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

[Kestrel]

The Italian system requires the judge in charge of a case to write a motivations document explaining the verdict. Is this still true when the judge disagrees with the verdict?

 

[Kestrel]

That's right. "oncoming traffic" would approach from the direction you are traveling therefore you would look for it ahead of you and not behind.


In each of the images shown, there was a a car on the road either visible in the frame where someone looked back or at least there was an illumination of their headlights indicating a car moving that way. Anyone in that situation would have to be very trusting of what they were hearing to not confirm there was no danger with their own eyes.

Since in each case there is a simple logical reasonable innocent explanation for these people to be turning their heads, there is no cause to speculate that there is any other reason. Still, these are all easily identifiable people that should have all been contacted to see what they might have witnessed before entering the carpark.

The lesson here is that evidence collected during an investigation is not always connected to the crime.

In TV crime dramas, scriptwriters take shortcuts to move the story along. When the detective finds a fingerprint, it's always from the perpetrator. When a cigarette butt is collected, we know it's from the killer. In crime dramas, Luminol only reacts to human blood. DNA is only deposited by criminals and victims of a crime. Eyewitness reports are either accurate or the eyewitness is lying.

 

[kwill]

This writer mentions a very specific 21-minute period during which every person -- ALL OF THEM -- have the same reaction. The people before that period and the ones after it didn't behave this way, which is pretty good evidence that something got the attention of every single person who passed in front of the camera during a ver specific time.

...

You are inserting a claim that is not part of the article. Where does this claim come from?

Valid question. Here's the text I used to make this inference.

. . . there are worrying images taken a little before 10pm, which were missed by the eyes of the enquirers. Very sharp images, among which not only are the people recognisable and potentially identifiable, but all show the same strange behaviour. Between 21.00 and 22.00, the telecamera recorded the entry into the car park of 37 people. All those captured between 21.31 and 21.52 passing the entrance barrier show the same reaction; they stop to look to the left, towards the entrance of the carpark, in other words towards the entrance to Meredith’s house.

A single hour of tape, 37 people captured, one subset of those -- the ones captured during the 21 minutes -- all did the same thing. They stopped to look left . . . doesn't that imply that the rest -- during the other 39 minutes did not behave this way? I think so, unless the writer is just jerking the public chain.

 

[Desert Fox]

The Italian system requires the judge in charge of a case to write a motivations document explaining the verdict. Is this still true when the judge disagrees with the verdict?

According to Luca Cheli, the motivation document appears to contradict itself and might very well be written by multiple individuals. Makes one wonder who actually wrote it?

 

[Bill Williams]

The Italian system requires the judge in charge of a case to write a motivations document explaining the verdict. Is this still true when the judge disagrees with the verdict?

It appears to be so. There's no real way, though, to know how the lead-judge cast their vote; but with 8 judges, two professional and six popular, there's bound to be SOME trials decided on a 5-3 vote where the lead-judge is in the minority.

Myself, I don't know enough about it. What if both professional judges were in the minority? In the States at the Supreme Court level there is often a minority opinion written - not sure, really what legal "weight" such a document has, except to note for posterity what the objections were so that perhaps a future SCOTUS has a basis for reversing a previous ruling.

I have no particular expertise to back this up, but I've always thought that the Massei motivations report was written by a judge who was trying to put the best face on a conviction that he, himself, did not support.

It's a little simpler with the Nencini motivations report. Nencini himself got into trouble for blabbing to the press in the days following the verdict that made it clear where he stood - he hinted he had to brow-beat at least one of the popular judges to go along with "judicial facts" established at earlier trials - particularly trials not involving Raffaele or Amanda.

The scandalous thing about Nencini is that it appears he actually DOES believe women have Y-genetic material. He actually DOES believe that one factoid can be cherry-picked from Rudy's many conflicting stories - namely, the argument over rent money factoid. He really does believe that this can be the motive for the crime while oblivious to it being part of a story where Meredith had invited Guede into the cottage for a "date".

It truly does appear that Nencini is a "company man" who simply believes whatever he's told to believe. Nencini has a future in Italian jurisprudence!

At least Massei, in his motivations, gave the appearance of struggling and weighing issues; even if at the end of the day he chose to believe the likes of Stefanoni, "just because".

On major items, Massei openly disagreed with Mignini's prosecution - disagreeing with the motive Mignini offered, the issue of mixed blood, the nature of Meredith and Knox's friendship, etc.

Why would Massei write THAT stuff if he didn't believe it?

 

[Desert Fox]

Maybe they need a majority and minority view with motivation reports
Would at least make things interesting

 

[Diocletus]

New Information

Remember how the cops went to get the bra clasp as soon as they learned that the Sollecitos had rubbished the shoe prints?

Check this out: http://murderofmeredithkercher.com/batch-5-bra-clasp-contamination-undocumented-re-run-tampering/

 

[acbytesla]

I'm not sure I agree that what the pedestrians did or didn't see is insignificant (though I agree of course that there are other reasons to doubt Toto!). If the defence could have called the people who walked through the piazza from 9 to midnight to testify, and if none of them saw the couple by the railings who Toto says were there all evening, I think that would definitely be a point in favour of the defence. The same goes for anyone else who might have been in the piazza that night, the people who regularly played basketball there, for example. The police and prosecution should have wanted to find corroboration for what Toto supposedly saw as much as the defence wanted to refute it, so they should've been interested in questioning anyone who could support Curatolo's sighting too - assuming they actually believed in it...

Here is the issue from my perspective katy. I'd say it would be fine for people to say that they walked though the Piazza that night and never noticed Amanda and Raffaele. But unless something specific drew your attention to a couple in the Piazza, would you really have noticed them? So they could have been there and just not noticed them.

This is one of the big reasons I don't believe Curatolo. (there are others) There is no reason for him to notice and identify either of these two people. He doesn't know either one. They never spoke to him. So these two people are likely to be anyone not someone specific that any one would remember. Just some couple.

 

[anglolawyer]

Remember how the cops went to get the bra clasp as soon as they learned that the Sollecitos had rubbished the shoe prints?

Check this out: http://murderofmeredithkercher.com/batch-5-bra-clasp-contamination-undocumented-re-run-tampering/

Diocletus

Respectfully, this needs quite a bit of dumbing down in order to be intelligible to the masses (or even to the assiduous student). I have read it but grasp very little. Also, what is your thinking on the fact the defence teams, which presumably had this material, did not advance the points you (and TomZ?) are making?

 

[Bill Williams]

Diocletus

Respectfully, this needs quite a bit of dumbing down in order to be intelligible to the masses (or even to the assiduous student). I have read it but grasp very little. Also, what is your thinking on the fact the defence teams, which presumably had this material, did not advance the points you (and TomZ?) are making?

Two quotes from the famous physicist, Ernest Rutherford. One of the quotes explains why we have never heard of him, the other why it is I am with you in trying to interpret what they claim is suspicious:

"An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid."

"The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine."​

In early work he discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, proved that radioactivity involved the transmutation of one chemical element to another, and also differentiated and named alpha and beta radiation. This work was done at McGill University in Canada. It is the basis for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he was awarded in 1908 "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances".

He then ruined his career by going to the U.K.

 

[Diocletus]

Diocletus

Respectfully, this needs quite a bit of dumbing down in order to be intelligible to the masses (or even to the assiduous student). I have read it but grasp very little. Also, what is your thinking on the fact the defence teams, which presumably had this material, did not advance the points you (and TomZ?) are making?

But there are pictures!

The defense teams didn't see this because its difficult to find given when and how the documents were produced to them. If they had the EDFs from the start, it would have been easy.

 

[acbytesla]

Two quotes from the famous physicist, Ernest Rutherford. One of the quotes explains why we have never heard of him, the other why it is I am with you in trying to interpret what they claim is suspicious:

"An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid."

"The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine."​

He then ruined his career by going to the U.K.

I love the references to great scientists....and what do you mean never heard of him? He may not be known as well as Einstein, but do you know how many physicists or any scientists are actually known outside of maybe 10 percent of the population? I love to test people by asking if they know about Tesla. Most people today just think Tesla is a car company. A few years ago it was rock band and before that they just stared at me saying "Tesla who or what"?

The world knows who Kim Kardashian is even though she hasn't made really a significant contribution to science, art,culture or politics. But ask them about Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Ernest Rutherford or Nikola Tesla and they are clueless.

And PS Bill: Rutherford's greatest work was actually done AFTER he won the Nobel Prize..and those experiments were made at Manchester and Cambridge.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

two of the problems

Diocletus

Respectfully, this needs quite a bit of dumbing down in order to be intelligible to the masses (or even to the assiduous student). I have read it but grasp very little. Also, what is your thinking on the fact the defence teams, which presumably had this material, did not advance the points you (and TomZ?) are making?

One of the experiments with a known amount of DNA gave a result that is about four times higher in DNA than expected. It is difficult to find another explanation besides contamination.

A second issue concerns the values of Ct, which are inversely related to how much DNA is present in a given set of sample (a large value of Ct corresponds to a small amount of DNA). It should be approximately constant for constant amounts of DNA run under identical conditions. It is not constant in these data: several samples which had known amounts of DNA give elevated Ct values, relative to the same standards run at other times. Although one could argue that some condition the amplification process changed, it is difficult to imagine what could cause Ct to change as much as it did, other than some sort of problem. I am not an expert in real-time PCR, but a friend of mine has been discussing the question with a number of experts.

 

[Desert Fox]

Diocletus

Respectfully, this needs quite a bit of dumbing down in order to be intelligible to the masses (or even to the assiduous student). I have read it but grasp very little. Also, what is your thinking on the fact the defence teams, which presumably had this material, did not advance the points you (and TomZ?) are making?

Good I am not the only one who does not know what i am looking at. . . .
This needs to be explained to a jury or at least a judge who thinks y profiles can belong to women.

 

[Bill Williams]

I love the references to great scientists....and what do you mean never heard of him? He may not be known as well as Einstein, but do you know how many physicists or any scientists are actually known outside of maybe 10 percent of the population? I love to test people by asking if they know about Tesla. Most people today just think Tesla is a car company. A few years ago it was rock band and before that they just stared at me saying "Tesla who or what"?

The world knows who Kim Kardashian is even though she hasn't made really a significant contribution to science, art,culture or politics. But ask them about Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Ernest Rutherford or Nikola Tesla and they are clueless.

And PS Bill: Rutherford's greatest work was actually done AFTER he won the Nobel Prize..and those experiments were made at Manchester and Cambridge.

Was he ever on a baseball card? Huh? HUH!!!!

 

[Bill Williams]

One of the experiments with a known amount of DNA gave a result that is about four times higher in DNA than expected. It is difficult to find another explanation besides contamination.

A second issue concerns the values of Ct, which are inversely related to how much DNA is present in a given set of sample (a large value of Ct corresponds to a small amount of DNA). It should be approximately constant for constant amounts of DNA run under identical conditions. It is not constant in these data: several samples which had known amounts of DNA give elevated Ct values, relative to the same standards run at other times. Although one could argue that some condition the amplification process changed, it is difficult to imagine what could cause Ct to change as much as it did, other than some sort of problem. I am not an expert in real-time PCR, but a friend of mine has been discussing the question with a number of experts.

Why? Let's assume I know nothing and actually ache in the brain when scientists talk.....

 

[acbytesla]

Was he ever on a baseball card? Huh? HUH!!!!

OK, you have a point there.

LOL.

 

[Skind]

Why? Let's assume I know nothing and actually ache in the brain when scientists talk.....

Basically: the negative controls that should have gone all the way through the machine 50 times and not detect any dna (because the whole point is that none of the materials that go into a negative control should have dna in them) only managed to go through 32 times before dna was found.

Translation: there was dna in the negative controls when there should have been none.

Basically: the positive controls should have given back a result matching what was known to go it, as the positive controls use a standard mix that has a known quantity of dna in (because it's typically mixed in the production lab to have exactly that amount of dna), yet they showed vastly higher amounts of dna.

Translation: there was more dna in the positive controls than should have been, with no rational basis for thinking the extra come from anywhere other than the machine.

 

[anglolawyer]

But there are pictures!

you rotten bugger! Kudos to you though, Diocletus. I know you have been digging away at this stuff for ages and I take my hat off to you.

The defense teams didn't see this because its difficult to find given when and how the documents were produced to them. If they had the EDFs from the start, it would have been easy.

They had what you had.

 

[anglolawyer]

One of the experiments with a known amount of DNA gave a result that is about four times higher in DNA than expected. It is difficult to find another explanation besides contamination.

A second issue concerns the values of Ct, which are inversely related to how much DNA is present in a given set of sample (a large value of Ct corresponds to a small amount of DNA). It should be approximately constant for constant amounts of DNA run under identical conditions. It is not constant in these data: several samples which had known amounts of DNA give elevated Ct values, relative to the same standards run at other times. Although one could argue that some condition the amplification process changed, it is difficult to imagine what could cause Ct to change as much as it did, other than some sort of problem. I am not an expert in real-time PCR, but a friend of mine has been discussing the question with a number of experts.

Dumb it down further. Explain Ct without a link and briefly (I will use more questions to open it up). Explain how the wiki piece relates specifically to the clasp. Tell us what may have happened to result in us seeing what we see.