Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[BobTheDonkey]

The Massei motivation is 400+ pages of garbage. Amanda carried a big kitchen knife in her purse for self-protection... they made the choice of evil because, as the esteemed professor so-and-so testified, cannabis causes people to do crazy things.

Google translator is far from perfect, but you can get a general sense of what the main conclusions are. No PMF translation can redeem such lunacy.

So you read Italian? Or do you have a full English translation? If the latter, could you provide it for the rest of us?


Or are you spouting off about a report that you haven't read? Kinda hard to know just how much garbage there is when you haven't read the report yourself, ya know?

 

[LondonJohn]

Amanda and Raffaele's defense teams should be happy the motivations were written - it makes it easier to fashion an appeal document when you know the reasoning behind a verdict. Many cases that have resulted in a guilty verdict don't have that benefit.

One can get a general sense of what the main conclusions are by reading the many forums dedicated to this subject. While I read all things I much prefer court testimony, transcripts and documents over subjective opinion on either side.

I agree (and have said before) that the Massei report's main beneficiaries will almost certainly be the defence: AK/RS's lawyers will now know exactly which parts of the prosecution's case the judicial panel found to be not only valid, but also indicative of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In this regard, I think that it's a plus point to have professional judges on the judicial panel, as they will obviously be well-practised in writing such reports, and in articulating the views of the panel. I dread to think what kind/quality of reports one might get from a typical 12-lay-person jury............

 

[Chris_Halkides]

a simple question

I think this is special pleading, halides1. If they had found DNA on Meredith's arms then we'd be back to secondary transfer and/or contamination. It seems it doesn't matter what the medical examiner's or other forensic reports say. Lack of DNA is presented as evidence against the prosecution case in one spot and presence of DNA is also called evidence against the prosecution case.

Stilicho,

The prosecution’s scenario suggests contact between Meredith and her assailants that has far more “vigorous rubbing” than any contact I can imagine with respect to the bra clasp. Why is there no DNA from anyone on Meredith’s arms or beneath her chin?

 

[christianahannah]

Stilicho,

The prosecution’s scenario suggests contact between Meredith and her assailants that has far more “vigorous rubbing” than any contact I can imagine with respect to the bra clasp. Why is there no DNA from anyone on Meredith’s arms or beneath her chin?

Is all vigorous rubbing going to result in DNA being left? Would the same vigorous rubbing apply to clothing (as to skin)? If skin is wet or dry does that change the result of DNA being left (same with clothing)? Would the difference between good shedders of DNA and poor shedders of DNA have any bearing here?

I ask these questions because I do not know the answers to them. Hopefully, someone does.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Stilicho,

I do not know whether Dan Krane will be called as a witness.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

DNA deposition during simulated strangulation

Is all vigorous rubbing going to result in DNA being left? Would the same vigorous rubbing apply to clothing (as to skin)? If skin is wet or dry does that change the result of DNA being left (same with clothing)? Would the difference between good shedders of DNA and poor shedders of DNA have any bearing here?

I ask these questions because I do not know the answers to them. Hopefully, someone does.

Did you look over the paper on simulated strangulation?

G.N. Rutty, Int J Legal Med (2002) 116 :170–173

 

[LondonJohn]

Is all vigorous rubbing going to result in DNA being left? Would the same vigorous rubbing apply to clothing (as to skin)? If skin is wet or dry does that change the result of DNA being left (same with clothing)? Would the difference between good shedders of DNA and poor shedders of DNA have any bearing here?

I ask these questions because I do not know the answers to them. Hopefully, someone does.

I think (but am not sure - do you know, Halides?) that if one person grasps another person in flesh-to-flesh contact strong enough to forcibly restrain them, then it's very likely that skin cell DNA transfer will occur.

Did the police even swab Meredith's wrists, forearms, upper arms or neck (outside wound/bleeding areas) for foreign DNA matter? If not, why not? If so, what are the results?

 

[GrouchoMarxist]

Thanks katy_did. I've been curious about the damaged computer(s) too.

Anybody have more on that? Was data accidently wiped or was there physical damage? Did they run them over or something - maybe on their way to arrest Lumumba?

Amanda's defense team offered to pay for the cost of Toshiba's trying to recover the information on her hard drive (pictures of her and Meredith as evidence that they got along), but the prosecution rebuffed their offer. Besides her drive, one of Raffaele's drives and a third drive were damaged. IIRC, it was possible to recover some information from them. Charlie may know more.

I heard it was Amanda's cartwheels that destroyed them...

Nope, unfortunately it was the rank incompetence of Perugia's "crack" postal police. Yet another tick in the box for the professionalism and technical skills of the local plod.

Well now I'm even more curious. Not necessarily because I think there was relevant info on the computer HD's - I don't know - but the way it happened may shed light on the way things were handled, at least for me.

I may not be understanding the role of the postal police, but I can't see why they would be handling potential evidence at all(once they determined a murder had been commited).

Can any point me to an online resource where I can read more about the computers, or give me an idea where to search?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I think (but am not sure - do you know, Halides?) that if one person grasps another person in flesh-to-flesh contact strong enough to forcibly restrain them, then it's very likely that skin cell DNA transfer will occur.

Did the police even swab Meredith's wrists, forearms, upper arms or neck (outside wound/bleeding areas) for foreign DNA matter? If not, why not? If so, what are the results?

I don't believe they did. To the best of my knowledge, they took the following:

- genital and rectal swabs,
- hair from the genital area
- samples from underneath the fingernails,
- a swab from the large neck wound, which became their reference sample.

 

[LondonJohn]

Here's an interesting technical note to an academic paper which deals with skin cell DNA transfer between individuals who contact each other skin-to-skin. Although the subject of the paper is secondary transfer, it necessarily deals with primary transfer as a precursor to secondary transfer.

http://www.bioforensics.com/conference04/Transfer/SecondaryTransferStudy.pdf

Table 1 in the paper shows primary transfer results from a handshake over varying lengths of time. It appears to indicate that a handshake of five seconds or more would likely result in detectable levels of primary skin cell DNA transfer.

I therefore feel fairly confident that there may well have been some skin cell transfer between Meredith's assailant(s) and the points where she may have been restrained. I naturally further believe that if the police did not swab Meredith's wrists, arms and neck properly for foreign skin cell DNA matter, they were negligent.

 

[RoseMontague]

Well now I'm even more curious. Not necessarily because I think there was relevant info on the computer HD's - I don't know - but the way it happened may shed light on the way things were handled, at least for me.

I may not be understanding the role of the postal police, but I can't see why they would be handling potential evidence at all(once they determined a murder had been commited).

Can any point me to an online resource where I can read more about the computers, or give me an idea where to search?

From Raffaele's appeal (Google Translation):

During the preliminary investigation was arrested Raffaele Sollecito on
Asus notebook brand, L3000D model, serial number 39NP033207,
together to 'hard drives Hitachi Travelstar model IC25N040ATCS04-0,
serial number 07N8327Z1Z5D2JNV81B.
Police Postal and Communications for Umbria has attempted to acquire
data contained in that hard drive as well as those found in computer
Meredith Kercher (make Apple iBook model) and Amanda Knox (brand
Toshiba Satellite model M55S3262).
However, it was not possible to do this work because
inexplicably, the electronic cards of all three hard drives were
damaged so as to prevent data mining.
In this regard, the GIP has given an assignment to the expert Massimo Bernaschi estraesse that the data in computer memories and seized
retrieve data in its hard drive, ensuring the blockage
spoke on the PC.
Outcome of the report and evidence of the incident, the causes of corruption
not been positively identified, was not clear if and when the
block of the computer occurred, or whether the same is due to a single
factor.
Accordingly, it is absolutely necessary to a more comprehensive discussion
the circumstances which gave rise to the block on the hard disk
notebooks seized

It sounds like the defense is looking for a better explanation than what they got.

 

[GrouchoMarxist]

From Raffaele's appeal (Google Translation):



It sounds like the defense is looking for a better explanation than what they got.

Thanks RoseMontague. I don't blame them because that is absurd.
Does anybody have handy that section of the appeal in the original Italian?

 

[BobTheDonkey]

So you read Italian? Or do you have a full English translation? If the latter, could you provide it for the rest of us?


Or are you spouting off about a report that you haven't read? Kinda hard to know just how much garbage there is when you haven't read the report yourself, ya know?

Charlie, I'd like a response to this query. When you get a spare second or two.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

This seems like crazy logic. Amanda mixed up some phone calls, therefore she's guilty of murder? Why the heck would she deliberately lie about phone calls, of all things, when she would know there would be records of all these calls?

Amanda forgot the details of a few phone calls. It really isn't any more complicated than that, though you're trying to turn it into something hugely significant. And you still haven't answered my question as to why Amanda would lie about those things, especially since she would know there was no point in doing so.

1) Amanda knows that Meredith has 2 phones but only calls one. Two possible reasons: Amanda is in a hurry or Amanda knows that both phones are in the same place.
2) Amanda didn't want Filomena to know that she had already called Meredith first and doesn't want the rest of us to know this either. It's hard to believe that their discussion of trying to locate Meredith wouldn't have caused Amanda to remember that she just called Meredith. Meredith's Italian phone was registered in Filomena's name, so if the phones had been found there would have been a chance that Filomena already knew that something had happened to Meredith before Amanda called her. Calling one of Meredith's phones would have been a way to find out whether they had been found (going over to the garden would have been too risky).
3) Amanda claims that one of the Meredith's cellphones rang for a little and then there was a "disturbance". She claims that the other phone "just kept ringing". For Amanda's story to be believable, we would have to believe that both phone companies had problems with their voicemail at the same time. It would be easier to believe that one company had a problem with their voicemail and there was something wrong with the other phone, so it would have been in Amanda's best interest to mention the "out of service" message. Amanda's actions and statements are consistent with someone who hung-up as soon as the phone calls went through, but her story implies that she was not able to get to Meredith's voicemail. This one should be obvious.
4) If Amanda had revealed that she waited until after Filomena had called her to call the police (and waited 17 minutes - and Raffaele was with her, so excuses like she didn't speak Italian well or that she didn't know how the police in Italy work aren't credible), she would have to explain why after discovering that the cottage was broken into she neither called the police nor any of her roommates.

Amanda's poor memory was not confined to phone calls. She also "forgot" that Raffaele had not slept in until ten. And she "forgot" that she and Raffaele had eaten dinner around eight the previous evening rather than the ten or eleven that she claimed. One would think that she could remember at least a few of the things correctly.

I think you should turn your attention to Filomena. Filomena said in court she was "shocked" after Amanda's first phone call, yet she didn't bother starting for home till the second phone call. She also called her boyfriend and asked him to go to the cottage, even though she had his car! (he had to go find a mate with a car to take him there). She claimed the first phone call happened at 12.35 and the second at 12.45; in reality, they happened at 12.11 and 12.36. Not once did she attempt to call Meredith's phones herself, and despite being the main tenant, she left it to the 20 year old foreign student who didn't know the difference between Carabinieri and postal police and spoke poor Italian to call the police. When she finally arrived home (nearly an hour after the first phone call, though she was only a few miles away and had a car; claims she 'couldn't find it'! A ruse?) she was again terribly shocked but made an inappropriate joke about the burglars being "stupid" for not taking anything. Then after Meredith's body was discovered, she seemed mainly interested in going back inside to recover her laptop, despite knowing - as a trainee lawyer - that taking objects from a crime scene is not the most sensible idea. To top it all off, she's the main source for glass being on top of the things in her room, despite the photographs contradicting her.

Very suspicious, no?

Very humorous, yes!

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

According to the person who found them, one of them did receive an incoming call, and the name "Amanda" flashed on the screen.
.
.
.
Why not? The cellular log might not reflect the time it took to put the connection through.

I'm not sure what your point is here. It is possible that this call was the one Amanda made before she called Filomena.

Somebody used Raffaele's computer, at his apartment, to check email and look at David Johnsrud's Facebook page at 12:20pm.

This is 8 minutes after Amanda's last of her 4 phone calls to Meredith and to Filomena. I see 2 possibilities:
1) Amanda comes back to Raffaele's place nervous and upset. She says "I got home and the door was open and there was blood in the bathroom and I can't find Meredith. I need you to go back there with me." To which Raffaele replies "We can go back later, but first I want to check out the new posts by my facebook friends."
2) Raffaele was passing the time until Amanda got back from the cottage by using facebook on his computer.
The second possibility seems more plausible to me. And if true it would provide further evidence that Amanda made the phone calls from the cottage rather than from Raffaele's as she claimed.

No, she said the call to the Italian phone was the one that kept ringing (consistent with the lady seeing Amanda's name flashing on the screen) and the second call to the English phone was the one where she got the out-of-service message.

The fact is that the phone records indicate that she hung-up after a few seconds on both calls. She could not know if either of them kept ringing. There was no reason for her not to mention the out-of-service message, in fact it would make her story more believable, so I'm guessing that she didn't listen to her phone long enough to hear it.

What evidence would that be? The evidence I have bears out Raffaele's story. The Carabinieri are shown arriving at 1:22 according to the clock on the garage camera. But at 1:22, the Carabinieri were driving around trying to find the place. They finally called for directions at 1:29, a call that lasted five minutes. So the clock on the garage camera is at least 10 minutes slow. Therefore, the car the postal police claim is theirs does not show up until at least 12:46, right around the time Amanda was calling her mother in Seattle, Raffaele was calling his sister and then two calls to the Carabinieri. The postal police did not say that either Amanda or Raffaele was busy making phone calls when they arrived, so they must have arrived after those calls had been made. And indeed, the garage camera shows a pair of legs crossing the street from the parking lot to the cottage driveway at 12:48 by the camera's clock, which was actually 12:58 to 1:00pm, exactly when Raffaele and Amanda said they arrived.

For one thing, Raffaele changed his story and said that the postal police arrived before they called the Carabinieri. And this doesn't change the fact that after discovering the break-in, Amanda neither called the police nor any of her roommates but that the police were only called after one of Amanda's roommates called her. I have trouble believing that an educated 24 year-old Italian whose sister was a police officer would have had to call his sister to find out whether he should call the police after discovering clear evidence of a burglary in his girlfriend's apartment, but I guess that I just have a strange sense of what seems reasonable.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Correction to last 2 posts: Amanda did state that she got an out-of-service message from the UK phone (is this known for sure, or was the basis for the out-of-service message solely her statement?). This still doesn't explain why she said that the Italian phone "just kept ringing" when she hung-up after 3 seconds.

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

What evidence would that be? The evidence I have bears out Raffaele's story. The Carabinieri are shown arriving at 1:22 according to the clock on the garage camera. But at 1:22, the Carabinieri were driving around trying to find the place. They finally called for directions at 1:29, a call that lasted five minutes. So the clock on the garage camera is at least 10 minutes slow. Therefore, the car the postal police claim is theirs does not show up until at least 12:46, right around the time Amanda was calling her mother in Seattle, Raffaele was calling his sister and then two calls to the Carabinieri. The postal police did not say that either Amanda or Raffaele was busy making phone calls when they arrived, so they must have arrived after those calls had been made. And indeed, the garage camera shows a pair of legs crossing the street from the parking lot to the cottage driveway at 12:48 by the camera's clock, which was actually 12:58 to 1:00pm, exactly when Raffaele and Amanda said they arrived.

We know that the postal inspectors were there before 1:00 because they were having a conversation with HQ when Meredith's UK phone was re-activated at 1:00. If they didn't get there until 12:58, that would give them less than 2 minutes to discuss the situation with Amanda and Raffaele and get a tour of the bathroom and Filomena's room before calling HQ.

 

[Malkmus]

I think you should turn your attention to Filomena. Filomena said in court she was "shocked" after Amanda's first phone call, yet she didn't bother starting for home till the second phone call. She also called her boyfriend and asked him to go to the cottage, even though she had his car! (he had to go find a mate with a car to take him there). She claimed the first phone call happened at 12.35 and the second at 12.45; in reality, they happened at 12.11 and 12.36. Not once did she attempt to call Meredith's phones herself, and despite being the main tenant, she left it to the 20 year old foreign student who didn't know the difference between Carabinieri and postal police and spoke poor Italian to call the police. When she finally arrived home (nearly an hour after the first phone call, though she was only a few miles away and had a car; claims she 'couldn't find it'! A ruse?) she was again terribly shocked but made an inappropriate joke about the burglars being "stupid" for not taking anything. Then after Meredith's body was discovered, she seemed mainly interested in going back inside to recover her laptop, despite knowing - as a trainee lawyer - that taking objects from a crime scene is not the most sensible idea. To top it all off, she's the main source for glass being on top of the things in her room, despite the photographs contradicting her.

Very suspicious, no?

Excellent post, Katy. This really sums up what's wrong with the logic most people use when convincing themselves of why they think Amanda is guilty. But, I think you forgot one of Filomena's most "suspicious" activities: She claims she told Amanda to call the police, and that Amanda responded she already had when she hadn't... in actuality, Paola, who was listening to their conversation testified that Filomena said no such thing to Amanda! Dun-dun-dun!

I'm sure the irony will be lost on some.

 

[LondonJohn]

It's worth bearing in mind that all of the events (phone calls, movements) of all the various parties on the 2nd November - prior to the discovery of the body - need to be placed into context.

Let's assume for one moment that none of relevant people* (AK, RS, the other girls in the house & their boyfriends, the police, AK's mother, RS's sister) knew that a horrific murder had been carried out behind Meredith's bedroom door. We can all discuss their actions between 12.00 and 13.15 with the benefit of hindsight, but at that time they were hardly likely to jump to the conclusion that their housemate was lying dead in a pool of blood with her throat cut.

Let's also bear in mind that the girls' house was on the fringe of a rough area of town, with questionable characters hanging around the nearby basketball court and shooting up in the undergrowth surrounding the house. I would be fairly certain that all the girls in the house would be well aware of the insalubrious nature of their neighbourhood. So even something like a broken window might be seen initially as either a botched break-in by a local addict looking for a way to support his fix, or even as general anti-social behaviour from one of the less-than-savoury local characters. It most certainly doesn't imply crimes of violence against people. Even small amounts of blood in the bathroom, and faeces in the toilet, do not imply any level of personal violence - if anything, these tally more with a confused addict and maybe a minor bleeding accident from either the addict or one of the other housemates.

And there's also no reason why any of the housemates should have leaped to the conclusion that Meredith might be (or might have been) harmed in any way. A locked bedroom door is not an indicator of that, nor is the small amount of blood in the bathroom, and nor necessarily is the lack of response from her mobile phones. As far as the girls in the house knew, Meredith might just as easily decided to crash out at the house of one of her English friends, or she might conceivably have hooked up with someone that night and stayed over at his place. I'm not making value judgments here, but I can be pretty sure that either of these possibilities (especially the former) would have seemed far more realistic to Meredith's housemates that morning than the possibility that she might have been harmed in any way.

* And even if we assume that AK and RS were involved in the murder, while it clearly changes they way in which these two people might have acted prior to the discovery of Meredith's body, it doesn't change the way in which any of the other might have reacted.

 

[Fine]

It's not subjective opinion that multiple-attacker sex murders involving couples teaming up with a perfect stranger to kill someone in the attacker's own home either never happen, or happen so incredibly rarely that there has never been a similar case. It's not subjective opinion that the prosecutor cooked up a multiple-attacker theory at the start of the investigation, and then embroidered it to fit the cast of suspects he ended up being forced to use (once his originally preferred suspect, Lumumba, walked). It's been alleged that this is consistent with similar fanciful behaviour on the same prosecutor's part at another time, and while that allegation doesn't rise to the level of proof beyond reasonable doubt it corroborates the idea that Mignini was a poor prosecutor who was not well-connected to reality.

______________________

Not a perfect stranger. Rudy was an acquaintance of Amanda.

Amanda had socially interacted with Rudy, in person---in one way or another---on several occasions prior to the murder. In her court testimony she places the number of times at "three or four."
(See court testimony transcripts on PMF website.)

///