Continuation Part Eight: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[Bill Williams]

I don't think that's quite fair, CoulsdonUK. The assertion was that the people who believe AK & RS are guilty of murder do not confront arguments about the case and do not defend their position with facts. The sweeping statement you refer to is just that -- the PGP have demonstrated repeatedly that they have no desire to honestly confront any issues that might undermine their convictions.

It's probably not helpful to guess about the psychology of what that might mean, but the statement itself is true.

For me the issue is not one of the "psychology of guilters".... as it is what is going on in the Italian judicial system, where judges like Nencini need to write completely nutty motivations reports.

Mnay are saying there is a war going on within the Italian judiciary - heck, even Machiavelli says that "the other side" is corrupt.

I take CoulsdonUK's posting at face value. Still I wish he'd give an example of the "cogent facts" that he would claim guilters have, but PIP are blind to. I've yet to see them.

 

[Samson]

Has anybody seen this:
"Amanda Knox Body Language on Chris Cuomo Interview Shows Odd Behavior and Lack of Genuine Emotion"
This Lillian Glass person analyzes the Knox-Coumo interview and declares her guilty because of facial expressisons, etc.
The author does not take into consideration the fact that Knox is probably traumatized by this seven years of persecution.
There are a swarm of Flies feeding on this article, CaliDeeva, Yves L., etc. Where do these people come from?
Analemma

She also says this

Nancy announced that she thought Amanda being found innocent was a ‘miscarriage of justice’ but Beverly Hills based body language expert says Amanda hasn’t lied once!

Nancy Grace slammed the Italian court’s ruling on Oct. 4 that found Amanda Knox innocent of murder! The former prosecutor and host of HLN’s Nancy Grace spoke with Access Hollywood just hours after Amanda’s fate was revealed but HollywoodLife.com‘s body language expert Dr. Lillian Glass says Amanda’s hand gestures, facial expression and tone prove her innocence!

“Amanda is innocent and Nancy Grace doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” she says. “In the beginning of the trial, Amanda seemed immature and didn’t realize the gravity of the situation but in her address in Seattle you could tell her sincerity by the tone of her voice, passion of the voice. All of her movements were connected, no signals of deception. It wasn’t contrived, it was really heartfelt, and her tears were of sincerity.”

http://hollywoodlife.com/2011/10/05/amanda-knox-verdict-nancy-grace-video/

 

[acbytesla]

For me the issue is not one of the "psychology of guilters".... as it is what is going on in the Italian judicial system, where judges like Nencini need to write completely nutty motivations reports.

Mnay are saying there is a war going on within the Italian judiciary - heck, even Machiavelli says that "the other side" is corrupt.

I take CoulsdonUK's posting at face value. Still I wish he'd give an example of the "cogent facts" that he would claim guilters have, but PIP are blind to. I've yet to see them.

I've never understood Coulsdon's approach to this controversy. I mean it must be uncomfortable with a fence pole up his back side for so many years.

While I can truly respect one who doesn't make up his mind until they have enough information or when the facts are equivocal. But in this case, they really are not. You don't need to understand the DNA, or Italian or anything else. We can argue until the cows come home, about the Luminol footprints or the bra clasp or the knife. The shoe/footprints in Meredith's bedroom tell the whole story. There clearly was no cleanup and there are only identifiable prints of Meredith and Rudy in that room PERIOD. That tells without question that those are the only two people that were in that struggle. The rest is just filler.

 

[JREF2010]

Even Amanda wants those minute hair samples tested!!!

excuse the snip, rw, but this part reminded me when I went from thinking guilty to saying "wait a minute? its the defense that wants the knife tested again?"

then it got worse from there with the interrogation and the prosecution lying about the interrogation and lying about not having a recording.

I doubt Rudy wanted more things tested.

 

[Bill Williams]

I've never understood Coulsdon's approach to this controversy. I mean it must be uncomfortable with a fence pole up his back side for so many years.

While I can truly respect one who doesn't make up his mind until they have enough information or when the facts are equivocal. But in this case, they really are not. You don't need to understand the DNA, or Italian or anything else. We can argue until the cows come home, about the Luminol footprints or the bra clasp or the knife. The shoe/footprints in Meredith's bedroom tell the whole story. There clearly was no cleanup and there are only identifiable prints of Meredith and Rudy in that room PERIOD. That tells without question that those are the only two people that were in that struggle. The rest is just filler.

CoulsdonUK's approach is not novel. It seems to be a, "Well, the competentant authority has found them guilty. 'Nuff said."

A very vocal innocenter had a reversal of opinion with the ISC's March 2013 reversal of the acquittals. The only "rationale" for this that I could spot was that the court must know something we do not.

 

[acbytesla]

CoulsdonUK's approach is not novel. It seems to be a, "Well, the competentant authority has found them guilty. 'Nuff said."

A very vocal innocenter had a reversal of opinion with the ISC's March 2013 reversal of the acquittals. The only "rationale" for this that I could spot was that the court must know something we do not.

I don't get that Bill.The court is just people. No better or worse than any one else. They certainly don't have a grasp of the science, since they are so willing to ignore it. Maybe I'm arrogant, but I tend to believe that my mind can figure anything out given the time and the education. I admit that at the beginning before I understood the case, I too assumed that they were probably guilty. After all, where there is smoke there is fire.

But this case really isn't that tough to figure out...well it is if you think they are guilty. Then you probably give up and give up and give in to that kind of thinking. That others wiser and smarter probably understood it better.

But I could never let someone else's life depend on the "other guy". That surely they "must know better". This is where my arrogance comes into play because it has been my experience when it comes to the average joe, they don't know any better than me. I'd bet on my own mind before I'd bet on the general public.

 

[kwill]

One of the more well known "guilters" keeps a personal blog. I found it because the guilter in question made a rare foray into the vile hatred of All things Amanda Knox on it, and it was picked up by a search engine.... the blog was mainly about all sorts of other subjects.

But if the Perugian murder stuff had been taken out, the two of us share fairly similar political views, and have been active in the same sorts of non-profit activities. If we were to ever meet, and avoid you-know-what, we'd have a lot to talk about.

This is what I meant when I said it's not helpful to guess at the psychology of the PGP. I like JREF for its refusal to allow members to go after one another in a personal way.

I don't have a clue what drives some of the PGP to take so much joy in attacking AK and RS. I really don't; I find it disturbing, but I don't understand and I don't expect to.

What matters to me is that there is plenty of evidence --both forensic and circumstantial-- that points toward innocence, and nothing that points toward guilt. When you ask for a PGP version of the crime, you never, ever get one that is derived from the physical evidence as we know it.

My strong belief is that nothing AK reportedly did or said in the hours after she and RS called the police has evidentiary value, from the moment the police arrived until the moment she was arrested.

She didn't understand what was going on! And there were no English speakers around to help her. There was no one around who could understand what she was saying, or who had a context in which to make sense of her behavior.

I bring this up here because the PGP attaches so much importance to all of that, but to me that seems absurd. We had an exchange student in our house one year. She arrived in late August and left the following June. She had pretty good English when she got here, but very, very limited ability to grok cultural cues. That develops slowly . . . Amanda Knox learned Italian culture from inside a prison. She had no way of knowing how she was coming across, or what she might have been expected to do or say after just a couple of months in Perugia.

Our exchange student, for example, was certain that if our daughters shared their hairbrush with her, she was in danger of getting HIV. She thought we would all get sick if we used a spoon that had been dropped on the kitchen floor. She thought we would have to bribe her teachers to give her good grades. She couldn't understand why it made sense to buy one apple at a time. A thousand small things arose, week after week, that were not obvious to us until she questioned them -- and she didn't feel capable of knowing the questions until she'd been in the country for four or five months.

I think of her when people talk about how Amanda "behaved." She wasn't strange. She was just a stranger, trusting the locals to bring her into their world. We did that for our student, but I think the only one in Italy who did that for Amanda was Fr. Saulo.

 

[Bill Williams]

This is what I meant when I said it's not helpful to guess at the psychology of the PGP. I like JREF for its refusal to allow members to go after one another in a personal way.

I don't have a clue what drives some of the PGP to take so much joy in attacking AK and RS. I really don't; I find it disturbing, but I don't understand and I don't expect to.

What matters to me is that there is plenty of evidence --both forensic and circumstantial-- that points toward innocence, and nothing that points toward guilt. When you ask for a PGP version of the crime, you never, ever get one that is derived from the physical evidence as we know it.

My strong belief is that nothing AK reportedly did or said in the hours after she and RS called the police has evidentiary value, from the moment the police arrived until the moment she was arrested.

She didn't understand what was going on! And there were no English speakers around to help her. There was no one around who could understand what she was saying, or who had a context in which to make sense of her behavior. I bring this up here because the PGP attaches so much importance to all of that, but to me that seems absurd. We had an exchange student in our house one year. She arrived in late August and left the following June. She had pretty good English when she got here, but very, very limited ability to grok cultural cues. That develops slowly . . . Amanda Knox learned Italian culture from inside a prison. She had no way of knowing how she was coming across, or what she might have been expected to do or say after just a couple of months in Perugia.

Our exchange student, for example, was certain that if our daughters shared their hairbrush with her, she was in danger of getting HIV. She thought we would all get sick if we used a spoon that had been dropped on the kitchen floor. She thought we would have to bribe her teachers to give her good grades. She couldn't understand why it made sense to buy one apple at a time. A thousand small things arose, week after week, that were not obvious to us until she questioned them -- and she didn't feel capable of knowing the questions until she'd been in the country for four or five months.

I think of her when people talk about how Amanda "behaved." She wasn't strange. She was just a stranger, trusting the locals to bring her into their world. We did that for our student, but I think the only one in Italy who did that for Amanda was Fr. Saulo.

Anyone wishing to expose me as a hypocrite in this department can perhaps find potshots I've taken over the three+ years I've commented on this. I plead guilty on that one.

The best thing would be to stick to the evidence, and leave the psychologising to others.

So back to evidence. The numbskull guilters.... oooops..... the poor mistaken cretins..... not so good either.... ah, er, the wretched sillies....

.... want to have it both ways. They want it so that Amanda was suspected going into interoogation, but then have all those suspicions dissolve, why?

Because they were supposed to have only stumbled upon Knox as "strongly suspected" (Machiavelli's words) on the night of the 5th of Nov, when Rafaelle was not allowed to consult a calendar so as to recall which was the Wednesday and which was the Thursday.

As stake was "Raffaele withdrawing Amanda's alibi," but wait for it. Alibi for strange behaviour?

No. The cops were supposed to have known nothing about Lumumba until Amanda allegedly, spontaneously blurted out his name.

"Spontaneously" is the key here. The cops were not supposed to know anything about Knox being involved, strange behaviour or no strange behaviour - because the spontaneity of the so-called spontaneous statements. If not spontaneous, then they are nothing.

PGP's have NEVER explained this. The reason to rely on the "strange behaviour" as well as the spontaneity of the declaration.

 

[griffinmill]

The PGP vs PIP psychology debate is ridiculous. Both claim the other distorts facts. Both malign whichever central players suit them. Both assert cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, prejudice, conspiracy, and sinister intention. Ironically, until the actual truth is known, both will be equally as right as the other.

Moving beyond the towering certitude on both sides, the case comes down to reasonable doubt. The PIP think it means one thing, the PGP think it means another. Based on what the law defines as reasonable doubt, my feeling is the courts made the right decision. They may be innocent, trapped in tragic circumstance, but there isn't enough reasonable doubt to conclude they are not guilty.

I have a life to live and will not answer millions of questions on the "evidence." That said, I believe Raf's DNA on the clasp and Meredith's DNA on the knife are not likely to be the result of contamination, and even less likely when both unlikely events are combined. Even without all the other (admittedly disputed) forensics, the circumstantial evidence is fairly overwhelming.

So I will be PGP until such time as reasonable doubt supports the contrary. At this point, believing in AK and RS requires too vast a conspiracy -- innocently bungled alibis, a wholly corrupt police force, a 2 hour interrogation that resulted in the accusation of an innocent person, forensic evidence that connects all 3 to the crime scene.

AK and RS have quite a task unwrangling themselves from all this, and not surprisingly they haven't.

 

[Bill Williams]

The PGP vs PIP psychology debate is ridiculous. Both claim the other distorts facts. Both malign whichever central players suit them. Both assert cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, prejudice, conspiracy, and sinister intention. Ironically, until the actual truth is known, both will be equally as right as the other.

Moving beyond the towering certitude on both sides, the case comes down to reasonable doubt. The PIP think it means one thing, the PGP think it means another. Based on what the law defines as reasonable doubt, my feeling is the courts made the right decision. They may be innocent, trapped in tragic circumstance, but there isn't enough reasonable doubt to conclude they are not guilty.
I have a life to live and will not answer millions of questions on the "evidence." That said, I believe Raf's DNA on the clasp and Meredith's DNA on the knife are not likely to be the result of contamination, and even less likely when both unlikely events are combined. Even without all the other (admittedly disputed) forensics, the circumstantial evidence is fairly overwhelming.

So I will be PGP until such time as reasonable doubt supports the contrary. At this point, believing in AK and RS requires too vast a conspiracy -- innocently bungled alibis, a wholly corrupt police force, a 2 hour interrogation that resulted in the accusation of an innocent person, forensic evidence that connects all 3 to the crime scene.

AK and RS have quite a task unwrangling themselves from all this, and not surprisingly they haven't.

This comment echoes what Chris Cuomo said.... they have to prove their innocence. And in this case the law is applied exactly the opposite as to what it really is all about.... reasonable doubt is a threshhold for the prosecution to go beyond, not the defendants.

Thank you for being clear about this.

 

[griffinmill]

This comment echoes what Chris Cuomo said.... they have to prove their innocence.

One way to put it. Another way to put it is the reasonable doubt of their innocence was not proved.

 

[kwill]

I have a life to live and will not answer millions of questions on the "evidence." That said, I believe Raf's DNA on the clasp and Meredith's DNA on the knife are not likely to be the result of contamination . . .

Well, that's good enough for you.

And you've already said you don't want to answer millions of questions, so I won't ask one. Just a couple of points that need to be made, since you've named the clasp and the knife as evidence.

A clasp that was lost for six weeks and moved across the room during that time should never have been admitted into court. Once the chain of custody is broken, it's not evidence, it's garbage.

And the testing showed that Meredith's DNA wasn't on that knife. It wasn't there, nor was any blood. That knife didn't match the wounds. It didn't match the imprint on the sheet. It wasn't the murder weapon, which is why Meredith's DNA wasn't on it.

There. That's not for you, it's for those lurkers who might be thinking that there is actually "evidence" showing that either AK or RS were present in the room where Guede killed Meredith. There is no evidence, because they weren't there.

 

[Poppy1016]

The PGP vs PIP psychology debate is ridiculous. Both claim the other distorts facts. Both malign whichever central players suit them. Both assert cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, prejudice, conspiracy, and sinister intention. Ironically, until the actual truth is known, both will be equally as right as the other.

Moving beyond the towering certitude on both sides, the case comes down to reasonable doubt. The PIP think it means one thing, the PGP think it means another. Based on what the law defines as reasonable doubt, my feeling is the courts made the right decision. They may be innocent, trapped in tragic circumstance, but there isn't enough reasonable doubt to conclude they are not guilty.

I have a life to live and will not answer millions of questions on the "evidence." That said, I believe Raf's DNA on the clasp and Meredith's DNA on the knife are not likely to be the result of contamination, and even less likely when both unlikely events are combined. Even without all the other (admittedly disputed) forensics, the circumstantial evidence is fairly overwhelming.

So I will be PGP until such time as reasonable doubt supports the contrary. At this point, believing in AK and RS requires too vast a conspiracy -- innocently bungled alibis, a wholly corrupt police force, a 2 hour interrogation that resulted in the accusation of an innocent person, forensic evidence that connects all 3 to the crime scene.

AK and RS have quite a task unwrangling themselves from all this, and not surprisingly they haven't.

Do you believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty? Or do you believe AK and RS must prove their innocence?

 

[Bill Williams]

One way to put it. Another way to put it is the reasonable doubt of their innocence was not proved.

You actually are allowed to invoke criteria that makes sense to you. You are one of the few who actually DOES try to put together a "reasonable" reason why you believe in guilt.

But that is the trouble with articulating it. In your case, you have reversed the burden of proof.

If this is your own personal standard, then good for you. You are honest.

But this is not the standard Italy advertises.

Put another way, can you take this out of the realm of your own belief, and actually provide proof that Meredtih's DNA is on the knife (remember, Stefanoni admits as recorded in the Masei report that the test she did could only i.d. the owner of the material, and since it was necessarily destroyed in the test the second confirmatory test - required by law - could not be done.)

So you say you believe the DNA to be Meredith's, but whatever it was was not Meredith's by any meaningful legal definition. Furthermore, unless it is blood - then the most likely reason Meredith's non-blood DNA would be there is because of contamination. Again, it is not incriminating by any legal definition... unless you want to be like Nencini and give the case against them a litlte help by inventing things, like Raffaele all of a sudden having DNA on that knife - and you say you don't believe in conspiracy!

See what I mean? One necessarily gets into discussing the evidence, and the burden is not on AK and RS to establish reasonable doubt.

These sorts of reversals are the exact roadmap of the wrongful conviction. You are just articulating it better than most that you believe that the wrongful conviction is actually just.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

two questions each on the knife and on the clasp

griffinmill,

How can one clean a knife of blood but not of DNA? If Bruce Budowle, the former head of a research lab at the FBI and now a professor in Texas, does not think it can be done, can you or anyone else explain why you think he might be wrong?

Do you agree that by storing the clasp in the presence of extraction buffer in a closed container, it was almost inevitable that there would be decomposition? If so, do you think that this was an innocent mistake?
ETA
The presence of a number of additional profiles on the clasp means that it was contaminated by definition.

 

[griffinmill]

Well, that's good enough for you.

And you've already said you don't want to answer millions of questions, so I won't ask one. Just a couple of points that need to be made, since you've named the clasp and the knife as evidence.

A clasp that was lost for six weeks and moved across the room during that time should never have been admitted into court. Once the chain of custody is broken, it's not evidence, it's garbage.

And the testing showed that Meredith's DNA wasn't on that knife. It wasn't there, nor was any blood. That knife didn't match the wounds. It didn't match the imprint on the sheet. It wasn't the murder weapon, which is why Meredith's DNA wasn't on it.

There. That's not for you, it's for those lurkers who might be thinking that there is actually "evidence" showing that either AK or RS were present in the room where Guede killed Meredith. There is no evidence, because they weren't there.

Interesting that you snipped out my following comment that BOTH Raf on the clasp and Meredith on the blade make the likelihood of contamination less likely to me. The fact that two highly unlikely events is strange to me, unless there is a wider conspiracy.

The rest of your argument doesn't make sense. C/V admitted Meredith was on the blade, only argued that is wasn't reliable. I'm not aware of any expert who has ever said her DNA profile wasn't there at all. And I'm always surprised to see the PIP claim the profile wasn't there instead of saying, "It's there, sure, but obviously a result of contamination (for X,Y,Z reasons.)
"

I'll admit to disappointment that the bra clasp wasn't collected in a more timely fashion, but it was a closed crime scene. Very few people were allowed in and out. It's certainly "possible" that Raf's DNA was transferred to the clasp. But highly unlikely, and therefore reasonable doubt is not met. Not to mention, countless cases have been solved in recent years with DNA evidence decades old.

 

[Samson]

The PGP vs PIP psychology debate is ridiculous. Both claim the other distorts facts. Both malign whichever central players suit them. Both assert cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, prejudice, conspiracy, and sinister intention. Ironically, until the actual truth is known, both will be equally as right as the other.

Moving beyond the towering certitude on both sides, the case comes down to reasonable doubt. The PIP think it means one thing, the PGP think it means another. Based on what the law defines as reasonable doubt, my feeling is the courts made the right decision. They may be innocent, trapped in tragic circumstance, but there isn't enough reasonable doubt to conclude they are not guilty.

I have a life to live and will not answer millions of questions on the "evidence." That said, I believe Raf's DNA on the clasp and Meredith's DNA on the knife are not likely to be the result of contamination, and even less likely when both unlikely events are combined. Even without all the other (admittedly disputed) forensics, the circumstantial evidence is fairly overwhelming.

So I will be PGP until such time as reasonable doubt supports the contrary. At this point, believing in AK and RS requires too vast a conspiracy -- innocently bungled alibis, a wholly corrupt police force, a 2 hour interrogation that resulted in the accusation of an innocent person, forensic evidence that connects all 3 to the crime scene.

AK and RS have quite a task unwrangling themselves from all this, and not surprisingly they haven't.

Maybe focussing on the evidence that is not disputed would be a place to start.
For example
1. Human interaction with a computer at 9 26 pm
2. The autopsy showing no gastric emptying.
3. The hundreds of crime scene photographs.
4. That Guede refused to name them until they had been found guilty.
5. That two Italian judges subsequently declared them innocent.

And then after fully analysing these items, consider the disputed items.
1. The accusation/confession.
2. The dna on knife and bra clasp.
3. All the footprint evidence bar the room of the murder.

And try to interpret these so they do not collide with the undisputed.

There are not millions of questions, just a small handful.

 

[Bill Williams]

I have a life to live and will not answer millions of questions on the "evidence." That said, I believe Raf's DNA on the clasp and Meredith's DNA on the knife are not likely to be the result of contamination, and even less likely when both unlikely events are combined. Even without all the other (admittedly disputed) forensics, the circumstantial evidence is fairly overwhelming.

So I will be PGP until such time as reasonable doubt supports the contrary. At this point, believing in AK and RS requires too vast a conspiracy -- innocently bungled alibis, a wholly corrupt police force, a 2 hour interrogation that resulted in the accusation of an innocent person, forensic evidence that connects all 3 to the crime scene.

Circumstantial evidence? Like?

You may not believe in conspiracy in relation to this case, but the conspiracy against AK and RS could not be more clear.

Take, for instance, the latest mitve ascribed to them. The conspiracy is exactly this - they are condemned by judges on issues not brought up in court.
Not once did Amanda or Raffaele defend themselves against the allegation that Meredith was killed over a dispute about rent money. Why? Because prosecutor Crini never once brought it into court as the motive. It was pooh in the toilet to Crini, that's what they defended themselves against.

Don't you find it a little odd that all the stuff which condemns them is literally invented by judges after the trial is over?

Overwhelming circumstantial evidence? Like?

 

[Planigale]

The PGP vs PIP psychology debate is ridiculous. Both claim the other distorts facts. Both malign whichever central players suit them. Both assert cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, prejudice, conspiracy, and sinister intention. Ironically, until the actual truth is known, both will be equally as right as the other.

Moving beyond the towering certitude on both sides, the case comes down to reasonable doubt. The PIP think it means one thing, the PGP think it means another. Based on what the law defines as reasonable doubt, my feeling is the courts made the right decision. They may be innocent, trapped in tragic circumstance, but there isn't enough reasonable doubt to conclude they are not guilty.

I have a life to live and will not answer millions of questions on the "evidence." That said, I believe Raf's DNA on the clasp and Meredith's DNA on the knife are not likely to be the result of contamination, and even less likely when both unlikely events are combined. Even without all the other (admittedly disputed) forensics, the circumstantial evidence is fairly overwhelming.

So I will be PGP until such time as reasonable doubt supports the contrary. At this point, believing in AK and RS requires too vast a conspiracy -- innocently bungled alibis, a wholly corrupt police force, a 2 hour interrogation that resulted in the accusation of an innocent person, forensic evidence that connects all 3 to the crime scene.

AK and RS have quite a task unwrangling themselves from all this, and not surprisingly they haven't.

People are certainly entitled to draw their own conclusions. For myself I do not think that the prosecution have made a coherent case that proves guilt beyond reasonable doubt, primarily because I think there is a strong case that Guede acted alone. If there is a significant probability that Guede acted alone, then this introduces reasonable doubt about Sollecito and Knox being involved.

One of the issues is there is only evidence against Sollecito, the involvement of Knox seems only because she is his alibi. The finding of the MK DNA on the knife blade from Sollecito's flat has a number of technical irregularities, such that it would not be permissible as evidence in the UK. If you want to discuss the reasons why the result is so dubious I and others will do so. If you have made your mind up, then I do not propose to waste time reiterating what has been said before. Knox's DNA on the knife is entirely irrelevant since she handled it since the time of the murder so no conclusions can be drawn from its presence (in contrast to say if it had been dumped and there had been no opportunity for it to have been handled post murder).

The DNA result on the bra hook seems a genuine result. There is certainly a discussion to be had about whether this is due to contamination. There is a discussion to be had about the significance of an isolated DNA finding (by which I mean not being used to identify the source of a biological material such as semen or blood). Forensic scientists in the UK caution about drawing strong conclusions in this situation. There is certainly an argument that if there was a struggle more DNA should have been deposited on the clothes of MK, and certainly given the nature of the crime significant blood should have been deposited on the clothes of anyone present. Certainly there should have been exchange of fibres. In my opinion the lack of fibre exchange and the lack of MK DNA / blood on the clothes and shoes of Sollecito and Knox is positive evidence that they were not present that out weighs the single DNA sample on the bra hook. In my opinion that Stefanoni exaggerated her results means she is not reliable. Examples are claiming epithelial cells present on the bra hook (not shown (no evidence of) to be present), claiming that the location of Knox's DNA on the handle indicates that the knife was used to stab someone, concealing the results of TMB tests.

I think there is an issue about the judge drawing a conclusion that Sollecito cut the bra when the forensic evidence shows that the bra was torn not cut (police forensic science opinion). There has to be a question about if there was direct contact from Sollecito to the bra hook what is the scenario, the bra was not unhooked, it was pulled apart by pulling on the straps with the result that the stitching holding the fastener to the strap gave way, the bra was never unhooked. So there is not a clear mechanism for the deposition. In my opinion this does mean that whilst this finding of the DNA is something to be considered, in itself it has very little value as proof of guilt. If I was on the jury I do not think I would take this one DNA result as proof beyond reasonable doubt, because I think the positive nature of the complete lack of other evidence outweighs this. It is of note the police have never claimed that Sollecito or Knox disposed of the clothes they wore that night.

 

[griffinmill]

griffinmill,

How can one clean a knife of blood but not of DNA? If Bruce Budowle, the former head of a research lab at the FBI and now a professor in Texas, does not think it can be done, can you or anyone else explain why you think he might be wrong?

Do you agree that by storing the clasp in the presence of extraction buffer in a closed container, it was almost inevitable that there would be decomposition? If so, do you think that this was an innocent mistake?
ETA
The presence of a number of additional profiles on the clasp means that it was contaminated by definition.

I doubt Budowle would assert that every single cleaned knife is cleaned thoroughly of its past use. Depends on how it was cleaned. Haven't read his analysis, but it makes sense that AK and RS probably didn't do a laboratory job cleaning the knife. And of course you neglect to mention other scientists you don't agree with Budowle.

The presence of additional profiles on the clasp was addressed by Balding. They may have significance, but they don't diminish from Raf's undeniable presence on the clasp. You interviewed him so you know this.

But it seems like you're arguing for large scale conspiracy from 2007 on which includes the prosecutor, police, scientists, and judges. Good luck with that.