Poll: Do you think Amanda Knox is guilty?
- Thread starter ryai458
- Start date
ummm the same can be said of Paul Bernardo and John Wayne Gacy and look what they did.FutureHousedad said:
as for reasonable doubt, she's changed her story a few times. there's also a few other inconsistencies in her story, such as falsely accusing her boss of committing it.
My personal opinion was that the Italians and international press made it into a witch hunt to go after an American. Did she do it? I don't know. An article I read stated that generally, in Italian courts, defendants are considered guilty until proven innocent. And that it's more about defending your personal honor than evidence proving your innocence. But I digress. I honestly don't know enough to have a strong opinion.
I went to school with her at UW. No I do not think she's guilty.
Even without that bias the evidence and prosecution is about as close as Glenn Beck you can get if he were a lawyer.
Even without that bias the evidence and prosecution is about as close as Glenn Beck you can get if he were a lawyer.
I do not know enough to make an informed decision but...
according to the wiki link they she had a very happy and upbeat demeanor within the murder trials... granted not a crime but if my friend died I do not think I would be doing cartwheels while being interrogated.
That aside all the hate on the italian legal system... it sounds more fair then the american legal system. A jury of your peers can mean you could be found guilty on matters that are not proven or in law... (the US says beyond a reasonable doubt but no one can influence a group of people who are not litigators into following the rules.)
In there system they have peers and judges it seems... making a better balance. They still have to be unanimous in there vote. So her not having a fair trial because it was in Italy I do not buy.
That being said to incriminate myself for long past crimes I once used cannibas... it did not make the events surrounding it "hazy". It's no where near like getting drunk.
So though I do not know any of the specifics of the case she did seem to have a very sketchy story and demeanor. That and she was found guilty by a court of law.
according to the wiki link they she had a very happy and upbeat demeanor within the murder trials... granted not a crime but if my friend died I do not think I would be doing cartwheels while being interrogated.
That aside all the hate on the italian legal system... it sounds more fair then the american legal system. A jury of your peers can mean you could be found guilty on matters that are not proven or in law... (the US says beyond a reasonable doubt but no one can influence a group of people who are not litigators into following the rules.)
In there system they have peers and judges it seems... making a better balance. They still have to be unanimous in there vote. So her not having a fair trial because it was in Italy I do not buy.
That being said to incriminate myself for long past crimes I once used cannibas... it did not make the events surrounding it "hazy". It's no where near like getting drunk.
So though I do not know any of the specifics of the case she did seem to have a very sketchy story and demeanor. That and she was found guilty by a court of law.
I know this is arbitrary of me but I must say, I don't give a flying shit. Judgement has been passed, on this I have no opinion, people kill each other everyday, I haven't the time to concern myself with every last damn one of them. Alike I don't care about every damn child born.
what is your opinion on this? You are the person who brought it up. So why should I tell you my opinion if you don't say anything yourself?ryai458 said:
I live in america and because of that the news I hear is biased towards a american exchange student, so my opinion is based on the news I hear. Personally I don't think she did it the evidence doesn't add up and they already found somebody who did it and the evidence, that I have heard, points more otward him them amanda or rafelle.SomeUnregPunk said:
The prosecution points to violent literature, such as comic books, that they found in Sollecito?s apartment. Prosecutors allege that manga comics found in Sollecito's apartment recounted tales of killing female vampires on Halloween night and that many of the details in the comics were similar to the scene police discovered.
Dam comics turning people into killers, bet he played violent computer games as well.
Dam comics turning people into killers, bet he played violent computer games as well.
Seeing as I keep hearing reasons to suspect prosecutorial misconduct after every other fact revealed about this case (no innterogation tape where she supposedly confessed despite it being required by law, a history of sanctions against the prosecutor for various issues of misconduct, producing a "murder-weapon" that could not have made the wounds, the lack of any physical evidence linking her to the crime that wouldn't be there by the fact that it was her roommate, etc.), there is a high probability that she should have gotten off. I don't know about whether she did it or not, but the nature of a modern justice system should be evidence based and it simply wasn't proven that way.ryai458 said:
Honestly i'm not sure whether she's guilty or not, but the more interesting part seems to be the outraged reaction of the American press that some dirty foreigners dared to prosecute an American without permission. And of course the immediate formation of groups demanding a boycott of Italian products, because that always makes a difference.
Sounds like they've already got their murderer, this Rudy Guédé guy, but given the way Knox was acting - and that she was heavily under the influence of drugs at the time - it's entirely possible that she was involved at least to the level of negligence to allow this to happen.
Bottom line is getting stoned out of your head is stupid enough of a thing to do, but when a murder gets involved and you don't have the wherewithal to defend yourself because of that, your ass is grass.
Bottom line is getting stoned out of your head is stupid enough of a thing to do, but when a murder gets involved and you don't have the wherewithal to defend yourself because of that, your ass is grass.
yeah cause blaming an innocent man AND not having a consistent story is a sure indication of you being innocent of the crime. there's also DNA evidence linking them to the crime and a few other thingsryai458 said:
This is why when you're an American leaving the country, you have to keep your wits about you. Being an American in this day and age is not safe outside of our borders.
Getting stoned while in a country without the protection of your government, and surrounded by people you don't truly know is beyond stupid.
Now she's going to rot in an Italian jail for 25 years for a crime she probably didn't commit.
Getting stoned while in a country without the protection of your government, and surrounded by people you don't truly know is beyond stupid.
Now she's going to rot in an Italian jail for 25 years for a crime she probably didn't commit.
Well, the American legal system is like it is because of all of our civil liberties protections combined with the way can so easily have a massive affect on the system as a whole. Rulings like Mapp Vs. Ohio having given people some pretty ridiculous rights when you get down to it.H0ncho said:
Comparing our legal system to other nations is a touchy subject. In many cases I feel even relatively civilized nations wind up having some rather backwards and inhumane/unfair policies, though admittedly some of those same systems do get away from the ridiculousness of our system.
I am not sure about Italy, but I know that I've heard in a lot of European nations American tourists oftentimes have difficulty with systems that do not work under the "innocent until proven guilty" assumption, and furthermore work under a "preponderance of evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt". That represents a serious problem and is fairly uncivilized in my opinion when things like this are involved.
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In response to OP and the subject in question, I believe this situation is touchy because I believe it hinges heavily on Anti-Americanism, and Europe pretty much wanting to mess with the US. According to the things I've read the basic gist of things is that Amanda Knox was a sl@t and seriously messed up on drugs at the time so wasn't sure what happened, having given some bad information other than the fact that someone else was present in the room whom she thought was her employer from a bar. Truthfully she was so far gone she didn't even fully remember having been there clearly. Apparently there was a homeless transient in the "flat" who was wanted for crimes, who had been picked up by the victim and HE had sex with her, his DNA also present in the room. He proceeded to flee to Germany when the investigation started and was later extradited back to Italy. According to some things I've read the victim was ALSO apparently strangled, in addition to having her throat cut. It's debatable what the actual cause of death was. Amanda more or less confesses to playing kinky sex games with her (which I get the impression they did regularly), erotic asphixiation is part of that kind of thing, but in general even when playing with sharps, vampire gloves, etc... and even actually blood letting one does not get into a position where they can accidently cut someones throat, though I suppose an accident might have happened if she was as F@cked up as she claims at the time. She's claimed a lot of things of increasing severity and intoxication it appears which makes sense if she was trying to avoid admitting to too much to the police... but I think we can pretty much figure out the bottom line.
The Italians pretty much seemed to do a half arsed investigation, and then pretty much throw jail time at everyone involved. Amanda, her boyfriend, and the transient (Rudy). What DNA evidence was mentioned is fairly pointless in this case because your dealing with people who lived in the house and apparently had wild sex with each other with some frequency. Amanda's DNA is on a knife in her own house? Wow... that means a lot, she also might have handled the knife after the fact because frankly she strikes me as beng stupid (which is not a crime). They also found her boyfriend's DNA in the victim's bra allegedly which means pretty much nothing under the circumstances.
It seems to me that since an American is involved and it got goverment attention that the Italians seen an oppertunity to stick it to the US, and they are taking advantage of that oppertunity, right or wrong. As things stand now we've got Hillary Clinton personally involved at some level, and despite what I think of her personally she's pretty much #3 in our goverment as well as being a former First Lady. Over the years we've deported a lot of people we could have otherwise convicted in the US at the request of other nations, it's not even newsworthy. Right now if Italy refuses to simply kick her out of the country and return her to the US it's a major insult. I felt this way even when a more clearly guilty fellow (David Faye) was conviceted in China and the blody President got involved and asked to have him deported.
To be entirely honest I *don't* think Mrs. Clinton should have gotten involved in this any more than Bill Clinton should have gotten involved with China. This has just turned into an international P@ssing contest, and honestly it's going to do a lot of damage (the situation with China did more indirect damage to the US's cred than you might realize). While Italy has backed us on a lot of stuff, this has pretty much turned into a situation where either they release her, or we send Special Forces to extract her at the expense of however many Italians get in their way. Either that or basically people will look at it in the context that if Italy can "kick our can" and ignore requests from high ranking goverment officials even at the same time as we've deported europeans on request rather than making them face charges, the rest of the world is going to feel the same way. Part of being a world super-power is that people need to respect you as one and few people respect the US because we don't do anything but make noise.
Personally if some of the stuff I've read is accurate you can thank Mrs. Clinton for this situation which now is likely to end ridiculously badly unless they back down, and of course Obama for putting her into such a position and not slapping a muzzle into her mouth before she could say anything on the issue.
At any rate, as far as the situation itself goes, from the evidence mentioned it seems to me like "Rudy" is the guy who committed the killing. The other people involved are basically a bunch of slutbombs with a love of intoxicating substances. Italy took a shotgun to the whole situation, pretty much convicted everyone of something, and really doesn't give a F@ck about an appropriate investigation or what actually happened. Independant investigators hired by the family and such have apparently talked about how sloppy this is, and how it's unlikely they could hold her on appeal even under the Italian system... but of course it got political and now Anti-Americanism is an even bigger factor than it was before.
Encyclopedia Dramatica has also pointed out (in their own way) that apparently both of the girls involved in this were Camwhores, albeit "FoxyKnoxy" has her site locked due to all but private traffic until such a time as she's released.
If this sounds unusually negative towards the victims (even as I am nailing the Italian system) to be entirely honest, I have no real problem with sexually promiscious behavior to an extent. But if your so out of control with it that you have homeless people coming into your house for sex (with anyone), and everyone is getting so intoxicated that nobody knows for sure who is in the "flat" at any given time... well your asking for it.
I mean for me the whole thing hinges on the fact that they had a bloody homeless criminal in their flat, having sex with one of the girls, and it sounds to me like Amanda was so out of it she thought it was someone else. Apparently at the same time while Amanda is taking the blame (probably for being American), the homeless guy blamed Amanda's boyfriend claiming HE fled the scene, after of course being pulled back after being the only dude who tried to flee the country.
Well enough rambling, that covers all my thoughts on the subject. I doubt anyone read this far, but I would point out that there are tons of articles out there with varying degrees of information. Ironically I find it kind of amusing that the only people blaming Amanda (who has no motive, and apparently is connected simply due to F@cked up testimony covering a drug habit, and having DNA on a knife in her own house) are the Italian cops. It seems Rudy and the Boyfriend were pointing fingers at each other.