Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[komponisto]

Thanks for the answers komponisto.

As an aside one of the things that I didn't notice right away was that not being able to understand Italian makes it difficult to research some issues of this case.

It helps with understanding some of the legal technicalities, but not as much as you might think. The problem is that even Italian sources often aren't terribly informative. I've noticed that, as a general rule, Italians who aren't lawyers seem to be astonishingly ignorant of their own legal system, often seeming not to know much more about it than, say, American reporters.

(An illustration of this occurred during the broadcast of the Hellmann verdict on one of the English-language networks, where the Italian translator misinterpreted "perché il fatto non sussiste" -- "because the act does not exist", one of the standard acquittal formulas, in this case applying to the staged burglary, ruling it didn't happen -- as something about "insufficient evidence"!)

Rather than any language barrier, I would say the most important obstacle is the scant availability of primary source material (e.g. court transcripts and documents). In the U.S., it seems like everything is public and online (particularly if it's high-profile). I haven't tried, but I feel like I could instantly download the complete transcript of the O.J. Simpson trial if I wanted. I can certainly download any Supreme Court opinion (even listen to oral arguments), and find all kinds of supplementary information about American jurisprudence. I believe Rolfe has also referred to having access to the complete records of the Lockerbie trial in the U.K. Whereas Italy does not yet seem to have caught on to the concept that official records are supposed to be public and on the internet. (There doesn't even seem to be any equivalent of The Smoking Gun.) In the present case, I had the hardest time even figuring out exactly what Hellmann's rulings each day were. (To this day, I still have yet to read a single dispositivo or ordinanza in this case.) And if you try going to the Cassazione website to find some opinion they issued yesterday, good luck unless you're a registered Italian lawyer.

EDIT: Although I should say that, given that we did end up having access to AK and RS's appeal documents, being able to read them was a substantial advantage; it was noticeable how a lot of people seemed to forget they existed, which may be attributable to their not having been translated.

I was referring to the Kercher suits against RS/AK. I thought the parties being sued included the families. There was talk in this thread about the financial ability of the families to pay damages and I assumed that they were being sued. Perhaps this wasn't the case and the suits were only against RS/AK. If that was so, could the families be forced to pay judgments against their children?

The suits were against AK and RS themselves, not their families; but my understanding is that Sollecito for example has a substantial inheritance. I don't actually know whether parents can be forced to pay judgements against their children in Italy; I would hope not.

 

[Mary_H]

<snip>
My rant is over,
see ya all l8er,
RW

And a beautiful rant it was, permanently saved on my hard drive, just in case.

 

[Rolfe]

For the slander charge to remain against Knox is impossible. It must be overturned by the Supreme Court because Knox Must Know that Lumumba is innocent for there to be slander. Even today it would be impossible to know this for certain.

I know this has been discussed before, but I still don't get it. I don't see how making a defamatory statement can be OK just because you don't know for sure that it's false. Surely it's not OK unless you have good evidence that it's true?

Knox had absolutely no reason at all of her own knowledge to substantiate her statement that Patrick was in the cottage and apparently involved in Meredith's murder. That makes it defamation, I'd say, unless she got real lucky and concrete evidence emerged that by sheer chance she'd hit on the truth.

At this point of course you get into the realms of the police interrogators having led her into the false belief that she had witnessed Patrick in the cottage at that time, but that's a different matter. If Knox was uncoerced and made her statements freely, I would have thought the defamation occurred.

I think the defence lies in the evidence and accusation of coercion, and in the vague wording of her statements (which go hand in hand of course). And I would have thought it was a good defence if Italian law requires that a calumny must be uncoerced and knowing. But it all hinges on the coercion and the creation of false memories, not on whether in normal sound mind Knox could have known with certainty that Lumumba was not involved.

Rolfe.

 

[snook1]

And a beautiful rant it was, permanently saved on my hard drive, just in case.

I did just the same. Rants like this one are very helpful and needed. People like Machiavelli are so lost, that maybe RWVBWL's rants will help them to cope.

Machiavelli, after your latest posts I, now, have no doubt in my mind that there's nothing we could say to change your mind, also what judge Hellmann says seems to be not important. Not that we care for your opinion or want to change your mind.

I'm speaking for myself only, but you are a typical guilter, who tries to pin Knox and Sollecito to the murder, no matter what the evidence is, no matter how impossible this is, no matter that the court just released them.

Get over it, there's no evidence. There's no footprints made in blood, there's no murder weapon, there's no DNA in the murder room. Give it up. It's over. Duh.

 

[Rolfe]

Continually claiming that the bathmat footprint is identifiable as Sollecito's foot is a good example. It's ridiculous. It's not identifiable as anybody's foot. It might be Guede's because we know from other evidence that he was there. If there was no other evidence of his presence, it wouldn't mean zip as evidence against him.

There's no other evidence of Sollecito's presence at the murder, so absolutely no reason to speculate that the print might be his. And even if such speculation is entertained, the toe is the wrong shape, and all this talk of millimetre-accuracy measurements is preposterous.

Another one is the supposedly "abundant" amount of Sollecito's DNA on that bra clasp. Except there wasn't. His somatotype could only be faked by picking the right peaks from a mess of others, and claiming the ones you don't like are "stutter". His y-haplotype seems to have been present, but at a low level along with a number of other y-haplotypes. Even if we assume he was actually the source of that y-haplotype rather than another man with the same y-chromosome, this is entirely conisistent with contamination.

Anybody who thinks this is evidence "beyond reasonable doubt" is delusional.

Rolfe.

 

[snook1]

Anybody who thinks this

there (my shy addition)

is evidence "beyond reasonable doubt" is delusional.

Rolfe.

Let's just focus on that simple line. Thank you, Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Here's another one.

Knox is a callous young adult who will deliberately and maliciously ruin a man's business and reputation on a whim.

Now there may be different possible explanations for what Knox meant by the statements in question, and why she said or signed what she did, but deliberate malice against Patrick on a whim doesn't seem to be one of them.

Rolfe.

 

[RoseMontague]

It helps with understanding some of the legal technicalities, but not as much as you might think. The problem is that even Italian sources often aren't terribly informative. I've noticed that, as a general rule, Italians who aren't lawyers seem to be astonishingly ignorant of their own legal system, often seeming not to know much more about it than, say, American reporters.

(An illustration of this occurred during the broadcast of the Hellmann verdict on one of the English-language networks, where the Italian translator misinterpreted "perché il fatto non sussiste" -- "because the act does not exist", one of the standard acquittal formulas, in this case applying to the staged burglary, ruling it didn't happen -- as something about "insufficient evidence"!)

Rather than any language barrier, I would say the most important obstacle is the scant availability of primary source material (e.g. court transcripts and documents). In the U.S., it seems like everything is public and online (particularly if it's high-profile). I haven't tried, but I feel like I could instantly download the complete transcript of the O.J. Simpson trial if I wanted. I can certainly download any Supreme Court opinion (even listen to oral arguments), and find all kinds of supplementary information about American jurisprudence. I believe Rolfe has also referred to having access to the complete records of the Lockerbie trial in the U.K. Whereas Italy does not yet seem to have caught on to the concept that official records are supposed to be public and on the internet. (There doesn't even seem to be any equivalent of The Smoking Gun.) In the present case, I had the hardest time even figuring out exactly what Hellmann's rulings each day were. (To this day, I still have yet to read a single dispositivo or ordinanza in this case.) And if you try going to the Cassazione website to find some opinion they issued yesterday, good luck unless you're a registered Italian lawyer.

EDIT: Although I should say that, given that we did end up having access to AK and RS's appeal documents, being able to read them was a substantial advantage; it was noticeable how a lot of people seemed to forget they existed, which may be attributable to their not having been translated.

I agree. Thank you for this and thanks for the translations you have provided. Getting documents has been a major problem in this case. Having to rely on news accounts of evidence and testimony has caused numerous problems in a case where a lot of the news reports were wrong or intentionally misleading.

I will say that even when you get an English translation, it doesn't mean that people, even people interested in the case, are going to read it. It is like Rudy's supreme Court ruling and the myth that the high court concluded that AK and RS were involved. Even the claim that the court concluded that others were involved is not entirely accurate, in my opinion. They simply list what the first two courts concluded and refer to the multiple attacker scenario as a thesis or possibility. It seems to me that some posters rely on other people to tell them what a report says, but I like to read it and judge for myself.

Katody showed us the other day that just by going back and reading something we all haven't read in quite awhile, something now becomes clear and makes sense in the context of today's discussion.

 

[RoseMontague]

Here's another one.

Originally Posted by Stilicho
Knox is a callous young adult who will deliberately and maliciously ruin a man's business and reputation on a whim.

Now there may be different possible explanations for what Knox meant by the statements in question, and why she said or signed what she did, but deliberate malice against Patrick on a whim doesn't seem to be one of them.

Rolfe.

It is all the appeal court left them and they are going to cling to this as if they are on the edge of a cliff and this is all that is keeping them from falling into the abyss.

For this reason it will be magnified a thousand times, exaggerated to no end, and become one of the seven signs, an ominous portent that another continent is going to be swallowed up by the waves. Just you wait, someone will have probably have said this already.

Personally, I think Patrick is a lying liar and knows exactly what happened with Amanda. He just wants money and thinks he has a better chance of getting it from Amanda than the cops. As soon as he realizes this bad assumption on his part his story will change yet again.

 

[Rolfe]

I believe Rolfe has also referred to having access to the complete records of the Lockerbie trial in the U.K.

Point of information. That trial was held under Scots law by a bench of three judges sitting in a court in the Netherlands, which had been temporarily designated as Scots soil for the duration.

In fact the transcripts are supposed to cost money. £1 a page, which sounds like a system trying to cover its photocopying and admin costs when someone turns up wanting a short extract of something. The Zeist transcripts are over 10,000 pages in length, as the format used doesn't get an awful lot on a page. (A reformatted version comes out at about 3,000 pages, mind you.) So theoretically, you're supposed to pay over £10,000 for the privilege of accessing these documents.

Of course, nobody photocopies anything these days, it's all electronic, on text files. I don't know if anyone ever paid money for them in the first place, but they're out there. And as they say, "information wants to be free".

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

As for ecstasy, I was among the first people to ever use it and I am not particularly proud of that. I used it before it became illegal. I nearly died and the experience was so harrowing that I stopped using drugs of all kinds shortly thereafter, including pot. So I have a pretty good idea of what ecstasy does to people. I have also used PCP, peyote, various kinds of hallucinogenic mushrooms and of course cocaine.

Rolfe.

 

[Machiavelli]

...
Oh wait a sec Machiavelli, if I do recall correctly, you do believe it is a semen stain, in fact you wrote so recently on PMF.org! Now don't go and give me some crap that this is not what you meant to write when you wrote those words, for in the court of public opinion, your written words counts, a lot! Even if English is not your native language and your translater, opps, I mean moderator sucks, I will find you guilty of lying, of tryin' to decieve me!!! Did not the same happen to Amanda Knox, she said afterwards that she did not mean what she had signed her name onto?
...

I have never stated that I had information on whether the "semen stain" was actually a semen stain. I have already answered to your question, and I said I did not imply to have any knowledge/information about the topic. I was quite annoyed by your interpretation of my words where you claimed to "read" information that was not there, and you attributed to me statements that I never made.
When I say the semen stain sometimes I mean to say the "semen stain", the name of a topic of discussion, as it would be in spoken language. I give it for obvious, since I was talking about a *claim by the defense*. I mentioned the name of a claim, of an argument.

 

[Machiavelli]

Machiavelli, have you considered the possibility the court found the restored computer data compelling? We don't much talk about it, but it was added in the appeals addendum and thus germane to the issue of their alibi.

The facts are:
1) the court was working just on the identical data report already submitted by the defnce that the Massei court had. The "new" updates brought in the Appeals contain no relevant information, anyway they were not admitted by Hellmann's court so they cannot be in their motivations
2) there is no data in the report that could demonstrate a period of human activity; the screeensaver logs is a ridiculous datum, many automatic application would produce those logs
3) traces of human activites in Raffaele's apartment do not work as an alibi for the night, especially not an alibi valid for two, both liars and unreliable


conclusion: nothing is "compelling" in these data.

 

[Machiavelli]

In that case the blame would fall on Mignini for wrongfully prosecuting Amanda and Raffaele, not the two innocents for not being convicted!

You're not going to win this one, Machiavelli! Think about it.

There will never be any blame on Mignini for "wrongfully prosecuting" Knox and Sollecito. Even Claudio Pratillo Hellmann himself stated the prosecution could not be criticized, and that the suspects were rightfully prosecuted. Moreover a large number of judges and magistrates had authored a conclusion of guilt on Raffaele and Amanda, in no way the "blame" could fall on Mignini.

 

[Machiavelli]

How could they possibly acquit him? Is this just fallout from trying to prosecute Amanda and Raffaele on the 'staged' break-in? What a weird loophole.

The preliminary judge drop the charge since there is absolutely no evidence he committed a burglary. They only found evidence he did not do it.

 

[GreyFox]

Mach,
You seem to be complaining about the lousy effort to find DNA where you think it should be. We also agree it was a terrible effort to solve this murder but how would you explain the choice to not test the stain? It seems like the same situation with the knife. It was the murder weapon one day while Steff was keeping the data to herself, however the prosecution didn't want to open the handle ? Do you have reasons why these 2 wouldn't be checked further? You may have answered these before and I missed it.

 

[Machiavelli]

Great if that's true. We do have a quote from Hellman that does appear to indicate a 530.1 acquittal.

But then again, why did Mach act like a 530.1 acquittal presented a greater problem for the defense?

Absolutely not. Not even an acquittal with 530.2 can be retried if definitive. Not in a criminal court. A 530.2 can be discussed only in a civil trial.
But 530.1 has wider implication on other kind of questions, such defamation and calunnia.

 

[Machiavelli]

On what grounds would a jury possibly release Rudy?

He has admitted to letting Meredith die.

I would love to hear what you think would convince a jury to let him go.

There will be no jury. If he is entitled a new trial, on that motivations a preliminary judge may just decide on his release on purely legal grounds. He would need cautional arrest at this point if he is awaiting a full re-trial, and terms for cautional arrests have run out.

 

[Mary_H]

Originally Posted by Skeptical Bystander
As for ecstasy, I was among the first people to ever use it and I am not particularly proud of that. I used it before it became illegal. I nearly died and the experience was so harrowing that I stopped using drugs of all kinds shortly thereafter, including pot. So I have a pretty good idea of what ecstasy does to people. I have also used PCP, peyote, various kinds of hallucinogenic mushrooms and of course cocaine.

Rolfe.

I believe the purpose of that dangerously self-sabotaging post was to serve as an excuse for why no one in the media asked for her opinion in the aftermath of the acquittal. It makes it look like she has lost credibility because of her past behavior, not because of her current beliefs.

 

[Diocletus]

I have never stated that I had information on whether the "semen stain" was actually a semen stain. I have already answered to your question, and I said I did not imply to have any knowledge/information about the topic. I was quite annoyed by your interpretation of my words where you claimed to "read" information that was not there, and you attributed to me statements that I never made.
When I say the semen stain sometimes I mean to say the "semen stain", the name of a topic of discussion, as it would be in spoken language. I give it for obvious, since I was talking about a *claim by the defense*. I mentioned the name of a claim, of an argument.

Didn't Comodi refer to it as a semen stain in closing arguments. And she tried to justify not testing it because she thinks it was an "old" semen stain?