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Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

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christianahannah said:
So it is possible that any images picked up by luminol six weeks into investigating a crime scene could be due to a bleach reaction?

Another question to anyone, do bare feet prints show up better than shoe prints? And do different floor surfaces show prints better than others, i.e. wood, tile, etc.
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No. None of the cleaning products in the cottage contained bleach.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
Nor any evidence that it was not. The test tells us nothing.



If Raffaele was in the house any length of time then he shed skin cells which would have been lying around the house, and those cells could easily have been tracked anywhere in the house. That tiny amounts of Raffaele's DNA could have been in that room for entirely innocent reasons is a given.

There is no evidence that his DNA got on to the clasp because he touched it, nor any evidence that his DNA got on to the clasp because it was lying on the floor with dust containing his DNA, nor any evidence that his DNA appeared to be on the clasp because of a false positive. Given the opportunities for contamination that test also tells us nothing - a reasonable person can believe it possible either that his DNA was on the clasp for innocent reasons or that the test was a false positive.



I will repeat myself a third time. We'll never know. Given that the "mystery substance" could have been tracked in at any time, and could have been a wide variety of different substances, all we can say is that the test result is meaningless.
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I agree - and I also appreciate the calm rationalisation within your posts. Where have you been over the past couple of weeks?!!!!!

I think that one of the really important things at issue here surrounds RS's DNA in the murder house. It's entirely fair to say that if a suspect's DNA - however small a sample - is proved beyond a reasonable doubt to have been found at the murder scene WHEN THE SUSPECT CLAIMS NEVER TO HAVE VISITED THE SCENE, then this can be pretty damning to the suspect. However, this is not the case here.

"But wait!", I hear some people exclaim. "Rafaelle claimed never to have "visited" Meredith's bra clasp, and his DNA was found there!" True enough, but then we also need to examine the whole area of tertiary (or even secondary) transfer of DNA. It's entirely feasible that RS's DNA (in various forms) was present in many different places throughout the murder house, through entirely innocent means of deposit. And we've already seen that forensics officers moved pretty indiscriminately throughout the house on the afternoon of 2nd November. And additionally, RS claims to have tried Meredith's door (if I'm not mistaken) before the arrival of the police. Yes, I know that the police recovered no samples of RS's DNA from the outer door handle - but "absence of evidence..." and all that. And if traces of RS's DNA HAD been transmitted to police gloves from the door handle to the bra clasp (i.e. tertiary transfer), then it's possible that none of his DNA would have remained on the door handle to show up in subsequent testing.

I'd also like to add to something that you illuminated in a previous post, around the whole issue of what constitutes "reasonable" doubt. As I've previously argued, "reasonable" does NOT in this instance simply mean "not improbable". In other words, it should emphatically not be interpreted in the same was as it would be interpreted in the following sentence: "The Mariners do not have a reasonable chance of winning the World Series this year". ( ;) to Mary).

Instead, "reasonable" within the "reasonable doubt" construction should be taken to be a contraction of something along the lines of "an alternative explanation that a reasonable person might take to be a plausible possibility - however unlikely". In other words, the phrase is designed NOT to eliminate alternative hypotheses which are unlikely, but instead to eliminate those which are utterly implausible to a reasonable person.

An example of "unreasonable doubt" might be something like this: "The victim was conclusively killed at 6pm, and the suspect was seen close to the murder scene just before 6pm. The suspect claims he was 200 miles away from the murder scene at 7pm. The prosecution say that this is proof that the suspect is lying about his 7pm alibi. But what if the suspect immediately got into his car at 6pm, and drove for the next hour at an average speed of 200mph to his alibi location? If this happened, then the suspect could be telling the truth. I therefore doubt the prosecution's inference of guilt." This alternative hypothesis is clearly utterly implausible to a "reasonable" person, and can thus be discounted as a potential source of doubt.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
Didn't it take multiple attempts to finally get a positive result on the bra clasp?
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No, you clearly have the clasp confused with the knife.

Kevin Lowe said:
In any case, if we agree that a positive DNA test result from dust contamination is a low-probability event in any single test, then it's not in any way remarkable that the DNA showed up in one place but not another.
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It's not a low probability, it's a zero probability. Positive profiles cannot be extracted from dust.

Kevin_Lowe said:
I don't think it's necessary to invoke corrupt forensics to establish the claim that Amanda and Raffaele cannot be shown beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty.
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My, isn't it a wonder anyone ever gets convicted in any court anywhere at all, what with the bar being where you've put it? ;)

Kevin_Lowe said:
It's not an implausible fairy story, though. The police have a pet theory, they have some suspects in the frame, and they have a frustrating lack of any direct evidence at all to put their suspects in the murder room. Forty-seven days into the investigation they go back to the murder scene, grab a piece of evidence that was lying around for all that time, and it just so happens that the one spot in the room where the suspect's DNA can be found is on that one piece of evidence. It's exactly the kind of luck a not-quite-honest police forensics lab could make for themselves if they were so inclined.

Police have falsified evidence to convict people they thought were guilty but likely to get away with it in the past, and they will do so again. It's anyone's guess whether they did so in this case, but given the high-profile nature of the case, the unusual timing and the fortuitousness of the discovery for the prosecution it's not unreasonable to wonder whether that particular piece of evidence was dodgy.
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Oh my, and now when it comes to accusing the police of corruption, you've lowered that bar all the way down to the floor, hell...we don't even need actual evidence. Oh my.

Kevin_Lowe said:
Philosophers have pointed out in the past that with competent defence and strict adherence to the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt, almost nobody should ever be convicted, because you could always come up with some story about how the accused was either framed or the victim of ridiculous bad luck. It's not a new observation.
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Fortunately, we live in the real World.

Kevin_Lowe said:
As I hinted at in the post you quoted, of course, in reality jurors often do not understand and apply the doctrine of proof beyond reasonable doubt. Often they just convict if they think the accused did it. Possibly our criminal system couldn't work if they didn't.
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That is actually how beyond reasonable doubt is 'supposed' to work. And you're right, our criminal justice systems wouldn't work otherwise. Therefore, I'm left wondering why it is you are trying to impose 'your' brand of beyond reasonable doubt onto the Meredith Kercher case?

Kevin Lowe said:
Given the absence of any other evidence of his presence, and the absence of any remotely plausible motive, I don't agree with that assessment of the relevant odds.
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There is a highly plausible motive. However, I note with interest that you have suddenly conveniently changed your tune and are demanding something to be plausible before it can be accepted. It's a pity you hadn't walked the Road to Damascus back when you were declaring completely implausible explanations for the luminol prints to be just dandy.
 
Mary_H said:
Think in terms of how little evidence Mignini had to provide to Matteini to get Amanda, Raffaele and Patrick locked up. How few voices -- even of lawyers for the defense -- have spoken out publicly against the prosection. Surely you can't argue against my claim about the three-trial legal system. And if you don't think Italians try their cases in the press, then you would have to wonder for what other reason jurors are allowed to have access to the media while they serve.
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Just like police anywhere don't need a huge amount of evidence to have you arrested and locked up on remand. The requirement for arrest and custody is not the same as it is for conviction in a trial.

Italian JUDGES are NOT allowed to have access to the media while they serve, at least not any media that's covering the case they are examining. They are expressly forbidden from doing so.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
I don't think it's necessary to invoke corrupt forensics to establish the claim that Amanda and Raffaele cannot be shown beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty.

Nor can the claim that the forensics were dodgy be shown to be true beyond reasonable doubt.

It's not an implausible fairy story, though. The police have a pet theory, they have some suspects in the frame, and they have a frustrating lack of any direct evidence at all to put their suspects in the murder room. Forty-seven days into the investigation they go back to the murder scene, grab a piece of evidence that was lying around for all that time, and it just so happens that the one spot in the room where the suspect's DNA can be found is on that one piece of evidence. It's exactly the kind of luck a not-quite-honest police forensics lab could make for themselves if they were so inclined.

Police have falsified evidence to convict people they thought were guilty but likely to get away with it in the past, and they will do so again. It's anyone's guess whether they did so in this case, but given the high-profile nature of the case, the unusual timing and the fortuitousness of the discovery for the prosecution it's not unreasonable to wonder whether that particular piece of evidence was dodgy.
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You'd have to use the same arguments for every single case that was solved by the forensics after the original investigation turned up nothing then.

This case is peculiar, too, in that one of those originally arrested was released due to lack of evidence. Somehow the authorities were right about Patrick and Rudy (releasing one and arresting the other) yet wrong about Raffaele and Amanda (fabricating or falsifying evidence).

What mechanism would you have to have in place for that to happen? In all the examples provided by halides1 and the rest of the troupe there is simply nothing quite like it.

You're also stating that the police were frustrated by the lack of evidence. Unless you know something about the particular individuals involved, that's quite a claim. Wouldn't all crimes therefore be likely to be "solved" by planting or fabricating evidence? Forensics labs would merely convert to evidence-manufacturing nodes. Why stop there? They could just plant witnesses too.

The only thing that makes Meredith's murder a high-profile case is that an American woman was involved in it. There's nothing else that remarkable about it or those involved. Meredith wasn't JFK or Princess Di. To suggest the police were motivated by something other than professionalism is simply misguided.

If it weren't for the relentless engine of powerful advocacy groups behind the American woman now jailed for her part in the murder, you wouldn't have even heard of this case, and she'd be simply doing her time. In the two years since she helped kill Meredith, these groups have produced nothing of value that might make a small dent in the mountain of evidence used to convict her.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for how a tiny speck of Raffaele's DNA could get on an object which was lying around on the floor of a house where he spent a lot of time.
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He didn't spend a lot of time at the cottage. Amanda spent more time at his flat. It was either once or twice that he'd been to the cottage. There was no reason for him to be in Meredith's room, either.

You've stumbled into precisely the same problem that Raffaele's defence team did. They want to explain the presence of his DNA on a girl's bra when there's no good reason for it being there, hence floating dust, transference from the door knob, contamination at the lab, and so on.

The prosecution has a perfectly logical explanation for it being there that doesn't require any of those things, nor is he required to have been a frequent visitor.
 
Fine said:
Hmmm. Speaking of philosophical errors, you've just provided us one. There are so many instances in life where we believe "beyond a reasonable doubt," while knowing that it's possible that we are wrong.

A case in point. The conviction, for murder, of Amanda Marie Knox. The judges/ jurors believed "beyond a reasonable doubt" that she committed the crime, knowing full well that it was possible that she did not. If, for instance, there had been a giant conspiracy on the part of the cops, forensic investigators, and the prosecutors to fabricate evidence. (Sound familiar?) Under those conditions, clearly Amanda would have been an innocent person. But the judges/jurors did not find it reasonable to accept such a conspiracy theory, if it had even entered their minds. Likewise it is possible that God had intervened, ...planting evidence, tinkering with lab machinery, creating false memories to make it look like Amanda was guilty. Under those conditions, too, Amanda would have been innocent but the judges/jurors were certainly not disturbed by that possibility either.

The judges/jurors can never completely exclude certain "possibilities." Only God can do that. The possibilities remain...whether they find them reasonable or unreasonable... while they proceed to their fallible verdict. This isn't the LAST JUDGMENT, which won't be subject to appeal.
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Again, I would argue that this is a prima facie mis-interpretation of "reasonable".

Law enforcement bodies have wrestled heavily with the potentially fatally destructive issue of police corruption for some years now. They understand (probably more than any other interested party) that VERY high levels of public faith in the veracity and incorruptibility of the police are ESSENTIAL to the very existence of a criminal justice system.

This is because if the public gained the belief that police corruption was a truly reasonable (in the "reasonable doubt" sense) possibility, then pretty much every case should result in an acquittal - including the majority of cases where the suspects were indeed the culprits. So law enforcers have tried over the years to close off each and every avenue to potential corruption - including (but not limited to) taped interviews at all stages (!), access to defence counsel to anyone under suspicion (!), duplication of officers to prevent "lone wolf" corruption, multiple analysis of forensic evidence, preferably by independent fully-accredited laboratories (big "!").

So what the state is essentially trying to tell jurors (and the public at large) is this: "Put aside any notions of police corruption. It's VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE in the present day, and your default position should therefore be that no corruption whatsoever occurred in this case - unless you are presented with specific evidence to the contrary".

Now, as it turns out, I have immense sympathy for the police (in the broadest definition) in this regard. Most of the time, evidence is indeed gathered, interpreted, analysed and presented in an utterly scrupulous and proper fashion. And, as I've said above, our entire system of law and order would likely collapse if people's faith in the police deteriorated to the extent where they believed that corruption was routinely possible (let alone probable).

The problem, though, is that corruption still DOES happen (however infrequently) throughout all levels of the police system in all countries of the world. So, demonstrably, law enforcers haven't yet managed to slam shut all the doors to corruptibility.

It's therefore reasonable to examine whether there are areas in this specific case where corruption might have occurred. And I would suggest that it's entirely reasonable to look in some depth at a situation where a lone DNA analyst - working with very little companionship - was searching for the DNA of specific, known suspects, at the behest of a police department whom she had served in the past - and for whom she was most likely expecting more requests for analysis in the future. Further, it's reasonable to ask why she searched with such additional - and hitherto untested - intensity for the DNA of specific suspects. I would agree however that the defence, on the face of it, made a GRAVE error in not sending their own representatives to witness the entire DNA testing process. I think they've done their case (in the DNA area) significant and irreversible harm as a result.

This level of scepticism and questioning is a world away (in my opinion) from making claims like "nano-thermite explosives brought down the Twin Towers and 7WTC", or even claims like "a Mafia/CIA conspiracy put in place the team that assassinated JFK".
 
LondonJohn said:
It's therefore reasonable to examine whether there are areas in this specific case where corruption might have occurred. And I would suggest that it's entirely reasonable to look in some depth at a situation where a lone DNA analyst - working with very little companionship - was searching for the DNA of specific, known suspects, at the behest of a police department whom she had served in the past - and for whom she was most likely expecting more requests for analysis in the future. Further, it's reasonable to ask why she searched with such additional - and hitherto untested - intensity for the DNA of specific suspects. I would agree however that the defence, on the face of it, made a GRAVE error in not sending their own representatives to witness the entire DNA testing process. I think they've done their case (in the DNA area) significant and irreversible harm as a result.
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The DNA is a bad place to look for corruption/fabrication--especially on an internet forum. Auditors examine controls and procedures all the time. I supplied the examples from the US labs mentioned by halides1.

If Amanda's supporters were really interested in discrediting the lab then they'd get someone who speaks and writes Italian to locate those audit reports. There is simply no other way to do it.
 
BobTheDonkey said:
I've stated before, I don't want to believe Amanda is guilty. This is not merely personal opinion: I find that the evidence cannot be so easily handwaved away as you and others would try, and as such, I am left with the conclusion that Amanda and Raffaele were involved in the murder of Meredith.

I find it a travesty that the life of an innocent, young woman was ended so brutally in a fit of emotion. I also find it a travesty that three young people will spend many years in prison due to that same fit of emotion - such a waste of life.

Those feelings, however, do not excuse the guilty parties. I am not interested in retribution - but if Amanda, Raffaele, and Rudy are unable to function in "our" (really Italian) society without raping/murdering an innocent person, then they should be removed from our society in a manner that allows them to rehabilitate and later reenter as functioning members.
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I don't "want" to believe that AK is innocent. I don't even "have" to believe that she is innocent (and I'm not sure that I do believe that). This is one of the areas where Mary and I diverge in our views - as we're all, of course, entitled to.

I also don't "want" to believe that AK may have been wrongly convicted. However, I currently DO believe that this is what very well may have happened. I've explained previously why I hold this belief.

Incidentally, I think you probably didn't mean "travesty" in the quote above. "Travesty" has a very narrow definition. It means "grotesque distortion or imitation". Hence the phrase "travesty of justice: a grotesque distortion of justice". What you might have meant to write was "tragedy", which would have made sense in that context.
 
stilicho said:
The DNA is a bad place to look for corruption/fabrication--especially on an internet forum. Auditors examine controls and procedures all the time. I supplied the examples from the US labs mentioned by halides1.

If Amanda's supporters were really interested in discrediting the lab then they'd get someone who speaks and writes Italian to locate those audit reports. There is simply no other way to do it.
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Errmmm, I don't think ANYONE is in a position to discuss with a straight face the audit controls or quality accreditation of the Rome lab where the DNA testing was conducted in this case......
 
LondonJohn said:
Errmmm, I don't think ANYONE is in a position to discuss with a straight face the audit controls or quality accreditation of the Rome lab where the DNA testing was conducted in this case......
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The onus is on your advocacy group(s) to find them.
 
turnip juice and peroxidase

I am not sure why BobTheDonkey is going on about turnip juice. The most important fact is that many fruits and vegetables have an enzyme called peroxidase. It can use luminol as a substrate very effectively. True, certain fruits and vegetables have more peroxidase than others (horshradish being one of the highest), but many others have it as well, including pineapple juice. I believe I have previously given literature references, but PM me if you need them.

The metal ions found in soil can also catalyze the luminol reaction. See the article I cited from the journal Talanta for some references.

halides1
 
proof of innocence

stilicho said:
This case is peculiar, too, in that one of those originally arrested was released due to lack of evidence. Somehow the authorities were right about Patrick and Rudy (releasing one and arresting the other) yet wrong about Raffaele and Amanda (fabricating or falsifying evidence).
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This is false. Patrick had a strong alibi. That is proof of innocence, not lack of evidence.
 
forensics in the courtroom

stilicho said:
The DNA is a bad place to look for corruption/fabrication--especially on an internet forum. Auditors examine controls and procedures all the time. I supplied the examples from the US labs mentioned by halides1.

If Amanda's supporters were really interested in discrediting the lab then they'd get someone who speaks and writes Italian to locate those audit reports. There is simply no other way to do it.
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The notion that the only way to discredit lab results is via audits is contradicted by a number of examples. Here is another:

http://www.bioforensics.com/articles/Legally Scientific (Errors at ESR).html

Outside of DNA forensics, one might look into the tragic case of Mrs. Patricia Stallings:

http://www.justicedenied.org/patriciastallings.htm
 
stilicho said:
The DNA is a bad place to look for corruption/fabrication--especially on an internet forum. Auditors examine controls and procedures all the time. I supplied the examples from the US labs mentioned by halides1.

If Amanda's supporters were really interested in discrediting the lab then they'd get someone who speaks and writes Italian to locate those audit reports. There is simply no other way to do it.
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How can auditors examine controls and procedures in a crime lab where there are no auditors?
 
halides1 said:
This is false. Patrick had a strong alibi. That is proof of innocence, not lack of evidence.
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He had a substantiated alibi 'combined' with a lack of evidence against him. Had there been hard evidence against him, alibi or not, he'd have remained in custody.
 
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