Continuation Part 10: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[acbytesla]

Denying my country is unthinkable to me. Not a chance. My wife is Dutch, and I have numerous international friends in NYC, Los Angeles, England, France and Italy.

Our country is no more flawed than any of these European powers at various times in their histories, and considerably less flawed than Italy, at a minimum, at the present time. Whenever I begin wringing my hands too much over US foreign policy in the company of such friends, I remember Omaha Beach, where young American men died like game animals to save Europe.

I understand, I have mixed feelings about doing it. I love my country...sometimes. Saying your an American abroad can sometimes makes you a target for unflattering comments about foreign policy, or about rich isolated dumb Americans. Some of the comments I agree with, however you can avoid the comments and political discussion altogether by being a pseudo Canadian. Nobody ever brings up Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan or politics at all with you if they think you're a Canuck. Nobody blames them for anything.

 

[acbytesla]

"Oversexed, overpaid and over here"
Term for US G.I. in England during WW2

What do you expect when a million 20 year old men just upset the balance of the sexes in the UK? Before the American invasion of the UK before D-Day, it was 1 to 1 on the sexual battlefield in England. Then all of a sudden there were twice as many available men for every woman and the Yanks were kind of a brand new flavor. A lot of the English men didn't stand a chance.

And any twenty year old American left home in the US had the pick of the litter.

 

[Planigale]

I mean to ask about this:
Is your defense lawyer always selected for you then or can you hire one?
Generally, you get a better lawyer if you hire although they are some good public defenders and some really bad hired lawyers.

So in England (and Wales and NI). There are two types of lawyers, solicitors who do not have the right to appear in courts and barristers who are advocates and appear in court. Whatever sort of legal advice you want you would go to a solicitor first. Small town solicitors will be fairly general; large city firms e.g. Slaughter and May will have highly specialist lawyers. If you need to go to court then you will need a barrister to represent you. Some law firms are highly specialised e.g. entertainment law. My understanding is an individual can not directly hire a barrister, this has to be done through a solicitor. Equally a barrister can not sue an individual for unpaid fees.

In a criminal case one would contact a solicitor specialising in criminal law. One is entitled to free advice on legal aid, but might want to pick a different solicitor in due course. In the middle of the night you might just get a paralegal. The solicitor would prepare most of the defence organising witnesses etc. but if it looks like going to court then one would get a barrister. The barristers are currently complaining that they get paid poorly on legal aid. Successful commercial barristers earn a lot. Young criminal barristers have a hard life. If you want to learn something about criminal barristers read a Rumpole novel.

 

[Grinder]

Anybody have a link to the Ch. 5 documentary with the window climb that will work here in the US?

Surprisingly some people here that one would assume had seen it, haven't.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Ricardo Panella

Anybody have a link to the Ch. 5 documentary with the window climb that will work here in the US?

Surprisingly some people here that one would assume had seen it, haven't.

Grinder,

Link to page with video. Not sure if this will play in Peoria, but it works in Wilmington.

 

[Grinder]

Grinder,

Link to page with video. Not sure if this will play in Peoria, but it works in Wilmington.

Thanks. It does work but I was looking for the whole show. I've found some on youtube but as of yet not the complete show.

Thanks again

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Y chromosomes and DNA profiling

From the pseudo-Wiki: "This causes complications for identification, since close male relatives all share the same Y chromosome. The bra clasp DNA was also a match for Sollecito's y-chromosome.[5] This confirms that the DNA belongs to a male Sollecito likely not more than two or three degrees of separation from Raffaele." and "...even if we ignore the autosomal DNA completely, the y-chromosome match that Vecchiotti concedes is present, limits the possible matches to Raffaele Sollecito, his father, and maybe his uncles."

In a previous thread a couple of us linked to the mutation rates for the loci in the YSTR profiles. The inference that these mutation rates are fast enough to produce a good chance that one's uncles have a different YSTR profile than oneself is seriously in error. In addition, an unknown number of unrelated men will also share the same profile. The counting method (discussed by Dr. Budowle) is probably the most common way to decide how rare a profile is, but one needs an appropriate database. YSTR profiling is not even close to being as discriminating as autosomal profiling is. Therefore, the discussion I quoted above is highly misleading at best, disingenuous at worst.

 

[acbytesla]

Anybody have a link to the Ch. 5 documentary with the window climb that will work here in the US?

Surprisingly some people here that one would assume had seen it, haven't.

I can only find the climb clip. You can find the trash later one all over youtuble. But I can't find the whole channel 5 documentary. Just the climb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JL6nIkaYLs

Sorry.

Here is the glass and the climb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsQLKWDskhA

 

[acbytesla]

Thanks. It does work but I was looking for the whole show. I've found some on youtube but as of yet not the complete show.

Thanks again

Does this work for you Grinder??


http://www.channel5.com/shows/amand...ns/episodes/amanda-knox-trial-5-key-questions

 

[acbytesla]

FYI: Grinder you can find it in multiple places on the Net but I can't get to it on Youtube. Use the search term "Amanda Knox 5 Key Questions" and you will find many links to it on different services.

 

[Bill Williams]

"Oversexed, overpaid and over here"
Term for US G.I. in England during WW2

...... and the G.I. would respond - "Underpaid, undersexed, and under Eisenhower."

 

[acbytesla]

...... and the G.I. would respond - "Underpaid, undersexed, and under Eisenhower."

It had to be tough getting laid when all the English girls had so many suitors at that time. You had to be good looking with a good line, and maybe some money to find that kind of companionship. Thank God I grew up in the 70s!!!!

 

[Grinder]

Does this work for you Grinder??


http://www.channel5.com/shows/amand...ns/episodes/amanda-knox-trial-5-key-questions

Thanks Tesla but although I can see it is the right site etc. it won't play. Perhaps I need to get one of those hidden web sites or whatever they are called.

 

[acbytesla]

Thanks Tesla but although I can see it is the right site etc. it won't play. Perhaps I need to get one of those hidden web sites or whatever they are called.

What is your OS and Browser? I have trouble with that link using Chrome and Windows XP. I wonder if it makes a difference with Windows 7 or 8?

FYI: Here is the link for the clip about Nara's testimony of what she said she heard. "Impossible" is what the sound engineer said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcGuLfn_Lvk

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Stefanoni claimed not to have used a suspect-centered analysis

IIUC, the inclusion of additional peaks as true alleles (as per C & V & Gill), means the resulting profile could fit a larger pool of potential contributors? For this reason, C&V were less certain of a specific "match", rather than a "not incompatible"?

Is this a professional argument between Dr's Gill and Balding then? And is there anyway for untutored bystanders to assess their respective reliability? Does Gill have a position in regard to Balding's 2013 "innovation"?

(Was Stef relying on Balding's analysis when she achieved her findings? Or was it her suspect centered analysis that enabled her to find what she was looking for, and discard everything else?)

Hope I'm not being thick -

(also thanks to DanO for the cite).

carbonjam72,

Dr. Balding's analysis was not published until 2013, so Stefanoni could not have used it. It is difficult to see how Stefanoni was not using a suspect-centered approach IMO, but she claims not to have done so. If Dr. Balding's analysis becomes generally accepted in the next few years, that will say something positive about its utility. If it does not, I don't think that we can conclude that it lacks much utility (good ideas, like good products, sometimes fall by the wayside). Both have good professional standing, but I consider Dr. Balding more of a specialist in the area of statistics.

EDT
The C-V report listed the peaks above 50 rfu in the Y chromosomal electropherogram, and it is still clear that there are at least two additional male contributors. If you allow smaller peaks into the analysis, there are correspondingly more contributors.

 

[Desert Fox]

What is your OS and Browser? I have trouble with that link using Chrome and Windows XP. I wonder if it makes a difference with Windows 7 or 8?

FYI: Here is the link for the clip about Nara's testimony of what she said she heard. "Impossible" is what the sound engineer said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcGuLfn_Lvk

The hosts sure do a lot of weaseling about it being a different day.
Such sound engineers usually go with minimum sound levels which might be heard so best case scenario means it is not likely to be heard.

 

[acbytesla]

The hosts sure do a lot of weaseling about it being a different day.
Such sound engineers usually go with minimum sound levels which might be heard so best case scenario means it is not likely to be heard.

No, DF, I think it means it was "impossible" which is what I have always believed.

I don't think Nara heard the screams and if she heard someone going up the stairs it was not Rudy and certainly wasn't Amanda or Raffaele. This is a crazy old lady seeking attention who probably imagined the whole thing.

From a sound perspective I bet I can get a woman to scream at the top her lungs from that back bedroom and you wouldn't be able to hear her in Nara's apartment with the windows closed. There were apartments much closer to the cottage than Nara's and they never heard anything. The sound engineer seemed like he was trying to give the old woman the benefit of the doubt, but he couldn't.

Accoustics and sound engineering is a very predictable science. Double pane windows can cut out a lot of sound as do thick stone walls. Nara didn't come forward for a long time. Giving Nara the benefit of the doubt, maybe after reading the papers and seeing the coverage on the news, she might have had nightmares and pretty soon the nightmares became her reality.

DF, the sound meter doesn't lie. The engineer said the weather etc could maybe make a couple of decibels difference which really isn't much. (I'm not sure he really bought it though) Most people's hearing degrades a little as they get older. I do wish the sound engineer had said what the meter showed him, but my bet is that it didn't move the needle and he couldn't hear it himself. Right then the engineer decided the old woman was full of it.

 

[Desert Fox]

No, DF, I think it means it was "impossible" which is what I have always believed.

I don't think Nara heard the screams and if she heard someone going up the stairs it was not Rudy and certainly wasn't Amanda or Raffaele. This is a crazy old lady seeking attention who probably imagined the whole thing.

From a sound perspective I bet I can get a woman to scream at the top her lungs from that back bedroom and you wouldn't be able to hear her in Nara's apartment with the windows closed. There were apartments much closer to the cottage than Nara's and they never heard anything. The sound engineer seemed like he was trying to give the old woman the benefit of the doubt, but he couldn't.

Accoustics and sound engineering is a very predictable science. Double pane windows can cut out a lot of sound as do thick stone walls. Nara didn't come forward for a long time. Giving Nara the benefit of the doubt, maybe after reading the papers and seeing the coverage on the news, she might have had nightmares and pretty soon the nightmares became her reality.

DF, the sound meter doesn't lie. The engineer said the weather etc could maybe make a couple of decibels difference which really isn't much. (I'm not sure he really bought it though) Most people's hearing degrades a little as they get older. I do wish the sound engineer had said what the meter showed him, but my bet is that it didn't move the needle and he couldn't hear it himself. Right then the engineer decided the old woman was full of it.

I agree with you that it was impossible [I hate that word but prefer incredibly unlikely]
The hosts of the program however tried to suggest that maybe it was possible on a different day with different shoes. I call that weaseling.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Chris H, I had this question too. Wondering if you could help clarify on this point?

carbonjam,

The "only Sollecito" claim is false with respect to the YSTR analysis, if for no other reason that YSTR is not very discriminating, as I mentioned earlier today. Tagliabracci did not agree with one aspect of Stefanoni's statement that the there were no other occurrences of this profile in the database. His point was that because the database was small, the rarity was meaningless. I don't know all of the details (see pp. 251-252 in the English translation of the Massei report). The "one-fifth of Italy" claim is of uncertain origin, at least as far as I am concerned. It is probably wrong, but we would need a large enough database to evaluate it further.

I also found this from the Massei report, "With respect to the traces present on the door handle of the victim's room, she [Mrs. Stefanoni] stated that they had been identified as being from Kercher. Only blood of the victim was found, and Y chromosome testing was not carried out. In this regard, she explained that Y chromosome analysis is not routine, and there was no particular reason for doing it here." This is an odd statement. If Meredith's blood were on the handle of the door, the most likely person to be responsible for this transfer is the murderer. It is sometimes possible to find additional DNA traces in blood. I am not saying that they would have found anything, only that they might have. Apparently, Sarah Gino also objected to the lack of testing of one door handle, but from the Massei report, it is unclear whether the inside or outside door handle was the one that she meant. (p. 235).

 

[acbytesla]

I agree with you that it was impossible [I hate that word but prefer incredibly unlikely]
The hosts of the program however tried to suggest that maybe it was possible on a different day with different shoes. I call that weaseling.

I agree with you about the hosts, but I'm fine with impossible. Rudy was wearing tennis shoes as what Raffaele wore most of the time. No need to give the guilters any room. I challenge anyone to use a sound meter from Nara's apartment and come up with a different result.

This is just another piece of incredibly silly evidence that would have been thrown out of most American courts. I really wish people like Peter Quennell or Machiavelli stood in that apartment looking at the meter while this test was conducted. There isn't single witness for the prosecution that is worth a damn.