It's the End for Amand Knox [Archive] - Debate Policy

hjmick

03-27-2015, 05:52 PM

As it should have been long ago.

Italy's highest court overturned the murder conviction against Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Friday over the 2007 slaying of Knox's roommate, bringing to a definitive end the high-profile case that captivated trial-watchers on both sides of the Atlantic...

In a rare decision, the supreme Court of Cassation overturned last year's convictions by a Florence appeals court, and declined to order another trial. The decision means the judges, after thoroughly examining the case, concluded that a conviction could not be supported by the evidence...

Amanda Knox murder conviction overturned by Italy high court (http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/amanda-knox-murder-conviction-overturned-by-italy-high-court/ar-AAa71DR)

Having read about Douglas Preston's personal experience with the Italian legal system in his book The Monster of Florence, which included some of the key players in the Amanda Knox case (not the least of which was the prosecutor), and having read some about the Knox case, I can't say that this decision surprises me.

In my opinion, it could not have gone any other way.

Just a taste of Preston's experience:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WebQA41RA48

Little-Acorn

03-27-2015, 05:57 PM

I haven't followed the case much, and don't know much about it.

I remember seeing this, some years ago. What parts are wrong?

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http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2011-09-07.html

AMANDA KNOX: THE NEW MUMIA!

September 7, 2011

Despite liberals' desperate need for Europeans to like them, the American media have enraged the entire nation of Italy with their bald-faced lies about a heinous murder in Perugia committed by a fresh-faced American girl, Amanda Knox.

The facts aren't elusive: In December 2009, the Italian court released a 400-plus page report detailing the mountains of evidence that led the judges and jury to conclude that Knox, along with her Italian beau, Raffaele Sollecito, and a petty thief of her acquaintance, Rudy Guede, had murdered Knox's English roommate, Meredith Kercher, on the evening of Nov. 1, 2007.

Now liberals are howling that the DNA evidence was "contaminated," but they always say that. It wasn't. And the DNA was already thoroughly vetted at trial.

Nonetheless, let's consider only a tiny slice of the evidence available to the police in the first week after the murder -- long before any DNA tests came back.

Murders and murder convictions obviously occurred before 1986 -- the first time DNA was used in any criminal investigation -- so it is possible to establish guilt with no DNA at all.

Knox's first-of-several alibis for the night of the murder was that she was at her boyfriend (and co-defendant) Sollecito's house all night, sound asleep until 10 a.m. the next morning.

A few days later, when that was proved false by telephone records, eyewitnesses and Sollecito's admission that it was a lie, Knox claimed she was in the house during Meredith's murder ... and she knew who the murderer was!

She said it was her boss, Patrick Lumumba, the owner of a popular bar in town:

"He wanted her. ... Raffaele and I went into another room and then I heard screams. ... Patrick and Meredith were in Meredith's bedroom while I think I stayed in the kitchen. ... I can't remember how long they were together in the bedroom, but the only thing I can say is that at a certain point I remember hearing Meredith's screams and I covered my ears. ... I can't remember if Meredith was screaming and if I heard thuds but I could imagine what was going on."

Solely because of Knox's claim that Lumumba murdered Meredith, he was arrested and sat in jail for two weeks before being released when the police discovered about a hundred eyewitnesses who could place him at his bar all night, the night of the murder.

If the police were intent on framing Knox for the murder, they were easily distracted by this wild goose chase.

Knox later said she falsely accused Lumumba only because the police wanted her to do so.

But absent Knox's false accusation, there would have been no reason for the police to consider Lumumba a suspect in the first place. He was a successful entrepreneur in Perugia, married with a child, and had no connection whatsoever to the murdered girl.

Knox's effort to frame an innocent man was nothing but a desperate attempt to throw suspicion off herself. In the process, she inadvertently revealed that she knew something only the police knew about the murder: that Meredith had also been sexually assaulted.

Police first came to the house the day after the murder to investigate a burglary in the bedroom of another roommate, Filomena Romanelli, that had been reported by Knox and Sollecito.

But the break-in turned out to be staged. Among many other reasons, glass from the broken window was on top of the piles of clothes thrown on the floor. (Always remember to break the window before trying to stage a burglary!)

Also, nothing had been stolen from Filomena's room. Of course, that wasn't known by anyone except the fake "burglar" until Filomena returned and determined her jewelry and other valuables were still there.

So it is especially telling that when Sollecito had called the police to report the "burglary" in two separate, recorded phone calls, he said nothing had been stolen -- despite the fact that Filomena had not yet come home. The only way Sollecito would know nothing was stolen was if he had helped stage the burglary himself.

Also highly suspicious, when the police first arrived and Knox was the only roommate there, she lied to them, driving them away from Meredith's locked bedroom door by assuring them that Meredith always locked her door, even to go to the bathroom.

So the police continued to investigate the alleged burglary and ignored Meredith's room, until Filomena arrived, found out Meredith's door was locked and demanded the police break it down, telling them -- contra Knox -- that Meredith never locked her door.

Everyone in the apartment -- the police, Filomena and her friends -- gathered around Meredith's door before it was kicked in. Everyone, that is, except Knox and Sollecito, who moved as far away as possible, to the other end of the apartment, strangely uninterested in seeing what was behind Meredith's door.

Now Knox is back to claiming she was in Sollecito's apartment all night on Nov. 1 -- with no evidence to support that story, but witnesses, phone and computer records contradicting it. Her only alibi witness is her co-defendant, Sollecito, and he's already told the police that he has lied for her.

Based on the wounds on Meredith's body, investigators conclusively determined that she had multiple attackers.

By now, the only people who believe Knox and Sollecito are the usual criminal apologists and their friends in the American media.

From Tawana Brawley, Mumia and the Central Park rapists, to the Duke lacrosse players and Karl Rove, liberals are always on the wrong side of a criminal case. A few times could be a coincidence; every time is evidence of a psychological disorder.

As described in "Demonic," liberals defend the guilty and impugn the innocent not only because they side with barbarians, but because a fair and just system of law challenges their hegemony as judges of the universe.