Continuation Part 10: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Samson]

So why did she store it? And if she chose to store it, why did she store it incorrectly?

I would suggest this.
She knows it will be a highly controversial item because it was an absolute must find to keep Sollecito in jail.
She wanted it destroyed without appearing to do so.

She could say here it is when inevitably asked, rather than say I destroyed it.

She knows Sollecito never touched it because the deliberate find was statistically beyond all standard deviations, and knows in her heart it is going to haunt her.

The fact that the hoax is lapped up by the guilter rabble shows how instinctively cleverly she acted.

Whoever had sufficient access to this critical, sine qua non item knew exactly what would happen to the evidence when stored in extraction buffer, or should under no circumstances have access to it. Only one of these can be true.

This is all speculation except
1. It was vital to discover.
2. It was vital to convict.
3. It was destroyed.
There is a narrative from the eye of god to convict the true criminals here.

Sollecito could not touch the item on the evening in question, Machiavelli must know this.
I look forward to his full deconstruction of my (and many others) proof.

 

[moije2]

Stefanoni's laboratory processes hundreds of items every week. None of the partyies involved in the trial asked them to store the item for further tests, as far as I know there is no such request. But there is actually another person who instead was requested to store an item and failed to do it properly, this person is Carla Vecchiotti. It is particularly relevant also because it a sample that was not tested, since she refused to process it. The DNA sample was stored improperly as the Carabinieri RIS pointed out, its solution amount partly reduced because not protected by a film and kept in a refrigerator that didn't have temperature logs, and not even a termometer.
And it was, by the way, an empty refrigerator. Because Vecchiotti's laboratory doesn't perform forensic analysis, and generally doesn't store forensic items at all.

I understand you are critical of Vecchiotti.

My question was about Stefanoni. You say no one ask for storage. That is irrelevant to the fact that she did store the clasp. And she did store it in a manner which it would surely be destroyed as evidence. Yet you go to length to describe her association with highly qualified professionals (my assumption of your intent). Yet she was unable to store the clasp properly. Why should we not think she is incompetent? Surely the procedure of storing scientific items is not as complicated as say DNA analysis?

You don't have to defend her of course on this. I just don't see a logical relationship between your statements about her and her supposed competence.

 

[Desert Fox]

The bra clasp was on the floor for 46 days, while other people entered the room. It was touched and handeled with gloves which I can reasonably assume might have contamination with some environmental allele that might have been also present on the floor, since forensic work is not sterile. The item was also itself an object frequently touched maybe even by other males at other times so maybe even retained previous traces. Possible contaminating agents can be reasonably related to this environmental sources or previous traces, which are independent from Stefanoni, there is no reason to assume that they should be related to the storage conditions.
So I don't know why you decided that storage conditions must have caused a contamination.

Thank you for just admitting that it was contaminated from the get go and was useless as evidence against the defendants. . . . .Oops

 

[AmyStrange]

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I'll leave the topic you address about the TOD and gastric content to another post. Here I focus on just your last statement.

I highlighted "my opinion" because it's not logically irrelevant. You address in this last statement a few entities which exist in your opinion and seem to have some features shaped by your opinon, let's see them. The notion that there is a contamination of the bra clasp, in particular that there was a specific contamination - relevant to the finding - that is the notion that it is Sollecito's profile that can be related to contamination, is not a proven fact. It's your opinion, and I'm afraid it's baseless. In my opinion it is not just not a fact, also not a reasonable hypotheses. Maybe you have a different opinion. I don't know what your opinion would be based on, I can tell you I likely have a different one.

But above all the idea that there was a contamination which resulted from storage, is you opinion, not a proven fact.
The fact is there is no reason to assume - even in the theoretical event there was a contamination - that this would be caused by how the item was stored before the test.
I see no factual basis for such an assumption. It seems to me unreasonable and unscientific.
I think it is not reasonable to assume a causal link between storage conditions and contamination event. Nothing points to such consequential link. It's made up.

Also, it wouldn't be logically consequential, wouldn't have the implication that you think evan if true, but it is baseless, made up.

The bra clasp was on the floor for 46 days, while other people entered the room. It was touched and handeled with gloves which I can reasonably assume might have contamination with some environmental allele that might have been also present on the floor, since forensic work is not sterile. The item was also itself an object frequently touched maybe even by other males at other times so maybe even retained previous traces. Possible contaminating agents can be reasonably related to this environmental sources or previous traces, which are independent from Stefanoni, there is no reason to assume that they should be related to the storage conditions.
So I don't know why you decided that storage conditions must have caused a contamination.

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It may not be relevant to you (and that's also your opinion), but it's relevant to me as to her qualifications as a forensic scientist, because she was responsible for it and it was destroyed under her care. It became contaminated, that's irrefutable, and it now becomes incumbent for her to prove it wasn't her fault, in my opinion.

Everything else you posted is also just your opinion and interpretation, and once again, doesn't prove she wasn't responsible for its contamination, because if what you said above is true, than how come the knife didn't become contaminated also?

The only probable answer that I can see, like Samson said in his/ her POST #3700 above, is because the knife's DNA traces were gone and couldn't be tested again anyway, but the bra-clasp DNA was the heart of their case, and it HAD to be destroyed so it wouldn't be used against her or hurt their case, in my opinion.

I'm willing to be proven wrong, but nothing in your post above does that, and thus my original belief that she is incompetent as a forensic scientist still stands in my mind and in my opinion also,

d

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[AmyStrange]

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Thank you for just admitting that it was contaminated from the get go and was useless as evidence against the defendants. . . . .Oops

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Good catch df,

d

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[AmyStrange]

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I understand you are critical of Vecchiotti.

My question was about Stefanoni. You say no one ask for storage. That is irrelevant to the fact that she did store the clasp. And she did store it in a manner which it would surely be destroyed as evidence. Yet you go to length to describe her association with highly qualified professionals (my assumption of your intent). Yet she was unable to store the clasp properly. Why should we not think she is incompetent? Surely the procedure of storing scientific items is not as complicated as say DNA analysis?

You don't have to defend her of course on this. I just don't see a logical relationship between your statements about her and her supposed competence.

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Well said m,

d

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[Machiavelli]

I understand you are critical of Vecchiotti.

My question was about Stefanoni. You say no one ask for storage. That is irrelevant to the fact that she did store the clasp. And she did store it in a manner which it would surely be destroyed as evidence. Yet you go to length to describe her association with highly qualified professionals (my assumption of your intent). Yet she was unable to store the clasp properly. Why should we not think she is incompetent? Surely the procedure of storing scientific items is not as complicated as say DNA analysis?

You don't have to defend her of course on this. I just don't see a logical relationship between your statements about her and her supposed competence.

I disagree. You say the fact that she didn't have to store it, and that nobody asked, "it's irrelevant".
I think its not irrelevant at all, I think it's very relevant. In my opinion your position is illogical. And given the context of Italy, would say also quite out-of-context or unrealistic.
The item was stored, with at least some kind of procedure, simply because in a biological laboratory all items have to be stored after a test. Storage is always the first step. I mean also the items that are going to be disposed of, as a first step, are stored. No biological item is 'thrown away' directly. You need an order and you write a legal record when you destroy an item, it's not really immediate. But you need to store it immediately. The bra clasp was 'stored' and remained such simply because nobody ordered it to be destroyed.
Your direct question "why did you store it without precautions", is something you find if you track back the interrogation of Stefanoni in 2008. Her answer was rather simple: "to clean the working place". After tests are complete, the item is stored, because it must be packed and placed away from the working area in ordert to not contaminate other things.
This is what Stefanoni said.

The meaning of "storage" then might be discussed: the bra clasp was not really stored the a way items are stored in order to preserve DNA, because wet or moist items containing DNA that must be preserved are stored in freezers, and the bra clasp was not.

Other things could be said about Italy but let them to another post.

 

[Machiavelli]

Thank you for just admitting that it was contaminated from the get go and was useless as evidence against the defendants. . . . .Oops

This makes no sense. There is no law nor evidentiary principle saying generically "contaminated" items are useless as evidence. All kind of cold cases are investigated based on contaminated evidence. So many crime scenes have some kind of "contamination", if you mean generic contamination. What you say about a kind of requirement of "purity" is completely illogical.

 

[AmyStrange]

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Stefanoni's testimony answered to the point. But the relevant legal point is that Stefanoni's lab did not take further precautions to store the item, because simply they are not required to do so: it is an unrepeatable test under art. 360 of the procedure code. A frequent procedure (that is the one mostly followed by the Carabinieri) is that when the test is done under art 360 the item is destroyed immediately after the test.

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Interesting that the way they decided to "immediately" destroyed the bra-clasp was to store it so it SLOWLY rusted. That's beyond laughable, and would totally be a laugh riot if it weren't for the added tragedy it created, which began with Meredith's horrifying death and is now ending with her right to receive justice which is also now being destroyed right along with how the bra-clasp was destroyed, in my opinion.

None of us would be here discussing this if the science had been done right to begin with and the evidence was super-solid and wasn't open to arguemental disertations like we've all seen here in this thread of over 100,000 post, which is also my opinion,

d

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[Samson]

Here is another paper, that discusses gastric emptying for pre op, but addresses another issue that has been raised, size of meal.

In contrast, the gastric emptying curve for solids is linear20,21 (Fig. 2). Gastric emptying of solid food starts approximately 1 h after a meal. Within 2 h, approximately 50% of the solid food ingested is passed to the duodenum. The gastric emptying of solids is independent of the amount of food ingested but dependent on the caloric density of the meal.

http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0120-33472007000400004

I am quite unable to find any research that allows for Meredith's autopsy to be consistent with a meal anywhere near two hours before her death, yet one hour to 90 minutes seems correct.

 

[AmyStrange]

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This makes no sense. There is no law nor evidentiary principle saying generically "contaminated" items are useless as evidence. All kind of cold cases are investigated based on contaminated evidence. So many crime scenes have some kind of "contamination", if you mean generic contamination. What you say about a kind of requirement of "purity" is completely illogical.

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So is "immediately" destroying evidence by letting it slowly rust illogical,

d

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ETA: which brings up another point that m made in his/ her POST #3798 above, why bother storing it if she was suppose to "immediately" destroy it under Art 360. Seems to me she's incompetent in following the law also.

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[Machiavelli]

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It may not be relevant to you (and that's also your opinion), but it's relevant to me as to her qualifications as a forensic scientist, because she was responsible for it and it was destroyed under her care. It became contaminated, that's irrefutable, and it now becomes incumbent for her to prove it wasn't her fault, in my opinion. (...)

I'm afraid this reasoning looses a bit of touch with the legal and scientific reality. Simply there is nothing like any "irrefutable" proof that it "became" contaminated. Even less that it "became contaminated" under storage. None of such proofs exist.
There is no basis in the assertion that she was responsible for it, certainly not before collection nor after the test.
And it is no true that it is incumbet to her to prove that it "wasn't her fault"; and in fact, there is no fault of sort at all.

Everything is invented. Contamination, that a contamination occurred during storage or inconsequence of it, alleged responsability, alleged duty to care about it, or fault; none of these exists in reality: every concept in this reasoning is legally wrong and/or scientifically unsupported.

She had no duty to take care of the item after a test done under art. 360 and without any request. She had no responsability about the integrity of the crime scene. She has no fault to respond to. There is no evidence of causal link between storage and alleged contamination. There is nothing she needs to proof.

As a last point, which is incidental but after all a point that shows the existence of a different logic, in fact it wouldn't even matter much how competent Patrizia Stefanoni is. The very notion that her competence must be "relevant" as if the trial was a zero-sum between forensic quality and defence, is just wrong. It doesn't even really matter that the police are honest or ithat the forensics have a high working quality, these are not requirements in a trial, and no piece of evidence at all requires to be completely trustable nor to be of high quality.
And moreover, in addition to that about Stefanoni and forensics, it is basically not even true that this trial depends on DNA findings. It's not that an imperfect quality of a DNA item, a degree of doubt in it, would change anything.

 

[Diocletus]

This makes no sense. There is no law nor evidentiary principle saying generically "contaminated" items are useless as evidence. All kind of cold cases are investigated based on contaminated evidence. So many crime scenes have some kind of "contamination", if you mean generic contamination. What you say about a kind of requirement of "purity" is completely illogical.

Really? What defendants have been convicted on the basis of admittedly contaminated evidence?

 

[Machiavelli]

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So is "immediately" destroying evidence by letting it slowly rust illogical,

In some degree illogical, I agree, but not Stefanoni's fault. Beaurocracy is illogical, Italian procedures are particularly illogical. But this is a system, a context. Not something that you can pin on Stefanoni or anyone else.

 

[MDDVS]

This makes no sense. There is no law nor evidentiary principle saying generically "contaminated" items are useless as evidence. All kind of cold cases are investigated based on contaminated evidence. So many crime scenes have some kind of "contamination", if you mean generic contamination. What you say about a kind of requirement of "purity" is completely illogical.

It must be considered in your interpretation of any finding.

 

[Samson]

I'm afraid this reasoning looses a bit of touch with the legal and scientific reality. Simply there is nothing like any "irrefutable" proof that it "became" contaminated. Even less that it "became contaminated" under storage. None of such proofs exist.
There is no basis in the assertion that she was responsible for it, certainly not before collection nor after the test.
And it is no true that it is incumbet to her to prove that it "wasn't her fault"; and in fact, there is no fault of sort at all.

Everything is invented. Contamination, that a contamination occurred during storage or inconsequence of it, alleged responsability, alleged duty to care about it, or fault; none of these exists in reality: every concept in this reasoning is legally wrong and/or scientifically unsupported.

She had no duty to take care of the item after a test done under art. 360 and without any request. She had no responsability about the integrity of the crime scene. She has no fault to respond to. There is no evidence of causal link between storage and alleged contamination. There is nothing she needs to proof.

As a last point, which is incidental but after all a point that shows the existence of a different logic, in fact it wouldn't even matter much how competent Patrizia Stefanoni is. The very notion that her competence must be "relevant" as if the trial was a zero-sum between forensic quality and defence, is just wrong. It doesn't even really matter that the police are honest or ithat the forensics have a high working quality, these are not requirements in a trial, and no piece of evidence at all requires to be completely trustable nor to be of high quality.
And moreover, in addition to that about Stefanoni and forensics, it is basically not even true that this trial depends on DNA findings. It's not that an imperfect quality of a DNA item, a degree of doubt in it, would change anything.

Something that everyone will agree on is that it can be determined without dna findings the correctness of the conclusion. I think this is an excellent point. For Hellman the dna was a distraction.
Guede is guilty with his shoe hand and finger prints.
Knox and Sollecito are similarly unconnected to the crime scene for this reason. The computer and gastric evidence is conclusive for innocence of at least one defendant, yet both are convicted.
The break in has no need for dna to prove the rock was thrown from the car park, the photographs are conclusive.
And so it goes on.

 

[Machiavelli]

Really? What defendants have been convicted on the basis of admittedly contaminated evidence?

DNA finding is by definition a contamination of some kind. In the Elisa Claps case the DNA findings were defined a "massive contamination" by expert Lago. there is a definition od "contamination" as DNA left after the murder, but this does not make other evidence necessarily disappear. Then all "mixed traces" contain by definition an extra contributor who is an extra "contaminating" profile, that might be an extra suspect or a victim or an uninvolved person.

 

[moije2]

I disagree. You say the fact that she didn't have to store it, and that nobody asked, "it's irrelevant".
I think its not irrelevant at all, I think it's very relevant. In my opinion your position is illogical. And given the context of Italy, would say also quite out-of-context or unrealistic.
The item was stored, with at least some kind of procedure, simply because in a biological laboratory all items have to be stored after a test. Storage is always the first step. I mean also the items that are going to be disposed of, as a first step, are stored. No biological item is 'thrown away' directly. You need an order and you write a legal record when you destroy an item, it's not really immediate. But you need to store it immediately. The bra clasp was 'stored' and remained such simply because nobody ordered it to be destroyed.
Your direct question "why did you store it without precautions", is something you find if you track back the interrogation of Stefanoni in 2008. Her answer was rather simple: "to clean the working place". After tests are complete, the item is stored, because it must be packed and placed away from the working area in ordert to not contaminate other things.
This is what Stefanoni said.

The meaning of "storage" then might be discussed: the bra clasp was not really stored the a way items are stored in order to preserve DNA, because wet or moist items containing DNA that must be preserved are stored in freezers, and the bra clasp was not.

Other things could be said about Italy but let them to another post.

So you need an order to destroy something, but a highly trained scientist, trained by the emminent scientists you described, decides to just clean up and destroy the evidence by her manner of storage? You use the word "logical" frequently. There is a gap here.

We've gone from she doesn't have to store it -- to it is not usually done - to she does store it - but just to clean up the lab in a manner guaranteed to destroy it for evidentiary purposes - even though she needs an order to destroy something. Again, the logic here is sequence I do not follow.

 

[AmyStrange]

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I'm afraid this reasoning looses a bit of touch with the legal and scientific reality. Simply there is nothing like any "irrefutable" proof that it "became" contaminated. Even less that it "became contaminated" under storage. None of such proofs exist. There is no basis in the assertion that she was responsible for it, certainly not before collection nor after the test.
And it is no true that it is incumbet to her to prove that it "wasn't her fault"; and in fact, there is no fault of sort at all.

Everything is invented. Contamination, that a contamination occurred during storage or inconsequence of it, alleged responsability, alleged duty to care about it, or fault; none of these exists in reality: every concept in this reasoning is legally wrong and/or scientifically unsupported.

She had no duty to take care of the item after a test done under art. 360 and without any request. She had no responsability about the integrity of the crime scene. She has no fault to respond to. There is no evidence of causal link between storage and alleged contamination. There is nothing she needs to proof.

As a last point, which is incidental but after all a point that shows the existence of a different logic, in fact it wouldn't even matter much how competent Patrizia Stefanoni is. The very notion that her competence must be "relevant" as if the trial was a zero-sum between forensic quality and defence, is just wrong. It doesn't even really matter that the police are honest or ithat the forensics have a high working quality, these are not requirements in a trial, and no piece of evidence at all requires to be completely trustable nor to be of high quality.
And moreover, in addition to that about Stefanoni and forensics, it is basically not even true that this trial depends on DNA findings. It's not that an imperfect quality of a DNA item, a degree of doubt in it, would change anything.

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What I posted was that it's irrefutable that it IS now contaminated. Are you saying the bra-clasp is not now contaminated?

I disagree with your conjecture that the case doesn't depend on the bra-clasp DNA. It's what places Raffaele at the scene and also effectively destroys Amanda's alibi that she was with him all night, because if he was with her than she can't say they were at his house all night and didn't kill Meredith.

There is nothing else (of real evidentiary value) that places them both at the house killing Meredith, it's why they had to go back to the cottage 46 days later to find more evidence. The rest of the case doesn't have a leg to stand on, in my opinion,

d

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ETA: sorry you were right Mach, I did write "became contaminated", but I hope you can see that I meant because it is now rusted, and it wasn't rusted before, it had to arrive at it's current state of rust somehow... i apologize to you for my original hilited statement above.

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[Strozzi]

I disagree. You say the fact that she didn't have to store it, and that nobody asked, "it's irrelevant".
I think its not irrelevant at all, I think it's very relevant. In my opinion your position is illogical. And given the context of Italy, would say also quite out-of-context or unrealistic.
The item was stored, with at least some kind of procedure, simply because in a biological laboratory all items have to be stored after a test. Storage is always the first step. I mean also the items that are going to be disposed of, as a first step, are stored. No biological item is 'thrown away' directly. You need an order and you write a legal record when you destroy an item, it's not really immediate. But you need to store it immediately. The bra clasp was 'stored' and remained such simply because nobody ordered it to be destroyed.
Your direct question "why did you store it without precautions", is something you find if you track back the interrogation of Stefanoni in 2008. Her answer was rather simple: "to clean the working place". After tests are complete, the item is stored, because it must be packed and placed away from the working area in ordert to not contaminate other things.
This is what Stefanoni said.

The meaning of "storage" then might be discussed: the bra clasp was not really stored the a way items are stored in order to preserve DNA, because wet or moist items containing DNA that must be preserved are stored in freezers, and the bra clasp was not.

Other things could be said about Italy but let them to another post.

Interesting explanation, Machiavelli. If I correctly understand what you write above, Stefanoni's placement of the bra clasp in the test tube was her way of placing it in (temporary) storage, pending it's eventual destruction in accord with appropriate evidence destruction protocols, and not a process to preserve the clasp. Is my understanding correct?

I have a follow-on question. If the clasp was placed in the test tube to temporarily store it (not preserve it) pending eventual discard/destruction, why was the test tube filled with a buffer?