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

[Dan O.]

It was but Dan's article specifically mentions the clasp. How'd they do that?

ETA is the Mirror the only paper with this story on 17 Dec 2007?

That's the only one I saved that mentions it. The Republica only talks about Amanda's interrogation on the 17th.

 

[Grinder]

Guess that's why Amanda lied about Patrick.

Could you explain what the chief meant when he said Amanda was questioned until she buckled and told them what they knew to be correct?

Since, in fact, what she told them wasn't correct, how do you reconcile that with the chief's words?

 

[yimyammer]

In reading Dan's Mirror story I saw this link:

Meredith shoe 'clue'
27 Apr 2008 00:00
Cops probing the murder of Meredith Kercher yesterday raided her former flat for a THIRD time and took away several pairs of shoes.

Does this sound hilarious to anyone else? Did they really need to "raid" the flat? Surely, this is a translation issue?

Officers also searched the home of Knox's boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and took shoes, bank statements, plasters and bandages.

Does anyone know what are "plasters" are?

 

[yimyammer]

Funny they use the verb 'raided'. What's wrong with 'returned to'?

and I need to read all posts before responding, I thought the same thing

 

[yimyammer]

what happened to Machiavelli and Tesla, did they get banned?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

I'll bring the popcorn

Guess that's why Amanda lied about Patrick.

Let's listen to the recording together and see who was zooming who. I'll pop the popcorn, and you can hit the "play" button. Oh wait, somebody at the police station forgot to his the "record" button. Never mind.

Yimyammer, DrTesla got banned.

 

[Bill Williams]

what happened to Machiavelli and Tesla, did they get banned?

Sometimes people get busy with real life....

We're all free to speculate, though. My speculation about Machiavelli is that he embarrassed himself by feigning expertise in sleep issues, in an attempt to vilify Amanda Knox all the more.

IIRC he was trying to say that she wilfully and with malice aforethought chose not to sleep in the days before the interrogation, therefore proving that when she was called into the interrogation room, she was rested and refreshed ready to pull the wool over the eyes of the crack team of inquisitors.

This is Machiavelli's view... no matter the evidence, he can spin it to it being proof of Amanda Knox's wilful, almost mystical, ability to control events. Except when she can't. With this sleep-thing he cited not one source, and made claims about sleep-deprivation effects on an individual, that trained clinicians would not make even after seeing them in a controlled setting.

Machiavelli comes and goes in posting.... usually disappears when something like this happens.

 

[Dan O.]

Guess that's why Amanda lied about Patrick.

Try to find a lie actually written or spoken by Amanda. While you do that, I'll take on an equally impossible task of trying to find an insightful post of yours in this thread.

 

[Bill Williams]

Guess that's why Amanda lied about Patrick.

Let's listen to the recording together and see who is zooming who. I'll pop the popcorn, and you can hit the "play" button. Oh, wait, somebody forgot to his the "record" button. Never mind.
Yimyammer, DrTesla got banned.

Of course, the fall back position to this is, "Well she was convicted as a liar by the Supreme Court and it's now final!"

My opinion of this is a couple-fold.... some people may know my own evolution on this point. There was a time that I argued that Knox was innocent of all crimes except for calunnia. At one point I thought I was the only one in the universe who agreed 100% with Judge Hellmann.

Then I reversed field on calunnia.... mainly after reading Giuliano Mignini's own accounting of the interrogation he was involved in, as recorded with CNN and Drew Griffin. It was the one where he claimed he had acted "only as if a notary" and had divined certain things about Knox simply by observing her and not asking a single question, nor - here's the key - admitting he'd heard the things up to what produced the 1:45 am statement.

With nothing other than observation, of a 20-year old foreigner.... someone who he claimed he'd never questioned that night beforehand, nor did he really know anything except for the contents of the 1:45 am memorandum.... he said, without her saying so (it was his interpretation of her demeanor):

- she looked like she'd had a giant weight lifted off of her
- she was afraid of patrick
- she still needed to make spontaneous statements.​

Note the tricky landscape Mignini is having to negotiate here. He has to be VERY careful here, because in the absence of a lawyer, and with no videotaping going on... (Two things he's just claimed he'd lectured Ficarra on, as to why everything had to stop at 1:45 am - his claim is that he stopped it because Knox was now a suspect....)

He has to tiptoe carefully in explaining to Griffen why there is a 5:45 am statement which involves him, esp. after he'd just lectured Ficarra about the very law he's about to break.

The only way to get a "spontaneous statement" is not to ask leading questions. So Mignini describes to Drew Griffin how after sensing those three things above, without asking Knox a single question about them, she simply said:

"If you want to speak some more, I will act as if only a notary and write them down for you."

It's no wonder the Italian Supreme Court struck down BOTH statements as violations of Knox's rights! The truly incriminating thing for Mignini is that he still clings to the belief that what he did was lawful!

One then is forced to make a choice.... is Mignini's accounting of his presence there correct (as per the CNN interview) or is Amanda Knox's (as per her book)? Show these two accounts to someone who has never even heard of Amanda Knox or Mignini, and ask them which one seems more likely..... I'd bet all the electrons in this message that 95% of the time they would pick Amanda's as being simply a more realistic presentation of an interrogation, given what was at stake... solving the horrible murder of Meredith Kercher.

On top of all this, guilters get to make drive-by postings saying, "she's a proven liar," based on the 26 March 2013 Supreme Court confirmation of Hellmann's conviction on the issue.

Well, maybe not. First of all, there's the manner in which the interrogation(s) was (were) conducted. But there are other things.

 

[tsig]

Could you explain what the chief meant when he said Amanda was questioned until she buckled and told them what they knew to be correct?

Since, in fact, what she told them wasn't correct, how do you reconcile that with the chief's words?

IOW, she lied.

 

[tsig]

Try to find a lie actually written or spoken by Amanda. While you do that, I'll take on an equally impossible task of trying to find an insightful post of yours in this thread.

You are denying that she gave a written statement?

While you're searching you might want to read the MA on personal attacks.

 

[Bill Williams]

Guess that's why Amanda lied about Patrick.

Try to find a lie actually written or spoken by Amanda. While you do that, I'll take on an equally impossible task of trying to find an insightful post of yours in this thread.

I go with Amanda's own rationale on this, the timeline she provides, not the conclusion as to her own responsibility on it. She to this day feels guilty for not being "strong enough" to withstand what is now known (to have been used as) the Reid Technique of interrogation, a technique that does a couple of things:

- won't allow any talk of the person's innocence
- will encourage the suspect to imagine what could have happened, and this "could have happened" is always something that includes the suspect (see #1)
- will produce more than its fair share of false confessions, particularly on the young and naive.​

I think that both 'tsig' AND Amanda should take a holiday from the notion that ANYONE is strong enough to resist what the Reid Technique is designed to do.... and which ALL interrogations (as opposed to witness interviews) are designed to do.

Get a confession. Get something on paper with the suspect's signature on it that implicates them. With Mafiosi-suspects we all cheer the police for being able to hoodwink them with a lie or two, or putting two in separate rooms and playing them off against each other; by "stretching the truth" about what the other is saying, unknown to the suspect at hand. Even me, I'm the first to cheer on that sort of thing.

But when it is used to elicit false confessions from the young....

Both 'tsig' AND Amanda should take a holiday from this.

 

[Bill Williams]

Could you explain what the chief meant when he said Amanda was questioned until she buckled and told them what they knew to be correct?

Since, in fact, what she told them wasn't correct, how do you reconcile that with the chief's words?

IOW, she lied.

If you had answered Grinder's first question...... what she did was participate in the lie which was brought into the room. EVERYONE was lying about Lumumba, and she confusedly did not know how that could be, until they coerced her into agreeing with them.

I think the real Achilles Heel of guilter arguments is that they don't even regard the cops as players at all in this. They truly believe that Knox just walked into the police station and caught the desk clerk off guard by blurting out, "Lumumba did it."

This is exacly why guilters do not provide a comprehensive theory of this crime. They cherry-pick tidbits of evidence, never (really) putting it together. An exception is John Follain with "Death in Italy"... by definition, and in a "True Crime" format, Follain tries to do what 'tsig' will not. Put together a comprehensive theory of the crime that involves Knox and Sollecito, and actually does include the cops and prosecutor as actors in this mess.

But when I read Follain, at the end I was not convinced that he though Knox and Sollecito guilty.

But for most gulters it's Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox, Knox. Look what she did, look what she did, look what she did, look what she did, look what she did, look what she did, look what she did, look what she did.

What's with that? Can 'tsig' even provide a comprehensive timeline for the interrogations!? I bet he/she cannot. 'Tsig' believes that Knox just walked in and said, "I have something to tell you, Lumumba did it."

 

[Dan O.]

You are denying that she gave a written statement?

While you're searching you might want to read the MA on personal attacks.

I am denying nothing. If you need help I can provide links to those documents. just be sure you are clear about who wrote each document.

And, I am not attacking your person. I very specifically attacked your posts in this thread.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

what lying is

IOW, she lied.

You answer to one question was a failure, and you failed to answer the other question at all. IMO Don Saulo's (Don Saulo was the priest at Capanne) response to Amanda's statements was exactly right (Waiting to be Heard). Lying necessarily implies a conscious will to deceive. Without a recording of the interrogation, one has to go with the circumstantial evidence: An awfully large number of cops, some from Rome; an interpreter who participated as more than just a translator, a complete lack of interest in anything but getting Amanda to come up with Lumumba's name, etc.

 

[Bill Williams]

IOW, she lied.

You answer to one question was a failure, and you failed to answer the other question at all. IMO Don Saulo's (Don Saulo was the priest at Capanne) response to Amanda's statements was exactly right (Waiting to be Heard). Lying necessarily implies a conscious will to deceive. Without a recording of the interrogation, one has to go with the circumstantial evidence: An awfully large number of cops, some from Rome; an interpreter who participated as more than just a translator, a complete lack of interest in anything but getting Amanda to come up with Lumumba's name, etc.

Every time someone completely removes Knox from the context of a manipulative interrogation, they should be required to read this....

.... as pointed out elsewhere, this is from a UK newspaper, only 6 months after the Dec 2009 conviction (where, it seemed back then, that Mignini won!). It was perhaps the first serious look at the man who drove this (then) wrongful conviction.....

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/knox-prosecutor-tainted-by-satanism-case-1992485.html

Knox prosecutor tainted by satanism case. Mignini has earned himself a reputation for steely ruthlessness in nailing his enemies. In January 2010, Mignini was convicted of abuse of office by a court in the Tuscan capital and sentenced to two years and four months in jail (overturned at appeal because the appeal judge ruled that it was heard in the wrong jurisdiction, not because the charges were unfounded).

(Mignini) and Michele Giuttari, a detective-turned-thriller writer, had used their powers to persecute people they regarded as their enemies: tapping their phones, interrogating them, putting them under investigation without any evidence against them and even getting them jailed, for personal reasons.

Mignini was banned from public office for the same term as his 2 1/2 year jail sentence – but the court suspended both sentences, allowing him to return to his Perugia office to continue persecuting Amanda and Raffaele.

"Tsig".... is all this why you do not put together a timeline for the interrogation, including all the actors at interrogation... and just jump to the end: she lied?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

You are denying that she gave a written statement?

She signed two patently false statements that were typed up by someone else in a language she was only beginning to learn. We don't know what she actually said, because the police, who had recorded every other interview, suddenly experienced a budget crisis such that they could not afford to record this particular interview. So we are left to guess: why did she sign those statements? Did she do it because she is a cunning and manipulative killer, or did she do it because she was scared out of her wits?

 

[anglolawyer]

Of course, the fall back position to this is, "Well she was convicted as a liar by the Supreme Court and it's now final!"

Not if she appeals to the ECHR. Just looking very briefly at some of the guidance, it seems the failure to afford access to a lawyer in the interrogations is capable of being regarded as denial of the right to a fair trial.

The Court has repeatedly held that the right of any person charged with a criminal offence to be effectively defended by a lawyer is a fundamental element of a fair trial


Imbrioscia v. Switzerland
24.11.1993
Although the “primary purpose” of Article 6 in criminal proceedings is “to ensure a fair trial by a ‘tribunal’”, it does not follow that it has no application to “pre-trial proceedings”.


“access to a lawyer should be provided as from the first interrogation of a suspect by the police, unless it is demonstrated in the light of the particular circumstances of each case that there are compelling reasons to restrict this right.”

 

[JREF2010]

She signed two patently false statements that were typed up by someone else in a language she was only beginning to learn. We don't know what she actually said, because the police, who had recorded every other interview, suddenly experienced a budget crisis such that they could not afford to record this particular interview. So we are left to guess: why did she sign those statements? Did she do it because she is a cunning and manipulative killer, or did she do it because she was scared out of her wits?

only a fantasy, but what a polygraph/lie-detector test would tell us about the interrogation...

 

[Antony]

Does this sound hilarious to anyone else? Did they really need to "raid" the flat? Surely, this is a translation issue?



Does anyone know what are "plasters" are?

In the UK, it's the word used to describe self-adhesive bandages. Sometimes we say "sticking plasters".