Meredith Kercher – the hold Knox has on everyone
It was not my intention to post again on this but a commenter replied and it has to be answered. The commenter cannot accept that an “innocent girl” can be a cold blooded murderess and so blames the prosecution and brings in defendent testimony as evidence.
This link takes you to all posts on this blog mentioning Meredith Kercher. To save you the trouble, the best analysis, leaving my posts aside, is that of the latter commenters on Why I Think Amanda Knox is Guilty, where everyone leaves aside the infighting and starts to look again at the evidence itself.
So to this post:
The very first thing to realize is that anything at all said by either Knox, Guede or Sollecito is highly suspect. Guede is trying to beat a 30 year murder rap and so, looking dispassionately at this, what are you going to expect him to say? With no witnesses and having changed his story so many times already, he now says:
He didn’t have the time for following them [the intruders] but he looked from the window and he recognized in the other person the shape of Amanda. So, he says, he went in to help Meredith, he hold her hand while he was trying to tell him something. At that point he says his mind went into a black out and he couldn’t understand anything else. And he found himself in Germany.
So he’s laying it on Knox. Now just as I can’t use any of that as evidence of Knox being there, my commenter can’t possibly conclude from it either that, “I think Guede acted alone. What has been lost in all this is that Meredith was the one who invited him into the house.”
The first part of that is “I think” but the second becomes fact in her mind – that Meredith invited Guede. This is only on Guede’s assertion, mind.
The “tiny amount” of DNA. Like being a “tiny bit” pregnant? It was accepted by the jury and all present at the trial except for the defence and their families as Knox’s and Sollecito’s. No disinterested parties have disputed that.
My commenter points to a mishandling of the case and lack of justice.
Presiding Judge Giancarlo Massei rejected the defense request and ruled that proceedings should go on. He argued that defense consultants were present when the DNA tests were carried out by forensic experts and said relevant documents had been made available a month and a half ago, suggesting that defense teams had enough time to review the DNA findings.
Well … and what? Why did they decide at that late stage to appeal the findings? The answer is that it was a ploy which suited the changed circumstances of the trial.
Then my commenter says about Meredith: “She is detached and rather odd.” This is the defence of attacking the character of the victim, which is interesting because I would have thought the commenter’s first thought would be for the victim. She usually champions victims, as I do and am doing now.
Unfortunately, we can only go on the evidence which has been established and no evidence was established that Meredith did anything but reject the advances of Guede [motive], and called her housemate slovenly and sluttish [motive].
In a mind of an innocent, such would not be a motive but in the mind of a person acting as Knox had done to that point and subsequently, any form of being crossed and accused of things has to be dealt with.
It’s not as if there is no precedent – girls have been known throughout history to have it in for anyone who stands in their way. It’s not an unknown motive, in other words and in a drug fuelled state, her own acquaintances in Seattle saying she was heavily into excess, snap decisions in angered situations are par for the course.
View her behaviour all the way through and it’s certainly not stable and consistent. Even her most vociferous supporters can’t claim that she’s either been consistent or truthful.
They try to explain it away as police pressure.
She said she’d been mistreated by the police at the Questura. What did it come down to? It came down to them calling her a liar to her face and no one, no one gets away with calling little Miss Knox a liar.
I’m just astounded that people are not looking at her whole performance and questioning it. If it had been any other person but this one who has turned the whole proceedings around herself – not around Sollecito nor Guede nor Meredith – people would have viewed it dispassionately.
As mentioned above – no testimony of any party trying to beat a murder rap can be accepted at face value and certainly not if it flies in the face of previous testimony, i.e. it changes its story. Knox herself has been shown to have done that many times.
Security cameras showed Knox to have arrived at the house for the required time. She said she had been there and also said she hadn’t been there. She kept changing her story, something her supporters put down to “mistreatment by the police”.
Every visitor to Italy meets the Questura at some stage.
The greatest criticism one can level is that they are pedantic, sticklers for the rulebook and unsympathetic to attempts to sway them with emotion. I have a specific case in mind where a woman tried just that and got nowhere. Money? Yes, certain police have been bribed before but has there been any suggestion that that was the case here? Has the defence even mentioned that?
When she lied about Lumumba, for example and it was shown she had lied, causing loss of earnings for months, her justification was this way:
Mr Lumumba is suing for damages, and has described Ms Knox as a “compulsive liar”.
“I’m very sorry about the way Patrick reacted” she said. “The first thing I did was to ask his forgiveness. I felt I was being pressured by the police so I mentioned him, but I’m really sorry”.
She felt she was being pressured so she lied and put the murder onto another person, a man who’d been her boss and was unhappy with her work. He crossed her, in other words, just as Meredith crossed her about her slovenliness and the way she brought men home and grew dope on the premises, all of which have been testified to and accepted by the court.
As for her being mistreated at her first detaining, as one commenter pointed out:
That’s another Knox lie. She arrived at the police station at 10.15, after a dinner with Raffaele, and having been in class that day. She was seen turning cartwheels before being questioned. She was questioned AS A WITNESS starting at midnight. She first fingered Lumumba for the crime at 0145. That’s hardly Guantanamo.
When asked if she had apologized to Lumumba for her accusation, she laughed and asked, “What … me?” Then she laughed again. And the cartwheels and splits at the Questura, soon after the murder of her “close friend” had been discovered? How does one explain those?
How has there been a miscarriage of justice, as my commenter alleges? On what basis? The prosecution says there is a murder weapon, the defence says no. The jury were in there, they saw it all, they deliberated for thirteen hours, they decided.
We, on the other hand, are armchair experts and so are the media, which is most culpable in its pro-Knox stance and then its anti-Knox stance.
For example, CNN’s headline, following the conviction, was:
Amanda Knox sobs as guilty verdict read
It then goes into, for over half the article, how the defence and the family believe it was a miscarriage. Now where is the balance in that?
Now please look at these headlines:
Consistent? Or this:
That one has been a major motif since the verdict. Because the jury wore the Italian colours, as they always do in high profile trial verdicts, the Americans translate this as a miscarriage and anti-American feeling. If she were tried at home, they say, she’d have had a fair trial.
On the question of the judicial system, Wiki compares the common and civil systems:
With respect to criminal procedure, certain civil law systems are based upon a variant of the inquisitorial system rather than the adversarial system. This kind of judicial organization is sometimes criticized as lacking a presumption of innocence. Most European countries, however, are parties to the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 6 guarantees “the right to a fair trial” and the presumption of innocence.
So, a different system which relies on getting to the facts of the case, rather than how far two highly paid lawyers can persuade a jury.
Returning to the media, what about this one?
So, the prosecution, in the eyes of Ninemsn, didn’t present evidence of the bra DNA, they “waved it around as a theatrical prop”. How exactly would Ninemsn like it to have been presented?
Should the prosecution have quickly run over to the jury box and left the bra on the table, saying nothing? It’s a trial, for goodness sake, where both sides are attempting to persuade. Has no one ever been to a debate?
More:
Refusal to accept a verdict and worse, attacking the system using that old chestnut – the question and the hanging question mark:
The media, in fact, has been so biased towards Knox that even fellow Americans had to protest:
and here:
One or two news services reported it as it really was:
and:
Finally
There was no joy in this. The family said they were “satisfied” with the verdict and that was all. I’m not going to say, “I told you so,” or “the result’s on the board” because it could be overturned on appeal and apparently, in Italy, appeals have a very good chance.
No doubt there will be much political pressure brought to bear. Now that a section of Americans have made it into an Italian-American standoff and no one gives a toss about the “British” victim, much money and duress will be brought to bear.
Look, at the end of it all, what the hell are we doing still allowing this to surround one person – Knox? Why on earth is the whole circus about her? Why on earth are my commenters coming in and defending her instead of defending Guede or Sollecito?
Just what sort of hold does Knox have on people’s minds?
Filed under: Society & human issues
I’m afraid the reaction to this verdict is further proof that some people will never assign malign intent to an attractive woman. Somehow there is a default position of ‘she looks so pretty, she couldn’t possibly have done something so awful’. If Amanda Knox was fat and ugly, she would have been convicted without a murmur.
In my view everyone is equal in the yes of the law James. Including pretty women.
What you seem to be hung up in IS the fact that it concerns two pretty women. So you accept circumstantial evidence and wild theory as proof of guilt.
In a bloody murder in which Knox was accused of the killer blow. With absolutely no physical evidence to back that up. And no murder weapon!
You immediately mention Guede who in a Skype call stated that neither Sollecito (remember him?) and Knox were in the house at the time of the murder. He only changed his testimony when he learned they were acccused and stood a chance of getting out of the crime. A crime he ran away from whilst this pair stayed put.
Why were Sollecito and Knoxs DNA not all over the room?
Why was there only the tiniest element of DNA on the clip of the bra. Not all over the bra as you would expect for an item that had been ripped off in murderous passion? or anywhere on her body?
The bra was shown in crime scene pictures to have been moved no less that 7 times and so contaminated at the crime scene. That would have been dismissed in a court of law in the UK
I like how you are prepared to take Guedes statement as unlikely but build a case around the prosecutors theory which has absolutely no evidence to back it up.
The statement about cartwheels is just such a loose statement. It isnt empirical fact, it was hearsay and was later disputed by a policewoman. She’s a yoga nut and was apparently showing the policewoman stress reducing yoga. She was at the station at that time as a witness – not a suspect.
She was also accused of buying ‘sexy’ underwear. Remember that? Later it emerged the shopkeeper didn’t speak english, and guessed what she was saying to Sollecito wondering why she was in his shop buying undies. In point of fact she was told to go buy new clothes because she was not allowed to return and collect hers at the crime scene.
Why are you so keen to see this pair prosecuted on such loose evidence James?
It is obvious this is directed at me and your assumptions about how I do or don’t feel about the case are misguided.
When I first read the story I was disgusted by the whole affair and convinced by their guilt on the story alone, assuming DNA evidence would then easily back that all up. That it doesn’t made me wonder. A little further digging and it is clear there is way too much doubt around this pair to send them to jail for life. The prosecutor has a track record with theorising like this.
That you are so keen to see them jailed makes me wonder about the jury system. This is just another example of why I think the jury system is so appaulingly flawed. It is THAT which held my fascination in this case more than the two women’s beauty. Women are perfectly capable of crime James. I’m not stupid, thanks. But I’d prefer to see two young people convicted of such a ruthless and ghastly crime convicted on empirical FACT.
She didn’t finger her boss as you put it without first having had that put to her at the station when they asked her what she meant when she sent him a text saying “see you later”. Do you actually know what was suggested by the police in all those interviews? Quite a bit. Read the case file instead of all these press cuttings you post dotted with pictures of this girl.
Were she just a plain woman I doubt you would feel the need to decorate this post.
I really dislike the way you have directed this post at me and assumed so much about my view of it and life in general. I come here for debate not for a slice of your assumptions about me.
“no one gets away with calling little Miss Knox a liar”
“hold on peoples minds”
What’s with that. You gleaned that through the media or personally meeting her? Do you personally know Ms Knox James? Or did you as I rather suspect formulate your opinion through the press “witch” depiction of her and then wrap it all up in tepid mysoginy?
One woman has been brutally murdered. The clear and evidence-backed murderer is in jail. Two other young people possibly have their lives hanging in the balance based on nothing more than hearsay, theory and Salem-like media speculation. They hated her so case closed as the prosecutor decided with no proof.
A woman scorned for whatever reason doesn’t naturally lead her to commit murder James . Just as it isn’t a given that a randy man with a hard on will commit rape and cut someone’s throat.
You post is essentially about the media speculation and from this you deem her (not even THEIR) guilt.
EVIDENCE please
If they had produced ANY, then in my view – she, Guede and Sollecito should have been thrown into solitary pits and had the keys tossed for good measure. I don’t care that she is a woman, much less attractive. Crap like physical attraction in this case interests me not one little bit. If anything I find it deeply unsettling. You only seem to care about victims if they are pretty?
Precisely the opposite, Alison – you slur the victim with no proof and now attempt to do the same with me.
As anyone who knows this blog knows – I only proceed from evidence and never include hearsay and emotion, as you have. I’m quoting only that which has been accepted as evidence. Hang ups, as Jim said, are with those who proceed from no evidence.
Alison, you have produced no substantiated evidence to support Knox but I’ve produced four posts with evidence. You clearly don’t read posts.
You can start with the CCTV if you like. Here’s the site which highlighted it first: http://www.corriere.it/cronache/07_novembre_12/meredith_telecamere.shtml
The whole post above was full of evidence. There is evidence all over the web in reports on the trial. All I can do is lead you to water – I can’t make you drink.
This is a very common syndrome – one produces the facts and the other person just ignores them and asks: “Evidence please?”
This is not debate – it is a power play to maintain an entrenched position. I played ball in putting up the post, showed why they’re guilty and you just ignore it. You really surprise and disappoint me in this.
Jim, I’m afraid that’s right.
Here is some more evidence you called for – from another site:
I think it’s worth revisiting her many falsehoods for any new visitors to this board, so that they can get a clearer picture of the real strength of the case.
Some of Amanda’s vociferous supporters have claimed that Amanda only lied once – and that was because she was “smacked around” by the police, or put under pressure.
And that her confessions, in which she admitted to being at the cottage on the night of the murder, were thrown out by the Italian Supreme Court.
It doesn’t take a careful examination of the known facts to conclude that both these claims really are nonsense.
Amanda’s first known lie wasn’t to the police, but to her flatmate, Filomena, on 2 November, the day after Meredith’s murder.
Amanda phoned Filomena at 12.08 pm, and said she was worried about the front door being open and blood stains in the small bathroom.
Lie one. Amanda said she was going to call Raffaele, but according to Raffaele, Amanda had already returned to his apartment at 11.30 am, and then they had gone back to the cottage.
At 12.34 pm Amanda and Filomena spoke again. Filomena said, “We spoke to each other for the third time and she told me that the window in my room was broken and that my room was in a mess. At this point I asked her to call the police and she told me that she already had.”
Lie two. Amanda and Raffaele didn’t actually call the police until 12.51 pm.
The postal postal police unexpectedly turned up at the cottage at 12. 35 pm.
Lie three. Amanda and Raffael told the police that they had called the police and were waiting for them.
Lie four. Amanda told the postal police that Meredith always kept her door locked. Filomena strongly disagreed with her, and told the postal police the opposite was true.
Amanda and Raffaele were then taken in for questioning.
Lie five. They said they couldn’t remember most of what happened on the night of the murder, because they had smoked cannabis.
It is medically impossible for cannabis to cause such dramatic amnesia and there are no studies that have ever demonstrated that this is possible.
Long term use of cannabis may affect short term memory, which means that users might have difficulty recalling a telephone number. But it won’t wipe out whole chunks of an evening from their memory banks.
Lie six. Amanda accused Diya Lumumba of murdering Meredith at the cottage.
It’s true that two of Amanda’s such statements were thrown out by the Italian Supreme Court. However, Amanda repeated the accusation, in a note that she wrote to the police on 6 November.
This note was not thrown out by the Italian Supreme Court, and it was admitted as evidence.
Lies seven and eight. In her 6 November note Amanda claimed to have seen Diya Lumumba at the basketball court at Piazza Grimana; and outside her front door. He was actually at his bar.
Line nine. Amanda’s supporters claim that she confessed to a lesser role in Meredith’s murder, and blamed Diya Lumumba, because she had been “smacked around” or put under pressure by the police.
But the real reason she had to say she was at the cottage was because she was informed that Raffaele Sollecito was no longer providing her with an alibi.
Raffaele had been confronted with phone records, and was now claiming that she was not with him the whole evening, and that she had only returned at 1.00 am. Amanda did not attempt to refute Raffaele’s claim, but now admitted that she had been at the cottage.
The significance of this about-turn cannot be stressed enough.
(Incidentally, Raffaele was also claiming that he had lied, because he had believed Amanda’s version of what happened and not thought about the inconsistencies. He is acknowledging that Amanda’s version had inconsistencies.)
If it had been true that Amanda had been “smacked around” by the police during questioning, why haven’t her lawyers ever filed a complaint? It was very telling that Amanda dropped her allegation of being hit by the police at her recent court hearing, and instead just claimed she had been put under pressure.
There’s a world of difference between police brutality and being put under pressure. It wasn’t the first time that Amanda has made a false and malicious accusation, as Diya Lumumba knows only too well.
Lie ten. Amanda claimed to have slept in at Raffaele’s until the next morning. However, her mobile records show that this was not so. Amanda turned on her mobile at approximately at 5.32 am.
The only plausible explanation for Amanda’s deliberate and repeated lies? That she was involved in the murder of Meredith Kercher.”
I’ve just completed reading the case file on line and you haven’t mentioned any evidence at all. You have missed out loads. But I have neither the time nor the inclination to trawl through it all with you James. Its there for anyone to read. You dance around hearsay and circumstantial evidence in the trial of two young people on a serious murder charge. You don’t have an answer for the points I raised. Or the fact that as per the case file there was some unidentified DNA in the house, as well as 17 unattributed fingerprints. The footprint belonging to Sollecito was never proven and the bloody one on the bedclothes didn’t match any of Solecitos or Knoxs. The police never changed gloves in collecting DNA. This is all serious stuff.
The language you use about Knox leads me to conclude you intensely dislike her. Well whoopdidoo. So this isn’t about justice it’s a little witch hunt. Well okay. But please don’t pretend you want justice for Meredith Kercher. If you truly wanted justice for Kercher you would look for facts and want the real perpetrator/s banged up.
Anyway based on your belief in Italian justice and the court verdict no doubt when it is overturned next year for lack of those facts, a shoddy police case and lack of a plausible motive you will be very happy.
I remain unconvinced either way.
Sigh. One can lead someone to the facts …
OK, let’s leave it.
Alison. Leaving aside the DNA and other points, why did Knox lie?
Why does an innocent person lie to cover up their innocence?
What is the explanation for Knox’s own actions?
Bill- I don’t think that Knox has to explain why she lied- its for the prosecution to explain why she is guilty. I have no idea whether she is or not and am neutral in the whole argumetn- beyond the fact that when courts decide things in general I believe that they get them right. But it is a fundemental point of good law that it is not for the innocent person to prove their innocence but for the prosecutor to prove their guilt.
There are plenty of reasons I can imagine that she might have had for lying- plenty which don’t involve her guilt- she may have felt as she said under pressure and thus lied. Its quite common to do so- lots of the victims of the Stalinist show trials (and I am not comparing the two events at all!) lied to incriminate others because they felt they had to. I am sure its not uncommon in court either- indeed it is not totally out of the way of things that people lie to say they have committed crimes that they did not commit. The human mind works in strange ways- but if we are judging Amanda Knox’s guilt or innocence of the crime, we cannot judge her as a person- the only thing that matters is did she commit the act? About that I have no idea.
I haven’t followed the trial, and haven’t heard the evidence. The court has heard the evidence, and if there’s an appeal it will be to a higher court — not to the media-influenced public, and that’s the way it should be.
Tiberius – this is simply not the case with this person. Apologists are determined to clear her no matter what, forgiving whatever, not taking into account whatever …….
I wrote a post a long time back about a Sergeant Holcombe. It was a quote form a Perry Mason story.
Now this was having a go at a professional who was not acting professionally. Most people commenting on this case are not in the profession of sussing things out but a detective is, as is an insurance assessor and there is a heightened sensitivity to the anomaly.
For goodness sake, even a doctor does that – signs and symptoms, remember. People go on about whether someone should be convicted. That was not my original post – it was about whether she’s guilty or not.
The CCTV puts her there. Her various stories of the incident, combined, put her there, including her own admissions of what she heard. At a minimum, that is obstruction of justice and in a serious case, that’s a five to ten stretch.
The main murderer was put away early and he got 30. Fair decision. The other two got 26 and 25 respectively – fair decision, reflecting that she may not have pushed the knife or even done anything [I think there is good motive for her doing so], she may even have just waltzed about in her drug stupour while the one she told to do it, Guede or even knew would do it, did the slitting. Even if she stood back, even if she went into the garden while it happened, even if she went into another room – she is still culpable of aiding and abetting.
There is no way she is not to some degree culpable and all the denial I see here in comments does not change that.
That’s as far as the court needs to go – placing her there while that horrendous crime was committed – something NONE of Knox’s supporters comment on, the horrendousness of what happened to Meredith Kercher. It’s as if they didn’t care about that aspect and that’s a syndrome in society these days which is very worrying – the non-concern for the victim and the focus on and fascination with the perpetrator.
All of us have character tendencies which are dormant and those which are active. On this blog, the humourless heat seeking missile comes out, which diminishes the other aspects but people who know me say that is not me – that the me they know has a sparkle in the eye and a mischievous smile.
So both lots can be right. With close people, Knox would have been calm and her killer smile would do the job. But on the scent of man and she was quite a nympho – even boasting about her train conquest, taking an apartment in Seattle right in the middle of where footballers were congregated and high on drugs – like many young women in the company of men – proving herself by her excesses. It’s a common syndrome, girls proving their hardness, as the young men also do.
That was the Knox who went to Perugia, the normal constraints inhibited by the drugs and nymphoism, the “I can score anyone” which even women like Carla Bruni boast about, the female motif taken to excess and that was what Meredith Kercher was complaining about – the stream of men and the slovenliness.
And like anyone in the grip of an obsession, any attempts to stop the person are met with a variety of responses from ignoring, playing down, laughing, mocking, getting on one’s high horse and saying, “How dare you!” and as it gets too close to stopping the person and the reality of life threatens to break through, even violence.
This is a common psychological syndrome and every single person reading this knows what it is about – what we do when we are stopped from doing what we want. It depends a lot on what reactions we’ve learned and what emotional age we are.
What emotional age is a young woman like that, typical of her peers and yet not – far more excessive, as those men reported in the Seattle trial, almost possessed. Let’s not get religious but the very devil got into her. That was reported, not in those words, yet by so many.
It was a constant motif with her. It is not speculation, it is not fantasy, it is based on her actions, statements and conviction in Seattle.
This, more broadly, is a reflection on the moral lapse in society – the excessiveness and lack of control. Alison herself points to it in young men’s behaviour towards women but won’t accept any guilt whatsoever for the equally drunk girl, also trying to prove herself.
This is what binge drinking is all about – emptiness inside and filling that void with externals – drugs, sex and violence when crossed, the short fuse we see so much today. It is infantilization of young people and young people age – with inhibitors placed on the normal maturing process.
It’s about how, strictly speaking, Knox was far too emotionally immature to even be let on a trip alone like that. At 20 but with the emotional maturity of a child, she was way too young but her parents’ non-parenting has been commented on many times.
The reason I say “child” is the myriad outbursts, the behaviour at the police station – turning cartwheels for goodness sake – and even Tiberius said this himself above – that there are many reasons for people acting the way they do.
Yes there are but he admitted it himself – there ARE reasons. There are never NOT reasons. And her reason is a combination of immaturity way past her years plus the callous indifference of youth to anything but their own well being. Hence no remorse, in an exaggerated form and one which the prosecution latched onto very quickly.
All of which apologists will say still doesn’t make her guilty, even granting this. And don’t forget that every commenter here [including me] has his/her own emotional baggage.
My particular emotional baggage is that, from experience, I’ve learnt to suspect, not to trust anyone, not to let anyone in. It gets worse with age. I’m still open and accepting initially but I pickup anomalies very quickly and mostly they’re harmless and one lets them go.
In Knox’s case, the anomalies are like giant red flags waving in the breeze and clinical psychologists would have a field day with her. So no, Alison, I don’t dislike her for herself but for what she had become. Every person has a core of goodness in them and for some,it shines through. In her case, it was suppressed and applied as a tool. So do many girls – turning on the smile, turning it off, getting what she wants. So does anyone do that.
She was extreme and high in the way she was living and that does not make for emotional balance. Into this situation came a flatmate who was prissy, who looked down on her as a slut and no girl likes to be reminded of that. It’s a constant motif for women who sleep around.
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The “sex game” is so easily explained. This is where I leave the safe conclusions above and this is where I do speculate, extrapolate for the hell of it.
“She brings the Italian and the Guede back to the house, sees Kercher and says Kercher is just as bad as her – who is she to make moral judgements? They involve Kercher in the sex.
No idea whether Meredith Kercher was drunk or not, high or not, no idea.”
It was therefore either something she went along with, Tiberius mentioned many reasons or else it was out and out gang rape, which Alison does not seem to be in the least horrified about in this case, despite the message she emits.
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Now the simple fact is that there was something which went on which resulted in murder. There’s a good psychological case to be made that Guede, spurned at the bar, was hanging about the house, saw Kercher return and did the job. Except the evidence doesn’t allow him to have come in that way. The smashed window was a ruse and was seen for that very quickly.
Guede places Knox there. The CCTV places her there. Other indications place her there. Sollecito was even more definitely there and how would he be there without her?
The jury got it right in all three cases, the sentences were fair in law but morally far too little and as Steve says, let’s wait and see what the appeal brings.
As I said James, I’m willing to trust the court and the appeal. I don’t know about the case and unlike you and Alison haven’t done the research so I will trust the court. All I was saying is that the accused in the court shouldn’t have to prove their innocence, its up to the prosecution to prove their guilt- that is a fundemental principle that applies to any case. In this case, the prosecution seem to have proved her guilt and others’ guilt to the satisfaction of the court- therefore she is civilly guilty.
Here is a fairly balanced view:
http://www.newsy.com/videos/will_amanda_knox_s_appeal_work
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8409273.stm
Oh Wolfie – you normally do better than this:
The father claims…
Sort of like Mandy Rice-Davies saying, “Well he would, wouldn’t he?” I should hope any father would do everything he could for his daughter. However, this was a trial in law, Knox herself said it had been fair and the decision was made. What was that about accepting the umpire’s decision?
Here’s another view:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/6789917/Meredith-Kercher-killed-for-refusing-Amanda-Knoxs-excesses-says-mother.html
You seem to be taking this case rather personally James. Its a case of crime and punishment so I don’t have an angle but what I don’t feel comfortable with is the poor quality of the DNA evidence.
Mr Knox is repeating facts, corroborated here :
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18215-knox-murder-trial-evidence-flawed-say-dna-experts.html
Mrs Kercher is repeating a theoretical scenario presented by the prosecution.
I just think the case has not been sufficiently proven either way.
The thing first and foremost is that I have been through every site possible, some fifty hours all up and the most difficult part i sorting the wheat from the chaff. Even if the DNA is discounted, which it needn’t be because it was present despite the media blitz by the defence and supporters, in particular the Knox family, there is the CCTV and all the other evidence – 13 points were presented.
The jury are not idiots. The reason Italian justice takes so long is not only that it is inefficient but that the prosecution must go over more hurdles than in the adversarial system. Therefore, when the case is presented, it has to stick. For outsiders to try to badmouth the Italian system is necessary to release Knox but unfortunately, it’s all speculation. You and I have no way of knowing what DNA was present but the prosecutors did because they did the footwork.
As a commenter on the last post on the issue said, they had their conviction already so why didn’t they stop? Simple. She’s guilty. Take out all the razamatazz on the defence side, their only defence and all that is left is the evidence – pesky things lie the CCTV footage placing her there, for a start.
She was not clever in covering her tracks, she shows all the signs of being guilty in addition. The evidence stands up, including the DNA. She’s guilty.
The jury are not idiots
The jury have to work on the evidence they are given in court only!
they had their conviction already so why didn’t they stop?
This is just a general comment and doesn’t relate to this case in particular. There is no justice in this day and age and the powers that be often feel it necessary to make a point by unfair means. Which might explain why they didn’t stop…
Thanks, Lord Nazh – it says much and saves me the job. Obviously guilty but that pretty face sways people:
Lord Nazh says:
December 12, 2009 at 19:46
Completely OT James but thought you’d enjoy this clip
http://video.foxnews.com/12407479/justice-served?test=latestnews
This was the most balanced one I’ve seen although it is old:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216903