Who killed Meredith Kercher? part 23

[acbytesla]

Who's Allen Saunders?

What? Doesn't your Google work?

 

[LondonJohn]

I just watched the part of the Netflix documentary where Mignini first appears, talks about his passion for detective movies - particularly Sherlock Holmes - and then talks his guff about women wanting to cover the body of their victim while a man "would never think to do such a thing". And pondering all this again, it's so very frightening if Mignini really does affect to model himself on someone like Sherlock Holmes. Because Holmes (and, I'd wager, pretty much every super-sleuth detective in the films he loves so much) was:

a) a purely fictional character with zero real-world repercussions;

b) deliberately and ostensibly written/filmed to be the hero of the piece, and thus - for the purposes of the fiction - was always correct and brilliant;

c) existing in a time of primitive forensic science techniques, where "hunches" followed by confessions, backed up with crude forensic identifiers such as fingerprints, items of clothing or unique shoe prints, were a common way to gain convictions;

d) entirely devoid of any scrutiny or accountability; and

e) (with reference back to (b) above) engineered by the writer - who had, of course, total control of the plot and outcome - to be brilliantly correct right from the get-go, with the early "hunches" always borne out by events.

And I strongly suspect that Mignini, with a personality that might be diagnosable as narcissistic and egotistical, had, to some extent, truly come to believe that he was cut from the same cloth as his (fictional and entirely unrealistic) detective heroes, and that therefore his "hunches" were worthy of similar weight and validity as those of Holmes et al. And, of course, that his hunches were usually brilliantly right and borne out by events, again just as with his fictional heroes. In Mignini's mind, possibly, the formulation of his "hunches" was, in many ways, the solving of the crime itself. All that was needed from that point on was to find evidence to "corroborate" these "hunches" (and of course this evidence was bound to exist and was waiting to be found, since Mignini's hunches had already unlocked the "truth" of the crime.....).

Despicable man. Needs to be removed from a position of practising law in Italy.

 

[Bill Williams]

Despicable man. Needs to be removed from a position of practising law in Italy.

It is clear that the documentary did a hatchet job on Mignini as well as Pisa.

The only question is was it deserved? Given the eventual exonerations that answer can only be "yes". Both Mignini and Pisa willingly gave the evidence needed.... they gave hatchet jobs on themselves!

 

[Sergei Walankov]

Because Holmes (and, I'd wager, pretty much every super-sleuth detective in the films he loves so much) was:

a) a purely fictional character with zero real-world repercussions;

b) deliberately and ostensibly written/filmed to be the hero of the piece, and thus - for the purposes of the fiction - was always correct and brilliant;

c) existing in a time of primitive forensic science techniques, where "hunches" followed by confessions, backed up with crude forensic identifiers such as fingerprints, items of clothing or unique shoe prints, were a common way to gain convictions;

d) entirely devoid of any scrutiny or accountability; and

e) (with reference back to (b) above) engineered by the writer - who had, of course, total control of the plot and outcome - to be brilliantly correct right from the get-go, with the early "hunches" always borne out by events.

And:

f) said it was "a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

 

[Planigale]

What? Doesn't your Googlework?

Other Web Search Engines are available.

 

[theprestige]

Who's Allen Saunders?

Jesus Christ. Apparently there are stupid questions after all.

It's 2016. We have the Internet. Why are you not a cyborg already?

 

[Planigale]

And:

f) said it was "a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

And that remains good advice today. Albeit from the mouth of a fictional Victorian detective or from the pen of a man who believed in fairies! Mignini and the Italian police seem rather to follow the catholic detective tradition of Father Brown relying on an interpretation of human nature and behaviour rather than the presbyterian tradition of Holmes based on material evidence.

I have not seen the documentary; I am surprised that Mignini continues to assert pop-psychology theories such as a woman must have done it because the body was covered. This should be an opinion given by a forensic psychologist or criminal profiler when it would be set about by suitable caveats, not from a provincial lawyer.

One can see how the investigation was directed by hypothesising before the facts from the beginning.

1) The break in was staged (no evidence to support this other than the initial (wrong) assumption that nothing was stolen); therefore it was an inside job.

2) The body was covered therefore it was a woman who carried out the murder.

The two Italian female trainee lawyer flatmates were excluded on the basis of alibis, to an extent that their foot prints and DNA were never even taken for exclusionary purposes.

The consequence is one can see that Knox was Mignini's principle suspect from early on, something which Mignini has now effectively admitted on screen. As Mignini was directing the investigation, any interview with Knox after the alibis of the other flatmates had been confirmed was with the person Mignini regarded as the principle suspect and should therefore have been interviewed 'under caution'.

 

[Sergei Walankov]

Jesus Christ. Apparently there are stupid questions after all.

It's 2016. We have the Internet. Why are you not a cyborg already?

I think you should consider the possibility that the question was rhetorical, and intended to be read in a spirit of conversational levity. And even if it wasn't, flying off the handle in response to something so trivial probably isn't the most constructive use of your time.

 

[Bill Williams]

Jesus Christ. Apparently there are stupid questions after all.

It's 2016. We have the Internet. Why are you not a cyborg already?

I was dragging my feet that day..... sue me!

 

[Bill Williams]

I think you should consider the possibility that the question was rhetorical, and intended to be read in a spirit of conversational levity. And even if it wasn't, flying off the handle in response to something so trivial probably isn't the most constructive use of your time.

It's the latter. I genuinely did not know who Allen Saunders was. And whoever he was, it was John Lennon who popularized the quote. For me at least.

But as you point out - which is worse: being an ignoramus of all things Allen Saunders or flying off the handle when one reads that another poster (aka: me) can be so dumb!

...... or (just to move this down the metaphysical levels a bit) flying off the handle because someone else flew off the handle, or in my case, flying off the handle because someone else flew off the handle because someone flew off the handle!

It's turtles all the way down.

 

[LondonJohn]

It's the latter. I genuinely did not know who Allen Saunders was. And whoever he was, it was John Lennon who popularized the quote. For me at least.

But as you point out - which is worse: being an ignoramus of all things Allen Saunders or flying off the handle when one reads that another poster (aka: me) can be so dumb!

...... or (just to move this down the metaphysical levels a bit) flying off the handle because someone else flew off the handle, or in my case, flying off the handle because someone else flew off the handle because someone flew off the handle!

It's turtles all the way down.

Particularly strange to interject in a thread in which one does not participate in any manner material to the OP of the thread, in order to insult another member on a matter unrelated to the thread's topic. Guess some people get their kicks in different ways.....

Anyhow, back to the matter at hand. Any news on Sollecito's compensation hearing?

 

[LondonJohn]

And that remains good advice today. Albeit from the mouth of a fictional Victorian detective or from the pen of a man who believed in fairies! Mignini and the Italian police seem rather to follow the catholic detective tradition of Father Brown relying on an interpretation of human nature and behaviour rather than the presbyterian tradition of Holmes based on material evidence.

I have not seen the documentary; I am surprised that Mignini continues to assert pop-psychology theories such as a woman must have done it because the body was covered. This should be an opinion given by a forensic psychologist or criminal profiler when it would be set about by suitable caveats, not from a provincial lawyer.

One can see how the investigation was directed by hypothesising before the facts from the beginning.

1) The break in was staged (no evidence to support this other than the initial (wrong) assumption that nothing was stolen); therefore it was an inside job.

2) The body was covered therefore it was a woman who carried out the murder.

The two Italian female trainee lawyer flatmates were excluded on the basis of alibis, to an extent that their foot prints and DNA were never even taken for exclusionary purposes.

The consequence is one can see that Knox was Mignini's principle suspect from early on, something which Mignini has now effectively admitted on screen. As Mignini was directing the investigation, any interview with Knox after the alibis of the other flatmates had been confirmed was with the person Mignini regarded as the principle suspect and should therefore have been interviewed 'under caution'.

Exactly so. Mignini has been hoist by his own petard - trapped by his own hubris and grandiosity. By announcing his "brilliant Holmes-esque" powers of deduction and sleuthing intuition as the camera rolled on the Netflix documentary, he has indeed grabbed enough of the rope that's been handed to him, and used it to hang himself (mixed metaphors ahoy!).

Perhaps even Mignini himself cannot see what a hopeless double-bind he's placed himself and the Perugia police into. In his puffed up "aren't I brilliant" recollections in the Netflix doc, he tells the world that he, the Mighty Mignini, figured out very early that Knox was firmly in the frame for this murder, based on his intuitive "hunches" over things like the covering of the body and certain behavioural aspects in the aftermath of the murder. And he therefore tells the world, in as many words, that Knox was far, far more than a "person of interest" to both him and the Perugia police by the time she entered that interrogation room on the night of 5th/6th November 2007.

And likewise, given that Mignini and the police "knew" Knox was involved somehow, it also stands to reason that Mignini and the police also "knew" that Sollecito was a firm suspect of a serious criminal offence - after all, Sollecito was claiming that Knox was with him in his apartment all that evening/night, so Sollecito HAD to be a clear suspect of lying to the police at the very least (to protect Knox, who had actually left his apartment that night to participate in the murder), or of some form of participation in the murder itself at most.

So Mignini, through his words captured forever on Digital Video storage, has effectively confirmed that both Knox and Sollecito were, by definition, considered suspects of serious criminal offences by the time they were brought in for "questioning" on the fateful night of 5th/6th November. And thus, it's a slam dunk that both Knox and Sollecito should have been officially declared suspects and afforded the appropriate rights and protections. Of course there are other pieces of evidence which only tend to support this argument (the fatuous preening triumphalism of Perugia police chief De Felice in front of journalists on 6th November comes immediately to mind...), but Mignini's words are something of a delicious confirmation, given that in trying to make himself seem brilliant, Mignini has actually achieved the exact opposite.........

 

[Bill Williams]

Particularly strange to interject in a thread in which one does not participate in any manner material to the OP of the thread, in order to insult another member on a matter unrelated to the thread's topic. Guess some people get their kicks in different ways.....

Anyhow, back to the matter at hand. Any news on Sollecito's compensation hearing?

Yea..... how strange is it to wait in the weeds, only to pounce when someone - me - makes an ignorant observation about something completely unrelated to the thread at hand.

At least the Lennon (Saunders) quote was related to Knox's USAToday piece.

And all of this goes unmoderated. Well done, skeptics' site.

 

[Bill Williams]

Exactly so. Mignini has been hoist by his own petard - trapped by his own hubris and grandiosity. By announcing his "brilliant Holmes-esque" powers of deduction and sleuthing intuition as the camera rolled on the Netflix documentary, he has indeed grabbed enough of the rope that's been handed to him, and used it to hang himself (mixed metaphors ahoy!).

Perhaps even Mignini himself cannot see what a hopeless double-bind he's placed himself and the Perugia police into. In his puffed up "aren't I brilliant" recollections in the Netflix doc, he tells the world that he, the Mighty Mignini, figured out very early that Knox was firmly in the frame for this murder, based on his intuitive "hunches" over things like the covering of the body and certain behavioural aspects in the aftermath of the murder. And he therefore tells the world, in as many words, that Knox was far, far more than a "person of interest" to both him and the Perugia police by the time she entered that interrogation room on the night of 5th/6th November 2007.

And likewise, given that Mignini and the police "knew" Knox was involved somehow, it also stands to reason that Mignini and the police also "knew" that Sollecito was a firm suspect of a serious criminal offence - after all, Sollecito was claiming that Knox was with him in his apartment all that evening/night, so Sollecito HAD to be a clear suspect of lying to the police at the very least (to protect Knox, who had actually left his apartment that night to participate in the murder), or of some form of participation in the murder itself at most.

So Mignini, through his words captured forever on Digital Video storage, has effectively confirmed that both Knox and Sollecito were, by definition, considered suspects of serious criminal offences by the time they were brought in for "questioning" on the fateful night of 5th/6th November. And thus, it's a slam dunk that both Knox and Sollecito should have been officially declared suspects and afforded the appropriate rights and protections. Of course there are other pieces of evidence which only tend to support this argument (the fatuous preening triumphalism of Perugia police chief De Felice in front of journalists on 6th November comes immediately to mind...), but Mignini's words are something of a delicious confirmation, given that in trying to make himself seem brilliant, Mignini has actually achieved the exact opposite.........

This is better than a copy of the Nov 5/6 interrogation videos - the ones Mignini was required to do, yet used the excuse of budget constraints. He has an excuse for everything on his side, yet one millimeter's variance of "story" from either Knox or Sollecito and they were liars and guilty.

Mignini was, as you say, handed enough rope to hang himself. So far, the ONLY external outlet to listen to his excuses are the predictable hate-sites.

 

[LondonJohn]

This is better than a copy of the Nov 5/6 interrogation videos - the ones Mignini was required to do, yet used the excuse of budget constraints. He has an excuse for everything on his side, yet one millimeter's variance of "story" from either Knox or Sollecito and they were liars and guilty.

Mignini was, as you say, handed enough rope to hang himself. So far, the ONLY external outlet to listen to his excuses are the predictable hate-sites.

And it's deeply pathetic (in the classical sense of the word) that Mignini penned a self-defensive missive to such a site in a pitiful (but bombastic, aggressive and hugely dissembling/distorting - in typical Mignini fashion....) way.

Incidentally, and as I've said before, my own personal belief (and it's at variance with some other pro-acquittal commentators) is that the Knox/Sollecito police interrogations of 5/6 November 2007 were never recorded in any form (as opposed to recordings having been made and then subsequently destroyed, hidden or "lost"). I believe that there was a conscious and deliberate decision not to record, as part of the carefully-choreographed (and well-practised) ruse whereby confessions were extracted from people who were clearly suspected by police, but whom the police/PM deliberately refrained from declaring an "official suspect" (a practice that appears endemic within Italian law enforcement, and which was noted and severely condemned by a European Criminal Bar Association report on Italy).

We all know that the withholding of the "official suspect" declaration meant that the police could interrogate a person without a lawyer being present as a mandatory requirement. And of course it also allows police to "interview" someone without having to record the interview electronically. It doesn't take a genius to see how these two factors would be of significant benefit to unscrupulous police and PMs, in terms of using, shall we say, unorthodox techniques to extract confessions from people whom they suspect of criminal offences.

So, IMO, the ruse was exactly that. You have someone you suspect of the crime. You'd love to get a confession from that person. You know that if you declare the person a suspect (as you should, under Italian law), that person will only be able to be interrogated by a PM from that point on, with a mandatory legal counsel in the room and mandatory electronic recording. It's not really ideal for extracting confessions. So you deliberately don't declare the person a suspect (even though you do really suspect the person, and are aiming for a confession). This gives you the ability to bring the person in and have the police "interview" them in the absence of any legal counsel and in the absence of electronic recording. This in turn gives you the opportunity to use unorthodox techniques to extract a confession from the person. After the event, you will be able to make the bogus claim that the person wasn't on your suspect radar at all, Your Honour, and just blurted out a confession while you were having a quiet chat with him! And if the now-accused person claims that the confession was forced out of him, and/or that the police were treating him as a suspect long before he confessed, well it's his word against yours (no lawyer, no electronic recording, and your police mates taking the notes of the interrogation*......). And you know that the courts almost always decide that you, the police, are telling the truth, and that the nasty criminal is making false claims to try to save his own miserable skin (so charge him with criminal slander into the bargain! Trebles all round!).

And that's exactly what I think happened to both Knox and Sollecito. I think no recording was made, because they police (and PM) knew - or thought they knew - that they could hide behind the old, well-practised "We didn't consider these people as suspects at the time, so there was no requirement to electronically record the interviews!" excuse. Making a recording and then hiding it would only create the unnecessary risk of the recording coming to light at some future point. At which point the unorthodox techniques used during the interrogation would undoubtedly be brought into the cold light of day. Why on earth risk that?! Nope, better to not electronically record anything at all. After all, these are only "persons of interest", so there's no need is there, Your Honour.....?


* The police notes thing is actually a very strong point in Knox's favour in her ECHR application. It's already been noted by (IIRC) both Marasca/Bruno and Boninsegna. In effect, it's beyond dispute that the interrogation of Knox on the night of 5/6 November 2007 was carried out over at least two hours (c.11pm-c.1am) and probably more. Yet the supposedly contemporaneous and complete police notes of the interrogation only account for a very small proportion of that time. The obvious inferences are either that a) the police note-taking was fundamentally (and unlawfully) incompetent, or b) the notes deliberately missed out parts of the interrogation that the police did not want to have written down for posterity. Either way, the police are screwed on this matter alone.

 

[Bill Williams]

And that's exactly what I think happened to both Knox and Sollecito. I think no recording was made, because they police (and PM) knew - or thought they knew - that they could hide behind the old, well-practised "We didn't consider these people as suspects at the time, so there was no requirement to electronically record the interviews!" excuse. Making a recording and then hiding it would only create the unnecessary risk of the recording coming to light at some future point. At which point the unorthodox techniques used during the interrogation would undoubtedly be brought into the cold light of day. Why on earth risk that?! Nope, better to not electronically record anything at all. After all, these are only "persons of interest", so there's no need is there, Your Honour.....?

Mignini, Napoleoni, and Ficarra et al., had nothing to fear about having "unorthodox techniques" filmed. The Reid Technique is quite legal, although there are cautions against its use against the young. Brendan Dassey comes to mind.

It is fairly well legally established that interrogators in that kind of setting are under no obligation to tell the truth. I'm serious. They are not.

It's up to a defence counsel at trial to prove that it was something undue... but it is not illegal in and of itself to be deceptive, manipulative, or even "unorthodox" at interrogation.

 

[Stacyhs]

Mignini, Napoleoni, and Ficarra et al., had nothing to fear about having "unorthodox techniques" filmed. The Reid Technique is quite legal, although there are cautions against its use against the young. Brendan Dassey comes to mind.

It is fairly well legally established that interrogators in that kind of setting are under no obligation to tell the truth. I'm serious. They are not.

It's up to a defence counsel at trial to prove that it was something undue... but it is not illegal in and of itself to be deceptive, manipulative, or even "unorthodox" at interrogation.

That is true, Bill. Police can lie during interrogations with no problem.
I also don't think the interrogations were recorded because the police knew darn well they were going to coerce Knox and Sollecito illegally. Recording interrogations protects both the interrogators and the suspects and there is no reason not to record them unless the interrogators know they will be doing something wrong beforehand. I have no doubt this was not the first time they smacked a suspect around.

 

[LondonJohn]

That is true, Bill. Police can lie during interrogations with no problem.
I also don't think the interrogations were recorded because the police knew darn well they were going to coerce Knox and Sollecito illegally. Recording interrogations protects both the interrogators and the suspects and there is no reason not to record them unless the interrogators know they will be doing something wrong beforehand. I have no doubt this was not the first time they smacked a suspect around.

That's my rationale too. Frankly, even if the police were planning to use nothing more coercive than the Reid Technique (or a variant of it) in those interrogations of Sollecito and Knox, it would still be worth their while making sure the interrogations were not recorded electronically for posterity. After all, the Reid Technique is only ever applicable in a situation where the interrogators clearly suspect the person being interrogated - and the police and PM needed to pretend that this was not the case with either Sollecito or Knox. They needed to be able to claim that they were just questioning Sollecito and Knox as witnesses, and that the "confessions of criminal acts" just came out of a clear blue sky.

But I tend to agree with you that the police intended to use techniques in those interrogations that went well beyond the Reid Technique (or, at the very least, they felt there was a high possibility that they would use such "enhanced" techniques). And so there was an even greater incentive to ensure that no electronic record of the interrogations could ever see the light of day. And, like you (and as I've stated several times), I'm of the strong opinion that this sort of thing was a relatively common and well-practised piece of choreographed deception on the part of police and PMs. They had, IMO, got well used and well practised to "figuring out" who the culprit(s) was/were for any given serious crime, and then getting the person(s) in for an interrogation as a "witness", which afforded them the dual advantage of not having a pesky lawyer present, and (more importantly) using any manner of techniques and threats to get their person(s) to make confessions, without any requirement to record the proceedings electronically (and with the only recording of proceedings being the written record of one of the interrogating officers - and any fool could see straight away how this could work in a way that either covered up or totally ignored any police malpractice during the interrogation).

 

[Bill Williams]

That is true, Bill. Police can lie during interrogations with no problem.
I also don't think the interrogations were recorded because the police knew darn well they were going to coerce Knox and Sollecito illegally. Recording interrogations protects both the interrogators and the suspects and there is no reason not to record them unless the interrogators know they will be doing something wrong beforehand. I have no doubt this was not the first time they smacked a suspect around.

MOO - the coercion was not what was illegal. It was coercion without the legal guarantees afforded those accused of crimes which was illegal. Even Machiavelli here on these threads had to "nuance" that one, it is the nuance that forms the core of what remains of guilter belief about the importance of the interrogations:

1) Knox was almost immediately identifiable as a suspect, meaning a capital "S" suspect. Her behaviour gave it away, as the police crowed about; careful behavioural observation made her a suspect even before the forensics came in.

2) Chief reason for pivoting to these behavioural "investigations" prior to the interrogation, was that the police immediately "knew" that the break-in was staged; they knew this without any forensic investigation other than eyeballing the scene. Therefore, this had to have been an inside job.

3) As highlighted in the recent Netflix documentary, Mignini "knew" that the real killer was female because of the placing of the duvet over the victim.​

Given all of these colossal rushes to judgement, it's simply stupid to think that Ficarra, Napoleoni, Mignini and possibly even Chiacchiara did not think of both Raffaele and Amanda as suspects when Raffaele was summoned to the Questura.

At that point - given normal police-interrogation practise - the police were full value in being coercive. It's because of what an interrogation is that makes everything (except the hitting, the denial of adequate translation, the mandatory taping, and a lawyer) fair game.

Why? Because the goal of interrogation is confession. Nothing more, nothing less. The police have wide latitude to achieve that goal, short of the hitting, the mandatory taping, the denial of adequate translation, and a lawyer.

Police by definition manipulate the discussion in the interrogation. Any talk of the suspect's innocence is quickly cut off - why? Because that frustrates the goal of confession.

Coercion is not the problem. All of this is on the police - if their coercion blinds the police to obvious false confessions, then THAT is the problem, and it belongs to the police and the police alone.

MOO

 

[Numbers]

MOO - the coercion was not what was illegal. It was coercion without the legal guarantees afforded those accused of crimes which was illegal. Even Machiavelli here on these threads had to "nuance" that one, it is the nuance that forms the core of what remains of guilter belief about the importance of the interrogations:

1) Knox was almost immediately identifiable as a suspect, meaning a capital "S" suspect. Her behaviour gave it away, as the police crowed about; careful behavioural observation made her a suspect even before the forensics came in.

2) Chief reason for pivoting to these behavioural "investigations" prior to the interrogation, was that the police immediately "knew" that the break-in was staged; they knew this without any forensic investigation other than eyeballing the scene. Therefore, this had to have been an inside job.

3) As highlighted in the recent Netflix documentary, Mignini "knew" that the real killer was female because of the placing of the duvet over the victim.​

Given all of these colossal rushes to judgement, it's simply stupid to think that Ficarra, Napoleoni, Mignini and possibly even Chiacchiara did not think of both Raffaele and Amanda as suspects when Raffaele was summoned to the Questura.

At that point - given normal police-interrogation practise - the police were full value in being coercive. It's because of what an interrogation is that makes everything (except the hitting, the denial of adequate translation, the mandatory taping, and a lawyer) fair game.

Why? Because the goal of interrogation is confession. Nothing more, nothing less. The police have wide latitude to achieve that goal, short of the hitting, the mandatory taping, the denial of adequate translation, and a lawyer.

Police by definition manipulate the discussion in the interrogation. Any talk of the suspect's innocence is quickly cut off - why? Because that frustrates the goal of confession.

Coercion is not the problem. All of this is on the police - if their coercion blinds the police to obvious false confessions, then THAT is the problem, and it belongs to the police and the police alone.

MOO

Bill, your post is interesting but it does not reflect the procedural law of the Italian Republic or the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Under CPP Articles 64.2 and 188, statements may not be obtained by coercion, that is, by any method that influences the self-determination of the suspect, or witness who is a de facto suspect.

The ECHR has stated that a trial is unfair if evidence obtained by coercion is used to obtain a conviction. The purpose of ECHR case-law insisting that a suspect have a lawyer present during an interrogation is to prevent coercion, according to the ECHR.

The police conducted their interrogations without recordings to allow their use of coercion, which violated Italian and international law, to be hidden.

I should add: under Italian procedural law, evidence gathered contrary to the prohibitions set by law shall not be used (CPP Article 191.1). I believe that this means that any statement obtained under coercion cannot be legally used as a basis to arrest or to convict someone.