<p>I am glad to see Amanda Knox back in Seattle. The whole case made by the prosecution made no sense but apparently Nancy Grace disagrees. I do agree that we/our kids should exercise caution when dealing with police and prosecutors. Some recent cases have reinforced that anything can happen,anywhere in the world.</p>
<p>Nancy Grace gives me a headache.</p>
<p>I don’t watch her. Has she ever believed anyone was innocent? ( this is a genuine question)</p>
<p>Nancy Grace is a toad and she has never believed anyone was innocent.</p>
<p>I think overzealous prosecutors are scary. Javert. Les Miserables.</p>
<p>My s’s friend works at CNN. He says Nancy Grace is as awful in real life as she appears. A real nasty lady.</p>
<p>And Nancy Grace would probably turn on a dime from her prosecutorial views the first time anybody even attempts to mess with her children when they are older. Can you imagine her teenage or young adult kid being in some of these situations(either victim or accused) and what her reaction might be?</p>
<p>Great now we have Nancy Grace and the UK Mail garbage tabloid to enjoy. Can we possibly go deeper in the gutter and hear from worse human beings than those charlatans? </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13279544-post55.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13279544-post55.html</a></p>
<p>Should someone call Nancy Grace to let her know that Amanda and Casey Anthony are distant cousins?</p>
<p>Nice story. Does a great job of blaming the victim.</p>
<p>They’d have felt right at home with the Fells Acre Day Care Center - one of the things that brought down Martha Coakley.</p>
<p>I actually was assigned to work for the Martha Coakley campaign out of the blue when I was interning with the DNC. I didn’t realize it until BC mentioned her just now, but I’m a little bit traumatized by the experience!</p>
<p>I just watched the video of Amanda thanking the people that supported her and was a bit surprised-- she looks like a totally different person to me. I really hope she manages to get some kind of normalcy back someday, my heart just aches for her. I can’t imagine how overwhelming it must be to be back home now.</p>
<p>(And I think this should go without saying, but since it apparently doesn’t, OF COURSE my heart aches for the Kercher family, too. )</p>
<p>Welcome home, Amanda!</p>
<p>As I was driving DH to the airport, I noticed a low flying airplane right above the interstate - it was the British Airways plane that was bringing Amanda home (the landing of the plane was covered in real time by the local news station we were listening to). The airport was a zoo crawling with close to 200 reporters, some even coming from as far as Norway. I have never seen so many news trucks and vans in one spot - I had to stop at the end of the ramp exiting the airport departures and take a photo. I’m so glad Amanda is finally home!</p>
<p>(Nancy Grace should change her name to Disgrace. Period.)</p>
<p>Does know anyone happen to know the living arrangement of Amanda and her unfortunate roommate? Were they in an apartment or a residence hall? It seems hard to find out many specifics. I still can’t figure out what the crazy prosecutor was trying to prove. And who is the guy still in jail? Was he student, too? Did a university put Amanda and her roommate together?</p>
<p>The case just seems so strange.</p>
<p>Saw Amanda speak on the news last night. She truly looks and sounds as if she’s been thru a terrible, terrible ordeal.</p>
<p>Rudy Hermann Guede confessed to the murder- but he wasn’t a college student ( he also implicated Amanda & Raffaele.</p>
<p>[Amanda</a> Knox accuser Rudy Guede will testify in court | Let’s Talk About True Crime - seattlepi.com](<a href=“http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/2011/06/26/amanda-knox-accuser-rudy-guede-will-testify-in-court/]Amanda”>http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/2011/06/26/amanda-knox-accuser-rudy-guede-will-testify-in-court/)</p>
<p>I think that they lived in an apt- there are probably apartments which are used by students studying abroad- and universities can help with finding them. ( students also do home stays- but that would depend on availability.)</p>
<p>My D had a home stay in both India & Costa Rica, but she also had a roommate.</p>
<p>There are probably 100s of men and women in America right now that are in prision for crimes they did not commit. The Innocence Project would not be in existence if police forces and investigators followed the evidence. There have been men put to dealth in the state of Texas for crimes that they did not commit. False confessions and false eye witness testimony are PROVEN facts in this country and I feel certain that it is factual in other countries as well.</p>
<p>Meet Michael Morton. Freed in an Austin suburb courtroom yesterday. His life has been changed by a course of events he had no control of. Read his story. DNA does not lie. People do.</p>
<p>[The</a> Innocence Project - Texas Man Freed After Serving Nearly 25 Years for Murdering His Wife That New DNA Evidence Shows He Didn’t Commit](<a href=“http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Texas_Man_Freed_After_Serving_Nearly_25_Years_for_Murdering_His_Wife_That_New_DNA_Evidence_Shows_He_Didnt_Commit.php]The”>http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Texas_Man_Freed_After_Serving_Nearly_25_Years_for_Murdering_His_Wife_That_New_DNA_Evidence_Shows_He_Didnt_Commit.php)</p>
<p>My point is, injustice comes in so many forms, we can’t “blame” the Italian Justice Systems, frankly it is a pretty fair process. The problem here was a prosecutor who went rogue. A common problem in the majority of these cases.</p>
<p>Regarding misplaced “justice,” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; ask Lenel Jeter about justice and amoral prosecutors in Texas.</p>
<p>As for Amanda, I am hoping that she gets all the rest and emotional support that she rightly deserves. And yes, she should be allowed to profit from a media deal, so as to save her family from financial ruin and to restart her life.</p>
<p>To the Kerchers, the Italian authorities owe them an apology. They can and should find comfort in the knowledge that the murderer Rudy Guede has been held accountable for his crime.</p>
<p>“My point is, injustice comes in so many forms, we can’t “blame” the Italian Justice Systems, frankly it is a pretty fair process.”</p>
<p>Honestly? A system that allows the police to sleep deprive and interrogate a young woman without a lawyer for days at a time? That allows the police to hit her during interrogation? That allows them to have someone pretend they are a doctor, inform her she has HIV and must tell them the names of men she had slept with…and then release the list to the press? To allow a prosecutor who is being charged with misconduct to continue to try the case? To allow shoddy DNA analysis?</p>
<p>Could be considered a pretty fair process if you’re an accused terrorist in a war zone.</p>
<p>I think the first thing that tells you there is a “fundamental” problem with the Italian justice system is the fact that they are allowed to hold someone in prison for up to a year without even charging them with anything. Right there, I’m already a little bit nervous.</p>
<p>As for the US and the grizzly death penalty, it just should not exist. The state should not be in the business of murder. Ever. But, add to that the fact of human infallibility, the fact that not every single cop or prosecutor is trustworthy, and I say even if you really believe in “an eye for an eye,” how can you be 100% certain in every case? You can’t. The state has executed innocent men. Horrifying.</p>
<p>There is an irony to this story. I am reading about the outrage (rightfully so) about aspects of the way Amanda Knox was questioned, the tricks they played, the fact that you can be in an Italian jail for a year without being charged, and so forth. The irony to me is that it was because of these abuses that we have the protections we do in this country. For example, the kind of questioning the Italian cops did would very likely get the evidence suppressed from a trial, using such methods to get a suspect to talk would be consiidered the equivalent of the old put the ‘suspect’ in a room and beat the crap out of them until they confess. We have the Miranda warnings in this country, and we have rulings on inadmissable evidence and such…we also have habeus corpus rulings and the right to being arraigned and indicted in a decent amount of time. </p>
<p>Yet there are many people in this country who are probably gnashing their teeth at the way Amanda was tried, yet who also turn around and deride the many protections the law gives those accused, whether it is wanting to get rid of Miranda warnings, taking away the right to an attorney that came out of Gideon, the rules of exclusionary evidence and the rules limiting the way cops can question subjects, we get howls, that all this ‘handicapped’ the cops and such…with a case like this, you see why, hence the irony.</p>
<p>And no, this isn’t unique to Italy,there are abuses here, big ones. The Duke case was a classic one, while in Italy there probably was an anti American slant to the case, while there the prosecutor , both for political reasons and possible because the accused were seen as rich, frat boy types arrogantly hurting a poor minority girls, conducted official misconduct (as an FYI, according to one radio report, the prosecutor has already been found guilty of misconduct charges, though it didn’t say it was this case). </p>
<p>One thing that does help prevent abuses here in the US is fundamentally different then Italy, if I understand Italian law correctly, they don’t have the concept of innocent until proven guilty, and there law says that the defense has to prove their client is innocent, that unless the defense totally rebuts the prosecutions case, rather then casts doubt on it, that the person is guilt. When the burden of proof is not on the prosecution, it is a lot easier to convict innocent people, since often it is very, very hard to prove someone is innocent rather then show that the prosecution case doesn’t add up. </p>
<p>What also is not unique to Italy is what happens with high profile cases like this, and how it affects the cops and the prosecutors office. Lurid cases like this demand ‘quick justice’, and cops and prosecutors often practice what is called ‘satisfice’, which is to find an easy solution and then build a framework to make that true, rather then dig in to find the truth which may be complex. Joseph Wambaugh in his novels (he had been an LAPD sergeant for a number of years) writes about the practice of ‘clearing’ a case, where detectives find either a patsy, or better yet, someone who is dead, who they can in some ways stick with a case that is nasty. </p>
<p>Prosecutors are political, and they have ambitions, so they are looking to granstand as well. And in these cases, cops and prosecutors are thus willing to ‘extend the envelope’ or whatever because of the pressure. Amd the other thing to keep in mind is to try and imagine what it is to get arrested, especially in a foreign country, and how that can cause those arrested to behave in ‘suspicious’ ways. People watch tv legal shows and think that getting arrested is no big deal, and especially for someone who has never been in trouble, it is a big ordeal, it isn’t like getting a speeding ticket. And cops know how to use that fear, they do all kinds of things, and sometimes to tragic ends. My sister in law, who had been an ada in NYC, said that despite what you see on “law and order” and such, that innocent people when brought in are the ones who seem confused or give conflicting testimony, that among other things, they are deathly afraid of saying something innocent and having it construed as a confession (ever see the movie, “My Cousin Vinny” where the kid is talking about accidentally not paying for a can of tuna from the store when he says “yeah, we did it”, when the cops are asking about the murder that happened in that store…). What she told me is that the career criminals are the ones who have the story, because they have rehearsed it many times. And if someone who is innocent is brought in, they often believe that being innocent, that they have nothing to hide, and will laugh or whatever, because they don’t feel threatened…or conversely, might be so scared that they react in weird ways. When I hear comments like “she didn’t seem sorry” or “well, she fingered an innocent man” is doing so from a very long range perspective; and more importantly, it has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Albert Camus wrote the novel “The Stranger” where a character is on trial for murder, and he basically gets convicted because everyone decides he is some sort of unemotional monster, who didn’t cry when his mother died and the like, and therefore he must be guilty…</p>
<p>Before anyone accuses me of being anti cop or prosecutors, I am not, I have members of my family and friends who are or have been cops and da’s, and some of them worked some of the worst kind of cases you can imagine, and from what they have told me I know how hard it is. What they have told me, though, is that there is no excuse for not doing a thorough job, that like in anything else, there are more then a few people willing to cut corners and try to take the easy way out.</p>
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<p>I think that the more time you spend with those in the business of prosecuting people, the less you trust them. I also have had very close ties to police and prosecutors in the past and those close ties have led to distrust. It always bothers me to hear people slammed for not cooperating with the police. Sometimes people do not cooperate because they are smart, not because they have something to hide.</p>
<p>Excellent post, Musicprnt.</p>
<p>Some of my classmates became U.S. Attorneys and ADAs. Some exceptional ones with a granite character come to mind. There are others whom give me fear for anyone being investigated by them, and not for good reasons.</p>
<p>As for the police, the best ones know that there are the slackers and the lazy among detectives, just like in the rest of the general population. The Charles Stuart case in Boston comes to mind.</p>
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Right, I mean look at the Ramseys. They were savvy people and knew that they needed a lawyer to protect them from a prosector who was sure they were guilty. The bed wetting scenario was about as sick as the Amanda Knox sex game scenario. I find that a very sad case, as well – Patsy Ramsey’s name wasn’t cleared until after she died, and the killer of a child has never been caught.</p>