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

[acbytesla]

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.

We've actually went over this in detail particularly Dan O and I and some others. There is an explanation for this problem and involves the tech switching drives while the power was on....doing it the same way one after another without realizing that each time he did it, he was frying another computer drive.

My problem however with this analysis, is that while it is strongly recommended not to switch PATA drives while they are "hot". Most of the time doing this does NOT result in the failure that happened 4 consecutive times in this case.

But your analysis is spot on...it is possible to for a smart person to blithely making the same mistake over and over again without realizing it.

 

[Alt+F4]

...it is possible to for a smart person to blithely making the same mistake over and over again without realizing it.

Yes, it happens all the time. Look at austerity and low interest rates. Both ideas have been total failures and still continue to be pushed.

 

[acbytesla]

Yes, it happens all the time. Look at austerity and low interest rates. Both ideas have been total failures and still continue to be pushed.

That's because it seems very logical. What do you do when you have a deficit? You cut spending to balance the budget. Seems reasonable...

But of course it is a VERY SIMPLISTIC answer to a VERY COMPLICATED PROBLEM and leaves out lots of important factors in the equation.

 

[Matthew Best]

Here's a very short video interview with Damon Thibodeaux who confessed to a crime he didn't commit and spent 15 years in prison as a result.



"Until you go through it, you just won't know how much of an interrogation can you take. Everyone has a point and when you break you'll tell them whatever they want to hear."

 

[Matthew Best]

And here's one about the problems of eyewitness testimony from Delbert Tibbs who was convicted of murder and rape based on the testimony of the surviving victim who said he was the perpetrator, despite the fact that he was 9" taller, lighter in complexion and with a different hairstyle to the description she initially gave.



"Eyewitness testimony can be false and it often is because we don't always see what we think we see, and sometimes what we think we see is not what's actually happening."

 

[Bill Williams]

Here's a very short video interview with Damon Thibodeaux who confessed to a crime he didn't commit and spent 15 years in prison as a result.



"Until you go through it, you just won't know how much of an interrogation can you take. Everyone has a point and when you break you'll tell them whatever they want to hear."

For a Canadian example from 2003 see: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2003/01/27/interrogation030127.html

Here the kid confessed to raping and killing a 14-year-old Regina (Saskatechewan) girl.

"I'm not even sure how to explain it because I'm not sure how it happened to me," says Joel Labadie, one of the three who falsely confessed.

"All I know is for hours on end I said 'No, I had nothing to do with it.' Next thing you know I'm sitting here going 'Sure, why not. I did it.' More or less it's like they kill your spirit or something," he said.

The whole point of interrogation is to elicit a confession.

 

[Antony]

Most murders are committed by someone the victim knows.

Yes, about 85-90 percent globally. This is why small police departments start any homicide investigation by grilling the people who knew the victim. Most of the time, somebody knows what happened. They know that someone had a reason to commit the murder. If the police can get that story, they often can solve the case.

But Amanda did not have a reason to kill Meredith. Raffaele certainly did not. In fact, nobody did. This was one of the 10-15 percent of murders in which the victim had no relationship with the perpetrator. That is evident in the forensic evidence as well as the nature of the crime scene.

But the cops didn't stop to think about the nature of the crime scene, and they didn't understand its significance. They followed the one and only approach they do understand, a rough heuristic driven by the factoid you cite here. It led to a spectacularly wrong answer. They did the same thing with the Michael Morton case in Texas, and with the Suzanne Jovin case in New Haven, CT, a murder that has never been solved. This is the cause of many wrongful convictions.

... and of course undetected wrongful convictions add to the statistic, and the likelihood that murders not committed by someone known to the victim are over-represented among unsolved crimes - so therefore not included in the statistics - make this something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To illustrate, consider first that "85-90% of murders are committed by someone known to the victim" actually means: "85-90% of people convicted of murder are known to the victim". Then, as a thought-experiment:

- 100 murders of which 50 are committed by someone known to the victim, 50 committed by someone unknown;
- of the 50 committed by someone known to the victim, 45 are solved and 5 remain unsolved;
- of the 50 committed by someone unknown to the victim, 10 are solved correctly, 30 remain unsolved, and 10 result in the wrongful conviction of someone known to the victim, in part because of the preconception that "85-90% of murders are someone known to the victim".

Result for the statistics: 55 murders with someone known to the victim convicted; 10 with someone unknown to the victim convicted - i.e., 85% (rounded to nearest % point) of solved murders, the person convicted is known to the victim. So the statistic is reinforced, even though the actual rate is only 50%.

Of course, there is no way of knowing the actual numbers in true-life cases, but the result is that the statistic is inflated, in part because of its own existence.

 

[bolint]

"This case is about a frightened and confused 19 year old who was subjected to intense questioning and interrogation, without the benefit of counsel"

 

[tsig]

"This case is about a frightened and confused 19 year old who was subjected to intense questioning and interrogation, without the benefit of counsel"

She's now a convicted liar according to the Italy's highest court. That fact and her book may play an important part in the upcoming legal proceedings.

 

[Kaosium]

She's now a convicted liar according to the Italy's highest court. That fact and her book may play an important part in the upcoming legal proceedings.

Many convictions through 'Italy's highest court' end up costing the Italian Republic a lot of money and prestige when taken to the ECHR...

 

[Mary_H]

"This case is about a frightened and confused 19 year old who was subjected to intense questioning and interrogation, without the benefit of counsel"

This quote refers to a friend of the Boston bomb suspect, not to Amanda Knox.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...e53a30-b543-11e2-9fb1-62de9581c946_story.html

 

[Dan O.]

Bolint is the one that is confused. I'd accuse him of posting in the wrong thread if he actually posted in other threads here.

Since Amanda was born in July 1987, by October/November of 2007 she would be 20 years old.

Bolint's quote can actually be found in this completely different case:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...e53a30-b543-11e2-9fb1-62de9581c946_story.html

 

[RoseMontague]

She's now a convicted liar according to the Italy's highest court. That fact and her book may play an important part in the upcoming legal proceedings.

And the head of the Italian Supreme court is a 911 truther. Guess we should take their word on that one as well.

 

[tsig]

And the head of the Italian Supreme court is a 911 truther. Guess we should take their word on that one as well.

Judges are paid for their expertise in law.

ETA: in any case it doesn't change Amanda's legal problems.

 

[acbytesla]

She's now a convicted liar according to the Italy's highest court. That fact and her book may play an important part in the upcoming legal proceedings.

It might..considering that everything seems crazy in Italy. I mean look at Hellmann's decision. He says that Amanda made the false statement under duress and other extreme mitigating circumstances and it is totally understandable and then convicts her anyway???

I've given up predicting what Italy's courts will do. Mignini and his cohorts actually lied during the trial on multiple occasions but are any of them charged with perjury or callunia? They committed many acts of out and out corruption including the little trick of telling Amanda she was HIV positive to get her to list her sexual partners only to give the list to European journalists. There were multiple suspects who said that they were hit during their procedures...did they even investigate?

Amanda said she was hit during the investigation, this fact was published in the tabloids....but Amanda's parents were charged with Callunia for repeating it. But Follain the English journalist who actually printed this information and was never charged.

What is extremely clear is the PMs and specifically (Mignini) uses the Italian laws capriciously and for his own twisted reasons.

Italy has some systemic issues that really hurts it's ability to achieve justice.

No system is perfect. There will always be mistakes...I can think of many miscarriages of justice in the US. But given even those, I still think the US system is far superior to the Italian system. This doesn't mean the at the US is better, only it's judicial system. (that doesn't mean the US system couldn't be better)

At first I thought the way that they do reviews of trials in Italy was better than the system in the US. The automatic retrial catches many miscarriages....and this is true, but now I believe it actually causes more miscarriages as judges are not as a cautious in the first trial in protecting defendants from possible wrongful convictions letting the second trial be more the final arbiter. Thus allowing the innocent to be incarcerated for longer periods of time unnecessarily.

I also thought the motivations were a good thing. At least the judges and the jury had to list their reasons for their decisions. But now I'm not so sure.

I think having two judges to steer the jury panel to its decision is a horrible thing. It demonstrates a lack of faith in ordinary people to make a decision that doesn't support the government or the laws as written, but is fair to the defendants and the people. (the public)

I think the adversarial system in the US, Canada and the UK is flawed, it is far superior to the inquisitional system in Italy. It's kind of like democracy, its the worst form of government except for all the others.

 

[Rolfe]

I would be somewhat inclined to agree with you except for one thing. The Italian justice system does not kill people.

Rolfe.

 

[Mary_H]

I would be somewhat inclined to agree with you except for one thing. The Italian justice system does not kill people.

Rolfe.

Maybe not immediately.

 

[Dan O.]

It killed Meredith Kercher by not dealing with the thief Rudy Guede when he was caught the first time.

 

[Kaosium]

Judges are paid for their expertise in law.

It Italy judges are required to write extensive motivations documents (The Massei Report ran to over 400 pages of text) detailing the crime and evidence and they are expected to be able to evaluate it in order to do so. Some of them are kooks though!

This one wants to take the United States to the International Criminal Court to "seek justice" for the "grave crimes" committed by the US Government in allowing the attacks so they could invade Afghanistan and Iraq. To wit:

The only possibility for achieving justice is to submit the best evidence concerning the involvement of specific individuals in 9/11 to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and ask him to investigate according to the articles 12, 13, 15 and 17, letters a and b, of the Statute of the ICC, recalling also the preamble of the Statute:


Recognizing that such grave crimes threaten the peace, security and the well
being of the world, Affirming that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished and that their effective prosecution must be ensured by taking measures at the national level and by enhancing international cooperation, Determined to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of these crimes and thus to contribute to the prosecution of such crimes, Recalling that the duty of every state to exercise its jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes.

ETA: in any case it doesn't change Amanda's legal problems.

Actually the problem is more Raffaele Sollecito's and the poor people of Italy. Mignini might have been lying, (to heighten the 'gravity' so that Amanda wouldn't 'escape') but he once said he couldn't get an extradition of Amanda on this case. I tend to agree as that would require him to provide the evidence to an extradition court which consists of a 'murder knife' that doesn't match the wounds and tested negative for blood (numerous times!) and which they refused to supply the data for, 'bloody footprints' that tested negative for blood but they tried to hide as well and 'mixed blood' which wasn't mixed blood but they tried to pretend it might be with forensic sophistry (we didn't do the tests to preclude the possibility so it's possible the DNA we wiped out of Amanda's sink was her blood--even though she had no wounds that could have produced it!) that even the convicting judge would disprove in his Motivations.

I'm not sure the Italian Republic would even ask even if she was convicted in absentia through a future trial.

 

[Grinder]

Apparently Follain wrote:

"[Knox] fails to say that [Cassation] definitively convicted her of slandering an innocent man, confirming an earlier three-year prison sentence (which she had already served)"

"the book fails to tackle the unanswered questions about Kercher’s death — why, and how, did she die? All questions that still torment the Kercher family"

Yes, it is shocking that someone locked up for 4 years can't shed light on what happened that night.