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JQuinton comments on Amanda Knox Guilty Again - Less Wrong Discussion
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I read this on Yahoo news, which was the only story I read about her reconviction:
This confuses me, because Italy is in the Schengen area, where you don't need a passport to travel between participating countries. Presumably they can stop him from easily leaving Schengen though, and presumably extradition treaties are in force.
This prompts me to ask what the heck he was doing in the country in the first place. In the years since Knox and Sollecito were released has Sollecito been prevented from leaving the country? If not then why in the heck would he stay in that place? Flee! Escape! Buy a citizenship in another country if you must. If that doesn't work then buy a fake identity in another country. You don't stay there and let them target you again.
I think you underestimate the costs of doing that. Not just the financial costs, but the social ones.
Changing idendity requires forfeiting most of your property that you can't carry with you, all your academic and professional certifications and achievements, and your entire social network.
It's unclear to me that this would be better than spending 25 years in prison.
LOL. So tell me, what does your "entire social network" look like after 25 years in prison? What's the worth of "all your academic and professional certifications and achievements"? How much property do you think you'll have?
Well, at least they'll feed you for 25 years :D
You don't have any basis for that conclusion. The social costs are obvious and the financial costs I happen to have researched.
I neither believe nor disbelieve your claim about yourself. People do stranger things than voluntarily obliterate most of their life (suicide doesn't even offer parole). Nevertheless the reasoning "V_V would prefer imprisonment for most of the rest of his life over moving to a country without an extradition treaty therefore Wedrifid must underestimate the costs of such a move" is rather flawed.
Fair enough, you are probably quite unusual.
While I don't endorse his decision, I suspect it might be motivated by a desire to preserve his own public standing. In the eyes of the public, admission that the courts will probably find against you is likely to be seen as effectively admitting one's guilt. Innocent people stay and uphold their reputations.
I'm annoyed that various news sources are reporting that he was picked up "near the Austrian border" as if that implies he was fleeing the country. I bet 60-70% of the population of Italy is as close to the border as Venzone is (roughly 70km).
EDIT: Now another news source is reporting that he may have actually crossed the border into Villach (the shorter route I mention later), which explains why people believe he was fleeing the country.
Actually the Italy-Austria border is a pretty mountainous area with a bunch of national parks. The only cities of note are Udine and Trieste, but altogether I doubt you have more than 5% of the population (and google maps suggests Venzone is around 20km from the border). So I think it's not an altogether arbitrary suggestion to make.
That's not the Austrian border, that's the Slovenian border. It's 40km from Venzone to Žaga, and 70km to Unterthörl.
My claim was that 60-70% of Italy is 70km away from the border of Italy. Almost every major city is on the coastline, with the exception of Florence. At its widest, it seems Italy is only about 350km wide.
EDIT: There seems to be a slightly shorter route due north, but it's only about 5km shorter.
Milan, Turin and Bologna aren't, though the former two are relatively close to the Swiss border.
"Almost every". I did not say Florence was the only exception.
Milan and Turin are well within 70km of Switzerland and France, though, so I don't know why you mention them.
This is why I don't comment as much on LW as I used to.
I was just nit-picking, sorry.
In any event, counting coasts as borders is not something Italians would usually do. I'd think it's much easier to escape a country undetected (at least in the Schengen area) from a land border than from the coast. I'd say that P(x is trying to flee Italy|x is in Venzone) >> P(x is trying to flee Italy|x is in Rome), or Naples, or Milan, or indeed most (by population) of Italy.
I'm curious, would it even matter if he had escaped to Austria? I was under the impression that the EU had fairly tightly integrated law enforcement & extradition within the Schengen area precisely because it's so easy to move around, and that being in Austria would be a very minimal obstacle for the Italian police.
Good point.