The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom

The OP would say that his framework is the only rational one.

False written statements are often signed in police stations.

The comments on the post relate further evidence that was missing from the analysis the poster provides. Why? Because the poster made a judgement call that it wasn't relevant. That alone makes this just so much blathering... sorry.

(a) It isn't zero-sum. Guede was convicted -- he is guilty, he did it. What we are determining is whether he acted alone.

(b) The priors are crap because they are weak, not because they are agreed upon. This is just a model, and it feels to me that the author is overfitting. The prior you mentioned as an example is so far away from the case at hand to be virtually useless.

I will reply to your points in turn, but to be clear, I'm not specifically arguing for or against the conviction; I'm saying that this article grossly ignores many of the facts of the case.

It appears that large parts of the American media have painted this case as some loon prosecutor bent on convicting an American girl with flimsy flawed evidence and a fanciful idea of some Satanic sexy orgy gone wrong. There's been a lot of column inches devoted to discussing some of the things this article breaks down (the strange behaviour, the telephone calls). I can understand the media focusing on this (it's what the public find interesting, not the detailed crime scene details). But as this article is about digging for information and applying reasonable thought, it's disappointing they chose to ignore the large body of evidence presented at the trial that lead to their conviction.

To your counterpoints:

1. If I recall, there is good (not the drunk homeless man) eyewitness testimony of the 3 meeting prior to the night in question.

- There is fair amount of DNA evidence (see my parent post, and the links). Yes, some may appear potentially flawed (e.g. bra clasp). However the judge considered and admitted the evidence. Consider that a panel of legal experts considered and unanimously convicted based on this evidence.

- From truejustice.org regarding evidence of a cleanup: "The ONLY fingerprints of Amanda Knox in the entire house were found on a glass in the kitchen. Even in her own room there was not one print."

- Yes, the eyewitness isn't great. But again, the evidence was admitted by the judge for reasons given in the judge's summary.

- The police themselves were the eyewitnesses to them being at the crime scene with mop and bucket.

- Whether the police appear tainted is worth considering, but doesn't explain away a body of hard evidence that was admitted in court.

- Your theory that Guede was a lone-wolf rape and murderer was quickly dismissed by the judge, given the huge body of physical evidence suggesting other people involved (again, see my post and the report).

edit:

This is a great link that goes over some of your points (motive, DNA evidence etc:

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/how_the_m...

I'm not sure the relevance of them being allowed to lie in court; no one is suggested they have committed perjury.

That depends on your jurisdiction. I'm not familiar with Italy, but most U.S. states and the federal government do not require actually personally causing death as an element of the crime of murder. If you're a) engaged in the commission of a felony (sometimes, an enumerated list of "really bad felonies") and b) someone dies with cause proximate to the felony you're committing, you just earned yourself a murder charge, regardless of who pulled the trigger. This is called "felony murder". The most common use case is suspects A, B, and C attempt armed robbery on D, D dies in the attempt, and A, B, and C each admit to the robbery but not to the killing. Absent the felony murder theory, you might have to sift through confusing physical evidence and unreliable testimony of self-interested shady characters. With felony murder, your options are simpler: charge 'em all.

No. Murder, and Rape, commonly promote the crime from conspiracy/accomplice to the full crime (murder, rape). Presumably because the stakes are so high for these types of crime, and traditional sentencing for 'accomplice to...' or 'conspiracy to commit' cases is so much lower, that people could game the justice system somewhat.

For example, if you hire a hitman to take out your wife/husband, you WILL be tried as the murderer, as will the hitman. If you conspire with a lover to kill someone, you will be tried as a murderer, no matter who is holding the murder weapon.

Perhaps it's different in America, although I'm sure there have been cases I've heard about in the US that fall under the same rules as those above, and where the conspirators were tried as murderers themselves.