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

[acbytesla]

Hm. I'm confused. Meaning the camera stopped working after a certain hour?

No, it's motion activated and records for a couple of minutes after it's activated. So when you are driving in and out of the Parking garage, it records and then it shuts off until the next time it is activated.

Meredith was across the street and didn't activate the camera but she could be seen crossing the street at that time.

 

[Planigale]

Idle question: Do Europeans need passports to travel among European Union countries? My impression, supported by this link, is that they generally do not (unless they are leaving the Schengen region). So if Raffaele decided "Back to prison? F.U.!," could he get to a country that would be unlikely to extradite him? How do, say, Switzerland or Sweden feel about extraditing convicted murderers who are in fact innocent?
http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/eu-citizen/index_en.htm

No passports not needed but many countries require you to carry official ID (e.g. France) and this can be used for travel between EU countries. No ID at all needed for some travel e.g. UK to Ireland.

 

[Grinder]

No, not necessarily Antony. The CCTV camera is motion controlled near the gate of the Parking garage. Meredith almost certainly didn't activate the camera in that view and a minute or two later there might not be a any images of Meredith returning home that night.

It would mean she went alone directly after Popovic stopped by as Raf was on the computer until after the video time.

Hm. I'm confused. Meaning the camera stopped working after a certain hour?

The CCTV only recorded after a car triggered it.

 

[acbytesla]

No passports not needed but many countries require you to carry official ID (e.g. France) and this can be used for travel between EU countries. No ID at all needed for some travel e.g. UK to Ireland.

I'm a bit surprised that the Irish would allow any Brits to their shore.

 

[Grinder]

Amanda and he arrive at the apartment. Someone has broken in. Meredith's door is locked and she's not answering, she's probably not home and has locked her door. Since it's locked the burglar wouldn't have stolen anything there. Raffaele and Amanda look around and talk about if anything is missing, Amanda says "no". The police ask Raffaele if anything was missing, he says no.

Really quite simple.

While yours is a popular view around here, I'd say that the statement as made to the police would legitimately have been suspicious. It is unfortunate that he didn't say "not that we can see" or "it doesn't appear so" but his absolute would make anyone investigating wonder. According to accounts Amanda didn't even look to see if her money was gone, which would be something most people would check.

It would be elucidating to find out exactly how the PLE used that response and how Raf explained it early on.

 

[icerat]

No passports not needed but many countries require you to carry official ID (e.g. France) and this can be used for travel between EU countries. No ID at all needed for some travel e.g. UK to Ireland.

Not only Europeans. To give you an example - I'm Australian but live in Sweden. A few years back I hired a motorhome, drove from Stockholm, through Denmark, Germany, and Austria to Italy, down as far as the Amalfi Coast, then back up via Tuscany and Venice then to Switzerland, France, Belgium, back through Germany and Denmark home to Sweden.

We didn't get asked for passport or any other form of ID once.

I suspect the police who can't afford to tape interrogations will probably have someone trailing Sollecito full time until this is all done.

 

[js202]

No, it's motion activated and records for a couple of minutes after it's activated. So when you are driving in and out of the Parking garage, it records and then it shuts off until the next time it is activated.

Meredith was across the street and didn't activate the camera but she could be seen crossing the street at that time.

I see. So it was pure happenstance that she was recorded? But, since Guede was also recorded arriving earlier, doesn't this seem too coincidental? Perhaps human or animal movement were enough to activate it?

 

[LondonJohn]

I'm a bit surprised that the Irish would allow any Brits to their shore.

How very dare you!!

Actually, in practice, if one is travelling from mainland UK to Ireland, one usually needs identification documents because of the mode of transport (airline or ferry). And crossing the border from Northern Ireland (part of the UK) to Ireland has always been strange owing to the "troubles", and also because of the amount of smuggling that (still) goes on across the border.

 

[LondonJohn]

Not only Europeans. To give you an example - I'm Australian but live in Sweden. A few years back I hired a motorhome, drove from Stockholm, through Denmark, Germany, and Austria to Italy, down as far as the Amalfi Coast, then back up via Tuscany and Venice then to Switzerland, France, Belgium, back through Germany and Denmark home to Sweden.

We didn't get asked for passport or any other form of ID once.

I suspect the police who can't afford to tape interrogations will probably have someone trailing Sollecito full time until this is all done.

Yes - and this reminds me of something else which also throws the "we couldn't afford to record/transcribe the interrogations" nonsense into further relief:

The police were apparently tailing Knox (and possibly also Sollecito) for some time prior to the 5th/6th interrogations. That's how they saw - and documented - Knox talking with Lumumba outside the University for Foreigners. Surveillance teams do not come cheap.

And it also speaks further to the undeniable fact that this was no ordinary run-of-the-mill crime investigation: this was perhaps the highest-profile and most-important criminal investigation that the whole of Umbria had seen for decades. It's quite simply outrageous to suggest that there wouldn't have been provision in the police budget to ensure a proper, exhaustive (within reason) investigation, including the recording of every single interview, where that was reasonably possible.

As I've already said, if those 5th/6th November interrogations were not recorded, I strongly suspect I know the real reason why not........

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I know I am responding to a big post with what amounts to a few lines

I have trouble believing four hard drives were fried all in custody?
I have likely have had 30 hard drives or so over 20 years with only around seven dying, one due to connecting the MOLEX wrong (old power connector) but cannot do that with SATA drives. Now, 2007, you still had IDE connectors in many cases.

Second, if the DNA is planted on the knife and bra clasp, how many people would need to be involved with that?

Would the same person be able to both screw up the computers and create the DNA evidence?

Kind of also curious, in another discussion, it was argued that it is a different prosecutor in this new case and why would be still want to frame them. This is after I brought up the simple argument that people have trouble letting go of already conceived notions. Thoughts?

At this point, the truth of this case makes the Italian court system as a whole look really bad, and they are doing what bureaucracies and public officials often do.

Take a look at the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas. A couple of years ago, the New Yorker published an article that advanced a strong circumstantial case for Willingham's innocence. Texas governor Perry, who had signed off on the execution, swung into action. He decapitated a state commission that was about to investigate the Willingham case, and he went on a rampage in the media to denounce Willingham and anyone who questioned his guilt.

If you look at the infamous Nicarico case in Illinois, a state Supreme Court justice upheld a conviction by citing "physical evidence" in a case where even the prosecutor conceded that there was no physical evidence.

I could cite any number of cases where the court system steps in to protect local authorities at the expense of innocent people. It is depressingly common.

 

[Bill Williams]

The Italian Ministry of Justice is launching an investigation into Judge Nencini's actions following the latest trial.

Unclear is that if successful, the convictions can be quashed.

 

[Poppy1016]

The only difference between you and the great leaders in industry is that you are willing to admit that you don't know what you are doing.

The only skill we are born with is the ability to learn. I've found that the best way to learn a new skill is to plagiarize. When you see a form that you like, copy it. make incremental changes and decide which you like best. Eventually the form will become your own.

Much of the work is simply mechanical chores. Finding and importing the original source documents, translating documents using Google, searching documents to build lists such as the names of people involved, elements for timelines. Pick whatever facet interests you, look to see if it already exists then gather the information to create it or update the existing element. Alternatively, as you are following the discussions and doing your own research, when you find a fact that you didn't already know look to see if it needs to be added to the wiki.

There are now two wikis. My private wiki and LondonJohn's public wiki. Help look at LondonJohn's wiki and see if it has the potential to go beyond the FOA answer to a guilter site and become a true skeptics resource. Unfortunately, his site is a faux wiki built on top of wordpress. I don't know yet if it will provide the full wiki capability or if I or somebody will still need to create the public skeptics wiki. In either case, the data collected in my wiki will need to be fact checked and transferred to the public wiki.

Lots of work to do. There ought to be something for everybody.

Can you provide a link to your wiki?

 

[AmyStrange]

speculative psychological crap

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I made this point before. If there was a mountain of solid irrefutable evidence for the guilt of Amanda and Raffaele and a 100% slam dunk case against them, why are the haters consistently unable to make the case for guilt without having to resort to lying? I gave an example of a hater on Amazon who said there were female thumbprints on Meredith's neck. Why do the haters have to resort to making things up if there was a mountain of genuine evidence against Amanda and Raffaele? If there was a solid case against Amanda and Raffaele, the haters should simply be able to list the evidence against Amanda and Raffaele truthfully.

-

I'd have to be shown how all three of these items, the duodenum, Meredith's try to her mother, and Rudy's Skype, don't all collaborate together to prove the probabilities are greater that the TOD was around 9:30 pm and not much later, which I believe is less probable. You'd have to show how it was more probable.

The confession/ accusation is a joke. The word murder is said, but no where else is anyone accused or confesses to an actual murder. It's like that movie "Psycho" where there are some people who still believe that Hitch actually shows a woman in the shower getting stabbed by a knife. The film is an illusion and so is the confession/ accusation.

The break-in could have been staged or not, but the Channel 5 video proves someone could have gotten in that way. Rudy's confession that someone else killed Meredith would probably need someone to break-in to be believable, so the question of staging becomes moot if either could logically have staged the break-in or needed to do it in order to make their story more believable.

The luminol and mixed blood evidence doesn't prove anything. I've followed both arguements here and they both make sense which to me means it doesn't prove nor disprove guilt, it all depends on your perspective whether it proves guilt or not.

The 40 wounds as a whole don't prove more than one were involved, and even if it did, it doesn't prove Amanda and Raffaele were the ones involved.

The actual knife wounds look to me like they were inflicted by a right handed person from behind. The rest of the wounds and bruising are consistent with someone being knocked about the room and even being hit in the nose area, maybe even being dazed by the nose hit enough so she could have been subdued long enough to be stabbed from behind and killed by one person.

The fact that there is no bruising on or around the wrist area is telling to me.

It would be interesting to see someone filming two people trying to hold a third person and NOT instinctively going for the wrist as a way to subdue that person. You'd go for the elbow area first, but then the wrist is the next logical target, which I think filming 300 different people doing this would prove, and thus makes me believe for more than one or two people to be involved, the wrist have to be bruised.

Yes, Amanda does look creepy, like an ice princess, but that don't make her one. I look creepy and I KNOW I'm a nice guy. A little weird yes, but a nice guy.

The rest of it are just interesting factoids or speculative psychological crap that don't prove (even all together as a whole) Amanda or Raffaele are murderers or even wannabe murderers, no more than any other college student from America (or even Italy) would be considered a murderer or wannabe murderer also.

But as always, this is all just my opinion,

d

-

 

[acbytesla]

I see. So it was pure happenstance that she was recorded? But, since Guede was also recorded arriving earlier, doesn't this seem too coincidental? Perhaps human or animal movement were enough to activate it?

No not really. It was a coincidence that Meredith walked across the field of view as a car entered the garage. But Guede walked through the parking garage and right past the motion detector .

 

[LondonJohn]

At this point, the truth of this case makes the Italian court system as a whole look really bad, and they are doing what bureaucracies and public officials often do.

Take a look at the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas. A couple of years ago, the New Yorker published an article that advanced a strong circumstantial case for Willingham's innocence. Texas governor Perry, who had signed off on the execution, swung into action. He decapitated a state commission that was about to investigate the Willingham case, and he went on a rampage in the media to denounce Willingham and anyone who questioned his guilt.

If you look at the infamous Nicarico case in Illinois, a state Supreme Court justice upheld a conviction by citing "physical evidence" in a case where even the prosecutor conceded that there was no physical evidence.

I could cite any number of cases where the court system steps in to protect local authorities at the expense of innocent people. It is depressingly common.

Exactly. And there are at least two very logical reasons why such phenomena occur with depressing regularity:

Firstly (and least defensibly), senior authority figures often have an imbalanced desire to defend other authority figures and institutions within their jurisdiction. Most often it's down to a sort of "we're all in this together" sentiment, coupled with "it could just as easily be me being attacked". Sometimes, it's also because of personal relationships/patronage/indebtedness.

Secondly (and more noble, but misplaced), this sort of reactionary defence of authority figures/institutions is often borne of a desire to preserve public confidence in those figures/institutions. It's absolutely fair and correct to say that a) the vast majority of authority decisions/rulings are right and just; and b) authority institutions depend in large part on public confidence to be able to operate effectively, and indeed systems of government can bend or break completely if public confidence falls below certain threshold levels.

For both these reasons - and there are others - it's far from uncommon to see this sort of "circling of the wagons". It's also why it can often take a very long time and a lot of strenuous effort to uncover the truth behind actual instances of malpractice or incompetence by authority figures/institutions. I think that some countries - including the UK and the US - are getting better at being transparent, honest and accountable after the fact, although these and other countries still have a long way to go to get to "best practice" status. However, everything that I have seen, read and experienced of Italy tells me that Italy is a very, very long way behind in terms of transparency, willingness to investigate misconduct/malpractice/incompetence, accountability and general openness.

 

[platonov]

Back to 2008 / 1st Trial strategy

At this point, the truth of this case

<snip>

All this foot stamping over watergate etc is all very well but I have a Q

The following is from Nencini's interview

Sollecito’s lawyers had asked you to split the defence.

“We’ll explain the point more in the reasonings, where we will explain why we rejected that request. In any case, Sollecito did not want to be questioned during the trial.”

How come we didnt hear of this at the time.

Comment is very thin on the ground here on this issue.
Any legal strategy is allowed but the Honour Bound / railroaded innocents meme takes a hit if this is true.

Any insights CW

Coulsdon - Have there been pages on this that I have missed.

Or is this another Italian lie !

 

[Paninaro]

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Giuliano_Mignini's_Closing_Arguments_-_Preliminary_Hearing

I think it's fascinating that Mignini in his closing argument above speaks about "the apparant parallelism between the behaviour of the young black man described by Tramontano and the Polish and the stranger in the apartment on Via della Pergola described in the various interrogations by Guede (maneuver to keep at a distance with the chair and use the knife) who obviously has seen fit to use that behaviour, attributing it to the unknown (urge?) murderess Meredith." (Google translation)

Is this Mignini's own words? In that case he seems to believe at least that Guede really wielded a knife during a failed break in at Tramontano?

 

[acbytesla]

At this point, the truth of this case makes the Italian court system as a whole look really bad, and they are doing what bureaucracies and public officials often do.

Take a look at the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas. A couple of years ago, the New Yorker published an article that advanced a strong circumstantial case for Willingham's innocence. Texas governor Perry, who had signed off on the execution, swung into action. He decapitated a state commission that was about to investigate the Willingham case, and he went on a rampage in the media to denounce Willingham and anyone who questioned his guilt.

If you look at the infamous Nicarico case in Illinois, a state Supreme Court justice upheld a conviction by citing "physical evidence" in a case where even the prosecutor conceded that there was no physical evidence.

I could cite any number of cases where the court system steps in to protect local authorities at the expense of innocent people. It is depressingly common.

I watched the documentary by Errol Morris called the Thin Blue Line. It's the story of Randall Adams who was wrongly convicted of murdering a police officer in Texas. He was sentenced to die. Luckily Morris tracked down evidence that exonerated Adams The prosecutor Douglas D. Mulder was censured for malfeasance in the case.

The appeals court found that prosecutor Mulder withheld a statement by Emily Miller to the police that cast doubt on her credibility and also allowed her to give perjured testimony. Mulder never repented his role in incarcerating Mr. Adams. In fact, he like Mignini, believed that the injustice was done to him.

 

[billyryan]

How very dare you!!

Actually, in practice, if one is travelling from mainland UK to Ireland, one usually needs identification documents because of the mode of transport (airline or ferry). And crossing the border from Northern Ireland (part of the UK) to Ireland has always been strange owing to the "troubles", and also because of the amount of smuggling that (still) goes on across the border.

I have made the trip many times from Ireland to the UK,Ryanair require an up to date passport,Aer Lingus will accept a current drivers licence,on the ferry you can roll on and roll off without being asked but you can also be challenged and a drivers licence will do,travelling between southern Ireland and Northern Ireland which I do often,now of days there is nothing to indicate you have left one jurisdiction for another,the only way to tell which jurisdiction you are in is to watch the road signs,distances are measured in kilometers in the South and Miles in the north

 

[Grinder]

The Italian Ministry of Justice is launching an investigation into Judge Nencini's actions following the latest trial.

Unclear is that if successful, the convictions can be quashed.

Isn't this a bit similar to the Hellmann court announcing the only thing certain is that Meredith was murdered. Hellmann also did an after verdict interview saying something like he didn't know if they were guilty or not but it wasn't proven in court.

If it can be shown that Nencini held Raf's not testifying against him, that would present an interesting problem as to whether or not both Raf and Amanda would have been the victims of prejudice.