Continuation Part 22: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Bill Williams]

Things that make you go, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

When Stacyhs and me make a mistake about whether or not Nencini thought Rudy a world-class burglar, Vixen is there with a cite from Nencini showing definitively that he was merely quoting from what the defence argued.

But when Vixen is claims that it was illegal for Marasca/Bruno to acquit without referral, she provides no link to the appropriate statute, she just claims it and leaves it at that.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

 

[Vixen]

Every Italian judge who has made subsequent mention of the Marasca acquittals though the definitive acquittal was legal. Meaning, they did not see it as inappropriate to not refer back. So you can either cite a source, or quit with this factoid.


This is a change of tune for you. It did not "find" anything. It reviewed the various theories put forward by the various prosecutors and the defence and said that, yes, they were at the crime scene, but that being "at the crime scene" includd the time when Amanda admitted being there for her mid-morning shower, as well as when she and Raffaele returned after alerting everyone they thought of.

Yes, they were at the crime scene, no one disputes that.


It is standard for police agencies dealing with DNA evidence to follow protocol. If they do not follow protocol, then the evidence is useless. Contamination does not need to be proven.

However, as Chieffi noted, if that is followed, then every DNA case in Italy since 1986 would need to be reviewed. That makes me suspicious that courts and police agencies in Italy are doing something wrong.

Of course courts make 'findings'. It's the whole point of a court/tribunal/inquest/ public inquiry.

The defence were arguing Rome didn't adhere to US standards, when - hello? - being in Italy, they adhered to Italian standards, we in the UK adhere to UK standards. Italian justice is more advanced than American justice, Italy is the cradle of haute cuisine (which the French appropriated), it is the height of art, lots of inventors, such as, erm , uh, (LondonJohn can come back to us on this), Marconi! haute couture - shame the French got the title first - opera (Pavarotti is king after only Jussi Bjorling, with the UK's Jonathan Antoine close on his heels), and then we have pizza and spaghetti and er, Lavazza coffee and, um..[that's enough ~ Ed].

Italian lab standards were / are perfectly adequate. It is a genuinely stupid argument that 'the Rome labs were not up to international standards'. In fact, it's what we, in England, call 'bollocks'.

 

[sept79]

. . . . . . . . There was neither a ruling that contamination did not exist, nor was there the science behind it all to show that contamination did or did not exist -- that would require the negative controls; which no one said they saw - except for Novelli, who told the Hellmann court he had seen them.

Otherwise, they were not in the court record, or else the subsequent judge, Nencini, would not have had to wrongly censure Vecchiotti for not asking for them. Why should someone ask for something already available to them in the record?

Novelli lied? If true, that puts him in the same cesspool as Stefanoni . . . . You just can't top Italian justice.

 

[Bill Williams]

Every Italian judge who has made subsequent mention of the Marasca acquittals though the definitive acquittal was legal. Meaning, they did not see it as inappropriate to not refer back. So you can either cite a source, or quit with this factoid.


This is a change of tune for you. It did not "find" anything. It reviewed the various theories put forward by the various prosecutors and the defence and said that, yes, they were at the crime scene, but that being "at the crime scene" includd the time when Amanda admitted being there for her mid-morning shower, as well as when she and Raffaele returned after alerting everyone they thought of.

Yes, they were at the crime scene, no one disputes that.


It is standard for police agencies dealing with DNA evidence to follow protocol. If they do not follow protocol, then the evidence is useless. Contamination does not need to be proven.

However, as Chieffi noted, if that is followed, then every DNA case in Italy since 1986 would need to be reviewed. That makes me suspicious that courts and police agencies in Italy are doing something wrong.

Of course courts make 'findings'. It's the whole point of a court/tribunal/inquest/ public inquiry.

The way you go back and forth on this issue exposes your own personal PR effort for what it is - arguing both ways, depending on how the facts/factoids fit into your preconceived notion.

The one definitive finding of the Italian courts which you cannot get around is that AK and RS were exonerated. Indeed, this is how subsequent Italian courts describe it - as the one judicial fact applying to them above all.

That you simply declare otherwise with NO citation to support your claim exposes that claim for what it is.

Italian lab standards were / are perfectly adequate. It is a genuinely stupid argument that 'the Rome labs were not up to international standards'. In fact, it's what we, in England, call 'bollocks'.

To follow this properly, when referencing the trials against RS and AK, no one is in a position, really, to say whether or not the behaviour of the Italian lab handling this was either adequate or not adequate. Once again, the point you seemingly deliberately miss is that without the negative controls, no third party (much less a properly constituted court) would know.

That, in a nutshell, is the whole point of Marasca/Bruno's argument in their 2015 M.R. criticizing (then annulling) Nencini for placing himself as the final arbiter of "expert-DNA analysis", over and above third-party expertise. (If Nencini disliked Conti-Vecchiotti, he should have appointed yet another independent team to review Stefanoni's work.)

Indeed, from the quote you supplied from Novelli - there is the tacit admission that the Stefanoni lab DID NOT follow protocols, international or otherwise. Period.

So far from it being a "stupid argument" to claim that Stefanoni was not up to snuff, that would - in fact - appear to be the case. For you to prove otherwise, you yourself would need access to the negative controls. I bet you would not share them with the likes of me.

 

[LondonJohn]

Of course courts make 'findings'. It's the whole point of a court/tribunal/inquest/ public inquiry.

The defence were arguing Rome didn't adhere to US standards, when - hello? - being in Italy, they adhered to Italian standards, we in the UK adhere to UK standards. Italian justice is more advanced than American justice, Italy is the cradle of haute cuisine (which the French appropriated), it is the height of art, lots of inventors, such as, erm , uh, (LondonJohn can come back to us on this), Marconi! haute couture - shame the French got the title first - opera (Pavarotti is king after only Jussi Bjorling, with the UK's Jonathan Antoine close on his heels), and then we have pizza and spaghetti and er, Lavazza coffee and, um..[that's enough ~ Ed].

Italian lab standards were / are perfectly adequate. It is a genuinely stupid argument that 'the Rome labs were not up to international standards'. In fact, it's what we, in England, call 'bollocks'.

What an *ahem* unusual post....

Unfortunately for the "argument" contained therein (and entirely discounting the bizarre and wholly-irrelevant references to high art, cuisine, fashion etc....), Stefanoni's team - both the CSI team of which she was inexplicably the lead member, and the lab team - was about...oooh....a million miles away from accepted international standards when it came to the collection, transportation, storage, testing and analysis of forensic evidence in this case. This is manifestly and demonstrably the case. Stefanoni was hugely and grossly incompetent in every single aspect of her work in this case, and - worse even than that - she resorted to dissembling and misdirection in court to try to cover up for her incompetence.

Ironically perhaps, it is a genuinely stupid argument that 'the Rome labs were up to international standards' when it came to the forensic work in this particular case. In fact, it's what we, in England, call 'bollocks'

 

[NotEvenWrong]

Italian lab standards were / are perfectly adequate. It is a genuinely stupid argument that 'the Rome labs were not up to international standards'. In fact, it's what we, in England, call 'bollocks'.

Is there a reason the inventor of LCN analysis published a paper in Forensic Science: International about how the Roman lab tech did not do LCN analysis correctly?

I mean, besides the obvious answer that he was paid off by the Freemasons. Wanted to get that one out of the way for you so you can give an intelligent response.

 

[Stacyhs]

Just saw a program on the JonBenét Ramsey case - where the Boulder CO police were heavily criticized for their leaking of info early on. Those leaks became the basis of "public truth" which resulted in then-unprecedented vilification of the parents.

As the 2 hour program unfolded, it trashed each of the leaks/factoids one by one. But the damage had been done - and the program followed what it called the group think/confirmation bias of the police which became the basis for the way they assessed evidence.

When the police were presented with incontrovertible evidence that expert forensic-DNA experts ALL said that the evidence in front of them suggested an intruder - where today's testing has narrowed it to an Hispanic male - the police stuck to the view that the DNA was suddenly irrelevant to the case.

There were a ton of parallels between Boulder and Perugia.

Bill, I watched the same program and I was also astonished by the similarities between the Ramsey and Kercher cases. I brought it up in another group I belong to before I read your post here. The inept suspect centered investigation by the Boulder police that included "group think" and confirmation biased centered investigation were startlingly familiar. Thankfullly, the DA saw it for what it was and refused to prosecute. Too bad Mignini wasn't as intelligent.

 

[Stacyhs]

What an *ahem* unusual post....

Unfortunately for the "argument" contained therein (and entirely discounting the bizarre and wholly-irrelevant references to high art, cuisine, fashion etc....), Stefanoni's team - both the CSI team of which she was inexplicably the lead member, and the lab team - was about...oooh....a million miles away from accepted international standards when it came to the collection, transportation, storage, testing and analysis of forensic evidence in this case. This is manifestly and demonstrably the case. Stefanoni was hugely and grossly incompetent in every single aspect of her work in this case, and - worse even than that - she resorted to dissembling and misdirection in court to try to cover up for her incompetence.

Ironically perhaps, it is a genuinely stupid argument that 'the Rome labs were up to international standards' when it came to the forensic work in this particular case. In fact, it's what we, in England, call 'bollocks'

Of course they were. Their certification in LCN analysis proved that. Oh, wait a minute.....maybe not.

 

[LondonJohn]

Of course they were. Their certification in LCN analysis proved that. Oh, wait a minute.....maybe not.

Indeed. Of course, one could perhaps (semantically) argue that certification is just a piece of paper and that what really matter are the actual practices and protocols used by the lab. But Stefanoni's lab not only didn't have the required certification, it also grossly violated pretty much every single process and protocol that the international forensic science community understands to be mandatory for low-template DNA analysis. There are clear and obvious reasons why it's absolutely crucial for labs undertaking low-template DNA work to use extremely rigorous protocols (positive-pressure hoods to prevent airborne contamination; total cleaning and disinfecting of all equipment and instruments; strict physical separation of samples with intensive cleaning in-between each sample being taken out in the lab; and so on). Not-a-real-doctor Stefanoni abjectly failed to follow a single one of these mandatory protocols and processes - instead, she appears to have employed her own "intuition" and unorthodox (and, needless to say, unapproved) methods, and she appears to have been slapdash and inept in the extreme.

 

[Bill Williams]

Bill, I watched the same program and I was also astonished by the similarities between the Ramsey and Kercher cases. I brought it up in another group I belong to before I read your post here. The inept suspect centered investigation by the Boulder police that included "group think" and confirmation biased centered investigation were startlingly familiar. Thankfullly, the DA saw it for what it was and refused to prosecute. Too bad Mignini wasn't as intelligent.

I'm always drawn back to that Canadian 2007 study of wrongful prosecutions and wrongful imprisonments, of which Canada has had too many - and many "notorious" ones, "notorious" not because of the accused but because of how far out of whack the process got.

Guilters always complain that police never act the way they sometimes act - the Ramsey and Knox/Sollecito prosecutions included. It happens, and investigative, prosecutorial and judicial incompetence are all too common.

 

[Stacyhs]

For someone who claims to hate witch hunting, intution and mental illness, it's hilarious you don't believe in scientific method and proof, that is DNA testing, footprint analysis, luminol, pathology, etc. It reminds me of the cadaver dogs in Portugal in the McCann case who sniffed out a cadaver in eleven different places and yet people think the dog is somehow mistaken, and people the world over should continue looking for 'sightings' of Maddie.

Wake up, smell the coffee. Science doesn't lie. Cadaver dogs are not 'mistaken'.

Science doesn't lie. But results are only as good as those who collect, analyze, and interpret the data and/or samples. The collection of the DNA samples was not done according to protocol unless one thinks using visibly dirty gloves and not changing gloves between handling evidence is correct. If one thinks that not changing shoe coverings between rooms is correct protocol, Stefanoni's team was great. If one thinks that storing evidence in a shoe box or wrapping it in gift wrap from the murder scene is correct protocol, then Stefanoni again was great.

I don't know about cadaver dogs' accuracy but drug sniffing dogs are not 100% accurate. In fact, just like luminol, dogs often give false positives.

"In 2010, a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis set out to test the reliability of drug- and bomb-sniffing dogs.

The team assembled 18 police dogs and their handlers and gave them a routine task: go through a room and sniff out the drugs and explosives.

But there was a twist. The room was clean. No drugs, no explosives.

In order to pass the test, the handlers and their dogs had to go through the room and detect nothing.

But of 144 runs, that happened only 21 times, for a failure rate of 85 percent."
(Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 9, 2012)

Although drug-sniffing dogs are supposed to find drugs on their own, the researchers concluded that they were influenced by their handlers, and that's what led to such a high failure rate.


"Dog handlers can accidentally cue alerts from their dogs by leading them too slowly or too many times around a vehicle, said Lawrence Myers, an Auburn University professor who studies detector dogs. Myers pointed to the "Clever Hans" phenomenon in the early 1900s, named after a horse whose owner claimed the animal could read and do math before a psychologist determined the horse was actually responding to his master's unwitting cues.

Training is the key to eliminating accidental cues and false alerts, said Paul Waggoner of Auburn's detector-dog research program.

"Is there a potential for handlers to cue these dogs to alert?" he asked. "The answer is a big, resounding yes."

(NPR Report: Drug-Sniffing Dogs Are Wrong More Often Than Right
January 7, 2011)

I like my coffee black if you're making it.

 

[Stacyhs]

I'm always drawn back to that Canadian 2007 study of wrongful prosecutions and wrongful imprisonments, of which Canada has had too many - and many "notorious" ones, "notorious" not because of the accused but because of how far out of whack the process got.

Guilters always complain that police never act the way they sometimes act - the Ramsey and Knox/Sollecito prosecutions included. It happens, and investigative, prosecutorial and judicial incompetence are all too common.

Quite. The Perugia police were all incapable of being victims of suspect-centered confirmation bias unlike the Boulder police.

And the anonymous letter from an alleged employee of the Rome lab detailing the problems with that lab was really written by Raffaele. Sneaky devil.

 

[Bill Williams]

Quite. The Perugia police were all incapable of being victims of suspect-centered confirmation bias unlike the Boulder police.

And the anonymous letter from an alleged employee of the Rome lab detailing the problems with that lab was really written by Raffaele. Sneaky devil.

Both Fleet White the day after the killing in Boulder, and Raffaele Sollecito the day before the disastrous interrogations shared something......

Both were approached anonymously by someone in the police department telling them that John Ramsay and Raffaele himself needed lawyers.

Both John and Raffaele thought they did not need lawyers because they'd not done anything. But Fleet White went and got one for John and Patsy.

They stayed out of jail. Raffaele endured 4 years in jail, two of them after a fraudulent conviction. The Ramsey's were vilified for "lawyering up".

Even as John Follain relates in his book - he relates the inner thoughts of Mignini who was sad to see Amanda finally with lawyers and surprised at how quickly she warmed up to them. (Imagine, someone on her side!) Follain relates how Mignini had thought, "Now we'll never know the truth."

The Boulder police thought that the Ramsey's lawyering up was an attempt to hide the truth.

The two cases have eerie similarities.

 

[Stacyhs]

Indeed. Of course, one could perhaps (semantically) argue that certification is just a piece of paper and that what really matter are the actual practices and protocols used by the lab. But Stefanoni's lab not only didn't have the required certification, it also grossly violated pretty much every single process and protocol that the international forensic science community understands to be mandatory for low-template DNA analysis. There are clear and obvious reasons why it's absolutely crucial for labs undertaking low-template DNA work to use extremely rigorous protocols (positive-pressure hoods to prevent airborne contamination; total cleaning and disinfecting of all equipment and instruments; strict physical separation of samples with intensive cleaning in-between each sample being taken out in the lab; and so on). Not-a-real-doctor Stefanoni abjectly failed to follow a single one of these mandatory protocols and processes - instead, she appears to have employed her own "intuition" and unorthodox (and, needless to say, unapproved) methods, and she appears to have been slapdash and inept in the extreme.

Does any of that really matter since she helped identify the victims of the tsunami where she had all the DNA she needed to analyze?

Analyzing LCN DNA also takes special training. No mention of any special training was ever mentioned when she testified. You can bet the prosecution would have mentioned that if she'd had it in order to enhance her credentials.

 

[Stacyhs]

Both Fleet White the day after the killing in Boulder, and Raffaele Sollecito the day before the disastrous interrogations shared something......

Both were approached anonymously by someone in the police department telling them that John Ramsay and Raffaele himself needed lawyers.

Both John and Raffaele thought they did not need lawyers because they'd not done anything. But Fleet White went and got one for John and Patsy.

They stayed out of jail. Raffaele endured 4 years in jail, two of them after a fraudulent conviction. The Ramsey's were vilified for "lawyering up".

Even as John Follain relates in his book - he relates the inner thoughts of Mignini who was sad to see Amanda finally with lawyers and surprised at how quickly she warmed up to them. (Imagine, someone on her side!) Follain relates how Mignini had thought, "Now we'll never know the truth."

The Boulder police thought that the Ramsey's lawyering up was an attempt to hide the truth.

The two cases have eerie similarities.

I find it amazing that getting a lawyer is seen as a sign of guilt, but it is. It just goes to show how confirmation bias works. Everything is interpreted to fit that bias. Did you notice that the Boulder police found John and Patsy not comforting each other as not "normal" and "suspicious? Yet when Raffaele comforted Amanda outside the cottage, the police saw it (and it was reported in the media) as "canoodling", which has amorous inferences.

 

[Stacyhs]

Amanda was thrown out of a bar for tipping a drink over the DJ's head. Kind, gracious Mez came to her rescue and persuaded the bar owner not to ban the thug.

I dumped a drink over a guy's head once and I've never killed anyone. Yet. Nor do I suffer from a "boiling rage".

 

[Vixen]

I dumped a drink over a guy's head once and I've never killed anyone. Yet. Nor do I suffer from a "boiling rage".

I have NEVER. poured a drink over anybody's head.

 

[Stacyhs]

It's about time to give up your crib sheet factoid, 'Rudy was a serial burglar of great expertise and skill'.

All the Milan nursery incident tells us is that, at best, Rudy exhibited Anti-Social Behaviour tendencies. He had a laptop he personalised. He may well have bought it cheap, being hard-up. Most stolen electronic equipment does go on the black market/ secondhand market. There's a shop near me which offers to 'unlock' equipment. Rudy walked into the nursery, he did not scale a sheer wall or use a rock.

The defence's ridiculous hyperbole was rejected over and over again. Even the Marasca court was scornful and upheld that the burglary scene at the cottage was faked.

1) I have to give up nothing as I've never said that "'Rudy was a serial burglar of great expertise and skill". Those were your words. I think he was a petty, amateur thief who had either broken into or accessed places he had no authority to be.

2) Being broke and without a job, one would think his main objective would be to steal things he could fence, not buy from fences.

3). Guede (I don't refer to his first name on purpose) did not need to use a rock or scale a wall into the nursery school as it was on the ground floor and had, according to del Prato, a door that was broken and could be opened with a kick. Not that someone trying to gain illegal access would ever force a door.

4) Regarding the staged burglary, Marasca was dealing with a favorite of yours; a judicial truth that had been confirmed by a previous ISC. As I've said, no one has ever provided an example where an ISC has overruled a "judicial truth" found by a previous ISC in the same case. Whether Marasca was being "scornful" is nothing more than a biased opinion of yours.

 

[Stacyhs]

I have NEVER. poured a drink over anybody's head.

Well good for you! The man pulled a stool out from under me, causing me to almost fall on my butt, because he thought I'd "stolen" his bar stool when he went to the bathroom. He then tried to hit me, causing a couple other men to throw him out after I poured the drink on him. But how does this prove that Amanda 1) tossed a drink on the DJ or 2) had a "boiling rage" temper? According to her friends in Seattle, she did not have a temper.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

fantastic lies

I dumped a drink over a guy's head once and I've never killed anyone. Yet. Nor do I suffer from a "boiling rage".

This story comes to us from John Follain's book, and it is highly dubious. If there were evidence for it, the prosecution would have used it at the trial. The story makes no sense, anyway. Why would Meredith have intervened? What could she have said that would have mollified the DJ?