I did a search of the boards both in the toolbar above and via Google, and surprisingly I don’t see any threads discussing the trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder Meredith Kercher in Italy.
I’ve written about it elsewhere so could go on and on, but as far as I am concerned, Knox and Sollecito are the victims of a witch hunt, both by a police force that made a snap judgment that Knox was suspicious and never let facts get in their way and yellow journalism that presupposes that they must be guilty or else they wouldn’t have been arrested in the first place and because of all the rumors that have since been proven to be false that got published uncritically.
And the thing is, I started out thinking the same thing: Knox must be guilty because she’s odd (not thinking at the time that it was the press trying to make her look crazy to sell more papers) and, gosh, didn’t they catch her buying mops to clean up the evidence when she was caught (no, they didn’t).
Anyone with a little experience reading about other criminal cases who starts reading about this case beyond just the fluff coverage in papers can should be having about 100 different warning bells going off in their heads. The only clear DNA evidence shows someone else entirely did it, and he has a criminal past, fled the country after the murder, and told a dozen different stories until he realized the police would be more lenient on him if he implicate the two people they wanted to believe did it. The lead prosecutor believes a conspiracy of Masons commit Satanic murders through sexually orgies and originally tried to fit this case into it but dropped the Satanic angle when the press made fun of him. The lead forensic scientist performed DNA tests she’s not certified to do and which are about the most likely to suffer contamination and then misrepresented the results in court. Police originally thought Amanda and the boss at the bar she sometime worked at did the crime together because she used the words “see you later” to him on the day of the murder, thinking it meant they were going to meet up that very night. Three of four computers the police were supposed to search for evidence to corroborate alibis had their hard drives destroyed, while the fourth was apparently used by someone to surf the web after the suspects were in custody and when only the police had a key to the apartment, thus destroying much of the browser history and other potentially vital files. The police claim Amanda confessed, but she says she was abused and was responding to a what-if scenario the police presented and which she answered solely as a what if, which she then immediately retracted once she knew what they were doing – and the interrogations were recorded but the police for some reason refuse to release it to the court, even though if you believe them it would be the perfect evidence to back up their claims.
It just goes on and on. I’m ashamed of how shoddy the press coverage has been and how normal people let this nonsense continue, though of course there’s very little we can do about it because it’s all in the hands of an Italian jury that is actually encouraged to read the news coverage and use it to form their opinions.
This whole thing reminds me of the West Memphis 3 case but even more screwed up. In this case the whole world’s press is watching, but most people still have no clue about any of the actual facts about the case, only what Amanda is wearing and so forth.
The basis for the conviction will be that the victim’s DNA was found on object in her home? An object that they can’t even say for sure was involved in the murder? WTF???
As soon as I saw this I figured the case had to be a mess.
Hopefully it’s not as horrific a mess as occurred in the investigation of the “Monster of Florence” murders, where authorities took a serial killer case and blew it up into a supposed Satanic cult, persecuting and prosecuting innocent victims and sending people to jail on trumped-up “evidence”. Reading Douglas Preston’s book on the affair is enough to convince you that the Italian criminal justice system is in dire need of a complete overhaul.
It seems to me that the American coverage of this case has been embarrassingly one-sided, from CBS’s 48 Hours correspondent asserting “If there’s one thing I want the people of Seattle to know, it’s that Amanda Knox is innocent” to Timothy Egan’s op-ed in the New York Times entitled “An Innocent Abroad” that could have been written by the Knox defense team.
Is there enough evidence for reasonable people to convict Knox? Probably not. Are there still some serious unanswered questions about why she and her boyfriend didn’t hear her roommate being brutally murdered in the next room? Absolutely.
I’ve been following this trial as best I can since I first heard about the case, and the evidence is very slim. There’s this and the police say she changed her story several times (over the course of months of imprisonment and (she says) beatings and intimidation while being interrogated).
I don’t think she denies telling different stories about where she was and exactly when on the day that Kercher was murdered, but none of her stories include participating in wild group sex, either with or without a knife. Mostly she says she smoked a lot of hash or marijuana that day and then was at her boyfriend’s (Sollecito) house boinking him.
The prosecutions case is so far-fetched, so ludicrous in it’s detail, I can’t believe they haven’t been laughed out of the country. They have no murder weapon, no motive, no basis for their supposed scenario, they’ve lost evidence, allowed evidence to be destroyed, failed to secure the crime scene for weeks following the murder… I can hardly believe that Miss Knox and Mr. Sollecito’s lives hang in the balance, and may be lost because of the fantasies of an obviously (to me, YMMV) deranged and deluded prosecutor.
I don’t believe this is true. The sources I’ve read said that the police found the murder weapon in the apartment of Mr. Sollecito, not the shared apartment where the murder took place. However, it does sound like the police fucked up the DNA testing, which is pretty egregious.
Also, I don’t believe that “beatings” is accurate. Ms. Knox says she was interrogated for 14 hours straight and that once during that time a policewoman hit her on the back of the head “to jog her memory.” Again, not good behavior on the part of police, but hardly a “beating.” I’ve seen Detective Stabler do worse on SVU.
Knox has changed her story numerous times about what happened that night, and even tried to blame a bar owner who later turned out to have an airtight alibi. Not proof of guilt, but surely not an indication of her good character. I don’t think she killed her roommate, but she certainly has acted suspiciously. Again, I don’t think she should be convicted of murder but it wouldn’t surprise me if she was involved in some way, or heard the murder happening next door and did nothing (possibly because she was stoned).
Just to be clear, and I know you know this – it’s the same public prosecutor as in the “Monster” case!
At one point he had Preston as part of the cult, and I think actually detained him. He should have been humiliated and lynched, but the Italians are somehow still letting him run this witch hunt, having not learned a thing.
Oh, in case it wasn’t clear, also, another guy has already been convicted of the crime (but absconded).
No, Rudy Hermann Guede first fled to Germany, then was arrested, transported to Italy, and then convicted. He recieved a 30 year sentence.
Somehow, even though he claimed to have had consensual sex with Kercher, he was also convicted of sexual assault (DNA tests indicated that he had, in fact, had sex with her).
And on and on and on. The level of competency displayed by the Italian police, prosecutors, and crime labs is on a par with, um, uh, gimme a second, I’ll think of something, um, uh, maybe… no… hang on, I’m working on it, um…
And for this, the trial has been over 5 months long, has virtually bankrupted Knox’s family, and still seems likely to end in her conviction.
They say they were at the boyfriend’s apartment, not the next room. Reports that she was in the house at the time were part of a coerced what-if scenario the police made her play along with and then tried to use as an actual confession.
The police tried to say the bar owner was involved based upon Knox having sent him a message earlier that night that said “see you later” and then coerced the same imaginary what-if scenario mentioned above, which was retracted immediately afterwards. The police are to blame for that fiasco, not Knox.
The moral of the story is if you are ever questioned by the cops, do not let them talk you into playing a game of what you would have done in a hypothetical situation that didn’t actually happen. And, no matter how many hours they have you locked up, do not talk or sign anything without a lawyer present.
Probably because of what the police did and didn’t do re: Mr. Sollecito’s alibi. Also, the police deny any mistreatment (or harsh treatment) of either Miss Knox or Mr. Sollecito.
So, it seems that while Miss Knox and Mr. Sollecito were at the police station being questioned, someone, perhaps another police officer, was using Mr. Sollecito’s computer online, possibly corrupting or destroying exculpatory evidence. Then, despite police expert testimony that the computer wasn’t in use at all from 9:10pm until 5:42am the next day, there is also testimony that there was online human directed interaction at 12:58am.
I agree that Amanda’s behavior after the murder is about the opposite of what I would expect from a truly innocent person.
I dont know what reallly happened, but if I was a betting man, I would wager serious money that Amanda and her boyfriend were somehow involved in the murder, even if they didnt actually do the stabbing themselves.
(I will also bet that she is found guilty, and ends up doing a stretch in an Italian prison)
Reporting on this case has been slanted in this country, but then again, when you have a prosecutor alleging Satanic drug and sex abuse culminating in murder, the case is likely to be pure bullshit.
She’s told some contradictory stories, but when someone is accused of murder and is trying to cover up drug use, I don’t find that really surprising. It’s extremely unwise, but not surprising.
Unbelievable. Every time I have heard about this case I thought of the “Monster of Florence” case (from Preston’s book), because of the Satanic angle. I did not know this was the same prosecutor - I just asssumed the whole Italian justice system had a hard-on for Satanic cults. In a way it’s good to know that this is due to a single person and not the whole system, except that they should have gotten rid of this bad apple by now.
I dont think that soft drug use is illegal per se in Italy, but if that is the only reason for her changing stories, you are certainly right about it being “extremely unwise”
If this was an American court, reasonable doubt might be in play, but apparently the Italian benchmark for finding someone guilty is considerably lower than here in the USA.
If Amanda is truly innocent, this is a tragedy on top of another tragedy—If she was complicit in the actual murder, an Italian prison is just exactly where she belongs…
I don’t know anything about Italian law, but that’s definitely the kind of thing Americans are used to keeping from the police. I find that more believable than the theory the prosecution has put out there, which doesn’t hang together at all.