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

[Chris_Halkides]

altruistic punishment

I think there's another factor at play, which is on display all too often in reactions to crime throughout history: far too many people see the role of justice not to establish facts, but to enforce punishment. If they see people escaping punishment merely because they weren't involved in the crime, then they feel cheated.

IIUC Douglas Preston has an essay in which he refers to people who are "altruistic punishers" by nature. His discussion of the internet storm surrounding this case is framed in this way.

 

[LondonJohn]

IIUC Douglas Preston has an essay in which he refers to people who are "altruistic punishers" by nature. His discussion of the internet storm surrounding this case is framed in this way.

This is a truly fascinating phenomenon, and I too believe that many (if not most) of the pro-guilt commentator group fit into this category.

It's a deeply interesting mindset to examine: vitriolic retribution and punishment, "excused" by some sort of imagined "greater good". In this case, "justice for Meredith" is of course the "greater good". Empowered by this misplaced sense of altruism, such individuals justify their hatred and desire to punish those who - as they see it - stand in the way of their noble ends.

I hate to "Godwin" things, but it's very much akin to the way people felt empowered to hate Nazi war criminals after WWII, and felt genuine joy at seeing them hang after the Nuremburg trials. In that case, of course, those on trial really had done unspeakably disgusting things and had broken pretty much every rule of warfare*. Virtually none of those baying for blood had ever been personally victimised by any of those on trial, but the "greater good" of justice for all those who had fallen victim to their actions was a key consideration. And of course most people in western Europe - and many in North America - had been affected directly or indirectly in some way by the Nazi war machine. This gave pretty much everyone in Western Europe and North America "permission" to hate the Nazi hierarchy and death camp commandants, and to dance with joy when they were hanged.

I think that what we're seeing among most of the pro-guilt commentators is a similar exhibition of altruistic punishment. But in this case, they have irrationally chosen retribution for the murder of a woman they never knew (and whose family and friends they never knew) as their "noble cause", thereby giving themselves permission to wish ill on everyone whom they have decided was responsible for her death. If Knox and Sollecito are found guilty by the Nencini court, I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that a majority of the pro-guilt commentators will be jumping for joy (maybe even literally in some cases). Likewise, if Knox/Sollecito are acquitted, I am certain that they will sink into deep funks of despair and dismay (who can forget Michael's legendary "I'm popping out for some milk" performance after the Hellmann verdict )

Truly bizarre, and truly fascinating.


* Although "rules of warfare" still seems oxymoronic to me! Overtones of "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

 

[acbytesla]

There will always be people who will claim they're sure the pair are guilty, even after a complete acquittal. These will be people on the internet, mostly on blog or newspaper comments, and Knox and Sollecito will have to get used to ignoring them. It's not fair, but that's the way it is.

Rolfe.

Some people just like those tin foil hats.

 

[Mary_H]

<snip>* Although "rules of warfare" still seems oxymoronic to me! Overtones of "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

I have reflected on this many times. If they can make a rule against certain types of warfare, why can't they just make a rule against war? Even more interesting is that the combatants follow the rules, thus proving that to them it's a game.

 

[Bill Williams]

<snip>* Although "rules of warfare" still seems oxymoronic to me! Overtones of "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

I have reflected on this many times. If they can make a rule against certain types of warfare, why can't they just make a rule against war? Even more interesting is that the combatants follow the rules, thus proving that to them it's a game.

There is a certain amount of honour in war. One soldier said the difference was that he'd been trained to be a killer, not a murderer. With opposing soldiers themselves under a chain of command, and the soldier under a chain of command, rules of war make some sense, anyway.

Then again, my brother and I were discussing this just today. The following is the only rule of war there is... really...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqhm36sjVE

 

[Samson]

Andrea Vogt has made another post in her journal. She writes:

She never told police Lumumba was innocent, but he was released after his alibi was later established.

My understanding was Amanda claimed she repeatedly tried to retract but the police refused to listen.
Also that she later said/wrote to her mother
"At last something has gone right, they have released Patrick."

It was clearly in police interests to refuse to listen on the first count, and that the final statement is illogical if she intentionally framed an innocent man.

Is Andrea Vogt telling the unvarnished truth?
I note that Amanda was not in a position to tell police Lumumba was innocent unless she was there. Therefore is Vogt finessing the narrative to paint a negative picture of Amanda?

 

[Mary_H]

Andrea Vogt has made another post in her journal. She writes:

She never told police Lumumba was innocent, but he was released after his alibi was later established.

My understanding was Amanda claimed she repeatedly tried to retract but the police refused to listen.
Also that she later said/wrote to her mother
"At last something has gone right, they have released Patrick."

It was clearly in police interests to refuse to listen on the first count, and that the final statement is illogical if she intentionally framed an innocent man.

Is Andrea Vogt telling the unvarnished truth?
I note that Amanda was not in a position to tell police Lumumba was innocent unless she was there. Therefore is Vogt finessing the narrative to paint a negative picture of Amanda?

Amanda did retract. The news was in the Italian newspapers by November 9th. Chris Halkides and I posted a number of comments about this last month on a certain blog article. You can scroll down to see our comments; Chris provided a lot of documentation. If I have time, I will compile some of the information.

As you point out, Amanda was not in a position to determine Patrick's innocence.

 

[Bill Williams]

Andrea Vogt has made another post in her journal. She writes:

She never told police Lumumba was innocent, but he was released after his alibi was later established.

My understanding was Amanda claimed she repeatedly tried to retract but the police refused to listen.
Also that she later said/wrote to her mother
"At last something has gone right, they have released Patrick."

It was clearly in police interests to refuse to listen on the first count, and that the final statement is illogical if she intentionally framed an innocent man.

Is Andrea Vogt telling the unvarnished truth?
I note that Amanda was not in a position to tell police Lumumba was innocent unless she was there. Therefore is Vogt finessing the narrative to paint a negative picture of Amanda?

Like Machiavelli, Andrea Vogt specializes in saying guilt-like things, which are perhaps technically true, but are stated in the "when did you stop beating your wife" way.....

This is what Knox wrote on the morning of Nov 6, her "gift" memorandum to the PLE... I've edited out non-related stuff to what she'd said, so as to keep it about Lumumba. Please note, again and again she says, "this is what the police are telling me is true....."

The police have told me that they have hard evidence that places me at the house, my house, at the time of Meredith's murder. I don't know what proof they are talking about, but if this is true, it means I am very confused and my dreams must be real.

Why did I think of Patrik? 3. Is the evidence proving my pressance [sic] at the time and place of the crime reliable? If so, what does this say about my memory? Is it reliable? 4. Is there any other evidence condemning Patrik or any other person? 3. Who is the REAL murder [sic]? This is particularly important because I don't feel I can be used as condemning testimone [sic] in this instance.

This is what she said at trial when asked by Lumumba's lawyer why the next memorandum she wrote, after the gift, the one penned by Knox at the behest of the nuns made no mention of Patrick.... please note how Pacelli is going for maximum confusion, and Knox is trying to clearly explain.

Carlo Pacelli (Patrick Lumumba's lawyer): In the memorandum of the 7th, why didn't you mention Patrick?
AK: I think I thought that everything would be clear since I had written that everything I had said in the Questura wasn't true. So that meant also the fact that Patrick--
CP: But you didn't mention Patrick.
AK: I said what I had done myself, and that was the important thing. The fact that I hadn't been with him, for me that showed that I couldn't say what had happened that night, in the house. I could only say what happened to me, and the fact was that I wasn't with him.
GCM: Excuse me, avvocato, where is this document?
CP: It's there, Knox's defense produced it, the memorandum from the 7th.
GCM: The 7th.
LG? Yes, we acquired also the 7th.
GCM: So we have it. Go ahead.
CP: On the 7th you wrote "I didn't lie when I said the murderer might be Patrick." Why did you write that in your memorandum of the 7th?
AK: Honestly, I thought, like the police had told me -- the police had told me they had already found the guilty person. And they had suggested Patrick so much that I thought maybe it really was him. But apart from that, in that memorandum that I wrote in prison, the important thing for me was to tell what I knew, and what I knew was where I was on that evening.
CP: Patrick was in prison because of YOU! You didn't even say it to the PM on the 8th.
GCM: Excuse me, excuse me.
LG? I object to the way this question is posed! It contains value judgments that are not opportune. Guilt or fault is something which hasn't yet been determined. It can't be the object of a question.
GCM: That is the position of the Court. Questions should not contain evaluations.
CP: Signorina, more simply, this is my question.
GCM: Go ahead.
CP: In the memorandum of the 6th you name Patrick. On the 7th you write another memorandum confirming that Patrick is the assassin. But on the 10th, you tell your mother that you feel terrible because you got him put in prison and you know he is innocent. Do you confirm this?
AK: At the moment when I named Patrick, I didn't know if he was innocent or not. I only said it because I was following the suggestion of the police. But when I wrote in the memorandum that I couldn't accept the things I had said in the Questura, for me that meant I couldn't know whether he was the murderer or not, I could only know that I wasn't there.
CP: But then why on the 10th, three days later, did you say "I feel bad about what I did to Patrick?" To your mother?
AK: Because I knew that they arrested him because I gave them his name. But they are the ones who suggested the name. They wanted me to accuse him, and I didn't like that.
CP: To your mother, in that telephone conversation, you say--
GCM: Excuse me, avvocato. To just return to this question. The defense is expressing his perplexity and we also feel it. You are saying: "I didn't know if Patrick was innocent or not." This is on the 6th and the 7th. But on the 10th, you essentially say that he's innocent. So what the defense lawyer is asking is, what happened in between to make you change your mind? To change your conviction about the role of Patrick? It's this.
AK: Well, yes. I knew he was in prison uniquely because of my words. At first I didn't know this. I thought the police somehow knew whether he was guilty or not. Since I didn't know, I was confused. But in the following days I realized that he was in prison only because of what I had said, and I felt guilty.
CP: Why didn't you tell the police this in the following days, or to the PM?
GCM: Excuse me, avvocato? The days following which day?
CP: I'm talking about the 10th of November. The day of the conversation with her mother? Why didn't you ever tell the police or the publicco ministero?
AK: I had clearly written down in the memorandum that everything in my declarations couldn't be true because I didn't really remember them. And then, whenever police came to talk to give me paper or anything, they treated me like "Oh, so you have another truth now." So this was my way of telling them that nothing I had said in the Questura was usable.
CP: But you accused Patrick in the memorandum.
GCM: In which memorandum?
CP: In the ones of the 6th and 7th.

Andrea Vogt is doing the prosecution's work for it in the public sphere, in short, spreading lies.

 

[Bill Williams]

For those confident that the Nencini court, and ultimately the ISC, will make the right decision regarding the Sollecito/Knox case...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10542835/Mans-sex-with-11-year-old-not-abusive-Italian-court-rules.html

An Italian high court has overturned the conviction of a 60-year-old man for having sex with an 11-year-old girl, because the verdict failed to take into account their "amorous relationship".

Pietro Lamberti, a social services worker in Catanzaro in southern Italy, was convicted in February 2011 and sentenced to five years in prison for sexual acts with a minor.

The verdict was later upheld by an appeals court.

But the Italian supreme court ruled that the verdict did not sufficiently consider "the 'consensus', the existence of an amorous relationship, the absence of physical force, the girl's feelings of love".

It's been thrown back to the lower level....

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Is Andrea Vogt telling the unvarnished truth?
I note that Amanda was not in a position to tell police Lumumba was innocent unless she was there. Therefore is Vogt finessing the narrative to paint a negative picture of Amanda?

What Mary_H and Bill_Williams said. Andrea is speaking falsely and doing a big disservice to her readers IMO.

 

[moije2]

Like Machiavelli, Andrea Vogt specializes in saying guilt-like things, which are perhaps technically true, but are stated in the "when did you stop beating your wife" way.....

This is what Knox wrote on the morning of Nov 6, her "gift" memorandum to the PLE... I've edited out non-related stuff to what she'd said, so as to keep it about Lumumba. Please note, again and again she says, "this is what the police are telling me is true....."



This is what she said at trial when asked by Lumumba's lawyer why the next memorandum she wrote, after the gift, the one penned by Knox at the behest of the nuns made no mention of Patrick.... please note how Pacelli is going for maximum confusion, and Knox is trying to clearly explain.



Andrea Vogt is doing the prosecution's work for it in the public sphere, in short, spreading lies.

It is really hard to believe that not so long ago there was a discussion comparing Candace Dempsey with Andrea Vogt. They are not in the same universe. IMHO.

 

[Strozzi]

The pointed questions cited by Samson in post 1348 that Lumumba's attorney, Pacelli, demanded of Knox about how and when she remembered that Lumumba must be innocent, and how and when did she tell the police/prosecutor of that are somewhat similar to the questions I, if a judge in this case, would want to put to Quintavalle, Curatalo, Nara, and others witnesses who claim to have seen or heard something, but did not come forward to the police at the time.

Did you really see or hear what you now think you saw or heard, or is this a conflated memory constructed in your imagination?
How do you know you heard it on the night you now think you heard it?
How do you know that it was the sound of a person, and not a mechanical-induced sound?
How do you know it was a sound of extreme distress?
How do you know the approximate time you heard it?
Have you been upset by the events that took place in the cottage on the night of Nov 1/2? Have you had recurring thoughts about the British girl?
Have you seen inflamatory media coverage of the case?
Have you been contacted by a reporter and has he suggested or encouraged you to remember something?
Have you seen media coverage implicating Knox or discussed with others that Knox is the villian?

 

[RandyN]

I don't understand Twitter at all, and I'm now told that FaceBook is becoming a thing of the past as other, more tech-savvy services are coming up.....
But my take on the guilt sites, or Facebook threads which promote guilt, is that they almost universally ban anyone who doesn't toe the party line. I got banned from TJMK two years ago for misspelling "homocide", but also saying that the climb in through Filomena's window was not difficult... and this was before the Channel 5 documentary!

This practise of banning opposing points of view, almost universally vilifying those who are close to the families... accusing the families of covering up the fact that they know their loved ones are guilty...

But it's the banning all the while saying that they promote open debate. It is startling how these common practises emerge from people with that point of view.

And as for bank transfers from Marriott..... I initially insisted on those.... then the transfers had about 97% deducted for otherwise hidden service charges. Then I found out that Marriott owned the bank! That guy's a real weasel!

Don't worry Bill...blowhards like you....and well...me and several others here who shall remain nameless due to the rules...can never make Twitter or any other limited word sites work for us...they are stupid and will fail because not everyone enjoys trying to condense ideas down to 76 words or whatever the magic number is...I tried it for a month...it sucks...I was always running up against the word count thing and refused to resort to the "other language" ru gtinme? Twitter has yet to make a penny. Don't know if you invest but the stock is a stay away from or sell at best. They lead the second onslaught of the dot com disasters...

 

[RandyN]

What Mary_H and Bill_Williams said. Andrea is speaking falsely and doing a big disservice to her readers IMO.

So nothing has changed about her then.

No surprise... actually that she has come out so much more obviously and vocally and as a marked biased slob tabloid writer which she has always been but always a bit more veiled...a lie here, a misquote there...but now she has gone completely off the mark. She cant pretend anymore. I cant imagine she will get any real work anymore...well National Dispise or Enquire or Inquire sure.

Surprising that she is still sucking on the teat of this sad story. Almost as if she is capitalizing on poor Miss Kerchers death.

 

[RandyN]

Originally Posted by RandyN View Post
Sure he knew exactly what he was doing. Pity in Italy he didn't have a Jessie Jackson or an Al Sharpton to help trumpet the racial injustice that was about to go down.

There are different versions of the race card game.

Man, why you always picking on me...don't you understand my ancestors were slaves? But we just caught you selling crack to a teenager. Hey man... its hard out there to be a pimp.

There goes Bill's screen shot.

Jessie and AL are two of the most visible racists in the USA. My stereotype example actually is a slightly paraphrased take on a comedy routine of a black comedian...it was also a hip hop hit song not all that long ago.

I have lots of black friends...spicks, waps, polocks, and dagos too...;-) Go ahead take another screen shot Bill.

Yummi calling anyone else raciest is a fine example of the pot calling the kettle black....err African American????

 

[LondonJohn]

What Mary_H and Bill_Williams said. Andrea is speaking falsely and doing a big disservice to her readers IMO.

Vogt's repeated bias and spin belie any claims that she is an objective reporter on this case. This is just the latest in a long, sorry line of lies and distortions. It's no wonder that her copy is not being picked up anywhere in the mass media. I continue to wonder whether she knows what she's doing (i.e. actively dissembling and misrepresenting) or whether she is merely too ignorant to know better.

Incidentally, the communications that Vogt has "revealed" in her latest dispatch tell us precisely nothing about the case. They are nothing more or less than the diplomatic and judicial niceties between the US Consulate and the judicial authorities, consisting of a chain of requests for visits to Knox in custody, confirmations of visits, credentials of the local US consul, and other purely bureaucratic exchanges. If anyone thinks that these communications shed any light whatsoever on the case, or on Knox's application to the ECHR, then they are either ignorant or biased (or both).

 

[bri1]

For those confident that the Nencini court, and ultimately the ISC, will make the right decision regarding the Sollecito/Knox case...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10542835/Mans-sex-with-11-year-old-not-abusive-Italian-court-rules.html

​

It's been thrown back to the lower level....

I saw this too, Bill. This judgment completely undermines any idea that the supreme courts in italy are competent.
It's absolutely sick to suggest that a 60 year old having sex with an 11 year old is not child abuse. Sick.

 

[LondonJohn]

I saw this too, Bill. This judgment completely undermines any idea that the supreme courts in italy are competent.
It's absolutely sick to suggest that a 60 year old having sex with an 11 year old is not child abuse. Sick.

Yes. Clearly the estimable (not) judges of the Italian SC are unfamiliar with the ethics (and probably even the concept) of "informed consent".

This is such an egregiously disgusting and incorrect ruling that (in my view) it raises extremely serious questions, in and of itself, about the Italian SC's ability to administer justice. In my opinion, the Italian criminal justice system is currently unfit for purpose. That the highest judges in the land can arrive at such a ruling is appalling, deeply shocking, and deeply disturbing.

 

[Rolfe]

I couldn't agree more. It smacks of such a disconnect between the men who make up that court and "all right-thinking people" (to coin a phrase) that the entire system must be called into question.

Rolfe.

 

[andreajo]

I saw this too, Bill. This judgment completely undermines any idea that the supreme courts in italy are competent.
It's absolutely sick to suggest that a 60 year old having sex with an 11 year old is not child abuse. Sick.

Even worse, a 60 year old in a position of trust and authority working in a professional capacity with the child and her family. Wow. Italian law allows weasel room on this?