Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

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I challenge any of the Thaumaturgical Three to elucidate any "principles" they've conjured for AK that would allow a conviction in any trial for any reason anywhere.
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There is plenty of evidence to convict Guede.
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and plenty of evidence that he did not act alone, and that the people who helped him murder MK had acess to the shared flat, and that they tried to clean up part of the evidence after Guede had left.
 
Fiona said:
Ok, lets do this dance. Kestrel certainly did use the word " abuse" and I forgot that we are not allowed to presume any degree of cooperation from any speaker at all in this debate: those who challenge our three apologists must be utterly precise; though curiously that standard is only applied one way. So let us look again at what Kestrel actually said: from upthread.

I took from this that Kestrel was saying Lumumba was punched and kicked (which I rendered as brutality). "Preston and Spezi got similar treatment" implied to me that they were punched and kicked. I thnk that is what most native speakers of english would have inferred and if anybody disagrees I will be very interested to hear from them. I think that meaning is inescapable.

This has been refuted in Preston's own words and in Lumumba's. There is not one statement adduced to show that Spezi ever made the claim or that Preston ever made the claim; and the evidence that Lumumba made it has been shown to come from two english speaking tabloid newspapers and that he denied he ever said it.

I do not know if Kestrel believed it when he said it. My doubt arises from the fact that he seems quite keen on Preston as a source and so I assume he has read what Preston had to say. But Preston has never made this claim.

So now we dance about with meaning and it seems to me that what we see is a very strong smear, with an element of (implausible) deniablity.

If the claim had not been challenged then what would the honest reader have understood to have happened? Would he have believed that Spezi and Preston were punched and kicked? I think they would have taken that from what Kestrel said. I do not think they would have thought "well Lumumba was punched and kicked but "similar treatment" probably means something quite different from that". In fact I think the propositons is laughable.

No amount of wriggling of the sort we see here changes that. It is a simple matter to acknowledge this claim was made and that it is false.
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My intended claim was that Spezi and Preston were abused, not necessary that they were punched in an identical way to that reported by Lumumba.

As for Lumumba, it would be nice to see proof that it never happened more reliable than the second hand references with no link filtered by the TJMK site. Do you have an Italian newspaper link for example?

Do you have any respect for rights of the accused? You seem to think Preston and Spezi are criminals and scumbags simply because they were arrested.
 
If that was your intended claim then you expressed it very badly. So just for the record, you do not make any claim of police brutality at all? Just to be clear, can you say that: otherwise I have a horrible feeling that this will re-emerge some time down the line cos that seems to happen


I wish you would stop attributing positions to me, Kestrel. It is a tedious and dishonest tactic. I do not think they were criminals because they were arrested: I think that there were reasonable grounds to arrest them, and I think so partly because of their own words. I would not call them scumbags, really. I don't think Preston is grown up enough for that epithet.
 
Kestrel said:
As for Lumumba, it would be nice to see proof that it never happened more reliable than the second hand references with no link filtered by the TJMK site. Do you have an Italian newspaper link for example?
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He was asked un numerous Italian television interviews about what was attributed to him in the Daily Mail article and he always said he never said he was hit, he wasn't hit.
 
Kestrel said:
Do you have any respect for rights of the accused? You seem to think Preston and Spezi are criminals and scumbags simply because they were arrested.
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Spezi wasn't only arrested, he was jailed and Mignini didn't jail him a judge did! Spezi may or may not have been innocent, but you can't blame it on Mignini. He simply arrested him and on seeing the evidence for the arrest and the judge clearly felt the arrest was justified and his potential crime serious enough to jail him. This also reflects on Preston, since Preston and Spezi were working as partners. Therefore, whether innocent or guilty, it looks like there was sufficient evidence for Mignini to suspect and investigate the pair for wrongdoing.
 
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The fact is that the only reason this pair are being discussed at all is because they were held to provide independent corroboration of police brutality; and they are the only source for Mignnini's alleged views on satanism.

We have established that the claim of brutality was never made and that neither Kestrel nor anyone else meant to imply any such thing.

Since Satansim is wholly irrelevant to the trial we are discussing we can put that to bed.

There is absolutely no reason to consider this aspect any more, so far as I can tell. It is just obfuscation
 
the wonders of bleach

shuttlt said:
What do they recommend doing with the dilute bleach to remove unwanted DNA? Should you soak the contaminated article in it for one minute, or leave it there for an hour? Will putting the bleach on a cloth, wiping the article down and then running it under a tap do?

As for the DNA but no blood issue. Asside from your intuition, what reason do we have for thinking this is miraculous? Personally my intuition is surprised by the DNA but no blood, then again I'm not a forensic examiner. I guess tissue is more easily caught in flaws in the blade than blood, so perhaps this is not so surprising.
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From the technical bulletin on forensic DNA analysis, “Wash all surfaces and rinse pipette barrels with a dilute bleach solution (2% to 3%). Be sure to rinse any equipment that comes into contact with reagents well, since residual bleach can cause allele or locus dropout.”

www.promega.com/profiles/802/ProfilesinDNA_802_11.pdf

With respect to the DNA profile culled from the knife, Dr. Elizabeth Johnson said (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/AmandaKno...cutorswitched-motives/story?id=9215634&page=3), “The key part of this is there was no blood detected by chemical test methods.” The open letter, coauthored by Drs. Johnson and Hampikian states, “
it is unlikely that all chemically detectable traces of blood could be removed while retaining sufficient cells to produce a DNA profile consistent with the victim.”

My biochemical “intuition” indicates that bleach is oxidizing the deoxyribosyl group of DNA. This creates a good leaving group, which facilitates the nucleophilic attack of water on the phosphodiester bond. Once the phosphodiester backbone is nicked in even one place on the strand, DNA polymerase cannot restart the replication process (remember that DNA polymerases require a primer, unlike RNA polymerases). DNA polymerase is a key component of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique.
 
conviction

shuttlt said:
How does that relate to the post you are replying to?
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Stilicho was implying that in defending Knox and Sollecito, we have set the bar so high that no one would ever be convicted of anything. My response was an empirical refutation.
 
halides1 said:
From the technical bulletin on forensic DNA analysis, “Wash all surfaces and rinse pipette barrels with a dilute bleach solution (2% to 3%). Be sure to rinse any equipment that comes into contact with reagents well, since residual bleach can cause allele or locus dropout.”

www.promega.com/profiles/802/ProfilesinDNA_802_11.pdf

With respect to the DNA profile culled from the knife, Dr. Elizabeth Johnson said (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/AmandaKno...cutorswitched-motives/story?id=9215634&page=3), “The key part of this is there was no blood detected by chemical test methods.” The open letter, coauthored by Drs. Johnson and Hampikian states, “
it is unlikely that all chemically detectable traces of blood could be removed while retaining sufficient cells to produce a DNA profile consistent with the victim.”

My biochemical “intuition” indicates that bleach is oxidizing the deoxyribosyl group of DNA. This creates a good leaving group, which facilitates the nucleophilic attack of water on the phosphodiester bond. Once the phosphodiester backbone is nicked in even one place on the strand, DNA polymerase cannot restart the replication process (remember that DNA polymerases require a primer, unlike RNA polymerases). DNA polymerase is a key component of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique.
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'Unlikely' or not, that is indeed what was done. I have no problem with that since 'unlikely' does not translate as 'impossible'. And what made it possible was Stefanoni's pioneering technique, a technique that Johnson has no experience whatsoever in performing.
 
Fulcanelli said:
'Unlikely' or not, that is indeed what was done. I have no problem with that since 'unlikely' does not translate as 'impossible'. And what made it possible was Stefanoni's pioneering technique, a technique that Johnson has no experience whatsoever in performing.
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Her so called "pioneering technique" consisted of operating a device beyond it's scientifically established limits without doing any studies to determine reliability of the readings so obtained. It's a classic problem of results oriented "forensic science", where the overriding goal is to produce evidence supporting the prosecution.
 
Her "pioneering technique" produced an electropherogram in which the smaller peak was less than 70% of the amplitude of the larger peak at six separate loci. They should be equal, and less than 70% is outside of the acceptable range for pairs of alleles (Butler, Forensic DNA Typing).
 
halides1 said:
Kestrel,

Well said. May I add a couple more off the top of my head?

6. Most sexual assaults are single-perpetrator events, but the prosecution wants to claim this is an exception.
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"Most" is a far cry from "all." There have been two notorious gang rapes in two decades in a well-to-do town near where I live. It happens.
 
Kestrel said:
Her so called "pioneering technique" consisted of operating a device beyond it's scientifically established limits without doing any studies to determine reliability of the readings so obtained. It's a classic problem of results oriented "forensic science", where the overriding goal is to produce evidence supporting the prosecution.
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It won't find DNA that isn't there. There was DNA there and it was Meredith Kercher's DNA. Even Amanda and Raffaele's DNA experts in court didn't dispute that.
 
halides1 said:
Her "pioneering technique" produced an electropherogram in which the smaller peak was less than 70% of the amplitude of the larger peak at six separate loci. They should be equal, and less than 70% is outside of the acceptable range for pairs of alleles (Butler, Forensic DNA Typing).
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What are you trying to say it isn't Meredith's DNA? If so, you're at odds with all the experts in the trial and since they are experts in DNA and you are not, I think their views carry more weight.
 
halides1 said:
6. Most sexual assaults are single-perpetrator events, but the prosecution wants to claim this is an exception.
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At the end of the day, one has to go with the evidence. That's what the judges did and that's why they accepted the prosecution 'claim' and found the pair guilty.

It isn't a claim, it's a 'case' and that's what we call a wrap.
 
Fulcanelli said:
What are you trying to say it isn't Meredith's DNA? If so, you're at odds with all the experts in the trial and since they are experts in DNA and you are not, I think their views carry more weight.
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I don't think you are going to get him to come right out and say it isn't Meredith's DNA. You're not even going to get him to say that it's 'probably not' hers. Or even that it's 'probably not' there as a result of the knife's direct contact with Meridith. He's only going to mumble confused generalizations about lab technique and thinly veiled attacks on Stephanoni's professionalism in an effort to make less astute readers believe it isn't.

More argument by homeopathy.
 
halides1 said:
Her "pioneering technique" produced an electropherogram in which the smaller peak was less than 70% of the amplitude of the larger peak at six separate loci. They should be equal, and less than 70% is outside of the acceptable range for pairs of alleles (Butler, Forensic DNA Typing).
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So, what are the odds that the bleach and Stephanoni's technique would manage to come up with exactly the same loci as Meredith Kercher's?

Is my DNA close enough to everyone in my village that were these exact same methods used on knife I'd pricked my skin with, it could be confused for the DNA of someone else in the village?

And what is the likelihood that the person who's DNA would appear to be mine would just happen to be a murder victim? And that the DNA sample would be found on the knife of one of the suspects?

And that's before we even deal with the fact that Sollecito admitted Meredith's DNA was on the knife at some point. I don't see why you continue to argue that it wasn't Meredith's. Even if it wasn't, it doesn't matter.

THE LAB WORK DOESN'T MATTER

Sollecito admitted that Meredith's DNA, blood specifically, was to be expected on the knife. The question, therefore, is how it got there NOT whether it's there or not.

Halides: Do you agree that Sollecito expected Meredith's blood to be found on the knife?
 
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