Sunday, February 28, 2010
This Was Definitely Not A Close Or Indecisive Case - Reasonable Doubt Was In Fact Totally Eliminated
Posted by FinnMacCool
Trashing Of Hard Evidence Gets Worse
You can see from the posts directly below that the Knox-was-framed camp is, if anything, becoming more superficial with all those pesky facts rather than less.
Hard reality is that nobody has ever come within light-years of constructing an alternative scenario of the crime. Hard reality is that for Knox and Sollecito the totality of the facts, seen together as the judges and jury did, are extremely damning. Hard reality is that the verdicts were decisive and unanimous. And hard reality is that Judges Sentencing Report due out some time this week will apparently be quite definitive.
Bizarre Reporting Gains Ground
And like this post by a Washingon DC writer Matthew Harwood who apparently came lately to the case and whose grasp of it is flimsy and untethered.
Harwood’s post appeared on the site for the one apologist newspaper for Knox in the UK, the Guardian (is the Guardian editor on the Knox PR payroll? nah…!) in an area called “Comment Is Free”. That title comes from CP Snow’s observation that “comment is free but facts are sacred.” Harwood’s blog and the Guardian in general seem a lot stronger on the freedom of comment than they are the sacredness of the facts.
Harwood opens with the bizarre claim that “anyone who has followed the trial should have had a gnawing feeling that the bars closed on the wrong people” and then predictably goes on to argue that the “right person” was the black man, Rudy Guede, who was in fact, um, convicted of the murder of Meredith Kercher.
Nobody looking at the case thinks that the guilty parties are still out there. The two minority partisan views are, for Knox and Sollecito, that Guede acted alone; and for Guede, that Knox and Sollecito were the instigators and the main perpetrators of the crime.
The majority non-partisan view ““ ratified by an incredibly cautious and painstaking succession of court hearings and a really massive body of evidence ““ is that all three are guilty of the murder and sexual assault of Meredith, that reasonable doubt probably fled the courtroom about the time that Knox got on the stand and shot herself in both feet, and that the judges and jury were swayed only by what they saw in front of them, and so the verdicts and sentences are quite correct.
The facts-lite version of Harwood is very typical (some might say suspiciously typical) of the claims still occasionally made that there still is reasonable doubt. And that somehow the incredibly large number of fine Italian professionals daffily got it all wrong and the writer is the lone smart guy who got it right.
Let us dismember the few skimpy arguments Harwood advances to smugly declare “case closed and only Guede is guilty” and see if anything is left standing.
That the non-sequestering of the jury caused it to ignore what it saw in front of it
Harwood writes: “The jury in the Perugia sentenced Knox and Sollecito to prison for about a quarter of their lives, despite no motive, scant physical evidence, and no prior criminal histories.”
Meredith of course was deprived of 100% of the rest of her own life and she appears to have been a far finer person than all three. Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the choice of that flexible word “scant”, beyond observing that a succession of courts have found the physical evidence sufficient to proceed and ultimately to convict Guede, Knox and Sollecito.
Harwood goes on to make the claim (the same claim made on Oprah) that “[unlike in] the US, juries in Italy are not sequestered.”
West’s Encyclopedia of American Law makes the following observation about jury sequestration in the United States:
Jury sequestration is rare. Typically ordered in sensational, high-profile criminal cases, sequestration begins immediately after the jury is seated and lasts until the jury has delivered its verdict. It is unusual for juries to be sequestered longer than a few days or a week. Occasionally, however, jurors are sequestered for weeks. The 1995 trial of former football star O. J. (Orenthal James) Simpson for murder was highly unusual: the Simpson jury was sequestered for eight and a half months “” half as long as the period Simpson was imprisoned while under arrest and on trial. The experience provoked protest from the jurors and calls for legal reform.
It is worth noting that the expensively sequestered jury in the OJ Simpson trial is far from universally believed to have arrived at a sound conclusion. The defense of “OJ Simpson got off, so why not me?” seems doomed to failure both legally and as a method of swaying public opinion.
The claim that Knox and Sollecito had no plausible motive for murdering Meredith Kercher also seems odd. Guede had no good reason to murder her either. But ““ and here’s a newsflash ““ Harwood and company think it is not acceptable to kill people for no good reason. In fact the reverse argument would seem more persuasive: those many murderers who kill without a good motive are and remain more of a menace to society than murderers who kill a specific person for a unique reason.
But behind the “no motive” argument is the implicit suggestion that Guede ““ being a young (black) male ““ needs no special motive for murdering a young woman. But even if we accept that uncomfortably racist-sounding premise, it still leaves Rudy Guede as the perpetrator of another motiveless crime: we have to believe that Rudy Guede staged a phony break-in at the house (and extensively cleaned-up traces of everyone except himself) where he had just murdered one of the residents.
How, precisely, does THAT help him?
That the break-in was real and that is how Rudy Guede entered the flat
There is no serious doubt that the break-in was staged. Everyone who saw Filomena’s room on the morning of November 2, 2007 (including Filomena herself) testified that the break-in looked fake.
The police officer who led the initial inquiry that morning testified that he pointed this out to Knox and Sollecito, and reported that they said nothing to counter this. For example, the broken glass was on top of the clothes that had been strewn on the floor, suggesting that the window was broken AFTER the clothes had been flung around.
Later investigation showed traces of glass from the window led from Filomena’s room, along the hall, and out to the front door. No such traces were found in the murder room itself. All of this suggests that whoever broke the window did NOT subsequently go into the victim’s room, but DID just walk straight out through the front door.
So why would Rudy Guede do this? He didn’t live in the house, so he had no reason to think that a break-in would deflect attention away from him. His own claim, that the victim herself let him into the house, is absurd, and conflicts with what we know of the victim’s movements and intentions that night. The prosecution’s theory, that all three perpetrators entered the house together, since one of them (Knox) had a key to the front door, seems trhe only one to really hold up.
Speaking of scant evidence, there is no evidence at all that Rudy Guede was ever in Filomena’s room.
If we ignore the evidence that the break-in was faked, and we suppose that he genuinely broke in to the house that way, then we have to believe that he did this while leaving no DNA traces of himself anywhere in the room (not even on the window that he would have had to climb through) although he went on to leave plenty of evidence in other parts of the house.
But forensic examination did show a trace of Knox’s DNA, mixed with the victim’s blood. In the room where the botched staging took place. (And, as we noted above, whoever broke the window seems to have gone from Filomena’s room straight out of the front door, shedding tiny particles of broken glass as they went.)
What that leaves us with is a choice of two motiveless crimes. On the one hand, a lone killer accompanies a victim into her own home, kills her, and then fakes a break-in. On the other, three people ““ probably under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol ““ conspire to kill an innocent acquaintance, and then one of them (the one who is a resident of the house) fakes a break-in to make it look like an outside job.
Which is the more likely? The DNA evidence suggests that Knox, and not Guede, was a main party in staging the break-in.
That the crime was carried out solely by a black “drifter”
Harwood is surprised that the jury convicted Knox and Sollecito (who he wrongly claims have “no prior criminal histories”) despite having already convicted “a drifter and small-time drug dealer” called Rudy Guede.
If comment is free but facts are sacred, then the fact is that there is no indication whatsoever that Rudy Guede has ever been a drug dealer of any kind.
Such an accusation was never made in court, and formed no part of the detailed 105 page Micheli report that explained the reasons for his conviction.
Not only that, but as there is something of a weakness in the prosecution’s case (the tenuous connection between the three supposed conspirators) if there had been any indication that Guede had been a drug dealer, this could have helped the prosecution’s case immensely.
It would have provided Guede with a link to Knox and Sollecito (they admitted to being regular drug users at the time of the killing).
The “small-time drug dealer” accusation is one of the many fictions that are regularly stirred up in this PR-driven case. The term “drifter” is different, because (a bit like calling evidence “scant”) it’s flexible enough to mean whatever you want.
And Rudy Guede is, after all, a convicted murder, so we might think it acceptable to use the term “drifting” where innocent people would perhaps just be moving decisively with innocent purpose.
If we apply this rule, we can say that on the Friday before the crime, Guede “drifted” from Perugia to Milan, where he was questioned by the police after breaking into a nursery school to spend the night (as he claimed to the school owner who found him in her office the following morning). Guede was fingerprinted, released and then “drifted” back to Perugia. After the murder, he “drifted” to Germany, although a better phrase might be “attempted to escape”.
Applying the same rule to Amanda Knox, we can say that, after being fined $269 by the Seattle police in June 2007 for creating a public disturbance, she “drifted” to Europe, where in September the German branch of her family arranged for her to take up a week’s employment at the Bundestag (the German Parliament). She started this job on Monday September 10 and “drifted” out of it on Tuesday September 11.
By her own account, what she did next was this: “then i walked, and walked and walked and walked. all over berlin, for two whole days. it was great. i was supposed to pick up a bus on friday, so i spent wednesday and thursday wandering around berlin, seeing things, meeting people, drinking a glass of wine in a park near my apartment every night.”
Back in Hamburg, she discovered that her family was not happy with her for drifting off the Bundestag job and spending the week drifting about Berlin (the term is surely appropriate):
i was in trouble with my uncle who ahd landed me the job at the bundestag in the first place. aparently he had to go to a lot of trouble to get me my spot there and everyone was confused as to what had happened to me. so i talked to him today and explain ed the mess, but not before freaking out and crying a little becaue i was afraid i made my uncle look bad in front of these very importan people. oops. to say the least. [All spellings and punctuation are Knox’s own.]
That the hard evidence is very scanty
Three weeks after Knox walked out on the Bundestag job, she arrived in Perugia. Four weeks after that, Meredith Kercher was murdered in the house they both shared on Via della Pergola.
Some of the “scant” evidence against Amanda Knox includes Knox’s DNA, some of it mixed with the victim’s blood, in the bathroom and in the room where the break-in was faked; Knox’s DNA on the handle of a knife found in the kitchen of Knox’s new boyfriend Sollecito, with the victim’s DNA on the blade; and a woman’s shoeprint found on a pillowcase under the victim’s body ““ the shoe size is too big to be the victim’s, and too small to be Guede’s, but happens to be precisely the right size to be Amanda Knox’s.
What initially raised police suspicions about Knox and Sollecito was the fact that their alibis did not match up. In court, Knox gave her own (often self-contradictory) account of what happened that night, but it was impossible to compare this with that of Raffaele Sollecito, since Sollecito consistently refused to testify anew on his alibi since his final November 2007 version.
However, something that we do know is what Sollecito originally said about how the victim’s blood might have got on the blade of his kitchen knife.
He wrote in a letter to his family: “The fact that there is Meredith’s DNA on the kitchen knife is because once while cooking together at home, I stumbled while handling the knife. I had the point on her hand, and immediately afterward I apologized but there was no serious harm to her. So the only real explanation of the kitchen knife is this.”
Well, it’s one explanation. Comment is free, but facts are sacred, and the fact is that Meredith Kercher never set foot in Sollecito’s apartment, as we now know (from the trial testimony).
That the jury and Italy in general convicted because of the lives they led
Harwood concludes: “But for people who still believe in a reasonable doubt, there’s considerable unease that these two young people may be spending a good portion of their lives behind bars because the jury, the prosecution, and Italian society did not approve of the lives they led, especially Amanda Knox.”
Wow. That really nasty anti-Italy argument yet again? Don’t believe what Knox’s PR machine tells you, Matthew Harwood, and don’t slime Italy or its excellent justice system. Don’t in fact sound like a racist and xenophobic jerk. Try doing your own research, and go a great deal deeper than you just did.
There is no reasonable doubt left at all. Knox and Sollecito tortured and stabbed Meredith in a very depraved way, probably on a cocaine high with severe psychological underpinnings. Then they took away her phones while she was still alive, locked her door, and left her to die an agonizing death clutching her neck to stop her lifeblood running out. The autopsy report is OVERWHELMING that three people had to have been involved.
Knox and Sollecito were convicted not because of the lives they led, but because of the sheer weight of the evidence of the very gruesome cruel deeds they carried out against poor Meredith.
No reasonable doubt.
Comments
Thanks, Finn, for cutting through the smoke and fog. I find it ironic that the PR machine is accusing the Italians of anti-Americanism when its own underlying premises are driven by anti-Italian xenophobia (keystone cops) and blatant racism (lone black wolf).
Given the documented racial bias embedded in the American criminal justice system, I was surprised to hear Oprah Winfrey say it is better to commit a crime in the US than elsewhere. It is entirely possible, in the case of the US and many other democracies, that the truth of this statement depends on the race of the accused.
Hi Skep. Oprah sure got snowed on that program. She cannot ever have been further from her roots and core interests. I wonder if she realizes, even now.
Here’s another example from the same racist mould as Harwood’s post and in almost the same language - there’s quite an industry creating this stuff out there. It is by a right-winger called Lawrence Auster and it appeared on his blog on 9 December, three days after the verdict.
**************
The weakness of the DNA evidence, combined with the total absence (to my knowledge) of any plausible motive and, even more important, of any plausible scenario by which two white college kids assisted a black drifter and career criminal in raping and murdering Meredith Kercher, would have compelled me, had I been on the jury in this case, to vote not guilty and to keep voting not guilty even if the whole world had said I was wrong.
Rudy Guede raped and murdered Meredith, there’s no controversy about that, and, indeed, his crime against her was typical of the extremely common crime of the sexual assault and murder of a white female by a black, many of which are catalogued [on this site]. By what cause and effect chain, by what narrative, would two friends and fellow students of the victim join with a black rapist in killing her?
**************
Rudy Guede of course has ZERO police record - hardly a career criminal - while Knox and Sollecito both do.
Readers could really help us by searching out and linking us to other racist remarks against Guede. For starters, if you google “guede” and “career criminal” you get more than 200 hits.
We will start keeping a record. Many well-meaning watchers of Oprah who were taken in last week, and probably Oprah herself, would be shocked to see the true nature of the company they are keeping.
By the way there’s a very telling blog post on Lawrence Auster with a photo of him here on Undercover Black Man.
At least Guede tried to help her stop the bleeding. I truly believe he wasn’t in the room when the final blow was struck. However, he was definately violated her and did nothing while she was being assaulted and strangled.
May they all rot in jail and live tarnished lives after their release, bearing the face of assassins.
Hi Finn
I have just read your excellent post above, and I totally agree with you about no reasonable doubt.
One thing that is annoying me is that the Knox/Mellas clan do not seem to acknowledge that the Kerchers have lost their beloved daughter in such a nasty way. It’s all about Amanda this and Amanda that. Such arrogance and coldness,we can clearly see where Amanda gets those traits from.
Why is it that Curt and Co can’t seem to get a grip and realize that she was involved in Meredith’s death? I am pig-sick of hearing the same old story. Amanda and Raff are innocent. Rudy did it alone, blah, blah, blah.I really don’t think they have done enough to dig deeper under the surface and examine all the forensic evidence that convicted Amanda and Raff.
Sadly, they are delusional,or they are just blatantly ignoring it and shoving it under the carpet. Curt and Edda are both so desperate to save their daughter’s skin, they will do anything to do it. Appearing on talk shows pleading her innocence when the forensic evidence is staring at them in the face.You don’t have to be Inspector Morse or Poirot to figure all the evidence out.
I know it is hard for her parents to think that their own offspring could be capable of committing such a brutal crime, but you can’t run away from the facts. I mentioned in my first post that I have a son who is around the same age as Meredith and Amanda and I would not be doing what Curt and Edda are doing if he were accused of any crime and there was sufficient forensic evidence to show he was guilty.
You can wrap your kids in cotton wool as much as you want and love them,but in the end,you have to do what’s right when they are guilty of a brutal crime such as murder.
Unfortunately we live in this cruel world where someone’s son or daughter has to take the consequences for their actions. Curt and Edda will both have to wake up and realise that they and Amanda can’t keep hiding away from the truth.
Having said that, I really feel Curt and Edda are responsible for the way Amanda is. When you have children, you need to teach them to take responsibility for their actions. You don’t pretend they are innocent on TV. Amanda Knox has grown up to believe that she can get away with anything.
Including murder.
Fortunately,not this time
Roll on for the sentencing report.
You guys are pathetic… patting each other on the back over your comments.
Yeah right - not an indecisive case???
The stubborn truth is that Amanda and Raffaele are innocent.
You don’t have to prove an alternate story to get reasonable doubt. You have to place reasonable doubt against the story the prosecution put together. Oh yeah… the prosecution changed that multiple times… they weren’t sure of it themselves starting with the story they forced Amanda into signing based on their misinterpretation of an english text message to Patrick Lamumba
Bottom line - Amanda and Raffaelle weren’t in that room. It is so obvious.
I’ve followed the case, followed media from the three countries, read the micheli report, read your biased interpretations, your “questions” that beg the question.
@davelebon:
ok ... point made.
Personally, I respect your opinion. Wanna know what the great thing is about this site?
You just got have your say .... isn’t it great?
“All of this suggests that whoever broke the window did NOT subsequently go into the victim’s room, but DID just walk straight out through the front door.
So why would Rudy Guede do this? He didn’t live in the house, so he had no reason to think that a break-in would deflect attention away from him.”
Imagine, he brakes the window to fake a break-in, then scatters clothes on top of the glass, steals nothing and after this brain-wave and deliberation, he forgets to flush the toilet containing his faeces? Was this left un-done for cosmetic effect?
Now, who would have benefited most from the fake break-in and the faeces left in the toilet ?
Rudy?
Hi davelebon22. “You don’t have to prove an alternate story to get reasonable doubt.”
You wish! But actually you really do. Otherwise all is just whack-a-mole and the defense will again lose on appeals. The police and prosecution takes on the case did advance, but they were more in the nature of fine tunings than the U-turns you can repeatedly see in the alibis of RS and AK.
You need to come up with a single coherent reason for among other things why the breakup was staged, why the washing machine with Meredith’s clothes inside was running if it was not to remove the perps’ DNA, why the crime scene was so very extensively adjusted, why AK still has no alibi, why all the eyewitnesses and ear-witnesses saw and heard what they did, why the mobile phones and computers behaved as they did, and so on and forth.
Otherwise, again, all is just whack-a-mole
Finn, it’s beautiful to hear you again. The critique of the ‘drifter’ propaganda is brilliant.
Hi davelbon23,
Actually your sentence: “You don’t have to prove an alternate story to get reasonable doubt. You have to place reasonable doubt against the story the prosecution put together”. This is not entirely correct. I make a few observations.
First of all it is not true you just need to set doubt on the ‘prosecutor’s’ story for one reason, because in this kind of trial the point to argue is not the prosecutor’s story, it is the judges story.
Second, on the logical aspect of the verdict you don’t have to just cast a general doubt of a negative kind. The reasonable doubt must be of a positive kind: to show any alternative scenario that maybe has a chance to explain the evidence. You have to show that an alternative story is at least possible. You have to *explain* the evidence as a possible occurrence.
There is a third point to argue in the end. The Italian verdict is not a pure yes/no verdict. It is a dossier. It is important thus to bear in mind that reasonable doubt does not equate to a publicity of innocence. A propaganda of innocence of this kind which is just based on the invocation of sheer doubt, pretending to transform possible doubt into something else though covering / making up facts (like the Rudy drifter thing) is anyway intrinsically dishonest, in any case, even in the case the two were innocent.
3/1/10
Finn McCool, thanks very much. There’s no doubt who killed Meredith Kercher. Yes, who was the real drifter? and sequestration means nothing. The jury looked at facts:
davelebon23 please consider what The Machine posted on PMF 2/28/10
AK’s blood was mixed with MK’s blood in 3 different places in the bathroom:
on drain of the bidet
on box of Q-tips sitting on sink
on the sink ledge
Machine is reliably informed that Knox’s DNA was not outlier DNA that had been left weeks earlier. MK and AK were both bleeding on the night of the murder.
The mixed blood sample from both these girls was found in Filomena’s room. Why?
Hi Dave,
Amanda Knox voluntarily admitted in her handwritten note to the police on 6 November 2007 that she was involved in Meredith’s murder. She even asked the police for a pen and paper to write this confession.
Hi all
@hopeful, thank you for your post above and the crucial reminder regarding AK’s and Meredith’s mixed blood in the bathroom. When you re-read all of that evidence, you can’t help being dumbstruck as to how damning that evidence is when certain bits of DNA evidence are singled out. Now when you gather all of that evidence together it’s really hard to believe that AK and RS are not the killers.
In the days even before DNA was introduced we obviously didnt have the luxury of relying on it to solve crimes, we unfortunately had to endure some unsolved murders, which descended into ‘cold cases’ for so many years. But now, we can use it and depend on it to catch out the perpetrators who commit brutal crimes. Since its introduction, those same ‘cold cases’ have now been solved and the menaces to society, who have lived the life of Reilly for the odd 20 years or so and thought they got away with murder, have been banged up thanks to the DNA.
So Dave, you see, sorry to say, there is no getting away from DNA. You quite firmly believe that AK and RS are innocent, and that’s your opinion. But for the rest of us, we can clearly see the opposite.
DNA. No reasonable doubt.
By the way Dave, you have no evidence to refute the facts as they stand. Therefore, try to keep insults out of this. If all os us are “pathetic” then you must be as well. You have offered no alternate theory using the multiple alibis along with the DNA evidence. Why don’t you do that now?
Finn, once again, a great article, well written, well argued 😊
Davelebon, why is it so important to you to have Amanda Knox proved incapable of harbouring malicious intent, let alone harming another human being. This is the girl whose “harmless pranks” for shits and giggles included the “April Fool’s Ski-Masked Home Invasion and Assault” and the “Throw Rock’s at Cars and Watch Them Swerve Farewell Bash”. Things could have gone horribly, fatally wrong in either of those instances, and then Knox would not have ever made it to Europe.
We all know how you feel about Amanda. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you mention your feelings about Meredith, you know, the dead girl.
Hi Everyone,
Here is a link for a local Seattle tv station with a well-known local reporter, Kathy Goertzen interviewing Donald Trump. This aired on the 11 pm news, today, March 1st. Interesting that his reasoning she is innocent is that he saw the U.S. news coverage of the trial. Very few of the U.S. news, local or international, bothered to report on any of the facts! They concentrated on interviewing AK’s mother and father.
Like I’ve said before, if that’s the only information people have, they will think she is innocent.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/85925657.html
Barb
DaveLeBon writes: “Yeah right - not an indecisive case??? The stubborn truth is that Amanda and Raffaele are innocent.”
I think it’s important to make a distinction between facts and wishful thinking - the “stubborn truth” is that Knox, Sollecito and Guede have all been found guilty, pending appeal. As for the decisiveness of the case, since you’ve been following it, you will remember that decisions have been made by a succession of judges and courts in November 2007, December 2007, April 2008, September 2008, January 2009, September 2009, culminating in guilty verdicts for Knox and Sollecito in December 2009.
Dave LeBon also writes: “[the prosecution] weren’t sure of it themselves starting with the story they forced Amanda into signing based on their misinterpretation of an english text message to Patrick Lamumba”
Here is a link to the statement which Amanda Knox voluntarily handed to the police on the day of her arrest. If we compare that statement with this “email for everyone” that she wrote two days earlier, it is easy to see that Amanda Knox’s story was changing from the start.
If we look at Sollecito and Guede’s testimonies, we can also see how they changed their stories as new evidence emerged, and how all three defendants contradicted themselves and each other in their versions of events.
Dave LeBon finishes with: “Bottom line - Amanda and Raffaelle weren’t in that room. It is so obvious.”
It may be obvious to you, but it wasn’t obvious to Amanda Knox (who wrote four days after the murder in the transcript quoted above: “But the truth is, I am unsure about the truth…”) and it wasn’t obvious to the succession of judges who have looked at the case.
The bottom line is that Knox and Sollecito (along with Guede) have been convicted of the murder of Meredith Kercher.
Where next:
Click here to return to The Top Of The Front PageOr to next entry Judges’ Sentencing Report Released In Perugia And It Is 427 Pages Long
Or to previous entry A Common View In Legal Circles: Knox Campaign Often Talks Legal Nonsense - As On Oprah