Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[christianahannah]

Isn't direct knowledge of seeing or not seeing buses kind of important if people with no connection to the discos or the buses are going to be witnesses?

Of course, however, I don't know how far Rosignoli's questioning went and if there was followup by investigators with regards to his answers.

For all I know he may frequent one of the buses to the various discos or be friendly with people who do.

 

[Alt+F4]

However I can't understand why the Knox/Mellas or Sollecito families have never written a single letter of condolance, telling the Kerchers they feel so sorry for their terrible loss but that thay believe in their daughter's/son's innocence and that they hope the court proves it and the Kerchers eventually believe it too. It wouldn't have hurt.

Probably because they believe in someway it would hurt Amanda's case.

 

[RoseMontague]

Of course, however, I don't know how far Rosignoli's questioning went and if there was followup by investigators with regards to his answers.

For all I know he may frequent one of the buses to the various discos or be friendly with people who do.

The appeal has also asked for testimony from owners of the Red Zone, Russian Dolls, and Degree's° to testify as to no buses running.

 

[CDHost]

Its a gray area because the Italian government authorized it. The CIA agents were not acting alone. Just like if the government decided to use the FBI to take someone into custody in America. The CIA in Italy assisted the Italian government.

I don't think its grey at all, frankly. Given that the Italian government was assisting, and this was an intelligence operation the CIA agents are absolutely not guilty. That being said, the Italians government has never said they were behind Imam Rapito and at least on paper denies any involvement.

IMHO what the courts are really aiming for is for the US to say the Italian government authorized it. This case is IMHO a perfect example of what executive pardons are for, the civilian judiciary is budding into national security.

As far as the extradition aspect while I can understand in theory conducting a trial in absentia, I can't understand any logic behind conducting an appeal.

So since we've expanded:

a) I think the trial (of the CIA agents) was political and didn't really get to the main issue, a questionable trial.
b) I think the appeal is an abuse of process.
c) I think (a) and (b) shows the serious problems with Italian justice
d) I think the Rapito affair did influence jurors on the Knox trial.
e) I think despite a,b,c the USA is in violation of our extradition treaty by refusing to extradite.
f) I think the people who ordered Rapito did violate the statues against kidnapping and torture, though they are likely high placed political persons. I suspect VP Cheney.

Whew. Anyway except for point (d) this is getting afield. Is it allowed?

 

[Katody Matrass]

Rudy would have been coming from his apartment (after changing), not Grimana.

What does Rudy have to do with all this? You were arguing that Curatolo saw a disco bus going to the Domus. Curatolo was sitting on Piazza Grimana. How far is it from there to Via Del Naspo where the Domus is located according to you?

Domus may or may not have disco buses, I don't know. Do you?

Yes, I do know. Why were you arguing if you admit now that you have no idea what you're talking about is beyond me.

First we are told by the pro-innocence folks that all the discos were closed that night. That turned out to not be the case.

What? That's exactly the case. Out of town discos that shuttle people from Piazza Grimana were closed. That's the point. What is so confusing for you?

Now we are being told there were no disco buses around Grimana.

First? Now? You don't see a logical connection? Discos closed = no buses.

Sorry, I'll wait to hear from the bus and disco people, I doubt any of them have an agenda.

They will say discos were closed and there were no buses. I agree it's better if you drop this topic for now

 

[LondonJohn]

The appeal has also asked for testimony from owners of the Red Zone, Russian Dolls, and Degree's° to testify as to no buses running.

Nice formatting there!!

BTW, I keep meaning to figure out how to type the degree symbol - you need to enter the ASCII short code, don't you? How do YOU do it? (And why on earth didn't IBM put it on the standard computer keyboard in the first place?! After all, how often is ^ used, relative to the degree symbol...?).

Anyway, back on topic: there were no out-of-town discos open on the evening/night of 1st November 2007. And therefore there were no disco shuttle buses picking up revellers in Piazza Grimana on that night. I (and others) were able to figure this out fairly easily quite some time ago. What still baffles me is why the defence teams didn't figure it out for themselves in the first trial. It really was (and is) very simple information to ascertain.

Of course, the court will want proper testimony from representatives of all the out-of-town discos, to the effect that they weren't open that night and weren't running shuttle buses that night, before it's willing to accept that this is the truth. However, I have absolutely no problem in saying that I'm 100% certain that I'm correct in this matter.

Oh and lastly, I'm also 100% certain that Domus does not provide shuttle buses between Piazza Grimana and its premises

 

[Alt+F4]

Well this is interesting! Are you now in the same camp as Charlie W.? That this mess is going to require high level political pressure to resolve or go thru the lenghty process of an ECHR review.

The ECHR will never hear this case. They have a 46 year backlog. Amanda's fate lies with no one but the Italians.

 

[Withnail1969]

The ECHR will never hear this case. They have a 46 year backlog.

You might be advised to start providing citations for your assertions as I doubt anyone believes you.

 

[Antony]

I always thought the DNA evidence was weak but just the shear volume of other evidence, primarily the crazy behavior and contradictory statements made by the two of them was a strong indicator of guilt.
...

Unless I'm confusing you with another poster, I think you said a few weeks ago that you were satisfied that Amanda and Raffaele told a number of lies during the investigation. Since you've again referred to "contradictory statements", could you make clear what you consider those lies to be?

From what I can gather, the reports of the 2 "lying" were down either to police claims with no independent proof that they made the alleged false statements, or to actual statements (which were then misrepresented) they made while in a state of confusion as a result of abusive interrogations. Do you know anything different?

I had a different take on the "crazy behaviour and contradictory statements" when I knew very little about the case: if those accusing them were resorting to this kind of reasoning, then it's because there was no genuine evidence to implicate them.

 

[LondonJohn]

You might be advised to start providing citations for your assertions as I doubt anyone believes you.

46-year backlog? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

http://www.echr.coe.int/NR/rdonlyres/37C26BF0-EE46-437E-B810-EA900D18D49B/0/ENG_QR.pdf

 

[RoseMontague]

Unless I'm confusing you with another poster, I think you said a few weeks ago that you were satisfied that Amanda and Raffaele told a number of lies during the investigation. Since you've again referred to "contradictory statements", could you make clear what you consider those lies to be?

From what I can gather, the reports of the 2 "lying" were down either to police claims with no independent proof that they made the alleged false statements, or to actual statements (which were then misrepresented) they made while in a state of confusion as a result of abusive interrogations. Do you know anything different?

I had a different take on the "crazy behaviour and contradictory statements" when I knew very little about the case: if those accusing them were resorting to this kind of reasoning, then it's because there was no genuine evidence to implicate them.

Amanda's call to Mom and Raffaele pricking Meredith were two I mentioned previously that I believed were lies rather than confusion, forgetfulness, or false memories. Halides1 used the quote recently from To Kill A Mockingbird about being mistaken in their own minds. I don't believe this is the case with all of the contradictions and lack of memory.

 

[Kaosium]

I've proven my point to the lurkers and fencesitters.

1. The discos weren't all closed.
2. No one has presented any evidence that there were no buses in that area that night.

Then why is Curatolo changing his story from the disco buses, to telling Frank it was the city buses, to finally trying to say that it was in fact tourist buses?

Truthfully I don't think it matters, three testimonies in murder cases while the cops had hard evidence of him heroin dealing is about all most should need to discredit Toto, and there's more besides that and disco/city/tourist buses if anyone still has reason to believe two young lovers were loitering around the basketball courts during the scientifically possible times of the murder. Which of course provides an alibi for both of them--if any of it were actually true.

At this point with all the lies from Toto, his history, and finally his obvious need for money providing a motive, Curatolo needs Amanda and Raffaele to give him an alibi as he makes a better suspect than either of them.

 

[christianahannah]

The appeal has also asked for testimony from owners of the Red Zone, Russian Dolls, and Degree's° to testify as to no buses running.

I thought also testimony from the bus owner for the defense.

The prosecution has countered with Curatolo recalled and testimony expected from Napoleoni and municipal officer Lucas that there was a bus running that night/early morning and that some disco venues were open. I wonder what their testimony will show and if it will be dated from early in the case investigation.

 

[Kaosium]

I always thought the DNA evidence was weak but just the shear volume of other evidence, primarily the crazy behavior and contradictory statements made by the two of them was a strong indicator of guilt. My initial reading of the Google translated Massei report of which I had a fairly early copy gave me a bad impression on his treatment of the three super-witnesses. The arguments he presented were one sided and his reasoning was not convincing. At this point I started to look into the witnesses more carefully and over time with some research and the counter arguments presented in both appeals I saw a confirmation of this as well as many other problems. I came to the conclusion that the court did not render a fair judgment and did not even attempt to give much of the defense position much less show why the court believed the prosecution over the defense on some of the issues.

I did think initially that Massei did an excellent job presenting the break in as staged. The break-in as well as Amanda's email to everyone and her forgotten call to Mom were the biggest indicators of guilt to me.

ETA: Shortly after I had Google translated the Massei report I became curious and was able to obtain copies of the appeals. I regret not making the Italian versions as well as my Google translations public as soon as I had them. I also regret that I did not have the resources to get a human translation done. I believe if I had started earlier I could have seen this accomplished by volunteers much as PMF did in their translation of the Massei report.

Thanks, Rose. Although I can't help but wonder how you maintained your sanity reading Massei via google translate. There must have a number of entertaining renditions that were produced by that combination.

You reminded me of something that was puzzling me when I first went through it, which was how could everything produced as 'evidence' turn out to be bogus? Then of course it occurred to me that was what you would get if you gathered evidence of innocent people. It seems obvious in retrospect, but at the time I was thinking 'there's no way they'd let this into the court if what these people are saying is true!'

Of course it soon became obvious they did present the bra clasp and 'murder knife' as evidence and accepted Curatolo's and Quintavalle's testimony. As for the break-in, just the fact that the main argument seemed to be absolute incredulity that anyone could climb into that window after seeing the picture of the lawyer getting his hands near the sill discredited that whole line of reasoning for me. Besides, how do you prove something like that anyway? At least beyond a reasonable doubt. All it amounts to is a rock going through a window, and the fact it is a more difficult window than it could have been is simply a better indication it wasn't staged, as in the latter case the perpetrators wouldn't want to raise any questions over the ease of of the entry.

 

[RoseMontague]

I thought also testimony from the bus owner for the defense.

The prosecution has countered with Curatolo recalled and testimony expected from Napoleoni and municipal officer Lucas that there was a bus running that night/early morning and that some disco venues were open. I wonder what their testimony will show and if it will be dated from early in the case investigation.

My guess is that Curatolo will describe it as a Van 9 times before they get him to say "bus", and of course they will go with the bus.

 

[Onofarar]

<snip>All it amounts to is a rock going through a window, and the fact it is a more difficult window than it could have been is simply a better indication it wasn't staged, as in the latter case the perpetrators wouldn't want to raise any questions over the ease of of the entry.

Kaosium - very good point had not thought of that before.

 

[Onofarar]

My expression of amusement was in direct proportion to the risible ludicrousness of the 46-year claim

In addition to your excellent on-point citation and link, the math didn't work.
Let's see Italy signed the treaty that created the ECHR in 1959 - some 51 years ago. So per that (ahem) claim the ECHR would be working on cases filed in 1964. Yeah right.

 

[Onofarar]

In addition to your excellent on-point citation and link, the math didn't work.
Let's see Italy signed the treaty that created the ECHR in 1959 - some 51 years ago. So per that (ahem) claim the ECHR would be working on cases filed in 1964. Yeah right.

BTW - whatever the outcome of this case in Italy - I think an ECHR case is inevitable by AK & RS. It is the only neutral forum where they can press their damages claim. (Maybe Maresca will change sides when he realizes how big that pot of gold is. )

 

[CoulsdonUK]

BTW - whatever the outcome of this case in Italy - I think an ECHR case is inevitable by AK & RS. It is the only neutral forum where they can press their damages claim. (Maybe Maresca will change sides when he realizes how big that pot of gold is. )

LondonJohn\Onofarar

Did either of you actually peruse the documents contents?

 

[Alt+F4]

You might be advised to start providing citations for your assertions as I doubt anyone believes you.

The European Court of Human Rights is facing a huge case backlog and at its current pace would need 46 years to rule on all complaints, it was revealed today.

The court, underfunded and lacking judges, is struggling with almost 80,000 cases, some of them pending from the mid-1990s, according to the court’s annual survey.

Last year, the court issued 1,503 verdicts and threw out more than 27,000 complaints.​

And that was in 2008.​

Read more: http://www.breakingnews.ie/archives...-year-backlog-in-eu-345706.html#ixzz1CeAdZI6X​

http://www.breakingnews.ie/archives...-cases-have-46-year-backlog-in-eu-345706.html​

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8525524.stm​