This is a lot of back and forth over the contents of a document to which you have access. That was the whole of my meaning, which I deleted almost immediately.

The photo: When selecting off the top of my head the name of the stuff that makes washed blood visible, Luminol was readily at hand and I used it hastily and imprecisely, assuming (wrongly) that everyone would get my meaning in service of the actual point, per the Novocaine example. The central point of the post was to demonstrate that no, menstruation isn't some horror-show bloodbath to counter arguments which diminish the importance of the fact that there is a LOT of blood (or is it?) in that bathroom. This was stated in the post itself.

It takes no great leap to suppose that the bathroom directly across from a room in which someone bled to death, and within the context of a modified crime scene, looks like it was covered in blood because it was. It is indicative of blood, which is why they apply it. They tested 460 samples in the lab and at no point did anyone jump up from their bench and say, holy ****, it's not blood. I take it on faith that the tests therefore produced the expected result. You nevertheless seem doubtful, which I can appreciate for the sake of the intellectual exercise, but it would take an outstanding alternative explanation to overcome the logical conclusion owing to the circumstance in which it was found.

So no, the photo was in no way dishonest. Mis-labeled, certainly.

I'm neutral but its tough to say Knox was not in the house when nobody can pinpoint where the **** she was at that night.

not even she knows according to her 3 diff statements. but rudys story about him goin to the club after is lol

The room had almost no prints including Meredith's. The abnormally low number of prints was what caused suspicion. Further, neither Amanda nor Raf's finger prints would have been much use since Amanda did live there so it wouldn't have been hard to imagine she had been in the room..

They go from a bloody murder scene directly to the suspect's room. What would you expect them to be?

Yes there are other ways elements that react as well but to believe it was something other than blood requires that we accept that Amanda covered her feet in this substance while in Meredith's room and then walked into her room before the murder. We also have to accept that Amanda only did this insane foot substance this one time since she did not walk anywhere else in the house with weird **** on her feet.

That you are even entertaining this as a possibility is why juries don't work. No reasonable doubt does not require that we remove every possible explanation be removed. If that was the required standard nobody could ever be convicted of anything since it is always possible to come up with some remotely insanely low probability alternative explanation. Nobody with any sense is going to believe that footprints going directly from a dead body to the suspect's room and not found anywhere that react with a product used by crime labs to test for blood was caused by the presence of some other oxidizing agent that the product also reacts with.

Of course it was staged. A criminal chooses one of the worst points of entry -- one that is likely an impossible point of entry. Somehow manages to ransack the room before breaking the window. Throws clothing around but doesn't even touch the items of value and takes nothing.

She was dating a guy who was asked to leave his previous school because of issues with animal porn. He collects guro hentai which in case you are not familiar here is a sample http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&cl...og&sa=N&tab=wi (Obviously NSFW). He collects knives and has one mounted over his bed. Raf was just a time bomb that she set off. Throw some drugs into the picture -- the jealousy and animosity between the girls and that Amanda is vindictive and you have a perfect storm.

It isn't hard to see how looking at some guro hentai while on meth leads to the idea that maybe it would be cool to make the pictures real. I know this sound crazy to most of us but we also don't collect this **** and enjoy looking at it. Next thing you know you have a very messy crime scene that you have to deal with because if you don't start cleaning you're done.

What surprises me is that in any questions about what Knox's motive could have been, a psychopathic response to power stuggles hasnt been mentioned. You've got a roommate who she didnt get on with and who was seen as a sexual rival, killed. You have the boss who was ushering her out of her job, framed. You've got the police who werent lured by shakira-esqe hip dances or exhibitions of backbends/doing the splits in the police station, falsely accused of assaulting her.

What you do have is a blatant lack of empathy for Kercher, overwhelmingly superficial emotional responses and lack of fear while at the police station or on trial, the fueled infatuation of the inexperienced Sollecito*, pathological lying while coming up with the various stories for where she was on the night of the murder, cartwheeling/sex-with-stranger-on-train impulsivity, a seeming inability to control her emotions and the egocentricity in her prison journal of suggesting she was only there because she was attractive.

Obviously any discussions focusing on motive deal in conjecture, as by its nature it cant be dealt with factually. Is psychopathy really that far out of the question though?

*maniulation is the most subjective of the psychopath traits ive gone through here, but it wouldnt take much work to write an essay on manipulative behaviour she's shown

Yeah, I have read most of this thread, and this seems like a plausible scenario. Can someone explain if Guede's account has been discredited?

Just saw the landing in Seattle news conference. lol, that bitch totally did it.

the american media machines handling of this is literally awe inspiring.

This pretty much sums it up. Unfortunately, people just can't understand what "reasonable doubt" actually means. I actually think there is a MOUNTAIN of circumstantial evidence against them in this case, like way more then is needed to convict. How juries can't take a step back and look at the totality of the evidence and come up with a reasonable conclusion is beyond me. For a second just think of all of the evidence and lies and ask yourself, "Is it possible that ALL of this crazy stuff just coincidentally happened to these two people on the night that her roommate was MURDERED?" Seriously just ****ing think about how impossible and ridiculous that is.

But no, now everyone thinks they are on the CSI team and when any little piece of anything doesn't blatantly say "Hey this girl did it" in clear as day letters, they yell "REASONABLE DOUBT" "REASONABLE DOUBT" like they have any ****ing clue what it even means. They could have 999 pieces of evidence pointing against someone and 1 piece that is just neutral they will pull the reasonable doubt card. It's getting to the point where nobody can get convicted unless there's a video tape of them actually doing it, and even then I'm not so sure.

It's just so tilting that we have all of these psycho murderers and other assorted criminals walking the streets because we have all of these ****ing brain-dead citizens making up juries and the media.

I agree. To us highly intelligent OOT posters the average person pretty much looks ******ed.

The thing is, do you have a valid sample size to base this complaint off of (ie, how many times has "reasonable doubt" been used unreasonably)? I'd be interested to know if this is a widespread phenomenon or just a generalization based on recent high profile cases.

This thread just reminds me of how stupid people are and how powerless we are to change that. Idiots gonna be idiots, man that is so tilting.

Well, I guess you're just going to have "reasonable doubt" about my claim then.

I've been lurking this thread, and would just like to commend H17 and PR on their excellent posting. I know particularly Henry was keen to see some of the Jurors Logic and so thought I'd quickly post this picked from the Daily Mail. It's brief and doesn't contain a whole lot but does give some insight to his logic, as mentioned by H17 the report should contain voting, however, hopefully a lot more will come out in the press with regard to the juries thoughts.


"The lack of a motive and errors made by forensic investigators crucially undermined the case against Amanda Knox, one of the jurors who freed her from Italian jail said yesterday.

Fabio Angeletti, a teacher from Terni, near Perugia, was a member of the jury who upheld Knox's appeal against her conviction for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher.

He told the Guardian newspaper: 'As a father, I have a real feeling for the Kerchers' pain. But you need conclusive motives to condemn, as well as conclusive evidence.

'There were lots of mistakes by the forensic investigators that robbed the case of any certainty.'

Mr Angeletti, 40, was one of six jurors who, along with two professional judges, upheld the appeal by Knox and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito against their 26- and 25-year sentences for the brutal sex killing of Miss Kercher in 2007.

The six jurors - five women and Mr Angeletti - were themselves technically lay judges, and were selected using more demanding educational criteria than those at Knox and Sollecito's first trial.

Mr Angeletti, who said he had heard appeals in four other murder trials, said he had focused more on documentary evidence provided to the court than the speeches by Knox."

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz1ZteqRsJd

Are there any other sources? That is the same Daily Mail that on Friday evening posted the wrong story online for half an hour, stating that Knox was found guilty still, which was complete with multi-paragraph quotes all of which were completely fabricated.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...er-murder.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...ror-speaks-out

Unfortunately it is quite high even in normal cases. You just need to have enough money to afford to turn the case into a battle of experts and you are going to walk. Since you can pretty much always find someone with credentials to say anything as long as you're paying them this isn't hard.

opal8,

Yeah I saw that last night. The juror is a moron. You don't need motive. It is nice if you have one but just being ****ed up is more than enough. By his reasoning Russell Williams isn't guilty since there was no motive -- he was just a ****ed up individual who liked to tie up and kill women then wear their underwear. The teenagers here in Ottawa who killed an elderly couple they had never met and from which they stole nothing from because they were bored and wanted to see what killing someone was like should also have been allowed to go free since after all they had no motive. Sometimes the motive is that the person is ****ed up and enjoys it.

I have no idea what the details are or what Italian schools are like when it comes to asking students to leave but applying North American standards you wouldn't get asked to leave over watching animal porn once. Collecting knives in and of itself isn't that bad but when you start hanging them in locations that under older traditional Italians would normally be reserved for a crucifix or rosary you have moved from knife collector to weirdo freak. Throw in the guro hentai collection and believing he was involved in a murder just for kicks isn't hard. In fact taking everything we know about Raf any bookie would set the line at him getting to 30 without being involved in some kind of violence against women as the dog outcome.

Amanda knew about the guro hentai and knives and she was cool with this. While I have never run a study on this my gut feeling is that any non-****ed up girl is going to bolt as soon as a guy pulls out the guro hentai. The prosecution focused way too much on the red herring of making her out to be promiscuous which really wasn't relevant in any way and not quite enough on the hey they like to look an violent cartoons of women getting sliced open while doing drugs angle.

Thanks for your work in this thread Henry, as haven't followed this at all and given the latest developments wanted to get up to speed.

This dude Michael Morton was just freed after 25 years in prison for a murder he didnt commit. And the judge says:

"
"You do have my sympathies," Harle said. "You have my apologies. . . . We do not have a perfect system of justice, but we have the best system of justice in the world."
"

I dont know about the "best system of justice in the world". Jury can be manipulated so easily if one has money behind. Just get sh*tloads of experts speak mumbo jambo about stuff the jury doesnt even understand and murderers walk. Get convincing experts and thats it. You can do anything and get away with it.

This is going to be interesting. There is going to be an appeal. If my understanding is correct Amanda must be present at the appeal -- she can't just have her lawyers deal with it while remaining in the US. So if I am understanding this correctly no matter what we are going to have a extradition situation next year.

All the media seems convinced that the US will not send her back but I honestly can't see how they could refuse. The implications of refusing are just too big.

henry, where did you get that info about the appeal? and yea, i think there would be an uproar in the US if they decided not to extradite her. i'm not even sure who would make that decision but considering it would be an election year i'd think any politicians would be crazy not to send her back.

The decision that there was going to be an appeal was almost instant. The PM himself has said there will be one and the prosecutor has also said. He has already stated to outline several mistakes even before the reasoning is released.

Further, there is also going to be an investigation of this decision and how it could have possibly have happened. That still hasn't been translated but it appears that their justice department is launching a special investigation. Raf's family is already up on charges for tampering with the trial. His sister was either fired or sanctioned from the police force for interfering. Several witnesses have made allegations of bribes being offered. There have been rumors that the DNA reviewers were gotten to.

If something nefarious is discovered that implicates the Knox family it will be interesting to see how that impacts US sentiment toward her. I still predict that it is going to turn on her fast regardless of this and that she will go from hero to bitch who got away with it by Christmas.

Henry,

Thanks for all your great posting. Can you or someone else point me to the following: a few months ago when reading about the case, i thought one of the most damning pieces of evidence against Amanda and Raf was their lame excuse for why Meredith's blood was on the knife in Raf's kitchen. Something about her cutting her finger while cooking at his house, and then later it being confirmed that she had never even been to their house. I've been looking for this online yesterday/today and can't find mention of it however.

Isn't that just about all the proof anyone would need? Who would lie about reasons for the victim's blood being on their own knives if there wasn't another real reason to cover up? And why is everyone willing to ignore this now just because the DNA collection may have been messy? Raf basically confirmed it was her DNA by needing to think of an excuse for how it got on his knife. Unless i'm making this all up - did this come from a reliable/neutral reporting source?

Looking at the US judicial system - "reasonable doubt" has always been a tough concept for me. Personally (when reading about a case or watching on television) - 'not guilty, the prosecution didn't prove that he/she did it beyond a reasonable doubt' always seemed to be the most intellectually compelling position. As others have mentioned on this page - it seems like it should be fairly easy for a defense attorney to create reasonable doubt, using experts, introducing other theories, etc.

That was the way I thought until I served on a capital murder trial recently (within the last 6 months). It was interesting that the court stresses over and over that YOU are the one who is to define 'reasonable doubt' for yourself. They even throw out percentages "for you, reasonable doubt might be 95% certain; it could be 90% certain; it could be 99.99999% certain - or it could be 100% (though anyone with a 100% would be weeded out by the prosecution in jury selection).

In the case I was on, the evidence was pretty thin - but we did have an accomplice testimony (it is illegal to convict based solely on an accomplice testifying - their testimony must be corroborated by separate evidence). But our case was pretty thin.

When we got into the jury room; it was 6 innocent (6 people who said "it hasn't been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, period"; and 5 guilty and 1 undecided. As the discussion went on, it was very interesting.

The question was presented - "who here thinks the defendant is innocent?" (no one did)
"who feels certain he participated in the crime?" (participation was all that was required to convict in our case) (everyone was sure he did it)

One person said "for me, I'm certain that he did it - and the evidence; though somewhat thin; is enough for me to be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed this crime". Within 1-2 hours, everyone had changed their vote to guilty.

It was a subtle difference but "did the prosecution prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt?" and "am I certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this person committed the crime?" are two very different questions on some levels

Henry and PR are crushing their opponents here. The last several pages is hardly an argument and more like sudents who missed the first two months of class only reading summaries of other's notes, returning to lecture and challenging the professor to support current lecture items with the material covered while they were absent.

Not only that, ask yourself which group is being intellectually honest as well as trying their best to be factually honest. The "arguments" I see against their positions are a farce.

Anyhow, here is what I think will happen. I call it "From Italy With Love."

Knox's aquittal will be overturned and her conviction reinstated. At that point, the U.S. will be put in a bad spot: do they uphold their duty to extradite? If no, a whole list of unsavory results follow, not the least of which is the U.S. is harboring a killer that the majority of the public supports.

Italy gets its cake and eats it too as they get their conviction while shipping the media circus out of town and letting U.S. take over the problem.

Book it.

So now anyone who has reasonable doubt after reading the wildly conflicting reports of this case and the evidence is an idiot. Nice.

I guess I'm just trying to understand how anyone can be so sure about either "truth" (that she's innocent or that she's guilty) given the errors and lies thrown around by both sides in this case. Some of the DNA evidence was mishandled or improperly collected at the scene. Did that make a difference? IDK, I'd have to know what swabs came back with with hits, and even then it would be impossible to determine if a "mixed" DNA hit was because there actually was a mix of two people's DNA or because of contamination during the collecting process. To me, that's huge.

There were a decent number of luminol footprints, but no blood or DNA found in any of those footprints. Even if a blood/DNA hit in similar circumstances is only 50/50, if those footprints are in blood, shouldn't about half of those footprints register traces of blood/DNA? Then it would be a hell of a lot easier to conclude they are all in blood.

There's some missing evidence you would expect to find in a murder case like this (and if I'm wrong about any of this being missing, I hope I'll be corrected by someone who knows more about the case than I do). Normally in a stabbing murder you'd expect to see some wounds on the attackers, especially if you have a suspect immediately after the crime. You'd expect to find traces of the victims blood in the suspect's home (the boyfriends, for example - they found microscopic traces of DNA on the knife, but not blood on the knife, or anywhere else) or on clothing/shoes. Even after washing, you can detect blood on clothing. If discarded during the clean-up, then the murder would have to be planned rather than spontaneous (and the evidence suggests it was spontaneous), otherwise how would the boyfriend have had a full change of clothing with shoes over at the apartment, to avoid bringing blood over to his place (if he participated in the murder, he had to have blood on him).

Do you know how unusual it is in an unplanned knife homicide for there to be no trace of blood found on any of the attackers clothing, shoes, personal effects, or in their home? In cases where there is an immediate suspect and timely arrest, anyway. It's pretty unusual. It's hard to argue that they were so meticulous in clean-up that they avoided contaminating the boyfriend's apartment with blood in any way, as well as getting rid of any clothing or items that had blood on them, and yet were still sloppy enough to leave a few small but noticeable drops of blood in the bathroom.

Also, how did they clean up by removing all (or almost all traces) of Knox and her boyfriend but leave the significant amount of evidence implicating Guere? In the hallway in particular, which photos indicate is extremely narrow, it would have been next to impossible for there not to be overlapping footprints in blood if there were three offenders, and ergo would have been next to impossible to clean two sets of footprints but leave a third.

IDK, the whole case defies explanation, since if they didn't participate, how do you explain the bloody footprint in the bathroom? And why do the luminol footprints, if not in blood, appear to make movements that would lead from the murder room? I don't see how anyone can be completely convinced of guilt or innocence.

Also, I believe the door issue wasn't about whether Mez kept it open, it was about whether she kept it locked.