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

[Machiavelli]

Do you like the system where defamation is a criminal rather than a civil offense?

Yes. Personally I prefer it.

If there is no cost to a person bringing an action, do some people overuse the system?

There is always a cost for the victim, even in criminal lawsuits.
Anyway the problem of misuse could be solved by introducing negative incentives.

 

[Bill Williams]

This is dietrology, Machiavelli. You say things with the sole purpose of being able to say you never said what you said.

Good for you. You admit that they have a case against you, enough to initiate proceedings, then you claim you never said that.
(...)

Stop it. Quit your lies attempting to make up what people said.
Stop attempting to put your own words into other people's mouth.

I will if you stop the dietrology. Take a read upthread. You say you didn't say something, then you say it again!

Of course you say this will only be an "attempt" by Hellmann and Vecchiotti to sue you, and I say that whether or not this is an "attempt" is a decision which is out of your control.

Stop the dietrology.

 

[RandyN]

I re-read it and on the second read I noticed you wrote "guilters"; at firset I thought you were meaning "innocentisti", describing what the pro-Knox people do; I'm not joking. I understand that my implicit pov was the reason of my first, let's say "automatic" interpretation.



It's good to point out that Mignini has sued a relatively small number of people if you compare him with the average Italian citizen.

It's not correct to say that legally Mignini had no choice but sue Sfarzo. But I mean that politically, as a public figure, he basically hae no choice but to respond legally to deligitimization campaigns.

But the defamation laws are not designed to protect public figures: they are designed to protect common citizens.

I point out that Hellmann and Vecchiotti have the right to attempt prosecute me under Italian law (this does not go for H & V alone, any citizen has the right to sue anyone), but H&V don't have any interest in waging a legal war against me. That would be a very stupid mistake on their part.
I am not shielded by the American flag at all. Instad I feel shielded by the inherent risk that these people would take if they decide to sue me. They would risk to lose much more than me by taking that move.

Well sure because unlike the corrupt Mignini these two would have to sue you at their own cost. Mignini on the other hand abuses his office and power by suing at the Italian citizens costs. This makes him worse than the common mafia thug because he uses the official power of the state as a weapon against the very people who fund that state. Hellmann is retired now...perhaps Zanetti would be the perfect person to sue you and Pervert ...et al. He could do so perhaps on the Italian dime...just like Mignini.


Honestly though I suspect you are safe because these people have some principles and perhaps a few morals...totally opposite of Mignini and his champions. Uhhummmmmm.

 

[Bill Williams]

I repeat it: I never "admitted" that Hellmann or Vecchiotti have "a case against me".
I never said anything like that. I said instead, that they have the right to attempt to prosecute me under Italian law; which is a very different thing.

This is your dietrology. If they have the right to attempt to prosecute you under Italian law, the issue of whether or not they have "a case" is not yours to make.

Yet, by saying that they have this right, you are admitting that they have a de facto case. Sheesh.

 

[RandyN]

.
Yes, Anglo, remember him? used to point this out quite often. It is exactly what one would expect Rudy to do after entering.

An interesting thing I notice is that there is no visible glass on the strip of sill which is directly under the window frame when the window frame is closed. That indicates to me that the window frame was closed while the glass was being broken, and remained closed until Rudy reached through the broken glass, unlatched and opened it.

It also indicates to me, along with all the other indicators, that the window was not broken from the inside while being held open, per Massei's hypothesis, because flying glass would not have avoided just that portion of the sill.

Speaking of which, how is it fair for Massei to make up his own explanations after the trial is over? The window breaking method, the knife transport method, changing the prosecution team's premeditated hypothesis to non-premeditated, moving the speculated Time of Death, were examples if I am not mistaken. How is the defense team supposed to defend against speculations that are made after the trial is over?
.

Anglo who? Is that the fellow that was mad about playing checkers or one of those board games?

 

[Samson]

I am not saying Guede is a good person. I am saying his behavior is strongly effected by his childhood. It seems he is a child born of a one night stand, or perhaps even a paid arrangement. At any rate, there was no love for him from mother or father from conception forward, and my guess is there are underlying biological factors as well. Others have triumphed in situations even worse than his, and he had more than his share of breaks. Still, the psychological damage was there, it was caused by factors he could not control, he was the victim of the irresponsibility of his parents and he did not have the ability to transcend it.

I think we all are perhaps inevitably irresponsible to greater and lesser degrees, no one is perfect, the context of our irresponsibility is to some extent thrust upon us from the context of our lives, if it is not biological. Moralty is the process of coming to terms with this, and leaving the planet a better place than we found it.

Within this broader context of the nature of humanity, Guede is just another person. He is acting as a human animal within the boundaries of the human condition. He is a statistical fact of Darwinian evolution in a meaningless world of biological and chemical interaction. He is not taking on the moral challenge to transcend the randomness of his place in the universe.

The zen question for me is, when I blame him for the murder of Ms Kercher, which I do, am I saying something about Guede, like - he's the bad one, or am I trying to abrogate my own responsibility for making the world a place where murders like this don't happen? Are we completely responsible for our own actions, or, does responsibility also lie in the community?

Rudy Guede is literate and of above average intelligence, who is trading a few years of his own freedom for a collective 50 years freedom of others with perfect comprehension of what he is doing. This situation is probably unprecedented, he should be considered the most evil person of the century.

 

[Kaosium]

You are mistaken.
Guede was not granted any mitigation at his first instance judgement.

And he got life.
However, life was discounted to 30 years because of his fast track option.

Are you saying that fast track offers two reductions for sentencing? Who determined that Guede would not only get the massive reduction of life to 30 years (which could be about 30 more years!) and then the 1/3 reduction after the 6 years of mitigations? Why didn't the prosecution contest that with aggravations or appeal this? They must be able to do that because if there's no other factor what you're saying means that no one who took fast track could be sentenced for more than 20 years for any crime. Why weren't there any aggravations added, as that's the mechanism to prevent that?

He was charged with theft, but is no evidence he comitted a theft.

Of course there was, and plenty of it; his DNA all over the owner's room including her purse, as well as on, inside and around the body of the owner. He also skipped the country and survived when there's reason to believe he had little money before.

If you're saying the prosecution didn't present this as evidence he committed the burglary then my point that the way it was prosecuted was responsible for Rudy's short sentence is proven.

Impossible within that trial. And anyway that would be totally uninfluential on his sentencing in the Kercher case. A theft in another apartment on some other time cannot be an aggravation for a murder charge. We are talking about two different events.

He could have gotten more years for that though, and it would have given grounds to appeal part of his mitigation that he was a first offender, at least by the ends of his appeal process. Using the calunnia conviction as evidence against Amanda in this current appeal proves that even charges from the same event can be used as evidence for other charges.

Rudy did not get "three mitigations".
He actually got NO mitigation at all on his first instance trial.

Where I read it they referred to the fast track discount as a mitigation. That is, a reduction of sentence due to agreeing to the abbreviated procedure. He did end up going from life to 30 years, then to 24 for that (standard) mitigation and then another 1/3 reduction to get him his cushy 16 year sentence. That's either two huge reductions for fast track that the prosecution must be able to contest somehow otherwise the maximum sentence for any one crime cannot be more than 20 years, and I doubt that is true.

Then, at his own appeal, he got just "generic mitigation" - that is only one mitigation, even if it depends on three conditions -that mitigation was considered very important though, since it brought penalty down from life to 24 years.

As I recall there were three conditions and it added up to six years, I thought I saw somewhere where that suggested they were each worth two years in the calculations, but no matter really, it amounts to the same thing. What were the three reasons again? That he was a first offender, that he was involved with others and that he showed remorse. One could contest all three of them, especially his showing remorse as all he did was claim he was sorry he didn't do more that go out dancing while still blaming it on someone else.

At any rate it could be appealed and there were good reasons to do so on all three conditions, at least for an objective prosecutor who wasn't trying to use that trial to blame someone else as well, namely Raffaele and Amanda.

Which means 16 years because of the fast track option.

Mignini was no longer the prosecutor on that appeal.
Nor Mignini nor Comodi were formally in charge for his prosecution on appeal; that was up to the Prosecution General to decide what to do next, if they were unsatisfied. Nor Mignini nor Comodi had any authority to file recourses against the 16 year sentencing.
Why the Prosecutor General didn't file a recourse at the SC against Guede's sentencing reduction? I don't know. But I guess that was because the Prosecution General thought they would have likely lost it at the Cassazione.

My point is had the charges against Rudy been prosecuted honestly then there would be very good reasons and evidence presented that would have caused him to get a much lengthier sentence, and no one would have worried about losing anything at Cassazione. Rudy's short sentence is directly the result of being prosecuted very generously before the fast track reduction was taken into account.

Knox and Solelcito got generic mitigation at their first instance trial. They got their sentencing reduced from life to 24 years. They obtained this benefit on their first instance, while Guede managed to obtain this only on his appeal.
And the mitigation awardd to Knox and Sollecito was basically the reason why Guede got it on his appeal.

Is this another way prosecuting Amanda and Raffaele reduced Rudy's sentence? However I don't recall anything about them being involved with others in their mitigations and theirs were appealed on the basis of things like Daily Mail articles. I am dubious of your contention that Rudy got his mitigations only because Amanda and Raffaele did, that wouldn't apply to the vast majority of crimes in Italy so single offenders couldn't be getting mitigations at all and that's not true. I think Rudy could have gotten those mitigations regardless but the prosecution chose to announce that as 'bringing his sentence more in line with theirs' because it sounded better than having to explain what he did.

 

[yimyammer]

What you are missing is a view of the latch mechanism for that window. There is a rod attached to the inside edge of the right window running from top to bottom. At each end of this rod are hooks that engage recessed slots in the casement securley holding the right window closed. An overlapping lip on the right window holds the left window closed.

In the center of the rod is a lever handle that rotates the rod to engage the hooks. The lever handle can also pivot up and down. Oposite the lever handle on the left window is a simple catch that the lever can be slid behind when both window are closed that holds the lever in the latched position.

When closed, the lever handle is in front of the left inner shutter so as to hold it closed too.

If the left shutter were latched behind this lever handle when the rock was thrown through the window, there would be a large divot in the inner shutter where it hits the latch handle and the catch would be deformed. Neither of these events are visible. With the inner shutter not fully closed behind the latch handle, the latch mechanism would be visible from the outside.

Thanks for clearing that up, I was wondering about that. This would stabilize the window and significantly reduce the odds that the force of the rock would cause the window frames to swing open. If the force of the rock had caused the window frames to open, there should be evidence of the hardware you mentioned being bent or ripped away from the surrounding window frame and I don't think that's the case.

I still think the rock would force the inter shutter open when the rock hit it (as evidenced by the dented shutter & chipped paint) and it would be easy to reach though the broken glass in order to access the hardware you mentioned and open the window.

 

[RandyN]

Hi Briars,
You have visited the area of the murder, haven't you?
I've never been to Italy, but I've heard that in certain places pickpocketing, ya know,
subtly stealing a persons wallet or belongings right from them, is a known problem.

Were you ever worried about being pickpocketed while there?I'd speculate that those kinda crimes usually happen where the thief is very visible and the location,
well it's usually out in the open where people can see the thief...

A little logic tells me that thieves are bold.
Would you agree?

Hmmmm:
https://www.google.com/#q=pickpocket+crime+in+italy&undefined=undefined


I'd say that Rudy Guede was bold.
I mean heck, I know a lotta bold crazy dudes,
BUT I don't know anyone that was ever found inside a nursery school,
(ya know, a place where parents drop their little children off to learn their A,B,C's),
with a huge knife on him!

Rudy didn't seem to be too worried about being caught inside the nursery school.
If he was, he woulda hid or split somehow, someway...

I don't think that Rudy Guede was too worried about getting caught breaking into Meredith Kercher's flat when he threw that rock at Filomena's window and quickly climbed that wall...

One has the best chance in the whole world to robbed by a pickpocket in Vatican City oddly enough. Oh wait...that's not technically Italy is it.

 

[Bill Williams]

(...)
By the way, I forgot to include in my previous post one of the more risible judicial "explanations" of "evidence" pointing to a clean-up: Massei and others "reasoned" that since there was a bloody partial foot print on the bathmat, and since there was not a "corresponding" trail of bloody footprints between Meredith's room and the bathmat, this therefore "proved" that these "intermediate" foptprints must have been extant at one time and subsequently wiped away!!

Of course, what this stellar "reasoning" abjectly fails to take into account is the possibility that the blood on the bathmat was not transported into the bathroom on the sole of that foot, but that it was instead transported there on the arms or clothing of the killer (Guede), then washed down onto a flat surface (the shower pan or possibly the bidet) whereupon the killer (Guede) placed his foot into it and stepped onto the bathmat. The fact that it is quite obviously a print made in heavily-diluted blood might have been a clue, you might have thought. But no. Not for the extraordinary judicial mind of Massei (and others). But then again, this is from the judge who brought you that other stunning piece of logic and reasoning: why would Capezzali have reported hearing a bloodcurdling scream of death unless she had in reality heard such a thing?

I think the reasoning of Massei is logically correct.
And I think the objection LJ offers doesn't stand, it's not consistent, especially when you look at the physical findings.

Logically correct? How can it be "logically correct" if there is not a stick of evidence to support it? How can it be "logically correct" if there are other, more compelling explanations for the same set of things seen?

Again, this is part of the dietrology. There's some unspoken thing here that you're withholding, or which Massei is withholding. Otherwise the only thing that's safe to assume is that the reasoning is....

.... "This has to be logically correct, or there's no way we can reach our goal, which is to convict the pair."

Some jurisdictions put it this way - if there are two equally likely explanations, then you MUST choose the one which tends to acquit. In Italy, it seems that you are defending the right to start with the assumption of guilt and work backwards.

 

[RandyN]

Rudy Guede is literate and of above average intelligence, who is trading a few years of his own freedom for a collective 50 years freedom of others with perfect comprehension of what he is doing. This situation is probably unprecedented, he should be considered the most evil person of the century.

Well he belongs in a line that includes those officials who used him to propagate this farce against two innocents and the whole family of the poor victim...but no its been "poor Rudy"... now whoever said that certainly belongs in this "most evil" lineup too.

 

[Machiavelli]

Logically correct? How can it be "logically correct" if there is not a stick of evidence to support it? How can it be "logically correct" if there are other, more compelling explanations for the same set of things seen?
(...)

There are no other more compelling explanations, that is the only problem.

And you are dietrologist #1 on this forum.

 

[Machiavelli]

(...)
Where I read it they referred to the fast track discount as a mitigation. That is, a reduction of sentence due to agreeing to the abbreviated procedure. He did end up going from life to 30 years, then to 24 for that (standard) mitigation and then another 1/3 reduction to get him his cushy 16 year sentence. That's either two huge reductions for fast track that the prosecution must be able to contest somehow otherwise the maximum sentence for any one crime cannot be more than 20 years, and I doubt that is true.
(...)

It's one, Kaosium, only one mitigation. The mitigation is from life to 24 years.
It was applied only once, and only on Guede's appeal; not on the first instance.
On his first instance he got life, which became 30 years for fast track reduction. If you read Micheli's report you might get it.

The second cut is not a mitigation, it's a reduction. It cuts down sentencing to 30 years when the penalty is life, and it cuts it down t 16 years if it's 24 years. It's the automatic reduction caused by the fast track option. it was applied only once (but the final effect changes depending on the original application of sentencing and mitigation).

Only one mitigation is what he got on appeal, from life (first instance) to 24 (second instance). Exactly the same of what Knox and Solelcito got.

And no way he could be found guilty of theft on appeal, he was charged and Micheli found him innocent.

(...) At any rate it could be appealed and there were good reasons to do so on all three conditions, at least for an objective prosecutor who wasn't trying to use that trial to blame someone else as well, namely Raffaele and Amanda

No, you can't apeal an appeal. You can recurr against an appeal at the Supreme Court. But Comodi and Mignini could not do that. Only the Prosecutor General could do that. And he would probably lose it.

You have no point.

 

[Samson]

Well he belongs in a line that includes those officials who used him to propagate this farce against two innocents and the whole family of the poor victim...but no its been "poor Rudy"... now whoever said that certainly belongs in this "most evil" lineup too.

Actually there is a bunch of them, my point is that if Machiavelli can subscribe to the insane belief that a physically and psychologically implausible chain of events occurred, then maybe Mignini can too.
Rudy on the other hand has perfect unambiguous knowledge of what occurred, that he killed alone, so he has top ranking in my view.

 

[Machiavelli]

My point is had the charges against Rudy been prosecuted honestly then there would be very good reasons and evidence presented that would have caused him to get a much lengthier sentence, and no one would have worried about losing anything at Cassazione. Rudy's short sentence is directly the result of being prosecuted very generously before the fast track reduction was taken into account.

I think I have shown precisely why this "point" is wrong and unfounded.

Rudy obtained the same mitigation of Knox and Sollecito, but he obtained it only on his appeal, while Knox and Sollecito obtain it immediately. He actually received a less favourable treatment by judges in terms of formal and informal mitigation, compared to AK and RS. This is plain facts.

 

[Poppy1016]

I think I have shown precisely why this "point" is wrong and unfounded.

Rudy obtained the same mitigation of Knox and Sollecito, but he obtained it only on his appeal, while Knox and Sollecito obtain it immediately. He actually received a less favourable treatment by judges in terms of formal and informal mitigation, compared to AK and RS. This is plain facts.

Mach, do you ever apply Occam's Razor in any of your reasonings?

 

[Machiavelli]

This is your dietrology. If they have the right to attempt to prosecute you under Italian law, the issue of whether or not they have "a case" is not yours to make.

In fact I did not make it.
Though, you assert that I made it. And your assertion s false. I never made such "admission" they have a case.

Yet, by saying that they have this right, you are admitting that they have a de facto case. Sheesh.

No, I am not. Not even in your dreams. But you are apparently unable to accept what I consider the basic of applied logic.

 

[Bill Williams]

There are no other more compelling explanations, that is the only problem.

And you are dietrologist #1 on this forum.

We can put that to a vote... I can't be both a dietrologist AND a liar!

Yes there are more compelling reasons, esp. for what Massei advanced which was.... "I can think of no other reason other than a clean-up."!

The lack of entertaining other reasons should not be seen as equivalent to there actually being no other compelling reasons, especially when Massei's is no reasoning at all..... once again, it is an assertion based on no actual investigation. It's all thought experiment, rather than processing of evidence.

Based on dietrology, which is some underlying notion or set of unstated facts, known only to an informed few.

 

[Machiavelli]

Of course you say this will only be an "attempt" by Hellmann and Vecchiotti to sue you, and I say that whether or not this is an "attempt" is a decision which is out of your control.
(...)

No, you said that I admitted they have a case against me.

And you are applying your usual technique: put your words into other people's mouth.
Lying using other people's name.

 

[Bill Williams]

In fact I did not make it.
Though, you assert that I made it. And your assertion s false. I never made such "admission" they have a case.



No, I am not. Not even in your dreams. But you are apparently unable to accept what I consider the basic of applied logic.

Why are we even talking about it, if now you say that you never made such an admission? This is the essence of dietrology? Keep chipping away at the edges until people wonder why you're even talking about it.

Never mind, Machiavelli. If and when Hellmann and Vecchiotti assert their right, to which even you admit they have..... oh no, here we go again, you're not even going to admit you said THAT!