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Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Malfie Henpox said:
<snip>Disgusting, and complete conjecture. The very thing this argument proposes to be against. It was the tone of the argument that uneases me, not the content.
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"It's an opinion, I'm sure you can deal with that on an open forum." ;)
 
Malfie Henpox said:
Yes. Now I just need several thousand people to bully everyone else into thinking the same.
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I have seen it less as bullying, and more that the people on the losing end of the argument cannot defend their position, so they say the others are being mean.
 
Malfie Henpox said:
Yes. Now I just need several thousand people to bully everyone else into thinking the same.
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This raises an interesting question. How many separate posters have actually participated in these threads of many thousands of posts? JREF probably has a way of finding out.
 
Malfie - I think this thread is brilliant and I've been reading it for ages. I've had far more accurate information from here than just from scouring the media and I've also read many excellent reasoned arguments. Some people might have a more aggressive tone and there's some mocking of posts (often justified IMO) but it never escalates to such a flame-fest that the thread becomes completely derailed.

If you really think this thread is "unbecoming" for this forum then maybe you should take it up with the admins who have permitted its presence.
 
lionking said:
There's also the ridiculous theory that she will be compensated for wrongful imprisonment. Nah, she will have to get by with the millions she will get on the talk circuit....

Who cares about him? This is clearly the Amanda Knox Victory Parade. Just have a look at the posts on her glorious homecoming.
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Perhaps I am reading it wrong, but I get the impression that you are not happy with the deals and publicity that Amanda is getting?

If so then I commiserate with you. It does seem a bit unfair that one person should profit so greatly from being acquitted of a crime, when other victims are not. No doubt this affair has cost her family a lot, and four years of false imprisonment must be worth something. But if I were her I would be looking at sharing any profits with the other victims.

However, I wonder who is making money out of announcing her every movement? Who is expecting to make vast profits from interviews, book deals and movie rights? Who are the real greedy opportunists here, and who is still being exploited?
 
bees said:
Malfie - I think this thread is brilliant and I've been reading it for ages. I've had far more accurate information from here than just from scouring the media and I've also read many excellent reasoned arguments. Some people might have a more aggressive tone and there's some mocking of posts (often justified IMO) but it never escalates to such a flame-fest that the thread becomes completely derailed.

If you really think this thread is "unbecoming" for this forum then maybe you should take it up with the admins who have permitted its presence.
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Or maybe not read it? :D
 
Dare I say it, but Malfie I think you're being a little irrational .... and by that I mean being guided by emotions rather than the data. I only joined this thread in the last week or two, with no idea of the substance of the arguments and on emotional investment in either side. In the last day or two I went back to the beginning and follow more of the longer debate, both here and in the media.. It is extremely clear that, on this forum at least (I can't say the same for elsewhere) *both* sides ... and pro-guilt and pro-innocent are as good a description as any, certainly no "mocking" there ... have had a good hearing. Indeed at the beginning the thread here was very much pro-guilt.

Yes there has been the occasional drop-in troll, and even more involved posters have occasionally said something in hindsight they probably would have worded differently, but really there's been extremely little mocking, even less has there had been any significant disrespect to the Kerchers.

Indeed, particularly in the early stages, if anything I'd suggest that the mocking of the "pro-innocent" and mocking of Amanda Knox and the Knox family has far exceeded anything going in other direction. The latter has continued right up until this past week, with bogus claims about private jets and such.

To believe there's been no room on this thread for counter-argument, or to assess the entire thread based on a few trolls or minor comments is, well, irrational.
 
Malfie Henpox said:
My opinion wasn't challenged. I agree (for the most part) with you. But I don't call anyone who doesn't irrational. And I certainly wouldn't call the Kerchers anything. One person went so far as to say they looked unhappy at the verdict due to lost compensation. In fact a few have alluded to this. Disgusting, and complete conjecture. The very thing this argument proposes to be against. It was the tone of the argument that uneases me, not the content.
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I don't believe the Kercher's are in this for the money. Maresca may be a different story. The motivation of the Kercher's was to seek justice for their daughter, and that is something I think they should have approached in a different way, in my opinion.

They were definitely not happy with the decision. They now find themselves in a position of going against the same system they have put their trust in to begin with and to continue to advance an opinion of guilt in regards to Raffaele and the Knox girl. They may come to realize that the first court got it wrong. It is hard to say at this point but it is obvious they are in a difficult position.

Their decision to wait until the motivation report comes out is a good one, in my opinion. But who will interpret that report for them and will they view that report objectively? I have seen them refer to the Massei report as 400 pages as if the number of pages represents more points for the prosecution case. What if Hellmann only uses 88 pages for his motivation report?

The Massei report is the prime example of irrational in this case. I have no problem saying that Massei is not rational. This talk of witches and rituals, condoms and vibrators, manga and group sex games gone wrong is not rational either.
 
Teddy2007 said:
Hellmann on last night's Porta a Porta show, that aired on RAI, said he is disappointed at the criticism he has received from the prosecution "ci sono rimasto un po' male". They shouldn't see it as a defeat - they was sufficient evidence that it needed to be reviewed, but the evidence was not convincing. Was the DNA review critical? He didn't respond directly to the question, but he did say that the review was just a confirmation of what was already known from the first trial - that there were problems with it! Interesting! It shows already, IMO, what he thought of the first trial.
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Thank you!

Have you seen the fragment when Raffaele's aunt is speaking? I'd love to know what's it about. It seems like there were considerations to get him out of jail at the expense of Amanda and he refused? Interesting. Was there any deal proposals from the prosecution?
 
RoseMontague said:
I don't believe the Kercher's are in this for the money. Maresca may be a different story. The motivation of the Kercher's was to seek justice for their daughter, and that is something I think they should have approached in a different way, in my opinion.

They were definitely not happy with the decision. They now find themselves in a position of going against the same system they have put their trust in to begin with and to continue to advance an opinion of guilt in regards to Raffaele and the Knox girl. They may come to realize that the first court got it wrong. It is hard to say at this point but it is obvious they are in a difficult position.

Their decision to wait until the motivation report comes out is a good one, in my opinion. But who will interpret that report for them and will they view that report objectively? I have seen them refer to the Massei report as 400 pages as if the number of pages represents more points for the prosecution case. What if Hellmann only uses 88 pages for his motivation report?

The Massei report is the prime example of irrational in this case. I have no problem saying that Massei is not rational. This talk of witches and rituals, condoms and vibrators, manga and group sex games gone wrong is not rational either.
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Lots of excellent points, Rose. The Kerchers will need some gentle education from someone on their side who recognizes this was never a case of "Meredith versus Amanda."
 
icerat said:
Dare I say it, but Malfie I think you're being a little irrational .... and by that I mean being guided by emotions rather than the data. I only joined this thread in the last week or two, with no idea of the substance of the arguments and on emotional investment in either side. In the last day or two I went back to the beginning and follow more of the longer debate, both here and in the media.. It is extremely clear that, on this forum at least (I can't say the same for elsewhere) *both* sides ... and pro-guilt and pro-innocent are as good a description as any, certainly no "mocking" there ... have had a good hearing. Indeed at the beginning the thread here was very much pro-guilt.

Yes there has been the occasional drop-in troll, and even more involved posters have occasionally said something in hindsight they probably would have worded differently, but really there's been extremely little mocking, even less has there had been any significant disrespect to the Kerchers.

Indeed, particularly in the early stages, if anything I'd suggest that the mocking of the "pro-innocent" and mocking of Amanda Knox and the Knox family has far exceeded anything going in other direction. The latter has continued right up until this past week, with bogus claims about private jets and such.

To believe there's been no room on this thread for counter-argument, or to assess the entire thread based on a few trolls or minor comments is, well, irrational.
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Well said.

I think the perception here of the Knoxites as a bunch of crazy CT'ers has changed to a perception of obsessive, single issue posters only in it because Raffaele is cute. The current mocking is more along these lines now.

Sigh
 
Malfie Henpox said:
My opinion wasn't challenged. I agree (for the most part) with you. But I don't call anyone who doesn't irrational. And I certainly wouldn't call the Kerchers anything. One person went so far as to say they looked unhappy at the verdict due to lost compensation. In fact a few have alluded to this. Disgusting, and complete conjecture. The very thing this argument proposes to be against. It was the tone of the argument that uneases me, not the content.
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If someone wrote that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and repeated it in the face of repeated reasoned explanations that they were wrong, do you think it would be fair to call that person irrational?

Closer to home, if someone repeatedly claimed that homeopathy had proven beneficial physiological effects on the human body (and claimed that rigorous scientific studies supported these claims), and kept doing so in the face of clear explanations as to the fundamental flaws in the relevant studies (and the massive amount of properly-run studies which prove beyond doubt that homeopathy has no physiological effect whatsoever), do you think it would be fair to call that person irrational?

And more to the point, have you visited the 9/11 threads, the evolution threads, the homeopathy threads, the faked-Moon-landing threads, the spoon-bending threads on JREF, in order to chide the logical realists on those threads for accusing the assorted conspiracy theorists, intelligent-design believers, phoney-medicine believers and mind-power believers of irrationality? I thought not.

I think your position is intellectually bankrupt. The truth is that the reasonable view on this case has, for well over a year now, been that at the very least Knox and Sollecito cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty of the murder. Anyone who had taken a close enough look at this case (which, incidentally, excludes a huge majority of the media - most of whom did the equivalent of "skim-reading" the case before reporting on it), with a dispassionate and objective eye, should have been able to see this very clearly. The argument for acquittal was overwhelmingly robust and clear. The critical point in relation to this main issue (guilt or acquittal) was - and still is - this: in order to argue rationally for guilt, it was necessary to argue that there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Knox/Sollecito were killers. In order to argue rationally for acquittal, it was only necessary to demonstrate that there existed even a modicum of doubt. The only rational position to argue, based on all the available evidence, when given the binary choice of conviction vs acquittal, had to be acquittal.

And all the sub-issues underpinning this overarching issue had a similar dynamic. Take, for example, the time of death argument. I don't know if you followed that particular debate here (and elsewhere). Basically, the autopsy discovery of Meredith's entire final meal still wholly within her stomach, when considered alongside her fairly-accurately-known start time of the meal, and the known physiology of human digestive transit, showed two important things: 1) Meredith could not possibly have died at 11.30-11.45pm, as per the first court's ruling, and 2) Meredith in fact must have died at some point between 7.30pm and 9.30pm (with 10pm as a very improbable outlier). And given that it could be proven that Meredith was alive at just before 9pm, this meant that her death must have occurred between 9.00-9.30pm (with a tiny possibility that it occurred between 9.30pm and 10.00pm, but a virtual certainty that it occurred no later than 10pm).

Now, the above argument is absolutely robust, it is entirely supported by accepted medical science, and it is endorsed by everyone in the medical community who has ever been consulted properly on it. A very prominent veterinary pathologist (who is also qualified to talk on human physiology through her training and general medical knowledge) is an active proponent of the argument here on this thread, and a number of pathologists and gastroenterology specialists have endorsed the position.

Yet far from wanting to engage in any kind of debate on this topic, most pro-guilt commentators (both here and elsewhere) preferred to stick to a handwaving dismissal of the entire argument, coupled with disparaging mockery aimed at discrediting those making the argument (the main thrust of this "strategy" being to claim that those making the argument had no idea what we were talking about, had no authority to even make any arguments in this area, and were nothing more than ignoramuses with access to Google and library cards, who didn't know how to use them). Perhaps you might be able to enlighten us all on a) how one debates in good faith against people such as these, and b) why it is wrong to call their position irrational.

Note that the example I chose is merely one of very many. But the story was much the same across the board. I don't think you have any real understanding of the crucial context within which the JREF discussion took place. That most of us here appear to have been entirely vindicated by the verdicts of Hellmann's court is not an occasion for jubilation, mockery or gloating. The Hellmann verdict simple gives most of us a quiet satisfaction, and some proof that our arguments were rational, appropriate and right. But most of us knew that already anyhow....
 
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Skwinty said:
Amanda Knox judge says she may have 'been responsible' after all

Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellmann tells newspaper the acquittal was based on 'truth created in the proceedings'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/06/amanda-knox-judge-responsible
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There is theoretically a small possibility Amanda violated some law somewhere. There are a billion laws.

But to get three years for agreeing with a police suggestion is already a very harsh punishment. Especially when you are tired and wish to escape harassment by the police.

Any punishment that exceeds minimum restraint or restitution is cruel and unusual by my thinking.
 
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