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

[Bill Williams]

.
I watched the new PBS documentary 'The Central Park Five', where 4 out of 5 innocent young men were coerced into confessing to a crime they did not do. One of the lawyers made a comment that struck me as very signficiant. He said a confession influences EVERYTHING, witness testimony, everything. I will try to get the exact quote if I get a chance to watch it again.
.

I saw this on Tuesday evening, and Sarah Burns was available on Skype before the screening. The confessions, the tabloid frenzy, the vilification of the 5, when the character assassinations did not remotely match the characters of any of the 5 (none of whom were angels, really, but the over-the-top tabloid assassinations were similar...)

I caught that remark from the lawyer. But remember the remark of Juror #5, the one who caused the jury to deliberate for 18 days? He said that it was when trying to put together the confessions, all of them, into a unifying narrative, that the crime made no sense. It's not that he'd disbelieved the interrogations really, but for 18 days he held out against the other jurors because the narrative of the crime based on all the interrogations made no sense.

The he said, "After 18 days I finally caved in. I thought of some cockamamie reason to think of them as guilty."

For me that was the most striking admission of cowardice on the part of the juror, and he looked like he now feels very guilty for not having the strength of not caving in.

No wonder guilters here resist putting things into a comprehensive unifying narrative.... esp. now that they're stuck with "sex-game-gone-wrong." Good luck with that one! Even Massei did not buy it.

 

[Bill Williams]

Codyjuneau, I seem to recall it was Saul Kassin who said that, but I may be mistaken.

Saul Kassim said other things, not the one about the power of confessions to overwhelm the narrative of the crime though. The lawyer who'd said, "So what that it was proven the kids were at another part of the park when the woman was attacked.... they'd confessed!"

Kassim made mention of the shoddy police work and the pressure cooker the cops were in to solve this quickly. He said that when, 13 years later, the real perp confessed and started admitting to things about the crime which the police had even missed, that by that point it should have been obvious that the other 5 had had nothing to do with it.

But, like the Italian legal system is doing today, everyone involved circled around one another and claimed integrity for their own little piece of the travesty. To this day the NYPD and NYLE claim they did nothing wrong and stand by their investigative work. except for a few including the court which eventually exonerated them.

Briars made a point above expressing deep skepticism in a wide ranging conspiracy to persecute Knox and Sollecito.... "Yeah, like that happens."

Briars.... I will pay for your viewing of the Central Park Five by Sarah Burns. Where do I send the money?

 

[Grinder]

Grinder
Would you class this as a motiveless murder?

This is a typically mindless British case, but not motiveless in my opinion. However, I would appreciate your take since you attack Bill for bringing up motive all the time and assert there doesn't have to be one. With respect, I think you are confusing this question with the different one of whether a motive must be proved.

Boy I get credit for one thing and you scour the Internet to find something to get me.

Apparently these fine british boys decided in a drunken stupor that killing someone or at beating them severely would be fun. If the prosecutor put forward a motive of having fun and later changed it to something else I wouldn't think significant.

Massei said that their motive was joining in the excitement (paraphrase) rather than a built up antipathy for Meredith. I don't think that a motive is needed nor do I think that if the prosecutor changes his idea that it is significant.

Not only need a motive not be proven it need not be known. If the crime is proven beyond a reasonable doubt and there is no motive known or even imagined the person is still guily.

If the footprints in the house were a match for Amanda and they tested positive for Meredith's blood and they found Meredith's blood on Amanda's shoes and clothes as well as in Raf's apartment I would think her guilty and still wouldn't care about a motive for the verdict.

I realize bringing up Ted Bundy is a little like bringing up Hitler but what was his motive? Crazy people or people crazed do things that don't make sense.

Bill can write all he wants about motive and changing motives and psychopathy but he won't prove anything. Those arguments are much more for the PR effort.

 

[Bob001]

...
The he said, "After 18 days I finally caved in. I thought of some cockamamie reason to think of them as guilty."
....

I haven't seen the film, but I'd be interested in knowing how long a typical judge would require a jury to keep deliberating before he declares that it's hung. If the judge says "You're not getting out of here until you reach a verdict," the situation becomes a lot like a coercive interrogation. For that matter, when does the defense get to say "The jury obviously holds reasonable doubt; this can't go on forever." Wouldn't a guilty verdict given under those circumstances be grounds for appeal?

 

[Grinder]

Well, Mr. (Memory) Quintavalle did remember that neither Raffaele nor Amanda had been in the days before or days after Meredith's murder to purchase bleach - the question which he was asked.

No, he testified he didn't know if the girl that was there in the morning bought anything. So he should have answered: "The girl was in the morning after the murder, very early, and went where the bleach is but I don't know if bought or stole any."

He knew by the 19th that they had been arrested. One year later he finds this information so important he goes on TV before talking with the police.

His interaction with Volturno wasn't a threatening session. Why would he answer questions strictly limited to the precise question rather than being expansive? Maybe he was sleep deprived.

If his nose started growing, would that convince you?

 

[anglolawyer]

Boy I get credit for one thing and you scour the Internet to find something to get me.

Apparently these fine british boys decided in a drunken stupor that killing someone or at beating them severely would be fun. If the prosecutor put forward a motive of having fun and later changed it to something else I wouldn't think significant.

Massei said that their motive was joining in the excitement (paraphrase) rather than a built up antipathy for Meredith. I don't think that a motive is needed nor do I think that if the prosecutor changes his idea that it is significant.

Not only need a motive not be proven it need not be known. If the crime is proven beyond a reasonable doubt and there is no motive known or even imagined the person is still guily.

If the footprints in the house were a match for Amanda and they tested positive for Meredith's blood and they found Meredith's blood on Amanda's shoes and clothes as well as in Raf's apartment I would think her guilty and still wouldn't care about a motive for the verdict.

I realize bringing up Ted Bundy is a little like bringing up Hitler but what was his motive? Crazy people or people crazed do things that don't make sense.

Bill can write all he wants about motive and changing motives and psychopathy but he won't prove anything. Those arguments are much more for the PR effort.

Grinder mush. Do you admit there is always a motive or not? You do not have to concede a motive must be proved nor that it is always important, nor that guilt cannot be determined without it, just that there always is one, no matter how crazy.

Motive is relevant in our case because it is a problem when looking at Amanda and Raffaele, Rudy not so much. That's why so many bottles of ink have been spilled in discussing rock throwing parties, 'hazing' (stupid word) and fancy dress mummification, to establish psychotic tendencies which might explain why this happened. It would certainly make it easier to believe in guilt if they had brutally killed someone else in similar fashion because then we would know they were nuts who liked killing people.

If Bill dismantles all these ridiculous fantasies he achieves something IMO. He leaves the PGPs and judges with an inexplicable crime. Judge Hellman certainly did not think the question of motive meaningless.

And it was to solidify a conviction based on assessments of mere probability that the first-level Corte di Assise felt it necessary to come up with a motive for the crime which, however, while not being corroborated by any objective piece of evidence, is itself not probable in the least: the sudden choice, on the part of two fine young people, well-disposed towards others, of evil for evil’s sake, just like that, without any other point (whence the aggravating circumstance of futile reasons alleged by the Public Minister); and all the more incomprehensible due to having been aimed at supporting the criminal action of another youth, Rudy Guede, with whom they had no relationship (there is not, for example, proof of telephone calls or text messages among the three), and [who was] different from them in terms of personal history, character, and human condition.

No doubt the SC motivation will express due outrage at this passage and you will align yourself with the SC judges on this one point while excoriating everything else. I shall take Bill's side of the trenches.

 

[Bill Williams]

Boy I get credit for one thing and you scour the Internet to find something to get me.

Apparently these fine british boys decided in a drunken stupor that killing someone or at beating them severely would be fun. If the prosecutor put forward a motive of having fun and later changed it to something else I wouldn't think significant.

Massei said that their motive was joining in the excitement (paraphrase) rather than a built up antipathy for Meredith. I don't think that a motive is needed nor do I think that if the prosecutor changes his idea that it is significant.

Not only need a motive not be proven it need not be known. If the crime is proven beyond a reasonable doubt and there is no motive known or even imagined the person is still guily.

........... <sinister deletia> .............

Bill can write all he wants about motive and changing motives and psychopathy but he won't prove anything. Those arguments are much more for the PR effort.

Apologies, Grinder but this misses the point.

I agree with you on motiveless crimes and all that. The point here in the Kercher murder is the frenetic effort of some to try to shoe-horn them into the case as if they had something to do with it.

As you may read above, the issue of "the confession" plays larger in any case than considerations of motive. But as was said in the CP5 documentary by the likes of Kassim and the defence lawyers, when there is not a lot pointing to the alleged-perps sometimes motive and confession is all the prosecution has to work with. Indeed, in the Knox/Sollecito case, most guilters now have nothing other than, "she lied about Lumumba," that how important one or two things become when there's nothing else.

In the Knox/Sollecito case the issue isn't, really, that Massei found that there was not motive. It's that there were four motives offered by the prosecution, offered serially. One of them, allegedly (but alleged by none other than Barbie Nadeau) causing friction between Comodi and Mignini themselves(!), was the one perhaps mis-titled as "Satan rite". That one did not make it to court, but was certainly tabloid fodder before trial.

The next one was the sex-game-gone-wrong, which is now currying favour with the ISC. One can imagine the Perugian ILE scurrying around dusty filing cabinets hoping all their files supporting that hadn't long since been shredded!!!!

Then it was the motive of Knox seeking revenge against Meredith for.... what? Criticizing Knox for not cleaning the toilet?

Then it became motiveless, at least in the sense that Massei wrote about in his motivations - that Sollecito and Knox were basically good kids, with no signs of psychopathology at all, who'd made a momentary "choice for evil."

Saying that this is part of a "PR effort" is laughable. This is simply a matter of record. Trying to position yourself as the only "neutral" observer here sometimes leads you to discredit what is simply part of the record.

Are you denying that the prosecution never had 4 differing motives? Please don't go all Machiavelli on me... no I have never beaten my wife!

 

[Grinder]

Well, Volturno was interested in the bleach since two bottles had been recovered from Raffaele's flat and Volturno himself had smelled the bleach in the flat so his focus may have been on the purchasing of bleach by the two defendants rather than documenting the times the two had come into the store. After all, Quintavalle was not the only store owner questioned in the vicinity of Raffaele's flat or the cottage.

A small correction, the smell turned out not to be bleach but some other cleaner that may have contained some bleach. The smell would obviously similar but not the source. It seems hard to accept that if they had used bleach or a bleach containing product on the 2nd that on the 6th it would still have enough smell to notice.

I use bleach to whiten the sink and leave it there for hours but the smell dissipates quickly after letting it out. Certainly days later there is no residual smell.

I believe the cleaning lady testified that no bleach was missing and that she didn't use it and she had cleaned on the 5th.

 

[Briars]

This is particularly where the Italian courts, except for Hellmann's, seems not to be interested in evidence, but is moving towards a directed guilty verdict. I hope someone else posts the video, but the reconstruction done with Nara shows that she probably did not hear what she heard, and she was wrong about the timings.

The thing which marks the prosecution is the number of times evidence is advanced like Nara's and it's accepted - as long as you're not allowed to tell the whole story! Guilters have always presented the prosecution's case, then told everyone to be quiet...

For instance, Machiavelli (and others) make the claim that the balcony is the natural point of entrance for a burglar - despite it being in open view to the road and lit by a street light. He then spends copious keypresses to try to make it seem that it is not.

Briars spends copious keypresses describing a general setting to come up with, "there is no other place for the screams to have come from". Yet this presupposes that she even heard them, when evidence suggests the contrary.

Quintavalle is shown pictures of Knox and SOllecito in the days after the crime, and he says they were not in the store. A year later after a visit from a journalist looking for a scoop, suddenly Quintavalle remembers Knox in the store.

For the last (almost) six years, it is this kind of reasoning that has plagued this case.

What evidence to the contrary? Common sense tells you that nothing stood in the way of her window , she faced nothing except the valley below and the cottage. A loud prolonged scream was heard by more than one witness at around the same time. A scream that was far from ordinary. She wasn't facing other buildings it was quiet outside.

 

[Briars]

She named Lumumba after 2 and 1/2hours. There were 3 or 4 people present. Donnino testified she was treated well and someone even held her hand. I have no evidence that Donnino lies or changes their stories unlike Amanda and Sollecito. So I don't need to watch a video about a very different situation thanks.

 

[anglolawyer]

Murder and motive

Or what about this one? Another British case:

A former pilot has been given a life sentence for murdering his estranged wife by crashing his car into a tree after the passenger airbag had been disabled.

Leicester Crown Court heard Iain Lawrence, 53, had argued with Sally Lawrence about finances in their upcoming divorce.

It's not in the link but the Times reports the judge as saying this when sentencing:

It is clear to me from the evidence that you had two motives for murdering Sally. One was that you could not accept your marriage was over ... You other motive was financial gain ...'

Grinder, are you suggesting the jury should never have heard about motive in this case because it's irrelevant?

 

[katy_did]

Coerced-compliant false confessions are:
1 - not false memories
2 - all known cases are always from interrogations of hight-risk subjects that lasted more than 16 hours the least (Knox's interrogation lasted 2.5 hours and she is NOT a high risk subject).
3 - they are confessions (worked out from sense of guilt and rationalized out from a situation of knowing the subject was unaware - drunk, under drug influence etc.), they are not false accusations (admission of responsability inroduced by supposition is not the same of false testimony, such is Knox's)

I appreciate the difference between coerced-compliant and coerced-internalized confessions, and that the former don't involve false memories (though a confession can also be a combination of the two types). Based on Amanda's note, I think there may be an element of 'internalization' in her account, though obviously only to a minor extent, since it's clear she always has doubts about it.

It isn't true to say that "all known cases" of false confessions are associated with "high risk subjects", if by that you mean low IQ subjects. From the same book I quoted earlier:

there are many people of good intellectual ability who prove to be abnormally suggestible on testing. In other words, suggestibility needs to be assessed directly rather than assumed on the basis of IQ scores. Furthermore, when drawing inferences about an individual case, possible situational sources of suggestibility must not be overlooked. [italics in original]

In this case there are various "situational sources of suggestibility" - that is, factors specific to the circumstances of the interrogation - which would need to be taken into account: e.g. that the interrogation was late at night, in a foreign language, with an interpreter (who arrived at least an hour into the interrogation) who was an active part of the interrogation; the fact Amanda was isolated from her usual support network, the family and friends who could have kept her grounded, relying on a boy she'd known just a week (even his support being taken away from her during the course of the interrogation); and of course, that she had just lived through a very extreme situation, the violent death of her roommate, with all the associated shock and stress. This is even leaving aside specific personality factors which may have placed her more at risk, like her high trust in authority.

As for the difference between a coerced false confession and a coerced accusation, you can surely see that the mechanism is exactly the same. If a person is coerced into making a false confession, it's because the police (wrongly) believe them to be guilty. But as you yourself said:

[Amanda] was suspected (even in the informal sense) but of covering the murderer not of being the murderer (not her specifically), this even during her 05:45.

She was suspected of covering for the murderer, not of being the murderer. Hardly surprising then that she confessed to covering for the murderer, not to being the murderer. Her confession tallies with what the police thought she was guilty of at the time.

4 - the existence and features of 'internalized' false confession, they overlap to the description of false memory syndrome. If a memory is actually there, meaning if the experience of it actually internalized, there is no possibility that the subject can distinguish it from the true event (unless an external proof is given to the subject to rationalize the conclusion that it was false) and it is independent from what the people "thinks".
The actual existence of cases of internalized false confession (actual false memory) is very controversial, because the true occurrence of it might be very rare. The compliant-coerced type of false confession instead is actually not 'internalized' but rather rationalized, while internalized parts are fragmentary pre-existing elements; this is why it is typically full with a pattern of suppositions and reasoning (maybe, I think, it's possible, it must be).

In Knox you have an opposite pattern: you have a claim of direct memory, visual and sensory material kind - "flashes", scream, etc - together with assertive statements that build a context (we wanted to have fun, I imagined what was going on, exact knowledge of the position where she was, I am very afraid of him, blood on Raffaele's hands etc.), then you have a rationalization that goes in the opposite direction and intends to claim the existence of this material but, at the same time, to make this material unusable.

I'm not sure of the point you're making here - if it's that once a 'memory' is fully internalized it can't be distinguished from the real thing, then sure. But obviously, there are degrees of internalization. I pointed out earlier that it's quite possible for people to gradually realize a 'memory' is false, as happened in Amanda's case.

 

[Grinder]

Grinder mush brilliance . Do you admit there is always a motive or not? You do not have to concede a motive must be proved nor that it is always important, nor that guilt cannot be determined without it, just that there always is one, no matter how crazy.

No, there is not always a motive, at least not what would be thought of as a motive by most people. For example, "I just had an urge to hit someone."

Motive is relevant in our case because it is a problem when looking at Amanda and Raffaele, Rudy not so much. That's why so many bottles of ink have been spilled in discussing rock throwing parties, 'hazing' (stupid word) and fancy dress mummification, to establish psychotic tendencies which might explain why this happened. It would certainly make it easier to believe in guilt if they had brutally killed someone else in similar fashion because then we would know they were nuts who liked killing people.

Okay it would be easier.

If Bill dismantles all these ridiculous fantasies he achieves something IMO. He leaves the PGPs and judges with an inexplicable crime. Judge Hellman certainly did not think the question of motive meaningless.

He doesn't dismantle, he just repeats that not even Massei or other such expressions. I have referred people to the source of the prank crud and have made clear that the party ticket wasn't anything significant. If you'd like the links I'd be happy to provide. Those issues go more to history than motive and yes, if they had a history of violence that would be bad for the PR.

No doubt the SC motivation will express due outrage at this passage and you will align yourself with the SC judges on this one point while excoriating everything else. I shall take Bill's side of the trenches.

Having a motive shouldn't convict and not having one shouldn't acquit.

I doubt I will align with SC judges on anything besides very fine points.

For the record it wasn't I that agreed with Hellmann on the calumnia conviction, that was Bill.

 

[Bill Williams]

Grinder mush.

........... <sinister deletia> ...............

If Bill dismantles all these ridiculous fantasies he achieves something IMO. He leaves the PGPs and judges with an inexplicable crime. Judge Hellman certainly did not think the question of motive meaningless.



No doubt the SC motivation will express due outrage at this passage and you will align yourself with the SC judges on this one point while excoriating everything else. I shall take Bill's side of the trenches.

As you know I am taken with Jeffery Tobin these days, a house-legal analyst for CNN. On the night of the acquittals in 2011, Tobin said that this was basically a very simply, albeit tragic and brutal crime.

And he said that as a lawyer looking at the case, he saw little pointing to Knox and Sollecito, nor even the need to have tried to shoe-horn them in. The evidence was clear. Rudy did it. There is simply no reason even to put K/S at the scene! He also said that the defamation charges against Curt and Edda were strange, "even for the Italian judicial system."

He's trying his best to be kind to a sovereign nation like Italy, which really DOES have a right to it's laws. But he's trying awfully hard not to giggle. Fortunately he's aware of the criminal action against Meredith, which stifles the giggles quickly....

If I have time today - after all, my family has disowned me and I have to type all this by my lonesome in the garage like PMF has ferreted out with that white tinted-windowed unmarked van outside - I will go through Tobin's stuff. Probably won't though.

But it is not lost on folk like him how this has played, when stretched over a time-line, and when you take four highligher-colours to that timeline, and mark in green when Satan Rite was in play, mark in yellow when Sex-Game was in play, mark in light blue when antagonism was in play, and then when no motive was in play.......

To me it becomes clear.... it's like Juror #5 in the Central Park 5 case, an otherwise uneducated man who had a nose to use for a smell-test. He actually listened to the 5 confessions, something the other jurors apparently did not do. He tried to put the 5 together into a coherent narrative... something the prosecutors did, but retreated into saying, "Well, no wonder they don't agree. We've only arrest 5 of perhaps dozens of people who took part in this."

Then juror number 5 probably pointed out, "What others?" The path in the grass recording how the poor woman had been dragged off was 18 inches wide.... indicating "the fewer attackers the better for the evidence." Only one set of DNA came up.

I suppose Amanda Knox was in Central Park in 1989 doing her patented "clean up all but one DNA signature" clean!!!!

This Juror #5 tried to get it to all add up, and confessions did not impress him, until day 18 when he describes how he caved in to the others, and invented a cockamamie reason for caving in in his mind.

Changing motives by the prosecution would not mean much if Knox's DNA was found all over the room... but even Massei admits she probably wasn't in the room, even Mignini implied she'd been in the hall directing things... a startling reversal for Mignini who had directed his cartoon (shown in court) to show her restraining Meredith. Which is it?

Smell test, people, smell test. This is not PR, this is telling Juror #5 to have larger cojones to resist the mob.

 

[katy_did]

The prosecution doesn't claim that the video or photos show evidence of staging. They claim that both the video (which was shot first) and the photos were taken after the crime scene had been altered in a way that removed the evidence of staging, i.e., glass on top of disturbed objects.

The prosecution may not claim it, Charlie, but the SC in its infinite ignorance does:

...the objective fact of at least a significant proportion of the glass shards above and not below the clothes (as was also documented by the photographs and recorded images), showing that the breaking [of the glass] followed rather than preceded the ransacking [of the room], was overlooked, employing an argument lacking in plausibility and relying on the frenzied rummaging of the thief.

...è stato superato il dato obiettivo della presenza di almeno una cospicua parte dei cocci di vetro sopra e non sotto i vestiti (come del resto veniva documentato anche dalle fotografie scattate e dalle immagini registrate) dimostrativo che la rottura seguì e non precedette l'opera di messa a soqquadro, spendendo un argomento privo di plausibilità e facente leva sulla frenesia del rovistamento ad opera del ladro.

On the other hand, they have just labelled as implausible the prosecution's argument that glass was moved prior to the pictures being taken...

 

[anglolawyer]

No, there is not always a motive, at least not what would be thought of as a motive by most people. For example, "I just had an urge to hit someone."

Gratification derived from hitting someone is a motive for doing so. It is probably tautological to say everyone has a motive for doing anything, whether murder or shopping, just because unless moved no one would do anything.

He doesn't dismantle, he just repeats that not even Massei or other such expressions. I have referred people to the source of the prank crud and have made clear that the party ticket wasn't anything significant. If you'd like the links I'd be happy to provide. Those issues go more to history than motive and yes, if they had a history of violence that would be bad for the PR.

So you are on the same side but employing different methods. However, you are the one saying motive is not important.

Having a motive shouldn't convict and not having one shouldn't acquit.

Why not? It might be the one thing that enables/prevents a jury from forming a reasonable doubt. Like I said already, it's another piece of CE that goes in the pot.

I doubt I will align with SC judges on anything besides very fine points.

For the record it wasn't I that agreed with Hellmann on the calumnia conviction, that was Bill.

He repented and we aren't discussing that.

 

[Grinder]

Apologies, Grinder but this misses the point.

Wrong.

I agree with you on motiveless crimes and all that. The point here in the Kercher murder is the frenetic effort of some to try to shoe-horn them into the case as if they had something to do with it.

The motives have worked against the case from the beginning. The satanic rite/sex game/etc. made me doubt the case from day one. Only the insane PGP believe these motives, but sane people think there is evidence against them.

As you may read above, the issue of "the confession" plays larger in any case than considerations of motive. But as was said in the CP5 documentary by the likes of Kassim and the defence lawyers, when there is not a lot pointing to the alleged-perps sometimes motive and confession is all the prosecution has to work with. Indeed, in the Knox/Sollecito case, most guilters now have nothing other than, "she lied about Lumumba," that how important one or two things become when there's nothing else.

Bill I must remind you that you came here ranting band raving that you were the only one that agreed COMPLETELY with Hellmann's verdict including the calumnia. Her lying about Lumumba is the linchpin of the case and that's why the police comments are so important to me

In the Knox/Sollecito case the issue isn't, really, that Massei found that there was not motive. It's that there were four motives offered by the prosecution, offered serially. One of them, allegedly (but alleged by none other than Barbie Nadeau) causing friction between Comodi and Mignini themselves(!), was the one perhaps mis-titled as "Satan rite". That one did not make it to court, but was certainly tabloid fodder before trial.

He did find a motive but you don't accept it. He says they saw evil and wanted to join in. Yes, an early judge threw out Mignini's wildest theory.

Are you denying that the prosecution never had 4 differing motives? Please don't go all Machiavelli on me... no I have never beaten my wife!

They had/have a number of motives, so what? I don't care if a murder is solved by solid evidence and the prosecutor can't explain why the perp did it.

The important points in this case are the lack of credible evidence, not motive and not if Mach knows about sleep.

What we do here means as close to nothing as possible. Having said that, I would like to keep Mach on the run about what De Felice meant by "knew to be correct" because that's the heart of the case. Both for her being a suspect and for the police writing the accusation.

 

[anglolawyer]

snip
Smell test, people, smell test. This is not PR, this is telling Juror #5 to have larger cojones to resist the mob.

I agree. It isn't everything by any means but it is much. The three handed killing plus knife plus 2 1/2 hours standing around in the square plus accusing Lumumba plus calling F and the cops etc etc abjectly fails. The lone wolf burglary gone wrong works fine.

 

[christianahannah]

A small correction, the smell turned out not to be bleach but some other cleaner that may have contained some bleach. The smell would obviously similar but not the source. It seems hard to accept that if they had used bleach or a bleach containing product on the 2nd that on the 6th it would still have enough smell to notice.

I use bleach to whiten the sink and leave it there for hours but the smell dissipates quickly after letting it out. Certainly days later there is no residual smell.

I believe the cleaning lady testified that no bleach was missing and that she didn't use it and she had cleaned on the 5th.

I will have to revisit that testimony, however, my recollection was that some of the bleach was gone in one of the bottles and that one of the cleaning ladies had testified to using the bleach on occasion before.

Volturno was at Raffaele's flat on November 8. The bleach could have been used up to November 5. I don't know if it was ever proven or unproven that bleach was used before Amanda's and Raffaele's arrest but there were some who testified to its smell.

 

[christianahannah]

No, he testified he didn't know if the girl that was there in the morning bought anything. So he should have answered: "The girl was in the morning after the murder, very early, and went where the bleach is but I don't know if bought or stole any."

He knew by the 19th that they had been arrested. One year later he finds this information so important he goes on TV before talking with the police.

His interaction with Volturno wasn't a threatening session. Why would he answer questions strictly limited to the precise question rather than being expansive? Maybe he was sleep deprived.

If his nose started growing, would that convince you?

Who knows why some give expansive answers and some give precise answers? That is an individual trait. Look at the various posters on this thread. Some can answer with many words what others answer in a few. Some go off in tangents with their answers while others answer only what is asked.

My opinion of Quintavalle, and it is only my opinion, is that he didn't think the information was important at the time and didn't want to become involved any more than was required. I don't know if he thought it was important later, only that he was told the information could be important.