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The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 31

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Yes, that was his office. Forgot to give him a written copy of something. A clerical error and Sollecito went after him out of vindictiveness.

Ah, er, Mignini's professional association went after him. Why the need to obfuscate?

They didn't do it out of vindictiveness. They did it because by denying Sollecito his rights, Mignini had brought his profession into disrepute.
 
Er, would that be the same team that made a total mess of Knox' and Sollecito's evidence...?

Actually, pretty much. It's one of the reasons why Mignini had to wait the full year before bringing formal charges against AK and RS. Their case eventually fell apart against them, which it never did against Guede.
 
Stop confusing cases that were overturned because of Brady vs Maryland: withholding exculpatory evidence and 'the attorney lied in court'. That has zippo to do with bent prosecutors who deliberately pick on a random innocent bystander. People get their cases overturned all the time on points of law. It doesn't follow that the 'prosecutor was bent'.

Stop moving the goalpost. No one said anything about a 'random innocent bystander', including you.
When a prosecutor knowingly withholds exculpatory evidence which leads to an unjust conviction, what would be your definition of that? Honest? Ethical?

Do you have any evidence at all that Mignini committed a criminal wrongdoing against Knox? A simple yes or no will suffice.

I never said he did so there is no need to answer your question.

Do you have any evidence that there was blood on that knife?
A simple yes or no will suffice.

Do you have any evidence that Kercher's DNA could survive on a knife completely devoid of blood?
A simple yes or no will suffice.

Do you have any evidence that the ONLY piece of evidence against Sollecito in that room, LC-DNA on a tiny hook and yielding the DNA of two other men, collected 46 days later and found in a pile of dust and debris across the room, and admittedly touched with unchanged gloves, is not highly suggestive of contamination?
A simple yes or no will suffice.

Is it logical that RS would knowingly leave his own footprint in blood as evidence against him and for AK to point it out to the police?
A simple yes or no will suffice.

Is it logical that RS would claim nothing had been stolen if he had staged a burglary?
A simple yes or no will suffice.
 
Yes, that was his office. Forgot to give him a written copy of something. A clerical error and Sollecito went after him out of vindictiveness.

Another clerical error? You mean like when the M-B report stated that the pair had been acquitted for "not having committed the act" was a 'clerical error'?


But Mignini is just so ethical! Like when he threw Mario Spezi into jail for weeks without access to a lawyer on a trumped up charge and a court had to order his release when they found it was an illegal arrest.

You love to go on and on about the "merits" trial. Ok...let's talk about a "merits trial" since you think that's the only trial that counts: the merits trial
that found Mignini guilty of abuse of office. Since that's the only one that really counts, we'll just let that stand as proof that he's guilty.

As for the Perugia police being so ethical and honest, let's talk about Napoleoni and Zugarini who both stand convicted of their own crimes against Monica's ex-husband and the poor court psychologist. Or perhaps Det. Profazio who extracted two false rape confessions from two innocent Roma men.
 
Mignini was sanctioned by his professional association for denying Sollecito his rights.

Once Italy complies with the ECHR ruling, it will be interesting to see what further sanctions await him. Criminal? Probably not. He was charged criminally in the Narducci affair. That one lapsed because of a time limit.

It's an interesting question, though. There is actual evidence that he committed something untoward....

Mignini was sanctioned by the High Council of the Judiciary (Consiglio superiore della magistratura, CSM), which is the Italian Constitutional Judicial Branch organ that among other duties administers any required discipline to judges and prosecutors (Italian Constitution Article 105).

The CSM is headed by the President of Italy and includes as members by right the First President and the Attorney General (Chief Prosecutor) of the Supreme Court of Cassation. The other members must be university Full Professors of Law or Lawyers with 15 years of legal practice. Two-thirds of these members are elected by all the judges of Italy and the remaining one-third by the members of Parliament in joint session (Italian Constitution Article 104).

Source:

http://www.jus.unitn.it/dsg/pubblicazioni/costituzione/costituzione genn2008eng.pdf

Regarding any criminal responsibility for Mignini or any of the other authorities who may have violated Italian criminal laws in the Knox - Sollecito case, those would most likely be extinguished by the statute of limitations by the time any legal action could begin.

And there were criminal acts implicitly alleged against them, in particular by Knox's complaints about the interrogation; otherwise, how could Knox have been charged with calunnia - the malicious accusation that someone had committed a crime - against the police and Mignini? One or more Italian prosecutors decided what these alleged crimes were, not Knox or her lawyers. The alleged crimes are listed in the first two pages of the Boninsegna MR; they have been discussed previously here.
 
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Here we go again. All the evidence against Knox and Sollecito was contaminated but not the evidence collected against Guede,

If the two are innocent then the evidence against them is nonsense, does that make any sense?

There are countless accused that are just not involved, understand?

BTW low copy DNA should've never been used against them.
 
Here we go again. All the evidence against Knox and Sollecito was contaminated but not the evidence collected against Guede, collected the same time by the same forensics team and analysed in the same laboratories by the same scientists and as witnessed by the defence's expert witnesses, who never complained at the time. Do you see your lack of consistency here?

Covered in post 3220. Not that I'm holding out any hope you'll actually get it

You wrote:

"Well, actually, dishonest prosecutors have been found to have done exactly that in some cases. Example: the Stanley Mozee and Dennis Allen case (the prosecutor surrendered his law license in lieu of being officially disbarred) for withholding exculpatory evidence and lying about evidence."

Fact:

"their joint convictions were rooted in unreliable jailhouse informant testimony, a false confession and substantial prosecutorial misconduct. "
https://innocenceproject.org/stanle...d-actually-innocent-after-15-years-in-prison/

Do try to understand the points of law you ae making.

LOL. What part of the prosecutor "withholding exculpatory evidence and lying about evidence" are you not connecting with "substantial prosecutorial misconduct"?

Do try understanding what you're reading before replying.

Still waiting for the links to anyone here saying no way "could Amanda possibly have been a friend of the Black guy."

Never mind. You'll just dance around it or ignore it completely thinking no one will notice. But we do.
 
Ah, er, Mignini's professional association went after him. Why the need to obfuscate?

They didn't do it out of vindictiveness. They did it because by denying Sollecito his rights, Mignini had brought his profession into disrepute.

Note the operative word: 'professional body'.

The regulators are there to ensure compliance with standards. The City accountancy firms I worked for have several raps on the knuckles from the ICAEW disciplinary guys. It would be unusual for any major regulated body not to. That includes the police and the prosecutors.

It doesn't mean they are bent. It means they were caught out failing to comply with high standards and someone complained. They were disciplined and fined and the misdemeanour kept on record for public viewing, and rightly so.
 
If the two are innocent then the evidence against them is nonsense, does that make any sense?

There are countless accused that are just not involved, understand?

BTW low copy DNA should've never been used against them.

If the sentences for Knox and Sollecito were annulled because of 'lapses in collection of evidence', then why aren't you agitating for a similar annulment int he case of Guede, whose evidence was collected at the same time as the other two and analysed in the same laboratory by the same scientists?

As for the claim Sollecito's DNA was LCN, that is another popular lie put out by the detractors. It was not low LCN. It was a very strong DNA sample of Sollecito's, which matched on the maximum of 17 pairs of alleles.

And no, DNA can't fly through the air to land on the victim's underwear through a closed door.
 
Guede raped Meredith which as proved by the discovery of Guede's DNA in Meredith's vagina. It is sign of the gross stupidity of PGP the are still making the absurd claim that Amanda and Raffaele needed to stage a rape when Guede had already raped Meredith.

It is the disingenuousness of the guilters to claim that the evidence "against" the pair was the same as the solid evidence against Guede, evidence which he did not dispute.
 
Mignini was sanctioned by the High Council of the Judiciary (Consiglio superiore della magistratura, CSM), which is the Italian Constitutional Judicial Branch organ that among other duties administers any required discipline to judges and prosecutors (Italian Constitution Article 105).......

This post is what is so annoying about Numbers.

If I were to argue against him, it wouldn't be me arguing against him. It would be me trying to argue against his source material!!!

So it is, I stand corrected. Rats!

I still remember the weak stuff that guilters tried to hurl at Dr. Peter Gill, an expert in forensic DNA analysis.

I'd once said that the reason I believe him about the 2007 Perugian murder case, is because he's 'peer reviewed'. The guilter counterpart that they'd offer in rebuttal was an astrologer!

One guilter started attacking peer review, saying that it really wasn't a thing. It was ballsy, I gave him that, to attack one foundation of academic scrutiny... it said everything that they're style of argument would suggest such!

But still, Numbers is still annoying.
 
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This post is what is so annoying about Numbers.

If I were to argue against him, it wouldn't be me arguing against him. It would be me trying to argue against his source material!!!

So it is, I stand corrected. Rats!

I still remember the weak stuff that guilters tried to hurl at Dr. Peter Gill, an expert in forensic DNA analysis. I'd once said that the reason I believe him about the 2007 Perugian murder case, is because he's 'peer reviewed'. The guilter counterpart that they'd offer in rebuttal was an astrologer!

One guilter started attacking peer review, saying that it really wasn't a thing. It was ballsy, I gave him that, to attack one foundation of academic scrutiny... it said everything that they're style of argument would suggest such!

But still, Numbers is still annoying.

The most moronic PGP smear about Prof. Gill is that he is just a "shill" for Knox and Sollecito. Such a claim is illogical besides being completely false. There is zero need for a DNA expert of Gill's reputation and status to "shill" for anyone. Nor would someone of his status put his reputation, earned over many years, in jeopardy by lying about his expert conclusions regarding the DNA evidence in this case. Of course, no evidence is ever presented by anyone that Gill is a 'shill', but since when does evidence matter to the PGP?
 
Stop confusing cases that were overturned because of Brady vs Maryland: withholding exculpatory evidence and 'the attorney lied in court'. That has zippo to do with bent prosecutors who deliberately pick on a random innocent bystander. People get their cases overturned all the time on points of law. It doesn't follow that the 'prosecutor was bent'.

Do you have any evidence at all that Mignini committed a criminal wrongdoing against Knox? A simple yes or no will suffice.

Criminal wrongdoing was committed by Mignini and his cronies on an industrial scale as the list below shows. Vixen has the fixed view that all police/prosecutors are honest and ethical and police/prosecution misconduct never happens and will always defend police/prosecutors. Due to this viewpoint Vixen refuses to acknowledge corruption/misconduct is ever committed by police/prosecutors and Vixen totally ignores the industrial scale corrupt acts committed by Mignini and co.

*Violating the rights of Amanda and Raffaele during the interrogations by denying access to lawyers and not taping the interrogation.

*Suppressing evidence and committing fraud and the list below is a small example of this.

"The prosecution hid the results of early and decisive DNA tests excluding Raffaele Sollecito as the sexual assailant, securing on improper grounds the pre-trial incarceration of Sollecito and Knox (and Lumumba) to the severe prejudice of the defense;

The prosecution concealed the initial results for tests performed on the two key items of evidence, i.e., the kitchen knife (Rep. 36b) and the bra clasp (Rep. 165b), and instead, produced only the results of suspicious “do over” tests (re-runs), without disclosing the data from the initial tests or even the fact that the subsequent tests were “do overs”;

The prosecution concealed that the kitchen knife profile was generated within a set of tests for which 90% of the results have been suppressed, strongly suggesting the occurrence of a severe contamination event that the prosecution continues to hide;

The prosecution claimed that contamination of the bra clasp was impossible, even though the bra clasp profile was produced during a set of tests for which there is documented proof of contamination;

The prosecution falsely portrayed the DNA laboratory as pristine and perfectly maintained, even though the lab’s own documents demonstrate that it was plagued with repeated contamination events and machine malfunctions that were known to the lab;

The prosecution has withheld the results from a massive number of DNA tests (well over 100), including probably exculpatory profiles relating to the sexual assault and a secondary crime scene downstairs;

The prosecution has hidden all of the records of the DNA amplification process—the most likely place for laboratory contamination to have occurred—including all of the contamination-control tests for this process."

*Telling numerous lies. The prosecution fed false stories to the media about the purchase of bleach receipts, the washing machine running, showering in a bloody bathroom and a missing Harry Potter book. Prosecutor Comodi lied to Amanda in court asking her why she phoned her mother at 12.00 pm when she actually phoned her mother at 12.47. Amanda was lied to she HIV. The postal police lied about the time of arrival to give the impression Raffaele had phoned the police after they arrived. The link below details the lies told by the prosecution.

http://knoxsollecito.wordpress.com/list-of-prosecution-and-press-lies-told-about-amanda-knox-and-raffaele-sollecito/
 
If the sentences for Knox and Sollecito were annulled because of 'lapses in collection of evidence', then why aren't you agitating for a similar annulment int he case of Guede, whose evidence was collected at the same time as the other two and analysed in the same laboratory by the same scientists?

As for the claim Sollecito's DNA was LCN, that is another popular lie put out by the detractors. It was not low LCN. It was a very strong DNA sample of Sollecito's, which matched on the maximum of 17 pairs of alleles.

And no, DNA can't fly through the air to land on the victim's underwear through a closed door.

Where did you get 'lapses in collection of evidence' from? 8.1. of M/B makes it clear that there was zero evidence of K&S at the crime scene (Meredith's bedroom) where it mattered, while there were multiple traces for Rudy. Gill said in his analysis of the case:

"The key consideration was the distribution of DNA profiles of Guede vs Knox and Sollecito. Multiple profiles from multiple evidential items are much less likely to all be contamination incidents, whereas weak (one-off) results are more likely to be contaminants—this was always a recognized difficulty for the prosecution who invented the selective cleaning hypothesis to explain away inconvenient results."

Raffaele's alleged DNA on165b was a weak one-off trace, like it or not. Not only that it had at least 2 other male contributors who's traces were nowhere else at the crime scene. Who did they belong to, and how did they get there? filthy, contaminated gloves is pretty good contender. Oh, and M/B confirm the bra-clasp as "an element without evidential value.".......Like it or not.

Hoots
 
Here we go again. All the evidence against Knox and Sollecito was contaminated but not the evidence collected against Guede, collected the same time by the same forensics team and analysed in the same laboratories by the same scientists and as witnessed by the defence's expert witnesses, who never complained at the time. Do you see your lack of consistency here?

This argument has never been able to hold water yet you've been trying to use it for how many years now? Let's review just a few of the flaws in your argument...

1. Guede's fingerprint, made in blood, can not be the result of contamination, and therefore can not be compared to anything collected against Amanda or Raffaele.
2. Most of the evidence against Guede was collected by the Scientific Police techs on 2 Nov. The knife, used against Amanda, was collected by the Perugia police and was days later. (i.e., not the same time or the same forensic team)
3. The DNA collected from inside Meredith, which matched Guede's profile, was obtained by the coroner. (not the same time or the same forensic team).
3. Guede had never been in the upstairs portion of the cottage, so none of his forensic evidence could be of an innocent nature.
4. All of Guede's DNA samples were of substantial quantity. Raffaele's DNA on the clasp was of LCN quantity. It would be very difficult to deposit Guede's DNA, in the quantities found, by way of contamination. Not true for Raffaele.
5. Every forensic trace of Guede's was confirmed by lab results. There were no contradictory results. The same can't be said for evidence used against Amanda and/or Raffaele. For e.g.,
  • The sample taken from the blade of the knife that supposedly was Meredith's DNA tested negative for blood, negative for human biological material and repeatedly generated a "Too Low" reading during quantification, which indicates either no DNA or to little to accurately profile. This substantiates the claim that Meredith's DNA was not on the blade.
  • The Luminol samples all tested negative for blood using TMB, and all but two did not contain Meredith's DNA. This is virtually impossible to be the case if the traces were made from Meredith's blood.
6. The two 'damning' DNA traces against Amanda and Raffaele, 36B and 165B, were only tested once, which by the very forensic regulations that Italy supposedly abides by, rendered the results "unreliable". This wasn't the case for any of the samples for which Guede's DNA profile was found.
7. Not all evidence against Amanda or Raffaele was claimed to be contamination. Her DNA in the bathroom was clearly hers. The claim is that it is latent... that is, she used the bathroom daily and deposited that DNA days before the murder.

So for me personally, no, I'm not seeing a lack of consistency here. Just a misrepresentation of the facts by you.

My advice to you is either figure out how you can successfully argue these points, and others, or you should just give up on this lame claim.
 
This post is what is so annoying about Numbers.

If I were to argue against him, it wouldn't be me arguing against him. It would be me trying to argue against his source material!!!

So it is, I stand corrected. Rats!

I still remember the weak stuff that guilters tried to hurl at Dr. Peter Gill, an expert in forensic DNA analysis.

I'd once said that the reason I believe him about the 2007 Perugian murder case, is because he's 'peer reviewed'. The guilter counterpart that they'd offer in rebuttal was an astrologer!

One guilter started attacking peer review, saying that it really wasn't a thing. It was ballsy, I gave him that, to attack one foundation of academic scrutiny... it said everything that they're style of argument would suggest such!

But still, Numbers is still annoying.

I regret that my contribution - a correction - was annoying.

One secondary source for the censure of Mignini (I did not provide it in my post):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuliano_Mignini

The Wikipedia article sources include:

https://www.trgmedia.it/notizia/Il-...-Sollecito-il-colloquio-col-s/77838/news.aspx

According to the above Italian media article, the CSM stated that Mignini's actions in withholding a lawyer based only on his oral instructions, without getting the legally required approval of a judge, were a "grave e inescusabile violazione di legge" (serious and inexcusable violation of the law).

Possibly the censure of Mignini by the CSM for violating Italian procedural law in denying Sollecito a lawyer, a violation of his defense rights, will be part of the evidence considered by the ECHR in the case Sollecito v. Italy.
 
Once again you are evading the issue by whataboutism. If Italy is of the same brand of racism as the U.S.A. how come it prosecuted all three defendants regardless of ethnicity? Note the campaign to 'free Knox!' comes from the U.S.A., furious and uncomprehending that they didn't 'just pin it on the Black guy'.

You keep claiming the evidence gathering was deficient and the DNA evidence contaminated. WAIT_! The forensics team who collected the evidence, finger, foot and hand prints and D.N.A. that convicted Guede are...exactly the same forensic team that collected the scientific evidence against Knox and Sollecito at the same time as Guede's and used the same laboratory and same scientists. So this was all right and proper for Guede but bent for Knox and Sollecito!!! The total lack of logic and contradictory claims either indicates you cannot see your own lack of logic or, more likely, you see it only too clearly but heck, who cares. Sentimentality, patriotism and a fantasy about corrupt prosecutors are king. **** truth, logic, facts, chronology, scientific evidence and reality.

Cue sophistry and semantics.


You're still (astonishingly, but paradoxically not surprisingly) obviously entirely unaware that there are different grades of forensic evidence, with differing levels of ease-of-collection, ease-of-analysis, sensitivity, ease-of-matching, and reliability.

A latent fingerprint left on a smooth glass surface, for example, is extremely easy to collect, extremely easy to analyse, extremely insensitive (to things such as contamination), extremely easy to match to a given individual (and to exclude other individuals), and extremely reliable (as evidence of the presence of a particular individual at that particular scene).

By contrast, something such as low-copy-number/low-template DNA is extremely difficult to collect (that is, to collect correctly), extremely difficult to analyse (that is, to analyse correctly), extremely sensitive to contamination, often extremely difficult to match to a given individual, and therefore often potentially extremely unreliable (as evidence of the presence of a particular individual at that particular scene).

Regarding Stefanoni: I have no doubt that in 2007 she was competent and qualified to lift latent fingerprints from a smooth surface, analyse them properly, and reliably match them (or exclude them). I also have little doubt that she was competent and qualified in 2007 to collect relatively high-copy-number amounts of DNA from a scene, analyse them properly with standard PCR methodology, and reliably match (or exclude) that DNA.

However, I have total confidence that in 2007 Stefanoni was neither competent nor qualified to collect low-copy-number/low-template DNA, nor to analyse it correctly, nor to protect it from contamination properly, nor to match it reliably. She had no idea what she was doing, and worse still, she lied about her competency levels in this area.

Now, here comes the important part, Vixen. Ready? OK. So.... the forensic evidence of Guede's presence at the murder scene was very reliable, because it was the form of evidence that was relatively easy to get right. His easily-identifiable and reliably-identifiable palm print was found, made with the victim's blood, on the pillow found under the victim's body. His high-copy-number DNA was found on the victim's handbag. His shoe (trainer) footprints, made with the victim's blood, were found in the hallway of the murder scene. And his high-copy-number DNA was found on/in the victim's genital area. Together, this forms more-or-less empirically-incontrovertible proof that Guede was intimately present at the scene at the very time of the murder.

I won't rehash the "evidence" of Knox's/Sollecito's presence at the scene at the time of the murder.... because there isn't any. All that was ever offered to the courts (and shame on the Italian lower courts for having no idea about this either - relying instead on the mendacious Stefanoni and Mignini/Commodi to assure them everything was kosher....) was minuscule trace-evidence DNA that had been horrendously incompetently collected/stored/analysed/matched by Stefanoni - who clearly had no idea what she was doing.

That's the difference, Vixen. I appreciate that you may not have the scientific knowledge/ability to understand the difference, but your lack of understanding really isn't important at all in the real world. Although if you care to look into the matter, you'll notice that competent, expert forensic scientists all over the world pretty much laughed open-mouthed at the extreme incompetence and utter unreliability of Stefanoni's work on the "evidence" linked to Knox and Sollecito. And incidentally, had the forensics linked to Guede similarly been a) of the super-intricate low-template-DNA type, and b) analysed in the same incompetent manner by Stefanoni, you can be sure that global experts would have driven a coach and horses through that as well.

Guede was correctly convicted, based in part on forensic evidence that was correctly handled by Stefanoni and others. Because the nature of the forensic evidence of his involvement meant that it was relatively extremely easy to get right. Knox and Sollecito were correctly acquitted and absolved, based in part on the fact that the nature of the forensic "evidence" of their involvement was such that it was outside Stefanoni's area of competence, knowledge and experience. As a result, Stefanoni (and her team) completely botched the way she treated that "evidence", leading to results that had a total lack of credibility or reliability.

Hope that's clear.

Sheee-eesh.
 
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Where did you get 'lapses in collection of evidence' from? 8.1. of M/B makes it clear that there was zero evidence of K&S at the crime scene (Meredith's bedroom) where it mattered, while there were multiple traces for Rudy. Gill said in his analysis of the case:

"The key consideration was the distribution of DNA profiles of Guede vs Knox and Sollecito. Multiple profiles from multiple evidential items are much less likely to all be contamination incidents, whereas weak (one-off) results are more likely to be contaminants—this was always a recognized difficulty for the prosecution who invented the selective cleaning hypothesis to explain away inconvenient results."

Raffaele's alleged DNA on165b was a weak one-off trace, like it or not. Not only that it had at least 2 other male contributors who's traces were nowhere else at the crime scene. Who did they belong to, and how did they get there? filthy, contaminated gloves is pretty good contender. Oh, and M/B confirm the bra-clasp as "an element without evidential value.".......Like it or not.

Hoots

You meant these gloves? From images taken by those very same Scientific Police, taken 46 days after the crime, from an unsecure crime-scene?



 
I regret that my contribution - a correction - was annoying.

Regret not.

It was annoying, in a good way. You shed light, not heat. Yours is in line with the purpose of this, a Skeptic's site.

What is amazing is that someone else who's posts simply fill the place with noise, attracts no attention or sanction - on the grounds of being antithetical to what skepticism is all about.
 
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