<p>Honestly, how is it even logical that someone could believe she did what she was accused of? Is it logical that a sweet, free-spirited, happy college kid who was lucky enough to go abroad, and just when she gets a new boyfriend and is living the dream…commits some sort of bizarre murder? Or that the criminal who raped Meredith and had his prints all over the place killed her?</p>
<p>Of course the murderer will testify to anything the wacko prosecutor asks. Why wouldn’t he?</p>
<p>Harvest Moon, how can you honestly not buy into the “whole duress thing?” Have you read about the interrogation? Interrogated for hours with no sleep, food or water, smacked in the head? Supposedly over a dozen police interrogators? Told lies and manipulated to say what they wanted? In a foreign country, no lawyer, told she was going to prison for 30 years unless she told them what they wanted to hear? How long would most young people last?</p>
<p>So maybe you and me have a clear mind and a will of steel, harvestmoon…okay, I don’t always have a clear mind. But very few others do, especially young people.</p>
<p>I never for a minute thought she was guilty. The type of interrogation used is known to produce false confessions and bizarre responses. Some people break quicker than others. A couple of years ago, I went through the TSA pat down process because I have a hip replacement. When the agent’s gloves were tested, the report indicated something suspicious on her gloves, so I was taken to another area for a more extensive search. The agent was very nice and professional but I had the strangest reaction. My anxiety level was off the charts. If they had isolated me and shone a light in my face, I may have confessed to just about anything right then and there.</p>
<p>“In about 25% of DNA exoneration cases, innocent defendants made incriminating statements, delivered outright confessions or pled guilty.”</p>
<p>“These cases show that confessions are not always prompted by internal knowledge or actual guilt, but are sometimes motivated by external influences.”</p>
<p>I haven’t kept on all the evidence so I don’t know what I believe, although I feel there enough inconsistencies that I would find it hard to argue that she is guilty.</p>
<p>What I think is really interesting is that when I talk to people in their late 30’s & early 40’s, they think she is guilty.
I haven’t had the time or energy to have them explain their reasoning however.
Although I wonder if it is Authorities are God syndrome. Could they think that she was guilty because she was arrested?</p>
<p>I think people believe she’s guilty because she said and did some things that are weird, and some things that aren’t nice (like implicating an innocent person). I don’t find those things very persuasive, however, in the absence of real evidence.</p>
<p>The only time I ever hear Duke mentioned in that context it is about prosecutor ego and over-reach and miscarriage of justice.</p>
<p>As somebody who works with rape survivors, nothing is worse than that kind of horrible situation being all over the news. It makes it more difficult for the true victims.</p>
<p>The young Italian man in this case is trapped in such a bad situation just because of this prosecutor’s ego and obsession with knox. Notice that Nifong lost all credibility. This guy has more than one case like this and is still working. Nuts.</p>
<p>It’s kind of hard to respect their justice system when they have this particular actor in a high-profile case. Apparently winning over there is more important than justice. It can be over here too - just read through the cases of the Innocence Project.</p>
<p>Since her last trial, wasn’t somebody from the Ivory Coast convicted of the murder? So does this guy go free, or do they convict Knox and keep them both imprisoned, just in case?</p>
<p>Need to remind myself to never litter or jaywalk in Italy.</p>
<p>Yes, the innocence project is an excellent project, and makes one shudder at the idea that there is still a death penalty anywhere in the US.</p>
<p>The group at Northwestern, which was very, very effective, has changed its name to the justice project, for some reason. But I’m glad, very glad, they exist.</p>
<p>Absolutely. Authoritarian-personality types believe that the police can do no wrong, and that arrest is tantamount to conviction. They also tend to think that “enhanced interrogation” produces reliable evidence.</p>
<p>@MADad “Since her last trial, wasn’t somebody from the Ivory Coast convicted of the murder? So does this guy go free, or do they convict Knox and keep them both imprisoned, just in case?”</p>
<p>No, Rudy Guede would not go free as the prosecution contends that he, Knox and Sollecito acted in concert. Guede, while originally from the Ivory Coast, was “adopted” by a wealthy Italian family when his father returned to the Ivory Coast. They attempted to send him to University but he dropped out and they gave him a job taking care of one of their properties on the Italian coast. He later got involved with selling drugs. He was friendly with the boys that rented the flat beneath Knox’s flat, and it is believed that he supplied them with the recreational drugs that they all appeared to use.</p>
I haven’t followed the case closely enough to have an opinion, but really, people could have a different take on the evidence than you and not be mindless automatons, emerald.</p>
<p>I think the question about what a “fair” standard of justice is depends on whether you want a court system that places the burden of proof on the defense (making it theoretically more likely that innocent parties will be convicted) or one that places the burden of proof on the prosecution (making it theoretically more likely that guilty parties will be acquitted). Lots of Americans are outraged when a justice system based on the former is in the American media, but plenty of those same people were outraged about the “reasonable doubt” in, say, OJ’s and Casey Anthony’s trials. As odd as it seems to be recommending a video game in this context, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney actually provides some interesting fictional commentary on the balance between those two. It is based on the actual recent change of Japanese courts from a pure bench trial system that heavily favors the prosecution to a more balanced mixed judge-layman jurist system–the Ace Attorney games are, in part, commentary on corruption in the Japanese court system due to the historically high level of favor granted to prosecutors. Of course, both systems can be corrupt for reasons outside their burden of proof balance (e.g., politics, prestige, money), but frankly, with any burden of proof balance people get outraged about the balance being injustice when a particular cause fails to get decided in the way they thought or assumed it should, in large part due to the burden of proof balance in a given justice system. It’s a moral judgement of a society if they would rather be more likely to convict innocent people or acquit guilty ones, and there are no hard and fast answers to that. Not to mention that people’s views on such a matter probably change greatly if they or a loved one are either accused of the crime or a victim of one.</p>
<p>It’s also interesting that in most court fiction in America (a defense-favoring burden of proof system), like Law and Order, viewers are biased towards the prosecution whereas in the Japanese Ace Attorney games, which are set in an–admittedly exaggerated–prosecutor-favoring justice system, the player is biased towards the defense. Perhaps a case of the grass is the greener?</p>