Sunday, June 16, 2013

Questions For Knox: Do You Really Think “False Memories” Claim Framing Italians Yet Again Will Help?

Posted by Our Main Posters



[You say Madison Paxton found Kassin? So why did Bruce Fischer and Sarah claim to have done so??]

1. Your Real Persona, Widely Observed

Remember that Italians have seen a lot more of the real you than most Americans ever have. Italians all saw the real you described here and here.

That is why maybe 95% of all Italians long ago concluded for your guilt. At times you can come across as winning but, as there on the stand, too often as brash, sneering, sharp-elbowed, humorless, uncaring, and self-absorbed.

That is the Knox that put off many who encountered you in Seattle, it is why you had Halloween largely alone, and why you put off almost everyone you encountered in Perugia. Including everyone in your house in Perugia, and most in Patrick’s bar - and this literally in less than a month.

The “lost little girl” persona, the “chaste girl who never did sex and drugs” persona, the “diligent girl who studied so hard” persona, and the “they all want to get me because I am so fantastically cute” persona you or your agenda-driven shadow-writer put in the book have many people who have seen a lot of you in strong disbelief.

Can you name even one good friend who still stands by you in Perugia, given that even Raffaele Sollecito has placed you at the brink of a cliff?

By the way, this is not an unkind group, mostly comprised as it is of professionals, and some surprising things you yourself said in your book confirmed a suspicion about untreated root causes that we mentioned here.

2. Pages 270 to 272 Of Your Book With Your False Claims Highlighted

Let us first quote what you claim about your interrogation as “explained” by Saul Kassin who had at this point diagnosed you only long-distance and talked with not even one person who was there. False claims are shown in bold.

Thankfully Madison had researched the science on false confessions. She found Saul Kassin, a psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. A specialist in wrongful convictions, he took the mystery out of what had happened to me.

Before my interrogation, I believed, like many people, that if someone were falsely accused, they wouldn’t, couldn’t, be swayed from the truth while under interrogation. I never would have believed that I could be pressured into confessing to something I hadn’t done. For three years I berated myself for not having been stronger. I’m an honest person. During that interrogation, I had nothing to hide, and a stake in the truth “” I desperately wanted the police to solve Meredith’s murder. But now I know that innocent people often confess. The records kept of people convicted of a crime and later exonerated by DNA evidence show that the DNA of 25 percent of them didn’t match the DNA left at the scene. The DNA testing showed that one in four innocent people ended up confessing as I did. And experts believe that even more innocent people confess, both in cases with and without DNA evidence.

According to Kassin, there are different types of false confessions. The most common is “compliant,” which usually happens when the suspect is threatened with punishment or isolation. The encounter becomes so stressful, so unbearable, that suspects who know they’re innocent eventually give in just to make the uncomfortably harsh questioning stop. “You’ll get thirty years in prison if you don’t tell us,” says one interrogator. “I want to help you, but I can’t unless you help us,” says another.

This was exactly the good cop/bad cop routine the police had used on me.

Besides being compliant, I also showed signs of having made an “internalized” false confession. Sitting in that airless interrogation room in the questura, surrounded by people shouting at me during forty-three hours of questioning over five days, I got to the point, in the middle of the night, where I was no longer sure what the truth was. I started believing the story the police were telling me. They took me into a state where I was so fatigued and stressed that I started to wonder if I had witnessed Meredith’s murder and just didn’t remember it. I began questioning my own memory.

Kassin says that once suspects begin to distrust their own memory, they have almost no cognitive choice but to consider, possibly accept, and even mentally elaborate upon the interrogator’s narrative of what happened. That’s how beliefs are changed and false memories are formed.

That’s what had happened to me.

I was so confused that my mind made up images to correspond with the scenario the police had concocted and thrust on me. For a brief time, I was brainwashed.

Three years after my “confession,” I’d blocked out some of my interrogation. But the brain has ways of bringing up suppressed memories. My brain chooses flashbacks””sharp, painful flashes of memory that flicker, interrupting my conscious thoughts. My adrenaline responds as if it’s happening in that moment. I remember the shouting, the figures of looming police officers, their hands touching me, the feeling of panic and of being surrounded, the incoherent images my mind made up to try to explain what could have happened to Meredith and to legitimize why the police were pressuring me.

This new knowledge didn’t stop my nightmares or flashbacks, but I was so relieved to learn that what I’d been through wasn’t unique to me. It had been catalogued! It had a name! As soon as I understood that what happened during my interrogation wasn’t my fault, I started forgiving myself.

Kassin and others show that interrogations are intentionally designed to bewilder and deceive a suspect. Originally created to get highly trained, patriotic U.S. fighter pilots to sell out their country during the Korean War, one technique uses a tag team of investigators and tactics meant to induce exhaustion, agitation, and fear. It’s especially potent on young, vulnerable witnesses like me. The method was designed not to elicit information but to plant it “” specifically tailored to destroy an orderly thought process. After some hours, the subject gives the interrogators what they want “” whether it’s the truth or not.

In my case they’d put several interrogators in a room with me. For hours they yelled, screamed, kept me on edge. When they exhausted themselves, a fresh team replaced them. But I wasn’t even allowed to leave to use the bathroom.

These were strategic measures, many of which are described in Kassin’s report on police interrogation, “On the Psychology of Confessions: Does Innocence Put Innocents at Risk?” Reading it, I was flabbergasted to learn how by the book the police had been in their manipulation of me.

It had been the middle of the night. I’d already been questioned for hours at a time, days in a row. They tried to get me to contradict myself by homing in on what I’d done hour by hour, to confuse me, to cause me to lose track and get something wrong. They said I had no alibi. They lied, saying that Raffaele had told them I’d asked him to lie to the police. They wouldn’t let me call my mom. They wouldn’t let me leave the interrogation room. They were yelling at me in a language I didn’t understand. They hit me and suggested that I had trauma-induced amnesia. They encouraged me to imagine what could have happened, encouraged me to “remember” the truth because they said I had to know the truth. They threatened to imprison me for thirty years and restrict me from seeing my family. At the time, I couldn’t think of it as anything but terrifying and overwhelming.

That was exactly their point.

Highlighted in bold is another large body of your many easy-to-disprove lies as in the previous post.

Your bizarre analysis leads to many many questions.

    What honest person? You served three years for felony lying. Exactly how did you ever help the police? What good cop/bad cop routine? There were only ever 2 or 3 interviewers there. What airless room? You were in a very modern building with air conditioning. What shouting? What 43 hours of interrogation? You had at most been questioned for one or two hours - and only for a few minutes on this night when you “broke”.  What story were police forcing on you? Why were you so confused and stressed - other than that Sollecito had just left you with no alibi? What did the police concoct and thrust on you, and why? Why didnt they do that to anyone else? So many others were interviewed too.

    You are not even in Kassin’s “vulnerable” target group. How could you possibly be brainwashed in such a short time? What do you mean “after some hours”? What hours? Who exactly yelled and screamed and kept you on edge? What fresh tag team? Who stopped you leaving the interrogation room for a bathroom break? Why did you testify that you were given refreshments and treated well? Why did your own lawyers say you were treated well? Why did they never lodge a complaint? Why when you had an excellent interpreter did you say you couldn’t understand? Why would police threaten to imprison you for 30 years when their whole interest moved quickly to Patrick as you engineered? And why after the interview when you were left sitting in a corridor, babbling and being calmed down, did you not simply walk right out?

In fact, nobody ever accused you of anything at all in your voluntary witness interview.

You were put under no pressure to confess. Not so long after Sollecito fingered you, you spontaneously blamed Patrick for Meredith’s death. For the next several hours, you babbled on, again and again blaming Patrick. Dr Mignini then witnessed you being warned, and barely said a word.

And of course you never ever did confess that you participated in the attack on Meredith yourself. You are really claiming a false confession - when you didnt even confess? 

Sollecito similarly cracked spontaneously in an adjacent room, and he pointed the blame at you. Its very noticeable in all of the above that you essentially dont even mention his name. Nor does Kassin.

So what made Sollecito crack? You don’t explain that.

3. Saul Kassin’s Version with His False Claims Highlighted

It seems that Kassin was subjected to the toxic Misinformation Cloud conjured up by the Rank Amateurs for Knox, and Kassin very foolishly failed to check with anyone at all who had been on the spot.

Here are the relevant passages from Saul Kassin’s paper in American Psychologist with his false claims highlighted in bold.

As illustrated by the story of Amanda Knox and many others wrongfully convicted, false confessions often trump factual innocence. Focusing on consequences, recent research suggests that confessions are powerfully persuasive as a matter of logic and common sense; that many false confessions contain richly detailed narratives and accurate crime facts that appear to betray guilty knowledge; and that confessions in general can corrupt other evidence from lay witnesses and forensic experts””producing an illusion of false support. This latter phenomenon, termed “corroboration inflation,” suggests that pretrial corroboration requirements as well as the concept of “harmless error” on appeal are based on an erroneous presumption of independence among items of evidence. In addition to previously suggested reforms to police practices that are designed to curb the risk of false confessions, measures should be taken as well to minimize the rippling consequences of those confessions…. 

Meredith Kercher was found raped and murdered in Perugia, Italy. Almost immediately,  police suspected 20-year-old Amanda Knox, an American student and one of Kercher’s roommates””the only one who stayed in Perugia after the murder. Knox had no history of crime or violence and no motive. But something about her demeanor””such as an apparent lack of affect, an outburst of sobbing, or her girlish and immature behavior”” led police to believe she was involved and lying when she claimed she was with Raffaele Sollecito, her new Italian boyfriend, that night. 

Armed with a prejudgment of Knox’s guilt, several police officials interrogated the girl on and off for four days. Her final interrogation started on November 5 at 10 p.m. and lasted until November 6 at 6 a.m., during which time she was alone, without an attorney, tag-teamed by a dozen police, and did not break for food or sleep. In many ways, Knox was a vulnerable suspect””young, far from home, without family, and forced to speak in a language in which she was not fluent. Knox says she was repeatedly threatened and called a liar. She was told,  falsely, that Sollecito, her boyfriend, disavowed her alibi and that physical evidence placed her at the scene. She was encouraged to shut her eyes and imagine how the gruesome crime had occurred, a trauma, she was told, that she had obviously repressed. Eventually she broke down crying,  screaming, and hitting herself in the head. Despite a law that mandates the recording of interrogations, police and prosecutors maintain that these sessions were not recorded. 

Two “confessions” were produced in this last session,  detailing what Knox called a dreamlike “vision.” Both were typed by police””one at 1:45 a.m., the second at 5:45 a.m. She retracted the statements in a handwritten letter as soon as she was left alone (“In regards to this “˜confession’  that I made last night, I want to make it clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock, and extreme exhaustion.”). Notably, nothing in the confessions indicated that she had guilty knowledge. In fact, the statements attributed to Knox were factually incorrect on significant core details (e.g., she named as an accomplice a man whom police had suspected but who later proved to have an ironclad alibi; she failed to name another man, unknown to police at the time, whose DNA was later identified on the victim). Nevertheless, Knox, Sollecito, and the innocent man she implicated were all immediately arrested. In a media-filled room, the chief of police announced: Caso chiuso (case closed). 

Police had failed to provide Knox with an attorney or record the interrogations, so the confessions attributed to her were ruled inadmissible in court. Still, the damage was done. The confession set into motion a hypothesis-confirming investigation, prosecution, and conviction. The man whose DNA was found on the victim, after specifically stating that Knox was not present, changed his story and implicated her while being prosecuted. Police forensic experts concluded that Knox’s DNA on the handle of a knife found in her boyfriend’s apartment also contained Kercher’s blood on the blade and that the boyfriend’s DNA was on the victim’s bra clasp. Several eyewitnesses came forward.  An elderly woman said she was awakened by a scream followed by the sound of two people running; a homeless drug addict said he saw Knox and Sollecito in the vicinity that night; a convicted drug dealer said he saw all three suspects together; a grocery store owner said he saw Knox the next morning looking for cleaning products; one witness said he saw Knox wielding a knife. 

On December 5, 2009, an eight-person jury convicted Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito of murder. The two were sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, respectively. Finally, on October 3, 2011, after having been granted a new trial, they were acquitted. [Actually they still stand accused - and facing a tough fact-based prosecution appeal] Ten weeks later, the Italian appeals court released a strongly worded 143-page opinion in which it criticized the prosecution and concluded that there was no credible evidence, motive, or plausible theory of guilt. For the four years of their imprisonment, this story drew international attention (for comprehensive overviews of the case, see Dempsey, 2010, and Burleigh, 2011).1

It is now clear that the proverbial mountain of discredited evidence used to convict Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito was nothing but a house of cards built upon a false confession. The question posed by this case, and so many others like it, is this: Why do confessions so often trump innocence? ...

Third, it is important to realize that not all evidence is equally malleable or subject to corroboration inflation. Paralleling classic research indicating that expectations can color judgments of people, objects, and other stimuli that are ambiguous as opposed to those that compel a particular perception, forensic research indicates that ambiguity is a moderating condition. Asked to report on an event or make an identification decision on the basis of a memory trace that cannot be recovered, eyewitnesses are particularly malleable when confronted with evidence of a confession (Hasel & Kassin, 2009). This phenomenon was illustrated in the case against Amanda Knox. When police first interviewed Knox’s British roommates, not one reported that there was bad blood between Knox and the victim. After Knox’s highly publicized confession, however, the girls brought forth new “memories,” telling police that Kercher was uncomfortable with Knox and the boys she would bring home (Burleigh, 2011). ... 

In recent years, psychologists have been critical of the problems with accuracy, error, subjectivity, and bias in various types of criminal evidence””prominently including eyewitness identification procedures, police interrogation practices, and the so-called forensic identification sciences,  all leading Saks and Koehler (2005) to predict a “coming paradigm shift.” With regard to confessions, it now appears that this shift should encompass not only reforms that serve to minimize the risk of false confessions but measures designed to minimize the rippling consequences of those confessions””as in the case of Amanda Knox and others who are wrongfully convicted.

4. An Exposure Of Ten Of Saul Kassins’s False Claims

Our main poster the Machine exposes further how Kassin’s key claims are wrong.

False Claim 1: They brought her in for that final interrogation late at night.

No they didn’t.

Neither the police nor the prosecutors brought Amanda in for questioning on 5 November 2007. Amanda Knox herself testified in court that she wasn’t called to come to the police station on 5 November 2007.

Carlo Pacelli: “For what reason did you go to the Questura on November 5? Were you called?”

Amanda Knox: “No, I wasn’t called. I went with Raffaele because I didn’t want to be alone.”

Amanda Knox went with Raffaele Sollecito because she didn’t want to be alone. Kassin’s false claim is the first red flag that Saul Kassin is very confused or has been seriously misled when it comes to this well-documented and well-handled case.

False Claim 2: The so-called confession wasn’t until 6:00am.

No it wasn’t.

If Saul Kassin had actually read Amanda Knox’s first witness statement, he would have known that it was made at 1:45am. Knox had admitted that she was at the cottage when Meredith was killed some time before this.

False Claim 3: She was interrogated from 10:00pm to 6.00am.

No she wasn’t.

According to the Daily Beast Amanda Knox’s questioning began at about 11:00pm.

Since Knox was already at the police station [in the company of Raffaele Sollecito] the head of the murder squad decided to ask her a few questions. Her interrogation started at about 11 p.m.

After Amanda Knox had made her witness statement at 1:45am, she wasn’t questioned again that evening. That was it.

However, Amanda Knox herself then wanted to make further declarations and Mr Mignini who was on duty on the night sat and watched while Knox wrote out her declarations.

Mr Mignini explained what happened in his email letter to Linda Byron, another who was factually challenged.

All I did was to apply the Italian law to the proceedings. I really cannot understand any problem.

In the usual way, Knox was first heard by the police as a witness, but when some essential elements of her involvement with the murder surfaced, the police suspended the interview, according to Article 63 of the penal proceedings code.

But Knox then decided to render spontaneous declarations, that I took up without any further questioning, which is entirely lawful.

According to Article 374 of the penal proceedings code, suspects must be assisted by a lawyer only during a formal interrogation, and when being notified of alleged crimes and questioned by a prosecutor or judge, not when they intend to render unsolicited declarations.

Since I didn’t do anything other than to apply the Italian law applicable to both matters, I am unable to understand the objections and reservations which you are talking about.

In Amanda Knox’s written witness statement, she explicitly states that she’s making a spontaneous declaration:

Amanda Knox: “I wish to relate spontaneously what happened because these events have deeply bothered me and I am really afraid of Patrick, the African boy who owns the pub called “Le Chic” located in Via Alessi where I work periodically.

False Claim 4: They banged her on the back of the head.

No they didn’t.

All the numerous witnesses who were actually present when Amanda Knox was questioned, including her interpreter, testified under oath at trial in 2009 that she wasn’t hit. She has never identified anyone who hit her and on several occasions confirmed that she was treated well.

Even one of Amanda Knox’s lawyers, Luciano Ghirga, confirmed that Amanda Knox had not been hit: “There were pressures from the police but we never said she was hit.”  He never ever lodged a complaint.

False Claim 5: All the other British roommates left town.

No they didn’t.

The police also told Sophie Purton that they needed her to stay on in Perugia on precisely the same basis as Amanda Knox. In chapter 19 of Death in Perugia, John Follain states that Sophie Purton was questioned by Mignini and Napoleoni in the prosecutor’s office on 5 November 2007.

Sophie had been counting on leaving Perugia to fly back home as soon as her parents arrived, but the police called to tell her they needed her to stay on; they would let her know when she could leave.

False Claim 6 : Amanda Knox stayed back to help the police.

No she didn’t.

This claim is flatly contradicted by Amanda Knox herself. In the e-mail she wrote to her friends in Seattle on 4 November 2007 she categorically stated she was not allowed to leave Italy.

i then bought some underwear because as it turns out i wont be able to leave italy for a while as well as enter my house

Knox actually knew on 2 November 2007 that she couldn’t leave Italy. Amy Frost reported the following conversation (The Massei report, page 37),

I remember having heard Amanda speaking on the phone, I think that she was talking to a member of her family, and I heard her say, No, they won’t let me go home, I can’t catch that flight.

It’s not the first time that the myth that Knox chose to stay behind rather than leave Italy has been claimed in the media. And incidentally, lying repeatedly to the police isn’t normally considered to be helping them.

False Claim 7: Amanda Knox had gone 8 hours without any food or drink.

No she hadn’t.

Reported by Richard Owen in The Times, 1 March 2009

Ms Napoleoni told the court that while she was at the police station Ms Knox had been ‘treated very well. She was given water, camomile tea and breakfast. She was given cakes from a vending machine and then taken to the canteen at the police station for something to eat.’

Reported by Richard Owen in The Times, 15 March 2009.

Ms Donnino said that Ms Knox had been “comforted” by police, given food and drink, and had at no stage been hit or threatened.

John Follain in his meticulous book Death in Perugia, page 134, also reports that Knox was given food and drink during her questioning:

During the questioning, detectives repeatedly went to fetch her a snack, water, and hot drinks including camomile tea.

False Claim 8: The translator was hostile towards Amanda Knox.

No she wasn’t.

Saul Kassin offers no evidence that the translator was hostile towards Amanda Knox and there is no evidence that this was the case. Nobody at the questura has claimed this. Amanda Knox’s own lawyers have not claimed this.

Even Amanda Knox herself has never ever claimed that Anna Donnino was hostile towards her although she had every opportunity to do so when being questioned on the stand.

False Claim 9: The translator was acting as an agent for the police.

No she wasn’t.

Saul Kassin offers no evidence to support this claim, which by the way in Italy is the kind of unprofessional charge that incurs calunnia suits. Do ask Curt Knox.

False Claim 10: The police lied to Amanda Knox.

No they didn’t.

The police didn’t mislead Amanda Knox. They told her quite truthfully that Sollecito was no longer providing her with an alibi, and that he had just claimed in the next interrogation room that she wasn’t at his apartment from around 9:00pm to about 1:00am. This also is the kind of unprofessional charge that incurs calunnia suits

Other claims by Kassin are also inaccurate. He claims that not one of your acquaintances had reported there was bad blood. That also is untrue. Even prior to the witness interrogation, law enforcement knew from multiple sources that you had been feuding with just about everyone. Acquaintances created no “new memory”. The bad blood you created was quite real. 

5. How Kassin Bends His Own Science To Make Results Come Out “Right”

Our main poster Fuji dug deeper into the science and turns up what is an obvious scientific fraud by Kassin to insert himself into the case.

Meredith’s case is absolutely riddled with fabricated false myths. 

They are now found by the hundreds on some misleading websites, and they simply make experienced law enforcement and criminal lawyers laugh. 

For example “Police had no good reason to be immediately suspicious of Knox simply because the murder occurred at her residence”.  And “The double-DNA knife is a priori to be disregarded as evidence, because no murderer would retain possession of such a murder weapon.”

One of the most strident and widespread myths is that Amanda Knox’s statements to the Perugian investigators on 5 and 6 November 2007, placing her at the scene of Meredith’s murder, are to be viewed as the products of a genuinely confused mind imbued with a naïve trust of authority figures.

The apparent certainty with which many of Amanda Knox’s most vocal supporters proclaim that Knox’s statements are actual “false confessions” as opposed to deliberate lies is not supported by even a cursory reading of the pertinent academic literature regarding false confessions.

What actually are “false confessions”?

Richard N. Kocsis in his book “Applied Criminal Psychology: A Guide to Forensic Behavioral Sciences” (2009), on pages 193-4 delineates three different kinds of false confessions:

First, a voluntary false confession is one in which a person falsely confesses to a crime absent any pressure or coercion from police investigators….

Coerced-compliant false confessions occur when a person falsely confesses to a crime for some immediate gain and in spite of the conscious knowledge that he or she is actually innocent of the crime….

The final type, identified by Kassin and Wrightsman (1985), is referred to as a coerced-internalized false confession. This occurs when a person falsely confesses to a crime and truly begins to believe that he or she is responsible for the criminal act.

The first problem facing Knox supporters wishing to pursue the false confession angle as a point speaking to her purported innocence is epistemological.

Although much research has been done on this phenomenon in recent years, academics are still struggling to come to terms with a methodology to determine their incidence rate.

The current state of knowledge does not support those making sweeping claims about the likelihood of Knox’s statements being representative of a genuine internalized false confession.

As noted by Richard A. Leo in “False Confessions: Causes, Consequences, and Implications” (Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 2009):

Although other researchers have also documented and analyzed numerous false confessions in recent years, we do not know how frequently they occur. A scientifically meaningful incidence rate cannot be determined for several reasons.

First, researchers cannot identify (and thus cannot randomly sample) the universe of false confessions, because no governmental or private organization keeps track of this information.

Second, even if one could identify a set of possibly false confessions, it is not usually possible as a practical matter to obtain the primary case materials (e.g., police reports, pretrial and trial transcripts, and electronic recordings of the interrogations) necessary to evaluate the unreliability of these confessions.

Finally, even in disputed confession cases in which researchers are able to obtain primary case materials, it may still be difficult to determine unequivocally the ground truth (i.e., what really happened) with sufficient certainty to prove the confession false.

In most alleged false-confession cases, it is therefore impossible to remove completely any possible doubts about the confessor’s innocence.

The next problem Knox supporters face is that, even allowing for an inability to establish a priori any likelihood of a given statement being a false confession, the kind of false confession which is usually attributed to Knox is in fact one of the LEAST likely of the three types (Voluntary, Compliant, and Persuaded, as Leo terms the three different categories) to be observed:

Persuaded false confessions appear to occur far less often than compliant false confessions.

Moreover, despite assertions to the contrary, Knox and her statements do not in fact satisfy many of the criteria researchers tend to observe in false confessions, particularly of the Persuaded variety:

“All other things being equal, those who are highly suggestible or compliant are more likely to confess falsely. Individuals who are highly suggestible tend to have poor memories, high levels of anxiety, low self-esteem, and low assertiveness, personality factors that also make them more vulnerable to the pressures of interrogation and thus more likely to confess falsely…

Highly suggestible or compliant individuals are not the only ones who are unusually vulnerable to the pressures of police interrogation. So are the developmentally disabled or cognitively impaired, juveniles, and the mentally ill….

They also tend to occur primarily in high-profile murder cases and to be the product of unusually lengthy and psychologically intense interrogations… ordinary police interrogation is not strong enough to produce a permanent change in the suspect’s beliefs.

Most significantly, there is one essential element of a true Persuaded False Confession which in Knox’s case is highly distinctive:

To convince the suspect that it is plausible, and likely, that he committed the crime, the interrogators must supply him with a reason that satisfactorily explains how he could have done it without remembering it.

This is the second step in the psychological process that leads to a persuaded false confession.

Typically, the interrogator suggests one version or another of a “repressed” memory theory.

He or she may suggest, for example, that the suspect experienced an alcohol- or drug-induced blackout, a “dry” blackout, a multiple personality disorder, a momentary lapse in consciousness, or posttraumatic stress disorder, or, perhaps most commonly, that the suspect simply repressed his memory of committing the crime because it was a traumatic experience for him.

The suspect can only be persuaded to accept responsibility for the crime if he regards one of the interrogators’ explanations for his alleged amnesia as plausible.

Knox did not in fact claim drug or alcohol use as the source of her amnesia - rather, she claimed to have accepted the interrogators’ attribution that this was due to being traumatized by the crime itself, and she offers no other explanation for her selective amnesia:

This is from Knox’s statement to the court in pretrial on 18 October 2008 with Judge Micheli presiding.

Then they started pushing on me the idea that I must have seen something, and forgotten about it. They said that I was traumatized.

Of course, Knox’s initial statement went far beyond being that of being merely a witness to some aspect of Ms. Kercher’s murder, as the interrogators at first seemed to believe was the case.

Rather, her statement placed her at scene of the murder during its actual commission while she did nothing to avert it, which naturally made her a suspect.

In other words, in the absence of any of her other testimony which indicated that she was only a witness to the murder, her own self-admitted rationale for providing a false confession was that she was traumatized by the commission of the murder itself.

Perugia judges will be familiar with all of the above and we can be sure that they brief the lay judges on the remote circumstances and incidences of false confessions.

If I were a Knox defense attorney, I would find it to be a far more fruitful line of argumentation to argue that she was simply lying, rather than claiming the supremely unlikely provision of an actual internalized false confession.

6. Kassin’s Paper with Correct Facts and Context Now Included

Here is our main poster BR Mull describing what actually took place.

On November 2, 2007, British exchange student Meredith Kercher was found sexually attacked and murdered in Perugia, Italy. The next day, 20-year-old Amanda Knox, an American student and one of Kercher’s roommates, became a person of interest, along with Meredith’s downstairs neighbors and several of her other acquaintances. Interviewing close contacts is a cornerstone of police work. Two of Meredith’s close English friends, who were so scared they couldn’t sleep alone, left Perugia in the immediate aftermath of the murder. Everyone else stayed on.

Months before arriving in Perugia, Knox received a citation for a noise violation when a going-away party she’d thrown for herself in Seattle got out of hand. One of the officers described it as a “scene from Baghdad.” Within about three weeks of moving into the cottage in Perugia, Knox was ejected from a nightclub for pouring her glass on the head of a disc jockey.

It’s often said that Knox had no motive to kill Meredith, but it was Knox’s claim of drug use which indicated a possible motive: a drug-fuelled assault. There are various others, though a motive is not actually required for conviction. In crime scene videos from the day Meredith’s body was discovered, Knox can be seen outside the cottage glancing furtively around. Still, it was not this and other odd behavior, but rather the many conflicting witness statements by Knox and her new Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, that led police to believe Knox was involved and lying when she claimed she was with Sollecito at his home continuously on the night of November 1.

Police interviewed dozens of witnesses in the days after the murder, some more than once. All witness statements were written down and signed for, not recorded. The police interviewed Sollecito for the third time beginning at 10:40pm on November 5. Knox later testified that she voluntarily accompanied her boyfriend to the station, because she didn’t want to be alone. The police did not summon her. To the interviewers’ surprise, Sollecito repudiated his earlier alibi when shown phone records, and now said Knox had left his apartment for much of the evening. Some time after 11:00pm the police asked if they might interview Knox. An interpreter was called and by 1:45am Knox had given a signed statement that she had witnessed the sounds of her employer, bar owner Patrick Lumumba, murdering Meredith at the cottage.

In that statement she acknowledged that she had been given an interpreter, and that she herself was now officially a suspect. Knox later testified that she was treated well. She was offered snacks and drinks during the interview and afterward. Made aware that she could not be interrogated without a lawyer, but still anxious to put out as much information as possible, she then requested a chance to make a spontaneous statement without any questioning. The prosecutor on duty agreed, and she gave a statement in front of him very similar to her witness statement from hours earlier.

Knox and the police gave different accounts of how the 11:00 to 1:45 am interview was conducted. Police said Knox was told Sollecito now no longer confirmed her alibi and he had called her a liar. She now had no alibi. Sympathetic to her because Knox now had no alibi, the interpreter urged her to try to remember at least something.  Shown a text she had sent to Lumumba at 8:35pm saying “See you later. Have a good evening!” she was asked to explain this. The police say Knox started to cry and burst out, “It’s him! It’s him!”

Both Knox’s witness statement at 1:45 a.m and her voluntary suspect statement at 5:45am were written out in Italian and translated back to her before she signed. After Knox was formally taken into custody at midday on November 6, she asked for paper and wrote a slight modification of her earlier statements, adding: “In regards to this “˜confession’ that I made last night, I want to make it clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock, and extreme exhaustion.”

Lumumba was arrested along with Knox and Sollecito. Knox and her mother held out on his non-involvement, but he was eventually determined to have a solid alibi. Another man, Rudy Guede, was identified through a hand print in Meredith’s bedroom. Knox appeared to have substituted Lumumba for Guede in her statements, and several details of the crime in her so-called confession were later corroborated by witnesses.

Because police had not needed to provide Knox with an attorney at the impromptu witness interview after 11:00, the Supreme Court ruled that statement inadmissible in the murder case against her. However both statements were ruled admissible in court for the purpose of establishing the crime of defamation against Patrick Lumumba. Knox’s November 6 letter was also ruled admissible.

Guede, the man whose DNA was found on the victim, told a friend while he was still on the run that he had found Meredith stabbed and that Knox had nothing to do with the murder. However, in the same conversation, which was recorded by police, he speculated that Knox and Sollecito might have been at the cottage. In a letter dated March 7, 2010, while his sentence was awaiting final confirmation by the Supreme Court, Guede wrote that Knox and Sollecito murdered Meredith. He reiterated this claim as a witness during Knox and Sollecito’s appeal.

Forensic police from Rome concluded that a kitchen knife found in Sollecito’s apartment had Knox’s DNA on the handle and Meredith’s DNA on the blade. Sollecito’s DNA was on the victim’s bra clasp in Meredith’s locked bedroom.

Several eyewitnesses came forward. Three neighbors testified that they heard a disturbance around 11:30pm in the vicinity of the cottage. A homeless man who at appeal admitted heroin use was reading a newsmagazine at the basketball court near the cottage. He testified that he saw Knox and Sollecito four or five times that night. An Albanian, a possible drug dealer. who the Massei court deemed unreliable after the Micheli court accepted him, said he had seen all three suspects together, and that Knox had accosted him with a knife. A grocery store owner testified he saw Knox at his shop early on the morning after the murder.

The conflicting alibis of the two were never resolved during trial. On December 4, 2009, an eight-person panel consisting of two professional judges and six lay judges found Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito guilty of murder aggravated by sexual assault, simulation of a burglary, unlawful carrying of a knife and, in Knox’s case, criminal defamation of Patrick Lumumba. The two were sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, respectively….

Knox’s mother later described her daughter as “oblivious to the dark side of the world.” Knox herself wrote that, on the night of the murder, she and Sollecito were talking about his mother’s suicide. She told him her philosophy was “life is full of choices and that these choices are not necessarily between good and evil, but between what’s better and what’s worse.”...

7. Our Concluding Advice

You simply didnt remotely fit Kassin’s own profile of those who break easily under interrogation and make things up. Your suspect interrogation was gentle, brief and considerate, as you have said, and didnt remotely fit Kassin’s claims. And of course, you never made a false confession on that night or any other.

Do you really want this guy or yourself cross-examined on the stand? Again, it may be the last good time to try to walk all of your malicious invention back.


[Saul Kassin with President Travis of John Jay College who lets the false anti-Italy allegations stand]

Comments

Another great post in a great series of articles that clearly address the deep problems of “The World According to Amanda”

In short, Knox’s book comes off as an “À la carte” selection of designer excuses and stories.  It really sounds like Knox was “waiting to be heard” all this time because it took that long to contrive something that might approximate making sense.

But it doesn’t make sense and only conveys the arrogance with which it was authored.  And now, it is us who can’t wait to see how all of this nonsense plays out in court.

Posted by Fly By Night on 06/16/13 at 10:17 PM | #

Once again, you managed to pull the garbled nonsense of Amandas lies into a comprehensible form. No easy task.

Thanking you as we all eagerly await the almost overdue report from the courts.

Posted by Bettina on 06/17/13 at 12:24 AM | #

Excellent article. Well-resourced and presented.

Must make very difficult reading for Ms. Knox but then she would likely dismiss it all with a sweep of her hand claiming that all the witnesses cited were lying and ‘out to get her’.

Shame Kassin himself couldn’t put the ducks into the row properly.

Really quite elementary work for an expert, non?

Posted by thundering on 06/17/13 at 02:50 AM | #

It’s great how TJMK posters and The Machine and brmull analyze this false confession debate. Madison Paxton’s brainchild, she grabbed Kassin’s vague unprovable theories to justify her good friend’s telling policewomen that she heard her roommate die. Maddie needed some excuse, some road to denial for her own self but she picked a lame one. It’s a repackaged whine of police coercion, the last cry of the desperate liar after they come partly clean during interrogation but then rue it.

It is Knox’s spontaneous handwritten statement to Mignini after her supposed brutal brainwashing that puts the lie to a Kassin argument, for in this later statement Knox does exactly what she wants to do with nobody pressing her. She has time to breathe and to reflect.

She can’t claim undue pressure or brain fog when she is freely and even eagerly stating her “honest” opinion offered in spontaneous statement to Mignini. At this point she’s under no duress at all. She pens her opinion of the crime for the police to see and what does she say? She says she is still afraid of Patrick and she tries to throw more suspicion on him. So if she had only said such things about him earlier out of fear and intimidation, why did she freely confirm it if she felt it was false and when it wasn’t necessary?

Let’s hope her interview on The View tv show tomorrow fully reveals the truth in some unexpected and marvelous way to remove all doubt about Knox for the Kerchers and TJMK and PMFs and the Florence court.

Posted by Hopeful on 06/17/13 at 05:58 AM | #

Great post, and I can confirm that the psychology would completely support your conclusion.

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding on 06/17/13 at 10:29 AM | #

It is important to absorb and understand the content of this great post but also at the end of the day the fact is that Knox has now been convicted of calunnia without the prospect for a further appeal. The conviction is definitive. Cassation is shortly to release it’s report which will probably render further debate redundant.

Posted by James Raper on 06/17/13 at 11:13 AM | #

@James Raper
Indeed.
The publication that showed pictures of AK as ‘a model’ in the sun ought to be ashamed of itself.

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding on 06/17/13 at 11:21 AM | #

My guess is that Madison had nothing to do with getting Kassin on board.  As far as I remember, Kassin was recruited at a relatively late date, probably in an attempt to lend a scientific veneer to the lies about the interrogation. 

I still have a hard time understanding why he consented to this, since the so-called scholarship he published on the case is shameful.  I do not believe that Dr. Kassin is an uninformed or unintelligent man, who wouldn’t have considered double-checking the “facts” he was given.  His reasons are his own, but I think it’s very unethical and the sort of thing which can destroy one’s credibility and which is therefore not worth the short-term gain.

Knox has been very ill-advised as far as this book is concerned.  I am not sure if these are her own lies left unchecked or lies she was told to write.  Either way, they are both egregious and easy to disprove, and will likely have negative consequences during the new appeal.

Posted by Vivianna on 06/17/13 at 11:24 AM | #

Excellent post. My goodness, if AK were to sit down and read through all that she might become a suicide risk.

It’s also very useful for relative newcomers like me to catch up on previous posts via the underlined links, so thanks everyone.

Posted by Odysseus on 06/17/13 at 12:56 PM | #

“Pictures of AK as a ‘model’ in the sun .........” ????

Posted by thundering on 06/17/13 at 02:37 PM | #

@ thundering
Link from Miriam on previous thread…


“If you can stomach it here are some new photos of Knox. So much for her “I am no longer the sunny, happy Amanda.” “

http://www.lanazione.it/umbria/cronaca/2013/06/15/904921-amanda-knox-gente-meredith-delitto.shtml

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding on 06/17/13 at 06:05 PM | #

Two minutes ago I saw “The View”. Knox was asked as the final question, “If you had anything to say to the Kercher family, what would it be?” Then she looked down, drew in deep sighs of frustration, and began to go off on tangents about being generally sorry that the murder of Meredith “has to be dug up and dug up” over and over again, in a tone of angry exasperation. Yes, you got it, she said in sort of muffled anger a whole lot of tripe and never once said in any form, “I did not kill Meredith.” She said she was sorry about what the Kerchers had to go through related to the case, but never a clear statement of “I did not kill Meredith, please believe me.”

She and Edda looked very sleek and coiffed and physically attractive but Knox nearly broke into tears or pretended to get that pre-weepy shakey voice at the very first questions. She is quite a fragile soul right now, she’s more serious about these TV appearances than she was at her murder trial. She is angry about being judged on “my behavior” meaning the cartwheels and the kiss, and Barbara Walters suggested her bedhopping. Knox is absolutely impenitent about all of her behavior and angry about being judged. She declares all of that was extraneous to the case and she is mad it was used to persecute her.

The feeling of frustration, anger, impatience and barely controlled rage comes through loud and clear. Her silence about the question of what to tell the Kerchers on national TV when she had a platform to relieve their doubts and suspicions, that evasion of hers spoke volumes. She said nothing clearly to the effect, “I did not kill Meredith, I want you to know that, I am innocent”. Nope, nothing like that came out of her mouth, just anger at her own legal situation and fury at the Italian justice system for keeping on her trail. She even seemed to direct hostility toward Meredith in my opinion by using the term “dug up and dug up” as it does have connotations of burial and bodies.

She is absolutely guilty of killing Meredith, and the only thing she’s sincere about is not having been smarter than the police. Oh, she voices that clearly enough, in no uncertain terms. She can always get that truth out there, and I believe it’s her only truth. She was unable to dupe the police, it galls her, it caused her a heck of a lot of trouble. It irks her in her competitive nature, she’s not as smart as others. That’s on her record forever and her hubris can’t stand it.

It’s not “I am innocent”, nowhere does she say that on this talk show. That incredibly important point is merely to be assumed, she is stupid enough to believe. It’s, “I should never have been convicted!” not I am innocent, but I should never have been convicted. Can you get any foxier than that?

Posted by Hopeful on 06/17/13 at 07:20 PM | #

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/14812529-will-amanda-knox-tell-the-truth-on-the-view

Posted by Miriam on 06/17/13 at 07:29 PM | #

@Hopeful

Thanks for your detailed take on the interview.

Posted by Miriam on 06/17/13 at 07:32 PM | #

For those of you who can’t watch “The View”, Knox wore a longsleeved black blouse over tight beige pants. Edda Mellas sat beside Amanda. Edda wore hot pink and her hair seemed to be styled almost the same as Amanda, long and straight with obvious blow-dry styling from a salon. They had more color in their faces, Knox especially looked well made up. Edda managed to control herself more than usual, a feat that has taken her 7 years to master, to not jump in and interrupt others who are talking. Amanda is taking center stage now.

Whoopi Goldberg wore a black chiffon blouse with white polka dots. Barbara Walters had on a pink floral dress with matching scarf at her neck. During the main Amanda interview, she sat to Amanda’s right on a couch (to your left as you view TV screen, with Amanda and Edda to your right). A pretty young blonde tv host sat beside Walters, wearing a sheath dress dominated by a glorious big floral necklace. It was just those 4 ladies on the couch, the blonde, Walters, Amanda, and Edda.

“The View” flashed up on the wall behind the couch giant video pix of Amanda being led into the Perugia courtroom in her green coat by the blue clad police officers. Mignini’s famous Roman-like head of white curly hair could be seen from behind above his black judge’s robes. The Perugia courtroom crowd was all there. They also flashed a lot of pix of Edda in the courtroom, as a reprise of what she had been through and her evolution to the polished mom you saw on The View today, seemed to be subtext. A rather bad picture of Raffaele was flashed on screen when they mentioned Amanda’s co-defendant. Amanda said Raffaele had been “betrayed by his country”. They showed the nice picture of Meredith with her big smile, very delicately lined eyes and black tank top showing her pretty tan, with Meredith’s long straight hair, its layers framing her face. In fact, come to think of it, Amanda’s and Edda’s hair is both starting to look like that exact style, eerie exchange of identity.

Knox had on neutral colored shoes, sandals. She sat stiff with her legs crossed the entire time. She has finally learned a bit of modesty. Edda seemed straining to get into the conversation but did restrain herself admirably. She was helpful to Knox to explain to The View ladies about how Amanda crashed under pressure of police interrogation, with Edda emphasizing that Amanda never really made a “confession”, but was told to imagine what might have occurred or she couldn’t leave. Amanda said that she took up the police suggestion that she was traumatized by the crime into amnesia. Using this theory as some possibly valid explanation of her mental state, she said she proceeded to make the non-confession “confession” to get out of the exhaustive interview. That is my paraphrase.

(Feel free to correct anything wrong in this comment, as I am going from memory and do not have a video of The View to re-examine.)

Walters said she could only imagine how badly Edda must have felt hearing about Knox’s private sexual experiments and drugs on international media. Mellas implied that it was rough but that she had friends tell her that Knox had not been excessively promiscuous compared to most young women they knew.

Amanda as usual seemed unprepared with clear summations of the essence of things. She preferred to assume she had hours of time to ramble. I see this as her being too desirous of putting things into her own words. She doesn’t appreciate the meaning of power language that hits a few points hard. I think she is envious of using borrowed terms. She thinks she’s on a psych couch instead of at a podium with five minutes to wrap things up. This is childish of her considering all the interviews she’s done and no doubt she has the tapes of them to study. But we know how resistant she is to instruction and refuses to change a tactic even if it’s not working for her.

She never once mentioned Kassin by name while trying to explain his theories of her internalized false confession. She dithers and rambles and expresses herself poorly. She is at the edge of tears or at least nervous emotions underneath most everything she says. Her anger quotient is humongus, she is steamed about everything that happened to her since 2007.

When asked about the finances to fight any next trial, no mention was made of Knox’s book money. Edda spoke of re-mortgaging houses and that it would take years before the finances had to be scraped up again, but they would manage it somehow. It was if she wanted to deflect the entire financial issue. Knox let Edda field that question.

Posted by Hopeful on 06/17/13 at 08:49 PM | #

In case anyone hasn’t heard, RS has had his permit to stay in Switzerland revoked and has already left Ticino. Apparently (I think I’ve got this right) locals objected to his presence and it seems his original documentation didn’t fully lay out his legal matters.

The net closing?

Posted by Odysseus on 06/17/13 at 10:11 PM | #

Hi Odysseus,

Thanks! Yes, it seems it was revoked because of lack of documentation.

Posted by Miriam on 06/17/13 at 10:57 PM | #

Hi Hopeful,

Thanks again. What a great memory and attention to detail you have! How long was the interview?

Posted by Miriam on 06/17/13 at 11:02 PM | #

Thank you SeeiingUnderstanding for the link to the sun pictures. I must say she doesn’t look like a model to me. To me she comes across very stiff, unnatural and not really very
attractive at all.

Hopeful, what a fantastic detailed summary of The View interview. I could see it all. Interesting that she spoke of the ‘confession’ and that she and Edda said there was no actual confession. I wonder if they have read this post and are trying to align some things with actuality?

Posted by thundering on 06/18/13 at 12:52 AM | #

Is Knox, now that she has been seen up close, still on Barbara Walters’ list of top ten most interesting women?

I did wonder what would happen after the DS interview as I thought DS must have ‘seen’ as it were.

If you remember DS also went on The View and a) wouldn’t comment much as her show had not then aired and b) wanted to email BW after it had aired.

I imagined that she had questions and comments and wanted to see what her friend thought.

It surely cannot be possible to interview AK and continue to believe in her lost little girl story.  Surely?

Posted by thundering on 06/18/13 at 02:28 AM | #

@Hopeful

Nice report and I love your attention to detail.

How the mom defends the ‘kid’: that she had friends tell her that Knox had not been excessively promiscuous compared to most young women they knew.

We live in interesting times!

Posted by chami on 06/18/13 at 04:43 AM | #

‘Interesting’    ??
Only if one is interested in pathology, perhaps.

Thankyou, Hopeful, for your insightful observations for those of us ‘over here’ in UK etc.

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding on 06/18/13 at 05:26 AM | #

@Miriam, Knox had only about 10 or 12 minutes on The View, my guess. After re-watching it, let me correct mistakes in my comments:

Knox wore black shoes and socks, Edda wore open sandals with heels in neutral color.  Liz Hasselbeck? was the blonde hostess, and she did not wear a dress but a skirt and top.  I omitted Star Jones, she hosted the first segment of The View but did not question Knox.

The last question posed to Knox was by Hasselbeck and it was, “If you had to say ‘I wish I had never…(fill in the blank)’”. Knox answered with words to effect: I wish I had stood up to the police. I wish I could have defended myself. The half hour show came to a screeching halt on that note.

After rewatching the video, I see Edda as more intrusive and interruptive and Knox as extremely frustrated with constant halts to her speech. If it wasn’t Walters answering for her when she saw Knox searching for words, it was Edda raising a right arm and waving a finger and butting in to speak, doing the actress face and wrinkling her nose and eyes in a continual effort to emphasize her every word in long explanations which ate up Knox’s time. The moment Knox tried to gain any verbal momentum, she would be cut off somehow or it was time to go to commercial break. The format is brutal to the longwinded or uncertain speaker, both of which terms describe Amanda. Knox used the term “maddening” a lot toward the end.

Edda said that the family was only now beginning to dig out of the financial hole and I think Knox picked up on that rustic image of digging when she shortly afterwards spoke of Meredith’s murder case as having to be “dug up” over and over again. This was in an effort to claim to the Kerchers she is sorry for their facing a constant digging up of the case. She used the term “over and over” but only said “dug up” one time.

She claims to be saying she’s sorry to the Kerchers by reminding them (and projecting her own angst onto them?) that they have to constantly have Meredith’s murder case dug up again and again so that it never goes away. Well, if she had a lick of sense she would know the Kerchers don’t want it to go away until the truth is found out 100%. It’s Knox who seems to admit in this Freudian “dug up” slip that she is the one who dreads the constant digging up of the case, it’s a pain to her that it never goes away. It reminds me of her H.O.T. video with the dark ghoulish material and running in circles back to her cell from the hell house.

She also uses a mocking tone to say that the Italians are giving the Kerchers a “fairy tale” to believe in, about mysterious and unknown killers of their daughter who are out there getting away with it. She mocks at this scenario, as if it’s inexplicable to her how the Italians are so badly confused as to demand more than Guede. (this from a woman who can’t say, “I am innocent” in a sincere tone of voice.) Yet earlier in the show when Knox says the real murderer is known, she hangs her head and goes silent and does the nervous tearful thing.

At one point she said very intensely when asked by Walters about extradition to Italy that she still thinks she can win. Wow, did Knox emphasize that word “win” with a tone of steely determination. Her martial manner.

I think Edda is not a help to Amanda in any way in these public interviews. If I were Amanda I would ask for mom to be off stage somewhere near in case of a true hysterical meltdown, but I’d ask for some perfect stranger to sit beside me on the platform, and just introduce him or her as a concerned “Friend”.

I bet Curt is gritting his teeth if he can even bear to watch these TV performances. Edda makes Amanda nervous as a helicopter parent and substitute lawyer in a protective suffocater role. Amanda tries to defer to her and manages to not make waves at least on screen for these short interviews. Her devotion to her mom seems genuine, but she also seems a bit brittle with the relationship.

The main thing from this fluff piece “The View” is that Barbara Walters very gently gave Amanda a wide open door to reach out to the Kerchers and speak directly to them. Amanda choked. She started to answer with “I’m trying so hard…” whatever that means, but she never got around to saying the word “innocent” or I did not kill Meredith. She seems to feel she is above having to say it!?! Or a guilty conscience won’t let her.

That one big omission negates all the rest of her inadequate verbiage on The View.

She complains in her opening remarks to Walters that she has been waiting 3 months to learn why she has to face a new trial in Italy but has no idea why. This sounded ridiculous. The waiting to be heard has turned on its head into her waiting to hear from Italy.

Also, she seemed to delight in using the term “collateral damage” for Raffaele, although she couched it as a reference to what others were saying about him, that he was collateral damage for having been linked with her. She likes that power, my conclusion. She comes across as very sassy and sarcastic and trying to cover it with a lot of what she said on The View. She is angry, and no mistake.

****************

Videos below embedded by Peter. Great review Hopeful, thanks a lot. So we started the post with these words “At times you can come across as winning but, as there on the stand, too often as brash, sneering, sharp-elbowed, humorless, uncaring, and self-absorbed” and noew, guess what?


<object width=“640” height=“360”><param name=“movie” value=“http://www.youtube.com/v/5fYk6IX2hJA?version=3&hl=en_US”></param></param></param><embed src=“http://www.youtube.com/v/5fYk6IX2hJA?version=3&hl=en_US” type=“application/x-shockwave-flash” width=“640” height=“360” allowscriptaccess=“always” allowfullscreen=“true”></embed></object>


<object width=“640” height=“360”><param name=“movie” value=“http://www.youtube.com/v/48ERuUltLvQ?hl=en_US&version=3”></param></param></param><embed src=“http://www.youtube.com/v/48ERuUltLvQ?hl=en_US&version=3” type=“application/x-shockwave-flash” width=“640” height=“360” allowscriptaccess=“always” allowfullscreen=“true”></embed></object>

 

Posted by Hopeful on 06/18/13 at 06:02 AM | #

Hi Hopeful

Thanks again. Your eye for detail is amazing! Better yet, is how you break down the interview.

Knox’s replies, silences, letting her mother answer, etc. That last question was another lost opportunity.

This would have made a great post! Thanks again.

Posted by Miriam on 06/18/13 at 03:14 PM | #

@thundering   Hi, for link I used my yahoo search for The View, abc. (abc is tv channel) but I also used links on PMFs for date of June 17 and maybe June 18, check those PMF pages. PMF.net also have a full transcript of The View segment in Knox’s own words.

Posted by Hopeful on 06/18/13 at 04:23 PM | #

The Cassazione sentencing report is out.

http://www.perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=592

Posted by Jeffski1 on 06/18/13 at 05:47 PM | #

http://www.online-news.it/2013/06/18/meredithcassazione-gravi-le-bugie-di-amanda-su-lumumba/#.UcB1dcu9KSN

“The Supreme Court: Amanda’s lies about Lumumba are serious”

Posted by Jeffski1 on 06/18/13 at 05:52 PM | #

The Motivations Report is out, 72 pages of it. I’m not sure what’s in it, but the scream and the witnesses and Guede not acting alone may be prominent.

Knife thoughts: As others said about Raf’s tactical knife, his Brian Tighe knife (pronounced “tie”), a very special designer knife made by Columbia River Knife and Tool, I wish the prosecution would order DNA tests on that knife. I think it was used to cut Meredith and Raf would never have thrown it away in a million years, it’s too special. People are on 7 year waiting lists to get a Brian Tighe original, although some are mass produced with the Tighe sig to exacting standards—made not far from Seattle.

A PMF Poster named Rebel believes the Brian Tighe knife matches the bloody outline on the bed sheet. It does have lots of screws and crevices where blood might remain. I believe they are considering retests on Raf’s kitchen knife.

I’m by no means against knives, only against murdering with them. Raf hung a combat knife above his bed. He is now being forced out of Switzerland due to his felony status probably.

Posted by Hopeful on 06/18/13 at 05:56 PM | #

http://www.diritto24.ilsole24ore.com/guidaAlDiritto/penale/sentenzeDelGiorno/2013/06/omicidio-meredith-processo-da-rifare-indizi-sottovalutati.html

Posted by Miriam on 06/18/13 at 07:05 PM | #

Miriam, thank you for the original paper.

Posted by ncountryside on 06/18/13 at 07:15 PM | #

Italy’s high court bashes Amanda Knox acquittal

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Italy-top-court-faults-Amanda-Knox-acquittal-211973491.html

Posted by Hungarian. on 06/18/13 at 07:17 PM | #

Seems like Sollecito is back in Italy.
his permit was revoke because he didn’t
say the truth about being involved in a
grave penal indictment. Or so says the media!

http://www.diritto24.ilsole24ore.com/guidaAlDiritto/penale/sentenzeDelGiorno/2013/06/omicidio-meredith-processo-da-rifare-indizi-sottovalutati.html

Posted by Miriam on 06/18/13 at 07:19 PM | #

Salve ncountryside,
Hai idea dove posso trovare il documento della Cassazione?
Grazie!!!

Posted by Miriam on 06/18/13 at 07:24 PM | #

Alla fine in fondo dell’articolo che hai citato: – below at end of the article you have posted:

Documenti e Approfondimenti

Approfondimento del 18-06-2013 - Corte di cassazione - Sezione I penale - Sentenza 17 giugno 2013 n. 26455

http://static.ilsole24ore.com/content/AltraDocumentazione/body/14000001-14100000/14051277.pdf

Posted by ncountryside on 06/18/13 at 07:42 PM | #

Che cretina!

Lo sto cercando dalle 2:45 di oggi pomeriggio!!
Grazie mille!

Posted by Miriam on 06/18/13 at 08:14 PM | #

It’s another great day for justice. The judges at the Italian Supreme Court have made it crystal clear that they believe that Knox and Sollecito were involved in Meredith’s murder.

They said the new appeal process would serve to “not only demonstrate the presence of the two suspects in the place of the crime, but to possibly outline the subjective position of Guede’s accomplices.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/amanda-knox-retrial_n_3459985.html

Posted by The Machine on 06/18/13 at 09:54 PM | #

Finally, perhaps at least some U.S. media will do what they should have done all along and read accurate translations of the court documents - especially the Massei Sentencing Report - from the original trial.  With rare exceptions (Andrea Vogt and Barbie Nadeau), most of the U.S. reporting has relied on pro-defense shills for their understanding of the case, and that’s why they’ve gotten so much wrong.

Many of the people who post to this site have relevant professional experience that has enabled us to look at the case with more objective eyes.  We have paid close enough attention to the underlying facts and evidence and how the Italian Court system works to understand that we were likely on a long, slow march toward justice.

Today was a good day for Meredith’s family.

Posted by Media Watcher on 06/19/13 at 12:37 AM | #

@ hopeful

Thank You very much for the details you provided reviewing Knox’s interview from “The View.”

One quick question :  Did the ladies on The View form any sort of opinion about Knox and her “stories”?

Thanks again !

MizzMarple

Posted by MissMarple on 06/19/13 at 12:50 AM | #

@MissMarple, The View hostesses stayed neutral and oozed general sympathy for Knox’s human plight. Barbara Walters did ask her “why in the world did you confess?!” but she bought Knox’s answer without argument. Liz Hasselbeck offered no verbal resistance to Knox’s explanations.

On a different note, “The Daily Mail” carries story of Raffaele today, headline: Swiss Drive Out Knox’s ex-lover. “Angry locals disturbed by presence of an accused killer, launched campaign to run him out of town. Authorities found that he hadn’t fully declared his pending legal proceedings on his application form.

“Sollecito’s father, Francesco Sollecito, condemned the decision, saying it amounted to ‘a moral and social lyching of someone who has been found not guilty.’”

“He said: ‘The town of Lugano has missed a good opportunity to show fairness to someone who has always been innocent and must endure two more trials at least.’”

“Raffaele will not appeal the council’s decision, his father said, but will instead return to his home town of Giovinazzo, near Bari in southern Italy, immediately.”

“He will finish his final exams to graduate from the University of Verona by long distance study, he said.”

“The retrial is expected to start in the autumn….”

Posted by Hopeful on 06/19/13 at 04:19 AM | #

Thank you, Hopeful.

I have been travelling and am not up to date.  Things are developing so fast! 

I appreciate your analyses - spot on!

Posted by thundering on 06/19/13 at 05:13 AM | #

@ hopeful,

Thank You so much for your response.

And thanks for the update on Raf. 

Oh, did Raf make a comment about being run out of Switzerland—or—just the comment from Papa Sollecito?  As usual, Papa to his son’s “rescue” ...

Things are finally moving : the Cassation ruling is out and Raf is out of Switzerland and back in Italy ... So, what is in store for Knox ?

Have a nice evening everyone !

MizzMarple

Posted by MissMarple on 06/19/13 at 09:02 AM | #

I like the “Breaking News” box at the top of the front page:

“...The US State Department and US Embassy in Rome despise the bigoted and dishonest Knox-Mellas PR campaign which harms the US image and interests with a key ally…”.

Quite. The xenophobia emanating from Seattle is breathtaking, and it clearly speaks to the low level of mentality behind the Knox family and its supporters.

They are prepared and ever-ready to pour their hatred and bile on a whole nation it seems, rather than allow due process in a trial for a crime committed in a sovereign nation. Clearly we aren’t talking about sophisticated, urbane world travellers here.

Of course Amanda herself displayed this same dismal mentality from the outset. Birds of a feather really do flock together…

Posted by Odysseus on 06/19/13 at 01:25 PM | #

Has there been a reaction from Seattle about the motivation report from Cassation?  A statement perhaps? 

I noticed when I Googled this morning that Bruce Fischer has written a nasty piece about Andrea Vogt.

Posted by thundering on 06/19/13 at 01:59 PM | #

All those nasty people ....

We have:

1 This beautiful website
2 The Cassation Motivation
3 Last, but not least, we’ve got Pete 😊

Posted by Helder Licht on 06/19/13 at 02:22 PM | #

@MissMarple The only comment from Raf in “The Daily Mail” story was, “He said he liked Switzerland because people there are ‘more discreet’.”

They called him “the student engineer”, said he had denied he was fleeing justice and he said he would return to face retrial. “He had already been granted residence and registered a not-for-profit company to help victims of miscarriages of justice.”

“The 29-year-old planned to finish his degree in robotic surgery by correspondence while working on his foundation.”

“The charity’s purpose was to review cold cases and produce manuscripts and films to tell their stories….”

“Right wing politician Daniele Caverzasio petitioned the council saying: ‘Isn’t being on trial for murder a good enough reason to revoke residency?’”

Posted by Hopeful on 06/19/13 at 05:09 PM | #

Hi Thundering

I’m sure you have noticed that such bottom feeders as Bruce Fischer and his forces of stupidity have really only one recourse in their valueless lives. They are only able to go after individuals such as Mignini for example. They have nothing else except to scream innocent regardless of any opinion to the contrary. In other words they bring nothing to the conversation.

Fischer and his ilk are incapable of any individual thought at all such as disseminating the evidence. In other words they believe that any contrary opinion is automatically wrong without even taking the trouble to examine it. Such valueless people as these bring absolutely nothing to the human condition and hopefully sooner or rather than later they will sink and be forgotten only to be replaced by others whose opinion also means absolutely nothing at all.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 06/19/13 at 06:31 PM | #

Regarding Sollecito…. The US media is lazy as usual.

The Swiss have been investigating his permit since around April 6, in other words shortly after he arrived.

http://www.ticinonews.ch/articolo.aspx?id=295939&rubrica=2

Posted by Miriam on 06/19/13 at 07:58 PM | #

Anybody want to help?

http://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/cronaca/fotogallery/1021993/mez-sollecito-chiede-soldi-sul-web-per-pagarsi-il-processo.shtml

Posted by Miriam on 06/19/13 at 08:15 PM | #

Barbie Nadeau has written a new article about the Supreme Court report for The Daily Beast:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/19/italian-court-explains-why-they-overturned-amanda-knox-s-acquittal.html

Posted by The Machine on 06/19/13 at 10:57 PM | #

Wow! When it rains it really pours down on Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

The Italian Supreme Court Motivations document has been released for public disclosure, Sollecito has been evicted from Switzerland and in my city’s big book store chain, Amanda Knox’s memoir Waiting To Be Heard is currently being discounted 40%.

Posted by True North on 06/20/13 at 12:47 AM | #

The good news now is that it’s unlikely the lack of competent reporting on the part of so many journalists will have an impact on how things proceed from here. 

The actual evidence in the case will be analyzed, not the ludicrous claims from pro-Knox supporters who claim there is no evidence and who seem unable to admit that mixed DNA, cell phone records, witness statements, and clear evidence of a cleanup is ACTUAL evidence.

I do hope that a journalism critic (Jay Rosen, where are you?) will review this case and especially the role so many U.S.-based journalists played in making what should have been a relatively straightforward case into an international media circus.

What happened in the case is that media bought into a prepackaged narrative - sold by the Knox PR team - of a young woman whose sexuality and unconventional demeanor somehow led to her being wrongly imprisoned.

The truth is so much more mundane:  Amanda Knox was deeply involved in a stupid, ultimately tragic incident that occurred through the interplay of three deeply flawed people who brought out the worst in each other over a brief period of time. 

We’ve all seen, heard, and read of other incidents that resulted from the tragic interplay of deeply flawed people at a moment in time - what seems unfathomable for any one of them becomes possible because of the group dynamic.

The physical evidence and circumstantial (surprise, that’s not a pejorative term) evidence in this case is overwhelming and it points clearly to Amanda Knox’s guilt.  The people who post to this site have taken the time to understand the web of evidence that has ensnared Knox.  It’s highly likely she will end up back in jail.

The enduring tragedy of this case is likely to be how well the baseless spin and obfuscation worked in building a false narrative that U.S. media was to lazy to see through.

Posted by Media Watcher on 06/20/13 at 12:57 AM | #

Se l’italia trove Amanda Knox innocente quindi qualsiasi American colpevole di omicidio perche sono American gratis. Questo e un presidente molto pericolose per il futuro delle persone che vivono in italia o studiare presso un’universita italina.

Or

If Italy finds Amanda Knox innocent then any American guilty of murder because they are American will go free. This sets a very dangerous president for the future of anyone living in Italy or studying at an Italian University.

Amanda Knox and Raphael Sollecito are guilty of the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 06/20/13 at 01:36 AM | #

@Media Watcher

Well said. Regarding your last para. the interesting question is whether lessons will be learnt.I hate to be cynical but I doubt it.

Media laziness is endemic - not just in the U.S. and the U.K. but everywhere. It seems to be part of the zeitgeist, for want of a better explanation.

Posted by Odysseus on 06/20/13 at 01:42 AM | #

One of the toughest problems for Knox, and one she never adequately explains in her book, is why she signed *two* statements that night. 

She acknowledges that the police high-fived one another after the 01:45 statement was signed.  But what happened over the next four hours?  She doesn’t say.

We know, from other sources, that she was resting, napping, and taking victuals.  She was as free of stress as one might be in a police station in a foreign country.

But then she creates another entire interrogation scene before the second, embellished, statement where she also provides Patrick’s address and the element of fear.

The second statement doesn’t make any sense unless Knox knew at the time that she was under investigation for Meredith’s murder and that her statements would almost certainly cause the police to look elsewhere for the “real murder” [sic].

Posted by Stilicho on 06/20/13 at 02:01 AM | #

I am perturbed by the references to the SC ruling that the context of the murder could be anything between a forced sex-game / hazing to a group sex game as the latter implies that Meredith was compliant in the first instance.

Posted by thundering on 06/20/13 at 05:47 AM | #

Media Watcher, you nailed it!  OMG, I so loved reading that.  Brilliant encapsulization & analysis, & a joy to read. I can’t see why so many don’t see the obvious manipulation. I have been really disgusted by the level of Canadian media as well. I really expected more; I know the level & quality of many here.

What is the economic motive of any self-respecting journalistic entity would choose to replay pap or just regurgitate the same stupid lines/fabrications/lies without questioning the content, motivations, etc. I know it must be cheaper to buy “re-cycled” news from larger outlets, but really. Where’s their dignity? Where’s their curiosity?!  Where is their hunger for the truth?

Posted by all4justice on 06/20/13 at 10:43 AM | #

There is a problem with the truth.

Some people cannot just take the truth. They are allergic to it. It cannot be helped, they will have to learn to live with it.

Some people cannot see the truth. They do not like the look or form or shape it comes in because they just have some preconceived notion about it. If they stumble on it, they will pretend that it is just an illusion.

Truth is omnipotent. You can discuss about it or analyze it or try to prove or disprove it, but it simply does not care about you. It just pops up whenever or where ever it feels like. Truth is beyond logic or science (or philosophy, if you want to think that way) but it encompasses them.

That is the reason many people are afraid of the truth. They just want to avoid it (like plague).

God created love, man made marriage.
God made the truth, man invented justice.

It is time for all of us to beg forgiveness for the world we have made for our children.

Posted by chami on 06/20/13 at 12:49 PM | #

Hi Stilicho

You mention what was going on between the two statements made by Knox and how that second statement points to guilt.

Agreed. Knox was babbling on and very agitated and intent on hammering nail after nail into Patrick’s coffin. The agitation babbling began after RS pulled out the rug from under her when for a period of time she had no alibi at all. It continued between the two formal sessions and the demeanor of those throughout (as with Donnino) was to attempt to calm her down.

The second statement was really another nail in the coffin, not any attempt to wind back the first one back. There was actually limited interest in hearing and recording it because at first glance it appeared deja vu all over again and the interest had moved to hearing Patrick out.

There was no high-five at her expense as they thought she had been an accidental witness. Underplayed is the enormous turmoil the murder put Perugia in and college kids were headed out in droves.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/20/13 at 02:17 PM | #

From The Daily Beast by Barbie Nadeau , ITALIAN COURT EXPLAINS WHY IT OVERTURNED AMANDA KNOX’S ACQUITTAL

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/19/italian-court-explains-why-they-overturned-amanda-knox-s-acquittal.html

Posted by True North on 06/20/13 at 02:32 PM | #

Daily Mirror reports. Posting on this etc soon:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/amanda-knox-secretly-reunited-ex-lover-1967203

Amanda Knox is secretly reunited with ex-lover Raffaele Sollecito in New York - photos

Posted by Peter Quennell on 06/20/13 at 03:58 PM | #

Is Larry Bodine the most hapless lawyer to claim Knox is innocent?

http://blogs.lawyers.com/2013/06/amanda ... oir-video/

He can be contacted via Twitter:

@LarryBodine

https://twitter.com/LarryBodine

Posted by The Machine on 06/20/13 at 08:59 PM | #

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