Meredith Kercher murdered-Amanda Knox appeals conviction #21

[SMK]

NYT.COM

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/10/04/world/04knox-span/04knox-span-popup.jpg

 

[emyr]

I love the way we can agree to disagree and respect others' decisions here on WS... eace:

In that spirit, it would be really great not to see "how can you..." and "ridiculous", etc. I don't see how someone innocent can laugh, dance, and show no emotion for almost four years if truly innocent. But that's my prerogative to think that - just as others have the right to totally believe in her innocence.

I'd like to hang out on here awhile and discuss the aftermath of the case in an attack-free environment.

And I think it's important that all feel welcome. So I hope you stay.

I think the behaviour of the mother in the infamous "dingo" case in Australia went a long way towards her long incarceration. Everyone thought her behaviour was at odds with the behaviour of an innocent person. But she was innocent. The dingo case also had "blood evidence" that was eventually proven false... another look at how police becoming suspicious enables them to find evidence to prove their suspicions.

I think if you get the police highly motivated to prosecute you, you have a high likelihood of running into bad luck that can get you convicted. MOO.

 

[Lera213]

Maybe Amanda's behavior after the murder of doing cartwheels was because she in fact felt innocent and maybe she smoked some pot from the horrible news. She wanted to escape the bad news? I've heard through my years people acting very strangely during high stressful situations. What would a young person do? They would want to forget about it, do anything to get their mind off of it.

I don't know but her reaction can be explained away. The non evidence is a big factor for me. For such a brutal crime I would think a lot more evidence would have been found. We will never truly know if she is totally innocent or not but in the eyes of the Italian Court she is not only innocent but they stated she was not involved in the crime.

There was pressure I'm sure on this court to keep the status quo, for what I read more then 60% thought AK was guilty. For this court to reverse and state as such she was not involved tells me they read all the facts and evidence in the case with a fine tooth comb.

I have to respect that because the mere fact they could have taken the easy way out and they didn't speaks volumes.

I've gone back and forth constantly on this case. The only thing that use to lead me to think she was guilty was her behavior. Even knowing that I know people react in strange ways some times her behavior still bothered me. What I never really took into account is her age. Smoking pot, you do have a laid back attitude, and perhaps she was high during her odd behavior.

My 2 cents

 

[gitana1]

We the people probably paid for this, just like the hikers in Iran! It makes me sick, I believe she had a hand in the murder and as for the hikers what kinda dumb a** goes hiking in a country we are at war with! We American's get mad when other country's ***** about our courts and laws.........but if an american kills someone in another country we are right in there *****ing! Wow

How do you think we may have paid for this? The U.S. government reportedly did not get involved at all. Do you think the appeals court was bought off?

Well, there will be hundreds of pages of reasoning from the court, within 90 days. It was the hundreds of pages of reasoning after the first trial that got a lot of people thinking differently about the possibility that the pair were guilty. It will be interesting to see.

But as it stands, from what came out in the appeals court (and what I reviewed prior), there was no credible forensic evidence against the pair. There were incriminating statements fed to two scared, young people, who had just met 7 days prior to the murder, one of whom could barely speak Italian, and there was forensic evidence against Guede, a transient, but no proof he actually knew the couple.

In general, it was thought that because Knox acted apathetically, did cartwheels and snuggled cozily with her boyfriend after the murder, had pre-marital sex and smoked pot, that somehow she and a guy she just met, hooked up with an African immigrant drifter and decided to have a sex orgy and smoke dope which made them crazy and all rape and kill Meredith, out of the blue. I think that's what made the appeals court render the verdict they did, not being paid off.

I'm a lawyer. I'm trained to see all angles of a case and to be able to argue both sides. To me, what they presented as evidence of guilt of the two doesn't come close to reasonable. Once I learned the couple had barely met, there was no provable connection to Guede, and the reality of the forensics involved (it's virtually impossible to clean a crime scene in a way that destroys only evidence of your own involvement but leaves evidence of another party's involvement), etc., etc., I realized there was no real case.

At first I thought those who immediately thought Knox was innocent were simply being zealous in their nationalism and suspicion of foreign governments, or sympathetic to one of "ours", a cute, little female one of ours at that. There may remain a tad bit of that sentiment but I don't think that's the reason, for the most part, why many feel they are innocent. I think it's the facts, or lack thereof, the improbability of the theories expounded by Mignini, his own, proven corruption and the media smear campaining, painting a young girl as a murderous simply because she had premarital sex, smoked pot and was too immature and/or selfish to realize the magnitude of what had happened to her roommate and act accordingly. :twocents:

 

[Footwarrior]

I'm just curious, because I've read others say the same thing over the last few months. How does one do selective clean up of a bloody crime scene? First there wasn't evidence of a clean up. Second, how does one remove all evidence of 1 or 2 people while leaving all or most of the evidence made by the 3rd person?

Raffaele's lawyer made a comment about using magic soap in his closing remarks. The jury seems to have understood the sarcasm.

It's a point some of have been making for years. This kind of selective clean up is impossible. Who do you know that has eyesight good enough to pick out their own fingerprints? How would someone see, much less recognize their own trace DNA evidence?

 

[Kaybug]

There is no comparison to the murder of Meredith Kercher and Caylee Anthony? Amanda nor Raffaele committed murder. They were acquitted because there was no evidence they were at the crime scene. Casey Anthony did commit murder. The system clearly failed. See.. there is a difference. If Amanda is going to be dragged through the mud, why is Raffaele not dragged as well?

Because of small people with small minds.

 

[darnudes]

Hmm, maybe now that Amanda is free she will enlighten us on why she told the lies that she did and why she accused innocent people to get the heat off herself - bet she won't though. Would also like to hear from Raffaele about why he didn't back up Amanda's alibi.

Don't agree with the verdict and I will always believe that these two were involved. Too many lies, too many inconsistancies in both their stories. Innocent people don't lie, they don't have to.

 

[gitana1]

Vergogna, Vergogna, if that was in fact chanted...more than likely was for Mignini. He does afterall have a disgracefull track record...

Yes, that's part of what I meant by "jeers" for Mignini. I didn't hear that when the defense walked out. It was dead silent when Knox's family spoke. The crowd wouldn't even let Mignini speak at all, so he left!

 

[kalekona]

Just curious. Can Donald Trump's plane make a non stop transatlantic flight. Can't land in the middle of the ocean for refueling.

LOL not sure- I was really just joking about Trump.. (but it would be a nice gesture )

But I did just realize something- isn't the normal route from Italy to the US include a stop in London? Cause that isn't the place Amanda wants to be right now. Or is there another way? (i really haven't a clue other than my friend just took her grandkids to visit their dad there and she went by way of London)

 

[kalekona]

Hmm, maybe now that Amanda is free she will enlighten us on why she told the lies that she did and why she accused innocent people to get the heat off herself - bet she won't though. Would also like to hear from Raffaele about why he didn't back up Amanda's alibi.

Don't agree with the verdict and I will always believe that these two were involved. Too many lies, too many inconsistancies in both their stories. Innocent people don't lie, they don't have to.

Innocent people terrified for their own lives sure due- Amanda isn't the first it happens all the time here in the states.

 

[Rolfe]

While I am very, very happy that AK & RS have been freed, I can't help hurting even more so for the Kerchers at this time. They are now stuck in a catch 22 that will never allow them to find true peace. They must now choose to either keep believing in the prosecutors etc and thus feel that their daughter was cheated out of justice, or they must accept the ruling as a true one, and thus deal with the guilt of having cheered a grave injustice being perpetrated in their loved one's name. I can tell you, it is a horror that nobody should ever have to deal with, and my heart goes out to them.

That is so true. The Kercher family have been led into a very bad place.

They don't speak Italian. What were they actually told about the case, about the evidence, about Amanda and Raffaele? Did they ever have a chance to get a balanced view, or to understand that the evidence they were claiming was so solid might not be solid at all?

Having their own lawyer involved in the process might not have been a good thing. He was claiming a large amount of money in damages on their behalf, money that would only have been forthcoming if Knox and Sollecito (particularly the latter, who came from a wealthy family) were convicted.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this financial motive took over, at least in the mind of their lawyer, and that everything was then presented so as to bolster the case for guilt.

Rolfe.

 

[emyr]

Hmm, maybe now that Amanda is free she will enlighten us on why she told the lies that she did and why she accused innocent people to get the heat off herself - bet she won't though. Would also like to hear from Raffaele about why he didn't back up Amanda's alibi.

Don't agree with the verdict and I will always believe that these two were involved. Too many lies, too many inconsistancies in both their stories. Innocent people don't lie, they don't have to.

But we know for a fact that innocent people have lied. We know for a fact that innocent people have confessed to killling their own children. At best, you can say "An innocent person would not lie in the same exact scenario Amanda was in."

You never know though. If Amanda and Raffaelle explain their actions in a really stupid way, I may switch my opinion of them back to guilt.

 

[darnudes]

Innocent people terrified for their own lives sure due- Amanda isn't the first it happens all the time here in the states.

She had no reason to lie to her family and friends and yet she did, she did so for a reason and I don't agree with you that innocent people lie all the time.

 

[gitana1]

Hmm, maybe now that Amanda is free she will enlighten us on why she told the lies that she did and why she accused innocent people to get the heat off herself - bet she won't though. Would also like to hear from Raffaele about why he didn't back up Amanda's alibi.

Don't agree with the verdict and I will always believe that these two were involved. Too many lies, too many inconsistancies in both their stories. Innocent people don't lie, they don't have to.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php

http://truthinjustice.org/kevin-fox.htm

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/not_guilty/coerced_confessions/6.html

Knox was 20 years old. She had only been in Italy for 2 months and didn't speak Italian well. She said she was told what happened and asked to imagine and write out what could have happened if what the police stated occurred, was true. I used to feel the way you do. But the cases I linked to above prove definitively (all confessors cleared by DNA) that innocent people can and do confess to things they don't do.

Usually, a confession is more than enough for me. But when facts don't match the confession, I have a problem.

 

[Cappuccino]

LOL not sure- I was really just joking about Trump.. (but it would be a nice gesture )

But I did just realize something- isn't the normal route from Italy to the US include a stop in London? Cause that isn't the place Amanda wants to be right now. Or is there another way? (i really haven't a clue other than my friend just took her grandkids to visit their dad there and she went by way of London)

I'm sure there are direct flights from Rome to the US. However, alot of transatlantic flights from Europe would include a stopover at Heathrow airport.

If that's the case, no worries. The cosmopolitan throngs passing through Heathrow won't give two hoots about Amanda Knox, or even give her a second glance.

 

[SkewedView]

Innocent people terrified for their own lives sure due- Amanda isn't the first it happens all the time here in the states.

That's why any honest LEO (that isn't in the process of questioning you, that is) will tell you that you should never, ever do an interview without a lawyer, because they are trained to get you to say incriminating things, under the assumption that you are guilty - and studies have started to show that when current interview practices are used, innocent people are more likely to be accidentally coerced into (false) incriminating statements than the guilty are.

 

[darnudes]

But we know for a fact that innocent people have lied. We know for a fact that innocent people have confessed to killling their own children. At best, you can say "An innocent person would not lie in the same exact scenario Amanda was in."

You never know though. If Amanda and Raffaelle explain their actions in a really stupid way, I may switch my opinion of them back to guilt.

Mentally ill people confess to crimes they didn't committ - not the same thing in this case.

Amanda and Raffaele have both lied numerous times about many different things - innocent people don't have to lie they just tell the truth and their story does not change - too many changes in their stories that neither will ever explain, I don't expect to hear either of them clear up the lies they both told.

 

[Cappuccino]

Completely sane people confess to crimes they didn't commit too.

 

[darnudes]

http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/False-Confessions.php

http://truthinjustice.org/kevin-fox.htm

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/not_guilty/coerced_confessions/6.html

Knox was 20 years old. She had only been in Italy for 2 months and didn't speak Italian well. She said she was told what happened and asked to imagine and write out what could have happened if what the police stated occurred, was true. I used to feel the way you do. But the cases I linked to above prove definitively (all confessors cleared by DNA) that innocent people can and do confess to things they don't do.

Usually, a confession is more than enough for me. But when facts don't match the confession, I have a problem.

I'm not talking about the confession as such, I'm talking about all of her statements and especially her email to her friends and family - sorry but Amanda told too many lies for my liking - if people want dismiss all the lies she told so be it but I will always think her guilty because of the many lies she told.

 

[gitana1]

She had no reason to lie to her family and friends and yet she did, she did so for a reason and I don't agree with you that innocent people lie all the time.

She never confessed to her family and friends. She talked about finding blood stains after coming out of the shower. But I don't see how that was a lie.

Mentally ill people confess to crimes they didn't committ - not the same thing in this case.

Amanda and Raffaele have both lied numerous times about many different things - innocent people don't have to lie they just tell the truth and their story does not change - too many changes in their stories that neither will ever explain, I don't expect to hear either of them clear up the lies they both told.

Michael Crowe was not mentally ill. Neither was Riley Fox's dad, when they confessed. Just beaten down. Or scared, traumatized, exhausted and confused.

Knox states she never confessed but instead signed a statement they had her give "imagining" what may have happened, based on the story fed to her by police. I have seen this many times in provably false confessions.