The Trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito: Part 31

[Vixen]

As I said: I found no such concurrence. I remember someone said:

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_716696375612ea0390.jpg[/qimg]

Oh....that was YOU! Yet again, you make a claim which you refuse to provide evidence for.



What is the point in continuing to make claims you refuse to provide evidence for?




How a debate works from your POV:

Vixen: Fact

Us: Citation, please.

Vixen: It's a FACT!

Us: Citation, please.

Vixen: It's a FACT!

Us: Citation, please.

Vixen: It's a FACT! Do look it up!

Irrelevant word salad snipped



It is no good claiming that the defense concurred there was a scratch without quoting and citing.

It is no good claiming the phone logs proved something when those phone logs from the court records and quoted in the Massei motivation prove no such thing. You know, sort of like when Massei claims Knox's footprints were in the victim's blood when he specifically says they tested negative for blood and Stefanoni agreeing that such tests prove no blood is present. Or when he stated that a cell tower does not serve Sollecito's apartment when he stated 3 other times in that same report that it does.

(Cue: "Oh no, they don't!")

This is a summing up by myself of what Crini presented at the Nencini Court of Appeal in the rebuttals on 20 Jan 2014

After a break, it is time for Prosecutor Crini to make his rebuttals. He sets out Sollecito’s sidetracking of the investigation. He affirms that Postal Police Officer Battistelli arrives ten minutes before his car, on foot, at 12:35. This is the time he recorded on his report, lodged the same day at the police station. Sollecito’s phone calls, to his sister and the police at 12:51 and 12:54, respectively, were ‘too late’. He denied the CCTV time was seven minutes slow, as claimed by the defense.

About Guede’s knife wounds to the hand, Crini says there was no sign of any of Guede’s blood at the crime scene, and in any case, as he knew the house, having visited more than once, he would have made a more logical entry.
He states that Boemia and Rinaldi used compatibility measurements, whereas Vinci was ‘just conjecture’. The former were objective as they identified the footprint thought to have been Sollecito’s to Guede.

He refutes Maori’s ‘alibi theory’ regarding Curatalo, failing to quote his testimony that refuted Sollecito’s alibi. He cited the expert computer witnesses of 14 Mar 2009 and December 2010 who found no computer activity, as claimed.

There was no contamination at the scene and he was pleased the defence no longer claimed contamination in the laboratories. Professor Novelli had ruled out tertiary transfer of DNA in situ. Arguments about Low Copy Number DNA were rendered obsolete by the RIS. He turns to the Conti-Vecchiotti reports and points out straw man use of ‘only’ and their reasoning à priori, they failed to look at X- and Y-haplotypes together.

Vecchiotti admitted there was a scratch on the blade of the imputed murder weapon.


--

You are quite welcome to read Nencini for yourself which can be found here:

https://themurderofmeredithkercher.net/Files master list.html

I have given you the date of the document. Should be easy enough for you to access it.

 

[Vixen]

You probably want to look properly into Krane's work history. I know that's what I would do, if only to brief myself sufficiently well that I'd avoid any attempt to smear him by way of (incorrectly) linking him exclusively to academia*.


* Not to mention the (rather obvious) fact that, in any event, academics can be just as expert as - or even more expert than - practitioners. It's strange and incorrect to think/claim anything different.

A trial takes place in a criminal court. The Friends of Amanda Knox campaign based in the USA are quite welcome to spin their theories to try and get their champion off the hook. However, if they were not there in court to be cross-examined it just remains their opinion. Nor did they assess the evidence first hand.

 

[Numbers]

These would be the case where the lower courts verdict was 'not guilty' and the prosecution appealed. There is no way a merits court and appeal court finding and upholding a verdict of guilty both times will be reversed without referral, except under case of mistrial or other 'in the public interest' - also rare. To have a finding of certain of guild BARD overturned as due to insufficient evidence has to as a matter of due process and conventional protocol be returned to the lower court to rectify the issue. We know what happened here. Political interference.

Hogwash.
Vixen, if you want any reasonable person to take the statements in your post as anything except fictions you have invented or borrowed, you should provide objective evidence to support your claims.

The impression left by the statements in your post is that you have either never read or never understood the relevant Italian laws.

Take, for example, CPP Article 620, which grants and requires the CSC the legal authority to declare a case before it annulled without referring it to a lower court under certain circumstances. For brevity, I'll list only a few of these circumstances here.

1. In addition to the cases specifically provided for by the law, the Court of Cassation shall deliver a judgment of annulment without referral:

A) if the criminal act is not deemed an offence by law, if the offence is extinguished or if prosecution should not have been started or continued;
....
D) if the appealed decision is not allowed by law;

L) if the Court of Cassation holds it can either reach a decision if no further ascertainment of the alleged offences is needed, set a new sentence based on the decisions of the merit court or take any other necessary decision, and in any other case in which it believes referral is superfluous.

All the reasons for annulment without referral relate to cases where the case should be dismissed or end in an acquittal.

Source:

https://canestrinilex.com/assets/Up...-Code-of-Criminal-Procedure-canestriniLex.pdf

 

[Vixen]

For the life of me I can't figure out why Amanda and Raffaele would return to the cottage to stage a sexual assault after Guede.... drum roll.... sexually assaulted Meredith. Then again, maybe the scene is exactly as Guede left it, or is that too obvious for you?

I go by what the court found after hearing all of the evidence from all of the parties. I am afraid the courts did not conclude that 'Guede did it all alone'. That is a ridiculous conspiracy theory.


Of course, there is NO WAY! Sollecito or Knox could have assaulted Mez, even though his DNA was on her underwear.

 

[Stacyhs]

You know perfectly well I am not allowed to because you complained. Stop being a hypocrite. Cease and desist your demand.

I never complained to the mods or contacted them about you. Period. Ask them. If someone did, it wasn't me. Perhaps a mod was just doing his job on his own.

You are misrepresenting the situation. What you are referring to happened on Oct. 1 or 2. You made this post almost a month later, on Nov. 6:

However, the US press has simply taken it for granted - or expects it to be taken as the case, due to centuries of deep racist attitudes - that 'only the Black guy is guilty' and express outrage and denial at the thought that Knox could possibly have been a friend of the Black guy. You have seen it here.

Asking you to cite and quote anyone "here" who has "express(ed) outrage and denial" that "Knox could possibly have been a friend of the Black guy," does not violate anything you claim you are "not allowed" to address.

Once again, I suggest you just not make claims you either can't or are not willing to back up with evidence. It would make things so much easier.

 

[Vixen]

Hogwash.
Vixen, if you want any reasonable person to take the statements in your post as anything except fictions you have invented or borrowed, you should provide objective evidence to support your claims.

The impression left by the statements in your post is that you have either never read or never understood the relevant Italian laws.

Take, for example, CPP Article 620, which grants and requires the CSC the legal authority to declare a case before it annulled without referring it to a lower court under certain circumstances. For brevity, I'll list only a few of these circumstances here.



All the reasons for annulment without referral relate to cases where the case should be dismissed or end in an acquittal.

Source:

https://canestrinilex.com/assets/Up...-Code-of-Criminal-Procedure-canestriniLex.pdf

Of course cases in which the defendant is found not guilty at the lower court and the prosecutor appeals is subject to an acquittal without referral. That is where the defandants have the balance weighted in their favour. There was a recent case in Finland - which follows Napoleonic Roman Law (German version) [as opposed to the UK, Commonwealth and USA Anglo-Saxon based adversarial common law]. A Danish guy was charged with the murder of two young German tourists on a cruise ship between Finland and Sweden, when aged 18, some 30 years later after his cellmates overheard him boasted about having committed the crime. He was brought before the court and charged. He was found guilty and his defence appealed on the grounds he had not been given a Danish interpreter at some stage. He won the appeal. The prosecutors appealed. The man was acquitted without referral. Do you see how it works? Had he been found guilty at the first instance court and he verdict upheld by the appeal court, there is no way the Supreme Court could acquit him without a referral back as the facts found at the lower courts still legally stand and it has no jurisdiction to change them. It was nor declared a mistrial or 'in the public interest' and it should be patently obvious that the reason a para 530 'insufficient evidence' is vanishing rare at this level is self -evident, in that 'insufficient evidence' becomes apparent at the preliminary stages not the Supreme Court stage! It is thanks to Bongiorno's hero, politician, Andreotti, that she was aware of this little used para, the last time having been Berlusconi, both found guilty and as upheld by both lower courts but used their political influence to wriggle off the hook.

 

[Vixen]

I never complained to the mods or contacted them about you. Period. Ask them. If someone did, it wasn't me. Perhaps a mod was just doing his job on his own.

You are misrepresenting the situation. What you are referring to happened on Oct. 1 or 2. You made this post almost a month later, on Nov. 6:



Asking you to cite and quote anyone "here" who has "express(ed) outrage and denial" that "Knox could possibly have been a friend of the Black guy," does not violate anything you claim you are "not allowed" to address.

Once again, I suggest you just not make claims you either can't or are not willing to back up with evidence. It would make things so much easier.

I have been told very angrily by at least two people that for me to do so would be to 'call someone a racist' and that this would be a 'vile accusation', even if the 'racist' word is not actually used or claimed.

So I am afraid I am unable to help you.

 

[Stacyhs]

So Krane is an academic, sitting in his ivory tower pontificating about this and that, churning out papers. Garafano actually set up Italy's first DNA laboratory and headed the R.I.S. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Carabinieri. A doer not a talking head.

Oh, Vix.

You tried the appeal to authority fallacy and it backfired. If you paid any attention to Krane's achievements, you'd see that, far from "sitting in a his ivory tower pontificating", he is the founder, president, and CEO of Forensic Bioinformatics:

The many hundreds of thousands of criminal and civil court cases each year are extremely adversarial proceedings. Scientific evidence is one of the few elements of a trial that is expected to be completely objective and give a clear insight into the truth. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of pressure on scientific experts and testing laboratories to become biased and to become advocates themselves - both for the prosecution and for the defense. There is a great need for truly objective review and presentation of scientific evidence. It is the purpose of Forensic Bioinformatic Services, Inc. to provide efficient, timely, accurate and comprehensive reviews so that experts and attorneys are better able to make the truth known.

Forensic Bioinformatics reviews cases involving forensic DNA testing. We employ an automated analysis system to provide an objective review while making the results easy to understand. We provide full consulting and testimony services. We also continue to perform research to better understand and define issues pertaining to forensic DNA testing and interpretation.

We have been involved in the review of high profile cases around the world, including: the Washington D.C. Beltway sniper, the Jaidyn Leskie Coroner's Inquest in Australia, the Omagh IRA bombing in Northern Ireland, and the Deventer murder in The Netherlands. We work closely with the Innocence Project and have been involved with several exoneration cases, including George Gould and Ronald Taylor (more information here) in April 2010.


I especially love the "churning out papers" as if writing peer reviewed articles in scientific journals and a forensics textbook is a bad thing.

 

[Stacyhs]

Read Sollecito's own signed police statement where he confirms he was lying.

You mean the one he signed under the same conditions as Amanda signed hers? Without the legally required lawyer present and no recording? Do you want to contend he never said he was coerced into signing that through threats and intimidation? Or that he said it wasn't true that she'd gone out? That one?

 

[Stacyhs]

Clause 360.

Why do you insist on not providing evidence and, when you finally do, you don't even bother to link it? Clause 360 of WHAT? ARTICLE 360 of the PCC is

Article 360 Non-repeatable technical ascertainmen

3. The lawyers as well as the possibly appointed technical consultants have the right to be present during the assignment of the non-repeatable technical ascertainment, participate in the ascertainment and make their own observations and reservations.

If this is what you're referring to, then you are wrong.

This is what Garofano had to say about experts attending the forensic lab sessions:

Colonel Garofano also pointed out that although the defense experts should be at the police labs for the whole session while the testing is going on, to ensure fair play, they don't always stay the course.
Now let's get to the DNA. The DNA testing is done using machines. There is nothing to see or understand. The legal experts often don't remain the full time during the period of analysis in the labs because everyone knows the procedure.
I have come across some of them before-Dr Pascali, for example, or Dr Torre. They have often been on the defence team whien I was producing analysis for the Prosecutor. Sara Gino works closely with Dr Torre; she's his DNA expert. They must all have been there for at least some of the time when the tests were done, although they do take hours and the costs mount up.

(Darkness Descending, no page number available)

Since DD was published in 2010, before Stefanoni's work was decimated by C&V, Garofano didn't have all the forensic information so his opinions on them are based on old information.

 

[Stacyhs]

This is a summing up by myself of what Crini presented at the Nencini Court of Appeal in the rebuttals on 20 Jan 2014

After a break, it is time for Prosecutor Crini to make his rebuttals. He sets out Sollecito’s sidetracking of the investigation. He affirms that Postal Police Officer Battistelli arrives ten minutes before his car, on foot, at 12:35. This is the time he recorded on his report, lodged the same day at the police station. Sollecito’s phone calls, to his sister and the police at 12:51 and 12:54, respectively, were ‘too late’. He denied the CCTV time was seven minutes slow, as claimed by the defense.

About Guede’s knife wounds to the hand, Crini says there was no sign of any of Guede’s blood at the crime scene, and in any case, as he knew the house, having visited more than once, he would have made a more logical entry.
He states that Boemia and Rinaldi used compatibility measurements, whereas Vinci was ‘just conjecture’. The former were objective as they identified the footprint thought to have been Sollecito’s to Guede.

He refutes Maori’s ‘alibi theory’ regarding Curatalo, failing to quote his testimony that refuted Sollecito’s alibi. He cited the expert computer witnesses of 14 Mar 2009 and December 2010 who found no computer activity, as claimed.

There was no contamination at the scene and he was pleased the defence no longer claimed contamination in the laboratories. Professor Novelli had ruled out tertiary transfer of DNA in situ. Arguments about Low Copy Number DNA were rendered obsolete by the RIS. He turns to the Conti-Vecchiotti reports and points out straw man use of ‘only’ and their reasoning à priori, they failed to look at X- and Y-haplotypes together.

Sigh. Your summation of what the prosecution alleged is absolutely worthless! Why do you insist on all these red herrings? Nencini was overturned and is therefore, of no consequence.

admitted there was a scratch on the blade of the imputed murder weapon.

You are quite welcome to read Nencini for yourself which can be found here:

https://themurderofmeredithkercher.net/Files master list.html

I have given you the date of the document. Should be easy enough for you to access it.[/QUOTE]

No, no, no, and hell no! You are doing it yet again. YOU made the claim. The ONUS IS ON YOU to quote and link to the actual statement where Vecchiotti stated that. You have the date of the document. Should be easy enough for you to access it and link to it. Stalling is a common and transparent tactic.

 

[Stacyhs]

I have been told very angrily by at least two people that for me to do so would be to 'call someone a racist' and that this would be a 'vile accusation', even if the 'racist' word is not actually used or claimed.

So I am afraid I am unable to help you.

You got caught misrepresenting what happened and you continue to misrepresent (and I'm using a diplomatic term) the situation. YOU made the accusation AFTER the events you are referring to so you obviously paid no mind to what anyone had 'very angrily' told you. The fact is, Vix, you made a claim and you CAN'T provide a single instance of anyone saying that because it never happened. You know that, I know that, and the readers of this thread know that.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Do keep up with current affairs. Lousiana still has legalised slavery.

From CNN Updated 5:36 PM EST, Tue November 15, 2022 (please note the date):

Yes I am aware. It's indentured servitude. They are not owned nor bought and sold. It's disgusting, but that doesn't make it slavery, nor does it make it a racist law.

Thus to claim Italy has the same systemic racism is not correct.

Please quote where I said Italy had the same systemic racism as the US or anywhere else. I'll wait. (Here's a hint, you can't because I never said it)

The idea that Italian prosecutors are prone to cut corners the same way that has been almost traditional - or at least salient in recent cases - that against certain demographs (that is populations subject to historical slavery) based on historical mores makes such practice par for the course.

This is word salad. It doesn't make sense, it isn't coherent English, and I have no idea what you meant to say.

To claim Mignini exercised a similar mind set towards Knox is pure conspiracy theory.

Which is not what I claimed, nor argued.

If you want to understand why the 13th Amendment hits Black populations in the U.S.A. hardest, ROLLING STONE, explains briefly here, for your edification:

You don't need to teach me, I suspect I'm considerably better versed in current affairs than you, mostly because I understand what the 13th amendment is. I understand that the USA has a serious problem with incarcerating people of colour. That does not make the 13th amendment a racist amendment. You were asked to provide a racist, federal law from the USA. All you're doing is pointing to the fact that Louisiana refused to ban indentured servitude for prisoners. I am aware it did that. I'm also disgusted by it. That doesn't make it what you were asked for.

We've been down this route with you before on more than one subject. You make a bold claim, then when called on it point to a much lesser version of the thing you were claiming and state that it is equivalent. It is not.

This clearly cannot be the case for Italy, no matter how right wing or fascist its recent history.

I was not claiming that the USA and Italy were identical. You made the apparent claim that systemic racism is a uniquely US problem. That is clearly nonsense. All I want you to do is provide evidence for the claims you have made.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I have been told very angrily by at least two people that for me to do so would be to 'call someone a racist' and that this would be a 'vile accusation', even if the 'racist' word is not actually used or claimed.

So I am afraid I am unable to help you.

This is what's commonly known as "a lie". At no point have you been told that demonstrating a specific statement is actionable.

What you HAVE been told is that maliciously accusing people of being racists by inference is actionable based on nothing more than your own ill intent.

Stop attempting to hide behind being slapped down for a different thing to avoid providing evidence for your claims.

 

[Stacyhs]

No, it was not 'an appeal' it was an application. Note correct legal terminology.

It is for a party to make an application and for the judge to either accept or dismiss it. Any decision by a judge can be appealed. The appeal is against the decision.

Yet again, your claim was disproved by cited evidence. Instead of acknowledging that, you resort to semantics which in no way supports your claim.

 

[Stacyhs]

Yes I am aware. It's indentured servitude. They are not owned nor bought and sold. It's disgusting, but that doesn't make it slavery, nor does it make it a racist law.


Please quote where I said Italy had the same systemic racism as the US or anywhere else. I'll wait. (Here's a hint, you can't because I never said it)


This is word salad. It doesn't make sense, it isn't coherent English, and I have no idea what you meant to say.
Which is not what I claimed, nor argued.


You don't need to teach me, I suspect I'm considerably better versed in current affairs than you, mostly because I understand what the 13th amendment is. I understand that the USA has a serious problem with incarcerating people of colour. That does not make the 13th amendment a racist amendment. You were asked to provide a racist, federal law from the USA. All you're doing is pointing to the fact that Louisiana refused to ban indentured servitude for prisoners. I am aware it did that. I'm also disgusted by it. That doesn't make it what you were asked for.

We've been down this route with you before on more than one subject. You make a bold claim, then when called on it point to a much lesser version of the thing you were claiming and state that it is equivalent. It is not.



I was not claiming that the USA and Italy were identical. You made the apparent claim that systemic racism is a uniquely US problem. That is clearly nonsense. All I want you to do is provide evidence for the claims you have made.

Which is all I've asked Vixen for when she makes a claim as fact...without much luck.

 

[Stacyhs]

This is what's commonly known as "a lie". At no point have you been told that demonstrating a specific statement is actionable.

What you HAVE been told is that maliciously accusing people of being racists by inference is actionable based on nothing more than your own ill intent.

Stop attempting to hide behind being slapped down for a different thing to avoid providing evidence for your claims.

 

[Stacyhs]

Of course cases in which the defendant is found not guilty at the lower court and the prosecutor appeals is subject to an acquittal without referral. That is where the defandants have the balance weighted in their favour. There was a recent case in Finland - which follows Napoleonic Roman Law (German version) [as opposed to the UK, Commonwealth and USA Anglo-Saxon based adversarial common law]. A Danish guy was charged with the murder of two young German tourists on a cruise ship between Finland and Sweden, when aged 18, some 30 years later after his cellmates overheard him boasted about having committed the crime. He was brought before the court and charged. He was found guilty and his defence appealed on the grounds he had not been given a Danish interpreter at some stage. He won the appeal. The prosecutors appealed. The man was acquitted without referral. Do you see how it works? Had he been found guilty at the first instance court and he verdict upheld by the appeal court, there is no way the Supreme Court could acquit him without a referral back as the facts found at the lower courts still legally stand and it has no jurisdiction to change them. It was nor declared a mistrial or 'in the public interest' and it should be patently obvious that the reason a para 530 'insufficient evidence' is vanishing rare at this level is self -evident, in that 'insufficient evidence' becomes apparent at the preliminary stages not the Supreme Court stage! It is thanks to Bongiorno's hero, politician, Andreotti, that she was aware of this little used para, the last time having been Berlusconi, both found guilty and as upheld by both lower courts but used their political influence to wriggle off the hook.

You've been asked repeatedly for evidence that Art. 530, para 2 is a "loophole" or "rare" or "little used". Shockingly you have failed to do so but shockingly again, that doesn't stop you from repeating it. I suggest again you stop making statements of fact that you cannot provide evidence for. It should be patently obvious why.

 

[TruthCalls]

I go by what the court found after hearing all of the evidence from all of the parties. I am afraid the courts did not conclude that 'Guede did it all alone'. That is a ridiculous conspiracy theory.


Of course, there is NO WAY! Sollecito or Knox could have assaulted Mez, even though his DNA was on her underwear.

This doesn't explain why you think Amanda and Raffaele would need to stage a sexual assault when one had already taken place.

I didn't ask you what the courts came up with. I'm asking YOU why you think staging a sexual assault was necessary since it had already happened. Try to stay on point..

 

[TruthCalls]

In a fair trial you can request whatever material you like be made evidence. There was absolutely nothing stopping Sollecito's lawyers from demanding the pillow be one of the issues.

One of the points of law on which you can bring an appeal is under the rubric of 'New Evidence'. However, for it to be classed as 'new evidence' it has to be evidence that was not known of as of the time of the trial. That is why, when Sollecito's team made an application to have it tested AFTER the trial and he had been found guilty and sentence, the judge threw it out because it was not 'new evidence' as he had the opportunity to have all of that examined and cross-examined at the trial.

Perhaps now would be a good time to (re)post what Massei and Nencini said about the possible semen stain in their respective MR's.

In this regard, what has been previously observed on the subject is called to mind; with specific reference to the stains found on the pillowcase, particular mention of which was made by Sollecito's defence during the trial and in the related illustrative memorandum, the following should be noted: even if a genetic investigation established the spermatic nature of these stains, such an investigation, as a rule, would not allow these stains to be dated and, in particular, it would not be possible to establish that they had been deposited on the night on which Meredith was killed. It having furthermore been established that Meredith had an active sexual life and at times had intercourse in her own room (cf. on this point the statements of her boyfriend Giacomo Silenzi) such an investigation, besides not being of a strictly necessary nature due to the impossibility of dating [i.e.establishing the date] (cf. what was elucidated on this aspect by the genetic experts), might also yield an entirely irrelevant outcome even for establishing the spermatic nature of those very stains and seems to be, therefore, a purely explorative activity, [which] is not permitted at this stage of the proceedings because it is lacking in the requirement for absolute necessity which was, on the contrary, requested.

With regard to the request for genetic testing of the pillow case that was found in the bedroom where the body of Meredith Kercher was found, the Court shares the judgment of irrelevance that has often been expressed during different stages of the case. The presence of Rudy Hermann Guede in the room where Meredith Kercher was assaulted is definitively established by final judgment, and the behavior of Guede is not the subject of this trial; it is also verified in the facts that the victim had a normal sex life for a young woman of her age; she had a boyfriend with whom she had regular sexual intercourse; finally, it must be observed that the requested expert assessment would never be able to certify any actual connection between the moment when the pillow was stained and the assault of Meredith Kercher. The circumstances referred to above suggest that any indication made by the expert assessment would not have importance for the case;

Raffaele's defense did ask for the stain to be tested during the Massei trial, but Massei considered the request late and failed to see how it would help, so it was denied. Nencini essentially parroted Massei.

And no, Vixen, the request was not made "AFTER the trial and he had been found guilty and sentence".

The point that should not be lost in all of this is WHY was the stain not automatically tested and the results published? You have a possible semen stain at the scene of a sexual assault and you don't test it? Either it was tested and the results buried (corruption) or it was never tested (incompetence). Either way, it's inexcusable.