The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 25

[LondonJohn]

I'm sure, with concerted effort you, too, can be, 'one of the group of people relies on evidence-based argument, reasoned analysis, and no wish/need to be bound to an a priori conclusion (with the consequence that if new evidence and good analysis leads towards a modification or even total reversal of the current conclusion, that is what will readily be done'.

It's easy: get rid of 'hypothetical situations' and conjecture; read the court documents; put aside ego and emotions; approach it as one would a mathematical puzzle, logically, objectively and dispassionately. Look at the facts found by the trial court.

Ahhh no, I see what you've done here. You've got the two groups the wrong way round.

No, I'm in the group that knows what it's talking about, relies on evidence-based argument, applies logic and reason to the evidence, and has zero emotional connectivity to any conclusion (e.g. "standing up for the poor victim", or making emotionally charged derogatory references to the defendants).

I recommend a quick gander at Bill's two posts from today about the "Knox washing Kercher's blood from her hands" issue (or, indeed, I humbly offer my own post about Chieffi's statements on Kercher's 9pm phone call to her parents mother) to see examples of what I'm talking about.

 

[bagels]

I'm sure, with concerted effort you, too, can be, 'one of the group of people relies on evidence-based argument, reasoned analysis, and no wish/need to be bound to an a priori conclusion (with the consequence that if new evidence and good analysis leads towards a modification or even total reversal of the current conclusion, that is what will readily be done'.

It's easy: get rid of 'hypothetical situations' and conjecture; read the court documents; put aside ego and emotions; approach it as one would a mathematical puzzle, logically, objectively and dispassionately. Look at the facts found by the trial court.

Oh your belief isn't a hypothetical fantasy you invented as a starting axiom but rather an actual concrete conclusion based on reasoned analysis?

Then perhaps you'd care to be the first PGP in this thread (or elsewhere on the internet, or any the court documents, or the prosecutors themselves) to put together a quick linear narrative of the crime and the corresponding evidence supporting that narrative.

I whipped up mine in about 60 seconds you can see it here.

Good luck I look forward to it!

 

[Vixen]

I will go one step further (pure speculation, I concede) than that, "it is not possible to use the genetic scientific data.....", as observed by even the first convicting court!

When one considers that Mignini ordered that the body temperature NOT be taken in situ, at the crimescene..... when one considers that the presumed-semen stain on the pillow under the victim's bare hips was not even tested.... when one considers that the Scientific Police did not forensically test the outside of the victim's bedroom door (doorhandle, etc.), when one considers that they had to wait until Dec 18 for a second forensic sweep of a hopelessly compromised crimescene, then 46 days old....

The police and prosecutor were not even interested in generating scientific data.​

The less there was of scientific data, the more the court was able to speculate. This was exactly one of the criticisms that the 2015 Marasca-Bruno report aimed at the whole court process - judicial hunches, became judicial truths, and replaced actual evidence.

This whole canard, "Knox wiped Meredith's blood from her hands," is one of them. Massei readily admits, "While it is not possible to use the genetic scientific data....." to come to that conclusion, he comes to that conclusion anyway, because of the way he views the overall circumstantial nature of this crime.

There's a case to be made that this was purposeful - the less evidence allowed, the more the judges could speculate.

The police have a very different approach to crime than a prosecutor or a forensic scientist.

The police's sole aim is to solve the crime. This entails identifying the culprit and building up a case so that the charge sticks. A prosecutor will be a qualified lawyer. He or she has the skill set and training to understand what constitutes reliable evidence and whether a prosecution would have a reasonable prospect of success, or 'cause' to bring a prosecution.

A forensic scientist is only interested in performing a scientific analysis using scientific methods and has no opinion either way as to whether this should be positive or negative.

 

[Vixen]

Oh your belief isn't a hypothetical fantasy you invented as a starting axiom but rather an actual concrete conclusion based on reasoned analysis?

Then perhaps you'd care to be the first PGP in this thread (or elsewhere on the internet, or any the court documents, or the prosecutors themselves) to put together a quick linear narrative of the crime and the corresponding evidence supporting that narrative.

I whipped up mine in about 60 seconds you can see it here.

Good luck I look forward to it!

Have you ever thought of taking up a career as a prosecutor?


<phew! > thank goodness for that.

 

[bagels]

Have you ever thought of taking up a career as a prosecutor?


<phew! > thank goodness for that.

Or what? The kids would have gone free?

Lol

 

[LondonJohn]

Chieffi is simply giving a plausible reason why Mez may not have called back. It can't be assumed that she was being attacked precisely at that time, 'because it was the last call she ever made'.

That's all.


Chieffi is <fx gestures upwards> up there.

And you are...?

No. No he's not. And firstly, if you think his reason was "plausible", then perhaps you yourself need to take another, closer look at what he said, alongside the facts of the case - and comparing the two. Just like I did.

The truth is: Chieffi is using an entirely bogus and factually-inaccurate hypothesis (and you've already articulated how much you HATE hypotheses, Vixen....) to dismiss the idea that the fact that Kercher didn't attempt to call her parents mother again could have been because she was confronted and attacked soon after getting home.

What was required was logic and reason. Applied to the evidence. Not judicial hunches - and, worse still, hunches based on a load of nonsense and fundamentally incorrect premises. And what was it that the pro-guilt commentators were saying about Supreme Court judges not being able to substitute their own interpretation of the evidence........?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!

 

[Bill Williams]

The police have a very different approach to crime than a prosecutor or a forensic scientist.

The police's sole aim is to solve the crime. This entails identifying the culprit and building up a case so that the charge sticks. A prosecutor will be a qualified lawyer. He or she has the skill set and training to understand what constitutes reliable evidence and whether a prosecution would have a reasonable prospect of success, or 'cause' to bring a prosecution.

A forensic scientist is only interested in performing a scientific analysis using scientific methods and has no opinion either way as to whether this should be positive or negative.

So? What does this have to do with Judge Massei's 2010 conclusion that there is no scientific basis possible to demonstrate Knox sloughed blood from her hands, and his admission that there was no way of knowing who the blood actually belonged to?

With this statement 7 years ago by the first convicting judge, are you going to continue to try to invent a scientific basis for your claim? Or are you going to concede the point?

 

[Vixen]

Ahhh no, I see what you've done here. You've got the two groups the wrong way round.

No, I'm in the group that knows what it's talking about, relies on evidence-based argument, applies logic and reason to the evidence, and has zero emotional connectivity to any conclusion (e.g. "standing up for the poor victim", or making emotionally charged derogatory references to the defendants).

I recommend a quick gander at Bill's two posts from today about the "Knox washing Kercher's blood from her hands" issue (or, indeed, I humbly offer my own post about Chieffi's statements on Kercher's 9pm phone call to her parents mother) to see examples of what I'm talking about.

Oh, and take may advice: learn to differentiate between relevant information and a non sequitur. (Re parents vs mother)

 

[Bill Williams]

You have the tenacity of a pit bull terrier, I'll say that of you.

Thank you.

 

[Vixen]

So? What does this have to do with Judge Massei's 2010 conclusion that there is no scientific basis possible to demonstrate Knox sloughed blood from her hands, and his admission that there was no way of knowing who the blood actually belonged to?

With this statement 7 years ago by the first convicting judge, are you going to continue to try to invent a scientific basis for your claim? Or are you going to concede the point?

What Massei was getting at (and I understood immediately) is that DNA is DNA. Where it comes from is not necessarily essential.

 

[LondonJohn]

The police's sole aim is to solve the crime. This entails identifying the culprit and building up a case so that the charge sticks.

This interesting little sentence says an awful lot. It says a lot about how little understanding you have of the correct role of a competent police force in a criminal investigation, and indeed it perfectly reflects the improper way in which the Perugia State Police force went about its investigation into the Kercher murder.

See, Vixen, a proper, competent police force (let's take the police in England and Wales as an example) actually does things in this manner: 1) it examines the crime scene, and competently/professionally processes the crime scene to collect as much potential evidence as possible; 2) it locates and interviews potential witnesses and other people who may have information to assist the investigation; 3) it conducts other lines of investigation (telephone/internet records, bank records, etc) connected to the victim and any persons of interest; 4) only AFTER collecting, analysing and concluding from the whole evidence set do the police identify prime suspect(s) - those suspects are then either voluntarily interviewed (under caution or not) or arrested and interviewed under caution, and they are usually challenged with some the evidence that the police have gathered. If, at the end of this process, the police believe that, based on the evidence and the suspect's/suspects' statements to police, there is sufficient evidence to justify charging the suspect(s) with specific criminal offences, a file is passed to the CPS, who assess things independently and either authorise charges to be brought or not.

What you described in your sentence, Vixen, was the way that incompetent police forces such as the Perugia State Police (under the direction of an incompetent PM) did it: 1) figure out who the "culprit is"; 2) find enough evidence against that culprit to "make a charge stick".

It should be fairly gigantically obvious why the Giobbi/Mignini method is so horribly flawed (and has the potential to result in dreadful miscarriages of justice), and why the correct method is far more likely to result in the correct culprit(s) being correctly identified and ultimately safely convicted.

 

[LondonJohn]

Oh, and take may advice: learn to differentiate between relevant information and a non sequitur. (Re parents vs mother)

Nope. Again.

Not only was this slack inattention to detail, it also formed a part of Chieffi's flawed "reasoning" - that Kerchers might have realised that her "parents" might have had some sort of engagement that evening (notwithstanding that Chieffi didn't even realise that Kercher's parents' mother's phone didn't even ring, since the call was cut off before connecting). The (hypothetical) picture Chieffi paints of Kercher's parents swanning out on an engagement of some sort is totally at odds with the truth: Kercher's mother, the actual intended recipient of the call, living alone with sever kidney failure, and whom Kercher called every day to check up on her wellbeing.

 

[Bill Williams]

What Massei was getting at (and I understood immediately) is that DNA is DNA. Where it comes from is not necessarily essential.

Huh?

There's no need for you to reinterpret what Massei was "getting at". Why? Because he wrote what he was getting at for all to read.

He wrote that there is no scientific basis possible to demonstrate Knox sloughed blood from her hands, and said that there was no way of knowing who the blood actually belonged to.

 

[Bill Williams]

What Massei was getting at (and I understood immediately) is that DNA is DNA. Where it comes from is not necessarily essential.

LOL! I almost missed it.

I almost missed that in one sentence you have undercut the very claim you've been insisting on for months now - that the presence of Knox's DNA mixed with Meredith's blood in the bathroom they shared could only have come from live-skin cells from Knox.

You claim that that was regarded as factual not only by the 2015 Marasca-Bruno court which acquitted the pair, but also by the 2010 Massei court which had convicted them.

What are you saying now? You're trying to claim that when Massei wrote his motiviations report in 2010, he meant that, "Where (the DNA in question) comes from is not necessarily essential."

Hoots! You've invalidated your own argument. I'll give you one thing, though, You have the tenacity of a pit bull terrier, before you eventually invalidate what you've been on about.

 

[Stacyhs]

Hehehehehehe classic. And, in its own way, entirely emblematic of what's constantly happening in a wider context in this thread. One group of people relies on evidence-based argument, reasoned analysis, and no wish/need to be bound to an a priori conclusion (with the consequence that if new evidence and good analysis leads towards a modification or even total reversal of the current conclusion, that is what will readily be done); while another group of people seemingly pulls "facts" out of their backsides at will, and argues based (again, seemingly) almost entirely upon appeals to their own bias and preconceived conclusions.

As a French person would not say: quel surprise.

I'm still waiting for her to answer my question:
So what part of what I said did she not support in her testimony?

 

[LondonJohn]

Now..........

A claim has been made (Hello, Hugo!) that Kercher had already spoken with her mother on the afternoon of 1st November (with the attendant implication that Kercher may not have felt it all that important to call her mother back after the failed 8.56pm call attempt)

So, let's look at the evidence.

Here is a link to the calls (incoming and outgoing) on 1st November from Kercher's UK mobile phone (the SonyEricsson model, which roamed onto the Wind network in Italy):

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.c...1-02-Log-cellphone-Kercher-Enghlish-phone.pdf.

It shows all the calls (incoming and outgoing) concerning Kercher's UK phone - the only one of the two phones with which she communicated with friends and family back in the UK. The number of Kercher's UK mobile phone is the number ending 571.

The call records show that the only billed call activity on this phone on 1st November took place between around 2.30pm and 3.55pm.

At around 2.30pm Kercher received a text message (SMS) from a UK mobile number ending 459. Kercher then sent two reply texts to this number at 3.01pm and 3.48pm.

This text communication took place with Kercher's English friend Amy - who was also in Perugia but who was also using a UK phone roaming onto an Italian network. The document below shows that the UK number ending 459 belongs to Amy:

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.c...ions/2007-11-02-Deposition-Police-Hayward.pdf


And then, at 3.55pm, Kercher made four consecutive extremely short calls to a UK mobile number ending 652, followed by a single lengthier return call from the same UK mobile number (ending 652) to Kercher's mobile at just before 3.56pm.

The person with whom Kercher was communicating in this series of calls was her father, John Kercher. He states his mobile number (ending 652) in this document:

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/7-Nov-2007-Statement-John-Kercher.pdf


So, in fact, Kercher did not speak at all with her mother (Arline) on the afternoon of 1st November. Instead, the evidence proves that she exchanged text messages with her friend Amy (most likely to arrange the pizza and movie event for later that same afternoon), and then she phoned her father who then called her immediately back for a proper conversation. It was her father with whom she would have talked about being tired after the Halloween night out, and the presents she had bought, and so on. Not her mother. She did not speak with her mother at all on the afternoon of 1st November (unless her father had just happened to be visiting his divorced ex-wife at that time, and handed his mobile phone to her so that she could speak with Meredith....................).

When Kercher tried to call her mother at 8.56pm that evening, she did so using her mother's home landline number (a UK fixed-line number with a Coulsdon code (01737), ending 564).

And so it goes.....



(And of course, all of this is notwithstanding the fact that whether or not Kercher had already spoken with her mother that day (and the evidence showed she had not) is very far from central to the errors of judgement and reasoning made by Chieffi in the way he ruled out the hypothesis that the failure of Kercher to make another call attempt to her mother could logically be posited as evidence that she was attacked shortly after arriving home)

 

[Stacyhs]

You accidentally typed "Knox" a couple times instead of "Kercher".

But the point of your post is quite accurate.

 

[LondonJohn]

You accidentally typed "Knox" a couple times instead of "Kercher".

But the point of your post is quite accurate.

So I did! Thanks for pointing it out. Now corrected.

When I first considered the premise that Kercher might have called her mother that afternoon (and that that call might have been the last one made from her UK mobile before that aborted 8.56pm attempt), I did get to wondering: had this 8.56pm call perhaps also been related to the attack? Did the attacker (Guede) perhaps grab Kercher's phone as she took it out of her bag, accidentally dial the last dialled number (Kercher's mother), and then terminate the call?

Of course, as it turned out, Kercher didn't call her mother at all earlier that afternoon, and the number she attempted to reach at 8.56pm (her mother's home landline number) was totally unrelated to any other number with which Kercher had had communication earlier that day. So the original premise remains entirely intact and feasible: almost immediately after parting from Sophie Purton, Kercher attempted to call her mother at home, but the call failed - very probably owing to the local topography causing signal reception/transmission problems. And then Kercher was confronted and attacked by Guede very shortly after returning home to the cottage, before she had any opportunity to call her mother back.

 

[Vixen]

This interesting little sentence says an awful lot. It says a lot about how little understanding you have of the correct role of a competent police force in a criminal investigation, and indeed it perfectly reflects the improper way in which the Perugia State Police force went about its investigation into the Kercher murder.

See, Vixen, a proper, competent police force (let's take the police in England and Wales as an example) actually does things in this manner: 1) it examines the crime scene, and competently/professionally processes the crime scene to collect as much potential evidence as possible; 2) it locates and interviews potential witnesses and other people who may have information to assist the investigation; 3) it conducts other lines of investigation (telephone/internet records, bank records, etc) connected to the victim and any persons of interest; 4) only AFTER collecting, analysing and concluding from the whole evidence set do the police identify prime suspect(s) - those suspects are then either voluntarily interviewed (under caution or not) or arrested and interviewed under caution, and they are usually challenged with some the evidence that the police have gathered. If, at the end of this process, the police believe that, based on the evidence and the suspect's/suspects' statements to police, there is sufficient evidence to justify charging the suspect(s) with specific criminal offences, a file is passed to the CPS, who assess things independently and either authorise charges to be brought or not.

What you described in your sentence, Vixen, was the way that incompetent police forces such as the Perugia State Police (under the direction of an incompetent PM) did it: 1) figure out who the "culprit is"; 2) find enough evidence against that culprit to "make a charge stick".

It should be fairly gigantically obvious why the Giobbi/Mignini method is so horribly flawed (and has the potential to result in dreadful miscarriages of justice), and why the correct method is far more likely to result in the correct culprit(s) being correctly identified and ultimately safely convicted.

Like Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito? Why elsewhere do you believe (or claim to believe) they should be exempt from all this?

Unfortunately, police are under enormous pressure to solve a crime, and given soft-hearted jurors propensity to feel more sorry for the defendant than the victim, police have to ensure they have a watertight case.

The number of bastards who have got away with murder on a 'technicality', makes this imperative.

However, they have a code of conduct, have sworn an oath of integrity, have clear lines of authority. Each police officer will only have key information on a 'need to know' basis.

There is no point in beating up suspects or torturing them, as it only means they get away with the crime, thanks to bad cops.

 

[Vixen]

Nope. Again.

Not only was this slack inattention to detail, it also formed a part of Chieffi's flawed "reasoning" - that Kerchers might have realised that her "parents" might have had some sort of engagement that evening (notwithstanding that Chieffi didn't even realise that Kercher's parents' mother's phone didn't even ring, since the call was cut off before connecting). The (hypothetical) picture Chieffi paints of Kercher's parents swanning out on an engagement of some sort is totally at odds with the truth: Kercher's mother, the actual intended recipient of the call, living alone with sever kidney failure, and whom Kercher called every day to check up on her wellbeing.

Chieffi understood perfectly well. He was responding to the appeal which made the ludicrous claim that the last call signified time of death, by giving generic examples of why.

It matters not a jot whether it was a call to the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker. It doesn't change the thrust of his argument.