Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito guilty verdict annulled by Italian court

[DuelingFanjo]

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Always thought they were completely innocent and often argued their case on here.

Feel very sorry for the Kercher family who have been dragged through years of shit.

Shame that Guede will be out soon.

What a relief, they can now move on with their lives.

Loon, I look at AK body language and behaviour in interview and I'm very much reminded of my son, who is on the autistic spectrum.

I'm not saying she is on the spectrum but I think that behaviours that are a little unusual and "wrong" the the context of a murder investigation were seen as guilt or hiding something.

In her press conference yesterday she looked like someone trying very hard to use the appropriate facial expressions and body language to convey her relief in a way that's socially acceptable, it looked quite practiced.
I think she's under huge pressure to "act normal".

I don't know why I feel so much doubt over this - Amanda Knox's behaviour in press conferences doesn't strike me as genuine or heartfelt. I really don't know what to think.

I have no particular feelings about her one way or the other but I have seen this sentiment expressed a number of times. I don't think coming across badly in press conferences etc is enough to think someone is guilty of murder though. I'm not sure how many people who found themselves in a similar situation would behave in a way that was acceptable to the wider public. So many go with 'no smoke without fire' for example.

I've just never understood the accusation that Knox and Sollecito would team up with someone they'd never met to kill Meredith on the spur of the moment.

Good.

Agree she comes across as a bit odd at times but that doesn't make her a murderer. They've had the guilty person locked up for years now. It's never made sense that Knox and Raffaele would have been involved. Not only from the pov that they barely knew each other so it's very unlikely that they'd suddenly come up with a plan to butcher Meredith but also from the overwhelming lack of forensic evidence.

That prosecution case was always based on the fantasy of one man, wasn't it?

No, the theory of a sex game was one man's but the case was built on a lot more than that.

The couple who gave RS and AK a lift to the police station were suspicious to the point of searching their car. They suspected them long before the police.

Meredith Kercher RIP

I think it is utter nonsense to base views of guilt or innocence on how they appear in pictures or interviews - this is not Big Brother. Not having a cuddly TV persona, does not make someone a murder.

The evidence just wasn't there - and most of what people think was the evidence, was 'sexed-up' and slut-shaming tabloid nonsense. All the credible evidence pointed to Guede alone. Hopefully they can now move on with lives

trial by jury worries me sometimes

Floraclare

That's simply not true.

MK's DNA was found on the knife in RS's flat - a place she had never been. DNA was found in Fillomena's room - how did it get there?

MK had to have been held down by someone and knife wounds came from both sides, so it was either more than one person or someone with at least 3 arms holding her down and stabbing.

The fake burglary - who did that?

The confessions?

The accusation of Patrick Lumumba(?sp)?

The call to the police not being made, but calls to Seattle and RS's sister were.

The mobile phones and the bomb threat?

Well, I am even more confused now than I was at the time of the trial.
I really wish there'd not been such a circus around the whole thing which really as far as the public went confused the picture something terrible.

And of course how somebody appears on TV says nothing about their guilt or innocence.

I'm very pleased about this.

In the uk they would never have been charged.

The DNA evidence is thought by many, including experts in the field as unreliable, and could be down to cross contamination.

For the family of Meredith Kercher. No nearer closure.

someone is serving 16 years for her murder - it is not an unsolved crime.
there is no closure in false imprisonment of innocent people either

There fact that another person was involved was stated at each stage and accepted - nver disputed even by the jury. So if people think it wasn't them, who was it? The evidence points to the fact he simply couldn't have done it alone. That's always been accepted.

Sashh

The majority of pathologists at the trial stated that injuries consistent with lone killer - and that injuries consistent with one knife.

There was no fake burglary - Guede was a known burglar, who had a history of entering properties in the exact same way

The DNA evidence has been widely criticised - just read what Professor Gill had to say. AK lived at the cottage and RS had visited many times - it is normal for their DNA to be found in their home. The knife did not match the wounds. The forensic evidence was shoddy nonsense! And don't believe me, believe the multiple experts that have spoken out about this

There was no confession, just a confused and coerced statement, from a terrified girl who was interrogated at night in a language she barely understood after being denied access to a lawyer and being hit around the head

I'm really hoping that people will finally stop hounding innocent people, with the lies they've read about in the tabloids or on the hate sites!

Floraclare

She had an interpreter with her, she chose to go with RS tot he police station after they had eaten dinner, so not exactly late night and the 'interrogation' was less than 2 hours.

Yes it is normal to leave DNA in places you have been which is why MK's being at RS's flat where whee had never been is evidence against them.

The 'staged' burglary was just that, staged with glass on top of clothes, nothing taken and has been accepted as false by all sides.

RG's conviction is that he was not acting alone, can he appeal now?

I'm really hoping that people will finally stop hounding innocent people, with the lies they've read about in the tabloids or on the hate sites!

And what about the court documents? Or the witness statements both to the police and in court?

Yes it is normal to leave DNA in places you have been which is why MK's being at RS's flat where whee had never been is evidence against them.

Not if it was due to cross contamination.

I think it is time people stopped minimising the involvement of Guede. And I'm not asking you to believe me sashh, but I do think you should read what Professir Gill said about the nonsense knife evidence - when a top DNA expert says it is nonsense, you really should listen!

And as for the interrogation - I wonder why the tapes mysteriously disappeared?

Guede had a fast track trial, which misses out the evidence stage - if mistakes were made and the multiple attackers nonsense went unchallenged, this should have nothing to do with the trial of AK/RS. The evidence clearly showed the crime was consistent with a lone attacker. I'm hopeful that people will now stop minimising his involvement

There fact that another person was involved was stated at each stage and accepted - nver disputed even by the jury. So if people think it wasn't them, who was it? The evidence points to the fact he simply couldn't have done it alone. That's always been accepted.

Accepted by who? It seems from what I've read that there are plenty of people who don't accept this and there have been interpretations of the evidence which can indeed support a scenario in which Guede acted alone.

when Guede was first questioned he didn't mention anybody else having been there, iirc

he was fed that suggestion the same way AK was fed Patrick Lumumba

the prosecutor Mignini decided what had happened & made the "evidence" fit his theory.

I was surprised at the acquittal. I thought they were guilty. It will be interesting to read the court papers when they are released.

Floraclare there have been numerous experts on both sides arguing the complete opposite to each other in this case. Professor Gill may have said it was nonsense but there were other experts both in DNA and statistical analysis who argued that the cross-contamination argument was not sound.

I'm not going to go round all the arguments surrounding the case again but I know a number of solicitors both in the UK and in Italy who were confident Knox and Sollecito would have been convicted in the UK. Their opinion was based on court transcripts and papers not on tabloid media conjecture.

It's been a horrendous process for the Kercher family and I only hope the court papers help in some way to explain how this has all happened, both the murder and the tortuous legal path to this point.

www.thecommentator.com/article/3069/justice_taking_second_place_to_a_system_saving_face

"having illegally extracted confessions from Knox and trumpeted to the press the subsequent arrests of Knox, Sollecito and a third man – whose name had, according to Preston and Spezi, been suggested to Knox under duress by interrogators – not to mention leaking details of the interrogation to the press, Mignini's, initially 'satanic', sex-game-gone-wrong scenario became 'fact'.

"But with the arrest of Rudy Guede, a drug-dealing drifter with a history of burglary and harassing women, and whose DNA was all over the crime scene, Mignini came under real pressure.

"With all the evidence now pointing to Guede, rather than Knox and Sollecito, and with the Monster investigation fiasco looming, Mignini, desperate to keep his sex-game-gone wrong scenario alive, released the Knox-named suspect and simply substituted him with Guede, even though Guede had never met or known Knox or Sollecito.

"In his subsequent defence Guede did not play ball. He never mentioned Knox or Sollecito, sticking to his story that he and Meredith had had consensual sex, that he had left and some other third party had committed the crime. In the US, detectives call this the SODDI defence, as commonly employed by rapist-murderers: 'We had sex. I split. Some Other Dude Did It.'

"Preston and Spazi document Mignini's subsequent campaign to stand the sex-game story up – investigators rounding up helpful witnesses, repeated examination of the crime scene, and then, after five months in prison, Guede changing his story completely to fit the Mignini plot line, the 'other Dude' being Raffaele Sollecito, and so on. DNA was eventually found, months later, linking the couple to the scene and the rest is history. Mignini got his conviction and his face was saved."

Or you could read the court transcripts. Really there's no need to rely on sensationalist reporting on either side.

Am I the only one that finds all of these 'sensationalist summary theories' disrespectful to Meredith and think they contributed to the focus on/demonisation of Knox? There has been so much shoddy reporting and unsubstantiated gossip on the internet. I had hoped the final verdict would draw a line under it but obviously not.

APlaceOnTheCouch there are also a lot of solicitors who think it was nonsense - read the analysis by Fred Davies. Most non-anonymous experts that have spoken out, have been in favour of AK/RS and have found the evidence against them deeply flawed

I agree it is time to stop the back and for arguments though, I don't think is going to change the mind of anyone.

Hopefully, some of the hate sites will have to remove the lies now and maybe find someone else to harrass.