Continuation Part 12: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Machiavelli]

The only conspiracy theory in this case is yours - the one involving Guede, Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito; the only attempt to "convict some people with no shred of evidence" lies with your side.

As for Stefanoni, we actually have real evidence of her incompetence, stupidity and criminal mischief - what say you about the differences between her report, her testimony and the partial disclosure of data before the end of the Massei trial? Can you see no problem at all?

No, I can only see how desperate the defence arguments are.

 

[Machiavelli]

Machiavelli,

There are at least three contributors to Rep. 177.

And can you identify a third profile?

 

[Dan O.]

...
Second, as far as I know, there wasn't any specific prosecution scenario about how the window was smashed by the stagers. That was basically a judges "favoured" scenario. Evidence abot the direction of the rock has been widely discussed in trial instances, there was even a defence video discussed, about which the only objection by the prosecution was that it didn't take into account the external shutters.

Typical of the corrupt prosecution and guilters. They need the break-in to be staged but have no evidence showing how it was staged.

Ok Machiavelli, please explain the significance of the outer shutter. What position was the outer shutter when the rock was thrown through the window. If you cannot answer that for the general case, then specifically for the scenario presented by the defense with Rudy Guede throwing the rock through the window from outside, what position must the outer shutter be in. Why is that concept so difficult for the prosecution to grasp?

 

[anglolawyer]

Mach - can you remind me which witness testified that the lamp was already in the room when the door was broken open (clue: there isn't one)

Maybe you don't have a clear concept about the burden of proof here.

Yes, I do. The prosecution must prove the lamp was in the room at the material time. That's easily done. Just call a witness to say so.

and tell me the results of the tests conducted on the lamp for prints (e.g. on the plug) and DNA (hint: there were no tests)?

No. So what?

Well, if it had been introduced to the room in the course of the murder or the supposed clean up, testing it might have yielded evidence of who did so. It's the great Nencini who says the lamp is of 'undoubted significance'. Isn't it odd not to obtain evidence from such an item?

Thanks in advance. Amazing how this item of 'undoubted significance' (Nencini) was dealt with by the muppets who prosecute and try serious criminal cases in Italy. Massei totally ignored it and Nencini treated its presence as a fact without any evidence. Weird.

They did so with several pices of evidence, which were in fact usable. Yet you think they acted as unfavourable judges only discarding exculpatory evidence. Indeed, they left out incriminating evidence too. They left out Knox's diary or her phone contacts with drug dealers, etc.

What are you suggesting about these things that were left out? That they were negligently overlooked or that they were taken into account but not discussed in the motivations (Numbers will be pricking his ears up at the latter possibility)?

 

[Numbers]

...

What are you suggesting about these things that were left out? That they were negligently overlooked or that they were taken into account but not discussed in the motivations (Numbers will be pricking his ears up at the latter possibility)?

Where is the evidence that her diary etc. were taken into account in the trials but not discussed in the motivations? That would be interesting indeed.

 

[anglolawyer]

Where is the evidence that her diary etc. were taken into account in the trials but not discussed in the motivations? That would be interesting indeed.

Hopefully Mach can back this up. It seems we may have a trial in which some of the reasons for the verdict are secret.

 

[Numbers]

Ann Wise wrote, "The prosecution presented witnesses and evidence that suggest the window was broken from the inside." She went on to say, "By analyzing the trajectory of the rock and the projection of the glass shards, Pasquali said he could 'exclude that the glass could have been broken from the inside.'" Massei, p. 51 is consistent with Ann Wise's account.

Massei's own conjecture is on p. 52: "Indeed, if one supposes that the stone was thrown from the inside with the shutters pulled closed (as they must have been according to statements cited above), but with the casement holding the pane somewhat open, with the inner shutter behind it, then here is a situation analogous to that of throwing the stone from the outside..."

Yes. My understanding is the prosecution only ever claimed the window was broken from the inside. The prosecution never specified any details this was 'left' to the judge. This meant there was never really a prosecution hypothesis for the defence to refute.

{Highlighting added to quote.}

Here's a brief summary:

The prosecution vaguely explains the mechanics of the break-in, which they claim is staged, by saying the rock was thrown from inside the cottage.

The defense counters with testimony from an expert who maintains that on the evidence of the distribution of glass shards, the indications of the trajectory of the rock, and physics, the rock must have been thrown from outside.

Now, according to the Italian Constitution, and to the Convention, the judge must act as an impartial third party (the court must be an impartial tribunal, in the words of the Convention) and the trial must be adversarial. So the judge formulates a hypothesis to explain what the prosecution wants, that the rock was thrown from inside, but with the window open (swung inward) and essentially ignores the defense argument, the evidence, and the physics.

Is a conviction reached under the situation and reasoning described fair in accordance with the Italian Constitution and the Convention? It may have been fair if the judge had obtained the opinion an independent expert who testified about a hypothesis that the window was broken while it was swung open by a rock thrown from inside, and the defense had known of this testimony and been allowed to challenge it. For example, the distribution of shards would be expected to differ in the two cases: window swung open, rock thrown from inside v. window closed, rock thrown from outside. But under the procedures used, where the judge simply supplies his own speculations that are not challenged, I perceive a violation of Convention Article 6, the right to a fair trial.

 

[Planigale]

Quote:
ETA: With respect to Nara and the "scream": the defense attempted to challenge the possibility that it could have been heard, using audiometric testing, IIRC. The judge (Massei) denied the defense request. What was the reason for the denial? Was it fair or arbitrary? Was the result important for the conviction? If yes, then if it was arbitrary, the conviction is burdened by that unfair denial of a defense request, and there would be further grounds for ECHR to judge a violation of Convention Article 6.
The reason for the denial of the request was:

3) In relation to the request for an audiometric examination in order to verify the veracity or not of the testimony given in Court by witnesses Capezzali, Dramis and Monacchia, the technical assessment requested, without questioning the reliability of the witnesses statements, is not required for the evaluations that this Court will have to make as to the reliability of such statements, which must therefore be evaluated in correlation with the other circumstantial evidence;

Pick the bones out of that.

In essence what Nencini is saying is; The defence in requesting acoustic studies are questioning the veracity of the witness i.e. are implying that the witness is lying. Since the defence have no grounds for thinking the witness would lie there is no reason to question the veracity of the witness therefore there are no grounds to do the acoustic analysis.

In fact the defence are doing no such thing they are challenging the interpretation of the prosecution. The witness could be absolutely accurate in terms of what she heard and when. It is the prosecution who attribute the scream heard to MK, concluding that she was alive at this time, therefore the time of death must be later than the time of the scream; a vital issue. The defence were challenging this interpretation by the prosecution and hence this evidence of time of death. Nencini was clearly wrong to deny the defence request, on the grounds he gave, this would appear to be grounds for appeal, or for an application to ECHR in due course.

 

[Planigale]

OK before too much more confusion is generated let’s address this post.
We will ignore for a moment the ‘backsplash’ issue – let’s pretend* that reality is on holiday.

Given that the prosecution argument has the window broken from within the room while the outer shutters are closedAnd the defence that it was broken from outside with the outer shutters obviously open........
How does more glass end up in the garden when the shutters are closed?
In your own time

Or is it time to come clean and admit your understanding of the prosecution argument was that the rock was thrown out through the window into the garden?

Or would you prefer to talk about glass distribution inside the room

*Not much of a stretch in this thread.

First, people should understand that there isn't a bond on a "prosecution scenario". Indeed the judges and the civil parties can put forward their own variants, without affecting the trial under a legitimacy point of view.

Second, as far as I know, there wasn't any specific prosecution scenario about how the window was smashed by the stagers. That was basically a judges "favoured" scenario. Evidence abot the direction of the rock has been widely discussed in trial instances, there was even a defence video discussed, about which the only objection by the prosecution was that it didn't take into account the external shutters.

Platonov please note even Mach is trying to correct you on this.

 

[Numbers]

In essence what Nencini is saying is; The defence in requesting acoustic studies are questioning the veracity of the witness i.e. are implying that the witness is lying. Since the defence have no grounds for thinking the witness would lie there is no reason to question the veracity of the witness therefore there are no grounds to do the acoustic analysis.

In fact the defence are doing no such thing they are challenging the interpretation of the prosecution. The witness could be absolutely accurate in terms of what she heard and when. It is the prosecution who attribute the scream heard to MK, concluding that she was alive at this time, therefore the time of death must be later than the time of the scream; a vital issue. The defence were challenging this interpretation by the prosecution and hence this evidence of time of death. Nencini was clearly wrong to deny the defence request, on the grounds he gave, this would appear to be grounds for appeal, or for an application to ECHR in due course.

I read this a little differently: "without questioning the reliability of the witness statements" could mean that the defense should question the reliability of the statements, otherwise not make the request for the audiometric testing. But the point is that the defense is entitled to challenge the reliability of the evidence; that's its right to do whether by cross-examination or other method. To me it seems clear that the judge is burdening the defense unfairly. I am confident ECHR would agree.

 

[Machiavelli]

Where is the evidence that her diary etc. were taken into account in the trials but not discussed in the motivations? That would be interesting indeed.

Many things were not even taken into account at the trial, not even brought up by in prosecution arguments. But they exist in the investigation file.

 

[Kaosium]

And can you identify a third profile?

Of course you could, you'd need to have all the peaks labeled and the peak heights and areas along with the requisite reference profiles. For this one you'd look at Filomena's first. The former information is contained within the EDFs which Stefanoni has managed to keep hidden until this day, the latter would require a cheek swab of Filomena.

In addition to finding additional profiles in the ones Stefanoni produced electropherograms for, there's another 100 samples with human DNA that Stefanoni decided to keep hidden as well, those too could be profiled with the necessary information and reference profiles.

There's a reason Stefanoni refused to hand over those edfs, it allowed her to cherry-pick the results she wanted to show and hide the ones inconvenient to the prosecution theory, much like the omitted TMB test results. Rolfe was commenting on the practice just a couple days ago, this is how corrupt labs fool the unwary and the unwise.

 

[Planigale]

First, people should understand that there isn't a bond on a "prosecution scenario". Indeed the judges and the civil parties can put forward their own variants, without affecting the trial under a legitimacy point of view.
Second, as far as I know, there wasn't any specific prosecution scenario about how the window was smashed by the stagers. That was basically a judges "favoured" scenario. Evidence abot the direction of the rock has been widely discussed in trial instances, there was even a defence video discussed, about which the only objection by the prosecution was that it didn't take into account the external shutters.

Mach I have no problem with this. It seems entirely appropriate for the judge to explore the evidence and clarify issues of doubt. If the judge had asked the witness e.g. "if the outer shutter was closed and the window opened 45 degrees and the stone thrown parallel to the wall through the window would that fit the glass distribution as seen?" Then if the defence had opportunity to come back, then this would be fair. The problem is the judge creating the hypothesis in the cassation with the defence having no opportunity to refute the theory.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

And can you identify a third profile?

piece o' cake.

 

[Machiavelli]

Yes, I do. The prosecution must prove the lamp was in the room at the material time.

You expect evidence that something did not happen. Namely expect that evidence is presented that police officers did not tamper with a murder scene doing something nonsensical. This is foolish.

The lamp was photographed behind the door as obviously pushed aside by the door when it was broken wide open.

 

[Machiavelli]

Of course you could, you'd need to have all the peaks labeled and the peak heights and areas along with the requisite reference profiles. For this one you'd look at Filomena's first. The former information is contained within the EDFs which Stefanoni has managed to keep hidden until this day, the latter would require a cheek swab of Filomena.

In addition to finding additional profiles in the ones Stefanoni produced electropherograms for, there's another 100 samples with human DNA that Stefanoni decided to keep hidden as well, those too could be profiled with the necessary information and reference profiles.

There's a reason Stefanoni refused to hand over those edfs, it allowed her to cherry-pick the results she wanted to show and hide the ones inconvenient to the prosecution theory, much like the omitted TMB test results. Rolfe was commenting on the practice just a couple days ago, this is how corrupt labs fool the unwary and the unwise.

Besides the fact that by your procedure you di not tell if you are able to identify any profile, and besides the fact that the defence IIRC did not rise such objection, what's needed to say is that Dr. Stefanoni did not refuse to hand over anything neither she hid anything, it's a lie that you decide to tell only because of propaganda convenience. She also provided herself full disclosure about TMB tests when requested.
On the other hand, the defence did not make those requests you complain about and they did not look into the evidence nor took documentation when they were invited to do so.

 

[Bill Williams]

Where is the evidence that her diary etc. were taken into account in the trials but not discussed in the motivations? That would be interesting indeed.

Hopefully Mach can back this up. It seems we may have a trial in which some of the reasons for the verdict are secret.

................. or ...........................

Some of the reasons for the verdict are known only to Machiavelli. When, for instance, Machiavelli provides what he claims is visual proof of the equivalence of the kitchen-knife with the bedsheet stain, is he simply passing on something known, and referred to at trial, by Prosecutor Crini in the fall of 2013: but which plays no part in Judge Nencini's motivations report?

I suppose Machiavelli can take the rhetorical escape route of saying that Nencini cannot cite ALL the evidence against Knox and Sollecito..... except to say, that it seems fairly huge to me that if, indeed, it is provable that the bedsheet stain is the proof that the kitchen knife was involved in the crime ....

.... then it is mysterious as to why Nencini would make no reference to it.

Or worse, allow an unknown internet poster to reveal visual proof of something the prosecutor referred to at trial, rather than include it in his own report.

The other possibility is that Machiavelli is fabricating evidence - not telling us how this evidence was arrived at - namely, the method used to photoshop it.

Then again, no one seems to mind that on another matter that the EDF's were never released either.

 

[Bill Williams]

Yes, I do. The prosecution must prove the lamp was in the room at the material time.

You expect evidence that something did not happen. Namely expect that evidence is presented that police officers did not tamper with a murder scene doing something nonsensical. This is foolish.

The lamp was photographed behind the door as obviously pushed aside by the door when it was broken wide open.

Machiavelli, I suggest you not cross sword with this poster on the issue of the lamp.

What he was asking - which he'll probably ask again and doesn't need anyone else to ask is...... (Let's just say, you are reframing his point wrongly. Why do you need to do that?)

 

[anglolawyer]

You expect evidence that something did not happen. Namely expect that evidence is presented that police officers did not tamper with a murder scene doing something nonsensical. This is foolish.

So police officers are deemed to be incapable of tampering? Irrelevant. I want evidence the lamp was there. That's all.

The lamp was photographed behind the door as obviously pushed aside by the door when it was broken wide open.

It is not obvious. You just haven't thought about it. The camera can prove no more than the photographer and all he can prove is that the lamp was there when he took the picture. This is really very simple. You have assumed the lamp was there and your assumption has remained unchallenged so long you can no longer question it. You, together with Nencini (and others) are so conclusion-led in your thinking you can no longer examine your premises.

Not only is there no evidence the lamp was there we even have a curious, lying postal cop as a prime candidate for the person who put it there.

Why wasn't it tested? You forgot to address that.

 

[MDDVS]

You expect evidence that something did not happen. Namely expect that evidence is presented that police officers did not tamper with a murder scene doing something nonsensical. This is foolish.

The lamp was photographed behind the door as obviously pushed aside by the door when it was broken wide open.

1) The police tampered with the murder scene several times as is documented in their own footage.

2) No connection has been established between the lamp and the murder.

3) The lamp is no evidence of involvement of the accused (anybody could have placed the lamp there).