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

[LondonJohn]

Cm’on, here it’s just a reality check.
If Amanda Knox was an upper class buisness woman above 30, with a well-paid job, living with a husband ad children, a regular social life with her acquaitned and relatives, who would have dinner every night at 9 pm, in a cool apartment in some other neighborhood downtown… then, her profile and lifestile would appear ‘not compatible’ with a scenario of her dating Rudy Guede for a casual drug-fuelled sex party at a students’ house in via della Pergola.

You see, this is just one illustration of how stupendously wrong you are regarding the "soft factors" in this case.

We'll set to one side for a moment the unavoidable fact that "evidence" such as this is of practically no importance in any attempt to assess guilt or non-guilt/innocence. Instead, we'll merely address the sheer stupidity and wooly thinking of this paragraph. If I could be bothered to spend 20 minutes searching, I am absolutely certain I could find numerous examples of the type of woman you describe above leading a secret double life with a lover from the "wrong side of the tracks". Just off the top of my head as kind-of counterexample, you may or may not have heard about the Mayor of Toronto who was filmed smoking crack in a house not far off being described as a crack den. The Mayor of Toronto! Imagine! A fine upstanding citizen such as that! Smoking crack! It could never happen!

I snipped the rest of your argument because it was more of the same specious rubbish. You don't know what you're talking about.

 

[LondonJohn]

MIT was a notorious party campus back in my school daze. I see little has changed:



http://www.dailyorange.com/2013/11/...als-implement-heavy-restrictions-for-parties/

Wild parties are the perennial concern of campus administrators worldwide, even at elite institutions. It's unsurprising that young students get up to the occasional mischief. This behavior stems from immaturity and social/academic pressures rather than deviance. It's beyond silly to suggest Knox's relatively tame noise citation has any bearing whatsoever on this case or her character in general.

Yes, but only academically-dim underachievers go to MIT, so it stands to reason.

Oh, wait..........

(Riotous parties at Oxbridge and the UK's best redbrick universities are legion as well. It's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that they are either a) out of the ordinary, or b) confined only to maladjusted "off-the-rails" students. But that's the sort of "argument" we'vecome to know and love from many of the pro-guilt idiots commentators)

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

This again seems to boil down to nothing more than - Amanda had sex, if she had sex she is bad and if she is bad she is capable of murder

It shows a total lack of understanding about young people, particularly young women and their lives. Having some sex outside of a relationship is nothing to do with potentially being violent - and most young people will experiment with drugs and alcohol and their appearance and this has nothing to do with any psychopathology.

She was not drifting around Europe just looking for fun - Amanda was not one of the very NORMAL young people on a gap year, spent mostly drunk on a Thailand beach - she was using her year to learn a language.

I think some of the views you've expressed above are also quite anti-American and are the result of a culture clash - and I say that as someone from the UK. When I started university and travelled as a young adult, I thought lots of the Americans I met were loud, flirty, annoying and not very 'cool' - many of the descriptions I've heard used to describe Amanda. It is the main stereotype used to describe young Americans travelling in Europe - thankfully I am no longer so close minded.

And to say one more thing about the drugs they were taking - cannabis has no link to violence. The absolute worst outcome with cannabis, which usually manifests itself in adolescents with excessive use, is to cause paranoia and possibly triggering schizophrenic symptoms - even then it shows no link to group sex and murder - and would more likely cause social withdrawal, isolation and possoble suicide. If anything, the evidence shows that Amanda wasn't a big drinker (alcohol is far more likely to result in violence) and that she was a fairly inexperienced smoker of cannabis.

He is wildly off, doesn't have the first clue.

I cannot conceive of her showing off to get attention. That is the polar opposite of how she is. She comes across as a friendly, well-adjusted person, not shy but not at all flamboyant or pushy.

She can be a goof, and she definitely has a broad streak of candor that might not serve her well in certain situations or with certain people.

As for sex, why would she deprive herself of some adventure while she's young? She's not married, she's not religious, and she was on her junior year abroad. It's her damn business, and I don't think it's going to mess up Machiavelli's life. It obviously messes up his head to think about it, but that's not her fault.

 

[LondonJohn]

I won't breakdown your list of lies point by point, I'll just respond to the part about Raffaele cutting a girl with scissors in his home-town school.

What I was wondering is why you would tell such a lie? You know this is a lie, because you attended the hearings.

You will have heard inspector Volturno say that he followed a lead by an unnamed informant that he would not reveal, to Raffaele's school, on the basis that some boy had apparently pricked or cut a girl with scissors. When he got there, he found the story to be unfounded. Not only did the school or anybody else say that Raffaele had not cut anybody with scissors, but indeed no girl had ever been cut by scissors.

So this was an unfounded claim, and as such, was not entered as evidence against Raffaele.

So my question to you Machiavelli, is why would you write such despicable lies?

While you're absolutely correct, the more important fact is this: whether or not Sollecito ever threatened a girlwith scissors in his schooldays (and there's no reliable evidence that he did anyhow), this would have zero bearing on the assessment of his guilt/non-guiilt/innocence in the murder of Meredith Kercher.

There's a very, very good reason why courts are not told about previous misdemeanours or felonies - even if they were proven. It's because human psychology means that it can be all too easy to draw the false inference that "if (s)he did something like that before, (s)he's more likely to have done this think that (s)he's charged with now".

Even if Sollecito had been justly convicted of murdering a woman with a knife when he was 14 (and had got out of prison just weeks before the Kercher murder), this fact would not have been admissible in the trial against him for the murder of Meredith. The WHOLE POINT is that guilt or non-guilt for a given crime must ONLY be assessed in relation to the evidence that's directly related to the crime itself.

It's not uncommon in UK high-profile trials for meedia reporters to say/write something like this: "After the jury returned a guilty verdict on Mr Smith for the murder of his wife, they were told that Smith had previously been convicted 25 years earlier for the murder of his first wife."

 

[LondonJohn]

That appears to be true. His latest barrage of anti-Knox fervor is silly, false or both silly and false. I wonder if there is any value in responding to it at all. It clearly indicates that the author of it is deeply involved in circular reasoning. He knows that Knox is guilty and therefore whatever behaviors he thinks might be true are true if they sustain his belief that Knox is guilty. And then he uses his belief that his little collection of half truths, falsehoods and innuendos are true and incriminating to prove to himself that Knox is guilty.

There is no way to break this circle of logic that I can see. It is self sustaining.



Exactly, evidence of violence (being at a noisy party doesn't count Machiavelli) or even some kinds of unusual sexual practices would lend credence to the idea that somebody might have been involved with a crime like the murder of Kercher. But despite, all this digging and all this hate filled sniping about Knox there isn't a tiny piece of evidence that has been made public about Knox to suggest that she is the kind of person that one would expect to commit this kind of crime. Machiavelli's nonsense should stand Knox in good stead on this issue, if this is all that the Knox haters can come up with she must be a very good person.

There's an interesting illustration related to this issue from the OJ Simpson trial. Prosecutors tried to use the following argument with the jury: Most men who kill their partners (or ex-partners) have history of spousal abuse. Simpson had a history of abusing Nicole. Therefore this makes it more likely that it was Simpson who killed Nicole.

The problem with this "argument" is that it's got a rather massive logical hole in it. That hole is as follows: most men (in fact almost all men) who abuse their spouses do not subsequently go on to kill them.

The jury knew this full well. In fact, given the jury demographics, it's probable that most of them at least knew someone (or even many) who'd been abused by their male partner, yet was still alive. They'd therefore have correctly turned the prosecution "argument" around to reason "Just because Simpson beat his wife, that in no way means he killed her".

Interestingly, prosecutors - had they been intelligent enough - could have constructed an argument based on Boolean theory that was logically watertight and might well have had an impact on the jury. They could have argued (supported by the available statistics) that if a) a woman is murdered, where b) that woman has previously been physically abused by a spouse/ex-spouse, and c) there are no other "risk factors" for murder (e.g. the woman's involved in the drug scene or is a prostitute, etc), then it's actually very statistically likely that it was the spouse/ex-spouse who murdered her.


(Incidentally, previous reliable evidence of a man physically abusing the woman he's currently on trial for murdering is quite obviously directly relevant, and should therefore quite obviously be placed in front of the triers of fact. Similarly, if there had been credible, reliable evidence that Knox or Sollecito had either psychologically or physically abused Meredith in the past, this would have been directly relevant in their trials. Of course there was no such evidence.)

 

[Teddy2007]

While you're absolutely correct, the more important fact is this: whether or not Sollecito ever threatened a girlwith scissors in his schooldays (and there's no reliable evidence that he did anyhow), this would have zero bearing on the assessment of his guilt/non-guiilt/innocence in the murder of Meredith Kercher.

There's a very, very good reason why courts are not told about previous misdemeanours or felonies - even if they were proven. It's because human psychology means that it can be all too easy to draw the false inference that "if (s)he did something like that before, (s)he's more likely to have done this think that (s)he's charged with now".

Even if Sollecito had been justly convicted of murdering a woman with a knife when he was 14 (and had got out of prison just weeks before the Kercher murder), this fact would not have been admissible in the trial against him for the murder of Meredith. The WHOLE POINT is that guilt or non-guilt for a given crime must ONLY be assessed in relation to the evidence that's directly related to the crime itself.

It's not uncommon in UK high-profile trials for meedia reporters to say/write something like this: "After the jury returned a guilty verdict on Mr Smith for the murder of his wife, they were told that Smith had previously been convicted 25 years earlier for the murder of his first wife."

That is all true LJ, but that was not the point of my post.

The point of my post is this: What does Machiavelli have to gain by knowingly telling lies about this case? What is his motivation?

I would like Machiavelli to respond.

 

[LondonJohn]

That is all true LJ, but that was not the point of my post.

The point of my post is this: What does Machiavelli have to gain by knowingly telling lies about this case? What is his motivation?

I would like Machiavelli to respond.

Very true (and yes I did realise that this wasn't your point anyhow, but I wanted to go off on another one of my rants )

I - like you - would be very keen to try to understand why Machiavelli, in conjunction with a very large proportion of pro-guilt commentators, is so keen to besmirch Knox's (and Sollecito's reputation with this sort of mixture of unproven allegations, baseless smears, and outright lies.

Actually, I probably already know the reason. It's because some people like to "reassure" themselves that if they decide someone's a murderer (or similar), it's then necessary to construct a character assassination of that person in order to shore up that decision. Such people are probably a) insecure about their arguments, b) ignorant of the logically-correct way to approach an assessment of guilt/non-guilt, and c) quite vindictive and bitter people at heart anyhow.

 

[acbytesla]

There's an interesting illustration related to this issue from the OJ Simpson trial. Prosecutors tried to use the following argument with the jury: Most men who kill their partners (or ex-partners) have history of spousal abuse. Simpson had a history of abusing Nicole. Therefore this makes it more likely that it was Simpson who killed Nicole.

The problem with this "argument" is that it's got a rather massive logical hole in it. That hole is as follows: most men (in fact almost all men) who abuse their spouses do not subsequently go on to kill them.

The jury knew this full well. In fact, given the jury demographics, it's probable that most of them at least knew someone (or even many) who'd been abused by their male partner, yet was still alive. They'd therefore have correctly turned the prosecution "argument" around to reason "Just because Simpson beat his wife, that in no way means he killed her".

Interestingly, prosecutors - had they been intelligent enough - could have constructed an argument based on Boolean theory that was logically watertight and might well have had an impact on the jury. They could have argued (supported by the available statistics) that if a) a woman is murdered, where b) that woman has previously been physically abused by a spouse/ex-spouse, and c) there are no other "risk factors" for murder (e.g. the woman's involved in the drug scene or is a prostitute, etc), then it's actually very statistically likely that it was the spouse/ex-spouse who murdered her.


(Incidentally, previous reliable evidence of a man physically abusing the woman he's currently on trial for murdering is quite obviously directly relevant, and should therefore quite obviously be placed in front of the triers of fact. Similarly, if there had been credible, reliable evidence that Knox or Sollecito had either psychologically or physically abused Meredith in the past, this would have been directly relevant in their trials. Of course there was no such evidence.)

Not sure I like the use of OJ as an example LJ. OJ was guilty as can be in that case. That was a simple case of jury nullification. That case just proved that a rich black man can get away with crime just like any other rich guy.

The weird thing is, that while OJ should have gone to jail for those murders, he received a much harsher sentence than is usual for the crime that he is in prison for today.

 

[NancyS]

The profile of Amanda Knox is just compatible with a scenario where she attended a sexual meeting with Guede at Via della Pergola. Every rational person can see that.
Just say it’s compatible and move on.

Wanted to comment a bit further on this - the only place where people arrange 'sexual meetings' is in the perverted dreams of the prosecution - it's like they lifted the plot straight out of some dodgy porn movie - maybe Migini is a huge secret fan of Fifty Shades of Grey

Young people have sex, but they very very rarely arrange 'sexual meetings' with people they barely know in the hope of some group action - nothing about Amanda is compatible with this. I would say that the theory is compatible with the prosecution getting their ideas about modern American women from Internet porn sites - and says far more about the prosecution than Amanda

 

[Skind]

Your (folks') objections were that she was not a ‘party girl’ because she was a honor student (a curiously unproven claim, btw) and that the reason and circumstances in which she gave her phone number to the drug dealer are not known in detail.
It’s self-evident that such objections are ludicrous.

No, the objections are based on the obsolute absence of evidence for the claims made against Knox.

To claim that someone is a 'party girl' has very serious connotations about their behaviour.

A party girl is not just a girl that goes to parties (we call such people 'students' in both the US and UK) but one that has extreme behaviour involving extreme promiscuity, drunkeness, drug taking, erratic behaviour, irresponsibility and frequent aggressiveness and assualt.

Knox's known party behaviour is: to get drunk and giggly in a kitchen after "2 and a half" shots, to flick a v-sign at a camera, and to get a noise ticket. Oh, she once smoked part of a spinolla.

Note, it's called a ticket because you get issued with a ticket that you have to take to pay. Nothing about police writing reports makes it any more serious than a ticket. ALL police tickets have a report written for them, even if it's an exact copy of the ticket. A parking ticket will have the phyiscal ticket, the report, AND photographic evidence AND GPS information.

Note also, the Knox got the ticket because she was the resident that went to deal with it. The ticket itself is payable by the residents. Any other resident in that house was equally liable to get the ticket - it's essentially not even Knox's ticket.

Knox's known behaviour is factually incompatible with asserting she is a 'party girl'.

 

[andreajo]

Very true (and yes I did realise that this wasn't your point anyhow, but I wanted to go off on another one of my rants )

I - like you - would be very keen to try to understand why Machiavelli, in conjunction with a very large proportion of pro-guilt commentators, is so keen to besmirch Knox's (and Sollecito's reputation with this sort of mixture of unproven allegations, baseless smears, and outright lies.

Actually, I probably already know the reason. It's because some people like to "reassure" themselves that if they decide someone's a murderer (or similar), it's then necessary to construct a character assassination of that person in order to shore up that decision. Such people are probably a) insecure about their arguments, b) ignorant of the logically-correct way to approach an assessment of guilt/non-guilt, and c) quite vindictive and bitter people at heart anyhow.

I read over at PMF sometimes. Some of the most fervent posters seem to have established a one-sided emotional allegiance with the Kerchers and see their activities as a heroic pursuit of justice on behalf of a cruelly bereaved family. Like you say, LJ they can be even more heroic (shore up their decision) if they use their imaginations to make Meredith saintly and Amanda Knox diabolical. And then it just goes on in a self-propagating, self-justifying cycle that is reinforced within the PGP community.

I wonder if some people got into this spin cycle early in the case when the media reports were damning. Once you get in, it's hard to get out because you'd have to admit that you have not been the hero for justice you had imagined, but have participated cruelly in the victimization of innocents.

Dehumanizing Amanda and Raffaele seems to be a necessary piece in the PGP puzzle. It probably helps when they are having their doubts and the cognitive dissonance is keeping them awake at night.

 

[andreajo]

C'mon Strozzi, they never record anything in Italy. Except interrogations. Or do I have that backwards?? Or is it they record interrogations and don't record phone calls? No,...no, maybe it is they record hallway conversations and ....hmmmmm (scratching my head) I'm confused now.

Travel tip: when abroad in Italy, only record things in your travel journal that would reflect well on you if you were called upon to stand trial for murder.

I wish this was more funny and less scary.

 

[Kestrel]

I wonder if some people got into this spin cycle early in the case when the media reports were damning. Once you get in, it's hard to get out because you'd have to admit that you have not been the hero for justice you had imagined, but have participated cruelly in the victimization of innocents.

Continuing to smear people you have never met is a lot easier than admitting you were wrong about them. The fact there is an active internet community dedicated to smearing AK and RS makes it even easier.

What is a bit scary is how that community will attack anyone who supports AK and RS. If you refute the pro guilt talking points on other forums, you can count on being accused of being a paid spokesman for Amanda. Credentialed experts like Steve Moore and John Douglas became persona non grata once they pointed out the flaws in the case against AK and RS. PGP even managed to get Steve Moore fired from his university job.

 

[Grinder]

I thought that Ms. Knox was tested for drug use and it came out negative. A competent forensic laboratory would detect cocaine, opiates, ecstasy, amphetamine use up to 3 months after use; a competent laboratory.

In fairness, they weren't competent.

Btw, does anyone have an inventory of prescription drugs at Raf's?

 

[andreajo]

Continuing to smear people you have never met is a lot easier than admitting you were wrong about them. The fact there is an active internet community dedicated to smearing AK and RS makes it even easier.

What is a bit scary is how that community will attack anyone who supports AK and RS. If you refute the pro guilt talking points on other forums, you can count on being accused of being a paid spokesman for Amanda. Credentialed experts like Steve Moore and John Douglas became persona non grata once they pointed out the flaws in the case against AK and RS. PGP even managed to get Steve Moore fired from his university job.

It is scary. At least in the old days, you had to look your victim in the face when you were marching with the pitchfork and lantern brigade, although any doubts you might've had about the correctness of your actions would likely be overcome by the encouragement of the mob.

I was aware that Mr. Moore had been fired from Pepperdine, and I was pleased to read he'd received compensation. The episode is an example of the real-life consequences that internet bullying can have. It is also an example of how people, including some Pepperdine administrators involved in making the decision to fire Mr. Moore, fail to perform due diligence when evaluating the credibility of sources they are relying upon to inform their decisions.

There was actually quite an involved discussion on PMF the other day about the size of Steve Moore's you-know-what. Really? Some people actually thought that kind of conversation should be a part of a grown-up discussion about Mr. Moore's opinions on the Kercher case?

 

[Grinder]

From the other side: Bruce and "Dougie" make the mistake of believing in Journalism Heresy (words shape reality, if a journalist describes something as X, then it is X).

(They also continually make the double mistake of starting from a presumption of guilt, and trying to argue from there. That is not a convincing or persuasive way of doing it. Only weak and mediocre arguments are presented with that technique, because they force themselves to discard and ignore a lot of helpful and strong reasoning before they even start. Why they do that is a mystery, and might be explained by their innate sense of fairness.)

I believe they are referring to the interrogators being guilty of bad form.

They also continually make the double mistake of starting from a presumption of guilt, and trying to argue from there.
Is there a "I'm laughing so hard I'm crying" acronym?

There's more: For example, in Honor Bound Sollecito reports that in the week they knew each other, Knox would routinely get up at five in the morning while at his house and yet on this same-as-any-other morning he claims she got up about half past nine. He makes no explanation as to why this is completely unlike the routine he just described. In WTBH, Knox makes a similar claim about the evening that they suddenly have together ("Woo hoo!") even though both report that they had been together for six out of the previous seven evenings (the exception being Halloween the night before). Knox is intending to explain by this why she unusually switched off her phone (= so as not to interrupt this precious moment) but she then can't really remember what happened next, and she does not even try to explain why phone records show that (like Sollecito) it was the first time in 30 days that their phones were switched off.

How would they know if the phone had been turned off? Why don't these PGP ask for Meredith's phone history to see if she had made similar calls to her bank and other numbers late at night just fooling with the phone as Massei speculated?

She also switched her phone off so as not to have to ignore a call back by Patrick, which would have a unique situation for her. You know, having her boss cancel work and being with Raf.

 

[Bill Williams]

I thought that Ms. Knox was tested for drug use and it came out negative. A competent forensic laboratory would detect cocaine, opiates, ecstasy, amphetamine use up to 3 months after use; a competent laboratory.

In fairness, they weren't competent.
Btw, does anyone have an inventory of prescription drugs at Raf's?

This reminds me of the way that Peggy Ganong used the "double negative" argument following the Oct 2011 acquittal... it was one of the things that drove me into the innocence camp, really.

I'm not saying you're either similarly arguing, Grinder, or even supporting it, you're making the observation which reminds me of it.

In essence, the logic goes like this. Knox was tested for drugs at arrest and it came out negative. Yet it's clear that the lab was incompetent. Therefore she must have had either cocaine, opiates, ecstasy, or amphetamines in her system. Bingo, case solved!

(As per Machiavelli's recent pornography, at the very least this is a "compatible" theory.)

Peggy back then argued that if you throw out the bre-clasp against Raffaele and the knife against Amanda (because of throwing out the DNA forensics) then you have to throw out the forensics against Rudy.

And therefore a subset of guilterdom is born.... "we really cannot know how this murder happened, and this is because there's something Amanda is not telling us."

How many times have we heard that, eh Barbie?

What drove me into the innocence camp was stuff like this. The reality, is that the first forensic sweep yielded everything about Rudy and Rudy alone. It wasn;t until 47 days later, after losing all evidence against Raffaele (the Nike) that they went back to get the very suspect bra-clasp.

So, no Peggy, it's truly not the fact that throwing out stuff which leads to AK and RS's exoneration necessitates throwing stuff out against Rudy, esp. when Rudy, unlike the other two, actually admits to being there.

 

[Bill Williams]

He is wildly off, doesn't have the first clue.

I cannot conceive of her showing off to get attention. That is the polar opposite of how she is. She comes across as a friendly, well-adjusted person, not shy but not at all flamboyant or pushy.

She can be a goof, and she definitely has a broad streak of candor that might not serve her well in certain situations or with certain people.

As for sex, why would she deprive herself of some adventure while she's young? She's not married, she's not religious, and she was on her junior year abroad. It's her damn business, and I don't think it's going to mess up Machiavelli's life. It obviously messes up his head to think about it, but that's not her fault.

What!? Religious people don't have sex? How do you think they get little religious people?

Ok, ok, I get it.... religious people in some countries make it seem that the sum total of theological inquiry is to control sexual behaviour. As witnessed by Machiavelli long diatribe - which actually is the sum total of his theory of the crime, btw - sex has a lot to do with it in his own (and my guess Mignini's mind.... ew!).....

The point is, as other posters have said better than me, there is not a single element in Machiavelli's post that has anything to do, really, with even suspecting two students of murder. (Remember, they solved the crime on these sorts of things before the forensics even came it - as per their brag.)

If Machiavelli's world were true, universities, like the one in Perugia but also around the world were motivated by this, they would be killing grounds and would need National Guard security and drone strikes every Friday night to restore order....

 

[Bill Williams]

The profile of Amanda Knox is just compatible with a scenario where she attended a sexual meeting with Guede at Via della Pergola. Every rational person can see that.
Just say it’s compatible and move on.

Wanted to comment a bit further on this - the only place where people arrange 'sexual meetings' is in the perverted dreams of the prosecution - it's like they lifted the plot straight out of some dodgy porn movie - maybe Migini is a huge secret fan of Fifty Shades of Grey

Young people have sex, but they very very rarely arrange 'sexual meetings' with people they barely know in the hope of some group action - nothing about Amanda is compatible with this. I would say that the theory is compatible with the prosecution getting their ideas about modern American women from Internet porn sites - and says far more about the prosecution than Amanda

It is revealing, isn't it, that this is the only place Machiavelli can argue... on the "compatibility" side of things... meaning, there isn't a shred of evidence to even suggest this, it's just that it is compatible.

It's like he's claiming that a flood of water recently happened on a city street. There's actually no sign at all of flooding.

Yet he wants to get you to look at the shape of the street - which perhaps could channel a flood down its avenues, and after all there are water mains buried beneath. So, let's face it - the street is compatible with the idea that there could have been flooding in it.

So call out disaster services and go rescue the merchants and tenants of apartments along that street!!!!

What is so enjoyable about reading Machiavelli's stuff, is that the very subject matter dealt with proves that the original prosecution really had nothing.

Point weak, shout louder.

 

[acbytesla]

Travel tip: when abroad in Italy, only record things in your travel journal that would reflect well on you if you were called upon to stand trial for murder.

I wish this was more funny and less scary.

Maybe Rick Steves should add that to his "tips for traveling through Italy?

(Another resident of the Seattle area)