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Old 19th June 2019, 06:47 AM   #224
Numbers
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Join Date: Sep 2014
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Originally Posted by TomG View Post
If you hypothesise that Mignini and the cops quite legitimately didn't know that Rudy was involved on Nov. 2nd, then you head into the interrogations of 5th-6th Nov with the same hypothesis, you then end up with a scenario that negates the argument that the calunnia was contrived by Mignini, since it implies that the cops didn't really know who the killer was, and were actually misled when Amanda implicated Lumumba. My argument has always been that Mignini and the cops knew that Rudy was involved by the night of the interrogations and they ushered in Lumumba on the strength of the text messages in order to protect Rudy. If you take the protection of Rudy out of the equation during the interrogation then the did she or didn't she argument becomes much more evenly contested.

Hoots

Originally Posted by Numbers View Post
The police were coercing Amanda to name someone whom she "knew" (in their opinion) had committed the rape/murder. Maybe they wanted or expected to coerce her to name Raffaele, or maybe they didn't care as long as it was a male. They may have had Lumumba picked out before the interrogation since they knew she worked with him and she had met him, If I recall correctly, for a few minutes (after her class, not at the pub) on Nov. 4 or 5. They did intentionally misrepresent what the text message meant, based on Donnino's testimony to the Boninsegna court. I don't see these events as compelling one to conclude that all this was done by the police to protect Guede. Nor does it compel one to conclude that the police were not protecting Guede. This same kind of missing the (real and sometimes obvious) suspect in pursuit of a police or prosecution theory that one or more (actually innocent) persons had committed the crime is an element in a number of wrongful convictions and exonerations in the US.

Examples from the US include the Central Park 5, Martin Tankleff, Jeffrey Deskovic, and many more. See, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._United_States

The police/prosecution behavior in these situations is sometimes called "confirmation bias" although in more behavioral terms it might be called "cheating by authorities motivated by the perceived need to seek a result ("case closed") quickly and with minimal effort". The police and prosecution may not perceive that coercing confessions, for example by conducting long interrogations with threats and lies, especially for young or vulnerable persons, with no defense lawyer present, is a form of cheating.

Last edited by Numbers; 19th June 2019 at 06:49 AM.
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