Continuation Part 16: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[js202]

So what is the prosecution case for the knife evidence? Peter Gill thinks it's crap. And who is Peter Gill?

"Dr. Peter Gill is a world renowned DNA expert. Dr. Gill is a coauthor of the 1985 paper in Nature that introduced forensic DNA testing."

So who do I trust on this issue? Somebody on the internet that fails to make even one argument for the reliability of the DNA on the knife evidence beyond their own credulity or Peter Gill? What do you think the answer is?

Here's an article about Peter Gill
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/...adds-voice-to-amanda-knox-case/article/397213

Perhaps you could point us in the direction of an article written about another famous forensic DNA expert that supports Stefanoni's findings?

Perhaps you could put forth a single reason that you believe the arguments put forth in this thread that the DNA evidence on the knife is unreliable and not actual evidence for the guilt of Knox beyond your own credulity?

One thing that I failed to include in the list above of arguments that have been put forth in this thread against the notion that the knife was involved in the crime was just how friggin crazy the theory is that the knife was used in the crime. Knox is supposed to have left Sollecito's apartment with a cooking knife, used it to stab somebody without leaving a trace of evidence in Kercher's room that she did that and then transported the same knife back to Sollecito's apartment where despite the incredible cunning she displayed by committing the murder in Kercher's bedroom while not leaving any evidence there, she is incapable of cleaning the knife so that Kercher's DNA can't be found on it?

​

The standard pro-guilt response to your eminently rational position is "Gill is: past his prime/a mere hired gun of the Knoxians/misguided by Conti & Vecchiotti's interpretation of the evidence." Expect one or all of the above from Vixen's quarter in 4, 3, 2, 1...

 

[Numbers]

What lawyer?

No that doesn't work anyway, if you're suggesting she was offered but declined counsel. There are very clear rules in play in order for there to be a valid waiver of her right to a lawyer. Not in this case.

To my knowledge, there is no evidence of a waiver to attorney by either Knox or Sollecito. A written and unequivocal waiver would be required for a suspect to surrender a Convention right, such as the right to a lawyer during questioning (Salduz v Turkey; Convention Article 6.3c with 6.1).

Some ECHR case-law on this:

... the Court reiterates that the waiver of a right guaranteed by the Convention – insofar as it is permissible – must be established in an unequivocal manner and must be attended by minimum safeguards commensurate with its importance (see, among other authorities, Sejdovic v. Italy [GC], no. 56581/00, § 86, ECHR 2006‑II).

Source: NALBANDYAN v. ARMENIA 9935/06 23339/06 |

 

[Numbers]

I'm being a pest, I know, but the legal issue in play that night was not the "voluntary" nature of any admissions, it was the "spontaneous" nature of them.

No less than Giuliano Mignini covers this at length in his 2010 interview with CNN's Drew Griffin. Mignini defended his admitted encouragement for Knox to, his words, keep making spontaneous statements and all he would do would be to record them as if only a notary.

That legal chicanery did not make it past even the Italian Supreme Court, which until March 2015 was favourable to Mignini's wrongful prosecution. The issue of the non-spontaneous statements (made, further, without mandatory legal representation) is something everyone should agree on; regardless of which side they've been on in the past.

I'm being a pest on this, but the difference between voluntary and spontaneous is what's at issue here.

"Spontaneous" in this context is an Italian legal term; that is, there are CPP Articles that - in translation - use that term. There is probably no daylight between "spontaneous" and "voluntary" in the meaning, which probably is:

Spontaneous:
proceeding from natural feeling or native tendency without external constraint

controlled and directed internally : self-acting <spontaneous movement characteristic of living things>

developing or occurring without apparent external influence, force, cause, or treatment

Voluntary:
proceeding from the will or from one's own choice or consent

unconstrained by interference : self-determining

acting or done of one's own free will without valuable consideration or legal obligation

Source of definitions: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/

ETA: The small difference between the meanings that I think the Italian wordsmithing is getting at is that a "voluntary" statement may be in response to a question, while a "spontaneous" statement is entirely self-generated and not in response to a question or prompt. Of course, the statements made by Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito during their interrogations on Nov. 5/6 and by Amanda during her "interview" with "notary" Mignini were not spontaneous or voluntary, and were obtained in violation of Italian procedural law and ECHR case-law.

 

[Antony]

I honestly think a prosecutor has better things to do with his or her time than try to frame innocent people.

Which is where you go wrong, and this betrays the conclusion-driven nature of your thinking. You reason from incredulity rather than what the facts show.

A prosecutor's success is measured solely by whether he can achieve a conviction. Factual innocence is less a consideration than what can swing the court his way. The history of (in)justice is littered with cases of innocents being set up by unprincipled police and prosecutors.

 

[Desert Fox]

Which is where you go wrong, and this betrays the conclusion-driven nature of your thinking. You reason from incredulity rather than what the facts show.

A prosecutor's success is measured solely by whether he can achieve a conviction. Factual innocence is less a consideration than what can swing the court his way. The history of (in)justice is littered with cases of innocents being set up by unprincipled police and prosecutors.

Tunnel vision and afraid to admit that they made a mistake are also factors.

 

[Bill Williams]

Which is where you go wrong, and this betrays the conclusion-driven nature of your thinking. You reason from incredulity rather than what the facts show.

A prosecutor's success is measured solely by whether he can achieve a conviction. Factual innocence is less a consideration than what can swing the court his way. The history of (in)justice is littered with cases of innocents being set up by unprincipled police and prosecutors.

It's worse than this. Fortunately he was writing a minority opinion, but US Federal Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia once wrote that actual innocence is not in and of itself sufficient to grant a petition of habeas corpus.

It's highly technical, but it seems his reasoning is that the court itself lacks the power to overturn a clear statutory command. (It probably has to do with the right-wing belief that the court should not, de facto, make laws through its rulings.)

And why let actual innocence stand in the way of these sorts of technicalities!

http://jurist.org/paperchase/2013/05/supreme-court-rules-on-actual-innocence-in-federal-habeas-petitions.php

Sounds like many guilters before they departed the scene after the March 27, 2015, exonerations.

 

[Desert Fox]

It's worse than this. Fortunately he was writing a minority opinion, but US Federal Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia once wrote that actual innocence is not in and of itself sufficient to grant a petition of habeas corpus.

It's highly technical, but it seems his reasoning is that the court itself lacks the power to overturn a clear statutory command. (It probably has to do with the right-wing belief that the court should not, de facto, make laws through its rulings.)

And why let actual innocence stand in the way of these sorts of technicalities!

http://jurist.org/paperchase/2013/05/supreme-court-rules-on-actual-innocence-in-federal-habeas-petitions.php

Sounds like many guilters before they departed the scene after the March 27, 2015, exonerations.

Scary that it was 5 to 4 as well

 

[Bill Williams]

"Spontaneous" in this context is an Italian legal term; that is, there are CPP Articles that - in translation - use that term. There is probably no daylight between "spontaneous" and "voluntary" in the meaning, which probably is:

<.......sinister deletia.......>

ETA: The small difference between the meanings that I think the Italian wordsmithing is getting at is that a "voluntary" statement may be in response to a question, while a "spontaneous" statement is entirely self-generated and not in response to a question or prompt. Of course, the statements made by Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito during their interrogations on Nov. 5/6 and by Amanda during her "interview" with "notary" Mignini were not spontaneous or voluntary, and were obtained in violation of Italian procedural law and ECHR case-law.

With all due, you may have made my point that in the legal setting, the definition of "spontaneous" is crucial to being allowed to present evidence in court; meaning that the spontaneity of the declaration is crucial - the "voluntary" nature of it is a separate issue.

IMO - the ISC ruled before the 2009 trial that just chucking the word "spontaneously" into a legal document, as in, "I wish to spontaneously declare that...." does not in and of itself make the declaration spontaneous. It matters little if it was Knox displaying a sudden and inspired understanding of the legal issues in play!!!!

That's the issue. When applying the "smell test", which everyone from the Italian Supreme Court on down (with the exception of guilters) applied, those statements were useless for the murder-trial, all-be-they admissible for the calunnia part of it.

Which is why Mignini managed to have both trials run concurrently in front of the same judge-panel. That's probably a normal thing for Italy, but it helped Mignini to have those inadmissible memorials available to the judge-panel - I'm sure you'll agree.

Lesson learned: you just cannot chuck in the word, and all of a sudden they are legally admissible.

 

[Dan O.]

This would be a good time to concede that ... that CT didn't report the break in to Nappy.

Where are you jumping to this conclusion from? We know only who took the official report two months later after Meredith's murder. We don't know who CT talked to at the time of the break in.

We don't even know where that particular meme started. The only link between the two that I have found is the reference to the summary report in the Massei court transcripts that gave us what we currently know. An impreciese report on that dates proceedings could have left the impression that Monica took the report at the time of the break in. I provided all of the relavent names and dates so someone could try to chase down such a lead.

 

[Dan O.]

Don't wriggle out of the fact Amanda voluntarily and of her own volition, made a claim Patrick did it and she was there witnessing Mez' screams.

The police are not clairvoyant. When they interviewed *all* of the house mates and Mez' friends, they're not to know Amanda was going to blurt out a false accusation.

Of course they are going to record it. In fact, Amanda followed it up with a "gift" statement in her own hand saying she stood by "seeing Patrick in blurry flashing images."

We all have to take responsibility for our own actions.

Do you have the audio or video recordings of that night or are you claiming clairvoyance to know what happened?

 

[Vixen]

So what is the prosecution case for the knife evidence? Peter Gill thinks it's crap. And who is Peter Gill?

"Dr. Peter Gill is a world renowned DNA expert. Dr. Gill is a coauthor of the 1985 paper in Nature that introduced forensic DNA testing."

So who do I trust on this issue? Somebody on the internet that fails to make even one argument for the reliability of the DNA on the knife evidence beyond their own credulity or Peter Gill? What do you think the answer is?

Here's an article about Peter Gill
http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/...adds-voice-to-amanda-knox-case/article/397213

Perhaps you could point us in the direction of an article written about another famous forensic DNA expert that supports Stefanoni's findings?
Perhaps you could put forth a single reason that you believe the arguments put forth in this thread that the DNA evidence on the knife is unreliable and not actual evidence for the guilt of Knox beyond your own credulity?

One thing that I failed to include in the list above of arguments that have been put forth in this thread against the notion that the knife was involved in the crime was just how friggin crazy the theory is that the knife was used in the crime. Knox is supposed to have left Sollecito's apartment with a cooking knife, used it to stab somebody without leaving a trace of evidence in Kercher's room that she did that and then transported the same knife back to Sollecito's apartment where despite the incredible cunning she displayed by committing the murder in Kercher's bedroom while not leaving any evidence there, she is incapable of cleaning the knife so that Kercher's DNA can't be found on it?

​

Professor David Balding of UCL.

http://m.pnas.org/content/110/30/12241.full

science
Authors
David J. Balding1
University College London Genetics Institute, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom
Edited by Terence P. Speed, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and accepted by the Editorial Board May 31, 2013 (received for review November 13, 2012)
Abstract

Enhancements in sensitivity now allow DNA profiles to be obtained from only tens of picograms of DNA, corresponding to a few cells, even for samples subject to degradation from environmental exposure. However, low-template DNA (LTDNA) profiles are subject to stochastic effects, such as “dropout” and “dropin” of alleles, and highly variable stutter peak heights. Although the sensitivity of the newly developed methods is highly appealing to crime investigators, courts are concerned about the reliability of the underlying science. High-profile cases relying on LTDNA evidence have collapsed amid controversy, including the case of Hoey in the United Kingdom and the case of Knox and Sollecito in Italy. I argue that rather than the reliability of the science, courts and commentators should focus on the validity of the statistical methods of evaluation of the evidence. Even noisy DNA evidence can be more powerful than many traditional types of evidence, and it can be helpful to a court as long as its strength is not overstated. There have been serious shortcomings in statistical methods for the evaluation of LTDNA profile evidence, however. Here, I propose a method that allows for multiple replicates with different rates of dropout, sporadic dropins, different amounts of DNA from different contributors, relatedness of suspected and alternate contributors, “uncertain” allele designations, and degradation. R code implementing the method is open source, facilitating wide scrutiny. I illustrate its good performance using real cases and simulated crime scene profiles.
<SNIP>

Edited by jsfisher: 

Excessive copied text removed for compliance with Rule 4 of the Membership Agreement.

 

[Vixen]

Do you have the audio or video recordings of that night or are you claiming clairvoyance to know what happened?

We don't need a crystal ball, we have Amanda's signed statements.

 

[Vixen]

Total absolute Nonsense. Specifically what behavior? In fact you would have to make this so called behavior up. But of course, that is what you do.

If Amanda did it, and several judges, including the pre-trial judges believed she did, and not only that, wielded the killer knife, then Amanda joins Joanna as being that ultra rare killer, a female who kills by stabbing.

 

[Grinder]

Not so Grinder. The origin of a fire is often the least damaged because the fuel is reduced in that area before the fire gets to its hottest stage.

The story is that the scarf caught on fire and that started enough fire to badly damage the house. the scarf would have been long gone.

Come on Grinder. He never bought it at all! This is Rudy's testimony.

You can say the real burglar "fronted him the laptop and phone if you want but you're just filling in the holes to support your own theory. A theory that there isn't a shred of testimony or evidence to support. Are you making it up as you suggest Nina did in her book?

No I have the Spanish kids and their observations. The fact that Rudi said he didn't buy when questioned by Mignini for the murder trials doesn't really mean much.

If he was just fencing or if he had done the burglary, either way he would have had the stuff.

He also said he had a date with Mez so I guess that must be true.

 

[Vixen]

John Kercher wrote a book that reads like a guilter hate site. He has done anything but "lay low". Lyle Kercher has been talking about just getting a verdict and putting the case behind them so they can grieve. They have all complained that Amanda "became a minor celebrity" at the expense of Meredith, which is absurd to the point of being truly sad.

The Kerchers have been anything but silent.

Amanda and Raffaele have been subjected to a terrible miscarriage of justice, and the Kerchers bear some responsibility for statements they have made at the least, if not the statements and legitimate inquiry they should have been pushing for.

I feel great sympathy for the Kercher's as the victim's family. But their grief does not entitle them to stand by silently while two innocent people and their families are made to suffer unjustly in the court of public opinion. They should either state their continued belief in guilt, and explain why, or admit a mistake was made and call off the lunatics on the web who claim to be speaking on their behalf.

At a minimum, the Kerchers could make it clear that none of the idiots harassing Amanda and Raf are "doing it for Meredith", or "standing up for the Kerchers". They could do that, even if they felt they weren't sure about amanda and Raf's guilt - unless they actually intend to encourage that type of behavior.
With all due respect, silence now is not an option, because they have been anything but silent in the past. John Kercher's statements have been appalling ("why is she still running around loose?", after Nencini and awaiting ISC appeal.)

Nothing will likely bring relief for the Kerchers, but the truth is the only thing can se that might, at least with time.

There is no evidence (a) Amanda has received death threats, apart from US tabloids relying on Amanda's PR agency self-serving press reports, (b) they are in any way connected to the Kerchers.

Anyway, Amanda herself said she gets letters from people saying how hot she is.

 

[Vixen]

]DNA evidence showed Mez DNA on the blade of the murder weapon and Amanda's on the hilt.[/HILITE] Witness Kokomani, in addition, reported being threatened by a drug-crazed Amanda on the murder night, brandishing a large knife./QUOTE]

No, in fact, there is no evidence that should make anyone believe that Raffaele's cooking knife was the murder weapon. In fact it is absurd idea. But of course you knew that.

Kokamani, who covered his face during his testimony said he met Knox with her uncle and Sollecito in early August. She WASN'T even in Perugia in August, doesn't have an uncle and didn't meet Raffaele until October. He also described her with large gaps in her teeth. (Of course, Amanda doesn't have gaps in her teeth)

Reports are that Kokomani was paid 100 thousand Euros to tell his tale but that has never been confirmed.

As we already established, Koko deliberately botched his testimony. Omerta.

 

[Vixen]

What lawyer?

No that doesn't work anyway, if you're suggesting she was offered but declined counsel. There are very clear rules in play in order for there to be a valid waiver of her right to a lawyer. Not in this case.

If you walk into the police station and proffer information of your own volition, there is no requirement for the police to advise a lawyer.

As soon as Amanda's status changed from witness to suspect - when she said she was there at the murder - the interview was immediately suspended.

Amanda signed her voluntary statement voluntarily.

You might wish she had kept her mouth shut, as a lawyer would have advised her. Unfortunately,you cannot wind back the clock.

 

[Vixen]

For the life of me I thought Vixen was babe in the woods, on the fence neutral in this matter. At least, that's what s/he assured us umpteen posts ago.

Still am. I'm still awaiting the slightest soupcon that swings the balance to innocence. Give me an alibi, anything.

 

[Dan O.]

We don't need a crystal ball, we have Amanda's signed statements.

Amanda signed lots of statements in the days since Mereedith was discovered. That doesn't mean she read or understood their content. It's what Amanda is talking about when she says she should have stood up to them and not signed the papers just to end the abuse.

Italian law is clear. In these situations the suspect is required to be represented by a lawyer.

Raffaele did stand up to them for a while. He refused to sign the crap summary that the police were putting in front of him. They finally got him to sign around 3:30 in the morning. The start and end times are right there in that document for you to read.

You are able to read these documents, right? The mention of audio books leads to the speculation that you might not be able to fully appreciate these documents and photographic evidence.

 

[Dougm]

If you walk into the police station and proffer information of your own volition, there is no requirement for the police to advise a lawyer.

As soon as Amanda's status changed from witness to suspect - when she said she was there at the murder - the interview was immediately suspended.
Amanda signed her voluntary statement voluntarily.

You might wish she had kept her mouth shut, as a lawyer would have advised her. Unfortunately,you cannot wind back the clock.

This is verbatim the prosecution's version of the story. We might as well just accept everything they say as gospel, then we wouldn't need a trial.

Oh, I forgot, the courts said Amanda is not guilty. Good thing we double checked with them instead of just blindly believing what the prosecution told us.