The Knox/Sollecito Case is Over--Really

The Italian Supreme Court overturned both convictions in the 2007 murder case of Meredith Kercher, and the case is now closed for good.

It was all a bunch of bullshit anyway, peddled by a batshit crazy and corrupt prosecutor and by an equally batshit European tabloid media. Neither person had anything to do with the murder, and the killer, Rudy Guede, is serving prison time.

Thank God for small miracles.

Italy's Supreme Court has overturned the murder conviction of American Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend in the 2007 slaying of her British roommate, the court announced late Friday.

Knox, 27, of Seattle, was convicted in 2009 for the killing of British student Meredith Kercher, who shared an apartment with her in the Italian university town of Perugia. Knox's boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, had been found guilty, too.

The case is now closed, the court said, and both Knox and Sollecito are free to go.

Italy is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to deal with its court system.

It's All Moot With Amanda Knox

The chances of her ever being extradited to Italy are less than my chances of being president of the United States. It will NEVER happen.

No matter what the prosecution tries to do with her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito to implicate her in some kind of plea deal of whatever the corrupt Italian system has in order for the corrupt prosecutor to cover his worthless ass, Amanda Knox will remain in the United States. The American people won't stand for an extradition.

Years ago the authorities got the killer of Meredith Kercher, Rudy Guede. Nobody else was involved.

The Knox case was slut-shaming at its worse. A flimsier case can hardly be imagined.

Justice That Goes Headlong Into the Sewer

Amanda Knox will simply have to scratch Italy off from her travel itinerary from now on.

The latest "argument" the utterly corrupt prosecution was making as to motive in the murder of Meredith Kercher was an unflushed toilet.

The CASE against Knox needs to be flushed down the toilet once and for all.

The person who murdered Meredith, Rudy Guede, is doing prison time for the killing. There is NOBODY else responsible, for crying out loud.

Knox issued a statement, which will simply go over the heads of the Italian "justice" system.
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Thank God We Don't Have Italian "Justice"

It is absolutely unreal that the country's supreme court has said Amanda Knox will be retried for the murder of Meredith Kercher.

I hope Raffaeli Sollecito has left the country.

Knox can't be compelled to return to Italy, and even if she is convicted, I seriously doubt she would be extradited.

Maybe the U.S. can extradite Juan Martinez to prosecute the case and yank him off the Arias case; his behavior has gotten more and more erratic over the course of the trial.

Etc.

This is what happens when people make education policy when they are people who haven't got a clue about education. I would say it is deliberately cynical in order to destroy public education and make money off the taxpayers putting in subpar or outright fraudulent schools.
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The assholes are out to destroy Medicare and Medicaid, and they don't care what the voters think.
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Employers are getting more and more ballsy. They want your credit report if you live in a state that hasn't outlawed credit checks, they require urine or saliva tests, they ask intrusive questions, and they can sit there and ask for your FB account and password despite this being a violation of the FB terms of service.

I doubt any employer would ask me for blog or FB information, but if any employer did, I'd thank them and say I plan to go elsewhere to find employment.
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Unreal. Now Amanda Knox's parents are scheduled to go on trial in Perugia.
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Is the Kony 2012 video a major fraud? According to this piece, it is.

I watched the video last night. I thought it was little more than a fundraising infomercial for the organization that created it.
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News, Etc.

Those who want to invest their time to better themselves careerwise are finding out they cannot repay their student loans.

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Knox speech:




I suspect she is suffering from PTSD.

News, Etc.

How did Amanda Knox get involved in such a convoluted mess in Italy?

This may explain it:

Knox grew up in the middle-class suburban neighborhood of Arbor Heights, in West Seattle, several blocks from the Puget Sound. Her parents like to describe her as "book-smart." This is true — she made the honor roll at Seattle Prep, a private Jesuit high school, and at UW — but it's also their way of suggesting that her intelligence was limited to books. As her stepfather, Chris Mellas, tells me, "She's the smartest person you'd ever know" but "dumb as a rock" when it comes to "street sense." In conversations with her friends and family, a portrait emerges of a person with a childlike innocence. She was, as her mother, Edda, puts it, "oblivious to the dark side of the world."




When strange men approached her in city parks, she would chat with them. "What's going on in your life?" she'd ask. "Let's talk." Her friend Madison Paxton recalls an incident when they passed a woman sobbing near the UW campus:



"All of a sudden, Amanda wasn't next to me. I turned around and she has this shocked look on her face. She says, 'I cannot believe that you just walked by her.' Amanda grabbed my hand and pulled me back. This woman couldn't even speak, she was crying so much. But Amanda took her by the hand into a cafe, ordered her a coffee and started talking to her, trying to get her to calm down."

The demented prosecutor says he will appeal the acquittal to the high court in Italy.  After all, he has to save face.
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I have said TFA should be outlawed because it denies low-income students the right of having an experienced, fully-credentialled teacher, and this article shows these TFA "teachers" don't even stick with the job longer than traditionally-trained educators.
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Justice Has Finally Been Done

A Perugia, Italy, jury and judges acquitted Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, today, or rather tonight in Italian time, of murder in the Meredith Kercher case.  Knox was convicted of the "defamation" charge where she fingered the wrong person, but she already served the time in prison to serve any more.  I am sure the man has been paid or will be, for the wrongful accusation.

Some asshole bitch "reporter" on CNN keeps bringing up Kercher's family and repeating all of the LIES about the phony case against Knox and Sollecito, but they HAD justice already when the real killer was convicted.  The other two  had NOTHING to do with it.  I believe Kercher's family knows this deep down anyway that the two people were railroaded.

A crooked and insane prosecutor, who apparently saw satanic sex orgies or whatever everywhere, was responsible for the travesty of those two EVER going to trial.  Worse still was the European tabloid media that demonized and convicted Knox of being a murderer and a slut, with the accent on the latter.  It was thoroughly despicable.

Of course Italy's legal system is different than the U.S.'s, and the appeals system there is really where it counted.  The court did the right thing.

Let's hope Knox and Sollecito can be left alone and try to get their lives back on track.

Article:

Amanda Knox tearfully told an Italian appeals court Monday she did not kill her British roommate, pleading for the jury to free her so she can return to the United States after four years behind bars. Moments later, the court began deliberations.
Knox frequently paused for breath and fought back tears as she spoke in Italian to the eight members of the jury in a packed courtroom, but managed to maintain her composure during the 10-minute address.
"I've lost a friend in the worst, most brutal, most inexplicable way possible," she said of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old Briton who shared an apartment with Knox when they were both students in Perugia. "I'm paying with my life for things that I didn't do."
Knox and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito, Knox's former boyfriend from Italy, were convicted in 2009 of sexually assaulting and murdering Kercher, who was stabbed to death in her bedroom. Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison, Sollecito to 25. They both deny wrongdoing.

News, Etc.

At least there has been some good news for Amanda Knox.

It's hell being convicted by the tabloids and have your life ruined.
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Payback is a Bitch

A crooked prosecutor gets his comeuppance:



Of course this crook is going to appeal, so it isn't over with.

News Briefs

More deaths on Mount Hood. Two climbers are still missing.

Nobody ever found the bodies of those two climbers who presumably lost their lives there a couple of years ago.

More here. A helicopter search is about to start to look for the missing climbers.
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In an interview with AP, Amanda Knox says she is scared:

"OK, thanks. How are you guys?" said the American student, who had been sentenced eight days earlier to 26 years in prison for the murder of her British roommate. But minutes later, Knox confided, in answer to a question from an Associated Press reporter in her cell: "I am scared because I don't know what is going on."

The 22-year-old, who is a cause celebre in the United States among those who contend she was wrongly convicted by the Perugia court, received a 10-minute visit inside the cell by two Italian lawmakers, prison officials and a pair of reporters in Capanne prison on the outskirts of Perugia.

Knox has been jailed for two years since she was arrested a few days after the slaying of Meredith Kercher in the house the two students shared in this medieval town.

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The lawyers will have a field day with this case:

Two Warner Robins Middle School students who allegedly engaged in oral sex in a classroom while a substitute teacher and other students were present are facing additional charges.

Along with the public indecency charges first reported in The Telegraph on Friday, both students are being charged with sodomy and disruption of public school. The male student will also be charged with solicitation of sodomy and violation of probation, said Capt. Jerry Stewart of the Juvenile Division of the Houston County Sheriff’s Department.


Both students are being detained at the Crisp Regional Youth Detention Center, said Stewart, who has been working with Sgt. Porter Wood, school liaison officer for the Warner Robins Police Department, on the investigation.

The two students have a hearing scheduled in Houston County Juvenile Court Monday, Stewart said.

48 Hours Did an Update on the Amanda Knox

case last night. Here is the updated video:


Watch CBS News Videos Online


I like this comment at the CBS link:

by 66witches December 6, 2009 7:30 PM EST
I think that the persons writing above who point out problems in Knox's and Sollecito's testimony are relying on a lot of unproven facts. The police record of timings of things are flawed and disputed, and the police are also in on it with that evil deranged slob Mignini. By the way, it was the police who first implicated Lumumba, not Amanda, and she was basically bullied into what is called an "interrogator's trap" in which a suspect is basically asked to imagine a possible scenario. It's very easy to imagine that you would be the perfect picture of stoic nobility under aggressive interrogation, but different people buckle under different levels of pressure, which is why in the US and UK and some other countries, there are stringent rules around how interrogations are conducted. Coercion, leading questions, bullying, aggression, - it doesn't have to take electric shock torture to get a compromised confession. For some people an hour of extreme, threatening and accusatory interrogation is enough to create a confusion. That entire interview in any case, was ruled inadmissible as it was under duress, without an interpreter and no lawyer present. If you have ever had to make a police statement you know that they put things into their own words, supposedly based on what you've said and they write it down and then you sign it. The only reason that interrogation was heard in court is because in the FLAWED and CORRUPT Italian judicial system, the civil case is heard simultaneously with the criminal case. Civil cases have a lower burden of what is admissable and so this loophole allowed that illegal and flawed entrapment of an interrogation to be heard by the same jury that was hearing the criminal case, simultaneously. We may never know why it sometimes appears that Amanda and Raffaele appear to have something to hide about their activities that evening, or at least are rather vague and insubstantial. Maybe they were smoking Salvia and went on an astral journey that lasted til 5 a.m. and can't exactly discuss the fact that they were at an alien rave on Venus all night, or maybe don't even remember what happened. It doesn't matter, because the fact they don't have a verifiable alibi other than that they weren't there should NOT be enough to convict. And even looking or acting a bit suspicious or in ways that don't conform to expectations is hardly proof of a hideous crime. To me, Amanda is not faking it one bit when she speaks about Meredith being her friend. Mignini on the other hand comes off as a loathsome toad with bizarre fixations. Catholic-Mafia run Italy also has very convoluted and hypocritical morals surrounding alternative lifestyles, sex and getting high. The agenda to enforce a traditional code of so-called morality is also a big factor in this case. I personally don't find the footage of the pair embracing after the murder was discovered as so weird as everyone is making out. If you are with your lover when you suddenly find yourself in an extreme and scary situation, involving death and tragedy, wouldn't the natural thing to do be to seek solace in their arms? I didn't find their embrace to be particularly racy, it seemed comforting. Anyway, thanks for showing this program CBS. I hope you continue to follow up the story.

But what I really want to know is why no-one is talking about the ditched cell phones? This seems really significant to me. If Meredith and Raffaele had taken them as part of the staged break in, well, first of all what a dumb choice as they're so identifiable! Secondly, why not dispose of them a bit better! It makes a lot more sense that Guede, the interrupted burglar and opportunistic sex attacker, would have taken them at some point - perhaps when it was still a burglary - and then panicked and ditched them when he ran off. I also find it significant that Guede never implicated Amanda or Raffaele in the crime until it was clear that there was a huge media interest in her and that he could manipulate things to shift the blame. I think all Americans should judge the merits of this case based on how the outcome would have been in a US court. By those standards, properly upheld, there is no way there would have been a conviction and so for that reason alone, all US citizens should support Amanda's right to a fair interrogation, arrest, and trial. Sending letters demanding Mignini's resignation would be a good start. Thanks for reading.

This Larry King Live interview with Knox's parents was from a couple of months ago:

L-king/Knox from Ray Turner on Vimeo.

Two Prominent Legal Authorities or Whatever You Want to Call Them

talk about the Amanda Knox case, and why the hell it is so confounding to Americans.

It has to do with a completely different legal system in place in Italy; in fact, our country is unique in that it is the only one with a "real jury system." In Italy, the jury merely rubberstamped the police investigation.

Let it be a warning to any American trying to live abroad.

Some snips:

In Italian criminal cases, the jury includes two professional judges, one of whom is the presiding judge in the case. “Many of the European countries have this mixture,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “In general, the lay jurors don’t have as much lay influence as the professional judges.”

Also, the jury is not sequestered until deliberations, opening them to the inflated media coverage of a trial. And in the case of Ms. Knox, there seemed to be leeway about how much inflammatory prejudicial evidence was allowed.

Prosecutors linked Ms. Knox to the murder with forensic evidence that included a D.N.A. sample that was found on the handle of a kitchen knife, although one that was wiped clean and, according to defense attorneys, not the same size as Ms. Kercher’s wounds. In their concluding arguments, the prosecution showed an animated version of how they believe the crime was committed.

And in a sharp departure from American jurisprudence, the prosecutors portrayed Ms. Knox as promiscuous and wanton.

I Don't Know, But I Would Be Scared

for any young student, especially female, who decided to go to Italy to study in the light of what happened to Amanda Knox. It's tragic, because Italy has so much to offer in terms of culture. But as the Knox case demonstrates, the legal system is very, very, very corrupt, worse than in the United States even.

More commentary about Knox that I agree with is here.

The case is a total outrage. I hope Congress does something about this horrendous miscarriage of justice and get her out of that country. The same would apply to her former boyfriend, who also had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Here is the 48 Hours Broadcast

of questions surrounding the Amanda Knox case. She never had a chance:


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Amanda Knox Was Found Guilty

in an obvious frame-up by Italian officials and by the prosecutor in the case.

That poor girl didn't have a chance, and neither did her former boyfriend. They had nothing to do with it, but Italy's legal system is notoriously crooked.

48 Hours did a report on her questioning her case. They will do an update tomorrow.

Italy is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Miscellaneous News

This s.o.b. should get what is coming to him.

Killing a tiny dog is beyond despicable.
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Considering how corrupt the Italian judicial system is, one has to take this "expert" in the Amanda Knox case with a huge grain of salt.

Given the widespread corruption, Knox probably doesn't have a chance in hell.

Italy is a great place to visit, but I am damned glad I don't live there.
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We need to work on providing more low-income housing, not be charging rent to working people who are homeless.

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The Amanda Knox Case

is surely a hideous injustice, especially now that 48 Hours has pretty much blown apart the prosecution's case out of the water.

Both she and her boyfriend should be released, but this despicable, lawless prosecutor is hellbent on getting her convicted. Public opinion in Italy always wants her convicted and imprisoned.

Unbelievable.




Watch CBS Videos Online

More here. I wish there could be something done about this. It's just outrageous. I am convinced she and her friend had nothing to do with Meredith Kercher's murder.


Here is another story about the persecutor--er, prosecutor:

The Italian prosecutor managing the murder trial of Seattle native Amanda Knox has added another target to his list -- Knox's neighborhood newspaper, the West Seattle Herald.

According to a BBC report filed Thursday, prosecutor Giuliano Mignini told reporters that he would take legal action against the paper for a Jan. 30 story that contained a claim by Knox's supporters that Mignini is "mentally unstable."

Murder of the Week

A 91-year-old has been is accused of shooting his caretaker, who was 38 years old.

The elderly man lived at a group home, which makes one wonder if he had dementia. The victim was the owner of the home:

Troyer said the elderly man opened fire after the caregiver arrived at 10:39 a.m. to take him to the doctor. The small, adult care facility is in the 5800 block of 62nd Street West.

Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum, who is handling media calls, said that detectives aren't sure what prompted the shooting.

"There is no indication of what started the argument, where he got the gun, or how he got it in there," Fulghum said.

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In a different case, Amanda Knox, a U.S. student from Seattle, appeared in court with regard to charges of being involved in the slaying of her roommate, Meredith Kercher of England.
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As the World Turns II.

Murder suspect Amanda Knox is in hot water:

A closed-circuit security camera captured images of Seattle native Amanda Knox entering her house on the night her roommate was slain, some Italian media outlets reported Monday.

The video contradicts one of the stories Knox, 20, has told police since she was arrested along with two men in connection with the slaying of her British roommate Meredith Kercher, 21.