Continuation Part 11: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[carbonjam72]

For the ICC, they are limited to broad-scale crimes such as genocide:

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt)[2] is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal that sits in The Hague in the Netherlands. The ICC has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes and it may one day be able to exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. The ICC is intended to complement existing national judicial systems and it may therefore only exercise its jurisdiction when certain conditions are met, such as when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals or when the United Nations Security Council or individual states refer investigations to the Court.

Most likely any criminal action agains Mignini et al. would be by Italian authorities. They already prosecuted him once for abuse of power (IIUC) and while he was convicted, he escaped sentencing due to the pecularities of Italian judicial management and the statute of limitations.

Your creative legal ideas I highlighted. As an amateur and fully unlicensed lawyer, I would hesitate to speak on this, except to point out that jurisdictional issues may be decisive. Unless the perpetrator is a terrorist....

oh well, perhaps if the ECHR's decision is sufficiently scathing, even the Italians would be embarrassed to look the other way at Mignini's antics.

I think the problem is that Mignini and the Perugian goons are not exceptional or rare, they appear to be par for the course in sunny Italy.

Italian justice just rolls along, albeit on a short yellow bus.

 

[Kauffer]

I didn't forgot. I remember it differently. Comodi did not refuse, she accepted. Se evidently told Stefanoni to provide documentation.

After that, what happened is:

1 - the defenses (in particular following Tagliabracci's testimony) said some SAls were missing, asked if there was further documentation and asked if they could have them, but failed to request raw data or to complain about their absence.
2 - Comodi said they had no further documentation, those SALs didn't exist
3 - judge Massei denied the defence request (not Comodi), assessing that the defence failed to explain why they should need further documentation (and the issue of raw data was never discussed)
4 - the defence did not seek "dismissal as a result" of said denial. They sought "dismissal" (actually annulment of Stefanoni's testimony) but not as the result of failure to provide full documentation nor failure to provide raw data; they sought as the result of late discovery, that was after Tagliabracci's notes in his testimony. Thus, not failure to provide data, but late discovery, that is having provided some data too late.
5 - Massei denied the annullment request, on the reasonable ground that it was the defence who didn't seek the data in the incidente probatorio; so did Hellmann, and so did Nencini.

The defence was clearly not focused on obtaining raw data, and was not focused on missing data at the the of the final disclosure.

And blah blah blah. So you're reporting that your courts are not interested in the truth and are bound up by obfuscating procedure. But why aren't you interested in the truth? Why aren't you campaigning for the truth? It has been pointed out to you over and over again that in matters of forensic science, the whole truth is to be found only within a comprehensive release of all the data and for that data to be peer reviewed. All you have at the moment are a couple of dodgy egrams, evidence of poor collection procedures, confirmation of contamination and malfunctioning equipment. In the Uk and the US that would be the end of the case. But, hey let's not stop there - let's get the data and let's know the whole story. Why not? What's wrong with the American Bar Association standards? Why aren't they also the Italian standards?

 

[Desert Fox]

This one is real ad-hominem. It's unforgivable: completely unsupported, completely prejudicial (like guessing that Quintavalle was "elderly").

I would not care if the witness is Steve Novella if it is six months after the fact.

 

[Samson]

This one is real ad-hominem. It's unforgivable: completely unsupported, completely prejudicial (like guessing that Quintavalle was "elderly").

The old lady may have heard a scream, but Meredith was long dead at the time she testified she heard it. You have accepted that by declaring
1, No alibi after 8 40pm
2. Girls ate at 7 20pm
3. Digestion autopsy allows a death at 9 pm, no later.

Why not just say they killed her when the autopsy permitted?
You challenged the autopsy method and LondonJohn gave a complete refutation, which was allowed to rest unchallenged.

 

[Numbers]

This is your opinion about the Polizia Scientifica report. I don't subscribe to it, I don't think that is a crappy work at all. I also don't consider it a laboratory work, and not as a report produced by one individual. I think it is also an unfounded assertion to say that operational procedures were not in place. Yet, I am not going to argue about your opinion. I will put it on a shelf. The point is elsewhere.
This is a murder case. There is a judge, and the focus of judgement is the defendant alone (and this is true even more when there is an inquisitorial principle in the system). Not the quality of the investigation, not the professionalism of this or that expert or witness or party, not even the quality of a piece of evidence: just the defendant alone. It's no zero sum game: the defendant does not become innocent if the detectives are unprofessional or the forensics are not good and not even if the prosecution is sloppy. Guilt or innocence of the defendant can only be asssessed by a judge directly and independently from all these external elements.
Second, this is a murder trial means it is about an overall system of evidence; it not a trial about DNA, nor about forensic evidence. It is only about evidence as a whole. And DNA, in this case, is an unnecessary element. Even if the forensics had been completely sloppy and had provided no DNA evidence at all, had I been the judge I would have convicted anyway. I would find them guilty beyond reasonable doubt with no need of DNA at all.
Yet, DNA here is not a "crappy" result at all. The bra clasp and the knife are valid results and good evidence simply because they fulfill the intrinsic property of good pieces of evidence: there is no likely explanation for them. The myth og "contamination" is in fact a conspiracy theory and thus is worth nothing.
And DNA findings on the knife are also part of a contiguous system. The victim's blood on the knife, for example, is not just backed by the DNA result, but also by the defendant's own admission that the knife came into contact with the victim. There was also the defendant admission that the victim's DNA might be found on the cleaning rags, there was Knox's admission in prison saying she was worried by the knife, there was Knox's DNA on the handle and on the blade at the handle insertion and there was her own blood on the tap where the murderer washed him/herself together with the victim's blood. Knox's DNA on handle, Sollecito's double and repeated admission, Knox's admission, Knox's DNA on blade, Knox's blood: this is a contiguous pattern of elements. In Italian legalese we say conducenti, they are "conductive". The knife is also an incredible match to the bed sheet imprint.
All this is what makes the knife a piece of circumstantial evidence.

All of your statements above are, IMO, either false or mistaken. Here are some counterpoints:

1. Forensic lab work must be held to the same or even higher standard than ordinary scientific lab work. There must be standard operating procedures, contemporaneous recording of data, proper controls, and quality assurance. In western democracies, defendants have the right to receive a fair trial, and that means that forensic labs must meet standards that assure their results are fair, reliable, and trustworthy.

2. In a murder trial, or any trial, the focus is on the evidence and the logical connections chain together the evidence. The quality of the evidence must be high; that means it must be reliable. The defense has the right to challenge the evidence in an adversarial process. This is what is stated in Italian Constitution and the ECHR.

3. Problems in the police forensic lab make some of the DNA evidence (the bra clasp and the knife) completely unreliable and unbelievable. Contamination is real, and there was contamination in the police forensic lab. It was not properly controlled for. The bra clasp had the DNA of several men on it; that means it was contaminated. The knife blade sample alleged to have DNA recorded "too low" for quantity with the Qubit fluorometer; this means it may have contained no DNA at all, since the Qubit cannot resolve quantities different from zero in the "too low" range.

4. Knox's DNA was found in a number of non-probative locations - including on the knife handle (she prepared food in Sollecito's apartment) and in her own apartment, including the bathroom. She had no wounds that accounted for the blood drop; it was likely from her earring problem. The presence of one's blood in minor amounts in one's home is not that unusual; there are nose bleeds, bleeding gums, etc.

5. Knox's admission was coerced and obtained illegally, contrary to Convention Article 6; she was a suspect who was not warned of her right to remain silent, she did not have a lawyer, and she did not have a neutral, fair interpreter. It also made no sense and had no real detail. It was a statement concocted by the police in order to arrest her, Raffaele, and Patrick Lumumba for reasons not clear to outsiders, but certainly not because of any credible evidence.

 

[Machiavelli]

The old lady may have heard a scream, but Meredith was long dead at the time she testified she heard it. You have accepted that by declaring
1, No alibi after 8 40pm
2. Girls ate at 7 20pm
3. Digestion autopsy allows a death at 9 pm, no later.

Why not just say they killed her when the autopsy permitted?
You challenged the autopsy method and LondonJohn gavev a complete refutation, which was allowed to rest unchallenged.

LJ gave no refutation at all.
I did not go back to the point, and I actually read LJ's posts only days later. I understand that you and LJ clearly miss the point, on both levels of the statystical argumentation and its application as well as the content of clinical findings in digestion emptying science. The point about sample changes was not entirely grasped but probably also I failed to explain myself thoroughly (since LJ seemed to fix his reasoning on a two-dimensional curve).
In any event, a statement like "digestion autopsy allows death at 9 pm" has no ground. It makes no sense in statistics and clinics, but also has little to do with the case, because we have a situation of stress and tension (and possibly more specific situations that may block digestion) that certainly starts at around 9pm. But at the same time, the multiple perpetrators scenario assumes that there was a prolonged situation of harassment and stress, an argument and a final excalation, so even if you place the starting of everything at 9pm still you well have a TOD like 1 hour later and fit both the scenario and the autopsy findings.

However I don't see why you say I have "accepted" (and what does exactly that mean?) that the girls "ate at 7 20pm", and even that (!) digestion autopsy "allows a death at 9 pm, no later".
I don't understand what does it mean that something should be deduced from the fact that I considered a scenario where the time of meal was conventionally placed at 7:20, I merely consider it as not necessarily impossible if we want a conventional time; and it's not clear how this could conventional time could determine a conclusion that the autopsy only "allows" a death at 9pm and not later.

Finally, Nara Capezzali: a scream like that cannot be attributed just to someone else as if it was a normal event. It is not something that the people in that neighborhood used to hear every other day. And also it is to be crossed with another witness, because it's two witnesses who heared the scream: Nara Capezzali and Antonella Monacchia. They both locate it later than 9pm, they describe it in the same was and they both locate it exactly in the same place.
Moreover, the scream appears for the first time as a very remarkable element in Knox's false statement of 05:45 to prosecutor Mignini, and it is also emphasized in Guede's phone conversation.
Why so many independent sources emphasize it like that? They do not merely report of it, they emphasize it, they associate strong memories to it.
It's not an element that you can easilly dismiss.

 

[Bill Williams]

All of your statements above are, IMO, either false or mistaken. Here are some counterpoints:

...........................

3. Problems in the police forensic lab make some of the DNA evidence (the bra clasp and the knife) completely unreliable and unbelievable. Contamination is real, and there was contamination in the police forensic lab. It was not properly controlled for. The bra clasp had the DNA of several men on it; that means it was contaminated. The knife blade sample alleged to have DNA recorded "too low" for quantity with the Qubit fluorometer; this means it may have contained no DNA at all, since the Qubit cannot resolve quantities different from zero in the "too low" range.

Judge Massei accepted Stefanoni's assurances that she**never** had an instance of contamination in her lab.

That one statement alone shows the nature of her truth-telling, and the decision Massei came to in this regard is all one (really) needs to hear about how this case has been adjudicated.

 

[Samson]

LJ gave no refutation at all.
I did not go back to the point, and I actually read LJ's posts only days later. I understand that you and LJ clearly miss the point, on both levels of the statystical argumentation and its application as well as the content of clinical findings in digestion emptying science. The point about sample changes was not entirely grasped but probably also I failed to explain myself thoroughly (since LJ seemed to fix his reasoning on a two-dimensional curve).
In any event, a statement like "digestion autopsy allows death at 9 pm" has no ground. It makes no sense in statistics and clinics, but also has little to do with the case, because we have a situation of stress and tension (and possibly more specific situations that may block digestion) that certainly starts at around 9pm. But at the same time, the multiple perpetrators scenario assumes that there was a prolonged situation of harassment and stress, an argument and a final excalation, so even if you place the starting of everything at 9pm still you well have a TOD like 1 hour later and fit both the scenario and the autopsy findings.

However I don't see why you say I have "accepted" (and what does exactly that mean?) that the girls "ate at 7 20pm", and even that (!) digestion autopsy "allows a death at 9 pm, no later".
I don't understand what does it mean that something should be deduced from the fact that I considered a scenario where the time of meal was conventionally placed at 7:20, I merely consider it as not necessarily impossible if we want a conventional time; and it's not clear how this could conventional time could determine a conclusion that the autopsy only "allows" a death at 9pm and not later.

Finally, Nara Capezzali: a scream like that cannot be attributed just to someone else as if it was a normal event. It is not something that the people in that neighborhood used to hear every other day. And also it is to be crossed with another witness, because it's two witnesses who heared the scream: Nara Capezzali and Antonella Monacchia. They both locate it later than 9pm, they describe it in the same was and they both locate it exactly in the same place.
Moreover, the scream appears for the first time as a very remarkable element in Knox's false statement of 05:45 to prosecutor Mignini, and it is also emphasized in Guede's phone conversation.
Why so many independent sources emphasize it like that? They do not merely report of it, they emphasize it, they associate strong memories to it.
It's not an element that you can easilly dismiss.

In fact I have no problem placing a death a reasonable time after 9pm, and certainly you state Rudy and Amanda were there at 9pm. I regard this as progress, because we are on the same playing field. As a juror I accept Amelie and Naruto as contradicting your narrative, and many other things of course, but at least you now offer a plausible theory.
I won't agree on digestion, or your statistical theory. It is determined by much more precise science than you allow.

 

[Machiavelli]

And blah blah blah. So you're reporting that your courts are not interested in the truth and are bound up by obfuscating procedure. But why aren't you interested in the truth? Why aren't you campaigning for the truth? It has been pointed out to you over and over again that in matters of forensic science, the whole truth is to be found only within a comprehensive release of all the data and for that data to be peer reviewed

.

It's not that I am not interested in the truth. I am very interested in the truth, and I think it has been found. I am only not that interested in forensic science. I don't accept that a trial is mistaken for an investigation on forensic science. And I also radically object to the ideology that the "whole truth" is to be found only within a comprehensive release of all the data and for that data to be peer reviewed. I believe the only review of evidence must be within the trial, and subject to the interest expressed by the judge and by the parties. The only trial must take place within the courtroom.

All you have at the moment are a couple of dodgy egrams, evidence of poor collection procedures, confirmation of contamination and malfunctioning equipment. In the Uk and the US that would be the end of the case. But, hey let's not stop there - let's get the data and let's know the whole story. Why not? What's wrong with the American Bar Association standards? Why aren't they also the Italian standards?

There is no standard of any kind for pieces of evidence.
Pieces of evidence cannot be subjected to evidentiary laws of the kind you have in jury based systems.

 

[Bill Williams]

LJ gave no refutation at all.
I did not go back to the point, and I actually read LJ's posts only days later. I understand that you and LJ clearly miss the point, on both levels of the statystical argumentation and its application as well as the content of clinical findings in digestion emptying science. The point about sample changes was not entirely grasped but probably also I failed to explain myself thoroughly (since LJ seemed to fix his reasoning on a two-dimensional curve).
In any event, a statement like "digestion autopsy allows death at 9 pm" has no ground. It makes no sense in statistics and clinics, but also has little to do with the case, because we have a situation of stress and tension (and possibly more specific situations that may block digestion) that certainly starts at around 9pm. But at the same time, the multiple perpetrators scenario assumes that there was a prolonged situation of harassment and stress, an argument and a final excalation, so even if you place the starting of everything at 9pm still you well have a TOD like 1 hour later and fit both the scenario and the autopsy findings.

Machiavelli - you are elevating a possible delaying scenario of the passing of food from stomach to duodenum into the sine qua non of the case.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestion#Human_digestion_process

"The partially digested food enters the duodenum as a thick semi-liquid chyme," typically within 1 to 2 hours. You are resting your entire case on this "delay". The far more likely scenario (tragically) is that death interrupted this process, rather than stress.

So, human digestion is now another one of your specialties.

 

[Machiavelli]

Judge Massei accepted Stefanoni's assurances that she**never** had an instance of contamination in her lab.

That one statement alone shows the nature of her truth-telling, and the decision Massei came to in this regard is all one (really) needs to hear about how this case has been adjudicated.

This is another twisted one. Stefanoni was asked if it had ever occurred to her that they found evidence that a result in their laboratory was the effect of contamination. Stefanoni said: no, I naver had evidence of such a problem.

I suggest you look at the original Italian text instead of paraphrasing Stefanoni (you also falsely parafrased my statement saying that I "admitted the trial was not fair", and I never made such statement: it comes probably from your own personal interpretation about what "fair trial" should mean). She uses often a rather precise and peculiar wording. Here I translate the expression she used emphasizing the word "evidence", which is the meaning that you can deduce from her wording.

 

[Machiavelli]

(...)
So, human digestion is now another one of your specialties.

It seems to me it is one of the pro-Knoxes specialties. They find incontrovertible truth on a field medical science holds as "largely unexplored" such as the gastric emptying lag phase.

 

[Diocletus]

It seems to me it is one of the pro-Knoxes specialties. They find incontrovertible truth on a field medical science holds as "largely unexplored" such as the gastric emptying lag phase.

I agree with Machiavelli. Pasta sits in my stomach for hours.

 

[Diocletus]

This is another twisted one. Stefanoni was asked if it had ever occurred to her that they found evidence that a result in their laboratory was the effect of contamination. Stefanoni said: no, I naver had evidence of such a problem.

I guess she doesn't read her own lab records. Not surprising, really.

 

[Bill Williams]

This is another twisted one. Stefanoni was asked if it had ever occurred to her that they found evidence that a result in their laboratory was the effect of contamination. Stefanoni said: no, I naver had evidence of such a problem.

I suggest you look at the original Italian text instead of paraphrasing Stefanoni (you also falsely parafrased my statement saying that I "admitted the trial was not fair", and I never made such statement: it comes probably from your own personal interpretation about what "fair trial" should mean). She uses often a rather precise and peculiar wording. Here I translate the expression she used emphasizing the word "evidence", which is the meaning that you can deduce from her wording.

From Judge Massei's motivations report:

In response to a specific question on this point, Dr. Stefanoni declared that she had
been working as a biologist for seven years, had always used the same methodology,
and had never heard that any problem of contamination of exhibits had occurred.

The distinction you are making does not get Stefanoni off the hook, nor Judge Massei for accepting such nonsense.

 

[carbonjam72]

It seems to me it is one of the pro-Knoxes specialties. They find incontrovertible truth on a field medical science holds as "largely unexplored" such as the gastric emptying lag phase.

Ok, Mach, a simple question:

If the bra clasp sample contains Raf's profile, along with 2-4 other males, why is this fact only incriminating, or more incriminating, to Raf only? Why wouldn't the other males who contributed DNA to the bra clasp also be suspects equally, along with Raf?

Couldn't there have been 5-7 attackers of Meredith in that tiny room?

Why can't the result simply be unreliable?

 

[analemma]

The pro-Knox are finished. They are going nowhere if their arguments are those of these comments. It's going to be a small club of conspiracy theorists forever split from our reality. The defence and the expert activists are no tax collectors, they are no public officers, and the defence did not make a request that was not fulfilled with the rules and opportunities provided by the system. The defence obtained all data they were interested in, and left out what they decided to leave out. Al their legitimate requests were fulfilled.
It's obvious that if their intent is to introduce further evidence at the appeal trial (the Florence one) only because people like Hampikian want to seek material to feed campaigns (calling themselves "tax collectors") this is not a legitimate reason for request. If the defence or other experts want to act as tax collectors and investigate the honesty or the validity of laboratory results, they should file a complaint and request of investigation with a court. They can't do this within the Knox trial.

"the defence did not make a request that was not fulfilled with the rules and opportunities provided by the system"
ABSOLUTELY FALSE. HOW CAN YOU EVEN SAY SUCH THINGS WITH A STRAIGHT FACE??????
In the Florence trial the Knox lawyers made 20 requests for tests against the evidence, including a sound test to see if there was any scream from inside the cottage that the old woman could have possibly heard from her house.
All the knox lawyer requests were denied!!!!!!
And yet you make these statements.
Amazing

 

[Bill Williams]

Ok, Mach, a simple question:

If the bra clasp sample contains Raf's profile, along with 2-4 other males, why is this fact only incriminating, or more incriminating, to Raf only? Why wouldn't the other males who contributed DNA to the bra clasp also be suspects equally, along with Raf?

Couldn't there have been 5-7 attackers of Meredith in that tiny room?

Why can't the result simply be unreliable?

Nencini covers this in his motivations report. The first extra-male trace is probably Meredith's boyfriend. Nencini says this with no testing of that extra-male trace to discover its identity, he just assumes it because otherwise..... well, Raffaele is guilty so there is no otherwise, so it must be Meredith's boyfriend's.

The other two extra-male traces belong to Meredith's "amica". The reason why this is not suspicious is because "amica" according to Nencini are always touching each other's bra-clasps. Nencini says this with no testing of those extra-male traces to discover their identities, he just assumes it because otherwise..... well, Raffaele is guilty so there is no otherwise, so it must be two of Meredith's girlfriend's.

 

[carbonjam72]

Nencini covers this in his motivations report. The first extra-male trace is probably Meredith's boyfriend. Nencini says this with no testing of that extra-male trace to discover its identity, he just assumes it because otherwise..... well, Raffaele is guilty so there is no otherwise, so it must be Meredith's boyfriend's.

The other two extra-male traces belong to Meredith's "amica". The reason why this is not suspicious is because "amica" according to Nencini are always touching each other's bra-clasps. Nencini says this with no testing of those extra-male traces to discover their identities, he just assumes it because otherwise..... well, Raffaele is guilty so there is no otherwise, so it must be two of Meredith's girlfriend's.

Bill, I thought we decided that Nencini was using the lower estimate of 2-4 males as being 2 males, and pretending the others don't exist. So he's not correct, but he's not crazy in attributing male DAN to Meredith's girlfriends. I wish you'd stop making that claim, they are crazy enough on their own without distorting their foolishness any further.

Now my math doesn't add up. I thought this was the reason Nencini attributed one Male profile to the Meredith's downstairs boyfriend, and any other profiles to the girlfriends, but it wasn't that he was actually attributing male DNA to the females.

Oh dear, I've forgotten the thread of this argument.

Now you've properly confused the stage for Mach to appear and resolve ALL.

 

[Bill Williams]

Bill, I thought we decided that Nencini was using the lower estimate of 2-4 males as being 2 males, and pretending the others don't exist. So he's not correct, but he's not crazy in attributing male DAN to Meredith's girlfriends. I wish you'd stop making that claim, they are crazy enough on their own without distorting their foolishness any further.

Now my math doesn't add up. I thought this was the reason Nencini attributed one Male profile to the Meredith's downstairs boyfriend, and any other profiles to the girlfriends, but it wasn't that he was actually attributing male DNA to the females.

Oh dear, I've forgotten the thread of this argument.

Now you've properly confused the stage for Mach to appear and resolve ALL.

Nencini only posits one "male" apart from Raffaele, and so therefore has 3 or 4 male-DNA apart from Meredith's female DNA....:

Indeed, from the little it was possible to find out about her from the statements in the case file, Meredith Kercher was a perfectly normal girl who had recently entered into a romantic relationship with one of the guys who lived in the semi-underground floor of the cottage, so it is reasonable to infer that she had a normal sexual life. This makes it reasonable to find it plausible that the girl’s boyfriend could have also left his traces on the bra hook; it is also reasonable to hold that some other one of her girlfriends could have at some point touched the bra hook and left her DNA.