Whether to suspect her or not isn’t the issue. By virtue of her being the victim’s roommate, the police should look at her. That’s CSI 101.
However, announcing that the case is closed, and that the murder was the result of a ritual sex game gone wrong before you’ve looked at the forensic evidence seem not only premature, but unprofessional. How can you even come up with such a theory on your interpretation of behavior alone? That says more about the observer than the observed, eh?
For example, much has been made about the “cartwheels” in the police station. Were you aware that Knox was a dancer and practiced yoga? Where you aware that she frequently used yoga positions to relieve stress? Where you aware on the night this was observed she had gone to the station with Sollecito who had himself been summoned by the police? She went voluntarily to the police station. That’s not the behavior of a guilty person. No one that knew her was surprised that while she was waiting she would do yoga stretches to relieve tension. Yet the police took this behavior as odd, and that she wasn’t properly grieving for her roommate, yet for Knox, this was normal. This is what I’m talking about… making premature assumptions with little corroborative evidence invariably heightens the odds of coming to the wrong conclusion.
I’m saying that the evidence they had on hand at the time does not add up to the conclusion they reached.
That’s different from what you seemed to have been saying before.
Your position now seems to be that the police acted unprofessionally and focused on Knox without a reasonable basis. You are saying that they concluded Knox was guilty without a sufficient basis.
First of all, I am skeptical of your claim. I asked you to provide a cite for your claim about the source of initial suspicion of Knox and you failed to do so. I did my own search and found nothing backing up your claim.
But more importantly, your argument doesn’t have much bearing on the ultimate question of guilt or innocence of Knox or Sollecito. If I were arguing that Knox and Sollecito are probably guilty because the authorities concluded they were guilty, then you might have a point, assuming you could substantiate your claims.
In that respect, it’s a bit like the OJ Simpson case—the police may very well have rushed to judgment against OJ. But even so, it seems very likely that he committed the crime he was accused of.
brazil84, I just don’t think you have a grasp on how weak the case against Knox and Sollecito is. You’ve said that the two things that make you think they did it—the changing stories and evidence of crime-scene-tampering—contribute 3 or 4 bits of evidence against them. That’s quite a small amount, which is easily overwhelmed by :
The prior improbability that people like K and S would be involved given that someone else was.
The lack of criminal history of K and S.
The lack of motive.
The lack of connection between K/S and G
The lack of any evidence that K and S themselves were at the scene.
I understand that you feel suspicious of Knox and Sollecito based on the reports you’ve read (the prosecution’s narrative does sound like a good made-for-TV-movie), and have a great deal of faith in courts due to your background as a lawyer. In most trials, the defendants are probably guilty. But this isn’t a typical case. There are times when you have to look at the object-level facts, and, frankly, do the math. Sometimes, police, prosecutors, and juries are just plain wrong—stupidly so. This is one of those times.
That’s quite a small amount, which is easily overwhelmed by :
Actually, the 3 or 4 bits was based on the assumption that there was no a priori reason to suspect Knox or Sollecito, such as an obvious motive.
have a great deal of faith in courts due to your background as a lawyer.
Putting aside the issue of my faith in the courts, I have a decent amount of faith in my ability as an attorney to detect BS.
Believe it or not, I have people calling me day in and day out, lying to me and trying to convince me to take their case. For the past few years, I have worked mainly on contingency, so if a prospective client succesfully snows me it’s a complete waste of my time and money. As a result, I’ve gotten pretty good at assessing cases based on limited evidence.
I’m analagous to a professional oddsmaker and most of the folks in this thread are analogous to amateurs telling me I’ve got my odds wrong. Which is of course possible. It happens all the time that the so-called experts are caught up by amateurs.
Still, while I’ve never been involved in a murder case, I have heard literally hundreds of stories of people who have denied wrongdoing, evaluated their cases, and then had the opportunity to learn more through discovery and trial.
In this case, it’s pretty clear to me that Knox and Sollecito are hiding something important. I’ve interviewed and cross-examined dozens if not hundreds of witnesses whose stories evolved in a similar fashion to meet evidence against them, often ultimately turning into “I don’t remembers” when faced with important contradictions. When further evidence is available, it almost always goes against the stories offered by such folks.
7 or 10 years ago, I would have been a lot less confident that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder. But after the experience of having seen hundreds of people lie and attempt to cover up their misconduct, I’m pretty confident that they were involved.
I’m beginning to wonder what evidence could possibly ever convince you that a defendant was innocent. DNA incriminating someone else? We’ve got it here—the DNA shows it was Guede. Prosecutorial irrationality and misconduct? Cornucopias full of it: they came up with their theory before knowing about Guede, and didn’t drop it once he’d been caught; furthermore, Mignini is under indictment for misbehavior in another case, and is notorious for bizarre conspiracy theories. Et cetera.
All those people exonerated via the Innocence Project? Well, there must have been something suspicious about them, or they wouldn’t have been prosecuted and convicted. Why should we be so quick to jump to the conclusion that they weren’t involved, just because the DNA points to someone else?
(The irony here is that, were it not for the fact that Guede has already been nabbed, this case would itself be a perfect candidate for the Innocence Project. Given what was used to convict Knox and Sollecito, we may as well still not know about Guede. In which case, the DNA tests showing that it was someone other than Knox or Sollecito would be considered exculpatory, rather than indicative of a three-way conspiracy.)
Actually, the 3 or 4 bits was based on the assumption that there was no a priori reason to suspect Knox or Sollecito, such as an obvious motive.
Write it out. Write out the evidentiary value of each piece of incriminating evidence, together with the values of the various pieces of exculpatory evidence I listed, and do the addition. Make your assumptions transparent for all to see.
I have a decent amount of faith in my ability as an attorney to detect BS.
“My lawyer’s intuition tells me” isn’t an argument. Beliefs have to be based on evidence. Until you can unpack your intuition and show specifically how the evidence leads to your belief, you might as well be saying you looked into a crystal ball.
I’m beginning to wonder what evidence could possibly ever convince you that a >defendant was innocent. DNA incriminating someone else? We’ve got it here—the >DNA shows it was Guede. Prosecutorial irrationality and misconduct? Cornucopias >full of it: they came up with their theory before knowing about Guede, and didn’t drop >it once he’d been caught; furthermore, Mignini is under indictment for misbehavior >in another case, and is notorious for bizarre conspiracy theories. Et cetera.
I’m satisfied that the defendants in the Duke lacrosse case were innocent. And I was reasonably confident of that long before the state prosecutor announced his belief they were innocent.
Well, there must have been something suspicious about them, or they wouldn’t >have been prosecuted and convicted.
You are attacking a strawman here. I have refrained arguing that Knox and Sollecito are probably guilty simply because they were charged and ultimately convicted.
Write it out. Write out the evidentiary value of each piece of incriminating evidence,
I will if I can find a block of free time in which I have the motivation to do so.
My lawyer’s intuition tells me” isn’t an argument. Beliefs have to be based on >evidence.
Again you are strawmanning me. I am saying that as an attorney, I have heard hundreds of people give statements or testify. In situations where (1) peoples’ stories have been incoherent/inconsistent in a manner similar to that of Knox; and (2) further evidence became available, that further evidence has virtually always gone against the person’s story. Sometimes dramatically so.
You are attacking a strawman here. I have refrained arguing that Knox and Sollecito are probably guilty simply because they were charged and ultimately convicted.
I didn’t say that’s what you argued. I said that if you were to look into the cases of those defendants later considered to be exonerated by DNA evidence, you would likely find grounds for being suspicious of them similar to the grounds on which you are suspicious of Knox and Sollecito. (In fact, I am given to understand that 25% of them actually confessed to the crime.)
I am saying that as an attorney, I have heard hundreds of people give statements or testify. In situations where (1) peoples’ stories have been incoherent/inconsistent in a manner similar to that of Knox;
Meaning that they were browbeaten by police into speculating on how their understanding of the situation might have been wrong?
I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about here. One keeps hearing these claims that Knox was “inconsistent”, “changed her story”, and the like. But the account given at Friends of Amanda seems perfectly convincing to me. From the beginning, Knox insisted she was at Sollecito’s. But she was told (falsely) that there was solid physical evidence placing her at the crime scene. This was understandably confusing to her. So after hours of being berated by interrogators, she finally gave in to their pressure by speculating—upon their prompting! -- about Patrick Lumumba. This doesn’t sound like evidence of guilt to me. You say that it does to you because of your experience as an attorney, but you’re going to have to do a better job of explaining why—and more importantly, why it comes anywhere near to trumping the other evidence.
At a minimum, you responded to the argument as if somebody had made it. Since you were responding to my post, it’s reasonable to infer that you were attributing that argument to me.
Meaning that they were browbeaten by police into speculating on how their >understanding of the situation might have been wrong?
No.
From the beginning, Knox insisted she was at Sollecito’s
During what time period? From approximately what hour to approximately what hour?
I am saying that as an attorney, I have heard hundreds of people give statements or testify. In situations where (1) peoples’ stories have been incoherent/inconsistent in a manner similar to that of Knox; and (2) further evidence became available, that further evidence has virtually always gone against the person’s story. Sometimes dramatically so.
This is stupid. The reason the further evidence turns out to go against them is because they’re guilty, not because their stories were incoherent. Don’t you think that the vast majority of criminal cases coming to your attention are, by the prosecutor’s discretion and incentive, ones where a strong case for the defendant’s guilt can be made? That’s all the explanation you should need of the phenomena you recount.
The reason the further evidence turns out to go against them is because they’re guilty, not because their stories were incoherent.
No, that’s not it. Their stories are incoherent because they are guilty AND the further evidence goes against them because they are guilty.
Don’t you think that the vast majority of criminal cases coming to your attention are, by the prosecutor’s discretion and incentive, ones where a strong case for the defendant’s guilt can be made?
No—I don’t practice criminal law. I practice civil (administrative) law. Perhaps 40-60% of my clients are innocent of the charges against them and I win more than half the time.
I don’t think you’re allowing much possibility for an innocent who has a suspicious story. You think p(guilty|incoherent) is higher than p(guilty|coherent). I agree. I’m saying that p(guilty|incoherent,criminal prosecution) is very close to the baseline p(guilty|criminal prosecution), because you only see prosecuted those cases where either the defendant is unlucky enough to have a sketchy-seeming alibi, or the direct evidence is strong enough that the alibi doesn’t matter.
Since your experience is from criminal cases, my speculation about it was inaccurate; on the other hand, that means that your experience is even less relevant than I thought. Many civil cases go to trial where, as you say, p(win) is nearly 1⁄2. Not so for criminal prosecutors; they drop cases they won’t win.
I’d like to back away from my initial response (“this is stupid”) to you.
I had understood you to be talking about personally observed frequency of (incoherent and guilty) vs. (coherent and not guilty) in the context of criminal testimony in court. Clearly that’s not the case, and you had much more experience with innocent defendants than I anticipated.
Also, I actually understood you to believe that the causation proceeded from incoherent → guilty, which of course is ludicrous. You later explained that you actually have a roughly correct causal network; my only objection would be in whether you’re using the proper frequency for (incoherent and innocent); only if it’s nearly zero can you immediately conclude that incoherence very strongly suggests guilt. (otherwise, you have to do the math).
I still hold that amongst criminal defendants at trial, (incoherent and innocent) may be quite frequent, because (coherent and innocent) are almost never brought to trial. But what’s important is, amongst criminal defendants, how much higher p(guility|incoherent,trial) is than p(guilty|coherent,trial). I don’t actually know precisely what the difference is; I also expect it to be higher, but dwarfed in importance by the additional evidence. I would be extremely hesitant to convict someone solely based on “suspicious cover-up like behavior”, but I know that it’s happened, e.g. in the case of Hans Reiser.
I would be extremely hesitant to convict someone solely based on “suspicious cover-up like behavior”, but I know that it’s happened
I also would be hesitant. And indeed, I don’t know if there was enough evidence to inculpate Knox beyond a reasonable doubt. My point in these discussions is that I’m pretty confident she was involved in the murder.
that means that your experience is even less relevant than I thought.
I would say it’s pretty relevant. I’ve questioned hundreds of people who were accused of wrongdoing; come to a belief about their guilt or innocence; and then had an opportunity to see further evidence against them and update my beliefs, so to speak.
As to your point that there is a selection bias in criminal prosecutions, that may very well be the case. I’m not sure what it implies for the Amanda Knox case. I suppose one could argue that the decision to prosecute her is evidence of her guilt. Evidence in the logical sense, not the courtroom sense.
Whether to suspect her or not isn’t the issue. By virtue of her being the victim’s roommate, the police should look at her. That’s CSI 101.
However, announcing that the case is closed, and that the murder was the result of a ritual sex game gone wrong before you’ve looked at the forensic evidence seem not only premature, but unprofessional. How can you even come up with such a theory on your interpretation of behavior alone? That says more about the observer than the observed, eh?
For example, much has been made about the “cartwheels” in the police station. Were you aware that Knox was a dancer and practiced yoga? Where you aware that she frequently used yoga positions to relieve stress? Where you aware on the night this was observed she had gone to the station with Sollecito who had himself been summoned by the police? She went voluntarily to the police station. That’s not the behavior of a guilty person. No one that knew her was surprised that while she was waiting she would do yoga stretches to relieve tension. Yet the police took this behavior as odd, and that she wasn’t properly grieving for her roommate, yet for Knox, this was normal. This is what I’m talking about… making premature assumptions with little corroborative evidence invariably heightens the odds of coming to the wrong conclusion.
I’m saying that the evidence they had on hand at the time does not add up to the conclusion they reached.
That’s different from what you seemed to have been saying before.
Your position now seems to be that the police acted unprofessionally and focused on Knox without a reasonable basis. You are saying that they concluded Knox was guilty without a sufficient basis.
First of all, I am skeptical of your claim. I asked you to provide a cite for your claim about the source of initial suspicion of Knox and you failed to do so. I did my own search and found nothing backing up your claim.
But more importantly, your argument doesn’t have much bearing on the ultimate question of guilt or innocence of Knox or Sollecito. If I were arguing that Knox and Sollecito are probably guilty because the authorities concluded they were guilty, then you might have a point, assuming you could substantiate your claims.
In that respect, it’s a bit like the OJ Simpson case—the police may very well have rushed to judgment against OJ. But even so, it seems very likely that he committed the crime he was accused of.
brazil84, I just don’t think you have a grasp on how weak the case against Knox and Sollecito is. You’ve said that the two things that make you think they did it—the changing stories and evidence of crime-scene-tampering—contribute 3 or 4 bits of evidence against them. That’s quite a small amount, which is easily overwhelmed by :
The prior improbability that people like K and S would be involved given that someone else was.
The lack of criminal history of K and S.
The lack of motive.
The lack of connection between K/S and G
The lack of any evidence that K and S themselves were at the scene.
I understand that you feel suspicious of Knox and Sollecito based on the reports you’ve read (the prosecution’s narrative does sound like a good made-for-TV-movie), and have a great deal of faith in courts due to your background as a lawyer. In most trials, the defendants are probably guilty. But this isn’t a typical case. There are times when you have to look at the object-level facts, and, frankly, do the math. Sometimes, police, prosecutors, and juries are just plain wrong—stupidly so. This is one of those times.
Actually, the 3 or 4 bits was based on the assumption that there was no a priori reason to suspect Knox or Sollecito, such as an obvious motive.
Putting aside the issue of my faith in the courts, I have a decent amount of faith in my ability as an attorney to detect BS.
Believe it or not, I have people calling me day in and day out, lying to me and trying to convince me to take their case. For the past few years, I have worked mainly on contingency, so if a prospective client succesfully snows me it’s a complete waste of my time and money. As a result, I’ve gotten pretty good at assessing cases based on limited evidence.
I’m analagous to a professional oddsmaker and most of the folks in this thread are analogous to amateurs telling me I’ve got my odds wrong. Which is of course possible. It happens all the time that the so-called experts are caught up by amateurs.
Still, while I’ve never been involved in a murder case, I have heard literally hundreds of stories of people who have denied wrongdoing, evaluated their cases, and then had the opportunity to learn more through discovery and trial.
In this case, it’s pretty clear to me that Knox and Sollecito are hiding something important. I’ve interviewed and cross-examined dozens if not hundreds of witnesses whose stories evolved in a similar fashion to meet evidence against them, often ultimately turning into “I don’t remembers” when faced with important contradictions. When further evidence is available, it almost always goes against the stories offered by such folks.
7 or 10 years ago, I would have been a lot less confident that Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder. But after the experience of having seen hundreds of people lie and attempt to cover up their misconduct, I’m pretty confident that they were involved.
I’m beginning to wonder what evidence could possibly ever convince you that a defendant was innocent. DNA incriminating someone else? We’ve got it here—the DNA shows it was Guede. Prosecutorial irrationality and misconduct? Cornucopias full of it: they came up with their theory before knowing about Guede, and didn’t drop it once he’d been caught; furthermore, Mignini is under indictment for misbehavior in another case, and is notorious for bizarre conspiracy theories. Et cetera.
All those people exonerated via the Innocence Project? Well, there must have been something suspicious about them, or they wouldn’t have been prosecuted and convicted. Why should we be so quick to jump to the conclusion that they weren’t involved, just because the DNA points to someone else?
(The irony here is that, were it not for the fact that Guede has already been nabbed, this case would itself be a perfect candidate for the Innocence Project. Given what was used to convict Knox and Sollecito, we may as well still not know about Guede. In which case, the DNA tests showing that it was someone other than Knox or Sollecito would be considered exculpatory, rather than indicative of a three-way conspiracy.)
Write it out. Write out the evidentiary value of each piece of incriminating evidence, together with the values of the various pieces of exculpatory evidence I listed, and do the addition. Make your assumptions transparent for all to see.
“My lawyer’s intuition tells me” isn’t an argument. Beliefs have to be based on evidence. Until you can unpack your intuition and show specifically how the evidence leads to your belief, you might as well be saying you looked into a crystal ball.
I’m satisfied that the defendants in the Duke lacrosse case were innocent. And I was reasonably confident of that long before the state prosecutor announced his belief they were innocent.
You are attacking a strawman here. I have refrained arguing that Knox and Sollecito are probably guilty simply because they were charged and ultimately convicted.
I will if I can find a block of free time in which I have the motivation to do so.
Again you are strawmanning me. I am saying that as an attorney, I have heard hundreds of people give statements or testify. In situations where (1) peoples’ stories have been incoherent/inconsistent in a manner similar to that of Knox; and (2) further evidence became available, that further evidence has virtually always gone against the person’s story. Sometimes dramatically so.
I didn’t say that’s what you argued. I said that if you were to look into the cases of those defendants later considered to be exonerated by DNA evidence, you would likely find grounds for being suspicious of them similar to the grounds on which you are suspicious of Knox and Sollecito. (In fact, I am given to understand that 25% of them actually confessed to the crime.)
Meaning that they were browbeaten by police into speculating on how their understanding of the situation might have been wrong?
I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about here. One keeps hearing these claims that Knox was “inconsistent”, “changed her story”, and the like. But the account given at Friends of Amanda seems perfectly convincing to me. From the beginning, Knox insisted she was at Sollecito’s. But she was told (falsely) that there was solid physical evidence placing her at the crime scene. This was understandably confusing to her. So after hours of being berated by interrogators, she finally gave in to their pressure by speculating—upon their prompting! -- about Patrick Lumumba. This doesn’t sound like evidence of guilt to me. You say that it does to you because of your experience as an attorney, but you’re going to have to do a better job of explaining why—and more importantly, why it comes anywhere near to trumping the other evidence.
At a minimum, you responded to the argument as if somebody had made it. Since you were responding to my post, it’s reasonable to infer that you were attributing that argument to me.
No.
During what time period? From approximately what hour to approximately what hour?
This is stupid. The reason the further evidence turns out to go against them is because they’re guilty, not because their stories were incoherent. Don’t you think that the vast majority of criminal cases coming to your attention are, by the prosecutor’s discretion and incentive, ones where a strong case for the defendant’s guilt can be made? That’s all the explanation you should need of the phenomena you recount.
No, that’s not it. Their stories are incoherent because they are guilty AND the further evidence goes against them because they are guilty.
No—I don’t practice criminal law. I practice civil (administrative) law. Perhaps 40-60% of my clients are innocent of the charges against them and I win more than half the time.
I don’t think you’re allowing much possibility for an innocent who has a suspicious story. You think p(guilty|incoherent) is higher than p(guilty|coherent). I agree. I’m saying that p(guilty|incoherent,criminal prosecution) is very close to the baseline p(guilty|criminal prosecution), because you only see prosecuted those cases where either the defendant is unlucky enough to have a sketchy-seeming alibi, or the direct evidence is strong enough that the alibi doesn’t matter.
Since your experience is from criminal cases, my speculation about it was inaccurate; on the other hand, that means that your experience is even less relevant than I thought. Many civil cases go to trial where, as you say, p(win) is nearly 1⁄2. Not so for criminal prosecutors; they drop cases they won’t win.
I’d like to back away from my initial response (“this is stupid”) to you.
I had understood you to be talking about personally observed frequency of (incoherent and guilty) vs. (coherent and not guilty) in the context of criminal testimony in court. Clearly that’s not the case, and you had much more experience with innocent defendants than I anticipated.
Also, I actually understood you to believe that the causation proceeded from incoherent → guilty, which of course is ludicrous. You later explained that you actually have a roughly correct causal network; my only objection would be in whether you’re using the proper frequency for (incoherent and innocent); only if it’s nearly zero can you immediately conclude that incoherence very strongly suggests guilt. (otherwise, you have to do the math).
I still hold that amongst criminal defendants at trial, (incoherent and innocent) may be quite frequent, because (coherent and innocent) are almost never brought to trial. But what’s important is, amongst criminal defendants, how much higher p(guility|incoherent,trial) is than p(guilty|coherent,trial). I don’t actually know precisely what the difference is; I also expect it to be higher, but dwarfed in importance by the additional evidence. I would be extremely hesitant to convict someone solely based on “suspicious cover-up like behavior”, but I know that it’s happened, e.g. in the case of Hans Reiser.
I also would be hesitant. And indeed, I don’t know if there was enough evidence to inculpate Knox beyond a reasonable doubt. My point in these discussions is that I’m pretty confident she was involved in the murder.
I would say it’s pretty relevant. I’ve questioned hundreds of people who were accused of wrongdoing; come to a belief about their guilt or innocence; and then had an opportunity to see further evidence against them and update my beliefs, so to speak.
As to your point that there is a selection bias in criminal prosecutions, that may very well be the case. I’m not sure what it implies for the Amanda Knox case. I suppose one could argue that the decision to prosecute her is evidence of her guilt. Evidence in the logical sense, not the courtroom sense.