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.

[fastweb]

If anybody fancies a little light reading, I've managed to find a translated version of the motivazione della sentenza, which litteraly means "reasons for the sentence" and is written by the judge to explain hpw and why the verdict was reached.

A lot less snappy than a press report, but since quite a few people have an interest I thought they might like to "get if from the horses mouth" as it were.

I've incuded a link to the forum of the people translating so the source is in the open.

perugiamurderfile.org/index.php

the full document in pdf

www.perugiamurderfile.org/download/file.php?id=1902

the original report in Italian

perugiamurderfile.org/download/file.php?id=3379

[fastweb]

oh and a summary, in English of the translation of the original

truejustice.org/ee/documents/perugia/MasseiSummaryVersion1_5.pdf

[fastweb]

Ah - the knife. The knife that was so big it couldn't have inflcted the wounds on MK!

from the summary of the motivazione della sentenza of the original trial page 10

----

The experts and consultants who were examined during the course of the trial, taking into examination the various wounds present on the neck, did exclude the compatibility of Raffaele?s knife with the smaller stab wound inflicted on the right side of the neck, and the Court agreed.  However, the Court did not agree with arguments that the knife confiscated from Raffaele?s flat was incompatible with the deep wound on the left  The Court concurred with expert testimony proclaiming that the knife presented by the prosecution as the murder weapon, with the DNA of both Meredith and Amanda on it (ie the ?double DNA knife?), is clearly compatible with the large fatal neck wound [169-173]

Where can I find the public records for motivations for sentencing for UK and the USA ?

Cos I think I've found a new hobby.

I know the idea of reading such a big, potentially dry doc sounds tedious, but actually it's fascinating. You start to see how the threads pull together to form the body of evidence and how they inter relate

[kelly2000]

I think she is guilty, but thta is just my opinion.
One thing I do not see why an innocent person would not only accuse someone else, but actually claimed to have heard that person carry out the killing, and give a detailed account of what happened. Which is what Knox did -she claimed to have been there and heard her boss kill Meredith whilst she sat in another room with her hands over her ears. Imagine if he had nto had such a strong alibi?
I also do not see why she told the police she had called them, and had tried to get into Meredith's room, when there was no record of the call, and when forensics looked at the door it had not one fingerprint of Knoxs or her boyfriends, there was only the prints of the police, incidcating whoever had last used the door had wiped it down.
And also was she not seen buying bleach?
I also do not like the why the so called independent experts on the DNA seem to get all their information from American cases, not European. For instance they said international protocols were followed, but there is no such thing. The European protocols were followed however. It just seemed a bit like they were helped by the American defence.
If I was on a jury for this case I would say guilty. (actually is it just judges who rule guilt or not in this case, or is there a mix of jury or judge).

[kelly2000]

fastweb,
I think you can go to the ministry of justice to find court records. If you have an athens password you could look up things like lexisnexis. I would have to check though. You coudl also got to a law school bookshop and they probably have them.
However English ones go on forever, and ever. Plus the judges in England who write these, do not actually decide on guilt or not. It is a jury, who do not contribute any written records to the cases and are not allowed to speak about them. However American juries are allowed to speak after the cases, and say why they gave their verdicts.

Sadly it seems there is a bit of a CSI effect, with people who know nothing about science or DNA thinking there always has to be DNA evidence that someone actually killed someone, and no other evidence really counts.
There was this one case where a woman was found shot, her husband that night cut out a large whole from the carpet, and bedboard and burnt it, then cashed the insurance money after her death and moved in with his lover. He got a not guilty verdict, and one juror said she was certain he did it, but gave a not guilty verdict as she felt the science was not there. It tuned out she had not one science qualification.

[DuelingFanjo]

I think it's quite odd that the report ssay that because the defensive wounds were minimal there must have been more than one person attacking her! Surely there are several cases where women have been sexually assaulted/attacked/killed by one person where there were few defensive wounds?

it just seems to me that they wanted to fit the crime to their already decided theory.

[Portofino]

kelly, I wrote this one another thread: they found a black hair at the crime scene > Amanda's phone had a message from Lumumba telling her not to come into work> Police realise that Amanda has a connection with a black man > she is interrogated for hours without a lawyer or a translator > she "confesses" that Lumumba was at the apartment. Imho - it was the police that concocted this scenario - not Amanda.

That "confession" was deemed inadmissable for the criminal trial. The jury only heard it as the civil case by Lumumba was run concurrently.

I can't remember all the details about the phone calls - but there were records. In fact it was the "postal" police who arrived first at the scene as someone had found Meredith's phone - they came completely unprompted by anyone. She was not seen buying bleach - this was discredited. And there was no evidence of a clear up. Guede's DNA was all over the murder scene, whereas there none of AK and RS's.

[kelly2000]

It depends on what the defensive wounds were. If there was nothing under the victims nails for instance, whilst it appears they had time to fight back, it would make it appear their arms were being held whilst they were being killed.
If there were no defensive wounds whatsoever it might appear that the victim was completely subdued i.e through being threatened, or the attacker was unexpected and even someone they trusted again making the attack unexpected and not giving the victim time to struggle. However if there were defense injuries yet no major one it might indicate the victim did strugle yet for some reason not very much despite the fact they were fighting for their life. it is not unreasonable to suggest this was because more thanone person was holding the victim down, making a struggle difficult.

[RedRubyBlue]

Why did RS tell the police that MK's DNA got onto the knife when he 'accidentally' pricked MK's finger while they were cooking at his flat.

MK had never visited his flat. There were too many lies told. The alternative to lying is telling the truth. The lies lead them to jail and the truth would have done as well.

I think all three were involved and had ingested something a little stronger than weed that night.

[DuelingFanjo]

defensive wounds were on hand and fingers iirc

[kelly2000]

portofino,
yes that was one of the issues, a neighbour found the phone in her garden and called the police. When they arrived at the house, Knox and her boyfriend were there and said they had called the police as they could not get into meredith's bedroom despite trying. The police had no records of their call, and there were no fingerprints or anything on the door despite their claims they had been trying it.

[kelly2000]

The call to the flatmate was also weird. If I had come home found the door open, bloody footprints in the bathroom and no-one about, I would have called a flatmate then and there. However Knox said she though the flatmates left the door open whilst they nipped out, and that the blood was menstrual. Ok fair enough. But if she was so unbothered about it, why did she call her flatmate hours later and mention it saying she had seen blood and was worried about meredith (baring in mind the forth flatmate was also not there, yet she never mentioned her). It does not make sense. If she had mentioned it in a moaning way i.e "you know what i went home and someone had left the door open, and someone has had their period and not cleaned up, its disgusting, I bet it was meredith but I cannot find her, shes just gone off and left a mess", then I would understand, but she was saying she was worried when earlier she was not was odd.

[redandgreen]

I just wanted to post a couple of extracts from the full pdf report about the kitchen knife (see below) - this is all from the prosecution experts. The defense experts concur. There is not one expert who says the kitchen knife could have killed meredith.

'He ruled out that the knife (Exhibit 36) could have caused the wound on the opposite side (still inflicted on the neck but on the right side) because of the size of the wound (1 cm and a half with a depth of 4 cm) and the fact that at 4 cm from the tip the width of the blade of the knife is about 3 cm and therefore much larger than the width of the wound (as indicated, 1.5cm).'

'On the point regarding compatibility of the wounds with the knife Exhibit 36, he affirmed that this had to be ruled out for the lesion on the right, 4 centimetres deep and 1.4 centimetres wide, and recalling the assessments made on pages 47 and 48 of the report, he stated that at 4 centimetres from the point of the blade, the blade is wider by 1.5 centimetres, and therefore a blade of those dimensions penetrating for 4 centimetres would have had to cause a bigger ?breach‛; therefore it could not have been the blade of the knife which was Exhibit 36.'

[redandgreen]

The prosecution scenario hypothesises that a pocket knife was the murder weapon but it has never been found. Both Sollecito and Guede carried pocket knives but I can't find anywhere whether the knives they each
respectively carried were accounted for.

All the experts also agree that it could have been a single attacker and the possibility of more than one attacker is only called into question by Sollecito's defense, who says the room was too small for 3 attackers.

The bra clasp that was kicking around in the the bedroom for 46 days is the strongest evidence against either Amanda or Sollecito. They certainly did well to get rid of any other evidence of their presence and their blood-stained clothing, while leaving the evidence of Guede in the room and only being seen out of the apartment by a lone drunken tramp.

There is a lot of unexplained stuff whatever scenario you get on board with. No way I'd agree to send anyone to jail on what was in that report posted by fastweb - other than Guede of course.

[redandgreen]

Btw I'm not really proud of myself for being so interested in this case. The thought that Meredith was brutally murdered by a student flatmate who was considered a friend was just beyond horrific to me. Although it does seem that if the police had started with the evidence rather than cod psycholgy the entire scenario with Knox and Sollecito would never have been dreamt up.

[madam52]

This reminds me of the Rachel Nickell case where Colin Stagg was sentenced jailed and had case later dropped and released on emergence of new evidence.
I think his was a case of trial by press/general public and basically even after his acquittal many people just cant accept his innocence or even the possibility of it because 'he seems a bit creepy'.
Including me to a point I must admit . Its just so much easier to villify someone who's a bit odd or different or a bit of a misfit.

[madam52]

Oh and there was that deputy head a few years ago who was accused of killing his teenage stepdaughter. He looked quite arrogant and lounge lizardy if you remember. Then the young girl who was last seen getting a pizza and going back to her flat [head like a sieve emoticon] - they arrested her landlord who was a very strange looking critter to say the least. Most people were totally convinced it must be him and didnt think for a minute they might have the wrong man - they did - purely because he looked creepy.Whether or not these people were or are guilty in the end is irrelevant in a way. As a civilised society allegedly we really cant go round throwing the book at someone because they look smug or shifty or are a bit different.

[kelly2000]

madam,
As far as I am aware Sion Jenkins had also been accused of battering his wife about the head so in fairness it was not just his looks that turned peopel against him.

Redandgreen,
I think in fairness there was a lot of evidence against Knox - her bloody footprints for one. The police could easily have just arrested Guede if they wanted just to close the case. Why fabricate a scenario just to arrest two more people. two people who they know will appeal, and have expensive legal teams. It certainly would have been easier for the police just to say this was a one off event by a known drug dealer rather than come up with a reason to arrest two middle class students in a town that largely relies on foreign students. The fact is that no-one seems to care about whether the African immigrant did it, but are up in arms at the arrest of two white middle class westerners.

[redandgreen]

Yep, trial by looking or acting a bit odd.

To be fair, sifting through all the evidence and making a case based on what actually happened is always going to take longer than seizing on the nearest eccentric and everyone wants the killer off the streets asap.

[RedRubyBlue]

I agree that the press should hang their heads in shame at the way AK was portrayed and the irresponsible reporting that went on.

One day a murderer will walk free because the chance of a fair trial would have been destroyed by hacks printing what the hell they like.

It nearly happened with Rosemary West, papers were offering witnesses tens of thousands of pounds for their story before the case even went to trial. One key witness took them up on it as well.

[kelly2000]

Redandgreen,
How is the trial of Knox based on her oddness. Do you think the forensics and police committed perjury because they thought she was odd? her behaviour is only mentioned very briefly as circumstantial evidence against her.

[redandgreen]

I looked through that whole report. There was one print that could potentially have been Knox's, but it was on a pillow which isn't a very good surface to take clear imprints and is admitted by the forensic expert for the prosecution to be inconclusive. There were loads of Guede's footprints though. Have a look yourself.

I can only imagine that someone acting for the prosecution is very charasmatic and single-minded, and couldn't move away from the original theory. There are certainly enough things that make you think 'hmmm, that is weird' surrounding AK and RS but nothing in the room that suggests more than one person attacked MK - apart from maybe the aforementioned bra-clasp of kicking about the room for over 6 weeks fame.

[redandgreen]

I shouldn't have said trial by oddness, but she was suspected for her oddness, not because of the evidence.

[kelly2000]

redruby,
The trial was in Italy, and judges are unlikely to be influenced by the british press. In most countries the press do not report on crimes like they do in England. The papers here seem to be missing a morality chip. They seem to forget thta it is real people they talk about. I remember the dailymail printed apicture of merediths body pointing out where you coudl see her foot. Her father complained baout the media doing this, and the next day there was a rather unpleasant article in their paper making some remarks about whether she wanted to engage in sex games or something like that.

But I think the same people going on about how Knox was portrayed are ignoring Guede for the same reason - the press. The press have not concentrated on him, so neither does anyone else. There are not threads about him, with people like us argueing about the evidence against him, even though the evidence against him was collected by the very same people who collected evidence against Knox. If the evidence used against Knox was flawed, then it has to be flawed against Guede also.

To be honest no-one but the killers will ever really know the real truth about what happened, and why.

[kelly2000]

redandgreen,
i think in many cases the police are first alerted by people not behaving how people in that situation normally would. When Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire ripper was first arrested, it was simply because he had been with a prostitute. When he was being interviewed one of the police officers thought there was something odd about him, and went back to look where they had arrested him, and found a bloody hammer.
A man's wife is found dead, and he then moves his lover in. Nothing illegal in that, but it will arouse suspicions and the police will look at him a bit more closely.
people acting shifty or suspiciously is of course going to make the police double check their stories in a murder investigation. You cannot sya to the police, well their alibi doe snot exist but you cannot charge them as you only checked their alibi because they were acting oddly.