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

[NancyS]

Amy Frost testified that, not Machiavelli (myself).

The fact is that Filomena knew that the locked door was not normal; she knew that wnat Amanda said - that Meredith would normally lock her door - was false.

I lived in shared houses for the best part of 10-years - and in all that time I wouldn't have a clue if any of my housemates regularly locked their doors. They might have at certain times, but not others - most people don't take that much notice and I find it a little strange that Filomena was so certain. Maybe she was always sneaking into Meredith's room when she was out, I can't think of any other way she would be so certain. It's such a non-point though

 

[Myriad]

The only question is on what legal ground: what formula will they chose for that.

Yep. Once they choose a formula, they can calculate how big the bribe has to be.

 

[Bill Williams]

The only person in the universe who wanted that door broken down was Filomena, and then only when she learned that Meredith was without her phones. To suspect RS and/or AK on that point is the equivalent to suspecting Battistelli of murder.

And add to the guilter lunacy, now Machiavelli is saying something akin to it was Amanda who'd tried, and failed, to break the door in. Not Raffaele.

Where do they dream up this stuff?

Amy Frost testified that, not Machiavelli (myself).
Amanda Knox told Amy Frost she had attempted to break down the door.

Testimonies also reveal that it is incorrect to state that Filomena was the only person in the universe who wanted that door broken down. This is absolutely false (and I find this kind of twistings also slightly offensive to Filomena). Marco Zaroli said he became maybe worried even more than Filomena, and he also declared the postal police officers agreed to break down the door as well.
The fact is that Filomena knew that the locked door was not normal; she knew that wnat Amanda said - that Meredith would normally lock her door - was false.

You haven't been keeping up. The issue of "normal" was not what Filomena was getting at. Filomena wanted the door opened, that's all.

But it is good to see that you are arguing the case at the level you're arguing it at. Reminds me a bit of how you defended Andrea Vogt for her "I was there" misreporting, eventually saying that Amanda and her mother talked in "mafia code". Relying on Amy Frost's misreporting is a sign of complete desperation...

... which is a lot like Crini now arguing a match between the kitchen knife and the sheet outline. I hear you're now an advocate of that theory now, too.

This puts you at odds with Mr. Mignini, who despite his misprosecution of this case, never made that inane claim. Mignini argued the phantom two-knife theory because the kitchen knife did NOT match the outline on the sheet.

Are you now calling Mignini a liar? Of all the people you've thrown under a bus, you've not done it quite like this to Mignini.

 

[Bill Williams]

Edited by Gaspode: 

Removed breach of rule 12.

 

[Paninaro]

Nobody ever interrogated Mignini, nor requested to do so.
Obviously the Jan 15 hearing is a preliminary hearing and not a trial. There will be no tiral. There will be a dropping of charges. The only question is on what legal ground: what formula will they chose for that.

Why will there be a dropping of charges and how can you be so sure about it?

Do you categorize the judges and prosecutors responsible for the original verdict against Migini for abuse of office as criminals like you do with Hellmann and Zanetti?

 

[Bill Williams]

Nobody ever interrogated Mignini, nor requested to do so.
Obviously the Jan 15 hearing is a preliminary hearing and not a trial. There will be no tiral. There will be a dropping of charges. The only question is on what legal ground: what formula will they chose for that.

So what you're saying is....

.... the thing is rigged, and we haven't even got into the year 2014 yet!

This is great... the next time I am charged with a crime, I hope I can, 6 weeks prior to the trial, announce its outcome. That's great work if you can get it.

 

[JREF2010]

Why will there be a dropping of charges and how can you be so sure about it?

Do you categorize the judges and prosecutors responsible for the original verdict against Migini for abuse of office as criminals like you do with Hellmann and Zanetti?

Im skeptical of guessing. There was a lot of guessing for Hellmans verdict too and they were instead freed to go home.

With charges and investigations into Commode and Napoleoni and others being charged or removed form their position recently, there seems to be someone purging out Perugia.

 

[acbytesla]

I just read where some corrupt Italians fed their enemy alive to pigs.

 

[Bill Williams]

Amy Frost testified that, not Machiavelli (myself).
Amanda Knox told Amy Frost she had attempted to break down the door.

Testimonies also reveal that it is incorrect to state that Filomena was the only person in the universe who wanted that door broken down. This is absolutely false (and I find this kind of twistings also slightly offensive to Filomena). Marco Zaroli said he became maybe worried even more than Filomena, and he also declared the postal police officers agreed to break down the door as well. The fact is that Filomena knew that the locked door was not normal; she knew that wnat Amanda said - that Meredith would normally lock her door - was false.

I don't believe you for a second about Marco Zaroli.

But worse, is the way you present "evidence". Even if this is what Zaroli said, the overwhelming evidence is that the postal police refused to break down the door, which led Filomena to direct her male friends to do it.

Why do you mislead like this?

 

[Machiavelli]

So what you're saying is....

.... the thing is rigged, and we haven't even got into the year 2014 yet!

This is great... the next time I am charged with a crime, I hope I can, 6 weeks prior to the trial, announce its outcome. That's great work if you can get it.

But it's not a trial. It's a preliminary hearing.
In order to have a trial you need to have an indictment, and no indictment has been requested.

There can't be any trial because:
1) there is no technical time to accomplish it; it's impossible to set a trial on charges that have expired or will expire within weeks. And it's clear you don't have a knowlege about the judicial history of the original 7 charges set.
2) there is no evidence. Whoever read the Maradei report knows there is no evidence on Mignini, and may know that Mignini proved himself innocent of the main three charges (he was accused of forging a recording, and he brought the factual proof that the recording was authentic), afterwards the Cassation even acknowledged they don't have even the "fumus" to press charges. Also consider that if there was evidence, the prosecutor would have dropped the charges directly, on technical reasons, without requesting a preliminary hearing. If the prosecutor sends the file to the preliminary judges, it's because accepter Mignini and Giuttari's request to discuss it in the merits.

 

[Grinder]

I don't think you're necessarily getting the point I'm trying to make here.

Here's the point: outside of the time period 9pm to midnight (maximum), it's almost immaterial what Knox and Sollecito claim to be doing and/or where they were. After all, it's perfectly POSSIBLE that Knox or Sollecito could have murdered Meredith at 10pm or 11.30pm, yet been (e.g.) playing online games with friends or chatting on msn at 00.30. D'ya see?

Of course I got your point but you missed the fact that they said they slept in until 10 and that was used against them because the music was accessed around 5:30. If he were up emailing until then, it makes his account of the night make sense. D'ya get it.

The ONLY thing that would be affected by any sort of disproof of what Knox/Sollecito claimed to be doing outside of 9pm-midnight would be their general credibilty, plus the additional question of why they might feel the need to lie about what they were doing outside of 9pm-midnight. But that does NOT constitute proof of murder.

Dear, dear, dear. Every piece of information leading to guilt need not be proof of guilt. According to those that believe in guilt the 5:30 music not mentioned is a big deal because he said he slept til 10.

The crime continued until much alter according to the prosecution as they bought or stole cleaning supplies early in the morning and went to the cottage probably before 10 and cleaned as you might have read in Massei.

 

[Bill Williams]

But it's not a trial. It's a preliminary hearing.
In order to have a trial you need to have an indictment, and no indictment has been requested.

There can't be any trial because:
1) there is no technical time to accomplish it; it's impossible to set a trial on charges that have expired or will expire within weeks. And it's clear you don't have a knowlege about the judicial history of the original 7 charges set.
2) there is no evidence. Whoever read the Maradei report knows there is no evidence on Mignini, and may know that Mignini proved himself innocent of the main three charges (he was accused of forging a recording, and he brought the factual proof that the recording was authentic), afterwards the Cassation even acknowledged they don't have even the "fumus" to press charges. Also consider that if there was evidence, the prosecutor would have dropped the charges directly, on technical reasons, without requesting a preliminary hearing. If the prosecutor sends the file to the preliminary judges, it's because accepter Mignini and Giuttari's request to discuss it in the merits.

If there is no evidence, then why was the first prosecution of Mignini for abuse of office overturned on the issue of jurisdiction?

In any event, it's good to have you back. One forgets how truly ludicrous the prosecution of AK and RS is without you around.

Are you still claiming that the now debunked kitchen knife is a match for the bedsheet outline? Mignini didn't even try to get away with that at his trials! You must think him an awful liar.

 

[Grinder]

The fact is that Filomena knew that the locked door was not normal; she knew that wnat Amanda said - that Meredith would normally lock her door - was false.

Since she lived at the other end of the house and as an employee of a law firm almost certainly had different hours than Meredith and probably this wasn't the first time she spent the night with her BF, how could she be so sure that with the rent money in her room or perhaps with a another guy she would not lock the door?

Would it be normal in Italy for her to try the doors when roommates weren't there?

 

[Machiavelli]

I don't believe you for a second about Marco Zaroli.

There is nothing to believe: it's in the testimonies, it's in the open.

But worse, is the way you present "evidence". Even if this is what Zaroli said, the overwhelming evidence is that the postal police refused to break down the door, which led Filomena to direct her male friends to do it.

But the thing was not exactly narrated that way by the whole of the testimonies. Filomena arrived some minutes later, Marco and Luca were already there. The police had already listened to Amanda Knox, that's why they were reluctant.
But they were reluctant from the point of view of Filomena; they objected to her request to break down the door immediately.
As Filomena was made aware that the door was locked, the men also told her "Amanda said it may be normal"; Filomena was surprised with the guys "how can you say normal?", she said them that it was not normal at all and so the guys became extremely worried; the postal police guys said they could not take responsibility to break down the door. Filomena told the police guys "I am the house lady, I take responsibility for breaking down the door", the police didn't object and Luca Altieri decided to brake down the door.

 

[Machiavelli]

Since she lived at the other end of the house and as an employee of a law firm almost certainly had different hours than Meredith and probably this wasn't the first time she spent the night with her BF, how could she be so sure that with the rent money in her room or perhaps with a another guy she would not lock the door?

Would it be normal in Italy for her to try the doors when roommates weren't there?

But this kind of question is a second guessing process. Maybe the police could have done such a thought in that moment, "maybe she is wrong" , etc. But from a logical pont of view, it's not really our buisness to know how she could be sure; the only relevant thing is that she declared she felt sure, she appered to be sure, and she later always maintained she's sure that's how Meredith used to behave.
Don't forget Filomena also was told about the blood, she was told she was not answering at the door, knew she was not answering the phone, and she knew she won't be away without the English phone she would use to call her mom, she knew about the 'break in' and strange burglary. She heared Knox's phone call and found it strange and alarming. She understood the thing was very unusual, potentially serious, she understood Meredith could not be out to do some shopping.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

And of course Crini - and the SC - is correct. It's not that each piece of evidence needs to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It's that each piece of evidence needs to be assessed both individually and alongside all the other evidence, and this holistic assessment must then be used to judge whether all the elements of the crime have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

But what the SC and Crini get spectacularly wrong, in my opinion, is that some pieces of evidence are so critical to the proof of the case in overall terms that simply raising doubt about them can make all the difference to whether guilt of the crime itself has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, in some cases, it IS indeed possible to say that if one particular piece of evidence is untrustworthy or unreliable, that on its own provides sufficient reasonable doubt to warrant an acquittal. I think that this was exactly what Hellmann was articulating regarding the forensic "evidence".

I've used Bugliosi's "rope" metaphor before for assessing proof, but it bears repeating again to illustrate the above point. Basically, each piece of evidence can be regarded as a strand in a rope connecting the defendant to the crime. Some pieces might be only peripherally proof of guilt, so in this metaphor they would be represented by very thin strands. Some - such as reliable DNA or fingerprints - might be represented by very thick,strong strands.

Each strand is twisted together to form the rope. Then, at the deliberation stage, the rope is "pulled" to see whether there are sufficient strands to prevent the rope from breaking. If there are many thin strands (i.e. many pieces of weak circumstantial evidence), this may still be enough to construct a sufficiently thick and strong overall rope that will not break. Likewise, if there's even only one or two strands -if they're sufficiently thick and strong, the rope will not break. If the rope doesn't break, the court should convict.

Using this metaphor, I'd say that the case against Knox and Sollecito consisted of several small thin strands and a few potentially thick strands: the DNA evidence, the "mixed blood" evidence, the "break-in" evidence and the bathmat print evidence. I'd therefore say that if these thick strands can be shown to be unreliable and therefore removed from the rope, this in itself will cause the rope to break since the remaining several thin strands simply will not hold when pulled.

The key point about good evidence is it has to mean what the prosecution says, it can't have a different explanation that is at least as likely, it can't fly in the face of better evidence, and it has to explain what happened.

It doesn't have to be much - all they had in the Palmyra Island case was human bones and a stolen boat, but that was enough to answer the questions of what happened and who did it, and no other explanation was at all credible.

In this case, they have pretty good evidence of when Meredith was killed. The digestive evidence suggests it was probably soon after she was last seen, around 9 pm. The cell phone tower records suggest her phones were in a different location by 10:13 pm. One can throw out medical and cell tower anomalies to postulate that this evidence is not conclusive, but it is strong evidence and by far the best available.

But it's not what the prosecution wants. So they ignore it completely, in favor of testimony from people who are dubious to start with. And even then they have to cherry-pick elements from the testimony. Curatolo describes seeing Amanda and Raffaele, but then he describes Halloween. So they say he's partly right, partly wrong, and they decide which is which purely by how it fits their accusation.

Nara heard a scream followed by footsteps sometime after 11. Not only that, it is corroborated by two other witnesses. Except one of the witnesses heard the scream after an argument that took place on the road outside her house, which couldn't possibly have been the altercation in the cottage. And the other witness heard the footsteps, but not the scream that Nara described as so distinctive and extraordinary. So the prosecution says, ignore the problems and contradictions, focus only on the points that line up with each other and the accusation. And never mind the digestive and cell tower evidence that suggest none of what these people heard has anything to do with the murder.

This obviously is not consistent with the method they themselves have specified, which is to examine the evidence in its totality. If the prosecution forms a specious case by cherry-picking, the defense has no choice but to go through the problems point by point.

 

[Bill Williams]

But the thing was not exactly narrated that way by the whole of the testimonies. Filomena arrived some minutes later, Marco and Luca were already there. The police had already listened to Amanda Knox, that's why they were reluctant.

Classic Machiavelli....

But they were reluctant from the point of view of Filomena; they objected to her request to break down the door immediately. As Filomena was made aware that the door was locked, the men also told her "Amanda said it may be normal"; Filomena was surprised with the guys "how can you say normal?", she said them that it was not normal at all and so the guys became extremely worried; the postal police guys said they could not take responsibility to break down the door. Filomena told the police guys "I am the house lady, I take responsibility for breaking down the door", the police didn't object and Luca Altieri decided to brake down the door.

So the police were reluctant. Upthread you quoted Marco Zaroli who said the police were not reluctant.

You cannot keep straight your latest version of events even from post to post.

What's the matter with you?

 

[Machiavelli]

If there is no evidence, then why was the first prosecution of Mignini for abuse of office overturned on the issue of jurisdiction?

It was annulled, not overturned.
It was annulled ("overturned") because it was illegitimate!
It was never assessed in the merits; because a judge won't assess in the merit something that should not even exist as a file on his table.

The jurisdiction legitimacy problem is in limine to any judgement. It's a preliminar problem, which prevented the investigation from being assessed in the merits for years.

Are you still claiming that the now debunked kitchen knife is a match for the bedsheet outline?

That it is not incompatible. It is not a "match" to it's shape, but I think it could have produced it; there is no reason why a blood stain should be a "match" to a three-dimensional object. I don't think that stain should be called "print" (a knife is not an inked stamp nor a foot) and I don't think a knife would necessarily leave a "print" the way a foot or a stamp may do. It was produced by a kitchen knife with a long blade. The stain is just compatible.
Why do you repeat questions about hings I already said?

 

[Machiavelli]

Classic Machiavelli....

So the police were reluctant. Upthread you quoted Marco Zaroli who said the police were not reluctant.

You cannot keep straight your latest version of events even from post to post.

What's the matter with you?

Bill, it's two different witnesses. It's two different points of view; and possibly two different moments.

 

[Machiavelli]

(...) But it is good to see that you are arguing the case at the level you're arguing it at. Reminds me a bit of how you defended Andrea Vogt for her "I was there" misreporting, eventually saying that Amanda and her mother talked in "mafia code".

I said mafia style, not "mafia code".
And I was not actually talking about Knox and her mother; I was talking about Knox writing about "remembering blood on Raffaele's hands" but that was probably "fish".

Relying on Amy Frost's misreporting is a sign of complete desperation...

Look, you will paste the word "desperation" basically in all your attampts to answer my posts.
You have two options to improve your writing: 1. to develop an automatic answering machine that pases "desperation" comments on all posts, you will optimize your time doing so; 2. decide to grow up