Utopian States: Striving for Perfection

The subject of police brutality includes framing people and false arrest.

From http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/FBI.html

My name is Steve Moore; I retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2008 after 25 years as a Special Agent and Supervisory Special Agent. My entire investigative experience was in the investigation and prosecution of violent crime, from murder to mass-murder and terrorism. In my last such assignment, I was the Supervisor of the Al Qaeda Investigations squad, following which I ran the FBI’s Los Angeles-based “Extra-Territorial Squad”, which was tasked with responding to any acts of terrorism against the United States in Asia and Pakistan. I have investigated murders throughout the United States and the world.

I do not know Amanda Knox. I have never met or spoken with anybody in the Knox or Mellas families. In my 25 years in the FBI, I had come to believe that if you were arrested, you were probably guilty. I never had a person I took to trial who wasn’t convicted. I was especially tired of guilty persons claiming their innocence.

I had heard snippets about the Knox case from the news, and believed that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were certainly guilty. But then I began to hear statements from the press that contradicted known facts. Wanting to resolve the conflicts, I looked into the case out of curiosity. The more I looked, the more I was troubled by what I found. So I looked deeper, and I ended up examining every bit of information I could find (and there’s a lot of it). The more I investigated, the more I realized that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito could not have had anything to do with the murder of Meredith Kercher. Moreover, one reason that they were falsely convicted was that every rule of good investigation was violated.

There are a growing numerer of web sites and blogs on this subject.  Many, myself included, have the same convictions as the FBI agent quoted above.

Amanda Knox as a Child

 

Above: Amanda Knox as a child.

While Guede was in Germany, police monitored a phone call during which he explicitly stated that Knox was not present when the murder took place.  This means that Guede, the man already convicted of this murder is, indeed guilty.  This also means that Amanda, now also convicted, wasn’t even there.

 The alleged murder weapon – the key prosecutorial evidence – did not have any blood residue on the blade.  The DNA on the blade was too small to reproduce the results with a repeat test.  [It is ABSOLUTELY necessary to reproduce the results since lab and other contamination could cause errors more than fifty percent of the time.]  The blade was too large to fit the outline in blood of the blade on the sheets and also too large to have produced most of the wounds.  Furthermore, Amanda’s DNA on the knives meant nothing since she used them to cook.  Kercher’s DNA on the blade could have been caused by a distant sneeze or by contamination.  Remember that sensitive tests did not reveal any blood on the blade and that this knife was randomly selected from several in the drawer.  The other knives weren’t tested.  Perhaps the steak knives had blood on the blade.

 There was no comingled blood found in the apartment, just Kercher’s blood comingled with Amanda’s DNA in the apartment (hair, dead skin cells, dandruff, sneeze residue, etc).  Only Guede’s fingerprints, and DNA was found in Kercher’s room, on her body, in the toilet and in her Kertcher’s body.

 The probability of Amanda’s guilt is extremely low.  If the prosecutor framed Amanda, he should go to jail.  The prosecutor’s guilt will never be discovered, however, as he will cut a “deal” with Amanda and reduce her sentence considerably in exchange for a signing a “confession” that he (the prosecutor)  will write. 

The source for this article is from the defense as stated in www.friendsofamanda.com.  A statement that no test is significant unless it can be repeated is mine as well as the prediction that the prosecutor will cut a deal for a lesser sentence in order to protect himself.

This is saved in the category of dystopian justice.  Justice is a crutial test of any utopian society for two reasons:

People have two responses to an attack.  They can fight or take flight.  People can fight two ways.  The can fight with force or truth.  When the truth fails, force is the result.  Any battle of truth requires that all people in that society can recognize source, fact and logic.  All members of a utopian society must be educated to participate intelligently in society.  Truth is a scarce commotity and requires proper validation.  Furthermore, people have to be trained to recognize the truth when they see it.

The Millgram experiment may explain why Amanda Knox is now in an Italian jail rather than at home, celebrating Christmas, graduating, getting a job and getting married.

From: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/6759992/Amanda-Knox-prosecutors-in-Italy-hit-back-at-US-critics.html

The chief prosecutor in the Amanda Knox case, Giuliano Mignini, said the criticism from the US was “unacceptable”. There have been accusations of unreliable DNA evidence and a coerced confession. But Mr Mignini said: “[The Americans] are saying there’s not enough proof to convict these two kids, but how is it possible to argue that? The evidence was scrutinized by 19 judges.” Lawyers for Knox and Sollecito are already beginning to prepare their appeals against the verdict. The first appeal is expected to start in late 2010. 

The following is from: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

 The Milgram’s experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,  and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.

The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the question: “Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?” In other words, “Was there a mutual sense of morality among those involved?”

Milgram’s testing revealed that it could have been that the millions of accomplices were merely following orders, despite violating their deepest moral beliefs.  Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, “The Perils of Obedience”, writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources

The lead prosecutor has introduced not one, but 19 quasi authority figures.  However, one good fact, one good video is worth 19 million quasi  authority figures.

Another way to express the prosecutor’s tactics the fallacy of an appeal to authority.  From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority

Argument from authority or appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative. The most general structure of this argument is:

Source A says that p.
Source A is authoritative.
Therefore, p is true.

This is a fallacy because the truth or falsity of the claim is not necessarily related to the personal qualities of the claimant, and because the premises can be true, and the conclusion false (an authoritative claim can turn out to be false). It is also known as argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect) or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it).

On the other hand, arguments from authority are an important part of informal logic. Since we cannot have expert knowledge of many subjects, we often rely on the judgments of those who do. There is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true. The fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible in principle and can hence be exempted from criticism.

The UtopianStates would send in the A team to rescue Amanda if that billionaire ever helped us…

Based on the true story of Dee Roberts, a 24 year-old African American single mother of four living in a small Texas town when she is dragged away from work one day in handcuffs, and then dumped in the women’s county prison. The local district attorney leads an extensive drug bust, sweeping her housing project with military precision. Dee soon discovers that she has been charged as a drug dealer.

Even though she has no prior drug record and no drugs were found on her in the raid, she is offered a hellish choice: plead guilty and go home as a convicted felon or remain in prison, jeopardizing her custody and risking a long prison sentence. She chooses to fight the unyielding criminal justice system, risking everything in a battle that forever changes her life and the Texas justice system.

Even more shocking are the statistics at the end of the movie. America has the largest prison population in the world. Ninety percent of the people are in prison because of plea “bargains”. Ninety five percent of convictions are without a trial by jury.

Unfortunately, threats of huge prison sentences extort people into accepting felony charges that they haven’t committed.

I personally can vouch for the pattern of judicial misconduct depicted by the movie. When government gives perks for convictions, or judges get kickbacks for sending children to the detention centers of their friends, then big change is needed. Citizens of the USA need an alternate justice system. I petition the United Nations to provide the world with an alternative.

Gates didn’t start the problem.

Obama didn’t start the problem.

The problem was the cop entering the home, the handcuffs, and the charges. Let’s face it, Americans have been sheltered from the 20 million arrests that happen each year. Americans don’t stop to think that Americans have NO real rights during arrests (just the dubious right to remain silent). Americans don’t know that they can be arrested in their own homes without any search warrant. Americans don’t know that they can be charged with years in jail for struggling with the police. Americans don’t realize that they shouldn’t talk to police (without a good lawyer). Americans don’t realize that they should just be a rag doll during the arrest and take whatever beating the police dish out (the courts shield the police from your attacks legal or otherwise).

The arrest procedure IS the problem!
American stupidity (about arrest procedure and practice) IS the problem!

Obama had it right. The police are stupid and behave stupidly. Furthermore, the rest of America is stupid for wearing blinders for so long.

Americans have the duty to video all arrests. Video clips rule!

See the video where Obama said Cambridge Police Were Stupid

A similar thing happened in my family. A policeman broke in to my families’ house without cause (unless being in a rage is cause), pulled his gun and stated (in the police report) that he would have shot a family member except that another member of the family stepped in front of the gun (the cop was not angry with this family member). The cop did fabricate charges that were sufficient to have put two family members away for a total of seven years, but they were all dismissed because they only happened as the result of the cops’ illegal warrantless entry into my families’ house which precipitated justifiable anger.

My family is Caucasian. Apparently the police have equal opportunity stupidity at times. I applaud Obama for his statement and hope that further public comment on excessive and unjustified use of force by the police ensues.

Find out the truth.

The defense has cost the family a million dollars. Donate.

In math and engineering courses, we’ve extrapolated curves both forward and backward.

Extrapolate backward from the SC findings giving police the right to avoid the 4th amendment in the instances of “hot pursuit” and “exigent circumstances”.

Your extrapolation will end up at invisible amendments such as:

IVa. You have no rights when any policeman suspects that you have just committed a felony.
IVb. The purpose of the fourth amendment is privacy rather than to protect rights of the accused.
IVc. A policeman only needs to make a statement that sounds like “probable cause” in order to justify violating of a citizen’s fourth amendment rights.
IVd. A citizen can’t use self defense against an unjust arrest by a police officer.
IVe. The rights of government employees are senior to the rights of the citizens.
IVf. A police officer cannot be prosecuted for violating the fourth amendment.

QED: The SC has invented false amendments

courthouse_kickbacks

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.

The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

“I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,” said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward..

Other government police and judicial brutality:
Overcrowded_Prisons
Innocent_Inmate_Dies_in_Prison
Innocent Bystander Shot

In the following video, a cop shoots and kills a handcuffed man lying on the ground.

Cop murder video

It is cowardly for a politician not to emphatically condemn police brutality, but few even whisper their objections. Politicians must start to loudly condemn police brutality and the courts that protect police brutality with bogus complaints by the police against the victims. All cases of police brutality should be adjudicated by a competent court. Few are.

See DOJ reports.
US DOJ
US DOJ Reports on Use of Force by Cops: