Continuation Part 22: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Mr Fied]

It could be a 'putative" budgerigar stain.

The police could see by looking at it (it glowed under flourescence) that it was a vaseline stain. Vaseline glows under a black light.

If you knew anything about biology, you'd know spermatozoa only live any length of time in the fallopian tubes. Those that fail to reach the safe haven die very quickly.

To get DNA from spermatozoa, you'd need to extract the DNA from the spermatozoa head. Not much use if it is all dried up and shrivelled away.

In any case, Vaseline kills spermatozoa.

You do know the perps delayed the body being found for a considerable amount of time.

Raff expressed great concern the forensics would identify the spermatozoa as his and that was why the defence carefully declined from requisitioning a spermatozoa test.

Who needs all that science witchcraft nonsense?

 

[Vixen]

Oh, please. Do you think no one can read here? QUOTE where I have put my "own thoughts and motives onto Amanda". Go on. And try this time to actually follow through instead of doing your usual tactic of diversion...as if none of us notices. I mentioned Amanda exactly once without any mention of her "thoughts and motives".

"You think you are 'coming to Amanda's rescue'."
Amanda doesn't need rescuing. She was definitively acquitted. And it looks like it's you who is assigning thoughts and motives to me. But I will clearly and openly state that I think you feel you are defending and doing this "all for Meredith".

Your claim that your son "never left a hair anywhere" is physically impossible. We all shed hair. Why must you resort to such an obvious lie?

Now quote where I assigned emotions and motives to Amanda. Not that I expect any.

Of course, we all do, however it wasn't in any such extent I was conscious of it, as I was with our cats and dogs over the years.

It's a dead giveaway your focussing on Amanda's hair being bleached at the time. This is because strong hair chemicals are known to damage hair (and peroxide or ammonia based chemicals are strong). I dare say her hair may have just broken off and it wouldn't be unusual, as you claim.

So I would hypothesise the long strands of fair-coloured hair found at the murder scene were possibly a ladies hair colourant-damaged broken-off hairs, and not a 'let-off' at all.

One of the hairs was gripped in Mez' hand, so obviously came off in the struggle.

 

[Vixen]

Who needs all that science witchcraft nonsense?

Putting the stain under a black light (ultra violet) is hardly witchcraft nonsense. Vaseline is petroleum based, designed to keep skin moist by preventing the elements drying it out. The Norwegian version of Vaseline has a much higher ratio of petroleum to water, for example.

As you know, Mez' lip-balm Vaseline was left nearby, empty, and Raff told people the body had been found 'covered in Vaseline'.

Amanda goes on about the Vaseline, too, so the kids can't resist boasting of special knowledge.

In any case, Raff didn't want the pillow tested in case his bodily fluids were found on it. Hmmm.

 

[Bill Williams]

Putting the stain under a black light (ultra violet) is hardly witchcraft nonsense. Vaseline is petroleum based, designed to keep skin moist by preventing the elements drying it out. The Norwegian version of Vaseline has a much higher ratio of petroleum to water, for example.

As you know, Mez' Meredith's lip-balm Vaseline was left nearby, empty, and Raff told people the body had been found 'covered in Vaseline'.

Amanda goes on about the Vaseline, too, so the kids can't resist boasting of special knowledge.

In any case, Raff didn't want the pillow tested in case his bodily fluids were found on it. Hmmm.

Why do you keep repeating these lies? But I did fix something for you.

 

[Mr Fied]

Putting the stain under a black light (ultra violet) is hardly witchcraft nonsense. Vaseline is petroleum based, designed to keep skin moist by preventing the elements drying it out. The Norwegian version of Vaseline has a much higher ratio of petroleum to water, for example.

As you know, Mez' lip-balm Vaseline was left nearby, empty, and Raff told people the body had been found 'covered in Vaseline'.

Amanda goes on about the Vaseline, too, so the kids can't resist boasting of special knowledge.

In any case, Raff didn't want the pillow tested in case his bodily fluids were found on it. Hmmm.

Yes, because any crack forensic unit when discovering a liquid stain underneath the body of a possible rape victim, wait for weeks or months before an accused tells them what to test.

Perhaps if Raff and Amanda had given them permission to test the alleged hairs, we might have found out who deposited them.

Why would Raff worry that the stain was his if it was so obvious it was Vaseline?

BTW, any evidence the body was covered in Vaseline?

As you know he wasn't worried that he had left the stain, just that the crackpot forensic team would attribute the stain to him, just as they had with the shoeprints, and we know they couldn't possibly have made a mistake with something as simple as counting rings.

 

[Numbers]

To provide more clarification on the issue of the role of the CSC, I quote here the excerpt from Wikipedia Bill Williams relied on:

The Italian Supreme Court of Cassation is the highest court of Italy. Appeals to the Court of Cassation generally come from the Appellate Court, the second instance courts, but defendants or prosecutors may also appeal directly from trial courts, first instance courts. The Supreme Court can reject, or confirm, a sentence from a lower court. If it rejects the sentence, it can order the lower court to amend the trial and sentencing, or it can annul the previous sentence altogether. A sentence confirmed by the Supreme Court of Cassation is final and definitive, and cannot be further appealed. Although the Supreme Court of Cassation cannot overrule the trial court's interpretation of the evidence it can correct a lower court's interpretation or application of the law connected to a specific case. {Reference: G. Di Federico, La Corte di cassazione: la giustizia come organizzazione, Laterza Editore, 1969}

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_Cassation_(Italy)

The highlighted information is not a fully correct and complete rendering of the applicable provisions of the current Italian Code of Criminal Procedure. The CSC may, in accordance with CPP Article 606.1E, when requested by an appeal argument, consider whether a lower court judgment is defective because the grounds of the judgment - its evaluation of evidence - are lacking, contradictory or manifestly {clearly} illogical, when the defect results from the text of the appealed decision or from other documents of the proceedings specified in the arguments for the appeal to the Court of Cassation. {Reference: The Italian Code of Criminal Procedure: Critical essays and English translation, eds. M. Gialuz, L. Luparia, F. Scarpa; Wolters Kluwer Italia, (C) 2014}

Furthermore, the CSC may consider whether the appealed judgment of the lower court followed Italian law in evaluating evidence. As a non-exclusive example, a decision of an Italian court must obey the procedure or logical demands of CPP Article 192.2 in the evaluation of evidence: The existence of a fact cannot be inferred from circumstantial evidence unless such evidence is serious, precise and consistent. Relevant to the AK-RS case, alleged DNA evidence that was not properly gathered, not properly tested and not properly evaluated based upon the accepted international scientifically-established protocols was thus considered meaningless as an indication of guilt by the Marasca CSC panel.

Under CPP Article 192.2, the CSC or any court may ex officio {from its status as a court} exclude any evidence that has been gathered in violation of the prohibitions set by law; under CPP Article 192.1, evidence gathered in violation of the prohibitions set by law shall not be used.

The CSC, as a result of its evaluation of the interpretation of evidence, and thus necessarily of the documented evidence, in an appealed decision, is allowed to annul such interpretation or exclude such evidence, which may lead to annulment of the appealed decision. The CSC is authorized by law to acquit in such circumstances, according to CPP Article 620.1L: ...The CSC shall deliver a judgment of annulment without referral in any other case in which the CSC believes the referral is superfluous or may proceed to the determination of the sentence or take the necessary decisions.

 

[Bill Williams]

To all my friends still battling the irrelevant pgp poster who won't give up the ghost.

You might want to consider moving on even if this one nobody won't. There was a time when correcting the record was important. It just isn't anymore. Both Amanda and Raffaele are free and both are prospering. Vixen's ignorant rants cannot change that.

<..... sinister deletia .....>​

But coming back and perusing the pages of comments that could easily been written years ago makes me want to beg you to quit. It's not worth it in any way whatsoever.

I say this with great feeling for all of you. Time to move on.

AC

Before we move on I'd like to hear from Vixen why she continues to post. But I want to ask, "why here on ISF," specifically. ISF has basically slid from view, especially as this case is concerned.

It is arguable that ISF/JREF had ever had impact, but once one digests the following, one needs to consider it's silly that any of us post. Here specifically.

The height of these threads was the 15th Continuation, which lasted for 3 weeks - 21 days - just after the March 2015 exonerations and well before the Sept 2015 publishing of the M/B report.

In that 21 day period there were 157 posts per day - per day for 21 days - and there were 4,721 "views" of that continuation per day in the same period. Out of all the posts and views this thread has attracted since 2010, Continuation 15 leads the league in visibility/participation.

But now? Continuation 22 started 10 June 2016 and has managed 27 posts per day; almost half of them Vixen's. More importantly, it has managed only 712 "views" of the thread per day (since 10 June); which sounds significant, but still pales in comparison with what once was, being down 85% from this thread's heyday.

The only person, really, trying to convince anyone of anything is Vixen - so my question is: why here, why now, why us, why this thread?

Does Vixen need what is essentially a private place (like Continuation 22) to vent her hostility?

At this point, interest in what used to be an International cause célèbre has literally fallen off the radar. No one cares anymore, not really.

The one person who could halt this thread in its tracks is Vixen. Not halting it makes no difference! One of the posters to this thread even tested that in a Florence courtroom and was laughed out of the room.

Does Vixen care to spend one of those 20+ posts per day on dealing with this?

 

[acbytesla]

Before we move on I'd like to hear from Vixen why she continues to post. But I want to ask, "why here on ISF," specifically. ISF has basically slid from view, especially as this case is concerned.

It is arguable that ISF/JREF had ever had impact, but once one digests the following, one needs to consider it's silly that any of us post. Here specifically.

The height of these threads was the 15th Continuation, which lasted for 3 weeks - 21 days - just after the March 2015 exonerations and well before the Sept 2015 publishing of the M/B report.

In that 21 day period there were 157 posts per day - per day for 21 days - and there were 4,721 "views" of that continuation per day in the same period. Out of all the posts and views this thread has attracted since 2010, Continuation 15 leads the league in visibility/participation.

But now? Continuation 22 started 10 June 2016 and has managed 27 posts per day; almost half of them Vixen's. More importantly, it has managed only 712 "views" of the thread per day (since 10 June); which sounds significant, but still pales in comparison with what once was, being down 85% from this thread's heyday.

The only person, really, trying to convince anyone of anything is Vixen - so my question is: why here, why now, why us, why this thread?

Does Vixen need what is essentially a private place (like Continuation 22) to vent her hostility?

At this point, interest in what used to be an International cause célèbre has literally fallen off the radar. No one cares anymore, not really.

The one person who could halt this thread in its tracks is Vixen. Not halting it makes no difference! One of the posters to this thread even tested that in a Florence courtroom and was laughed out of the room.

Does Vixen care to spend one of those 20+ posts per day on dealing with this?

I like you Bill, but if you expect to get any satisfaction from Vixen you haven't learned anything over the last 8 years. It ain't going to happen.

Vixen is locked into this fantasy that somehow she's making a difference. Hell we all were to a degree. Whether we ever were is debatable. But one thing for sure, it isn't now.

I know that because I broke away and coming back to visit is like stepping into a time warp. All the same people making all the same arguments with same exact person. Absolutely nothing has changed.

I don't really like mentioning it because it reminds me a bit of the reformed alcoholic walking back into the bar he use to hang out in and trying to get all of his old friends to join him in sobriety. And realizing that he's about as welcome as a turd in a punch bowl.

But, I'd also be wrong not saying anything. Anyway, my best to everyone including VIxen....And finally, in closing let me say, "GO HUSKIES!!"

 

[Bill Williams]

I like you Bill, but if you expect to get any satisfaction from Vixen you haven't learned anything over the last 8 years. It ain't going to happen.

Vixen is locked into this fantasy that somehow she's making a difference. Hell we all were to a degree. Whether we ever were is debatable. But one thing for sure, it isn't now.
I know that because I broke away and coming back to visit is like stepping into a time warp. All the same people making all the same arguments with same exact person. Absolutely nothing has changed.

I don't really like mentioning it because it reminds me a bit of the reformed alcoholic walking back into the bar he use to hang out in and trying to get all of his old friends to join him in sobriety. And realizing that he's about as welcome as a turd in a punch bowl.

But, I'd also be wrong not saying anything. Anyway, my best to everyone including VIxen....And finally, in closing let me say, "GO HUSKIES!!"

No quibble. Esp. the highlighted part.

Yet in "arguing" with Vixen, I've learned more about the source documents - even in the last three months - than I ever knew.

While Vixen pulls out one sentence from M/B as the be-all and end-all of the case, I've just been reacquainted with M/B's Section 6.2 which is a stinging indictment of the judicial error Nencini made about the T.O.D.; and how Nencini erring on that point meant that Raffaele could be convicted wrongly; convicted literally no matter what the evidence was.

It's hard to exaggerate how much 6.2 is a repudiation of a lower court's illogic and injustice.

Given that I've only ever been into this so us to understand what went on with the 5 court cases this generated, in that sense these past 3 months have been more rewarding than any other. If nothing else, Vixen forces her critics to delve into source material - mainly because she won't, or that she considers the fake-wiki or Nick van der Leek to be original sources.

Anyway, we all have differing ways to float our boats. One day I'll just move on, then months after that check in and perhaps have the same reaction as many.....

..... are you people STILL at this?

 

[bagels]

Of course, we all do, however it wasn't in any such extent I was conscious of it, as I was with our cats and dogs over the years.

It's a dead giveaway your focussing on Amanda's hair being bleached at the time. This is because strong hair chemicals are known to damage hair (and peroxide or ammonia based chemicals are strong). I dare say her hair may have just broken off and it wouldn't be unusual, as you claim.

So I would hypothesise the long strands of fair-coloured hair found at the murder scene were possibly a ladies hair colourant-damaged broken-off hairs, and not a 'let-off' at all.

One of the hairs was gripped in Mez' hand, so obviously came off in the struggle.

You should stick to the central argument, which is Amanda Knox shouldn't have been acquitted. Going off topic discussing alleged evidence not part of the court case doesn't serve any purpose.

 

[acbytesla]

No quibble. Esp. the highlighted part.

Yet in "arguing" with Vixen, I've learned more about the source documents - even in the last three months - than I ever knew.

While Vixen pulls out one sentence from M/B as the be-all and end-all of the case, I've just been reacquainted with M/B's Section 6.2 which is a stinging indictment of the judicial error Nencini made about the T.O.D.; and how Nencini erring on that point meant that Raffaele could be convicted wrongly; convicted literally no matter what the evidence was.

It's hard to exaggerate how much 6.2 is a repudiation of a lower court's illogic and injustice.

Given that I've only ever been into this so us to understand what went on with the 5 court cases this generated, in that sense these past 3 months have been more rewarding than any other. If nothing else, Vixen forces her critics to delve into source material - mainly because she won't, or that she considers the fake-wiki or Nick van der Leek to be original sources.

Anyway, we all have differing ways to float our boats. One day I'll just move on, then months after that check in and perhaps have the same reaction as many.....

..... are you people STILL at this?

Hey, I want to check back especially when the ECHR rules. But the temptation of diving into the minutia and arguing with someone who couldn't see the light if you taped her eyelids open is gone. Out of curiosity, has Machiavelli been back in the last few months?

 

[Methos]

Do you seriously believe Massei and Nencini convicted, 'without evidence'?

No, it's worse than that.

Judge Massei convicted, ignoring and even coming up with excuses for evidence that the main forensic investigator lied under oath and falsified court documents.
This came out only after dottoressa Stefanoni reluctantly handed over only a small part of the files documenting her work.

Judge Massei denied a defense request he would have been obliged to grant by law (re-examination of newly dicovered evidence, the same article Judge Chieffi used to take judge Hellmann to task for not granting the persecution's requests to re-hear Aviello and finish the testing on 36I).

Judge Nencini, just followed the orders he had been given by Judge Chieffi and his panel. The "taliban court" statement he made at the beginning and him dressing down Dalla Vedova, rehearsing art 368 c.p. when the defense lawyer brought up the HIV scare during closing arguments, makes clear that "Judge" Nencini's tribunal was just a "show trial"...

I'm not sure who of the two is more unsuitable to be a judge...

 

[Stacyhs]

Of course, we all do, however it wasn't in any such extent I was conscious of it, as I was with our cats and dogs over the years.

It's a dead giveaway your focussing on Amanda's hair being bleached at the time. This is because strong hair chemicals are known to damage hair (and peroxide or ammonia based chemicals are strong). I dare say her hair may have just broken off and it wouldn't be unusual, as you claim.

So I would hypothesise the long strands of fair-coloured hair found at the murder scene were possibly a ladies hair colourant-damaged broken-off hairs, and not a 'let-off' at all.

One of the hairs was gripped in Mez' hand, so obviously came off in the struggle.

You claimed your son "never left a hair anywhere" which is completely false. According to Women's Health Magazine, "the average person loses between 60 to 100 hairs a day" and up to 125 hairs per day is considered normal. Your son left hair everywhere, every day.

Do you really think that police just didn't bother to look at the hair in (not "gripped" by) Meredith's hand? How incompetent would that be? Oh, wait...about as incompetent as not testing a suspected semen state found under the body of a rape/murder victim.

I could hypothesize that the hair fell from Guede's clothing as he sexually assaulted her and/or it transferred as she struggled with him. It could even have been a stray hair just lying on the floor and picked up by her hand as she lay on the floor.

By the way, a broken hair vs. naturally shed hair is also easy to determine by putting it under a microscope and looking at the ends. A shed hair will have a white bulb at the end while a broken hair will not. See the picture.

Colored and naturally shed vs. broken hair are both easily determined by just looking under a microscope. Yet no evidence of the hairs you brought up being either colored or broken off has ever been mentioned by the police or prosecution. There are really only two reasons why this would be: 1) the incompetent police never bothered to look or 2) they were natural blonde which excluded Amanda as the donor.

Try as you might to connect Amanda to those hairs, you just can't.

 

[LondonJohn]

No, it's worse than that.

Judge Massei convicted, ignoring and even coming up with excuses for evidence that the main forensic investigator lied under oath and falsified court documents.
This came out only after dottoressa Stefanoni reluctantly handed over only a small part of the files documenting her work.

Judge Massei denied a defense request he would have been obliged to grant by law (re-examination of newly dicovered evidence, the same article Judge Chieffi used to take judge Hellmann to task for not granting the persecution's requests to re-hear Aviello and finish the testing on 36I).

Judge Nencini, just followed the orders he had been given by Judge Chieffi and his panel. The "taliban court" statement he made at the beginning and him dressing down Dalla Vedova, rehearsing art 368 c.p. when the defense lawyer brought up the HIV scare during closing arguments, makes clear that "Judge" Nencini's tribunal was just a "show trial"...

I'm not sure who of the two is more unsuitable to be a judge...

Again, I think that so many of the problems that manifested themselves in the egregiously wrong and unlawful verdicts in the Massei and Nencini courts have their roots in the clumsy and incomplete way in which adversarial justice was sort of "grafted" onto the pre-existing inquisitorial system, thereby allowing reactionary judges to ride roughshod over the law and code that they are supposed to be following.

In the old inquisitorial system, courts were effectively investigative and fact-finding entities in their own rights. While PMs directed the actual formal investigation and presented their findings & conclusions to the courts (and the courts invariably looked upon the PMs' positions as a disinterested search for pure truth....), the courts themselves were allowed to formulate their own theories and narratives and even conduct their own investigations. This led to a dreadful situation where courts could "go rogue" almost at will, so long as the lead judge and his/her assistant judge "decided" that they had figured out how it all went down.

All this should have been thoroughly swept out when the adversarial systems was introduced (and don't forget, adversarial justice was more-or-less forced upon Italy as an EU directive to modernise its criminal justice system and to try to make it more fit for purpose). Yet clearly - as so vividly illustrated by the Nencini and Massei courts - Italian judges are loath to give up their old powers. The ONLY role of Italian criminal court judges (and judicial panels) in the modern age should be to test and assess the evidence placed before the courts, listen to arguments dispassionately and fairly from both sides, and arrive at a conclusion and verdict based only on those inputs. Furthermore, the only output required from judges (and judicial panels) is to decree whether or not the defendant(s) before the courts are guilty BARD of the crimes with which they are charged. The courts are manifestly NOT required to "find the truth" about the crime, nor to construct a full-blown narrative of the crime (though of course they are required to support guilty/not-guilty verdicts with a certain amount of context, and with a certain amount of reference to wider narrative issues).

The Massei and Nencini courts behaved grossly unlawfully in the ways in which they operated. And the Supreme Court (belatedly) recognised this, and said so in as many words in a pretty damning indictment (though regretfully still with a certain amount of "circling the wagons"-style self defence of the criminal justice system).

As a slight aside, all of this further reinforces just how irrelevant and malleable the "citizen judges" are in Italian criminal courts. It is abundantly clear that the system is abysmally set up and routinely abused by judges, who pull the lay jurors into their line of thinking. I would love to find a single recent case in Italian justice where the lay judges outvoted the two professional judges. I'll bet that among the tens of thousands of trials for serious crimes in Italy since 2000, no more than a couple of handfuls (at most) have featured convictions or acquittals where the pro judges have voted one way only to be outvoted by lay jurors voting in the other direction.....

 

[Stacyhs]

Raff criticises Amanda in several places he couldn't understand why Amanda stayed at the cottage for such a long time.

Did Amanda mention in her book if she ever met anyone coming back in?

When one returns home with the door swinging open, surely the worry is who is inside, not outside?

You still don't get it about the shower. All you can think about is sex and the American way. Perhaps you need a cold shower. IMV both Amanda and Raff shared a shower together during the night, not when Amanda popped by at 10:30 in the morning. Hence the blood stain on the light switch and the cotton bud box. In her email home she gushes on about Raff cleaning her ears with a cotton bud and brushing out her hair. Her good scrub wasn't to do with sex, it was to do with her 'washing off Mez' blood', as decreed by Marasca. Fact.

Nope. That 99% accurate memory failed you again. She wrote nothing in her Nov. 4 email about this. However, on the night of Nov. 6, after her arrest, she did write this in her statement to the police:

"However, I admit that this period of time is rather strange because I am not quite sure. I smoked marijuana with him and I might even have fallen asleep. These things I am not sure about and I know they are important to the case and to help myself, but in reality, I don't think I did much. One thing I do remember is that I took a shower with Raffaele and this might explain how we passed the time. In truth, I do not remember exactly what day it was, but I do remember that we had a shower and we washed ourselves for a long time. He cleaned my ears, he dried and combed my hair. "

I guess my definition of "gushing" (and that of any dictionary) is different than yours. Your use of such unnecessary hyperbole does not make you any more credible. Notice that she makes a point of saying she doesn't remember what night it was that they showered together so your claim that she showered "3 times in 36 hours" is also unfounded.

 

[Bill Williams]

No, it's worse than that.

Judge Massei convicted, ignoring and even coming up with excuses for evidence that the main forensic investigator lied under oath and falsified court documents.
This came out only after dottoressa Stefanoni reluctantly handed over only a small part of the files documenting her work.

Again, I think that so many of the problems that manifested themselves in the egregiously wrong and unlawful verdicts in the Massei and Nencini courts have their roots in the clumsy and incomplete way in which adversarial justice was sort of "grafted" onto the pre-existing inquisitorial system, thereby allowing reactionary judges to ride roughshod over the law and code that they are supposed to be following.

In the old inquisitorial system, courts were effectively investigative and fact-finding entities in their own rights. While PMs directed the actual formal investigation and presented their findings & conclusions to the courts (and the courts invariably looked upon the PMs' positions as a disinterested search for pure truth....), the courts themselves were allowed to formulate their own theories and narratives and even conduct their own investigations. This led to a dreadful situation where courts could "go rogue" almost at will, so long as the lead judge and his/her assistant judge "decided" that they had figured out how it all went down.

All this should have been thoroughly swept out when the adversarial systems was introduced (and don't forget, adversarial justice was more-or-less forced upon Italy as an EU directive to modernise its criminal justice system and to try to make it more fit for purpose). Yet clearly - as so vividly illustrated by the Nencini and Massei courts - Italian judges are loath to give up their old powers. The ONLY role of Italian criminal court judges (and judicial panels) in the modern age should be to test and assess the evidence placed before the courts, listen to arguments dispassionately and fairly from both sides, and arrive at a conclusion and verdict based only on those inputs. Furthermore, the only output required from judges (and judicial panels) is to decree whether or not the defendant(s) before the courts are guilty BARD of the crimes with which they are charged. The courts are manifestly NOT required to "find the truth" about the crime, nor to construct a full-blown narrative of the crime (though of course they are required to support guilty/not-guilty verdicts with a certain amount of context, and with a certain amount of reference to wider narrative issues).

The Massei and Nencini courts behaved grossly unlawfully in the ways in which they operated. And the Supreme Court (belatedly) recognised this, and said so in as many words in a pretty damning indictment (though regretfully still with a certain amount of "circling the wagons"-style self defence of the criminal justice system).

As a slight aside, all of this further reinforces just how irrelevant and malleable the "citizen judges" are in Italian criminal courts. It is abundantly clear that the system is abysmally set up and routinely abused by judges, who pull the lay jurors into their line of thinking. I would love to find a single recent case in Italian justice where the lay judges outvoted the two professional judges. I'll bet that among the tens of thousands of trials for serious crimes in Italy since 2000, no more than a couple of handfuls (at most) have featured convictions or acquittals where the pro judges have voted one way only to be outvoted by lay jurors voting in the other direction.....

Before I am done with this, Judge Massei's MR deserves one more read. Once regarded as the gold standard by guilters in explaining why the pair's guilt is obvious, guilters have long since had to have denied main findings in this, a fact-finding court.

Massei believed that Amanda and Meredith had a normal flat-mate relationship. Massei believed that Rudy needed no encouragement to begin the assault on Meredith. Massei settled for all time that Raffaele had called the Carabinieri BEFORE the postal police arrived. Massei saw this as NOT a premeditated crime. Massei (even in convicting the pair) saw no psychopathology within them, the crime as he saw it was because they were away from home outside their normal moral parameters.

And on and on.

But in convicting the pair, Massei just makes up stuff - perhaps not as bad as the later Judge Nencini inventing out of thin air that Raffaele's DNA had been found on the knife. Massei made up out of whole cloth a motive for Knox to have transported the knife from the apartment, because (remember) Massei found that there was no premeditation.

Massei invented a reason why it was normal for the Scientific Police not to have tested the presumed semen stain. He simply assumed it could have been Meredith's boyfriend's and dismissed any attempt to:

1) id as semen in the first place
2) id the owner​

All this in a transparent attempt by the judge to cover up for Stefanoni. Whether or not that coverup was criminal or not needs to left up to the Italian justice system.

It was not me who said it, but back at IIP in 2012 or so I reported once I had read the PMF translation of Massei. I did not coin the phrase, but I adhere to it: "The best way to agree with Massei's decision to convict, is to avoid reading the Massei report."

One poster back then openly postulated (probably wrongly) that Massei had the unenviable task of writing a MR report for a verdict he himself disagreed with. I mean, even the night of the conviction in Dec 2009, Barbie Nadeau herself told CNN, "This will probably be overturned at appeal." Which it was in 2011.

But Massei's role in what was obviously a sham prosecution is worse than Mignini's role, and most certainly worse than Stefanoni's role. For those who disagree..... the challenge is to read what Massei wrote! Proof is that guilters have long since been in a position of refuting Massei on key points, mainly all of then save his verdict.

 

[Stacyhs]

Putting the stain under a black light (ultra violet) is hardly witchcraft nonsense. Vaseline is petroleum based, designed to keep skin moist by preventing the elements drying it out. The Norwegian version of Vaseline has a much higher ratio of petroleum to water, for example.

As you know, Mez' lip-balm Vaseline was left nearby, empty, and Raff told people the body had been found 'covered in Vaseline'.

Amanda goes on about the Vaseline, too, so the kids can't resist boasting of special knowledge.In any case, Raff didn't want the pillow tested in case his bodily fluids were found on it. Hmmm.

For someone who is constantly accusing me (falsely) of assigning Amanda emotions and motives, you do a darn fine job of it yourself.

Just how did Amanda have any "special knowledge" of the Vaseline? Quote this example of her "special knowledge. Napoleoni saw it on the afternoon of Nov. 2.

If Raff was so afraid of the suspected semen stain being tested, why was it the defense who asked for it to be tested more than once and the prosecution who fought it?

Cite your source that the police ever used a black light on the stain. The police videos do not show them using a black light nor am I aware of Stefanoni testifying she used one.

Cite your source that the little pot of Vaseline was "empty".

For some strange reason, I suspect you're simply making things up (again).

 

[Bill Williams]

Hey, I want to check back especially when the ECHR rules. But the temptation of diving into the minutia and arguing with someone who couldn't see the light if you taped her eyelids open is gone. Out of curiosity, has Machiavelli been back in the last few months?

Last post of Machiavelli's was to defend the reliability of witnesses which had not come forward for up to a year. He was saying that it was illogical to simply say someone's testimony was unreliable on the basis of a time-lapse alone.

He then said that once this was accepted, it was then up to the accuser (the one saying those witnesses were unreliable or lying) to prove it. It was a nice rhetorical move on his part - remove the grounds for unreliability, and THEN pose the question!

He also briefly mentioned he was not posting here to discuss the intervention of a private citizen in the Florence courts to bring some sort of lawsuit about judicial corruption, vis a vis Marasca and Bruno. He simply did not want to discuss it, which was (obviously) his right.

That's it since March 2016.

 

[Methos]

Just how did Amanda have any "special knowledge" of the Vaseline? Quote this example of her "special knowledge. Napoleoni saw it on the afternoon of Nov. 2.

No special knowledge needed. From her e-mail home it looks like the investigators were quite fixated on the "vaseline":

At the house they asked me very personal questions about meredith's life and also about the personalities of our neighbors. how well did i know them? pretty well, we are friends. was meredith sexually active? yeah, she borrowed a few of my condoms. does she like anal? wtf? i don't know. does she use vaseline? for her lips?

Cite your source that the police ever used a black light on the stain. The police videos do not show them using a black light nor am I aware of Stefanoni testifying she used one.

It looks like Prof Vinci was the first to think about using alternative lighting on that pillowcase (in May 2009). There's no mention of any further analysis in the original report or in the court presentation.

Cite your source that the little pot of Vaseline was "empty".

There's a picture of it in this document.

And just for the record, seemingly the only one to remember Raffaele Sollecito saying "they found her body covered in vaseline" is Marco Zaroli.

 

[Numbers]

....
It looks like Prof Vinci was the first to think about using alternative lighting on that pillowcase (in May 2009). There's no mention of any further analysis in the original report or in the court presentation.



There's a picture of it in this document.

....

The failure of the police/prosecution to test the presumed semen stain on the pillow, or to report the test if they had tested it, was a flagrant denial of fairness in the trial.

The methods for testing presumed semen stains are well-known to forensic science. As with tests for blood, there are presumptive and confirmatory tests for semen.

The alternative light source method is only a presumptive test; additional testing (microscopic or biochemical) is required for confirmatory testing (providing the certainty required in a trial).

Presumptive tests for semen:

1- Visual and Alternate Light Tests: If the area to be examined and analyzed for semen is larger than an individual swab, forensic scientists resort to visual identification first. Clothing, undergarments, and bedding can be quickly surveyed for potential semen stains using the naked eye. Dried semen stains are often off-white to faint yellow in color. Semen can also be visualized using blue light, ultraviolet light (also known as Wood’s Lamp), or a modern light source such as CrimeScope that is properly configured with optimum wavelength filters. Under those specialized lights, semen will fluorescence due to the presence of molecules such as Flavin and Choline-conjugated proteins. The color of this fluorescence will vary from blue to yellow, depending on the light equipment used. There are many molecules (natural and artificial) that will fluoresce in a similar way as semen, and therefore, this detection technique is highly presumptive. ...

Confirmatory Tests for semen:

1- The Christmas Tree Stain: The most reliable confirmation for the presence of semen is the positive visual identification of sperm cells (or spermatozoa) using the Christmas tree stain. Click here to read the NC State Crime Lab’s procedures for semen analysis. ...

2- RSID-Semen Strip Test: The RSID-Semen test provides sensitivity as well as specificity to human semen. B.C.M. Pang & B.K.K. Cheung, Identification of human semenogelin in membrane strip test as an alternative method for the detection of semen, 169 Forensic Science International 29-30 (2007). Similar in format to a pregnancy test strip, the RSID-semen test identifies the presence of the seminal vesicle-specific antigen, or semenogelin. Id. at 28; Jennifer Old et al, Developmental Validation Studies of RSID-Semen A Lateral Flow Immunochromatographic Strip Test for the Forensic Detection of Seminal Fluid, Independent Forensics, Rev. D 3, 3 (2010). This antigen is unique to semen, and therefore, there is no cross reactivity with other bodily fluids in males and females or with semen from other mammals. Id. at 3, 31. This test can also identify semen even if the stain was stored under less favorable conditions which have been shown to affect other tests such as the Acid Phosphatase test. Id. at 10-11.

Source: https://ncforensics.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/forensic-tests-for-semen-what-you-should-know/