Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

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Dan O. said:
I have nothing to do with any of the players in this case despite the numerous attempts by some to paint me with that brush.


The defense has one shot to present their case. They can't run with every possible alternative theory because they will be mutually exclusive and the jury will know that some must be lies and therefore the defendant must be lying.

We are not in a court so we have time to explore the alternative scenarios where facts are not available to exclude them. Only juror like idiots will conflate the details in different scenarios and assume that one must be a lie because they both cannot be true. Nobody here is such an idiot because the forum rules won't permit it.


Now, what was that comment that you were making before all the shouting began?
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Obviously you guys all think this is an important issue because you all keep coming back to it.

Why, on the other hand, do the members of the Defense team and Sollecito not believe it's important to cast doubt onto the murder weapon? I mean, you say they're maybe trying to keep from confusing stories...but we're talking about evidence that the murder weapon was found in Sollecito's apartment. That's not a minor detail, there's no alternate scenario that can explain that would allow confusion on this issue, and yet while there's no attempt by the defense to dispute this evidence you 3 (or 4) continue to argue forward and backward about whether this DNA evidence is valid. Why?
 
stilicho said:
Why do you assume that two stupid criminals, who staged a burglary, who called police after they claimed to have done so, who locked the victim in her own room, and who lied in their statements as witnesses, would suddenly become geniuses in covering up their crimes?
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Where is the forensic analysis of the broken window before the prosecutor told the investigators what happened?

Where is the documentation of the timing of those morning events from before the prosecutor decided that the pair should be cast as liars?

Where is the evidence that shows who locked Meredith's door other than the theory in the prosecutors head?

Where are the lies that weren't forced by the interrogations or presentment of false facts by the prosecutor?
 
Dan O. said:
The defense has one shot to present their case. They can't run with every possible alternative theory because they will be mutually exclusive and the jury will know that some must be lies and therefore the defendant must be lying.

We are not in a court so we have time to explore the alternative scenarios where facts are not available to exclude them. Only juror like idiots will conflate the details in different scenarios and assume that one must be a lie because they both cannot be true. Nobody here is such an idiot because the forum rules won't permit it.
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Actually I don't think that the JREF forums prohibit idiots. Rule cite?

This is interesting, though: They can't run with every possible alternative theory because they will be mutually exclusive... And yet someone did try to present a single alternative theory, placing themselves into the shoes of the AK/RS defence team:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5471640&postcount=1

Is there a reason that thread was abandoned in favour of this one? That thread postulated that all evidence must be discarded that did not adhere to the statement highlighted in the second sentence. This was quickly found to be difficult if not impossible.

We have even less raw information than the authorities have or than the defence teams have.

So what fresh new alternative theory do you have that doesn't include RS and AK as central figures in a brutal murder case? I would argue that any alternate theory you have would suffer the same fate because it would still contain all the inconsistencies, lies, evidence, testimony, and other components of the rock-solid theory pointing to the pair now in prison.
 
stilicho said:
I don't think I'd expect to see my DNA stomped in blood on the bathmat of my bathroom or mixed with my deceased roommate's blood in a third room of the house which none of us shared.

I understand you're trying to argue as a partisan but you're being too selective even for that, Kestrel.

I cannot see how my DNA would be mixed with the blood of someone who had been knifed and locked in their bedroom. Can you?
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Imagine that a couple days after you leave town, some dirtbag kills a member of your household. The dirtbag goes into a bathroom you use frequently and washes the blood off his hands. The victims blood mixes with what is already in the sink.

When you washed your face a few days earlier standing over that sink, some of your skin cells were rubbed off. They ended up deposited near the drain and on the handle of the faucet. If you shaved while standing over that sink, you left a lot of cells and a lot of DNA. Rinsing out the sink gets rid of some of those cells, but not all. A fair number will probably survive even a good scouring.

I should also mention that DNA is tough. It will still be there even if the last time you used that sink was weeks or months earlier.

If the dirtbag drips a bit of blood on the toilet seat, it mixes with skin cells your rear end left the last time you sat on the throne.

In both of those cases, the test for blood will be positive because the sample contains the victims blood. Even if you didn't contribute blood, running a DNA test will reveal a mixture of the victim's DNA and yours.

BTW - If you look up the actual facts of the case, you will find that Amanda's DNA wasn't found in the bathroom footprint and that Meredith's blood wasn't present in the footprint in Filomena's room.
 
Dan O. said:
Where is the evidence that shows who locked Meredith's door other than the theory in the prosecutors head?
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I'll pick this one. The others have been done to death.

I will argue that only the killer(s) could have locked the victim in her own bedroom. I will argue that the killer(s) must have had access to the house keys.

Let's see...who would fit that description?
 
stilicho said:
I'll pick this one. The others have been done to death.

I will argue that only the killer(s) could have locked the victim in her own bedroom. I will argue that the killer(s) must have had access to the house keys.

Let's see...who would fit that description?
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Rudy Guede, the dude who left his DNA on the victim's purse.
 
BobTheDonkey said:
Obviously you guys all think this is an important issue because you all keep coming back to it.

Why, on the other hand, do the members of the Defense team and Sollecito not believe it's important to cast doubt onto the murder weapon? I mean, you say they're maybe trying to keep from confusing stories...but we're talking about evidence that the murder weapon was found in Sollecito's apartment. That's not a minor detail, there's no alternate scenario that can explain that would allow confusion on this issue, and yet while there's no attempt by the defense to dispute this evidence you 3 (or 4) continue to argue forward and backward about whether this DNA evidence is valid. Why?
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The (in)validity of the DNA evidence is pure science and applies far beyond this case. I don't want such bad forensics to become a standard that could be used against anybody in the future. Good scientific forensics requires establishing the baselines for the accuracy of specific procedures in advance and not the performance of some ritual and then moving the goalposts afterwards to claim a score.

The problem of cross contamination when working with LCN DNA testing is well known in the industry and the Italian lab was simply not equipped and not trained to prevent cross contamination. As I've said before, get the raw data from the full set of DNA tests that the lab had performed and we can show you the cross contamination that was happening. Without the data we cannot say what the contamination rate is but we can guarantee that it is not zero. Even with a properly configured lab with micron filters, positive air flow and disposable tools, they still expect contamination and won't accept a result unless it is repeatable in a second lab.

The whole human genome is a mere 6.5* picograms. The small fragments that the DNA tests multiply and examine are only a few billionths of that. We are talking tiny on a scale that the best optical microscopes have difficulty resolving. You can't just sweep it away and say there is no contamination.
 
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Dan O. said:
The (in)validity of the DNA evidence is pure science and applies far beyond this case. I don't want such bad forensics to become a standard that could be used against anybody in the future. Good scientific forensics requires establishing the baselines for the accuracy of specific procedures in advance and not the performance of some ritual and then moving the goalposts afterwards to claim a score.

The problem of cross contamination when working with LCN DNA testing is well known in the industry and the Italian lab was simply not equipped and not trained to prevent cross contamination. As I've said before, get the raw data from the full set of DNA tests that the lab had performed and we can show you the cross contamination that was happening. Without the data we cannot say what the contamination rate is but we can guarantee that it is not zero. Even with a properly configured lab with micron filters, positive air flow and disposable tools, they still expect contamination and won't accept a result unless it is repeatable in a second lab.

The whole human genome is a mere 6 picograms. The small fragments that the DNA tests multiply and examine are only a few billionths of that. We are talking tiny on a scale that the best optical microscopes have difficulty resolving. You can't just sweep it away and say there is no contamination.
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Sollecito and the Defense agree with the lab results.
 
Kestrel said:
Imagine that a couple days after you leave town, some dirtbag kills a member of your household. The dirtbag goes into a bathroom you use frequently and washes the blood off his hands. The victims blood mixes with what is already in the sink.

When you washed your face a few days earlier standing over that sink, some of your skin cells were rubbed off. They ended up deposited near the drain and on the handle of the faucet. If you shaved while standing over that sink, you left a lot of cells and a lot of DNA. Rinsing out the sink gets rid of some of those cells, but not all. A fair number will probably survive even a good scouring.

I should also mention that DNA is tough. It will still be there even if the last time you used that sink was weeks or months earlier.

If the dirtbag drips a bit of blood on the toilet seat, it mixes with skin cells your rear end left the last time you sat on the throne.

In both of those cases, the test for blood will be positive because the sample contains the victims blood. Even if you didn't contribute blood, running a DNA test will reveal a mixture of the victim's DNA and yours.

BTW - If you look up the actual facts of the case, you will find that Amanda's DNA wasn't found in the bathroom footprint and that Meredith's blood wasn't present in the footprint in Filomena's room.
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Well, since we're imagining these things, I would say that I better have a rock-solid alibi. Do you not think this happens in other murder cases? Don't you think anyone needs an alibi when a victim's blood is found elsewhere in the house a suspect lives?

It is interesting that you've strongly suggested that the killer used the bathroom to clean up. The prosecution believes that to be the case too.

AK, of course, supplied an alibi that appeared to fit what was found. It didn't explain the bloody footprint on the bathmat which wasn't hers. It didn't explain the mixed DNA source in Filomena's bedroom. So you're getting closer at putting together a perhaps half-believable story.

The prosecution explanation is a lot more logical, though, and doesn't require a mysterious third person (aka "the dirtbag") using the bathroom but not leaving their DNA in it.

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Are you sure that none of Meredith's blood was found in Filomena's room? Where is your source? It's possible that it's better than mine but let's compare: http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=7656872&page=1. I had thought the luminol was used to reveal blood traces and not other DNA sources.
 
Kestrel said:
Rudy Guede, the dude who left his DNA on the victim's purse.
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He had access to the house keys? Why are you assuming Meredith's room key was in her purse? I've seen you suggest this before but there's no reason to leap to that conclusion. The reason I say that is because it has not been argued that Meredith kept her cash in her purse. Seems unusual to me but it seems she kept money in a drawer.
 
Dan O. said:
You can't just sweep it away and say there is no contamination.
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Nice dodge.

Go get the data then. Maybe you and halides1 can put together a fundraiser to get them from the defence teams who've had them for more than half a year.
 
stilicho said:
Nice dodge.

Go get the data then. Maybe you and halides1 can put together a fundraiser to get them from the defence teams who've had them for more than half a year.
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Or better yet, why don't you guys go join the defense team as the current team is apparently inept :rolleyes:
 
stilicho said:
He had access to the house keys? Why are you assuming Meredith's room key was in her purse? I've seen you suggest this before but there's no reason to leap to that conclusion. The reason I say that is because it has not been argued that Meredith kept her cash in her purse. Seems unusual to me but it seems she kept money in a drawer.
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It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Meredith had a set of keys to her own apartment. Her keys would have been left someplace handy. If not in her purse, perhaps sitting on her dresser or desk. So yes, Rudy probably had access to Meredith's keys.

You will have to ask Rudy where Meredith's keys are now.
 
Kestrel said:
It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Meredith had a set of keys to her own apartment. Her keys would have been left someplace handy. If not in her purse, perhaps sitting on her dresser or desk. So yes, Rudy probably had access to Meredith's keys.

You will have to ask Rudy where Meredith's keys are now.
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And if he took the keys...who moved the body while he was at the club?
 
Kestrel said:
It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Meredith had a set of keys to her own apartment. Her keys would have been left someplace handy. If not in her purse, perhaps sitting on her dresser or desk. So yes, Rudy probably had access to Meredith's keys.

You will have to ask Rudy where Meredith's keys are now.
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Why, when we can just as easily ask Amanda and Raffaele?

Why would Rudy have locked her door? If he did, where are the keys? (It's not good enough to glibly say 'ask Rudy').

Did Rudy also transfer Meredith's lamp to the floor? Did he also then go into Amanda's room, unplug her lamp, take it into Meredith's room, place it on the floor at the foot of her bed, then lock her bedroom door with it's cable running out from beneath the door? Why?
 
Kestrel said:
It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out Meredith had a set of keys to her own apartment. Her keys would have been left someplace handy. If not in her purse, perhaps sitting on her dresser or desk. So yes, Rudy probably had access to Meredith's keys.

You will have to ask Rudy where Meredith's keys are now.
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In a way you're agreeing with me (more than once). Your "dirtbag" scenario placed the killer in the bathroom. This scenario says the killer had the room keys at least at some point.

This is good! You're starting to put together information points into a coherent scenario involving the movements of the murderer(s) inside the cottage.

The problem you're getting into at this point, though, is trying to fit a preconceived idea of who the killer(s) is/are to the facts as known. Nobody knows where Meredith's keys were. To suggest that only RG could have had them has no basis in fact, nor that Meredith had them in her purse.

Why don't we stick to the facts and the common ground? We know the killer(s) locked the door. We know the killer(s) had Meredith's room keys. We each agree that at least one of the killers was in the bathroom to wash up.

Let's move on. Did the killer(s) move Meredith's body and mostly cover it with the quilt? Did this happen some time after her death?
 
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