The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 25

[Machiavelli]

This case has been over for more than two years. There is no pro-Knox campaign. All the principals have long since gotten on with their lives.

What's left are folk trying to argue that "hypothetical" doesn't mean "hypothetical".

(...)

What about folks who have been writing on this forum trying to argue - based on false and disproven arguments about language - that Bruno-Marasca didn't write what he writes?

 

[Bill Williams]

What about folks who have been writing on this forum trying to argue - based on false and disproven arguments about language - that Bruno-Marasca didn't write what he writes?

This is what they wrote - an English translation vetted by three Italian speakers:

9.3 During the analysis of the aforementioned elements of evidence, it is certainly useful to remember that, taking for granted that the murder occurred in via della Pergola, the alleged presence at the house of the defendants cannot, in itself, be considered as proof of guilt.​

Nevertheless, even if attribution is certain, the trial element would not be unequivocal as a demonstration of posthumous contact with that blood, as a likely attempt to remove the most blatant traces of what had happened, perhaps to help someone or deflect suspicion from herself, without this entailing her certain direct involvement in the murder. Any further and more meaningful value would be, in fact, resisted by the fact - which is decisive - that no trace leading to her was found at the scene of the crime or on the victim’s body, so that - if all the above is accepted - her contact with the victim’s blood would have occurred after the crime and in another part of the house.​

Now you're going to say that M/B did not say those things. Have at it.

 

[bagels]

Your bias is grotesque. You don't seem even real to me.
Your blindness and twisting of each element is so systematic that it requires a big effort to show all the points one by one. There might be a step by step process, but, I can see that you are unflinched by some very disturbing aspects of Hellmann's verdict, for example by its racist point. You don't seem sensitive to racial issues and you seem to not see aspects of bias that are really huge, before your eyes - someone says, it requires considerable effort to notice things that are before our eyes.
You say Guede appeared on CCTV. There is actually no evidence that he is on CCTV more than Knox is, or more than Sollecito's car. But you note Guede.
There is not even evidence beyond reasonable doubt that he was a burglar, btw, he has no precedent for burglary. There is a suspicion of link, to only one burglary. Reality is made of details.
You could have equally said - based on the same type of evidence - that Amanda Knox is the one who picks up drug dealers in series, who has precedents for drug fuelled parties dangerously running out of control and rape pranks on roommates, who used to spend 1k euros cash in excess on unknown items every months; or recall of Sollecito as the knife collector and an enthusiast of snuff movies.
These are elements of profiling, but they are not evidence. They are contextual elements, they may help understand a scenario.
They are not evidence neither for Knox, Sollecito or Guede.

We have tons and tons of evidence in this case. More than we need. There's so much it's like sand, it slips through my fingers when I'm going through it trying to produce it all. For example, Amanda was tested for drugs, and tested negative. There is no junkie narative. There is however a copy of the Dean's list from UW, her name is on it. Very suspicious. Your tabloid crap about what's clearly a standard issue American college girl that's been to a few parties is more telling of yourself than her.

You cannot "use" a precedent (or suspicion) of burglary against Guede that way, as if it was evidence that Guede committed that specific crime, alone. I caught a burglar (a girl, 16/18 yo) yesterday, as she was trying to enter my dining room, an a second girl was hiding in the garden. My city - just like Perugia - is full of burglars, but nobody rapes tortures and murders women in the house: you need specific evidence about a crime.

What I can and can't use in a court of law is irrelevant, because I am building a personal historical sense of what happened, not convicting someone using the modern rules of evidence before a blind lady justice. If a guy with a history of rock throwing window climbing break-ins is walking around covered in blood at a rock thrown window climbed break-in, I connect them, because it is obvious, unless I have a compelling reason not to. Some cop saying oh even though it's not in a single photo there was glass on clothes believe me - give me a break.

BTW burglar homicides occur semi-common in this country, about 100x a year last I checked, which is several orders of magnitudes more often than coed knife slashing sex games between strangers speaking different languages, last I checked.

And one of the most obvious sets of evidence about this crime, not the only one but just one of the obvious sets of evidence, is that it was not committed by a single perpetrator.

A single set of bloody prints. A single set of DNA from the rapekit. Wounds and imprint all perfectly compatible with a single knife. *in Arnold Schwarzenegger voice* c'mon, don't BS me.


IDK what your deal is with this case Mach. National pride? Look at the idiot cops in the David Camm case. The prosecutor there was giving Mignini a run for his money. It was a screw up. You'll get over it.

 

[Stacyhs]

You realize there is no argument in what you say, don't you? Yes they are doing it "wrong", or at least it's just useless most of the times. One reason why TMB is so easilly performed with reduncancy, even on latent luminol traces, is that TMB is very cheap, very easy to perform, and very easy to record; whilst luminol may be very difficult to perform and difficult to record. Therefore a double collection is mostly regarded as a convenient protocol.
But this does not mean that it adds information.
Scientific literature shows it doesn't.

The fact that a procedure is wide spread, is not a scientific argument to claim that it's valid or useful. History of science is full of procedures or protocols that had been previously wide spread and believed to be efficient, that were later deemed not useful and changed.

I'm aware that fact backs me up. It is a fact that luminol positive traces are commonly followed up by TMB testing to determine if blood is not present. That is why it is used. If it adds no information then why is it routinely used around the world in investigations? Why bother with it? To reduce it to a "convenient protocol" is without logic or foundation.

Once possible blood is located with luminol, the Combined Phenolphthalein-Tetramethylbenzidine (PTMB) Test must be performed. Since other substances are known to react with luminol, blood is not indicated unless the PTMB Test is positive. Luminol will not
interfere with this subsequent test.

Virginia Dept. of Forensic Science Training Manual.

Now, why don't you provide some of the alleged literature stating otherwise?

 

[TruthCalls]

No no no, they didn't say "if Amanda Knox got blood on her hands". They said that Amanda Knox did get blood on her hands, but maybe she was participating in a crime committed by others, that is without an active participation to the murderous action.

But they also wrote that they agree that - based on autopsy related findings - it is incontrovertible that Meredith was killed by at least two persons, not just by Guede alone.

It is also pointed out that there is no doubt that Knox's calunnia was a voluntary and malicious behaviour, and says that any finding on the part of ECHR would be irrelevant to this effect.

It is in fact impossilbe, based on those conclusions, to believe that Knox could be innocent, and it is obvious that the judges may not believe it as well. The only thing that one can understand is that the verdict is manifestly politically motivated: they annull the conviction not because of a rationale but because they are politically forced to.

Miss a couple of days and wham... now a couple of pages behind. Maybe this will come out at some point but I have to ask... did Vixen call you in because she was boxed into a corner? You seem to be playing the same game as Vixen, but with slightly slicker wording. Nonetheless, you are making no more headway than her. So I would ask you the same question we've been asking Vixen;

o What is the EVIDENCE that Amanda was at the cottage at the time of the murder?
o What is the EVIDENCE that Amanda washed Meredith's blood from her hands?
o What is the EVIDENCE that Amanda heard Meredith scream?
o What is the EVIDENCE that more than one person murdered Meredith?

We all understand the crazy Italian justice system, the issues of "judicial truths" being established at trials where Amanda and Raffaele weren't even represented. You can cite all you want what you THINK M & B were saying in their motivational report. But at the end of the day there isn't a single person from the PGP that can cite any REAL, PHYSICAL evidence to support any of these claims. Hell, the courts don't even have a clue as to TOD so how the hell could they know whether they were there or not? Cite me a shred of evidence that proves Meredith wasn't dead or dying by 21:30 (as Guede himself stated). I can site significant pieces of evidence that indicates Amanda and Raffaele were at his place, acting normal and in a good mood, up to at least 21:26. I can cite six of seven expert witnesses who examined the body or reviewed the autopsy and concluded the wounds were compatible or consistent with a single attacker. And certainly I can cite an enormous amount of evidence that proves there is NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE of either Amanda or Raffaele in Meredith's bedroom, where the murder took place.

The courts annulled the conviction not for political reasons, as you claim (without any supporting evidence, I might point out) but because, as proven time and again by you and others, there is no evidence that even remotely links them to the crime.

 

[bagels]

The thing about these specific issue arguments is they're always lost in the incompatible perspectives between the two sides. From the PGP point of view quibbling about the technicalities of TMB doesn't make any sense when you have a lying coke fueled shedevil at a crime scene with multiple perpetrators.

If an omniscient being came down and revealed to the PGP the luminol was created by a previous tenant five years prior or some crap, it's not like suddenly all the PIP narratives would make sense to them. They're not stuck on the technicalities of TMB. They're stuck on looking at every aspect of the case and exclusively seeing signs of guilt. It's the nature of cognitive bias.


To be fair, in theory the same could possibly be true of us. But our position doesn't rely on multiple independent organizations spanning oceans conspiring to free Ted Bundy for no reason, so I tend to think it's probably more likely to be based in reality.

 

[TruthCalls]

1) not the SAL cards, but Stefanoni herself, on 8th October 2008, declared before Judge Micheli that "other tests" (without specifying them) had been performed on some luminol samples, and that they tested negative, and also told the judge that usually those tests are negative from latent traces. I say this just to point out that the existence of other negative tests was not revealed by the SAL cards, it was already known since 2008.

2) negative TMB tests do not show whether latent traces are in blood or not. They contain no additional information. This is because there is no known substance that has the property of being positive to luminol and negative to TMB at the same concentrations (even less a plausible substance).
TMB in the way it is performed it is also a much less sensitive test than luminol, and most important it is much less sensitive because it is an indirect test (therefore forced to operate on much smaller concentrations: it's not a trace that is tested, but a sample, which will have to be further diluted).
TMB is also even less specific than luminol, and all substances that test positive to TMB, also test positive to luminol.

Clearly you do not understand what these tests are all about.

First, Luminol is a presumptive test for the POSSIBLE presence of blood. In and of itself it proves nothing. Every piece of literature discussing the use of Luminol will stress follow-up tests are required to prove;

1. That it IS blood
2. That it IS HUMAN blood
3. WHO'S blood it is

TMB is plenty sensitive and while it is no more definitive than Luminol in proving a sample is blood, it is just as definitive as Luminol in proving something isn't blood. IOW, you suggesting a TMB negative sample is blood is just as compelling as me claiming a Luminol negative sample is blood.

Stefanoni had the option to run confirmatory tests on the samples, a step she HAD to know she needed to take after the negative TMB results, but as history shows, she ran no further tests to definitively identify the substance. One could speculate that's because she KNEW the TMB results proved there wasn't any blood but that, of course, would be speculation.

But the bigger issue you keep avoiding is there were several Luminol positive traces that either failed to provide a biological profile (i.e., NO DNA) OR there was a profile but it wasn't Meredith's. A trace that is TMB negative and does NOT contain Meredith's DNA is NOT a trace made from Meredith's blood, no matter how grossly you wish to try to distort the science.

There were three prints in Amanda's room that were TMB negative and only contained the DNA profile of Amanda. Please explain to me how those prints were made from Meredith's blood yet yielded those test results. And by explaining I mean in science terms, not what Massei or Nencini thought they knew.

But this does explain why you so bought into Massei and Nencini... you like to flip the burden of proof thingie on it's head. No, Mr Defense, YOU prove it ISN'T Meredith's blood. Never mind my own secondary presumptive test indicated it wasn't, and never mind I couldn't find her DNA in the sample... Luminol lit it up and if you can't prove what the source is then it's just perfectly fine for me to ASSume it's Meredith's blood - damn the science.

 

[Stacyhs]

Clearly you do not understand what these tests are all about.

First, Luminol is a presumptive test for the POSSIBLE presence of blood. In and of itself it proves nothing. Every piece of literature discussing the use of Luminol will stress follow-up tests are required to prove;

1. That it IS blood
2. That it IS HUMAN blood
3. WHO'S blood it is

TMB is plenty sensitive and while it is no more definitive than Luminol in proving a sample is blood, it is just as definitive as Luminol in proving something isn't blood. IOW, you suggesting a TMB negative sample is blood is just as compelling as me claiming a Luminol negative sample is blood.

Stefanoni had the option to run confirmatory tests on the samples, a step she HAD to know she needed to take after the negative TMB results, but as history shows, she ran no further tests to definitively identify the substance. One could speculate that's because she KNEW the TMB results proved there wasn't any blood but that, of course, would be speculation.

But the bigger issue you keep avoiding is there were several Luminol positive traces that either failed to provide a biological profile (i.e., NO DNA) OR there was a profile but it wasn't Meredith's. A trace that is TMB negative and does NOT contain Meredith's DNA is NOT a trace made from Meredith's blood, no matter how grossly you wish to try to distort the science.

There were three prints in Amanda's room that were TMB negative and only contained the DNA profile of Amanda. Please explain to me how those prints were made from Meredith's blood yet yielded those test results. And by explaining I mean in science terms, not what Massei or Nencini thought they knew.

But this does explain why you so bought into Massei and Nencini... you like to flip the burden of proof thingie on it's head. No, Mr Defense, YOU prove it ISN'T Meredith's blood. Never mind my own secondary presumptive test indicated it wasn't, and never mind I couldn't find her DNA in the sample... Luminol lit it up and if you can't prove what the source is then it's just perfectly fine for me to ASSume it's Meredith's blood - damn the science.

That about sums it up.

 

[Planigale]

Hi Planigale,

No the statements were *never* ruled to be "illegally obtained".
The statements were obtained legally.
The statements are unusable because under the Italian criminal procedure code, witness' statements to investigators are not usable contra sé.

The court of cassation *did* establish as a judicial truth that it is a proven fact that Knox was on the scene of murder when Meredith was killed, and also the murder was committed by more than one person, and that Knox washed her hands from Meredith's blood. You can't deny this manifest definitive finding.

You seem to think that it is important whether or not some Italian court came to some conclusion unsubstantiated by a rational analysis of the facts. Even worse that where an ill founded conclusion has been reached by one court that it has to be imported into another case perpetuating the error, and perpetuating the injustice. The court of cassation has ruled that Knox and Sollecito are not guilty of murder and that the evidence against them is so lacking in substance that no court re-examinig the evidence could reach a conclusion of guilt on the evidence available. We know Knox and Sollecito were present in the flat before and after the murder, evidence of their presence cannot be evidence of participation in the crime. Compare this with the bloody handprint of Guede, this provides identity, place and time. It tells you that Guede literally had blood on his hands.

 

[sept79]

You "provided" nothing. There is no test "that showed the footprints were not in blood".

And the Earth is flat . . . . .

 

[Machiavelli]

This is what they wrote - an English translation vetted by three Italian speakers:

Now you're going to say that M/B did not say those things. Have at it.

1) In the firtst quote the term ipotizzato is a neutral word, you cannot infer any position of the judge from it (contrarily to your interpretation).

2) The second paragraph instead, is just badly translated. In reality the paragraph only presents two possibilities: the possibility that Knox washed her hands during a cleaning up of the scene, or that she did so after killing.

It is a piece of evidence of strong suspicion, but it is not decisive, apart from the well-known considerations about the sure nature and reliability of the traces we talk about.
Nevertheless, even if we consider its attribution certain, the trial element would be non-univocal, because it is also demonstrative of a posthumous contact with that blood, as a probable attempt to remove the most visible traces of what happened, maybe to help someone or to deflect suspicion, while this could not contribute to reach certainty about her direct involvement in the killing action. Any further and more relevant value would be, in fact, however resisted by the circumstance that no trace referable to her was retrieved in the crime scene or on the victim’s body, so that, contact with blood would have happened in a subsequent time and in another room of the house.
A further element against her is, surely, represented by the slanderous declarations against Lumumba, abovementioned.

The paragraph has in fact written in a style that retains ambiguity and inaccuracies like most of what Bruno/Marasca writes – it also embeds factual falsehoods (because the attribution and reliability of the traces has not been questioned). But you can see that - with all its caveats - it only presents two alternatives, and innocence is not among them.



However the point is that this is not all what B/M writes. It is only one thing B/M writes, while you ignore other things he writes which are absolutely unequivocal and don't leave room for interpretation. The fact is that you ignore things B/M writes.

See few points:

a) Those alleged Italian mother-tongue translators (?) changed the meaning of the part with the word "conclamato", which cannot mean "proclaimed". Such interpretation is not possible in grammar. The phrase is unequivocal and only means absolutely proven fact.

b) You always ignore the parts where B/M say explicitly that from their point of view they agree with the findings of the lower court, that is they agree that Knox heared Meredith's scream, and they say it is incontrovertible that the crime was committed by multiple persons. Those paragraphs are unequivocal, and you just ignore them.

c) B/M (p.44) make a point of law presenting two legal alternatives, that is the two legal categories of not punishable complicity and concurring in the crime committing by another person. Those cathegories are not there in a hypothetical phrase, they are just the actual alternatives presented, which imply the presence of Knox on the murder scene. To present those categories - and them alone - means to imply Knox is at the murder scene.

d) B/M repeats again that the presence of Knox at the murder scene is "certain", in a phrase where - well I correct myself I won't call it it participium coniunctum, maybe it's an ablativus absolutus - the word "certain" is the first of the phrase and there is no "if". I wouldn't recommend anyone to write this way, but the phrase conveys a meaning of certainty to the reader. It is not an "if" phrase.

 

[Machiavelli]

I'm aware that fact backs me up. It is a fact that luminol positive traces are commonly followed up by TMB testing to determine if blood is not present. That is why it is used. If it adds no information then why is it routinely used around the world in investigations? Why bother with it? To reduce it to a "convenient protocol" is without logic or foundation.

Virginia Dept. of Forensic Science Training Manual.

Now, why don't you provide some of the alleged literature stating otherwise?

There is no scientific content in what you say. Training manuals are no scientific literature. Those are not arguments.

 

[Bill Williams]

1) In the firtst quote the term ipotizzato is a neutral word, you cannot infer any position of the judge from it (contrarily to your interpretation).

Reread my note. I did not interpret it. I merely quoted it. I then noted that your response would be to try to explain why what was said was not what was said.

Which you did. There it sits.

 

[Bill Williams]

I was searching for a definition of "dietrology", a term that was explained to Douglas Preston as he, as a non-Italian, tried to figure out why so many in that country try to explain things based on some "hidden knowledge" unavailable to outsiders.

I kept coming up with "conspiracy theory" as a preferred synonym.

According to the political scientist Michael Barkun, conspiracy theories rely on the view that the universe is governed by design, and embody three principles: nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected. Another common feature is that conspiracy theories evolve to incorporate whatever evidence exists against them, so that they become, as Barkun writes, a closed system that is unfalsifiable, and therefore "a matter of faith rather than proof".​

A poster to this thread says that the plain-text meaning of words in a 2015 Supreme Court motivations report is not as it seems. I'm now as stuck as Douglas Preston was in trying to figure out why outsiders like us need to be schooled in what we'll obviously never understand, compared to our betters.

 

[Bill Williams]

I kept coming up with "conspiracy theory" as a preferred synonym.

According to the political scientist Michael Barkun, conspiracy theories rely on the view that the universe is governed by design, and embody three principles: nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected. Another common feature is that conspiracy theories evolve to incorporate whatever evidence exists against them, so that they become, as Barkun writes, a closed system that is unfalsifiable, and therefore "a matter of faith rather than proof".​

There is no scientific content in what you say. Training manuals are no scientific literature. Those are not arguments.

The highlighted part, as well as M.'s response to Stacyhs's point, is classic. Machiavelli simply says something "sciencey" expecting us to swallow it whole, as a legitimate counter to S.'s point.

M. simply reframes his post to keep his views unfalsifiable. Of course I could be proven wrong, but is seems that M. has never once admitted to the conditions which would (at least in theory) falsify his views. He simply moves a few rhetorical steps left or right to keep his view unfalsifiable.

Which requires one to reread Barkun's quote above. All PIP's views are potentially falsifiable, meaning that all PIP know the conditions which would need to exist - and indeed could in theory exist - which would falsify their views.

For PGP no falsifiability exists, even in theory. If I am wrong about this, they'd similarly be able to list those things which would, in theory, prove them wrong.

 

[Machiavelli]

Reread my note. I did not interpret it. I merely quoted it. I then noted that your response would be to try to explain why what was said was not what was said.

Which you did. There it sits.

No you did not quote it. You quoted a translation, and you presented it (wrongly) as if it had a meaning that it doesn't have.

And above all, this is only a deflection on your part. The points in my previous posts are standing. You still deny that B/M makes some unequivocal statements, which do not leave any room for alternative interpretations.

As for the real meaning of the word "ipotizzato", you did not answer my question: would you accept that the word is neutral in the way that I explained, if I present you an example where the word is used by a judge to address a criminal allegation, while in the same paragraph (or the same page) the judge calls the crime "certain" or "proven"?

 

[Machiavelli]

The highlighted part, as well as M.'s response to Stacyhs's point, is classic. Machiavelli simply says something "sciencey" expecting us to swallow it whole, as a legitimate counter to S.'s point.

No. I am not really interested in what you swallow. I am merely advising you that I have no reason to swallow yours.
A falsification of S. point was unfold more than once on this forum in the past. And the fact is rather than seeking any "legitimate counter", I note that there is no point at all. Let's say that a kind of "legitimacy" of my lack of engagement, expresses an assessment that there is nothing to engage with.

S. defined herself/himself as a "believer in Knox's innocence". I note that she wouldn't consider a training manual ase evidence unless she wasn't a believer. I am not a believer. I'm skeptical. A neutral and skeptical person would instead seaarch through the scientific literature, to seek for example if a TMB negative & positive luminol points to any alternative substance with such property.

In fact, scientific literature disproves S. inference. TMB and luminol react to the same classes of compounds, have the same false positives. And I note again that a fundamental element in the innocentisti theory would be the existence of a probable alternative substance that is negative to TMB but positive to luminol. The impossibility to indicate such a substance would deprive the negative test of any information or possible logical value.

 

[bagels]

A neutral and skeptical person would instead seaarch through the scientific literature, to seek for example if a TMB negative & positive luminol points to any alternative substance with such property.

Whatever substance was found in Raff's house lighting up all the luminol maybe.

 

[Bill Williams]

As for the real meaning of the word "ipotizzato", you did not answer my question: would you accept that the word is neutral in the way that I explained, if I present you an example where the word is used by a judge to address a criminal allegation, while in the same paragraph (or the same page) the judge calls the crime "certain" or "proven"?

If you are trying to import some importance to what I, a non-Italian speaker, believes, I believe those Italian speakers who are neutral to the subject matter at hand. You in the past have described these back and forths as some sort of warfare.... which one of the Italian speakers anticipated when saying (as an opinion) that you had an agenda.

I cannot report more than that because of ISF's members agreement.

Speaking for myself, I would not trust anything you presented, just as you distrust anything I write.

There it sits. It's amazing you think it important enogh to try to correct my blindness and ignorance!

 

[Stacyhs]

There is no scientific content in what you say. Training manuals are no scientific literature. Those are not arguments.

This is classic obfuscation. The use of TMB as a follow up to luminol is universally accepted by the scientific community. As the saying goes, "you are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts."

From the Hellmann report:

Dr. Stefanoni herself, moreover, clarified (preliminary hearing of October 4 2008) that, while a positive test result could be deceptive due to reactivity of the chemical [evidenziatore] with other substances, a negative result gives certainty that no blood is present.”

No matter how the PGP try and spin it, those footprints were not made in blood. To insist otherwise simply demonstrates their sheer desperation. It would be amusing if it weren't so pitiful.