The sad case of Meredith Kercher

[FreeGeorgeJackson]

I feel for her parents. The trial seems to have gone on for ages doenst it?
I cant see ( form what i read) how kNox will get off.

Sorry MrsRuffalo. I am sure no one means to distress anyone, including the kercher's family.

lenin - am not sure how the alibi's don't match up in the original statements made. Though am having difficulty finding a transcript of what was said by AK and RS before the rettracted statements were given.

this is what RS said after a few days of giving statemnts. Certainly he seems to have a slightly different version of events.

"I looked at that TrueJustice site and found it a bit Miss Marple" and this thread isn't?

Honestly, the way in which some on this thread are obsessing over the evidence and spending their time searching the internet for supposed "evidence" (because everything you read on the net is of course accurate, ) is bizarre in the extreme.

Do you know Amanda Knox personlly? because if not I can't possibly see why you would want to spend so much time obsessing over a woman who has been found guilty of the brutal murder of a young woman in a court of law, where judges and juries had access to all of the evidence and decided, beyond reasonable doubt, that she is guilty.

And this is not just about DNA evidence. Murderers were convicted long before DNA testing was available, were they all innocent too?

I don't know her personally. I am worried about a miscarriage of justice though.

In this case teh DNA evidence is really important as so much of the other 'evidence' is circumstantial.It is important to recognise when DNA evidence might not be correct.

but why? There's nothing you can do about it if it was, that's what the appeals process is for.

No Wannabe, this thread isn't particularly 'Miss Marple' in its approach: there is very little here of people claiming to know what was really going on and a lot of questioning about what the evidence is and what the various sides are claiming.
There is a serious chance that this might be a miscarriage of justice, which makes it worth discussing. The idea that because a court have a reached a verdict there is no more to be said is ridiculous - miscarriages of justice are almost certainly very rare, but they do exist.

There's nothing you can do about most of what happens in the news, but people still discuss it.

This is making me think a bit about Colin Stagg, the guy who supposed killed Rachel Nickell. He was "obviously" guilty as sin and was pilloried by the media at the time. Only trouble of course, being that he didn't actually do it!

And I remember my one instance of Jury Service, fortunately for something much less serious. But in that case the evidence was very clear, the law relating to it was very clear, but most members of the jury wanted to acquit an obviously guilty man because they felt sorry for him! He was nice looking and mentioned working with disabled children. In that case, it turned out he had a lot of previous and was sent to prison for several years.

My point is I suppose that the dynamics in the Jury room can't be ignored. The trial was very long and drawn out. And the Jury was not sequestered, they were free to read newspapers/watch TV about the case.

I think the jury is different to here isn't it? There are only a few members of the public.

it is : INFO

"The court's ruling (which is not called a verdict in Italy) is made by an eight-member jury: six laymen and two professional judges. They will vote, and the majority rules. In the case of a tie, the presiding judge Giancarlo Massei gets a second vote to break the tie. "

Decision made by eight-strong jury, composed of six lay people and two judges

Discussions with trial judge before verdict announced

No explanation for verdict will be provided immediately, instead within 90 days

Anyone convicted has 90 days to appeal. If not, the sentence becomes definitive

Appeals heard at the regional Assisi Appeals Court, or at Italy's highest court, the Corte Suprema di Cassazione, for final verdict

IIRC they can't appeal until this report is made.

Incidentally does anyone know if a similar report had to be printed after Rudy Guede was convicted, or does a fast track trial negate that?

this doesn't compare at all to Colin Stagg.

there was no evidence against him

So he was led into a honey trap to try to get him to confess as he aledgedly fitted the profile for the killer.

He was aquitted - never found guilty.

"The bathroom scene with the bloody footprint on the bathmat, makes it clear that there was a clean up job that went on. Where were the footprints leading up to that footprint on the bathmat? They'd gone"

true. It could certainly have been cleaned up by Guede before he faked a rape scene and/or robbery.

I have read the Micheli Report before, or at least the bits I can find which were translated. Hadn't realised it was the 90 day report on the reasons for Guede's conviction.

Seems that he (Micheli) believes the same thing put forward in Mignini's second proposed scenario. I Can see that Micheli totally dismissed Guede's version that he had been in the toilet listening to his i-pod while AK and RS killed Meredith. He believes that Amanda let him in to the house, that the original intent of all three was sexual so therefore planned.

I haven't been following the facts of the case, but don't understand why the DNA evidence would be given any weight at all as of course Amanda's DNA would be at the flat and other places, including trace evidence which can be transferred.

Thanks for the article link, DF -- very interesting about the Italian judicial system.

Amanda testified in court that she did not have a friendship with Guede and she did not remember his name. IIRC they were introduced socially but Sollecito dind't know him at all. Infact Sollecito had not known Amanda very long at all.

'However when something really did upset her - being sent to prison for murder - she cried, she had a normal reaction. Which suggests that the uncaring behaviour was just that, uncaring - she didn't care that her flatmate had been brutally murdered.'

It seemed odd to me too. But I wonder if she might be autistic? Sometimes autistic members of my family can react in strange ways to stress.

why are you repeating yourself Dittany?

but 'knew' can mean different things so it's not a non-point, it nuances it a bit. ie yes there is evidence they had met but no more than that.