Continuation Part 11: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[CoulsdonUK]

Coulsdon, all legal remedies have been exhausted as regards the calumny conviction. There is no need to await the final outcome of the murder case. In fact, it should be other way round. The murder process should await the ECHR's review of the calumny appeal since Italy has used that conviction to strengthen the case of murder.

I stress, before the muppets over at PMF go into orgiastic spasms of joyful moockery, that I fully realise things don't work this way but its how they should work. After all, it would be repugnant to your and my sense of fairness if she were hurled back in jail only to have the whole thing turned upside down if/when the ECHR reverses the calumny conviction. Such a reversal would go right to the heart of the whole case, don't you agree?

All legal remedies have been exhausted in the calumny case. She stands convicted and this has been finalised. The aggravation aspect is an additional penalty phase and not a matter of fact finding.

The calunnia conviction of Amanda Knox was finalized by the CSC; they approved that part of Hellmann's verdict, while annulling the acquittal part. It is aggravated calunnia which will be before the CSC for review in its March appeal hearing.

The timing of the ECtHR is unclear; they have truly many cases on their docket. There is no reason to have any certain belief that they will time their actions to the course of the CSC activity, either before or after.

There are a number of previously decided ECtHR cases in which an individual in his or her first interrogation with police makes a statement or confession without benefit of a lawyer present, and later the person is convicted based in whole in part on this statement or confession. I have posted information on several such cases. The ECtHR found the respondent state in violation of the person's rights to a fair trial (ECHR Article 6) in all such cases I have examined to date.

ETA: It should be pointed out that the Grand Chamber hearings are only a small part of the ECtHR hearings. Most of the hearings are judged by Committees of three judges or Chambers of seven judges. The Grand Chamber hearings with seventeen judges are typically only for cases of an unusual or controversial nature. If there is sufficient case law established that is relevant to a case, the Grand Chamber is unlikely to be employed for the hearing. Note that Chamber hearings may be appealed to the Grand Chamber by either side within three months of a Chamber judgement, but Grand Chamber hearings are final.

Thanks for providing additional information. I decided to provide a link to a simplified overview flow chart, although the devil is indeed in the detail. Given the slander application was filled a year or so ago coupled with the backlog of applications I do not believe this application will be heard as a case (assuming it passes the admissibility phase) prior to the scheduled date of the third level hearing. I also do not believe the ECHR would rule on a case when such a ruling could undermine an ongoing judicial process in a member state.

The 95% rejection rate of applications was a surprise.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

rapid stain identification

Makes you wonder why police use luminol at all if contamination is that easy and defense attorneys must get people acquitted all the time because of the unreliability of luminol.

tsig,

They use luminol to detect the possibility of blood; nowadays they use HemaTrace or the RSID to confirm that it is blood, or that it is not. Why are these kits made, if one can conclude that something is blood on the basis of luminol alone? If you read back over the last few weeks, you will find citations to American or Australian states that do not permit luminol evidence into the courtroom without additional information. Do you think that they are wrong? If so, why?

 

[Numbers]

Thanks for providing additional information. I decided to provide a link to a simplified overview flow chart, although the devil is indeed in the detail. Given the slander application was filled a year or so ago coupled with the backlog of applications I do not believe this application will be heard as a case (assuming it passes the admissibility phase) prior to the scheduled date of the third level hearing. I also do not believe the ECHR would rule on a case when such a ruling could undermine an ongoing judicial process in a member state.
The 95% rejection rate of applications was a surprise.

On rare occasions they in effect (through the Committee of Ministers) order a state to halt a proceeding. They very specifically will order halts to extraditions when the ECtHR has reason to believe the requesting state would not respect the Convention rights of the person sought for extradition.

For more ordinary cases, the ECtHR is so slow due to its backlog of cases (78,000 pending applications as of 1 Nov 2014*) that they rarely have the opportunity to address a case in "real time".

*See:
http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Stats_pending_month_2014_BIL.pdf

Note 14,900 are from Italy (19.1%, the largest share from any of the 47 states of the Council of Europe. However, some of the other states, such as Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey, come close. Sometimes applications are bundled for judgment when the alleged violations are essentially identical.)

ETA: Note also that one must exhaust domestic remedies before applying to the ECtHR.

 

[Bill Williams]

tsig, please try to keep up. We already knocked that one off several pages ago. Read up Galati on petitio principii. That's the logical error when you use your conclusion as a premise. It seems as though only pro-acquittal judges are not allowed to do this while the likes of Nencini (who adopts your reasoning) get a free pass.

• There was a lot of blood nearby
• Blood (among other things) causes luminol to react
• The luminol gave a reaction which could have been blood
• Therefore the luminol reacted with blood

is not a valid argument even if it did not miss out elements like the negative TMB, lies about TMB etc etc

tsig:

Don't take it too hard. I, too, have not been keeping up in relation to Locard's exchange principle. I've seen the term used before, but until Kauffer explained it (above) I thought it had something to do with exchanging dollars into euros.

My bad.

Apparently it is a principle which explains the fallacy of saying, "the whole cottage is the crime-scene," when in the most immediate crime-scene, the bedroom, there is no forensics attributable to Amanda Knox - and one sole, tiny hotly-disputed Y-haplotype belonging to a range of males from which Raffaele cannot be excluded. (As well as "amica".)

How can the whole cottage be the crime scene, when the most immediate vicinity surrounding the victim has nothing?

 

[lonepinealex]

Anyone who is truly searching for the truth.

We know there was blood in the house so it seems logical that it was blood.

Well sure, who needs a scientific protocol and why bother with a forensic reconstruction of the crime? What a waste of money when we know there is blood elsewhere in the house.

Truly searching for the truth indeed.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

searching for truth

Anyone who is truly searching for the truth.

We know there was blood in the house so it seems logical that it was blood.

tsig,

if one were searching for the truth, one would not overapply the luminol; one would not wait six weeks to apply luminol (or one would keep the apartment from being trashed in the interim); one would follow-up luminol with appropriate tests; one would perform substrate controls; and one would report all the results so that they could be checked. Did the FP do those things?

No article or book I have read ever said, that if blood is present, all luminol-positive stains can be assumed to be blood. Nor would it make sense to do so. Cleaning agents can produce a reaction with luminol.

 

[Numbers]

CASE OF VETRENKO v. MOLDOVA 36552/02 18/05/2010

A person confessed to a murder during an interrogation but got the details wrong. Also, he actually had an alibi. The applicant had been acquitted (twice) but then convicted on appeal by the prosecution. The ECtHR noted that there was arbitrary reasoning b;y the convicting court. Violation of Article 6.1.

Excerpts:

54. The Court notes that the applicant raised several serious arguments challenging the only three pieces of evidence which arguably linked him to the crime. He pointed, for instance, that the search at his apartment had not indicated that the relevant documents had been found in his room (as opposed to that rented from him by R. M., whose guilt had been proved by various types of evidence), that S. P.'s statement only reproduced what T. had allegedly said to her (while T. herself never mentioned the applicant's name) and that there were circumstances which seriously challenged the genuine character of his “confessions” (most importantly, his refusal to sign them, despite them being “voluntary”, both before making the statements and after the statements were recorded, and the clear discrepancy between what he had “confessed” and what objective expert reports subsequently found concerning the attempted strangulation). He finally relied on his alibi for the night of the murder.

55. The Court reiterates that it is not its role to re-examine the facts of a case which has been dealt with by the domestic courts or to act as a “fourth-instance court” and decide on an applicant's guilt or innocence. Rather, its concern is to verify whether the proceedings as a whole complied with the requirements of Article 6 of the Convention. As it recalled in paragraphs 52 and 53 above, one of the requirements of Article 6 is for the domestic courts to deal with the most important arguments raised by the parties and to give reasons for accepting or rejecting such arguments. Even though the extent to which the courts should give reasons may vary depending on the particular circumstances of the case, a failure to deal with a serious argument or a manifestly arbitrary manner of doing so is incompatible with the notion of a fair trial.

56. In the present case, the Court considers that the applicant's arguments mentioned in paragraph 54 above could not be regarded as being insignificant or not capable of influencing the outcome of the proceedings. However, it does not see in the domestic courts' judgments a proper analysis of these arguments raised by the applicant. The one exception was the judgment of the Supreme Court of Justice, which addressed the discrepancy between the self-incriminating statement concerning an attempt to strangulate M. with a cord and the findings of the expert, who had found no signs of strangulation on M.'s body. However, while the Supreme Court of Justice apparently tried to deal with this clear discrepancy, it chose to simply rephrase the applicant's statement from what it expressly said (an attempt at strangulation) to something better corresponding to the findings of the expert (signs of severe beating, which had never been mentioned in the applicant's statement, see paragraphs 13 and 33 above). The Court considers that this tempering with evidence (by significantly amending the applicant's statements) was not only arbitrary but also did not answer the applicant's argument that there was a serious contradiction between his statements and objective evidence found which, together with his refusal to sign those statements, challenged their genuine character. Answering the applicant's arguments in this respect was even more important in the light of the fact that this was one of the reasons for which the courts had acquitted him in the first round of the proceedings (see paragraph 22 above).

57. Moreover, just as in Grădinar, cited above, in the present case the domestic courts failed to deal with the applicant's alibi for the presumed night of M.'s murder, even though that alibi had been accepted by two courts in the first round of proceedings (see paragraphs 22 and 23 above). There was no explanation for this omission, which concerned one of the strongest arguments put forward by the defence and thus required a proper analysis. Similarly, even though there was a discrepancy between what T. declared to the police (not mentioning the applicant, but another person S.) and what S. P. reported as having been told by T. (mentioning the applicant), the investigators and the courts did not question T. again in this respect during her interview on 5 June 1997 to dispel any doubts, but simply preferred to rely on S. P.'s hearsay evidence, to the detriment of that provided by the original witness.

58. The Court finds that, while heavily relying on the self-incriminating statements made by the applicant and failing to address his serious challenge to the genuine character of those statements, even re-phrasing those statements so as to avoid contradictions with objective evidence, the domestic courts chose simply to remain silent with regard to certain fundamental issues, such as the fact that he had an alibi for the presumed time of the murder. The Court could not find any explanation for such omissions in the domestic courts' decisions (see Grădinar, cited above, § 117). This is striking, given that two courts acquitted the applicant in the first round of proceedings (see paragraphs 22 and 23 above) and since, in the absence of any new evidence mentioned in the courts' judgments, they convicted the applicant in the second round of proceedings, disregarding circumstances which had earlier led to his acquittal (see Salov, cited above, § 91). Therefore, the domestic courts did not give sufficient reasons for their judgments.

59. There has, accordingly, been a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

On rare occasions they in effect (through the Committee of Ministers) order a state to halt a proceeding. They very specifically will order halts to extraditions when the ECtHR has reason to believe the requesting state would not respect the Convention rights of the person sought for extradition.

For more ordinary cases, the ECtHR is so slow due to its backlog of cases (78,000 pending applications as of 1 Nov 2014*) that they rarely have the opportunity to address a case in "real time".

*See:
http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Stats_pending_month_2014_BIL.pdf

Note 14,900 are from Italy (19.1%, the largest share from any of the 47 states of the Council of Europe. However, some of the other states, such as Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey, come close. Sometimes applications are bundled for judgment when the alleged violations are essentially identical.)

ETA: Note also that one must exhaust domestic remedies before applying to the ECtHR.

It must be rare, as I cannot recall a member state case being halted in recent times.

I did notice Italy had the highest percentage, then again as you said a percentage of applications could be classified together and addressed by one ruling of a judge(s).

Must admit the ECHR is an absolute treasure trove of PDF’s, charts etc. For example, The Examination of Your Application page 5 of 9.

 

[Bill Williams]

Anyone who is truly searching for assuming what the truth is.

We know there was blood in the house so it seems logical that it was blood.

Well sure, who needs a scientific protocol and why bother with a forensic reconstruction of the crime? What a waste of money when we know there is blood elsewhere in the house.

Truly searching for the truth indeed.

Why wouldn't someone in the search for truth NOT want the full suite of blood i.d.'ing tests? Rather than simply assuming?

 

[Kauffer]

The luminol hits of presumed blood traces are irrelevant

tsig,

if one were searching for the truth, one would not overapply the luminol; one would not wait six weeks to apply luminol (or one would keep the apartment from being trashed in the interim); one would follow-up luminol with appropriate tests; one would perform substrate controls; and one would report all the results so that they could be checked. Did the FP do those things?

No article or book I have read ever said, that if blood is present, all luminol-positive stains can be assumed to be blood. Nor would it make sense to do so. Cleaning agents can produce a reaction with luminol.

These excellent comments both top and tail the discussion about luminol. It was not a search for the truth. It was an attempt, based on Ms Knox's revelation that she was walking around barefoot at the apartment on 2nd November, to incriminate her. It was a bad job and they hid the test result that tended to exonerate. If that wasn't enough, here we all are five years after the TMB test was uncovered but just eight months after a very silly judge managed to ignore it and reach a conclusion unsupported by science. Sometimes the road is very long indeed.

 

[Planigale]

Doesn't seem that serious, especially if you consider that luminol prints were analyzed at the presence of Prof. Potenza and SALs were accessible throughout the investigation, and if you consider that TMB test is irrelevant. Also, you should consider that Stefanoni pointed out that they made a "series of other tests" on luminol stains at the beginning of her 2008 testimony.

.

They are just recorded as tested in a table, without any specification. But this is still irrelevant since they were tested at the presence of defence experts and magistrate. Prof. Potenza was there and could see and record exacly what was done.

.

This is a repetition of the above point. Prof. Potenza was there and he knew everything, the investigation judge was there, defence experts were summoned, the defences did not object. The omission of QBit fluorimeter from documentation cannot serve any malicious purpose, since we know the fluorimeter is less performative than the other techniques, and the defence expert of Sollecito knew the fluorineter was being employed.

- Samples marked as ‘cat blood’ were positive for human DNA[/

I don't see how you can see anything criminal I'm this. The samples were also positive to cat antibodies. They were taken from a bed sheet of a human, but yet the presence of human DNA is not certain. There was a testimony that there was a wounded cat. Now, these are questionable aspects of the investigation maybe, but I can't see something like a criminal intent.




Under suspicion of no offence. There is no elements for suspicion.
The above ones look like just complaints about documental imprecision or incompleteness, or (as for the cat) a criticism about investigation choices.

Mach. from what you say if an error was made in a test and the 'defence' were present, even if the error was later realised the result would stand.

What rights do the observers have when observing? Can they challenge the procedure? Can they video the procedure? Photograph the record books? If they think an error is made what can they do? Is there a limit to who is present? Can I as a defendant insist on being present to observe the tests?

I can see a problem, you get all the defence and associated interested parties representatives present. Then your realtime PCT quantification machine breaks down, so the sensible thing might be to put off the test by a couple of days but then you need to reschedule everyone and that might delay things by weeks. So you do an inferior test. Is that what happens?

 

[Samson]

Machiavelli says

"You don't need to present on the place of a murder in order to be guilty."

He is a hero amongst guilters on other sites.

This statement goes in my file to show best practice amongst guilters, to demonstrate to people that there is no fire behind the smoke the Italian authorities are blowing.

 

[Vibio]

Mach is of course correct: one can be found quilty of murder without physical evidence being found at the scene of the murder.

 

[Samson]

Mach is of course correct: one can be found quilty of murder without physical evidence being found at the scene of the murder.

But do you have to be present?

 

[Vibio]

You do realize that Mach is writing in a foreign language. He already made a mistake in that
sentence. It might be best to have him elaborate. My interpretation is that above.

 

[Bill Williams]

Mach is of course correct: one can be found quilty of murder without physical evidence being found at the scene of the murder.

Yes, Machiavelli is correct.

Yet in this case, this was a horrible bloody murder. It now needs to be explained why:

- Rudy Guede left at the scene of the crime what one would expect
- Amanda Knox did not leave in the room anything forensicly interesting
- the basis of the conviction was what was alleged to have been Amanda Knox traces left outside of the room, particularly in the bathroom she regularly used.​

Of course Machiavelli is correct on that narrow point. Is he going to leave it at that? A question is this - why is Machiavelli continually moving the goal posts in this thread?

Have you read the number of times Nencini uses "presumed blood" in his reasoning..... and he is mostly talking about evidence outside of that room....?

 

[Bill Williams]

You do realize that Mach is writing in a foreign language. He already made a mistake in that
sentence. It might be best to have him elaborate. My interpretation is that above.

Machiavelli does amazingly well in his second language. However, it is very, very difficult to express oneself concisely in that second language often.

 

[Kauffer]

Evidence of murder

Mach is of course correct: one can be found quilty of murder without physical evidence being found at the scene of the murder.

But not in a small bedroom as part of stabbing murder with prolific ex-sanguination, likely to be in excess of two litres of blood - that's about four British pints - more if they're American pints. Apparently there were three assailants. Prolific evidence exists of one. Nothing for Ms Knox and a tiny trace of Mr Sollecito mixed with traces of others. And Ms Knox did the stabbing!!!?? And there's no evidence on her clothes!?? Can you explain this? Does it seem likely to you?

Of course in one sense you are correct; one can be found guilty in these circumstances because one has! But one shouldn't.

 

[Kauffer]

Origins

Machiavelli does amazingly well in his second language. However, it is very, very difficult to express oneself concisely in that second language often.

Unless of course he's faking it and he's not Italian at all. Or she!

 

[Samson]

We have first Mignini and now Machiavelli saying Amanda need not be in the room.
However Nencini specifies she plunged the kitchen knife in while Guede was sexually assaulting from behind, in the bedroom, and he never touched a knife. Surely Vibio can see what a fiasco this case is.
The reason everyones tits are tangled is because there is no way Amanda could have been involved without blood tying her to the scene, and they know this.