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

[Mary_H]

You may know I've already talked about this. It's like jumping from a building on fire... you recall? Amanda Knox herself answered to your question: she accused Patrick because It could be truth (It could be true = it was beliavable; they could believe that).
So it could have side-tracked the investigators at least for some time.
Knox thinks she doesn't have any alternative, because the only alternatives would be to tell the truth and accuse herself or one of the true perps (so herself), or to keep on denying (they won't believe that any more, and now Sollecito withdrew her alibi). She sees an unexpected glimmer, the police have a false track, they believe she met Lumumba; she may have them believe to a scenario in which she is not the murderer. She sees an open window and she jumps. The jump may kill her but she is trapped in the fire, she has no alternatives; she tries.

Why is she trapped in a fire? Why is she so desperate that she makes an incredibly stupid decision, that is, chooses a "jump that may kill her?" You make it sound like she was emotionally overwrought, and grasping at straws. How could that be?

I thought she was a cool candidate -- someone who planned an inscrutable crime, someone they still have not been able to break, six years later. Under what circumstances would such a person feel so panicky, so helpless?

 

[Strozzi]

You may know I've already talked about this. It's like jumping from a building on fire... you recall? Amanda Knox herself answered to your question: she accused Patrick because It could be truth (It could be true = it was beliavable; they could believe that).
So it could have side-tracked the investigators at least for some time.
Knox thinks she doesn't have any alternative, because the only alternatives would be to tell the truth and accuse herself or one of the true perps (so herself), or to keep on denying (they won't believe that any more, and now Sollecito withdrew her alibi). She sees an unexpected glimmer, the police have a false track, they believe she met Lumumba; she may have them believe to a scenario in which she is not the murderer. She sees an open window and she jumps. The jump may kill her but she is trapped in the fire, she has no alternatives; she tries.

Machiavelli, there is a simpler explanation for that night. The police took her into the room to interrogate her and steered the conversation "to provide information that the police already knew to be true". And they were in a rush to get compromising information that night because they knew Amanda's mother was to arrive the next day from Seattle.

The police told her Sollecito said she had gone out the night of Nov 1, the murder night (he was confusing Nov 1 evening with October 31 evening when she did go out to waitress at Le Chic for the big Holloween evening and he stayed home and worked on his thesis). Amanda denied she had gone out but after hostile accusations from the interrogators that she was lying they convinced her that she had gone out, had met someone - the recipient of the texts - that she was lying, that whoever she exchanged texts with that night is the murderer. Of course, she did not remember this and denied it but after incessant anger and shouting by the police and two hits from behind she was so confused she believed the interpreter when the interpreter told Amanda that she was there but traumatized, suffered amnesia, and was there. That of course got Amanda scared because she trusted the police but had no memory of meeting Lumumba or being at the house.

You may deny the above. So it is my turn to say "prove it!" Prove it is not what occurred.

So the "it could be true" is written while she is still reeling and confused. And since she has no memory of being at the house and no way of knowing who the killer is but the police tell her that Lumumba is the killer she believes "it could be true".

My hope is that there are enough police involved at different stages that night that eventually one or two will finally come forward - even 10 years from now - to tell what really happened that evening. Maybe a family member - a divorcing spouse - will reveal what their policeofficer-spouse told them occurred and how it had gone down.

 

[Samson]

Without the internet few outside of Amanda's family and friends would have heard of, or at least remembered, Amanda's name and she and Raffaele would be spending most of their lives in a Perugian prison for a crime they did not commit.

Let me think about that, it is certain that this thread has collated vast information and can be substantially useful for redressing further injustices that may occur to people suffering in this debacle.

 

[kwill]

Amanda Knox herself answered to your question: she accused Patrick because It could be truth (It could be true = it was beliavable; they could believe that).

You have it backwards. They already believed it (remember, they said she buckled and told them what they knew to be true.)

Their task that night was to make her think it could be the truth -- to get her to confirm what turned out to be their wildly off-the-mark suspicions. They succeeded.

In your telling, this 20-yr-old murderer who has managed to say nothing incriminating for days while being secretly recorded, who has coolly washed blood off her hands, who has been capable of maniacal jealousy -- that young woman falls apart and begins to behave stupidly the moment she realizes she herself is under suspicion. She doesn't ask for a lawyer. She doesn't ask if she's under arrest. She doesn't ask if she can leave.

If only there were a recording of that interview, eh? I'm with Strozzi . . . I hope some day one of the police speaks up to say how it actually happened.

 

[Antony]

Of course, the idea that Amanda couldn't have been involved because women just don't do such things, or that she was good student, or that she wouldn't hurt a spider mean little to nothing.

This is true, but I think the reason why Amanda's supporters focus on her good character is the tidal wave of character assassination that continues to be part of the debate supporting the Italian establishment's actions against her.

It is (a) untrue; and (b) not genuine evidence.

Which of these points do you argue? Of course, we argue both of them, but neither line of argument detracts from the other.

 

[Planigale]

".

No. My position (and I believe the law is with me) is of a flat "no" to this point.
A fingerprint may well be just compatible, and be a piece of circumstantial evidence.
Pieces of evidence do not need to have a standard of certainity.

At least we may agree that my position and yours are incompatible.

Anyway this is a simple point, quite at the root of any reasoning. Regardless everyone opinion, I think it is quite clear to everybody that the Supreme Court jurisprudence expresses my view.

I'm not offering my point as a legal argument; I think it is an argument about rationality. I think it belongs to logic not just to legal procedure.

The problem is there is not equality between prosecution and defence. The prosecution can collect lots of random facts, stories of screaming and running, discard those irrelevant and just present the one or two compatible with their story. Could a scream be heard? There is considerable doubt and some evidence that the scream heard could NOT be from the apartment. There is considerable doubt about the day that the scream was heard on and some that it was not the night of the murder. There is certainly no identity on the scream. Any university town or big city, the odd late night scream is not unusual. Certainly the character of the scream was not so unusual that it was reported at the time, or even after the report of the murder, but far later. given the uncertainty over time date nature and identity, any honest assessment has to be that this is more likely unrelated to the crime than related. The post mortem evidence is however really strong that the murder must have occurred shortly after 21.00. Rudi admits being present at the apartment and confirms the timing of the murder as being shortly after 21.00.

Interestingly I take the 'lies' of Amanda as evidence of innocence. I can see myself buckling and confessing. What is interesting is how she got details wrong that she would have got right had she been present. When sleep deprived one loses the ability to discriminate between reality and dreaming, intrusive dreams and mini-sleeps occur. Reality seeps into dreams. Her 'confession' seems to me an accurate description of a sleep deprived individual susceptible to suggestion who can no longer clearly discriminate between reality and dream. This is why Mach is so keen to deny sleep deprivation because this is so clearly a sleep deprived description, with he facts fed by the police.

Many knives were present in the apartment and were untested, one of which might have been involved in the crime and revealed important information, e.g. finger prints of some one who should not have been there.

A simple example of 'scientific validity' is the timing on the video. One needs to check the accuracy of the clock otherwise it is false evidence. It is like saying hypothetically that it was suspicious person X was warmly dressed because the temperature was 32. The Italian would assume it was centigrade and hot, the American it was Fahrenheit and cold, any scientist would realise that we were on Uranus. Without knowing the units and accuracy the value is meaningless.

It is like this with the PCR data, unless the test is done correctly and the controls and calibrations are given, the result is meaningless.

The honest way to present the luminal footprints is to say that given 1) luminal result, 2) TMB result 3) Lack of cellular material 4) lack of human specific test. It is most likely that these footprints were not the result of blood, there is a small but non zero possibility that it might be very dilute blood. It is not possible to attribute any time to its deposition, it may have been before, during or after the crime. It is not possible to identify whose foot deposited the material.

Remember there are fingerprints and DNA of unknown persons identified at the apartment, there are untested knives. We know that when AK was interrogated overnight the forensic results were not available, only subsequently did a 'friend' of Rudi tell the police that Rudi might be guilty. I have always thought that getting his testimony would be interesting.

 

[Rolfe]

For example, for a fingerprint to be considered a match, It must have a minimum of 12 similar points. And even this may not be enough. A good set of prints may have 50 points that match. However, sometimes there is a distinguishable feature that is so different from a 12 even 20 similar points that may still eliminate that print.

Quoted for truth. Is it the case that this wasn't generally recognised until the prolonged scandal surrounding the false identification of Shirley McKie's fingerprint in 1997?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_McKie

Rolfe.

 

[acbytesla]

Quoted for truth. Is it the case that this wasn't generally recognised until the prolonged scandal surrounding the false identification of Shirley McKie's fingerprint in 1997?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_McKie

Rolfe.

Here is a great study about fingerprint error. It was done as a result of what "was probably the most highly publicized fingerprint error ever." The case of Brandon Mayfield. But it covers much more than that.

 

[Rolfe]

Here is a great study about fingerprint error. It was done as a result of what "was probably the most highly publicized fingerprint error ever." The case of Brandon Mayfield. But it covers much more than that.

That's really fascinating. I'd forgotten about the Madrid misidentification - round here the McKie case is for sure "the most highly publicized fingerprint error ever".

Rolfe.

 

[billyryan]

You have it backwards. They already believed it (remember, they said she buckled and told them what they knew to be true.)

Their task that night was to make her think it could be the truth -- to get her to confirm what turned out to be their wildly off-the-mark suspicions. They succeeded.

In your telling, this 20-yr-old murderer who has managed to say nothing incriminating for days while being secretly recorded, who has coolly washed blood off her hands, who has been capable of maniacal jealousy -- that young woman falls apart and begins to behave stupidly the moment she realizes she herself is under suspicion. She doesn't ask for a lawyer. She doesn't ask if she's under arrest. She doesn't ask if she can leave.

If only there were a recording of that interview, eh? I'm with Strozzi . . . I hope some day one of the police speaks up to say how it actually happened.

For the right price they will and someday somebody will offer the right price,as it is the main players are able to hold the threat of the consequences to the careers and lifestyle of anyone who decides to talk, but that will lessen and disappear as time goes on,there was plenty of people in that police station, that night, who did nothing wrong and who know a lot,one female officer followed Raffaele out of the police station and gave him a slip of paper with the name of a lawyer, telling him he would need to talk to a one.
A lot of people get a conscious when they go to die and some of the people who were in that police station will yet set the record straight.

 

[acbytesla]

That's really fascinating. I'd forgotten about the Madrid misidentification - round here the McKie case is for sure "the most highly publicized fingerprint error ever".

Rolfe.

The study calls it the most publicized fingerprint error. I don't. But, it goes into a lot more. I'd never heard of the Mickie case, but that doesn't mean much. I didn't know Brandon Mayfield's name either, but I did remember the incident.

 

[Rolfe]

I remembered it after I opened your link. I think it's salutory to remember that with fingerprints as with DNA, if you have a database of the entire population of the world you may well find a match by chance.

I note that article takes the position that McKie could still have left that print and Asbury could still be guilty of the Ross murder. I think they need to look at the politics of the affair a little more closely.


Rolfe.

 

[LondonJohn]

You have it backwards. They already believed it (remember, they said she buckled and told them what they knew to be true.)
Their task that night was to make her think it could be the truth -- to get her to confirm what turned out to be their wildly off-the-mark suspicions. They succeeded.

In your telling, this 20-yr-old murderer who has managed to say nothing incriminating for days while being secretly recorded, who has coolly washed blood off her hands, who has been capable of maniacal jealousy -- that young woman falls apart and begins to behave stupidly the moment she realizes she herself is under suspicion. She doesn't ask for a lawyer. She doesn't ask if she's under arrest. She doesn't ask if she can leave.

If only there were a recording of that interview, eh? I'm with Strozzi . . . I hope some day one of the police speaks up to say how it actually happened.

Yes. The spectacularly ill-judged statement from de Felice in the press conference the next morning indicates all by itself that this wasn't a case of Knox mendaciously clutching at straws in a bid to "save herself".

Remember, de Felice said that the police "knew" that Knox's original version of events wasn't the truth, and that Knox "eventually buckled" and told the police "a version of events that we (the police) knew to be correct".

This explicitly implies two things: 1) At the point when Knox walked into the interrogation room that evening, the police already had a theory of the crime that involved Knox; and 2) the "version of events" that Knox gave when she "buckled" - i.e. the meeting-with-Lumumba version - was precisely what the police had considered the "truth" to be prior to knox "confirming" it.

And from this, we can also infer two things with near-certainty:

1) the police and PM should have been considering Knox a suspect from the very moment she walked into the interrogation room (and accorded her the appropriate rights and protections);

2) The police already "knew" Lumumba to be the "missing link" as it were, which makes it overwhelmingly more likely that the police were suggesting Lumumba as the murderer, rather than the coincidence of Knox choosing to accuse Lumumba out of the blue.

The only other possibility is that de Felice - the Head of the Perugia Police Dept - was lying through his teeth when he made that extraordinary statement. I don't think that's the case - I think he was accurately reporting the way it went. But if people want to come to the conclusion that de Felice chose to lie to the world's media, then I'd suggest that this opens a whole new can of worms in itself.......

 

[Strozzi]

Collection of large knife from Sollecito's drawer

I pointed out by the way, some other false factual element reported here and there by some other poster, for example Strozzi's reporting about the police picking up one knife randomly among several others in Sollecito's apartment. QUOTE]

Police Inspector Finzi picked the knife out of Sollecito's cutlery drawer and put it in an evidence envelope. Finzi stated in court under oath that he collected it because it looked clean. That is why he chose it, he said. He later referred to using "police intuition".

Visual examination of the knife showed a number of visible streaks including several on the right side of the blade running from the tip half way the length of the blade, other areas of discoloration, and dark-colored material exactly in the area where the blade meets the handle. You may read of this in the Conti-Vecchiotti report. A link to the English-translated version of he report follows. See page 7 for visual inspection of the knife: http://knoxdnareport.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/translation-of-the-conti-vecchiotti-report2.pdf

 

[Grinder]

".

No. My position (and I believe the law is with me) is of a flat "no" to this point.
A fingerprint may well be just compatible, and be a piece of circumstantial evidence.
Pieces of evidence do not need to have a standard of certainity.

At least we may agree that my position and yours are incompatible.

Anyway this is a simple point, quite at the root of any reasoning. Regardless everyone opinion, I think it is quite clear to everybody that the Supreme Court jurisprudence expresses my view.

I'm not offering my point as a legal argument; I think it is an argument about rationality. I think it belongs to logic not just to legal procedure.

Well I wish you hadn't added the last sentence. I can accept that the Italian legal system has different rules, but I can't accept that things that are compatible are used to convict without things that match and are certain.

And yes we have incompatible positions on this

 

[Antony]

Yes. The spectacularly ill-judged statement from de Felice in the press conference the next morning indicates all by itself that this wasn't a case of Knox mendaciously clutching at straws in a bid to "save herself".

Remember, de Felice said that the police "knew" that Knox's original version of events wasn't the truth, and that Knox "eventually buckled" and told the police "a version of events that we (the police) knew to be correct".

This explicitly implies two things: 1) At the point when Knox walked into the interrogation room that evening, the police already had a theory of the crime that involved Knox; and 2) the "version of events" that Knox gave when she "buckled" - i.e. the meeting-with-Lumumba version - was precisely what the police had considered the "truth" to be prior to knox "confirming" it.

And from this, we can also infer two things with near-certainty:

1) the police and PM should have been considering Knox a suspect from the very moment she walked into the interrogation room (and accorded her the appropriate rights and protections);

2) The police already "knew" Lumumba to be the "missing link" as it were, which makes it overwhelmingly more likely that the police were suggesting Lumumba as the murderer, rather than the coincidence of Knox choosing to accuse Lumumba out of the blue.

The only other possibility is that de Felice - the Head of the Perugia Police Dept - was lying through his teeth when he made that extraordinary statement. I don't think that's the case - I think he was accurately reporting the way it went. But if people want to come to the conclusion that de Felice chose to lie to the world's media, then I'd suggest that this opens a whole new can of worms in itself.......

Don't want to throw a spanner(*) in the works, but does anyone have a link to the original Italian text of de Felice's statement? I've only seen English translations. I'd be interested to know what the original of "she buckled" was. Or did he make the statement in English? Surely not.

(*) that's a wrench to you uneducated yanks.

 

[Grinder]

I certainly agree that it is unexplained and unjustified. I cannot imagine a reason in the world why Amanda would place a false accusation against Patrick. If she committed the crime as you and the prosecutor claim, then she was aware of the evidence that existed at the scene. Obviously, she had some knowledge of how crimes are investigated, or she wouldn't have gone to the trouble of cleaning everything up and faking a burglary. Why accuse someone who wasn't there, when she was fully aware that the evidence of who WAS there would eventually be uncovered? How do you think that worked in her mind, Mach?

Now had the body been found in Raf's car or buried in his family's yard...

Another big question for the PGP to answer is what was the plan in "leaving" Rudi's evidence behind? Why in the world wouldn't they have wiped up all the blood, the feces, and everything else. Why not wash down the body with bleach? They had hours and hours.

Clearly, if guilty, they decided to leave obvious evidence of Rudi even to the point of staging a break-in in his style, why not point the police towards him on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and the 5th?

 

[Grinder]

You may know I've already talked about this. It's like jumping from a building on fire... you recall? Amanda Knox herself answered to your question: she accused Patrick because It could be truth (It could be true = it was beliavable; they could believe that).
So it could have side-tracked the investigators at least for some time.
Knox thinks she doesn't have any alternative, because the only alternatives would be to tell the truth and accuse herself or one of the true perps (so herself), or to keep on denying (they won't believe that any more, and now Sollecito withdrew her alibi). She sees an unexpected glimmer, the police have a false track, they believe she met Lumumba; she may have them believe to a scenario in which she is not the murderer. She sees an open window and she jumps. The jump may kill her but she is trapped in the fire, she has no alternatives; she tries.

What you miss is that she had days to plan. Why didn't she point in the direction of Rudi?

"There was this basketball player the boys knew from playing at the court in the plaza. One night he was out partying and we all met him and went to the boys' place and hung out. He seemed interested in Meredith and me and later I saw him at Le Chic and asked about Meredith. He seemed a little strange."​

If Raf had really pulled her alibi and it was obvious she was lying about the evening, why didn't that make her a suspect?

 

[RWVBWL]

Of course, the idea that Amanda couldn't have been involved because women just don't do such things, or that she was good student, or that she wouldn't hurt a spider mean little to nothing.

This is true, but I think the reason why Amanda's supporters focus on her good character is the tidal wave of character assassination that continues to be part of the debate supporting the Italian establishment's actions against her.

Well said Antony!
I'm just a supporter who originally thought Amanda Knox and Faffaele Sollecito were guilty, as I'm sure most of you did too. And the character assassination was a big reason to believe she murdered Meredith Kercher.

But she didn't...

 

[RWVBWL]

About that cartoon...

Just had a look at The IIP site, found an interesting new post from Flipp:
Comodi is in trouble because of the infamous 3D cartoon. The Italian Superior Council of Magistrates is processing Comodi for causing an "unjust loss" to the Treasury.

http://www.lanazione.it/umbria/cronaca/2013/11/20/985108-meredith-video-pm.shtml


Heya Machiavelli,
Can you give a good translation please?