Continuation Part 11: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[AmyStrange]

Question about the wrist...

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I've been trying to find the actual autopsy report online, but the best I've been able to find is Ron Hendry's analysis of the autopsy report.

It actually shows the wounds and bruises to her neck, and then talks about her nose being smashed and lips bruised and then the trauma to her head as her hair was forcibly pulled back from behind. Besides that there were also multiple bruises to the body:

FROM: http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/RonHendry7.html

" ...Notable bruise markings were noted to both elbow regions. Some bruising was also noted to the mid section of the right forearm. Light knife tip contact wounds were found to the hands.

"Pathologist Lalli also noted bruising to the hips and some to the right leg, none of which were readily detectable from the available photos of those regions.... "
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No where is it mentioned that her wrist were bruised. There is no way anyone can make me believe that two people were holding Meredith and they weren't holding her by her wrist.

Try it sometime. Get three people together with two of them trying to hold a third person. The first thing you go for is the elbow area, because those don't move as much as the wrist or hands, but once you get a hold of the elbows, you almost immediately then go for the wrist and hold them that way.

One person can easily hold another person by grabbing them around the waist and elbows from behind and still have a hand free for the knife which you can use to hold against the throat, which most sane people won't struggle against, but under those circumstances, sanity really doesn't apply. Not in real life anyway, in my opinion.

The bruises to me look like Meredith tried to get away and was grabbed by the elbow and swung against something that was about hip high or she hit the wall with her hips. This was also when her shoulder was bruised by the violent swinging of her body by the elbow and forearm.

I also believe that she was then thrown against the floor and that was when her nose was smashed and her lips bruised. This could have dazed her enough so someone could forcibly pull her head back by the hair and plunge the knife into her neck.

This is all possible with a single attacker.

What is telling to me is that the wrist weren't bruised. This would have made it more plausible in my mind that three people could have been involved with two of them holding Meredith by the wrist while a third person stabbed her from behind.

If anyone has access to the autopsy report, could you post a link here or at least read it to see if her wrist were bruised also.

Otherwise, any scenario where one or two people were holding her by the wrist (including Mach's scenario), is just too improbable and implausible, and not supported by the evidence as I know it, in my opinion,

d

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ETA: Hell, you can see my single attacker scenario acted out in most WWE wrestling matches on TV, and even when they get extreme and two of the wrestlers hold a third wrestler so a fourth can pound away at them, you'll see the two of them hold the third wrestler by the wrist.

-

 

[Chris_Halkides]

lack of uniformity with respect to luminol results

I don't think it should b allowed.

A luminol hit is evidence only of a chemical reaction. It is not evidence of blood, until the confirmatory tests confirm that the substance is blood.

SNIP

I don't think a bare luminol hit would be allowable as evidence in a US court, though I may be wrong.

carbonjam72,

It is not uniform across all jurisdictions, but some states do exclude it, as several of us have documented over the past few weeks. I lean slightly toward excluding it, but I agree that a case can be made for including it, so long as it is understood to indicate only the possibility of blood.

 

[AmyStrange]

Amanda Knox quietly writing for West Seattle newspaper

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Amanda Knox quietly writing for West Seattle newspaper
BY JOSH KERNS on November 5, 2014 @ 5:48 am

http://mynorthwest.com/11/2637912/A...t-Seattle-newspaper?google_editors_picks=true

"Amanda Knox is in the news again, but this time she's writing the stories instead of having them written about her... "

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[Kevin_Lowe]

I don't see any objection risen by the other parties experts, to tho specific request about C&V seeing data. If they wanted to object they would have objected, such as they did on the proposal to break the knife handle. But the point is the other parties don't want Conti e Vecchiotti to be involved in anything at all. It's not something about "this data". They were fundamentally objecting to the appointing of experts for further DNA tests. They object to the Hellmann-Zanetti court decision to order a perizia, they distrust the court and they distrust Conti and Vecchiotti. They don't wish Conti and Vecchiotti to have basically anything, they think Conti and Vecchiotti are criminals and they understand the trial has been hijacked and bribed.

That's funny.

The way I remember it, the pro-guilt community were very happy with the appointment of Conti and Vecchiotti. The pro-guilt community were saying "Just you wait until these renowned experts come down wholeheartedly on the side of the prosecution, this is going to be so good, I can't wait!".

It was only when Conti and Vecchiotti dismantled the DNA evidence and humiliated Stefanoni that suddenly the pro-guilt community decided that Conti and Vecchiotti were trial-hijacking criminals in the pay of the Marriot ninja Mason supertanker conspiracy.

Can you cite a single source dating from before Conti and Vecchiotti delivered their report where the accusations were made?

 

[acbytesla]

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Amanda Knox quietly writing for West Seattle newspaper
BY JOSH KERNS on November 5, 2014 @ 5:48 am

http://mynorthwest.com/11/2637912/A...t-Seattle-newspaper?google_editors_picks=true

"Amanda Knox is in the news again, but this time she's writing the stories instead of having them written about her... "

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I know...I have been going toe to toe with a very weak guilter in the comment section. lol

 

[Numbers]

Here is a case of wrongful conviction from Italy, reported in 2012.
The details are strange indeed.

From: The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/09/edmond-arapi-payout?newsfeed=true

Edmond Arapi wins payout from Italian court for wrongful murder conviction

A Staffordshire man wrongly accused of murder in Italy and held in prison for weeks under a European arrest warrant has been awarded major damages in a precedent-setting case. The decision has been hailed as a warning to judges and prosecutors throughout Europe not to grant such arrest warrants without examining the evidence closely.

In 2006, Edmond Arapi, 31, an Albanian who came legally to the United Kingdom in 2000 was convicted in his absence of a murder in Genoa, Italy and sentenced to 16 years. Arapi, who works as a chef in Leek, Staffordshire, was unaware of the case until he was arrested at Gatwick airport in 2009 on his return from a family holiday in Fier, Albania. He has only been out of the UK on two occasions since he first arrived and had never been to Genoa.

Despite his protestations of innocence and the flimsy case against him, he was held in jail for a number of weeks, to the distress of his pregnant wife, Georgina, whom he had met in 2001. They now have three children. Even after he was released on bail, he was under strict bail conditions as he awaited extradition to Italy.

A campaign was organised on his behalf by the charity, Fair Trials International (FTI), which has repeatedly warned that the European arrest warrants are being used too frequently and without proper consideration. Eventually, it was shown that Arapi could not have carried out the crime as he had been in working in a cafe in Staffordshire at the time. It became clear that he was the victim of a case of mistaken identity and another man with a similar name and from the same region in Albania was the actual suspect. The extradition order was withdrawn by the Italian authorities and the case against him dropped.

With the help of FTI, Arapi launched an action for compensation and the evidence was heard in Genoa earlier this year. He has now been awarded £18,000 by the appeal court in Genoa in recompense for his time inside and the distress caused to him and his family.

 

[Machiavelli]

There is one and only one reason why the Crini prosecution in the Nencini court in 2013 had to give up on a second knife. By "give up" on a second knife, I mean to give up on the allegation that there were two knives....

..... one being the kitchen knife from Raffaele's with all the DNA that Stefanoni tested....

..... and the second knife known only by the presence of an outline of it in blood on Meredith's bedsheet. This used to be touted as the second knife by the pro-guilt lobby because it was so obviously NOT a match for the kitchen knife.

Then the RIS Carabinieri gave their report to the Nencini court about the mandated DNA testing of sample 36i on the knife.

If the ownership of that piece of evidence had been Meredith Kercher, then I would be a guilter. Perhaps most of the people here on this thread would be too. We'd be apologizing to Machiavelli.

But no, the sample was Amanda Knox's adding nothing, really, to knowing anything about that knife other than that she'd probably cooked with it back at Raffaele's where it was found; and where there is NO evidence that it had ever left that drawer in Raffaele's place.

You can tell why, then, Crini had to - straight out of the blue, with NO evidence supporting it - say in court that all of a sudden, three trials into this farce, that the bloodstain outline on the sheet now was a match for the kitchen knife back at Raffaele's. What was at stake was literally the whole case against AK and RS..... if that knife never made it to the cottage, then Stefanoni really did frame two students....

Strangely, as an aside, Machiavelli from this very thread makes a posting three or four days before Crini's assertion in court, that he, too, now thinks there is a match between the knife and the stain. Machiavelli was ridiculed for that assertion.... all until no less than Crini himself made the claim in the Florence court!!!!

Crini didn't "give up" on the two knives. He made clear that the knife that produced the she's print and the knife that caused the right wound are two different knives. He assumed the knife on the bed is the one that caused the left wound, thus the kitchen knife. This is not a contradiction of a two knives scenario.
He also pointed out that the right wound and the left wound were made with different knives, because of the margins of the left wounds and because of its blade width.

 

[moije2]

Confirmation blood testing

Una pregunta por favor: I may have missed it, and apologies if it has been similarly discussed, but there has been much discussion about presumptive tests re blood - luminal, TMB/hemastix/2-step etc. In this discussion about presumptive tests there has always been reference to the need to follow up with a confirmation test. Right now the name of the test slips my mind. Anyway, has there been testimony of such confirmatory test ever being done by the highly trained and highly esteemed dottore and/or her assistants? And I am of course referring to luminol hotspots, or TMB tests. In other words, was this part of the usual and customary practice of scientific police to do confirmatory tests? Do we have evidence of that? In what way do they follow or not follow the standard of practice among scientists? If they did <no> confirmations in this case, and they have done it before, why didn't they do it this time if in fact that is true?

Thanks if anyone knows...

 

[Numbers]

Some statistical information from the ECHR for 2013,
the year Amanda Knox submitted her application; source:

http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Stats_analysis_2013_ENG.pdf
Table 3 The Court's total caseload by stage of proceedings and judicial formation

Italy

Single Judge or Committee__________________________________650
(Low Priority Cases)

Chamber or Committee___________________________________12,101
(High Priority Cases)
(Awaiting 1st Examination)

Communicated to Italy______________________________________850

Pending Italy Gov't Action____________________________________793

Admissible_________________________________________________31
(Cases examined and deemed admissible)

At the end of 2013, Amanda Knox's application was most likely in the group of 12,101 awaiting first examination, since it probably arrived at the ECHR in the 4th quarter.
(This is my guestimate, of course)

 

[Bill Williams]

Crini didn't "give up" on the two knives. He made clear that the knife that produced the she's print and the knife that caused the right wound are two different knives. He assumed the knife on the bed is the one that caused the left wound, thus the kitchen knife. This is not a contradiction of a two knives scenario.
He also pointed out that the right wound and the left wound were made with different knives, because of the margins of the left wounds and because of its blade width.

The point is, unless the kitchen knife matched the bedsheet outline, then with no DNA tying the kitchen knife to the crime, then there is nothing tying that knife to the crime.

Crini had to come up with that knowing that the RIS Carabinieri report to the Nencini court added nothing to the understanding of the crime - in relation to sample 36i.

Go bad to the threads circa Nov 2013 where you vigourously argue that the kitchen knife is a match for the bedsheet outline.

Then turn to the Nencini report for a discussion of it.

 

[anglolawyer]

I might be a little late on this one, but I wanted to add a word about a luminol hit without a follow up confirmatory test being allowed in as evidence.

I don't think it should b allowed.

A luminol hit is evidence only of a chemical reaction. It is not evidence of blood, until the confirmatory tests confirm that the substance is blood.

It's not a crime to use bleach cleaner, or spill fruit juice. It is a crime to commit a bloody murder, or clean-up after one to conceal the crime.

The idiot British virgins believed they had "possible information" useful to the court. They didn't. I don't know whether their testimony as to Amanda and Meredith's relationship or stress should have been allowed in as evidence.

But the luminol, because it is purely a physical chemical reaction has an absolute quality as to its state of being, but its probative value is based on our interpretation of an ambiguous fact.

I don't think a bare luminol hit would be allowable as evidence in a US court, though I may be wrong.

I served on a jury, and the fact that a prior offense of a very similar type had been committed by the defendant was specifically excluded from the jury, precisely because of its prejudicial effect The fact that a prior similar crime had been committed, did not mean the defendant had committed this crime in this case - was how the judge explained it to us after we delivered a verdict.

So a luminol hit, without confirmatory test, is not "evidence" of blood, its evidence only of a luminol hit. It's not "possible" evidence of blood either. Until its confirmed as blood, to the full limits of the analysis, it should be excluded from jury consideration, imo.

Allowing a bare luminol hit to be counted as evidence lowers the standard of proof. That's what Mach and Nencini want to do, because they can't meet a rational standard of proof.

If a defendant has the right to cross examine a witness against them, how do they "cross-examine" i.e. "test" something presented as "possible evidence".

The prosecution has to prove its case, not by possibility or probability, but beyond reasonable doubt. Allowing such evidence into a conviction is inherently unfair.

I realize its an adversarial process and any lawyer would want as much admissable as possible. But I don't think this type of leniency is evidence in fair to a defendant.

I am not being very successful in detaching the argument from the specifics of the Knox case. I don't think the luminol evidence here is probative of anything except incompetence and corruption. But if luminol detected a body-sized shape on a brand new floor in what had been an unoccupied house in which there had never been any bleach, rust etc (IOW if I could exclude other possible causes of the chemical-luminescent reaction) then even Numbers might allow the resulting evidence. Like I said already, evidence need not be and usually isn't perfect or 100% certain.

 

[anglolawyer]

The rules for what can be accepted as evidence are merely a simplification of the rules of science for those of lesser skills like judges and lawyers.

it's the other way round, Dan. The tiny and insecure mind is fit for operations that may resolve questions to the certainty needed to fly an object to Mars and land it there. A computer can do that. It takes broad experience of human affairs, wisdom, skill and true intellect to reconstruct the past via the trial process in face of the infinity of possibilities life throws up

To support the science, there is a whole branch of math (which I shall not name because you have already rejected it out of hand) that can tell you when given the conditions that prompt a measurement to be made how the results of that measurement affect the probability of your theory being true or false. And the math goes beyond making that judgment but also gives you the uncertainty of that judgement.

Even oblique references to Bayesian *********** statistics brings me out in hives. Please don't do it.

If you don't follow the protocols which are the basis for the expected results of the test or if you don't perform sufficient measurements such as ignoring negative substrate controls or you perform tests at random without a prior basis for performing that test, you aren't going to achieve any certainty for the result. The math will effectively ignore this unreliable data. If you aren't using the math such as in front of a jury in a courtroom you need some other way of excluding this evidence so it doesn't inappropriately influence the decision making.

Next thing you will be insisting that everybody be forced to learn maths to PhD level as part of a citizenship qualification. The cure is worse than the disease. Your first sentence is trite I dont need the second two or a maths degree to agree with it.

 

[Samson]

The point is, unless the kitchen knife matched the bedsheet outline, then with no DNA tying the kitchen knife to the crime, then there is nothing tying that knife to the crime.

Crini had to come up with that knowing that the RIS Carabinieri report to the Nencini court added nothing to the understanding of the crime - in relation to sample 36i.

Go bad to the threads circa Nov 2013 where you vigourously argue that the kitchen knife is a match for the bedsheet outline.

Then turn to the Nencini report for a discussion of it.

Bill, when arguments are imported to this forum, progress can be made, because this is the default forum. Leila's last contribution on IIP on the subject was this: on February 4 2014:

Leila Shneps says:

Indeed, I wished for nothing so much as to discuss all the DNA evidence in more detail and above all the new test on the knife, but all the most interesting parts as far as I am concerned had to go due to the stringent word limit. Don't worry, further articles are in the making.

I thoroughly disagree that the new test on the knife, which for my part I would always have strongly recommended, is exculpatory. To me it proves exactly one thing: perfectly valid tests with clear results can be performed on extremely small samples, indeed on a sample so small that Vecchiotti wrongly claimed it was too small to test. If the result of 36I is accepted, then I can see no reason to exclude the one on 36B; certainly not the smallness of the sample.

Of course, it does not weigh as it would have had it showed Meredith's DNA. But it lends weight to the previous result by removing one of the major objections raised by Vecchiotti, that very small samples cannot give reliable results. (Recall that the "too low" result obtained by Stefanoni from the Qubit Fluorometer meant only that the sample was below 200 pg, which is really quite ample for testing purposes; I believe that 36I was much smaller.) Her other major objection, that the DNA result could have been a trace from a previous run of Meredith's DNA through the machine was removed in court, where she herself admitted that the six day gap between testing of any item containing Meredith's DNA and the knife was too much to allow of this type of contamination.

Thus the result of the testing on 36I as I see it, and as I believe the court saw it, was essentially to invalidate Vecchiotti's assertion, and to validate the result of 36B.

I have seen it expressed on here (by Chris Halkides, I believe) that one possible source of the DNA on the knife was innocent transfer before the crime, or possibly transfer during the transport of the knife (although this would have to be tertiary or quaternary transfer which is very unlikely). Under these hypotheses, the laboratory work on the knife is not at fault. If these arguments had been presented in court, it would have been up to the jury to deliberate whether the DNA came on the knife by innocent transfer (namely Amanda touching Meredith and then touching nothing else on her way back to Raffaele's until she directly handled a knife blade), or tertiary transfer during transport, or during the crime. Even if I don't find the innocent transfer argument convincing - it would be more so if Meredith's DNA had been found on Amanda's clothing, for instance - it is certainly more realistic than random accusations of contamination flying around the lab. However, none of these possibilities were raised in court. I can't deny that Amanda's defense appears to me to have been sadly lacking in imagination all through.

 

[Numbers]

I am not being very successful in detaching the argument from the specifics of the Knox case. I don't think the luminol evidence here is probative of anything except incompetence and corruption. But if luminol detected a body-sized shape on a brand new floor in what had been an unoccupied house in which there had never been any bleach, rust etc (IOW if I could exclude other possible causes of the chemical-luminescent reaction) then even Numbers might allow the resulting evidence. Like I said already, evidence need not be and usually isn't perfect or 100% certain.

After detecting the body-shaped luminol CL the next step is to do additional tests, such as an antibody-antigen test for blood.

And one should not have over-applied the luminol if high concentrations can produce self-CL. Look for swirl or wipe marks or similar indications of a clean-up. Look for other evidence. You don't mention if it's known that a criminal act involving blood is known or suspected in your hypothetical.

Could be that someone rolled in dirt or mud that had iron compounds or other material that would produce luminol CL and then laid down on the floor. No crime in that scenario.

 

[Planigale]

I'm afraid Mach is off rebooting again since I called him on the trousers being reversed. It's a pity nobody take the time to critique their own scenarios before making themselves look foolish in public.

The way Mach presented his scenario made it seem like Meredith was left in the initial position for hours. But there is so much evidence that this isn't so. There was blood pooling in the initial position but not for hours, only minutes while the perp (Rudy) backs off from the initial shock of what he's done, drops the knife on the bed (note RW how it bounced slightly) and steady's himself by putting his hand out to the wall (Rudy himself admits to writing on the wall). Rudy then fetches the first towel from Meredith's bathroom to wipe the blood off his hands and returns to reposition the body.

Meredith's blue jacket is removed (it's covered in blood and pulled off in a way that reverses the sleeves), her tee shirts are pushed up over her breasts, her bra is grabbed and removed as I have explained earlier leaving Rudy's DNA on the back band and she is laid on her back while she is still alive as evidenced from the blood spray. (This isn't certain, it is possible that the spray was the result of Rudy raping Meredith's corps. But Rudy the lier claims Meredith was alive when he left her.)

Maybe Meredith was still alive when Rudy covered her naked body with the duvet. Meredith's right arm is bent at the elbow and there is no real explanation for this. Rigor mortis would not set in for a couple of hours and Meredith's hand would have fallen to the floor if it were not being held up. I see the possibility that Meredith raised her right hand in front of her face as an automatic reaction to keep from being suffocated when the duvet is tossed over her. The duvet held her arm in that position as she died. Rigor mortis gradually dissipates from approximately 24 hours after death so the arm would have begun to straighten even before the slow Italian police uncovered her body.

FWIW I believe the left thyroid artery was cut this is a branch of the left carotid artery which supplies blood to the left side of the brain which controls the right side of the body. This may have resulted in decreased blood flow to the left brain resulting in a a seizure or a stroke like episode; a bent right arm and extended right leg might be the consequence in the immediate pre terminal phase.

 

[carbonjam72]

carbonjam72,

It is not uniform across all jurisdictions, but some states do exclude it, as several of us have documented over the past few weeks. I lean slightly toward excluding it, but I agree that a case can be made for including it, so long as it is understood to indicate only the possibility of blood.

The lack of uniformity of an evidentiary standard across jurisdictions means in one jurisdiction you could be guilty, yet in another innocent, on the same case against you. I find that troubling in itself.

I guess I'm trying to understand the scenario where a luminol test is applied, but no confirmatory test is applied to confirm that a presence suspected of blood, is actually blood. Is there ever a justification for not completing the confirming test for blood? (In this case, IUUC, the confirming test was done, found to be negative, concealed from the defense and courts, and then implicitly lied about on the witness stand. Isn't that perjury? I know the defense in Italy has a "right to lie", but does the prosecution as well?)

Beyond that, and more generally, I am troubled by the idea that a logical component of a criminal conviction could be based on "an indication of only the possibility of blood".

Such a circumstance seems to establish, by definition, the presence of reasonable doubt.

But the point I wanted to make apart from this, is that a luminol test is, on its own terms, nothing but a chemical reaction. The fact that it is part of a multi-phase test used by investigators to confirm the presence of blood, adds no special status to any one leg of the test.

Yes, a positive luminol test is an indication to proceed further to confirm a hypothesis that blood is present, but that's an investigative decision, and not yet fairly substantiated point in evidence of, "possible blood".

The possibility relates to our understanding as investigators, not to actual facts that represent a state of affairs in the world.

(Compare this to someone saying, "I was there and saw a red stain on the floor I thought might be blood". Or, "I thought was blood". Those statements may not be further testable, so I don't know, should such statements be allowed in, or are they unfairly prejudicial?)

At what point does our certainty about a fact make it admissable as evidence?

No doubt, there are actually guilty people who will, over a number of cases, be found guilty in court with lower exclusionary standards. But the corollary is that there will also be actually innocent people for whom this uncertain evidence will tip the scales of justice resulting in a wrongful conviction.

In the US, the saying is. 'better 10 guilty go free, then 1 innocent be wrongfully convicted'.

I do believe that assessment, in the sense that there is a trade off we make in where to set the bar as to standards of evidence. My opinion is that the truth is the truth in a million ways, and a lie is a lie in a million more. A true fact is hard to conceal, a false fact is hard to maintain. The prosecution is not likely injured by respecting in total the rights of the accused in all ways, including with regard to allowable evidence.

 

[carbonjam72]

The point is, unless the kitchen knife matched the bedsheet outline, then with no DNA tying the kitchen knife to the crime, then there is nothing tying that knife to the crime.

Crini had to come up with that knowing that the RIS Carabinieri report to the Nencini court added nothing to the understanding of the crime - in relation to sample 36i.

Go bad to the threads circa Nov 2013 where you vigourously argue that the kitchen knife is a match for the bedsheet outline.

Then turn to the Nencini report for a discussion of it.

Mach has effectively conceded that Amanda and Raf are entitled to a verdict of 'not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt'.

When Mach argues that no trace of Amanda need be found in the room where meredith was killed in order to convict, he is effectively conceding that under a rational standard of proof, literally nothing exists to support a conviction against Amanda nor against Raf.

It's only by changing the standards of logic, by declaring like Nencini, that 'any traces of Amanda in her own home are referable to the murder', that a hypothetical 'guilty verdict' can be "justified".

It can't, and Mach knows it. That's why he gets so snippy when you press him on the issue. Mach is experiencing 'cognitive dissonance', and his angry defensive irrational retorts are an expression of this inner torment.

He can't let go of his assumption of guilt, yet every measure of fairness, logic, reason, and established procedures and protections, results inevitably in a finding of actual innocence.

Mach can't handle the truth. So instead, we get, 'multiple side-trackings of breath-taking dimensions'.

 

[anglolawyer]

After detecting the body-shaped luminol CL the next step is to do additional tests, such as an antibody-antigen test for blood.

And one should not have over-applied the luminol if high concentrations can produce self-CL. Look for swirl or wipe marks or similar indications of a clean-up. Look for other evidence. You don't mention if it's known that a criminal act involving blood is known or suspected in your hypothetical.

Could be that someone rolled in dirt or mud that had iron compounds or other material that would produce luminol CL and then laid down on the floor. No crime in that scenario.

Turnip juice or blood. You decide.

Look, I can keep tweaking the thought experiment further if you want. You are already moving into the realm of fanciful explanation which lies beyond the zone of reasonable doubt and becomes too much to swallow. I mean, when was the last time you rolled in dirt and then came home and rolled around on the floor? Not impossible, just fanciful. And yes, I was posting in the context of a murder enquiry so it went without saying, I thought, that there had been a murder.

We agree the luminol evidence in this case is garbage. It doesn't even have zero value since the negative effect of the associated lies, certainly using Nencini's test (the one he sarcastically employed when rejected the defence request for re-testing of the clasp) obliges us to discount or discard all of Stefanoni's evidence. We don't agree whether luminol-only evidence can ever have probative value, even weak, non-zero value in the right context.

 

[Kauffer]

Guilt and innocence

The lack of uniformity of an evidentiary standard across jurisdictions means in one jurisdiction you could be guilty, yet in another innocent, on the same case against you. I find that troubling in itself.

I guess I'm trying to understand the scenario where a luminol test is applied, but no confirmatory test is applied to confirm that a presence suspected of blood, is actually blood. Is there ever a justification for not completing the confirming test for blood? (In this case, IUUC, the confirming test was done, found to be negative, concealed from the defense and courts, and then implicitly lied about on the witness stand. Isn't that perjury? I know the defense in Italy has a "right to lie", but does the prosecution as well?)

Beyond that, and more generally, I am troubled by the idea that a logical component of a criminal conviction could be based on "an indication of only the possibility of blood".

Such a circumstance seems to establish, by definition, the presence of reasonable doubt.

But the point I wanted to make apart from this, is that a luminol test is, on its own terms, nothing but a chemical reaction. The fact that it is part of a multi-phase test used by investigators to confirm the presence of blood, adds no special status to any one leg of the test.

Yes, a positive luminol test is an indication to proceed further to confirm a hypothesis that blood is present, but that's an investigative decision, and not yet fairly substantiated point in evidence of, "possible blood".

The possibility relates to our understanding as investigators, not to actual facts that represent a state of affairs in the world.

(Compare this to someone saying, "I was there and saw a red stain on the floor I thought might be blood". Or, "I thought was blood". Those statements may not be further testable, so I don't know, should such statements be allowed in, or are they unfairly prejudicial?)

At what point does our certainty about a fact make it admissable as evidence?

No doubt, there are actually guilty people who will, over a number of cases, be found guilty in court with lower exclusionary standards. But the corollary is that there will also be actually innocent people for whom this uncertain evidence will tip the scales of justice resulting in a wrongful conviction.

In the US, the saying is. 'better 10 guilty go free, then 1 innocent be wrongfully convicted'.

I do believe that assessment, in the sense that there is a trade off we make in where to set the bar as to standards of evidence. My opinion is that the truth is the truth in a million ways, and a lie is a lie in a million more. A true fact is hard to conceal, a false fact is hard to maintain. The prosecution is not likely injured by respecting in total the rights of the accused in all ways, including with regard to allowable evidence.

In fact you might find the original version of your quotation even more appealing. It is from Blackstone and goes like this:

"All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds it better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent party suffer."

There is actually a biblical precursor, but let that not trouble us. The founding fathers seized on Blackstone and the English Common law tradition and the rest is history. Your quote I believe is taken from Franklin.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_formulation

 

[Annella]

I'm afraid Mach is off rebooting again since I called him on the trousers being reversed. It's a pity nobody take the time to critique their own scenarios before making themselves look foolish in public.

The way Mach presented his scenario made it seem like Meredith was left in the initial position for hours. But there is so much evidence that this isn't so. There was blood pooling in the initial position but not for hours, only minutes while the perp (Rudy) backs off from the initial shock of what he's done, drops the knife on the bed (note RW how it bounced slightly) and steady's himself by putting his hand out to the wall (Rudy himself admits to writing on the wall). Rudy then fetches the first towel from Meredith's bathroom to wipe the blood off his hands and returns to reposition the body.

Meredith's blue jacket is removed (it's covered in blood and pulled off in a way that reverses the sleeves), her tee shirts are pushed up over her breasts, her bra is grabbed and removed as I have explained earlier leaving Rudy's DNA on the back band and she is laid on her back while she is still alive as evidenced from the blood spray. (This isn't certain, it is possible that the spray was the result of Rudy raping Meredith's corps. But Rudy the lier claims Meredith was alive when he left her.)

Maybe Meredith was still alive when Rudy covered her naked body with the duvet. Meredith's right arm is bent at the elbow and there is no real explanation for this. Rigor mortis would not set in for a couple of hours and Meredith's hand would have fallen to the floor if it were not being held up. I see the possibility that Meredith raised her right hand in front of her face as an automatic reaction to keep from being suffocated when the duvet is tossed over her. The duvet held her arm in that position as she died. Rigor mortis gradually dissipates from approximately 24 hours after death so the arm would have begun to straighten even before the slow Italian police uncovered her body.

I thought blood stopped pumping once heart stops beating. Blood will only seep, flow gently in this case. How does this fact explain the marks left on the duvet? Knowing duvets...and observing the type covering Meredith's body, it was of the uneven lumpy type yet blood had collected in a large pattern on it. Considering Meredith was on her back, and if her heart had ceased beating, one would expect any gentle blood flow to seep down her neck onto floor rather than arrive on the duvet placed over her I would have thought?