Grinder himself said he was not claiming the other items were robust pieces of evidence. His sole point is that the bra clasp is not the only item of
claimed evidence against Raffaele.
He also said that I said you could make a good case with lots of pieces of weak evidence. That is not what I intended to be understood as saying when I used David Gilroy as an example of a circumstantial case. Or rather, it is an over-simplification. The items of evidence in Gilroy's case are not weak or strong or anything else when viewed individually because viewing them individually is itself wrong (there is judicial authority for this in the common law world). It is always the
totality of the evidence that counts.
Of course, these individual items still have to be proved. It had to be proved that it was Gilroy who bought the air freshener and not someone else. It had to be proved that his car journey took longer than it normally would etc The parallel in our case is that it still has to be proved that Curatolo saw them, that the footprint is Raf's etc etc In Gilroy's case, all the elements could be proved quite firmly. Not so with the the evidence against Raffaele.
Where things get complicated is that one weak piece of evidence (weak in the sense of a dubious identification or merely 'compatible' print) may corroborate another. As I have said before, systematising this stuff is difficult, but suppose there had been another witness in Piazza Grimana during the evening. Suppose this witness was a regular there and was a pretty reliable person. Suppose they proved Curatolo was there on the 1st as he said he was but that he was not there the night before. Now that would firm up Curatolo's evidence somewhat. No, we could be satisfied he really was there whereas before doubts on that point entitled us to reject his claim that he was.
Suppose, further, that our new witness also saw the couple Curatolo claims to have seen. He never saw their faces but he remembers the clothes the female was wearing and these clothes are similar to those Amanda was last seen wearing. Again, not a positive ID but evidence that firms up Curatolo's evidence (which in turn corroborates the evidence of the new witness).
The collection of evidence against Raffaele is weak in a special sense i.e. not because it is merely within one of Grinder's categories of weak circumstantial evidence (everything other than DNA, prints etc) but the individual items are themselves of doubtful interpretation
and unsupported by anything else. Contrary to the ISC's osmotic claim, they do not assemble to form a coherent picture that tells us what happened. The picture is instead full of incongruity and even impossibility such as to require considerable interference with already weak evidence in order to make it work, Curatolo's being the best example. We have to let him only look up when Raf and Amanda happened to be in the square but not when they were missing. The fact we have to do this to the point of attracting ridicule suggests something is wrong and what's wrong is - they didn't do it.
ETA reading
the judgment in Gilroy in which his appeal was rejected I saw another item of CE which had been used against him.
That is
'weak' evidence per Grinder (because not DNA, fingerprints etc) but strong both in being very clearly proven and in the further sense of working well in combination with the rest of the case against him.
