Ominous Parallels: Comparing the Duke lacrosse case to the Knox/Sollecito case

Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher, Amanda’s flatmate in Perugia, Italy, in 2009. Both Ms. Kercher and Ms. Knox were studying abroad. Ms. Kercher was from Great Britain, Ms. Knox is from Seattle, Washington; Mr. Sollecito is an Italian student. A third suspect, Rudy Guede, was convicted in 2008. To some students of the Duke lacrosse (DL) case, the Amanda Knox/Raffaelo Sollecito (KS) case is playing like a sequel they did not wish to see.

DNA evidence

In the Duke lacrosse case the only DNA that even might have been from one of the three indicted players was on a fake fingernail found in a trashcan in one of the bathrooms. The DNA was a weak match to David Evans; however, the most likely explanation was that it arose from transfer from items of his in the trashcan, such as dental floss or facial tissue. In the Perugia murder case there are two pieces of evidence, the kitchen knife discussed in part I of this series, and the bra clasp, which will be treated in a future post. The kitchen knife is alleged to have DNA from Ms. Knox on the handle and a trace of DNA from Ms. Kercher on the blade (http://viewfromwilmington.blogspot.com/2010/01/amanda-knox-and-raffaele-sollecito-and.html). The bra clasp is said to have DNA from Ms. Kercher, Mr. Sollecito and possibly three other individuals. Its value as evidence is disputed.

The Prosecutor

DA Michael Nifong not only withheld exculpatory DNA information, but also made inflammatory statements to the press. His conduct was so egregious that a new verb, to Nifong, has entered the English language. Giuliano Mignini has the distinction of having had a book written about his conduct during a murder investigation, The Monster of Florence, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/an-innocent-abroad/?ref=opinion). Mr. Mignini was indicted in 2006 based upon his actions in the Monster of Florence murder case (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/07/crimesider/entry5928444.shtml). Mr. Mignini denied any wrongdoing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7883286.stm).

Changing Storyline

After Reade Seligmann’s attorneys released evidence of the younger Mr. Seligmann’s whereabouts at the time of the alleged rape, Mr. Nifong implied that he had a different timeline, a transparent attempt to get around an unimpeachable alibi. In December of 2006, the alleged victim said that she was no longer sure that she had been penetrated by a penis. Many students of the DL case saw this as an attempt to explain away the lack of players’ DNA even in the presence of DNA from other individuals in the AV’s body.

The KS case has been through more changes in storyline than a movie script handled by a dozen writers. Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Timothy Egan wrote in the summer of 2009, “‘Case closed,’ the Italian authorities said in those first days of November, 2007, even though they had yet to arrest the only man [Rudy Guede] who has ever been found guilty of the murder.” At one point the possibility that the murder was related to a Halloween ritual was floated; at the close of the trial this was not mentioned. In both the DL and RS cases the only constant was that the defendants must be guilty.

Presumption of Innocence

A prominent southern writer, Alan Gurganous, wrote an article for the New York Times titled, “Blue Devils Made Them Do It.” Mr. Gurganous said (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/opinion/09gurganus.html?ex=1302235200&en=97bf0167bd611343&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), “From north of here, this story must seem like yet another involving Southern frat boys run wild.” Mr. Gurganous does no more than to pay lip service to the principle that a defendant is innocent unless proven guilty. If anyone doubts that many leading figures in Durham and elsewhere trod the presumption of innocence into the ground in this case (in other words, if one doubts that Mr. Gurganous’ view was representative), Taylor and Johnson’s book Until Proven Innocent will disabuse him or her of this notion.

With respect to the KS case “Judge Paolo Michelli, during the pretrial, took the conspiracy for granted. He boasted that he began his reasoning with all three suspects in the murder room. So much for innocent until proven guilty (http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/archives/179047.asp).”

Character assault

Nifong gave about seventy interviews in the first weeks of the DL case. Among his many false assertions was that the players were stonewalling the investigation. The Durham police aided and abetted him.

One of the criticisms leveled against Ms. Knox is that she failed to act appropriately after the murder. Attorney Scott Greenfield posted an essay on the judicial weakness of such an argument (http://blog.simplejustice.us/2009/06/11/how-is-she-supposed-to-act.aspx). Greenfield also wrote (http://blog.simplejustice.us/2009/12/05/a-trial-without-evidence.aspx), “During the summation, the prosecutor told the jury about the things Amanda Knox might have said to Meredith Kercher before the alleged drug-induced orgy that ended with her throat being slashed. ‘You are always behaving like a little saint. Now we will show you. Now we will make you have sex.’ This would be a horrible thing to say, except that it never happened. No one says that such a statement was ever made. But summations in Perugia aren't limited to evidence, as they are here. Rather, this is a permissible indulgence into fantasy, a made up dramatization of what the prosecutors contend might have happened.” Indeed, many of the incidents that have been used to paint Ms. Knox in an unfavorable light are either untrue or misleadingly portrayed, and may be the subject of separate posts.

Irrelevant or false leaked information

Unindicted sophomore Ryan McFayden made an ill-judged allusion to the book and movie “American Psycho” in a private email. Virtually everything written about the hard-to-stomach contents of this email had to do with the character and mental health of its author (I have firsthand knowledge, however, that Ryan McFayden is a polite, thoughtful, and intelligent young man). Too few people have pointed out that the email had nothing to do with the case and that the authorities were wrong to release it.

Amanda Knox’s journal, which was written during her pretrial incarceration, was leaked to the press. Apparently, it had been translated into Italian then back-translated into English. Along the way the meaning changed in ways that were unfavorable to her (http://www.sciencespheres.com/2009/11/crucible-of-perugia.html). Moreover, upon being informed that she was HIV-positive (which was not true), she wrote about her sexual partners in her journal. This information has contributed to her public image as a person of low sexual morals. However, the ethics of leaking her journal have received scant attention. Some of the leaks in the K/S case, such as the claim of receipts for bleach (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2894139.ece), were not presented at the trial and are probably false (http://www.friendsofamanda.org/cleanup.html).

Wendy Murphy

Among the pundits who got the Duke lacrosse case wrong, Wendy Murphy ranks close to the top (http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2006/12/wendy-murphy-file.html). She made numerous factual errors, and speculated wildly and with an unchecked anti-player bias. Her defense of DA Michael Nifong was bizarre (http://liestoppers.blogspot.com/2006/12/wendy-murphy-strikes-again.html).

Students of the DL case might expect similar behaviors with respect to the Knox/Sollecito (KS), and Ms. Murphy does not disappoint (http://www.patriotledger.com/opinions/x1682953943/WENDY-J-MURPHY-Is-Foxy-Knoxy-an-innocent-coed-or-manipulative-murderer). She wrote,” DNA on the handle of the knife that killed the victim matched Knox - and blood on blade matched the victim…Pro-Amanda forces also forget to note that the knife was found hidden in a shoebox, far back inside a closet at Sollecito's apartment - and that the knife had been scrubbed clean with bleach and an abrasive substance - like a Brillo Pad. The defense claimed the sample of Knox's DNA was too small to matter, but ANY DNA is damning evidence - especially on a knife that's been intentionally cleaned and hidden away deceptively in a shoe box, tucked deep inside the closet of a suspect's home.”

Let us focus only on her factual errors about the knife, the subject of Part I of this series (http://viewfromwilmington.blogspot.com/2010/01/amanda-knox-and-raffaele-sollecito-and.html). There was no blood on the blade, and this is one of the main reasons to doubt that DNA signals arising from when the knife was swabbed did not really originate with the blade at all (http://www.sciencespheres.com/2009/10/lcn-dna-profiling-part-ii-watch-where.html). The knife was found in a kitchen drawer with other knives. The police stored it in a shoebox. Ms. Murphy does not explain how she divined that Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito used bleach to clean the knife, nor does she bother to tell us that bleach is so effective at destroying DNA that it is routinely used in DNA labs for that very reason. If bleach and a brillo pad were used to clean the knife, it is very difficult to see how any DNA could remain. Finally, the amount of DNA observed was so small that to say it matched Ms. Kercher’s profile is a stretch; calling it a partial match is a better description, and it is quite possible that it originated from Ms. Kercher’s DNA in the laboratory itself.

Courtroom Demeanor

In Until Proven Innocent Taylor and Johnson wrote (p. 180) about Collin Finnerty facing a wall of photographers while awaiting his first appearance before a judge: “He tried to remain expressionless. In that atmosphere, if he had smiled the media would have called it a smirk; if he had frowned they would have called it an angry glare.” Nevertheless one sportswriter wasn’t sure if the younger Mr. Finnerty’s expression was one of shock and fear or or smugness (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/saraceno/2006-04-18-duke_x.htm).

Frank Sfarzo wrote (http://perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2009/11/migninis-rage-against-knox-and.html) wrote of Amanda Knox, “If she smiles it's wrong, if she cries it's wrong, if she moves it's wrong, if she's still it's wrong, if she watches it's wrong, if she doesn't watch it's wrong."

The role of the blogosphere

In the Duke lacrosse case the blogosphere was able to go into issues in greater depth than the mainstream media and correct a number of important errors. Here is a partial honor roll: Bill Anderson, CrystalMess, Durham in Wonderland, John In Carolina, LaShawn Barber, Liestoppers, and TalkLeft. In the Amanda Knox case, Dr. Mark Waterbury (http://www.sciencespheres.com/2009/10/seven-deadly-sins-of-knoxsollecito.html) and Candace Dempsey (http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/archives/129925.asp) have been covering forensics and general aspects of the case, respectively. Ms. Dempsey may have been the first to point out the similarities between the DL and RS cases.

Final Thoughts

This post is intended as an overview of some of the problems in the Knox/Sollecito case. Any one of these points could easily be expanded into its own post. We will try to explore some of them in the coming months, especially those involving forensics.

Part II in a series.

Update (22 January 2010)

Seattle, WA (USA), near where Amanda Knox's family lives, and Perugia, Italy are sister cities. Maybe Durham, NC should be Perugia's sister city, instead.

The final Duke photographic lineup and some thoughts on Tulia, Texas

Chapter 13 in the book “Race to Injustice: deals with eyewitness-identification procedures. The authors are Gary L. Wells, Brian L. Cutler, and Lisa E. Hasel, and the first two authors helped to develop the procedures that Durham adopted prior to the lacrosse case as well as serving as consultants for the defense. With respect to the final array of photographs on April fourth, the authors write, “The repeated presentation of certain suspects’ photos is obviously egregious; ironically, existing recommendations for proper identification procedures have spent little time discussing this issue…precisely because it seems so obvious.” The American Psychology-Law Society and the North Carolina Innocence commission both recommend against showing the same faces multiple times, and for doing the lineup in a double-blind fashion (meaning that the officers in charge of presenting the photos should not know who the suspects are).

Recently a commenter here claimed that the lineup was not to identify her alleged attackers but rather to help her recall who was at the party. However, even if this rationale were true, it would still violate the recommendation on not showing faces multiples times put forth in the chapter by Wells, et al. Moreover, once Ms. Mangum picked certain individuals in the photos, I would predict her to identify them in a trial based on her memory of the photos. In stark contrast to the views of these authors, Professor Irving Joyner of North Carolina Central University and case monitor for the NCNAACP (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-27-duke-race_N.htm), says “as long as she can identify the men in court, the photo lineup is ‘really unimportant.’" Her identifying them would be enough to "support" a verdict of guilty in a rape case in North Carolina (“Until Proven Innocent,” p. 379), meaning that the jury could have convicted Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, both of whom had alibis for the time in question.

This is where the conviction of some forty-six putative drug dealers, most of whom were black, in Tulia, Texas, a town of about five thousand might be discussed for comparison. The story of the mostly wrongful convictions is the subject of a documentary (“Tulia, Texas”) aired as part of the Independent Lens series on PBS in February of 2009. The convictions were based entirely on the word of one undercover cop in the absence of other witnesses or corroborating fingerprints. Curiously when this film premiered in Wilmington in November of 2008, a representative from the WPD mentioned the Duke case in passing, when discussing whether a case like Tulia could happen here. In assessing the motives of the now discredited policeman, it is fair to point out that the professional rewards for exaggerating the number of drug dealers was considerable.

An exacerbating factor in both the Duke case and the Tulia case is the role of stereotypes. The first defendants in the Tulia case faced an all-white jury, and one can speculate that the stereotype of blacks being more likely to use and deal in drugs played a part in these convictions (http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=611). Likewise it was easy to believe the early story of jocks gone wild because it played into a picture of rich, white men of privilege doing whatever they pleased. The combination of a low threshold for conviction and stereotyping the defendants would seem to be synergistic in its ability to generate miscarriages of justice.

However, there were differences between this case and the Duke case, the first being that a few of the Tulia defendants were able to produce alibis and had their charges dropped. Another difference is that poverty and the use of long prison sentences against the first defendants caused some of the rest to accept plea-bargains. Finally, one area of both similarities and differences is the role of the press. Attorney Jeff Blackburn noted, “The only say we had was in the press. Mr. Blackburn, who hired a private investigator out of his own pocket, also said, “We had to go outside [the legal system], to the press. I’m glad that we had the allies that we did. [Otherwise] it would have been swept under the rug.” The allies to which Mr. Blackburn referred included the ACLU of Texas, the William Kunstler Foundation, and the NAACP legal defense fund (http://www.forejustice.org/wc/tulia_travesty.htm). The Tulia case illuminated the positive role the press has to play when someone is wrongfully convicted. In the Duke case the NCNAACP argued for a pretrial gag order (http://www.wwaytv3.com/node/1260). These are typically issued when publicity will impair a defendant’s right to a fair trial (see Chapter 8 in “Race to Injustice”). The NAACP legal defense fund is allied with the NAACP but not affiliated with it.

When the punishment for an offense is a multiyear prison sentence, there should be a higher standard of evidence required to obtain a conviction than the word of one person. Despite the cautionary lesson from Texas, the federal drug laws have not been changed. One wonders how criminal statutes came to have weak requirements for conviction. In Chapter 12 of “Race to Injustice” on the grand jury system, former Federal prosecutor Michael Seigel writes, “Without a doubt, the worst accusation that an individual can face today is that he is a child molester or rapist.” I submit that when the public is fearful about a particular type of crime, or when it holds a type of crime in special contempt, politicians will tilt the law in favor of conviction.