Meredith Kercher murdered-Amanda Knox Conviction Overturned #22

[arielilane]

Just waiting for the press conference...

This link is continuous... here is Amanda coming off the plane..

http://www.kirotv.com/livestreamvideo/26941056/index.html

Thank you for the link to the livestream, MsFacetious.

Welcome home, Amanda!!!

Welcome home.

 

[greycoupon]

Did they have some kind of audio issue or did her parents just decide not to take questions?

 

[Malkmus]

Did they have some kind of audio issue or did her parents just decide not to take questions?

I don't think it was ever meant to be a Q&A session.

 

[Nova]

I guess I shouldn't judge everybody by my family, we all went to college too, after serving our country, my children were all 18 when they enlisted, the baby was in Iraq at 19....this goes for all boy and girls! 20 years old is an adult, my adult son's were both blown up in Iraq and many other families babies didn't come home alive!
I never said that is what make them guilty, but it sure is odd!!!!! Amanda is NOT a child!

I am so sorry for your loss, alwayslooking. I have no doubt your sons grew up much faster than the average American exchange student.

Don't soldiers get specific training so they can withstand interrogation techniques?

 

[gitana1]

I do agree that false confessions happen but, you would never get me "confused" enough to make up a story about some crime I knew nothing about. Possibly out of fear of extreme physical punishment or death but, not from a whack on the head and exhaustion. I would be arrested for beligerence and punching the lady back before I gave some made up story. Amanda was a smart girl so not sure I buy the confused bit. I'm not saying she is guilty. The evidence was lacking so I agree with her release. I just think she's a curious individual and it will be interesting to see how she behaves now out of prison.

No one would ever get me that confused either. And I would never change my story or falsely confess, etc. But I would also never join a cult, like many very intelligent people have done, or "follow orders" that lead to someone being murdered or tortured like several of our very own soldiers have done.

Some people are not as steadfast as others. Some are not as strong-minded, some are more group thinkers, follower types, etc. I mean, Riley Fox's dad confessed to killing her by accident. He was older than Knox, a father of two, and in his own country, speaking his native tongue:

Desperation−cases in which exhausted suspects confessed for no reason other than to bring their grueling interrogations to an end, figuring that, because they are innocent, they will be able to straighten out the facts after getting some rest.

Kevin Fox: They promised to stop the grilling−if he'd just say his daughter's murder had been an accident. http://falseconfessionsbook.com/desperation


Knox was 20. In a foreign country. She had been there only two months. She barely spoke the language. I was in a foreign country, barely speaking the language at the same age. I remember wanting to try a different brand of cigarettes that a guy had who was part of our group, out on the town one night. I asked him (or I thought I did) if I could try one of his to see what it was like. He said yes. (I smoked then. Haven't for 10 years now).

But later that evening, he made a pointed comment. Something about how he doesn't mind being generous but gets miffed when people ask for something when they already have it. See, he noticed that I had my own pack. He didn't understand that I had merely wanted to try one of his because it was a different brand. Everyone had cigarettes. No one was short.

I got the gist of what he was trying to convey. He thought I was being greedy. But I refrained from trying to explain. With the language difficulty, it was just too hard. And then what if he wasn't really talking about me asking for a cigarette? Then I would look stupid. The whole thing was very embarrassing.

I had many moments like that - moments when people misunderstood me or I misunderstood them. But, I was a tough minded person, always on guard against danger, etc. Not flighty.

Until you have had the experience of being a non-native speaker in a foreign country, where the language, customs, attitudes are different, you simply cannot fathom how Knox felt or how the pressure in a criminal murder investigation would have felt that much more intense.

But you don't even need all that to create an environment in which you implicate yourself or falsely confess, apparently. It just makes it much easier for that environment to occur. I mean, let's look again at the case of Kevin Fox, a 27 year old man with no mental incapacities of any kind, who confessed to murdering his baby girl:

On October 27th, 2004, the Defendants wrapped up what can be best characterized as a botched investigation of the murder of 4-year-old Riley Fox. Having made critical mistakes in the early stages of the investigation resulting in the destruction of key evidence, Defendants, in a last desperate effort to close the case on the eve of an election, made their move on an easy target - the 27 year old father of Riley Fox. A young man with no knowledge of the criminal justice system in Illinois and its shameful history of false confessions and wrongful convictions, Kevin Fox was best known for being a great father to his children and a bit too trusting of authority figures. Seeing no need for an attorney because he had “nothing to hide”, Kevin walked into a locked room from which he may never return. After hearing hours of threats, lies about the evidence, and promises about a ”deal”, Kevin Fox fell victim to a lethal game of bait and switch.

Believing he had only two options, a 30 year to life sentence with the promise of daily sexual assaults and years of separation from his family or, the bait, a 3-5 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter and immediate release on bond, he chose the later, at the price of agreeing to a fabricated story.

The switch occurred on October 27th when Kevin Fox learned he had not only been tricked into a first degree murder charge but the lethal game ended in the coveted prize for the State - a chance to get a lethal injection. https://antipolygraph.org/cgi-bin/forums/YaBB.pl?num=1146566231

DNA, a confession and the signed shoes of the real perp, left at the scene where Riley was found, led to Fox's release. But not until after he spent 8 months in jail and had the entire country against him.

When I look at Kevins' case, his false confession, and then add it to the facts of this case, I have to do some thinking. In this case there is:

1. No motive for a couple, who just met 7 days before the murder, to kill Meredith, a flat mate Knox knew for only two months.
2. Discredited forensics tying them to the scene.
3. A real perp whose DNA was all over the place and who actually left his body waste in the toilet after murdering Meredith.
4. A real perp who was a career criminal known for breaking in homes with a knife.
5. A real perp who could at best, have known of Knox for two months.
6. A real perp who met Meredith and found her enchanting.
7. A prosecutor who has been convicted of corruption.
8. A prosecutor who led a witch hunt against 20 other people on trumped up charges that they were part of a satanic ring who murdered people in satanic rituals. Charges later flatly dismissed and charges which led to his own conviction on corruption.
9. Similar charges from this prosecutor against Knox and Sollecito, who he fantastically claimed hooked up with Guede in order to go out of their minds on pot (ok) and then, insane from the pot, play crazy sex games that led to murder.
10. Two young kids, pressured by police in a system that doesn't have the protections our does (our own still leading to numerous false confessions).
11. A female suspect who was zeroed in on primarily because she was too "loose" for the culture.
12. A female suspect zeroed in on because she didn't show enough grief after her roommate of two months was found murdered and acted too carefree.
13. A female suspect whose sexual mores were actively smeared by the same, deranged prosecutor, a man desperately needing to save face after his earlier, botched prosecution of 20 people, who leaked "things" about Knox, like the number of sex partners she had had, to an angry media in an attempt to make Knox seem like a *advertiser censored* and a witch.
14. A system in which people are not really considered convicted until an appeals court has convicted them.
15. A system in which 50% of the people convicted in lower courts have their convictions overturned or reduced, due to the fact that the lower courts and the prosecutorial system is basically a left-over of the fascist police state of the Mussolini era.
16. A female suspect who was only 20 years old, in a foreign country she had just come to, who did not speak the language hardly at all, when she was interrogated for several hours in interrogations that were inexplicably not taped or recorded, while the prosecutor gave conflicting reasons for that failure.
17. Two suspects who had no criminal or mental health histories of any kind.
18. Two suspects who, despite aggressive attempts, no information of ANY kind that would point to a disturbed or criminal or sociopathic mindset emerged, ever, but who were convicted of the brutal rape and murder of someone one hardly knew and the other just met two months prior.
19. The quick change in the theory of the prosecutor from a satanic sex-murder ritual between Knox, Sollecito and her boss Lambada, who Knox first implicated when investigators suggested him to her, after it was discovered that he not only had an alibi but that DNA from a different black man, a known criminal, made the Lambada theory ridiculous.
20. No evidence that our country or Donald Trump or anyone else paid off or otherwise forced the hand of the Italian appeals court.
21. No evidence that our media, which initially jumped mostly on the bandwagon against Knox, had any more sway than the British media, who maintained a strong presence and disgust of Knox.
20. An independent forensic review which found no evidence at all that Knox and Sollecito were at the scene of the crime.
21. An appeals court that could have upheld the convictions or overturned them based on reasonable doubt but instead did neither and overturned the convictions stating the couple had not committed the crime at all.
22. A true crime author, middle aged, intellectual, worldy, who himself went up against the Knox/Sollecito prosecutor and was accused as well of being part of a satanic ritual ring and of being a murderer, after he dared to try to write a book about the murders that same prosecutor charged 20 innocent people with, and who stated that after so many hours, he himself was close to breaking under the pressure.

Well, when I add all of that up, when I show proof that Knox, at the time she "lied" or implicated herself in the rape and murder of a flatmate, faced pressures far greater than the likes of the older Kevin Fox, and many others who have falsely confessed, or greater than the Monster of Florence author, then I have to believe that the main reason anyone still insists she is guilty is because Mignini really did his job well in influencing the media and hence, the public, into believing his portrayals of Knox as a frighteningly immoral and sexually perverted witch, feeding into the secret fears people, especially men, have had for centuries about the Dianas in our midst - the same fears that have led to false accusations against multiple women over the centuries. The same fears that have led to the burning, drowning and stoning to death, of women all over the world since antiquity. :twocents:

 

[alwayslooking]

I am so sorry for your loss, alwayslooking. I have no doubt your sons grew up much faster than the average American exchange student.

Don't soldiers get specific training so they can withstand interrogation techniques?

My husband and I were both LE, so that training came from home!!!lol they were always told not to say a word without a lawyer!:floorlaugh:

 

[SMK]

Re press conference:


First time I ever heard Amanda not speaking Italian! Just a sweet, nervous college girl---where is the double-souled witch and Luciferina? This is a good girl, an innocent girl, who loves her family. She thanked all who supported and defended her, which includes JREF and Websleuthers---- She is lovely. I love her face. What a cutie.

SEATTLE TIMES: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2011/10/04/2016405259.jpg

 

[sherlockh]

Re press conference:


First time I ever heard Amanda not speaking Italian! Just a sweet, nervous college girl---where is the double-souled witch and Luciferina? This is a good girl, an innocent girl, who loves her family. She thanked all who supported and defended her, which includes JREF and Websleuthers---- She is lovely. I love her face. What a cutie.

SEATTLE TIMES: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2011/10/04/2016405259.jpg

The lawyer who said that AK is a witch actually won his case and AK was convicted and her sentence was increased from 1 to 3 years. She is a convicted criminal. Not a nice person. Why in the world would anyone put this <modsnip> on a pedestal?

 

[twall]

Amanda speaking after she arrived home. (make sure you have tissues handy, it's a tearjerker)

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/04/us/knox-seattle/index.html

 

[kalekona]

Did they have some kind of audio issue or did her parents just decide not to take questions?

Not sure if non locals are still seeing Amanda's homecoming but if not the Vans are arriving home and there are people lining the streets in the rain holding signs welcoming her home.

I really need to tell the non-supporters that Amanda isn't just another media story and there was no PR push or campaign that influenced most of us here in the Seattle area-
it was the early days of the case and the people who really knew her that influenced us- it was the fact that no one had anything bad to say about her- then it was watching her family suffer, watching them never give up to keep their faith- we watched them go broke and her grandmother give up her retirement and take another mortgage out on her home.
There was no million dollar PR campaign there was a defending their daughter campaign. These are real people, this is real joy and with Amanda it was pure gratitude.

I will not apologize for supporting them and I will not be belittled for it either. Amanda showed tonight our belief in her was justified.


She is the first person to really say thank you to people for "defending me"- not just supporting and believing in her it. For once I know that everything I have posted over the past 4 years really DID matter, it really made a difference- at least to Amanda-

20yr's are not all grown up- they may be legally adults, they may go off to war or have children but they are most certianly not all grown up. Being a grown up comes from life not just having s birthday.

 

[kalekona]

The lawyer who said that AK is a witch actually won his case and AK was convicted and her sentence was increased from 1 to 3 years. She is a convicted criminal. Not a nice person. Why in the world would anyone put this<modsnip> on a pedestal?

Sorry to disagree with you... you know what no I'm not sorry to disagree with I'm proud to disagree with you.

Her sentence may have been increased but her fine was reduced- <modsnip>-

 

[SMK]

The lawyer who said that AK is a witch actually won his case and AK was convicted and her sentence was increased from 1 to 3 years. She is a convicted criminal. Not a nice person. Why in the world would anyone put this <modsnip> on a pedestal?

I do not believe she is guilty, nor a criminal, of course---or I would not be moved by her. I think she is innocent.:furious:

 

[SMK]

Sorry to disagree with you... you know what no I'm not sorry to disagree with I'm proud to disagree with you.

Her sentence may have been increased but her fine was reduced- <modsnip>-

Thanks.:innocent:

 

[Katana]

I have a hard time viewing AK as a sweet person. I keep seeing it as an act. I think she is probably innocent and was unfairly imprisoned so why do I keep getting the feeling we're being railroaded by this girl?

 

[SMK]

There is no excuses anymore. She has been convicted. She is a convicted criminal with a record. These are facts.

Hellman said that he could not comply with the request of life sentences in the ennumerated cases, as the defendants did not commit the crimes charged in the indictment. She has been vindicated.

 

[SMK]

I have a hard time viewing AK as a sweet person. I keep seeing it as an act. I think she is probably innocent and was unfairly imprisoned so why do I keep getting the feeling we're being railroaded by this girl?

If this were true, it would be a very bad thing. I do not believe , having gone through many unusual and traumatic experiences and having reached middle age, that I am easily led astray.

ETA: There may be something duplicitous in her nature which you are picking up on; however, regarding the Kercher case I do believe she is innocent.

 

[sherlockh]

Now the PR campaign has come to an end, you will see more opposite opinions. It is easy enough to cheer for 'an innocent locked up far away', it is another thing to have 'a <modsnip> who got away with it' walking free on the streets.

Nancy Grace: Amanda Knox Decision Is 'Miscarriage of Justice'

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20534097,00.html

 

[mdana]

Wow. Another incredible article, this one posted in the Guardian UK:

The overturning of the murder convictions of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, came as no surprise. The appeals trial showed that virtually all the crucial evidence used in the original trial to convict Knox and Sollecito was faulty, erroneous, worthless, or manipulated...

But big questions remain. How could two innocent people be convicted of such a heinous crime, backed up by a 400-page opinion, spend four years in prison, and then have their convictions so resoundingly overturned?
The answer lies in the Italian concept of face, la faccia, whose deep and pervasive power most Anglo-Saxons who have not lived in a Mediterranean country have a hard time appreciating.

The story begins almost a decade ago, long before Meredith Kercher's murder, when the pubblico ministero (public prosecutor) of Perugia, Giuliano Mignini, opened an investigation into the mysterious death of a doctor whose body was found floating in Lake Trasimeno in 1985.


<modsnip>


Furthermore, Guede had been involved in a string of crimes, for which he had never been prosecuted by the Perugian police. An enduring mystery is why Guede was repeatedly released after committing serious crimes, such as breaking and entering while in possession of a knife. If it turned out Guede had murdered Kercher alone, hard questions would be asked of the Perugian police and prosecutors about why they had repeatedly released him...[/FONT]


Crucial evidence that could have exonerated them was lost or mishandled. For example, the hard drive on Sollecito's computer, which could have shown he was on his computer during the time of the murder, was "fried'' by investigators as they supposedly tried to copy it.

<modsnip>

Much more at link. It explains a lot about the system over there: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/04/knox-acquittal-only-possible-verdict

I have stated repeatedly this was the elephant in the room throughout the entire case and the Massei report. The more bluster about sex games and she-devil caused the media and public to chase their own tails, the less time allowed to contemplate the continual failure of the Italian police to do their jobs. The foreigner did it as opposed to those obliged to protect and serve the public allowed RG to terrorize others and finally kill.

 

[kalekona]

There was never anything in Amanda's history to make anyone think she wasn't just a sweet girl.

The truth is had the roles been reversed and it had been Amanda at home that night the same people condemning her would be singing her praises.

Amanda's only crime seems to have been lying- lying to protect herself.
I watched her come home a walk into that room full of media,I saw her face and her eyes she wasn't acting- if she was that good an actress she sure wouldn't have behaved the was she did during the first trial.

 

[mdana]

That's just not true, but don't take my word for it as RS speaks for himself...
(1)
Article posted online 4 Nov 2007
Raffaele had spent the night at his own house on the other side of the city with his girlfriend, Meredith's American flatmate Amanda Knox, 22.

He said: "It was a normal night. Meredith had gone out with one of her English friends and Amanda and I went to party with one of my friends.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sunday-mirror/2007/11/04/italy-murder-details-emerge-98487-20058122/

(2)
5 Nov 2007
&#8220;Amanda and I went into town at around 6pm, but I don&#8217;t remember what we did. We stayed there until around 8.30 or 9pm.

At 9pm I went home alone and Amanda said that she was going to Le Chic because she wanted to meet some friends. We said goodbye. I went home, I rolled myself a spliff and made some dinner.&#8221;

RS's states that Amanda returned to his house at around 1am and the couple went to bed, although he couldn&#8217;t remember if they had sex.

<modsnip>. From the same article...

As Amanda, from Washington DC, stepped into house she could tell there was something terribly wrong.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sunday-mirror/2007/11/04/italy-murder-details-emerge-98487-20058122/

We have no idea if the reporter mixed up the nights in her reporting like she mixed up Washington state with the city.