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

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what are you driving at?

griffinmill said:
Your previous answer does not explain why Bongiorno does not address missing EDF files in her address to the Nencini court. That is what I'm asking.
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Actually yes, it does. But putting that aside for a moment, what is your point?
 
we don't have all of the egrams

anglolawyer said:
I don't think Griffinmill has had a good answer to his or her very good question. Assuming the defence teams did not ask for the EDFs (a possibility weakly supported by Samson's quoted tweet which refers only to a new expert review of electropherograms*) what are the possible reasons or implications? I suggest these, with my comments (for 'Bongiorno' read 'the defence teams'):

  1. EDFs aren't, in fact, important or necessary for an understanding Stefanoni's work - based on the knowledge I have gained here and elsewhere and the uniform opinions of those well-qualified to comment, I reject this.
  2. Bongiorno does not understand the science well enough to get the importance of the EDFs - this is very possible. Lawyers aren't scientists and generally don't have them on tap. In my own more mundane field of law, we are sometimes required to understand accounts. Lawyers and judges will often go out of their way to resolve issues without having to get to grips with accounting principles. There are plenty of criminal cases in which good forensic points get missed by the defence. Nyki Kish, for example.
  3. Bongiorno's judgement on the point differs from ours - we think the EDFs are crucial but she doesn't. That simple. The case is enormously complicated and judgment is going to play a part in where time and resources are directed. Her aim is different from ours too. We want The Truth, she wants to win. Those are different things.
  4. Some banal reason like lack of preparation time due to limited funding/other commitments - self explanatory. It should not be assumed she had the hundreds and thousands of man-hours we have collectively between us here.
  5. The chilling effect of Italian law - unlike my jurisdiction, lawyers in Italy do not enjoy immunity from suit for things said in court. Try framing an application for the EDFs which does not involve an imputation of fraud. Not only does Italy not have a Brady rule it's not even clear that judges can override prosecution decisions on disclosure (see Comodi's statement and Hellman's seeming helplessness in the face of stubborn obstruction and game-playing over the e-grams)
  6. The fact the defence has already won on the issue - as I already said, Bongiorno has different goals from ours. C-V already shredded Stefanoni. The EDFs can have no effect on their many damning findings which, in a sane world, are enough to destroy the DNA evidence for all but the demented or dishonest. As of Hellman, the EDFs ceased to matter given the terms in which C-V reported to the court. If the ISC is willing to can C-V because they didn't test 36I then it will take more than some mysterious electronic files to make any difference.
* which we already have
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One, the EDFs would contain the raw data of the negative controls. Paper copies or pdf files would be nowhere near as useful. Two, the work posted at murderofmeredithkercher supports the interpretation that there are missing (suppressed egrams). The complete EDFs would allow one to examine all egrams. Three, the EDFs would have some additional information about how and when the data were acquired.
 
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If the EDFs were not provided, then...

griffinmill said:
To repeat what I just said, I don't disagree that the defense alleged EDF files were missing or suppressed as far back as 2011 (Hellman, essentially)
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Griffinmill,

Do you agree that if the EDFs were not in fact provided to the defense in 2008-2009, then the Massei trial was unfair?
 
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anglolawyer said:
I don't think Griffinmill has had a good answer to his or her very good question. Assuming the defence teams did not ask for the EDFs (a possibility weakly supported by Samson's quoted tweet which refers only to a new expert review of electropherograms*) what are the possible reasons or implications? I suggest these, with my comments (for 'Bongiorno' read 'the defence teams'):

  1. EDFs aren't, in fact, important or necessary for an understanding Stefanoni's work - based on the knowledge I have gained here and elsewhere and the uniform opinions of those well-qualified to comment, I reject this.
  2. Bongiorno does not understand the science well enough to get the importance of the EDFs - this is very possible. Lawyers aren't scientists and generally don't have them on tap. In my own more mundane field of law, we are sometimes required to understand accounts. Lawyers and judges will often go out of their way to resolve issues without having to get to grips with accounting principles. There are plenty of criminal cases in which good forensic points get missed by the defence. Nyki Kish, for example.
  3. Bongiorno's judgement on the point differs from ours - we think the EDFs are crucial but she doesn't. That simple. The case is enormously complicated and judgment is going to play a part in where time and resources are directed. Her aim is different from ours too. We want The Truth, she wants to win. Those are different things.
  4. Some banal reason like lack of preparation time due to limited funding/other commitments - self explanatory. It should not be assumed she had the hundreds and thousands of man-hours we have collectively between us here.
  5. The chilling effect of Italian law - unlike my jurisdiction, lawyers in Italy do not enjoy immunity from suit for things said in court. Try framing an application for the EDFs which does not involve an imputation of fraud. Not only does Italy not have a Brady rule it's not even clear that judges can override prosecution decisions on disclosure (see Comodi's statement and Hellman's seeming helplessness in the face of stubborn obstruction and game-playing over the e-grams)
  6. The fact the defence has already won on the issue - as I already said, Bongiorno has different goals from ours. C-V already shredded Stefanoni. The EDFs can have no effect on their many damning findings which, in a sane world, are enough to destroy the DNA evidence for all but the demented or dishonest. As of Hellman, the EDFs ceased to matter given the terms in which C-V reported to the court. If the ISC is willing to can C-V because they didn't test 36I then it will take more than some mysterious electronic files to make any difference.
* which we already have
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Griffinmills is not presenting his "argument" about the defence and the EDFs in good faith. Despite repeated answers to his/her questions, he/she continues as if no one has responded. One could very well set up a stock response, which simply repeats former responses... in a sense, what griffinmills is doing is "slow flooding" the thread. It's what Tesla did to get banned, only slower.

It's a style of argument unique to the guilters. It's a slower version of what Jackie does in the various incarnations here.... starting with what sounds like an innocent first shot, "I have always wondered why.... 'X'......?"

Where the "X" is something to do with the defence side of things.... completely ignoring or oblivious to that there even was a prosecution or a silly judge's ruling.

It's another form of diversion - solely asking questions about Amanda's behaviour, and not even acknowledging that (for instance) she'd not had a lawyer at interrogation - controlling the agenda by flooding the argument with one-sided "wonderings".

Or solely asking questions about Raffaele's supposedly withdrawing an alibi, or going to Matteini with something, ignoring that for 6 years Raffaele has been saying the same thing since about his own and Knox's alibi.

It's griffinmills' "Jackie-esque" posting-style that's the issue. He/she keeps going unpreturbed that his/her wonderings have been addressed numerous times. It creates the illusion that they remain legitimate questions.

ETA - in style, it's another form of "prove contamination", because it's based on a tilted playing field where its the defence who has questions to answer, not the prosecution or the Italian judges. Ergo, griffinmills will NEVER ask a similar question about Nencini.
 
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griffinmill said:
Sure, maybe there is reason why the "missing" EDF's matter. But why didn't Bongiorno even mention the missing EDF's in her address to Nencini?
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Maybe she just didn't expect any legal system in the world to be so utterly bonkers as to demand that the defence 'prove how the contamination happened'. The DNA evidence had been so utterly and completely discredited by the independent experts that it must have been fairly difficult to imagine that any system could be so corrupt and anti-science as to resurrect such totally discredited evidence - and she would have probably been even more surprised to know that there are a lot of Internet folks, who celebrated the resurrection of such discredited evidence because that would help them to 'punish' that witch/bitch/whore Amanda.
 
Bill Williams said:
Griffinmills is not presenting his "argument" about the defence and the EDFs in good faith. Despite repeated answers to his/her questions, he/she continues as if no one has responded. One could very well set up a stock response, which simply repeats former responses... in a sense, what griffinmills is doing is "slow flooding" the thread. It's what Tesla did to get banned, only slower.

It's a style of argument unique to the guilters. It's a slower version of what Jackie does in the various incarnations here.... starting with what sounds like an innocent first shot, "I have always wondered why.... 'X'......?"

Where the "X" is something to do with the defence side of things.... completely ignoring or oblivious to that there even was a prosecution or a silly judge's ruling.

It's another form of diversion - solely asking questions about Amanda's behaviour, and not even acknowledging that (for instance) she'd not had a lawyer at interrogation - controlling the agenda by flooding the argument with one-sided "wonderings".

Or solely asking questions about Raffaele's supposedly withdrawing an alibi, or going to Matteini with something, ignoring that for 6 years Raffaele has been saying the same thing since about his own and Knox's alibi.

It's griffinmills' "Jackie-esque" posting-style that's the issue. He/she keeps going unpreturbed that his/her wonderings have been addressed numerous times. It creates the illusion that they remain legitimate questions.

ETA - in style, it's another form of "prove contamination", because it's based on a tilted playing field where its the defence who has questions to answer, not the prosecution or the Italian judges. Ergo, griffinmills will NEVER ask a similar question about Nencini.
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Bill, I agree with your comment and had arrived at the same conclusion based on the tone and focus of Griffinmilll's questions about and comments on the defense to the exclusion of questioning the prosecution or court. Griffonmill demonstrates an unusual familiarity with the case for someone new to the discussion.
 
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An EDF can be altered when you hack into the computer. You can't consider them to be evidence.
 
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anglolawyer said:
My understanding (I stand to be corrected by Chris, Randy etc) is the acronym stands for electronic data files. Some of the machines used for e.g. quantification, amplification and electrofluoresis record the operations by way of internal electronic, digital data. All that has been disclosed to date are hard copy PDFs of the egrams, not the underlying data. The data would include information about negative controls at the amplification and electrofluoresis phases and probably much else besides. Diocletus and Chris would better be able to tell you exactly what.

RandyN has explained to me in the past that the hard copy egrams, which is all C-V got and then only in stages (at first they got the peak heights and later they go the peak areas) are like photoshopped pictures. They are not themselves 'the real thing' since they can be manipulated by interaction with the machines or some other funky software type of thing. They are the product of the electronic data, not the data itself. I take that to mean, they are not like the squiggly line produced by a lie detector, which (I think) is an analogue amplification of real bodily reactions to questions but an expression of digital data which can be manipulated.

If attempting to defraud you want to control the data and I surmise that the EDFs contain information Stef does not want anybody to see. Even the dates of the knife amplifications have been suppressed. That would be in there. It is relevant to the 6 day claim for instance.

Others may (no, do) know more and will hopefully correct and/or add to any of the above.

ETA see this post by Chris on this very page.
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I see, thank you.

The reason I ask is that Raffaele's lawyer definitely raised the issue of the missing negative controls for the knife and bra clasp in front of Nencini, which I know as I heard it with my own ears. She said that those are vital if the defence are supposed to "prove contamination" but that both they and the independent experts had asked for them without success. I don't know that she talked about "EDFs" specifically.
 
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The Cops always knew Amanda was innocent.
It is the job of the police and the prosecutor to construct a case that will prove someone is guilty.
If they know someone is guilty, they want the videotape and the lawyer there to show that everything is on the level.
If you have a good case and the defense can bring up a forced confession, there is a risk that one or more of the jurors are skeptics.
When the jury discusses the case, a skeptic can show that the prosecutor is a <SNIP> artist and there is something about his case that is not kosher. This will plant the seed of a not-guilty verdict.

Edited by Locknar: 
SNIPed breach of rule 10; please to not alter curse words in an attempt to by-pass the auto censor/
 
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Bill Williams said:
Griffinmills is not presenting his "argument" about the defence and the EDFs in good faith. Despite repeated answers to his/her questions, he/she continues as if no one has responded. One could very well set up a stock response, which simply repeats former responses... in a sense, what griffinmills is doing is "slow flooding" the thread. It's what Tesla did to get banned, only slower.

It's a style of argument unique to the guilters. It's a slower version of what Jackie does in the various incarnations here.... starting with what sounds like an innocent first shot, "I have always wondered why.... 'X'......?"

Where the "X" is something to do with the defence side of things.... completely ignoring or oblivious to that there even was a prosecution or a silly judge's ruling.

It's another form of diversion - solely asking questions about Amanda's behaviour, and not even acknowledging that (for instance) she'd not had a lawyer at interrogation - controlling the agenda by flooding the argument with one-sided "wonderings".

Or solely asking questions about Raffaele's supposedly withdrawing an alibi, or going to Matteini with something, ignoring that for 6 years Raffaele has been saying the same thing since about his own and Knox's alibi.

It's griffinmills' "Jackie-esque" posting-style that's the issue. He/she keeps going unpreturbed that his/her wonderings have been addressed numerous times. It creates the illusion that they remain legitimate questions.

ETA - in style, it's another form of "prove contamination", because it's based on a tilted playing field where its the defence who has questions to answer, not the prosecution or the Italian judges. Ergo, griffinmills will NEVER ask a similar question about Nencini.
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Whoever Griffinmill is and whatever his or motives, the question is a good one: if the EDFs are so important why didn't the defence ask Nencini to order their disclosure? One conclusion is that we are all wrong and they are not important. That may satisfy the wilfully ignorant and ill-informed but it neglects among other things this memo recorded in C-V which I quoted recently:

“On 4/5/2011 at 10:10 am, at the Department of Forensic Medicine of the University of Rome — La Sapienza, Forensic Genetics Laboratory, 336 Viale Regina Elena, as ordered at the hearing of 1/22/2011, testing by the Appointed Experts Prof. Carla Vecchiotti and Prof. Stefano Conti was begun, in the presence of the following consultants for the parties:

- Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni, consultant for the Prosecutor’s Office;
- Prof. Giuseppe Novelli, consultant for the Prosecutor’s Office;
- Dr. Emiliano Giardina, consultant for the Prosecutor’s Office;
- Prof. Francesca Torricelli, consultant for the civil plaintiff;
- Prof. Adriano Tagliabracci, consultant for Raffaele Sollecito;
- Dr. Valerio Onofri, consultant for Raffaele Sollecito;
- Ms. Donatella Donati, attorney for Raffaele Sollecito, acting on behalf of Mr. Luca Maori;
- Prof. Carlo Torre, consultant for Amanda M. Knox;
- Dr. Sarah Gino, consultant for Amanda M. Knox;
- Dr. Walter Patumi, consultant for Amanda M. Knox.

It is noted that Prof. Novelli removed himself at 10:35; subsequently, the Appointed Experts and the consultants for the parties [i CTP, presumably Consulenti Tecnici delle Parti] reported to the Histology Section of the Appointed Experts’ home Department, where the slides [vetrini] relative to the Items 36 (knife) and 165b (clasps) were prepared and examined. The Experts and the consultants examined the results with a microscope and agreed to photographically document the item labeled with the letter H (handle-blade contact edge). Prof. Tagliabracci and Dr. Onofri asked that the experts proceed to request the raw data (electronic files generated by the instrument) relative to the quantization and electrophoretic analysis relating to Items 165 B (clasp) and 36 (knife). Dr. Gino, Dr. Patumi, and Prof. Torre concurred with the request. The present memorandum ends at 1:50 pm.”
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The memo does not record any objection from Stefanoni or Giardina. Presumably they kept mum and decided how to respond when they got back to their lab. What they did was provide PDFs of the egrams (minus peak areas). We should be glad they condescended to as much since otherwise we wouldn't know about the other alleles on the clasp.

Note for folks who write the date the right way round - this memo records an event which took place on 5th April 2011, not 4th May. There followed a well-documented panto before Hellman which Griffinmill should try to become acquainted with as it's all part of the same picture of suppression of data considered relevant to their enquiries by both the defence scientists and the independent experts.

Note also that C-V spelled out in the memo what 'raw data' meant so there could be no confusion. It is easy for a lay person to get that wrong, as Amanda herself does in her book, and think it means Stefanoni's lab records and notes (also valuable, suppressed and highly revealing when eventually crowbarred out of her).
 
katy_did said:
I see, thank you.

The reason I ask is that Raffaele's lawyer definitely raised the issue of the missing negative controls for the knife and bra clasp in front of Nencini, which I know as I heard it with my own ears. She said that those are vital if the defence are supposed to "prove contamination" but that both they and the independent experts had asked for them without success. I don't know that she talked about "EDFs" specifically.
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Thank you Katy. Key information. I can add another to my list of reasons why nobody asked for the 'EDFs' - namely that they did but they used language the judge might be expected to understand. It's easy to forget how much time it takes to absorb some of the jargon we bandy about here. Try teaching the ropes to a newbie judge in a court hearing. It's not easy.
 
MichaelB said:
Summary: The investigators didn't find anything relevant because they stated that the people that appeared in the video were not recognizable, whereas the article says there are some pictures that are very clear. Between 21 and 22 hours it captures 37 people, and all those captured between 21:31 and 21:52 all do the same thing once they go past the barrier – they stop and look to their left towards the entrance to the car park, i.e. towards Meredith’s house. There is a family of father, mother and two children. They stop, the mother looks to the left, then one of the girls, then both girls. They seem to discuss something. In the end, they go away. The couple that passed just before them had done the same thing. What got their attention? What did they see or hear? Why were they never questioned?

[qimg]http://murderofmeredithkercher.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/10264108_653088601411224_7354278274572477096_o.jpg[/qimg]
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Let me speculate in a systematic way what it might be that caught the attention of a number of people over a 21 minute period of time, yet did not seem to cause the onlookers to report anything.

People? Unusual prolonged behavior such as singing or dancing over a 21 minute period?
Animals? Horse, cattle, goats lingering in the immediate area?
Vehicle(s)? Police, fire truck, ambulance, utility vehicle with work lighting and ladder or pumps deployed?
Unusual vehicle? Military vehicle, crane, bulldozer, farm machinery.
An unusual physical occurrence visible? Fire, bright lights, colored lights?
Loud music?

ETA: perhaps something simple like a drunk or drug addict passed out on the ground? Or a dog napping just out of camera view?

In spite of my effort to systematically categorize what it might have been, it appears that it was something that caught the fleeting attention of people walking by and caused them to look in its direction, and caused a few people to actually pause for a moment to look. But it was not something sufficiently noteworthy to be publicized by the individual's themselves. If they did report what they noticed to authorities, it's nature has not been reported in the media.
 
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MichaelB said:
Incredible hey. 37 people in 1 hour were across the street from where a girl was murdered and the cops never used the media to request they come forward and none of them bothered to.
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Indeed. Also incredible (as in, incredibly good) that the Italian media is now running with this stuff. Unlike the recent crap about the moustachioed Amanda, this is actually relevant.
 
Chris_Halkides said:
One, the EDFs would contain the raw data of the negative controls. Paper copies or pdf files would be nowhere near as useful. Two, the work posted at murderofmeredithkercher supports the interpretation that there are missing (suppressed egrams). The complete EDFs would allow one to examine all egrams. Three, the EDFs would have some additional information about how and when the data were acquired.
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Can you expand/explain the highlighted part please?
 
anglolawyer said:
Thank you Katy. Key information. I can add another to my list of reasons why nobody asked for the 'EDFs' - namely that they did but they used language the judge might be expected to understand. It's easy to forget how much time it takes to absorb some of the jargon we bandy about here. Try teaching the ropes to a newbie judge in a court hearing. It's not easy.
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I think she also mentioned the six day gap and why this isn't meaningful because some of the testing dates for parts of the process were missing, e.g. the amplification dates or something of that sort. She said the SAL cards only contain scarce information. Wish I could remember in more detail but in any case, that issue was definitely addressed too.

Griffinmill is right though that neither Andrea nor Barbie tweeted a single word of this. To be fair I may be doing Barbie a disservice as I think she did tweet something about the lawyer's outfit or haircut or something.
 
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