@ Fred: I believe you had posted the statement analysis of Knox which appeared on TJMK and I had discussed that with you further. Have been doing more reading and reflecting, so wanted to add to our discussion now:
Lately, I have been continuing my reading of Andrew G Hodges on the Jon Benet Ramsey case, and his thesis that "thought prints" were left in the ransom note, indicating that the mother was confessing to the crime.
Now, I see Peter Hyatt has also used the "forensic thought print method" which has been mastered and advocated by Hodges on his further musings on Knox.
I am only posting this because the method - which you and people on other forums find significant - may be tested here. Either it is right or wrong. If right, then I would need to discount much that logic tells me. If wrong, then I would have to question the method itself, which has been proven accurate in other cases.
Says Hyatt:
Amanda Knox was part of a sexual homicide. This comes from her own words, and is not changed if prosecutors are corrupt or honorable, nor if evidence was dropped or mishandled. Amanda Knox, herself, has told us that she was part of a sexual homicide, was present, and that she knows hard evidence thus proves it.
Question:
Could drug use, stimulating the right brain , and hence the sphere where deception is likely to be formulated, mimic the deception process, throwing the analyst off? Something to think about in Hyatt's analysis, and in the one posted on the TJMK site as well.........:waitasec:
Hyat finds simple statements to be
weighty and decisive: If a suspect uses sexual homicide referencing in their language, as proposed by FBI forensic psychologists, then it is open and shut, with no margin for error:
It is significant that she tells us that Raffaele "cleaned" her. While speaking, even when attempting to be deceptive, what is in the heart slips out and she may have been thinking of washing off blood when she gave this statement.
Those that wish to excuse her due to police misconduct, or mishandling of evidence must do so by ignoring not only the fact that she lied, but that she employed the language of a sexual homicide in doing so.
"I dropped off (the hitchhiker), stopped to get gas and wash up. After that, I drove down I-95 until..."
This was a statement where a hitchhiker was murdered. The timeframe where he washed up showed the time of death.
But because it was true in the hitch hiker homicide, is the language indicating the same when employed by Knox? Was she writing in Italian, losing something in the translation?
Further, didn't Freud employ these same rigid standards to human speech, and to the language of dreams, only to be debunked and rebuked in the next century? Something to ponder, when dealing with human lives..........:waitasec:
And if we look at what some skeptics have argued, we may not want to be so decisive re the statements of suspects: This scholar begins by revealing how adamant the creators and users of this analytical and forensic tool are about its precision:
Statement analysis (aka content analysis) analyzes the content of statements to detect whether information provided by a suspect is truthful or intentionally incomplete. Supposedly, there are linguistic cues a person gives that can reveal concealed, missing, or false information. Those who defend this technique of interrogation believe that they have a reliable method to detect deception in ways that go beyond the obvious technique of making logical inferences from what is stated and identifying implausible claims based on general or specific knowledge. Anyone can detect a lie, for example, when a suspect is caught in a contradiction or makes statements that are inconsistent with one another.
To someone with substantial background knowledge relevant to the issue being investigated, it is often obvious when a person making a statement has omitted important information. In any case, those like Avinoam Sapir, who developed what he calls Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN), think they've discovered something that goes beyond mere logical and common sense analysis of people's statements.....There is very little scientific research into statement analysis. One of the more vocal proponents of it is FBI special agent Susan H. Adams. Adams believes that statement analysis will allow an investigator to
gain insight into a suspect prior to conducting an interview. By learning more about a suspect and determining whether that person is being deceptive, they have a much better chance of identifying the guilty party and gaining a confession.
The purpose of statement analysis, according to Adams, is to gain a confession.
The skeptic goes on to argue the marketing of such analysis, and the potential for dubious outcomes , and the need for extensive research before accepting this as a forensic tool. I think his cautious approach is reasonable:
Apparently the only thing scientific about Scientific Interrogation and Scientific Content Analysis is in the names. That could change, but until the Undeutsch Hypothesis becomes the Undeutsch Law, I'll remain skeptical. Until there are large-scale double-blinded studies that validate some of the claims made for the power, accuracy, and utility of statement analysis, law enforcement should approach this technique with caution.
http://www.skepdic.com/statementanalysis.html
