You realize she manufactured details? What kind of tape do you need? Do you think she was tortured into saying anything to make the pain stop? If you aren't being tortured, and you are innocent, at what point do you manufacture details? She stuck to the story even after interrogation.

What kind of tape? Are you kidding me? Police all over the world videotape questioning of suspects.(But apparently not in Perugia) They use it later to go over to check out facts and it can be used later in court. It would have been invaluable in this instance. Unless you can provide a tape of this interrogation you can make no judgement on what Knox might of said or under the circumstances it was said.

I say this in all seriousness and not just to make an awful poker joke: think of the variance associated with that and jury selection. The nice part of the US system is it is, seemingly, constructed to reduce variance as reasonably as it can.

Because there is this much arguing it should be obvious that there is no way she should be thrown away for 30 years or whatever. They need facts, no accusations and circle jerks. There isn't one bit of solid evidence that puts her there. While she may have had something to do with it (I really have no idea) I think it's ridiculous that she's getting locked up with what little info we have.

I will say the bootprint to convict the dude is really really questionable/scary as it still seems legitimately plausible he was not involved. As for her not being involved I just really don't see how you can have the motive to create a lie (even under duress), and let the guy sit in jail for 14 days without clearing it up and without being complicit. I think all of them having really bad alibis + not having their alibis checking out is playing into it as well.

There is a joke in Italy about the Justice system that equates to, kill just about anyone you want but don't rob the state or you'll really be in trouble. I asked my own lawyer how many years she would have got if this had been a normal low profile muder case and he said that she would have been unlucky to get 8.

There are so many stories in this case, its hard to tell what is true or false, but one I heard/read was that after Amanda repeatedly denied being involved and after being in the police station for several hours, the police starting asking Amanda to imagine who did it. What would she have done if she had been there? etc, etc.

So, if we had a video, we might be able to determine how the police questions were tabled and then make sense out of her answers.

If she just out of the blue offered up a story about how the bartender did it and she was there, it sounds worse than if she was asked to guess what might have happened and decided to play along.

I'm with you in the respect that I simply can't imagine ever confessing to a crime I didn't commit unless I was being tortured and then I'd probably say just about anything to make the pain stop (and I'm not saying torture was involved here).

Having said that, I've heard of many cases where individuals confessed to crimes they didn't commit under the simple duress of extended interogation. I still scratch my head and think WTF? I would fight to the bitter end and never confess to something I didn't do, but then again, I've never been in that situation, so who knows what I might do after 12 hours of endless interogation without food, sleep or water and possible fear tactics and light physical abuse or threats of physical abuse.

Amanda and her boyfriend sure didn't do themselves any favors with their multiple alibis, but I find it extremely hard to understand how a couple who had only know each other for 6 days could connect with another person she barely knew and her boyfriend had never met (Rude Guede) and commit this crime.

Here's an article that seems to echo some of my feelings about the case:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...questions.html

Everybody lies. Doesn't matter if you're guilty or innocent, if you're dumb enough to talk, you're dumb enough to try and lie.

This seems to make sense. I'm definitely gonna keep quiet in these situations from now on.

False confessions are definitely a real thing. The most famous occurence is probably the central park jogger case where 5 teenagers confessed seperately to raping the woman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisha_Meili

It is insane that Italian courts don't sequester their juries. Is everything just admissible then? If they aren't sequestered then everything better be allowed in court. You don't want jurors reading that she did cartwheels or whatever in a newspaper and then not getting to hear the defense explaing/mitigate that.* I guess since they only need a majority decision there's is less a concern of bribing, but I would think that is a problem as well.

Most of what I know about the case has come from reading this thread. I think she was probably involved, but that there wasn't enough evidence to convict her. I also think, however, that she probably would have been convicted in the US. I've seen enough episodes of 48 hours mystery to know that juries don't require as much evidence as they do on Law and Order. A bad conviction, but probably only slightly more reckless than is the standard. This is nowhere near as bad the West Memphis 3 conviction.

What is the explanation on her only getting 26 years? Is that like hedging their bet or something?

*I've seen a few interviews with jurors, post-trial, and it is ****ing frightening some of what they say as their justifications. It's way more of "that guy just didn't seem right" than physical evidence. There was a 48 hours mystery episode called "dream killers" which was a much worse conviction than this, in my opinion. It deals with a possible false/coerced confession as well. The best part is when one or more of the jurors afterward in an interview for the show said that they didn't believe that was possible and that they already had made up their minds. frightening ****.

that was a lot more rambling than I had intended.

I don't think there is a chance in hell that a 12 person jury would unanimously agree on convicting her, at worst she would get a hung jury.

In Italy all they need to convict is a majority and if its a tie, one of the judges gets to make the deciding vote, it's much easier to get a conviction under these circumstances (imo).

Does anyone know how the jururs voted (ie, was it unanimous).

I also think there was probably massive peer pressure to convict given the way she was portrayed in the press. Reminds me of what I read about the Salem witch trials.

Yeah Ive seen some of these interviews too and they are scary ****. Some juror admitted making up his mind before there was some new evidence brought in. This hillbilly just said that the new evidence didn't matter because he had already made up his mind. So sick on every level, even if this was true, how dumb do you have to be to admit it. Yeah it was a murder trial.

change "probably" to "a good chance of." From the limited exposure I've had to juries (there is definitely selection bias here, as the only trials I'm reading about or watching shows on are going to be ones where defendants seemed innocent and got convicted), they don't require the air tight physical evidence that most of us would like. They're basically 12 angry men, but without Henry Fonda. There are definitely cases in the US of people getting convicted on less.

The Italian system is all kinds of retarded and the majority vote to decide a person's guilt is reckless, but does anyone else think it's a great idea to have a judge in there? I like the fact that there are 2 judges in there who can guide the discussion and who have votes.

Under Italian law, the jury has 90 days to release the reasoning for its decisions.

Well that should be interesting to hear when it comes out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/wo...y.html?_r=1&hp

I wonder if that just means they transcribed what she said and she signed it. Or if she wrote it out herself. Clearly though it sounds like this wasn't just a one-time outburst. I'd like to know every detail of the story she told and how long she stuck to it. I mean bottom line for some amount of time she carried on the charade, and for all that time apparently she was willing to see this guy rot in jail the rest of his life, and she knew he didn't do anything. This is not some semi-retarded 16-year-old who is barely aware of what they're doing giving a false confession. This is a very smart, calculating young woman who by all accounts should be as aware of the consequences of her actions as much as anyone.