on. Supporters used everything from taunts and insults, to the linguistic gymnastics of hyperbole to plead against the verdict, and condemn anyone disagreeing with them."

The Statement Analysis host did not trouble his readers with anything that might count as evidence to support his viewpoint. As far as I am concerned, he made himself into everything he condemned in others. It is conceivable that the concept of statement analysis is something other than complete woo. What is beyond doubt is the fecklessness of the practitioner in question.

 

[JREF2010]

Raffaele accuses the cops of violence during his interrogation, now that he's been released from prison.........

"Dad - he told his son - I'm tired, I want to be alone, to be left alone." Words that emphasize a mood still uncertain that explains who has seen him, oscillates between joy and anger. And the anger leaks out, at times, in long conversations with his father as when the boy explains why the first night of questioning did not think to call a lawyer. "I was in front of the police and I could not imagine that was not even there to protect me as my father always taught me. I could not imagine that the police instead of protecting citizens could exercise coercive and violent actions. " Bitter words, hard, leading to urge that night when he was subjected, as the father trying to be diplomatic, to a "very forceful interrogation under conditions of physical and psychological." "The shoes were also removed." "And I will not say more," said the grim father who has never stopped fighting to bring back his son.

LaStampa

Hmmmmm.

///

There were so many police there, I think the truth will come out. The good cop and bad cop situation. Maybe even other locals who had the same experience will come forward too. Power in numbers...

 

[JREF2010]

I really don't understand all of this back and forth over what AK & RS said during their interrogations. They were denied representation period. The supreme court ruled on this, and the prosecution illegally used the interrogation in spite of the supreme court ruling. I can't wait for the prosecutions appeal so they can explain why they ignored the ruling. IMO everything that was said during the interrogations should be tossed including the so called fLse accusation. This whole case is a disgrace and and embarrassment to Italy. There are my two cents.

It seems to be a hot point with Amanda and Raffaele too, if I recall whenever the interrogation came up in the first trial they stood up and said something.
I always thought that was very telling of a suspicious event they went through.

 

[Fine]

"A Big Mess"

Speaking of the translators employed by Mignini & Co., and why Amanda discontinued her interrogation by Mignini on December 17th, 2007---for which we happen to have an audio recording for confirmation--- he's what Amanda said in her (first) trial testimony about that interrogation session....


CDV [Lawyer dalla Vedova]: I wanted to start the examination again by
talking about the interrogation of December 17, 2007.

AK: Okay.

CDV: In front of the pubblico ministero [Mignini]. You remember that the interrogation
took place in prison.

AK: Yes.

CDV: And what language were you speaking on that occasion

AK: I spoke English with the help of an interpreter who explained to me
what the pubblico ministero was saying.

CDV: Was the interpreter by any chance a certain Giulia Clemish, Austrian
citizen?

AK: I suppose she was, but I don't remember her name.

CDV: Were you satisfied with the translation from Italian into English and back, during the interrogation?
GCM: Excuse me, first can you explain if you were able to evaluate the
translation? Were you able to tell whether the translation was exact or
not? Whether it corresponded?

AK: No. I was quite frustrated with her, because she would take something I said in a hundred words and say it in two, and then she used words that weren't right, and then she forgot to tell me things that the pubblico ministero had said. There was a lot of confusion.
CDV: How long did that interrogation last? Do you remember?

AK: At least six or seven hours.
CDV: Do you remember that the recording of the interrogation was then
translated by another person?

AK: I know it was translated, but I didn't know it was translated by another
person or the same one. I don't know.

CDV: And do you remember that it was necessary to translate also the
translator, the interpreter, this Giulia Clemish?

AK: [Laughing] Oh yes, true. Right.

CDV: So the interrogation that we have in the dossier is a translation
of the interrogation, and also of the translation made by that interpreter.

AK: Yes.

CDV: Who was German-speaking.

AK: Yes. It was a big mess.______________________________

As we can see, the "translator" during Amanda's interrogation of December 17th was incompetent. Hmmm.

By the way, back to Amanda's interrogation on the night of November 5th, don't it seem a bit strange that Amanda would be signing SPONTANEOUS STATEMENTS written exclusively in Italian........a language she barely understood????? How could she know what the heck she was signing? (Or, was that the point in having them written in Italian?)

///

 

[davefoc]

Raffaele's hard drive was never damaged. Meredith's drive and another were fried but almost fully recovered. Amanda's drive was fried. The first attempt to recover by swapping the logic card probably screwed it up more. The drive was then sent out to two data recovery services which is evidenced in the aftermath when it is photographed with their labels. The defense offered to pay to have the manufacturer attempt recovery. Massei rejected this offer.

As for how this started in the first place, my reconstruction from the available documentation points to the most likely cause being that ILE was hot swapping the drives.

Thanks for the information. What is the source for this? Based on what you've written it sounds like formal reports about the problems with the hard drives were never released. That sounds pretty bad to me.

This is one of the screwier parts of the case. Hot swapping hard drives that are to be forensically examined sounds like staggering incompetence in this day and age. But I believe that it is almost impossible for hot swapping to have damaged the drives to the point that all the data was not recoverable. I can believe that swapping out control cards might cause some significant issues though, if something happened such that the control card crashed in a way that it was overwriting the disks continuously, but that sounds at least unlikely.

As an aside I'm pretty sure I've wrecked a drive or two over the years by improperly connecting (that is easy with the old parallel cables) it or attempting to hot swap a drive. However, screwing something like this up on a drive that might contain critical information in a criminal investigation is just beyond stupid.

I suspect that not allowing the defense to arrange to have the manufacturer attempt to recover the contents of the drive might be grounds for reversal in a US court. This strikes me as bizarre cronyism on the part of Massei.

It might be interesting to get Machiavelli's take on this but this seems to be one of the topics he won't discuss although he professes knowledge about it.

ETA: There is also the issue of the police accessing the computers before they have had a chance to be examined by the forensic examiner. That sounds like a pretty bad error also. And then there is the issue that the defense seems to have found exculpatory evidence on RS' drive that the police examiners didn't. A bit of a whoops on that one also.

 

[RWVBWL]

This is complete and patent nonsense. An interpreter called into a criminal investigation has an obligation to interpret only. Not to become an agent of the state as Ms. Donnino did. The minute she started being a "negotiator", "facilitator", or "mediator" at the behest of the police, she abdicated her responsibilities as an independent interpreter and became an agent of the police.

Properly trained and appropriately professional translators know their duties when they are hired by different people and/or agencies. It is well and good for a translator to insert himself or herself in certain translation duties, such as non-litigious matters, but when hired by the police, an interpreter's duty is to interpret only. Ms. Donnini should have known that her duty, when hired by the police in this instance, was to honestly interpret the words of the person being interrogated in a criminal matter and nothing more. She should have known that inserting her own added commentary and her own added stories of her personal life in an effort to help the police get what they wanted, was entirely inappropriate.

Hi LashL,
Good points!

This is my opinon only,
but I for one can see that Flying Squad interpreter Donnino, who probably has bills to pay and likes havin' a job, maybe needed to keep her bosses happy. Doing whatever it is that they needed done. Can't you see that?

I'm tryin' to look at the wider picture here, and and so I recall reading of "the small, insular world of Perugia's legal establishment", where, when Rudy Guede's lawyer, Mr. Biscotti, turned 50 year old, he threw himself a party at a disco called "The Red Zone" and Judge Paolo Micheli, (who had ealier convicted Rudy of Miss Kercher's murder), head of the homicide squad Monica Napoleoni, her sidekick Lorena Zugarani and others, including Mignini's briefcase man, all hung out together as Biscotti played lead guitar* in his band.

Lawyers hanging out with Judges, Homicide cops?
In reading of a tight-nit circle of professionals who apparently worked often with each other and socialized together too, I would think that Ms. Donnino would surely want to please her boss and keep that paycheck coming...

But as I wrote above,
that's just my opinion only!
RW


* - Reference:
Pages 110 + 111, 'Angel Face', Author: Barbie Nadeau.

 

[Dougm]

By the way, back to Amanda's interrogation on the night of November 5th, don't it seem a bit strange that Amanda would be signing SPONTANEOUS STATEMENTS written exclusively in Italian........a language she barely understood????? How could she know what the heck she was signing? (Or, was that the point in having them written in Italian?)

///

That is a GREAT point, and something I have never understood -- e.g. why do some people consider the documents Amanda signed so significant when she signed them, and did not have the ability to read what they said? So people are saying "ah ha! she confessed", when the statements are not only obviously written by the police (just read them, you can tell), but are written in a language she only speaks a little of.

The mere fact that she signed statements written in a language she did not understand also gives insight into her state of mind at the time. She was willing to agree to whatever they wanted, just to have the torture stop. Who in their right mind would sign a statement in a language they did not understand? She was obviously exhausted, scared, and signing something that she did not understand the significance of.

 

[Mary_H]

<snip>No. Even if there is a police misconduct, this does not shift responsability from the person wo declares. A misconduct by one, itself is something that does not justify any wrong action by another, it does not diminish anyone's moral responsibility. Even if the police is unethical, the suspect must behave ethically or, if he does not, the moral responsibility of his action will belong to him alone and not to others. This goes for each human being. Moral responsibility for one's choices is permanently personal, not depending on possible bad actions of others.

Amanda did behave ethically. The police convinced her that the ethical choice would be to accuse Patrick. She did it out of a sense of respect for and cooperation with the police. It is unrealistic and ignorant of human nature to claim that one young individual has the "moral responsibility" to cling to a belief in the face of many authority figures who are denying it and trying to persuade her otherwise. To have done so would have gone against most of the ethical and social principles Amanda had learned throughout her life.

You are doing what you accused LondonJohn of doing, that is, you are stating "rules and principles that don't exist; then you build an argument on them. Based on the principles that you create, your argument stand as rational. But your axiomes are false."

 

[Mary_H]

The fact that all of the suspects were denied legal representation, should have ended the process before it got to trial.

I agree, Poppy. Also with your observation that "None of the interrogations were recorded and legal representation was denied. Nothing more needs to be said."