Rudy chose the "fast track" option, which allows for a one third reduction in prison term, and so that's why his sentence was reduced. I don't really understand their system enough to criticize it, but it seems to me that guilty criminals generally would choose the "fast track" option, and get reduced sentences, whereas the innocent generally would choose the full trial, and get full sentences.
brazil84's points 1, 2, and 3 are false in my opinion, I have insufficient knowledge about #4 (the allegedly postmortem removed bra) but my reaction is "so what?" and "how does the investigator know the bra wasn't removed post-cut rather than postmortem?"), and here is my take on #5, the mop and bucket...
The allegation that Amanda and Rafael were found with a mop and bucket outside the crime scene apartment is reported on truejustice.org (which has been accused of bias in some of the comments here.) Truejustice.org claims to be paraphrasing a judge's statements about pretrial hearings. This alleged fact apparently did not come up in the actual trial. In the actual trial, Rafael's maid said she found a mop and bucket underneath the sink at his apartment, and said he explained that they had cleaned up some leaked water. The maid testified that there was a clear liquid in the bucket. My wild guess at the truth here is that indeed Amanda and/or Rafael had taken a mop and bucket from Amanda's apartment to Rafael's apartment to clean up a leak, and the maid saw it when she came in the morning (she cleaned around 11:00 on certain days, as I recall.) And then, possibly, and unfortunately for them, Amanda or Rafael brought the mop back to Amanda's apartment shortly before the police arrived. But your guess is as good as mine.
One thing I stumbled across was this comment to a blog:
"There is one simple reason that I believe that Amanda and her boyfriend are both guilty of some involvement in this crime: they were at the apartment the next morning with a bucket of bleach. Please explain away her guilt under this "circumstance.""
I think that's pretty funny, or at least it would be if the freedom of two individuals weren't at stake. No evidence of bleach, by the way.
The above Youtube video is worth watching. If there is even one mistake like this by the police in a criminal investigation, I think they should be forced drop the investigation, rather than to risk putting innocent people in jail due to the police's incompetence or bias.
How much does the choice of words bias peoples' thinking?
"Lone wolf theory" - If you google this term, what comes up is, sadly, the Amanda Knox case, and then terrorist cases like the DC sniper and the holocaust museum shooting. Rudy was not a terrorist, so some people may unconsciously dismiss the likelihood that he was a "lone wolf." And although it's a "theory," the phrase "Lone Wolf theory" sounds like something nutty, whereas it's really the normal scenario in such murders. The onus should lay on disproving this scenario, not proving it.
"Cartwheels" - Amanda Knox is said to have done cartwheels during her interrogation. Cartwheels have a connotation of joy. To prove my point, if you google "cartwheels of joy", it gets 82,400 hits. If the police had chosen the term "gymnastics," then it might be easier to understand why a young girl cooped up for 30 hours might engage in such behavior. Even if she did cartwheels and only cartwheels, she wasn't joyful.
"Foxy Knoxy" - Amanda's character was assassinated by the press long before her trial, and this catchy phrase was responsible for much of it. Ironically, the phrase came from Amanda Knox herself on her Facebook page, according to one of her old friends who stood up for her character.
Words played a powerful role in bias in Amanda's case. I don't think I even need to qualify that as my opinion.
This is what the article was talking about: privileging the hypothesis. Amanda's boyfriend said that she was simply buying clean underwear, because she had no access to her clothes in the apartment, which should kinda be obvious, no?
Another example is Amanda's internet-posted story about rape. Did you know that rape is the number one sexual fantasy of women? Well, that's according to my surveys. Askmen.com puts the rape fantasy at #3. Whatever... it's up there. I'm saying that it's dangerous when people bring in the murder hypothesis to explain "weird" behavior, because that "weird" behavior may be normal.
If you were being interrogated for 30 hours straight, would you stand up and do some stretches at any point? Is that so different from doing a little gymnastics?
However, it's a mistake to even go down this path. Let the evidence lead you. None of Amanda's DNA was found at the crime scene, whereas Rudy's DNA was all over the place. Therefore, Amanda likely never set foot in that room... and Rudy likely did.
The bigger question here is how can the court system (in Italy, America, and elsewhere) be fixed or at least improved? What can be done?
I agree that truejustice.org reported that one of the residents stated that she left her room without clothing strewn about and that she left valuables in plain sight that were not taken. I fail to see the relevance to Amanda, especially if the valuables were not clearly valuable or were easily traceable (e.g., the valuables could have been jewelry, which the murderer may have believed risky to fence or believed to be worthless costume jewelry.) Cash was taken.
I agree that a second floor window was broken and that there was easy access to said window from the side/trellis. I fail to see the relevance to Amanda.
You are implicitly referencing the glass-on-clothes argument. I am unmoved by this evidence that the window was broken from the inside because:
Glass fragments could wind up on top of clothes even if the window was broken from the outside. The clothes weren't strewn about before the incident, so, if the glass were broken from the outside then the clothes would have been strewn about after the glass fragments were on the floor, allowing fragments to roll up on top of clothes.
The murderer's objective after the crime seems to have been to delay discovery of the body. The murderer went into the bathroom outside the victim's room to clean himself, then went back into the victim's room, locked the door, and exited through the window. Therefore, even if the window was broken from the inside, which I really, really doubt, it makes sense from the murderer's perspective. Amanda and her boyfriend, on the other hand, sped the discovery of the body by calling the police (although, ironically, other police were already on their way.)
I'm kind of assuming the victim had a European style door lock, which can only be locked from inside, rather than American style door lock, which can be locked before exiting. But if it's true that it was a lock-from-inside style lock, then there is something wrong with the prosecutors. The prosecutors implied there was no way to get in or out of this room through the window (which wasn't true, but never mind), so what happened to the criminal in their estimation? Did he teleport out?