Sco v. IBM, what happens to a political case

The "save Amanda Knox" cause that has recently consumed this blog, is undergoing a shift.  Initially the core group standing behind Amanda Knox were people who knew her.  People who simply couldn't conceive of her being the sort of person Mignini described.  People who paid their own airfare to testify in her trial.   Then a small group of people examined the evidence and found it wanting.  So while there was publicity, it was mostly directed in the early days by Mignini towards villifying Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito so as to generate false statements (see Amanda Knox and prosecutorial abuse for more on this).   As the cause is broadening out to a few thousand people, its beginning to look more like a small political movement. Fewer and fewer people involved knew Amanda or any of the main parties involved personally.

So what we have here is a structure: a core group of people involved in the formal legal case, surrounded by a web support group who are gathering "evidence" in parallel with the actual trial, surrounded by a broader political movement. There are lots of criminal cases with the broader political movement. There are lots of political cases with a web based investigation but no broad political support. This triple is rare. And the best analogy is a civil suit that occurred recently SCO v. IBM that I was involved with in much the same way as this case.  And the point of this post is to examine this earlier case for what is instructive about it.

SCO was a market leader in x86 (PC) based Unixes during the 1980s  and 90s, and arguably along with Microsoft one of the few companies that believed there was money in the operating system's business as opposed to operating systems being a lost liter for selling hardware.     As Linux came in they moved onto more of a legacy support role and eventually saw their value eroded, eventually being merging with a Unix company (see Caldera OpenLinux on wikipedia for more details).

The public controversy started when the SCO Group's CEO, Darl McBride, initiated a media campaign arguing that the Linux kernel contained "hundreds of lines" of code from SCO's version of UNIX, and that SCO would reveal the code to other companies under NDA in July.  The Linux development process is public, and the kernel team has always been aggressive in attempting to ensure compliance with copyright law.  The SCO code copyright violations, if they existed most likely were in the IPX module which had been funded by Caldera, the predecessor to the SCO group.  And so this media campaign led to public outrage by a small group of people who were involved with Linux.  But this outrage quickly moved onto the broader community of people involved in the Linux community.  In much the same way that Mignini's media leaks to British and Italian tabloids originally offended just Amanda's family and friends but later generated the public interest in Seattle regarding Amanda Knox.

With a high level of public interest the initial filing in their lawsuit against IBM was heavily scrutinized.  I was typical in noticing dozens of incorrect and false statement.    I caught a lot of statements about the history of SCO, which I had been a fan of during the early 1990s, which were false.    There were also provably false statements about the history of Linux.   So in the discussions on the case I started raising these points.  And this was nothing more than internet blather.  What was different in this case, than so many others was I wasn't alone.  Dozens of people were doing the same thing.  And very quickly a site, Groklaw, was set up which organized this counter information.  Playing much the same role as Injustice in Perugia and Friends of Amanda do for the Knox case.  A central collection of information about the case as if the broader public had a vote.

Its hard to give examples on a general purpose blog since: most of the readers don't know what an operating system is, Linux / SCO has to do with operating systems kernels and the debates about things like IPX have to do with kernel libraries.  So I'll pick an example, which while trite gives an example of how misleading and dishonest the entire filling was.  Point 75, reads (points are mine)

The name "Linux" is commonly understood in the computing industry to be a combination of the word "UNIX" (referring to the UNIX operating system) and the name "Linus." The name "Linus" was taken from the person who introduced Linux to the computing world, Linux Torvalds.

Which of course is false in a whole bunch of ways. The name of the original programmer was Linus Torvalds, not Linux Torvalds. His name for the system was Freax which was a combination of Free, Freak and X. The name "Linix" (not a typo) was Ari Lemmke's abbreviation of "Linus' Minix".  Ari ran the site where Linux was first uploaded and first distributed from.    Minix was a reference to Andrew S. Tanenbaum  Operating system he wrote as a companion to his standard text, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (link is to the late 1980s version, current is here).

And these details are important in context.  The point of 75 was to argue that even the name Linux is evidence for their theory of the derivation of Linux  While in reality the origin of the name shows the opposite.  The reference to Minix shows that the early version of the code came from the educational / academic community and not the commercial community, product lines with the AT&T code.      As an aside, the name Linux was a failed attempt at unifying the pronunciation using Linus name. American's were pronouncing Linix (Linn-ks) rather than 'Lee-nuks' (Len-uxs) and since Linus pronounces his name 'Lee-nus' the assumption was Linux would be pronounced that way; however Americans pronounce Linus as 'lye-nus' and Lye-nuks was the natural connection which also wasn't right and just added to the confusion.

So again while that point may sound nitpicky, and it is, this is meant to be an example that doesn't require background of how wrong SCO was on its many many points.   And there were hundreds of these.  All like the Harry Potter book, the blood on the knife, the bloody footprints... evidence that simply didn't exist.  And just as guilters today in the Knox case encourage everyone to ignore the specific facts that virtually ever piece of evidence that is not irrelevant has been refuted, SCO's defenders encouraged the people hearing about these nonsensical claims to focus on the big picture.   But of course the big picture was just an amalgamation of innuendo.   But unlike in the Knox case the judiciary didn't feel it appropriate to create their own theories from SCO's claims, filling in the blanks with "it is possible and in fact probable".   Rather they focused on the evidence as presented by the plaintiff:

Viewed against the backdrop of SCO's plethora of public statements concerning IBM's and others' infringement of SCO's purported copyrights to the UNIX software, it is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed SCO's alleged copyrights through IBM's Linux activities.

The interest and controversy, fed by these sites continued to build.  Journalists covering these sorts of things, typically rewrite a press release throw in a line or two of their own and move on after a few hours.  For serious cases of course everything needs to be carefully fact checked, reputations can be made or lost based on how evidence was handled.  And journalists soon found that this case was not going to be treated the same way as a minor lawsuit.    The level of controversy and heat, was more like writing about the Israeli / Palestinian crisis or a major political case.  There were expected to check and double check every line they wrote.  Years later journalists faced criticism for what they had written in SCO v. IBM; and almost all who had done little more than regurgitate press releases had to write detailed apology / retractions admitting it, to maintain their credibility.

But journalists were not the only ones effected.  The legal system itself was substantially influenced.  They were people in IBM that originally been inclined to settle cheaply.  The PR campaign and the community reaction to the SCO PR campaign put those ideas to rest.  IBM knew the community reaction to anything short of total victory would be devastatingly negative publicity.  Conversely the ongoing case was a net positive in terms of marketing, IBM's got to be the good guys among a large chunk of their potential customer base all for the cost of a minor lawsuit, SCO's PR campaign backfired.  And again the analogy of Mignini's original vilification campaign leading to a dozen books and at least 3 movies works well in this analogy.

And as the case continued the people involved who were deposing themselves to assist IBM were not secondary players like myself but primaries.  For example the project manager who had negotiated parts of the project Monterey contract for SCO with IBM came forward to contradict SCO's claims about what their intent had been at the time.  The estate of John Lions, whom both sides knew had died of old age, came forward publicly to forward to contradict SCO's claims, and provide evidence to IBM about having gotten parts of Lions' Commentary on UNIX from AT&T that Lions hadn't.  IBM's lawyers had the effect of an infinite investigative budget.   Even SCO admitted how effective Groklaw was and tried to create a connection with IBM to put an end to their activities, which failed.

In terms of the Judges, most couldn't believe that this "BS lawsuit" was the case they were going to be famous for.  None had experienced this level of public scrutiny where every motion was discussed publicly and in detail.  It caused them to go more slowly and more carefully.  It is my hope that the publicity for the Knox case similarly effects the Italian judges.  The Italian judiciary is being attacked from the right within Italy, from the British with the EU it doesn't need to further alienate America where  Italy has consistently taken the position that justice must meet international standards and shouldn't be a one country affair, (see Italy the EU and the international standards of justice).

Finally business partners and contributors to the lawsuit like like Yarro, Microsoft and Sun were affected.   Negative PR for Linux had been a boon for Microsoft and Sun.  Positive PR for SCO had been a boon for Yarro.  But once this case became really hot everyone backed off.  Microsoft while seen as unavoidably hostile to Linux needed to avoid being truly detested the way SCO was.  SUN wanted credibility in the open source world.  Conversely people on the other side like Novell and IBM who had often been mixed earned a lot street cred by being on the side of the angels.  Perguia was shocked when Seattle rejected Perugia park.  Rocco Girlanda has a US reputation now, and contacts with average Americans.

While the Knox case is not nearly as big as the SCO v. IBM case, I do think its an instructive example.

Amanda Knox: Murder On Trial In Italy

Its been interesting the last day or two reading the comments about this movie with apparently both the innocentisti and the colpevolisti thinking the movie is going to harm their cause. I've been rather confident almost from the start on this one that's its going to be friendly to Amanda. I don't have any kind of insider information here but what I've seen so far has been very promising.

First, lets start with the director Robert Dornhelm. He did a bunch of light fare in the late 1970's and all of the 1980s. In 1989, in the last days of the Ceausescu regime, a childhood friend of his, Dominic Paraschiv was shot.  The doctor misidentified him, falsely accused of being involved in a massacre. The doctor being a member of the anti-communists tied him to a bed, posted a guard to let him die from his gunshot wound.  As evidence mounted that he had the wrong man, the doctor stood by his original theory rather than admit the mistake.  As the story broke, the international media was still in a hope and glory phase with the overthrow and no one wanted to carry story about a stone cold murder due to judicial incompetence. Dornhelm wrote a movie in tribute to his friend,  and does a fantastic job in showing the banality of a the state killing Parashiv and how the media and the society all conspired in acts they would later regret. The analogy Parachiv / Knox, Timisoara massacre / Kercher murder, Clara Weber (the journalist who proved Parachiv was innocent) / Edda Mellas, Romanian anti-Communists / Italian Police, Doctor who originally misidentified Parachiv and lets him die / Mignini, the International Press / International Press is crystal clear.  I can't read his mind, but perhaps, hopefully, Dornhelm hopes to do for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito what he was too late to do for Parachiv.  I hope that Dornhelm sees that instead of another eulogy / tribute movie this time he will not let Mignini kill pull off his murder to cover his own mistake, this time he will get there before Parachiv dies.

But without question ater the death of Parachiv, Dornhelm is not the same man.  The light comedies are gone.  He makes the tribute movie to his friend.  His very next movie is the story of Marina Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald's widow.  That movie takes a conspiratorial view and is sympathetic to Oswald seeing Lee Harvey and Marina as pawns in a broader conspiracy.    Over the next few years he does movies about Anne Frank, Spartacus; both victims of state violence, both tried and both guilty. He then does a movie about Michelle Brown.  She was an early victim of identity theft.   Her thief stole $50,000 in her name; she is accused and the authorities take a bad situation and make it worse.  Eventually she becomes a leader in the credit protection acts but only after the US Senate acts, the police were none too helpful.    I don't know Dornhelm's work too well, but I do not see a guy who is going to blithely assume that because the Italian police say something its true.

Next lets move onto Hayden Panettiere who has indicated she played Amanda as innocent.  While she's not sure about the facts of the case herself and sees the facts as balanced,  she is sure that Amanda Knox is no threat to society, never had malicious intent.  She also doesn't believe Amanda got a fair trial (link to one interview).  Marcia Gay Harden who plays Edda Mellas is appalled at the lies in the newspaper, what the prosecution leaked vs. what the actual case was (link to interview).

Further, Lifetime's brand is women getting screwed over by men.  The natural villain for a Lifetime production, even knowing nothing else would be Mignini or Guede.

Its entirely possible I'm wrong.  I've made some bad calls before from the crystal ball.  And certainly I'd feel better if  Candace Dempsey had written the screen play.  But every indication I read is that the Guilters are fully justified in their freak out.  I'm going to take the liberty to answer their string of questions they have raised.

Like Arline Kercher, Meredith’s mum, we wonder why only the name “Amanda Knox” appears in the title of the film when the victim is named Meredith Kercher. And finally, we wonder why, if Amanda Knox’s family and friends are unassociated with this project, as they claim to be, they are being given an hour of airtime directly following its scheduled showing? (Open letter on true justice protesting the movie)

As I mentioned in my earlier article on Amanda Knox and the Shadow they repeat the silly point that the movie should be named after Meredith Kercher, even though the movie is about Knox not Kercher.  I addressed this bizarre notion that Knox is not a person in her own right but only a negative image of Kercher in my shadow article.   But to use the analogy from Dornhelm in this article, his movie is called, Requiem for Dominic, its named after the man accused wrongly not after the 80 people who died in the Timisoara massacre.

"What possible justification could there ever be for inflicting this kind of pain on the real-life, grieving family of Meredith Kercher?"  Saving the life of two kids for one thing.  Preventing this sort of injustice from occurring again for another thing.

"Does it enhance our understanding of this heinous crime in any way? No, it does not."  Of course it does.  Most people who see this movie will know little if anything about the crime and will know far more about it after the movie.

Does it serve to dissuade others from engaging in such acts? Do you believe there are large numbers of people contemplating rape, torture, murders that need to be dissuaded from this course of action through a movie or two?  What an odd question.


And then they close with this accusation about a bunch of people they know nothing about.  On the contrary, it breeds the kind of callous disregard for human life and lack of empathy that led to this gratuitous act of violence in the first place and that apparently characterizes those who have produced, directed and otherwise participated in the project.  The group of people who signed this letter, PMF, delights with open glee in acts of cruelty frequently complementing one another on their success in acting with callous disregard for others.   But ignoring that.  No one has any idea what led to this act of violence in the first place.  It may have been a disregard for human life, it may been lust, it may have been greed, or any of dozens of possible motives.  We just don't know that's part of the problem with the case never having been investigated properly.

But, what we do know is the people who produced this movie are good people.  I may not think much of Hayden Panettiere as an actress, but as a human being far from callous she's been active in Save the Whales for years.  Just to prove how absolutely not callous she is in this video you can see her break down in sobbing tears when she fails to save some dolphins:


You can also hear her being interviewed where she is excited about being arrested by the Japanese because it would give publicity to the cause.   She's been active in other environmental causes.   And Dornhelm, as I mentioned is someone who changed his life in response to a human tragedy.  Marcia Gay Harden who we also mentioned is extremely active in the Red Cross, and is on the board of Hearts of Gold which helps New York's homeless especially homeless children.  Valentina Carnelutti who plays Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni has done wonders in fighting against sexual abuse of children.  So again we see that the accusers of Knox just make up facts about others.

What I see are more good people, standing up for the truth and holding a light into the darkness that the Migninis of this world wish to create.

Words from a murder, repentance vs. innocence

A couple times I've used the Gary Gilmore analogy.  I'm going to do it again by contrasting a pair of speeches, Amanda's statement in her appeal vs. Gary Gilmore's first letter to Nicole Baker after his arrest (written Aug 3, 1976).   Both are the thoughts of people looking down the barrel of annihilation.  For those who don't know, Gilmore will go on to be the first man executed after the reimposition of the death penalty.  He's been arrested for 2 murders during the course of a robbery.    Gary in Green, Amanda in Red italic.  

Amanda asserts her innocence, while Gary is "repentant" in the way guilters would have liked her to be:

I look around the ugly vile cell and know that I truly belong in a place this dank and dirty, for where else should I be?

  vs   Raffaele and I are innocent, and we want to live our lives in freedom. We are not responsible for Meredith's death, and, I repeat, no justice is accomplished by taking our lives away. 

Gary agrees he is a threat to society; Amanda asserts she has never been a threat: 

I’m so used to bullshit and hostility, deceit and pettiness, evil and hatred. Those things are my natural habitat. They have shaped me. I look at the world through eyes that suspect, doubt, fear, hate, cheat, mock, are selfish and vain. vs.  Ask them if I have ever been violent, aggressive or uncaring in front of the suffering that is part of the broken lives in prison. Because I assure you that I'm not like that. I assure you that I have never resembled the images painted by the prosecution.  How could it be possible that I could be capable of achieving the kind of violence that Meredith suffered? How could it be possible that I could throw myself like that at the opportunity to hurt one of my friends? such a violence, as though it were more important and more natural than all my teaching, all my values, all my dreams and my whole life?

Amanda is often attacking for not being repentent.  Gary Gilmore is quite repentent, he killed two people to speed up his ability to make payments for a truck.  Amanda is sorry only that the whole thing happened:

Eat my heart out for the wondrous love you gave me that I threw away Monday nite because I was so spoiled and couldn’t immediately have a white pickup truck I wanted? vs. 

The only thing I am really sorry about now is that there are people to whom I should turn, who are not here, but I hope my words will reach them, because I am either locked in prison, or I'm here. And...I'm here. To the family and dear ones of Meredith, I want to say that I'm so sorry that Meredith is not here any more. I can't know how you feel, but I too have little sisters, and the idea of their suffering and infinite loss terrifies me. It's incomprehensible, it's unacceptable, what you're going through, and what Meredith underwent. [Long pause] I'm sorry all this happened to you and that you'll never have her near you, where she should be. It's not just and never will be.

Finally look at how they responded to the murder.  Gary identifies with the person going to gallows, Amanda bravely declares she is entitled to a normal life, that is all just an enormous error:

Remember I told you about The Oldness? And you told me how ugly it was - the oldness, the oldness. I can hear the tumbrel wheels creek. So fucking ugly and coming so close to me. When I was a child… I had a dream about being beheaded. But it was more than just a dream. More like a memory. It brought me right out of the bed. And it was sort of a turning point in my life… Recently it has begun to make a little sense. I owe a debt, from a long time ago. Nicole, this must depress you. I’ve never told anybody of this thing, except my mother the nite I had that nitemare and she came in to comfort me but we never spoke of it after that. And I started to tell you one nite and I told you quite a bit of it before it became plain to me that you didn’t want to hear it. There have been years when I haven’t even thought much of it at all and then something (a picture of a guillotine, a headmans block, or a broad ax, or even a rope) will bring it all back and for days it will seem I’m on the verge of knowing something very personal, something about myself. Something that somehow wasn’t completed and makes me different. Something I owe, I guess. Wish I knew. vs.

Because I felt an affinity towards her, suddenly, in her death, I recognized my own vulnerability. I clung above all to Raffaele, who was a source of reassurance, consolation, availability and love for me. I also trusted the authorities carrying out the investigation, because I wanted to help render justice for Meredith. It was another shock to find myself accused and arrested. I needed a lot of time to accept that reality, of being accused, and redefined unjustly. I was in prison, my photo was everywhere. Insidious, unjust, nasty gossip about my private life circulated about me. Living through this experience has been unacceptable for me. I have trusted above all to the hope that everything will be arranged as it should have been, and that this enormous error about me will be recognized, and that every day that I spend in a cell and in court is one day nearer to my liberty. This is my consolation, in the darkness, that lets me live without despairing, doing my best to continue my life as I always have, in contact with my dear friends and my family, dreaming about the future.

You can stop here, or read the full versions below:

August 3, 1976 from Gary Gilmore

Nothing in my experience, prepared me for the kind of honest open love you gave me. I’m so used to bullshit and hostility, deceit and pettiness, evil and hatred. Those things are my natural habitat. They have shaped me. I look at the world through eyes that suspect, doubt, fear, hate, cheat, mock, are selfish and vain. All things unacceptable, I see them as natural and have even come to accept them as such. I look around the ugly vile cell and know that I truly belong in a place this dank and dirty, for where else should I be? There’s water all over the floor from the fucking toilet that don’t flush right. The shower is filthy and the thin mattress they gave me is almost black, it’s so old. I have no pillow. There are dead cockroaches in the corners. At nite there are mosquitoes and the lite is very dim. I’m alone here with my thoughts and I can feel the oldness. Remember I told you about The Oldness? And you told me how ugly it was - the oldness, the oldness. I can hear the tumbrel wheels creek. So fucking ugly and coming so close to me. When I was a child… I had a dream about being beheaded. But it was more than just a dream. More like a memory. It brought me right out of the bed. And it was sort of a turning point in my life… Recently it has begun to make a little sense. I owe a debt, from a long time ago. Nicole, this must depress you. I’ve never told anybody of this thing, except my mother the nite I had that nitemare and she came in to comfort me but we never spoke of it after that. And I started to tell you one nite and I told you quite a bit of it before it became plain to me that you didn’t want to hear it. There have been years when I haven’t even thought much of it at all and then something (a picture of a guillotine, a headmans block, or a broad ax, or even a rope) will bring it all back and for days it will seem I’m on the verge of knowing something very personal, something about myself. Something that somehow wasn’t completed and makes me different. Something I owe, I guess. Wish I knew.


Once you asked me if I was the devil, remember? I’m not. The devil would be far more clever than I, would operate on a much larger scale and of course would feel no remorse. So I’m not Beelzebub. And I know the devil can’t feel love. But I might be further from God than I am from the devil. Which is not a good thing. It seems that I know evil more intimately than I know goodness and that’s not a good thing either. I want to get even, to be made even, whole, my debts paid (whatever it may take!) to have no blemish, no reason to feel guilt or fear. I hope this ain’t corny, but I’d like to stand in the sight of God. To know that I’m just and right and clean. When you’re this way you know it. And when you’re not, you know that too. It’s all inside of us, each of us - but I guess I ran from it and when I did try to approach it, I went about it wrong, became discouraged, bored, lazy, and finally unacceptable. But what do I do now? I don’t know. Hang myself?


I’ve thought about that for years, I may do that. Hope the state executes me? That’s more acceptable and easier than suicide. But they haven’t executed anybody here since 1963 (just about the last year for legal executions anywhere). What do I do, rot in prison? Growing old and bitter and eventually work this around in my mind to where it reads that I’m the one who’s getting fucked around, that I’m just an innocent victim of society’s bullshit? What do I do? Spend a life in prison searching for the God I’ve wanted to know for such a long time? Resume my painting? Write poetry? Play handball? Eat my heart out for the wondrous love you gave me that I threw away Monday nite because I was so spoiled and couldn’t immediately have a white pickup truck I wanted? What do I do? We always have a choice, don’t we?


I’m not asking you to answer these questions for me, Angel, please don’t think that I am. I have to make my own choice. But anything you want to comment on or suggest, or say, is always welcome.


God, I love you, Nicole.

Amanda's speech in court: (translated from Italian by PMF)


...It would happen sometimes that someone would propose a subject to discuss among us, everyone giving their opinion. I liked to followed these discussions but I was uncomfortable about whether I should participate directly, because I'm not talented for discussions. Often I don't succeed in expressing my convictions, at least verbally right at the moment. In fact, of all my friends, I'm the weakest for this. That's why, jokingly, my friend would usually jump on this, that my character was so peace-loving, and would challenge me with a little sentence: “Stand up for yourself Poindexter”, which means “Defend yourself, grind” [secchiona=someone who studies too hard, too serious]. It was a joke. And inevitably, either I would answer, but the answer coming out of my mouth would get all twisted incomprehensible...incomprehensibly around itself, or, I just didn't succeed in answering at all, because my mind would get blocked and my tongue would get all stuck. I couldn't do the thing that my friend often asked me to do, which was to defend myself. We have to imagine [Figuriamoci se io...not easy to render in English: maybe “You can imagine”] that I'm the weakest person in this room for expressing myself. That's why I ask for patience, because all this that I've prepared are the things that I didn't succeed in saying to you yet. Or better, I find myself in front of you for the second time, but these are the things that I would like to have said already. I ask you for patience because there have been opportunities to speak, but I was of few words. I believe that often words didn't come to me, because I never expected to find myself here, condemned for a crime I didn't do. In these three years, I've learned your language, and I've seen how the procedure goes, but I've never gotten used to this broken life. I still don't know how to face all this [3:00] if not just by being myself, who I've always been, in spite of the suffocating awkwardness. I was wrong to think that there are right or wrong places and moments to say important things. Important things have to be said, and that's all.


The only thing I am really sorry about now is that there are people to whom I should turn, who are not here, but I hope my words will reach them, because I am either locked in prison, or I'm here. And...I'm here. To the family and dear ones of Meredith, I want to say that I'm so sorry that Meredith is not here any more. I can't know how you feel, but I too have little sisters, and the idea of their suffering and infinite loss terrifies me. It's incomprehensible, it's unacceptable, what you're going through, and what Meredith underwent. [Long pause] I'm sorry all this happened to you and that you'll never have her near you, where she should be. It's not just and never will be. If you're not alone when you're thinking of her, because I'm thinking of you, I also remember Meredith, [5:00] and my heart bleeds for all of you. Meredith was kind, intelligent, nice and always available. She was the one who invited me to see Perugia, with her, as a friend. I'm grateful and honored to have been able to be in her company and to have been able to know her.


Patrick? I don't see you. But, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, because I didn't want to wrong you. I was very naïve and really not courageous, because I should have been able to endure the pressure that pushed me to hurt you. I didn't want to contribute to all that you suffered. You know what it means to have unjust accusations imposed on your skin. You didn't deserve what you went through. I hope you'll succeed in finding your peace.


Meredith's death was a terrible shock for me. She was my new friend, a reference point for me here in Perugia. But she was killed. [7:00] Because I felt an affinity towards her, suddenly, in her death, I recognized my own vulnerability. I clung above all to Raffaele, who was a source of reassurance, consolation, availability and love for me. I also trusted the authorities carrying out the investigation, because I wanted to help render justice for Meredith. It was another shock to find myself accused and arrested. I needed a lot of time to accept that reality, of being accused, and redefined unjustly. I was in prison, my photo was everywhere. Insidious, unjust, nasty gossip about my private life circulated about me. Living through this experience has been unacceptable for me. I have trusted above all to the hope that everything will be arranged as it should have been, and that this enormous error about me will be recognized, and that every day that I spend in a cell and in court is one day nearer to my liberty. This is my consolation, in the darkness, that lets me live without despairing, doing my best to continue my life as I always have, in contact with my dear friends and my family, dreaming about the future. [9:06]


Now, I am unjustly condemned, and more aware than ever of this hard and undeserved reality. I still hope for justice, and dream about a future. Even if this experience of three years weighs me down with anguish and fear, here I am, in front of you, more intimidated than ever, not because I'm afraid or could ever be afraid of the truth, but because I have already seen justice go wrong. The truth about me and Raffaele is not yet recognized, and we are paying with our lives for a crime that we did not commit. He and I deserve freedom, like everyone in this courtroom today. We don't deserve the three years that we already paid, and we certainly don't deserve more. I am innocent. Raffaele is innocent. We did not kill Meredith. [10:54] I beg you to truly consider that an enormous mistake has been made in regard to us. No justice is rendered to Meredith or her dear ones by taking our lives away and making us pay for something we didn't do. I am not the person that the prosecution says I am, not at all. According to them, I'm a dangerous, diabolical, jealous, uncaring and violent girl. Their hypotheses depend on this. But I've never been that girl. Never. The people who know me are witnesses of my personality. My past, I mean my real past, not the one talked about in the tabloids, proves that I've always been like this, like I really am, and if all this is not enough, I ask you, I invite you, I ask you to ask the people who have been guarding me for three years. Ask them if I have ever been violent, aggressive or uncaring in front of the suffering that is part of the broken lives in prison. Because I assure you that I'm not like that. I assure you that I have never resembled the images painted by the prosecution. [13:00] How could it be possible that I could be capable of achieving the kind of violence that Meredith suffered? How could it be possible that I could throw myself like that at the opportunity to hurt one of my friends? [?] such a violence, as though it were more important and more natural than all my teaching, all my values, all my dreams and my whole life? All this is not possible. That girl is not me. I am the girl that I have always shown myself to be and have always been. I repeat that I also am asking for justice. Raffaele and I are innocent, and we want to live our lives in freedom. We are not responsible for Meredith's death, and, I repeat, no justice is accomplished by taking our lives away. [Whispers: “okay”] Um, thank you 

NET Bible upgrade

The NET bible, which is my recommendation for all around best evangelical bible has just done a nice interface upgrade.  If you haven't tried them yet or have and like them take a look at the new interface.

http://net.bible.org 

JREF off topic

This is an open thread for comments coming from the James Randi Forum's Amanda Knox discussion.  Its purpose to allow off topic materials to float over somewhere.

Please link to a post in the related discussion, when you start a new topic,  if you know how.  Otherwise I'll try and do it.  

_________

Senator Cantwell & Amanda Knox

One of the people that the Friends of Meredith love to trash is Senator Maria Cantwell.   The reason is that she has taken an incredibly strong stand for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for a sitting US Senator.  She's questioned not just the punishment, which is common but the verdict which is almost unheard of:

“I am saddened by the verdict and I have serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether anti-Americanism tainted this trial. The prosecution did not present enough evidence for an impartial jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Knox was guilty. Italian jurors were not sequestered and were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Ms. Knox. Other flaws in the Italian justice system on display in this case included the harsh treatment of Ms. Knox following her arrest; negligent handling of evidence by investigators; and pending charges of misconduct against one of the prosecutors stemming from another murder trial.

 I am in contact with the U.S. Ambassador to Italy and have been since the time of Ms. Knox’s arrest. I will be conveying my concerns to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. I have also been in touch with the Embassy of Italy in Washington, DC. (press release)

Now the argument made against her, is that she made that statement out of ignorance.  That she didn't even know two Italians were convicted, hence her claims of anti-Americanism are ridiculous.  But, if you clicked on the link to the press release you will see in her description, "Knox stood trial with co-defendant and former Italian boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito."  So claims that "she didn't even know that Raffaele Sollecito, an Italian national, was convicted by that same jury" are obviously false.
TJMK demand more details and Senator Cantwell being the gracious person she is offered them:

Dear Professor Snape,

Thank you for contacting me with your thoughts regarding the Amanda Knox case. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

I have serious questions about whether Amanda Knox received a fair trial by an impartial jury. According to some news reports, Italian jurors were not sequestered and were allowed to view highly negative news coverage about Ms. Knox. Additionally, there may have been cross-contamination of evidence due to negligent handling by police investigators.

In this case, as in all cases where US citizens abroad face legal jeopardy, I believe that the U.S. Government should work to ensure that U.S. citizens are treated fairly, given adequate due process, and when appropriate, a fair trial by an impartial tribunal.

If Americans run into trouble while overseas, they should contact American Citizen Services at the nearest U.S. Embassy.

Thank you again for contacting me to share your thoughts on this matter. You may also be interested in signing up for periodic updates for Washington State residents. If you are interested in subscribing to this update, please visit my website at http://cantwell.senate.gov. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of further assistance. (link)

So of course like anyone else who dares speak up for Amanda she is subject to attacks.   Peter Quennell in my debate with him regarding her, "The sitting senator (Cantwell) made a fool of herself, and it is a year since her staff shut her up. Hillary Clinton of course brushed her off. For one thing Italian-Americans in Congress are very ticked at the xenophobic attitudes toward Italy being shown. For another the State Department found NOTHING wrong with the process and the trial and anything in a bill would have the whole of Italy in an uproar.  Besides there is NO sign the Italian judiciary can be leaned on. Go and ask a certain Mr Berlusconi."

Now lets talk about who Senator Cantwell really is.  Is she a foolish woman being led around by her staff whom people casually brush off, or is that just a bunch of nonsense?  Maria Cantwell got a degree in public administration and then went to work for the Alan Cranston's primary campaign in 1983.   She got involved in local politics and was elected to the Washington House in 1986, had a successful legislative record.  She was a sacrificial lamb candidate in a Republican district for the US House in 1992, except she won her seat.  As a freshmen congressmen she took strong stands on electronic privacy, and changed national policy with regard to the clipper chip.  She running in a Republican district, in a landslide year (1994) almost held her seat.

She left took over an executive position in RealNetworks and became instrumental in some of the very earliest streaming of sporting events ever done.  She was an innovator in online music,  balancing privacy with marketing, and we owe many of the compromises that have held for the last 15 years to her policies at Real.  After leaving Real she used a substantial chunk of the money she had accumulated to fund a Senate campaign without having to accept any donations.  She ran for the US Senate in 2000, won her seat and thus along with Senator Stabenow became the very first female candidate to beat an incumbent Senator.   Since then she has served a decade in the Senate where she took the lead again on privacy issues, environmental issues (she chairs the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard ), alternative energy (she chairs the Subcommittee on Energy), and of course technology.   In 2006 her opponent Mike McGavick was quite literally running from the  Liberty Mutual Group, and one of the main reasons we have healthcare reform today was that she won that election and beat back, at least in this one instance the forces of political corruption.

This is a woman of substantial accomplishment.  Amanda Knox is lucky to have such an outstanding Senator and I can't think of any reason her comments should not be treated with the seriousness of a statement by a United States Senator.  There is simply no sign that Italian American politicians, like Nancy Pelosi, have anything but affection and camaraderie for Senator Cantwell.  Her suggestion about impartial tribunals has been key to international trials for many years, and moving it down from trials of military/political figures to civilians strikes me as an excellent policy and one that is well considered.   In short the attacks on Senator Cantwell are pure bunk.

____

See also:

• Did Amanda Knox Get a Fair Murder Trial? By Nina Burleig
• An open letter with 5 questions critical of the Senator

Mack the Knife and biblical development

Mack and Jenny

So while I've been on the topic of murder I thought I'd get back to our regular scheduled programming with an analogy regarding the development of the books of the New Testament. The song Mack the knife has an interesting history:  

One of the themes I've addressed regularly is how groups other than the proto-orthodox / proto-catholics produced earlier versions of many of the books of the NT.   This often is a source of confusion and debate.  So I thought I'd give an example from a song that underwent all sorts of diverse development and whose history his fully known, the song Mack the Knife.  Here there is no dispute or missing links regarding the history. I have no doubt that Kevin Spacey sang the 2004 version. On the other hand the lyrics, music and style came from the 1959 Bobby Darin version.
Darin’s version picked up its score and lyrics from the 1956 Louis Armstrong version. Armstrong’s lyrics came from the 1954 Blitzstein translation from the German and the score from that came from 1928 Bertolt Brecht lyrics.  Brechts lyrics were originally paired Kurt Weill’s score, The Ballad of Mackie Messer, written for his wife Lotta Lenya (link to her singing it ).  But Armstrong was familiar with the version as abridged by Ernie Kovacs, which had the dark cabaret feel (listen to original Brecht).  Going back further the idea for the song came from Harald Paulsen (also in German), and he was modifying a folk tale that was based on a medieval German song whose origins are unknown.

So who wrote Mack the Knife? Clearly the “canonical” version is Darin’s but can I really talk about Bobby Darin as the author while he openly acknowledges his debt to Armstrong? Moreover, if I move fron just considering style and start asking questions about what the song means I need to look at the context, the 1928 Three Penny Opera. But that’s a modified version of the 1728 Beggar’s Opera. Most of the ideas for “Mack the Knife” come from Gay’s ballad opera, and there is a more primitive version of the song there. But that opera’s lyrics were based on Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope’s play in 1716.
 
Are those the original? Now imagine I asserted that God authored this song, based on historical events. Well the underlying historical events happened in the late 17th century and it was Pope and Swift who would have been inspired. Darin never claimed any sort of special inspiration but Mack the Knife stabilized in the 1950′s with his version.   We have hundreds of records involving dozens or artists and million of copies of versions that agree on both lyrics, score from the 1950s and 60s. That doesn’t mean the two and a half centuries prior the song was stable.    And this Darin stability ran in both directions with modern German versions show influence from Darin, for example this Dean Baxster, take.

There is no single author.  The song evolved, from a variety influences.  Earlier versions exist and give us insights.  The modern Jazz, English language ballad has a culture but what gives the song its bite are the hints of the earlier cultures.

And this is precisely what is meant when evolution of various biblical books is discussed. For example Bultmann's theory how the legends formed into a saying gospel, the Signs Gospel, which became a proto-John, which evolved towards canonical John.  Q and Mark form Ur-Lukas (proto-Luke in the diagram to the left), which migrate towards canonical Luke with Marcion's Luke (Gospel of the Lord) coming before or after.  Similarly for Moses books, the first five books of the bible that have multiple strands with alternative theologies.   When these notions come up think about how Mack the Knife evolved:
___

Variants on Mack the Knife:

• A fun version from 1959 by Dinah Shore & Pearl Bailey showing how free the song became after Darin.
• Marianne Faithful does a more traditional piano interpretation.  This had no influence but is a delightful version.  
• Liberace, 1969 does Mack in 5 different styles on piano.  
• Czech version from 1961, stylized dancing girl version with an eastern european feel 
• Damia 1931 version which has a Parisian cabaret feel.  

Darin / classical versions:

• Kevin Spacy doing Darin's Mack the Knife
• Ella Fitzgerald a nice smooth version which is well known.  
• Frank Sinatra 1989 where he acknowledges Darin / Armstrong influence.  

windowserver.log, Raffaele Sollecito's alibi witness

In the Massei report there is a ton of wild conjecture that passes for proven fact.  In the section dealing with the computer forensics however we run into statements that are reproducibly falsifiable.  That is Massei has findings of fact in his report which are not only contrary to literally thousands of pages of documentation published by Apple computer on how their operating systems work, but in fact can be falsified easily with every Macintosh computer sold in the last decade.  This is the very height of exculpatory evidence, it is evidence that can be infinitely attested to.  It is from an empiricist definition the very definition of a false statement.  Now this attack on the computer forensics, may sound like me getting on a high horse and nitpicking.  You might say something like "sure Massei is an arrogant buffoon for claiming as a matter of law that he understands OSX better than Apple computer, but he was deciding a murder case not a computer case" and you would be right.   But the computer forensics came up for very good reasons.  The false forensics were the means by which the police convinced Raffaele to give an alternate alibi to his original one.  That is without the computer forensics there is no reason to suppose that Raffaele and Amanda were not in his apartment watching Amelie at 11:00 when the prosecution believes that Meredith Kercher was killed.  They have an alibi again and we can go back to trying to decide this case on the facts on not on Mignini's hunch.    Moreover, if Raffaele has his 11:00 PM alibi then the prosecution doesn't have to argue their own medical examiner botched the autopsy to get their theory of the timeline to match what they consider the key material evidence.  Suddenly we are back to the murder happening at 9:00, Amanda and Raffaele being blocks away, and if they were involved at all only being involved in the clean up.   So this is a very big deal.  I'm going to do my best to try and make the debate between the prosecution and the defense on the computer forensics understandable, so you can follow as much of this as you can take and at least people have a reference they link off of.  The actual documentation submitted is very difficult to read because, IMHO, whoever wrote the documentation is parroting things they heard rather than understanding what they are writing.

The core argument between the prosecution and the defense has been regarding the use of Encase which is a computer forensics tool.  Encase was used to interact with Macs, running the OSX operating system on the POSIX level, the stuff common to every UNIX.  So the prosecution did not look at anything which is OSX specific, for example the defense objected to the fact that the prosecution only examined the 3 types of timestamps used by POSIX vs. all 5 types of timestamps that OSX supports.  The defense argues that there is evidence in some of the OSX files and flags showing signs of human activity, and that these signs are not present in the POSIX things that the prosecution examined.  To give you an analogy  If I were describing a book in Chinese I might have to talk about its color, its weight, the front cover illustration if there is one, the number of pages.  That's a limited amount of information.    While if I were talking about a book in English I could talk about its title, the description on the back or dust jacket, other books by the same author.  And the defense's argument is that they have found evidence in that additional information proving human activity at the time of the murder.

Getting more specific the defense argues that there is exactly the kind of exculpatory evidence that could have been missed via. inappropriate methodologies in the windowserver.log file.  Windowserver.log is part of OSX's NeXTSTEP heritage.  On most POSIX systems the sorts of messages in the Windowserver.log file would have been caught at the X11 level, not by the windowserver and thus wouldn't have been logged.   Since this is one of the  key points in the appeal it is worth answering the questions:

1. What does the Mac's windowserver do?
2. What sorts of things does it log?

Take a quick peek at this diagram to the left.  You can see basic I/O actions like typing on your keyboard or moving your mouse get dealt with at the lowest level by Kernel drivers these can also basic translations So user hold shift - a - release shift - n - g - e - l - space - f becomes user types "Angel f".  Then  the system needs context if the system is booting or in some sort of single user mode you don't want to send messages to a complicated GUI.  The context determination is done by "Core Services".   For hardware actions that are going to require interaction with end user applications, like spreadsheets, web browsers or games the message is passed through to the Windows Server.  It then can handle the message itself, which is generally the case with mouse movements; or it can pass the message onto the correct application depending on where various things are on the screen, which is generally the case with keyboard input.   Lets see an example of both.  Microsoft Windows machines also have window servers and while things don't work quite the same, but close enough for this demonstation.

I want you to grab another window other than this web browser and move your mouse really quickly so that you keep covering and uncovering this line from various angles.  Next I'd like you to reload this webpage and have the browser's rendering engine redraw everything. The first kind of redraw was fast.  What happened was your window server saw the two windows were going to overlap, had already buffered what the applications wanted in their windows broke everything down into primitives and fed it to the your graphics card.  When you changed your mouse direction the window server used the relative eternity of those hundredths of a second to repeat this process and the two windows passed smoothly.  The second time we had the application actually redraw everything and let the window server know what was needed.  Orders of magnitude slower.

So hopefully I've convinced you:

• To be grateful to your window server for the years of eye strain it has saved you from suffering
• Why the window server is a very credible witness to a human interaction with a computer. Exactly the sort of process that would know when Raffaele (or another user) was clicking his mouse or banging on his keyboard.

So you might think "perfect, we just ask the WindowServer what it was doing at the time of the murder and we either confirm or refute Raffaele's alibi".  Oh if only it was that easy.  WindowServer listened to your childhood coach about focusing on this play "keeping your head in the game".  It is fast it lives unencumbered by the past, existing in a permanent now.  Your obnoxiousness with the mouse  and the two windows is forgotten.  WindowServer itself is the perfect witness with an amazingly bad case of Alzheimer's.  Oh but it does keep a log book a place where it writes down some important stuff, called windowserver.log.

I've highlighted where the Window Server sits on the OS side. This is just like our other picture but with more stuff on it, you still see hardware, kernel, core services, the window server, the application environments and the applications themselves.   The point I wanted to make is where this plugs into on the OS side, the Quartz system, if you are a Mac user this is probably not your first time hearing about "Quartz" the part of the OS that handles graphics for applications and hopefully seeing Window Server in this context helps you make the mental shift to thinking of this from the application's perspective.  If you start to think in terms of Quartz then you can think of this as the applications make calls to the Window server to draw, resize, hide, and move windows using Quartz graphics primitives.   It also handles extraneous interactions like the screen passing over, from the previous example.  What you would expect Quartz to do.  If you haven't heard of Quartz don't worry about it,  The main thing you need to understand is that it sits in the Quartz layer that most applications use to handle the screen.    If you look directly above WindowServer, you'll see references to Carbon, Classic...  the various applications environments.

Cocoa has the best support for Window Server so lets look at this from Cocoa's perspective rather than the Window Server's as we switch over to the logging.
I've highlighted the NSWindow binding which is where Window Server interactions will occur.  You can see it is inside of NSResponder, which makes sense, this is how the system is going to pass events to you as an application that it believes you need to respond to.  Conversely creating a Window needs to create a reference with Window Server so it can manage it....

It is this interaction between NSWindow as an abstract binding and WindowServer as an actual entity that will generate log.  Anytime for example an application requests something impossible, like a window bigger than the screen it is on, if an applications reports that it has no idea what do with a message that was passed to it, etc... Window Server writes a short message in windowserver.log recording this failure and then "uses its judgement" about how to handle the problem.  If you look at your own windowserver.log (if you are on a mac) you'll see that depending on your applications somewhere from every few seconds to every ten minutes something like this happens and a note is recorded.  They may seem a bit cryptic but they are designed for the applications programmers to see where and when these times when windowserver had to guess occurred.  Apple's documentation for the NSWindow class, discusses in detail what sorts of events specifically will generate log.  For example in the section on setBackingType Apple indicates that if buffering is changed after initialization that will generate an error, a log entry in windowserver.log.  I don't see any advantage in going another level deep but I hope the discussion above makes it clear what the connection is between NSWindow and Window Server, and why that documentation should be taken as authoritative on Cocoa applications generating windowserver.log entries.

For the other environments:

• Carbon the default is to register windows and get messages more or less like the OS9 windowserver unless kOSAModeNeverInteract is set.
• Java the interaction happens at the JRE level.
• Quartz-wm: handles the interaction for X11 applications.
• Quicktime has a lower level primitive that can peer with windowserver (this is complex)
• Classic didn't run on Raffaele's computer so we can ignore.

And that's basically it.  Most every application uses Quartz, Quartz uses Window Server to manager the windows, Window Server logs all errors or anytime an application doesn't know how to respond to but mostly when they make an invalid request.  Common invalid requests are documented.  That is the defense's theory and it is fully 100% supported by Apple.  I leave it to you whether you consider Apple or Massei/Mignini more credible on what generates log.   Needless to say everything in this post is reproducible and verifiable on any Apple computer running OSX.

_

Let me move away for teaching for a second, and do a pure editorial. I've never personally done forensics in a case involving violence; when I've done it has always been theft or fraud or mostly just trying to figure out and reverse the cause of corrupted data that is driving the investigation. That being said a programmer's laptop should be analyzed more like you would a server and less like you would a general end user's. Encase is fine for Amanda or Meredith's laptops had the prosecution not "accidentally" destroyed them. I don't think it is appropriate at all for Raffaele's.   Since he was doing a computer science thesis he's a programmer it is going to require a skilled operator to do the investigation things are not going to in most obvious places or setup in the most obvious way and your typical forensic analysis will be wrong. For example the prosecution focuses heavily on cache data, and that is exactly the sort of thing you would typically check on an end user's laptop to look for activity. I agree with the prosecution's thinking. Most end users on a Mac would have their cache's in /Users/[Raf's username]/Library/Caches and /Library/Caches. But on Raf's machine I'd want to check places like /opt/local/var/cache (Apple's Darwinports default cache location), /sw/var/cache (Fink's default cache location) and he might even have a personal one like ~/caches. Encase won't check for those sorts of caches and thus the investigators won't find these in a cache's report. I agree with Raffaele's defense's intuitively, professionally, the examination the defense argues should have occurred, is exactly what I would have done were I investigating. I do consider this to have been a mistake.

Moreover, I'll say it is the sort of mistake that a forensic accountant / examiner is likely to make; so at least on this point I don't see evidence of an intent to mislead the court. I think the prosecution is innocently incorrect.  I hate to take Mignini off the hook ever, but I don't see signs of the prosecution deliberately lying on this point.

There is one another bad news for the defense.  Raffaele being a programmer cuts both ways.  Because he programs we can assume he knows or can easily learn how to have programs generate events that look like interactions with hardware.  He also knows how to change the windowserver.log file.  Which means on his system we have to consider the contents of these files less definitive than they otherwise would be.  I'd want to look at samples of his code from that time to get a grasp on whether the computer is telling me is likely to be true at worst or highly likely to be true at best.    I would scratch definite however in either direction.

Amanda's confession

I can picture the scene clearly.  Jean-Paul's bath is room temperature.  I could hear Simonne, his wife, in the kitchen.  She was using the stove to boil up more of Jean-Paul's concoctions for his bath and at the same time make the 4:00 supper, they liked to eat early when Jean-Paul was too ill to entertain.   In the room I could smell the vinegar coming off the head bandage he was wearing, it was oppressive and mixed with the smell of rotten flesh it was hard to stay in the room with him.  There was too much instruction I needed to get, so I tried and swallow the bile and focus on the work.  Visually it was difficult as well.  The afternoon he had a rash which looked awful on the right of his chest; it was blistering and scabbing.  There were a few places in the rash where the skin had been peeled off.   Jean-Paul knew better than to scratch his body, he was already covered with scars, but sometimes the pain the itching was too bad.  His skin was like tissue sitting on-top of oil on top of ketchup.  When he finally did scratch, it instantly tore and the smell of the puss made the visuals worse.

I was shocked when Charlotte walked in the room.  Simonne would have announced her at the door.  I wondered  if she had just barged through the front door or Simmone didn't want to come up with Charlotte.    Charlotte was a gorgeous woman, but the grief had aged her terribly since I'd seen her 30 months before.  Her blond hair peaked out from her bonnett.  She hadn't combed it that day, which was quite unusual.   She flew into the room.  Charlotte walking right up to Jean-Paul, an undressed man,  an undressed man not her husband.  I couldn't believe what I was watching.  Jean-Paul was less shocked then me, he reacted more quickly, sensed the danger, and started to bring the board he was writing on up like a shield.  He was translating another famous English work, his English was so strong, he had this flair for capturing the metaphors that the English lace their writing with and could find just the perfect correspondence in French.  That's what I was thinking about as I watched the board rise and those pages fall into the bath.  I know that sounds odd but while I admired Jean-Paul I never really liked him.

It was then that I noticed the dagger Charlotte brought out from the money purse in the front of her dress.  I doubt Jean-Paul recognized but I knew it was the daily wear dagger of Restif, her brother, her dead brother, he had died in the September massacre with much of Charlotte's family.  Because Jean-Paul was still seated she had too much leverage, as she reached the tub she shifted her weight onto the board and it dropped back towards the bath trapping his hands in its fall.     She used the blister on Jean-Paul's chest like a bulls-eye and targeted his heart.   Her aim was solid, and the dagger pierced deep.  She didn't get caught on the ribs, I've often wondered if she had she practiced on hogs?

She glanced at me, a smile.  I was actually happy to see her smile, those blue eyes, with light in them again.   And then I thought of the irony.  Five years ago, Charlotte even though she was little more than a  petty aristocrat, would never have smiled at a commoner about a shared activity she would have considered that act grossly inappropriate.  Now in her last truly free moment I saw that "égalité, fraternité" had become so much a part of her that she was untroubled sharing an emotion with one of a lower rank.  She saw our shared humanity.

I suspect she missed the heart, but in Jean-Paul's condition that didn't matter.  It took him almost ten minutes to die.  I could hear the air from his punctured lung hissing with each breath.  The noxious chemicals from the bath that he used for his skin kept the blood flowing faster.  I don't know if he would he have bled out anyway, without the chemicals but I suspect he likely would have.    Simmone entered and wept, and wailed.  It was amazing how much she loved him, despite how visually and olfactory unpleasant it was to be in his presence,  that her care these years hadn't been just duty.  I realized she always saw the marvelous doctor from the 70's and not the withered politician.

Simmone tried to help him but she had never been in the army, she didn't know what to do.  I did, know what to do, but I've mentioned all that was going through my mind.  Also I'm not sure it would have worked, so I followed Simmone's lead of laying him flat on the ground and let Jean-Paul bleed out.   It was a mercy when the hissing stopped.  In his final moment, Jean-Paul looked at me accusingly, knowing I hadn't really tried.    I shrugged, I loved him, but I never liked him.  I admired what he did, and considered him a monster.  I had often thought I was a terrible hypocrite for assisting him.  But over the last year, I had seen  his physical pain further twist his already damaged soul, this man had done much to damage our revolution.  That his final glance would be an accusation for me and not a comfort for Simmone proved Charlotte had been right.    Georges, Maximilian were there to take over for him.   If Charlotte thought this was worth the gallows for her, I'd honor her death with his.  And that unforced smile of Charlotte's proved that Jean-Paul's life had accomplished its mission.

_____

Amanda Knox was asked to imagine the death of Meredith Kercher and provided some details about herself in the kitchen.  That's not a confession to having been present to the murder, anymore than my little terrible attempt at fiction is a confession to having been present for the death of Marat.  It is not hard to picture a murder when asked.  That is not a confession and the use of the word "confession" to describe a vision she was asked to construct is frankly dishonest in the extreme.

It is fair to say those statements have a ring of authenticity too them.  That is very different though than a confession.

Italy the EU and the international standards of justice

Why have trails at all?  What's the point?  Prosecutors are usually right, police investigate.  If the police knew they were not handing suspects off to a court but rather directly summary punishment / execution they would even be more careful.  We already have a grand jury system to avoid the worst abuses.  So why bother with the expense and time of a trial?

I want you to think if you really object to extrajudicial punishment.  Is it OK to punish the probably guilty or do you need the virtual certainty of beyond a reasonable doubt?  Julian Assange's lawyers were arguing in a British court last week that there was a serious threat of Assange disappearing into the USA's now fully functioning extrajudicial punishment system.  Prior to 2001 the idea that the USA would be OK with running an extrajudicial punishment system in a systematic large scale manner was unthinkable.  I'm still deeply ashamed that I agree with Julian Assange that there is no guarantee once he is in US custody of a fair trial.  The world has started treating the USA like Egypt when it comes to criminal justice because we have started to act like Egypt.

The country that has most effectively led the charge against the USA on violating international norms of justice is Italy.  Italy forms the backbone of the EU's opposition to the death penalty (link).  The advertisements in the upper left hand corner of this post are by Benetton, a series of people on death row in America whose faces are being used to promote their clothing.    The point of this image is to demonstrate how mainstream opposition to the death penalty is in Italy, that being associated with the anti-death penalty movement is like an American company wanting to be associated with Nascar.

But what is the moral basis of opposition to the death penalty in a foreign country?  Italy makes the standard arguments: lack of deterrence, unfairness, inevitability of error, barbarity of methodology, cost but those are essentially domestic arguments.  There they attack the death penalty for undermining human dignity and lacking deterrent value and the irreparable harm that it causes.   But if you think about it there is underlying idea that trials should have a universal moral legitimacy beyond the scope of the governed.  That governments should not engage in the naked use of power, they have physical possession of the citizen of another country and thus the right to with them what they will.  In other words it is irrelevant to the United States whether Italy thinks our justice system is moral or immoral unless there is some underlying basis of morality that needs to be appealed to.    They are one of the primary authors of UN 62/149, which calls for an immediate moratorium on the death penalty precisely because they do believe in an underlying moral basis for criminal justice that is subject to international oversight.

The EU and Italy in particular have argued forcefully that 

• The Death penalty
• Torture
• Detention without trial, Guantanamo Bay
• Renditions (kidnapping)

undermine our -- with "our" being the west, the civilized world, the member states of the United Nations... -- shared sense of justice.  But what basis do they have for these complaints if they hold that people captured by Italians should be subject to arbitrary Italian law without any international review or input?  

Now lets return to the original question about why have trials.  In the 12th century Henry II, King of England,  was trying to centralize power.  One of the ways to do this was to develop a direct relationship between the governing authority (the King's judges) and the people (the jury) that bypassed the local officials (the sheriff).  So Sheriffs would have the authority to execute, judges ruled on matters of law (guaranteeing the King's control of the law) and juries ruled on matters of fact.   The jury guaranteed the King's laws were applied in a way that the people approved of, preventing a popular resentment from building up against the national government which the local government could exploit.  Thus by empowering the people as a check on their local governments, the King enhanced his own power and created a system which had legitimacy at every level.  For a person to be convicted and punished: the local government, national government and people need to agree.

And this established a basic concept in law that the punishment of offenders needs to have popular consent.  It should be noted that Henry II's reforms  was the point our system forked from the Inquisitorial system, the system that exists in Italy today. Italy accepts the underlying morality of Henry's reforms if not the specific mechanism (the jury) .  For example Italy certainly considers Israeli trials of Palestinians to lack legitimacy because they arise out of an "occupation government" that is to say a government that lacks the consent of the governed.   Italy's attacks on Israeli justice point to another example of where Italy as a matter of policy holds that criminal law is in some sense universal and not just an arbitrary use of power by the state, and moreover needs to be.

So given that, what should Italy's response be when they've held a trial and Americans find the evidence wanting?  This is a big deal, normally the punishment not the actual guilt is in question, so this is an unusual case.   Yesterday, a poster on my board showed me the actual forensic methodology used to disqualify Raffaele Sollecito's alibi and there is no doubt that the methodology is highly questionable (see windowserver.log, Raffaele Sollecito's alibi witness for an extended discussion).  That Raffaele should be doing two decades in prison based on is a travesty, it is quite simply morally repulsive.  I do not see how Italy can claim to believe in universal standards of justice and behave like this.  Every time I learn more about this case I become further disgusted with Italy's handling of it.  I don't think I'm alone in the effects of education.

This trial reminds in many ways of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an activist with a domestic terrorist organization called MOVE conviced for the 1981 murder of Daniel Faulkner who developed a widespread following almost immediately that became a major political cause in 1984.    Since the early 1980s there have been movies about his conviction pro and con continuing today (as those links show).  Italy itself is on Mumia's side (see item Y).  In Mumia's case I thought he was guilty and was rather opposed to MOVE though at this point I think he's reformed and I'd have no problem with his release.  Amanda is well on her way to achieving this same kind of long term controversy.  The parades the films the.... all attacking their justice system all undermining Italy's ability to be a leader on human rights.  You would think they would want a lot in exchange for losing their moral authority.  I don't understand is what Italy possible hopes to gain from his.

The "best case" for Italy is that Amanda does her time. Interest in her case wanes.  She emerges a hardened criminal, no longer the girl with the naive faith in justice, no longer the girl who couldn't bring herself to even look at the crime scene photos.  Now she seen people sliced dozens if not hundreds of times, she has seen done far worse than anything Meredith Kercher was involved in.   Since Italy has a shortage of prison beds to keep this "murder" in prison means they have had to not hold many other prisoners.  To simplify lets say over the course of 25 years say a dozen Albanian prostitutes that rob/stab customers. So they have an extra 200 stabbings to show for their detention.  Destroying Amanda and driving their domestic crime rate up is the best case for Italy as far as I can tell.  If someone wants to propose a better case feel free.

Another possible case, is she dies in prison or is seriously injured, particularly if it is at the hands of a guard.   High security prisons are not low risk environments so this is a very likely outcome.    If interest has waned then this really doesn't matter very much, most likely as her death would be a passing footnote.  If interest has not wained she becomes a martyr.  She's remembered forever as the image to the left.  Seattle unquestionable severs their sister city relationship with Perugia (link).  Italy has no moral authority on criminal justice issues for a generation, the EU move to suspend the death penalty is over.  And that's assuming that there are no cases involving Italian nationals around the time of her death in Washington or Oregon courts so that things heat up even further.  The same sort of thing would happen if the court of appeals reverses on premeditation and Amanda and Raffaele get life.   These are the scenarios where there could be real meaningful blowback for Italy and its the sort of thing the state is not well equipped to avoid.    The US still suffers substantial blowback from an assassination we were involved in 1953.

A more reasonable possibility is that the court of appeals is sane enough to realize what happens when the American girl is still in jail for over a decade more than the rapist on a rape murder and gives her a sentence reduction that gets her sentence down around Guede's or shorter.  At worse  they both get paroled after about 8 years in jail, 2015 or so.  There is lingering resentment but the issue can die down.  People like myself who think she's most likely guilty of something like manslaughter, aggravated sexual assault or obstruction can live with an 8 year or less sentence.   While obviously I support immediate release due to severe prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, this would be a very sane outcome that's easy to achieve at this point.    A way to backoff from a train wreck that I would urge the court to consider.  

And those are the scenarios with no upside.  Normally there isn't much upside to imprisonment, states detain dangerous people so they don't reoffend.  The argument being that these prisoners pose an ongoing threat.  The people to whom Amanda posses the most threat, assuming she were guilty, are the people the city she is likely to return to, Seattle.  The people of Seattle are eager and enthusiastic for her return.  They clearly understand and embrace the risk.  The downside of release simply does not apply in this case.   Even from a purely pragmatic standpoint the plusses and minus for Italy seem unbalanced in continuing their persecution.

On the FOM side, I'm running into essentially a different group of authoritarians than usual.  Usually the authoritarians I deal with tend to see a group of church leaders as being essentially infallible, truly wonderful people motivated only by the best interests of all concerned, people who by default should be trusted.  Now those people tend to have a fairly skeptical view of the government and the courts.  They quite often have seen the IRS engage in abuses and have enough connection with the working and lower classes to have seen the innocent get convicted in traditional courts all the time.  Many of the people who believe most fervently in church discipline do so because they believe the state has become utterly morally corrupt.  If they are authoritarian towards the state it is usually mainly in theory not in practice, Gary North felt free to talk about the Obama inauguration with an essay, The Audacity of Hype.

This new group seems to view courts in essentially the same way.  Their argument is that we as individuals have no right to question the details of the court cases.  A good example was when I had a problem with a statement in Massei.  The guilt side made sarcastic comments about Raffaele's defense, the innocent side provided me with more information about how the analysis was conducted.  One side argues for blind faith the other for reasoned discourse.  The forensic case is key for me, because it proves that  even when we know that some of the findings in Massei, are easily demonstrably falsifiable the persons who support guilt are unmoved to change their opinion regarding that fact, not about the entire case but about the finding.    In 1519 Luther stood against this very attitude at the Diet of Worms and held that all men were bound by conscience to judge the good by conscience, by reason and by divine law.  While I would never compare myself to Luther I would urge all readers to consider his words with regard to the blind submission to Massei as the final arbitrar of truth:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. God help me. Amen. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. 

_____

See also:

• Brazil / Italy debate over Ceseare Battisti (link) 
• Politics and Inerrancy another foray into the connection between religious fundamentalism and support for right wing ideology.  
• The economist has been critical of Italy's justice system over the years considering it an underfunded, slow and inefficient mess.  (sample editorial)
• An article published later (Oct 3, 2011) talking about how Perugia has been negatively effected by this case: Perugia fights sex-and-drugs image.