Who killed Meredith Kercher? part 23

[Machiavelli]

Italian Constitution:

Art. 15
Freedom and confidentiality of correspondence and of every other form of
communication is inviolable.
Limitations may only be imposed by judicial decision stating the reasons and
in accordance with the guarantees provided by the law.

Thus this not mean that words written in one's own diary may not be given to unauthorized person(s) and published, of private information, without one's consent, even if one is a prisoner?

The judgment of the Court of Milan in 2014 apparently recognized this provision of the Italian Constitution in finding against Sarzanini and her publisher.

They can be given to unauthorized persons, but they cannot be published.

 

[Machiavelli]

LOL. Really? I must have been confused by the fact that Chieffi remanded the matter to the lower court and then there was a subsequent supreme court decision in the very same case. So, if by "final" you mean "final except for the subsequent decision that ends the case", then yeah, I guess you're right. Otherwise, I'm afraid you're clueless.

Chieffi points of law are definitive. I know perfectly well what I say. The definitive status of points of law established by cassazione is recognized by jurisprudence of art. 628 § 2 cpp.

 

[Machiavelli]

An explanation based on Italian procedural law of why the Marasca CSC panel motivation report and verdict may legally contradict anything stated in the Chieffi CSC panel annulment with referral. The res judicata of the Chieffi CSC panel - that is, the conviction of Knox for "simple" calunnia - cannot be appealed in the ordinary way, but can only be changed by a revision trial*.

*These three legal measures apply:

CPP Article 648.1, judgments delivered at trial which are not subject to appellate remedy other than revision are final;

CPP Article 629, the revision of judgments of conviction may be performed at any time;

Constitutional Court judgment 113 of 2011, revision may be requested when it is necessary to reopen proceedings to comply with a final judgment of the ECHR. (In addition to those reasons for request of revision allowed in CPP Article 630.)

Also the points of law established by Chieffi are final. And Art. 628 § 2 inhibits all subsequent courts from even discussing the points.

 

[Machiavelli]

This (highlighted) seems a fair point.

Why that one alone?

From the point of view of an investigator, whether an acquaintance was a "sexual partner" or not would have very little relevance.

 

[Welshman]

I did not admit that Amanda lied but I put supposed before the word lies. There is a simple reason why Quintavelle is a liar. He was questioned by the police shortly after the murders and he said nothing about Amanda being in his shop the day after the murder. A year later he changes his story and says Amanda was in the shop the day after the murder. He gave two completely different version of events and only one version can be true.

Machiavelli does not address the issue I raised concerning the double standards of the PGP. Machiavelli called Amanda a malicious liar and PGP have relentlessly attacked Amanda for lying and Machiavelli’s posts is the just the most recent example. As you can see from my three posts PGP have a long history of lying themselves, condoning and ignoring the lies of others. It is clear from my post that PGP don’t have a problem with lies but how lies are employed. According to PGP lies are wrong if they work in Amanda and Raffaele’s favour but are perfectly acceptable if they work against Amanda and Raffaele. This can be seen from the examples in my posts. For instance, PGP defend witnesses who lied because their testimony was harmful to Amanda and Raffaele. They give praise to books and documentaries filled with falsehoods if they are pro guilt because these falsehoods work against Amanda and Raffaele. As can be seen from one of my posts Vixen lied that Kurt Knox paid two million dollars to the PR firm. The PGP slavishly defend corrupt prosecutors who told numerous lies because these lies were damaging to Amanda and Raffaele. The PGP spread lies about people. Vixen recently told the falsehood judge Hellman had been bribed 500,000 dollars. One of my posts shows Amanda has been a victim of lies.

Machiavelli brands Amanda a malicious liar. The mind boggles. In view of the track record of the PGP in lying, condoning and ignoring the lies of others and the fact PGP feel lying is perfectly acceptable when it works against Amanda and Raffaele, the scale of this hypocrisy is difficult to take in. Anyone who comes an internet forum and viciously attacks someone for lying and then lies themselves, condone and ignore the lies of others and feel lying is perfectly fine depending on how lies are employed, should explain their hypocrisy which so far PGP have refused to do.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=11430102#post11430102

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=11427461#post11427461

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=11333243#post11333243

 

[Planigale]

Remind us all, Mach, which joker (almost literally, perhaps soon....) is running the failing state of Italy this month? Remind us too about how virtually every branch of Italian government is in disarray, constitutional crisis and panic, and how the economy and banking system are in near-meltdown.

Funnily enough, this IS all directly germane to the Knox/Sollecito case. Had not the Italian government been a shambles for so long, the necessary legal reforms would have been legislated, codified and enacted a long time before 2007. And the judiciary would have been root-and-branch shaken up and modernised. If the Italian state had been even a fraction of the car crash that it's been over most of the past 25 years or so, there's a genuinely good chance that the judicial process against Knox and Sollecito would have been as short and as decisive (in its acquittals) as it should have been.

One of the things I admire about the Italians is their ability to keep the country functioning at a high level with effective industry, excellent railways, great food and fashion despite a disastrous legal and political system. Almost as if the calibre of society is of greater importance than the institutions inflicted upon the people. If they had the brakes removed one might think they were capable of ruling the world!

 

[Planigale]

Personally, I still prefer the failing state of Italy rather than the failing state of the UK, if I have to chose.
If I were British I would think twice before spewing condescending judgements about things you don't know or about laughing of Italy. Just my opinion.

Italian prosecutor Henry Jorhn Woodcock (who happens to be also British citizen and familiar with the UK justice system) maintains that in terms of modernity - including rights of the accused - the Italian justice system is "light-years forward" compared to the British despite some suggest we shuld "parrot" it (so he says).

Never trust anyone who confuses units of distance with time.

 

[toto]

Why that one alone?

From the point of view of an investigator, whether an acquaintance was a "sexual partner" or not would have very little relevance.

You don't think her list of sexual partners is truthful: You think she slept with another man she had met but you seem to concede that finding someone beautiful does not necessarily mean she slept with him.

From the point of view of someone writing her list of sexual partners because she was advised to by her prison guard (as she did relate in her prison diary, as I quoted a few pages back) and because she was scared very much by the fact that she might have HIV, and from someone who was later aquitted of the crime of murder, then there is no reason to believe her list was inaccurate. You don't agree with any of this of course, but it is a logical possibility : she was interested in her sexual partners because of the HIV scare- other aquaintances would be irrelevant.

I understand fully we are both seeing the scenario from entirely different perspectives, and clearly one side won the argument legally.

 

[Planigale]

This is quite nonsensical (example of utter bias), because Knox had just contracted Herpes Simplex, one of the known false-positives factors, and ELISA might have detected a window of early serum cross-reaction.

Mach, you are excellent on providing an Italian perspective. I have a great deal of respect for your opinion, unlike other posters here you do and try and stick to the facts.

BUT

When you get to science you are terrible. Knox had a cold sore, this is reactivation of previously acquired HSV1, in a white middle class american girl this would have almost certainly have been acquired in childhood probably from another family member by kissing or other close face to face contact. It is NOT a primary herpes infection which in HSV1 usually causes a sore throat and ulcers of the throat NOT herpes labialis as seen in the pictures. HIV ELISA do NOT cross react with herpes and in any case the suggested false positives historically (tests used in 1990's) were related to primary herpes infections. (Due to a non specific elevation in antibodies in primary infections that does not occur in reactivation).

Interestingly primary childhood HSV1 oral infection provides cross reacting resistance against genital HSV2 infection in adulthood.

So, NO having a cold sore is NOT a reason for a false positive HIV test, not then, not now, not ever.

 

[Machiavelli]

If this 'logic' hadn't actually become reality until M/B overturned it, this would be hysterical. Mach speaks of the PIP ignoring facts while the PGP is faithful to them. But let's look at the facts;

- The clasp is seen on day 1 of the investigation. This is clearly a sexual assault and here is a severed piece of bra clasp. It is, nonetheless, not collected.
- 46 days later, after numerous visits to the cottage and the complete undoing of the bedroom, the clasp is located in a different location. The SP now decide to collect it, but in doing so they violate numerous protocols;
(1) They collect it using visibly dirty gloves
(2) They rub the very metal hook where the DNA is found using the same dirty glove.
(3) They pass it around among the technicians there as if they can eyeball anything relevant in doing so.
(4) They put the clasp back down on the ground to photograph it.
(5) They only test the sample once.
(6) They improperly store the clasp, allowing it to rust and render it useless for further testing.

The court claims there is no source of Sollecito DNA that could have resulted in a transfer but they ignore the fact the exterior side of Meredith's bedroom door/frame/handle were never tested for DNA because (to paraphrase) the crime took place on the other side of the door. Clearly Sollecito's DNA had to be there since he had tried to break down and enter the room.

For all these reasons, and because other male contributors are detected, C&V rules the results unreliable. Hellmann agrees.

1. The fact that other alleles are found on the clasp cannot be a logical reason from which one could infer anything about the way Sollecito's DNA was on it. This is because of what Halkides called "the first axiom of DNA science": nothing about date and means of transfer of the DNA can be inferred from the presence of the DNA itself.
The extra alleles themselves do not tell anything about the way they have come on the item, and they cannot provide any information about how Sollecito's DNA came on it. Absolutely zero.

2. C&V cannot "rule" anything, while Hellmann's decision was definitively ruled illogical and null.

3. The external side of the door seems to be the area of interst (of speculation) by the defence. However the fact that Sollecito tried to kick down the door (allegedly "tried") itself may not provide a reasonable probability that a massive amount of Sollecito's DNA would stick on the external side of the door - or that any amount of it would.
I assume Sollecito did not spent time licking areas of the door surface.
In fact the problem is about the intrinsic extreme improbability of tertiary transfer, which is something that calls into play conditions that are intrinsically improbable: according to experiments requires conditions of presence of wet biological fluids or wet surface and only happens within the framework of a structured interaction between very small areas, of which one already has an abundant DNA presence - it could be detected sometimes only in cases where you already know that there has been a contact with some speific very small (square centimeters) area where it was already known there was DNA, under wet conditions, and in those extreme low probability conditions it still happens in a minority of cases.
In this case we don't even know if there was Sollecito's DNA on the external surface of the door, there is no reason to assume that there had to be DNA on the door, to think that the forensic's glove ever touched the door (which had been disassembled by that day btw), even less we have a reason to expect that this immaginary touch would have occurred on that specific square centimeter where Sollecito had left his hypothetical DNA, and even less we could assume that the hypothetical biological material in those conditions after 46 days could be "wet" that is in transferable conditions.
There is also no reason to expect this kind of alleged contamination with any degree of frequency, given if this type of transfer was frequent we should have found quite a number of other instances, not only of Sollecito around the apartment but also of Amanda Knox inside the murder room.

4. The SC anyway cannot assess this topic. They have no legal power and no mean to do it. Direct assessment of this matter is exclusive competence of courts of merits.

Let's not forget, anyway, that the bra claps is only a piece of circumstantial evidence. Sollecito had a number of other pieces of evidence against him, and evidence has to be assessed altogether.
And also, consider that the evidence against Knox adds itself to the evidence against Sollecito.

Then we have the Luminol traces.. ones that test negative for blood using TMB and negative for Meredith's DNA, but what does Nenini rule? ... there was a lot of blood in Meredith's room, which is in close proximity to where the traces were found, so what else could these traces be from? They argue if you can't prove what non-blood agent caused the results then we must accept they were made from Meredith's blood, completely disregarding the indisputable evidence that proves it can't be her blood.

Nencini is absolutely correct. The (alleged) TMB negatives itself do not reduce at all the probabilities that luminol traces are blood, due to the properties of TMB and luminol (there is no known alternative substance that reacts to luminol but not to TMB, even less a plausible substance, they have the same false positives while luminol is more sensitive and more specific than TMB).
There is in fact no plausible alternative substance at all to explain the bare feet prints, no plausible alternative dynamic, and there are even other bare foot prints on the scene that are proven to be in diluted blood and to be related to the murder (but not showing to be related to Rudy Guede).

 

[TruthCalls]

I mean exactly what I said. From a detective's point of view, there is no reason to believe her partners list is truthful.
From the perspective of investigation there would no reason to assume that a suspect who has something to hide would write down a truthful or full list.
Btw the list of acquaintences she released to the police was certainly not truthful (incomplete) because in her MySpace page she had told about a beautiful black young man she had known in Perugia (via Garibaldi area) since August, and they promised they would meet again as soon as she would return from Germany. Yet she does not name this person neither in her police testimonies nor in her book. Maybe the man was not a "sexual partner" but still the "most beautiful black man she had ever met" is missing from her acquaintances and from her memories: she does not provide complete information.

Talk about lies and deception...

This same investigation had no problem believing a statement naming Lumumba, something they knew they coerced out of her, was truthful enough to justify racing out in the middle of the night and arresting him.

Amanda did not release anything to the police. She wrote in her diary, which was subsequently confiscated by the police, which was subsequently released to the media (I don't care what the path was, it was in their custody, it was their responsibility to ensure if remained out of the media). At no time did she release the list.

The list was clearly intended to represent her sexual partners, not acquaintances. But you need to lie on this point because you have no evidence of her having any other sexual partners, and without that you couldn't even make the OP.

Under what pretense do you assume she needed to tell the police or include in her book meeting someone?

 

[Machiavelli]

Mach, you are excellent on providing an Italian perspective. I have a great deal of respect for your opinion, unlike other posters here you do and try and stick to the facts.

BUT

When you get to science you are terrible. Knox had a cold sore, this is reactivation of previously acquired HSV1, in a white middle class american girl this would have almost certainly have been acquired in childhood probably from another family member by kissing or other close face to face contact. It is NOT a primary herpes infection which in HSV1 usually causes a sore throat and ulcers of the throat NOT herpes labialis as seen in the pictures. HIV ELISA do NOT cross react with herpes and in any case the suggested false positives historically (tests used in 1990's) were related to primary herpes infections. (Due to a non specific elevation in antibodies in primary infections that does not occur in reactivation).

Interestingly primary childhood HSV1 oral infection provides cross reacting resistance against genital HSV2 infection in adulthood.

So, NO having a cold sore is NOT a reason for a false positive HIV test, not then, not now, not ever.

What I find interesting in your response is, while you suggest that I am "terrible" when I talk about science, what you actually say is that ELISA false positives were indeed associated with HSV infection (at least that was from old medical literature) as one of the factors, and that in fact you only speculate that a possible immunitary activation of Knox system in that context would be a reactivization and not a primary infection, and you infer that also from the clinical picture (cold sore) - however, the pictures of Knox with a cold sore you refer to, are of June 2009, that is, almost 2 years later.

The question of the medical reason for a ELISA false positive anyway I think is secondary, as I said.
It is actually not easy to find meaningful statistics about it, I mean statistics that would be approriate to the contexts. What I found on the internet in Italy is that there is a mass of complaints about ELISA false positives within the Italian Health Care System - that you can read on internet forums - and you can see doctors answering "we have them frequently". You may also read the application of strange "protocols" as you read of patients that after a ELISA false positive are given a second and a thirt ELISA test (rather than WB) so you have real anarchy of approaches by patients among the Italian peninsula. I'm not drawing any scientific inference from that. I just note this.
Btw Italy has basically 20 Health Care Systems (one for each Region) and they are not consistent with each other.

 

[bagels]

Nencini is absolutely correct. The (alleged) TMB negatives itself do not reduce at all the probabilities that luminol traces are blood, due to the properties of TMB and luminol (there is no known alternative substance that reacts to luminol but not to TMB, even less a plausible substance, they have the same false positives while luminol is more sensitive and more specific than TMB).
There is in fact no plausible alternative substance at all to explain the bare feet prints, no plausible alternative dynamic, and there are even other bare foot prints on the scene that are proven to be in diluted blood and to be related to the murder (but not showing to be related to Rudy Guede).

This is where some basic logic might be helpful. If what you said was true, there would be no reason to ever use TMB, let alone use it following the application of luminol.

Since TMB was used following luminol, it means what you said isn't true.

 

[Diocletus]

Chieffi points of law are definitive. I know perfectly well what I say. The definitive status of points of law established by cassazione is recognized by jurisprudence of art. 628 § 2 cpp.

Nope. Nice try, but 628 sec 2 doesn't say that a preliminary judgment is "final" and also doesn't say anything about binding a subsequent session of cassazione.

The results here tell us very clearly that you are wrong. Yet again.

 

[Diocletus]

What I find interesting in your response is, while you suggest that I am "terrible" when I talk about science, what you actually say is that ELISA false positives were indeed associated with HSV infection (at least that was from old medical literature) as one of the factors, and that in fact you only speculate that a possible immunitary activation of Knox system in that context would be a reactivization and not a primary infection, and you infer that also from the clinical picture (cold sore) - however, the pictures of Knox with a cold sore you refer to, are of June 2009, that is, almost 2 years later.

The question of the medical reason for a ELISA false positive anyway I think is secondary, as I said.
It is actually not easy to find meaningful statistics about it, I mean statistics that would be approriate to the contexts. What I found on the internet in Italy is that there is a mass of complaints about ELISA false positives within the Italian Health Care System - that you can read on internet forums - and you can see doctors answering "we have them frequently". You may also read the application of strange "protocols" as you read of patients that after a ELISA false positive are given a second and a thirt ELISA test (rather than WB) so you have real anarchy of approaches by patients among the Italian peninsula. I'm not drawing any scientific inference from that. I just note this.
Btw Italy has basically 20 Health Care Systems (one for each Region) and they are not consistent with each other.

LOL. I can't wait until you start arguing that the ECtHR judgment hammering Italy is illegal/unethical/corrupt.

 

[Machiavelli]

Talk about lies and deception...

This same investigation had no problem believing a statement naming Lumumba, something they knew they coerced out of her, was truthful enough to justify racing out in the middle of the night and arresting him.

Yes. Correct. In the context I think it was an understandable decision.

Amanda did not release anything to the police. She wrote in her diary, which was subsequently confiscated by the police, which was subsequently released to the media (I don't care what the path was, it was in their custody, it was their responsibility to ensure if remained out of the media). At no time did she release the list.

Maybe I didn't express myself exhaustively, but in my 1st and 2nd paragraph was talking abut two different things.
Knox also wrote in her diary when she was in prison, but she also released a list of acuantances to the police when she was at the police station (a "note" she gave to Rita Ficarra I think).
Pleas note she was not asked about "sexual partners" - she was asked about acquaintances, people she knew they had something to do with the cottage or who knew Meredith. She did not write the name of Rudy Guede, despite they were together at the cottage in the downstairs apartment reportedly "talking very friendly" just a week before.

The list was clearly intended to represent her sexual partners, not acquaintances. But you need to lie on this point because you have no evidence of her having any other sexual partners, and without that you couldn't even make the OP.

I didn't lie at all.
I obviously don't know the full "real" list of her sexual partners but I know there would be no reason to trust her prison diary list, I think it would be illogical to take it at face value.
I also know that she did not provide the name of Guede in the list of acquaintances she provided, when she was asked about people who might have been at the cottage, and she did not mention - neither in her prison diary or in her book - the existence of the unknown Perugian "most beautiful black man she ever met", despite they promised each other they would meet again as soon as she would be back in Perugia.
So she certainly omits things, she does not provide complete information.

Under what pretense do you assume she needed to tell the police or include in her book meeting someone?

I do not assume that she needed. It's actually almost the contrary. What I do is that I note that she does not. And from the fact that she does not, I may draw a guess about the reason, which is, maybe, exactly that she needs to keep her mouth shut about meeting this "someone".

 

[Machiavelli]

Nope. Nice try, but 628 sec 2 doesn't say that a preliminary judgment is "final" and also doesn't say anything about binding a subsequent session of cassazione.

The results here tell us very clearly that you are wrong. Yet again.

Absolutely yes. It does - and also consider its jurisprudence.

You are wrong about Italian law. And I am right. As usual.
(U are usually wrong also about everything else)

 

[Machiavelli]

This is where some basic logic might be helpful. If what you said was true, there would be no reason to ever use TMB, let alone use it following the application of luminol.

Since TMB was used following luminol, it means what you said isn't true.

You see your reasoning is utterly flawed, don't you?

I think you can see there is nothing remotely scientific in your "deduction".

By applying your logic, any existing practice or protocol ever applied in the past some time would be scientifically correct or useful, just because someone applied it.

 

[Machiavelli]

LOL. I can't wait until you start arguing that the ECtHR judgment hammering Italy is illegal/unethical/corrupt.

No it would be only an attempt to distract the attention, away from the evidence of Knox's guilt.

 

[Machiavelli]

Never trust anyone who confuses units of distance with time.

I don't confuse anything I just quote. But this is just an Italian colloquialism.

Anyway - completely unrelated topic - time and distance are not exactly "separate" according to General Relativity, a theory that defines them as tightly related. In GR the concept of "small distance" would imply "short time", as much as in Quantum Mechanics "short time" would imply a "big energy".