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

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.

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