Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[Open Inquiry]

Cite note #82, Murder of Meredith Kercher, Wikipedia

 

[Open Inquiry]

"What's more, a sensitive chemical test for blood on the knife was negative, and it is unlikely that all chemically detectable traces of blood could be removed from the knife while retaining sufficient cells to produce a DNA profile." - New Scientist


Linked to from:

The Murder of Meredith Kercher, Wikipedia

Cite note # 82.

 

[lionking]

So what's your theory Open Inquiry?

 

[Matthew Best]

Hundreds of Americans, mostly minorities, are sent to their deaths each month.

Really? Hundreds each month?

 

[Open Inquiry]

Re-posted next entry.

 

[Open Inquiry]

So what's your theory Open Inquiry?

I am asking on what grounds it can be included in the evidence at this point. Asking if anyone knows. Or knows anyone who knows.

I guess I could ask a lawyer, as well.

 

[stilicho]

Really? Hundreds each month?

It's pretty brutal there, Matthew. They send mentally challenged people to their deaths in routine fashion.

AK is lucky she wasn't tried in the USA.

 

[stilicho]

Really? Hundreds each month?

Try this: http://uspolitics.about.com/od/deathpenalty/i/death_penalty.htm

China, Iran, Vietnam, and the US are the leaders in killing their own citizens.

 

[Brainster]

The Innocence Project is largely an American lobby group, ShuttIt. Hundreds of Americans, mostly minorities, are sent to their deaths each month.

Well, you're only off by 1-2 orders of magnitude.

 

[Matthew Best]

Try this: http://uspolitics.about.com/od/deathpenalty/i/death_penalty.htm

China, Iran, Vietnam, and the US are the leaders in killing their own citizens.

That site says about three a month, not hundreds.

 

[stilicho]

Well, you're only off by 1-2 orders of magnitude.

I must apologise for that exaggeration.

Still, there's a very good chance that AK would have had a needle in her arm by now if she were tried in the United States of America. China, Vietnam, and Iran would have killed her too.

This is a mitigating circumstance against her return to the USA for the duration of her sentence and not many of her supporters understand that she is better off serving her prison sentence in Italy.

 

[stilicho]

Well, you're only off by 1-2 orders of magnitude.

Saw that link. Is that all the state-sponsored killings in the USA? Is there a link to commuted sentences? They do tend to kill murderers there, don't they?

 

[snook1]

tgcom.mediaset.it/cronaca/articoli/articolo475741.shtml

Guede: "I know who killed Meredith"
Disclosure to the assassin of Tommy

Strange judicial crossovers between two cases of crime news: the murder of Meredith Kercher and the brutal killing of Tommaso Onofri.

Rudy Guede, found guilty of the murder of the English student, is supposed to have said that he knows who the real murderer is.
“It wasn’t Amanda and Raffaele, but another man.” The person who received this piece of gossip was Mario Alessi, who is also in prison, and already condemned for having massacred little Tommy.

Raffaele Sollecito’s defence has lodged with the Perugia prosecutor’s office the statement made by Alessi to these same lawyers during investigations by the defence, when the bricklayer mentioned having received disclosures about the murder of Meredith Kercher from Guede, together with whom he is an inmate of the prison at Viterbo. In particular, the man from the Ivory Coast is said to have ruled out the responsibility of the young man from Puglia and of Amanda Knox for the crime, indicating another man, not yet identified, as the one responsible.

Guede has confirmed (as he always has done) his presence in the crime house, claiming to have never met Sollecito and to have met Knox only occasionally. The Ivorian, according to the disclosures received by Alessi, is said to have also mentioned that there was another man present in the house at Via della Pergola on the night between the first and second of November, 2007, and he murdered Ms Kercher.

“No comment" about the lodging of the acts on the part of lawyer Luca Maori, defence of the young man from Puglia, with Giulia Bongiorno.

“We are maintaining maximum discretion – Maori further said – because there are documents being evaluated by the prosecution which will act for the best.”

 

[Brainster]

I must apologise for that exaggeration.

Still, there's a very good chance that AK would have had a needle in her arm by now if she were tried in the United States of America. China, Vietnam, and Iran would have killed her too.

This is a mitigating circumstance against her return to the USA for the duration of her sentence and not many of her supporters understand that she is better off serving her prison sentence in Italy.

I don't want to be a jerk here, but for the part about AK would have had a needle in her arm by now if she were tried in the US is laughable.

The length of time prisoners spend on death row in the United States before their executions has recently emerged as a topic of interest in the debate about the death penalty. The discussion increased around the execution of Michael Ross, a Connecticut inmate who had been on death row for 17 years, and has been spurred by the writings of two Supreme Court Justices who have urged the Court to consider this issue.

Death row inmates in the U.S. typically spend over a decade awaiting execution. Some prisoners have been on death row for well over 20 years.

And I doubt very strongly AK would have been convicted of capital murder in the US. There is nothing in the thread that indicates premeditation that I can see. Maybe in Texas it might have happened, but executions of women have bene relatively rare; 11 since 1976 and none since 2005. And I suspect that if you spend a little time looking through the women executed you will find nothing close to Knox's case in terms of guilt or innocence.

 

[shuttlt]

"What's more, a sensitive chemical test for blood on the knife was negative, and it is unlikely that all chemically detectable traces of blood could be removed from the knife while retaining sufficient cells to produce a DNA profile." - New Scientist


Linked to from:

The Murder of Meredith Kercher, Wikipedia

Cite note # 82.

But who is claiming it? The New Scientist article isn't peer reviewed or anything, it's just repeating the open letter. The only sources for the "there is no blood" claim are the Innocence Project and one of the defence experts. For all I know the Innocence Project have drawn that opinion from the same defence expert (though the author of the letter is certainly an expert in her own right) . All the rest are just quoting them. All the Innocence Project and the defence expert have said is that the blood test is more sensitive than DNA testing, so it's unlikely etc. etc.

What has bothered me since I read this is that they never explicitly say that they are comparing the blood test with LCN DNA testing. Of course we are intended to assume that is what they mean, but is it? Who can say. The figures on the sensitivity of the LCN test is always given in terms of the number of cells that it can get a reading from (5 seems to be about the minimum). The sensitivity of the blood test is given as a dilution, 1:10,000. Additionally, the blood test sample was 1/4 of the size of the one used in the LCN test, the blood test would have to be 4 times more sensitive than LCN testing just to break even.

I've tried to convert the blood test into an absolute number of cells it can detect and determine whether it could detect blood assuming the DNA on the knife came from blood (calculations upthread). This isn't easy given that the ratio of red to white cells varies by quite a bit and we aren't sure how many cells were on the knife to start with. One has to be careful with amature calculations such as this, but based on them, I am doubtful that the blood test is more sensitive than LCN (and the Motivation document seems to support me). It may possibly be if you get lucky and get somebody with a helpful ratio of red to white cells. Again, this is an amature calculation and I'd be grateful to find out the basis for the FOA claim about the blood which may well render my work null.

On the plus side for Amanda, if the Innocence Project do genuinely have a solid basis for their claim that the blood test is more sensitive than the LCN test then that may well be a basis for attacking the verdict. It would be nice if they would produce something a little more detailed to explain their reasoning. Otherwise we are just left with them asserting stuff that it is very hard to check.

 

[snook1]

cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-6271397-504083.html

Amanda Knox Bombshell: Convicted Killer Rudy Guede Told Cellmate Knox Didn't Do It, Says Paper

NEW YORK (CBS) The Italian newspaper La Repubblica and some Italian national television networks are reporting tonight a new version of events in the controversial Amanda Knox murder case in Perugia, Italy.

Knox, 22, and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 25, were convicted of the murder of Meredith Kercher, along with a third man, Rudy Guede. Sollecito's attorneys, in conducting their own investigation, have interviewed a former cellmate of Rudy Guede.

Guede, 23, allegedly admitted to his cellmate that Amanda and Raffaele were not with him when Meredith Kercher was murdered.

Rudy Guede in his own trial had told the court that both Amanda and Raffaele were there and participated in the murder of the 21-year-old British student.

In the dramatic new statement Guede's cellmate claims that Rudy Guede told him there was another person with him but it was not Amanda or Raffaele.

The cellmate's testimony was videotaped and submitted to the prosecutor's office in Perugia.

Valter Biscotti, a lawyer for Rudy Guede, however, points out: "My client has never mentioned this aspect of the story."

Knox is currently serving a 26-year sentence. Sollecito is serving 25. Guede is serving 16. All three are appealing their convictions.

 

[shuttlt]

One additional thing about the open letter. They state things as facts that are in fact claims by the defence that are contested. e.g.:

"The knife was selected from among several knives in the kitchen drawer of Raffaele’s apartment. It was the only knife collected from the kitchen, although it had no visible stains or notable characteristics."

The police claimed that the knife was chosen because it appeared to have been recently cleaned and, I think, smelled of bleach. One can doubt, disagree with and question this, but it is no less a fact than that there were "no visible stains or notable characteristics".

Then there is the material in the scratch that was visible on close inspection. They either haven't been told about this claim, or decide not to mention it.

Either the open letter is an attempt to give an objective summary of the facts, in which case I think it's pretty crap, or it's includes an implicit assumption that Amanda is innocent and then decides which facts are true and which aren't on that basis. If it's the former, then some attempt should be made to put across the prosecutions side of the case, if it's the latter then I think they should be clearer about what they are doing.

 

[Dan O.]

I've tried to convert the blood test into an absolute number of cells it can detect and determine whether it could detect blood assuming the DNA on the knife came from blood (calculations upthread).

Your entire calculation was based on the assumption that if you diluted the blood sample then it would be too diluted for the blood test to detect blood.

 

[Alt+F4]

Still, there's a very good chance that AK would have had a needle in her arm by now if she were tried in the United States of America.

No, the average stay on death row in the United States is about ten years and most states have automatic appeals when the death penalty is the sentence. If this conviction happened in California she would probably never be put to death.

 

[shuttlt]

Your entire calculation was based on the assumption that if you diluted the blood sample then it would be too diluted for the blood test to detect blood.

Man, I must be a rubbish explainer. Nobody understood me.

The test has a sensitivity of 1:10,000. That doesn't mean that you can detect arbitrarily small amounts of blood so long as nobody has diluted them before hand in enough water to take them beyond this dilution. Surely? Luminol has a sensitivity of 1:7,000. What does that mean in the context of dry, but invisibly faint bloody footprints? Surely it's the ratio of Luminol to blood residue?

Say you have a tiny spot of blood to which you want to add your blood detecting mixture. If the ratio of blood to blood detecting mixture is better than 1:10,000 the test is good, if not you're out of luck. As the size of the blood sample gets smaller you have to use smaller and smaller drops of blood detecting chemical. At the levels we are dealing with here one would have to use tiny fractions of a drop of blood detecting chemical in order to get a result.

I may still be wrong, but given what arse people clearly thought I was talking, I wish it had been pointed out at the time. If anybody still thinks I'm talking arse I'd be grateful to be told where I've gone wrong.