Continuation Part 16: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

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zotz said:
Question: How come you left the judiciary right after that verdict?

Hellmann: "I was practically forced to. Our decision was received with reactions of contempt. I can still remember the whistling and the shouting by a claque that had gathered outside the Court house on the evening of the verdict. From the next day I felt surrounded by a growing hostility. In the bars of Perugia they were saying I had sold out to the Americans, that I had yielded to the pressures of the CIA. Tall tales, of course, but what hit me more than the defamatory lynching that lasted years, was the reaction of colleagues in the judiciary. Nearly all of them stopped greeting me. In particular those who in various roles had been involved in the case. I realized that my Court had been a lone voice in a Courthouse where all the judges, starting with the GUP (Judge of the Preliminary hearing) up to those of various review courts, while criticizing the investigation, had endorsed the charges. In addition I had good possibilities of becoming the President of the Tribunal and naturally that position was assigned to another colleague who certainly was very worthy but I had some suspicion that it was a retaliation. So, six months after the sentence I decided to retire."
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Hellmann's statement certainly sheds light on how an Italian court of first instance convicted six seismologists of manslaughter . . .
 
Hellmann certainly became an advocate for his ruling after the trial. I would say during the trial he was an advocate for justice. He was a brother in seeking the truth. ;)
 
Grinder said:
Thanks. Wonder why they tested his asap and the cottage so much later. I think waiting takes away the bleach covering factor, but wish experts from the box seat or the suites would weigh in.
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They didn't test the cottage until they were utterly desperate. They had absolutely no evidence at all against Amanda or Raffaele other than Amanda's quickly withdrawn statements and she was heading for release, having previously assumed they would find mountains of it. By Dec 18th, the case had collapsed. They weren't going to get very far, even in Italy with a non confession, some fried computers and a few innocently explainable bathroom samples.

One theory is that based on Amanda's bath mat shuffle story, they were hoping frantically and probably as a last resort, that she did pick up Kercher's blood on her bare feet on the morning of the 2nd and that if they found her latent prints with luminol they could convict her with them. As it turned out, they did exactly that even without finding blood.
 
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Grinder said:
Hellmann certainly became an advocate for his ruling after the trial. I would say during the trial he was an advocate for justice. He was a brother in seeking the truth. ;)
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I would like to think that he was simply attempting to apply justice in accordance with his oath of office.
 
sept79 said:
Hellmann's statement certainly sheds light on how an Italian court of first instance convicted six seismologists of manslaughter . . .
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Was Hellmann an exception in a system that was almost solidly in support of the prosecution? Why did the Conti-Vecchiotti report not end the debate where it should have ended? It seems to me that a lot of people really want them (even today) to be guilty. The mystery is why.
 
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Kauffer said:
They didn't test the cottage until they were utterly desperate. They had absolutely no evidence at all against Amanda or Raffaele other than Amanda's quickly withdrawn statements and she was heading for release, having previously assumed they would find mountains of it. By Dec 18th, the case had collapsed. They weren't going to get very far, even in Italy with a non confession, some fried computers and a few innocently explainable bathroom samples.

One theory is that based on Amanda's bath mat shuffle story, they were hoping frantically and probably as a last resort, that she did pick up Kercher's blood on her bare feet on the morning of the 2nd and that if they found her latent prints with luminol they could convict her with them. As it turned out, they did exactly that even without finding blood.
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without disputing your main points I still would like to know if waiting with luminol has any advantages.

The second visit was coordinated with the defense since they now had a right to observe which is a reason for the weird video.
 
Grinder said:
without disputing your main points I still would like to know if waiting with luminol has any advantages.

The second visit was coordinated with the defense since they now had a right to observe which is a reason for the weird video.
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Oh ok, you mean the question - does luminol work better if you don't test immediately?

What did you mean earlier when you wrote about the later testing "takes away the bleach covering factor"?
 
Kauffer said:
Oh ok, you mean the question - does luminol work better if you don't test immediately?

What did you mean earlier when you wrote about the later testing "takes away the bleach covering factor"?
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Bad on me. Yes I wanted to know if there was a good reason to wait
 
Grinder said:
Thanks. Wonder why they tested his asap and the cottage so much later. I think waiting takes away the bleach covering factor, but wish experts from the box seat or the suites would weigh in.
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What makes you think they waited? The cottage door was photographed wide open and the seals pealed back on the morning of the 14th.
 
Dan O. said:
What makes you think they waited? The cottage door was photographed wide open and the seals pealed back on the morning of the 14th.
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That was Barbie's pic, wasn't it? Well I thought that what the records showed and I never heard differently but perhaps I missed it. Regardless they waited longer at the cottage than at Raf's even if they luminoled on the 14th Nov. at the cottage.
 
Grinder said:
That was Barbie's pic, wasn't it? Well I thought that what the records showed and I never heard differently but perhaps I missed it. Regardless they waited longer at the cottage than at Raf's even if they luminoled on the 14th Nov. at the cottage.
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The door was found opened on the morning of the 14th. It needs to be dark to see the glow from Luminol. What night (ie, the dark time) immediately preceeds the morning of the 14th? (I'll even permit you to consult a calendar if it will help)
 
Kinky hair on Meredith's body

Ken Dine said:
If the Italian police hadn’t found a Black man's kinky hair at the crime scene (on or near Meredith’s body), then what purpose would there be to take a sample strand of hair from Lumumba’s head?
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I posed a question about the African hairs recently on the IIP forum and they said that the "black kinky hair" found in Meredith's room wasn't even hair but were fibers from a piece of clothing or a carpet. But it could have been the impetus for the police to think a black person was involved.
 
Dan O. said:
The door was found opened on the morning of the 14th. It needs to be dark to see the glow from Luminol. What night (ie, the dark time) immediately preceeds the morning of the 14th? (I'll even permit you to consult a calendar if it will help)
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But why would we suspect that the luminol was applied then? Wasn't the luminol and other activity on Dec 18th part of a documented incidente probatorio where the defence were on site?
 
Kauffer said:
But why would we suspect that the luminol was applied then? Wasn't the luminol and other activity on Dec 18th part of a documented incidente probatorio where the defence were on site?
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Yes it was definitely December 18 although as far as I can tell the Kastle–Meyer test in the bathroom had already been done on some other day before they arrived. DanO might know more about that.

Everything about the Dec 18 inspection is strange. If you watch the 2 videos we have, they don't even go into Amanda's room. She's suppose to be their prime suspect so why weren't they going over her room with a fine-toothed comb? Looking under the bed, pulling everything apart etc....maybe there was some victims blood somewhere they missed.

Part 1 of that inspection is on youtube and it's 54mins. All they seem to be doing is bumbling around in Meredith's room looking at the floor and trying to find Guede's footprints they erased. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0OznU6lvwU

I don't know what to make of the article from November 11 that I posted. I guess it's just one of those things that make you go hmm. It does say they're heading to the cottage on Tuesday which would be the 13th and the next day the door is photographed wide open.
 
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MichaelB said:
New translation: Amy Frost witness statement November 2, 2007: http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Amy-Frost-Statement-2-Nov-2007.pdf

Frost says twice in her statement that Amanda was Meredith's friend.
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Frost says a lot of things. This statement is benign. By the time she gives testimony to the Massei court, her account has been fleshed out and she becomes a serious character witness against Amanda, reporting conversations with Meredith about her. Indeed, before this testimony, but after her initial witness statement, she also gave a statement to police in Bergamo and later, when she returned to England, telephoned Interpol to report that Meredith had keys to the downstairs apartment. A British police officer visited her at home in Derby to take a statement about this, according to Frost.

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.com/Amy_Frost's_Testimony_(English)
 
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Grinder said:
Hellmann certainly became an advocate for his ruling after the trial. I would say during the trial he was an advocate for justice. He was a brother in seeking the truth. ;)
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I need to double check a assumption - are you then saying that Hellmann becomes LESS reliable after the trial, because he's an advocate? That during the trial he was simply an advocate for justice, but then after became slightly less trustworthy?
 
Bill Williams said:
I need to double check a assumption - are you then saying that Hellmann becomes LESS reliable after the trial, because he's an advocate? That during the trial he was simply an advocate for justice, but then after became slightly less trustworthy?
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Leaving Massei aside because I think the situation is less clear, let me suggest that each of Hellmann, Nencini and Marasca/Bruno and colleagues had come to a definite conclusion prior to hearing any testimony or argument. In Hellmann's case, he was smart enough to have worked out that there was something inherently wrong with the knife and bra clasp DNA results and how they had been erroneously interpreted, before he appointed CandV and that CandV told him what he, correctly this time, already knew.
 
Kauffer said:
Leaving Massei aside because I think the situation is less clear, let me suggest that each of Hellmann, Nencini and Marasca/Bruno and colleagues had come to a definite conclusion prior to hearing any testimony or argument. In Hellmann's case, he was smart enough to have worked out that there was something inherently wrong with the knife and bra clasp DNA results and how they had been erroneously interpreted, before he appointed CandV and that CandV told him what he, correctly this time, already knew.
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I'm one who is of the mind set that Massei would have convicted AK/RS even if a video showing Guede to be the sole assaulter/murderer had surfaced.
 
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