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Continuation Part 5: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

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I don't think my point is begging any question.

There is strong circumstantial evidence that Knox, RS and PL were all subjected to an illegal interrogation. In civilized countries that renders anything discovered by that means to be something withheld as evidence. In Italy apparently anything goes including corporal punishment in order to get what they need or "what they know to be true".

And to stem the certain flood of reminders of the USA behavior at Guantanamo and other black opps CIA facilities....The USA has been brutally attacked and was and is at war. Italy can make no similar claims at least in regards to this case.

I simply suggest that Knox et al start explaining the situation in more clear terms. Not well...I was tired and stressed and hit....and I said the name Lumumba. Fact is she has no way to reasonably know if she ever actually said that name in that context.

Same with RS. How did you know where Knox was while you were asleep?
That is a bull crap question and everyone knows it. No discussion of alibi should go on without that being injected into the context. And plus same thing...made when required lawyers were disallowed...and now we know factually that both AK and RS ask about having lawyers...yet no lawyers were forthcoming...not until the minute before the start of Mattinis hearing.

I'm betting this type of thing gets Italy in trouble with the European Court Of Human Rights all the time. Country with most violations for failure to provide a fair trial. Just under the number of violations for failure to provide a speedy trial. And forget the fact they can hold you for a year without charge. Who gets away with that? Italy? uh huh.

I wish US cases could get hauled before the European Court of Human Rights. Are you familiar with what happened to Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns here in Washington state? They are still locked up. Last year, the state supreme court ruled that their "confessions" are legally admissible as evidence in the US, even though the technique used to obtain them is not legal in the US.

http://www.injustice-anywhere.org/MrBig.html

The court system is determined to sweep it under the rug:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti.../03/07/bc-rafay-burns-application-denied.html

Move along, folks... nothing to see here...
 
Perhaps you sense a bit of resentment in me as being the last minority (white males) that are freely ridiculed and for which open season seems to be for any level of stereotyping in this all too political correct world.

Or maybe I really could give a rats petuidy...I have a couple of Ex-wives who may side with you but they still love me for some strange reason. Maybe its pity.

Listen, I could have stripped the facts bare and made a strong case...especially against Nadeau...who had a hard time making a sentence that did not refer to sex or depravity. In fact she holds the record as the sole reporter of Kerchers sexual experiments as well as her Brazilian styling.

Really? Really really.

You will find me honestly fair to women. No hate and not close to being some male chauvinist pig. In fact I lived a good portion of my life in a household with 3 women and me. Went into the store to purchase Kotex for the 16 year old who was too embarrassed to do so one early morning when everyone was running late and the cupboard was bare...no hero, just a guy who tries his best and often fails...

I happen to find Nadeau and Vogt particular holder on'ers who have done little to present a balanced view of the facts which they certainly must be aware of. Nadeau does it to sell her book...which has undergone a name change since she rushed it into print. Vogt? Peggy? Lesbians maybe? LOL...Im kidding...I love lesbians.

I do vent but I often do so because I think the milquetoast attitude to this injustice is part of what has allowed it to have a life for so long. Rather than the gross, corrupt, almost silly case that is presented ...they expect the world to give the prosecution case some credit... I cant do that. I have studied it from all angles and to this day it is beyond me how anyone can keep a straight face when presenting prosecution points.

Hellmann and Zanetti saw it. But other than those few it appears the Italian judicial system has lined up against logic and even the law. I'm still waiting for a judge to question the prosecution as to why no lawyers were allowed or provided? It is a requirement and an Italian law after all. This type of thing doesn't happen in civilized countries...at least not so blatantly and with the general population somehow ignoring all that.

"All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men (and women ;-)) to stand by and do nothing."

Evil has already triumphed...Guede will soon be free and somehow... inexplicably... he is barely a footnote of this case.

Is the general population really this stupid? What does Darwin have to say about all this? I remain clueless apparently.

It's okay, Randy. You had me at patuidy.
 
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I don't think my point is begging any question.

There is strong circumstantial evidence that Knox, RS and PL were all subjected to an illegal interrogation. In civilized countries that renders anything discovered by that means to be something withheld as evidence. In Italy apparently anything goes including corporal punishment in order to get what they need or "what they know to be true".

And to stem the certain flood of reminders of the USA behavior at Guantanamo and other black opps CIA facilities....The USA has been brutally attacked and was and is at war. Italy can make no similar claims at least in regards to this case.

I simply suggest that Knox et al start explaining the situation in more clear terms. Not well...I was tired and stressed and hit....and I said the name Lumumba. Fact is she has no way to reasonably know if she ever actually said that name in that context.

Same with RS. How did you know where Knox was while you were asleep?
That is a bull crap question and everyone knows it. No discussion of alibi should go on without that being injected into the context. And plus same thing...made when required lawyers were disallowed...and now we know factually that both AK and RS ask about having lawyers...yet no lawyers were forthcoming...not until the minute before the start of Mattinis hearing.

I'm betting this type of thing gets Italy in trouble with the European Court Of Human Rights all the time. Country with most violations for failure to provide a fair trial. Just under the number of violations for failure to provide a speedy trial. And forget the fact they can hold you for a year without charge. Who gets away with that? Italy? uh huh.

There's not merely circumstantial evidence but direct evidence of unlawful conduct. All I am saying is their accounts should not be expected to be precise. It takes a few minutes to read Amanda's account but she is describing something that extended over nearly 3 hours up to 1.45 with more relevant events after that. Neither account gives a proper impression of the passage of time and I am sure neither is or ever can be satisfactorily complete. Maybe that's why these things are often recorded, who knows?

ETA rats' patuidies are otiose to this discussion.
 
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This is a legend. Based on the logic: No sign of activity, so it must have been deleted by the evil cops. :)

Considering the other three computers, Raffaele's other one as well as Amanda's and Meredith's had their hard drives rendered unreadable in police hands it's not difficult to believe they may have done something stupid with the Macbook Raffaele was using. :p

Some was overwritten while Raffaele was in police custody 2:47 AM, November 6th, right about when Raffaele said he was arrested in his book. That it happened is undisputed even by Massei:

Massei PMF 309 said:
The uncertainty surrounding the ‚afterwards‛ depends on a loss of data connected with the P2P sharing that Raffaele Sollecito had with the Internet.

For example, it was explained, it has been positively confirmed that in the afternoon of 1-Nov-2007, the download completed for the multimedia file ‚Stardust‛ that the user had requested from the Internet using the P2P system.

[332] The files requested were six in number (those in the Stardust series), where the user had played the first three downloads, evidently of good quality, so as to cancel the download of the further copies.
But the Stardust files remained on Raffaele Sollecito’s computer in a folder shared with the Internet, such that, for these, a ‚last access‛ occurred right on the night of 6-Nov-2007, at 02:47, during the time period in which Raffaele and Amanda were being held in the Questura [Police Headquarters].
The fact that the Encase system registers a "last modified" entry during the night of 6-Nov-2007 for the Stardust files constitutes the confirmation that there has been a loss of data.

It can be said, indeed, when there was a last access, but the information of when the file was previously launched has been lost.

bolint said:
They could not delete internet traffic log at the ISP. And amazingly there was no traffic, while he said had been browsing the net.

After seeing Meredith for the last time, Raffaele downloaded Amelie and Stardust, then later Naruto, logged onto Apple (probably for) Itunes where apple.com assaulted him with a popup he closed, and early in the morning hours created the music files.

Raffaele did go on the internet, and there is a record of it, but when he said that it was days later and he had his days mixed up anyway; no doubt he did more browsing the night before when Amanda wasn't there most the night than he did the night they had dinner together and watched sappy (:)) movies on the internet.

In bed.



Bolint said:
So no matter how you try to save this, he simply lied. He did not use that computer that night until 5:32AM. That simple.

No, you're wrong, he did use the computer. You know he used the computer. However he didn't use the internet much when he was with Amanda as he did the night before when he wasn't with Amanda. That's where the 'browsing the internet' claim comes from, the November 5th 10:40 statement where he describes going out with Amanda and parting at the square like they did on Halloween, where he goes home. He couldn't remember which night was which. With Amanda he watched movies, when Amanda was sleeping he listened to some music. Most of the rest of the time it sounds like he had more interesting things to do than putter around with the computer.

bolint said:
I'm still waiting the details of the mythical screensaver evidence.

If I recall correctly, you read Italian. I sure hope so, because I couldn't find a translation in English at this juncture, and I cannot get this into google translate as it's an image or something and I can't copy and google doesn't automatically translate it, probably for the same reason. I can't read Italian, I'm just assuming this is the addendum from the few things I can 'read'--like the numbers!

You are welcome to translate this for us if you wish! :p

http://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/fotogallery/fotogallery8914.shtml?1


My bet it is a pure bunkum.

No way you use the mouse eight hours and you don't access a single file.

That they were dancing around the computer thereby vibrating the mouse is indeed good for a joke. :)

So how do you suppose the keyboard light and screensaver file were (or were not) activated? Raffaele's computer was hooked up to the internet all night, there's a record of it being on the entire time, that is not disputed:

Massei PMF 306 said:
Whereas the accused’s Apple computer was connected to the Internet during the 21:10:32 on 01-November to 5:32:08 on 02-November period, keeping the Mozilla Firefox web-browser (which is a program for navigating on the Internet) open, the Encase forensic analysis software determined, for such time period, that the only files created (last created) or written (last written) were generated, automatically, either by the computer’s operating system or the Firefox web-browser within its own cache: being files generated at regular intervals.

That last part however is not true. There was the Naruto file downloaded that they missed, as well as the ~1 AM Apple access for a few seconds which was probably a pop-up generated by the Itunes he was using listening to music while Amanda slept.

As for how and why those screensaver and keyboard light files were activated--or not in the case of the screensaver which did activate for six minutes or so sometimes--considering they were watching movies in bed, and then doing things in bed and the laptop might have been on or near the bed which caused it to jiggle when someone got up or made movement that doesn't strike me as the slightest bit unusual. I close a door and my screensaver pops off if I haven't been using the laptop. I sit down in front of the laptop and the screensaver goes off, a slight move is all it takes. You have two stoned kids in a small room with it doing physical things, as well as getting up to go to the bathroom and such, this a laptop that we know was sitting on the bed much of the night, they could have moved it but considering their condition and activities probably not too far away from it.

Bolint, they were home all night. What kind of idiot murder timeline has Amanda getting a text saying she didn't have to work, Raffaele unexpectedly finding out he didn't have to give someone a ride he'd planned to do, then they watch the rest of Amelie, start Naruto and...Oh. Wait. Meredith was probably stabbed by then. However even if the ToD was as late as 10:30 as in Rudy's trial, does that sequence of events make sense to you if it ends up with them going out in the cold to rape and murder Meredith for no reason with a burglar they barely met who left all the evidence in the murder room and they'd leave nothing between them that didn't kick around the floor for six weeks?

What would have happened if Amanda had to work, or Raffaele had to give Joanna Popovic a ride?

Rudy still would have killed Meredith, but Amanda and Raffaele would have had more than themselves to alibi them.
 
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Rafay and Burns and the Mr. Big technique

I wish US cases could get hauled before the European Court of Human Rights. Are you familiar with what happened to Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns here in Washington state? They are still locked up. Last year, the state supreme court ruled that their "confessions" are legally admissible as evidence in the US, even though the technique used to obtain them is not legal in the US.

http://www.injustice-anywhere.org/MrBig.html

The court system is determined to sweep it under the rug:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti.../03/07/bc-rafay-burns-application-denied.html

Move along, folks... nothing to see here...
The Canadians really embarrassed themselves with the whole "Mr. Big" scheme of getting pseudo-confessions, but especially in this case. Then the Americans said, "No, wait, why should the Canadians be the only ones who get to look like idiots?" IMO the Italian system has its share of endemic problems, but if you move across the border to another country, you just get a different set of problems.
 
computer forensics

The subject of computer forensics is unfamiliar to me, but here is an analysis about this case from a JREFF member IIRC that may be helpful.
 
The Canadians really embarrassed themselves with the whole "Mr. Big" scheme of getting pseudo-confessions, but especially in this case. Then the Americans said, "No, wait, why should the Canadians be the only ones who get to look like idiots?" IMO the Italian system has its share of endemic problems, but if you move across the border to another country, you just get a different set of problems.

For all you folks who believe that all innocentatii do is rag on the Italian injustice system, you should hear us rag on our own systems! The "Mr. Big" technique of coercing a confession is about as scandalous as the Reid Technique.

The one thing the cops need as iron-clad; is evidence of the interrogatee's guilt for these to be at all legitimate. (Begs the question: if there is iron-clad evidence, why do the cops need a confession.)

Everyone needs to get their head around one thing.... interrogations are not about eliciting information. Interrogations are about getting the person in the room to confess.

If you do not have this hard-wired into your brain, you should not be commenting on the Sollecito, the Knox, OR the Lumumba interrogations.

See the EAPL webpage: http://www.eaplstudent.com/component/content/article/124-false-confessions

Interrogations are based on deception strategies that the police use:

The primary purpose of a Police Interrogation [PI] is to obtain a confession, or other critical information about the crime, from an interviewed suspect (e.g. the names of criminal associates). PIs operate on the basic assumption that suspects are generally unwilling to cooperate because of the shame or fear they reserve for the crime committed. Thus, in pursuing the truth, police officers are guided by manuals based on techniques of social influence and/or persuasion that commonly use pressure, deception and manipulation tactics to ascertain truth. A variety of police manuals utilizing deception strategies will often sanction the following practices:

Also this from the EAPL webpage....

Research into the area (of psychology and the law) suggests, however, that Eyewitnesses are prone to certain kinds of memory errors because of basic perceptual biases, their responses to suggestive questioning, and the malleability of the memory system. Basic memory errors are in fact often generated or consolidated by common policing techniques such as interviewing methods and the way police lineups are structured. Psychology and Law specialists that work in this field are often baffled by the amount of false information generated by such procedures, and attempt to teach legal professionals strategies that avoid biasing and changing witness's memories.

Police interviews targeting a suspect(s) of a crime are primarily concerned with obtaining a confession rather than obtaining facts. However, it has been found that very few suspects change their position from a denial to an admittance of guilt, and the vast majority of this group tend to confess just before the interview. Thus, police tactics – specifically, procedures used to persuade suspects into confessing guilt within an interview, are effective in only few cases. It has been found that in only 23% of interviews a confession is obtained and in 25% a partial admission. In 29% suspects deny involvement, and in 6% suspects remain silent. Current research distinguishes between two styles of interviewing: ‘humanity’ (i.e., interviewers are perceived as empathetic and sympathetic) and ‘dominance’ based approaches (i.e., case-oriented interviews of an aggressive/ impatient nature). The latter style is more often used to dictate the interviewing process and has been most associated with crime denial. On the other hand, the former was found to make suspects feel more respected and comfortable, and thus, more willing to confess.
 
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The subject of computer forensics is unfamiliar to me, but here is an analysis about this case from a JREFF member IIRC that may be helpful.

Thanks Chris for posting it.

The best way to explain why Massei and the police were wrong about the activity on Raffaele's computer is this.

They used Encase software which is a computer Forensics software tool. The best way to think of Encase is to think that the Encase software is a translator. Say it understands how to speak Italian...but only to a point. It translates what it understands and IGNORES the rest.

"the prosecution (encase)only examined the 3 types of timestamps used by POSIX vs. all 5 types of timestamps that OSX supports."

"The defense argues that there is evidence in some of the OSX files and flags showing signs of human activity, and that these signs are not present in the POSIX things that the prosecution examined"

In other words the examination of his computer did NOT show all the human activity on his computer...only some of it.

The article also points out that the Police investigator using the Encase software was probably "semi-skilled" and not really an expert. "Enough to be dangerous". Not expert enough to understand that Raffaele was studying computer science and something of an expert himself. Not being a novice, Raffaele would be likely to "personalize" his computer settings for his needs as opposed to the general public.

Most end users on a Mac would have their cache's in /Users/[Raf's username]/Library/Caches and /Library/Caches. But on Raf's machine I'd want to check places like /opt/local/var/cache (Apple's Darwinports default cache location), /sw/var/cache (Fink's default cache location) and he might even have a personal one like ~/caches. Encase won't check for those sorts of caches and thus the investigators won't find these in a cache's report.

I'm not a computer programmer, but I do essentially some of the same things with my PC. I have a lot of default files being saved not to the standard location but to other locations that work better for me so I understand the point that the author of this blog is making.

Sadly, it seems as if the police in Perugia really failed on a major scale with the computer forensics side of their investigation. Add this to the 4 computer hard drives being damaged really proves just how inept they were, technologically speaking.
 
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The Canadians really embarrassed themselves with the whole "Mr. Big" scheme of getting pseudo-confessions, but especially in this case. Then the Americans said, "No, wait, why should the Canadians be the only ones who get to look like idiots?" IMO the Italian system has its share of endemic problems, but if you move across the border to another country, you just get a different set of problems.

Have they embarrassed themselves? Does anyone even know about this? First I'm hearing about it, and I didn't just fall off the turnip truck yesterday.
Not to derail the thread, but I find this highly disturbing. How is it possible that their convictions weren't overturned based on the fact that the evidence was gathered using a technique that is illegal in the United States? Are there no more opportunities for appeal?
 
I don't check in here very often, but I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of Knox's interview with Diane Sawyer. No revelations, especially for those of us who have no doubt that Amanda and Raffaele are totally innocent, but it's our first look at her outside the courtroom. She comes across as an intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, poised young woman who is moving on after a terrible ordeal. But in some of the pre-Perugia videos that were included, she sounds like a spacey, self-absorbed child. It's not hard at all to believe that she went to the police station thinking the cops were her friends; after all, in her previous life experience they were. She did say she asked whether she needed a lawyer, and the cops told her if she had a lawyer it would go worse for her. For most of us that would make the alarm bells scream, but not for her. Sawyer never asked her "How could you be so stupid?" But the answer is pretty clear.
 
I have worked in and around computers for years, and in all that time I have never seen anyone blow up a bunch of hard drives, but it certainly is possible. I was a resident at a huge corporation one time when a guy went do some maintenance on a bunch of servers in a room that contained hundreds of computers. In order to do the work, he had to plug in a PS/2 mouse, keyboard, and monitor; it was something he had done many times, and he didn't shut down and power down the servers first. He just plugged everything in live, which I would not recommend, but that doesn't stop lots of customers from doing it anyway. But, this time he had a defective mouse, which blew a pico-fuse on the system board every time he plugged it into one of the computers, and caused it to immediately crash. He took down five different servers before giving up, but did not notice anything was wrong because there was really no visible indication the computer had stopped working from where he was in the narrow aisle behind it. (That information had to trickle in from users logging calls to the help desk.) So, this poor guy had tried to plug this stuff into five different computers, he just couldn't get it to work, so he determined - correctly, I might add - that at least one of his three items was broken.

Once I figured out what had happened - it was our equipment - I had to log a call and tell our office we needed five identical system boards for five servers that were completely down. We only had one immediately available, so the customer racked up some considerable downtime that they characterized as a "disaster". The guy who did it was fired before the day was over. The tech came out early in the morning after gathering up the required parts, and they had to pay time and materials because their maintenance contract didn't cover the damage.

The question everyone had was, why did he try five different computers before giving up? He didn't have an answer, and was sacked and out the door before I could talk to him about it. But, IMO, there was no excuse for one of the biggest corporations in the country to be ignoring its own best practices by having someone routinely plugging things in and out of live servers. Not long after that, they installed the requisite hardware to interface to the computers without manually plugging things in and out.

So, the answer is yes, a smart guy can serially blow up a bunch of equipment without realizing what is happening until it is too late. This guy was a programmer, but maybe the people in Perugia who analyze the disks are mostly software people, too. I don't know.
 
Burns and Rafay and the Idaho Innocence Project

Have they embarrassed themselves? Does anyone even know about this? First I'm hearing about it, and I didn't just fall off the turnip truck yesterday.
Not to derail the thread, but I find this highly disturbing. How is it possible that their convictions weren't overturned based on the fact that the evidence was gathered using a technique that is illegal in the United States? Are there no more opportunities for appeal?
Besides Charlie's links, here is one more, that indicates that the Idaho Innocence Project is working on this case as well:
"Greg Hampikian, a professor of forensic biology at Boise State University and a director of the Idaho Innocence Project, said 30 per cent of the cases his group takes on involve a false confession.

Physical evidence questioned

Hampikian said there is a lack of physical evidence tying Burns and Rafay to the crime and he's identified evidence in the case he'd like tested with current DNA technology. He declined to identify that evidence prior to the appeal."
 
I don't check in here very often, but I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of Knox's interview with Diane Sawyer. No revelations, especially for those of us who have no doubt that Amanda and Raffaele are totally innocent, but it's our first look at her outside the courtroom. She comes across as an intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, poised young woman who is moving on after a terrible ordeal. But in some of the pre-Perugia videos that were included, she sounds like a spacey, self-absorbed child. It's not hard at all to believe that she went to the police station thinking the cops were her friends; after all, in her previous life experience they were. She did say she asked whether she needed a lawyer, and the cops told her if she had a lawyer it would go worse for her. For most of us that would make the alarm bells scream, but not for her. Sawyer never asked her "How could you be so stupid?" But the answer is pretty clear.

What is the answer? What seems clear to me is that she was young and somewhat immature and a little self absorbed. But weren't we all at 20? Well I was.

What is your answer?
 
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