I'm just surprised to see that the Kercher family is sad that the accused were acquitted.

Why do the Kercher family think that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are guilty?

Update: Here's a clue to the family's thinking:

Whether that faith would remain solid after the court of cassation’s ruling, however, was unclear. Although the family have always been careful not to personalise the legal battle, they may well find the definitive clearing of both Knox and Sollecito hard to fathom. An earlier verdict by the court of cassation, which found Rudy Guede, an Ivorian, definitively guilty of Kercher’s murder, specified that the murder could not have been carried out by him alone, and that he must have had accomplices.

How, therefore, the only other people who have ever been seriously considered suspects in the case are now to walk free – for good – as a result of the same court is likely to be a bitter pill for the family to swallow.

We're heading into the last few hours to make predictions on the outcome of the latest round of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case. I've made mine. See also here (and, for that matter, the post and other comments).

The main sources of uncertainty are the general unpredictability of Italian Supreme Court decisions (as demonstrated in the nigh-inexplicable -- at least on naïve theories of how the system should work -- overturning of the acquittal by the Supreme Court two years ago), the fact that the panel that hears the case tomorrow won't actually be the same one as the one that heard it the first time, the fact that a juror in last year's retrial has come out expressing doubts about the case in the Italian press recently, and the fact that Knox and Sollecito do, in fact, have a pretty good case (even if their case was better at the previous levels of trial).

Of course, these factors aren't independent by any means, and I think they are dominated by the inertia of the previous verdicts. But, I don't dare put my confidence at more than about 60%.

(1) You write that 'the Supreme Court has gotten the verdict it wanted.' Why does the Supreme Court want to convict Sollecito and Knox?

Presumably, because they watch the same TV shows as everyone else in Italy, and are convinced that Sollecito and Knox are bad characters, and are furthermore convinced that the Italian public thinks that Sollecito and Knox are bad characters, thus allowing them to play the role of "heroes" doing their duty and standing up for "justice".

(2) In the room murder was committed, no DNA evidence pertaining to Knox and Sollecito was found. How does the prosecution explain that only one assailant (Guede) left traces of DNA but the two others left no such traces?

Firstly, of course, they claim that the bra clasp DNA counts as a trace left in the room by Sollecito. Secondly, the original lead prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, at one point speculated that Knox directed the violence from outside the room.

(3) It is said that the evidence shows that Kercher was killed by multiple people. What is your take on this?

It's just plain wrong, and entirely motivated by the desire to imply that Knox and Sollecito were involved. It's possible that Guede had one or more accomplices (of whom no trace has been identified), but parsimony argues against it.

(4) Perhaps most basically, how did Knox and Sollecito get implicated in this crime? I mean there were a lot of witnesses being questioned but how did the police/investigators somehow get the idea that Knox and Sollecito were suspects?

They were convenient, vulnerable (no lawyers, unlike the other housemates), and unaware of the specific way in which the investigators apparently expected all innocent humans to behave in such a situation. In short, easy targets for an impatient, quasi-panicked police force in need of a quick "resolution" to the case.

Particularly to parties informed on the subject: Can someone explain the court's reasoning?

As is usual in the Italian system, the court itself will publish its "motivations" within 90 days.

I can't quite follow why Knox and Sollecito were first convicted, then acquitted and yet are convicted once again.

If by "why" you mean "how it is procedurally possible", that can of course be answered now. Italian "trials" have three stages: first-level court, second-level court, and Supreme Court . The original first-level verdict (December 2009) was a conviction (this was the occasion of my original posts here); that was then changed to an acquittal at the second level (October 2011); that acquittal was then canceled by the Supreme Court (March 2013), who ordered a new second-level trial, which has now ended in another conviction. The case will thus go back to the Supreme Court again over the next year or so.

(Yes, this process could theoretically go on forever -- but in real life, what's going to happen is that now that the Supreme Court has gotten the verdict it wanted, it will rubber-stamp it without fuss.)

Hello,

There have been informed discussions of this subject on LW before.

Particularly to parties informed on the subject: Can someone explain the court's reasoning? I can't quite follow why Knox and Sollecito were first convicted, then acquitted and yet are convicted once again.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It was inspiring indeed.

The Inuit may not have 47 words for snow

The Inuit does not have 47 words for snow! Please, don't propagate this falsehood, especially on a 'rationality' blog.

Edit: Sorry I read incorrectly. My apologies! It says 'may not'...

I wonder if most of the responses to JJT's thought experiment consider the least convenient possible world. (Recall Yvain's insightful discussion about Pascal's wager?)

Most of the responses that I have read try to argue that if the act of killing a healthy person to steal his organs for organ-missing people were generalized, this would make things worse.

By the way, this worry about generalizing one's individual act feels so close to thoughts of Kant - oh the irony! - whose "first formulation of the CI states that you are to 'act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.'". (Does this sound like this "What happens in general if everyone at least as smart as me deduces that I would do X whenever I'm in situation Y"")?

But suppose this act were not to be repeated in the following (candidate?) least convenient possible world. Suppose a group of ethics students killed a healthy human to distribute his organs to organ missing people. They did this very secretly and only once to increase the total utility/happiness/quantifiable measure of goodness and they have no intention to repeat the act - precisely to parry the sorts of objections people have been voicing. And they have succeeded in increasing utility as the killed person was an ex-convict homeless guy with no family or friends. The saved individuals were cherished entrepreneurs and aging prevention scientists.

Now the question is, was their act of killing an ethical one? In a world where Eliezer Yudkowsky is the president and Less Wrongers are law-makers, should these people be jailed?

That said, I don't think objections such as these are knock-off arguments against consequentialism, the way they may look so. I will explain why later.

"If you object to consequentialist metaethical theories"

There is no such thing as a 'consequentialist metaethical theory'.

Consequentialism is a first-order ethical theory.

While most people here despise philosophy (see here ), I do wonder how much people actually understand philosophy.

Sounds like Casey is overwhelmingly likely to be guilty. It also sounds plausible, but unlikely (and maybe more evidence makes it less likely; this post is all I've read on the matter), than Cindy killed Cayley.