Foxy knoxy guilty.....again

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/30/world/europe/italy-amanda-knox-retrial/


Third (Fourth?) times a charm?

This is dumb. I haven't been following the trial. Based on WHAT EVIDENCE did she get convicted?

I just did a quick read-up on Wiki about the case and it seems like the actual evidence against her is very, very weak.

True, she did "confess" to being present during the murder, but the person who supposedly did it in this scenario was later found to have an airtight alibi. And she only confessed after a long interrogation in which she had no lawyer present and in which, it is claimed, the police were coercive.

There's virtually no physical evidence against her, and the only witness putting her at the scene during the murder--himself the convicted murderer!--changed his story.

That's what I thought.

No different evidence than the other trials.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I heard somewhere that in the US at least, you can't use the same evidence on appeal that you used in the initial trial. Isn't that the same in Italy?

I admit I am no lawyer.

Looks like the Sicilians are reaching.

You know what they say, "never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!"

Obviously this crap wouldn't happen In the US. one trial.

On appeal in the US you can't raise new evidence or raise new objections to evidence that weren't raised at trial. You basically argue procedural error on the part of the judge. In America Knox would never get a second trial.

Obviously there are exceptions to those general rules but i don't see Knox having met those high burdens. But in Italy it's bizarro world where double jeopardy doesn't exist.

I love how some idiot publication the other day said that if found guilty, Knox would be "trapped" "caged" in the United States, unable to leave it for fear of entering a country that would extradite her to Italy.

Apparently oblivious to the fact that the United States is a continent-sized nation, containing within it just about every manner of terrain, climate, et al you could want. There is the tropical sunshine of Florida and Hawaii, the temperate rainforests of Washington State and western Oregon, the vast steppe of the Great Plains, the towering rockies, the frigid tundra of Alaska, the deserts of the southwest. Many live their whole lives and never leave the States once.

"Trapped" in the United States, lulz.

Dumb question, but would this have any affect here legally? Is she a convicted felon? Will this show up on background checks?

They can have a trial every month if they want. As long as she never steps foot in Italy again she's golden.
And considering what happened to her, I'm guessing she's not chomping at the bit to go back.

I think as far as her record here is concerned, she's clean. The U.S. won't extradite her precisely because we believe she was previously acquitted and that the second conviction is a result of double jeopardy.

She can't go into any of the EU countries. And she'd probably be unwise to go anywhere that has an extradition treaty with Italy.

Italian justice.

In other words, don't leave America. Could be worse, she could be trapped in England.

These songs are dedicated to a special lady:

I'd like to see her naked.

I had to look this up, I didn't even remember what it was about.

There's a shocking news flash........

The Italians are insane when it comes to their court system. But I can believe that the Messiah would try to extradite her.

If she gets extradited, I would be willing to give her conjugal visits.

I like the #1 user comment on the CNN website:

"A country that imprisons earthquake scientists for manslaughter for failing to predict an earthquake cannot really be taken too seriously."

Holy crap! If Rome gets hit with a sudden snowstorm like The South, head will, literally, roll I think if the Popemobile gets stuck on the side of the road.

Shit, after all that crap I'd never want to set foot off the North American continent again anyway.

My read of it was that she was basically convicted because she was a foreigner, and it's apparently easier for the Italians to see a crime like this as having been done by foreigners rather than by some home-grown thug.

From what I'm hearing the Wops are seeking extradition. I would hope the US would have some balls and tell them to go fuck themselves, but with Barry in charge I'm sure they'll be rushing her back on the next flight out.

I watched and read some more material on the case last night and I'm really having a hard time seeing how she could be convicted.

The police suspected her, not from physical evidence, but for reasons arising from their interpretation of her behavior after the crime. Once they began investigating her, they found a text message in her phone to her boss, Patrick Lumumba, whose content was, in my mind, completely unsuspicious. At the end of a short message in reply to his telling her she wasn't needed for work that evening, she texted "See you later" [in Italian], which the police interpreted as acknowledgement of a later rendezvous the evening of the murder. The police had decided that she was involved and that Lumumba was the killer.

So, when she "confessed" during her long, late night interrogation, she named THE PERSON THE POLICE WANTED HER TO NAME as the murderer: Lumumba. One itty-bitty problem: Lumumba had an air-tight alibi. He was at his club all night and seen by many witnesses. I don't know if the Italian police pressured Amanda Knox to that claim, but it's the beginning of a pattern: suspects change their story to comport with the direction the police WANT to go.

The police slam dunk case fell apart. But they still remained fixated on Amanda Knox, ostensibly because she changed her story, even though the story she told was, apparently, what the police wanted to hear. So they grilled the boyfriend, Rafaele Sollecito, until he said something the police wanted to hear: that, no, Amanda was not with him all night. Of course, Sollecito was then drawn into suspicion because if he was no longer Amanda's alibi, she was no longer HIS. So, the police decided they worked it together.

Now, again, the police have virtually nothing in terms of physical evidence. The best piece of evidence they have against Sollecito is a small amount of DNA found on a bra strap clasp of the victim. But the defense pretty conclusively showed that police collection and handling of the DNA evidence was highly flawed and not in accord with international standards. DNA is a powerful tool in solving crimes, but it is highly susceptible to contamination. The evidence the police had against Amanda? A kitchen knife at Sollecito's house which had Amanda's DNA and a trace amount of the victim's on it. Amanda's DNA on the knife is pretty explainable--she claimed to have used it for cooking during the week she had been a guest at Sollecito's--but two big problems for the prosecution arose: one, the knife was very poorly handled and stored by the police before it was ever DNA tested; and two, it was shown that this knife was NOT the murder weapon. Even if you accept this evidence at face value, you're left with only this: Amanda Knox and the victim both touched an object that was not the murder weapon.

In the meantime, other physical evidence at the scene--including his DNA in the victim's body and a bloody fingerprint--pointed directly to Rudy Guede, who had suddenly left the country soon after the murder. Police monitored one of his phone calls wherein he admitted to having been with the victim at the time of the murder. He was captured and questioned, and his story was implausible (A girl he's trying to romance is murdered almost in front of his eyes and he leaves and goes to a disco with some friends? Come on.) Guede was tried and found guilty of the murder.

That should've been the end of it, right?

No, the police are still holding to Amanda Knox SOMEHOW being a part of it. So, under questioning from the police, Guede now changes his story to say that the shadowy figure he saw the night of the murder was Rafaele Sollecito. Once again, the police get someone to change their story to point in the direction where they want it to go. Guede's sentence was shortened soon thereafter.

Now the police concoct the SEX GAME GONE TOO FAR angle, wherein Knox, Sollecito, and Guede are playing some kind of sex game with the victim and, when she resists, she's murdered. Now bear in mind: the police cannot even show that Sollecito and/or Knox even KNEW Guede, much less participated in bizarre sex games with him.

Do you see how far down the rabbit hole this case has gone? The evidence tying either Knox or Sollecito to the crime is all but nonexistent--despite the fact that there's PLENTIFUL evidence for Guede's involvement--and the police are still holding to their involvement.

In Knox's original trial, it seems pretty clear that the prosecution focused on Knox's character and not on the evidence. She was found guilty. But the Italian appellate court threw out Knox's "confession"--she had no lawyer and no reliable translator present--and ruled that the small physical evidence against her was irretrievably flawed and--in my mind rightly--acquitted her. The trial that concluded yesterday apparently re-admitted this evidence and, even though it doesn't clearly establish Knox or Sollecito as the murderer, they were both found guilty.

Unless I'm missing a big part of this case--and the articles on line and the BBC program I watched last night seemed pretty thorough--this looks to me like a pretty big miscarriage of justice. Even accepting Knox's "confession" (the major thrust of which has been PROVEN false) and the DNA evidence, there is nothing to show exactly what happened that night. It seems pretty clear that Guede was the killer, and the combination of physical evidence and his lack of credible explanation support this, but what real evidence is there that Knox or Sollecito had anything to do with it?

If this trial were held in an American courtroom, Sollecito's and Knox's defense would have waaaaaaaaaay more than enough reasonable doubt.

Anyone got a good argument in FAVOR of Knox's/Sollecito's guilt?

"I watched and read some more material on the case last night and I'm really having a hard time seeing how she could be convicted." - Paladin
What part of "it's Italy" don't you understand? They decide the verdict first and then build the case around it.
If she sets foot in that country (or leaves America) she deserves everything she gets.

She should do porn.

And maybe that is the explanation, but I have a hard time accepting that because there has been so much international attention in this case.

If this is it how it works in Italy, their criminal justice process really leaves a lot to be desired. I'm astonished that someone can be convicted of murder when there is still so much uncertainty about WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

If the verdict in Italy is indefensible, it seems unfair to limit her options in life.