Continuation Part 13: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

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Bill Williams said:
I finished with the ersatz-debate on the "logical" entry point, when a guy quipped: "Why can't a stupid burglar choose a stupid point of entry?"
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If researchers found that 85% of buglers went through the sliding glass door (number I am making up), that still means that 15% enter another way.
 
Well I don’t know about that, but it would definitely save a quarter.

NotEvenWrong said:
Can a confidence interval be calculated for TOD with the digestion information?

i.e. 99.9% certain TOD before X pm
99% certain TOD before Y pm
95% certain TOD before Z pm

etc. etc.
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Well, IIRC [and I usually do] there were no confidence intervals – just very precise figures.

That’s not to say it was completely lacking in ‘error bars’ – there was always the ‘25% correcting factor’ to fall back on.

Happy to be of assistance.
 
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Desert Fox said:
If researchers found that 85% of buglers went through the sliding glass door (number I am making up), that still means that 15% enter another way.
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That's because so few people who are not burglars realize that both doors can slide and the door that normally doesn't open is often only secured by a small screw on the outside.

But that's not important here because the patio doors on the cottage were double swinging french style doors.

What is important is that those doors were glass and anyone attempting to enter from the porch would be fully exposed to the residents inside before they got through the door. The police would be called and the residents would arm themselves and be waiting for the intruder. Only a moron would suggest that as a viable entry unless they were assured that the cottage was vacant.
 
Dan O. said:
That's because so few people who are not burglars realize that both doors can slide and the door that normally doesn't open is often only secured by a small screw on the outside.

But that's not important here because the patio doors on the cottage were double swinging french style doors.

What is important is that those doors were glass and anyone attempting to enter from the porch would be fully exposed to the residents inside before they got through the door. The police would be called and the residents would arm themselves and be waiting for the intruder. Only a moron would suggest that as a viable entry unless they were assured that the cottage was vacant.
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..... as opposed to chucking a rock through an upper window, then seeing if a light goes on, or some activity happens.....
 
Amazing that pro-guilt people aren't anxious to avoid these types of mistakes before there is wrongful conviction, and wrongful imprisonment. The lack of any thought process is so evident its hardly worth taking seriously anymore. They argue or believe in guilt because they want to, for whatever reason - just not anything to do with evidence.

I am going on the record that I am convinced Amanda and Raf will be acquitted for lack of evidence, at the March 2015 cassation hearing.

Here's another recent wrongful conviction. Compare this prosecutor's attitude with Mignini, and realize again what a crazed reckless idiot he is.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/illinois-man-freed-by-dna-after-29-years-imprisonment-for-murder/

...
Abernathy, who confessed to the crime when he was 18, may have suffered from a “diminished mental capacity,” prosecutors said. They tested all available evidence in the case and found that Abernathy’s DNA profile matched none of it.


“This is difficult for all parties including the victim’s family, but I cannot and will not let a wrongful conviction stand,” Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said in a statement.
At the time of the crime, law enforcement did not have the scientific ability to conduct DNA analysis that exists now, she said.

Alvarez started a “Conviction Integrity Unit” in 2012 to focus on reviewing cases involving questionable convictions. Thirteen defendants have since had their convictions vacated.

Such efforts are part of a national trend, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the University of Michigan Law School.

The number of people exonerated in the United States in 2014 climbed to a record high 125, partly because of work by prosecutors willing to admit their mistakes, the registry found last month.
...
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Rolfe said:
This is something that's intriguing me too. The stomach contents are the absolute clincher that makes sense of the entire scenario. Once you know Meredith died not long after nine (I'll stretch to 9.20 as that's when Rudy said she screamed, but probably a bit earlier) it gives you a framework to fit the rest of it round. And fit it does.

And yet none of the high-profile commentators want to talk about this. Nobody is trying to hammer it home. It's the narrative that makes sense, and would make sense of any account of the murder, but they'd rather witter on about mops and bleach receipts and people hearing running feet. The accused themselves don't seem to understand the importance of it.

It seems to me that too many people have just heard "alimentary tract findings are an unreliable guide to time of death" and dismiss it. It's too complicated to get your head round the explanation of why, in this case, unusually, alimentary tract findings give an extremely precise time of death.

I'm getting the same kind of thing with the Lockerbie evidence, though I think the reasons might not be quite the same. I've proved, boringly, that the police were entirely wrong about where and when they thought the crime happened. The commentators only want to talk about whether evidence was planted.
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Dougm said:
I have always wondered why the defense has never made a bigger issue of the stomach contents/TOD argument. All I can think of is that they think that it will be handwaived away by the judges, just like the guilters do.

It is my understanding this type of science used to be considered unreliable because it varied too much, but, in this case, even the estimated range of timing makes it very unlikely that Amanda and Raffaele could have committed the crime. That, combined with the lack of clear evidence to prove they were even present at the cottage that night, would be a slam dunk acquittal in most trials.

I just wonder why the defense has not used this point more aggressively?
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It is far from unusual for a convicted person to embark on an appeal, or series of appeals, with a new legal team. Examples are too numerous to mention. New minds come to the case with appetite, a fresh perspective and untainted by the mistakes and omissions of their predecessors.
 
anglolawyer said:
It is far from unusual for a convicted person to embark on an appeal, or series of appeals, with a new legal team. Examples are too numerous to mention. New minds come to the case with appetite, a fresh perspective and untainted by the mistakes and omissions of their predecessors.
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Often what you can and cannot appeal is restricted however. There is some arcane system that I only sometimes understand. Some I do understand such as a man was question and said he did not want to talk (but did not ask for a lawyer) but questioning continued. Surprise, Surprise, the conviction was thrown out on on appeal.
 
Desert Fox said:
Often what you can and cannot appeal is restricted however. There is some arcane system that I only sometimes understand. Some I do understand such as a man was question and said he did not want to talk (but did not ask for a lawyer) but questioning continued. Surprise, Surprise, the conviction was thrown out on on appeal.
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Here, our system and the Italian one diverge widely. The Costa Concordia captain, who just got 16 years, may not spend a day in jail pending his two(!) appeals. That is a system gone nuts. OTOH, we prize the verdict of a lay jury above almost everything and treat it as closing the door to all but a few avenues of reversal: erroneous summing up, fresh evidence and that's about it. In the US the possibilities are generally richer involving parallel, multi-level appeal paths of Byzantine complexity that vary from state to state. Kaosium is very knowledgable about these systems.
 
anglolawyer said:
Here, our system and the Italian one diverge widely. The Costa Concordia captain, who just got 16 years, may not spend a day in jail pending his two(!) appeals. That is a system gone nuts. OTOH, we prize the verdict of a lay jury above almost everything and treat it as closing the door to all but a few avenues of reversal: erroneous summing up, fresh evidence and that's about it. In the US the possibilities are generally richer involving parallel, multi-level appeal paths of Byzantine complexity that vary from state to state. Kaosium is very knowledgable about these systems.
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There is one state which allows polygraphs, another state that allows jurors to ask questions in court, and other than only needs ten out of twelve for guilt.

On the captain, he is an Italian older white male, they will likely find some way of getting him to avoid a jail sentence. I think that is one of the secrets of the Italian legal system.

One example, if I read it right, was that with the CIA kidnapping, one of the big wig Italian intelligence officers got off while a junior female officer has been imprisoned.
 
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Desert Fox said:
Often what you can and cannot appeal is restricted however. There is some arcane system that I only sometimes understand. Some I do understand such as a man was question and said he did not want to talk (but did not ask for a lawyer) but questioning continued. Surprise, Surprise, the conviction was thrown out on on appeal.
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DF,

Getting back to the topic of variable time of death: I just finished watching the presentation at Washington and Lee University School of Law that you had posted on IIP:

https://vimeo.com/86046579

and Eric Wilson from the Norfolk Four talked about his coercive interrogation. At first he had a perfect alibi: the victim had been murdered at noon, and Eric was already on his ship out to sea. So the detectives (including the infamous Det. Ford) came back to him and reset the time of death to 5:00 am. Well, Eric was getting ready to go to his ship at that point. So Det. Ford et al. reset the time of death to 2:00 am. Eric was asleep then, he said. Did he have any witnesses to that? The detectives had him there.

Such are the wonders of the variable time of death, as also used by the authorities in this case.

ETA: That presentation is very informative. Among other things, I learned a bit about Det. Ford's extortion scheme, which previously I had not really understood.

Thinking about Det. Ford's involvement with drug dealers, and how Perugia is apparently a center of the heroin trade in Italy, I wonder if there are any Italian versions of Det. Ford there, who must protect their jobs on the police to protect their income from "other sources".
 
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If you are in the navy, the night before a deployment is usually a pretty busy day and almost certainly it is that which is going to be your driving motivation. You are making sure that you have everything you need beforehand. Even though the ship's store has most of what you need, there are things far more convenient to get out in town.

Even if the time frame would make it technically possible, it becomes very implausible.

Curious, it is painful as hell but have you ever read Ballard's letter. I would link to it but afraid that it would run afoul with the moderators.
 
I think you're allowed to link to stuff so long as you post a content warning with the link.
 
The topic is false confessions. One side of this debate argues that false confessions occure and that the summary of Amanda's interrogations that are being presented as confessions fit the patern of false confessions. An example of such false confessions is the Norflok case and Ballard's letter is evidence that supports that the Norflok confessions were false.

Unless there is a universal stipulation that the Norfolk confessions were in fact false, Ballard's letter needs to be presented to support the argument.
 
Dan O. said:
The topic is false confessions. One side of this debate argues that false confessions occure and that the summary of Amanda's interrogations that are being presented as confessions fit the patern of false confessions. An example of such false confessions is the Norflok case and Ballard's letter is evidence that supports that the Norflok confessions were false.

Unless there is a universal stipulation that the Norfolk confessions were in fact false, Ballard's letter needs to be presented to support the argument.
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The DNA evidence, finger prints, the fact that it was a small room where the rape and murder occurred, and the actual body all support a single attacker and that attacker being Ballard. Many of these factors are similar to the Kercher case.
The letter is on the Norfolk Four website under Omar Ballard section.

Edit:
http://www.norfolkfour.com/index.php?/norfolk/realkiller/
Read the letter at your discretion. Has violent sexual content.
 
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Samson said:
We must do what we can to enable normalising this fine young woman with all endeavours.
Congratulations Amanda.
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At some point it means all of us stepping away and letting all the families connected to the original tragedy be.
 
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