This wouldn't be a death penalty case either way. Well maybe for Guerde, but not her.

Her DNA is on the handle of the knife found at Solecito's - the one that had Kercher's on the tip.

My scenario is you were not in the house that night and didn't have any connection to the murder whatsoever.

Why would the fact that your room mate was murdered cause you to remember every single movement you made in the previous day and enable you to recite it perfectly on your first account when asked by the police?

I could eventually reconstruct my day, but I can see myself get the order of events wrong and then correcting them as I really thought about it. I can remember to this day exactly where I was when I saw the planes crash into the WTC on 911, but I have no idea what I did the previous day...is that a relevant analogy? I'm not sure, I'm sure you guys will let me know.

I'm just playing devils advocate here, I obviously have no idea whether she & Sollecito were involved or not.

I've never smoked hash and only smoked pot a few times, I do remember it making me paranoid and in a weird state of mind, but I don't really remember having black outs or big memory loss. Do you think smoking pot/hash would have any effect on their ability to accurately recall events?

I also find it amazing that they couldn't make a deal with Sollecito to turn on Amanda or vice versa. People that get caught in a crime together seem to always make a mad dash to cut a better deal by selling out their partners in crime. Their stories of where they were on the night of the murder are inconsistent, but they both have had amazing resolve to continually deny being part of this crime.

I am also perplexed by how this trio got together to do this. It's just bewildering and makes no sense to me. Sollecito had only known Amanda for 6 days and apparently didnt know Rudy at all. What happened on this night to cause them to not only find themselves suddenly together but to also suddenly agree they needed to kill Amandas room mate?

Like I said, I have no idea what happened here, I obviously lean against Amanda and Sollecito's involvement, but there are so many other aspects that make me think maybe they were involved.

I guess we will never know for sure

Who knows, that's the 60 million dollar question eh?

She's either lying or her memory screwed her in the pooper

this^^^^^^

i was once held in police custody for five hours for something that i was completely innocent of. during that five hours, i was EXTREMELY nervous and was blabbering my innocence to any police officer that would listen.

when everything was finally cleared up, the police shift commander apologized to me and told me that he knew that i was innocent, but that he had to make sure of everything before he could let me go. i asked him how he knew that i was innocent, and he told me that i didnt try to hide anything and that only the innocent ones are worried about being arrested.

and that is what strikes me most about knox's behavior during and immediately after her arrest. she has this creepy facade of whimsy and calmness when any normal person would be freaking out.

and if she is not guilty of murder, but gulity of some lesser crime (accessory, lying to the police, accomplice) wouldn't she cooperate completely with the police to expose who the real murderer was??

even though the police work and prosecution appear to be very very sloppy, it is also clear that knox did not cooperate with the police. why? she is probably guilty.

and the most disgusting part of this case is the american narcissism on full display.

knox seems completely remorseless about everything other than the fact that she has been accused and convicted. even her friend who shows up on the today show is a narcissistic hipster douchebag.

i am very bothered by the justice system in italy, but i am not bothered in the least by the fact that knox is going to prison.

Actually there is more than one way to implicate yourself and you should never talk to the police without a lawyer.

What? You lost me bro, could you explain what you mean here? How does her comment about jews give her opportunity?

Let's talk about the turd in the toilet that Rudy Guede left behind.

Is that weird or what?

Let's say this Rudy guy was innocent and went over there to shag this chick. He takes a break from bonking and then drops the kids off at the pool and doesn't flush. Who does that around a woman they are trying to sex?

Now let's say he was guilty but decided he had to pinch one off before exiting the crime scene, but bolts before taking the time to flush.

Isn't it strange that under either scenario he left without flushing the toilet?

It almost makes his story that he was on the ****ter while the murder took place sound reasonable in that he didn't want to make any noise by flushing and rushed out of the house and forgot to flush.

I've been to Italy, but I dont remember anything unusual about their toilets, Adman are the toilets weird down there and keep turds in them longer than normal or something?

I recommend reading this whole article found on The Guardian's website.

Of all the millions of words written about the marathon trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher, some of the most revealing appeared in a dispatch from Italy's leading news agency, Ansa, on Wednesday.

"Certainly, the decision facing the [judges and jurors] will not be an easy one," wrote Ansa's reporter, Matteo Guidelli, as he looked ahead to the final phase of the trial of Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

"Sentencing to life imprisonment two young people, aged 22 and 25, would mean destroying their lives forever," he continued, "but letting them off would mean gainsaying not only the entire investigation, but also the judges who have reached decisions before them."

It hardly needs to be said that the "danger" of contradicting police and prosecutors would not exactly weigh heavily in the deliberations of a British or American jury. But Italy is not Britain or the US.

For the "Anglo-Saxon" reporters who followed the trial, it was about bloodstains and DNA; contradictory statements and suspicious omissions. So it was for their Italian counterparts.

But for them, as for their readers, there was always a further dimension. Italy is a country in which the preservation of "face" is of enormous importance. And in this case there were many people with reputations at stake: the detectives who investigated the murder, Perugia's prosecutors, who oversaw their inquiry, and the judges who indicted Knox and Sollecito and decided that the evidence was sufficient to keep them locked up for more than two years. Since the case attracted worldwide publicity, the images of Perugia and Italy were at stake, too – Italy's standing as a country that can find and punish murderers, and the city's reputation as one to which the parents of overseas students attending its university for foreigners can entrust their children without qualms.

The question being asked – if only half-openly – yesterday was how much weight the judges and jury had assigned to the factors cited by Guidelli before deciding that Knox and Sollecito were murderers.

The centre-left daily La Repubblica said the outcome was "surprising, and has a certain [Pontius] Pilate-like quality". The paper noted that last year the third accused, Ivory Coast-born Rudy Guede, was sentenced to 30 years. Yet Guede had opted for a fast-track trial, which would normally secure him a lighter sentence. What is more, the prosecution in the trial that ended on Friday night, whose version of the killing was upheld, maintained that Guede was not the material killer. He was claimed to have sexually assaulted Kercher while Sollecito prodded her with one knife until Knox delivered the lethal, final blow with another. Yet Sollecito was given 25 years and Knox 26 years.

A theory voiced by defence lawyers and court reporters early yesterday morning was that the court that tried the two former lovers had deliberately constructed a self-detonating judgment whose internal contradictions made it, in the words of La Repubblica, "eminently changeable on appeal".

Defendants in Italy are allowed two appeals. One view was that Friday's judgment could thus be revised on the first appeal and overturned altogether on the second. That would allow all concerned to save face.

The overturning of the verdict and sentence would be widely ascribed in Italy not to any flaw in the investigation or trial, but to the foreign pressure that was already building up yesterday on the other side of the Atlantic. Clearly, this theory – or something like it – had reached the ears of the Kercher family's lawyer, Francesco Maresca, because he made a point of saying at a press conference in Perugia yesterday that it was "offensive to talk of compromise" by the court.

The decision facing the two professional and six lay judges was scarcely an easy one. And it was made even more difficult by the way investigations and trials are conducted in Italy.

In theory, the police's findings are secret until the moment at which the prosecutors ask a judge for the indictment of some or all of the suspects. In practice, everything of importance in a high-profile case like this one ends up in the media.

But what, in the heat of the chase, can seem like a vital clue or damning admission can later be shown to be untrue or misleading. The six lay judges – effectively jurors – were faced with the near-impossible task of disentangling what they believed they understood of the case when the trial opened from what they subsequently learnt in court.

Not that what they heard in court was all fact. The presiding judge, Giancarlo Massei, made a broad interpretation of what constituted evidence. Witnesses were allowed to repeat hearsay and to give their subjective assessment of people's attitudes and emotions. This was particularly important for Amanda Knox, because a key element of the prosecution's case was that her apparent lack of emotion after the discovery of her flatmate's corpse was an indication of her hatred of Kercher, and that her hatred of the British student had led her to murder her.

Yet very little evidence was produced to sustain that argument. Witnesses who knew them suggested relations between the American girl and her flatmate had cooled as they found new friends in Perugia. But no one claimed to have witnessed anything more than a contretemps between them.

Just what was the motive for the killing was never made clear. At the pre-trial hearing, Giuliano Mignini, who led for the state, hinted at satanic ritual, but that idea was dismissed by the judge in his report on the reasons for indicting Knox and Sollecito.

Other factors poured into the mix by the prosecution included cash belonging to Kercher that was found to be missing from the flat she shared with Knox. According to Mignini in his summing-up, Kercher was the victim of "an uncontrolled, unstoppable build-up of violence and sexual play", involving Knox, Sollecito and Guede. But for what reason?

"We do not know with certainty what intentions they may have had," were his exact words. "But it is possible that there was an argument, which then degenerated, between Mez and Amanda over the money that disappeared. Or perhaps the British student was upset by Guede's presence."

Possible. Perhaps. These were scarcely firm grounds on which to base 26-year and 25-year prison sentences. They were arguably sufficient, though, if the forensic evidence had been conclusive. And it was not.

The defence maintained that the traces of DNA linking Kercher to the supposed murder weapon were inconclusive. The British student's bra clip, which bore a trace of Sollecito's DNA, was not bagged by police until 45 days after the initial forensic inspection. And no evidence of any kind was produced to show Knox had been in the room where Kercher's half-naked body was found.

The room did, however, contain an all-important clue – one which was not there. In Kercher's bedroom there was not a single fingerprint belonging to either Knox or her boyfriend.

Could they have wiped them away? Impossible, said Sollecito's lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno, in her summing-up.

Had they done so, they would have removed Guede's too. Yet "that room was awash with Rudy's prints", she told the court.

Quoting the head of Italy's forensic experts, Bongiorno added that "only a dragonfly" could enter a room without leaving a trace. And, she added, "since they are certainly not dragonflies, it means these two young people are innocent."

Yesterday, as the scaffolding holding the television cameras outside Perugia assizes court was being dismantled and the radio vans were preparing to edge out of the parking spaces they have occupied for more than a week, one of the few certainties in the case was that it had yet to run its full course.

Ultim8Degen says..

>>and if she is not guilty of murder, but gulity of some lesser crime (accessory, lying to the police, accomplice) wouldn't she cooperate completely with the police to expose who the real murderer was??<<

Yea and what if she doesn't know? Is she supposed to make something up?

>>even though the police work and prosecution appear to be very very sloppy, it is also clear that knox did not cooperate with the police. why? she is probably guilty.<<

Not cooperate how exactly? Explain this in detail.

>>and the most disgusting part of this case is the american narcissism on full display.<<

Most Americans don't like to see anyone railroaded on false charges, I guess we are funny that way. Where are you from that this is accepted conduct by authorities?

>>knox seems completely remorseless about everything other than the fact that she has been accused and convicted. even her friend who shows up on the today show is a narcissistic hipster douchebag.<<

If she didn't do it what is she supposed to be showing remorse for? "Narcissistic" huh? Are you some psychologist? How did you determine this? And what is the connection with Knox being "remorseless" as you say and her "narcissist" friend on TV?

>>i am very bothered by the justice system in italy, but i am not bothered in the least by the fact that knox is going to prison.<<

I guess you don't care to see that truth and justice is done, That's too bad...and quite frankly your whole post is utter nonsense.

Here's the link if anyone is interested:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...-trial-perugia

dragonfly defense, sweet.

What's bothering is Knox isn't being sentenced based on evidence, actually, more lackthereof: ..because a key element of the prosecution's case was that her apparent lack of emotion after the discovery of her flatmate's corpse was an indication of her hatred of Kercher.

The ''dragonfly defense'' is relevant, because the murder took place in Kercher's room. It's evident that Knox, nor Sollecito, ever was in this room.

Obviously I don't know if they did it or not, but I believe substantial evidence should be required to sentence anyone to a life in imprisonment. As written, this is destroying two possibly innocent people, all for the sake of ''saving face''?

yeah.... what did i say?

bleah.. more than likely you are some rando hipster douchebag who sees this as a (lame) attempt to defend the (nonexistant) honor of hipster douchebags everywhere.

good luck sporto. you are going to need it.

This is the problem - there is no reasonable explanation for giving people life sentences when there is nothing but hearsay. YOu need solid evidence, there is none, and this is just an abortion of a trial. Seems as if nothing was handled right.

Try posting without throwing all the names around, you really lose tons of credibility and nobody takes anything you say seriously when every other word is douchebag, rando, dumb, calling people names, etc.

The sign of someone losing an argument is resorting to name calling ...gotta love it.

no

yes

http://www.zimbio.com/Meredith+Kerch...aele+Sollecito



1 lie, a ah ah.
2 lie, a ah ah.
3 lie, a ah ah.
4 lie, a ah ah.
5 lie, a ah ah.
6 lie, a ah ah.
7 lie, a ah ah.
8 lie, a ah ah.
9 lie, a ah ah.
10 lie, a ah ah.

A good rule of thumb, is if you are being investigated by the police for murder, when you get to being caught out for 9 lies, if you are innocent, you probably should just try and round it out to 10 lies, then tell the truth, then get your parents to hire some PR people to help make you look innocent in the media.

Same goes for the boyfriend.

And the hits just keep a coming:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,310637,00.html

Seriously, innocent people dont lie this much to police. There have been lots of prosecutions of people with no physical evidence in the US, this is probably more slam dunk than the others even if you threw out the slim amounts of forensic evidence there was (knife and bra clasp).

from that link

This is very telling. The reports that it was a small amount of DNA and there could have been possible contamination in the lab seemed somewhat realistic to me but the fact that he made up a story here doesn't look good for him at all

Unless you can show us videotapes of Knox's interrogations and in what context she might have said anything to the cops about this you really have no point.

reread what i responding to, and you'd notice he was talking about her lack of an alibi, or atleast a solid alibi.

here is the post...

hope that helps.

I guess I'm dense, I still don't get your point, care to elaborate?

nope.