So ILE doesn't have a Meredith Kercher/FoxyKnoxy murder thread yet?

interesting 2 hear the journalist on anderson cooper talk abt the prosecutor under indictment and how he had previously threatened to and accused teh reporter of accessory to murder, being a satanist, etc

I can't speak for the US but in Britain or Ireland I've never seen a case so convoluted. The whole thing speaks of terrible police work, is this a very complex murder or is it just a desperately handled one? I don't know for sure but it seems confusing above and beyond how it should be. All of that said there are definitely facts that raise doubts about knox and sollecito (read this article for a really fucking excellent memory jog on it all http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/05/meredith-kercher-murder-trial) but I just don't have faith in the process. There are some instances that seem to indict them and others that seem to suggest they are innocent.

Above all it just feels like police work was so utterly shit and so many corners were cut at every stage that no clear picture of who murdered the girl will ever come out. A murder becoming some kind of subjective free for all is a really horrible thing but this thing will never be solved, it is really nasty that someone died and that that's basically the end of it, two people sent to jail for a massively hypothetical act....not even saying they're innocent, just that it all feels like total bullshit.

The most upsetting thing is that the Kercher and her family are rarely mentioned in many of the articles today about this, relative to the other players.

It's just Knox Knox Knox boyfriend Italy Knox Knox prosecutor Knox's family Knox Knox etc.

I hate to admit that I'm glad something got resolved and don't really care for Amanda Knox anymore, even if there's a remote chance she was wrongly convicted, and her weirdness was only some Ally-Sheedy-in-The-Breakfast-Club type thing.

My best to the Kercher family.

Kercher family refuses to speak to the press so that's why

never was able to make up my mind about this. clear that the police work was sloppy, and there didn't seem to be much effort to ensure a fair and impartial verdict based on evidence alone. then again, knox & her boyfriend did their case no favors and hardly earned my sympathy. i'm not outraged by the verdict, but nor do i have a sense of justice done. still kind of mystified by the whole thing.

Seems quite a lot of bullshit here, the Italian justice system is pretty good, although of course like every system in the world, it has it's fuck-ups. But a lot of what I read in the press just seemed fed to them by the defence team. Even that Guardian article has bits that seem to be cribbed from the website set up by Knox's family. Double glazing - so what? Homeless people don't know what day it is? Maybe, maybe not. And I'm sorry Suzy but this...

I'm not surprised by this verdict but I don't think this woman would have gotten a guilty sentence in the US.

...just makes me mad.

Ned, go back and have another look at what I wrote, maybe? Because the italics quoted don't belong to me. OK?

I've been involved in things like this (well, not like this one, but other bad things that people do) and I can promise you that what gets reported is only ever a fraction of what the proceedings actually are. You can't spend a couple of hours reading other people's accounts, especially if there's an angle even more distorting than 'this is an interesting detail', and then think you can second-guess a jury who've spent six hours a day for weeks actually hearing the evidence.

Apologies Suzy - got confused.

xp - yeah sure none of us were actually at the trial, but "actually hearing the evidence" makes it sound like there's one simple and clear-cut story. But the whole thing still could be a whole lot of lies and distortions which the prosection did a very good job of selling.

Same that radar piece seems to have disappeared, it thoroughly convinced me of her innocence.

I'm not surprised by this verdict but I don't think this woman would have gotten a guilty sentence in the US.

I'm sure OJ Simpson would agree with you

Kercher family refuses to speak to the press so that's why

They spoke to the press today and sounded, although not triumphalist, like they thought the jury had come to the correct verdict. Although considering what their state of mind must be I'm not sure if that illustrates much.

What's astonishing about this case is that they actually convicted someone for the murder ages ago, and that hardly gets mentioned because Knox has become the story. My legal knowledge is shaky at best and I'm not going to presume to have a better idea of the case than the jury, but I'm not sure how you can convict someone without any evidence of them being there at the time. The media furore must have factored into this in some way, whether she did it or not.

Best murderer since that Goth army cadet that killed Jodi Jones

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 15 November 2007 15:07 (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

look, just for this post alone can we bring him back please?

Who the fuck does cartwheels at the police station? I really am trying to picture that scene but fail to.

Even if she is innocent doing cartwheels in the police station while being questioned about your flatmate's murder really deserves a custodial sentence.

guys, nothing personal and not singling you out here jim but sentiments like this are pretty fucked up imo

People being questioned about their flatmate's brutal murder in not behaving entirely rationally shocker.

i didnt realize there was such an intense anti-knox american contingent

perugiamurderfile.org/

from the little i've read italians juries don't have to give any reasons for their verdict until six months later or something, and you can only appeal a verdict up until.. six months! on what grounds could you possibly appeal if you don't even know why they decided the way they did??

i read somewhere that its automatically appealed anyway and another trail will be held w/in 18 months

Are there any countries where juries have to give reasons for their verdict?

Tend to agree with people who think this is an iffy conviction but the usual caveats about not sitting thru the actual trial apply.

from the little i've read italians juries don't have to give any reasons for their verdict until six months later or something, and you can only appeal a verdict up until.. six months! on what grounds could you possibly appeal if you don't even know why they decided the way they did??

― Tracer Hand, Saturday, 5 December 2009 08:34 (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't think the logic of the jury is grounds to challenge a verdict in any country. The italian legal system is pretty sound, despite somewhat racist comments coming from the likes of Maria Cantwell and others. Having spent a deal of time in Perugia I doubt the local plod's ability to investigate their way out of a cardboard box. I'm sure any appeal will be based on the evidence and it's admissibility.

I'm not sure how you can convict someone without any evidence of them being there at the time.

well, she said she was in the bathroom when it happened, which is a pointer.

oh, no, she wasn't there after all. but it was probably that... black dude.

i thought the "black dude" was the one who said he was in the bathroom

oh alright thanks you guys! i guess there are plenty of ways to appeal without knowing the jury's reasoning.

i thought the "black dude" was the one who said he was in the bathroom

― max, Saturday, December 5, 2009 2:18 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

another black dude. she accused the owner of the local bar of doing it. and, well, as a guy who WORKS IN A BAR, he had a few alibis.

yeah even so--her making crypto-racist accusations doesnt exactly convict her of murder, u know

no, an italian jury does that.

hi-yo!

;-)

You never find out the reasoning of the jury in most places - I think it's only in the US, with its primacy for freedom of speech, where jurors speak out afterwards. Irrationality of the verdict could be a reason for overturning it in theory (in the UK), but in such a case the judge should stop the trial before it reaches the jury.

these people all had to have been on drugs, right? I can't imagine someone getting killed in your house and you not knowing it; or killing someone under these circumstances (if she and her boyfriend did it).

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f386/xchamberx2/General%20Stupidity/if_i_did_it.jpg

these people all had to have been on drugs, right? I can't imagine someone getting killed in your house and you not knowing it; or killing someone under these circumstances (if she and her boyfriend did it).

― akm, Saturday, December 5, 2009 3:14 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah this seems to be what happened. wasn't the standard line "sex game that went wrong"?

Yes, it was.

People being questioned about their flatmate's brutal murder in not behaving entirely rationally shocker.

Maybe, still under the influence of drugs, she was thinking of escaping and joining Cirque du Soleil?

yeah this seems to be what happened. wasn't the standard line "sex game that went wrong"?

― a young thug's brutal coming of age (history mayne), Saturday, December 5, 2009 10:33 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think this was a line of thinking based on the same logic that held the comic books in sollecitos apartment as solid evidence of his violent nature

For what's worth, one of the most baffling sentences in our recent history.
And, sorry Ed, unfortunately our legal system isn't sound at all.

i dont get how smoking weed translates as the murder being 'drug-fuelled' in all the uk press. i'd be more surprised if some 20somethings watching a dvd of a weekend weren't smoking weed. i'm amazed these days at the ever-more tabloid-y tone of BBC/ mainstream tv news.

i dont get how smoking weed translates as the murder being 'drug-fuelled' in all the uk press

You don't read any newspapers or watch TV then?

idk, knoxy kind of fucked herself by lying repeatedly and trying to incriminate someone else who wasn't there. she was in the apartment when kercher was murdered and did not give a convincing story as to what happened. that *in itself* does not make her guilty, but why is it hard to believe that sometimes people on drugs do amazingly awful things?

if i were stanning for knoxy et al i'd take 'sex game gone wrong' over 'just slit her throat for s & g'.

she was in the apartment... according to a "confession" extracted with leading questions, and no lawyer present, after 14 hours without food.

To give some background, this is just the last in a long series of incredibly messy trials, where you can just be amazed and horrified by the sheer ineptitude of the police, the protagonism of the prosecutors, the scandalism of the press and the painful slowness of the whole thing (up to 10 years to get a definitive verdict, even you're considered innocent in the first trial).

yea one of the 'friends of amanda' ppl also said that she was just responding to a hypothetical, cooperating w/ police ~ what she would have heard if she had been home, etc xp

i don't think many people dispute the investigation was badly done, though given how badly, it is then surprising that the prosecution won.

i've not been in that situation, but i hope that if i were asked to talk about a hypothetical situation i wouldn't actually accuse someone else of the crime. (im pretty sure asking "leading questions" is part of murder police are supposed to do, though.)

Again tho, being a bit of a douche doesn't make yr conviction safe.

why is it hard to believe that sometimes people on drugs do amazingly awful things?

uhhh they were smoking hashish

could've led to listening to Phish

but I'm not sure how you can convict someone without any evidence of them being there at the time.

http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/other/1974/faul76a.gif

And, you know, loads of others.

Was going to respond with something similar to that to Marco wrt to the italian legal system being no better or worse than any other western one, certainly if you compare it to, say, one where judges are elected based on the prejudices. This certainly isn't the Dreyfuss affair.

Is Italian legal theory not based on the principle of reasonable doubt? Failure to deliver justice is preferable to performing a second injustice.

i’ve probably read this transcript a million times. guede’s story is super sketch, sounds kinda fake, but at the same time there are so many weird details. the clothes in the washing machine. the broken window (which i know from other sources had shattered OUTWARDS rather than inwards)

https://famous-trials.com/amanda-knox/2635-guede-s-taped-skype-conversation