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

[Caper]

Great to have Mach back. I know a little more about be technicalities.

Mach you are going of have to back up your work.

 

[Caper]

Double post.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Dingo and the Chamberlains

Question:
There was a case featured years ago on one of those crime TV shows about a couple where their child was killed. They have a D&D Forgotten Realms novel.
The police claimed that the parents sacrificed the child due to finding the novel.
The story of the parents, which is more likely, is that the child was attacked by a dog and the child's wounds were extremely neat looking due to medical attempts.
Anybody know what case this was and what the resolution was?

Some parts of what you describe could be the Lindy Chamberlain case in Australia, more than thirty years ago now. I don't know anything about a novel being associated with this case, and Azaria's body was never found, so perhaps we are thinking of two different tragedies. There is a thread or two here at JREFF on the Chamberlain case, and one can draw some close parallels with the forensics of the present one.

It is interesting how often the police go for a ritual sacrifices/satanism. I think it is part of the prosecutor's handbook; when you have no clue about motive, go for satanism, and hope the jury is gullible.

 

[Dan O.]

Remember O.J.Simpson? With all his celebrity and connections, and given a second chance after the murder trial, he still couldn't stay on the right side of the law. Guede has none of his advantages, and will be subject to release on licence to boot.

What I haven't seen is a skeptical site with an unbiased presentation of all of the OJ evidence and with rational discussion. At the time, the primary sites presenting the data were the equivalent of TJMK with the message that it was in memory of Nicole and the same sort of frenologists comming out of the woodwork.

Rudy's non celebrity status may be an advantage for him. He will be mostly forgotten as a side note while the attention remains focused on Amanda and the other guy.

 

[LondonJohn]

I go with RandyN on this one. She could have worn Hillary Clinton conservative pantsuits for all the sessions, and this travesty would have still happened.

It's all part of blaming the victim - Barbie Nadeau and Andrea Vogt have made careers out of it.

Amanda may as well be Amanda with all the warts.

I'm not suggesting that her choice of attire did make any difference to the verdict(s) - as you say, it's entirely likely that nothing would have made any difference.

What I am saying, though, is that there was nothing but a potential downside to Knox from choosing to wear that t-shirt. In other words, she did herself no favours whatsoever by wearing it, and could only have stood to harm herself judicially-speaking. Therefore, it was a stupid and ill-judged decision to wear the t-shirt, and it was even more stupid and remiss of her lawyers to let her wear it.

In addition, of course, Knox did herself few favours in the court of public opinion. I cannot imagine that any "neutral observer" thought that it was somehow "cute" or "free-spirited" for someone to wear that sort of clothing while appearing at their own trial for murder. Instead, I suspect that most such observers would have considered the move disrespectful to a court, and rather crass. I know I did.

It simply doesn't wash to say that this was simply "Amanda being Amanda". I, for example, use swear words not-infrequently when I'm out in the evening with mates - you might call that "me being me". But I do not use swear words when I am having an office-based business meeting with senior executives. I modify my behaviour to suit the occasion, the audience and the nature of the conversation. That is the implied social contract that binds us all. Knox was no different. She should have dressed neutrally, soberly and demurely for her role as a defendant in a criminal trial. That's all there is to it.

 

[Planigale]

It's a lie. And you know it. You have been shown repeatedly... but you denie it... Vecchiotti was caught lying. I have shown that and innocentisti folks deny it... Stefanoni never lied. Never cehated and never refused to deposit documentation. She answered all questions. But I see how you folks repeatedly try to rationalize about something different. You "imagine" things. Even Stefanoni guess about hundreds picograms was correct, and it was proven that the defence lied on several occasions (when they talked about 5 picograms found by Vecchiotti. or when they falsely claimed that Novelli and Stefanoni agreed to refuse the testing...).
We can take this point about alleged misconducts of Stefanoni as just one small example. Falsehood is a the roots of the arguments of pro-Knoxes. Of all their arguments.

The problem is there seem to be a lot of mistakes in this case. Unlike others I do not think there was a conspiracy. Incompetence maybe. E.g. Arresting and charging Patrik on the basis of the late night distraught ramblings of a traumatised witness. (Why was his bar kept closed for so long?) Getting the timing on the video camera to be fast rather than slow. Damaging the hard drives. Misidentifying the bloody shoe print as matching the trainer of RS when it was definitely NOT a match (surely incompetence?), but was a match to trainer of RG, failing to collect the bra fastener at the first investigation of the crime scene. Failing to follow proper procedure in collecting samples. Failing to store the bra fastener correctly such that it could be retested. Failing to present the results of all tests done (both positive and negative for blood). Failing to take an early liver temperature. Failing to do a proper quantification of DNA as per in house SOP. Getting the quantity of DNA wrong.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

information versus ammunition

I go with RandyN on this one. She could have worn Hillary Clinton conservative pantsuits for all the sessions, and this travesty would have still happened.

It's all part of blaming the victim - Barbie Nadeau and Andrea Vogt have made careers out of it.

Bill Williams,

I partially agree with both you and LondonJohn. It is good to show respect for the court, even when the court has not earned it. Journalists who wrote about the shirt instead of the forensics are either showing that they have a shallow intellect, or that they let their personal biases rule their judgment.

I hope that Amanda and Raffaele understand what Mary_H enunciated so well: the PG community is not looking for information, they are searching for ammunition.

 

[LondonJohn]

What I haven't seen is a skeptical site with an unbiased presentation of all of the OJ evidence and with rational discussion. At the time, the primary sites presenting the data were the equivalent of TJMK with the message that it was in memory of Nicole and the same sort of frenologists comming out of the woodwork.

Rudy's non celebrity status may be an advantage for him. He will be mostly forgotten as a side note while the attention remains focused on Amanda and the other guy.

But the Simpson case was a true outlier: a situation where there was an overwhelmingly strong case for guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but where there was an acquittal due to a combination of prosecutorial incompetence/hubris, irrational judicial rulings from a judge who became starstruck, slick defence teams who shameless;y overplayed the race card, and the backdrop of the improper acquittals in the Rodney King case.

It's more than clear in the Simpson case that a sober, objective analysis of the totality of the evidence shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Simpson killed his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman. He almost certainly stalked her after they'd seen each other at the child's concert. He very possibly watched her having dinner in Mezzaluna (where Goldman worked). He very possibly tailed her back to her house. It's almost certain that he became enraged when he saw Goldman arrive at the house, and saw Nicole being hospitable to him (perhaps more....). It's beyond all reasonable doubt that he stabbed Nicole and Goldman to death, then raced back to his own house.

By contrast, there's not one single piece of credible, reliable evidence to suggest that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder of Meredith Kercher. And in the case of Knox/Sollecito, I would suggest that it was the dreadful combination of a badly-warped criminal justice system (in which prosecutors are far too close to judges, and where the prosecution line is seemingly accepted as the "starting point"), a very poor defence team, media (and, by extension, public) hysteria and the massive judicial error of trying Guede separately - and not in camera - that led to the wrongful convictions.

 

[LondonJohn]

Bill Williams,

I partially agree with both you and LondonJohn. It is good to show respect for the court, even when the court has not earned it. Journalists who wrote about the shirt instead of the forensics are either showing that they have a shallow intellect, or that they let their personal biases rule their judgment.

I hope that Amanda and Raffaele understand what Mary_H enunciated so well: the PG community is not looking for information, they are searching for ammunition.

But that's my point. What upside potential was there for Knox in wearing that t-shirt? I would argue that there was none - that instead, there was only downside potential (or, at best, it would have no effect at all). And if that is correct, then there is only one rational decision to make: don't wear the t-shirt.

To me, these arguments that "Knox should have felt free to express herself, to wear what she wanted to wear" (and so on) cut absolutely no ice whatsoever. As I said before, if society worked in this way, nobody would mind if I turned up to a business dinner with senior business figures and politicians wearing jeans and a Metallica t-shirt. But they WOULD mind. And courts - and media watchers, and most of the public - mind if they see people on trial for murder turning up to court in t-shirts with massive slogans such as "All you need is love" plastered on them. There's simply no getting away from this. It's a fact. An inalienable and undeniable fact.

And that's why Knox should not have worn that t-shirt - and, given that she did wear it, why Dalla Vedova should have insisted that she did not enter the courtroom wearing it, and should have sent an assistant out to get some suitable replacement clothing. This should be beyond debate, in my opinion.

 

[Bill Williams]

I'm not suggesting that her choice of attire did make any difference to the verdict(s) - as you say, it's entirely likely that nothing would have made any difference.

What I am saying, though, is that there was nothing but a potential downside to Knox from choosing to wear that t-shirt. In other words, she did herself no favours whatsoever by wearing it, and could only have stood to harm herself judicially-speaking. Therefore, it was a stupid and ill-judged decision to wear the t-shirt, and it was even more stupid and remiss of her lawyers to let her wear it.

In addition, of course, Knox did herself few favours in the court of public opinion. I cannot imagine that any "neutral observer" thought that it was somehow "cute" or "free-spirited" for someone to wear that sort of clothing while appearing at their own trial for murder. Instead, I suspect that most such observers would have considered the move disrespectful to a court, and rather crass. I know I did.

It simply doesn't wash to say that this was simply "Amanda being Amanda". I, for example, use swear words not-infrequently when I'm out in the evening with mates - you might call that "me being me". But I do not use swear words when I am having an office-based business meeting with senior executives. I modify my behaviour to suit the occasion, the audience and the nature of the conversation. That is the implied social contract that binds us all. Knox was no different. She should have dressed neutrally, soberly and demurely for her role as a defendant in a criminal trial. That's all there is to it.

Sorry LJ, I don't believe this for a second. The downside, judicially, was going to happen anyway.

For the argument to be made that Knox contributed, even unwittingly, to a downside is ludicrous. This is in regard to ANYTHING she did or did not do.

The analogy used about the business/executive situation is not apt. The implication is that you might be denied business or a promotion because all of a sudden you lapsed from some social norm. The whole point of the situation facing Sollecito and Knox is that, to continue the analogy, they were going down no matter what.

You really do need to watch "The Sicilian Scene" in "True Romance". If you're going down, you may as well go down your way - and not still clinging to some social norm you mistakenly think might have a small smidgeon of hope will rescue you.

Long live Dennis Hopper! With all due respect, your reasoning in seriously flawed.

"You're part eggplant." "You're a cantaloupe."

 

[Bill Williams]

But that's my point. What upside potential was there for Knox in wearing that t-shirt? I would argue that there was none - that instead, there was only downside potential (or, at best, it would have no effect at all). And if that is correct, then there is only one rational decision to make: don't wear the t-shirt.

What "upside" judicially speaking was there for Nelson Mandala to make a speech in court about how corrupt Apartheid was?

 

[Bill Williams]

Bill Williams,

I partially agree with both you and LondonJohn. It is good to show respect for the court, even when the court has not earned it. Journalists who wrote about the shirt instead of the forensics are either showing that they have a shallow intellect, or that they let their personal biases rule their judgment.

I hope that Amanda and Raffaele understand what Mary_H enunciated so well: the PG community is not looking for information, they are searching for ammunition.

I say, tell the truth about yourself and let the heavens fall. Screw 'em all.

 

[anglolawyer]

But the Simpson case was a true outlier: a situation where there was an overwhelmingly strong case for guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but where there was an acquittal due to a combination of prosecutorial incompetence/hubris, irrational judicial rulings from a judge who became starstruck, slick defence teams who shameless;y overplayed the race card, and the backdrop of the improper acquittals in the Rodney King case.

It's more than clear in the Simpson case that a sober, objective analysis of the totality of the evidence shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Simpson killed his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman. He almost certainly stalked her after they'd seen each other at the child's concert. He very possibly watched her having dinner in Mezzaluna (where Goldman worked). He very possibly tailed her back to her house. It's almost certain that he became enraged when he saw Goldman arrive at the house, and saw Nicole being hospitable to him (perhaps more....). It's beyond all reasonable doubt that he stabbed Nicole and Goldman to death, then raced back to his own house.

By contrast, there's not one single piece of credible, reliable evidence to suggest that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder of Meredith Kercher. And in the case of Knox/Sollecito, I would suggest that it was the dreadful combination of a badly-warped criminal justice system (in which prosecutors are far too close to judges, and where the prosecution line is seemingly accepted as the "starting point"), a very poor defence team, media (and, by extension, public) hysteria and the massive judicial error of trying Guede separately - and not in camera - that led to the wrongful convictions.

What OJ's case shows is the capacity for celebrity to distort the judicial process. OJ would have been convicted here, though, because celebrity and popularity have little traction in an English court. What counts here is class, which is why we can't handle cases against establishment types. Jeremy Thorpe would have been convicted in the US, as would all the City fraudsters who mostly manage never even to get charged. Jeffery Archer would not have won his libel case. SA will be put to the test on the celebrity front when Pistorius goes on trial. I believe there are cases which raise the stakes for the participants (judges, lawyers, cops, experts) and produce strange results in consequence but they aren't the same type of case in each society. They are culture-specific.

 

[Bob001]

What "upside" judicially speaking was there for Nelson Mandala to make a speech in court about how corrupt Apartheid was?

Wait a minute. Nelson Mandela's conviction was a foregone conclusion. He really was fighting the government. He took the opportunity to make his case against apartheid when he knew the whole world would hear it.

But Amanda's goal was to go home. Period. And the core of the prosecution's case basically was that "this is a girl who doesn't behave like we think she should." Her goal should have been to prove the prosecution wrong in every way she could, and one way to do that would have been to go to court every day dressed like a respectable Italian woman. You don't jam your finger in somebody's eye when he's deciding whether to send you to prison for life. That might at least have opened some jurors' eyes to the possibility that other aspects of the case were flawed too.
.

 

[Bob001]

What OJ's case shows is the capacity for celebrity to distort the judicial process. OJ would have been convicted here, though, because celebrity and popularity have little traction in an English court. ....

There is no doubt in my (or any reasonable) mind that OJ got away with double-murder. Yet I'm not sure celebrity alone is what got him off. In post-trial interviews some jurors said they thought he probably did it, but they weren't convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. That's the prosecution's fault. The jury was sequestered for months, meaning they weren't reading press reports. They heard one key prosecution witness proven to lie under oath, they learned a vial of the defendant's blood was mishandled by police, they heard that there were no fingerprints or DNA or eyewitnesses, and the prosecution, particularly Marsha Clark, was patronizing, if not insulting, toward the jurors. The prosecution also made a key mistake when they decided to prosecute in downtown LA for logistical reasons rather than in the Santa Monica district, where the crime occurred and where jury pool would have been different. OJ didn't get off by fame alone.

 

[LondonJohn]

Sorry LJ, I don't believe this for a second. The downside, judicially, was going to happen anyway.

For the argument to be made that Knox contributed, even unwittingly, to a downside is ludicrous. This is in regard to ANYTHING she did or did not do.

The analogy used about the business/executive situation is not apt. The implication is that you might be denied business or a promotion because all of a sudden you lapsed from some social norm. The whole point of the situation facing Sollecito and Knox is that, to continue the analogy, they were going down no matter what.

You really do need to watch "The Sicilian Scene" in "True Romance". If you're going down, you may as well go down your way - and not still clinging to some social norm you mistakenly think might have a small smidgeon of hope will rescue you.

Long live Dennis Hopper! With all due respect, your reasoning in seriously flawed.

"You're part eggplant." "You're a cantaloupe."

What "upside" judicially speaking was there for Nelson Mandala to make a speech in court about how corrupt Apartheid was?

I don't think I am communicating my argument well enough then.

For one thing, Knox most certainly didn't know she was going to get convicted in Massei's court.

For another thing, what "statement" was Knox making by wearing that t-shirt? In what way was it even slightly comparable to Mandela using the courtroom as a pulpit to advance his political manifesto?

And I still ask: what did Knox think she stood to GAIN from wearing that t-shirt? (This is probably the most pertinent question).

Lastly, would you at the very least agree that there's a socially-accepted convention that is in place in both the US and Italy, in which people appearing in criminal courtrooms - especially if it is they who are on trial - dress appropriately. And that "appropriately" in this context means smart, sober, muted clothing with collared shirts and either a smart sweater or a tailored jacket. Would you agree that this is as much of a social convention as that regarding dress codes in - say - a clerical office, a high street bank or a funeral (unless specifically informed otherwise)?

 

[LondonJohn]

Wait a minute. Nelson Mandela's conviction was a foregone conclusion. He really was fighting the government. He took the opportunity to make his case against apartheid when he knew the whole world would hear it.

But Amanda's goal was to go home. Period. And the core of the prosecution's case basically was that "this is a girl who doesn't behave like we think she should." Her goal should have been to prove the prosecution wrong in every way she could, and one way to do that would have been to go to court every day dressed like a respectable Italian woman. You don't jam your finger in somebody's eye when he's deciding whether to send you to prison for life. That might at least have opened some jurors' eyes to the possibility that other aspects of the case were flawed too.
.

I agree. She should not have given the judicial panel - or the media - any ammunition to support the contention that she was "different" or "whacky" or "individual" or "non-conformist".

I repeat: this is NOT about whether her choice of clothing had any material adverse effect on the Massei court's verdicts (and we'll never know whether it did or not in any case). Instead, this is about why Knox should have chosen to wear clothing that ONLY stood to harm her cause. And if she didn't realise this, then her defence lawyers should have. Unfortunately though, her defence lawyers appear to have been deficient, incompetent and ineffectual in this and many other areas.

 

[Dan O.]

But the Simpson case was a true outlier: a situation where there was an overwhelmingly strong case for guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but where there was an acquittal due to a combination of prosecutorial incompetence/hubris, irrational judicial rulings from a judge who became starstruck, slick defence teams who shameless;y overplayed the race card, and the backdrop of the improper acquittals in the Rodney King case.

I see you have chosen to ignore my question and launched straight into the guilter mantras. Where bedsides the trial has all the evidence in the case been open to critical analysis? If we got all our evedence in the Knox case from reading TJMK and PMF we might even be in their choris chanting Guilty-guilty-guilty.

 

[AmyStrange]

"If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit."

-

There is no doubt in my (or any reasonable) mind that OJ got away with double-murder. Yet I'm not sure celebrity alone is what got him off. In post-trial interviews some jurors said they thought he probably did it, but they weren't convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. That's the prosecution's fault. The jury was sequestered for months, meaning they weren't reading press reports. They heard one key prosecution witness proven to lie under oath, they learned a vial of the defendant's blood was mishandled by police, they heard that there were no fingerprints or DNA or eyewitnesses, and the prosecution, particularly Marsha Clark, was patronizing, if not insulting, toward the jurors. The prosecution also made a key mistake when they decided to prosecute in downtown LA for logistical reasons rather than in the Santa Monica district, where the crime occurred and where jury pool would have been different. OJ didn't get off by fame alone.

-

And don't forget Cochran's, "If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit".

Regardless of whether OJ did it or not, that was brilliant and I think was more than enough for reasonable doubt all by itself, but that's my opinion,

Too bad Amanda and Raffaele's case didn't have a live courtroom TV show like OJ had. At one time I had the whole court case on tape,

d

-

 

[Poppy1016]

It's a lie. And you know it. You have been shown repeatedly... but you denie it... Vecchiotti was caught lying. I have shown that and innocentisti folks deny it... Stefanoni never lied. Never cehated and never refused to deposit documentation. She answered all questions. But I see how you folks repeatedly try to rationalize about something different. You "imagine" things. Even Stefanoni guess about hundreds picograms was correct, and it was proven that the defence lied on several occasions (when they talked about 5 picograms found by Vecchiotti. or when they falsely claimed that Novelli and Stefanoni agreed to refuse the testing...).
We can take this point about alleged misconducts of Stefanoni as just one small example. Falsehood is a the roots of the arguments of pro-Knoxes. Of all their arguments.

I believe Vechiotti produced all of the documentation to prove her testing was accurate. Stephony did not, and still has not.