What should Amanda Knox's parents do about the criminal charges they're facing?

[pnwmom]

They are supposed to stand trial in July in Italy on defamation charges, which carry a potential of several years of prison time. The charge is that they repeated in an interview Amanda's claim that she had been hit on the back of the head during her interrogation. Amanda is also charged for the same "crime"; and more than one journalist has been, too.

So if you were Amanda's parent, what would you do? If you go to Italy and stand trial, you could be convicted -- in fact, that seems likely, since you won't have any way of proving that what Amanda said was true. The police had audio-video taping capabilities in all the rooms at the police station, but they didn't tape Amanda's 52 hours of interrogations.

But if you don't stand trial (and get a not-guilty verdict), then you won't be able to visit your daughter as long as she's in Italy (up to another 22 years--more, if she's found guilty of defamation). And because of recent delays (the police are stonewalling the independent investigators on providing all the DNA files), Amanda's appeal likely won't end before sometime in the fall.

To complicate matters further, Amanda's parents have several other younger children.

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/16/amanda-knoxs-parents-are-just-the-latest-to-run-afoul-of-italy/


"I'd tell them not to ever go back to Italy," Seattle attorney Anne Bremner, a Knox family friend and founder of the Friends of Amanda organization, told AOL News today.

"But of course they probably will. Their child has been in prison for three years and faces at least 26 more years. People will die for their children, so I imagine they will go stand trial."

SNIP

In Italy, defamation is punishable with a minimum fine of 500 euros and a incarceration of six months to three years.

SNIP

"Libel shouldn't be criminal; it should be a civil complaint," Tompkins said. "Using the way it can be used in Italy just serves to inhibit journalists."

SNIP

One of Knox's other Italian lawyers, Luciano Ghirga, as well as a lawyer for Knox's former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who was also convicted of the Kercher murder, and several Italian newspaper and magazine journalists reportedly have either been sued or investigated for defamation.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. What a dilemma

Do you think Amanda is guilty? I'm not sure I do.

[CTyankee]

3. I don't either. I think this is horrible. Those poor parents!

The kid goes away to a school in Perugia (not a really big town, pretty, but not huge) and has mastered the language (which, for an American, is a real accomplishement) and then is framed in a murder she didn't do and thrown into jail.

this is just deplorable. I cannot understand it. It defies logic...

[pnwmom]

9. Actually, she hadn't mastered the language -- and that was part of her problem.

She had only been there for a few weeks, and they didn't provide her with an interpreter for her 52 hours of interrogations. They didn't record the interrogations or even provide the Court with transcripts. When they finally got a "confession" out of her after keeping her awake all night (one of those, "just imagine you were there -- what COULD have happened?" type of confessions) they typed it up in Italian and had her sign it.

A few hours later, after finally getting some sleep, she disavowed the confession -- and the trial judge threw it out of the criminal trial. HOWEVER, the same confession was allowed in the concurrently run civil trial (Kercher's parents against the defendents) -- and the SAME JURY heard both cases. So they heard the confession for the civil case that wasn't allowed into evidence for the criminal case.

[polly7]

18. She did have interpreters.

"While I was there, there was an interpreter who explained to me an experience of hers,
where she had gone through a traumatic experience that she could not remember
at all, and she suggested that I was traumatized, and that I couldn't
remember the truth. This at first seemed ridiculous to me, because I
remembered being at Raffaele's house."

This was from her testimony.

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=165&sid=5330229bb2a6526eaa558c6a0dd9799e

"Ms Donnino said that when questioned after Ms Kercher's body was found, Ms Knox walked up and down nervously at the police station, "hitting her head with her hands". She had denied responding to an SMS message from Mr Lumumba telling her there was no need to come to work because there were few customers, leaving her free for the evening. But she broke down when police said phone records showed that she had done so, Ms Donnino said.

"She showed extreme emotional involvement – she was crying and visibly shocked, saying 'It was him, it was him. He's bad'," Ms Donnino added" ....

"Aida Colontane, another police interpreter, told the court that she had noticed a red mark on Ms Knox's neck which "leapt out" from her "extraordinary pallor". Laura Mezzetti, one of the Italian flatmates of Ms Knox and Ms Kercher, has also testified that Ms Knox had a red mark on her neck. Curt Knox, Ms Knox's father, has suggested the mark was a love bite."....


"Fabio D'Astolto, an English-speaking police officer who helped to question Ms Knox, told the court that she and Mr Sollecito had behaved strangely, kissing and cuddling and talking together in low voices. A number of other witnesses have given the same testimony."....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5912206.ece

[pnwmom]

20. She didn't have an interpreter through most of the 52 hours.

And then there is this, from a recent interview with Mignini.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3592844/THE-Suns-probe-into-Amanda-Knox-case-reveals-evidence-that-may-undermine-conviction.html?OTC-RSS&ATTR=News

A CONFESSION said to have been dragged out of Knox after nearly 52 hours of intense police interrogation was "half fact, half fiction", Italian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini has admitted to The Sun.

He even said he chose to go with the parts of the testimony that suited his case.
The Sun has also discovered that both the police and prosecutor failed to follow strict Italian legal rules.

They require cops to record all interviews with suspects, to provide non-Italian speakers with a translator and to have a lawyer present. Knox was arrested just a few weeks after she had arrived in Italy and could not speak Italian.
Cops provided her with a police employee who interpreted - but they admitted she was "more investigator than translator".

SNIP

[pnwmom]

7. No, I don't. There is virtually no evidence against her.

The problem was that the prosecutor immediately suspected the killer was one of the roommates, and within 5 days of the murder announced "case closed" -- they had the killers: Amanda, her boyfriend, and the bar-owner she worked for. Three weeks later, all the DNA and fingerprint evidence came in and there was a big problem: it didn't match any of the three -- it ALL matched a known burglar with a history of carrying a knife.

The burglar denied that he'd killed Kercher, but acknowledged having sex with her; and he said that Amanda and her boyfriend weren't there.

The logical thing to do at that point would have been for the police to drop charges against Amanda and Raffaele, but then they would have had to admit they had been WRONG. Which apparently wasn't possible. So ever since then, they've been imaginatively trying to figure out ways Amanda and Raffaele could be guilty after all. Just the other day, the prosecutor speculated that maybe Amanda -- who in her trial was supposed to have been wielding the knife -- actually stood outside the room, directing the murder. This was his answer when asked how Amanda could have murdered Meredith and not let a trace of her own presence in the tiny room -- not a speck of DNA, or a fingerprint, or a shoe print, in a room that was covered with blood and yielded an abundance of DNA, fingerprints, handprints, and shoe prints (that belonged to Guede).

At trial, the only piece of evidence that supposedly connected Amanda to the crime was a kitchen knife found in a drawer at her boyfriend's apartment. The knife had Amanda's DNA on the handle - hardly surprising, because it was a kitchen knife. It was too big to fit the pattern of the knife used in the crime (which was outlined in blood on a sheet), so why did the police select it as a murder weapon? Because it looked so clean - hey, that's what they said! Anyway, the police lab supposedly found a speck of possibly Meredith's DNA on the tip. No blood, anywhere, just a partial DNA fragment. There was too little DNA to repeat the test, so the appeals judge has ordered that the raw DNA files (the same type of lab information that finally got the Duke lacrosse students released) be provided to some independent investigators that he appointed. Now the police lab, which has been holding back the DNA files since 2009 when the defense first requested them, is still stonewalling. Their answer to the judge? That they never provide such files! So the judge has repeated his order . . . who knows what will happen next.

[msanthrope]

13. There's plenty of evidence against her--

You should read things that aren't paid for by her parent's PR firm--"Friends of Amanda," the organization where you apparently got your info on the case about, is an astroturf org that was started by the PR firm the parents hired.

There is plenty of evidence--you can read the Massei report online. Amanda Knox particiapted in the murder, and the clean-up--and left PLENTY of evidence.

But here's a list of the evidence in the case--

"Consider as you read it what is your own possible explanation for each of the following:

•the DNA of Raffaele Sollecito on Meredith’s bra-clasp in her locked bedroom;
•the almost-entire naked footprint of Raffaele on a bathmat that in *no way* fits that of the other male in this case – Rudy Guede;
•the fact that Raffaele’s own father blew their alibi that they were together in Raffaele’s flat at the time of the killing with indisputable telephone records;
•the DNA of Meredith Kercher on the knife in Raffaele’s flat which Raffaele himself sought to explain as having been from accidentally “pricking” Meredith’s hand in his written diary despite the fact Meredith had never been to his flat (confirmed by Amanda Knox);
•the correlation of where Meredith’s phones were found to the location of Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guedes’s flats;
•the computer records which show that no-one was at Raffaele’s computer during the time of the murder despite him claiming he was using that computer;
•Amanda’s DNA mixed with Meredith Kercher’s in five different places just feet from Meredith’s body;
•the utterly inexplicable computer records the morning after the murder starting at 5.32 am and including multiple file creations and interactions thereafter all during a time that Raffaele and Amanda insist they were asleep until 10.30am;
•the separate witnesses who testified on oath that Amanda and Raffaele were at the square 40 metres from the girls’ cottage on the evening of the murder and the fact that Amanda was seen at a convenience store at 7.45am the next morning, again while she said she was in bed;
•the accusation of a completely innocent man by Amanda Knox;
•the fact that when Amanda Knox rang Meredith’s mobile telephones, ostensibly to check on the “missing” Meredith, she did so for just three seconds - registering the call but making no effort to allow the phone to be answered in the real world
•the knife-fetish of Raffaele Sollecito and his formal disciplinary punishment for watching animal porn at his university – so far from the wholesome image portrayed;
•the fact that claimed multi-year kick-boxer Raffaele apparently couldn’t break down a flimsy door to Meredith’s room when he and Amanda were at the flat the morning after the murder but the first people in the flat with the police who weren’t martial artists could;
•the extensive hard drug use of Sollecito as told on by Amanda Knox;
•the fact that Amanda knew details of the body and the wounds despite not being in line of sight of the body when it was discovered;
•the lies of Knox on the witness stand in July 2009 about how their drug intake that night (“one joint”) is totally contradicted by Sollecito’s own contemporaneous diary;
•the fact that after a late evening’s questioning, Knox wrote a 2,900 word email home which painstakingly details what she said happened that evening and the morning after that looks *highly* like someone committing to memory, at 3.30 in the morning, an extensive alibi;
•the fact that both Amanda and Raffaele both said they would give up smoking dope for life in their prison diaries despite having apparently nothing to regret;
•the fact that when Rudy Guede was arrested, Raffaele Sollecito didn’t celebrate the “true” perpetrator being arrested (which surely would have seen him released) but worried in his diary that a man whom he said he didn’t know would “make up strange things” about him despite him just being one person in a city of over 160,000 people;
•the fact that both an occupant of the cottage and the police instantly recognised the cottage had not been burgled but had been the subject of a staged break-in where glass was *on top* of apparently disturbed clothes;
•that Knox and Sollecito both suggested each other might have committed the crime and Sollecito TO THIS DATE does not agree Knox stayed in his flat all the night in question;
•the bizarre behaviour of both of them for days after the crime;
•the fact that cellphone records show Knox did not stay in Sollecito’s flat but had left the flat at a time which is completely coincidental with Guede’s corroborated presence near the girl’s flat earlier in the evening;
•the fact that Amanda Knox’s table lamp was found in the locked room of Meredith Kercher in a position that suggested it had been used to examine for fine details of the murder scene in a clean up;
•the unbelievable series of changing stories made up by the defendants after their versions became challenged; Knox’s inexplicable reaction to being shown the knife drawer at the girl’s cottage where she ended up physically shaking and hitting her head."

http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C356/

[pnwmom]

19. Evidence against Raffaele isn't evidence against HER. But let's pretend it is.

•the DNA of Raffaele Sollecito on Meredith’s bra-clasp in her locked bedroom;

After 3.5 years, the police lab is still stonewalling on providing the raw DNA files to the defense, and even to the independent investigators appointed by the appeals judge

•the almost-entire naked footprint of Raffaele on a bathmat that in *no way* fits that of the other male in this case – Rudy Guede;

Why would that prove a murder? It wasn't a bloody footprint -- it tested positive for bleach, and people use bleach in bathrooms.

•the fact that Raffaele’s own father blew their alibi that they were together in Raffaele’s flat at the time of the killing with indisputable telephone records;
I have no idea what this is about, but Amanda doesn't NEED an alibi since there's nothing that ties her to the crime.

•the DNA of Meredith Kercher on the knife in Raffaele’s flat which Raffaele himself sought to explain as having been from accidentally “pricking” Meredith’s hand in his written diary despite the fact Meredith had never been to his flat (confirmed by Amanda Knox);

The knife contained NO BLOOD. It's not logically possible to have a significant amount of DNA and no blood - unless the speck of DNA was through contamination. But we don't know, since the police lab is withholding the DNA files

•the correlation of where Meredith’s phones were found to the location of Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guedes’s flats;
SO?

•the computer records which show that no-one was at Raffaele’s computer during the time of the murder despite him claiming he was using that computer;

how convenient: the police "accidentally" wiped out the computer memories

Amanda’s DNA mixed with Meredith Kercher’s in five different places just feet from Meredith’s body.

Amanda's DNA was NOT found in the murder room. But no doubt it was all over her apartment. SO WHAT? SHE LIVED THERE.

•the separate witnesses who testified on oath that Amanda and Raffaele were at the square 40 metres from the girls’ cottage on the evening of the murder and the fact that Amanda was seen at a convenience store at 7.45am the next morning, again while she said she was in bed;

You mean the heroin addict and the deaf woman? And the convenience store man who changed his story after months of denying she'd been there?

________________________________________
I give up. I don't have the energy to fight all these lies. And it doesn't matter, because it's all going to come down to the DNA evidence - or the lack thereof. In Italy, as in the U.S., guilt is supposed to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. And it is IMPOSSIBLE to reasonably believe that you could wield a knife in a violent, bloody murder and not leave a trace of your presence in a murder room covered in blood. It is impossible to reasonably believe that you could remove all traces of your own DNA, fingerprints, shoe-prints and leave ONLY those belonging to another defendant. Even Mignini is now acknowledging how ludicrous that idea is: after telling the jury during the trial that Amanda wielded the murder weapon, he told the SUN in a recent interview that maybe Amanda only directed the murder from OUTSIDE the room!


"THE MOUNTAIN OF MISSING EVIDENCE"

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/FBI2.html

Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence

The Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case isn’t really about (the alleged) evidence, it is about lack of evidence—evidence that would have to be there if Knox and Sollecito participated. A shooting victim has an entry wound. That is evidence. If you tell me you have a shooting victim, but there’s no entry wound, the lack of evidence shows your theory to be impossible. No entry wound→ no evidence→ no shooting. A complete case consists of not just what’s at the crime scene, but what’s not at the crime scene. This is simply basic investigation: Investigation 101. The prosecutors and investigators in this case simply ignored the implications of what they could not find.

In the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case, we have a conflict between an implausibly small amount of highly suspect “evidence” that is alleged to be at the scene vs. a vast amount of missing evidence that would have HAD to be at the scene if Amanda and Raffaele had participated at all, and even more so if they had participated in the way the prosecutors allege. While the prosecution’s evidence is scant, contrived and likely non-existent; the mountain of missing evidence is absolutely overwhelming and compelling. And they both can’t be right because they are mutually exclusive.

If Amanda and Raffaele had actually killed Meredith in company with Rudy Guede, the following evidence WOULD have been there:

BLOOD TRANSFER
1. Meredith’s room would have been filled with the bloody footprints, handprints and smears of THREE PEOPLE, not one.

In the world of homicide (and other) investigations, law enforcement officials and prosecutors use the word “transfer”. Transfer is what it sounds like; the transfer of physical evidence from one person to another. Transfer is especially prevalent in murders (especially by stabbing) and rape. The nature of this case indicates that it would have the MOST transfer of any type of case.

2/3 of the required evidence missing, means 2/3 of the people were not there.

If the prosecution’s story is true, we are missing all credible evidence of the participation of, or even presence of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the cottage at the time of the murder.

SNIP

[pnwmom]

21. Don't you wonder why "True Justice" cites non-existent computer records?

Kind of weakens their overall credibility, don't you think?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234298/Amanda-Knox-The-troubling-doubts-Foxy-Knoxys-role-Meredith-Kerchers-murder.html

The appeal will examine closely how potentially critical evidence on three laptops - two owned by Sollecito and one owned by Knox - was destroyed by a police 'computer expert'.

The computers were seized after the two lovers were arrested. The defence team claim examination of the hard-drives would have gone a long way to substantiating the version of events given by Knox and Sollecito.

At least two of the computers would have shown Knox or Sollecito were using them at the time Meredith is said to have been killed.

But the computer expert managed to systematically destroy all three hard-drives.

SNIP

[XanaDUer]

2. You should post this in the True Crime forum

if you're into that stuff.

As for AK's parents: they have a big dilemma. :(

[undeterred]

4. I think they should ask Hillary Clinton for help.

From the television coverage that I saw, I truly doubt that their daughter is guilty of more than immaturity and bad judgment. The Italian justice system truly sucks.

But no, I really don't think the parents should risk getting themselves caught up in this wretched system.

[davidpdx]

5. I agree, but I'd take the chance she'll be aquittted

if I were the parents and stay out of Italy. The acquittal rate is pretty high on 2nd and 3rd appeals (as you stated in a post the other day). If the parents went back, I'd say there is 100% chance the parents will be convicted given how dirty the courts are in Italy. Then when (hopefully) Amanda is released her parents would be stuck there.

[msanthrope]

6. May be they should ask Gogerty -Stark-Marriott what to do?

It worked so well for the trial!

As I read this thread, I realize that the Knox PR teacm has sold the "Italian justice sucks!" line to Americans---the Knox family bought and paid for good media here.

[pnwmom]

11. You obviously bought the British tabloid press

foxy knoxy, pot-smoking sex crazed murder fantasy.

How pathetic.

But I think the problem for Amanda Knox isn't the Italian justice system, it's a prosecutor who targeted her out of his own delusions and for his own ends; just as the problem with the Duke lacrosse students wasn't the American justice system, it was Mike Nifong.

[msanthrope]

14. Not at all. I read the judge's report, in Italian. I understand it is available in

English. Giancarlo Massei ran a fair trial, and I recommend you reading his findings--it is a simple, undeniable, and dispassionate walk-thru of the evidence.

She hooked up with some very nasty people, participated in a murder, and then, participated in the cover up--which included her falsely accusing her former boss who went to jail based on her lies.

I agree with the jury's finding that it wasn't premeditated on her part--something that went to far, and then the extensive cover-up.

Motive is not an element necessary for conviction--a simple walk-through of the direct and circumstantial evidence clearly proves her guilty.

[polly7]

15. That was one of the things that turned me towards her being guilty,

that she blamed Lumumba. He lost everything.

[pnwmom]

17. Do you know the circumstances of that?

They had her in for 52 hours of interrogation over several days, without an attorney or an interpreter, and the last day they kept her there overnight until she cracked. The police were sure Lumumba was one of the killers because on her cell phone she had texted him: "bye! see you later!" So they kept hammering her, asking her to imagine what if Lumumba were there, what did she THINK could have happened? And so she finally started answering along those lines. Then they typed up a confession in Italian (which she could barely read). After a few hours of sleep, she disavowed the confession, saying she was confused earlier but she was now sure that it hadn't happened, that she hadn't been there and she didn't remember anything about Lumumba.

The Court tossed out the confession because of the way it was elicited from her, but the jury was allowed to see it anyway (since they were trying the concurrent civil case.) The bar owner was able to get free because he had an unimpeachable alibi.

[pnwmom]

16. The judge's report didn't even accord with

the prosecution's case. It was all nonsense.

There was not a bit of evidence that connected her to the crime except for the testimony of a self-acknowledged heroin addict who placed her in the area, and a speck of supposedly Meredith's DNA on the knife - and the police are stonewalling on providing the DNA files. How can the raw DNA files still not be available, 2.5 years after their CONVICTION?

I'm not condemning Italian justice unless this IS a good example of "justice" in Italy - I think it must be an aberration, because this is horrifying.

[customerserviceguy]

8. Go back, and assert your right to protest what the police do

And if there's a conviction from the Italian kangaroo court, send in Seal Team Six for the rescue.

Now, I don't know if Amanda Knox is guilty or not, I suspect that she's been framed, but I haven't seen the evidence. However, criticizing the police is not a jailable offense in the civilized world. If Italy wants to be regarded as part of that civilized world, they need to take a fresh look at the history of, movtives for, and uses (& abuses) of this defamation law.

[pnwmom]

10. I agree. How, in a civilized country, can it be a criminal offense

to make a charge of police misbehavior or brutality that cannot be proven?

[saras]

12. If they were richer, I'd suggest they just hire someone to go and get her