Category: N America context

Saturday, January 09, 2016

How A Major Media Controversy In The US Augurs Well For The Imminent Reframing Of The “Knox Case”

Posted by Our Main Posters


1. The Wisconsin Case Now In Dispute

1. The Netflix Report

In mid December a pay-per-view documentary about a murder case in Wisconsin was put online.

Millions of people in the US and elsewhere have paid up and watched the 10-hour Netflix report. Convinced that they are experts now on the whole case, hundreds of thousands of Americans have signed petitions to the President and the State Governor requesting that the convicted Steve Avery be released.

Some viewers have even taken to berating and threatening the investigators and the prosecution both online and in telephone messages and texts.

Their take seems to be of the investigators and the prosecution corruptly making many, many things up during the investigation and trial. Their supposed motive was to cover their tails in a previous case where Steve Avery was indeed wrongly convicted, for which they could now face court and loss of jobs.

Furthermore some reports claimed that a juror had said the jury felt intimidated and were never convinced of guilt.

2. Reaction Of US Media

A growing wave of reports and articles have been aired and published online in effect saying most of the hardest evidence was left out.

The lead prosecutor has been quoted as saying “90 percent of the evidence” against Avery and a relative convicted as an accomplice was not even mentioned in the report.

So a wave of fact-checking is going on.

Even though it is still early days here and here are Time Magazine. Here is the Los Angeles Times. Here is the New York Times. Here is On Milwaukee’s website. Here is the International Business Times.

Several TV documentaries contradicting the Netflix report are reportedly already in the works. See the reports here and here and also here.

And the juror has now denied that the jury was intimidated and did not do an honest job. So far, all the jurors seem to be standing by their verdict, in the face of a lot of heat.

Oh and on those petitions which Netflix stirred? President Obama’s spokesman has said it is not a Federal case so he will not intervene, and the Governor of Wisconsin has said he will not intervene either, as the state has good justice systems in place.

So they will ignore opinion that was deliberately muddled for commercial ends, and instead leave matters to the courts.

2. Parallels To Reporting Of The “Knox Case”

The parallels to the Perugia case are in fact immense.

The prosecution case in 2009 was extremely persuasive and the entire jury (panel of judges) voted for guilt. They sat through the very tough and convincing 1/4 of the trial that was held behind closed doors.

A majority of Italians still believe that Amanda Knox led a cruel pack attack on Meredith and (to Guede’s and Sollecito’s seeming considerable shock) landed the fatal stab in Meredith’s neck.  They watched Knox on the stand for two days, in fact doing herself great harm.

In contrast, almost the entire American media followed the Netflix route.

Main media have struggled to report the trial for language and local-staff reasons, and the Associated Press carried by 2000 media outlets actively misled. Main media presented almost no reporting of the very painstaking judicial checking by ten judges that preceded the case ever going to court.

Main media have still not translated not even one major document (the Wiki and two PMFs and TJMK have translated hundreds of documents now and are still not done) and have left hundreds of evidence points unaddressed.

Main media have also misreported the overturning of the Hellmann outcome and the Nencini appeal. They have especially misrepresented the supposed complete Marasca-Bruno reversal for the Fifth Chambers of the Supreme Court.

As lawyers for Dr Mignini and three of our main posters (James Raper, Machiavelli and Catnip) have shown, in fact the Fifth Chambers (a) should not even have had the case; (b) broke two laws, (c) misinterpreted a few elements of the evidence, (d) left literally hundreds of evidence points out, (e) went against strongly established Italian legal precedents, and (f) even ridiculed plain hard science.

And even so, they still placed Knox right at the scene of the attack at the time, and Sollecito probably so. Accessories before or after the crime. Felons in their view in fact.

So here’s a prediction on what Americans will see in the media soon on this case.

The widespread media reaction against Netflix will be reflected in a major correction in the main media against the serious under-reporting and misreporting of the Perugia case.

We have some idea of what is already in the works. Stay tuned.

 

Posted by Our Main Posters on 01/09/16 at 11:52 AM • Permalink for this post • Archived in The legal followups,  News media & movies,  Media developments,  The wider contexts,  N America context,  Hoaxers: media groups,  Assoc Press • Comments here (24)

Monday, April 06, 2015

Columbia University Journalism School Blasts Fabricated Story - But What Of Hundreds In Our Case?

Posted by Peter Quennell


1. The Damage From False Media Reports

Once a false meme is put out there it can do immense harm and be almost impossible to turn around.

Public relations houses try to propagate memes, and if they are false that is sleazy and unethical but usually does not contravene criminal law.

But serious media spreading such memes have a very strong moral mandate and at times a legal mandate to check, double-check, and check again.

Often the real damage extends way beyond immediate victims and witnesses and families and friends. It can chill and distort right across law enforcement and the justice system and deeply affect paranoia-prone minds.

2. The Rolling Stone Article Report

What was misreported in the fortnightly Rolling Stone is described chronologically today by Rolling Stone itself here.

Essentially, an experienced reporter with a valid story did not go the extra mile to check if her highly inflammatory flagship claim was true.

There seems no question now that it was not.

The first report that the story did not smell right was posted by a respected reporter here. A week later, the Washington Post reported serious discrepancies here and here.

A few days later Rolling Stone itself cautiously began to ‘fess up. The story was indeed untrue. Neither the reporter nor the editor had checked, double-checked, and checked again.

Its owner Jann Renner contracted with the Columbia University Graduate Journalism School to publish an in-depth report.  The supposed victim was increasingly contradicted by her own friends and shown to have changed stories a lot. On 23 March local police reported that their investigation turned up no sign of a crime.

Yesterday the journalism school published their conclusions on “What Went Wrong” and they will make available and summarise the full version of their report on April 8th.

Damage has rippled on and on not least to women who have a huge interest in being taken seriously when they have a complaint.

The University of Virgina is in full damage control mode (that campus is about one hour’s drive southwest of Washington). Who could now be charged or sued is discussed here in the Washington Post. Many reputations have come out looking worse.

3. Relevance To Meredith’s Case?

On 27 June 2011 (right in the middle of the Hellmann appeal) Rolling Stone published one of the least accurate and most damaging and defamatory of literally hundreds of inaccurate reports.

Nathaniel Rich reported only in English, of course, from safely across the Atlantic, and there was zero due diligence by the editor at Rolling Stone (the same editor as today). His false claims were very widely quoted elsewhere. See here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here.

Rolling Stone inflamed public opinion through false claims.  It added to the perception that an extradition battle could drop two governments in the soup. That may have impacted the Supreme Court.

Yes, this case of mass misreporting seems every bit as bad.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 04/06/15 at 03:59 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in News media & movies,  The wider contexts,  N America context • Comments here (10)

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Rabid “Ground Report” Owner Rachel Sterne Haot Works For A Prominent Italian-American

Posted by Peter Quennell



New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, brother of CNN’s Chris Cuomo, with the President of the US

Haot “Secretly” Owns Inflammatory Ground Report

The shadowy founder and owner of the bitterly anti-Italian Ground Report “citizen journalism” website works for one of the most prominent Italian-Americans in the United States.

He is Andrew Cuomo, the very pro-Italy governor of the State of New York. Brother of Chris Cuomo who in his CNN TV persona has twice interviewed Amanda Knox, each time seemingly unconvinced and underwhelmed.

In contrast, for Rachel Sterne Haot it has been a case of rabid pedal-to-the-floor Knoxiana and rabid anti-Italian demonizing for the past few years to boost her anemic readership and to try to make a buck. Other website owners with better judgment had previously kicked off these dangerous crazies.

See very typical examples of false accusations of serious crimes by Italian officials here and here and here and here and here. If any media request this help, we can provide links or captures for 150+ more.

Pro-justice pro-Italy pro-Meredith points of view have been remorselessly edited out for nearly four years. Protests of defamation have been repeatedly brushed off with the claim that “a lawyer” who is never named says the defamation is just fine.

This new post below on Ground Report was by the (of course) anonymous “Jay Rap” and represents his sixth inflammatory and highly defamatory post in just three weeks. 

Later in the Interrogation Hoax series, when we have finished laying out what really happened, we’ll take apart all such misleading and defamatory posts. May note be taken of them in Albany and Italy.

The Rudy Guede Hoax

Here’s a quick rebuttal of Jay Rap’s untethered rant about Rudy Guede, who will be the subject of a second hoax series soon. Prior to the attack on Meredith, police had no knowledge or written record of either Rudy Guede or Patrick.

Dr Mignini had never even heard of Guede till analysis days after the murder of his handprint surfaced who he was (Knox didn’t name Guede but carefully pointed at him, as this series of transcripts shows).

Guede did not ever work for the police. Guede did not ever get even one break in this case.

Milan police released him after he was found staying overnight in a Milan pre-school only because he had no prior record, not because anyone in Perugia told them to. In 2009 Guede offered to testify against RS and AK at trial in exchange for a break. HE WAS TURNED DOWN. No breaks at all.

“Knox Was Intentionally Framed By Italian Police”

Rachel Sterne Haot may wish to note that Jay Rap’s made-up accusations here go away beyond what already cost Amanda Knox three years. Everything shown here in bold (and more) is untrue. All of Jay Rap’s histrionic posts are pure fiction. 

If you are following our Interrogation Hoax series, you will see immediately how wildly wrong this all is. If not, scroll down to “2. How Knox helped police with recap/summary”

Following up on the Italian police motive, this series will explore the positive indications that the Italian police intentionally framed Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Here we review the pre-planned illegal interrogations of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. This is a summary of a review here (link).

Again, the motivation for framing Knox and Sollecito is to deflect attention away from Rudy Guede in the killing of Meredith Kercher, so as to conceal the culpability of the Perugian authorities and Giuliano Mignini for having protected and thus enabled Guede to murder Meredith Kercher. In short, self preservation. (For a review of the Police motive for framing Amanda Knox for the murder of Meredith Kercher, please see this previous article (link), or a summary of that article here (link).

The first indication of intentional framing by the Italian police, is the text book characteristics of the intensive and regimented pre-plamnned program of interrogations that were conducted by the police, resulting in falsely incriminating statements from the defendants.

It should first be said, that no confession taken under any circumstance whatsoever, can overcome the overwhelming physical evidence that the murder of Meredith Kercher was committed only by Rudy Guede. The lack of any physical trace of anyone else in the tiny blood soaked room where Meredith was killed, renders it a scientific impossibility that anyone but Rudy Guede, and he alone, killed Meredith Kercher. There is no evidence of a “˜staged break-in’, that claim is simply a distraction from this basic and obvious truth. Having said that, let’s discuss the interrogation.

It is undisputed that in the five days from the discovery of the Kercher murder, to the arrest 5 days later, Amanda Knox was subjected to 43 hours of questioning by the Italian police. The last overnight session went from 10:30pm to 6am the next morning. We need look no further than Steve Moore’s analysis in his contribution to the book; “The Forgotten Killer; Rudy Guede and the Murder of Meredith Kercher”, to understand this process and objectives.

One of the most striking elements of Moore’s narrative, is the extraordinary degree of consistency between the program of interrogation applied against Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito by the Italian police, and that described in a declassified FBI manual discussing techniques for “brain washing” used by the communists in North Korea.

Moore, quoting the FBI the manual; “Deprivation of sleep results in more intense psychological debilitation than does any other method of engendering fatigue. The communists (North Koreans) vary their methods. “Conveyor belt” interrogation that last 50-60 hours will make almost any individual compromise, but there is danger that this will kill the victim. It is safer to conduct interrogations of 8-10 hours at night while forcing the prisoner to remain awake during the day. Additional interruptions in the remaining 2-3 hours of allotted sleep quickly reduce the most resilient individual.”

At 43 hours over 5 days, the Italian police interrogation of Amanda Knox is perfectly consistent with the formal brain washing techniques favored by the North Korean communist totalitarian regime. It is a clear violation of human rights in any civilized country operating under any recognizable rule of law.

Moore also draws special emphasis on the last day of the interrogation, the overnight session. Remarking on the number of detectives, he writes; “The fact that there were twelve detectives in the police station overnight is an indictment in and of itself. If you are going to have twelve detectives available all night for an interrogation, you need to let them know well in advance. You need to schedule them, to change their days off, etc. You need to pay them overtime. In the real world, twelve detectives all night is something that has to be signed-off on by higher ups. What does that tell us? It tells us the interrogation was planned well in advance and intentionally overnight.” (emphasis Moore).

That this process was pre-planned, is also suggested in Amanda Knox’s own account in her book, “Waiting To Be Heard”. When speaking with Rita Ficarra, whom Knox describes as “˜her main interrogator’ and has identified as the officer who twice struck her during the last crucial session, Knox had asked if she could leave Perugia to stay with her Aunt in Germany, and Ficarra’s response; “You can’t leave Perugia. You’re an important part of the investigation”. When Knox inquired how long she would be needed, Ficarra’s reply; We don’t know- maybe months”. When Knox responded that she was planning to go home for Christmas. Ficarra’s response; “We’ll decide if you can do that. We’ll have to hear what the magistrate says when he calls in three days”. This conversation occurred on the morning of November 3rd, the day after the crime was discovered. The decision to specifically target and frame Amanda Knox, was likely made no later than on the evening of November 2nd, 2007, the same evening of the day the crime was discovered.

Regarding the last overnight interrogation, Moore continues; “The reason they interrogated Amanda all night was to break her. Not to get the truth, not to get answers, not to make Perugia safer, but to break her so that she would say what they wanted her to say.”

Reflecting on the overall process, Moore adds; “Amanda Knox was interrogated for eight hours. Overnight. She was denied food and water. She was denied the use of a bathroom. In a police station. In a foreign country. In a foreign language. By a dozen different officers. Without being allowed a lawyer.”

Moore continuing; “The inquisition Amanda Knox endured in Perugia was no more legally or morally defensible than the Salem Witch Trials. No rational person should believe that the results of what she went through are reliable evidence. If you gave me the same amount of time with Knox’s prosecutor (Mignini), I could have made him confess to the crime.”

Moore’s contribution and the book itself are well worth the read for anyone wanting to understand the injustice of the case against Knox and Sollecito, but let’s turn lastly to Moore’s comments on why an interrogation stops.

Moore; “There are two reasons an interrogator stops an interrogation: 1. He/she gets what he/she wants, or 2. He/she gives up. If the interrogator gives up, there is no written statement by the suspect. Therefore if the interrogation ends with a signed statement, you know the interrogator got what he/she wanted and can easily determine what that was. And what did Amanda say that satisfied her inquisitors? “˜I confusedly remember seeing Patrick come out of Meredith’s room.’ So what did they want? They wanted to implicate Patrick Lumumba.”

Moore explains; “Amanda did not bring up the name of Patrick Lumumba. The police did. And they repeatedly told her to “˜imagine’ Patrick and herself being at the cottage that night. Amanda did not give in to the brainwashing. But the police achieved enough with her to obtain a statement that let them do what they had intended to do all along: arrest Patrick Lumumbra”

As has been said, the motive of the Italian police and Mignini was to defect attention away from Rudy Guede, but in any event, to absolutely deny that Rudy Guede acted alone. For that to be the case, the break-in had to be staged, because otherwise, its just Rudy all by himself breaking in, and killing Meredith Kercher.

But by embroiling multiple people in the crime, the police could if not keep Rudy out of the crime entirely, they could at least minimize his role. If Patrick Lumumba had remained as a defendant, no doubt all the judges would have put the knife in his hands. But since Rudy Guede could not be kept out of the picture, it became necessary for someone else to play a more dominant and leading role.

And of course such a person had to be someone capable of manipulating others, and who better for that role ““ in the mind of Mignini, than a seductive manipulative woman. So in the fantasy world of the Italian prosecutors, judges, police, and an unfortunately significant segment of the populations of Italy and the UK, the knife that killed Meredith Kercher ended up being placed in Amanda’s tiny hands, in their fantastic false imaginings.

Of all the lies that have been invented and repeated in this case, among the worst is that of those who misuse the confused statements that were extracted through psychological torture, as evidence of deception on the part of Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Solecito. It is the exact equivalent of blaming a rape victim for the consequences of a violent sexual assault. This lie is repeated by major news outlets, unscrupulous or careless reporters, and has become part of the lexicon of the case. It’s both tragic and profoundly unfair.

The cruelest and most criminal hypocrisy of Mignini, the Italian police and judiciary, is to blame Knox for the confused statements induced through these abusive coercive means. The Italian police charging Amanda Knox with Calumnia, after forcing her to name Lumumba as part of their process and their own objective, must surely be a violation of human rights that all civilized countries and people must deplore.

When Knox herself testified to the ordeal she was put through at trial in her own defense, she was further charged with calumnia against the police, a charge which the prosecution itself would be allowed to investigate, an obvious conflict of interest. In Italy, defending oneself against fraudulent charges by the prosecutor, is apparently a criminal act.

The criminal, brutal, illegal, and supposedly unrecorded interrogation by the Italian police should shock the conscience of the civilized world. Yet this criminal conduct by the Italian police must again be concealed by blaming the victim. Charging Knox with calumnia for being tortured into naming Lumumba, is the arrogance of unrepentant criminals. And it is a marvel to behold how pliant and cooperative the Italian, UK and international media have been in simply passing along the prosecution’s malicious self-serving slanders.

It may be the Italian authorities simply no longer have the ability to recognize the wrongfulness of their own behavior.

Knox’s final conviction for calumnia by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation is being appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, where we must all hope this shameful miscarriage of justice will finally be corrected.

The last word is perhaps best left to Moore: “How could this happen? It is either inexperience combined with poor training or corruption ““ or both. I have had rookie FBI agents come out to the field and conduct vastly superior investigations to what happened in Perugia in this case. I do not think the Italian system is inferior. In fact, if I thought so, I would not be criticizing those detectives in this manner.”

Significantly, Moore concludes; “Every country has prosecutors and investigators who make mistakes. Every country experiences the shame of corruption. No country should be judged on whether these things exist; it should be judged on how it deals with them.”

When Patrick Lumumba was released, and Rudy Guede was brought back from Germany, Rudy was substituted in for Patrick in the prosecution’s case. But now the role of chief instigator would pass from Patrick, and be applied to Amanda Knox. Because from the perspective of the Perugians authorities, Mignini, the Italian police, and the Italian judiciary, Rudy Gude could not have acted alone (which is why the break-in must have been staged), or at worst, Rudy must have been a lesser player in this crime which was as has been stated, was by necessity a group effort in the prosecution’s theory ““ for otherwise, the Italians themselves are responsible for Meredith Kercher’s death.

Other commenters have said that the police erred by not changing their theory of accusation, when they slotted in Guede for Lumumba, that they suffered from “˜target fixation’ or other innocent mistakes. I disagree. There never was an “˜accusatory theory’ in the sense of one supported by evidence. The police objective of minimizing Guede’s role, and therefore their own culpability in the murder of Meredith Kercher, was intentional, premeditated, and ultimately unaffected by Guede’s formal emergence as a culprit. The Italian police objectives remained unchanged; under no circumstances, could Rudy Guede be found to have acted alone, because otherwise, Kercher’s killing was the fault of the Italians.

There has never been an investigation in the usual sense of the word. It has been an exercise from the beginning of intentionally framing two innocent people for crimes they had nothing to do with, to deflect attention and criticism away from Mignini and the Perugian authorities ““ and there is a clear conflict of interest in allowing the Perugians and the Italian judiciary, to investigate themselves.

And so, the frame-up proceeded accordingly.

With Amanda’s and Raffaelle’s coerced statements in hand, now all that was necessary for Mignini and the Perugians, was to fabricate the evidence, and build their “˜case’.



Below: the eager host to the dangerous Knox crazies Rachel Sterne Haot

Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/04/14 at 05:12 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in News media & movies,  Media developments,  The wider contexts,  N America context,  Hoaxers from 2007,  Knox-Marriott PR • Comments here (22)

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Perhaps Associated Press Should Try Reporting The Odds?!

Posted by Peter Quennell

Click for larger images. Online polls on whether Amanda Knox will be found guilty. 

Gulp! The odds now [above] have become even more ominous than the odds one year ago [below]. 

Polling is by avid news followers. Probably only a small minority follow Meredith’s case specifically and seek to distort those polls

Obviously the PR campaign is doing a terrific job (!) Obviously the Associated Press is right to take it so seriously (!)

Posted by Peter Quennell on 12/24/08 at 09:00 PM • Permalink for this post • Archived in News media & movies,  The wider contexts,  N America context,  Hoaxes Knox & team,  20 No-PR hoax,  Hoaxers: media groups,  Assoc Press • Comments here (1)