Meredith Kercher murdered - Amanda Knox convicted, now appeals #6

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False Confessions
In about 25% of DNA exoneration cases, innocent defendants made incriminating statements, delivered outright confessions or pled guilty.

These cases show that confessions are not always prompted by internal knowledge or actual guilt, but are sometimes motivated by external influences.

Why do innocent people confess?
A variety of factors can contribute to a false confession during a police interrogation. Many cases have included a combination of several of these causes. They include:

•duress
•coercion
•intoxication
•diminished capacity
•mental impairment
•ignorance of the law
•fear of violence
•the actual infliction of harm
•the threat of a harsh sentence
•Misunderstanding the situation

•Some false confessions can be explained by the mental state of the confessor.

•Confessions obtained from juveniles are often unreliable – children can be easy to manipulate and are not always fully aware of their situation. Children and adults both are often convinced that that they can “go home” as soon as they admit guilt.

•People with mental disabilities have often falsely confessed because they are tempted to accommodate and agree with authority figures. Further, many law enforcement interrogators are not given any special training on questioning suspects with mental disabilities. An impaired mental state due to mental illness, drugs or alcohol may also elicit false admissions of guilt.

•Mentally capable adults also give false confessions due to a variety of factors like the length of interrogation, exhaustion or a belief that they can be released after confessing and prove their innocence later.


Regardless of the age, capacity or state of the confessor, what they often have in common is a decision – at some point during the interrogation process – that confessing will be more beneficial to them than continuing to maintain their innocence.

From threats to torture
Sometimes law enforcement use harsh interrogation tactics with uncooperative suspects. But some police officers, convinced of a suspect’s guilt, occasionally use tactics so persuasive that an innocent person feels compelled to confess. Some suspects have confessed to avoid physical harm or discomfort. Others are told they will be convicted with or without a confession, and that their sentence will be more lenient if they confess. Some are told a confession is the only way to avoid the death penalty.

Recording of interrogations
The Innocence Project has recommended specific changes in the practice of suspect interrogations in the U.S., including the mandatory electronic recording of interrogations, which has been shown to decrease the number of false confessions and increase the reliability of confessions as evidence

http://www.innocenceproject.org/fix/False-Confessions.php?phpMyAdmin=52c4ab7ea46t7da4197
 
Forensic Science Misconduct

Because forensic science results can mean the difference between life and death in many cases, fraud and other types of misconduct in the field are particularly troubling. False testimony, exaggerated statistics and laboratory fraud have led to wrongful conviction in several states.

Since forensic evidence is offered by "experts," jurors routinely give it much more weight than other evidence. But when misconduct occurs, the weight is misplaced. In some instances, labs or their personnel have allied themselves with police and prosecutors, rather than prioritizing the search for truth. Other times, criminalists lacking the requisite knowledge have embellished findings and eluded detection because judges and juries lacked background in the relevant sciences, themselves.

In some cases, critical evidence has been consumed or destroyed, so that re-testing to uncover misconduct has proven impossible. Evidence in these cases can never be tested again, preventing the truth from being revealed.

One weak link
The identification, collection, testing, storage, handling and reporting of any piece of forensic evidence involves a number of people. Evidence can be deliberately or accidentally mishandled at any stage of this process.

The risk of misconduct starts at the crime scene, where evidence can be planted, destroyed or mishandled. Evidence is later sent to a forensic lab or independent contractor, where it can be contaminated, poorly tested, consumed unnecessarily or mislabeled. Then, in the reporting of test results, technicians and their superiors sometimes have misrepresented their findings. DNA exonerations have even revealed instances of "drylabbing" evidence – reporting results when no test was actually performed.

All over the map
The Innocence Project has seen forensic misconduct by scientists, experts and prosecutors lead to wrongful conviction in many states. The following are among the more notorious:

• A former director of the West Virginia state crime lab, Fred Zain, testified for the prosecution in 12 states over his career, including dozens of cases in West Virginia and Texas. DNA exonerations and new evidence in other cases have shown that Zain fabricated results, lied on the stand about results and willfully omitted evidence from his reports.

• Pamela Fish, a Chicago lab technician, testified for the prosecution about false matches and suspicious results in the trials of at least eight defendants who were convicted, then proven innocent years later by DNA testing.

• A two-year investigation of the Houston crime lab, completed in 2007, showed that evidence in that lab was mishandled and results were misreported.

Ending forensic fraud
The Innocence Project has uncovered these abuses since 1992 and has developed recommendations for forensic labs, law enforcement agencies and courts to ensure that forensic science misconduct is prevented whenever possible. The Innocence Project calls for states to impose standards on the preservation and handling of evidence. When exonerations suggest that an analyst engaged in misconduct or that a facility lacked proper procedures or oversight, the Innocence Project advocates for independent audits of their work in other cases that may have also resulted in wrongful convictions.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Forensic-Science-Misconduct.php
 
Giving a confession after about 2 hours sort of knocks out all these theories/false hope that it was sleep, food, or water depravation that was the cause of it :innocent: .

How long should it take to get a false confession from a 20yr old college student interrogated in a language she didnt fully understand?

Have you ever been a smart yet naive 20yr old girl studying abroad? I have. Have you ever been intimidated into signing something that was not true? I have. I can easily see how it happened.
 
no history of prescription drugs mentioned plus, they were drug tested and only a small amount of cannabis was detected

Yeah, in the urine test given several days later.
 
That is the very reason the weight, the size, the power of the knife, the transporting it knowing the control, the authority he has that he could make a snap decision and use that knife at will.

Multiple weapons to the point of the ridiculous carried by an individual are not unusual as evidenced in the pages of this site.

Young, impulsive [imo sociopaths] giddy with the thought of the possibilities with the reinforcing load adding bravery….impetus…..

Maybe RS’s regular pocket knife was not adequate for the possibilities or the eventuality.

I don’t mean to interrupt the conversation but I think if an understanding of the knife is to be had the closer examination of the fetish associated with knives and their role in the act is called for.

A knife lover is going to want bigger not smaller and carrying it and any associated discomfort is all part of the attraction.

The carrying of an unwieldy knife is a reminder of the move from thought to action.

It also may have had some sort of significance to the couple.

Obviously I feel the right people are in jail. I felt it even stronger seeing tape of the two sort of unexpectedly on high def on a huge TV. Chills ran through me. I wouldn’t want to run into either of them in a dark alley.

I do feel for AK’s mother but her father and AK have a lot in common, imo.


All IMO

Hi Jade:) Thanks for the great post, please continue to contribute:)
 
very hard to make those facts fit the hypothesis

These are tox screens folks. They are highly sensitive tests

Yes Nova Xanax is from the same group of drugs, thus no cocaine, no xanax, there is a long list of these drugs under that category and i think they have tried to fit many of them in

The fact remains she was tested, and these are very sensitive tests, she did not have any type of benzoylegonine in her system

Only trace amounts of cannabis

If anyone thinks they did not test her for just about anything under the sun they did. They were trying to find anything they could on her even to the point of telling her that she had HIV, thus we know they even went that far with the drug tests. They then gave her a false result to find out whom she had slept with so that they in turn could be tested when in fact she never tested positive and the test was given to her 2 times. The simply wanted a list of whom she had slept with


I've asked it before, and I'll ask it again: was she ever given a hair drug test?
How long do benzos (or its metabolites or other evidence of its use) stay in the hair?
 
Do you know how much sleep, food or water AK or RS had during the days following MK's murder? If that info is available, I haven't read it.

But those are merely aggravating factors. The primary motivation in coerced testimony is a desire to accommodate the interrogators, either to end the pressure of the interrogation itself or to avoid whatever punishment is threatened for non-cooperation.

Do you?
 
I guess the question is, are AK and RS 'sociopaths?'

If they didn't do this crime, are they still 'sociopaths?'

Yes, yes I know many are convinced they did, but just consider the question for a moment.

If they still acted the same way (hug, kiss, smile, buying underwear), but you had 100% proof they were not involved in MK's murder at all, would you still affix the same label to them?


Fascinating point!

Yes, I think a sociopath could be an innocent bystander and the behavior associated could cast doubt on their innocence.

It would seem if there was any question that might be the case the defense would point out that an anti social personality disorder is evident and the actions don’t say what they appear to say.

Better to be labeled a sociopath than a murderer I would think.

All imo
 
I took the 9:46 time from an anti-AK site, so I thought it was safe. I don't know why the time there differs from what I assume are times you got from the Motivation Report. Either way, it is unlikely that AK was home by 9.

The reference to parsimony at 9:58 makes no sense whatsoever, unless MK was calling someone else's voicemail. If so, why isn't that person identified? If she was checking her own messages, maybe she hung up the phone when she heard "no new messages"; otherwise, it makes no sense to call your own voicemail, but hang up before you hear the messages to save minutes.

I don't understand what you mean by an "anti-AK" site? Is that a site dedicated to hating AK or are you referring to sites which support her guilty conviction?
 
Amanda had both blood and urine tests and only trace amounts of cannabis was found in her system. There is misinformation with respect to the testing of cocaine. The drug itself does not stay in your system as long as the metabolite Although they test for cocaine they also test for benzoylegonine which stays in your system much longer as explained below. If she had ingested cocaine or been a habitual user it would of been all over every media outlet and tabloid immaginable. Xanax is also a benzoylegonine

As per perugiashock below

Technically none at all, since Amanda basically tested negative for drugs (only low traces of cannabis), therefore, didn’t need rehab therapy in jail. So useless you’re trying to say that she was a drug addict when it’s already acknowledged she was not.

http://74.6.117.48/search/srpcache?...2&icp=1&.intl=us&sig=MiABrkvbA_AF0qelP71yVA--

These tox screens they do now are much more sensitive and these can be detected for much longer that stated (they just dont want the bad guys to know)

There is a bit of misinformation out there and that is cocaine is out of your system in 2-3 days. Well while that might be true LABS DON'T TEST FOR THE DRUG ITSELF. Yes, that is true, they look for the metabolite. A metabolite is something that the body produces when it ingests something, in the case of cocaine it is "benzoylecgonine" that will stay around long after the drug is gone, up to 30 days for a frequent user. THE DRUG ITSELF can stay in your bloodstream up to 72 hours. It can stay in your urine for about 2 or up to 7 days after single use. Habitual or chronic use can be detected in urine for up to 12 weeks depending on quantity, duration, and frequency of use.

Cocaine can stay in your hair up to about 90 days. But there are also information that cocaine can stay in your hair for about 25 years after you only take it once

So benzos can stay in urine for up to 2-7 days itself, too? Am I reading that right? And how many days after the murder was AK's urine tested?
 
very hard to make those facts fit the hypothesis

These are tox screens folks. They are highly sensitive tests

Yes Nova Xanax is from the same group of drugs, thus no cocaine, no xanax, there is a long list of these drugs under that category and i think they have tried to fit many of them in

The fact remains she was tested, and these are very sensitive tests, she did not have any type of benzoylegonine in her system

Only trace amounts of cannabis

If anyone thinks they did not test her for just about anything under the sun they did. They were trying to find anything they could on her even to the point of telling her that she had HIV, thus we know they even went that far with the drug tests. They then gave her a false result to find out whom she had slept with so that they in turn could be tested when in fact she never tested positive and the test was given to her 2 times. The simply wanted a list of whom she had slept with

One can't miss the irony that the prosecutor wants AK to serve additional time for slander, but the officials who told her she was HIV+ apparently go unpunished.
 
How long should it take to get a false confession from a 20yr old college student interrogated in a language she didnt fully understand?

Have you ever been a smart yet naive 20yr old girl studying abroad? I have. Have you ever been intimidated into signing something that was not true? I have. I can easily see how it happened.

So which is it??? The point was lack of ..... , was not the reason for the accusation against Patrick.

Lack of food?
Lack of sleep?
Lack of water?
Intimidation?
Coercion?
Naivety?
Confusion?
Pot haze?

Can't have 'em all... especially after only 2 hours.

Did you confess to being at a murder scene, allowing the killer into a cottage, then doing nothing to help your 'friend'???
 
A comparison to Satanism is not equivalent or relevant and shuts down a conversation that to ignore is naive.

To take the point of the post then my opining that they are sociopaths is giving them the benefit of doubt.

Ok, so if they had conscience that would inhibit their actions it was a case of wilding which would explain why they have no defense to speak of.

Either way it came to bad end for poor Meredith.

And expecting there to be honest testimony on behalf of knives and their feeling towards them would be pretty stupid for the accused of a knife attack to partake in would it not?

There is nothing stupid about those two I will give them that!


All imo

If my comparison of "satanism" and "nonspecific and undiagnosed sociopathy" is not equivalent in the sense I listed, you should be able to show how and why they can not be compared. My point was that neither term is really an argument, nor is either an actual diagnosis; yet both are used as umbrella terms to justify all sorts of things for which there is no evidence. (Note: it may be possible to define and diagnose sociopathy concretely, but that has not happened in this case.)

It isn't my comparison that shuts down the discussion, it's the use of vague terms that justify everything and, therefore, actually explain nothing.

The rest of your post dealt with speculation that AK and/or RS somehow made a fetish of that particular kitchen knife, and I merely pointed out we have no evidence that such was the case. Yes, it's possible they kept their kinks to themselves, but it's equally possible that all the "kinkiness" ascribed to this case came from the imaginations of the lead investigator and the prosecutor (the latter having been recently convicted of improper conduct inspired by just such flights of imagination).
 

I have no idea, which is why I asked. The implication of the post to which I was replying was that AK was deprived of sleep, water and food for a mere 2 hours. I don't think we know how much she slept or ate that week, do we?

As I said, however, I don't think food deprivation was a factor in the coerced statements. (Lack of sleep seems quite possible, given the events of the week.) I think she succumbed to threats from her interrogators. (I mean threats against her future; I have no opinion as to whether she was hit or not, so I don't mean to claim AK felt she was in imminent danger.)
 
Fascinating point!

Yes, I think a sociopath could be an innocent bystander and the behavior associated could cast doubt on their innocence.

It would seem if there was any question that might be the case the defense would point out that an anti social personality disorder is evident and the actions don’t say what they appear to say.

Better to be labeled a sociopath than a murderer I would think.

All imo

What is the source for all this info on sociopaths and how they behave?

The honest answer to sleuthy's question is "No." If it were proven that AK and RS were innocent, some of their behavior after the murder might be seen as eccentric, but nothing more, and probably not even that.
 
I don't understand what you mean by an "anti-AK" site? Is that a site dedicated to hating AK or are you referring to sites which support her guilty conviction?

It was just a bit of shorthand for a site that bills itself as "pro-MK." Since I think we're all "pro-MK", I used anti-AK for short.

But you're right: I should have said "pro-verdict" or something like that. Because I wasn't impugning the site's accuracy, I didn't think it mattered.
 
So benzos can stay in urine for up to 2-7 days itself, too? Am I reading that right? And how many days after the murder was AK's urine tested?

I'm certainly no expert, but as I read Allusonz' post, she is saying the benzos stay in the urine that long for an occasional user.

HOWEVER, labs actually test for the metabolites the body produces in response to benzos and other substances. The metabolites are present up to 30 days.

So AK's test should have been accurate whenever it was taken during the week or even two weeks after the murder.
 
I would hope, if I were ever to be labeled a 'sociopath,' it would be on the basis of some psychoanalytic examination over some period of time (in person) by a qualified professional and not based on snippets of video and/or rumors about my activities as seen by (and imagined by) armchair and uncredentialed lay folk.

That said, it must be pointed out that not everyone involved in a homicide is a sociopath, and not every sociopath commits crimes, let alone homicides. So using that label for AK and/or RS may be hyperbolic, at best. It does nothing to further the understanding of the evidence in this case, and it is that very evidence (some of it, anyway) that casts doubt on the assertion of guilt.

Frankly, SG, and while the term may have very precise meanings for professionals, among the media and general public the term "sociopath" is so overused I think it's become meaningless.
 
Would your (referring to those who feel AK & RS are evil or sociopaths or whatever term-du-jour is being used) feelings change about AK and RS if you found out they were completely innocent and had been railroaded in this case?

Would you still think them evil and sociopathic? Or is it the fact that they appear to be involved in this murder and declared guilty that garners this opinion (and the attendant feelings toward them)?

I'm really curious about this.

I see what appears to be a lot of hatred (for lack of a better descriptor) towards AK & RS, but whether it's because of the crime or it's separate from the crime is hard to tell.

I see compassion of a sort towards RG, which I also find curious. He apologized and it got his sentence reduced. It's not a stretch to surmise that the very reason he apologized could have been a strategy to get that sentence reduced, and yet I haven't read that anyone suggested such a thing.
 
Frankly, SG, and while the term may have very precise meanings for professionals, among the media and general public the term "sociopath" is so overused I think it's become meaningless.

That's a good point. I think 'sociopath' has come to be equated with someone seen as 'evil.' So that may be interchangeable. Either way, it's not intended as a term of endearment, that's for sure! ;-)
 
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