Now I found your post.
I rest my case; Finzi was badly briefed. He justifies his choice on the fact that he had been told the wounds were deep. BUT no dimensions, no description of a type of knife.
Your "case" was that he only picked the first one he saw. Now, if you believe he was only briefed approximately, this might well be. But it seems a rather inconsequential observation.
In fact all the wounds were compatible with a smaller knife than the one he collected. Some wounds were ONLY compatible with a smaller knife.
IMHO, they were not. I believe noting there was a very deep and long wound is an important element that would suggest any rational investigator to pay a particular interest to large knives.
You say that the large wound was compatible with a small knife, but I have to disagree. Theoreticall, once could say any knife with a blade longer than 8.5 cm could be compatible. But it's theoretical. A large wound of that kind indicates probably a large knife, and the imprint on the bedsheet looks like that of a knife with
at least a 12cm long blade.
All these elements are circumstantial, but they are an indication.
I say that such a large wounds tends to be incompatible with a small knife, because the lengh of a knive determines not also depth of wound abut also the strenght of the leverage. It's quite difficult to produce such a long cut with clean margins like that with a thin blade only 8.5cm long. I'm not saying I have any proof that this is physically impossible, but intuitively I would look for a larger knife, it looks like a tool more likely to cause that wound.
Anyway, still I don't see the point about Finzi. In fact, Finzi collected both a large knife and a smaller knife from the apartment, on the basis that they looked interesting. And that's a rational procedure.
Can you say the smaller wounds were not compatible with a steak knife?
No, I cannot tell that a steak knife is incompatible with a stabbing. I can only tell that it would be irrational to collect steak knives, especially from an apartment where you just found two "good" knives certainly compatible with a stabbing, and worth to be analysed immediately.
If you read Finzi's testimony, however, you would note Finzi says the apartment was seized entirely: all objects inside were seized, thus including steak knives. The police reserved to pick up any other object from the apartment if they deemed that could be useful to investigations.
What about the knives in Knox's kitchen and under her bed? By dismissing other knives as being too small he made an error.
But there is no "dismissal", there was no definitive decision, it was only temporary. The other knives were actually "dismissed" later only because DNA of Meredith was found on Sollecito's kitchen knife.
It should also be noted that knives inside the cottage were considered less interesting than those in Sollecito's apartment in the first place, because a possible Meredith's DNA finding on them would have been of less probative value.
There must have been a smaller knife. He did not look for one because he jumped to a conclusion not supported by the evidence. This is characteristic of the police approach, jump to a conclusion, act on it, ignore what the evidence says.
I don't think Finzi "jumped" to any conclusion. It's simply normal for investigators to make choices. Investigators have no other choice but making choices, they have to use intuition and comprehensive perception, and their approach has an economy. It is just false that Finzi chose "without" evidence. He chose on summary information, and he chose rationally.
Because of his 'instinct' that the knife on top, the first knife he saw, was a possible murder weapon, the prosecution were forced in to the two knife theory, because this large knife could NOT have inflicted all the wounds.
After you know what his actual criteria were, you stop emphasizing a false idea that he picked a knife because it was "on top" or because it was "the first he saw". This is defence spin, trying to invent non-existing causal link.
He did
not chose the knife because it was the first one he saw. It's false. He doesn't say so. He says he picked it because it appeared interesting, ans also picked another one because of the same reason.
So where did he get the gloves from? In the crime scene videos we see that the police use boxes of gloves, not individually packed pairs. So who pulled out gloves before him? Where had they been? Where had the box of gloves been? We have a source of contamination here.
Sources of contamination need to be proven with some substantial argument.
I accept if you say so that there is no concept of chain of evidence in Italy. However if considering the interpretation of LCN touch or trace DNA the integrity of the sample and the collection process is crucial.
If you want to dismiss a piece of circumstantial evidence you need a strong, substantial argument, capable of actually crushing the evidence completely. To point out that the circumstantial evidence is not "perfect" in cartesian terms is no argument. Meredith's DNA found on a blade in Sollecito's apartment is a very peculiar and improbable finding, not something you can dismiss on a concept of scientific quality.
So this was a standard process? I assume then that most of the evidence was treated in the same way? Unpackaged at the police station, documented, and repackaged? Was this done in the same room? On the same desk? What were the cleaning processes between examination of each item? Was the box sitting in the office where the evidence underwent repertazione? Had Gubbiotti been to the crime scene? Had anyone else passing through that office? if you say this is routine procedure I accept that. Yet it is another opportunity for the knife or the box it was put in to be contaminated with MK DNA.
It's not me who says that. It's Gubbiotti who says so in his testimony. He explains he unpacked the knife to do a procedure called "repartazione".
He was not asked all the questions you ask.
I accept there was a great deal of poor practice, that the handling of the knife was not worse than the handling of most of the evidence.
Reference please.
In contrast please see Goray, M. and R. A. H. van Oorschot (2014). "The complexities of DNA transfer during a social setting." Legal Medicine 17(2): 82-91. Where they document DNA transmission in a social situation not involving body 'fluids'. Interestingly one participant 'imported' DNA from an unknown individual which he subsequently spread first on to a glass (secondary transfer)then from that glass on to a table (tertiary transfer). If this had been a crime scene the finding of this unknown persons DNA would be argued as evidence they were there. However in a controlled experiment it has been demonstrated that an individual does not need to have been present for their DNA to be found on an object in a room. No body fluids here.
The premise is that I don't have Oorschot's article before my eyes, but as for what I recall by memory, such "situation" produced by the experiments only tends to support what I said, no way it contradicts it. The experiment is based on massive DNA sources (like glasses),
not microscopic sources. My understanding is such massive sources were even deposited through liquid mean (saliva) and transferred through wet surface (human skin). But above all it's the massive original amount produced through saliva what makes this seems having nothing to do with what we are talking about. The knowledge about a stain of biological fluid (wet at the origin, then dried) containing massive amounts of DNA that is likely to be touched, equates to assume there is a large-size (non microscopic) DNA stain to start with, and that the carrier is likely to touch the stain. Also, you should assume that the same carrier will be likly to touch the item.
And even under those ideal pre-set conditions, tertiary transfer is still a relatively rare event.
But in a real scenario, such assumptions/conditions should be
proven first. (ths is basically what Novelli and the Cassazione say)
No conditions like that are proven for the bra clasp or the knife.
So why were not all the scratches tested? Perfectly reasonable to swab the blade. Not sure why anyone worries about whether there was a small scratch where Stef says she saw one.
In fact I'm not worried. But ther was one at least. And I just guess she swabbed seizable portions of the blade.
It does not improve the issue. She submitted to court a document that was false. The hand written entry is supposed to have been contemporaneous. It is hard to see how she could have made that mistake if the document had been written at the time.
I don't know when it was written, but I would naturally think the report was written subsequently. And despite we call it "Stefanoni's report", I believe it was not redacted by Stefanoni, certainly not by Stefanoni alone.
Several pages of the report seem to be the re-pasting of pre-written texts, repeating themselves with only some data changing.
Especially since subsequently documents were found that documented the use of the QUBIT. So the hand written note must have been made later. The fact that there is one 'error' justifies going through and checking all other facts she gave against the original data.
There's nothing wrong chacking data. I just note the defence never intended to seriously check the data. Their approach was always opportunistic and intended to search pretext, never intended to thoroughly exploit their options to check data.
Once this one 'error' was identified all the rest should have been reviewed. This review should have been led by the director of the laboratory, possibly with an external expert to independently review the data and ensure the report was otherwise true.
This is not something you can say. You can't tell who is to be appointed to "review". Quality of any investigating action or evidence collection can sure be investigated as well, but not along with the principles you seem to believe. A review anyway should be motivated on a principle that does not dispute a principle of trust for Stefanoni as a witness, because to dispute a witness sincerity one would need a proof.
All this would have to be done by a judge, and anyway the judge would need to assess himselfto what extend the imprecision of an expert could actually influence evidence. Because the evidentiary relevance is a key concept: even showing that Stefanoni's documentation activity or scientific investigation had a mediocre quality, would likely be itself irrelevant as for the evidence.
We do not know what was said, I think what I quoted could be regarded as his comments on the record his report is 28 November 2007 reporting on the testing done over several days from 12 November.
Potenza raised the issue that Steffanoni did not follow standard protocols. We do not know what he said at the time but he certainly documented objections shortly after. I think this means that the argument that defence had to accept the findings of the incidente probatorio, because they did not object is not valid. They objected to the methodology. This was contested evidence not mutually accepted evidence.
If one raises issues about quality of documentation against Stefanoni, the same should raise equally alarming censure about the Potenza's quality of documentation.
The point about the "incidente probatorio" tells me that maybe you didn't understand exactly what I was saying when I was talking about objections. Doesn't matter. I wouldn't say the defence has to accept the findigns of the incidente probatorio, this makes little sense in legal words. The incidente probatorio is evidence, it's shaped like that. Potenza's observations are part of the incidente probatorio, they are part of the "finding". What is in Potenza's words is part of the documentation. However, also what is
not in Potenza's word is part of the incidente probatorio. The lacks in his documentations are part of how the piece of evidence is shaped.
I'm not saying that the defence cannot attempt to re-open or to discuss and change the findings of the incidente probaorio, but if they intend to do so through searching documentation, they should do that seriously.
Poster davefoc made an interesting example about his experience as a juror in a drnk driving case. That could be an interesting comparison because it is possible to show how it's the rules that influence the evidence and how the evidence work, not an absolute concept of "scientific" quality. That could be a topic for another post in the future.
