Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Mary_H]

<snip>So what you're saying is indeed that police can do whatever they like against anyone who falls into their clutches, and the only sanction against them is that they can't use statements obtained in court?

Yet here, the statements were used and Amanda has ended with a civil suit against her, and a 3-year prison sentence for allegedly making statements that led to someone being falsely imprisoned for 2 weeks. Meanwhile all those who made false accusations against her, leading to spending 4 years in jail, continue to enjoy impunity.

Not only that, but these "non-usable" statements give you an excuse to continue to call her a "convicted liar". This while, in the face of repeated questions by others in this forum, you decline to state what part of Amanda's documented statement constituted any kind of accusation.

Outstanding.

 

[Dan O.]

I can write only a quick answer now: yes. Based on the evidence that I can see now, not only I would vote to find them guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but I also am quite confident - in a purely virtual bet - that, had I been sitting in a court among the lay judges, I think I would have had good chances to succeed in convincing some other or another few judges in the panel. I think that if I were sitting in the panel, the number of "guilty" votes would have likely increased by more than one unit.

I can see how Rita could convince other jurors to vote her way. But seeing that you aren't Rita and you have failed to sway anyone on this forum with your "logic", I can only ascribe this perception to a delusion on your part. Perhaps your overestimate of your strength comes from hanging out with the weak minded inhabitants of the PMF forums.

 

[RoseMontague]

I can see how Rita could convince other jurors to vote her way. But seeing that you aren't Rita and you have failed to sway anyone on this forum with your "logic", I can only ascribe this perception to a delusion on your part. Perhaps your overestimate of your strength comes from hanging out with the weak minded inhabitants of the PMF forums.

I see PMF has claimed to have added Steve Moore's second cousin to their ranks. Wow. I am impressed.

 

[CDHost]

and the Washington Post cited Maundy Gregory a week or so ago who's a member of that site and does nothing but try to temporize the nonsense promoted by them and TJMK.

Do you think this a positive development or one that ought to be contested?

I don't know if you saw the weird fantasy they had about an Amanda Knox arrest in Canada decades from now. Remember they were expecting

• disaster at trial
• disaster in sentencing
• a disaster when Amanda returns home

None of which has happen. Right now AK has to decide if she wants to be a celebrity or not. She's going to do the tough interview, where the police can't hit her with calumina for using words like "coercion" and discussing the facts of the interrogation. And of course my guess is the PDL might help her by leaking other cases where there has been severe judicial misconduct.

She could be mighty impressive and effective with a little coaching.

I meant confronting Giulia Buongiorno as a group shouting 'shame' and I think they might have even thrown something, details were unclear. As for the media some of them looked a little shook up by the 'protesters.' There was even a report Mignini himself got the treatment. I'm just thinking that's awfully arrogant of the police union, and might not sit well with some.

I don't think it will be a problem. Mignini has done much worse during this trial. No one who supports him now is going to be shocked he badmouthed the court.

I've wondered about that, (not the shanking--yikes!) Mignini having some pull inside the prison, especially with the Aviello debacle. Did you follow that little tangent? That's just another reason they could make a black comedy of this case. Incidentally it also suggested you might well have been right regarding the cause of his two front teeth missing.

Yeah. He is a major prosecutor. That was one of the reasons to keep the support up, so Amanda didn't die in an accident.

Considering the conditions, I don't think convincing her for a few hours that the mental images must have been 'recovered' memories is really that much of a distortion. She didn't actually witness the murder, she was supposedly covering her ears in the kitchen. She wouldn't have actually 'seen' anything all that crazy, and as per her testimony most of it is confabulation to connect those images. All she needs to do is try to think about it and have those images come to her mind. It would explain the 'hard evidence' of her being there and the 'fact' Raffaele said she left, making it more compelling 'evidence' it 'had' to happen.

I understand your theory. I just don't see that level of brain washing in 2 hrs. She has to build a seperate plan of events, like leaving Raffaele's house after they make love and going to back home to hear the murder...

OK, I've never done hash, I thought it was just strong marijuana which is more like 2-4 hours in my experience.

It is. But the more pot you do the longer it lasts. And hash is much stronger.

Can you remember what it was like to be young and innocent and trusting of authorities?

Nope. I dealt with retched abusive authorities at age 7. I didn't have the best home life either. I can't remember ever really trusting authorities, I just trust them less and less as I get older. I'm frankly shocked whenever authorities do anything good.

How does she square the 'hard evidence?' She's definite about the fact she didn't ask Raffaele to lie, but she puts that on him, not them. Otherwise she seems to be trying to figure out how everything she's been told can be true and her memories not, outside of those flashes of imagination. Those are just props like the misinformation like the 'hard evidence' and what Raffaele said, all they have to do is convince her for a few hours with 'You must be lying! You must be guilty! and that the only explanation for this is she was there and repressed the memories. She gets a chance to think on it and she starts to realize the 'inconsistencies' and how it doesn't seem so probable anymore.

I understand. But that's pretty tricky.

1) You have to have her create a narrative and attach imagery to it.
2) She has to believe that narrative as memory. Which means forgetting the construction process.
3) She was to repeat it over and over, and deal with the tons of missing detail.


In a few hours?

Heh, heh, heh...I hope he becomes the model for an archetype villain for a generation. The seemingly sophisticated old-world gentleman with seemly harmless esoteric knowledge and eccentricities whose friendly demeanor can turn suddenly to freakish antagonism and who simply refuses to admit he could be wrong and takes it to perverse levels regardless of consequences chasing more and more bizarre theories.

I agree. He's a great villain for all sorts of TV shows. Cop shows are regular on television and the Mignini style prosecutor.... It would be great justice if Mignini becomes like Iago.

Did you ever look into what he was doing in his 'Monster of Florence' 'investigation?'

No the book was on my "to read" list and I bought it. I still want to read it.

I think Patrick spending four years pounding on Amanda and promoting his martyrdom probably had an effect as well. They get to absolve the local police and 'do justice' for a Perugian who's been described as a leader in his community and blame it all on the Polizia Scientifica from Rome and the naughty American girl who might not be a murderess but makes for a convenient solution to the entire issue from a Perugian standpoint.

Good point. All the Perugians are good, all the outsiders evil. That does a nice job of explaining the verdict.

That's why I'm wondering how its going to come out in the Motivations, as one of the redeeming qualities of the Italian System is they have to try to make sense of it that way. I'm wondering how it can possibly be done!

I don't see it as that complex. Remember my early scenarios I started with. I think those are all defensible based on the evidence we have. Once you assume Amanda had motive to derail the murder investigation... Think about the Scooter Libby indictment for perjury and how it got Cheney and Rove off. The prosecutor just focused on the leak.

 

[Rolfe]

Are we going on like this till the motivations report is published?

(Will someone translate that, is maybe the more pertinent question?)

I note LondonJohn speculates that Hellmann might incorporate some scenario of what actually happened, even though he isn't required to do that. I hope this is the case, because a sensible presentation of Guede as the sole assailant in a forum which is bound to reach the Kercher family's attention may be very helpful to them.

I'm struck, as I was that evening, by the treatment of the allegation of staging the crime scene. Not a judgement that Knox and Sollecito were not the people who had done that, but that it wasn't done at all. This certainly seems to indicate that Hellmann has concluded that Rudy did indeed break into the cottage by that route. Which seems rational. Whether or not Filomena's window was the most logical route for a burglar to choose is not the issue. It was a rational route, and one that fitted Rudy's known modus operandi. I hope that can be introduced, and also Rudy's habit of making himself at home in the properties he burgled, and then confronting anyone who disturbed him with a knife - exactly what appears to have happened in Meredith's case.

The Kerchers seem quite fixated on the notion that the presence of multiple attackers has been established, independently from any evidence against Knox and Sollecito specifically. As far as I can see, this is entirely false. The pathologist reported that a single assailant was perfectly possible (and I note someone else pointed out that Jo Yeates had forty-odd injuries on her body, and she was attacked in rather similar circumstances by a single, unarmed attacker, without question).

As has been repeatedly pointed out, nobody put the case for Rudy as the lone assailant to his trial court. Not his defence, for obvious reasons, and not the prosecution, because they were keeping their options open as regards trying Knox and Sollecito. So how could that court do anything other than endorse the multiple-attackers position? More specifically, the endorsement of that position must have been based on the unchallenged acceptance that there was evidence of Knox and Sollecito's presence in the room at the time of the murder. Now that that evidence has been challenged and found to be spurious, that position is obviously no longer secure, if it is tenable at all.

It's a very unfortunate side-effect of the Italian legal system that led to this anomaly. Rudy's main defence has just been shot to pieces by the Hellmann court, but as his legal proceedings are complete, he continues to benefit from its earlier acceptance. He would be well advised to do nothing that might lead to his case being re-opened, and I suspect he knows this.

I hope Hellmann is sufficiently aware of the Kerchers' concerns to realise that even if it's not strictly necessary in legal terms, they need a coherent and rational account of Meredith's death to have any hope of achieving closure. Giving them that by presenting a narrative of Rudy as the burglar-turned-murderer would be a real kindness, I think.

Could there have been more than one person present? I read interesting speculation about Kokomani, but I come back to the bloody shambles of that room, and find it extraordinarily difficult to see how any second attacker could have got away without leaving identifiable traces. Perhaps Kokomani was a lookout or something like that, but I seriously doubt that more than one person climbed in that window, or that Rudy let anyone else in the door. He didn't have an accomplice in any of his previous adventures, did he?

The statement that the break-in was not staged gives me a lot of optimism that we're not going to get a fudge about there simply being no evidence that Knox and Sollecito had anything to do with it, but that there will be a motivation which is at least partly based on the incrimination of Guede.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I can write only a quick answer now: yes. Based on the evidence that I can see now, not only I would vote to find them guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but I also am quite confident - in a purely virtual bet - that, had I been sitting in a court among the lay judges, I think I would have had good chances to succeed in convincing some other or another few judges in the panel. I think that if I were sitting in the panel, the number of "guilty" votes would have likely increased by more than one unit.

Based on your strike rate of convincing posters in this forum, I beg to differ.

Rolfe.

 

[Katody Matrass]

I see PMF has claimed to have added Steve Moore's second cousin to their ranks. Wow. I am impressed.

To me it looks like it became literally a fan page of Amanda Knox.
Where she was spotted, what she did lately, how does she look, what does she wear, is she a lesbian, latest paparazzi pics and gossip. All of this on a site declaring itself as a tribute to Meredith Kercher. I bet her family is delighted.



Interestingly Facebook memorials for Meredith Kercher are basically the same - Amanda Knox this... Amanda Knox that... Disgrace. I pity poor Kerchers for having such "supporters". Really Peggy and her ballerina stalking friend should bridle their happy flock a bit, if they have any human feelings for that family left.

Not to mention that it is constant denigrating of two people whose complete innocence of any wrongdoing against Meredith was declared by the court of law. Doing it in the name of the murdered girl is a revolting disgrace.

 

[Ammonitida]

I can write only a quick answer now: yes. Based on the evidence that I can see now, not only I would vote to find them guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but I also am quite confident - in a purely virtual bet - that, had I been sitting in a court among the lay judges, I think I would have had good chances to succeed in convincing some other or another few judges in the panel. I think that if I were sitting in the panel, the number of "guilty" votes would have likely increased by more than one unit.

What would you say that you think would convince them?

 

[Katody Matrass]

Based on your strike rate of convincing posters in this forum, I beg to differ.

Rolfe.

 

[Mary_H]

I see PMF has claimed to have added Steve Moore's second cousin to their ranks. Wow. I am impressed.

After reading the letter carefully, I feel safe in asserting it was written by Skeptical Bystander.

 

[Bob001]

... Based on the evidence that I can see now, not only I would vote to find them guilty beyond reasonable doubt...

Great. So sum it up: What undisputed, incontrovertible evidence do you (alone) see that proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?

 

[Rolfe]

Oh for goodness sake, don't encourage him! Life's too short.

Rolfe.

 

[Mary_H]

Oh for goodness sake, don't encourage him! Life's too short.

Rolfe.

I agree! I think Machiavelli has already summed up his position in this post. He agrees with the court's decision, whatever it is.

"My statement, Knox was lying, is aligned with a sentence established in a court of Law, therefore entirely legitimate from any point of view."

 

[RoseMontague]

After reading the letter carefully, I feel safe in asserting it was written by Skeptical Bystander.

I don't know, could just be someone just dying to join in the great discussion over there. You go to all that trouble to register and then you get the message attached (edited).

 

[Bob001]

You have a right to a lawyer, but only after the police make sure it won't do you any good.

I continue to have trouble grasping this concept of "witness" and "suspect." The police come to your home or office and say "Come with us." You say "No," and they say "You must" and grab your arms. By any rational definition, you are now under arrest. If you chose to go to the police station voluntarily, and you didn't like the direction the conversation was turning, you might say "I'm leaving." If the police say "You can't leave," you are under arrest. You say "I want my lawyer," and they say "You can't have one," you are being held incommunicado, which can't be legal in a democratic society. And if the police say "You must answer our questions," and you say "I refuse," what can they do? Waterboard you? String you up by your thumbs? I just don't see a gray area between "arrested" and "not arrested," but obviously others do.

 

[Ammonitida]

I agree!

I don't. I want to know why he is so convinced of guilt.

 

[Rolfe]

Meredith's DNA on the knife
Raffaele's DNA on the bra clasp
Raffaele's bloody footprint on the bath mat
The mixed blood in the shower room
Amanda's bloody footprint in the hall
The staged break-in

Amanda's cold-blooded and calculating accusation of a man she knew to be innocent
The multiple changing alibi stories
Raffaele's lies about using his computer when there was proven to be no activity
The "making out"
The underwear purchase
The hip-swivel
"She bled to death"

Oh, fill in the rest for yourself. Some people have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Rolfe.












































I forgot the cartwheels.

 

[Freddy]

I continue to have trouble grasping this concept of "witness" and "suspect." The police come to your home or office and say "Come with us." You say "No," and they say "You must" and grab your arms. By any rational definition, you are now under arrest. If you chose to go to the police station voluntarily, and you didn't like the direction the conversation was turning, you might say "I'm leaving." If the police say "You can't leave," you are under arrest. You say "I want my lawyer," and they say "You can't have one," you are being held incommunicado, which can't be legal in a democratic society. And if the police say "You must answer our questions," and you say "I refuse," what can they do? Waterboard you? String you up by your thumbs? I just don't see a gray area between "arrested" and "not arrested," but obviously others do.

Believe me, I'm with you. Either Italy's justice system is a joke and a disgrace, or Machiavelli has mischaracterized the law. I don't know enough to say which. Trying to make sense of such nonsense is bad for one's blood pressure.

 

[Bob001]

Meredith's DNA on the knife
Raffaele's DNA on the bra clasp
Raffaele's bloody footprint on the bath mat
The mixed blood in the shower room
Amanda's bloody footprint in the hall
The staged break-in

Amanda's cold-blooded and calculating accusation of a man she knew to be innocent
The multiple changing alibi stories
Raffaele's lies about using his computer when there was proven to be no activity
The "making out"
The underwear purchase
The hip-swivel
"She bled to death"

Oh, fill in the rest for yourself. Some people have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Rolfe.

Note that I inquired about "undisputed, incontrovertible" evidence. I don't think much on that list qualifies.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm with you on that, but I suspect Machiavelli still has his own opinions. I'm against arguing every point again, individually.

Rolfe.