The so-called Motivation Report which was released in March 2010 and signed by Judges Giancarlo Massei and Beatrice Cristiani should do more to free Amanda Knox at her coming appeal in November than many people realize. Contrary to what some people think- it is NOT a damning report. Instead, this long wordy report clearly shows the lack of critical thinking on the part of those responsible for Amanda's conviction in December 2009.
The original report was released in Italian, but there has been an English translation available online since mid August 2010. This English translation has been thrown in the face of anyone who thinks Amanda Knox is innocent- by those who think she is guilty of course. It makes me wonder if those who praise the report have actually given it a good read, or if they are simply suffering from the same faulty thinking as the judges who wrote it.
This post is not an attack on Italy or the Italian legal system. Nor is this a put-down of the Italian legal tradition of writing motivation reports after a trial. My sole purpose here is to point out that this particular report, the one that supported Amanda's conviction for murder, is full of errors, faulty thinking and speculation. And I intend to back up what I say.
I have gone over this report in detail and it is now up as a separate page linked to this forum/blog. My intention is to go over the important issues and point out the errors and speculation that the motivation report contains. This will be ongoing and over time- taking one issue only at a time. There is a lot of information and one needs to digest it little by little- one point at a time- in order to fully comprehend the difference between the reality of events and what is simply speculation unsupported by fact.
You will find a page called Motivation Report In Focus and it is located under 'pages' seen on the upper right side of the main forum page (home). There is a place to comment and ask questions for those who wish to do so, providing the comments are civilized and to the point. I have started with the so-called 'staged break-in' and will move forward from there. I will be using the English translation and any quotes from the report will be based on that. Hopefully this will open a few people's eyes, however if one does not wish to see the point then they won't. All that is required is an open mind and an IQ higher than Boo Radley- and we're good to go.
THE MOTIVATION REPORT IN FOCUS PAGE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED AND THE FIRST PARTS ARE READY AND LOCATED AT THE UPPER RIGHT OF THE MAIN FORUM PAGE- UNDER THE CAPTION "PAGES". IT WILL BE ADDED TO UNTIL THE ENTIRE REPORT HAS BEEN COVERED.
4 comments:
I hope the appeal is more broad based than just the knife and the bra clasp because the Motivation report cites multiple threads of evidence. A single instance of deception by a suspect is damaging. I've logged 50-100 hours studying this case, just enough to scratch the surface, initially out of concern for injustice, but I keep running into facts that lead me in the opposite direction. I never believed that a murderer would put the murder weapon back in his kitchen drawer, but if the DNA evidence is refuted I don't think that overturns the verdict. There are other findings that are incriminating. Here are two rarely cited pieces of damaging evidence from the Motivation Report:
from p.77: Francesco Sollecito also explained that, during the 8:42 pm call, his son mentioned "that while he was washing dishes he realised he had a water spill" (p. 45). This fact, which was also mentioned by Amanda Knox (who links it to the need to fetch the mop to dry up the floor), is relevant because it allows us to determine the time of dinner as being around 8:30 pm and before the call at 8:42 pm, in which Raffaele tells his father that while washing the dishes he had a leak from the sink.
Therefore, the statements by Amanda Knox in which the hour of dinner is postponed until 10 pm or even 11 pm constitute an attempt to reduce insofar as possible the length of time devoid of activity that could be documented in some way, during the final hours of November 1, 2007, thus creating an alibi that could put her and Raffaele away from the Via della Pergola house where, precisely during that time, the murder of Meredith Kercher was being perpetrated.
from p.91: In the already mentioned e-mail Amanda Knox thus writes: "... Filomena's door was closed but when I opened it I saw that her room was in a mess and that the window was open and completely broken ... convinced that we had been robbed I went to Laura's room and looked quickly in, but it was spotless I checked my room for things missing, which there were not. Then I knocked on Meredith's bedroom door. At first I thought she was asleep, so I knocked gently, but when she didn't respond, I knocked louder and louder until I was really banging on her door and shouting her name. No response. Panicking I ran out to the terrace to see if I could see inside. Raffaele told me he wanted to see if he could break down Meredith's door. He tried and the door was cracked but we couldn't open it. It was then that we decided to call the police... At first Raffaele called his sister for advice, and then called the police. I then called Filomena who said she would be on her way home immediately. While we were waiting, two plaincloths policemen came to our house. I showed them what I could and told them what I knew.
In this email, Meredith's locked door therefore acquires a central importance... Amanda cannot help but give central importance to this locked door and writes, therefore, that this fact induced her to run to the terrace, and to position herself on the window ledge to see if she could see something, and writes that this door being locked created in her a state of absolute panic, she "was panicking" and continues, writing that Raffaele tried to break down the door but couldn't open it, which is how they came to decide to call the police("It was then that we decided to call the police"),as well as to call Romanelli and tell her to come to the house.
Yet when the Postal Police arrived, the panic caused by that locked door was not expressed in any way...
I'd personally like to see Amanda and Raffaele exonerated but the Motivation Report sets the bar higher. Btw, my read of the court transcript so far shows Massei to be considerate of Amanda and able to process and summarize complex considerations.
Thanks for the comment. First let me point out that the motivation report is flawed big time- Even the appeals court judge is in agreement with that. In order to convict in Italy (as in the U S) there can not be a reasonable doubt. The motivation report is based on mostly speculation as the appeals court is aware -therefore the need to re-examine the evidence. One thing you missed that the motivation report addresses wrongly is that the testimony of the 'park bum' was believed and as a result seemed to place Amanda near the scene of the crime and made her alibi seem like a lie. However it is well known now that the park bum is really a drug dealer (since arrested) and was either not telling the truth or had the wrong evening as he used the disco buses running that night as a reference to what time it was - but it has since come to light that the disco buses were not running that night. Therefore the park bum's testimony is - out the window. In between that and the re-evaluation of key 'evidence- it should be enough to bring this court to overturn the conviction.
Come on, use a little logic, this is not damaging at all. Washing dishes means dinner beforehand? No, if you had dirty dishes, they could have been used for other things, preparing dinner, an earlier meal, etc., and they needed them for dinner. This is just an example of the many leaps of logic needed to make very ordinary things seem "incriminating" when they are not.
Running to the terrace to try to look inside is admittedly a little weird, but if you read the court transcripts, Amanda was doing this while Raphaele was already on the phone to the police. And while she was doing this the postal police came by. It's not strange for panicked people who discovered a robbery to calm down when the authorities finally arrive and defer to their judgement about what to do. Again from the court documents, she was not "reassuring" the postal police to say her roommate's door was always locked. She simply commented that sometimes she does lock her door, which Amanda would be in a better position to know seeing how her room was right next door.
In any case, this is all kind of ridiculous. To be so scheming and devious as the prosecution says as to make an almost perfect coverup, and be confident and collected enough to even call the police and walk them through, would require Amanda and Raphaele to be some kind of experienced criminals with highly controlled internal emotions. This does not fit with how they behave in general, which is that they are very open people with nothing in their background that would suggest such capabilities.
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