Continuation Part 22: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[LondonJohn]

Nice one.

However since you don't know the difference between a simile or a metaphor, and since you are making a fool of yourself on a Latin loan-phrase...........

It'd probably do no good to explain sarcasm to you, either.

Carry on.

It genuinely has entertainment value for me at this point. It's beyond parody

 

[Vixen]

Nice one.

However since you don't know the difference between a simile or a metaphor, and since you are making a fool of yourself on a Latin loan-phrase...........

It'd probably do no good to explain sarcasm to you, either.

Carry on.

Oh gosh. <fx enter stage left> Bill Williams arm in arm with LondonJohn in tutus and ballet shoes in the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

 

[LondonJohn]

A stage direction is not an "fx"

You keep on teeing 'em up - I'll keep on hitting 'em

 

[NotEvenWrong]

Vixen seems to be one of those people that believes she has a solid grasp of a wide range of subjects, but when anyone who knows what they are talking about in a given subject comes along she ends up looking like a complete fool.

This seems to be a common characteristic of TJMK and PMF members, and PGP in general. I wonder if it is one of their admission criteria?

I also think I know why she believes she has a "99% accurate" memory. When your mind can can distort reality like this:

1) Say something wrong and/or stupid.
2) Be shown that it is wrong and/or stupid.
3) Well the (language, legal, forensic, etc.) experts must have been paid off to make me look like an idiot.
4) I am still right! 99% record intact!

It's pretty easy to be "right" 99% of the time. Keep it up Vixen, you are great.

 

[Bill Williams]

A stage direction is not an "fx"

You keep on teeing 'em up - I'll keep on hitting 'em

This one I give to Vixen. It takes time in the computer lab, to create the FX needed to sustain her wacky theories. It is genuinely funny quipping about us in tutus......

...... what is not funny is Vixen's PR campaign against two innocents. Perhaps worse is as Andrea Vogt said about the Ferrera arm-chair detective who tried to launch a law-suit against the Italian Judiciary in Florence....

They are simply prolonging the Kerchers' grief well beyond anything considered a normal grieving period. It's been almost nine years since the horrible murder, and people like Vixen are trying to keep the case against AK and RS open, when it was closed in March 2015.

 

[Methos]

I agree with some of what you say.
[...]

Would you mind telling on what you agree?

I notice you haven't levelled the same criticism at Waiting to be Heard US$18 (really?) a Son of Sam effort, together with 'Honor Bound'. Both have laid bare the breathtaking lies the pair were prepared to promulgate to get themselves 'off the hook', both published whilst the legal process was still ongoing. At the same time they smear every honest decent person who saw right through their lies. The flagrant arrogance of the psychopath.

One thing is, that "Waiting to be Heard" and "Honor Bound" are first hand accounts of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito about what happened to them, so they are definitely worth a read or two. The second thing is that the court records and the Italian newspaper articles from that time are indeed corroberating these accounts. AFAIK there is only one factual error in "Waiting to be Heard".

Of course one can go ahead and find differences between them and between them and other accounts. This is because of the different POV's and because some of the other stories like the ones from Russell, Follain or Nadeau are, as we have seen in the case of "Darkness Descending", simply made up.
The other approach is "to find fault in everything", that was done with "Honor Bound" on TJMK and Liz Houle's "book" is just the latest example for that, pretty cheap, if you ask me.

What about all these people cashing in: Bruce Fischer, Ron Hendry, Doug Preston, Mark Waterbury, John Douglas, Nina Burleigh, Christopher Robinson...?

Can't see you criticising any of these, Methos?
[...]

Why should I? Fischer, Hendry and Waterbury didn't try to press the facts into a narrative, you can't blame them for not having "all" the information, and Waterbury did a good job in explaining how "DNA-testing" works. The Knox case was as far as I know just one part of Douglas' book. Preston/Spezi, Burleigh and Dempsey are in the "True Crime Narrative" group, together with Nadeau, Russell, Sarzanini, Castellini and Follain. I don't get your point here. If it isn't wrong to publish a pro-guilt narrative, why is it wrong to publish a pro-innocence narrative?
I think you missed my point. The problem I have with the lately published books by Van der Leek and Raper is that they are "reporting" about the case as if it was still 2009 and the information that wasn't available then (but is now) doesn't exist. Hodges' book is another attempt in trying to make Knox say things she doesn't say (also has a long tradition on TJMK so nothing really new here). For Houle's book: see above.
I've no idea why you mention Christopher Robinson in this regard?

And just for the record: the linguistic discussion club meetings are down the hall, third door on the left

 

[bagels]

No, it was not 'stuck'. You have no understanding of how law works if you think law courts run on the priniicples of Alice in Wonderland with each judge being able to scream, 'Off with her head!' and if they cannot, it is because they are 'stuck' with - ahem - following the law. Hello, as laid down by legislature?

It was stuck though. The Chieffi court more or less said "off with her head." Have you read the Chieffi report? This is basically how it reads:

"Hellmann believes Quintavalle was an unreliable witness just because he told police, when they were in his shop holding a picture of Amanda in front of his face directly asking about her, that he did not see her and she was not in his shop and only changed his story a year later once the case became a public sensation...but did you know he recognized blue eyes in the court room? Therefore he's like super reliable."

What can you even do with that? When that's considered top court level reasoning worthy of overturning a 2nd tier verdict? M&B did the best they could.

I think Chieffi was lazy more so than corrupt. Even a corrupt judge could see there was no case and going after a doctor's son and American student publicly defended by a sitting US senator over evidence like "blue eyes" and such would be futile. I honestly don't think they really read the case. They rubber stamped the appeal in front of them not realizing there wasn't a case.

M&B was left to clean up the pieces as best they could, and had no procedural means to directly overturn Chieffi, so had to go about it in a roundabout way.

 

[sept79]

.
.
I think Chieffi was lazy more so than corrupt. Even a corrupt judge could see there was no case and going after a doctor's son and American student publicly defended by a sitting US senator over evidence like "blue eyes" and such would be futile. I honestly don't think they really read the case. They rubber stamped the appeal in front of them not realizing there wasn't a case.
.
.

In such a high profile case?

 

[Stacyhs]

Does anyone know of any case where Cassation has overturned a previous finalized C of C verdict concerning the same crime case?

I know a C of C declared that a woman could not be raped while wearing tight jeans and that a later C of C disagreed with that reasoning, but they were two different cases. Was it even legally possible for Marasca to declare that there were not multiple killers or that the robbery was not staged when those had been declared judicial truths by the Giordano C of C decision of Dec. 2010?

 

[bagels]

In such a high profile case?

We'll never know for sure of course, it's just my worthless speculation.

But Hellmann acquitted the accused, tore the prosecution's case to shreds, and forcefully argued that the guilt scenario was "far from probable" and the law has a sworn duty to protect the innocent.

Then the Supreme Court comes along and talks about blue eyes and unrelated verdicts in separate unrelated trials.

I don't know how to interpret that beyond they really didn't take the time to study the case and read the Hellmann and Massei reports.

I mean let's look at this way, is there a single esteemed individual anywhere in the world that has read Massei and still argued in favor of the defendants guilt beyond reasonable doubt? The closest anyone has come is Dershowitz, who displayed profound ignorance about the case, yet still acknowledged reasonable doubt.

Is every single legal expert in the world smarter than an Italian Supreme Court judge? Or is the Supreme Court judge just lazy and didn't bother to read the case? I just don't know.

 

[LondonJohn]

We'll never know for sure of course, it's just my worthless speculation.

But Hellmann acquitted the accused, tore the prosecution's case to shreds, and forcefully argued that the guilt scenario was "far from probable" and the law has a sworn duty to protect the innocent.

Then the Supreme Court comes along and talks about blue eyes and unrelated verdicts in separate unrelated trials.

I don't know how to interpret that beyond they really didn't take the time to study the case and read the Hellmann and Massei reports.

I mean let's look at this way, is there a single esteemed individual anywhere in the world that has read Massei and still argued in favor of the defendants guilt beyond reasonable doubt? The closest anyone has come is Dershowitz, who displayed profound ignorance about the case, yet still acknowledged reasonable doubt.

Is every single legal expert in the world smarter than an Italian Supreme Court judge? Or is the Supreme Court judge just lazy and didn't bother to read the case? I just don't know.

As I wrote recently, I think the most likely interpretation for the Chieffi ruling is that his panel looked at the case, saw that it was an almighty clustersomething, saw that it was riddled with contradictions and conflicting evidence, and saw that the forensic "evidence" was questionable to say the very least. And then, IMO, instead of being brave and calling a terminal halt to the nonsense, the Chieffi panel basically threw the ball back to an appeal-level court, with the effective remit to "sort this out properly".

I also think that the Chieffi panel was far too deferential to the prosecution position (a recurring theme in Italian criminal justice, unfortunately), with the result that it clearly tended to side with the prosecution case (and the Massei verdict which chimed closely with the prosecution case) and looked upon the Hellmann verdict as something of an anomaly, a "spanner in the works".

But on top of all that, I do agree that there was probably a certain degree of laziness and apathy in the Chieffi panel. I suspect they decided very early on indeed that they were going to send the case back down for another trial at appeal level. And I have little doubt that there was a lot of lobbying and "persuasion" going on behind the scenes to that effect. And once that pre-ordained decision had been effectively made, the rest was not much more than window dressing. And that's where the mistakes started to creep in.

PS: GO TEAM GB!!

 

[Matthew Best]

you have taken it upon yourself to go through my posts with a fine tooth comb in the desperate wish to find a typo to mock me with.

Who needs a fine tooth comb? You only have to blindly poke at one of your posts with a huge ****** stick to find a mistake.

 

[Planigale]

Bravo! I do actually have a tape measure in front of me.

IIRC the hyoid bone is about eight inches back from the angle Mez was stabbed.

OK for those of you who have never done any anatomy, the hyoid bone is actually palpable under the skin at the top of the neck. If you go straight back from the chin to the top of the neck in the mid line just under the skin you should feel a slight ridge if you run you fingers up and down. For the plumper of you this may mean slightly pushing up towards your mouth. If you swallow you can feel that slight ridge moving up and down. That is the hyoid bone. The bone is 'U' shaped and the knife injury was to one of the arms a bit deeper in. The location of the knife wounds were almost directly on top of the hyoid so not 8 inches. (In any case the depth of the wounds were measured).

 

[Planigale]

The merits court found as a fact that there was more than one knife used and explains it, thus:


Massei states,





In addition, it is established - from bruises and from the lack of defence wounds - that Mez was forcibly restrained from behind. Further, there was little sign of affray - the chair was in its place, as was a tumbler of water and a pile of postcards home, perched on the edge of the desk. A single attacker would have had to move from behind to the front and to change knives, together with managing to maintain his grip without disturbing the furniture. The posited 'single attacker' had no motive or reason to avoid upsetting the furniture.

The defense pathologist theory, the reason the hyiod bone was broken proves the killer used maximum force, therefore he must have thrust the blade in to its hilt, thus it could not have been the 17.5 cm knife as the hyoid was only 8 cms in.




In other words, argues Massei, the hyoid actually did act as a resistant to the full length of the blade, notwithstanding it being quite a soft bone, nonetheless, it is still difficult to cut with a knife. In addition, it did have faint serration marks compatible with the knife edge.



Massei, the fact-finding court heard the expert forensic testimony of half a dozen pathologists - the defense arguing against the knife found at Raff's and the prosecution for - and upheld that the kitchen knife WAS fully compatible with the wound. In addition, the bruising around the wound was not indicative of the marks of the hilt of a knife, but were compatible with fingernail shaped moons by a hand as could be seen from the digit-sized bruises over Mez' lower face. This is consistent with the theory, the aim of this injurous hand was to forcibly stop Mez from screaming.

This is a good example of the judge acting as an expert of experts, something that the supreme court said is not allowed. mass has no competence to decide whether the hyoid bone would resist a knife. The hyoid is actually what would be termed free floating it is held in place only by the muscles attached to it. The bone would either be cut or move. It is not like a rib held rigidly in place. Here I can claim more competence than Massei.

 

[Planigale]

Bill, for all your frantic pirouetting like a latterday Nijinski, you never managed to once convince me 'the kids were framed'. True, there have been one or two occasions, when I entertained the possibility, but there was nothing to sustain the passing illusion. And that's where you fall flat onto your face. Let me give you a helping hand up.

You have to remember you are not comparing like with like. Gill is an airy-fairy academic dreaming about the Imperial Royal Family of Russia and bleeding his heart out at the idea poor murderers are being brought to justice by bully boy Italian pigs and locked up.

Mignini is paid handsomely to clean up the town. He sees murdered bodies every day; suicides, car crashes,, domestic violence. His job is to act for the State to enforce the law. Not got a license, mister? Here's a ticket, see you in court.

Gill is, 'Why shouldn't people drive without a license? I'm going to use all my influence as the Father of Forensic DNA to help you get off.'

Get up, dust yourself down and start all over again.

Gill worked for the UK forensic science service. He developed the technique to catch criminals. The whole point was that the forensic science service was not a police operation and so was independent. The problem with Steffanoni is she is a police officer - she has a uniform and everything - working for the police in a police laboratory; she lost independence.

 

[Planigale]

First of all, Marasca did not establish the judicial fact that they did not participate in the crime. The verdict filed was, 'Not Guilty due to insufficient evidence'.

This 'insufficient evidence' is directly attributed to 'fatal investigation flaws'.

If the forensics were flawed for the kids, then it ipso facto follows it was flawed for Rudy, as one can now no longer place any reliability on it (cf. Hume, 'the slippery slope' syndrome).

Yes, by his own account Rudy was there. However, Marasca ruled as a fact Amanda was there, and Raff also, on the balance of probabilities.

Rudy was convicted of murder mainly on the grounds his DNA was found on the cuff of Mez' jumper. This DNA was collected by the same team, at the same time as the bra clasp. Marasca found as an implied fact the DNA could have been the result of tertiary transfer. This same condition applies to Rudy.

Rudy's footprints were highlighted by luminol, but then so were Amanda's and Raff (=the presumption is an interaction with the victim's blood).

Marasca upheld the fact the burglary was staged, that Amanda washed off Mez' blood and that she covered up for Rudy when she accused Patrick. [This has to be a clear example of the supreme court acting outside of its remit as this 'fact' was never found by the lower courts, and it did not remit it back to evaluate the imputed fact].

The Pietrocarlo & Grossi legal team did sum up the particulars for the application in a 20-page document. I presume this is available to the public? Is there any download of it available, anyone?

The big hurdle Rudy will have to clear is the edict:
641** or the request is proven to be manifestly groundless, . However, I would imagine Florence would need to list a preliminary hearing to establish whether there is 'Reasonable Prospect of Success'.

Bear in mind, like Amanda and Raff, Rudy has always claimed he was innocent and there by invitation.

The other thing is, he has served most of his sentence as far as parole is concerned so there is no deal breaker such as 'we can't let a murderer/rapist loose'. However, a deal breaker might be, 'No way will we allow Rudy a potential claim for €500K compo, as we did Raff and Amanda'.

The critical evidence that identified Guede and placed him at the time and place of the murder was his bloody handprint. Discard all the DNA and this would be adequate to convict.

 

[Vixen]

Does anyone know of any case where Cassation has overturned a previous finalized C of C verdict concerning the same crime case?

I know a C of C declared that a woman could not be raped while wearing tight jeans and that a later C of C disagreed with that reasoning, but they were two different cases. Was it even legally possible for Marasca to declare that there were not multiple killers or that the robbery was not staged when those had been declared judicial truths by the Giordano C of C decision of Dec. 2010?

Yes, of course. It could have sent the issue back to a lower court.

However, it was clearly happy with the fact found there were multiple killers and a staged burglary.

 

[Vixen]

As I wrote recently, I think the most likely interpretation for the Chieffi ruling is that his panel looked at the case, saw that it was an almighty clustersomething, saw that it was riddled with contradictions and conflicting evidence, and saw that the forensic "evidence" was questionable to say the very least. And then, IMO, instead of being brave and calling a terminal halt to the nonsense, the Chieffi panel basically threw the ball back to an appeal-level court, with the effective remit to "sort this out properly".

I also think that the Chieffi panel was far too deferential to the prosecution position (a recurring theme in Italian criminal justice, unfortunately), with the result that it clearly tended to side with the prosecution case (and the Massei verdict which chimed closely with the prosecution case) and looked upon the Hellmann verdict as something of an anomaly, a "spanner in the works".

But on top of all that, I do agree that there was probably a certain degree of laziness and apathy in the Chieffi panel. I suspect they decided very early on indeed that they were going to send the case back down for another trial at appeal level. And I have little doubt that there was a lot of lobbying and "persuasion" going on behind the scenes to that effect. And once that pre-ordained decision had been effectively made, the rest was not much more than window dressing. And that's where the mistakes started to creep in.

PS: GO TEAM GB!!

Would this be the mawkish sentimentality you so dislike?

 

[Vixen]

Would you mind telling on what you agree?


One thing is, that "Waiting to be Heard" and "Honor Bound" are first hand accounts of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito about what happened to them, so they are definitely worth a read or two. The second thing is that the court records and the Italian newspaper articles from that time are indeed corroberating these accounts. AFAIK there is only one factual error in "Waiting to be Heard".

Of course one can go ahead and find differences between them and between them and other accounts. This is because of the different POV's and because some of the other stories like the ones from Russell, Follain or Nadeau are, as we have seen in the case of "Darkness Descending", simply made up.
The other approach is "to find fault in everything", that was done with "Honor Bound" on TJMK and Liz Houle's "book" is just the latest example for that, pretty cheap, if you ask me.


Why should I? Fischer, Hendry and Waterbury didn't try to press the facts into a narrative, you can't blame them for not having "all" the information, and Waterbury did a good job in explaining how "DNA-testing" works. The Knox case was as far as I know just one part of Douglas' book. Preston/Spezi, Burleigh and Dempsey are in the "True Crime Narrative" group, together with Nadeau, Russell, Sarzanini, Castellini and Follain. I don't get your point here. If it isn't wrong to publish a pro-guilt narrative, why is it wrong to publish a pro-innocence narrative?
I think you missed my point. The problem I have with the lately published books by Van der Leek and Raper is that they are "reporting" about the case as if it was still 2009 and the information that wasn't available then (but is now) doesn't exist. Hodges' book is another attempt in trying to make Knox say things she doesn't say (also has a long tradition on TJMK so nothing really new here). For Houle's book: see above.
I've no idea why you mention Christopher Robinson in this regard?

And just for the record: the linguistic discussion club meetings are down the hall, third door on the left

I chanced across one account of the case which was about 16 pages long and the characters names kept changing, it was full of inaccuracies and poor details and yet the author was charging IIRC about $3. Amazingly, it was and is still selling well. That's cashing in. It's good amazon do refunds.

You are wrong. The court records do not corroborate Waiting to be heard or Honor Bound. If you download Liz Houle's book, you will discover that WTBH factually does not match the facts. It is a pack of lies, which should give you some warning as to its writer's claimed 'innocence'. In fact, it deliberately misleads the reader on key issues, such as the times of the phonecalls and sequence of events. This is why Liz and James' books are important in setting the record straight for the interested public.

Wasn't Christopher Robinson flogging his book on the back of Amanda Knox publicity?

Have a word with LondonJohn about his insistence in bringing linguistics into it. (BTW LJ I have two Institute of Linguists certificates, too. this time from a course at London University SSEES. Eat your heart out.)

 

[Vixen]

It was stuck though. The Chieffi court more or less said "off with her head." Have you read the Chieffi report? This is basically how it reads:

"Hellmann believes Quintavalle was an unreliable witness just because he told police, when they were in his shop holding a picture of Amanda in front of his face directly asking about her, that he did not see her and she was not in his shop and only changed his story a year later once the case became a public sensation...but did you know he recognized blue eyes in the court room? Therefore he's like super reliable."

What can you even do with that? When that's considered top court level reasoning worthy of overturning a 2nd tier verdict? M&B did the best they could.

I think Chieffi was lazy more so than corrupt. Even a corrupt judge could see there was no case and going after a doctor's son and American student publicly defended by a sitting US senator over evidence like "blue eyes" and such would be futile. I honestly don't think they really read the case. They rubber stamped the appeal in front of them not realizing there wasn't a case.

M&B was left to clean up the pieces as best they could, and had no procedural means to directly overturn Chieffi, so had to go about it in a roundabout way.

You talk as though Marasca had some kind of mystical powers. It should be apparent by now that the trial is of ultra importance (cf. USA, UK). it is this court where all the evidence is presented. Thus, any later Appeal court will rely heavily on facts found at this court.

In the case of Quintavalle, when PC Volturne (_sp?) initially visited a day or so after the murder, he showed a photo and asked whether this person had bought anything in his shop. He said no, because as you know, the 'exhausted-looking' student type waiting outside his shop at 7:45 didn't buy anything.

Anyway the case, didn't hinge around his testimony, his was just one of many thousand pieces of evidence presented. His description of what this shelf browser was wearing matches the clothes strewn across Amanda's bed in a police photo - which he won't have seen - apart from the scarf being a slightly different colour, and an unidentified item.