Continuation Part 13: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[js202]

It would seem appropriate for them to at least wait until the decision on Wednesday before issuing such a statement, but I suppose that propriety has never been their strong suit.

Merely yet another example of the family's much ballyhooed "dignified silence," I suppose.

 

[Diocletus]

I have to say that I find it outrageous that Knox and Sollecito won't get to appeal if they are convicted on Wednesday. What kind of medieval judicial system doesn't allow appeals?

 

[Samson]

Vogt says:

"The prosecutor general Wednesday is a veteran magistrate with extensive international experience. Both he and the president of the section of the court handling the case have links to Naples."

There must be a deep meaning in this, but what?

 

[Desert Fox]

I have to say that I find it outrageous that Knox and Sollecito won't get to appeal if they are convicted on Wednesday. What kind of medieval judicial system doesn't allow appeals?

In the US, you don't get an appeal after the supreme court

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Vogt says:

"The prosecutor general Wednesday is a veteran magistrate with extensive international experience. Both he and the president of the section of the court handling the case have links to Naples."

There must be a deep meaning in this, but what?

If Cassation upholds the conviction, they will then have to decide if they want to seek extradition. If they do, they will forward a request to the Italian Ministry of Justice, which is a gov't bureau as opposed to a function of the Italian court system. The Ministry of Justice would have to make the extradition request to the US State Dept.

Vogt is saying the right people are in place to make this happen.

 

[Planigale]

Let's not be silly. The problem is precisely that Amanda Knox was not exactly normal. And this not because of her sexual habits, but because of her personality, her narcissistic self.
You realy decide that you want to misunderstand things. She was not a witch, nor a bitch nor a slut. She was just an unfortunate sick individual, a person suffering from a health condition.

I am catching up so apologies if this issue has been raised.

What is interesting is what was Not said in the prosecution case. The prosecution has Knox assessed by a professional psychologist. The prosecution presented no expert testimony by a professional psychologist that Knox had any psychological disorder. if Knox had suffered from a psychological disorder then the prosecution would have provided testimony to that effect. We can therefore conclude that expert psychological opinion by someone who formally assessed Knox concluded she was normal. I suspect this is a more reliable opinion than amateur fantasies by people who have never spoken with Knox and if they had would have no competency to give an opinion in any case.

 

[Kauffer]

I find it interesting that the entity, which would have to request extradition of Ms Knox from the USA in the event of a confirmation, is the same entity which must answer questions about the violation of her human rights, at the ECHR.

But Italy has a choice when it comes to the former, yet is compelled, when it comes to the latter.

I don't believe it would find these activities particularly compatible with each other.

 

[Dan O.]

We are not talking about odds of contamination in general. We are talking about a specific allege occurrence, that is an alleged contamination event with one specific contaminating agent (one specific profile, not just any DNA) on one specific small location.

Here your argument is wrong. It doesn't matter one whit where the DNA profile was found. It could have been any of the locations tested: the drinking glass on the nightstand, the cuff of Meredith's jacket, one of the other locations tested on the bra clasp and bra, one of the many locations tested on Meredith's body including inside her vigina. And if it wasn't found in any of those locations, the prosecution would come back again for more collections and more DNA testing. It's not clear that the prosecution would ever stop and admit that they arrested the wrong people in their rush to close the case.

The Bra clasp is significant only because it was photographed on the first visit and then forgotten for 6 weeks. And when they rediscovered the clasp they made a big production of it as if the clasp was the key evidence in the whole case. It's almost like they could already see Raffaele's DNA on the clasp when they held it up to the light.

The prosecution still hasn't explained how Raffaele's DNA was supposed to have gotten onto that clasp and why it's presence should be treated any differently than the presence of the other male DNA profiles.

 

[Antony]

.
Not even accurate, but such an odd idea of evidence anyway? If any of the trivial nonsense Machi mentions was indicative of a murderer, the streets of every town and city in the world would be bathed with blood.

But it is insightful, because Machi's posts apparently reflect the thinking of the prosecuting team in Perugia.

Cody
.

I've been following this with interest. On the one hand we have Christianah Hannah who denies that there was ever any campaign of character assassination against Amanda, on the other we have Machiavelli backing up the campaign and asserting that it was all true.

 

[Planigale]

Total bizarre circular reasoning. It takes a moron of major proportions to believe that based on the evidence presented that there is certain proof beyond a reasonable doubt . You're not a moron are you ?

I don't think this is a helpful comment. Machiavelli is being honest here. He believes Knox is guilty of sexual assault and murder. A normal woman would not be able to manipulate two men she hardly knows into doing this therefore Knox must logically be abnormal. However since Machiavelli admits his interpretation of her personality is dependant on an assumption of Knox's guilt this can not in turn be used to argue for guilt.

 

[Matthew Best]

We are not talking about odds of contamination in general.

Yes, we are. We are discussing with Eric Paroissien his claim that "Contamination is a rare process, one star among billions." If you want to jump in and correct him like the rest of us are doing, go ahead but it does seem weird when talking to the monkey to be faced with interjections from the organ grinder.

 

[Planigale]

This doesn't make sense, the correct wording is:

After 46 days during which everybody and everything entered that room, how could that clasp not be dirty/dusty(if you wish)?

Contamination is a rare process, one star among billions. The logic above is like saying, "I'm a young beautiful teenage girl, how come for my 18th birthday i haven't received a love letter from a celebrity actor.

This is simply untrue. Contamination is common. Even in controlled experiments where extreme care is taken to avoid contamination, the presence of DNA of unknown individuals is detected (about 10% of samples). See for instance Goray, M. and R. A. H. van Oorschot (2014). "The complexities of DNA transfer during a social setting." Legal Medicine 17(2): 82-91.

if you can find reference giving a contamination rate of 1:10⁹ I would be interested to read it. Otherwise admit you are in error in this statement. (I.e. put up or shut up).

 

[Planigale]

What you wrote doesn't make sense. Household dust is composed mostly of shed human skin cells. If a small item has been shuffled through household dust for 46 days, ending up in a new place and touching other items, the presence of DNA from people who have been in that house is likely. We all slough off skin cells all the time.

The clasp getting shuffled around on the dusty floor for so long may also explain the extra random profiles.

Actually this is a myth. Most of household dust is mineral dust from soil, and fibres from clothes / furnishings. Skin cells (and not necessarily human) is only a small part of dust. In addition shed human skin cells are a very poor source of DNA. Touch DNA is probably more related to sweat.

 

[Bill Williams]

There is now more than enough reporting that the USA will never give up one of their citizens to this insane, 7 1/2 process. A UK paper is reporting that "sources" within the US State Department already know what this is all about.

It leaves things just prior to Cassazione as per the Italian gentleman on Porta a Porta a while ago - why is it that the Americans can protect their citizens' rights, and we Italians cannot?

 

[Diocletus]

In the US, you don't get an appeal after the supreme court

Remember, this is still the "trial". In the us, by the time you get to the Supreme Court, you've already had the benefit of at least one appeal as of right to an intermediate appellate court and/or state Supreme Court.

There are no appeals in Italy. Just one gigantic trial. We know that must be the case, otherwise we would have a double jeopardy situation on our hands.

 

[Bill Williams]

Yes, those Massei segments are extraordinary. They 'filtered' the allele scores, as C and V discovered, to present a forced interpretation. That's known as 'doctoring the results', isn't it?

Kauffer - I think all Massei was trying to determine - which he determined wrongly - was if Stefanoni followed a "suspect-centric" analysis, as the defence expert claimed she had.

Massei at least has the cojones to deal with the issue. But when you read the sections where he tries to deal with it, his own "analysis" of it gets lost. Massei is the source of what the ISC in 2013 eventually said about all this - that regardless of protocols....

..... the technician still needs to rely on their experience and intuition. However, in this case, that "experience and intuition" found no need for things like a second confirmatory test, despite protocol. Massei's point of view is, if Stefanoni (the expert) says this is all right, then it is all right. If someone else says it is not all right; even appointing an independent third party to see who's right will only side with one or the other, and Massei says this leaves him no better off than when he started.

This, by itself, confirms Stefanoni's suspect-centric method, at least how Massei deals with it. She's basically saying that there's no need to run a confirmatory test, because: "What? You want me to find Raffaele on the bra-clasp again?"

Well, yes, that's what confirmatory tests are all about!!! And Massei eventually lets Stefanoni off the hook, with his own brand of, "the technician is not the one on trial here."

Whether or not this is "doctoring the results", is not something Massei deals with, really: except to say he can't imagine why someone connected with the police would do that.

 

[Kauffer]

Actually this is a myth. Most of household dust is mineral dust from soil, and fibres from clothes / furnishings. Skin cells (and not necessarily human) is only a small part of dust. In addition shed human skin cells are a very poor source of DNA. Touch DNA is probably more related to sweat.

An interesting point.

In fact, Professor Vecchiotti co authored a paper about this.

 

[Planigale]

We are not talking about odds of contamination in general. We are talking about a specific allege occurrence, that is an alleged contamination event with one specific contaminating agent (one specific profile, not just any DNA) on one specific small location.
What matters is not a probability of generic contamination, but the chances of that specificity.
And not only that: also there is no need to have probability as small as a one-to millions ratio in order to have a piece of evidence. Even 1:10 would be sufficiently small to rule it out from the set or reasonable scenario when combined with other circumstantial evidence. In order to dismiss the piece of evidence you would need to show that that contamination was probable, not that it was just possible. And the burden to show that is on those claims that event occurred.

The problem is the denominator. If say 200 tests were done then 20 would be contaminated. So we are saying that for just one of those contaminated samples (5%) to be contaminated by Sollecito is beyond any possibility? The more tests you do the more likely you are to find contamination.

What about the other unknown DNA profiles found? Why are these qualitatively different? Why are these other profiles innocent contamination, but Sollecito's exclusively the result of transfer during an assault on MK?

 

[Diocletus]

If Cassation upholds the conviction, they will then have to decide if they want to seek extradition. If they do, they will forward a request to the Italian Ministry of Justice, which is a gov't bureau as opposed to a function of the Italian court system. The Ministry of Justice would have to make the extradition request to the US State Dept.

Vogt is saying the right people are in place to make this happen.

I don't think Vogt knows what she's talking about. Who cares what personnel from Cassation are present, including but not limited to Mr. 9/11 Denier? All the court can do is send a note to (I think) the minister of justice saying "please extradite Amanda Knox". Then, they're done--I have to believe that they have no power or right to communicate with the US government.

 

[Samson]

Remember, this is still the "trial". In the us, by the time you get to the Supreme Court, you've already had the benefit of at least one appeal as of right to an intermediate appellate court and/or state Supreme Court.

There are no appeals in Italy. Just one gigantic trial. We know that must be the case, otherwise we would have a double jeopardy situation on our hands.

This may be exactly what this is about. Vogt has put the pdf of the statement when she returned home on her website.

"With the verdict of Oct. 3 overturning Amanda Knox's prior conviction, her immediate release from prison, and her subsequent departure from Italy today, Post considers this case closed.
THORNE

REVIEW AUTHORITY:

U.S. Department of State Case No.F-2012-20357 Doc No. C05147606 Date: 07/11/2011"

I suggest there is a strong case to say any subsequent events in Italy be deemed irrelevant. However it is reported elsewhere that her lawyers are working hard right now.

http://thefreelancedesk.com/amanda-knox-trials-meredith-kercher-case/