Cont: The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 32

[Vixen]

I'm confused. If the court does not have sufficient evidence to convict, but the defendant is not able to prove their innocence, how could the court rule them "not guilty", and on what basis would they do that? It seems to me if a court has decided there is insufficient evidence to convict, but innocence has not been proven, the court would have no other option than to acquit due to insufficient evidence.

The Marasca-Bruno verdict was hardly egregious. The court did identified violations of Italian law by both the investigation and the lower courts, and declared that if they had followed the law they HAD to acquit. Courts, after all, are not supposed to speculate and assume, something both Massei and Nencini did excessively, something Guede apologists and Knox haters refuse to accept.

There was no violation of Italian law.


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[SpitfireIX]

SpitfireIX, thanks for your post. In the Italian court cases unfavorable to Knox and Sollecito, there are certainly instances of the various biases pointed out in the above excerpt from your post.

Besides the "biases", courts can make "mistakes". Whether mistakes or intentional violations of procedural laws by the Italian authorities - police prosecutors, and judges, the Knox-Sollecito case is littered with numerous violations of Italian procedural laws and ECHR human rights case law violations. These violations made the trials resulting in provisional convictions for murder/rape and, for Knox, the two final convictions for calunnia wrongful.

One great example of this is the way in which Vixen keeps trying to claim that Amanda's lawyers somehow hoodwinked the ECHR into believing she was a suspect, when she technically wasn't, and thus not entitled to a lawyer (conveniently ignoring all the other glaring problems with the interrogation and her statement).

The fact is, Amanda clearly was a de facto suspect, and thus was entitled to a lawyer under the Convention, no matter what technicalities of Italian law might or might not have applied.

 

[Vixen]

Vixen wrote:


Ah, er, there is nothing to see here.

It is simply not true that they were acquitted under a 'rarely used loophole'. And even if they were (there's that pesky 'even if' that formed the basis of Marasca-Bruno's panel in 2015 acquitting them).....

.... it is still an acquittal, which I am forever grateful you've finally, after 10 years, conceded. Thank you!

The facts, they always remain facts. The one fact that was unassailable formed the basis of the 2015 final and definitive acquittal - that even if the prosecution case before Nencini's 2013-'14 court HAD BEEN TRUE, none of it made up for the unassailable fact that no evidence, none at all, had been found in the murderroom pointing to either AK or RS. None.

The ISC ruled in 2015 that the Nencini court had erred in convicting, not under any loophole. Unless you think it is a loophole that one cannot be convicted unless there is actual evidence which supports it.

You translate it as 'even if' in the sense of a remote possibility, but it doesn't say '[even if] it had been true'. You inserted the latter part yourself to negate that fact of the issue being so. It translates as 'even though' in the sense of 'despite' or 'notwithstanding'.

It did not say Nencini 'had erred in convicting'. What it did was go into a long rant about Gallileo and the scientific method, resuscitated the corpse of the terminally flawed and defenestrated Conti & Vecchiotti like a horror-show-Lazarus rising from the dead and rubbished the newspaper coverage, ignoring completely the merits of the case.


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[Vixen]

I seem to recall having this discussion just a few short days ago, and I provided to you multiple instances where the prosecution fed the media lies, which were then embellished further by a media eager to sell copies/website hits. So now you're back to this "massive PR campaign" nonsense again.

Actually, I never did ask you to provide an example of something coming from this "massive PR campaign" that was false. We all know Curt hired Marriott to handle media requests for the family, and we also know the firm later tried to correct some of the more egregious falsehoods being pushed in the media, but no one has ever provided examples of falsehoods being promoted by Marriott. Can you?

An example is of a textbook I read - soz, forget which one - in which the author states he or she had had to agree to let the Knox/Mellas parents state their view of the case, and were given a chapter. Being the parents, they are hardly going to be impartial or neutral! I believe both parents know perfectly well their daughter did it - there is one clip of Edda giving AK a funny look - and we all saw shouty, angry red-faced Curt, to know the PR campaign was all about rescuing the reputation of the parents. It's understandable in that respect but it feeds the public a less than full picture. There is a serial child-killer in the UK who has also just recently hired a PR firm, having failed in the objective air of the courtroom.


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[Vixen]

Except that video exists of the police not changing their gloves, passing the bra clasp, and even dropping it and picking it up.


And if one person had put on clean gloves and then immediately collected the clasp and not let anyone else touch it, you might have a point.


Affirmed consequent fallacy. Standard crime scene procedures were clearly violated; were they just supposed to meekly watch without objecting?


That would hardly inspire confidence in the verdict.


As noted, I do not accept you as an authority on the Italian legal system, but I'll let others more knowledgeable about the case comment on this one.


No.


No. You do know that one component of house dust is dead human skin cells, don't you? So Raffaele's DNA could have gotten on the inside of the hook just from having dust, even a very tiny amount, disturbed nearby. And if you want to claim that it could only have gotten there by direct contact, please explain how it could have gotten on the inside of the hook if he had actually been involved in the crime.


I would ask you to explain what you believe this has to do with anything, but I doubt the answer would be very insightful.


"Everyone who rules in favor of Amanda Knox is corrupt or incompetent."

It is well-known that housedust is full of DNA fragments. That is why the courts' legal standard is that of a minimum 10 or 11 allleles* is required for it to be entered into evidence. That is just as well because otherwise AK's DNA fragments on Mez' underwear would incriminate her. Note that one of her counsel walked off the case, shortly after the DNA was revealed. I wonder what made him walk?

*Sollecito's DNA was the full load of alleles.

 

[LondonJohn]

Boy, some people are still REALLY pissed that the Italian system finally did its job (although far too belatedly, and it still cannot do its job re Knox's criminal slander conviction). It's almost as if those people still cling to the misguided belief that there was sufficient evidence - credible, reliable evidence, that is - to safely convict Knox and/or Sollecito of anything to do with the murder. It's almost as if they still refuse to believe that not only was there not one piece of (credible, reliable) evidence pointing to the involvement of Knox and/or Sollecito... but also that all of the evidence was in fact entirely compatible with Guede acting alone (and there was more than enough inculpatory evidence to convict Guede of the murder).

Not really too sure why all but one person here thinks there's any point whatsoever in rehashing the murder-related aspects of this case. I can understand ongoing discussions around Knox's still-live criminal slander conviction, but the other stuff? Disengage already........

 

[Welshman]

"I don't care what all those structural engineers and authorities on fire prevention say, I can clearly see the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed in controlled demolitions, and all of you who accept the Official Government Story are just blind sheeple who can't think for yourselves!"


No. From "Scientific Thinking About Legal Truth," by Gal Rosenzweig (Frontiers in Psychology, July 6, 2022):

The Legal Truth​

The legal fact-finding process is based on witness reports about sources of information, such as eyewitness testimonies and scientific measurements. Although the fact finders examine the validity of witness testimonies based on reports of various interviewing techniques, such as cognitive interviews, or based on scientific department reports, and the legal fact-finding model relies mainly on estimations and risk management. Fact finders hear witness testimonies, assess their validity based on their perceptions, and decide what has happened in reality. Although fact finders also consider the relationship between crime scene findings and the witnesses' reports, they examine only whether these correlate. They use the synthesis of evidence, logic, life experience, and the rules of evidence to determine whether to rely on the testimony. Finally, their decisions are guided by confidence in the coherence of the information.​

​

Court rulings show that making decisions based on these guiding principles may be problematic because (a) the correlations might be random, being based on statistics with low probability; (b) the justifications might contradict scientific research findings, as in the case of a credible eyewitness identification under problematic viewing conditions and a delayed lineup; (c) evidence synthesis might point to a certain conclusion even if a contradictory hypothesis cannot be discarded or if crucial information needed for validation, such as the possible error rate, is missing or not examined at all.​

​

Brain science research may reveal the reasons why deciding based on these principles can be problematic, showing that prior knowledge unconsciously biases perception and can lead to false confidence about reality even if the pieces of information are sparse or inaccurate. Thus, deciding based on the confidence level regarding evidence coherence might diverge from reality because it may be based on the witnesses' and fact finders' prior knowledge rather than on evidence. Several psychological research findings regarding cognitive biases can also explain why deciding based on subjective perception regarding what happened at a crime scene could lead to mistakes. First, fact finders may be affected by tunnel vision. Tunnel vision is the tendency of actors in the criminal justice system to use heuristics and shortcuts to filter evidence selectively and build a case for a suspect's conviction, ignoring or suppressing evidence that points to the suspect's innocence. Tunnel vision motivates investigators, prosecutors, and judges to attribute importance and relevance to information that supports their original conclusion, while information inconsistent with the presumption of guilt is easily overlooked, dismissed as irrelevant, or considered unreliable. Second, the fact finders' decisions may also rely on several aspects of false judgments, e.g., about the plausibility of the testimony. Finally, other biases, such as confirmation bias, hindsight bias, and outcome bias are frequently observed in the criminal justice system. For example, confirmation bias is the favoring of information that confirms an individual's preconceptions or hypotheses independently of the truth of the information. Forensic findings can be also interpreted in a biased way. [citations omitted]​

No. These are public records. Further, you have repeatedly insisted that judicial facts, once determined by a court of first instance, cannot, or at least should not, be changed, or even questioned. And yet, most of the examples you list here can and do change throughout a person's lifetime. Even information on a birth certificate can be changed in certain circumstances (e.g., a court finding of paternity).


No. Courts can and do make mistakes. You are quick to claim that "the court got it wrong" whenever an appeals court or the ECHR rules in favor of Amanda or Raffaele, yet, whenever a court has found a "judicial fact" that works against them, you insist it must be set in stone and not even questioned.


See article excerpt above.


Which you decry as corrupt or incompetent whenever Amanda and Raffaele's convictions are overturned.


You just contradicted yourself.


Citation to where Madison was in a relationship with anyone who worked for RS.


Here is a link to the article. Kindly quote the sections that state that Amanda was "RAILROADED!!" or that contain "all kind of claims of torture."


Do you dispute that the all-night interrogations took place? Amanda and Raffaele went to the police station after 10:00pm, and Amanda signed her statement at 5:30am.


Kindly quote the section where Mignini is characterized as "evil." There is one uncomplimentary statement about him, but the article makes clear that that is how Knox's supporters view him, and not necessarily how the author views him.


You're absolutely right, Vixen. The author really should have interviewed Mignini and presented his views on the case in the article as well. Oh, wait, the author did.


Please stop making statements that are unsupported by facts.

The idea judicial facts are set in stone, can’t be questioned and are the same as actual facts is highly flawed for various reasons :-

1)Judicial facts may conflict with actual facts. If the Italian courts decided Raffaele’s knife was used to stab Meredith and this becomes a judicial fact this conflicts with the fact the characteristics of the knife made it physically impossible for the knife to have been used to stab Meredith or contain Meredith’s DNA

The knife was picked at random with no other knives taken from Raffaele’s kitchen or the cottage. Is it credible a knife collected under these circumstances was the murder weapon.
The knife didn’t match a bloody imprint on the bed.
The knife was too large to have caused the two smaller wounds.
There was bruising on the fatal wound which indicated the knife had gone all the way in. The length of the fatal wound was 8 cm whilst the length of the knife was 17 cm which indicated the knife couldn’t have caused the larger wound.
The knife didn’t have any blood or human biological material on it.
The defence had no objection to the knife being opened while the prosecution didn’t want the knife opened.

2) Vixen only accepts judicial facts if they go against Amanda and Raffaele and will not accept judicial facts in favour of Amanda and Raffaele. How can the notion that judicial facts must always be accepted without question be credible if people cherry pick which judicial facts they support.

3) What if new information comes along which undermines a judicial fact. For instance, a court decides on a judicial fact that someone confesses voluntarily to a crime but later police video appears showing the suspect was mistreated during an interrogation and the confession was forced out of him.

4) Courts can't provide evidence to support a judicial fact. For instance, someone is convicted of murdering a relative and it is argued that the defendant had a motive to kill the relative as the suspect would receive money on the death of the relative but no one can produce evidence to support this eg the will of the victim doesn't mention giving anything to the suspect.

 

[Vixen]

Per usual, you ignore the many provided articles that prove you wrong and make up your own facts.
FACT: Guede's name was released to the public on Nov. 19, not "around lunchtime" on Nov. 20.
FACT: A TV was in Knox's cell as in every cell.
FACT: News does NOT have to be "official"; it breaks when it's reported. The media doesn't need to have it made official by the police to report something.
FACT: Watching TV, including the news, is a very common way for inmates to pass the time.

"Hagiography": hyperbole used with the intent to discredit. See? We do understand how it works! "We" aren't saying she learned his name when it was read out on the news: SHE IS.

Denial of the quoted and cited facts.


Fact not in evidence.





LOL! Mignini thinks a lot of weird things including it "was a 'sacrificial rite' that should have taken place on Halloween", because only left shoeprints were found there could be masonic influence, and that he's an Italian Sherlock Holmes.


No, they didn't 'uphold' it because they had no power to say otherwise since Chieffi had already confirmed that "judicial fact".

Judicial fact "Knox covered for Guede" vs common sense:

Knox pointed out Guede's feces to the police.
Knox pointed out Guede's bloody footprint to the police. If it had been Sollecito's they'd have gotten rid of it.
Knox did not mop away Guede's bloody shoeprints in the hallway or kitchen.
Knox did not remove the pillowcase with his bloody handprint on it.

Goes to show how cunning AK was and is. Mignini descrined her as 'narcissistic, transgressive and manipulative', a fine actor and a 'talented liar'.



He is probably not far wrong to link the crime to Hallowe'en, given RS' penchant for extreme experiences, vampire-slaying manga and collection of knives, Knox, someone who enjoys shocking people. Boiling with rage at the perception Mez had stolen her job, snubbed her at Hallowe'en, had the handsome skiing Italian downstairs, popular, in demand, whilst AK was stuck with the swotty incel.


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[Vixen]

No. If they were guilty, they could have left much earlier.


A pretext for what?


Yes, because, granting, arguendo, that the above is accurate, there's no way he could possibly have 1) woken up when Amanda left, 2) checked his phone, 3) (optional) used the bathroom, and then 4) gone back to sleep after she left.





Some phones systems go straight to voicemail if the phone being dialed is turned off.


Apart from some of the above's being inaccurate, it still doesn't explain why Amanda needed to call Filomena before they left for Gubbio..

That one didn't. If you came home to find the door swinging open and a person who also lived there was not around who usually was, would you not give them a ring? And shouldn't that phone call ring slightly longer than three seconds before hanging up...?



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[Vixen]

4. Let's see a reference citation for "TV News is not something mostly lower-class inmates would be watching." It certainly appears to be a highly biased statement. US prisons generally allow prisoners to watch TV (if the prisoners are well-behaved). **

** https://www.restonyc.com/do-prisoners-get-tv/

I knew someone who worked in a care home and the television was on all day. What they liked to watch were game shows like Bargain Hunt, Homes Under the Hammer, or Pointless, perhaps a film or The Graham Norton Show. No-one was interested in the news or politics. I promise you.

 

[Myriad]

Mignini descrined [Knox] as 'narcissistic, transgressive and manipulative', a fine actor and a 'talented liar'.

He is probably not far wrong to link the crime to Hallowe'en, given RS' penchant for extreme experiences, vampire-slaying manga and collection of knives, Knox, someone who enjoys shocking people. Boiling with rage at the perception Mez had stolen her job, snubbed her at Hallowe'en, had the handsome skiing Italian downstairs, popular, in demand, whilst AK was stuck with the swotty incel.

It's a judicial fact that there's insufficient evidence for any of that.

 

[TruthCalls]

An example is of a textbook I read - soz, forget which one - in which the author states he or she had had to agree to let the Knox/Mellas parents state their view of the case, and were given a chapter. Being the parents, they are hardly going to be impartial or neutral! I believe both parents know perfectly well their daughter did it - there is one clip of Edda giving AK a funny look - and we all saw shouty, angry red-faced Curt, to know the PR campaign was all about rescuing the reputation of the parents. It's understandable in that respect but it feeds the publci a less than full picture. There is a serial child-killer in the UK who has also just recently hired a PR firm, having failed in the objective air of the courtroom.

I asked for an example of this massive PR campaign you keep referring to. Parents expressing their opinion of the case is not a massive PR campaign. I'm looking for examples where Marriott was out there waging this massive PR campaign, when they did it, where they did it, how they did it, and for you to cite an example of a falsehood they were spreading. I mean, surely if it was this massive PR campaign you should have plenty of evidence of it. I had no problem citing falsehoods fed to the media by the investigation, why can't you do the same?

The rest of your paragraph is 100% irrelevant BS.

 

[LondonJohn]

Someone tell Vixen that "mobile telecom records" can be added to the long, long list of things she thinks she understands but actually doesn't have the first clue about.

(Hint, mobile records only record CONNECTION time. They do not include "ringing time". So, for instance, if someone called my cellphone right now, and I let it ring and didn't answer the call, the phone might ring for, say, 20 seconds. Then it would connect in order to access my voicemail. The calling party would hear "This is LondonJohn. I can't get to the phone right now (etc etc)".

Say the person hung up after listening to three seconds of my voicemail message - with the reasonable assumption that I was unable/unwilling to pick up the phone. The call would then be listed in the records not as a 20+3=23 second call (ie including the ringing period), but purely as a 3 second call.

Now reframe that in the context of Knox trying to reach Kercher that morning. The obvious truth of the matter is clear. If one bothers to educate oneself, that is.)

 

[Myriad]

I knew someone who worked in a care home and the television was on all day. What they liked to watch were game shows like Bargain Hunt, Homes Under the Hammer, or Pointless, perhaps a film or The Graham Norton Show. No-one was interested in the news or politics. I promise you.

Were the people in your acquaintance's care home also inmates in Italian prisons?

 

[Vixen]

Why would Amanda even have taken a shower there at all? She could have taken one at Raffaele's place, or taken one later. Why didn't they clean up Amanda and Meredith's bathroom? They obviously had plenty of time. And why didn't they get rid of Rudy's feces?





Which they could have just cleaned up, otherwise gotten rid of, or explained away as being due to her having not gone into that part of the cottage (e.g., the broken window).

Assuming they didn't just go with a story that Amanda had taken the stuff she'd need for the weekend and not gone back to the cottage Friday morning at all.


See above.

AK left Geude's faeces there because she knew it was his and not hers. The pair made a point of dragging Napoleoni back out of her car, as she was leaving the cottage, to have a look at it. What they didn't realise is that there is too much bacteria in faeces for it to be particularly useful for DNA recovery. But the forensic police did manage to link it to Guede, who never denied it, anyway.

Unfortunately, there was no forensic sign of RG in Filomena's room but there WAS a damning mix of DNA of AK and Mez. This was via blood which scientists could identify by the high RFU's, as only blood reacts in that way.




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[Vixen]

Were the people in your acquaintance's care home also inmates in Italian prisons?

Even AK in the sample preface of her book (on Amazon) sneers that they were all paupers and 'jealous' of her because she was 'famous', her words. AK certainly wasn't watching television with the flea-ridden hoi-polloi. The idea is hilarious.



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[Vixen]

As Stacy pointed out, no one knew exactly how Meredith had died until after the autopsy. The medic could have been indicating the location of the wound, and the witness could have interpreted that as a throat-slashing gesture. It's also possible that something's getting lost in translation here.

Oh please. A young woman has been brutally murdered and you reckon the medic called in to check signs of life, 'just in case', is going to play charades on his or her way out to the sundry people gathered outside.

MEDIC: <fx indicates a square with his hands>

BYSTANDERS (all together) A FILM!

MEDIC: <fx holds up four fingers followed by index finger>

ALL: Five words. First word.

MEDIC: <fx tugs ear>

ALL: Sounds like...!

MEDIC: <fx points two fingers to his temple>

BYSTANDER: Gun shot!

MEDIC: <fx waves it away>

OTHER BYSTANDER: Gun fight!

ALTIERI (for it is he!) : Gunfight at OK Corral!

I mean, Altieri is so perceptive and good at this stuff.

Seriously though, AK knew how Mez died because she was there!


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[TruthCalls]

There was no violation of Italian law.

I'll ask again...

If the court does not have sufficient evidence to convict, but the defendant is not able to prove their innocence, how could the court rule them "not guilty", and on what basis would they do that? It seems to me if a court has decided there is insufficient evidence to convict, but innocence has not been proven, the court would have no other option than to acquit due to insufficient evidence.

 

[Vixen]

The above post by Vixen equals Nonsensical double-talk plus falsified translation of Italian legal terms multiplied by failure to be honest in noting that the Marasca CSC panel Motivation Report concluded with an acquittal under CPP Article 530 paragraph 2.

The Italian Code of Criminal Procedure (Codice di Procedura Penale) is organized as though it were an outline; the headings are Book Number & Name, Title Number & Name, Chapter Number & Name, Section Number & Name, and CPP Article Unique Number & Name. The Articles deviate from the outline format because each Article is assigned a unique integer number starting with 1 (one) and ending, as of 10 May 2025, with 746-quater. Since the original CPP had a fixed integer number of Articles, with one Article for each law, each assigned in numerical sequence with no space for a new law, when the Italian Parliament passes a new procedural law that requires a new Article Number, the new Article Number is the same as the previous logically relevant Article Number with the suffix second (bis), third (ter), fourth (quater), and so on. Each CPP Article consists of at least one paragraph and may contain more than one paragraph. If there is only one paragraph, it is numbered 1; subsequent paragraphs are numbered in order. If a paragraph has several subparagraphs, each subparagraph is assigned a letter in sequence from the Italian alphabet (an alphabet that contains only 21 letters, thus differing from the English alphabet of 26 letters).

Okay - that was just the introduction to get to the first point: In Book VII Trial, there is Title III Judgment (Sentenza), which includes Chapter II Decision (Decisione), which includes Section I Judgment of Dismissal (Sentenza di proscioglimento) that includes 4 CPP Articles: Article 529 Judgment of Non-Prosecution (Sentenza di non doversi procedere), Article 530 Judgment of Acquittal (Sentenza di assoluzione), Article 531 Declaration of Extinguishment of the Offense (Dichiarazione di estinzione del reato), and Article 532 Decisions on Personal Precautionary Measures (Provvedimenti sulle misure cautelari personali).

Here's the second point: Knox and Sollecito were acquitted of the murder/rape charges by the Marasca CSC panel under CPP Article 530 paragraph 2. This is the most common provision for acquittal currently, in post-World War II Italy and post-1988 reform of the CPP. The first paragraph of CPP Article 530 is essentially a hold-over from the original fascist-era 1930 CPP, called the Rocco Code and reflected the inquisitorial criminal justice system of that era (essentially, the accused had to prove he or she was innocent). Its current purpose is to instruct the judge that the reason - one of 4 fixed-worded formulas - for the acquittal must be stated in the operative section of the judgment (the "PQM" section at the end of the MR, but that is given at the conclusion of a trial at the presentation of the judgment without all the MR's reasoning). The fixed-worded formula applied to Knox and Sollecito for the murder/rape charges was "the accused did not commit the act (of the crime)".

So, each and every acquittal in Italy under CPP Article 530 is an "assoluzione" (acquittal), and each acquittal is one of the three forms, under CPP Article 529, 530, or 531, of "proscioglimento" (dismissal).

See:
The Italian Code of Criminal Procedure: Critical Essays and English Translation, ed. M. Gialuz, L. Luparia, and F. Scarpa. Wolters Kluwer Italia (C) 2014.

Page Expired

DECRETO DEL PRESIDENTE DELLA REPUBBLICA 22 settembre 1988, n. 447 - Normattiva

Approvazione del codice di procedura penale.

www.normattiva.it

The term 'proscioglimento' is used in Art. 529, which is to do with lower court stuff and not the Supreme Court.



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[Vixen]

"I don't care what all those structural engineers and authorities on fire prevention say, I can clearly see the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed in controlled demolitions, and all of you who accept the Official Government Story are just blind sheeple who can't think for yourselves!"


No. From "Scientific Thinking About Legal Truth," by Gal Rosenzweig (Frontiers in Psychology, July 6, 2022):

The Legal Truth​

The legal fact-finding process is based on witness reports about sources of information, such as eyewitness testimonies and scientific measurements. Although the fact finders examine the validity of witness testimonies based on reports of various interviewing techniques, such as cognitive interviews, or based on scientific department reports, and the legal fact-finding model relies mainly on estimations and risk management. Fact finders hear witness testimonies, assess their validity based on their perceptions, and decide what has happened in reality. Although fact finders also consider the relationship between crime scene findings and the witnesses' reports, they examine only whether these correlate. They use the synthesis of evidence, logic, life experience, and the rules of evidence to determine whether to rely on the testimony. Finally, their decisions are guided by confidence in the coherence of the information.​

​

Court rulings show that making decisions based on these guiding principles may be problematic because (a) the correlations might be random, being based on statistics with low probability; (b) the justifications might contradict scientific research findings, as in the case of a credible eyewitness identification under problematic viewing conditions and a delayed lineup; (c) evidence synthesis might point to a certain conclusion even if a contradictory hypothesis cannot be discarded or if crucial information needed for validation, such as the possible error rate, is missing or not examined at all.​

​

Brain science research may reveal the reasons why deciding based on these principles can be problematic, showing that prior knowledge unconsciously biases perception and can lead to false confidence about reality even if the pieces of information are sparse or inaccurate. Thus, deciding based on the confidence level regarding evidence coherence might diverge from reality because it may be based on the witnesses' and fact finders' prior knowledge rather than on evidence. Several psychological research findings regarding cognitive biases can also explain why deciding based on subjective perception regarding what happened at a crime scene could lead to mistakes. First, fact finders may be affected by tunnel vision. Tunnel vision is the tendency of actors in the criminal justice system to use heuristics and shortcuts to filter evidence selectively and build a case for a suspect's conviction, ignoring or suppressing evidence that points to the suspect's innocence. Tunnel vision motivates investigators, prosecutors, and judges to attribute importance and relevance to information that supports their original conclusion, while information inconsistent with the presumption of guilt is easily overlooked, dismissed as irrelevant, or considered unreliable. Second, the fact finders' decisions may also rely on several aspects of false judgments, e.g., about the plausibility of the testimony. Finally, other biases, such as confirmation bias, hindsight bias, and outcome bias are frequently observed in the criminal justice system. For example, confirmation bias is the favoring of information that confirms an individual's preconceptions or hypotheses independently of the truth of the information. Forensic findings can be also interpreted in a biased way. [citations omitted]​

No. These are public records. Further, you have repeatedly insisted that judicial facts, once determined by a court of first instance, cannot, or at least should not, be changed, or even questioned. And yet, most of the examples you list here can and do change throughout a person's lifetime. Even information on a birth certificate can be changed in certain circumstances (e.g., a court finding of paternity).


No. Courts can and do make mistakes. You are quick to claim that "the court got it wrong" whenever an appeals court or the ECHR rules in favor of Amanda or Raffaele, yet, whenever a court has found a "judicial fact" that works against them, you insist it must be set in stone and not even questioned.


See article excerpt above.


Which you decry as corrupt or incompetent whenever Amanda and Raffaele's convictions are overturned.


You just contradicted yourself.


Citation to where Madison was in a relationship with anyone who worked for RS.


Here is a link to the article. Kindly quote the sections that state that Amanda was "RAILROADED!!" or that contain "all kind of claims of torture."


Do you dispute that the all-night interrogations took place? Amanda and Raffaele went to the police station after 10:00pm, and Amanda signed her statement at 5:30am.


Kindly quote the section where Mignini is characterized as "evil." There is one uncomplimentary statement about him, but the article makes clear that that is how Knox's supporters view him, and not necessarily how the author views him.


You're absolutely right, Vixen. The author really should have interviewed Mignini and presented his views on the case in the article as well. Oh, wait, the author did.


Please stop making statements that are unsupported by facts.

Madison Paxton considered herself AK's best friend and even moved to Perugia to be near her. She knew Nathaniel Rich and so took AK's story to him which he hyped up into a grossly exaggerated account of torture and bulldozing by the police. It was not all night. Within 90 minutes of entering the Questura, AK offered up Lumumba's name. The interview was then terminated as she put herself at the scene. The witness statement was drawn up and AK signed it. She then went to sleep whilst the police needed the prosecutor to authorise any next steps. He arrived at about 5:30am. There was no 'interrogation', interview, bullying, torture or intimidation between circa 1:00am and 5:45am. Pack of lies.




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