Continuation Part 13: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Numbers]

As Americans accustomed to a system that does not allow double jeopardy, we are more than a little shocked when we see countries such as Italy where a supreme cassation court can overrule a finding of innocence by one appeal court and order another appeal court to find guilt. It is especially shocking when there was no difference in the inculpatory evidence before both courts. Furthermore, the judgment opinion, called a motivation report, is clearly arbitrary in the finding of guilt, but reasonable in the finding of not guilty. The ECHR has also found such judicial maneuvers unfair. But the current situation in the Amanda Knox - Raffaele Sollecito case is that that judicial maneuver has taken place and we await the opinion of a different supreme cassation court panel of judges on the provisional verdict of guilt produced by the Nencini court.

 

[Welshman]

There is a question I would like to ask Machiavelli. If Amanda stabbed Meredith with the knife from Raffaele's apartment, why was Amanda not accused of stabbing Meredith during the interrogation and no mention was made of stabbing Meredith in the two statements the police wrote for Amanda.

 

[Bill Williams]

Actually she also said she was ready to provide the EDFs, if examined under controlled conditions. The defence did not pursue that opportunity, and Kaosium explained why: because Pascali (but I read "Hampikian") wanted the EDFs in order to use them in other venues and to change the settings, so to produce new files not deposited with the trial papers. Thus, this is the reason why the defence turned down Stefanoni's offer, according to Kaosium. This seems the real reason, the one you should focus on if you want to understand the case.

That's one way of putting it, another is 'exposing the fraudulent interpretation of Stefanoni with the exculpatory evidence she omitted.'

Numbers' dilligence suggests the ECHR has already ruled on this issue and Stefanoni's goose is already cooked. From what I have read on her dispute with Pascali, what she is trying to do is re-brand 'fraud' and 'constructive incompetence' as something akin to 'teaching the rest of the world how to do DNA forensics.'

Here's an article you might want to read, Stefanoni's malfeasance is hardly unprecedented and just part and parcel of the faulty practices that have arisen at several labs in this field worldwide, not just in Stefanoni's lab or the American ones. Here's another paper you've seen referenced dozens of times in these threads, give the whole thing a read. If you want to skip to the part on EDFs go to page 11.

The longer you keep reading the better it gets. The next section is on contamination and I'd give that one a long read too. My point here being is that the sort of malfeasance Stefanoni engaged in was not that uncommon and the problems associated with it have been identified, corrected and punished the world over. The rest of the world is showing Italy how to detect incompetence and fraud in DNA forensics.

Mach,
If you are saying that Judge Micheli violated the Italian Constitution and the European Convention and ECHR case-law by not judicially forcing Stefanoni to turn over true copies of the EDFs to the court and the defense, I am totally in agreement. We shouldn't blame Stefanoni, just because she didn't want to turn over copies of these critical results of her testing, when it was the judge's responsibility, as the impartial supervisor of an adversarial process, to force her to provide true copies. And if and when this case reaches the ECHR, if will be Italy that will have been judged to have violated the Convention, rather than any individual.

And of course Hellmann ordered the disclosure of the EDFs, but Stefanoni failed to comply. In the event, Conti and Vecchiotti exposed the nonsense of Stefanoni's conclusions, just using the printouts that she did provide.

What this sequence of posts is, is a short-course in what went wrong in the relationship between Stefanaoni's refusal to supply the EDFs to the court (and therefore to the defence), and the various courts (incl. Hellmann's) which refused to force her to do it.

Any way you cut it, this is a violation of Article 111 of the Italian Constitution. Machiavelli has yet to explain why this whole thing is NOT a violation of Article 111.

The only Judge who might have his inappropriate refusal mitigated, is Hellmann, because Hellmann found Conti-Vecchiotti's report to have superseded Stefanoni's refusal anyway. Even without the release of the EDFs, it was shown - at the very least - that Stefanoni's work could not be used to convict Sollecito and/or Knox.

That should have been the end of it.

My view is this: Stefanoni herself with rue the day that Cassazione kicked this back to Florence for a second 2nd-grade trial. Stefanoni's sins could have been buried for good in March 2013.

 

[Desert Fox]

As Americans accustomed to a system that does not allow double jeopardy, we are more than a little shocked when we see countries such as Italy where a supreme cassation court can overrule a finding of innocence by one appeal court and order another appeal court to find guilt. It is especially shocking when there was no difference in the inculpatory evidence before both courts. Furthermore, the judgment opinion, called a motivation report, is clearly arbitrary in the finding of guilt, but reasonable in the finding of not guilty. The ECHR has also found such judicial maneuvers unfair. But the current situation in the Amanda Knox - Raffaele Sollecito case is that that judicial maneuver has taken place and we await the opinion of a different supreme cassation court panel of judges on the provisional verdict of guilt produced by the Nencini court.

I wrote something that ties into this which which went into post hell. . . .

There is a case in Canada which I believe is a case of wrongful conviction. I believe the judge made leaps of logic and bad conclusions. The thing is that at least it is not a 600 page slog to try to read through.

I believe these Italian motivation reports are really not meant to be read but something to be displayed. Believe in 95% of cases, a motivation report could be 20 pages or less.

 

[Bill Williams]

I wrote something that ties into this which which went into post hell. . . .

There is a case in Canada which I believe is a case of wrongful conviction. I believe the judge made leaps of logic and bad conclusions. The thing is that at least it is not a 600 page slog to try to read through.

I believe these Italian motivation reports are really not meant to be read but something to be displayed. Believe in 95% of cases, a motivation report could be 20 pages or less.

The Italian requirement for a "motivations report" is both a blessing and a curse. I prefer the Canadian way.... that the "reason for judgement" is prepared before the verdict is announced, in many cases it is read in full in court by the presiding judge (in non-jury trials: jury trials have no written reasons).

It is read before the verdict is announced, and usually the verdict is the last part of it. Maybe it is short because it is meant to be first an foremost a verbal document!

In Italy, the verdict is announced, then the presiding judge is given 3 months to write the reasons why. In theory at least, there must be some cases where the presiding judge had voted against the majority of the panel - but is stuck with explaining why they voted the way they did!

The huge surprise in reading the six, seven or eight motivations reports (incl. Guede's) is that the judge is allowed to just make up stuff in them - make up stuff concerning matter not even raised in court by either prosecutor or defence.

For instance, Judge Massei convicted Amanda and Raffaele of the illegal transport of the knife....

with the criminal offence to which articles 110 of the Criminal Code and 4 Statutes
number 110 of 1975 apply, for having, in complicity amongst themselves, carried out
of the residence of SOLLECITO, without justified reason, a large knife of point and
blade comprising in total a length of 31 cm (seized at SOLLECITO’s on November 6,
2007, Exhibit 36)​

..... on a probably. Amanda probably had carried that knife that night for protection. This "probably", really was a necessity, because Massei found that there was no premeditation, so there had to have been a reason for Knox to have been (initially at least) innocently carrying it. The "without justified reason", I presume is that Massei found that it was the murder weapon, and there is no justified reason for carrying the knife if that's what it was used for, regardless of original intent.

Yet what is the evidence that Knox carried that knife "for protection"? Nothing. Nada. Massei just makes it up. I suppose this could be considered an understandable speculation on his part, which is not critical to the finding...

..... but, then there's the clean-up. Although there's no "charge" directly relating to the clean-up (only the alleged faking of a break-in), Massei just makes it up that Amanda and/or Raffaele had cleaned the short stretch of hallway between Meredith's room and the bathroom.

Why does he say this? On the evidence? No. It's because he'd otherwise be at a loss to explain how the bloody foot-track got onto the bathmat with no intervening bloody foottracks.

Evidence? No. Just his admitted inability to explain.

It is not just in Canada that judges make, "leaps of logic and bad conclusions." That Italian motivations reports are 4x larger just allows the unsubstantiated leaps of logic (and making stuff up) more apparent!

 

[Desert Fox]

I was speaking to a forensic computer reconstructionist and he considers what was done with the hard drives by the Italian police to be criminal not negligent.

 

[Agatha]

I have split 3 posts discussing a forum management concern to the Forum Management Feedback subforum. Concerns about what is or is not on topic for this thread should be discussed in the FMF thread HERE. In the meantime, please keep your posts in this thread strictly on topic.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Agatha

 

[Kaosium]

I wouldn't call that a dispute with Pascali. What happened is, a prosecutor in the town of Potenza appointed Pascali as DNA expert with the task testing the clothes of Elisa Claps' for DNA.
The preliminary judge thought Pascali's report was unconvincing, and decided to appoint another expert in order to make an assessment on Pascali's work. The other expert was Patrizia Stefanoni.

Patrizia Stefanoni did not have the task of testing items, but just to review Pascali's work. Stefanoni said Pascali's tests were unsatisfactory, and he did not investigate the objects properly.

So the judge ordered that the Carabinieri RIS from Rome should perform tests on the items. The result was that the Carabinieri found multiple instances of DNA of a suspect, Danilo Restivo (a serial killer who was indicted in another state for another murder).

I don't think this was a dispute between Stefanoni and Pascali. We are talking about an expert (Pascali) who egregiously failed to acomplish his duty. Had his work not been reviewed, Elisa's family would be still awaiting justice.

Bad evidence can be gathered on guilty people too, and from your brief summary what I suspect happened is that Stefanoni dug a profile out from below the RFU limit.

*
As for the reasons why Pascali wanted the EDFs, it doesn't really matter what the defence purpose was, what matters is that - as for the procedure code - they only have to explain the judge why they want that evidence, and why the couldn't request it before. Now you parse a judgemental phrase: "fraudulent interpretation .. exculpatory evidence..", which is rhetoric, but it is nothing but judgmental, there is no factual information in it.

It was a characterization which I supported with the two pieces I linked, and have highlighted in recent previous posts to you just why her interpretation was fraudulent and if it isn't obvious to you on the face of it why the existence of those other 2-4 contributors to the clasp are exculpatory, the fact Stefanoni lied outright about it in court (October 4, 2008 in the exchange I quoted recently from C&V where she claims they're all stutter) ought to suffice.

What was the defence seeking? Was the defence seeking whether there was evidence of laboratory contamination in the negative controls of the contested samples, or even in those of other samples? If that's what they were looking for, they should have explained this to the judge. And they didn't.

How do you know that? What we do know is that starting with Pascalli in 2008 the defense wanted the edfs and that Stefanoni went to great lengths to keep them hidden. There's a number of ways the edfs could show her work is unreliable--if not outright fraudulent-- contamination is just one.

Pascali only said he needed to know the peaks areas, this is what he explained the judge on Oct. 4. Stefanoni also deposited the negative controls she had with her. Here I'm not stating that the judge would have said "yes" to any request on the part of Pascali, but the fact is Pascali and the defence did not make the request, and they did not explain the intent of their requests in terms compatible with how you explain them, the defence did not say anythig on the lines of seeking "contamination that was not revealed" and see possible "fraudulent behaviours". They did not describe such alleged purpose to expose omitted evidence to the judge in the terms that you describe. They describe their purposes in such terms that a further investigation in electronig data wouldn't seem necessary to the judge: they did not explain such alleged purpose to the judge.

From what you've posted, they didn't have to explain to the judge that the edfs could reveal fraudulent practices--Stefanoni did it herself! She used it as an argument as to why she shouldn't have to reveal the edfs, which is damned curious to the eyes of those not accustomed to the Italian Court System. That in itself is reason enough in many jurisdictions (where DNA forensic analysis is done) the defense must see those files, but in Italy she is able to use it as a reason they shouldn't! That's part and parcel of the problem, Machiavelli, and why she was able to think she could get away with foisting such crap on the court and telling them such pathetic lies.

I do not want to draw any conclusion as for what purposes Bongiorno and Pascali had in their minds. As for Stefanoni and prosecution I can well see many good reasons for not wishing to release raw data, without any neeed to think at any conspiracy or fraud. So I don' do mind-reading. I only limit myself to recording trial facts. Those are the facts.

Stefanoni did say she was ready to present log files, but she had reservations about the way they could be manipulated, the "offer" was known to the parties insofar it belonged to the court documentation available to them, and on the hearing the defence did not make some requests, and they did not express the motivations that you attribute to them.

No, she wasn't willing to 'present the log files' all she was willing to allow was them to see that data on the screen with the same settings she had used, essentially all that would do is verify that she hadn't (literally) photoshopped the electropherogram, which is but one (particularly stupid) way her work could be fraudulent.

 

[Bill Williams]

Stefanoni did say she was ready to present log files, but she had reservations about the way they could be manipulated, the "offer" was known to the parties insofar it belonged to the court documentation available to them, and on the hearing the defence did not make some requests, and they did not express the motivations that you attribute to them.

No, she wasn't willing to 'present the log files' all she was willing to allow was them to see that data on the screen with the same settings she had used, essentially all that would do is verify that she hadn't (literally) photoshopped the electropherogram, which is but one (particularly stupid) way her work could be fraudulent.

I do wish Machiavelli would cite why Article 111 of the Italian Constitution is important here.... in what way, shape or form does Article 111 allow a technician to bargain with either the judge or the defence on the terms and conditions for releasing evidence to the defence?

Granted, Constitutionally speaking this is something the Judge should have simply insisted upon, and something that Cassazione, as a guardian of the law, should have insisted on.

Does Italy adhere to full disclosure of evidence to the defence or doesn't it? Or does it adhere to full disclosure of evidence as long as Stefanoni is not charged with a crime as a result? (That part is not covered in Article 111.)

 

[Desert Fox]

I do wish Machiavelli would cite why Article 111 of the Italian Constitution is important here.... in what way, shape or form does Article 111 allow a technician to bargain with either the judge or the defence on the terms and conditions for releasing evidence to the defence?

Granted, Constitutionally speaking this is something the Judge should have simply insisted upon, and something that Cassazione, as a guardian of the law, should have insisted on.

Does Italy adhere to full disclosure of evidence to the defence or doesn't it? Or does it adhere to full disclosure of evidence as long as Stefanoni is not charged with a crime as a result? (That part is not covered in Article 111.)

The only think I will argue is that trying to hide evidence from the defense is common across many jurisdictions. I wish that Machiavelli could see that this is a way too common problem.

 

[JREF2010]

I was speaking to a forensic computer reconstructionist and he considers what was done with the hard drives by the Italian police to be criminal not negligent.

I think in Italy, especially with the Perugian Inbreds Polizia minions, you could be charged for saying that, and be sent to prison until they create enough crap-evidence and media slander, to build a case against you. Maybe get a few heroin addicts to testify too.

However, if you just admit that you are a coward thug, and make a deal with the Persecutor, and take the Fake Track offer, you can shack up with rapist murderers, like Rudy Guede ,and get a free college degree while in prison, and get released fairly quickly. Maresca will help you out too, as long as you say Amanda and Raffaele did it.

 

[sept79]

As Americans accustomed to a system that does not allow double jeopardy, we are more than a little shocked when we see countries such as Italy where a supreme cassation court can overrule a finding of innocence by one appeal court and order another appeal court to find guilt. It is especially shocking when there was no difference in the inculpatory evidence before both courts. Furthermore, the judgment opinion, called a motivation report, is clearly arbitrary in the finding of guilt, but reasonable in the finding of not guilty. The ECHR has also found such judicial maneuvers unfair. But the current situation in the Amanda Knox - Raffaele Sollecito case is that that judicial maneuver has taken place and we await the opinion of a different supreme cassation court panel of judges on the provisional verdict of guilt produced by the Nencini court.

Thinking out loud here: Wonder if the U.S. State Department has made known its concerns about double jeopardy to Italy?

 

[Desert Fox]

I was speaking to a forensic computer reconstructionist and he considers what was done with the hard drives by the Italian police to be criminal not negligent.

I think in Italy, especially with the Perugian Inbreds Polizia minions, you could be charged for saying that, and be sent to prison until they create enough crap-evidence and media slander, to build a case against you. Maybe get a few heroin addicts to testify too.

However, if you just admit that you are a coward thug, and make a deal with the Persecutor, and take the Fake Track offer, you can shack up with rapist murderers, like Rudy Guede ,and get a free college degree while in prison, and get released fairly quickly. Maresca will help you out too, as long as you say Amanda and Raffaele did it.

I was trying to give the Italian computer forensics the benefit of the doubt but it is getting to the point where it is extremely hard to argue that position.

I still have trouble with other departments within the police being in on a conspiracy however. My understating it is not Stefanoni's lab which is in charge of computer forensics?

 

[Rolfe]

The only think I will argue is that trying to hide evidence from the defense is common across many jurisdictions. I wish that Machiavelli could see that this is a way too common problem.

I think this is absolutely true. If you want to see another case where the concealing of important evidence from the defence was a huge issue in a miscarriage of justice, go over and look at the Lockerbie thread. Though that aspect isn't being discussed at the moment. (In that one there is the extra wrinkle of the defence being given material that was exculpatory but they failed to realise this, and when the prosecution failed to lead it in court the defence didn't either.)

It's a worldwide problem, really. No matter how comprehensive the disclosure rules, the investigators and the prosecutors frequently try to hide stuff that doesn't fit their agenda. The miscarriages of justice in the IRA bombings trials hinged on that too. Stefanoni is hardly unique, or even unusual, sadly. That doesn't make it right.

 

[Numbers]

I was trying to give the Italian computer forensics the benefit of the doubt but it is getting to the point where it is extremely hard to argue that position.

I still have trouble with other departments within the police being in on a conspiracy however. My understating it is not Stefanoni's lab which is in charge of computer forensics?

I believe it is the Postal Police who do the electronic stuff. A cracker-jack bunch, they never fail.

 

[Dan O.]

Trial case wiki proposal

Something I've been thinking about since I joined this thread is how to make all the facts of the case widely available. Everyone here of course knows about the two fake wikis. These both present selected information spun towards a particular point of view. Then there is the original wiki which I created when I first started here. It doesn't have all the latest translations but the information it contains goes much deeper than either of the fakes. I unfortunately don't have the resources necessary to make my wiki accessible to the public.

What I propose is that there should be a wiki associated with this thread for collecting facts and indexes. It could be managed entirely by the members with management only needing to get involved in the case of vandalism, spamming or other breaches of the membership agreement. And they only need to restrict the violators from modifying the wiki as the members can perform the necessary cleanup.

The old JREF did have a wiki at times but was more of an encyclopedia for skeptics. Court cases were not part of the JREF mission so it did not seem apropriate to ask for an Amanda Knox case wiki. But with the creation of the new Trials and Errors section, it appears that IS is expanding and looking for new direction. Assocating a wiki with the major threads would make this section blossom and draw more posters to IS.

So, what do you think?

Also, Should I have this discussion moved to it's own thread and get input from the general members or should we keep this local and attempt to get a wiki for this thread alone as a trial.

 

[Samson]

A pressing need is present in this case, so I would imagine starting here, and hoping the wiki can be ready enough to be linked to by the media if the injustice is rubber stanped in march.
My IT skills are insufficient to be helpful at the outset.

 

[Dan O.]

The press should be pointed to MerderOfMeredithKercher.com it's really a good resource for someone that needs a well thought out presentation of the case.

What I am talking about is more a resource to support discussion within the thread. Specific questions were asked recently for instance about the keys. A wiki page would be able to quickely answer where were they found, who found them, what pages of the Massei report mentions the keys, what news reports talk about these keys, a link to the Wikipedia pages on euro locks and the europian interroom door locks and the shapes of each of the keys and anything else anyone comes up with that can be supported as factual, related to the case and about the doors and keys. These are all details that most people looking into the case won't give a damn about. But if it comes up in a discussion, the facts are right there.

 

[Bill Williams]

The press should be pointed to MerderOfMeredithKercher.com it's really a good resource for someone that needs a well thought out presentation of the case.

What I am talking about is more a resource to support discussion within the thread. Specific questions were asked recently for instance about the keys. A wiki page would be able to quickely answer where were they found, who found them, what pages of the Massei report mentions the keys, what news reports talk about these keys, a link to the Wikipedia pages on euro locks and the europian interroom door locks and the shapes of each of the keys and anything else anyone comes up with that can be supported as factual, related to the case and about the doors and keys. These are all details that most people looking into the case won't give a damn about. But if it comes up in a discussion, the facts are right there.

Probably one of the more depressing things is that few people in the tabloid-world appreciate that this is about a murder, someone 7 1/2 years ago lost her life brutally and completely viciously. This is, for many, simply a chance to engage in internet bullying.

What people think this is about is, "Amanda's behaviour." Cartwheels, snuggles with Raffaele, or crying at the sign of a knife. Or as the geniuses with Italian law enforcement thought, swivelling her hips. When it focusses on those tabloid-questions about an essentially random foreign student from Seattle...... THAT'S when Meredith Kercher is lost in this, and the tragedy lurking behind the questions of Stefanoni's competence/criminality is lost.

Strangely, when I talk to people here of Italian descent, they're the first to "get" the kind of corruption that accompanies a bloated legal system, complete with competing parties of interests within. Others tend to think you're making it up when you talk about the six or seven different motives that prosecutors and judges have floated in the merry-go-round of evidence they unblushingly invent.

I don't know, Dan O. These threads are a bit of a whack-a-mole. Are you suggesting that when Machiavelli brings up, then again, the falsehood that Knox knowingly had a drug dealer in her mobile, and that she perhaps traded sex for drugs....

..... that our answer be only, "101-A"?

Where "101-A" is the standard reply?

 

[Dan O.]

I don't know, Dan O. These threads are a bit of a whack-a-mole. Are you suggesting that when Machiavelli brings up, then again, the falsehood that Knox knowingly had a drug dealer in her mobile, and that she perhaps traded sex for drugs....

..... that our answer be only, "101-A"?

Where "101-A" is the standard reply?

No. I suggest that the wiki would be an educational resource by which even a noobie to the case would be able to make a clear rebuttal with facts to back it up.

After that I would hope the discussion would move on to new areas that haven't already been beat to death.