Some additional thoughts on the arguments of the prosecution...
As I said in my first probability analysis, the arguments the prosecution put forward are mostly in the form of “This action seems more suspicious for an innocent person than a guilty person.” But for much of their case, I think even that is giving them too much credit. Let’s look at some examples.
The three-second phone call from Knox to Kercher. This is unusual behavior, right? Well, I’ve done this more than a few times myself, but I agree, it is pretty unusual. So how much weight would I assign that evidence?
None. The question is not how unusual the behavior is, but how much more unusual if she’s innocent than if she was involved in the murder. If I know that Amanda Knox was going, later that day, to come across Meredith Kercher being attacked, and encourage or participate in the attack, the three second phone call will not be any less confusing to me. Stalking and incessant phone calls are certainly more easily explained in light of a murder, but I know of no evidence whatsoever to suggest that murderous inclinations and unusually short phone calls are associated, nor can I think of any particular reason they would motivate one.
The time at which Amanda Knox claims to have woken up. The Massei-Cristiani report finds suspicion in the fact that Knox claimed to have gotten up at 10:00-10:30 AM that day, while her roommates characterized her as an early riser. For a person to violate their established sleep habits is unusual, although still normal enough that their say-so is generally enough to establish it as probably true absent additional reason to doubt them. I am personally not an early riser, but this morning I got up and left the house for a walk at 6:00 AM, while the stars were still bright out (which is in fact what got me thinking about the prosecution’s report in the first place.) But Amanda Knox was a murder suspect, doesn’t that give us additional reason to doubt her claim?
Well, no. Whether she was up at 10:30 or hours earlier has no bearing on the strength of her alibi. We know that the murder didn’t happen in the morning, and we know that she was in other places later in that day prior to the murder; it’s not as if she failed to establish that she ever left the house. Being involved in the murder doesn’t give her any additional reason to claim that she got up at 10:30.
Combined with misrepresentations and mistreatments of forensic evidence, including claims like the pattern of glass being inconsistent with a break-in, which was found to be simply false when tested, a large part of the prosecution’s body of arguments does not represent any weight as evidence at all.
Some additional thoughts on the arguments of the prosecution...
As I said in my first probability analysis, the arguments the prosecution put forward are mostly in the form of “This action seems more suspicious for an innocent person than a guilty person.” But for much of their case, I think even that is giving them too much credit. Let’s look at some examples.
The three-second phone call from Knox to Kercher. This is unusual behavior, right? Well, I’ve done this more than a few times myself, but I agree, it is pretty unusual. So how much weight would I assign that evidence? None. The question is not how unusual the behavior is, but how much more unusual if she’s innocent than if she was involved in the murder. If I know that Amanda Knox was going, later that day, to come across Meredith Kercher being attacked, and encourage or participate in the attack, the three second phone call will not be any less confusing to me. Stalking and incessant phone calls are certainly more easily explained in light of a murder, but I know of no evidence whatsoever to suggest that murderous inclinations and unusually short phone calls are associated, nor can I think of any particular reason they would motivate one.
The time at which Amanda Knox claims to have woken up. The Massei-Cristiani report finds suspicion in the fact that Knox claimed to have gotten up at 10:00-10:30 AM that day, while her roommates characterized her as an early riser. For a person to violate their established sleep habits is unusual, although still normal enough that their say-so is generally enough to establish it as probably true absent additional reason to doubt them. I am personally not an early riser, but this morning I got up and left the house for a walk at 6:00 AM, while the stars were still bright out (which is in fact what got me thinking about the prosecution’s report in the first place.) But Amanda Knox was a murder suspect, doesn’t that give us additional reason to doubt her claim? Well, no. Whether she was up at 10:30 or hours earlier has no bearing on the strength of her alibi. We know that the murder didn’t happen in the morning, and we know that she was in other places later in that day prior to the murder; it’s not as if she failed to establish that she ever left the house. Being involved in the murder doesn’t give her any additional reason to claim that she got up at 10:30.
Combined with misrepresentations and mistreatments of forensic evidence, including claims like the pattern of glass being inconsistent with a break-in, which was found to be simply false when tested, a large part of the prosecution’s body of arguments does not represent any weight as evidence at all.