So ILE doesn't have a Meredith Kercher/FoxyKnoxy murder thread yet?

This is indeed a very, very weird story. Is it UK Tabloids only at this point, or are the U.S. rags following it as well?

I picked up on it in the NYT yesterday. Very weird indeed.

So we're allowed to admit that lust-crazed murder suspect Amanda Knox* is hot then?

*Copyright every sensationalist tabloid ever.

Best murderer since that Goth army cadet that killed Jodi Jones

this 20/20 is on right now and it is fabulous

Guede had been arrested in Wiesbaden, Germany in an Interpol operation that traced Guede when he logged into his Facebook account.

amanda is no way the booze sex vamp pothead but c'mon she was so involved in this

Radar Magazine article about how Knox is getting railroaded by the insane Italian prosecution (Who the fuck knows, obviously, but it's an interesting read):

How an American Coed was Framed for Murder

i was wondering what was going on w/ this

That article is ridiculous, it does a fairly good job of debunking a few of the myths and arguing that Knox is being misrepresented by short stories, pictures off the internet, etc, and then undermines it with A disturbing YouTube video surfaced of Guede, apparently out of his head on some illicit substance, repeating the words, "Oh my God. I'm an extraterra." As his eyes roll back in his head the rant continues: "Oh mama, I'm a vampire, I'm Dracula. I'm gonna suck your blood."

Essentially everyone should just stop all activity on the internet in case they get arrested on suspicion of a high-profile murder.

Wiley should be OK

why doesnt the radar website work

radar article is pretty convincing

It is. Original k-k-kraaazy sex kitten story seemed too "good" to be true

found guilty!

she got 26 years he got 25.

i saw it on tv but USA today is on it i guess
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-12-04-italy-knox-trial-friday_N.htm

this all seems a terribly managed case...she may be guilty but god knows the entire process doesn't seem to have revealed anything that's any clearer than mud

From one of my Twitter contacts:

http://twitpic.com/s5xsu - An unintentional insight into journalists' advance preparation of news by @TelegraphNews

I hate this kind of shit. On BBC they have their character summary up and it ends: "And with a 26-year-sentence ahead of her, Amanda Knox will have ample time to reflect on what led her to commit murder on that fateful night."

Like just cos she's found guilty they now report her guilt as fact, after months of actually investigating facts and discussion. It just feels so anti-journalism and pro-state.

Yeah, that's ridiculous. I feel like someone is going to write a really great book about this case at some point.

Like just cos she's found guilty they now report her guilt as fact

um that is how the law works hate to break it to ya

It's disingenuous though-- as if there hasn't been one shitstorm after another with this case? It has been one giant shitstorm.

Yeah that is how the law works but the papers shouldn't work like that. I had to write one of those summaries and it feels skeezy as fuck, even in cases that seem clear cut.

doesn't matter. I agree with you that this whole case seems ridiculous on the face of it, but y'know the whole point of trials and juries is to determine guilt and determine it in a decisive enough way to support punishment (which is kinda more significant than what people are allowed to say in newspapers). she went to trial. she was found guilty. by any standard, it is permissable to refer to her as having committed the crime in question.

x-post

I feel like I hear people referred to as having committed x crime after they've been convicted of it all the time so confused as to why this is a point of contention.

Happy at this verdict. Even if she is innocent doing cartwheels in the police station while being questioned about your flatmate's murder really deserves a custodial sentence.

she seems really flighty

I don't know the first thing about her I just know that the murder scenario described by the proseuction seems patently ridiculous and highly unlikely

that's my thinking

you know, normally I'd agree with Shakey, insofar as it's not like there's a much better system than letting a conviction stand as some kind of broad consensus that someone committed a crime and you can now say that without caveat.

but really, what Ronan's quoting there is a huge leap beyond "consensus," it's like a kind of magic -- because that sentence is finding her so guilty that even in her own thoughts she's guilty and reflecting upon that guilt (despite her presumably ongoing claim of innocence).

plus it's not always as cut and dried as conviction -- as in cases where the conviction is weak or strongly contested and the consensus once again shifts back to everything being alleged (e.g., Willingham)/

either way, most places are responsible enough not to leap quite so hard on the magic of a conviction, except insofar as it allows you to say "so and so was convicted of doing X, Y, and Z."

The BBC articles I've just been reading are appallingly written - full of emotive language and non sequiturs. (they're attributed ones, so I take it not yours lg)

^^^^This; am thinking it will go to appeal and in that situ the 'go to your room and think about what you did' angle is way inappropriate. Don't think justice has been served here. Also, Knox could have been going manic in custody.

LOL last three xposts a Fed worth of OTM.

The BBC front page still has 'murder shrouded in mystery' as one of the sub-headlines, so I don't think they're jumping so hard. Also, it's always been the case that crimes are 'alleged' or so on, until there is a conviction, at which point media moves to assertion.

I like that Guardian article about the cultural differences. But maybe I'm prejudiced against the 'Old World Thinking'.

what with their negative football

i think what's going on here is that people don't trust the italian justice system -- better just to be out with it tbh guys.

(im unsure if it's "pro-state" to report that someone who has been convicted of murder is a murderer. iirc italy has an independent judiciary? nominally, anyway.)

as a 1/16th Italian person I am frankly shocked and appalled at the aspersions being cast on Italy's sterling legal system.

I know very little about all the details of the whole thing, but I personally solve some of this whole epistemological mire by just being biased and suspicious of anyone who's like "someone killed my roommate? you know what, it was probably one or the other of these African guys"

ok actually I take that back, my knowledge of the whole thing is too cursory to even make that joke

Few of the eight jurors looked at her. Six of the jurors were wearing red, white and green sashes -- the colors of Italy's flag.

O_o

^wow

i know this is getting attention because of the fact that she's a decent looking caucasian American girl, but she did no herself no favors by changing her story/alibi/whereabouts a half dozen times.

tru dat

I'm not surprised by this verdict but I don't think this woman would have gotten a guilty sentence in the US. Maybe that says something about US courts, maybe not; there just doesn't seem to be very much actual evidence.

"He claimed to be listening to music on his iPod while using the facilities and thus did not hear the killer enter the house."

^sry this only happens in movies

the radar article about the case from a while ago is fairly convincing in its attempt at exonerating knox. either way the whole thing seems mismanaged on all sides

I'm not surprised by this verdict but I don't think this woman would have gotten a guilty sentence in the US.

Uhhhh . . . maybe the Pretty White Girl factor would work in her favor, but lots of people in the US have been sent to prison forever on a lot flimsier evidence.

interesting 2 hear the journalist on anderson cooper talk abt the prosecutor under indictment and how he had previously threatened to and accused teh reporter of accessory to murder, being a satanist, etc

I can't speak for the US but in Britain or Ireland I've never seen a case so convoluted. The whole thing speaks of terrible police work, is this a very complex murder or is it just a desperately handled one? I don't know for sure but it seems confusing above and beyond how it should be. All of that said there are definitely facts that raise doubts about knox and sollecito (read this article for a really fucking excellent memory jog on it all http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/05/meredith-kercher-murder-trial) but I just don't have faith in the process. There are some instances that seem to indict them and others that seem to suggest they are innocent.

Above all it just feels like police work was so utterly shit and so many corners were cut at every stage that no clear picture of who murdered the girl will ever come out. A murder becoming some kind of subjective free for all is a really horrible thing but this thing will never be solved, it is really nasty that someone died and that that's basically the end of it, two people sent to jail for a massively hypothetical act....not even saying they're innocent, just that it all feels like total bullshit.

The most upsetting thing is that the Kercher and her family are rarely mentioned in many of the articles today about this, relative to the other players.

It's just Knox Knox Knox boyfriend Italy Knox Knox prosecutor Knox's family Knox Knox etc.

I hate to admit that I'm glad something got resolved and don't really care for Amanda Knox anymore, even if there's a remote chance she was wrongly convicted, and her weirdness was only some Ally-Sheedy-in-The-Breakfast-Club type thing.

My best to the Kercher family.

Kercher family refuses to speak to the press so that's why

never was able to make up my mind about this. clear that the police work was sloppy, and there didn't seem to be much effort to ensure a fair and impartial verdict based on evidence alone. then again, knox & her boyfriend did their case no favors and hardly earned my sympathy. i'm not outraged by the verdict, but nor do i have a sense of justice done. still kind of mystified by the whole thing.

Seems quite a lot of bullshit here, the Italian justice system is pretty good, although of course like every system in the world, it has it's fuck-ups. But a lot of what I read in the press just seemed fed to them by the defence team. Even that Guardian article has bits that seem to be cribbed from the website set up by Knox's family. Double glazing - so what? Homeless people don't know what day it is? Maybe, maybe not. And I'm sorry Suzy but this...

I'm not surprised by this verdict but I don't think this woman would have gotten a guilty sentence in the US.

...just makes me mad.

Ned, go back and have another look at what I wrote, maybe? Because the italics quoted don't belong to me. OK?

I've been involved in things like this (well, not like this one, but other bad things that people do) and I can promise you that what gets reported is only ever a fraction of what the proceedings actually are. You can't spend a couple of hours reading other people's accounts, especially if there's an angle even more distorting than 'this is an interesting detail', and then think you can second-guess a jury who've spent six hours a day for weeks actually hearing the evidence.

Apologies Suzy - got confused.

xp - yeah sure none of us were actually at the trial, but "actually hearing the evidence" makes it sound like there's one simple and clear-cut story. But the whole thing still could be a whole lot of lies and distortions which the prosection did a very good job of selling.

Same that radar piece seems to have disappeared, it thoroughly convinced me of her innocence.

I'm not surprised by this verdict but I don't think this woman would have gotten a guilty sentence in the US.

I'm sure OJ Simpson would agree with you

Kercher family refuses to speak to the press so that's why

They spoke to the press today and sounded, although not triumphalist, like they thought the jury had come to the correct verdict. Although considering what their state of mind must be I'm not sure if that illustrates much.

What's astonishing about this case is that they actually convicted someone for the murder ages ago, and that hardly gets mentioned because Knox has become the story. My legal knowledge is shaky at best and I'm not going to presume to have a better idea of the case than the jury, but I'm not sure how you can convict someone without any evidence of them being there at the time. The media furore must have factored into this in some way, whether she did it or not.

Best murderer since that Goth army cadet that killed Jodi Jones

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 15 November 2007 15:07 (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

look, just for this post alone can we bring him back please?

Who the fuck does cartwheels at the police station? I really am trying to picture that scene but fail to.

Even if she is innocent doing cartwheels in the police station while being questioned about your flatmate's murder really deserves a custodial sentence.

guys, nothing personal and not singling you out here jim but sentiments like this are pretty fucked up imo

People being questioned about their flatmate's brutal murder in not behaving entirely rationally shocker.

i didnt realize there was such an intense anti-knox american contingent

perugiamurderfile.org/

from the little i've read italians juries don't have to give any reasons for their verdict until six months later or something, and you can only appeal a verdict up until.. six months! on what grounds could you possibly appeal if you don't even know why they decided the way they did??

i read somewhere that its automatically appealed anyway and another trail will be held w/in 18 months

Are there any countries where juries have to give reasons for their verdict?

Tend to agree with people who think this is an iffy conviction but the usual caveats about not sitting thru the actual trial apply.

from the little i've read italians juries don't have to give any reasons for their verdict until six months later or something, and you can only appeal a verdict up until.. six months! on what grounds could you possibly appeal if you don't even know why they decided the way they did??

― Tracer Hand, Saturday, 5 December 2009 08:34 (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't think the logic of the jury is grounds to challenge a verdict in any country. The italian legal system is pretty sound, despite somewhat racist comments coming from the likes of Maria Cantwell and others. Having spent a deal of time in Perugia I doubt the local plod's ability to investigate their way out of a cardboard box. I'm sure any appeal will be based on the evidence and it's admissibility.

I'm not sure how you can convict someone without any evidence of them being there at the time.

well, she said she was in the bathroom when it happened, which is a pointer.

oh, no, she wasn't there after all. but it was probably that... black dude.

i thought the "black dude" was the one who said he was in the bathroom

oh alright thanks you guys! i guess there are plenty of ways to appeal without knowing the jury's reasoning.

i thought the "black dude" was the one who said he was in the bathroom

― max, Saturday, December 5, 2009 2:18 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

another black dude. she accused the owner of the local bar of doing it. and, well, as a guy who WORKS IN A BAR, he had a few alibis.

yeah even so--her making crypto-racist accusations doesnt exactly convict her of murder, u know

no, an italian jury does that.

hi-yo!

;-)

You never find out the reasoning of the jury in most places - I think it's only in the US, with its primacy for freedom of speech, where jurors speak out afterwards. Irrationality of the verdict could be a reason for overturning it in theory (in the UK), but in such a case the judge should stop the trial before it reaches the jury.

these people all had to have been on drugs, right? I can't imagine someone getting killed in your house and you not knowing it; or killing someone under these circumstances (if she and her boyfriend did it).

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f386/xchamberx2/General%20Stupidity/if_i_did_it.jpg

these people all had to have been on drugs, right? I can't imagine someone getting killed in your house and you not knowing it; or killing someone under these circumstances (if she and her boyfriend did it).

― akm, Saturday, December 5, 2009 3:14 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah this seems to be what happened. wasn't the standard line "sex game that went wrong"?

Yes, it was.

People being questioned about their flatmate's brutal murder in not behaving entirely rationally shocker.

Maybe, still under the influence of drugs, she was thinking of escaping and joining Cirque du Soleil?

yeah this seems to be what happened. wasn't the standard line "sex game that went wrong"?

― a young thug's brutal coming of age (history mayne), Saturday, December 5, 2009 10:33 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think this was a line of thinking based on the same logic that held the comic books in sollecitos apartment as solid evidence of his violent nature

For what's worth, one of the most baffling sentences in our recent history.
And, sorry Ed, unfortunately our legal system isn't sound at all.

i dont get how smoking weed translates as the murder being 'drug-fuelled' in all the uk press. i'd be more surprised if some 20somethings watching a dvd of a weekend weren't smoking weed. i'm amazed these days at the ever-more tabloid-y tone of BBC/ mainstream tv news.

i dont get how smoking weed translates as the murder being 'drug-fuelled' in all the uk press

You don't read any newspapers or watch TV then?

idk, knoxy kind of fucked herself by lying repeatedly and trying to incriminate someone else who wasn't there. she was in the apartment when kercher was murdered and did not give a convincing story as to what happened. that *in itself* does not make her guilty, but why is it hard to believe that sometimes people on drugs do amazingly awful things?

if i were stanning for knoxy et al i'd take 'sex game gone wrong' over 'just slit her throat for s & g'.

she was in the apartment... according to a "confession" extracted with leading questions, and no lawyer present, after 14 hours without food.

To give some background, this is just the last in a long series of incredibly messy trials, where you can just be amazed and horrified by the sheer ineptitude of the police, the protagonism of the prosecutors, the scandalism of the press and the painful slowness of the whole thing (up to 10 years to get a definitive verdict, even you're considered innocent in the first trial).

yea one of the 'friends of amanda' ppl also said that she was just responding to a hypothetical, cooperating w/ police ~ what she would have heard if she had been home, etc xp

i don't think many people dispute the investigation was badly done, though given how badly, it is then surprising that the prosecution won.

i've not been in that situation, but i hope that if i were asked to talk about a hypothetical situation i wouldn't actually accuse someone else of the crime. (im pretty sure asking "leading questions" is part of murder police are supposed to do, though.)

Again tho, being a bit of a douche doesn't make yr conviction safe.

why is it hard to believe that sometimes people on drugs do amazingly awful things?

uhhh they were smoking hashish

could've led to listening to Phish

but I'm not sure how you can convict someone without any evidence of them being there at the time.

http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/other/1974/faul76a.gif

And, you know, loads of others.

Was going to respond with something similar to that to Marco wrt to the italian legal system being no better or worse than any other western one, certainly if you compare it to, say, one where judges are elected based on the prejudices. This certainly isn't the Dreyfuss affair.

Is Italian legal theory not based on the principle of reasonable doubt? Failure to deliver justice is preferable to performing a second injustice.

well, whoever did the birmingham bombing wasn't *there at the time* of course, and the six had a pretty watertight alibi on that score.

And I'm sorry Suzy but this...

I'm not surprised by this verdict but I don't think this woman would have gotten a guilty sentence in the US.

...just makes me mad.

I said this, not sure what makes you mad about it. In California we had someone who willfully beat his own infant to death and got manslaughter and was let out in 11 years, who then appears to have gone on and killed another kid. The US justice system is a weird and unpredictable thing I guess.

Sorry I totally misinterpreted you.

The reporting non this is just crap. Take the broken window.

BBC yesterday.
Afterwards they tried to make the death look like part of a failed burglary, breaking the window in Miss Kercher's room to look like forced entry. But police realised it had been done from the inside.

BBC today.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46857000/jpg/_46857947_knox_house466x600.jpg

Is this a contradiction or just badly written?

Less armchair investigation, more hot pix of the murderess.

yea one of the 'friends of amanda' ppl also said that she was just responding to a hypothetical, cooperating w/ police ~ what she would have heard if she had been home, etc

This is how the dude in John Grisham's The Innocent Man was convicted, too. Spent 11 years on death row before being exonerated.

To Ned and Ed: I'm not implying that other legal systems are good or better, I'm just saying that very often here in Italy investigations and trials are surrounded by a very thick cloud of ineptitude and plain dumbness.
The Knox-Kercher thing is not the Dreyfus affair but it is a link in a long long chain of truly embarrassing trials: it got international exposure because it involved US and Uk citizens, but there have been at least other four or five recent cases where people have been kept in prison for years and sometimes even condemned on totally nebolous premises.

Also, our judges are not elected but there can be other (very) serious problems: a judicial system where, among many other problems, the defence doesn't have the same rights of the prosecutor and where that same prosecutor is not going to be considered responsible for any of his mistakes (despite a referendum sanctioning his civil liability) doesn't seem that well to me.

Finally Italian legal system is obviously based on the principle reasonable doubt, that's why this sentence is particularly strident.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/06/11/amanda.knox/index.html?eref=rss_crime

I hope like hell she gets out. Poor kid. I miss her long hair.

any news?

I hope like hell she gets out. Poor kid. I miss her long hair.

― kkvgz, Sunday, June 13, 2010 12:36 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark

are you generally chill with murderers?

She's starting her appeal in October (according to CNN) or November (according to the DMail), hopefully (for her) her lawyers will know the actual date.

I hope like hell she gets out.

A bit like Al-Megrahi, difference being we all know for sure he didn't do it

WTF

'Heroes' star cast in Amanda 'Foxy Knoxy' Knox biopic

Maybe they should wait until this isn't being appealed?

maybe it'll be like that jeffrey archer play and the audience will get 2 decide if she's guilty at the end of the film (could be a good social networking gimmick)

An American is in prison abroad. A good looking one too. And white. That's what really counts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO46MFEbzNY&feature=player_embedded

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-neverending-nightmare-of-amanda-knox-20110627?print=true

yeah it is such a nightmare when you murder someone and have to go to the big house

wow i didn't realise you'd witnessed the murder

i mean i'm wary of the tone of Rolling Stone article but if half of its assertions are factual then there's no way you shd be able to get a conviction on those grounds.

What is your story, History Mayne? You've made a couple of those weirdly perfunctory posts.

(this legit question coming from someone who's only read a few of these big articles, all of which seem to convincingly point to some pretty questionable shit about her role in it all)

amanda knox is history mayne's oj

lol

heh. just trolling out on a sunday afternoon is all.

She Got the Questions

http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/110922-knox-vmed-450p.grid-4x2.jpg

Coming down the home stretch now.

similar issues have been touched on in the death penalty thread and i wanna be tactful but the Kercher family are being dicks about this really

huge dicks! it's okay, you don't have to be tactful

Eh. It's all terribly sad. They're dealing with a tremendous loss and people who have told them everything was one way are now telling them that it was a different way. It's gotta tear them up something bad.

The best thing anyone can hope for is that if Knox is truly innocent, that she'll be freed.

Buongiorno, one the highest-profile lawyers in Italy, attacked media coverage of the trial as sensational, saying it could have affected what witnesses told the court.

And she compared Knox to the voluptuous cartoon character Jessica Rabbit, who protests, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way," in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"

i don't know everything about this case (i read the rolling stone thing + that's about it); it is nice to think that someone went to prison in such a way and wasn't necessarily, inevitably totally destroyed by it

decision expected in a few hours i believe

I just saw her statement to the court - interesting

"I didn't realise how serious life is" is not the best ever explanation for cartwheels in the nick

"It's difficult to speak of forgiveness at this time. Four years is a very long time but on the other hand, it's not and it's still very, very raw," Lyle Kercher told a news conference on Monday afternoon.

don't think anybody's asking them to forgive anybody who committed the murder

wow, she lost the appeal

woah WHAT

she totally didn't but one second ago the guardian liveblog said 'know has lost her appeal'

so yeah she is, they are, free

or 'fee' as the guardian put it, which i guess is at least less embarrassing in the face of having got it way wronger a second earlier

#TeamFoxyKnoxy

The Mail have been saying she lost too http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044583/Amanda-Knox-verdict-GUILTY-appeal-murder-conviction-rejected.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

I suspect that won't stay up long

For clarification, this entry said Knox had lost the appeal, not the appeal on this specific charge. Apologies for this error.

what a confusing clarification

Premature posting by the mail there.

well, she lost the defamation appeal right?

there were two charges, apparently; she got the murder charge overturned but lost the defamation charge where she accused Patrick Lumumba of being the murderer

That Mail link reports her sobbing as it's announced and the enormity of 26 yrs sank in, etc - it's one thing getting it wrong, but blatantly making up the whole story. I'm naive to be shocked I guess.

Best part of the pre-written Mail article: 'Media scum: Journalists, photographers and camera crews flooded the court room during the appeal sessions earlier today ahead of the verdict'

It's like they'd been fantasising about it for ages...

lol mail article still up

hahahahahahaha they've posted the "she's free" article on the homepage but the prefab "she's GUILTY" article hasn't been deleted yet

Italian justice system has really failed to cover itself in glory here - not that I'm implying other countries are better, just fucked up differently.

I suppose the best the Italians can say is that at least they didn't execute her...

Nobody is covered in glory here - the prosecution, the judge, the defence, the police, Knox, the Knox family, the pro-Knox media, the anti-Knox media...

as i say, differently fucked up. the whole prosecution story is kinda unlikely when you think about it, and i assume it takes a certain kinda culture to swallow the "she's obv a ho so she must have done it" line

tbh I can see that line working in quite a few countries

eh newspapers hedge like this all the time, by having two stories ready. not an indictment in itself of anything other than the competency of web site staff.

i assume the exciting public grandstanding carried out by judge, defence, prosecution, cops, etc. was what influenced the UK gov to open our courtrooms to TV cameras, give us a chance to experience it first hand

eh newspapers hedge like this all the time, by having two stories ready. not an indictment in itself of anything other than the competency of web site staff.

please be reassured that all of my lols are squarely aimed at the web site staff

Now what? Book deal, millions of dollars for her story/reality show/porn parody until everyone's sick of her?

The first flight out of Italy before the prosecution get their appeal going, surely

yeah, and enough common sense to tone down the victory celebrations in light of the unsolved murder of her former flatmate, please god

re hedging, I get that - it's more the reporting of a bunch of stuff that never happening that's the thing. If the appeal had failed and she'd shrugged, or maybe frowned a little, the story would still have been about her as a sobbing wreck.

Well there's still a guy doing 16 years for the murder xp

I expect her to record a duet with DSK - that other recent innocent victim

Dancing With The Stars 2012, signature move involving a cartwheel across the dance floor?

eh newspapers hedge like this all the time, by having two stories ready. not an indictment in itself of anything other than the competency of web site staff.

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, October 3, 2011 4:20 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that 'justice has been done' although they said on a 'human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'.

xp w/ IK

oh for some reason i thought Guede had done one

maybe cos him and the other two all having done it makes no sense

wait I thought this person helped killed someone

That Mail article is still live http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2044583/Amanda-Knox-verdict-GUILTY-appeal-murder-conviction-rejected.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

why did the forensics not get done properly first time? talk on the BBC just now of masks not being worn and evidence not being bagged, tagged the usual way? any uh.. forensic experts on ile (wouldn't surprise me!).

I think there is a Rolling Stone article above that discusses all the issues with the crime scene.

Now what? Book deal, millions of dollars for her story/reality show/porn parody until everyone's sick of her?

A reality show where she shares an apartment with Casey Anthony and they have wacky adventures together?

there were two charges, apparently; she got the murder charge overturned but lost the defamation charge where she accused Patrick Lumumba of being the murderer

ha ha, it's like a simpsons thing though; i hereby pronounce you GUILTY!

- of slander & thereby must pay $15 in damages. of murder?, oh, sure, innocent.

i kinda doubt amanda knox wants to be famous

well she shouldn't've not committed a crime then

damn dude

The Rolling Stone made it seem kind of ludicrous that she was tried at all, so much so that I recoiled a bit because it seemed almost like a release by the PR machine they talk about. But then you hear about the speeches comparing her to Goebbels or bloody Jessica Rabbit and it's just like nobody's trying to find an impartial truth here.

xp

was digging at the media and its speculators, not Knox who i'd guess wants to disappear, like max said

'human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'.

ha did not read that. lol mail?

I'd be interested to know what the Italian media response is to this. I've largely ignored the whole thing, but I get the impression the UK media have demonised Know while the American media have held her up as victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. Personally, I have no idea if she's guilty or innocent and whether her being released is a good or bad thing. I'd like to know what a 'neutral' country's perspective is.

Actually, I suppose Italy aren't exactly neutral as their legal system is kind of on trial here. Someone tell me what the French think.

the swiss surely

*Gallic shrug*

What I read (possibly in Rolling Stone) was that her lying about Lumamba's involvement (and maybe alibi and other things too?) was for Italians basically conclusive of her guilt. Then there were the highjinks in the police station. Kind of an honour-based way of looking at it. You can see the appeal of that approach when it comes to judging character, but it's still a whole other thing whether they did the murder or not.

The tension in court as the verdict was delivered exploded into gasps when the presiding judge, Claudio Pratillo Hellmann, began by declaring that the American student's appeal had been rejected, before adding that the rejection only applied to the slander charge.

this is really awful

that claudio! what a prankster

you're being REJECTED ... from italy!!!

i find you GUILTY ... of being in prison too long!!!!!

I sentence you to death... by chocolate!

it was like this Blue Jam sketch where the guy gets his HIV test over the phone but i'm sure no-one remembers that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_HD2MMNv_c

The tension in court as the verdict was delivered exploded into gasps when the presiding judge, Claudio Pratillo Hellmann, began by declaring that the American student's appeal had been rejected, before adding that the rejection only applied to the slander charge.

lol - "This. Is. AMERICAN IDOL!"

"I'm sorry ..... but you're going to have to GET RELEASED FROM PRISON!!!!"

i assume it takes a certain kinda culture to swallow the "she's obv a ho so she must have done it" line

"He (Berlusconi) is the longest-serving post war Prime Minister of Italy, and third longest-serving since the creation of Italy, after Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti."

idk whether it was a specifically Italian thing. I get the impression that her alleged promiscuity was only one element of a more complex picture that was built up around her. She wasn't painted as immoral, she was painted as a psychopath. There was a huge amount of pop-psych commentary that fitted her behaviour in the police station and in court into a template of the 'textbook psycho' - cold, manipulative and incapable of feeling.

There are so many problems with clinical diagnosis of psychopathy, trying to do it via new bulletins is always going to be tricky.

*news bulletins*

Well there's still a guy doing 16 years for the murder

This is the thing I don't really get. If Knox and Sollecito are innocent, why could it not just be that one guy already sent down for it? Are they saying there might be another accomplice still walking round?

I could be wrong, but all that stuff about her being a "she-devil" and a "witch", wouldn't that have got laughed out of a British court? Maybe it got laughed out of an Italian court, I don't know. Italy seems a fairly misogynistic or at least sexist society (I know, where isn't). (xxp)

"He (Berlusconi) is the longest-serving post war Prime Minister of Italy, and third longest-serving since the creation of Italy, after Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti."

xp Yes, there was a lot of misogyny in the language which may be something you wouldn't find so readily in a British court (as opposed to a British tabloid).

It's more this general "Hollywood Beckons" slant, as if:

1) the best kind of validation of anything is if Hollywood makes a movie of it
2) that somehow someone 'getting' this in an 'undeserving' way is purely to rile the general population

This is the thing I don't really get. If Knox and Sollecito are innocent, why could it not just be that one guy already sent down for it? Are they saying there might be another accomplice still walking round?

Looks like the family are saying that - the father is reported as saying that there were two knives used and there's no way that one person could be responsible.

how familiar is the father with the evidence and how much can he trust it based on what appear to be a string of procedural botches?

i don't really think we can trust anything the family says about the case tbh, harsh but fair.

otm

however, the early Daily Mail version:

http://davesaysthings.com/delicious-cake/dailymail-knox-guilty.png

ah, it's here in it's entirety:

http://davesaysthings.com/delicious-cake/dailymail-knox-guilty.png

shorter version:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7kpZKZc9VTs/ToohMMFaQTI/AAAAAAAACQQ/D-k0JAXFPiQ/s1600/guilty.jpg

The link has the full version, including quotes from all parties, and suchlike.

sidebar is still the most compellingly weird thing about the daily mail site. i don't know what mail readers' angle on the new pac sextape is, i guess it is maybe something to disapprove of.

Weeping tears pof self-pity and still denying he's a peadophile...Chris Langham plotting his comeback

Underneath pics of 'sultry' Kendal Jenner (15). You Couldn't Make It Up.

http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg806/scaled.php?tn=0&server=806&filename=ypgq.jpg&xsize=640&ysize=640

Foxy Knoxy: Would Ya?
So Amanda Knox has been cleared of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher. She’s entirely innocent. She’s also undeniably fit and loves wild sex. Or did. So if you were a guy who’d met her in a bar and she invited you back to hers, would you go? I’m being quite serious. Or would something in your brain make you think twice?

Or would something in your brain make you think twice?

Some biochemical process I assume?

i would hit it but but my parasitical brain-weevils say nuh-uh

acquittal removes much of the frisson or perhaps increases it

Also she's been in prison for four years, eh boys? Knowhorrimean? Wahey! Eh? Eh?

was digging at the media and its speculators, not Knox who i'd guess wants to disappear, like max said

oh no I got that, I was marveling at the combo of ice cold and hilarious

Even if she does want to disappear, it's not going to happen -- her family has a lot of debt to pay off due to legal fees so she's likely to be making the media circuit w/paid interviews and probably publishing a book as well.

couldn't she/wouldn't she/would she not shoot for compensation on account of wrongful conviction?

does her family really have that much debt? i was under the impression that they were pretty rich--father was a microsoft exec or something?

Whatever she does, I imagine Italy's off the itinerary for a while

Taking Sides: pizza in the joint, or pizza in Seattle?

I gotta know

"Amanda, I hear real Italian pizza is worth going to jail for..."

The lady at the post office checked my ID yesterday (was using a cc to pay for overseas shipping) and she was like "this reminds me of that GIRL! they set her free, right?" and we proceeded to talk about Foxy Knoxy for at least 3 min while other people waited in line.

Knox's father is a vice-prez at Macy's. Well off but not wealthy, I'd imagine.

Can somebody link to something that explains why the Kerchers think there was a second murderer?

La Lechera pics or it didn't happen

Can somebody link to something that explains why the Kerchers think there was a second murderer?

BBC keep saying this too as if it's fact that there must have been more than one murderer

... or maybe it was Channel 4 News with that terrible reporter who looks like Penfold from Dangermouse

this is not a link but I think guede's conviction was based on the fact that there was one or more others involved not sure why

xpost

"There were 47 wounds on Meredith and two knives used, one person couldn't possibly have done that." (Kercher's dad) - I think it's basically a line used by the prosection.

The one knife submitted as evidence was the one found in Knox's boyfriends kitchen, which the discredited forensics said had her and kercher's dna; a defence expert testified that the three cuts to Kercher's throat were made by a smaller knife.

When asked if there could have been two knives involved, a theory put forth by the prosecution when it had to admit that the smaller wounds could not have been made by the big kitchen knife, Torre replied, "It would be the first time in history that a murder was done with two knives.

translation of the report by original trial judge, including all forensic evidence heard by the court:
http://www.beforeyoutakethatpill.com/2011/3/Massei_Report.pdf

So:

- Acquitted couple's DNA found on big knife
- Murder was done with smaller knife

Wow, what a stumper

I mean.. the Kerchers have to be operating on some data that is more complicated than that?

ok if you read from page 368 on the above link, it was the opinion of the court that there must have been more than one assailant, essentially due to her being strong and fit and awake and sober, and thus requiring more than one person to subdue her - "Also the diverse morphology of the injuries and their number and distribution lead one to consider that those participating in this criminal action were more than one".

rmde

... even though "The consultants and forensic scientists have asserted that from the point of view of forensic science, it cannot be ruled out that the author of the injuries could have been a single attacker, because the bruises and the wounds from a pointed and cutting weapon are not in themselves incompatible with the action of a single person."

Torre replied, "It would be the first time in history that a murder was done with two knives.

"Et tu, Torre?"

http://cache2.artprintimages.com/p/LRG/29/2927/ZQ9RD00Z/art-print/c-l-doughty-the-death-of-julius-caesar.jpg

i have no way of knowing how much of this is true but the italian prosecutor sounds like a real piece of work

http://abcnews.go.com/International/critics-knox-prosecutor-giuliano-mignini-seeking-revenge-redemption/story?id=14623904

Decades passed with no resolution and then, in 2002, Mignini re-opened the case. He didn't buy into the lone psychopathic killer theory. Instead, he claimed, the murders were the work of a satanic sect, dating back to the Middle Ages, that needed female body parts for their black masses, to serve as the blasphemous wafer.

[...]

Preston and Spezi were investigating the Monster on their own. They pursued a lone killer theory which entirely undermined Mignini's. In short order, they found themselves in Mignini's crosshairs.

The prosecutor brought Preston in for an interview which, Preston said, quickly became an interrogation.

"He accused me of planting evidence and demanded that I confess to these crimes," he said. "I was accused of knowing all about Satanism and so on and so forth. And it was completely insane. It was like something out of a nightmare."

why would guede do it? what is the motive?

burglary gone wrong iirc.

this all plays well into my theory that european countries don't have the death penalty because their right-wing kooks and miscarriages of justice really beat ours hands-down

Rolling Stone sez:

There are many theories, but the most persuasive scenario goes as follows:

Guede stakes out the cottage after dark. He breaks into the girls’ apartment and makes himself comfortable. He swigs orange juice from a carton he finds in the refrigerator — he had a spicy kebab for dinner — and then uses the bathroom. While he’s on the can, Kercher enters the apartment, locking the door behind her. Guede is trapped. He can’t exit through the window without alerting Kercher, and he can’t use the front door, because you need a key to open the lock from the inside. (Kercher’s keys would be stolen, along with cash, credit cards and phones.) Guede rises from the toilet without flushing, so as not to make a noise. He walks to Kercher’s bedroom. Perhaps he tries to explain himself — “Sorry, the door was open, I let myself in, I’m a friend of Giacomo’s downstairs” — or perhaps she starts screaming before he can speak. He grabs her by the mouth (there were bruises on Kercher’s face) and threatens her with the knife. He assaults her and, realizing that Kercher can identify him, he panics and kills her.

and he stabbed her 47 times to make it seem like a crime of passion?

47 wounds including bruises and defensive wounds, not 47 direct stab wounds (i can't even find a primary source for the number 47).

looking fwd 2 the spicy kebab defense

orange juice isnt the best way to deal with spicy food repeating on you

So, what sort of supposed chain of events has the NME come up with?

either there was no milk in the house or we're dealing with a total psycho

I use my 8" kitchen knife to cut almost anything. The defense theory that there must have been a second knife is based on what? The depth of the cut?Is there any way to accurately determine the breadth of a cutting blade from a cut? What if one person accidentally or purposely cut Kercher's throat (thus obviating any need to subdue her) and then, for whatever reason proceeded to stab her multiple times?

"Also the diverse morphology of the injuries and their number and distribution lead one to consider that those participating in this criminal action were more than one".

I understand this sentence but I am dubious about the facts behind it.

of course the issue here isn't whether there's a convincing defence version of events but whether the prosecution version shd have ever been considered convincing

Guede's bloody fingerprint was found on the bed right? So either he was involved or he happened to be in a strange girl's flat and found the body?

Or the forensics and the investigation were completely botched and/or corrupt.

"He ruled out that the knife (Exhibit 36) could have caused the wound on the opposite side ... because of the size of the wound (1 cm and a half with a depth of 4 cm) and the fact that at 4 cm from the tip the width of the blade of the knife is about 3 cm and therefore much larger than the width of the wound (as indicated, 1.5cm)." xp to mwhite

Guede 'fessed to something tho which - i know, right? - but still

Yeah, and bloody footsteps that matched his shoes. And he confessed, but changed his story a million times. He definitely did it, but for some reason the Kerchers are despairing that there is somebody else out there, escaping justice.

im kind of blown away by the amount of misinformation thats out there circulating--is this just a british tabloids-shitty-translations-of-italian-tabloids thing? or what

not like those fine upstanding american tabloids!

"Jury's Verdict Unlocks Knox - Sprung after 4 years in prison - Beau also cleared of grisly slay - Chaos as mob cries 'murderer!'" - New York Post - Tuesday 4 October 2011

this all plays well into my theory that european countries don't have the death penalty because their right-wing kooks and miscarriages of justice really beat ours hands-down

Yeah, and the guy's black too so if it was America he'd been a dead man walking amirite?

I dunno, does he have a learning disability too?

botched crime scene work + criminal investigation driven by what sounds like a crazy person + media circus court case + four years = anything goes

xp to max

now now i wasnt trying claim that american tabs are better than UK tabs, tho they are

they did break Elvis's secret life as a UFO pilot first, tbf

Can't we just all be friends and agree that Italy has worse corruption, racism, and terrible tabloids?

Sorry any Italian people.

As always the best guide to what happened can be found here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043338/

The Italian tabloids couldn't be worse than the British ones, could they?

Sorry any Italian people.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, October 5, 2011 11:07 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

JUSTICE FOR DOM PASSANTINO

Or the forensics and the investigation were completely botched and/or corrupt.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, October 5, 2011 10:57 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

i don't remember the exact details from that rolling stone but initial crime scene was contaminated/breached beyond belief

some cases will never get solved, cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JonBen%C3%A9t_Ramsey

nypost is waste in the extreme but still better than the sun

thought this was quite good on how the italian justice system is geared up to generate debate and discussion, not to settle it. (eg, prosecutors get to appeal? after the defence has successfully appealed itself? wtf?) just another part of berlusconi's entertainment empire:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/04/amanda-knox-case-italy-justice

Doubt there's much in any developed country worse than the worst of the Brit tabloids, although the Italian press might be advocating shooting all immigrants for all I know.

come on, that's only the Express

another thought...

The defense theory that there must have been a second knife is based on what?

The "first" knife was picked up from Sollectio's flat, from a drawer containing other cutlery, the only reason to link it to the crime is the now discredited DNA evidence. IOW the "second knife" theory is misnamed, the knife submitted as evidence is a complete red herring, there was only one murder weapon which has never been recovered.

Makes sense

So if there was only one murderer then the authorities have basically fucked any chance the family will ever get of achieving closure or a sense of justice or anything? Excellent work all concerned.

italy, everybody!

Well aside from the fact that the murderer is already behind bars for killing Meredith Kercher, and will be for quite a long time..

achieving closure

Expression needs to be euthanized, imho.

Yeah sorry I got carried away.

The Italian tabloids couldn't be worse than the British ones, could they?

I can't speak for the tabloids, but when I was in Italy I saw a TV programme which seemed to be about how the Rothschilds were the secret world government. There was a graphic showing the places where the five original Rothschilds went to - AND WHEN YOU JOINED THEM TOGETHER THEY MADE A STAR.

also, the programme's presenter was wearing a balaclava.

there needs to be a public ceremony where the kercher's family, amanda knox's family, sollecito's family, guede's family and representatives of the US and EU get together over a big fat file of papers, and solemnly take turns stamping CASE CLOSED on the file.

then we'd have "closure"

http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/GT/david-caruso-0409-lg.jpg

From what I recall, they don't really have tabloids in Italy, just 'proper' newspapers. The TV is another matter, especially on the channels owned or controlled by Berlusconi (which is virtually all of them).

The one shred of comfort I have in these difficult times is that our TV news is relatively impartial as far as these things go.

I saw somewhere that the prosecutor is only still working because he's currently appealing against an 18-month sentence for something or other. That can't be right can it?

Or that the Prime Minister is only in his job because he has enough money to repeatedly appeal against all his convictions until the statute of limitations says the case has been going on too long and has to be closed

Hm, that's a fair point.

I read (on the BBC or the Guardian) that one thing that helped Ms Knox secure her release was that Berlusconi has a strong interest in seeing Italy's investigating magistrates discredited.

LOL

That is awesome. It's the kind of end-of-book quiet bombshell John Le Carre would drop in, and you'd shake your head and go "well, maybe in BOOKS it works this way..."

http://i55.tinypic.com/28b7034.jpg

Italian magazine just happens to give away free knives with their latest issue.

That's the first issue of Oggi i've seen that hasn't had a partially-naked woman on the front. I thinks someone mentioned upthread that Italy doesn't really have tabloid newspapers, this might be true but it more than makes up for it in sensationalist magazines.

yeah italy is basically second to none in terms of sensationalist irresponsible media.

It's back

Amanda Knox faces retrial over Meredith Kercher murder

Italy doesn't have anything prohibiting double jeopardy?

The UK sacked it..

italy, everybody!

― yung huma (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, October 5, 2011 11:56 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this case refuses to die! i'm not gonna lie, might read the book.

will be a good book but this is nowhere near ready for publication

Meanwhile Rudy Guede - who was *ALSO* convicted of the murder and is in prison for it - is eligible for parole in 2016. He could very well be out before they're done with Knox!

Can't she refuse to defend herself? Now that she's back in the USA I mean?

she could get extradited

extradition between europe and the US is kinda one way

She won't get extradited. US won't allow it because of double jeopardy.

Yeh, no way is she serving time now. Italian courts often hold trials without the defendant but being present eg. Berlusconi's trials.

Presumably the Italian guy is fucked though...

#AmandaKnoxABC

this was the stupidest trial ever. the case against her never made sense to me.

someone shd compare & contrast how abc portrays the story here vs how they did 5 yrs ago

now shes playing cat power cover songs how is she not in jail

cat power is awesome

lol @ Diane Sawyer "hard as it is to imagine, people DO sometimes give false confessions."

like, she was in a stressful situation. it's not at all hard to imagine.

Knox and Sollecito found guilty this go-around. Sad interview with Kercher's brother and sister. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25941999

Goddamn Italy has a kangaroo court justice system. No way this woman should be extradited. What a joke.

I'm totally out of touch with this. What's the most reasonable position on what actually happened?

this is still going on? wtf italy!?

Cardamom, there was a guy who broke into the apartment and robbed them who pleaded guilty to murdering her. The evidence against him was, i think, stronger than against knox.

Ah yeah - now I remember. Was there something about her being involved with the robber in some way?

(What I'm doing here is prob very annoying as I could surely google all this, ffs, but secretly I want to know what ilx people think about this)

The robber scenario is totally separate from the knox/sollecito(sp?) scenario but all accused parties have been found guilty. That's the central absurdity of this thing.

Knox should never step foot into Canada or Mexico again.

iirc the prosecutor is some sort of tabloid-driven conspiracy magnet? it all seems kind of fucked up and based more on what makes an interesting court narrative than the truth

This sort of reminds me of how those (4? 5?) Australians are being threatened with being put on trial remotely whether they like it or not in South America cos the cops there claim they pushed some guy off a balcony when it is so screamingly obvious even in pics it wasnt possble (and they werent actually there at the time).

http://www.smh.com.au/world/framed-for-murder-20130812-2rqxg.html

sooooo i've just been reading one of these kook-ball "WE present the REAL STORY" web sites and i've done a total 180 on this, just as the authors intended; it sure does seem like sollecito at least was there

also reading the details again is horrifying

the whole thing is so addicting if you have an appetite for mysteries; it reminds me of intense wave of newsgroup "fact"-marshalling around the OJ trial, vast armies with their favorite pieces of pet evidence

link please?

it's at the obviously unbiased "truejustice.org"

Criminal justice in Europe is generally a disaster. Defense attorney culture was wiped out in WWII, and the inquisitorial legal system has become over the decades a rubber stamp for the State's Attorneys. This is not that big a deal where the SAs are professional and serious people -- but that will differ from province to province, let alone nation to nation -- and sentences are generally lighter than in the Anglo-American system, so that the unofficial but real tendency is to convict where there is any doubt in absolute innocence, because what's the harm? The harm is that the tendency towards heavier punishment is solidly on the march throughout Europe, and that common law countries have to figure out what to do with conviction from other nations they have treaties with that would never have been convictions in the common law country.

Americans berating the legal system of other countries is a constant source of hilarity

http://politicalblindspot.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/17.jpg
"I know, right?"

Yes, Yes, Florida's acquittal of George Zimmerman disqualifies all Americans from criticizing one of our citizens from being tried three times, and acquitted once, by a kangaroo court that allowed psychic testimony and already has the murder behind bars. We get it, blah blah blah blah

...the murderer behind bars...

dang, Bill pretty on point here

i wasnae thinking of one trial tbh

any criticisms of the Kercher case - and i'm sure there are many valid ones - ought to be made from a standpoint that doesn't try to compare Italy's justice system with yr own morally corrupt, racist, murderous justice system tho. ours is reasonably morally corrupt and racist too tbf

there's also a fair leap from "these trials have been conducted in such a way as to make any conviction completely unsafe" and "yay Knox is totally innocent no question", so to say "the murderer is behind bars" is a bit of a stretch

well, there's innocence before the law and innocence in the sense of whether or not you did commit the crime

"Americans berating the legal system of other countries is a constant source of hilarity"

So's your red nose, floppy shoes, and rainbow wig, you clown.

1. I haven't been an American for over a decade. 2. I spent a year on a Robert Bosch Fellowship studying comparative criminal law, including internships with a private defense attorney and at the German Justice Ministry, and was the negotiation team for the Germans in negotiations on an EU criminal law cooperation treaty. 3. I am specifically contrasting the civil law legal systems of continental Europe with common law systems such as the US, the UK, canada, etc. 4. In most of Europe, Zimmerman would never have been brought to trial, following a years'-long and terribly expensive "investigation". 5. Wannabe progressives who think criminal prosecutors are allies in the fight for justice are, consciously or unconsciously, white supremacist elitist dopes. 6. Your rainbow wig isn't actually that funny.

again: i agree there are serious problems with the legal system in many European countries. to contrast the US and UK as models of "getting it right" is pretty fucken laughable to me

Goody for you! Who's suggesting that?

any criticisms of the Kercher case - and i'm sure there are many valid ones - ought to be made from a standpoint that doesn't try to compare Italy's justice system with yr own morally corrupt, racist, murderous justice system tho.

yeah I think everyone has just been pointing what is fucked up, not holding up anyone else's as an ideal

I mean unless you want to go on about the positives of the Italian justice system and how this is an amazing outlier and how it is better than other systems

5. Wannabe progressives who think criminal prosecutors are allies in the fight for justice are

Who did you have in mind here?

If the clown shoe fits...

ach, maybe we're all deliberately misreading each other's tone

maybe

I do think a criminal justice system is best measured on the quality of its defense bar and have a personal bias that convicted innocents are worse than acquitted bad guys. That's really the only point where I would say the US system is the best in the world, which is sadly not the same thing as saying it's any good.

But if you're guilty and want to confess, pretty much anywhere else but the US has a better criminal justice system.

maybe instead of talking about the relative merits of western criminal justice systems, which is sort of boring, we could talk about whether we think sollecito and knox dun it or not (which could involve the criminal justice system, of course; there are many many ppl out there who think the justice system has been stacked in favour of knox and sollectio, fwiw, ibid the aforementioned kook-town sites with encyclopedic knowledge of the various justices assigned to the case and their supposed ties to the mafia)

the other thing i want to talk about is how sollecito has transformed over the years!! he started out as, in knox's words, "an italian harry potter" and looks like a kind of thick-necked iron-pumpin' good ol' boy

i mean he NOW looks like a thick-necked iron-pumpin' good ol' boy. the change is remarkable

honestly i'm happy to know next to nothing about this case

Maybe Knox had a wildly differing image of Harry after reading the books.

for what it's worth TWU i also prefer a system that errs on the side of the defendant, and if i made my initial snipe after you posted that was mainly because i've read a lot lately that has a tone of condescencion to the Italians or fails to distinguish between an unsafe conviction and innocence

and my half-reading of your comment was the trigger, i shd add

the details are SO CRAZY though goole. i just go down a rabbit hole with it. there is a crazy amount of physical evidence. DNA on a knife. a set of bloody footprints. a different bloody (bare) footprint in the bathroom. an unflushed shit in the toilet. a seemingly staged break-in. WHERE IS KALINDA WHEN YOU NEED HER.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01240/perugia2_1240580c.jpg

http://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video/__NEW/tdy_mor_sollecito_140131.standard.jpg

ha i had to google that name

xp

xp -- Fair enough, NV, there is still bad feeling about the Zimmerman thread and my strawmanning thereon, so I came out aggressive.

there was a guy who broke into the apartment and robbed them who pleaded guilty to murdering her. The evidence against him was, i think, stronger than against knox.

I thought Guede didn't plead guilty?

I mean, I thought he'd admitted to being present when the murder was committed, not to the murder itself?

tracer i get you, i love a good rabbit hole. but this whole thing just reads like nancy grace explaining a christopher nolan movie to me

sorry to trivialize a real actual murder but all the world is text etc

I tried to read the Wikipedia on this but could not understand any version of what supposedly happened.

Have you ever considered a role in the Italian judiciary?

tracer i get you, i love a good rabbit hole. but this whole thing just reads like nancy grace explaining a christopher nolan movie to me

goole bringing his classic sense of wordplay, hats off to you, sir

I tried to read the Wikipedia on this but could not understand any version of what supposedly happened.

― ryan, Tuesday, February 4, 2014 1:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Have you ever considered a role in the Italian judiciary?

― Eats like Elvis, shits like De Niro (Tom D.), Tuesday, February 4, 2014 1:42 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He'd be overqualified.

hope to god three word username isn't going to law school

Drop dead, you hateful little weasel.

substance of TWU's posts otm

Am I seeing things?

http://cdn4.pitchfork.com/albums/20190/homepage_large.49b6343b.jpg

No, you're right

http://www.arenbergschouwburg.be/content/dam/arenberg/Agenda/Seizoen%2013%20-%2014/Nina-Persson.jpg

this is good (UK only i'm afraid)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03wd39x

what's it doing on BBC3 then?

It's a programme for kidz obv.

court says the murder was likely not result of sex game gone wrong, but of an attempt to bully and humiliate meredith kercher, possibly after knox had stolen her rent money

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/29/world/europe/italy-amanda-knox/

"There is nothing against me and nothing very strong against Amanda," Sollecito recently told CNN. "And in my case, I really did nothing wrong, and I don't want to pay for someone else's peculiar behavior."

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/26/world/europe/italy-knox-ex-boyfriend/?hpt=bosread

new vid from that night:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/may/06/amanda-knox-alibi-new-cctv-footage-video

The figure in the CCTV video has a very herky jerky walk, while the video of Amanda shows that she has a smooth, purposeful strut.

Andrea Vogt
‏@andreavogt
Both raffaelle Sollecito and #amandaknox convictions have been fully overturned. Cries of joy in courtroom from sollecito's family
Rome, Lazio

Dude

I had fully signed up to Knox and Sollecito being lying-ass liars about this somehow

Well, they are definitely lying-ass liars, which is what has made this whole thing troubling for me, because that doesn't necessarily make them guilty of murder.

apparently everyone was stunned by the verdict - defense, prosecution, everybody

Yeah i did a 180 on this. I always used to see them as the victims of a botched investigation but there's always been something really off about these two

Bit of evidence linking them to the crime for which someone is already doing time would be nice.

Thankfully not the person she falsely accused for no reason.

She looks like Billy Corgan. Therefore, probably a wrong'un.

they're a bit odd but from what I read of any of this over time there was hardlly any evidence connection them to it. I admit it seems like people outside of the US seem to have a completley different take on this for some reason.

They've spent an enormous amount of money managing the media in the US, which goes some way towards explaining the divide.

No point beating a dead horse at this point, but Salon sums it up nicely:

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/27/amanda_knox_verdict_the_real_evidence_and_why_almost_everything_you_think_you_know_about_the_case_is_wrong/

Are we gonna have a Serial/Jinx treatment of this in years to come?

It may be the intervention of the PR firm coupled with media echo effects and confirmation bias, but I'd love to read a serious investigative piece about this case's public "life". It's one of those cases where there's so much strawmanning, xenophobia, contrary positions with seemingly entirely different sets of basic facts that it makes me feel like every comment section is street-teamed. I guess "welcome to the Internet, me" but there's so much deliberate lying, innocent misinformation and general ugliness involved with this case that it's hard for me to process.

sorry that's so badly written, but hopefully it's a little bit intelligible.

Don't forget Sarcasm, there's a lot of it about and it ends up being accumulated into the 'stated' facts of the case.

Yes - I think sarcasm and detachment probably explain a lot.

That salon article reads like the author stumbled across one of the highly partisan anti-knox blogs (I know there are just as bad pro-knox ones) and then ran wide eyed to the typewriter.

Knox’s DNA was found on the handle of the murder weapon – a knife belonging to Sollecito – and Kercher’s was found on the blade. Whether it’s really Kercher’s DNA is hotly contested by Knox supporters, but contamination was ruled out at the latest appeal. The probability that the DNA on the blade did not come from Kercher was found to be one in 300 million billion.

One in three hundred million billion bajillion! That's incontrovertibly high! That appeal she refers to where contamination was ruled out was the previous appeal, the one that was just overturned.

And reading the comments it seems there were two knives, and the one with Knox/Sollecito DNA couldn't have been the murder weapon because it was too big (I admit I haven't been following close enough to know definitively whether that's the knife they're talking about).

Wow I don't remember dissecting the evidence quite as closely as I did back in 2011, still, nothing has materially changed since then. In other words I'd just like to point out that I was otm in this thread.

ledge you said she was held for 14 hours. she wasn't. you said the DNA evidence on the knife was discredited. it wasn't.

guys

I'M IN HTE ZONE DAMMIT

you said the DNA evidence on the knife was discredited. it wasn't.

What's your source for this? I don't think it's correct, although we can't be sure until the final courts full judgment is released.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3081807/What-s-head-Foxy-Knoxy-Watch-Amanda-Knox-sing-away-woes-karaoke-rendition-Cranberries-song-Zombie-NYC-visit.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r8LG_lCbac

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NueLjUNB-GM

ok now i think she did it

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/amanda-knoxs-boyfriend-is-here-to-party-rock-1786455477

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--qs8fmX3S--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/v0rghjaw95nufmitoj56.jpg

it me

we can't be sure until the final courts full judgment is released.

Did this happen, does anyone care anymore?

oh there are a few websites that will care about this for the next 30 years. i haven't checked them in awhile tho.

i just checked one. latest post - this tuesday. hundreds of words.

http://truejustice.org/ee/

ghouls

fucking hell someone has a lot of time on their hands

Just learned that she hosts a podcast (for Sundance): The Truth About True Crime. I'm gonna check it out.

did we ever get this sorted?

documentarians are divided

guede is out of prison. if you listen you can hear the sound of checkbooks opening all over europe. i don’t think he has anything to lose by talking - he’s already been convicted and served his time. sorry if it’s ghoulish, this is my one true crime guilty pleasure.

i’ve probably read this transcript a million times. guede’s story is super sketch, sounds kinda fake, but at the same time there are so many weird details. the clothes in the washing machine. the broken window (which i know from other sources had shattered OUTWARDS rather than inwards)

https://famous-trials.com/amanda-knox/2635-guede-s-taped-skype-conversation