@ossobuco,
ossobuco wrote:I agree with this article, and found Dershowitz's take on matters useful -
LOL! No comment.
Nice pack of lies there in that article, but this is a2k, so I think I'll post a fact or two if you don't mind (or even if you do mind).
guilter vermin wrote:in Italy and the UK the reaction so far has mainly been one of stunned disbelief.
Contrary to guilter vermin claims about the views of the UK, a large part of the UK has always been horrified over the framing of Amanda and Raffaele, and those people are celebrating the acquittals right now.
guilter vermin wrote:“Everybody is saying there’s no evidence against her and she’s totally innocent. It’s just not true.”
Actually, yes it is true. From the start, all the evidence has reliably indicated that Amanda and Raffaele had nothing to do with it, and that Guede carried out the crime all by himself.
guilter vermin wrote:Dershowitz is correct that waves of pro-Knox publicity have permeated much of the American media, thanks in part to the backing of Seattle’s largest PR company.
The only overwhelming PR campaign in this case has been the one slandering Amanda.
It is certainly true though that this PR campaign has fed many falsehoods into the American media, due mostly to the outright lies of a couple of yellow journalists: Barbie Nadeau and Andrea Vought.
guilter vermin wrote:just last week, Nina Burleigh’s Newsweek piece contained multiple untruths, such as the bizarre claim that the trace of Kercher found on Sollecito’s knife actually came from a potato.
No untruth, but perhaps some ambiguity here that should be removed/clarified.
Here is the comment in question: "police forensic investigators declared they had found the victim’s DNA on it. Independent experts later determined that the organic material the police had found on the knife was from a potato."
The truth is that Meredith's DNA was never on the knife. The Italians fabricated a chart of Meredith's DNA that they pretended came from a test of the knife. This chart did not come from an actual DNA test; it was entirely a fabrication. Actual DNA tests come with electronic data files, and are not just a chart printed on paper.
However there was some organic material on the blade, and the Italians focused on it when they were trying to verify the results of the fabricated test. The results of the tests were that the organic material was common starch (not from a human source).
It should also be noted that the knife in question was not in any way compatible with Kercher's wounds. It was way larger than the knife that was used to kill Kercher.
guilter vermin wrote:The claim that there is no evidence is baffling.
That depends on what you mean by evidence. If I go to a nice tropical beach and dig up some sand and put in in a box, and I say that this box of sand is evidence that Ossobuco committed all the crimes normally attributed to Jack the Ripper, does that mean that there is evidence that Ossobuco is Jack the Ripper?
Or is there no evidence that Ossobuco is Jack the Ripper? If anyone claims there is no evidence, I have the box filled with sand right here. It clearly exists.
The supposed "evidence" against Amanda and Raffaele is of the same nature. There is indeed a bunch of nonsensical gibberish that people claim is "evidence" against Amanda and Raffaele. But really there is nothing that actually counts as evidence.
guilter vermin wrote:Among the 10,000 pages of evidence presented is, of course, the DNA evidence.” Knox’s DNA was found on the handle of the murder weapon – a knife belonging to Sollecito – and Kercher’s was found on the blade. Whether it’s really Kercher’s DNA is hotly contested by Knox supporters, but contamination was ruled out at the latest appeal. The probability that the DNA on the blade did not come from Kercher was found to be one in 300 million billion.
As I noted above, no DNA test ever found Kercher's DNA on the blade. They just drew a chart of Kercher's DNA on a sheet of paper and pretended that it came from a DNA test. A real DNA test would have had an electronic data file, and would not have been a mere chart drawn on paper.
guilter vermin wrote:It’s worth noting that Sollecito, to whom the knife belonged, had no trouble accepting it was Kercher’s DNA on his blade: “The fact there is Meredith’s DNA on the kitchen knife is because once when we were all cooking together I accidentally pricked her hand,” he wrote in his prison diary. “I apologized immediately and she said it was not a problem.”
This did not factor in the legal case, but is a common refrain from lower-IQ echelons of guilter vermin.
This happened during the interrogation where the Italian police were beating false statements out of Amanda and Raffaele. They told him that Meredith's DNA was on the blade, told him to explain it, and then hit him until he did.
guilter vermin wrote:Sollecito later admitted this was a fabrication and Kercher had never been to his house. His diary contains several more intriguing comments that highlight his trust that it was indeed Kercher’s DNA on his knife: “I was in a total panic because I thought Amanda killed Meredith or maybe helped someone kill her… Amanda may have stitched me up by taking the knife and giving it to the son of a bitch who killed Meredith.”
All that highlights is his initial confusion over what was going on. He had yet to figure out that the police were framing him and Amanda, and was pondering if it was possible that she was involved.
guilter vermin wrote:Sollecito’s DNA was also found on Kercher’s bra clasp. Because his genetic profile is fully represented at 15 loci (only 10 loci is necessary in most countries), the chance it came from contamination is next to nil.”
His DNA was found mixed with the DNA of about a dozen other men.
In such mixed DNA scenarios, you can only be sure that you have accurate DNA profiles if you trace every single profile, otherwise you never know if you are mixing together multiple profiles to match someone whose DNA is not present.
Since no one has ever bothered with the other profiles, it cannot actually be said that his DNA was found on the clasp.
And unless someone is going to propose a scenario where there were a dozen other men involved in the attack on Kercher, the presence of all that extraneous DNA on the bra clasp is very much evidence of contamination.
But there is much more to this bra clasp than proved contamination and incomplete testing. Some weeks after the false charges were filed against Amanda and Raffaele, the fabricated evidence against Raffaele began to unravel, and they would have had to release Raffaele without any other evidence. So the Italian police all trooped back to the apartment and made an exaggerated show of searching the place again, all on video tape. They collected some unremarkable pieces of evidence and clearly treated them as nothing special. Then they found the bra clasp, and they made a huge show of finding it, as if they had just made some sort of monumental find.
It was very clear that they knew
before the bra clasp had even been tested that it was just what they needed to maintain their crumbling case against Raffaele. And the only way they could know
before it was tested is if they had planted his DNA on the clasp themselves.
Subsequent examination of the bra clasp was impossible, because after their initial testing on it, they chose to store the bra clasp in a vial of corrosive liquid, and there was nothing left of it by the time of the first appeal.
guilter vermin wrote:But then there is also the circumstantial and behavioral evidence that has gone largely unreported. Why did Sollecito admit to police in 2007 that, “In my previous statement I told a load of rubbish because Amanda had convinced me of her version of the facts and I didn’t think about the inconsistencies”?
Because that was the interrogation where the Italian Police were beating false statements out of them.
guilter vermin wrote:Why did Knox and Sollecito insist that they slept soundly through the night of the murder until 10 a.m. when there is undisputed human interaction on Sollecito’s computer at 5:30 a.m., where someone listened to music for around 30 minutes? How could they be asleep if Sollecito’s phone was turned on at 6:02 a.m.?
Because they were both stoned out of their minds. (Pot only, nothing harder.)
I actually never did illegal drugs. But I remember being that age. I was part of a pretty small minority.
guilter vermin wrote:Why did Knox say she never left Sollecito’s apartment that night when her phone records clearly show that she did – a fact Sollecito admitted when he withdrew his alibi for her last year?
Her phone records show no such thing.
He never withdrew his alibi.
guilter vermin wrote:Why did Knox, apparently frantic with worry at not being able to locate Kercher and desperately calling, only let her phone ring for mere seconds before hanging up?
No one has ever presented evidence that this happened. I could speculate some innocent explanations for it, but absent evidence that it happened, it seems a waste of time.
guilter vermin wrote:Is Knox’s story about using the blood-stained bathmat to slide back to her bedroom on credible – or is it simply a way to explain why her DNA was found mingled with Kercher’s blood in footprints in the hallway?
Amanda's DNA was never found mixed with Kercher's blood
anywhere, and certainly not in any footprints.
guilter vermin wrote:The full evidence list in this case is extensive
A long list of fictitious evidence still amounts to zero real evidence.
guilter vermin wrote:as Dershowitz commented, “there are thousands of Americans in jail today on the basis of far less evidence than there is against Amanda Knox.”
Unfortunately that is likely true.
It is also probable that every single one of them is innocent.
guilter vermin wrote:Knox accusing her innocent employer of rape and murder is well-documented. According to her supporters, Knox only accused Patrick Lumumba after a torturous, lengthy interrogation in which she was slapped, screamed at, refused an interpreter and denied food and water. This is information that even Knox’s defense now refutes.
They most certainly do not refute it.
guilter vermin wrote:An interpreter, Anna Domino, was present throughout the interview
That alleged "interpreter" was one of the people who were forcing Amanda to give false statements.
guilter vermin wrote:Her lawyer Luciano Ghirga rejected the claims that she was ever hit by police back in 2008, stating, “We never said she was hit,”
Italy is the sort of place where people are harshly punished if they complain about the Italian Police beating false statements out of innocent people.
guilter vermin wrote:and just last week the Italian courts ruled that Knox must face trial for further aggravated calumny for repeating these charges in her book and on TV.
Italy is the sort of place where people are harshly punished if they complain about the Italian Police beating false statements out of innocent people.
guilter vermin wrote:Despite claims that the interview lasted around 40 hours, it was at most two hours long.
It did, however, come at the end of days worth of exhausting interviews.
guilter vermin wrote:she accused Lumumba of murdering Kercher and placed herself at scene. Knox never retracted her claim and Lumumba spent weeks in prison before being released. The only admission that she had made the whole thing up was to her mother while she was in jail. Her mother decided not to pass on that information to the police.
Amanda made a written retraction of the claim immediately after the Italian Police beat it out of her, before they even went out to arrest him.
guilter vermin wrote:Double jeopardy does not apply in this case.
That depends. It was unlikely that this was ever going to reach the point where the Italians even could ask for extradition, since the European Court of Human Rights was never going to allow it to stand. And it was unlikely that the Italians would have asked for extradition even if they could have, as it clearly would have damaged their relations with the US. But the US would have refused to extradite, and likely would have used "double jeopardy" as a convenient excuse.
guilter vermin wrote:No one is disputing that Guede was far more involved than he is letting on, but the idea that he has confessed is just incorrect. In a letter to the courts, he referred to the case as “the dreadful murder of the splendid and marvelous girl Meredith, by Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox.”
That would be the letter filled with big words that he did not know the meaning of when questioned about it in court.
guilter vermin wrote:Another theory is that Guede had his sentence cut in exchange for a plea bargain. Plea bargains of this kind do not exist in Italy – Guede’s sentence was reduced from 30 years to 16 because he opted for a fast-track trial, an option Knox and Sollecito had but rejected. Fast track trials involve less evidence being presented, and for this a one-third reduction in sentence is granted. Further, because Knox and Sollecito’s young age was taken into account by the judge and their sentence was reduced from 30 years to 24, Guede’s appeal allowed him the same mitigating factors; he was 21 at the time of the murder, two years younger than Sollecito.
Almost no one understands Guede's three sentence reductions. Only me and Frank Sfarzo seem to get it.
Yes. If someone agrees to be tried by a quick hearing in front of a judge instead of by a full-dress jury trial, they get a sentence reduction as follows:
a) A sentence of LIFE with Solitary Confinement is reduced to LIFE.
b) A sentence of LIFE is reduced to 30 years.
c) Any other sentence is reduced by a third.
Guede's crimes that night were severe enough to mandate "A" above had he been correctly charged and convicted of them. So even by choosing a fast track and getting a sentence reduction, he properly should have gotten a LIFE sentence.
However, the need to frame Amanda and Raffaele meant that Guede could not be charged with breaking and entering through the window. And the confusion caused by falsely accusing Amanda and Raffaele meant that Guede was not convicted of stealing Meredith's money.
Not being convicted of those two crimes gave Guede an undeserved second sentence reduction, to level "B" above, and he got 30 years.
Later, when Amanda and Raffaele were convicted in the first instance, they were granted mitigating circumstances, and instead of a LIFE sentence they were sentenced to 24 years for the rape/murder.
Since the courts were pretending that all were in on it together, they were then forced to give Guede an undeserved third sentence reduction, to level "C" above (24 years with a one third reduction to 16 years).
Guede's first sentence reduction, from LIFE with Solitary Confinement to mere LIFE, was legitimate. He did choose to have an abbreviated hearing in front of a judge instead of a full-dress trial.
Guede's second and third sentence reductions, from LIFE to 30 years and then further to 16 years, were illegitimate, an unintended result of the effort to frame Amanda and Raffaele.
guilter vermin wrote:Despite this latest ruling, we will probably never know exactly what went on the night of November 1, 2007.
Nonsense. Guede had a history of breaking in through second story windows while carrying a sharp knife, using exactly the MO used in the breakin when Kercher was killed.
His skin DNA in Kercher's vagina and the semen stain underneath her corpse shows that he raped her.
The blood pattern on her clothing shows that she was fully dressed when her throat was cut.
The blood pattern on her bare chest shows that she was still alive and spraying blood when he raped her.
After he raped her, he took her phones so she could not call for aid, locked her in her bedroom (the door required a key to unlock from either side), and went out dancing at a local nightclub while she slowly drowned in her own blood on the floor of her room.
The only real unanswered question is: What is Guede's connection to the police/Mignini?
On his way to go dancing at a local nightclub, Guede hurled Meredith's phones down a ravine to land in the yard of an obscure house at the bottom.
Very shortly thereafter, someone who had the resources to rapidly identify the exact house and its phone number, called and told them that they had a bomb in their bathroom.
The homeowners of course called the local police, who didn't bother to search the bathroom, but did a pretty extensive search of the part of the yard where the phones landed, not finding them in the bushes because it was dark by then.
guilter vermin wrote:After all, it was Knox herself who, when asked if she’d received a fair trial by an Italian member of parliament, affirmed that, “Yes, the system was fair to me.”
Amanda never said any such thing.
