Amanda Knox

[LadyBeagleEyes]

Her appeal is being heard at the moment, and there is a good chance she'll be freed.
So who did kill Meredith?
If she and her ex boyfriend are deemed innocent, I hope the Italian police will continue to look into the case and get some justice for her.
I don't understand why they say the DNA is flawed, or have Knox's parents just managed to hire some very smart lawyers?
It's such a sad case.

blinks

Yeah, but price a defendant exercising his right to increase his chance of a lighter sentence when the police have built a solid case against him and he simply can't afford the kind of lawyer you need to make the most of of certain aspects of the slow track.

The most onviously conclusion is that at the time the decision was made, RG's lawyer advised him that slow track was odds on a long slow stroll to 25plus, or life imprisonment.

Proof positive that RG was an after thought, a footnote and the Italian police fucked up.

ah i got wrong end of fastweb- he didn't 'choose' fast track- he struck a deal to get fast tracked by implicating AN and RS.

Mignini was accused of blocking in the 'Monsters of Florence' case, because he DID

Hold the front pages, supreme court to be disbanded, made redundant by forum poster!

Having permission from the GIP deemed an utter irrelavance!

Italian Consitutional tinkering now to be undertaken by way of TV Blog Based game show "on your remote press red for no, green for yes"

To be aired between strictly and come on down, vote open to all British and American gen pub with access to the English Language media, to save the Italian nation from their inherant bumbling thickieness.

No, He didn't need a deal to take the fast track, but you have to meet certain conditions and give up certain rights.

A soldi case against you and a lack of economic power to fight that case on the slow track is typical of fast track, which is why (wrongly) picking fast track is sort of seen as looking a touch guilty.

Given that he exercised his right to silence at K&S trial, it doesn't look like any kind of deal was struck.

There is speculation that this will change at the next trial, but unless somebody has found a particulary effective crystal ball I can't work put how anybody could be so sure.

sorry above for blinks

Fastweb You are implying that Mignini has been wronged - he has a clear history of creating scapegoats so that he can find someone guilty. He's been caught out twice now, how many times before has this happened.

He accused 23 people in Perugia of being in a satanic sect that murdered 16 victims over several years. All of the cases were thrown out.

This is a good article with an interview with other victims of Mignini.
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/hunt-for-the-monster-of-florence-1657052.html

"You do know RG chose fast track right ?

And part of that deal is a vastly reduced sentence in the case of a guilty verdict upheld in the final trial, in exchange for saving the court loads of time and money by avioding the 5 year plus standard tract trial."

Yes, I do. I have talked about it somewhere on MN during the last two days, just can't remember which thread.

My thought is that he knew he would get a guilty verdict (because he did it) so opting for fast track would mean a better outcome for him: not guilty = set free/guilty = vastly reduced sentence. Because the prosecution were so pre-occupied with Amanda and Raffaele, no-one seemed at all concerned with Guede getting off lightly. But now it's too late. Amanda and Raffaele have been cleared, the guilty party is already imprisoned but on a vastly reduced sentence, so Meredith's killer is doing a poxy 16 years for her murder.

Bizarre that the system would have allowed AK to get 30 years and RG 20 - IF they hadn't been vigilant. I can see now why the Italian system is the way it is, they seem to assume and expect incompetence from their officers.

www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/knox-to-be-trained-in-how-not-to-look-shifty-201110044377/

I've just read through this thread and I can't understand why kelly thinks race is relevant? AK has had her character shot to pieces by the press - it is certainly not the case that people view her favourably because she's a white American so I don't get that argument.

In my personal opinion there is definitely not enough evidence to convict AK and her boyfriend and I doubt they would have been charged in the UK. No DNA evidence was found in the Amanda Dowler case because Levi Bellfield got rid of it all in plenty of time before he was strongly suspected. If Guarde left DNA evidence surely it's reasonable to suspect the other two would have as well as they were all supposed to have been there together? DNA may not be the only evidence used but there is no denying how significant a role in has in most cases - Sarah Payne for one. Her killer was convicted only after her hair was found in his car even though the police suspected him all along.

Anyone capable of cutting another person's throat must be a psychopath in my opinion, and there was no evidence that either AK or her boyfriend had tendencies like those. The Guarde guy on the other hand, already had criminal convictions. AK has been vilified for her sexuality as far as I can see. Which is no surprise since women are still viewed with suspicion if they are open about liking sex for some reason. I cannot believe AK felt moved to slit her flat mate's throat just because MK had previously complained about her leaving her vibrator on show in the bathroom. It doesn't add up.

Can someone help me - we are discussing this at work and someone has come up with the 'fact' that all three of the suspects were caught on CCTV outside the apartment the evening Meredith died. I've found some articles from mid November 2007 stating this but nothing since - was this discredited and has anyone got any articles stating this?

No - that is not true. I think a car was seen on cctv parked in the vicinity for a short while that evening. There was one witness who claimed to have seen AK/RS nearby that night. But he was homeless heroin addict who changed his story enough to make him an unreliable witness. If there was CCTV footage of the 3 of them, we would not even be dicussing this now....

That's what I have been saying. There are articles in the broadsheets at this time saying the police stated they have CCTV evidence - it was obviously not true.

So many people here seem to be convinced of their guilt despite the rulings. I find it really frustrating as you just have to trust the fact that they have no evidence to convict them since the DNA evidence was found inadmissable.

Makes me think that AK (and perhaps RS though I'm sure to a lesser extent) is going to really struggle to have any kind of decent life. Wherever she goes people will still be convinced of her guilt and she will be hated because of this

I think he may have a harder time of it. She is going home to a country which seems to largely believe her innocent. He is staying (presumably) in a country where a lot of people assume guilt as far as I can make out.

the reason why the papers - broadsheets and tabloids - kept printing stuff about cctv, bleach, mops, and so on is because these things were being leaked all te time to discredit AK. Some of the headlines from 2007 are shocking.

in the wiki piece linked to upthread there is a link to \link{http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/05/meredith-kercher-murder-trial\this Guardian piece} from 2009 which includes:

'did someone clean up the flat between the murder and the arrival of the police? Only one of Knox's fingerprints was found in the entire house.'

This is very odd if true - it came originally from the forensic scientists - was it discredited at some point?

you would think, if someone had bothered to clean up the flat they would have thought to clean up the bedroom and destroy all of Guede's evidence. Plus impossible really to clean up a room and only leave Guede's fingerprints and DNA! Clearly the idea of a clean up was fabricated bollox, another thing fed to the papers. There's so much misinformation out there about this case - it's no wonder people get confused and think AK and RS are guilty.

Exactly DF, and it's not in the interests of any paper for them to print the facts now they are fully available as that would sabotage a great story. They have to keep the intrigue alive to keep their jobs.

I still want to know why it was so much in Mignini's interest to nail Lumumbe for the crime. He seemed perfectly happy with that explanation until they found that Lumumbe had an allibi.

My thought on the Lumumba thing - already stated on these threads is that the apparently found a black hair at the scene. AK had messages on her phone from her black boss and replied saying "see you later" The police took this to mean they had plans to meet up "later". I honestly believe that they put 2 and 2 together to make 5, and that it was the police who initially tried to implicate Lumumba in this, not AK.

As I said before, even if she was guilty and there at the time, why on EARTH would she bring Lumumba into it? She retracted the statement the following morning.

I think the forensics expert stated that it normal not to find clear fingerprints when you are continually there and touching things repeatedly. They get smudged. Nothing much was made of this fact by the prosecution.

My thought is that he knew he would get a guilty verdict (because he did it) so opting for fast track would mean a better outcome for him: not guilty = set free/guilty = vastly reduced sentence. Because the prosecution were so pre-occupied with Amanda and Raffaele, no-one seemed at all concerned with Guede getting off lightly

I'm unclear why you think a distracted prosecution, a shambles of an investigation and bumbling policemen is such a disadvantage that anybody would cut their losses and go for fast track and its heightened risk of a guilty verdict when the slow track would offer the better gamble under those conditions.

And I'm thinking it is my fault for not explaining it clearly enough.

It's not down to the prosecution which track a defendant picks, in the sense they don't get to decide, the defendant does.

If I personally am ever a defendant in a criminal case there would have to be four conditons ALL met before I would take my chances on the fast track.

a) I'm guilty
b) the prosecution team is strong
c) the evidence looks hard to discredit
e) all my connections have deserted me taking the family wealth with them, lumbering me with a less than marvellous lawyer.

Take away just one from that equation, and I would take the slow train. And the prosecution would just have to lump it.

RG's lawyer would have advised him to take the fast track becuase his xhances of aquittal were low enough that greater priority had to placed on reducing the final sentence as much as possible. He still fought to win, but was unlikely to have been that surpised when he didn't.

Do see what I mean ?

To quote from a body language blog:

"No one hears a blood curdling scream, and doesn't know the source, but covers their ears. As humans, when we hear a threatening noise, albeit a scream, a loud bang or thud, we don't just decide to cover our ears without knowing what is going on. Our natural, biological response is to investigate the noise. It's a protective measure we all have within us, an instinct for survival, because that noise could ultimately be warning that we, too, are in danger.

We only cover our ears when we know what is going on, but don't want to listen to the wretched noise before us. This statement shows that Amanda had some awareness of what was going on when Kercher screamed. To me, that is bone-chilling. I don't think Knox lied about this bit of information. I suspect she was there and she did hear a scream, and perhaps she did cover her ears, but I believe she knew what was going on. It's too strange of a lie to come up with if she wasn't there or wasn't in some way involved. She just changed the details, and those details give her away."

The guy who admitted to killing her was a drug dealer. It is widely believed (nay, even accepted) that Knox was a drug taker. It is widely believed, from what she has said and her behaviour, that she required to be centre of attention and that she disliked the VICTIM Meridith, who had accused her of promiscuity and poor personal hygiene.

As a result, I firmly believe that, though she categorically did NOT kill the victim, she was by her own admission at the scene when it happened. Further, I believe that she set up the events by getting the drug dealer to come in and rape Meridith in revenge, in return for drugs. Did she know it would turn to murder? No. But she knew full well her "friend" was being raped and BY HER OWN ADMISSION IN COURT did not do anything to help or call the police.

Was Knox guilty of murder? No, but she was entirely complicit in the events, even if they turned out worse than she expected.

a body language blog being the last word in scientific evidence.

Lie to Me - a documentary.

Fastweb You are implying that Mignini has been wronged

You tell me.

Is there a conflict of interests in the accuser, the prosecution and Judge all being from the same court when the accused stands charged thanks to his investigation of the court that went on to accuse, prosecute and Judge him for alleged infractions duing said investigstion of them.

Or should the court that was being investigated by the defendant have passed the case over to another territorial power ?

Especially since the defendant in question has the backing of the territorial power that required him to do the investigating into the pther territorial power the first place ?