Friday, September 21, 2012
The Rather Strained Couric-Sollecito Interview: Reading Between The Lines (2)
Posted by James Higham
Katie Couric interviewed Sollecito, more briefly and frostily than expected, last Tuesday afternoon in New York. You can read the transcript here.
Sicily based blogger Welshcakes Limoncello commented on a summary of the interview I posted on my own website. “Do you think we will ever know the truth?”
It was a neutral statement, one so many must have made around the world when they considered the case in as much detail as the media allowed. The short answer, for those who’ve gone into the evidence in as much detail as PMF, TJMK and dozens of others, including me have, is a resounding: “Yes, we do actually. We are as sure as any court needs to be or has ever been, short of a signed confession.”
This is not an even playing field in the least. The evidence points one way, the professionals in the field concur, the Kercher family who, one needs to remember, were neutrals in the sense of whoever emerged as the killers they’d be down on, have sat through every bit of evidence as it was presented and they concur. Nineteen justices who reviewed the case concurred.
One can’t just sweep that under the carpet, claiming there was “zero evidence”, not when that time and effort when into gathering and considering it all, not when consideration of the evidence presented filled hundreds of pages. Just what are people trying to pull, claiming there was “zero evidence”?
And the defence ““ it hasn’t chosen to attack pieces of evidence [around 130 pieces of it] which they know they can’t attack. They picked on two main pieces in the appeal and failed to establish either, except in the minds of Zanetti and Hellman, the appointee who came in when the original trial judge was replaced. Would he risk his reputation and hundreds of pages of scathing consideration of Hellman and Zanetti if there was zero in it in the first place?
I mean, at what point doe blind denial cease and the cumulative weight of evidence win the day? Not cherrypicking two pieces of evidence and the judges refusing to hear the rest. I mean cumulatively ““ all of it.
And cumulatively is the only way to approach this case ““ what the totality of evidence, not the cherrypicking, points to. The weight of that evidence, from the DNA to the false alibis and the phone calls, would be sufficient to put anyone away, let alone the Supreme Court view that there was most certainly more than one killer, a point Sollecito, in his Couric interview, does not pooh-pooh. Wasn’t that interesting? He hopes the Kerchers will one day find the killers.
Not only was Sollecito forgetful of what had already been given as evidence but he has shown himself an inveterate liar. When you accuse someone of being a liar, as a certain commenter at Orphans of Liberty is wont to regularly accuse me of, being asked to produce his evidence of that and then dropping into assertion and ad hominem with no evidence whatever, the outcome is not one of life and death.
In Sollecito’s case, it is ““ the death of Meredith Kercher. So, I’ve accused him of being a liar. Where is my evidence? See this post by the Machine of April 2009.
There comes a point when one wonders why most who are still supporting Knox and Sollecito are doing so. One can understand the family and close friends doing so against all the evidence but not people like that professor at John Jay University who made the same assertions, minus evidence and relied on his learned credentials to convince.
Minus evidence, minus evidence ““ it has to be repeated over and over.
[Below: a previous interviewee who was more in Katie Couric’s class]
Posted by James Higham on 09/21/12 at 07:25 PM in The officially involved, News media & movies, Raff Sollecito, Raff Sollecito PR, Raff Sollecito #2
Comments
For Katie it is just another interview. She does not have the time or inclination to spend hundreds of hours (that is the time I guess I have spent going through the documents- both sides) going through boring documents just to ask a couple of questions to a stranger (and a possible killer).
For Katie the audience is important and she need to factor in the proportion in her audience who is reasonably and fairly familiar with the detailed technical backgrounds. She kept her questions simple and basic (everybody can understand) and there is no need to dig deep.
For Katie it is an interview of Knox: RS will not be there unless AK is directly involved. I presume most in the audience have never heard of RS and few about AK. But I will give her good marks: she clearly conveyed that she is not satisfied with the answers. He has cast shadows of doubt once more on AK.
For Katie it is doubly tricky: the (US) media is mostly on the side of AK but she does not want to take sides (and look biased). She never followed up a question not because she does not want to but simply because the show will be forgotten by the next week. Good for her.
The AK fanboys have made a smart move: they have brought into the picture the experts (so called) who speak in a language common man does not understand and therefore, by default, must be true. The greatest of their heroes is C&V (no, not Greg Hampikian, by the way); they together must have sucked in many. Unfortunately both were weak on their basic brief and got trapped. I do not think anyone believes them anymore.
The overall impression for the common man in the street (who watched the show) is clear: the chap is hiding something!
Personally I did not expect much and was not disappointed much!
Minus and minus make one plus
The reason for this we need not discuss
Posted by chami on 09/21/12 at 10:11 PM | #
I’ll bet the Knox clan’s eyeballs were glued to their sets for these interviews.
Wonder if R has sent AK an autographed copy of the book (with a special inscription?) or will she have to purchase her own copy? She couldn’t dare attend next Tuesday’s signing, as she’d surely be mobbed (by her fans and supporters, of course).
I think his folks would have been wisest to let him sit out his pre-appeal days in jail without interfering. That would have been a much surer indication of their trust in the system and belief in his innocence. Instead, they are all tainted. Lies only beget more lies.
As for the big , week-long romance, he never loved her; it was pure infatuation and intoxication at the sudden, endless orgy. She was simply another drug for him, and his possessiveness is an expression of the addict fighting to protect his supply.
Posted by mimi on 09/21/12 at 11:52 PM | #
Hi Chami
Most of us were quite impressed. She was seemingly set up the same way Saul Kassin was, highly one-sided, with RS’s book and the so-called experts you mention.
But she seemingly read here at the site and some of the questions were those we hoped for. So she did a u-turn in quite a short timeframe. That is impressive and has not happened a lot.
The Sollecito segment was heavily promoted here with trailers on TV and nothing else on the show that afternoon was promoted, so it appears she cut the Sollecito segment down from 40 minutes plus ads to just half that in a hurry.
I found most interesting how she progressively became icy and turned away from him at the breaks. At the end where he awkwardly said thank-you he said it to the top of her head!
Body language and tone suggested she went through a process during the interview of judging him and perceived he was lying and she was increasingly ticked.
I thought Hopeful got it 100% right. http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/the_rather_strained_couric-sollecito_interview_reading_between_the_lin/
Something esle. The Couric interview was seemingly intended as the flagship legitimizing interview with the hope that a whole lot of other hosts would then want him. That didnt happen.
In fact since we put up the YouTube and his own father began to reject him in Italy (posts soon) he has not been seen. We will see if he is on the Jane Velez Mitchell crime show at 7:00 tonight.
***
Added: This is hilarious! Legal talk show host Jane Velez Mitchell on CNN has RS and a legal commentator on (Wendy Murphy) who is furiously chopping the ground out from under Sollecito’s feet.
A couple of years ago JVM was one of the most adamant defenders. She had an entire panel screaming for Italian blood and its just as well they did not take the next plane out there.
What happened in the meantime? Well this for one thing: her senior colleague on CNN, the much more popular Nancy Grace, saying in her view AK did do it.
Wendu Murphy by the way has spoken against RS and AK out before. Anyone want to download and watch the video? I’ll get to work and put it up there.
Not to be missed!
Posted by Peter Quennell on 09/22/12 at 01:51 AM | #
Just watched this interview on You Tube.
Good for Katie Couric and she really has Raffaele sweating.
You are right, Peter, she becomes progressively icier towards him and the ending was very telling.
She doesn’t even mention him at the beginning when outlining to the audience who is coming on her show/s!!
Now, I believe, the knitting is beginning to unravel.
R.I.P. Meredith Kercher
Posted by thundering on 09/23/12 at 12:16 PM | #
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