Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Malkmus]

I'm astonished that Mary and others continue to claim that AK and RS didn't lie. Pricking Meredith at his apartment when she was never even there?

He never said that happened at his apartment, he never said he pricked Meredith, and if it was a lie who was he lying to? It wasn't an argument presented in court, just a conversation with himself via his diary.

I'm panicked about the locked door....no, I'm not?

I think you need to educate yourself on what a "lie" is.

I just had a shower but I smell terrible?

Same as above.

I can't remember calling my mother in the early hours "before anything happened"?

That never happened. I thought you were well-versed in this case...

Patrick is bad he killed Meredith?

Can you quote this? Oh, no you can't because they didn't record the interrogation. But what we do have are two annotated statements, one where Amanda is quoted as saying "I vaguely remember that he killed her." Funny that that same statement didn't come up in her second statement when Mignini was present a few hours later. No, there she simply stated "I am very confused. I do not remember if Meredith was screaming and if I heard some thuds too because I was upset, but I imagined what could have happened". But no mention of Patrick killing Meredith. I'm sure you put a lot of stock in dubious comments like this, made under dubious circumstances. I don't.

 

[LondonJohn]

Bucketoftee,

You are a day late and a dollar short. Comodi’s question to Amanda was in error, as Charlie helpfully pointed out.

The police lied when they claimed that Amanda was not summoned on 5 November. Dr. Giobbi’s testimony made it clear that he wanted to interrogate both of them, as discussed at Perugia-Shock. Dr. Giobbi was there that evening, and arguments to the effect that the police did not do as he asked (by interrogating them in separate rooms) are risible. This was discussed in the previous thread here. Apparently the police did not tell Amanda that she was expected that evening, but that is not the same thing as not summoning her.

Is it really true that the first cellphone call from Knox to her mother was made at 12.47 Perugia Time*, rather than at "around Midday", as Comodi blithely asserted when questioning Knox in the trial?

If this is indeed true, then there are two important other things to bear in mind. Firstly, according to Barbie Latza Nadeau, when Knox said she couldn't remember this "midday" phone call to Seattle, Judge Massei intervened and said:

"You don't remember, but the prosecutor just pointed out to you a phone call that your mother received in the night. So, it must have been true. It happened." (Angel Face, p143)

This is the trial judge saying that because a prosecutor made an allegation about timing, it must have been true. It happened.

Secondly, if there was no midday phone call, why didn't the defence intervene properly at this time? Surely they would have had a list of the phone call timings at hand. Why didn't this get properly picked up - either immediately, or at the very least in rebuttal further on in the trial? I can only conclude that the defence slipped up in the first trial on this issue as well.

* 04.47 Seattle time, I believe, due to the week's difference in changing back from Daylight Saving Time: ordinarily, there would be a 9-hour time difference between the two places.

 

[LondonJohn]

By the way, just to tie up this issue, here is some information into how the state police are organised in Italy. It shows clearly that the Postal Plice division has very specific responsibilities, and these don;t extend to the investigation of burglary or murder.

http://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/966-Investigations

Also, to reiterate, the Carabinieri is a totally separate military-style police force. Here's some information on them for those who didn't realise the difference between the Carabinieri and the State police (including, it seems, "Alt+F4"):

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

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I'm astonished that Mary and others continue to claim that AK and RS didn't lie. Pricking Meredith at his apartment when she was never even there?
I'm panicked about the locked door....no, I'm not?
I just had a shower but I smell terrible?
I can't remember calling my mother in the early hours "before anything happened"?
Patrick is bad he killed Meredith?

Lets see your lying police evidence.

The Postal Police testified that they showed up at the cottage 20 minutes before Raffaele called the emergency number, but the video from the camera across the street proved they arrived after he made the call.

The Postal Police testified that they never set foot inside Meredith's room, but two witnesses testified that they did.

An unnamed police source told Richard Owen of the UK Times that they found receipts showing the purchase of bleach on the morning after the murder, and he went with the story, but no such receipts exist.

They lied on December 18 when they told the media that the book Amanda claimed to have been reading at Raffaele's apartment was found instead at the cottage. But the book to which she was referring really was at Raffaele's apartment, and they knew it. It was captured on police video taken more than a month earlier.

The police say they treated Amanda well during her interrogation, but they don't have a recording of that interrogation, even though it was required by law, they made recordings of all the other witness statements, and they secretly recorded Amanda and Raffaele when they were alone together.

Comodi lied about the call made "before anything happened" when she questioned Amanda. She said Amanda called her mother at noon, but in fact, Amanda did not make that call until 12:47, after she had spoken to Raffaele, after she had discovered the broken window, and after she had spoken to Filomena four times.

Rinaldi lied about the size of Guede's foot to create the false impression that it was too big to have made the print on the mat.

Stefanoni lied about performing a second blood test on the luminol footprints, saying that no such test was performed. Later, under pressure from defense lawyers, she provided documents showing that a second test was performed, and it was negative for blood in every case.

Stefanoni also lied when she testified that she changed gloves every time she handled a new sample. Raffaele's lawyers were able to prove from the video that she was lying.

The prosecution's entire case is predicated on lies.

 

[LondonJohn]

Interesting indeed. Being incoherent and confused during police questioning as a result of being drugged makes sense. Since it appears that neither AK and RS were drugged by the authorities perhaps their inchoherence and confusion was caused by their own drug usage.

Does a fundamental discrepancy between the written record of the interrogation (in which the suspect apparently made a confession) and the actual audio recording of the interrogation (in which the suspect made no confession whatsoever) make sense too? Does the clear evidence of police malpractice in this case make sense? Are you cherrypicking one element to try to make some sort of point?

 

[Malkmus]

The Postal Police testified that they showed up at the cottage 20 minutes before Raffaele called the emergency number, but the video from the camera across the street proved they arrived after he made the call.

The Postal Police testified that they never set foot inside Meredith's room, but two witnesses testified that they did.

An unnamed police source told Richard Owen of the UK Times that they found receipts showing the purchase of bleach on the morning after the murder, and he went with the story, but no such receipts exist.

They lied on December 18 when they told the media that the book Amanda claimed to have been reading at Raffaele's apartment was found instead at the cottage. But the book to which she was referring really was at Raffaele's apartment, and they knew it. It was captured on police video taken more than a month earlier.

The police say they treated Amanda well during her interrogation, but they don't have a recording of that interrogation, even though it was required by law, they made recordings of all the other witness statements, and they secretly recorded Amanda and Raffaele when they were alone together.

Comodi lied about the call made "before anything happened" when she questioned Amanda. She said Amanda called her mother at noon, but in fact, Amanda did not make that call until 12:47, after she had spoken to Raffaele, after she had discovered the broken window, and after she had spoken to Filomena four times.

Rinaldi lied about the size of Guede's foot to create the false impression that it was too big to have made the print on the mat.

Stefanoni lied about performing a second blood test on the luminol footprints, saying that no such test was performed. Later, under pressure from defense lawyers, she provided documents showing that a second test was performed, and it was negative for blood in every case.

Stefanoni also lied when she testified that she changed gloves every time she handled a new sample. Raffaele's lawyers were able to prove from the video that she was lying.

The prosecution's entire case is predicated on lies.

I would add to that list the police telling Amanda they had video of her entering the cottage that night to further convince her she had been there but was just too traumatized to remember, the matching of Raf's shoe to Guede's bloody footprint (I don't think it's an "oopsie" when yo don't bother counting the number of rings in the pattern on the shoe), and Amanda being told she'd tested positive for HIV.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

testimony of Paola and Filomena

My claims are not unsupported. In her email to friends back home and in her prison diary Amanda expressed little grief for Meredith and zero sympathy for what her family was going through. As I mentioned before, she was bummed she had to pay rent on the apartment for another month.

I'm not saying that her lack of grief means she is guilty but it does show that she and Meredith were not very good friends. Amanda's supporters should stop spreading the untruth that they were.
SNIP
With that said, might I ask, are the passages you mentioned in your previous post footnoted or were they based on actual interviews she did? Did she quote or paraphrase?

If you choose to use this book as a source then can I assume that you agree with Ms. Dempsey's translation of RS's phone call to the Carabinieri? She states that he told the Carabinieri:



In my opinion this is very incriminating. Everyone at the crime scene agreed that there was not a lot of blood visible. RS knew there was a lot of blood....behind the locked door.

Bruce believes that Ms. Dempsey got the translation wrong. Could be, but then she could also have made mistakes regarding Amanda's behavior.







RS: You can see the signs. There are also stains of blood in the bathroom. They didn't take anything. The problem is the door is locked ... There is a lot of blood.

Alt+F4,

You are moving the goalposts. You originally said, “Then let's not forget all of Amanda's grief and outreach to Meredith's family. Oh that's right, there was none.” Your claim was not solely about the email; it was more general, encompassing all of her statements and behavior.

And there are other problems with your comments. There is no reason to expect an email intended to be informational to have the elements you suggest. Furthermore, Amanda imagined what Meredith’s last moments might have been like (in her diary, IIRC), wondering whether Meredith experienced terror or not: "Alone I imagine the horrors my friend must have gone through in her last moments. I have to imagine what it felt like when she felt the blood rushing out of her. What must she have thought about? About her mom? Regret? Did she have time to come to any peace or did she only experience pain terror in the end?”

The information I gave you came from the witness statements or trial transcripts, according to Ms. Dempsey. Filomena and Paola were under oath. Besides Ann Wise (whom I quoted in a previous comment), Frank Sfarzo and Elio Bertoldi reported on the witnesses’ testimony. I don’t see the significance of whether someone said a lot of blood or not because it is subjective. What is much blood to me might be only a little blood to you.

Amanda refers to Meredith as a friend at least twice in the first seven pages of her diary. There were also photographs of them together on Amanda’s computer, which ILE harmed, and which ILE has not allowed Amanda’s defense team to turn over to Toshiba, to see if any information can be recovered. I am not aware of any person who claims that Amanda and Meredith were particularly close friends, yet the prosecution’s claims about their relationship look quite dubious in light of these facts and others.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

So to briefly sum up:

The "staged break-in" story comes solely from the word of the police and has no hard evidence to back it up. The false confession/accusation is from an interrogation session where the tapes got mysteriously lost, and the DNA evidence comes from an "expert" who was provably not up to professional standards in her collection procedures, hid relevant data from the defence and claimed that dead cells had no DNA. The supposed footprint evidence falls apart upon examination and turns out to be entirely consistent with Rudy Guede leaving all the blood traces himself after going back and forth to the bathroom to clean up.

Meredith's time of death as established by the food in her system, and by her phone pinging a tower halfway between the murder house and the place the phones were discovered, also shows that the prosecution's timeline is bogus and that Meredith was murdered while Amanda and Raffaele were still at home.

Having thus cleared away the rubbish we are left with a break-in that fits Rudy's known M.O., a murder that fits his known choice of weapons, a wealth of evidence putting Rudy at the scene, and absolutely no motive or evidence whatsoever for Amanda and Raffaele to have killed Meredith.

All that's left of the PMF/prosecution case is a pile of "gotchas", some real and some entirely manufactured, where Amanda or Raffaele made factually incorrect statements which are in all cases irrelevant to whether they actually murdered Meredith or not.

To be honest I'd hoped for more from the prosecution case. I'd hoped for a few more chewy bits to work on, but it's starting to look to me that all that is left of the prosecution case is a smoking crater. Once again, are we missing anything substantial from the prosecution case that hasn't been addressed?

 

[Malkmus]

Not hard proof of anything, but I found this quote from a Mignini interview on TJMK rather enlightening:

Surely Preston was shocked by the interrogation. He says you were quite hard on him

Shocked? What can I say? This is how interrogations are conducted, their purpose is also to accuse.

So, here we have Mignini basically summing up interrogations as being "shocking" to the suspect and their purpose is to accuse. Says a lot about how Amanda's interrogation likely went. I wonder if "shocking" sometimes includes cuffing someone across the back of the head to get them to "remember better".

And these gems:

You didn’t record it?

No. I usually do when for example I am in my office. I recorded the declarations of her roommates and of the witnesses. But that night, we were at the police station, there was agitation, and we had to go and arrest Lumumba, who had just been accused by Amanda. Lumumba was later cleared thanks to me

This makes very little sense to me and says nothing of the room not being set up for recording.

What about the investigation on your abuse of office and wiretapping in Florence?

I still have to understand what I am being accused of.

However, the investigation has now ended. During this time the Tribunal of Riesame in Florence followed by the Cassazione have annulled all the proceedings initiated by Prosecutor Luca Turco against Dr Giuttari [who investigated the Monster case], my codefendant, as no evidence of the crime of abuse of office exists.

Sounds like a lie to me, or maybe there was a "conspiracy" against him since he was eventually found guilty.

 

[Fine]

Bucketoftee,

You are a day late and a dollar short. Comodi’s question to Amanda was in error, as Charlie helpfully pointed out.

The police lied when they claimed that Amanda was not summoned on 5 November. Dr. Giobbi’s testimony made it clear that he wanted to interrogate both of them, as discussed at Perugia-Shock. Dr. Giobbi was there that evening, and arguments to the effect that the police did not do as he asked (by interrogating them in separate rooms) are risible. This was discussed in the previous thread here. Apparently the police did not tell Amanda that she was expected that evening, but that is not the same thing as not summoning her.

Well, here's what Amanda said in her court testimony:

_____________________________________
"CP [Carlo Pacelli, Patrick's attorney]: For what reason did you go to the Questura on November 5? Were you called?

AK [Amanda Knox]: No, I wasn't called. I went with Raffaele because I didn't want to be
alone." (Translation courtesy of Thoughtful, PMF> Board Index> InTheirOwn Words> Amanda Knox)
_____________________________________


So Amanda clearly wasn't "called" to the police station the night of November 5th. But nonetheless, according to Halides, she had been "summoned" to the police station? Umm, OK, but I understand a summons as a request to be present. Maybe someone will kindly explain this apparent absurdity.

///

 

[Mary_H]

I'm astonished that Mary and others continue to claim that AK and RS didn't lie. Pricking Meredith at his apartment when she was never even there?
I'm panicked about the locked door....no, I'm not?
I just had a shower but I smell terrible?
I can't remember calling my mother in the early hours "before anything happened"?
Patrick is bad he killed Meredith?

Lets see your lying police evidence.

Well, bucketoftea, it looks like you got more than you bargained for from halides, Charlie and Malkmus. They did such a good job, there's not much more I can add (but, of course, I will).

Generally speaking, the most noticeable difference I find between the alleged lies of Amanda and Raffaele versus the documented lies of the police is that the reports about the police stem from court testimony, whereas the reports about Amanda and Raffaele reflect hearsay, with no proof or documentation of an actual intent to deceive.

What is more important to me, though, is that inherent in the claims that the police lied is the assumption that it is essentially lying to conduct a transaction in bad faith, as the police appear to have done when they interrogated Amanda on the night of November 5th-6th, 2007. Bad faith has been defined in legal terms as, "The fraudulent deception of another person; the intentional or malicious refusal to perform some duty or contractual obligation."

http://www.enotes.com/wests-law-encyclopedia/bad-faith)

Fraudulent deception and the intentional or malicious refusal to perform some duty or contractual obligation were present in all of these circumstances:

• The police allowed Amanda to believe the interrogation of the night of the 5th was just another in the series of informational interviews they had conducted over the previous few days, thus denying her the right to make an informed decision about whether or not to attend.
  
• Amanda testified that the police instructed her that a lawyer "would only complicate things."
  
• The police pretended they didn't know who the text message was from on Amanda's cell phone, when they actually had her phone records and were prepared to ask her about them.
  
• Amanda testified that the police told her she would go to prison for thirty years and never see her family again if she didn't agree with their allegations.
  
• The police accepted Amanda's written statement after the interrogation, withholding from her the information that she, as a suspect, should not be offering more testimony before consulting with the attorney they were required to provide for her.
  
• The police pretended they had no recourse but to arrest Patrick violently at dawn, when, in fact, other options were available to them.

As for what has occurred since November 6th, 2007, a lot of lying has continued to be done by omission. When are the police publicly going to accept responsibility for arresting Patrick instead of allowing people to believe Amanda made them do it? When are they going to withdraw or apologize for all the misstatements to the media, and all the deceits listed by the other posters here?

Last but not least, I would really like to see either documentation for or the discontinuation of the desperate, Johnny-come-lately claim that "Amanda smelled terrible" the morning of November 2nd. Did the prosecution or police ever allege that the bathroom showed no evidence of anyone having taken a shower there that morning?

 

[LondonJohn]

Has anybody seen the photograph of Sollecito looking "bombed out" following a night of no sleep, during which he got high on coke, murdered a young girl, and cleaned up the crime scene? You can clearly see in this photo that the bags under his eyes, the redness of his eyeballs, his unkempt hair and stubble are indisputable evidence of his hard-partying night before, coupled with his evident lack of sleep.

Oh, hold on a minute, that photograph was actually taken on at 1pm on the 3rd November - in other words after an additional night had passed since the murder. Oh, and there are plenty of other photos of Sollecito taken since he was taken into custody, in which he looks remarkable similar to his appearance in the "bombed out" photo. Oops.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Second memoriale

I take it you consider Candace Dempsey an expert on the case?

Alt+F4,

My previous email has an error, in that the passage I quoted came from Amanda’s second memoriale, not her diary. I trust “Murder in Italy” far more than “Darkness Descending” or “Angel Face” because of the errors in the latter two books that suggest haste. On the other hand, when I went to find confirmation for what the translator said about Amanda’s state of mind, I was able to do so quite easily (see my comment that cited the Ann Wise article). Have you read all three books, and if so, what is your evaluation?

With respect to Raffaele’s writing, an Italian speaker whom I know thought that he writes rather well.

 

[LondonJohn]

Well, here's what Amanda said in her court testimony:

_____________________________________
"CP [Carlo Pacelli, Patrick's attorney]: For what reason did you go to the Questura on November 5? Were you called?

AK [Amanda Knox]: No, I wasn't called. I went with Raffaele because I didn't want to be
alone." (Translation courtesy of Thoughtful, PMF> Board Index> InTheirOwn Words> Amanda Knox)
_____________________________________


So Amanda clearly wasn't "called" to the police station the night of November 5th. But nonetheless, according to Halides, she had been "summoned" to the police station? Umm, OK, but I understand a summons as a request to be present. Maybe someone will kindly explain this apparent absurdity.

///

I imagine that this "apparent absurdity" could be easily explained by the supposition that the police planned to bring Sollecito in first, then to bring Knox in after they were done interviewing Sollecito. In the event, Knox saved them the extra phone call by accompanying Sollecito to the police HQ* when he was summoned for his interview.

* "Police HQ" is the direct English translation of the Italian word "Questura".

///

 

[LondonJohn]

John, you need to learn more about the law. Breaking down a door because someone thinks there is an injured person behind it would not constitute criminal damage.

I need to learn more about the law? What you've said here is, in fact, MY ARGUMENT EXACTLY. The very fact that the police allowed the door to be broken down is evidence that they shared the collective concern about Meredith's whereabouts and welfare. To remind you, you originally said the following (my emphasis):

"As for what was observed in the cottage, the Postal Police had such little worry about wrong-doing they were unwilling to break down the door"

And then in your next post you said:

"The police had no reason to believe anything bad had happened behind that door based on the what they observed in the apartment. If they were not worried about wrong-doing in Meredith's room why were AK and RS?"

And I then responded with:

"The postal police did believe something was amiss. There was unexplained blood in the bathroom next to Meredith's room, there was a broken window in Filomena's room, Meredith's door was locked, and she was not answering her mobile phones. The available testimony indicates that they were unwilling to take responsibility to any damage to Meredith's door, but they sanctioned Filomena's boyfriend to break it down. Where do you get the idea that the postal police were "not worried"? If they were not worried, they would have advised that breaking the door down was not only unwarranted, it probably would constitute criminal damage"

So, I was refuting your suggestion that the Postal Police were not worried about Meredith, by pointing out that they must have been worried about her if they allowed the door to be broken in. I was using the whole "criminal damage" section of my argument to point out that the police realised there was a good reason to break down the door. I had thought that was very obvious.

Again, what is your expertise in Italian law enforcement? Please provide a link stating that the Postal Police are not trained to investigate burglaries.

Addressed earlier, with links to the organisation and responsibilities of the various elements of the Italian State Police.

You're darn right it's pejorative and the question remains, "what is wrong with him?". He can barely read or speak in his native Italian, he can't bust down a door another young man his own age could do and those who disregard his prison diary ramblings seem to put him in a state of constant confusion. Does he have some sort of mental defect that would prevent him from the obvious conclusion that if there is no key their is no other avenue to exhaust except to break down the door?

This is very pejorative. And cogent suggestions as to why Sollecito might not have made a full effort to break down the door - in the absence of the police condoning such a move - have already been offered.

 

[LondonJohn]

In Mignini's interview reproduced on TJMK, he makes a small but telling point about the release of Lumumba (my emphasis):

"But that night, we were at the police station, there was agitation, and we had to go and arrest Lumumba, who had just been accused by Amanda. Lumumba was later cleared thanks to me"

Now, the word "narcissistic" has been incredibly overused recently, but I think this might be an appropriate time and place to put it to good use. Lumumba was released because he repeatedly told the police and prosecutors that he had a solid alibi for that night. The police and prosecutors didn't find his alibi witness. The witness (a Swiss university professor) heard about Lumumba's plight via a friend in Italy, and rang the Perugia Police himself. He was told to call back the following day (sounds like the authorities were falling over themselves to corroborate Lumumba's alibi, eh?!) Instead, the professor made his own way to Perugia, and provided the testimony that led to Lumumba's release.

So, quite how Mignini can boast that Lumumba was released "thanks to him" is - at the very least - a distortion of the truth.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Dr Giobbi summoned them

Well, here's what Amanda said in her court testimony:

_____________________________________
"CP [Carlo Pacelli, Patrick's attorney]: For what reason did you go to the Questura on November 5? Were you called?

AK [Amanda Knox]: No, I wasn't called. I went with Raffaele because I didn't want to be
alone." (Translation courtesy of Thoughtful, PMF> Board Index> InTheirOwn Words> Amanda Knox)
_____________________________________


So Amanda clearly wasn't "called" to the police station the night of November 5th. But nonetheless, according to Halides, she had been "summoned" to the police station? Umm, OK, but I understand a summons as a request to be present. Maybe someone will kindly explain this apparent absurdity.

///

Fine,

This is not as complicated as you are making it. Dr. Giobbi gave the order to bring them both in, according to his testimony at the trial (see Perugia-Shock). Perhaps the police failed to make this clear when they spoke to Raffaele, or perhaps he did not understand them, but in either case Amanda was not made aware that she was also expected. However, the police subsequently claimed that Amanda showed up unexpectedly, as Frank Sfarzo reported. The police claim is a lie:

“Edgardo Giobbi isn't covering her [Rita Ficarra] anymore. As we know, indeed, the troubles of Amanda started with the fact that she went to the police station when the call was only for Raffaele. According to Rita, according to Monica, according to Lorena Zugarini. Well, it wasn't true. Giobbi, chief of Direzione Centrale Anticrimine of Rome, said today in court that on the evening of the 5th he gave the order to bring Amanda and Raffaele together at the police station. Remember how many times Amanda was rebuked for having gone when she wasn't supposed to?”

To argue that the police were not lying, one would have to assume that they were unaware of Dr. Giobbi’s order, and this argument would make no sense.

 

[Dan O.]

The Italian police were constantly lying to the press. Here is another one of their lies that has been exposed:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-fourth-suspect-in-kercher-murder-758731.html

Investigators say Mr Guede left Perugia on the morning after the murder and went to Milan, where he was stopped by police but not detained. Detectives locked on to his mobile phone signal in Milan as recently as this weekend, but it then went dead. Amanda Knox made at least two calls to his number, one of them at 11am on 2 November, around the time police discovered Kercher's body.​

 

[HumanityBlues]

Well, here's what Amanda said in her court testimony:

_____________________________________
"CP [Carlo Pacelli, Patrick's attorney]: For what reason did you go to the Questura on November 5? Were you called?

AK [Amanda Knox]: No, I wasn't called. I went with Raffaele because I didn't want to be
alone." (Translation courtesy of Thoughtful, PMF> Board Index> InTheirOwn Words> Amanda Knox)
_____________________________________


So Amanda clearly wasn't "called" to the police station the night of November 5th. But nonetheless, according to Halides, she had been "summoned" to the police station? Umm, OK, but I understand a summons as a request to be present. Maybe someone will kindly explain this apparent absurdity.

///

Hey fine, great to have you back and all. So are we still anxiously waiting on your pepper spray law explanation?

 

[RoseMontague]

Regarding the question that came up previously about whether Stefanoni treated the knife differently than some of the other evidence. The answer to that question would be a youbetcha. From Amanda's appeal pages 61/62:

"Dr Stefanoni terms expressed in the Technical Report, where he
stated that the extracts negative quantification were not considered useful
's DNA extraction:
Ø <<all extracts analyzed for traces of the findings
67,68,69,70, 71,72,73, 74, 75, 76, 77,78,79,80 and 83 were
negative analysis of quantification and therefore were not
considered useful for the subsequent DNA amplification>> (Report
Stefanoni, p.. ESS 119).
Ø <<all extracts derived from tracks A, B, C, D, E, F belong
findings were negative in 192 of quantification and analysis
were therefore not considered suitable for the subsequent phase
amplification and electrophoresis>> (Stefanoni Report, p.. 233).
Ø <<all extracts derived from tracks A, B, C, D belong to
193 were negative finding of the analysis and quantification
therefore were not considered useful for the subsequent amplification
DNA>> (Stefanoni Report, p. 234)..
Ø <<extract DNA derived from trace A, as a result
Negative quantification was not considered suitable for
Next phase of amplification and capillary electrophoresis.The
investigations are therefore not go>> (Stefanoni Report, p..
236)."

It is very clear that Stefanoni regarded this piece of evidence as very important in terms of the prosecution's case and went the extra 99 miles to find something, even if it was done without following normal standards, protocols, and guidelines. All this other evidence was not "useful" or "suitable" for further testing, yet the knife was.