Continuation Part 17: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Diocletus]

The idea Rudy could not possibly have associated with Amanda or Raff is a very American one. You have segregation there we just do not have in Europe.

LOL. R U Serious.

 

[Diocletus]

are traditionally racist, so the idea they were soft on Rudy and hard on the American and their own is the usual Göbbels-type propaganda your kind have been perpetrating. It relies on the hope the American public are so racist, they'll swallow the idea it was the black guy what done it all by himself. The cynicism doesn't fool anyone except those with an agenda anyway.

It sure is a good thing for Rudy that the police went off half-cocked and then had to try to save face by redirecting away from Rudy, otherwise the police might have done to Rudy what they did to . . . Lumumba.

 

[js202]

Q.E.D.

It sure is a good thing for Rudy that the police went off half-cocked and then had to try to save face by redirecting away from Rudy, otherwise the police might have done to Rudy what they did to . . . Lumumba.

Yes, I mean, after all, this sort of "cynicism" only "fools" those with two brain cells to rub together...

 

[Vixen]

Hi Diocletus,
So I just looked at the chart linked by Methos earlier,
what the heck?

Field Rep 10/Lab Rep 28
was indeed tested on Tuesday, Nov. 6t.,
Plate 357, Serial #'s 688 + 689.
Profile: Missing???



Missing Profile???
As were the testing results of the blood found on Stefano's bed,
and his blue pillowcase found on the floor in a different part of the flat.


[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=480&pictureid=10048[/qimg]


Heya Vixen,
I still like correspondin' with you,
even though you have never worn a bikini!


As we carry on the conversation,
(Nice! Doug M),
I wonder, what do you, Vixen,
make of those Missing Profiles
from The Down Stairs Crime Scene?


Why would all the big wigs interrogate Stefano, Marco, Ricardo,
but not Giacomo,
on Nov. 3rd,
and tell them 3 boyz to keep quiet
IF they knew the blood video'd on Nov. 3rd
was not there after Flyin' Squad officer Zugarini 1st broke in
+ PM Mignini, lookin' soooo cute in them blue booties,
surely searched the boyz downstairs flat on Nov. 2nd,
as Miss Kercher still lay dead, upstairs, under her duvet?

Heheh. I recall I did wear a bikini once whilst lying on a yacht lapping up the sun. A Swedish yacht went by and I got terribly jealous, as they like to sunbathe nude, altho' one is not supposed to gawp at them. Being a keen swimmer, I prefer the standard little black swimming cozzie. Soz!

It's clear the cops didn't consider the downstairs evidence relevant. In a murder trial some judicious self-editing needs to go on so the trial can concentrate on relevant evidence.

 

[Vixen]

That wasn't really an answer to my questions, was it?


Where did I say that?

You claimed the forensic cops cleverly managed to isolate random mixed DNA of Amanda and Mez, whilst carefully ignoring mixed DNA of the other housemates.

Logical fallacy #1. FALSE PREMISE = "Amanda lived there, so of course her DNA and/or blood was mixed with the murder victim on the night of the murder."

Logical fallacy #2. Following on the FALSE PREMISE #1 = "It therefore follows the cops deliberately conspired to fail to find mixed DNA and/or blood of the other housemates with Mez'".

Do you see the error in your analytical processing faculties?

 

[Vixen]

It's my understanding that once the EDFs are fed into a computer program (such as Stef had used), that the results of the raw data can then be manipulated subjectively quite a bit by the person analyzing the DNA (especially w/ LCN-DNA or mixed DNA samples), which is the purpose in providing the defense with the EDFs, to allow the defense to verify the prosecution's results.

Ideally, to avoid manipulated results favoring the prosecution, the technician shouldn't even have the suspect's DNA profile available for comparison (and potential manipulation).

Here in America, they are also now considering on feeding DNA labs occasional known DNA samples to check their accuracy, and to make these tests meaningful, the crime-lab technician wouldn't know which samples are a test or from an actual case.

DNA can be a wonderful tool that can both exonerate as well as rightfully convict guilty people, but we are far from having a reliable crime lab system, especially when dealing with mixed DNA samples and LCN-DNA samples, such as was supposedly found on Meredith's bra clasp.

It's the forensic cops' job to match the DNA found to an individual.

Enter Steffanoni. Doh_!

 

[Kauffer]

All of the slander cases still pending will expire. It was all for show. As you said, this is over. But recent discussions here touched on holding the authorities responsible for their actions. Prosecutors should not be immune to charges of egregious misconduct. Italy took care of Mignini in their own way. They pushed him along toward retirement and in doing so made sure that he would no longer be prosecuting cases. That method is not acceptable and needs to change. Will this case cause change? No. Why? Because Italy has done an incredible job of clouding the truth of this case. It will be forever seen as a blur and I see no positive changes coming from it. That is a shame but I think it is a reality. I hope I am wrong.

That would be a shame. Getting an innocent person freed is a tremendous achievement; getting a system to change prevents the need to do it so often.

 

[Kauffer]

It's the forensic cops' job to match the DNA found to an individual.

Enter Steffanoni. Doh_!

Yeah. But they should do it blind. Otherwise there is in built bias.

 

[Vixen]

All of the slander cases still pending will expire. It was all for show. As you said, this is over. But recent discussions here touched on holding the authorities responsible for their actions. Prosecutors should not be immune to charges of egregious misconduct. Italy took care of Mignini in their own way. They pushed him along toward retirement and in doing so made sure that he would no longer be prosecuting cases. That method is not acceptable and needs to change. Will this case cause change? No. Why? Because Italy has done an incredible job of clouding the truth of this case. It will be forever seen as a blur and I see no positive changes coming from it. That is a shame but I think it is a reality. I hope I am wrong.

No, they will not. You should be overjoyed that, at last, on Sept. 7th, Amanda will be able to substantiate her claims of torture and police brutality, in her day in court.

 

[christianahannah]

I don't know the Italian laws and protocols about who is obliged to provide a DNA sample to the police during an investigation, but I can't see a good reason why housemates and friends would refuse to give a reference sample? Those samples are usually not stored in a database (unless one is later identified as the killer) and only used in the specific case so they aren't "made public" in the sense of everybody has access to my DNA profile, so privacy concerns wouldn't make sense.

I am not always clear but my comment concerning privacy means that if a reference sample was collected from say the roommates or the guys downstairs we may not have knowledge of such since none had been or have been charged with the crime. As far as not providing a reference sample voluntarily there have been reasons for not doing so (whether those reasons are valid are not I will not debate here as the subject may veer into OT territory).

I'll have to do some digging (can't recall right now where I read it - one of the books or Perugia Shock) but IIRC either Comodi or Stefanoni herself asked something like "How contamination could have been possible, since of those 400+ samples we took, in only one of them the DNA of one of our investigators was found?" So they must have had the DNA of their team "on file", as Ken said.

I would think that is correct about the team and was not questioning that part. I mean the lab wasn't all bad.

On the Fingerprint Map the locations of prints belonging to Kercher, Sollecito, Knox, Silenzi, Mezzetti, Romanelli and Guede are shown, alongside those that were "Utile non attribuita" (four of those in Meredith Kercher's room).

The Uomos and Donnas in Stefanoni's presentation are indicating that for those individuals she got a profile that would have been useful to identify the person. So we have at least 8 male and 3 female profiles from the cottage and Sollecito's apartment that could have been identified and in a not suspect centred investigation would have been identified.

I will have to read her testimony and look at her presentation again. I don't remember that as precise as you but am ready to take a second glance.

What I'm having problems with is this "We can't prove a negative, but we'll use it as an argument anyway" attitude. "Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." is the argument when it comes to the lack of traces from Knox and Sollecito in Meredith Kercher's bedroom, "The traces may be there, it's just that we haven't found them..." (Sure, 100+ samples from that room and no trace of them means nothing.) On the other hand the argument against Guede entering the house through Romanelli's window is: "We didn't find one trace of him in that room, it's impossible that he has been there." Wait a sec, 100+ samples from the murder room aren't enough to prove the absence of Knox and Sollecito, but 3 samples from Romanelli's room are enough to prove Guede's absence from that room? (It's the same reasoning about "not finding Sollecito's DNA elsewhere in the apartment" that is used to make it look as if 165b had any meaning...)

And that is even before I question the use of the "We didn't find mixed traces of Kercher and the other housemates, so the mixed traces of Kercher and Knox must be crime related" argument.

There always is the possibility that more samples or better samples could have been collected. That will always be the fail of a human investigation in a less that sterile environment.

AFAIK the files that the analysis on amandaknoxcase.com is based on are those that were available to the defence during the trial. Any other useful information that might be there somewhere and that might see the day of light, has to be described as "suppressed" because it wasn't available to the defence during the trial i.e. when it mattered. (my 0,02 Euro)

There were quite a bit of documents available now (to the public) that were not available earlier because they had not been accessed from the court. They were not suppressed. These are the documents we are discussing recently, however, I would definitely be interested in the documents you feel were suppressed.

 

[Vixen]

Yeah. But they should do it blind. Otherwise there is in built bias.

You b'aint able to match DNA without comparing it to suspects. Doh_!

 

[Diocletus]

No, they will not. You should be overjoyed that, at last, on Sept. 7th, Amanda will be able to substantiate her claims of torture and police brutality, in her day in court.

She would have to be nuts to go near those head-smackers/mind benders.

 

[Methos]

You claimed the forensic cops cleverly managed to isolate random mixed DNA of Amanda and Mez, whilst carefully ignoring mixed DNA of the other housemates.

Nope, I claimed wrote that the "forensic cops" as you call them, weren't able to identify mixed DNA of Meredith Kercher and the other housemates even if they wanted to. Just because they didn't mind to ask the "other housemates" for a sample... For whatever reason...

Logical fallacy #1. FALSE PREMISE = "Amanda lived there, so of course her DNA and/or blood was mixed with the murder victim on the night of the murder."

Nice try to build up a strawman to knock down. The (still standing and not refuted point) about the mixed DNA is: "Amanda lived there, so of course her DNA and/or blood was mixed with the murder victim('s)".on the night of the murder." Barbie's statement about the mixed blood here is ridiculous. Who claimed that the DNA was mixed on the night of the murder anyway? There is a video showing how some of those traces got mixed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APLa0lBfTLo

Logical fallacy #2. Following on the FALSE PREMISE #1 = "It therefore follows the cops deliberately conspired to fail to find mixed DNA and/or blood of the other housemates with Mez'".

See answer to first quote...

Do you see the error in your analytical processing faculties?

No.

 

[Bill Williams]

She would have to be nuts to go near those head-smackers/mind benders.

Vixen is demonstrating in this thread why Knox should not got back to Italy while the legal foolishness continues, despite the exonerations.

In grand strawman fashion, Vixen tries to sell this as if torture has ever been claimed. Vixen has also demonstrated no appreciation for what a suspect-centric investigation is. Up until March 27, that seemed to be winning the day in Italian courts.

No doubt Vixen approves.

 

[LondonJohn]

You b'aint able to match DNA without comparing it to suspects. Doh_!

Oh Dear. Scientific illiteracy. There are, I imagine, some good places online where one can learn about a) suspect-centric identification (what it is, why it's so wrong, and how to avoid it), and b) the huge dangers and imprecisions inherent in trying to make DNA matches from extremely low-template samples which are both mixed-contributor and containing multiple misleading artifacts.

And perhaps after Vixen reads, learns and understands, she might pass the material on to not-a-real-doctor Stefanoni, who appears to be equally ignorant on these matters (which, not surprisingly, is a great deal more worrying and damning).

 

[Dougm]

Personally, I think race is a red herring here. Rudy just happens to be an Ivorian.

The idea Rudy could not possibly have associated with Amanda or Raff is a very American one. You have segregation there we just do not have in Europe.

Police are traditionally racist, so the idea they were soft on Rudy and hard on the American and their own is the usual Göbbels-type propaganda your kind have been perpetrating. It relies on the hope the American public are so racist, they'll swallow the idea it was the black guy what done it all by himself. The cynicism doesn't fool anyone except those with an agenda anyway.

This faux "Europe is not like you racist Americans" BS is just that. It was Mignini that made the big deal about Patrick, arresting him in the wee hours with little to no evidence he was involved. He also came up with the theory that Rudy, the poor, helpless black guy, was easily manipulated by Amanda because he could not resist the charms of the tempting white woman.

Do you know that something like 75% of the people in Italian jails are immigrants, many of those people of color? The idea that the Italians are not racist while people in the US are is a joke.

Yes, America has a history of slavery, racial segregation, etc. And you know who the people are behind that? White Europeans.

Rudy is no more or less guilty because of his race or skin color. He is guilty because the evidence says so.

 

[LondonJohn]

No, they will not. You should be overjoyed that, at last, on Sept. 7th, Amanda will be able to substantiate her claims of torture and police brutality, in her day in court.

Yes. Yes they will. Italy is going through the motions in some sort of sick face-saving attempt. It is unquestionable that no verdict on these charges will be definitively confirmed by the ISC by the time the SoL expires. So in a judicial sense, this whole thing is a moot farce.

And, incidentally, while I believe that a) in any sort of rational world, there is zero way that these charges against Knox can ever be proven to the standard of conviction; b) Knox is factually innocent of the charges; and c) despite (a) and (b), it's not unlikely that Knox will be found guilty (until the charges expire and she is acquitted under the SoL....

....the question of Knox's guilt/non-guilt/innocence of these charges can be viewed separately from the farcical way in which Italian courts routinely fall foul of the statute of limitations. That's simply no way to administer and apply justice. It's just one more example of how horribly broken the Italian criminal justice system is, and how much it desperately needs root-and-branch reform (including a swathe of new legislation) in order to become in any way fit for purpose. It's a disgrace for a country that would like to think of itself as a major industrialised liberal democracy.

 

[Kauffer]

You b'aint able to match DNA without comparing it to suspects. Doh_!

You simply have numbered or lettered profiles. And then you make comparisons. So, in shorthand, you would report that Person C's sample has been found on an item. You would not know who Person C is if you were running the tests. In other words the tester does not know whom she is looking for because she is not given this information. She is not told that the police suspect is in fact Person B.

She also has to report all her results and her data.

Following this protocol, the tester has no incentive to blow up background noise or contamination in order to get a match.

 

[Kauffer]

Personally, I think race is a red herring here. Rudy just happens to be an Ivorian.

The idea Rudy could not possibly have associated with Amanda or Raff is a very American one. You have segregation there we just do not have in Europe.

Police are traditionally racist, so the idea they were soft on Rudy and hard on the American and their own is the usual Göbbels-type propaganda your kind have been perpetrating. It relies on the hope the American public are so racist, they'll swallow the idea it was the black guy what done it all by himself. The cynicism doesn't fool anyone except those with an agenda anyway.

No. It's an unevidenced one. There was no association. It's got nothing to do with cultural bias.

 

[Kauffer]

You claimed the forensic cops cleverly managed to isolate random mixed DNA of Amanda and Mez, whilst carefully ignoring mixed DNA of the other housemates.

Logical fallacy #1. FALSE PREMISE = "Amanda lived there, so of course her DNA and/or blood was mixed with the murder victim on the night of the murder."

Logical fallacy #2. Following on the FALSE PREMISE #1 = "It therefore follows the cops deliberately conspired to fail to find mixed DNA and/or blood of the other housemates with Mez'".

Do you see the error in your analytical processing faculties?

On #1, Amanda's DNA was in her bathroom - it's undated. Kerchers blood gets washed of on to it causing a mix, or, indeed, the collection process caused the mix. There were almost certainly mixtures in the small bathroom before the murder too.

On #2, if they'd processed the large bathroom which all the flat mates used, they would almost certainly have found other mixtures.

A mixed profile is not evidence of guilt.