Why so much attention to the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[CoulsdonUK]

Let's move this over to the main discussion thread!

Agreed.

 

[Grinder]

This may be a form of heresy for some but I do not see railroading, wrongful conviction, despotic prosecutors, corrupt or at best incompetent police officers, of course mistakes were made during the investigation and the media played its role by polarising the case early on, but I do not see a grand conspiracy against Raffaele and Amanda.

I think the above is appropriate for this thread. I see no grand conspiracy, but do see a lousy job by the ILE. The video of evidence collection including wrapping the mop in gift paper, putting samples into the cottage freezer, storing the bra clasp, a key piece of evidence, in such a way that it was destroyed are just three examples of shoddy ILE work. The interrogation of Amanda was clearly done with the wrong truth in the minds of the police.

I would accept that the Knox and Sollecito families and their supporters

I'm neither. I lean heavily to the ILE not making their case.

The issue some have with the Kerchers certainly isn't about how they feel about Meredith's memory. I do have issue with the statement "it's all about Meredith".
No, it isn't. It should be that it's all about justice. Why would the Kerchers be upset about the acquittal? They may have information not allowed in court that causes them to be 'sure' the two are guilty.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

two questions

Oh come on, what is the dominate ethnic, socio-economic groups that populate most American prisons, white middle classes or African American, Hispanic and people from economically deprived backgrounds? Duke Lacrosse were an exception as was Lindy Chamberlain, they are by no means the norm.

It may be that there are more wrongful convictions involving poor people because they lack the means necessary to mount an effective challenge. I happen to believe that many wrongful convictions start out when the police prematurely latch onto someone close to the crime and don't let go, in spite of further information.

a) Do you believe that there are wrongful convictions?
b) Assuming that the answer to a) is yes, who and what brings them about?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

What do you mean, exactly?

I see it differently to you. I am uncomfortable with the concept of justice via cyberspace or public opinion.

Please define what you mean by justice via cyberspace.

 

[Rolfe]

Please define what you mean by justice via cyberspace.

This is an interesting topic in its own right. Without the internet, it would be impossible for ordinary people to access the depth of information and primary evidence necessary to understand any case in sufficient detail to challenge a verdict. Such activities were the provenance of the investigative journalist, and interested punters really had to take what these journalists said at face value.

Before the internet it was also impossible for a critical-mass group of interested people to get together to discuss the case and the evidence, and bounce ideas off each other, and generally maintain interest and advance the group understanding.

I think we may be seeing a new phenomenon here, which if it isn't "justice by cyberspace" is certainly scrutiny by cyberspace. Time will tell whether it proves to be pivotal in real life, but it's arguable it may have helped with the 2011 acquittals of Knox and Sollecito, and if current developments in the Lockerbie case come to fruition it will have been the catalyst in that one too.

Cyberspace isn't somewhere eternally insulated from real life. Each of us has his or her own real lives. We can inform our real-life actions by what we read in cyberspace, and if something we learn about in cyberspace proves sufficiently compelling we can go out in real life and do something about it.

No criminal case will ever be judged and settled in cyberspace alone. Nevertheless cyberspace may prove invaluable in achieving real-life justice.

Rolfe.

 

[Dan O.]

Please define what you mean by justice via cyberspace.

He's not from around here. The right of the people to monitor the criminal justice system to insure that it doesn't devolve back to the divine rights of kings was written into the Bill of Rights. He grew up under a different system and cannot fathom how the world could work if not managed by the aristocracy.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm from around him, though I have to say from a different legal system, and I can fathom that quite easily. Justice must be seen to be done, and if a judgement cannot stand in the face of reasonable public scrutiny, something is wrong.

Rolfe.

 

[Bill Williams]

He's not from around here. The right of the people to monitor the criminal justice system to insure that it doesn't devolve back to the divine rights of kings was written into the Bill of Rights. He grew up under a different system and cannot fathom how the world could work if not managed by the aristocracy.

Heaven help me for taking CoulsdonUK's side on this, but I also live in a system which rests on the fall back position of "Royal Prerogative."

In non-constitutional systems like the U.K. it works quite well. In constitutional systems like Canada it's like a lot of those status reports on Facebook when one describes their marriage/relational status: "It's complicated."

As for Italy, they are in transition from an inquisatorial system to an adversarial system of law, and have not yet worked out the kinks. Having to deal with Mussolini's Italy for all those years did not help either. Italy, in that respect, resembles more my country than either the U.S. or the U.K.: "It's complicated."

So as the self-appointed score keeper, I am awarding this point to CoulsdonUK, for purely selfish nationalistic reasons.

 

[HumanityBlues]

Heaven help me for taking CoulsdonUK's side on this, but I also live in a system which rests on the fall back position of "Royal Prerogative."

In non-constitutional systems like the U.K. it works quite well. In constitutional systems like Canada it's like a lot of those status reports on Facebook when one describes their marriage/relational status: "It's complicated."

As for Italy, they are in transition from an inquisatorial system to an adversarial system of law, and have not yet worked out the kinks. Having to deal with Mussolini's Italy for all those years did not help either. Italy, in that respect, resembles more my country than either the U.S. or the U.K.: "It's complicated."

So as the self-appointed score keeper, I am awarding this point to CoulsdonUK, for purely selfish nationalistic reasons.

So is this the new defacto/unmoderated Knox thread?

 

[Antony]

So is this the new defacto/unmoderated Knox thread?

The main Amanda Knox thread has been off moderation for 2 or 3 weeks.

It's always been off-topic on the main thread, to raise the questions posed by the OP in this one. After all, there are any number of miscarriages of justice which deserve attention, and it isn't obvious what makes this one a special case. The answer lies not so much in the character of the accused as in the behaviour of the prosecutor and the online cult created around the murder victim.

 

[RoseMontague]

I'm from around him, though I have to say from a different legal system, and I can fathom that quite easily. Justice must be seen to be done, and if a judgement cannot stand in the face of reasonable public scrutiny, something is wrong.

Rolfe.

I agree. I wonder what is going to happen to those that fall back on authority when the SC rules and the appeal judgment is confirmed. Maybe we will finally hear why those that believe in guilt feel that way despite the final ruling. The very reason this case interests a lot of people is that the original judgment does not stand up to public scrutiny.

 

[Supernaut]

I agree. I wonder what is going to happen to those that fall back on authority when the SC rules and the appeal judgment is confirmed. Maybe we will finally hear why those that believe in guilt feel that way despite the final ruling. The very reason this case interests a lot of people is that the original judgment does not stand up to public scrutiny.

I'll be quite honest;

I'm afraid that I can't accept doubt expressed about AK's and RS's innocence at face value (at least not from people who are manifestly aware of the facts).

Which is to say, I suspect anyone who does so of motives which they are keeping carefully hidden (perhaps even from themselves - but that would be a mental health issue).

As for the OP's original question;

what I and many others found unusual, even unique about this case was the "guilt campaign" (or "hate campaign") against Amanda. I've never witnessed anything like it, and It's actually what first got my attention.

Had even SOME of what was alleged about her by the Italian prosecution been true, and even if she HAD been guilty, it still wouldn't explain it.

As others have pointed out, 'innocence campaigns' aren't unusual, and it isn't hard to understand why - but a guilt campaign?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I'll be quite honest;

I'm afraid that I can't accept doubt expressed about AK's and RS's innocence at face value (at least not from people who are manifestly aware of the facts).

Which is to say, I suspect anyone who does so of motives which they are keeping carefully hidden (perhaps even from themselves - but that would be a mental health issue).

As for the OP's original question;

what I and many others found unusual, even unique about this case was the "guilt campaign" (or "hate campaign") against Amanda. I've never witnessed anything like it, and It's actually what first got my attention.

Had even SOME of what was alleged about her by the Italian prosecution been true, and even if she HAD been guilty, it still wouldn't explain it.

As others have pointed out, 'innocence campaigns' aren't unusual, and it isn't hard to understand why - but a guilt campaign?

It is indeed interesting. The "Free Mumia" campaign doesn't have some kind of opposite "Mumia eats babies and started WW2" campaign which vilifies Mumia beyond reason. Nobody sits around making surreal and vaguely schizophrenic photoshops of Mumia and his relatives. Nobody goes around lying about the events which got him locked up to make them seem worse than they were.

I'm not at all sure why some people have made hating Amanda Knox such a huge part of their mental and emotional lives, but there's clearly something psychologically interesting going on with it.

 

[Bill Williams]

I agree. I wonder what is going to happen to those that fall back on authority when the SC rules and the appeal judgment is confirmed. Maybe we will finally hear why those that believe in guilt feel that way despite the final ruling. The very reason this case interests a lot of people is that the original judgment does not stand up to public scrutiny.

The best way to believe the Massei motivations report is not to read it.

Go through it with a highlighter and highlight the shear volume of "could haves", "might haves", or what Hellmann himself calls the "39 probablies" and the nature of the Massei report lays there staring you in the face.

For me, all the Hellmann-Zanetti court did was restore reasonable doubt and presumption of innocence to the case - little things like that.

Yet the remaining guilters got their own dander up in the months prior to the Dec 2009 conviction, esp. when Andrea Vogt was telegraphing the prosecution case, point by point, to the PMF/PMF website(s). For some reason the guilters hard-wired their own feelings about the case before a single word was said in defence of the pair - much less the application of the rule of law.

The Kercher connection to the British tabloids did not help. Taking the Daily Mail as the chief offender, there was not factoid too lurid, and no character assassination too low, or no picture of Amanda Knox which could not be photoshopped enough to produce cold steel-blue killer eyes.

All this to the point where one of the webadministrators of the PMF/PMF sites says that her determination of innocence or guilt turned on one picture she saw of Knox.... her claim is that initially she thought the picture to be of Kercher and though, "Gee, if I didn't know better I'd say she was the killer." When it was pointed out to her that the picture was of Knox - a vindictive, neighbourhood hate campaign was born. See Strange Dave on that one.

The Massei report though actually makes the case for innocence, while finding them guilty. The fifth point in my list is now Massei's finding of fact that there was no animosity between Kercher and Knox - a major claim in the prosecution's claim, and the reason why they called the witnesses they did. Massei simply did not believe it.

Yet the continuing campaign from a smaller and smaller group of dedicated people maintains retelling Rudy's fable - that Kercher and Knox were not getting along in Oct 2007. Heck, even Massei does not try for small rehabilitations of Rudy Guede in an attempt to vilify one of the two remaining suspects! It's been stunning reading the way Rudy, the only one who's DNA is inside the victim (!) is let off..... all for the sake of trying to pin the unpinnable on two innocents.

Much of the attention to this case these days is trying to reconcile Massei's verdict with his fact finding. I've listed ad nauseum 4 such facts which heavily suggest innocence, from his very report.

That and his 39 probablies actually DO deserve attention.

 

[Dan O.]

I don't see this as the only case where the hate campaign takes a foothold. The haters come out of the woodwork whenever the OJ case is mentioned making a rational discussion of the case impossible. When I brought up the Ryan Furguson case here, the thread was hounded by authoritarians proclaiming that the police can do no wrong. The still moderated Zimmerman thread is another example.

What happens most of the time is people fragment into opposing groups based on an initial perception. The peer groups gather evidence to reinforce their own view. Where these groups interact the battles mostly consist of throwing the same old evidence back and forth which then often devolves into personal attacks getting the topics shutdown on most neutral sites.

What happened here in the Amanda Knox threads is due to a combination of factors. The moderation team played a big roll in culling the name calling and providing a neutral forum where opposing ideas can be discussed. There was also a core group of rationalists that built an extensive database of facts backed by evidence and science that was used to shutdown the repeated attempts to throw the same defeated arguments and therefore kept the discussions moving forward into new territory. The hot discussions here attracted more outsiders and made JREF one of the top discussion portals for the case.

Meanwhile, most of the regular JREF crowd was too preoccupied in ridiculing the threads to notice what was really happening in their own house.

 

[Supernaut]

It is indeed interesting. The "Free Mumia" campaign doesn't have some kind of opposite "Mumia eats babies and started WW2" campaign which vilifies Mumia beyond reason. Nobody sits around making surreal and vaguely schizophrenic photoshops of Mumia and his relatives. Nobody goes around lying about the events which got him locked up to make them seem worse than they were.

I'm not at all sure why some people have made hating Amanda Knox such a huge part of their mental and emotional lives, but there's clearly something psychologically interesting going on with it.

Edward de Vere wrote; "the Lady doth protest too much, methinks".

The very fact of the efforts this group of 'guilt advocates' have gone to to vilify AK and anyone sympathetic to her indicates to me they don't really believe she was guilty, and they knew there was a strong liklihood she would ultimately be found innocent, a prospect they apparently found completely beyond the pale.

Nevetheless they seem to "feel" that she was guilty of *something* for which she deserved to go to jail for a long time anyway. The question has to be - what would that be, exactly? Being attractive? Being slightly gauche? Not being dead instead of Meredith?

It often seems like madness, but (de Vere again) might there be method [purpose] in it?

 

[RWVBWL]

<snip>
What happened here in the Amanda Knox threads is due to a combination of factors. The moderation team played a big roll in culling the name calling and providing a neutral forum where opposing ideas can be discussed. There was also a core group of rationalists that built an extensive database of facts backed by evidence and science that was used to shutdown the repeated attempts to throw the same defeated arguments and therefore kept the discussions moving forward into new territory. The hot discussions here attracted more outsiders and made JREF one of the top discussion portals for the case.

Well put, Dan O.!

Meanwhile,
most of the regular JREF crowd was too preoccupied in ridiculing the threads to notice what was really happening in their own house.

Too funny!

And it's been over a year now since Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were freed from their un-just imprisonment.

Thanks JREF for providing a great forum for this wrongful conviction discussion, you rock!

Yea!
Happy Holidays JREFer's!
RW

 

[Chris_Halkides]

West of Memphis (documentary on the WM3) review

From NPR: "If West of Memphis spends a great deal of time with the trio's advocates, that seems warranted. Without outside pressure, Baldwin and Misskelly would still be in prison, and Echols might well have been executed. Mara Leveritt, who wrote a book on the three, notes that they benefited from a 'crowd-sourced investigation.' It took way too long, but the crowd finally bested the mob." Thank goodness for justice via cyberspace.

 

[Bill Williams]

Nevetheless they seem to "feel" that she was guilty of *something* for which she deserved to go to jail for a long time anyway. The question has to be - what would that be, exactly? Being attractive? Being slightly gauche? Not being dead instead of Meredith?

It often seems like madness, but (de Vere again) might there be method [purpose] in it?

This is the fall back position of many. I wish I had a nickel for everytime someone wrote the very odd phrase, "I don't know if she did it or not, but she knows something she's not telling us."

Think about that for a second...... <waiting>, <waiting>, <waiting>, <waiting> ... truly this is a euphemism for, "She did it, she just hasn't told us how."

It cannot be a euphemism for, "She's innocent, but knows something." Think about it. It's a way of continuing to vilify two innocents while getting off the hook for explaining why.

Why? Gee, I just have a feeling this is true.... I once saw a picture of a guilter and their eyes said it all......

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Happy New Year!

CoulsdonUK,

I am glad that you are back, and I trust that you enjoyed your holiday. There are a number of questions that have been addressed to you, and I hope that you will be able to answer some of them.