What are you talking about? Ice-T has made an amazing journey from cop killer to senior detective. I don’t know why they keep calling him the wrong name, though.
I think this is a case of the baby and the bath water. Satanic ritual? Clearly bullshit. However, it doesn’t quite follow from that that the two people acting suspiciously, allegedly at the murder scene, and allegedly in possession of the murder weapon are innocent. I don’t think you can explain away all the weird behavior, contradictory statements, and circumstantial evidence with “they were scared of a pot conviction.”
The fact that some of the defense’s claims rely on outlandish scenarios where the police have deliberately incriminated these two kids from the very day of the murder gives me pause. (Like the computer story upthread.) Unfortunately, there is very little cut-and-dried about this case. The police have really fucked things up with their incompetence and made it impossible to make any clear conclusions. At least one guy will spend a long time in jail for the killing.
I think it would explain some of the contradictory statements, but no, it would not explain everything they have said and done. But as for the murder weapon - is there a murder weapon? I thought they found some of Meredith Kercher’s DNA on a knife (not unusual in itself), but the knife didn’t match the stab wounds.
Wikipedia describes some additional items of evidence: A bloody footprint at the scene, which police assert they have matched to Sollecito, and some DNA of Sollecito on Kercher’s bra. Presumably Sollecito disputes both of these items.
Wikipedia also states that Sollecito’s family is thought to have interfered with the investigation:
If true, that obviously puts any complaints about police handling of the matter in a very different light.
Well, for one thing the police did tape the interrogation but refuse to release it. Seems like the sort of thing that should have played in court. But no, we’re supposed to just take them at their word and not take Knox at hers. Sorry, but I go for innocent until proven guilty and not the other way around. Based upon what I have seen from the statements from all the various parties, Knox and Sollecito are far more trustworthy than the claims made by police.
But even if everything the police say they did is 100% accurate they still come off looking like bozos who put people through a ringer with techniques that are known to induce false confessions. Some of the officials brag about how all the evidence they needed was looking at Knox and Sollecito and realizing they were guilty. One goes so far as saying it revealed everything clear as day with no pesky physical evidence needed and the only thing that could have been more helpful than their keen psychological assessment was a video camera taping the actual crime. Of course he said this when the theory was that it was the bar owner and Amanda raping and killing Meredith… funny how they are still so convinced of their infallibility after that theory was proven wrong.
The prosecution claims they have the murder weapon and insist it could have made the wounds. The defense says otherwise. The prosecution says it has Kercher’s DNA on it, but the defense says the tests didn’t follow proper controls, were run by someone without proper training, are the kind of test that are easily contaminated even by certified technicians, that the lab notes of the testing show that the techs themselves labeled the results as being too low for any meaningful response even though the prosecution expert testified in court just the opposite, and so forth and so on.
So basically each side is making claims that support their side and deny everything the other side says. Which is fine for how things work in general, but when it comes to scientific results there need to be standards to follow so the laypersons on the jury can sort it out via some method other than deciding which side they like better. The court could have authorized completely independent testing of all claimed evidence, or even just the DNA, but they refused to allow any of it to be examined by outside experts.
These stories are not at all outlandish when examples of this kind of behavior have been shown to happen all the time, and indeed the lead prosecutor himself is under investigation for abuse of power for doing the exact same kinds of things with the Monster of Florence investigation: jailing a reporter for no reason, etc.
I wish we lived in a world where no law enforcement cared more about making sure they close a case quickly instead of waiting to sort out actual physical evidence and so forth, but we don’t.
Hell, this sort of thing happens in the US too. I mentioned the West Memphis 3 above, and I think the comparison there is apt. Over in Milwaukee the police still insist that the two people they originally prosecuted for the murders of two prostitutes in separate cases are still the guilty parties even though the only DNA evidence on the victims came up as a match to the guy they are now prosecuting as a serial killer for seven cases in the exact same neighborhood. One of them is thankfully free, but the other is in a similar situation as Knox, in prison based upon a reportedly coerced confession despite the lack of physical evidence and with DNA clearly pointing to another killer.
If you read through some of the cases that the Innocence Project eventually got overturned here in this country you’ll see countless other examples of these things having been documented and innocent people released after serving years.
One of the things I was interested in reading more about was the timeline just prior to the discovery.
I know there is some controversy over when Knox/Sollecito called the police (before or after the arrival of the postal police). Do you know of any sites that explains this controversy more fully?
I wish there was more information available on this case. There are a couple of blogs and websites out there but one is heavily slanted for guilt and one for innocence…not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just not interested in other people’s opinions (this is in contrast to the wm3 case where almost the entire case file and court transcripts are online).
That said, with what little I’ve read…the whole scenario laid out by the prosecution seems inane particularly in light of Rudy Guede’s story.
This was an interesting interview with Douglas Preston that explains things better than I can.
I also can’t believe satanism is still rearing its head in the 21st century/ that the public seems unwilling to understand/believe that false confessions can and do happen or that people are shallow and/or narcissistic enough to condemn another person on the basis of how they feel that person should behave but I suppose those are subjects for different threads.
This is why I love the Straight Dope. Here people actually look into things and come to their own informed conclusions. Over on my Examiner.com pages discussing the case the majority of comments are by people repeating the same baseless rumors as if they were facts and attacking me for not parroting the prosecution’s speaking points.
I think, for the first time, there’s some real hope for Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley. Time will obviously tell but the developments surrounding case are promising, in particular (IMHO) the allegations of juror misconduct.
It seems that the prosecutor is changing his story now. cite
Maybe we could work out a deal to send our crazy people to Italy, where they could work as lawyers? I’m pretty sure we could spare Orly Taitz & Charles F. Kerchner, Jr. right away.
Srsly, this seems to me to be the worst move the prosecution could have taken. If I was on the jury, I’d wonder why the motive was changed, and why it was changed after so much testimony and presentation of evidence. It would make me think “hmmm, I wonder if that prosecutor really knew anything, or if he was just talking out his ass the whole time?”
Is this something that happens often? Do prosecutors spend months building a case and presenting T&E, and then just change something as central as the motive during closing arguments?
Any thought from our legal beagles will be much appreciated (and yes, I know most of you practice in the US and really can’t comment much about Italian law, etc., etc.).
I was about to jump in and say, regarding the OP, “whaddya mean ‘surprisingly I don’t see any threads discussing the trial’; we had a thread on this already!”
I’m not a lawyer, but no, I am sure this is not normal. Introducing a whole new motive during your closing argument is probably an acknowledgment that you have no idea what you are doing and your case is fucked.
I can’t speak with any experience about the Italian system.
In the U.S…
Motive is not an element of the crime. It’s not something that the prosecution has to prove. The prosecution has to prove the accused committed criminal acts, and that there was an intent by those acts to accomplish certain ends. The reason the accused wanted those ends to happen is not part of the equation. Technically.
From a practical standpoint, of course, the more outrageous the act, the more a jury wants to hear about a reason. Accusing someone of bank robbery? You don’t generally need to show that they were in dire financial straits and thus had a “need” to rob the bank; juries generally will accept that gaining the money was a motive in and of itself.
I never handled a murder case, but I can easily imagine that in a case with these facts, the jury would want to hear something that explained why a college student with no record of violence would choose to commit an act like this. And I imagine that the prosecution suddenly introducing a new theory of motive during closing arguments would not play out very well.
So – not technically legally significant. But from a strategic and tactical viewpoint, it’s not a sign of strength for the prosecution to do this.
Why is the defense lawyer permitted to tell the jury about statements made by the prosecution at a preliminary hearing? Were those statements put into evidence in some way?
I find Amanda Knox an embarrassment to the U.S. She’s a guest in a foreign country and supposedly getting an education. Instead she’s partying, doing drugs, and screwing every thing in sight. She gets mixed up in a murder and openly laughs about it at the police station. I’ve seen all the facebook pics of her. An alley cat has more morals.
I hope she spends the rest of her life in an Italian prison. Maybe that’s harsh, but I’m sick of people breaking the law and getting away with it.