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

[Rolfe]

It's one thing when an eyewitness is sure they saw someone they already knew. Someone they would recognise. But this malarkey of trying to identify a stranger, seen only once, from a bunch of photographs or a line-up, is absolutely wide open to mistaken identification.

How similar do you think these guys look?

Rolfe.

 

[Antony]

In North Carolina Jennifer Thompson identified Ronald Cotton as her assailant. There was a similar case in Wisconsin involving the misidentification of Steven Avery by Penny Beerntsen. Both of the women who made the identifications struck me as being intelligent and reasonable. DNA evidence indicated that they identified the wrong suspects (sadly Mr. Avery went on to commit murder). Curatolo's identification at night over a considerable distance would be open to question even if he had picked out Amanda and Raffaele shortly after the crime from some sort of a line-up, and if he were a respected citizen of the town.

Exactly. Even Machiavelli admits that the 30-40 metres distance in street lights at night "is a problem" for his side, and in another message he qualifies his assertions in a way that acknowledges that it's not certain that the people seen were actually AK and RS.

So why waste time raking over the other problems with his testimony? It fails at the first hurdle because it can't be a certain identification - and Machiavelli is admitting that.

 

[Poppy1016]

I'm not sure it is strictly true to say she was "allowed" into her room, then behind crimes scene tape, to retrieve her computer. She, apparently, just decided to go get it and no one stopped her. That might simply be a result of the chaos of the day, and the inexperience of Napoleoni who was in charge of her first investigation with the Kercher murder.

The cops simply blew it, and Filomena risked it... but turned herself in.... and had no consequence other than the outrage of the cops!

I believe it was in Dempsey's book that the most full account of this little episode resides. But the compromising of the crime scene was not only this - through no fault of anyone's really, the postal police gave both Amanda and Filomena the run of the place (with the obvious exception of Meredith room which was still, then, behind the locked door.) Even semi-pro-guilt author John Follain said that Filomena was allowed to "rummage" thought her room, whatever that means.

But incredibly, after taking her own computer, from behind police tape, Filomena takes it with her (accompanied by her lawyer) to the Questura; where in my way of thinking the cops must have had apoplexy. If nothing else, this proves there was nothing "secure" about preserving this scene.

Fast forward a bit.... given that Massei's sole basis of conviction in 2009 is on the basis of nuances of forensic found outside the murder room it is simply stunning that the compromised crime scene did not rule out anything outside of the murder room.

The most obvious piece of "compromising" was the claim that after Battistelli and the other postal police saw a dead body in Meredith's room, under a blanket, is the claim that they did not immediately go into to check - I mean, was Meredith injured and unconscious? Did one of them track in DNA from the door-around, where two groups of people had just tried to break the thing down, one unsuccessfully?

Tragically and horribly, Meredith was not unconcious and injured ony... it was far worse. But the point is, from the door way how would you know? But that "scene" was not something a respectable court would have allowed to decide this case at all. Filomena's laptop is only one of many of the issues.

In mny opinion the whole argument of staged vs not staged was compromised by Filomena. Glass on top of or underneath clothing could no longer be certain if she had rummaged through the room.

 

[yimyammer]

In North Carolina Jennifer Thompson identified Ronald Cotton as her assailant. There was a similar case in Wisconsin involving the misidentification of Steven Avery by Penny Beerntsen. Both of the women who made the identifications struck me as being intelligent and reasonable. DNA evidence indicated that they identified the wrong suspects (sadly Mr. Avery went on to commit murder). Curatolo's identification at night over a considerable distance would be open to question even if he had picked out Amanda and Raffaele shortly after the crime from some sort of a line-up, and if he were a respected citizen of the town.

This is who I was referring to in my previous post upthread

 

[Bill Williams]

In mny opinion the whole argument of staged vs not staged was compromised by Filomena. Glass on top of or underneath clothing could no longer be certain if she had rummaged through the room.

I agree. The crack investigators did not seem to take any of that into account. There is the matter, though, of their assessment of the doablility of the climb in through Filomena's window... that's somewhat separate. Yet the Channel 5 documentary should put that to rest forever. (Why the crack cops didn't go get a kid from the basketball hoops and tell them to give it a try on site.... that would have answered it then, rather than let "Fat-cop intuition" decide things.

 

[Antony]

This is the issue isn't it. Depending on the web the guilters are trying to spin, Knox has to be at times a world class liar (pulling the wool over seasoned interrogators) or an awkward unconvincing liar. She has to be a world class-forensic-cleanser (clean-up to the molecular level with nothing but a desk lamp as her guide) or a clumsy first-time offender who leaves a bathmat and some blood on a faucet.

The lies that have been told about that woman are legion.... including that she supposedly changed her story to adapt to what the evidence was.

All the guilters have in retrospect is the allegation that she's a liar. When I looked into this, I found the guilters had no such list of specifics, really. Just the propaganda. It's a canard if repeated enough simply becomes believed and part of the lore....

.... early on I was ridiculed by guilters here on JREF (now absent) for even asking for a list. It was for them self-evident. One guilter said that even if the DNA was debunked (which it has been) he'd still believe Knox was guilty because of all her lies.

I then assembled The Machine's list, plus three more "lies" from the obscure blogger and the strange thing about them that was, aside from the Lumumba issue at interrogation, they were all Raffaele's so called lies! The forgotten man in all this.....

It didn't seem to do any good. This one guilter was so convinced that it was "Amanda's lies" which decided this, that even when shown the list, and debunking them.... he kept saying things like, "but what about all the other lies....?" And then he'd refuse to even speculate what those might be....

It was whack-a-mole.

And as "welshman" showed, it simply is easy to list prosecution, police lies. Mignini himself had 5, maybe five differing motives for this crime. Was Mignini "lying" about the one's he gave up on? Esp. when his last scenario had Amanda standing out in the hall, egging on the boys....

.... I mean, is that a de facto admission Mignini had simply been lying with sex-game gone wrong in which Amanda wielded the knife? Using guilter standards, yes, Mignini was simply lying!!!!

Can't have it both ways.

My understanding is that the myth of Amanda's "lies" and "constantly changing story" began through a misreading of evidence, and turned into an article of faith in the rush to judgement:

The idiot police convinced themselves early on that the image on CCTV of a young woman returning to the cottage around 9pm was Amanda - of course it was actually Meredith. This wrong belief of theirs continued at least until after the first arrests - this was their "proof" that Amanda had been at the crime scene.

The problem was that Amanda went on insisting that she hadn't gone to the cottage - apparently on 6 occasions when she was questioned before the night of November 5th. So this was reported that she "lied 6 times" about where she was on the night of the murder, and this turned into "changed her story 6 times".

 

[Bill Williams]

My understanding is that the myth of Amanda's "lies" and "constantly changing story" began through a misreading of evidence, and turned into an article of faith in the rush to judgement:

The idiot police convinced themselves early on that the image of a young woman returning to the cottage around 9pm was Amanda - of course it was actually Meredith. This wrong belief of theirs continued at least until after the first arrests - this was their "proof" that Amanda had been at the crime scene.

The problem was that Amanda went on insisting that she hadn't gone to the cottage - apparently on 6 occasions when she was questioned before the night of November 5th. So this was reported that she "lied 6 times" about where she was on the night of the murder, and this turned into "changed her story 6 times".

Yup. All this is the basis for why Machiavelli right here in this forum still claims she was a liar. She wasn't a liar or a story changer, it's just that Machiavelli wants to draw her that way.

 

[Bill Williams]

For those who want to see Italian TV covering the "Justice Wasted" coverage of Manuela Comodi and the wasted 180,000 Euros on a cartoon....

http://www.video.mediaset.it/video/tg5/servizio/422439/giustizia-sprecona-.html

Machiavelli - does this make this TV channel nothing but criminals now? How do you feel about Mignini being re-indicted for abuse of office?

 

[Antony]

Yup. All this is the basis for why Machiavelli right here in this forum still claims she was a liar. She wasn't a liar or a story changer, it's just that Machiavelli wants to draw her that way.

Yes, and the irony is that the police and prosecution lied repeatedly during the investigation and trial, and changed their story repeatedly. But, in PGP eyes, they are "not on trial" so any of that isn't for discussion.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Cotton picked

It sure seems susceptible to being incorrect or effected by emotions. I watched a show this week about a lady that was raped and identified her attacker in a line up twice. She was dead certain the man she identified raped her....until DNA revealed a match to a different man already in prison for raping another woman. I can't remember her name but she apologized & reconciled with him and now works with the man she identified in some charitable capacity (he was subsequently released from prison after the DNA exonerated him).

Jennifer Thompson identified Ronald Cotton, and this story is told in the book "Picking Cotton." These may be the individuals you recall.

 

[Strozzi]

. Even semi-pro-guilt author John Follain said that Filomena was allowed to "rummage" thought her room, whatever that means.

But incredibly, after taking her own computer, from behind police tape, Filomena takes it with her (accompanied by her lawyer) to the Questura; where in my way of thinking the cops must have had apoplexy. If nothing else, this proves there was nothing "secure" about preserving this scene..

I want to know if Filomena had drugs in her room and, if so, whether she checked for or removed them from her room when she retrieved her laptop. If she did have drugs in her room, I would think she would be very concerned that they could be found by the police and used to compromise her, an apprentice lawyer beginning her legal career in Perugia, her hometown.

When she removed her laptop (and possibly any drugs she might have had), how much disturbance did she cause to the distribution pattern of broken glass in her room? Did her disruption contribute to the early police conclusion that the window break-in was fake - and thus cause the police and Mignini to pursue a wrong suspect-centric investigation and prosecution - with great damage to many including Italy. Did Filomena tell the police the true extent of what she touched, opened, and disturbed in her room? Would she really admit to messing up the original glass distribution pattern or did she downplay it?

Lastly, did the police find her drugs in her room and upon Napoleoni's or Mignini's order their existence withheld from the records in order to initially protect her as a "good Italian girl"? And later was it leverage to ensure she went along with the prosecution?

 

[Samson]

I want to know if Filomena had drugs in her room and, if so, whether she checked for or removed them from her room when she retrieved her laptop. If she did have drugs in her room, I would think she would be very concerned that they could be found by the police and used to compromise her, an apprentice lawyer beginning her legal career in Perugia, her hometown.

When she removed her laptop (and possibly any drugs she might have had), how much disturbance did she cause to the distribution pattern of broken glass in her room? Did her disruption contribute to the early police conclusion that the window break-in was fake - and thus cause the police and Mignini to pursue a wrong suspect-centric investigation and prosecution - with great damage to many including Italy. Did Filomena tell the police the true extent of what she touched, opened, and disturbed in her room? Would she really admit to messing up the original glass distribution pattern or did she downplay it?

Lastly, did the police find her drugs in her room and upon Napoleoni's or Mignini's order their existence withheld from the records in order to initially protect her as a "good Italian girl"? And later was it leverage to ensure she went along with the prosecution?

The simplest way to solve this is to study Ron Hendry's collation of photographs and his analysis, the glass distribution photographed even after the rummaging, and the analysis of the damage to the shutter and embedded glass, proved beyond doubt the rock was thrown horizontally from the car park, either by Rudy before 9 or Raffaele at midnight with a dead body in the house. Amanda is excluded because of her physique.

 

[Poppy1016]

The simplest way to solve this is to study Ron Hendry's collation of photographs and his analysis, the glass distribution photographed even after the rummaging, and the analysis of the damage to the shutter and embedded glass, proved beyond doubt the rock was thrown horizontally from the car park, either by Rudy before 9 or Raffaele at midnight with a dead body in the house. Amanda is excluded because of her physique.

I just want to know how staging could be proved or disproved, knowing that the room had been entered and rummaged through.

 

[Grinder]

If an Italian speaker would go over Curatolo's testimony and analyze I'd very much appreciate it.

My read of the machine translation makes it out that Curatolo arrived between 9:30 and 10 and the kids were already there. Then he sits and reads the the articles he is interested in looking up occasionally and sees them tehre by the edge of the plaza. He smokes three cigarettes and uses that time to look around and doesn't read until he finishes.

As he leaves between 11:30 and midnight they are still there. He doesn't see them again.

He claims he knew them but doesn't say from when.

Is there any doubt that he notes they were there whenever he looks up?

 

[yimyammer]

Jennifer Thompson identified Ronald Cotton, and this story is told in the book "Picking Cotton." These may be the individuals you recall.

yep, thats them

 

[kwill]

The central and critical lie on the part of the police and prosecutors is that they did not tape either Amanda's or Raffaele's interrogation on the night of Nov. 5th.

It's simply not believable. Not compatible with all their other behavior relative to recording the conversations of these two. It's false. And from that it follows like night follows day that those tapes would have shown exactly what Amanda and Raffaele have described.

There is absolutely no reason to trust any of them, unless and until they produce those tapes.

 

[yimyammer]

I just want to know how staging could be proved or disproved, knowing that the room had been entered and rummaged through.

What's remarkable about the break in theory to me is that in every other case I've seen where an obvious staged break in has occurred, they find the glass broken from the inside with the shards found outside, yet in this case, somehow the glass being on the interior is evidence of a staged break-in.

If one is going to claim it was staged, then it would seem they would have to claim the window was still broken from the outside.

 

[Supernaut]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson says that if the justice system was being designed by scientists, eyewitness testimony would not be admissible.

I tend to agree with that.

Also, low-template DNA samples, since secondary, tertiary transfer etc' becomes more and more feasible as an explanation for the presence of such samples.

 

[Supernaut]

It's one thing when an eyewitness is sure they saw someone they already knew. Someone they would recognise. But this malarkey of trying to identify a stranger, seen only once, from a bunch of photographs or a line-up, is absolutely wide open to mistaken identification.

How similar do you think these guys look?

[qimg]http://www.vetpath.co.uk/jref/hussain-menezes.jpg[/qimg]

Rolfe.

De Menezes had been, so I heard, working as a contract electrician on the London Tube.

His killing was a hit.

 

[LondonJohn]

That one is worse than that. The witness never claimed to be certain that it was the same person, only that there was a resemblance (which got stronger the more he realised that was what the cops wanted from him and there was a lot of money in it). The time elapsed was ridiculously long - 2 years three months before he was shown a bad photocopy of the suspect's passport photo which was such a bad likeness it was almost unrecognisable as the actual man, and over 11 years before he picked the same man out of an identity parade. And the suspect differed in many significant respects from the witness's original description of the man he saw.

You'd think that anyone with any common sense would realise you can't hang a conviction on that. That even if there was a resemblance, there was nothing approaching certainty that it was the same man. The judges saw it differently though. They reasoned that after such a long time it would have been suspicious if the witness had been sure, and that the witness's very uncertainty reinforced the conclusion that he was speaking honestly - and that therefore it was the same person.

It's not just Italy that produces judicial pronouncements of that quality. You couldn't make it up.

Rolfe.

Yes, that Maltese fella was so hideously compromised by the way in which his testimony was extracted (together with literally MILLIONS in "expenses" from a shady US agency or two) that, frankly, even if he HAD really seen the Libyans his evidence should have been rejected as unreliable.

As another interesting parallel, close-up magicians know very well of a fascinating phenomenon related to audience interaction. In its most simple manifestation as an example, it's well known that if a confident magician asks someone to "pick a card" from a regular deck, then shows them a different card (if the trick's gone wrong) and announces with a flourish "And is THIS your card?!", a significant proportion of people will reply "Yes!" in genuine astonishment and admiration.

What's happening is that some people are so invested in the powers of the magician - and they so want the illusion to work - that they can immediately convince themselves that whatever card the magician says is genuinely the card they chose, even when they saw and recognised a totally different card just seconds earlier. Elements of this type of psychological interplay between "authority expert figure with special powers" and "person who wants to believe in the authority and powers of that expert" are also partly/significantly responsible for the effect of hypnotism (some argue that almost all of the effects of hypnotism are entirely due to this phenomenon).

It's not too difficult to see how this sort of well-known and well-documented phenomenon might be potentially relevant to police/public and courts/public interactions.