Amanda Knox guilty - all because of a cartwheel

[stilicho]

It looks to me like the problem is that it's a mountain of evidence that never quite proves what it's supposed to. You can't prove it false because it's not. All you can do is say "Look, folks, the problem with this huge pile of evidence is that none of it is evidence that Amanda and Raffaele actually killed anyone. You've got loads of oddities which make great conspiracy theory fodder, and you've got some scary knives and evil comic books and terrible drugs and other things which might convince Italian grannies that these kids were rampaging Satanist serial killers, but when you get right down to the nitty-gritty the evidence that puts them in the murder room sucks".

Which evidence would you disallow in a murder trial in general and in this murder trial in specific? You've already suggested that evidence such as the murderer's DNA on the victim's bra is insufficient.

What do you actually need?

 

[LondonJohn]

How do you know who they interviewed or what they asked for? Nobody in their right mind would volunteer any of those things without a lawyer present.

Nope, it's standard police procedure in many countries (including the UK) as I understand it. A friend of a friend of mine* lived in a shared post-grad student house where there was a sexual assault of a girl after a party. All the partygoers were asked to provide skin-cell DNA, hair and fingerprint samples, for cross-checking and elimination purposes. All of them did so (without requesting lawyers, to my knowledge), and the culprit was eventually isolated as a local man with mental health problems who'd wandered in through the open front door.

In addition, the very first time that DNA analysis was used to convict in a criminal investigation (the Colin Pitchfork conviction in Leicestershire, UK, in 1988), a mass voluntary screening of local men led to Pitchfork's arrest. HE was caught because he'd persuaded a local simpleton to provide a sample of DNA on his behalf, and the patsy bragged about it in the pub.

* Yeah...sounds convoluted and is technically hearsay, but I implicitly trust my friend, and he'd have no reason to misreport - in some detail, I might add - what HIS friend told him in some detail...

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Nope, it's standard police procedure in many countries (including the UK) as I understand it. A friend of a friend of mine* lived in a shared post-grad student house where there was a sexual assault of a girl after a party. All the partygoers were asked to provide skin-cell DNA, hair and fingerprint samples, for cross-checking and elimination purposes. All of them did so (without requesting lawyers, to my knowledge), and the culprit was eventually isolated as a local man with mental health problems who'd wandered in through the open front door.

In addition, the very first time that DNA analysis was used to convict in a criminal investigation (the Colin Pitchfork conviction in Leicestershire, UK, in 1988), a mass voluntary screening of local men led to Pitchfork's arrest. HE was caught because he'd persuaded a local simpleton to provide a sample of DNA on his behalf, and the patsy bragged about it in the pub.

* Yeah...sounds convoluted and is technically hearsay, but I implicitly trust my friend, and he'd have no reason to misreport - in some detail, I might add - what HIS friend told him in some detail...

You're right, the police usually get DNA from everyone in the household where a murder takes place, including children. That way they can exclude samples of no value to their investigation.

In this case, they had cigarette butts in the kitchen with unidentified DNA, and they had bloody tissues in the driveway with unidentified DNA. But hey, it would be a nuisance to investigate that stuff, and if it won't help them nail Amanda and Raffaele, why bother?

 

[stilicho]

All the partygoers were asked to provide skin-cell DNA, hair and fingerprint samples, for cross-checking and elimination purposes. All of them did so (without requesting lawyers, to my knowledge), and the culprit was eventually isolated as a local man with mental health problems who'd wandered in through the open front door.

No way you'd ever do that without consulting an attorney or being placed in custody. That's an appalling infringement on an individual's rights if it were true.

 

[Mary_H]

Really? As I just posted...everyone else had solid alibis. Nice strawman though.

There has been some continued misuse of the term "straw man" in the last couple of pages. Here is the definition of a straw man argument:

Description of Straw Man

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:

1. Person A has position X.
2. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
3. Person B attacks position Y.
4. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html

I think LondonJohn would agree that many of the arguments against his claims have been straw men. Here is another example:

Charlie wrote: "But that takes us back to the central problem of this whole case: what could possibly precipitate this mad impulse? Why would Amanda and Raffaele depart from a quiet evening alone together, in the first stages of a fresh love affair, and team up with Rudy to kill Amanda's housemate? The answer is that they wouldn't, and they didn't."

Fulcanelli wrote: "Nobody has ever suggested that they teamed up with Rudy with the intention of murdering Meredith. That's really a straw man."

Fulcanelli responds to Charlie as if Charlie had said that Amanda and Raffaele would have teamed up with the intention of murdering Meredith, when Charlie did not actually say that, and that was not his meaning. Charlie has not set up a straw man, Fulcanelli has.

 

[Fulcanelli]

If we look at it from your perspective then the print on the bathmat belongs to Raffaele. Are you saying that Raffaele would have left that print and not noticed it?

You believe that they did an elaborate clean up to remove everything that pointed to them but you feel there was no need to remove the bathmat.

Something in your scenario just doesn't work out.

Of course the print belongs to Raffaele, it certainly doesn't belong to Rudy and this was what was established in the trial.

Neither of them noticed the print, it wasn't visible as a print and this is shown by both of their statements and testimonies. All they recognised was a blood stain.

I don't believe they did anything elaborate, they did what they thought would be enough.

The truth is, The print on the bathmat is inconclusive. The most probable scenario points to Rudy.

There was no clean up. You have to imagine a very improbable scenario to suggest that a clean up was done.

Oh, all of a sudden the print on the mat is conveniently inconclusive. Perhaps by Bruce Fisher, not according to the court.

Tell us all about the 'improbability' and what exactly it is that is so improbable. Is it rare for murderers to clean up after themselves at crime scenes...is this a new phenomenon?

 

[tsig]

Which evidence would you disallow in a murder trial in general and in this murder trial in specific? You've already suggested that evidence such as the murderer's DNA on the victim's bra is insufficient.

What do you actually need?

I'm guessing he would have to be in the room and witness it himself then engage in a long philosophical discussion with the murderer as to what he meant by his actions.

 

[Mary_H]

I just don't see where it has been disproved at all. There's just a hole where the evidence that should disprove it ought to be. Either Amanda and Raffaele cleaned it up with supernatural and uncharacteristic effectiveness, or it was never there in the first place...

...I also have to say that your repeated claims that "all of the evidence" proves this and that when the evidence manifestly does not are rather tiresome. If all of the evidence proved Knox's guilt we wouldn't be here at three-hundred-and-forty-something pages of discussion and counting.

Kevin, I wish you were on Amanda's defense team.

The three-way conspiracy theory with Guede was pants-on-head crazy because Raffaelo and Amanda didn't even know Guede.

I was not aware of this idiom until now. I have seen people with plastic bags on their heads, but not pants. What a great image.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

No way you'd ever do that without consulting an attorney or being placed in custody. That's an appalling infringement on an individual's rights if it were true.

???

I can only suggest that you provide yourself with a rudimentary grasp of how the police investigate major crimes. They test everyone who has been at the crime scene. Very often they test first responders like paramedics. It doesn't mean they view the paramedic as a suspect. They just need to eliminate DNA that has no relevance to the crime.

 

[Alt+F4]

This was posted quite a while ago - but I couldn't let this jewel go without pointing it out in bold. Try substituting any of the names from the list below in place of the word "Amanda" in the quote above....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_miscarriage_of_justice_cases

(Note that my point stands REGARDLESS of whether there actually HAS been a miscarriage in AK's instance....)

Ok, according to you and Wiki there has only been three miscarriages of justice in Italy since 1969. Quite the jewel indeed.

 

[stilicho]

???

I can only suggest that you provide yourself with a rudimentary grasp of how the police investigate major crimes. They test everyone who has been at the crime scene. Very often they test first responders like paramedics. It doesn't mean they view the paramedic as a suspect. They just need to eliminate DNA that has no relevance to the crime.

This is from NZ but I know it's no different in Canada:

Ü Police requests for a DNA sample
When the Police ask to take a sample for DNA analysis, they must give you a written notice and tell you the following things:

· the offence the sample request relates to;​

· that they have reasonable grounds to believe the sample will confirm or disprove your involvement in the offence;​

· you do not have to give the sample;​

· you can change your mind about giving the sample at any time before it is taken;​

· you are able to speak to a lawyer before deciding;​

· the sample may be used as evidence;​

· if you don't consent to giving the sample, and there is good cause to suspect you committed the offence they are requesting the sample for, the Police may apply to the Court for an order requiring you to give a sample.​

(Source: http://www.communitylaw.org.nz/fileadmin/documents/dna_and_the_police.doc )

In the US can they simply seize anyone and force them to submit to a DNA test without their consent? Sounds barbaric.

 

[Alt+F4]

You're right, the police usually get DNA from everyone in the household where a murder takes place, including children. That way they can exclude samples of no value to their investigation.

Did the defense ask for a DNA profile from Laura and Filomena to compare them against the unknown DNA on the bra clasp?

 

[RoseMontague]

Mary_H,
I also think Kevin_Lowe does a great job with the counter-arguments. I also agree that Mignini is a bit whacked.

 

[Alt+F4]

If all of the evidence proved Knox's guilt we wouldn't be here at three-hundred-and-forty-something pages of discussion and counting.

Are you kidding us? When has there EVER been a 100% consensus on ANY murder trial?

 

[quadraginta]

Really, my argument was tu quoque, yet you were unsure of what my argument was anyways?

In a sense though you are right, but perhaps then you are acknowledging your own hypocrisy. You had plenty of chances when prosecution patsies on here were making analogous statements about defense experts under oath, so the timing of your great rhetorical splash seemed suspect.

I'm tired of it from both "sides". I've skipped over just as many from each "side" Sorry about the timing. I'll try to make it more convenient to your prejudices next time.

If you are intent on exploring the tu quoque nature of some of this discussion (which, frankly, I am not) then ponder this. Is making insinuations and outright accusations of misfeasance, malfeasance and other abuses of authority, of criminal behavior by public officials, of deliberate perjury in court really the same thing as questioning the neutrality of opinions solicited and distributed by a public relations firm?

You said

prosecution patsies on here were making analogous statements about defense experts under oath.

I have not seen this to be a great theme in this thread, in large part because the testimony of "defense experts under oath" has gone relatively unremarked here, even by Knox supporters. The most substantial example, that of the defense experts opining on how many attackers there were, was criticized because they didn't even agree with each other, not because they were accused of lying. Testimony by the defense DNA experts seemed to be less important when it was pointed out that the defense chose not to pursue the avenues brought up by that those same experts. Not because they were lying.

Maybe I have overlooked this flood of accusations of criminal behavior on the part of the "defense experts under oath" in this thread.

Maybe we have different definitions of the meaning of "analogous".

Fair enough. But then what are you really saying then in response to Charlie? That because Charlie is in the United States, he can't say Rinaldi was negligent in not taking reference samples? That Charlie can't draw the inference that this seems to indicate a nonobjective investigation? How does an expert testifying under oath in Italy change any of this?

I wasn't saying anything in response to Charlie in that paragraph. I had moved on to musings about credibility as separate from motive, which was what Charlie had been discussing. Perhaps you overlooked the part where I said "a different topic ...".

Sorry I just don't agree with this. No one needs to be in Italy to say reference samples should be taken in an objective investigation considering the facts of the case like this. Do you have an opinion on this, or do you we need to fly down an Italian prosecution expert to come to our forum and write down his opinion on it under oath?

It is the under oath part that is key to what I was discussing. There's no real need to fixate on the geography issues. That is just a result of the fact that most of these armchair "expert" critics of the case seem to be on this side of the pond. If they would be willing to be deposed by both parties for the court I couldn't care less where they were when it happened.

Perjury in a court of law is a serious professional transgression. It is even more serious if the profession in question involves much interaction with courts of law. This is why I am prone to take testimony in (or for) court with somewhat more weight. The people offering that testimony have a great deal more to lose.

 

[Fulcanelli]

But where's the evidence that they had any motive to do something to her in the first place? If you can pile supposition on supposition then you could equally well call it plausible that anyone did it.

What is all this obsession with motive? reading you one would think motive is more important then the actual evidence. What's with that? We don't know 'why' they did it, so that means they didn't do it? Courts deal with facts and evidence, not mind reading. In regard to 'reason's, senseless murders happen all the time, having spun out of control for the most petty of reasons. Sometimes the reasons are never known, especially when those involved are all saying they 'didn't do it'. That's life. The establishment of a motive is not a requirement for a conviction.

Because there was a brutal struggle and someone got their throat cut. Plus there was that unspecified awful something-or-other that you reckon they did first that they had to kill her to cover up, which presumably involved someone touching her at some point.

What scientific law book states that if there's a struggle and a throat is cut (actually, they were stabs) there must be DNA? It is quite common for there to be no DNA in the case of violent murders. Guede was supposed to have 'violently struggled' up and in through Filomena's window and that didn't leave the merest trace, yet that doesn't seem to bother you.

I don't see how that counts as evidence for or against anything at all. I imagine there are smudged fingerprints and footprints all over my house too.

This is a defensive on the back foot argument. I never claimed it was evidence, I stated they could be responsible for any of the unattributable traces. Those traces are of people, people who could be Amanda and Raffaele, just as easily as of anyone else. It is not correct to describe the room as some 'Bermuda Triangle' where they certainly left no evidence. It can only be stated they left no evidence that can be attributed to them, aside from Raffaele's DNA (along with Amanda's actually) on the clasp, Amanda's footprints on the pillow and partial female barefoot footprints that were certainly not Meredith's (and Rudy Guede's)

Just offhand he also left multiple DNA traces on Kercher's brassiere, didn't he?

If you mean that he left two traces on the bra, that is correct. But then, I was never under the impression that those judged innocent or guilty of murder were done so on the basis of who got the highest score. At any rate, None of Rudy's DNA is on meredith's bra clasp. Raffaele's is though!

You can't have it both ways. You can't have them be superhumanly good at eliminating virtually every trace of themselves from the murder room, leaving only the traces of their accomplice, then have them be totally incompetent at covering up everything else

No, because unlike you I'm not setting the criteria that they would have had to have left traces to remove in the first place.

Once again you are directly contradicting sourced, factual claims made by others earlier in this thread and all I can do is flag that contradiction and move on.

Wow, now I know how H.G.Wells felt. I feel like I've just stepped back in time via a time machine back to the day when the 'Satanic myth' was going good and strong. You claim to have read the thread and the sources, but obviously you stopped reading there or you would have seen the whole Satanic tosh well and truly debunked by the actual facts. Keep your sources, they're not worth the toilet paper they were wiped on. None of them attended the pre-trial, the source for it all was one, Raffaele's lawyers. The truth is actually far more pragmatic and for that I refer you to Judge Paulo Micheli's sentencing Report which is the ultimate and definitive source. No Satanic cults or Satanic anything else! NOW we can move on!

Hang on, I think something's amiss here. You asserted that to be consistent I would have to argue that every single case ever where forensic evidence appears late in the day to make a prosecution possible was dodgy. I explained that I had no such obligation. So now you're saying that I have no evidence for my lack of obligation and that I'm just asserting it?

Sorry, but you don't get to define other people's positions for them and I simply am not committed to making any kind of general claim about Italian investigations or any others. I'm perfectly happy to say that this case may be unusual, and if you prefer to think otherwise you can think what you please.

Sorry, this reads like sophistry to me. If you are going to allege wrongdoing, you need to evidence it...it's as simple as that.

I'm not sure that actually proves what you think it does but regardless, there are other reasons we've already discussed to cast serious doubt on the proposal that because Raffaele's DNA was found on the clasp that he therefore was in on the murder of Kercher.

It proves exactly what I said: Raffaele's DNA on the clasp wasn't from dust or shed skin cells. Even halides1 doesn't argue this anymore.

I just don't see where it has been disproved at all. There's just a hole where the evidence that should disprove it ought to be. Either Amanda and Raffaele cleaned it up with supernatural and uncharacteristic effectiveness, or it was never there in the first place.

False premise. They left plenty of evidence of themselves at the crime scene. Hence, we have no need to believe in superhuman entities although, you can if you want to.

One more time for the peanut gallery: We will never know what caused the luminol result. There are many different plausible contenders, it was a long time ago, and we don't have the information needed to solve that puzzle.

However luminol is not a conclusive test for blood, as has been explained before. Followup tests must be done before you can conclude that you are looking at blood. Followup tests did not show that the substance that set off the luminol was blood. Therefore it is not rational to assume that it was blood.

Name one and give a plausible explanation for how it got there then. If it's so plausible that shouldn't be so difficult. If it isn't, then we don't need to consider it. And don't ignore the bloody footprint on the mat! (and you made no attempt to answer my questions on that...no surprise there).

I'll see if the person I asked comes through with more details than just asserting that it's evidence of a clean-up. However as has already been stated, even if we accept it as God-given truth that it's evidence of a clean-up it's not evidence that Amanda or Rafaelle wiped off that heel-print and the claim that Rudy had no motive to clean anything up is simply baseless. He had excellent motive to clean things up, however being a disorganised killer who fled the scene he had very little time to do so.

He did other odd things too like take Kercher's phones then throw them away. He clearly wasn't pursuing a well thought out, rational plan. If the only explanation for a missing heel print is that someone deliberately wiped it up, Guede can perfectly well have been the one who wiped it up.

Rudy had none. Alternatively, you could explain to us what these 'excellent' reasons responsibility lays with a guy that was quite happy to leave his bloody footprints running down the hall, bloody fingerprints on the pillow and his crap in the toilet. I look forward to reading your deduction.

Once again you are either ignoring plain facts, or other people have been posting blatant lies as fact both here and on a variety of other sites. Everyone but you seems to agree that the prosecutor was a nutter on the verge of professional collapse and that he started with a three-way conspiracy theory involving Lumumba and then switched to a three-way conspiracy theory involving Guede instead.

The three-way conspiracy theory with Lumumba was pretty stupid, because Raffaelo would have to have agreed to participate in some kind of group rape deal that led to murder after being Knox's girlfriend for only six days, which would be moving pretty damned fast, and then keep quiet about it. The three-way conspiracy theory with Guede was pants-on-head crazy because Raffaelo and Amanda didn't even know Guede.

You refer to that theory as "plausible" at the beginning of the post I'm replying to, but I simply can't see how any rational person could do so.

I also have to say that your repeated claims that "all of the evidence" proves this and that when the evidence manifestly does not are rather tiresome. If all of the evidence proved Knox's guilt we wouldn't be here at three-hundred-and-forty-something pages of discussion and counting.

Sorry, 'who' is this 'everyone'? Can you please list them for us? Do you have any other then members of the FOA (which includes Douglas Preston)?

Nobody knows 'what' they agreed to do at the start, therefore, your assertions are built on assumptions and that is quicksand. And I never said the three of them hatched a plan together to rape Meredith. Please don't put words on my mouth or throw straw men at me.

The evidence proved Knox's Guilt. You may have missed it, but she was unanimously convicted after an eleven month trial and sentenced to 26 years (which still may be increased). You're argument that the verdict is unsafe because a few persons like yourself are deciding to blow hot air on an internet message board is quite frankly, risible.

 

[Fulcanelli]

It would be inconclusive because you do not get an accurate footprint with luminol. I know PMF has done comparisons but they were less than convincing. It is not a possible to get a conclusive match with luminol photos.

It looks pretty accurate to me, the one in the corridor looks the spitting image of the one on the bath mat.

 

[Alt+F4]

We know this because in the same video the clasp is collected. The clasp was collected before the luminol testing was done.

Thanks for the info. Could you link to the unedited video of clips 4, 5 and the clasp being collected with the time/date stamp and sound?

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Except there's no proof that the footprints were made with blood, and if they were not made with blood, they could have been made at any time in the days or weeks before the murder.

So where is the source of whatever was on their feet?

 

[stilicho]

Mary_H,
I also think Kevin_Lowe does a great job with the counter-arguments. I also agree that Mignini is a bit whacked.

Kevin probably would have let Rudy go for lack of evidence, too. He has extremely high standards of reasonable doubt.