Continuation Part 15: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[anglolawyer]

I think the professors would be another level or two down. The police asked about the boys and other men that might have known Mez. I think they would have asked Amanda if Mez had frequented Le Chic. They would have asked about other men from the club that knew her.

No, both you and Numbers are missing the point. They were waiting to see whether she would mention Patrick without being asked. I don't understand your blind spot on this. Mignini asked Amanda at trial why she never mentioned Patrick.

 

[anglolawyer]

A lease will often specify that the rent and/or service charges are payable on "the usual quarter days". The usual quarter days are: 25 March - Lady Day, 24 June - Midsummer Day, 29 September - Michaelmas, 25 December - Christmas.

http://www.irwinmitchell.com/glossary/q/quarter-days

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_days

You are saying Italian residential tenancies usually stipulate that rent should be paid quarterly? And you base this on the pattern of rent payment under English commercial leases? LOL. This is another point which reeks of TJMK.

 

[Planigale]

You have no idea how the police work. They are literally teams of several hundred people. Teams of investigators (detectives) collate the evidence, scientific, eye witness, circumstantial, behaviour, etc., etc.

Hours and hours of transcribed interviews.

They have to produce a report for the prosecutors, who make the decision as to whether there is enough evidence. Producing a report, means making recommendations.

Next, a completely independent body, the judiciary, arranges hearings to appraise what the issues are, the witnesses, the jurisdictions, etc.

At any point, the emphasis can shift.

Nor apparently do you. This is Italy; the prosecuting magistrate directs the investigation. There were no transcribed interviews. Recording and transcribing interviews may occur in the UK but NOT in Italy and NOT in this case!

 

[anglolawyer]

Don't forget, the police turned up unexpectedly.

Perhaps in the aftermath the perps responsible for the staging forgot to remove something obvious.

Oh for crying out loud, Vixen. Use your brains. You are saying they would have stolen something but for the unexpected arrival of the posties. Like the still spinning washing machine they had not yet finished manipulating the evidence. Then why had they already called Filomena to alert her to the state of affairs? Why had they already called the cops? Why did their staging not obliterate Raf's footprint on the bathmat?

Please regale us with the brilliant Quennell's theory on this.

 

[davefoc]

No, that is not the bit.

Quarter days? What century are you living in Vixen? It's obviously been a very long time since you've rented (if you've ever rented). Quarter days are not A Thing in UK residential lettings, whatever your desultory google searches are telling you.

Were quarter days ever a thing in Perugia? The Perugia Student Living site doesn't seem to know about them. The only hit that Google returned for Perugia and quarter days was to this thread. I also tried some permutations on the term translated into Italian without getting any hits related to rent payment days.

FWIW, I'd never heard of them but I thought it might be some weird British thing like fortnights (which I had heard of but think is a pretty useless word). But now I know what it is, it might come in handy if I want to rent some industrial space in Britain that still uses the quarter days as the rent due dates. But so far it doesn't sound that useful a thing to know if I'm going to move to Perugia though.

Also, FWIW, I've been a renter and a landlord in California and my experience is that rents being due on the first is the norm.

 

[anglolawyer]

Is it a tradition that in Italy all rent is paid first of the month. I bet it is not.

In the UK we have a tradition of assigning rent due on leases on Quarter Days.

Not in short term residential tenancies.

 

[Planigale]

Heheh, not like Ronaldo to get out of bed for less than $7m!

AFAIAA Rinaldi and Boemia are experts who have analysed hundreds of footprints and are professionally trained to be objective.

Are you seriously saying the two Italians were eager to incriminate one of their own, instead of the African ragazzo? Really?

Their report shows that this is true. They referenced a discredited 'expert' (involved in multiple wrongful convictions), in their analysis. They did not analyse the footprint, but a photo, they did not know the basic information about the taking of the photo needed to analyse the image correctly. Normally forensic anthropologist would analyse footprints not fingerprints specialists (fingerprint analysis is hugely unscientific but that is another issue). The measurements given can only be obtained if they measured to fit the control print not blind. This was the most corrupt bit of forensic science, Stefanoni was merely careless and incompetent.

 

[Planigale]

Don't forget, the police turned up unexpectedly.

Perhaps in the aftermath the perps responsible for the staging forgot to remove something obvious.

Untrue. The police turned up after they had been called. The unexpected factor was that they were 'police' and not carabinieri.

 

[anglolawyer]

Were quarter days ever a thing in Perugia? The Perugia Student Living site doesn't seem to know about them. The only hit that Google returned for Perugia and quarter days was to this thread. I also tried some permutations on the term translated into Italian without getting any hits related to rent payment days.

FWIW, I'd never heard of them but I thought it might be some weird British thing like fortnights (which I had heard of but think is a pretty useless word). But now I know what it is, it might come in handy if I want to rent some industrial space in Britain that still uses the quarter days as the rent due dates. But so far it doesn't sound that useful a thing to know if I'm going to move to Perugia.

Also, FWIW, I've been a renter and a landlord in California and my experience is that rents being due on the first is the norm.

I have been practising landlord and tenant law in England for over 35 years. It is not unusual to find rent payable quarterly under commercial leases and long residential leases (meaning leases granted for fixed terms of many years - 99 being a typical number). I cannot remember coming across a short term residential lease under which the rent was payable other than weekly, four-weekly or monthly (the most common by far). Rent payment days under these last usually start with the first day of the tenancy, whatever it is. So there is nothing magical about the first of the month.

 

[Planigale]

Isn't it the case that, initially, the crack Perugian police floated the theory that Ms. Kercher was a slutty party girl (based upon what they presumed to be her excessive drinking and all-night-long bar hopping) who probably invited her killer into her apartment when nobody else was there and her putative 'boyfriend' was away for the weekend, and insinuated that whatever had happened to her was probably her own fault? Didn't they try to push that "theory" by asking the room mates about Ms. Kercher's sexual habits, and specifically about whether or not she was into anal sex (presumably because the crack Perugian police could think of no other reason that a person might have Vaseline - which the crack Perugian police took pains to photograph on Ms. Kercher's bedroom table/desk)?

This is the mindset that the crack Perugian police and the nutcase pervert Mignini had from the outset - that if a god-damned foreign girl was killed in Perugia, it had to be the fault of the god-damned foreign girl, not the fault of any Italian, being fine upstanding citizens all, of course.

All they did later was substitute one god-damned foreign girl for another, just as they substituted one god-damned black guy for another with Lumumba and Guede. Sure, Mignini and Co. had to sub in Raffaele Sollecito as well, but he wasn't Perugian, and they needed him to make the she-devil nonsense (transferred from Ms. Kercher to Ms. Knox at this point) fly, so he was an acceptable sacrifice as far as Mignini was concerned.





Did they? Do you have a list?




Maybe. It should have been Investigation 101 to do so, but it is not clear that the crack Perugian police did any meaningful sort of canvas at Ms. Kercher's school. I would certainly be interesting in seeing what they did (or didn't do) in that regard.

To be fair to the police, one of the forensic pathologists reported anal dilatation and internal trauma compatible with anal sex. Subsequently the consensus was this was compatible with constipation. The latter if true may be relevant, it may imply slow bowel transit which would fit with slow gastric emptying.

 

[Planigale]

Possibly for a similar reason as Dr Gill. They want to enhance their reputation by publishing, and to put themselves out there as expert defense witnesses.

With the huge PR campaign, it is inevitable that kind-hearted people rushed forward to help what they didn't realise was clever branding, a grave case of miscarriage of justice.

Dr Gill was probably affronted by the "sincere" tales of police brutality and torture and felt moved to intervene professionally.

It is clear he considers the Italian police to be complete idiots who have no idea how DNA works.

On the radio, he really seemed to think that people have glamorous ideas about forensic evidence.

If you read the scientific literature on forensic DNA, Prof. Gill merely reflects a widespread concern amongst the experts about how forensic DNA evidence is presented in courts. That forensic scientists need to be objective and explain to the courts the limitations in the evidence. This is especially true since trace and low template DNA has been reported and especially mixed DNA in this situation.

 

[Planigale]

I hear what you are saying. However, in a crime scenario, perps will wear gloves and will try to avoid leaving any trace. It is unfair criticism to knock a forensic doctor who does find a trace, inadvertently left behind on the grounds there are not bucketloads of it. Forensic means minute, after all. In fact, Raf's DNA was not Low Copy Number. It was hidden under the body well-protected. It is specious for the defense to claim it came off a rubber glove.

Untrue. Forensic means related to criminal law.

Untrue. The bra fastener was not under the body, and kicked (perhaps literally) around on the floor for six weeks ending up on the other side of the room.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You're right he cant for sure. We'll give you that. But anyone with half a brain knows that rents are usually paid at the beginning of every month. It's a good guess.

Still, it doesn't really matter. The evidence is there that Rudy killed Meredith. That's why he is spending his days behind bars.

He knew the men who lived downstairs, and it seems possible that upstairs and downstairs tenants paid rent on the same day.

 

[anglolawyer]

Untrue. Forensic means related to criminal law.

snip

Not quite. It applies to civil law too and concerns evidence or argument devised for use in court.

 

[anglolawyer]

Incidentally, there is an obvious problem with the argument that Rudy was hoping to scoop up all the rent money. He was a day late. For that reason and also because everybody could be expected to be partying on Halloween, he should have chosen the previous evening.

 

[davefoc]

Incidentally, there is an obvious problem with the argument that Rudy was hoping to scoop up all the rent money. He was a day late. For that reason and also because everybody could be expected to be partying on Halloween, he should have chosen the previous evening.

Perhaps so, although it is conceivable that he had knowledge that the landlord picked up rents a day after the first or perhaps he thought that was a good possibility. If he did have inside knowledge about the behavior of the landlord with regard to picking up rents then whoever gave him that information probably knows that he has information pertaining to the crime but he has decided it is not in his interest to reveal that fact.

 

[codyjuneau]

CBC's The Fifth Estate is doing an hour on the Reid Technique of interrogations and false confessions. Chilling.

It's arguable that neither Sollecito nor Knox were exposed strictly to the Reid Technique specifically, but Donnino's intervention (the translator - mediator - diplomat) managed to implement parts of it. As did arguably the others.

.
I watched this one on TV the other night: http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2014-2015/the-interrogation-room

The police were using the Reid Technique on a WITNESS! They showed the video of the 'interview'. The guy's witness statement did not fit the police hypothesis for the crime so they lied to him, threatened him, and eventually, after 8 hours, bullied him into saying what they wanted to hear. Afterwards the guy recanted on this bullied witness statement but it was still allowed in court and used to convict an innocent person. Fortunately the conviction was overturned later.

Cody
.

 

[anglolawyer]

Perhaps so, although it is conceivable that he had knowledge that the landlord picked up rents a day after the first or perhaps he thought that was a good possibility. If he did have inside knowledge about the behavior of the landlord with regard to picking up rents then whoever gave him that information probably knows that he has information pertaining to the crime but he has decided it is not in his interest to reveal that fact.

I agree that, one way or another, Rudy was probably using info gleaned from his social connection with the house. It may have concerned the keys, travel plans or rent arrangements (perhaps overheard if not actually related to him).

 

[bagels]

Goodness gracious, folks. Talk about low-hanging fruit. Obvious troll (and sockpuppet) is obvious. Just ignore it.

I didn't know we were allowed to point out the obvious like this on this forum, but yeah.

 

[anglolawyer]

I didn't know we were allowed to point out the obvious like this on this forum, but yeah.

Neither a sock puppet nor a troll (not intentionally anyway) IMO.