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

[Grinder]

"It's an open secret that Italian police rough up suspects during interrogations. "

With that statement you are implying that the Italian police routinely rough up suspects. Certainly this does happen here… as it does in the US. But routinely? As a matter of course? I don't think so.

So much so that there TV shows and web sites devoted to them.

The problem with Ms. Knox is that she's a liar.

Her lawyers never filed any complaint of police abuse.

In fact, during the trial, her lawyer Luciano Ghirga in a taped interview said “There were pressures from the police, but we never said she was hit.” "

Someone is lying…. I wonder who?

More from Girgha speaking about her alibis:

"A lawyer for Knox, Luciano Ghirga, told reporters Friday that his client had given "three versions and ... it is difficult to evaluate which one is true."

"He also said he had warned Knox against making unfounded accusations. "We told her that it would be worse than assassination to accuse an innocent person. We explained to her what slander means in Italy and we'll see," Ghirga said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/09/AR2007110901457_pf.html

Let's see the article is from Nov. 7th. Do you think Ghirga had seen all of the statements and the notes? Do you think he could read English then as he doesn't seem able now?

How any people were charged with a crime associated with the treatment of Amanda by the police? Did Mignini charge her parents for an interview given to an English writer while they were not even in Italy?

Do you think that a country where it is "... worse than assassination to accuse an innocent person. We explained to her what slander means in Italy [even in court] and we'll see" might keep lawyers from properly representing their clients?

He apparently has had the chance to evaluate what is true and came down on the side of her being at Raf's and not involved.

When did she, herself, first mention the slaps and mistreatment? Why if she maintains it happened do you think the lawyers demurred?

From the first note - Not only was I told I would be arrested and put in jail for 30 years, but I was also hit in the head when I didn't remember a fact correctly. I understand that the police are under a lot of stress, so I understand the treatment I received.

Since she wrote that on the 6th before she had talked with Ghirga, why in the world would they not bring it up since in would be in the record because of the concurrent PL calunnia trial? Why not, because the Italian sysrem puts people including lawyers at risk for even repeating such a thing, even in court.

“There were pressures from the police, but we never said she was hit.”

Nope not us, maybe someone else, maybe the guy behind the tree, but not us, nope no sir.

 

[AmyStrange]

SPC (Speculative Psychological Crap)

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Not if I was a cold blooded murderer whose only regret was that I didn't get away with my lie.

If I was innocent I'd pay in a heartbeat.

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Proof that this is exactly what ALL guilty or innocent people do or say?

This is just your opinion, or as I like to call it, speculative psychological crap.

Give me real proof that your statement isn't crap and I'll believe you,

d

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[Bill Williams]

And again:



There were never any calunnia charges filed against Ghirga.

What's amazing is how guilters bob and weave around the obvious. Knox herself was so charged, even knox's parents... the proof this was a targeted bit of harassment was that neither the publisher or the author, who have money, were not charged.

Ghirga knows the score on this.

 

[acbytesla]

Not if I was a cold blooded murderer whose only regret was that I didn't get away with my lie.

If I was innocent I'd pay in a heartbeat.

I WOULDN'T!!! And I think your claim is bull. You'd tell them to eff off.

 

[AmyStrange]

More SPC

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Especially if I had inadvertently caused him to be arrested and lose his business, it would be an opportunity to show to the world that I was honest about being sorry for mistakenly accusing him.

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So, Amanda actually went out and arrested Patrick huh? Or, was that the PLE?

Where in Amanda's confession/ accusation/ statement did she give details on how Patrick killed Meredith?

d

ETA the PLE are the ones who are responsible for Patrick and they should have known better than to arrest him w/o any investigation. I'm not saying Amanda was wrong in signing that statement w/o a lawyer, but until I (or you) have been interrogated like she was, I (or you) have no idea what we're talking about in that regard... show me the tapes!
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[Grinder]

Second off what she says is that she wasn't lying, she'd been convinced by police it must be so, thus wasn't lying to them. She was convinced by the police continually telling her untruths that I don't think they were lying about either, even though it wasn't true, because they had reason to believe them because of their mistakes.

Would that be the police that knew what was correct before hearing from Amanda? I may have missed Vibio's explanation as to what that meant other than the police channeling Amanda into a statement of their creation. Could you direct me to a PGP explanation of De Felice?

 

[Grinder]

Not if I was a cold blooded murderer whose only regret was that I didn't get away with my lie.

If I was innocent I'd pay in a heartbeat.

Huh? Really? Why would she have made a false accusation if innocent?

Could you explain how and why the police knew her accusation of Patrick was correct before she gave it? Didn't think so.

 

[Kestrel]

There are so many lies posted on this thread that its hard to keep up.

"It's an open secret that Italian police rough up suspects during interrogations. "

With that statement you are implying that the Italian police routinely rough up suspects. Certainly this does happen here… as it does in the US. But routinely? As a matter of course? I don't think so.

Amanda Knox was convicted of falsely claiming a Perugia policewoman hit her on the back of the head. But where is the proof that the allegation was false? There are no recordings of that interrogation, so it's just the word of the police against a young woman. And in court, the police know that their word trumps any criminal suspect.

In the US, merely making such an allegation is not a crime. But Italy is too proud of their police force to let such a comment pass. Not only was Amanda convicted, but lawsuits were filed against her parents and others for simply repeating the allegation.

Journalists did not have much trouble finding others who had been abused by Perugia's finest. The even found others that had been abused by the same policewoman as Amanda. For their trouble, most of them where sued and a couple suffered beatings.

Italy has the worst court backlog in Europe. Minor cases can take years to get to trial. Yet on this case alone at least a dozen peripheral cases have been filed against critics of the Perugia police and prosecutors.

Yes, bad police behavior also happens here in the US. I know people who have suffered beatings at the hands of corrupt policeman. I have watched citizens back down from testifying against the police because they fear retaliation. But over the years measures have been implemented to reduce the problem. Other nations such as the UK have gone even further, requiring video recordings of both the suspect and questioner in all police interviews. Italy needs to do the same instead of denying the problem out of a misplaced sense of national pride.

 

[Diocletus]

Her lawyers never filed any complaint of police abuse.

In fact, during the trial, her lawyer Luciano Ghirga in a taped interview said “There were pressures from the police, but we never said she was hit.” "

Why does this matter? She wrote an almost contemporaneous statement stating that she had been hit. Isn't that a complaint. Or, you mean that she has to have filed some kind of criminal charge of assault against the police in order to be taken seriously?

 

[Bob001]

The Italian Court System is based upon the inquisitorial concept, the judge is more a mediator and the defense kind of a Devil's Advocate to ensure the incorruptible prosecutor doesn't overlook anything.
.....

So if everything the prosecution says is presumed to be the truth, how is a defense even possible? "Mr. Prosecutor, did you consider that the defendant didn't commit the crime?" "We know she did." "Mr. Prosecutor, did you consider that your agents mishandled evidence?" "Our agents are professionals. They don't make mistakes." "Mr. Prosecutor, why did you fail to tape what you claim are statements made by the defendant?" "Our dedicated police officers took careful notes." The big question is how does any defendant ever get a "not guilty" verdict?

 

[Diocletus]

It appears I may have misspoke.

Apparently there is a whitehouse.org ? petition on the go.
How is that doing ?
Given that AK is going to avoid extradition due to a groundswell of popular support that the politicos dare not ignore one hopes the numbers are good.

With all the fawning TV coverage it must be up to 300/400 k at this stage.

So how is it looking.

Rose Montague - you are good at booksales etc ...
Can you give the board an update.

Is the caption of your post intended to suggest that the people who believe that Amanda Knox is innocent are "racist nutters"?

 

[anglolawyer]

Rolfe

Re: Tabak

The prosecution also said that Tabak attempted to implicate Chrisopher Jefferies for the murder during the police investigation, and that in the days following Yeates' death, he had made internet searches for topics that included the length of time a body takes to decompose and the dates of refuse collections in the Clifton area.[89][105]

Yes, AC, I was joshing. My point was that very little can be derived from appearances. Innocent looking people turn out to be guilty and weirdos can be innocent.

 

[RoseMontague]

Rose Montague - you are good at booksales etc ...
Can you give the board an update.

I only sold a few copies last week, platonov. For updates follow the 'What is everyone writing right now' thread. Rolfe was doing well with his last time I checked.

 

[acbytesla]

Typical Guilter nonsense TSIG
.
If she and Raffale would have went to Gubbio, they would have been hiding.
But staying proves they were trying to control the discovery.
"Amanda a moron."
"Amanda's an evil genius."
If she doesn't cry..she's the ice maiden...without feelings.
If she does cry, she's a manipulative phoney.

You can interpret every behavior multiple ways..doesn't mean you have a clue.

 

[Supercalifragilistic]

Especially if I had inadvertently caused him to be arrested and lose his business, it would be an opportunity to show to the world that I was honest about being sorry for mistakenly accusing him.

I must say that this is how I currently see it. I can't comprehend how someone who is totally innocent in this case would think it perfectly moral or in any way reasonable to avoid paying court-awarded damages to the person who was mistakenly fingered by their statements. Plus, as you say, surely the dimmest innocent wit would want the world to see just how sorry they are by paying the damages pronto. I'm told Knox has apologized, but of course words on their own are far too easy.

 

[Rolfe]

Rolfe

Re: Tabak

Yes, AC, I was joshing. My point was that very little can be derived from appearances. Innocent looking people turn out to be guilty and weirdos can be innocent.

I didn't realise he had done that.

It was so easy for the tabloids to make Chris Jefferies out to be a real weirdo. Even his former employer was carefully non-committal when saying that he had had a blameless career. The poor man had to have a complete makeover to make him look like an ordinary boring guy with a short back and sides. But mauve hair, while probably a mistake on a man of his years, does not a murderer make.

Rolfe.

 

[Grinder]

Amanda Knox was convicted of falsely claiming a Perugia policewoman hit her on the back of the head. But where is the proof that the allegation was false? There are no recordings of that interrogation, so it's just the word of the police against a young woman. And in court, the police know that their word trumps any criminal suspect.

Unless a homeless heroin addict can be found that witnessed the interrogation.

In the US, merely making such an allegation is not a crime. But Italy is too proud of their police force to let such a comment pass. Not only was Amanda convicted, but lawsuits were filed against her parents and others for simply repeating the allegation.

I don't think the defamation or whatever they are called suits have been completed only the calunnia against PL. More sure of the parents than Amanda. In the US a accusation made in court is very hard to charge someone with a crime.

Journalists did not have much trouble finding others who had been abused by Perugia's finest. The even found others that had been abused by the same policewoman as Amanda. For their trouble, most of them where sued and a couple suffered beatings.

Links would be good and best if not only from Frank.

Yes, bad police behavior also happens here in the US. I know people who have suffered beatings at the hands of corrupt policeman. I have watched citizens back down from testifying against the police because they fear retaliation. But over the years measures have been implemented to reduce the problem. Other nations such as the UK have gone even further, requiring video recordings of both the suspect and questioner in all police interviews. Italy needs to do the same instead of denying the problem out of a misplaced sense of national pride.

Here a sheriff just lost his job for trying to intimidate a journalist. All of our cop cars have video that go on when the blues are activated. It is being proposed that all cops have camera, which presents a hell-of-a-problem in tracking them all.

 

[AmyStrange]

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I must say that this is how I currently see it. I can't comprehend how someone who is totally innocent in this case would think it perfectly moral or in any way reasonable to avoid paying court-awarded damages to the person who was mistakenly fingered by their statements. Plus, as you say, surely the dimmest innocent wit would want the world to see just how sorry they are by paying the damages pronto. I'm told Knox has apologized, but of course words on their own are far too easy.

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Amanda did not go out and arrest Patrick, the PLE did.

Where exactly in her confession/ accusation/ statement did she give any details on how Meredith was killed by Patrick?

d

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[LondonJohn]

I am pretty sure Tabak told the police something that pointed them at Jefferies. 'Pretty sure' might be too strong, on reflection. Challenged by Rolfe I am wavering. I will go look it up

Tabak (via his girlfriend) called the police from the Netherlands to misdirect them towards Jefferies. The police (Avon & Somerset) actually sent an officer over to NL to interview Tabak - he told them, incorrectly, that he'd seen Jefferies' car parked facing the opposite way the morning after the murder to the way it had been parked the night before. The obvious intended inference was that Jefferies had used his car at some point during the night of the murder (and this was doubly damaging to Jefferies because he had already told police that he had not gone out at all that night).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-15430885

Incidentally, we shouldn't be toooooooo quick to pat the Avon & Somerset Police on the back for the way they handled the arrest of Jefferies. The police quite obviously colluded with the media in releasing details of Jefferies' interviews, and in giving them additional information that had "juice" value. I very, very strongly believe that either money or other indirect remuneration was passing from the media to certain individuals within the police. As I understand it, there's still an investigation pending.

And aside from the issues around those forms of police corruption and collusion with the media, there are also questions to be asked around the way the police were apparently all too ready to be convinced - in the short term, at least - that Jefferies was "their man". That was certainly the tenor of the communications that certain officers were having with the media in the days following Jefferies' arrest: there was a certain misplaced "justification" to the unlawful passing to the media of information about Jefferies, since there was consensus that Jefferies was the culprit. This article makes for interesting reading on how Jefferies was treated:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/22eac290-eee2-11e0-959a-00144feab49a.html#axzz2sxkG7cRl

And in fact the police remained resistant to the possibility that Jefferies was completely innocent for a very long time after he was released from custody without charge: Jefferies remained on police bail - and therefore still officially under suspicion - for some three months, while the real culprit (Tabak) was charged only some three weeks after Jefferies' release. Since Jefferies was still officially under suspicion for all that time, it was still open season on the media to attack him. Avon & Somerset Constabulary should be ashamed of the fact that they held Jefferies on police bail for such an unnecessarily long period. In fact, he should never have been put on bail at all - he could always have been re-arrested had new information ever come to light that implicated him (and that was extremely unlikely anyhow, given the growing weight of evidence for Tabak as sole assailant). It seems highly likely that the primary motive for the police to keep Jefferies on bail for so long was to save face, to "justify" their high-profile arrest of him, and to ensure that when he finally was released from bail, it wouldn't be so much of a story.


So while the police in this case certainly acted far, far better than the Perugia State Police in the Kercher case, they still acted far less than honourably by any objective measure of the term. In fact, the level of malpractice of the police in the Yeates murder case - under far better and stricter laws (PACE and other regulatory codes) than those in Italy, where it appears to be open season on police corruption and malpractice - should make anyone far more amenable to the (correct) suggestion that the police in Perugia engaged in far worse malpractice in their misguided pursuit of Knox and Sollecito.

 

[Kaosium]

So if everything the prosecution says is presumed to be the truth, how is a defense even possible? "Mr. Prosecutor, did you consider that the defendant didn't commit the crime?" "We know she did." "Mr. Prosecutor, did you consider that your agents mishandled evidence?" "Our agents are professionals. They don't make mistakes." "Mr. Prosecutor, why did you fail to tape what you claim are statements made by the defendant?" "Our dedicated police officers took careful notes." The big question is how does any defendant ever get a "not guilty" verdict?

If there's not good evidence the prosecutor is supposed to ask for an acquittal. If they don't, then the judge and lay judges must determine the prosecutor is misrepresenting things or is incorrect as to what the evidence means, that's tougher for some to do than others. There's a natural bias to assume the authorities are correct and wouldn't lie (or be incompetent) about matters of evidence and justice.

Note in a normal Italian trial the second prosecution would be a different prosecutor, in fact a guy named Costagliola was the official prosecutor for the appeal. However Mignini and Comodi attached themselves to the prosecution and did most of the courtwork for the appeal, which is nearly unprecedented. That's supposed to be a safeguard as it requires two separate prosecutors to come to the same conclusion on the evidence, however I've read they kinda stick together anyway most of the time.