Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[RoseMontague]

I'll save your eyes some strain Alt+ and just tell you the excuse on the shopkeeper in disguise is now that he may have seen some other girl but if he did the defense has surely searched for her and if it was not Amanda they would have certainly tracked her down by now. (LOL)
News flash. The probability that Marco just invented the Amanda Polo does not seem to register yet.

 

[Mary_H]

This is where I disagree. If Amanda and Raffaele have their verdicts overturned on appeal I doubt the reason will be because of a "big, fat, painfully obvious frame-up, designed to protect the reputations of officials who very publicly announced a dramatic theory that is both wrong and stupid."

It hasn't been shown that there should be distrust of the justice system in Italy or the officials who investigated, tried and judged the case. There have been many allegations. Do even the appeal documents of Amanda and Raffaele point to evidence of intentional wrong-doing by officials?

christianahannah, if you reread page 100 of this thread, you will find lists of lies, dishonesty and examples of negligence by the police, offered by several posters. I'm curious about why you find them unconvincing.

What about Mignini's conviction for abuse of power in a previous case? Doesn't that raise your level of distrust a little, when you consider Mignini was in charge of the investigation for this case?

On the other hand, you are partly right -- the judges will never publicly admit the verdict is being overturned on account of wrongdoing, stupidity or frame-ups. They are probably already working hard on what their reasoning is going to be.

 

[LondonJohn]

I doubt the appeals contain lies and I doubt Quintavalle lied when questioned by both the defense and prosecution in court. As in any situation, one must read the whole of an argument rather than excerpts, so I also doubt Massei's credibility is dented.

Perhaps Chiriboga was asked by Quintavalle if she noticed the girl who was present when he unlocked the store that very day, 2 November (not if she saw Amanda, he may have not known the girl was Amanda). Later when he was coaxed to go to the police with his information by his journalist friend, he asked Chiriboga if she remembered his asking that morning about the girl who was early at the store.

This, of course, is speculation as I was not in court when Quintavalle testified and have not seen the whole transcripts, however, I am not willing to concede anyone is lying or anyone's credibility is on the line. I would need more information to do so.

I understand your quest for the full picture, and I hope I (and many others here) share your desire for accuracy and fairness. But the appeal documents seem to make it very clear that the question asked of Chiriboga by Quintavalle one year on was simply whether she (Chiriboga) had seen Knox on the morning of 2nd November - and NOT the more convoluted question of whether Chiriboga recalled Quintavalle asking her on 2nd November about Knox's presence in the store that same morning.

As you say, though, this is subject to further clarification, and as you also point out, only those who were in the courtroom or who have access to the trial transcripts can be more certain. And, in the final analysis, what we all think is of little importance (other than an intellectual curiosity to us) - the real business will take place exclusively inside Italian courtrooms.

P.S. I see Lex Rex is a fan of The Mighty Boosh (this will make absolutely no sense to all but a few people - apologies for the opacity!).

 

[LondonJohn]

I ask, because some of your posts that refer to posts on other sites are confusing. I only post at the JREF and I don't read PMF or Frank's site because they are both white type on black background and that bothers my eyes.

Ah OK. I hear that there are ways in which it's possible to re-format those types of sites to a black-text-on-light-background format. I'm not sure how it's done precisely, but I'm sure some research could throw up a solution (that's if you want to read those sites, of course!).

 

[Scorpion NITE]

Nadeau's space is called The Daily Beast. This is a good site and one that preceded most of the others: The Ridiculous Case Against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito

Thanks Mary,

That's one of the sites I have browsed previously too - some interesting points made on there and I particularly recall listening to that radio interview of Steve Moore....(P.S. Had to take out the url as it won't ket me post it due to my low post count )

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Sherlock is trying to argue the same point both ways. Look what he said earlier in this thread:

​

No, Sherlock does not argue anything with anybody. I'm not FOA, remember.

Kevin asked for evidence that Kercher died after ~9:30pm, I'm saying there is more pointing to after than saying she died before, and yes, I do believe she died sometime between 9:30 and 10:45 and yes, I do know the 3 people involved.
Kevin did ask for hard evidence that there is none of that anywhere in this case, just evidence.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

It hasn't been shown that there should be distrust of the justice system in Italy or the officials who investigated, tried and judged the case. There have been many allegations. Do even the appeal documents of Amanda and Raffaele point to evidence of intentional wrong-doing by officials?

I would say this discussion has revealed abundant reasons to distrust the authorities in this case. We're talking about the bleach receipts. The police told Richard Owen they had bleach receipts from November 2. But they don't. Is that wrong-doing? What about the claim of the postal police that they arrived before Raffaele called 112. The camera across the street proves they arrived after he made that call. Is that wrong-doing? What about the Harry Potter book that they said Amanda lied about, when in fact they knew it was right where she said it was? Is that wrong-doing? What about the luminol footprints? The authorities say they were made with blood, but for over a year, they withheld the key fact that that they tested these spots for blood, and the test was negative in every single case. Is that wrong-doing?

I'd say yes, it is. It is clear, unmistakable proof that the authorities lied and misrepresented key facts in order to frame innocent people, people who had no motive to commit the crime for which they have been convicted and who are, prima facie, utterly improbable suspects.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Quintavalle as a witness seems to be getting a lot of attention lately. The response that I have seen from those that believe his testimony is credible is that Quintavalle is said to have asked his employee on November 2nd if she also saw Amanda that very morning. Amanda's appeal points out that this question was actually asked of Chiriboga at the time of Quintavalle's TV interview 11 months later.
Quintavalle at one point says he had seen Amanda and Raffaele together on several occasions before November 2nd (even gives a time prior to Amanda and Raffaele even having met each other) and on another occasion Quintavalle says the first time he saw Amanda was November 2nd. Volturno's testimony is that after 16 November when the 2 bottles of bleach were found at Raffaele's he went around to shops in the area showing pictures of Raffaele and Amanda and asking anyone if they remembered them buying that bleach on November 2nd. Both Quintavalle and Chiriboga told him no and Chiriboga recalls talking to Quintavalle about it and him saying he did not see them that morning and they also knew who Amanda and Raffaele were from all the news reports going on at that time.
Quintavallle's story a year later is that he was only asked about Raffaele and not Amanda and he doesn't remember being showed pictures or if he was he didn't recognize her in the picture because the picture did not show her distinctive blue eyes or something like that and then goes on to describe her clothing as something she was not wearing a few hours later and a coat she evidently did not even own. The Massei report is said to indicate they believe Quintavalle's story about not being asked about Amanda at the time of Volturno's questions a couple of weeks later and is also relying on Quintavalle's claim that he told Chiribogon on November 2nd that he saw Amanda in the store that very same morning even though her testimony says he only made that claim almost a year later and asked her about it at that time.
It seems to me to be a real stretch to find this witness even remotely credible.

Yes. The police examined the bleach bottles at Sollecito's apartment with great interest. They examined the receipts with great interest. Then they told the media they had found bleach receipts dated Nov. 2 when in fact, there are none. They clearly were focused on this line of inquiry. So how likely is it that they would have failed to ask this shopkeeper about the matters that elicited his testimony a year later?

I see no reason why anyone interested should not examine the video from Sollecito apartment, so here is the link:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/sollecito_apartment.mp4

It's over 400mb. I rendered it with AviDemux (freeware for all platforms) and recommend it for watching this video. If you get a warning, use "safe mode" and don't worry about frame accuracy, which is only an issue if you want to re-render it rather than just view it.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Meredith might have had those numbers as her speed dials and they may have been pressed by her and/or the killers during the struggle, meaning the murder occured closer to 10pm. As for the received call, since the tower convered the area between the cottage and garden there is no way to prove that the phone still wasn't in the cottage at 10:15.

My understanding is that Meredith's phone had never pinged that tower before, so while it might just barely be technically correct that "there is no way to prove that the phone still wasn't in the cottage at 10:15" it is overwhelmingly likely that the phone was outside the cottage and on its way to the point where it was finally found at 10:15.

Mobile phone towers have overlapping coverage, but phones will establish a connection with the tower that has the best signal, which from the cottage was evidently not the one that was pinged at 10:15.

You really have to bend over backwards to explain away the stomach contents and the phone records, both excellent examples of hard evidence, and put the time of death forward until it could plausibly be the result of a four-way sex romp.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

faulty DNA evidence collection

Quadraginta,

I found more information on the collection technique that calls into question the competence of the lab:

“The contamination theory has been discussed again today: Ms Bongiorno repeatedly asked the forensic witnesses information regarding the techniques used to collect the samples found in Meredith’s house, but PM Manuela Comodi showed the Court that contamination did not occurr by asking the forensic witnesses: “Using the same gloves, you have touched the victim’s socks after working on other samples. Could you tell me what the result of the sock analyses was?”
The witness answered: “No foreign DNA nor genetic traces have been found”. Another demonstration that DNA passive transfer just doesn’t occur so easily. Differently, the probabilities of obtaining a contaminated sample would be so high that DNA testing would hardly be of any use in crime investigations.”

So one “experiment” disproves what is known about DNA transfer from forensic journals? It could be that the other item of evidence did not have DNA. Moreover, the forensic witness is admitting an error in technique. In Forensics magazine, Dick Warren wrote, “If you pick up one piece of evidence and then pick up another piece of evidence you can transfer evidence from the first item to the second item. You can avoid this kind of cross-contamination if you remember to change your gloves before handling each piece of evidence.”

In my opinion if Stefanoni is head of the laboratory, she is responsible to see that the procedures are correct.

 

[Alt+F4]

My understanding is that Meredith's phone had never pinged that tower before, so while it might just barely be technically correct that "there is no way to prove that the phone still wasn't in the cottage at 10:15" it is overwhelmingly likely that the phone was outside the cottage and on its way to the point where it was finally found at 10:15.

My understanding is that the two phones were not found at 10:15pm. They were found the next morning in a garden owned by the son and daughter of the woman who received a prank call that there was a bomb in her toilet.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Perhaps we should lay off PMF and TJMK, and let them build their own legacy as they see fit.

Fred Phelps is a "minister" in Kansas who once took it upon himself to picket the funerals of gay people who had died of AIDS, with signs that said "God hates fags." More recently he has picketed the funerals of US soldiers killed in combat, with signs saying "Thank God for IEDs." His rationale is that God is punishing them for their service to a wicked country.

He presents himself as someone who is teaching the world what is right and what is wrong. But most neutral observers think he is a weirdo who gets his jollies by hurting people who are already grieving. When someone posts about Edda Mellas, saying the media needs to "hold her feet to the fire," it comes across the same way.

 

[Chris C]

No, Sherlock does not argue anything with anybody. I'm not FOA, remember.

Kevin asked for evidence that Kercher died after ~9:30pm, I'm saying there is more pointing to after than saying she died before, and yes, I do believe she died sometime between 9:30 and 10:45 and yes, I do know the 3 people involved.
Kevin did ask for hard evidence that there is none of that anywhere in this case, just evidence.

What evidence?
You can't cherry pick evidence, you have to look at all the evidence as a whole.
1st. Autopsy.
Whats more accurate, the stomach contents or a liver temp taken 24 hours later. Frankly the stomach contents are more accurate. Therefore 2 to 3 hours after she ate at 6pm she died. That should be your time of death.
The liver temp accuracy gets worse the longer a body sits. There are just to many variables.

Body temp at ToD: Was meredith ovulating? What was her normal body temperature? Was her body under a physical strain? Did Meredith's body temperature rise during the struggle? The average body temp varies up to 1 degree during normal day to day activities. More if body is under stress at time of measurement.
Room Temp: Was the heater on, did the temperature stay constant. Did someone turn it up or down or off. If the heater wasn't on did anyone keep a constant eye on the temperature in the room.
Body Weight
Body Fat
Air Movement
Humidity
Amount of Clothing worn.
All these things effect the body temperature and the longer you wait to take a body temperture on a body the less accurate it is.

Stomach Contents: This is constant, its how the stomach works.
Plagiarized for your viewing.
The digestive system and gut contents of a victim can provide important clues to the time of death of a victim. Chewed food will firstly pass through the oesophagus and then down into the stomach within seconds of the initial swallowing. After 3 hours, the food then leaves the stomach and heads toward the small intestines. 6 hours after eating a meal, the food will have traveled half way through the small intestines and begin moving through the large intestine. Where the victim's small intestine is empty, it suggests that the victim ate his or her last meal approximately 8 hours before death.

The food Meredith ate hadn't left the stomach yet, therefore she died within 3 hours of that meal.

2nd. Witnesses
Even the information the witnesses present in court is cherry picked.

Curatolo: Claims to have seen knox/sollecito at the court that night. Problem with his testimony is he claims to have seen them all the way past midnight. Which gives knox/sollecito an alibi for not committing the murder. Prosecution use this witness to put them near the scene but down plays the times. Cherry Picked information.

Nara Capezzali: Claims to have heard a blood curdling scream inside her place of residence. People from a broke down car which can see the entrance to Knox/Kerchers home, are closer than Capezzali, and not inside a home, hear nothing, see no one enter the place of residence, and see no lights turn on.
Cherry Picked information. Gave more weight to Capezzali eventhough the witnesses in the car had a better viewpoint and listening point. Is it possible that Capezzali heard the tow truck. Dont know what kinda tow truck it was, but hydraulics and wenches can make some high pitched noises that could mimic a scream if heard through walls of a home.

Phones: What we know is that phone was dumped in that garden at the latest by 10:13pm. The reason being is because it changed towers the same night. Earlier it was bouncing off one tower, then it changed to a different tower. There is no evidence that has been presented to refute this. There has been no high call volume presented off the tower meredith's phone normally uses. There has been no evidence presented that a phone at merediths residence has ever picked up that tower.

So you say there is no hard evidence. The stomach contents and the phone towers are hard evidence. So how do you figure there is more evidence pointing to a ToD after 9:30.

 

[Chris C]

The liver temp accuracy gets worse the longer a body sits.

Before anyone corrects me. I meant to say "body temp" not "liver temp", since I dont know exactly how the coroner took the temperature.

Now that I corrected my self there is another thing I'd like to share.

When determining ToD using body temperature you use a curve. The fresher the corpse the faster the temperature goes down. As time goes along lets say 3 or 4 hours the temperature drops closer to a steady rate until it approaches the ambient temperature. However generally speaking on average a body temperature drops at 1.5 degrees F per hour. I will use 24 hours period to determine how much the body temperature dropped. If anyone knows The exact time the coroner took the temperature that would be helpful. All the reports I have read said it was over 24 hours. So after 24 hours the body temperature dropped 36 degrees F. So that means at a minimum, the ambient temperature of the room would have had to been below 62.4 degrees F. Anyone know what the room temperature was? The 62.4 temperature mark for an ambient temperature is low. Which means most likely the apartment would have had to been in the 50's for the body to keep losing heat. You would think someone would have turned on the heater if the apartment was in the 50's. However, once a body has reached ambient temperature you can no longer determine ToD by body temp.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Before anyone corrects me. I meant to say "body temp" not "liver temp", since I dont know exactly how the coroner took the temperature.

Now that I corrected my self there is another thing I'd like to share.

When determining ToD using body temperature you use a curve. The fresher the corpse the faster the temperature goes down. As time goes along lets say 3 or 4 hours the temperature drops closer to a steady rate until it approaches the ambient temperature. However generally speaking on average a body temperature drops at 1.5 degrees F per hour. I will use 24 hours period to determine how much the body temperature dropped. If anyone knows The exact time the coroner took the temperature that would be helpful. All the reports I have read said it was over 24 hours. So after 24 hours the body temperature dropped 36 degrees F. So that means at a minimum, the ambient temperature of the room would have had to been below 62.4 degrees F. Anyone know what the room temperature was? The 62.4 temperature mark for an ambient temperature is low. Which means most likely the apartment would have had to been in the 50's for the body to keep losing heat. You would think someone would have turned on the heater if the apartment was in the 50's. However, once a body has reached ambient temperature you can no longer determine ToD by body temp.

According to the clock on the camcorder, the examination of the body began at 1:32 am Nov. 3, 12 hours after the door was broken down and more than 24 hours after death by anyone's estimate.

As you point out, the decline in body temperature is a log function rather than a straight line. If they had charted the temperature at intervals, starting as soon as possible after the body was discovered, they could have obtained a portion of the curve and thereby calculated the rest of it, which probably would have allowed them to fix a time of death within about an hour.

To be fair, this is an oversight that any small police department might make, because this technique is only useful in a limited subset of homicide investigations. Analysis of stomach contents is the most widely used technique to determine the time of someone's death. Michael Baden has written about a case where someone found a body in a lake. The remains of a meal, consisting of fruit and vegetables, were found in the victim's stomach, and the victim's sister was able to tell investigators when the victim had consumed that meal, so they were able to determine the time of death within a few hours. What makes this story incredible is that a botanist who examined the body found two generations of algae growth. This woman had been dead for more than a year. They figured the husband killed her, but they couldn't prove it. (This is from Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner.)

 

[LondonJohn]

Before anyone corrects me. I meant to say "body temp" not "liver temp", since I dont know exactly how the coroner took the temperature.

Now that I corrected my self there is another thing I'd like to share.

When determining ToD using body temperature you use a curve. The fresher the corpse the faster the temperature goes down. As time goes along lets say 3 or 4 hours the temperature drops closer to a steady rate until it approaches the ambient temperature. However generally speaking on average a body temperature drops at 1.5 degrees F per hour. I will use 24 hours period to determine how much the body temperature dropped. If anyone knows The exact time the coroner took the temperature that would be helpful. All the reports I have read said it was over 24 hours. So after 24 hours the body temperature dropped 36 degrees F. So that means at a minimum, the ambient temperature of the room would have had to been below 62.4 degrees F. Anyone know what the room temperature was? The 62.4 temperature mark for an ambient temperature is low. Which means most likely the apartment would have had to been in the 50's for the body to keep losing heat. You would think someone would have turned on the heater if the apartment was in the 50's. However, once a body has reached ambient temperature you can no longer determine ToD by body temp.

You're absolutely correct. The curve of post-mortem body temperature essentially follows an inverse-exponential pattern of decay. This means that it becomes extremely difficult to reverse-extrapolate the curve to calculate time of death if the first readings are taken any more than 6 hours after death. And in order to reconstruct the curve, one also needs to know the ambient temperature around the body, both at the time of death and since. I don't recall ever reading about anybody taking temperature readings in Meredith's room.

As you said, your 1.5 degrees F per hour fall in body temperature is only an average, so it has limited relevance along an exponential curve. It's incorrect, therefore, to suggest that after 24 hours the body temp will have fallen by 1.5 x 24 = 36 degrees F. In fact, it's a complex calculation with the ambient external temperature as the minimum, and 98.5 degrees F as the maximum. After 9 hours or so after death, the body's hourly temperature loss will be very small, as the body starts to approach the ambient external temperature.

Like you, I'm not sure when the first post-mortem temperature readings were taken. However, research shows that trying to estimate time of death using body temperature is incredibly inaccurate - even if the first temperature readings are taken within a few hours of death. The table given in the following link shows just how imprecise body temperature can be as an indicator of time of death:

http://www.studyworld.com/basementpapers/papers/stack12_14.html

It shows that if, for example, the body temperature is taken as 79 degrees F, the time of death could be anywhere between 9 and 20 hours previously (and this is when the ambient temperature has also been carefully measured). I would venture to suggest that if Meredith's body temperature was only taken some time late in the day of 2nd November, it would be virtually impossible to establish the time of death from this temperature reading to anything less than about a 10-hour period (say, between 6pm on the 1st and 4am on the 2nd). Clearly not very helpful in the investigation.

A far more accurate method (as also discusses in the linked article) is to examine stomach/intestine contents, and correlate them with any known times of eating pre-mortem. Fortunately, we have pretty accurate baseline information here, in terms of quantities and time of ingestion. And therefore it's possible to infer with some accuracy that Meredith died between 9pm and 9.30pm on 1st November.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

No, Sherlock does not argue anything with anybody. I'm not FOA, remember.

Kevin asked for evidence that Kercher died after ~9:30pm, I'm saying there is more pointing to after than saying she died before, and yes, I do believe she died sometime between 9:30 and 10:45 and yes, I do know the 3 people involved.
Kevin did ask for hard evidence that there is none of that anywhere in this case, just evidence.

Hang on, you still haven't told us what this evidence is that convinces you that Kercher died after 9:30pm, apart from the circular argument that she must have died later because the accused have an alibi for that time.

You claimed that there was hard evidence in the autopsy report: what hard evidence are you referring to? I asked you specifically and you did not respond.

I have to disagree with you about the lack of hard evidence: A mobile phone's ping is hard evidence. The mobile phone system will not lie or misremember. The contents of Kercher's stomach are hard evidence. For that matter the records of phone and computer activity at Sollecito's house are hard evidence.

The problem for guilters is that all this hard evidence puts Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito at home when Meredith Kercher died.

My understanding is that the two phones were not found at 10:15pm. They were found the next morning in a garden owned by the son and daughter of the woman who received a prank call that there was a bomb in her toilet.

That is my understanding as well. However the location where the phones were found was not within the footprint of the tower they pinged around a quarter past ten on the night of the murder.

Ergo the phone pinged as the murderer(s) were moving it. At a quarter past ten the murderer(s) had left the murder house with the phones in their possession, but had not yet dumped the phones in the location where they were found the next day.

This is entirely consistent with the time of death established by Meredith Kercher's stomach contents, and entirely consistent with the earlier odd calls from her phone being caused by her murderer(s) fiddling with them, possibly trying to turn them off.

However it's irreconcilable with the prosecution story where Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito participate in murdering her later that night.

 

[RoseMontague]

I would say this discussion has revealed abundant reasons to distrust the authorities in this case. We're talking about the bleach receipts. The police told Richard Owen they had bleach receipts from November 2. But they don't. Is that wrong-doing? What about the claim of the postal police that they arrived before Raffaele called 112. The camera across the street proves they arrived after he made that call. Is that wrong-doing? What about the Harry Potter book that they said Amanda lied about, when in fact they knew it was right where she said it was? Is that wrong-doing? What about the luminol footprints? The authorities say they were made with blood, but for over a year, they withheld the key fact that that they tested these spots for blood, and the test was negative in every single case. Is that wrong-doing?

I'd say yes, it is. It is clear, unmistakable proof that the authorities lied and misrepresented key facts in order to frame innocent people, people who had no motive to commit the crime for which they have been convicted and who are, prima facie, utterly improbable suspects.

It's a good point, Charlie. I think the "mountain" of evidence of bias regarding the police and investigators is growing almost daily. In my case, the deciding factor was evidence in the Massei report that the court/judges in this case did not give Amanda and Raffaele a fair judgment. After reading the Massei report several times and then looking at the appeals, it clearly shows to what level of bias the court went to to render a guilty verdict.
I will read the Massei report again after the translation is made public in just a day or two if only because I realize that the Google translated version leads to possibilities of misunderstandings. At the present time it seems to me that the court has chosen to believe less obvious evidence of guilt over more obvious evidence of innocence. Quintavalle's testimony that we have been discussing is an example of that as are the evidence regarding Meredith's cell phone records, time of death arguments, Curatolo's reliable testimony getting the time right once in a dozen tries, Miss miracle ear's amazing hearing, the completely whacked LCN DNA procedures, the Luminol prints, the mixed DNA sample in the sink, the mixed DNA on the bra clasp, and so on. Not to mention the court rulings regarding discovery and rulings asking for testing or review by the defense teams.

 

[Danceme]

What evidence?
You can't cherry pick evidence, you have to look at all the evidence as a whole.
1st. Autopsy.
Whats more accurate, the stomach contents or a liver temp taken 24 hours later. Frankly the stomach contents are more accurate. Therefore 2 to 3 hours after she ate at 6pm she died. That should be your time of death.
The liver temp accuracy gets worse the longer a body sits. There are just to many variables.

Body temp at ToD: Was meredith ovulating? What was her normal body temperature? Was her body under a physical strain? Did Meredith's body temperature rise during the struggle? The average body temp varies up to 1 degree during normal day to day activities. More if body is under stress at time of measurement.
Room Temp: Was the heater on, did the temperature stay constant. Did someone turn it up or down or off. If the heater wasn't on did anyone keep a constant eye on the temperature in the room.
Body Weight
Body Fat
Air Movement
Humidity
Amount of Clothing worn.
All these things effect the body temperature and the longer you wait to take a body temperture on a body the less accurate it is.

Stomach Contents: This is constant, its how the stomach works.
Plagiarized for your viewing.
The digestive system and gut contents of a victim can provide important clues to the time of death of a victim. Chewed food will firstly pass through the oesophagus and then down into the stomach within seconds of the initial swallowing. After 3 hours, the food then leaves the stomach and heads toward the small intestines. 6 hours after eating a meal, the food will have traveled half way through the small intestines and begin moving through the large intestine. Where the victim's small intestine is empty, it suggests that the victim ate his or her last meal approximately 8 hours before death.

The food Meredith ate hadn't left the stomach yet, therefore she died within 3 hours of that meal.

2nd. Witnesses
Even the information the witnesses present in court is cherry picked.

Curatolo: Claims to have seen knox/sollecito at the court that night. Problem with his testimony is he claims to have seen them all the way past midnight. Which gives knox/sollecito an alibi for not committing the murder. Prosecution use this witness to put them near the scene but down plays the times. Cherry Picked information.

Nara Capezzali: Claims to have heard a blood curdling scream inside her place of residence. People from a broke down car which can see the entrance to Knox/Kerchers home, are closer than Capezzali, and not inside a home, hear nothing, see no one enter the place of residence, and see no lights turn on.
Cherry Picked information. Gave more weight to Capezzali eventhough the witnesses in the car had a better viewpoint and listening point. Is it possible that Capezzali heard the tow truck. Dont know what kinda tow truck it was, but hydraulics and wenches can make some high pitched noises that could mimic a scream if heard through walls of a home.

Phones: What we know is that phone was dumped in that garden at the latest by 10:13pm. The reason being is because it changed towers the same night. Earlier it was bouncing off one tower, then it changed to a different tower. There is no evidence that has been presented to refute this. There has been no high call volume presented off the tower meredith's phone normally uses. There has been no evidence presented that a phone at merediths residence has ever picked up that tower.

So you say there is no hard evidence. The stomach contents and the phone towers are hard evidence. So how do you figure there is more evidence pointing to a ToD after 9:30.

Why is there even a need for an appeal Chris? If all this is so obvious how come none of these arguments were made in court by the defense lawyers or experts, and if they, were how come they were not at all convincing? I don't get why bloggers on internet forums can find all the answers yet all the high paid experts and legal eagles couldn't. A stronger case should have and could have been made in the first place if indeed all the evidence has such simple refutations.
Today or tomorrow, hopefully we can read the english version of the motivations, thanks to the tireless efforts of some incredible posters on PMF, and see for ourselves why these arguments failed or if they were even made at all.
Do you think Amanda and Raffaele had sub-standard representation and expert testimony? If they are innocent, I suggest they did.

 

[Kestrel]

Before anyone corrects me. I meant to say "body temp" not "liver temp", since I dont know exactly how the coroner took the temperature.

Now that I corrected my self there is another thing I'd like to share.

When determining ToD using body temperature you use a curve. The fresher the corpse the faster the temperature goes down. As time goes along lets say 3 or 4 hours the temperature drops closer to a steady rate until it approaches the ambient temperature. However generally speaking on average a body temperature drops at 1.5 degrees F per hour. I will use 24 hours period to determine how much the body temperature dropped. If anyone knows The exact time the coroner took the temperature that would be helpful. All the reports I have read said it was over 24 hours. So after 24 hours the body temperature dropped 36 degrees F. So that means at a minimum, the ambient temperature of the room would have had to been below 62.4 degrees F. Anyone know what the room temperature was? The 62.4 temperature mark for an ambient temperature is low. Which means most likely the apartment would have had to been in the 50's for the body to keep losing heat. You would think someone would have turned on the heater if the apartment was in the 50's. However, once a body has reached ambient temperature you can no longer determine ToD by body temp.

The measurement of body temperature is noted on page 103 of the Massie report:

The inspection of the corpse was adjourned and was carried out at approximately 0.30 of 3/11/2007. ... At about 0.50 the following data were collected ... rectal temperature of 22 degrees Celsius and ambient temperature 13 degrees Celsius.