It's hard not to reply to this.
First Vixen claims that the Italian Supreme Court (March 2015) did not exonerate the pair - even when shown repeatedly that subsequent Italian courts cited as judicial fact that the 5th Panel of the ISC had said "l'assoluzione".
Now Vixen utters a mistruth about what the Nencini court in 2014 had confirmed.
The one thing that the Nencini court did not do was confirm that the original DNA police forensic analyst, Patrizia Stefanoni, had given control samples to the court. Any of the courts who heard this.
We've gone over this countless times. We last went over this when I challenged Vixen to name one, just one, DNA forensic analyst/scientist who agrees with Stefanoni's work.
Vixen had cited Professor Novelli, who had testified at an earlier court.
What did Nencini say about Novelli? Nencini at least recorded that Novelli agreed that Stefanoni did not follow international protocols.
That there should have been a show stopper. But it showed why the 2015 ISC reversed Nencini's conviction - see the part in the 2015 motivations report where a lower-court judge should not substitute his own opinion (or even hunch) for the evidence, and most assuredly not substitute those things for a lack of evidence.
The lack being that with Stefanoni, as confirmed by Novelli? Stefanoni did not follow international protocols.
That should have ended it. But that, apparently, was not a problem for Nencini who went on to quote Novelli that sometimes protocol's lack can be made up by the experience of the operator - except that both Nencini and Novelli failed to say one way or the other if Stefanoni should be regarded as that operator!!!!!!
Be that as it may, did Nencini confirm that Stefanoni had deposited those negative controls into the court record?
No, Nencini did not. Nencini cited Novelli who claims to have seen them, simply by requesting them directly from Stefanoni, not from the court. Not the court, but from Stefanoni.
Nencini then goes and slaps Conti and Vecchiotti for not asking Stefanoni. (As an aside, what law requires Stefanoni to hand over controls to individuals.... they ARE supposed to be handed to "the court", which Nencini implies did not happen.)
What had Stefanoni done in the past when the defence had requested to see them? Stefanoni's record was to refuse to release them on their request. Stefanoni even asked one of the lower courts to defend her on this issue, because she thought of it as insulting that they had wanted to check her work!
Indeed, that lower judge defended Stefanoni hanging on to them by daring the defence to, in essence, charge Stefanoni with some sort of crime or make some sort of accusation against her - which would be difficult, given that you'd only know if she'd put her thumb on the scale by viewing the negative controls!!!!
So - if the pair's guilt is obvious, if it is as Vixen claims (throw out the bra-clasp evidence and there's still 100s of condemning issues against them).....
Why does Vixen need to misrepresent what Nencini claimed about the negative controls? Why lie?
Another poster here tracks this far better. In short, if the case is so overwhelming against the pair and if the 2015 Italian Supreme Court is corrupt in exonerating them, why lie at all?
I don't get it.
Notes from the Nencini Second Instance Appeal hearing:
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• Crini took the opportunity to criticise the previous appeal's independent DNA experts, saying that someone who keeps a refrigerator like the one Vecchiotti has [ie the one where the DNA samples have been stored], should be less critical about laboratory practice.[5] He also noted Vecchiotti's refusal to test "Trace 36I"—the then newly-discovered DNA trace on the knife blade—saying that this approach was 'ideological', 'weak' and 'insufficient'.[5] In reviewing the DNA evidence, Vecchiotti should (according to Crini) have also referenced the conclusions reached by the other DNA experts who have been involved in the case, but failed to do so.[5] Crini emphasised that, contrary to some reports, Vecchiotti had said she obtained all the cooperation she required from Stefanoni. Raw data could be accessed by accessing the machine itself as Stefanoni offered. Crini confirmed that the negative controls (suggested by some to be missing) were deposited with the other records of the DNA testing, and he pointed out where the court could find the documentation of their deposit.[5] Crini stated that this kitchen knife was compatible with the knife print on Meredith's bed sheet.[5]
• The bra clasp. Regarding the DNA trace on the bra clasp, Crini acknowledged that it was a mixed trace, which makes interpretation more difficult. However, the police experts were in no doubt that it contained Sollecito's DNA.[5] The Y-haplotype was a very good match for Sollecito, although it could theoretically match other close male family members. However, Crini pointed out that Guede was identified from a Y-haplotype match in a mixed DNA sample.[5] Crini cited Gill and Balding [13] in support of the DNA match.[5] Addressing the possibility of contamination, Crini said that it would need to be be deduced from the context of the finding and collection of the bra clasp: if contamination is to be considered, there must be a practical way for Sollecito's DNA to have been transferred to the clasp.[5] He pointed out that there was no instance of transfer of Sollecito's DNA anywhere at the crime scene.
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Source:
www.themurderofmeredithkercher.com
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Both the expert witnesses were examined during the course of the trial examination of the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia, and provided complex testimony that must be evaluated in addition to the written report [that was] lodged.
In analyzing the investigations of a technical nature to which Exhibits nos. 36 and 165 B were subjected, this Court must therefore evaluate first the results of the forensic-police tests, and then [evaluate] the objections to these which were advanced by the defendants’ technical consultants, as well as by the court-appointed experts in the Perugian appeal verdict.
Bearing this in mind, it is necessary to confront the issues – which are common both to the defendants’ Defense teams and to professors Carla Vecchiotti and Stefano Conti – of the potential contamination of the exhibits. This argument, obviously, must be resolved first, since in the event that a conclusion of probable contamination of the exhibits is reached, any evaluation of the findings on the analyses would be irrelevant for the purposes of the trial.
This Court considers that speaking of the contamination of exhibits in a generalized way and allowing for abstract possibilities, as was several times repeated by the Defense and by the court-appointed experts, Prof. Carla Vecchiotti and Prof. Stefano Conti, even in their written conclusions [points 4) and 5) of the conclusions of the technical report, signed by them, and quoted several times], has absolutely no meaning in the context of a criminal trial, and is objectively deceptive.
In a general way and allowing for abstract possibilities, all or any instrument forming part of the evidence in the trial may contain within itself the seeds of contamination and of unreliability. And this is true not only for the defendants’ statements, but also for the witnesses’ statements (who [196] may be corrupted in order to give false testimony, or even intimidated), and even, finally, for any other assessment of a technical nature or of an unrepeatable nature carried out by the State Police, which may be tainted by falsification of the related test-transcripts carried out by those same police officials (as several trials of national importance have taught us). In the context of a criminal trial, in the face of probative/evidentiary or circumstantial evidence, whether this is thus a document, a declarative proof, or even a test of a technical or unrepeatable nature, it is necessary that the latter [i.e. evidence] should always be subjected to the critical scrutiny of those judging, which involves an evaluation of the evidence of the established fact, and of its significance in the overall context of the circumstantial or probative findings. It is necessary that the Judge naturally should also consider the issue of the genuineness and of the consequent reliability of the evidence and circumstantial evidence. But such genuineness and reliability, once the probative or circumstantial evidence has been formed, cannot be cast into doubt by mere conjectures, or by deductions based on the acceptance of mere possibility. The unreliability of the evidence or of the circumstantial evidence must be tested and linked to specific data of at least concrete probability, if not of outright certainty.
The above-mentioned procedural methodological principle, which this Court holds must be followed, must be borne in mind even in this case in point, when evidence is debated, [with] persistently repeated [claims] of the contamination of exhibits that were subject to technical-scientific [forensic] investigation.
While it can, with reason, be asserted that it is not the duty of the objecting party to prove the occurrence of contamination – since this would otherwise constitute an inadmissible inversion of the burden of proof – it must at the same time be admitted that this party has likewise an explicit duty of producing specific facts[22] which may actually have caused the alleged contamination, and regarding which an investigation may be requested from the Judge.
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Now, even if [we] wished to follow the same method of argument, we would have to conclude that a police operator, having picked up Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA elsewhere without noticing, had transferred it accidentally, but by some exceedingly selective manner, only onto the tip of the little hook, but not onto the adjacent cloth too, or onto other pieces of evidence that were collected during the search carried out on 18 December 2007 in the cottage (for example, the above-mentioned sweatshirt belonging to Meredith Kercher, on which was found only Rudy Hermann Guede’s DNA), which had definitely come into contact with that same forensic police operator.
This Court holds that this hypothesis set out by the Defense, when examined with the criteria of reasonableness on the basis of the trial findings, becomes precisely yet another of those conjectures that have no connection with legal reality, and that – being driven by an abstract allowance for mere possibility – are not able to diminish that which has, moreover, been ascertained through the trial.
Lastly, there remains to be considered the phase relating to the analyses carried out on Exhibit 165 B in the laboratory – a place where accidental contamination by contact is always possible. This remaining hypothesis must also objectively be excluded.
Regarding the point of the alleged violation of international protocols, as a repeated assertion during the course of the judgment, it is worth setting out a few reflections.
In the first place, it must be observed that the State Police personnel, who on a daily basis work opposite the forensic police, together with the Carabinieri Corps Police – to whom we will return shortly – have reached levels of professionalism of indisputable merit, recognized at the national and international levels, and recently even certified: professional levels, to say the least, of a level equal to the best scientific/forensic minds, who have provided their contribution during this trial in their capacity as consultants for the trial parties.
[207] In the second place, the constant presence during the course of the laboratory activities of extremely competent professionals, in their legal role as party appointed consultants in defense of the rights of the defendants, too, as a consequence of the Prosecutor’s adoption of the procedure under article 360 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, guarantees the correctness of the analysis methods (but obviously not their results, which will be the subject of specific investigation); in the sense that, in the event that any gross errors of scientific protocol had been committed by Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni, they would have been pointed out and criticized immediately. Thus, the fact that none of the parties’ consultants criticized the analyses during the course of their execution (but only the methods used and the results obtained) is greatly reassuring with regard to the overall reliability and genuineness of the circumstantial and probative totality that can be deduced from the genetic analyses.
Lastly, even if we wish to hold that during the course of collecting the material which was later subjected to analysis there had been lapses of professionalism (certainly the belated collection of the bra clasp clearly constitutes a significant one) the goal of criminal proceedings, which aim at the rigorous assessment of criminally relevant behaviors which result in the imposition of a criminal sentence, imposes on the Judge the [duty of] verifying, in actual fact and not as mere hypothesis, whether such a lapse of professionalism has negatively impacted the admission of evidence in the trial. And in the case under consideration, such negative impact can be ruled out for the reasons already set out.
In conclusion, therefore, when no negative impact on the trial evidence has been established, even the alleged violation of international protocols on the topics of property searches and of collection of samples to be subjected to analysis becomes a trial element of no value, which cannot, per se,invalidate the results of the laboratory analyses that were carried out on the exhibits.
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Indeed, nothing can be excluded a priori in any criminal trial. Thus, what counts in the trial is that which can be documented; not that which can be excluded abstractly, but that which can be asserted concretely. In the case at hand, examining the operations performed by the State Police in their professional role and the biological analyses performed in laboratories with certified reliability, it was the task of the court-appointed experts to inspect the methods and results of the analyses and furnish the Judge with a contribution of knowledge that he expressly asked for by entrusting them with this task.
And it was also one of the precise tasks of the expert panel, on the basis of the task entrusted to them, to make sure they obtained all the necessary information to perform the job correctly, diligently seeking out everything that could be useful in responding to the questions.
But this turns out not to have been done, if it is true that in the report submitted to the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia the appointed experts asserted that the negative and positive controls relative to the electropherograms were never made available at the trial; yet on the basis of this assertion, they drew conclusions as to the unreliability of the investigations performed by the Scientific Police in view of the possible contamination of the exhibits.
[221] Now, it turns out from the records of the preliminary hearings, which were produced during the first instance trial with the agreement of all parties, that on 4 October 2008, during a hearing before the Preliminary Hearing Judge of the Court of Perugia and in response to a specific question by Prof. Pascali (one of the consultants for the defendant Raffaele Sollecito), Dr. Stefanoni asserted that the negative and positive controls existed, that they had been examined and evaluated by her, and could be produced on simple request (and in truth at that very hearing she submitted those relating to Exhibit 165B, the bra clasp). This circumstance, also mentioned in the report submitted by Dr. Stefanoni following the outcome of the expert report submitted by Conti and Vecchiotti, was true and in fact was confirmed by the fact that Prof. Giuseppe Novelli made the effort to ask for them and duly obtained them, so that he was able to examine them and deduce the absence of contamination of the exhibit under analysis.
The Court holds that the behavior of Prof. Carla Vecchiotti is deserving of strong condemnation, since before making an incorrect statement in a report, and then deriving from it further incorrect considerations on the reliability or unreliability of laboratory analyses performed by others, it should have been her duty to ask Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni for the positive and negative controls whose existence she had asserted at a trial hearing. Only in the case where they were not provided should Prof. Vecchiotti have then drawn the conclusions that were due.
This initiative should have been undertaken as a duty, since it is expressly contained in the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure which, in article 288, regulates the investigative activity that an expert should and must follow with the goal of furnishing a correct response to the question posed by the Judge. In the penal context one need not respect the limits which are typical of civil procedures, in which the formation of proof is made available to the parties, so that the expert can examine only what was produced at trial, thus respecting the limits fixed by the procedural law. In the penal context the expert, precisely because of his function as an assistant to the Judge for the comprehension of evidence with the aim of correctly exercising the jurisdictional power of imposing a sentence, is not held to any particular limits in the acquisition of the information on which to base his opinion, which he may acquire even directly from the accused.
This Court holds that not having acquired the positive and negative controls on the part of the experts appointed by the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia reveals [222] at the very least a lack of attention to the documentation in the case file resulting in decreased reliability of the answer furnished in the technical report.
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In conclusion, the technical and scientific assertions by Prof. Carla Vecchiotti as to the insufficiency of the quantity of material contained in trace (I) to allow for further testing, given in the written report submitted to the Court and also explained with ample arguments at the 6 September 2011 hearing, led the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia to the conviction that any further analysis of trace (I) from the knife known as Exhibit 36 would be an “adventuresome” operation from the scientific point of view, incapable of providing any result that would be methodologically and thus scientifically reliable; thus it could be discarded for trial purposes.
However, this technical and scientific assertion, repeated several times by Prof. Carla Vecchiotti with great conviction, was glaringly false.
This is not because this Court declares it to be indisputably so, but because it has been proven false during the course of this trial.
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The experts appointed by this Court did tests of a scientific and technical nature that were above all reproach, performing two separate amplifications of the trace on a quantity of material identical to that which Prof. Carla Vecchiotti had assessed to be unsuitable for analysis.
This is one incontrovertible fact, and gives a confirmation per tabulas of what was already maintained in September 2011 by Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni, geneticist of the State Police as well as the technical consultants of the Prosecutor and the civil parties, Profs. Giuseppe Novelli, and Francesca Torricelli: namely that trace (I) was analyzable using kits that were already available on the market in 2011.
The trace should have been analyzed by Profs. Stefano Conti and Carla Vecchiotti in the context of the trial that took place at the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia.
Equally erroneous was the opinion expressed by the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Perugia in the sentence subsequently annulled, namely the opinion according to which the analysis of trace (I) could not be performed because the available methods of analysis were not reliable. This opinion, which was obviously induced by the erroneous technical scientific assertions made in the expert report and in the courtroom by Prof. Carla Vecchiotti, was proven wrong by the expert tests performed before this Judge.
These are essentially the conclusions reached by the Scientific Police as a result of the laboratory analyses performed on Exhibit 165B. According to the opinion of Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni, the analysis of the DNA found on trace (B) attributed it to two contributors; a mixture of Raffaele Sollecito and Meredith Kercher. This fact was confirmed by the identification with Raffaele Sollecito’s Y chromosome.
Also with respect to these results, the experts Conti and Vecchiotti concluded, in the report they submitted and subsequently also during their cross-examination in Court, that this evidence was unreliable and in particular: “with respect to Exhibit 165B (the bra clasp) we hold that the technical analyses performed on it are not reliable, for the following reasons.
<snip>
But all of this is entirely irrelevant to the question of the specific significance of the fact of having found Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA on the hook of the bra worn by Meredith Kercher on the evening of the murder. There is no reason for the DNA of Raffaele Sollecito to be present on that hook, as nothing in the case file indicates that there was any intimate or even merely familiar relationship between the victim and Raffaele Sollecito, apart from [244] the fact of his having been present on the evening of the murder and having pulled at the clasp with his fingers in order to cut the elastic closure at the moment when the victim was being attacked. Essentially, in not very technical but maybe more expressive terms, it is possible that many hands touched that bra clasp, but the one that is important at trial is that of Raffaele Sollecito, since the evidence places the defendant at the scene of the crime on the evening when the murder was committed, and indicates his taking an active role in the attack on Meredith Kercher.
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However, the attribution of the biological trace to Raffaele Sollecito is not only a consequence of the fact that all 15 of the genetic loci, as well as the sex gene match according to Dr. Stefanoni and the consultants of the Civil Parties and of the Prosecutor, and a considerable number of them match even in the opinion of Prof. Adriano Tagliabracci. The attribution of the trace to Raffaele Sollecito also follows from the analysis of the Y haplotype, with respect to which there are no pertinent objections concerning the interpretation, given that the haplotype found on the trace present on the hooks is the result of a selection operated by the machine, which produced these numbers in that order, without any intervention by the geneticist. It is furthermore shown that, for the examination and attribution of such a haplotype, 17 loci were utilized, which is the [249] greatest possible number it is possible to analyze at the present time and gives a methodology that is enormously more efficient than the analysis of just 11 loci as was done in previous years.
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In conclusion, in analogy with what was already maintained by the First Instance Court, this Court also considers it completely unreasonable to entertain the notion that another person, not Raffaele Sollecito but with a haplotype that coincides with his at the maximum number of 17 loci, could have left the trace that was found on Exhibit 165B. Indeed, that would be tantamount to assuming that a person different from Raffaele Sollecito but belonging to the same male line as him and therefore possessing the identical Y chromosome entered the cottage at 7 Via della Pergola. Furthermore, this hypothetical person would also have to have had all of the uncontested genetic loci that identical to those constituting the specific individualizing inheritance of Raffaele Sollecito.
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From these considerations, it can be deduced that the fact that the Y haplotype of Raffaele Sollecito coincides with the Y haplotype found on the trace extracted from Exhibit 165B leads to the conclusion that the biological trace found on the hook of the clasp of the bra that Meredith Kercher was wearing on the evening she was murdered was left by Raffaele Sollecito. This conclusion is rendered even more obvious, and thus more convincing, by the fact that Raffaele Sollecito’s genetic profile coincides with the one found in the trace at the numerous loci that were not contested by any of the consultants.
[250] It is thus possible to assert that the genetic investigations performed by the Scientific Police on the hook of the clasp of the bra worn by Meredith Kercher on the evening she was killed yielded a piece of evidence of indisputable significance. Both by the quantity of DNA analyzed and by the fact of having performed the analysis at 17 loci with unambiguous results, not to mention the fact that the results of the analysis were confirmed by the attribution of the Y haplotype to the defendant, it is possible to say that it has been judicially ascertained that Raffaele Sollecito’s DNA was present on the exhibit; an exhibit that was therefore handled by the defendant on the night of the murder.
- Extracts from Nencini Report
Nencini upholds that the Forensic Police, aside from some human error, acted correctly and dismissed defence claims that Stefanoni had withheld raw data, and as claimed by ‘the experts’, citing documentary proof the information had been deposited.
