Is there any credible evidence against Amanda Knox?

[MGL]

Does anyone think there is any credible evidence against Amanda Knox and Rafaelle Sollecito?

[mickthinks]

Yes, the judges and jury who convicted them.

[MGL]

Yes, the judges and jury who convicted them.

And what do you think?

[HexHammer]

She was first aquitted lacking evidense, but here in the appeal she got 28 years, quite baffeling, but I don't really credit the Italian court as being any relyable for dispensing sound justice.

[Impenitent]

double jeopardy

-Imp

[tbieter]

Here is a website that should be studied before anyone expresses an opinion on ultimate guilt or innocence.
http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Main_Page

Having prosecuted and defended criminal cases for over thirty years , from running stop signs to murder cases, I'm qualified to assert that generally the fact-finder's (judge, jury, or both) decision must be respected by the rational commentator.

[MGL]

Here is a website that should be studied before anyone expresses an opinion on ultimate guilt or innocence.
http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Main_Page

Having prosecuted and defended criminal cases for over thirty years , from running stop signs to murder cases, I'm qualified to assert that generally the fact-finder's (judge, jury, or both) decision must be respected by the rational commentator.

After studying the website recommended by tbieter, I recommend the website below as well before expressing an opinion on ultimate guilt or innocence:

http://murderofmeredithkercher.com/

I don't think I'm qualified to tell anyone whose opinion they should respect, but I personally try to respect only those opinions that make sense and are based on credible evidence.

[The Voice of Time]

You can't put anyone away for 28 years on the question of "maybe", that's bad judicial practice.

If there is an "extremely likely" case you could give them prison sentence but, and I'm now commenting on general justice, it should be reduced such as to show that evidence does in fact play a role in determining the case, and that people are not just "thinking with their stomachs" (as we say in Norwegian), or taking their choices on a "stomach feel".

Therefore, if there is an "extremely likely" case, the amount of years sentenced should be at least half the ordinary amount of the respective country, and perhaps only ten years, although in Norway you would probably only get 10-14 years even if there was a cold murder that was followed by an admittance of guilt and regret, where the admittance would then count as evidence. With a case of no evidence and no admittance the court may be forced to set the case as "unresolved" (from what I know, not that I take particular interest in it, but from what I know evidence is very important in Norwegian justice system and that they would rather not continue the case if there's no leads than just "find and pick a guilty person" with a risk of picking the wrong person).

[bergie15]

I don't think that there is credible evidence against her. I was reading about the investigation in an article and it said, for example, the knife that was supposedly used as the murder weapon doesn't match the wounds found on the body. I don't know; it's very hard to say. It's such a strange case.

[Wyman]

She confessed.

[MGL]

She confessed.

There was a confession, but the issue is whether this was genuine or not.


There are two statements, typed up in Italian, claiming she was at the cottage with Lumumba and that Lumumba was the murderer.These were produced very late at night, after a gruelling and aggressive interrogation, without a lawyer and without a corroborating police recording of her declaration, and despite the fact she was their prime suspect and had been questioned incessantly and bugged and phone-tapped for more than 2 days. Less than 24 hours later, still without a lawyer, she effectively and implicitly retracts her "confession" in a spontaneous handwritten note. This note explains her "confession" was based on what seemed to be a memory that she herself doubted and insists is unlikely to be true.

Perversely, the police and prosecution interpreted this note as confirming her accusation of Lumumba, an interpretation accepted by the Massei trial and then the Supreme Court, all because the expression "I stand by my statements" was plucked out of context of not only the rest of the note, but the very same sentence in which it occurred. This interpretation was so strained, that the Massei report attempting to justify the original guilty verdict had to insert the word "accusatory" between the words "my" and "statements", a word Knox never used herself.

The contention that she accused Lumumba to distract attention away from herself and the others is utterly ludicrous, given that by doing so she was not only implicating herself but risking the very real possibility Lumumba had a credible alibi as she knew he was working that night. If she had to admit being present, but wanted to divert attention away from the others she could have invented a complete stranger with reasonable plausibility given the police were given the impression of a habit of bringing strange men back to the house. The prosecution went to great lengths in the court room to rebut charges the police had forced a confession out of her and seemed to be oblivious to the fact that she never claimed they had deliberately done so, only that their aggressiveness and her exhaustion had induced the false memory.

The very bizarre nature of her claim to have a false memory might at first seem a pathetic attempt at damage limitation, but the writing of the note so soon after signing the statements and the note itself suggests that she had never made any unequivocal assertion about being at the cottage with Patrick and had only signed the statements because she could not deny having what seemed to be a memory and desperately wanted to co-operate with the police. The fact that false memory confessions are not well known ( at least at that time), but do occur, especially in relation to aggressive interrogation techniques and circumstances remarkably similar to those Knox found herself in, can only increase her credibility.

She should not have signed those statements, but her naivety in doing so pails into comparison with the dubious legal reasoning that justified admitting them as evidence of slander. And part of this reasoning was that her voluntary note was confirming the signed statements. If Supreme Court Judges can be excused for making such bizarre inferences, it hardly seems to fair to hold Knox to a higher standard in her act of committing a signature.