Amanda Knox Found Guilty of Murder By Italian Court

Yahoo News ^ | January 30, 2014 | PHOEBE NATANSON | Good Morning America

[Uncle Chip]

Amanda Knox was found guilty of murder today by an Italian court, the latest twist in a murder case that goes back to 2007.

The verdict reached by the two judges and six jurors came after several hours of deliberations at the Florence courthouse.

The judge sentenced Knox to 28 years in prison. Her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and co-defendant was sentenced to 25 years.

Two Italian judges and six jurors began deliberations earlier today. If Knox and her former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito are found guilty, the court is also expected to pronounce a prison sentence.

The prosecutor has asked for a 26 prison term for the murder for Knox and Sollecito, plus another four years for Knox on a related libel conviction.

This is the fourth time Knox faced a verdict on the 2007 murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher while they were roommates in Perugia, Italy. Knox, now 26, and Sollecito, 29, were convicted in 2009.

After serving four years in prison they were freed in 2011 when an appeals court threw out the murder conviction. But Italy's supreme court ordered another appeals court to rehear the case. Kercher's sister Stephanie and brother Lyle were in the courtroom for the verdict.

Knox, who is sporting a new, short haircut, remained in her hometown of Seattle for the latest trial. Sollecito was in court today earlier today, but was not present for the verdict....

[Uncle Chip]

Okay then —

What is the lie in this statement???

[Tired of Taxes]

Here’s a website with some more information on the case:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Myths_debunked

[Uncle Chip]

Try this one instead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Meredith_Kercher

This less affiliated site says that “within hours the principal investigator had concluded that signs of a break-in had been staged to mislead the police enquiry, and Knox became the prime suspect.” — and hence should have had a lawyer.

The Kercher site says:

Knox signed a formal statement at 01:45 am [November 6th], “placing herself at the crime scene and from this point she could not be interviewed without a lawyer, because she was now a suspect.”

Do you really believe the Kercher site here? that she did not become a suspect until after 5 days of intensive interrogation???

[Tired of Taxes]

Where does the Kercher site say that Knox “did not become a suspect until after 5 days of intensive interrogation”?

[nowaczyk]

There’s a ton of evidence against this girl in my opinion. And if the conviction is upheld, she is most likely to be extradited:

http://maundygregory.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/can-amanda-knox-be-extradited/

[Uncle Chip]

Paragraph 6:

Myth: Knox's human rights were violated because the police did not give her a lawyer or an official interpreter

At around 11 pm on November 5, 2007, Knox was questioned as a witness .... Knox signed a formal statement at 01:45 am, placing herself at the crime scene:[15] from this point she could not be interviewed without a lawyer, because she was now a suspect.

What a load --

And the statement she signed hardly places her at the crime scene ... it merely places here at the badgering scene at the police station.

[Tired of Taxes]

I agree that the case against her looks pretty damning.

In an interview this week, she said that she’ll go kicking and screaming if she’s extradited. So, her lawyers must’ve told her that extradition is a possibility.

[Tired of Taxes]

Uncle Chip, according to that website, Knox herself testified that she went voluntarily to the police station with Solecito just because she didn’t want to be alone.

In her handwritten statement to police the day she was arrested, Knox claims to be confused, not sure about her memory, etc., and she’s not sure, but she seems to see blurred images in her mind of this other guy committing the murder while Knox was in the apartment.

Maybe she’s innocent, but she sure sounds very guilty.

[Uncle Chip]

It was the police interrogator who suggested Lumumba as the killer to her when they saw the text she sent to him on her cellphone saying “See You Later”. She didn’t come up with his name — they did and kept bringing the conversation back to him.

Then she says that the police say they have evidence that puts her there at the time which she questions.

And then the police lie about what Sollecito said — that he wasn’t with her all night, when in truth what he said was he couldn’t guarantee that she might not have gotten up and left during the time when he was sleeping.

So then they indict him for being asleep when she got up and left —

But here’s the bottom line:

It wasn’t anything that anyone said that solved the crime.

It was the cr*p that Guede left in the toilet that solved the crime.

Knox said that she saw it but just left it there.

It’s a good thing she didn’t flush it otherwise they may have never traced the murder to Guede.

[Tired of Taxes]

But Guede was found guilty of participating with a group in a murder. The victim had almost no defensive wounds which suggests that someone else held her down. Also, there is DNA evidence that ties Knox and Solecito to the crime.

For example: The victim’s DNA was found on the knife in Solecito’s apartment. He claimed that he’d accidentally cut the victim while she and others were having dinner at his apartment. Does that sound likely to you? Plus, it’s believed that the victim never went to his apartment.

As for Knox’s implication of the bar owner, which sounds more likely: That she was really confused but seemed to have images in her memory of being at the apartment when her boss murdered her friend? Or that, when the police mentioned the bar owner, she suddenly saw a way to implicate someone else?

[Uncle Chip]

But Guede was found guilty of participating with a group in a murder.

Then why is only Rudy's DNA and fingerprints on the victim and at the crime scene.

The victim had almost no defensive wounds which suggests that someone else held her down.

or tied her up with her own clothes.

Also, there is DNA evidence that ties Knox and Solecito to the crime.

Not true -- the prosecutor when confronted with the absence of their DNA or prints at the scene said that Knox and Solecito cleaned up their own DNA but left Guede's -- LOL.

For example: The victim’s DNA was found on the knife in Solecito’s apartment.

Nope -- at best poor testing protocol. Even they are not stupid enough kill somebody and hold onto the murder weapon.

He claimed that he’d accidentally cut the victim while she and others were having dinner at his apartment.

Where did he say this??? Show me.

Plus, it’s believed that the victim never went to his apartment.

That's more than likely. Do you really believe that he would take a knife out of his drawer over to kill another person and then bring it back and put it in his drawer to use to then make sandwiches with? Who holds onto a murder weapon??? Even Rudy knew enough to throw his knife away -- and her keys away and her cellphones.

Anyway the testing they did on the material that they claim was taken from the knife defied their own protocol. When asked to reproduce the test they refused because there was no DNA there.

As for Knox’s implication of the bar owner ...

It was the police who suggested and pushed the bar owner as an accomplice because of deleted text messages to him on her phone. She didn't bring up his name -- the police did and kept pushing it. When she texted "See You Later" to him the police took that not colloquially but literally.

They spent two months trying to find DNA or anything trying to connect those two to the crime and found nothing -- nothing -- nothing.

The best they could do is find Knox's DNA at the hamlet where you would expect it to be because she lived there.

[CodeToad]

“Imho, that statement reads as if she’s having trouble remembering which lie to tell.”

Under police interrogation you’d swear you killed JFK, so why do you keep bringing up coerced statements?

[Tired of Taxes]

Under police interrogation you’d swear you killed JFK, so why do you keep bringing up coerced statements?

She was questioned for only one to two hours (at most) before implicating an innocent man.

[Tired of Taxes]

That website (themurderofmeredithkercher.com) gives more details.

Regarding DNA:

- Meredith’s DNA was found on the knife at Solecito’s apartment.
- Knox’s DNA was found mixed with Kercher’s blood in evidence found.
- Solecito’s DNA was found on Kercher’s bra hook.

Footprints:

- Footprints made in blood matched Knox and Solecito’s bare feet (but not Guede’s - so, apparently, he did not act alone.)

- A shoeprint made in blood on the pillow found under the victim’s body was made by a woman’s shoe and matched Knox’s shoe size.

As for “holding on to the murder weapon”: They had to clean it. Maybe they didn’t have time to dump it somewhere after cleaning it. Maybe they were afraid they were being watched so couldn’t dump it anywhere.

As for falsely accusing an innocent man: The police only questioned her for an hour or two before she decided that she seemed to remember being at the apartment when this other man killed the victim.

Once again... IF she and her ex-boyfriend are entirely innocent, the evidence and their behavior sure make them look guilty. This is why the case continues in Italy.

[Uncle Chip]

The footprints are dealt with here — all belonged to Rudy. Though he threw his bloody shoes away, the police found the box they came in at his apartment:

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/footprints-01.html

The DNA on the knife was likely a bread crumb or Amanda’s:

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

The braclasp was kicked around on the floor for 47 days before collected and when it was collected had DNA from 4 people on it. If this is so incriminating then why weren’t the other 3 people arrested and charged???

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

Amanda’s DNA was found in the bathroom they all shared — why wouldn’t it be there — she lived there.

[Tired of Taxes]

According to the site below, there also were bloody footprints that couldn’t have belonged to Guede. For example, this one matched Solecito:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Bathmat_Footprint

There were other footprints, but Knox claims that her DNA must’ve mixed with the victim’s because, she says, when exiting the shower, there were no towels, so she used the bloody bathmat to slide back to her room. (Does that sound credible to you?)

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Luminol_Traces

Knox’s DNA was found on the knife - yes, she probably used it for cooking. But, Kercher’s DNA also was found on the knife. Solecito claimed he accidentally cut Kercher with the knife while they all were cooking dinner at his apartment, but there’s no evidence that Kercher ever went to his apartment.

The bra clasp had Solecito’s DNA on it. The defense claimed that some of that DNA could be from other people - it turns out, this claim by the defense is a stretch, but the fact that Solecito’s DNA is on the bra clasp is not disputed. More info here:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Bra_Clasp

Again, she might be entirely innocent, but it doesn’t look that way... I can see why she was charged and eventually found guilty.

[Uncle Chip]

She took a shower — where was she supposed to step.

And I’ve done that many times just as she describes when there are no towels to keep water off the floor. So what???

All that blood in Kercher’s room and not one trace on Knox or Sollecito or their shoes or their clothes.

<> But, Kercher’s DNA also was found on the knife.<>

Here read what was found by independent forensic experts appointed by the court, Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti, from Rome’s Sapienza University.

Among their conclusions — No Kercher DNA on the knife — it’s not the murder weapon.

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

[Tired of Taxes]

That’s not what Conti and Vecchiotti concluded, though. They agreed that the DNA on the knife matched the victim’s. Their criticism was that the amount was not large enough to allow for repeated testing, so they argued for the evidence to be dropped:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/The_Double_DNA_Knife

We could go back and forth like this forever. You could keep pointing to one website, and I could keep pointing to another. But, I don’t think we’ll change each other’s opinion.

[Uncle Chip]

Is this or is this not the conclusion of the report re: the knife:

ITEM 36 (KNIFE)

Relative to the genetic analysis performed on trace A (handle of the knife), we agree with the conclusion reached by the Technical Consultant regarding the attribution of the genetic profile obtained from these samples to Amanda Marie Knox.

Relative to trace B (blade of the knife) we find that the technical analyses performed are not reliable for the following reasons:

1. There does not exist evidence which scientifically confirms that trace B (blade of knife) is the product of blood.

2. The electrophoretic profiles exhibited reveal that the sample indicated by the letter B (blade of knife) was a Low Copy Number (LCN) sample, and, as such, all of the precautions indicated by the international scientific community should have been applied.

3. Taking into account that none of the recommendations of the international scientific community relative to the treatment of Low Copy Number (LCN) samples were followed, we do not accept the conclusions regarding the certain attribution of the profile found on trace B (blade of knife) to the victim Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher, since the genetic profile, as obtained, appears unreliable insofar as it is not supported by scientifically validated analysis;

4. International protocols of inspection, collection, and sampling were not followed;

5. It cannot be ruled out that the result obtained from sample B (blade of knife) derives from contamination in some phase of the collection and/or handling and/or analyses performed.

http://knoxdnareport.wordpress.com/contents/conclusions-2/

Having read that conclusion are you going to continue to insist that the knife was the murder weapon???

[Tired of Taxes]

Uncle Chip, are you the blogger who runs the “Injustice in Perugia” website? Just wondering.

Anyway, the report you posted was made by defense witnesses. Other experts who testified disagreed with C & V.

Try this website. But scroll down to the photo of the knife for an argument that this was the murder weapon:

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php

The more I read, the more they come across as guilty. Your theory is that Guede acted alone, but then who cleaned up (or tried to) and staged a break-in after he ran out the door?