As many of you probably know, in an Italian court early last weekend, two young students, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of killing another young student, Meredith Kercher, in a horrific way in November of 2007. (A third person, Rudy Guede, was convicted earlier.)
If you aren't familiar with the case, don't go reading about it just yet. Hang on for just a moment.
If you are familiar, that's fine too. This post is addressed to readers of all levels of acquaintance with the story.
What everyone should know right away is that the verdict has been extremely controversial. Strong feelings have emerged, even involving national tensions (Knox is American, Sollecito Italian, and Kercher British, and the crime and trial took place in Italy). The circumstances of the crime involve sex. In short, the potential for serious rationality failures in coming to an opinion on a case like this is enormous.
Now, as it happens, I myself have an opinion. A rather strong one, in fact. Strong enough that I caught myself thinking that this case -- given all the controversy surrounding it -- might serve as a decent litmus test in judging the rationality skills of other people. Like religion, or evolution -- except less clichéd (and cached) and more down-and-dirty.
Of course, thoughts like that can be dangerous, as I quickly recognized. The danger of in-group affective spirals looms large. So before writing up that Less Wrong post adding my-opinion-on-the-guilt-or-innocence-of-Amanda-Knox-and-Raffaele-Sollecito to the List of Things Every Rational Person Must Believe, I decided it might be useful to find out what conclusion(s) other aspiring rationalists would (or have) come to (without knowing my opinion).
So that's what this post is: a survey/experiment, with fairly specific yet flexible instructions (which differ slightly depending on how much you know about the case already).
For those whose familiarity with the case is low:
I'm going to give you two websites advocating a position, one strongly in favor of the verdict, the other strongly opposed. Your job will be to browse around these sites to learn info about the case, as much as you need to in order to arrive at a judgment. The order, manner, and quantity of browsing will be left up to you -- though I would of course like to know how much you read in your response.
1. Site arguing defendants are guilty.
2. Site arguing defendants are innocent.
I've chosen these particular sites because they seemed to contain the best combination of fierceness of advocacy and quantity of information on their respective sides that I could find.
If you find better summaries, or think that these choices reflect a bias or betray my own opinion, by all means let me know. I'm specifically avoiding referring you to media reports, however, for a couple of reasons. First, I've noticed that reports often contain factual inaccuracies (necessarily, because they contradict each other). Secondly, journalists don't usually have much of a stake, and I'd like to see how folks respond to passionate advocacy by people who care about the outcome, as in an actual trial, rather than attempts at neutral summarizing. Of course, it's fine if you want to read media reports linked to by the above sites.
(One potential problem is that the first site is organized like a blog or forum, and thus it is hard to find a quick summary of the case there. [EDIT: Be sure to look at the category links on the right side of the page to find the arguments.] If you think it necessary, refer to the ever-changing Wikipedia article, which at the moment of writing seems a bit more favorable to the prosecution. [EDIT: I'm no longer sure that's true.] [EDIT: Now I think it's true again, the article having apparently changed some more. So there's really no telling. Be warned.])
After you do this reading, I'd like to know:
1. Your probability estimate that Amanda Knox is guilty.
2. Your probability estimate that Raffaele Sollecito is guilty.
3. Your probability estimate that Rudy Guede is guilty.
4. How much you think your opinion will turn out to coincide with mine.
Feel free to elaborate on your reasoning to whatever degree you like.
One request: don't look at others' comments until you've done the experiment yourself!
For those whose familiarity with the case is moderate or high:
I'd like to know, as of right now:
1. Your probability estimate that Amanda Knox is guilty.
2. Your probability estimate that Raffaele Sollecito is guilty.
3. Your probability estimate that Rudy Guede is guilty.
4. How much you think your opinion will turn out to coincide with mine.
5. From what sources you've gotten the info you've used to arrive at these estimates.
Then, if possible, do the experiment described above for those with little familiarity, and report any shifts in your estimates.
Again, everyone should avoid looking at others' responses before giving their own feedback. Also, don't forget to identify your prior level of familiarity!
If the level of participation warrants it, I'll post my own thoughts (and reaction to the feedback here) in a later post. (Edit: That post can be found here.)
I'm going to have to distinguish here between guilt in the actual sense, and guilt in a legal sense. Do I think Amanda Knox did it? Somewhat likely. Do I think the prosecution proved that beyond a reasonable doubt? No.
I think my estimates of guilt for all three parties will be higher than most commenters, but here they are:
Probability that Knox participated in the murder: 15% Probability that Knox participated in or covered up the murder: 20% Probability that I would find Knox guilty of murder: 5%
Probability that Solecito participated in the murder 10% Probability that Solecito participated in or covered up the murder: 20% Probability that I would find Solecito guilty of murder: 5%
Probability that Rudy Guedo participated in the murder 80% Probability that Rudy Guedo participated in or covered up the murder 95% Probability that I would find Guedo guilty of murder: 85%
The biggest problem to me with the prosecution's case is the alleged physical abuse of Knox by her interrogators. Her story did change somewhat, but not in a manner consistent with a guilty party. If Knox was guilty and wanted to frame someone else, it is unlikely that she would have fingered Lumumba days later and made vague statements that incorporated some kind of clairvoyant dream about Lumumba raping Kerscher rather than just making immediate and damning accusations. If the police physically harmed her in any way, that alone should have been enough to immediately drop the case. I'd find Charlie Manson innocent if I found that the police had roughed him up in interrogation to elicit a confession; such actions by the police undermine the very fabric of a free legal system and cannot be tolerated in any way whatsoever.
Secondly, the prosecution failed to establish a clear motive. First they claimed that Meredith refused to participate in some unspecified 'sex games'. They never showed that Knox or Solecito were inclined to that sort of sexual behavior, and even if they were, it is a large leap from sexual frustration to murder. There was the stolen credit cards and missing money, but it was never shown that Knox or Solecito were in possession of the money. It should have been fairly easy to find a record of their withdrawals from Kerscher's account, but it appears the police never even attempted to find such evidence. So the prosecution claimed that since Knox and Solecito smoked cannabis, they must have been addicts who stole the money (that no one ever proved the couple even had) to fuel their raging drug habits and possibly buy 'hard drugs' like cocaine. Que clips from 'Reefer Madness' now.
There is DNA evidence against Knox, but being roommates with the victim, it would be a challenge to find something of Kerscher's that didn't have some of Knox's DNA on it. This seems to be a case of the 'CSI effect' actually working in favor of the prosecution. All the jury hears is 'DNA', but don't stop to consider any number of explanations as to why Knox's DNA would be on one of her own kitchen knives and on her roommate's clothes that don't involve murder.
There is also some dodgy eyewitness testimony, but even if the witnesses were so-called 'credible witnesses' eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.
Guede, on the other hand, used the classic 'a large unidentified black man did it' defense at first but then changed his story when he found out Knox and Solecito were involved. He did flee the country, but so would I if accused of murder in a foreign country. Forensic evidence also confirmed that Guede had sex with Kirscher that night, not rock solid evidence I know, but notable. More evidence against Guede comes from the story he gave of how he was sitting on the toilet listening to his iPod when the attack occurred, which would have meant that he knew about the attack when it happened, failed to call the police, and fled the scene to go dance at a night club. Additionally he originally claimed that he tried to comfort Kerscher, meaning she was still alive, before fleeing and leaving her to die, which is ethically equivalent to murder.
To draw this lengthy post to a conclusion, I'm going to give my first impressions of the site wanting to keep Knox behind bars. As Nietzsche said "Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful." All of these 'victim rights' groups who spend their time trying to keep other people in prison are a walking contradiction. A murder victim, by definition, has no rights; they're dead. It does a victim no good to keep the murderer behind bars; it only serves to satiate the need for vengeance in the bereaved. True, there are people who will likely murder again if released, but often, these groups continue to hound those who have reformed and express remorse (Leslie Van Houten), or those whose guilt was never clearly established in the first place (Leonard Peltier). Knox seems to be just another one of these unfortunate victims getting slandered by those who confuse justice with revenge. Am I out on a limb here, or does someone want to present a rational case for rights post-mortem?
Although I'm invariably annoyed by this kind of (what seems to me like) weasly hedging ("just state your probability already!"), it might be a reasonable thing to say if your probability is somewhere between 50% and 99%. At 15%, however, I hardly see the point, and in fact it's downright misleading.