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

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Antony said:
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.
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I have no problem with people arguing that accusations are untrue and in fact I do it all the time. I have posted the actual police report of the noise ticket multiple times. I have pointed out that the "rape prank" was based on a comment by a dungeons and dragons type on the Slog.

What I was and am objecting to is the meme that Amanda couldn't have been involved because of her life's history or make-up.

A while back LJ took Popham to task because he had said there was no evidence except the DNA. I agree with LJ that it is not productive to say no evidence exists when there is evidence just not enough or good enough to convict.

Of course, the "evidence" of Amanda's life style is not genuine evidence even if true. Some of it is true but has no probative value to most clear thinkers
 
RWVBWL said:
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...
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Can I say that I never thought they were guilty but I only heard about the case at the conclusion of the Massei trial. Then I thought, this doesn't sound right, but maybe when I read what the evidence is, it'll make sense."

I soon realised from reading the discussion blogs that not only was there no genuine evidence, but the 2 students were at the scene when the crime was discovered, and Amanda had been subjected to an all-night interrogation session with no safeguards for her rights, and the resulting statement was being used against her. That was the clincher for me.
 
Stoned?

Antony said:
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. ;)
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Hi Antony,
maybe check the early Perugia Shock, back when FS was sometimes posting in Italian:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100807000507/http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html


Having a quick read there myself,
I see it mentioned a coupla times that Raff was stoned when the cops found his pocket knife on him.

Raffaele Sollecito questioned:
Q: Why you still had a knife?
A: I was so smoked that when they've taken me to questura I didn't take it away from my jacket.
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Then Amanda, Raffaele and Patrick --when questioned by the police-- tried to pursue their story. But not only there wasn't coherence among the three versions, even inside the three versions there were lots of contradictions, new at every stage. Their defensive strategy, undeliberately, was "a chaos" as the questore Arturo De Felice defined it.
Chaos in Amanda's mind, justified with the suffered shock. Chaos in Raffaele's mind, justified with the smoked joints. No disclosures yet about Patrick's version.
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Stoned and sitting in a room with police detectives late at night?
Yikes!

No wonder Raff couldn't get his story straight and thereby confused Halloween night with the next night, so he then asked for a calendar to help him sort it out when interrogated by a buncha cops who were planning to arrest Amanda Knox that night, before her Mother arrived tomorrow, as Judge Matteini has stated...
 
Antony said:
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. ;)
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I believe de Felice used the Italian word "crollare", which directly translates as "crumbled" or "buckled".
 
RWVBWL said:
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?
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Very interesting.

It basically says that Comodi is accused by the CSM (the regulatory body for Italian magistrates) of failing to follow mandatory procedures related to the payment of this contract. She's accused, in effect, of willful overpayment to the company that made the animation, and consequently of causing an unnecessary and unlawful loss to the Treasury.

Quite WHY Comodi might willfully overpay to the animation company must be left, at this point in time, to readers' imaginations...... :rolleyes:
 
JREF2010 said:
About time, it also mentions Mignini who approved it.
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I used google to produce a rough English translaton of the article. If I understand the rough translation, Comodi faces a hearing on December 6 by the disciplinary section of the CSM (my note: CSM appears to be the administrative body of the court system.)

The article alleges that Comodi and Mignini together hired a firm, Nventa Id, to create the animation and later expanded the work to include creating a database of trial proceedings. Comodi (not Mignini) later authorized payment to be made to the firm for EUR 182,740, thus causing damage to the Treasury's budget by the large amount.

An allegation is that Comodi ordered payment be made to the firm in violation of proper contracting procedures. Questions concern whether the contract was properly specific or whether the firm's invoice was properly specific as to what tasks were to be performed and what was actually performed.

Was the animation used but once in court? Is it publicly available? Can defense attorneys or the public access the database of the trial proceedings paid for with Italian public funds?
 
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LondonJohn said:
Very interesting.

It basically says that Comodi is accused by the CSM (the regulatory body for Italian magistrates) of failing to follow mandatory procedures related to the payment of this contract. She's accused, in effect, of willful overpayment to the company that made the animation, and consequently of causing an unnecessary and unlawful loss to the Treasury.

Quite WHY Comodi might willfully overpay to the animation company must be left, at this point in time, to readers' imaginations...... :rolleyes:
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I note that the firm was originally retained to produce the animation. Later it was tasked to develop a database of court proceedings. Normally the second task, which came later, would be done on a second procurement contract or work order because it is a not a simple expansion of the animation task but is an entirely different and separate product deliverable. One reason a manager might merge the two without adequately specifying the various tasks to be performed and itemizing their costs is to obfuscate the expense incurred in performing some of the tasks. In other words, trying to hide cost overruns in one part of a contract by increasing the total contract - and not adequately itemizing the details.
 
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Mach,

If the evidence is so overwhelming why did the prosecution feel they needed an animation at any expense? Do you think Comodi should be sanctioned over this? how about Mignini?
 
Strozzi said:
... and later expanded the work to include creating a database of trial proceedings.
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That is news. Lawyers that have access to the court transcripts can pretty much do what they want with them. Same for the news outlets that access the case files. But a privat company contracted to create a database of the trial proceedings would be given the full transcripts and documents but would be contractually prohibited from releasing it even though the information was esentually public.

In fact, to even use that information privately, say to chat about the case in online forums would be a breach of that contract. Someone in the Italian judiciary is pissed and looking to fill the gap between the buss and the pavement with whatever meat they can catch.


ETA: Ms. Comfortable is due in court December 6th. I guess that is when the bovine byproducts will his the rotational air movement device.
 
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Strozzi said:
I used google to produce a rough English translaton of the article. If I understand the rough translation, Comodi faces a hearing on December 6 by the disciplinary section of the CSM (my note: CSM appears to be the administrative body of the court system.)

The article alleges that Comodi and Mignini together hired a firm, Nventa Id, to create the animation and later expanded the work to include creating a database of trial proceedings. Comodi (not Mignini) later authorized payment to be made to the firm for EUR 182,740, thus causing damage to the Treasury's budget by the large amount.

An allegation is that Comodi ordered payment be made to the firm in violation of proper contracting procedures. Questions concern whether the contract was properly specific or whether the firm's invoice was properly specific as to what tasks were to be performed and what was actually performed.

Was the animation used but once in court? Is it publicly available? Can defense attorneys or the public access the database of the trial proceedings paid for with Italian public funds?
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The invoice from Nventa can be found here: http://www.injusticeanywhereforum.com/download/file.php?id=1172
 
Dan O. said:
That is news. Lawyers that have access to the court transcripts can pretty much do what they want with them. Same for the news outlets that access the case files. But a privat company contracted to create a database of the trial proceedings would be given the full transcripts and documents but would be contractually prohibited from releasing it even though the information was esentually public.

In fact, to even use that information privately, say to chat about the case in online forums would be a breach of that contract. Someone in the Italian judiciary is pissed and looking to fill the gap between the buss and the pavement with whatever meat they can catch.
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So . . . there does exist a complete collection of the transcripts and documents, all gathered in one place? This has been one of the puzzling things to me. Sometimes people say, "I wish we had a transcript" of this or that testimony, and I think, well, why don't you?

I've gathered that it's another point of differentiation between the USA/UK system and the Italian one. We the people pay for those proceedings, so unless there are issues of national security, all of what goes on in them belongs to us, and anyone can ask for the documentation at any time for any reason (or no particular reason).

It seems very strange to have to guess at what was actually said, and also to have no reliable translations for a case that involved someone who spoke American English and very little Italian.

I wonder why Comodi wanted the company to create that database. Anticipating needing it for the inevitable 2nd instance? Just trying to hide cost overruns? Some other reason?
 
kwill said:
So . . . there does exist a complete collection of the transcripts and documents, all gathered in one place? This has been one of the puzzling things to me. Sometimes people say, "I wish we had a transcript" of this or that testimony, and I think, well, why don't you?

I've gathered that it's another point of differentiation between the USA/UK system and the Italian one. We the people pay for those proceedings, so unless there are issues of national security, all of what goes on in them belongs to us, and anyone can ask for the documentation at any time for any reason (or no particular reason).

It seems very strange to have to guess at what was actually said, and also to have no reliable translations for a case that involved someone who spoke American English and very little Italian.

I wonder why Comodi wanted the company to create that database. Anticipating needing it for the inevitable 2nd instance? Just trying to hide cost overruns? Some other reason?
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Loading a bunch of transcripts into a database can't cost that much. $10,000?

And how much could the cartoon really have cost? $20,000?

Let's see, what else does this company do? Wiretapping.
 
I'm not sure how it is now, but certainly in Scotland until recently you had to pay £1 per page for a court transcript. And let me tell you there aren't that many words on a page. I suppose in the days when some poor secretary had to go find the typescript and physically photocopy each page it might have been justified. But in these days of electronic files, it's extortionate.

For the full transcript of the Lockerbie trial, the cost would theoretically have been £10,000. Who can afford that? (I don't know if anyone actually paid it, but the entire transcript has been out in the wild for free for some time. And I don't see how they can object.)

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
I'm not sure how it is now, but certainly in Scotland until recently you had to pay £1 per page for a court transcript. And let me tell you there aren't that many words on a page. I suppose in the days when some poor secretary had to go find the typescript and physically photocopy each page it might have been justified. But in these days of electronic files, it's extortionate.

For the full transcript of the Lockerbie trial, the cost would theoretically have been £10,000. Who can afford that? (I don't know if anyone actually paid it, but the entire transcript has been out in the wild for free for some time. And I don't see how they can object.)

Rolfe.
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Well, that's true. I guess I was assuming that the prosecutor would obtain the transcript disks themselves, and send the disks to the consulting firm to load into the database.
 
kwill said:
So . . . there does exist a complete collection of the transcripts and documents, all gathered in one place?
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This we have been told.


Rolfe said:
I don't know if anyone actually paid it, but the entire transcript has been out in the wild for free for some time. And I don't see how they can object.
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Thousands of pages. And it really didn't take that much effort to build a database out of it.


Diocletus said:
Well, that's true. I guess I was assuming that the prosecutor would obtain the transcript disks themselves, and send the disks to the consulting firm to load into the database.
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That's the only way to insure that the database is complete. This piecemeal process has been very frustrating. Of course, maybe what's been hapening is that different groups have been getting different parts of the data and the only way to see the whole thing would be to cooperate and share everything. A side effect of the sharing is that any blogger that happened to be peaking at the consulting firms files could reasonably say that they didn't because the data was available elsewhere online.
 
Dan O. said:
That's the only way to insure that the database is complete. This piecemeal process has been very frustrating. Of course, maybe what's been hapening is that different groups have been getting different parts of the data and the only way to see the whole thing would be to cooperate and share everything. A side effect of the sharing is that any blogger that happened to be peaking at the consulting firms files could reasonably say that they didn't because the data was available elsewhere online.
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Amanda Knox has posted the entire set of first trial transcripts on her website, listed by date.
 
'I'm not sure how it is now, but certainly in Scotland until recently you had to pay £1 per page for a court transcript. And let me tell you there aren't that many words on a page. I suppose in the days when some poor secretary had to go find the typescript and physically photocopy each page it might have been justified. But in these days of electronic files, it's extortionate.

For the full transcript of the Lockerbie trial, the cost would theoretically have been £10,000. Who can afford that? (I don't know if anyone actually paid it, but the entire transcript has been out in the wild for free for some time. And I don't see how they can object.)'

Rolfe.

Scotland is a Roman law system like Italy, not a common law system like England.
 
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Grinder said:
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?
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And why leave the bloody bathmat then point it out to PLE ? Clean up theory goes out the window here. If it belonged to Knox or Sollecitto they would have thrown it out or cleaned it.

If PGP say they left it because it was Rudy's ... Well you cant have it both ways .

If it's Rudy's then you lose another piece of controversial evidence.

If they say the footprint belonged to AK or RS it clearly was the easiest piece of evidence to eliminate by throwing it out .

It doesn't explain why they would leave it then point it out to the police as a reason for concern.
So outside of genuine concern , why would they call the police and then point this bloody bathmat out ??
 
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