Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Charlie Wilkes]

Am I misremembering, or wasn't there significant controversy over some of Meredith's post-mortem blood alcohol readings, with a high reading turning out to be a mistake? If this 0.43 is a standard BAC % measurement (I haven't checked), then this is equivalent to extreme alcohol intoxication - the standard drink-drive threshold is 0.08.

See the bottom of P. 152/top of 153...

On the basis of such contrasting results, a check was carried out on the alcohol percentage in other regions: in the gastric content and then in the liver. A value substantially of zero had been found in the gastric content and, he stressed, ‚in the gastric content the quantity of alcohol is frighteningly greater than in the blood‛ (page 106). In the liver too a very slight quantity had been detected, equal to 0.2, which was comparable from the pharmacokinetic point of view with the 0.43 verified by Dr. Lalli at the Institute of Forensic Medicine of Perugia, rather than with the value of 2.72.

There was food in her stomach, but no alcohol.

 

[Alt+F4]

This is actually a contradiction from Massei which is pointed out in Raffaele's appeal. If you turn to page 364 of the PMF version of the report you'll see

I did see that, then another contradiction on page 369, "it is considered that she [Meredith], who was sober and fully conscious since no traces indicating either the use of drugs or the abuse of alcohol were found".

Bolding mine. He now seems to be saying that while she may have had a drink, she wasn't drunk.

I think the alcohol reading was determined to be due to contamination.

What kind of contamination to be mistaken for a blood alcohol reading?

 

[LondonJohn]

The 0.43 was given as grams per liter and there are approx 1060 grams in a liter of blood. The BAC is a percentage measurement, my guess this is about 0.004 but math is not my strong point.

Ah, in that case g/l should be divided by 10.63 to get the equivalent BAC %. So a 0.43g/l level would correspond to a BAC of 0.040% = half the typical drink/drive limit = approx one large glass of wine or half a litre of beer.

It's theoretically possible for such a BAC % to have been due to the residual effect of heavy drinking the night before - but only if Meredith was very drunk by 05.30 on the morning of the 1st November (i.e. the end of the Halloween party night). A rule of thumb is that BAC % decreases by 0.015 per hour. So, for Meredith to have had a BAC % of 0.04 at her time of death - which I believe was around 21.30 - then her BAC % at 05.30 (16 hours previously) would have had to have been around (0.04 + (16*.015)) = 0.28. This is in the realms of quite heavy intoxication - but far from uncommon in the student community.

I have no idea whether there's any evidence of whether Meredith was extremely drunk by the end of the Halloween party night. If she wasn't very drunk, then she must have had some more alcohol at some point during the day/evening of the 1st November to push her post-mortem BAC % back up to 0.04.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

We have had a lot of discussion about Meredith's cell phone records and how it seems to indicate an earlier TOD. The Massei report proceeds to give the courts reasoning that this is not considered significant.



The reasoning here is that since the time of death is later (in the court's opinion) than the time frame as presented by the defense phone expert, the defense expert must be wrong and that Meredith must have just been playing with her phone and that one call shortly after 10PM that had never connected to Meredith's flat before must just be an anomaly and it was shown that that particular mast could connect to Meredith's bedroom even though it had not happened in the past. In addition the court considers that it proves that the phones were at Meredith's place at least until that time, not on the way to the garden as demonstrated by the defense expert.

Here we have another example of the court justifying flawed reasoning on one piece of evidence by using previously flawed reasoning on a completely different piece of evidence. It still reeks, in my opinion. My opinion that the court did not render a fair judgment has not been swayed by the translation of the report.

It's utterly ridiculous. Meredith was not a toddler who amused herself by pushing random buttons on her phone.

I am so glad to have this translation. It will be of tremendous value to FOA.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

BAC

The 0.43 was given as grams per liter and there are approx 1060 grams in a liter of blood. The BAC is a percentage measurement, my guess this is about 0.004 but math is not my strong point.

Rose,

Some concentrations are expressed as weight percentages, meaning mass of solute per volume of solution. So for example, a 0.043% solution is 0.043 grams per 100 mL. To convert this to grams per liter, one would multiply by 10, and it would become 0.43 grams per liter.

0.43 grams per liter is the same as 0.43 milligrams per milliliter (both numerator and denominator have been reduced by the same factor, 1000. Therefore the BAC (if I understand this table correctly), is 0.043%.

 

[Danceme]

It's a good point and the reason the defense wanted that piece tested. They believe it is a piece of apple from her apple crumb dessert eaten along with the pizza. The prosecution did not test it. The appeal is asking for it to be tested.

The piece of food was in her esophogus was it not? That would completely rule out it being part of her earlier meal as food remains in the esophogus mere seconds before passing into the stomach. It sounds like she either regurgitated a piece of food she had just popped in her mouth slightly earlier or was grabbed just after popping the mushroom into her mouth.

The autopsy clearly states that it was pizza in her stomach. You can research it all you want. All the reseach i've run across states it takes no more than 3 hours for your stomach to digest food and move it to your small intestines. The coroner even points this out in his time off death when he says 2 to 3 hours.
MULTIPLE WITNESS testify that Meredith ate pizza at 6pm. So either you claim these witnesses are lying and now are suspects or they have given the correct time of that meal in which she ate pizza.
QUOTE]

I've also been researching this and most of what I find say approximately 4 to 6 hours.

Am I misremembering, or wasn't there significant controversy over some of Meredith's post-mortem blood alcohol readings, with a high reading turning out to be a mistake? If this 0.43 is a standard BAC % measurement (I haven't checked), then this is equivalent to extreme alcohol intoxication - the standard drink-drive threshold is 0.08.

Yes there was a mistake LondonJohn. There was some controversy which was explained as the sample of Meredith's blood being stored in a test tube with residual alcohol in it or some such thing.

 

[Malkmus]

That's it? Hardly evidence that they were at his apartment.

I can't remember the last time my computer spontaneously opened a video file all by itself, and then closed it all by itself. Come on, not evidence they were home? I suppose they could have brought the computer with them to the crime scene for some post-murder cartoon-watching....

I don't know the validity of the claim in that article, but if true it's strong evidence of Raf and Amanda being home at that time. You previously claimed that if the computer activity was simply leaving a program running while they were away then that would be proof of nothing, and I agree. But this isn't a case of Raf simply leaving a program running, is it now? The file was opened smack dab during the time that they are purported being at the cottage.

 

[RoseMontague]

The 0.43 was given as grams per liter and there are approx 1060 grams in a liter of blood. The BAC is a percentage measurement, my guess this is about 0.004 but math is not my strong point.

Chris says I am off by a factor of 10, beats me, I think an experiment is the only real way to determine this. I will let you know the results later.

 

[LondonJohn]

I am grateful to the volunteers at PMF for translating the Massei motivations report. I urge everyone to read it and to compare relevant passages with the appeals documents. I have just started this process, and I am finding it very enlightening.

I too am grateful, and I thank the translators for their hard work and clear diligence. It doesn't change my view on the case though - in fact some of Massei's reasoning makes it look to me that a successful appeal is more likely.

Anyway, regardless of what I think, it was clearly a huge undertaking, which has increased the knowledge of unconnected onlookers such as me. As for swaying public opinion, well, I doubt that. It certainly hasn't made a splash in the media (outside of a paid-per-article freelancer who, I understand, has a connection to the head translator, and who submitted the piece to an online-only Seattle news source).

Of course, the court of public opinion is of virtually no importance so far as the legal proceedings are concerned (which is probably one reason why Knox's defence team have not seen it fit to publicly release an English-language version of the document, nor of the appeal documents). The defence teams will have known the full content of the Massei report since its release in March, and they and the prosecutors and the Kercher family are the only people who need to know what it says. The international media took what they wanted from the report (and translated it themselves where they wanted to) at the time it was published, but won't be interested in it so long down the line. They, I suspect, are all waiting for the appeals.

 

[Malkmus]

Frank has a post on this. There was an initial error, IIRC. I doubt that 0.43 is the standard BAC measurement, but I don't know what it is.

"Alcohol level: As I thought, there was a mistake. Nobody said "I made that mistake," but it seems that the blood sample was kept in a container with some residual alcohol, which is why the second analysis was abnormal. So, the rate of 0.43 found by the University of Perugia is confirmed. Meredith was not drunk."

They made a mistake?! I am in disbelief.

 

[LondonJohn]

Excerpt of Chris C's quote:



I am not so sure that the autopsy clearly stated pizza (perhaps, some of its ingredients) was in Meredith's stomach. This it says from Massei Motivations:



Is the term "caseosis" referring to mozzarella, a dairy product (Meredith ate apple crumble with ice cream half way through watching the movie, not immediately after dinner) or a physical process which was observed in the stomach?

Also, is one able to differentiate between vegetable fibre and fruit fibre (I am not sure what ingredients were on the pizza - her friends testified to no mushrooms - as written above, Meredith ate apple crumble).

And lastly, if there were contents in the last loop of the small intestine what does this mean as far as time of death, Meredith's meals, etc.?

Regarding your first question, I think "caseosis" might be a mistranslation. I think that the original autopsy report was referring to recognisable pieces of cheese product (caseous means "cheese-like", from the Latin for cheese: caseus). Therefore it's more than likely that the autopsy report was specifically referring to cheese - and not to any general dairy product.

Second, with regard to the word "fibre", it depends whether the autopsy report is referring to "fibre" as stringy matter or as dietary fibre (cellulose, lignin and other enzyme-resistant starches). If the former, then it is easy to differentiate between vegetable and fruit matter. If the latter, then analysis of the dietary fibre constituents would probably enable the source to be identified.

Thirdly, the position of matter at the very end of the small intestine implies that this food was ingested some 8-10 hours before death. This is inconsistent with Meredith's 6.00-6.30pm pizza meal, but is instead consistent with Meredith having had something to eat at lunchtime on the 1st November. The absence of any chyme matter in the duodenum or upper part of the small intestine is also very important.

Taken as a whole, the autopsy findings imply that Meredith had something to eat at lunchtime (some time between 11.30am and 1.30pm), then had a pizza meal at 6.00-6.30pm, followed by some apple crumble and ice cream at some time before 8.30pm. The presence of recognisable constituents of pizza in her stomach, together with the lack of matter in the duodenum or upper small intestine, imply that Meredith died before around 9.30pm - i.e. within 3 hours of consuming the pizza meal.

 

[LondonJohn]

See the bottom of P. 152/top of 153...

On the basis of such contrasting results, a check was carried out on the alcohol percentage in other regions: in the gastric content and then in the liver. A value substantially of zero had been found in the gastric content and, he stressed, ‚in the gastric content the quantity of alcohol is frighteningly greater than in the blood‛ (page 106). In the liver too a very slight quantity had been detected, equal to 0.2, which was comparable from the pharmacokinetic point of view with the 0.43 verified by Dr. Lalli at the Institute of Forensic Medicine of Perugia, rather than with the value of 2.72.

There was food in her stomach, but no alcohol.

If it's true that no alcohol was found in her stomach, then this would indicate that any alcohol Meredith might have consumed that day would have had to have been consumed before she went to her friends' house. This is because her friends testified that no alcohol was consumed while Meredith was there, and if Meredith had drunk alcohol after returning home at around 9pm, it would still have been present in her stomach (and possibly also her duodenum - if the time of death was as late as 11.30pm). Or, of course, the other option is that Meredith's body still contained residual alcohol from a very heavy night at the Halloween party the night before.

 

[katy_did]

I did see that, then another contradiction on page 369, "it is considered that she [Meredith], who was sober and fully conscious since no traces indicating either the use of drugs or the abuse of alcohol were found".

Bolding mine. He now seems to be saying that while she may have had a drink, she wasn't drunk.

What kind of contamination to be mistaken for a blood alcohol reading?

It's in the article Chris quoted earlier about there having been contamination of the sample ("the blood sample was kept in a container with some residual alcohol") so that would be how it was contaminated. Reading it again, it sounds as if possibly the second reading may have been much higher than the first, because contaminated, and the very low reading was the correct one. I'm not so sure Massei is saying she had a drink (or that if he is, he's correct): it sounds as if the amount would have been too low to be explained by a glass of wine or beer just a few hours (at most) before she died.

I'm a bit hazy on the exact amount that was found, though (or at least, what it means!) so can't really comment on that...

 

[LondonJohn]

Small point:

Amanda Knox could have left Italy at any time between the 2nd and the 5th November. She was asked to stay by the Perugia police to assist them with their investigation, but was (I believe) under no formal legal obligation to do so. Therefore, when she said things like she "had" to stay, she was merely obeying implicit "orders" from the Perugia police that had no basis in law. Once she was made a suspect, I presume that the Perugia police could have applied to a court to seize her passport and/or notify all border points. But none of these could have happened while she was still only a witness, which is of course how the Perugia police apparently classified her up until 01.45 on 6th November.......

 

[piktor]

This is actually a contradiction from Massei which is pointed out in Raffaele's appeal. If you turn to page 364 of the PMF version of the report you'll see:
Quote:
[Meredith was] in an entirely normal condition having consumed neither alcohol nor drugs as shown by Dr Lalli and confirmed by the experts appointed by the Preliminary Hearing Judge.

I think the alcohol reading was determined to be due to contamination.

"He stated [Dr.Lalli] that the results of the toxicological analyses revealed the absence of psychotropic drugs and a blood alcohol level of 0.43 grams/litre." -page 112, PMF Translation

Maybe this means that the victim was not drinking alcohol at the time of the assault?

It definitely needs to be clarified at the appeal.

 

[Chris C]

The piece of food was in her esophogus was it not? That would completely rule out it being part of her earlier meal as food remains in the esophogus mere seconds before passing into the stomach. It sounds like she either regurgitated a piece of food she had just popped in her mouth slightly earlier or was grabbed just after popping the mushroom into her mouth.

The autopsy clearly states that it was pizza in her stomach. You can research it all you want. All the reseach i've run across states it takes no more than 3 hours for your stomach to digest food and move it to your small intestines. The coroner even points this out in his time off death when he says 2 to 3 hours.
MULTIPLE WITNESS testify that Meredith ate pizza at 6pm. So either you claim these witnesses are lying and now are suspects or they have given the correct time of that meal in which she ate pizza.
QUOTE]

I've also been researching this and most of what I find say approximately 4 to 6 hours.



Yes there was a mistake LondonJohn. There was some controversy which was explained as the sample of Meredith's blood being stored in a test tube with residual alcohol in it or some such thing.

What you been researching? I bet people on this forum could probably post 10 different forensic websites that say 3 hours max for food to digest and pass into the small intestines. Now if your reading some site that claims drugs can slow this process to 4 to 6 hours then you must remember. Meredith had no drugs in her system. Meredith didn't gorge herself either. No if you are gonna refuse the Coroners finding that she died within 2 to 3 hours after eating pizza, then there is nothing we can do to change your mind. We can keep doing this argument, but its apparent that most guilters prefer to ignore the autopsy or try to prove the coroner is wrong when he states 2 to 3 hours. However, 2 to 3 hours is backed up by scientific facts.

 

[katy_did]

"He stated [Dr.Lalli] that the results of the toxicological analyses revealed the absence of psychotropic drugs and a blood alcohol level of 0.43 grams/litre." -page 112, PMF Translation

Maybe this means that the victim was not drinking alcohol at the time of the assault?

It definitely needs to be clarified at the appeal.

Yeah, it would certainly seem to be quite an important issue. I found this bit in the report (p153, PMF translation), confirming what Charlie said in his post about there not being any alcohol in Meredith's stomach:

[Prof. Cingolani] concluded on this point that that was no pharmacokinetic condition which could justify all three of these values, that is zero in the stomach, 2.72 in the blood and 0.2 in the liver.

So I guess if there was no alcohol in her stomach, she can't have had anything to drink after she ate her dinner at about 18.00 (or so I'd assume, anyway). I'm not so sure that it will be clarified in the appeal though, given that it doesn't seem to have been an major issue for either defence or prosecution...

Still, you'd think that with Massei hypothesizing that she might have had something to drink when she got home, they'd settle the issue one way or another!

 

[Chris C]

Yeah, it would certainly seem to be quite an important issue. I found this bit in the report (p153, PMF translation), confirming what Charlie said in his post about there not being any alcohol in Meredith's stomach:

So I guess if there was no alcohol in her stomach, she can't have had anything to drink after she ate her dinner at about 18.00 (or so I'd assume, anyway). I'm not so sure that it will be clarified in the appeal though, given that it doesn't seem to have been an major issue for either defence or prosecution...

Still, you'd think that with Massei hypothesizing that she might have had something to drink when she got home, they'd settle the issue one way or another!

Was there any open alcohol containers or alcohol in the apartment? There might have not been any open containers of alcohol in the apartment. Which might be the reason for the non issue by either the prosecution or defense. Might also be why the investigators asked her friend if she had been drinking.

 

[Danceme]

What you been researching? I bet people on this forum could probably post 10 different forensic websites that say 3 hours max for food to digest and pass into the small intestines. Now if your reading some site that claims drugs can slow this process to 4 to 6 hours then you must remember. Meredith had no drugs in her system. Meredith didn't gorge herself either. No if you are gonna refuse the Coroners finding that she died within 2 to 3 hours after eating pizza, then there is nothing we can do to change your mind. We can keep doing this argument, but its apparent that most guilters prefer to ignore the autopsy or try to prove the coroner is wrong when he states 2 to 3 hours. However, 2 to 3 hours is backed up by scientific facts.

Would you mind posting the links to those websites then Chris because from the forensic websites I've been reading it is stressed there is an unacceptable level of imprecision in basing TOD on stomach contents. It can be downright misleading in fact and is only used when other methods are not available, such as in Meredith's case where the pathologist could not examine her straight away to take body temperature readings.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Yeah, it would certainly seem to be quite an important issue. I found this bit in the report (p153, PMF translation), confirming what Charlie said in his post about there not being any alcohol in Meredith's stomach:

So I guess if there was no alcohol in her stomach, she can't have had anything to drink after she ate her dinner at about 18.00 (or so I'd assume, anyway). I'm not so sure that it will be clarified in the appeal though, given that it doesn't seem to have been an major issue for either defence or prosecution...

Still, you'd think that with Massei hypothesizing that she might have had something to drink when she got home, they'd settle the issue one way or another!

There's no open bottle or evidence of a snack. But there was an open package of mushrooms in the refrigerator, so it is possible that she ate a raw mushroom when she arrived home.

The preponderance of evidence is clear. The remains of her 6 pm meal were still in her stomach, suggesting that she was killed within three hours of eating. She tried to call her mother at 8:56 pm, but the call was not completed, and she made no further effort to contact her mother. And then the next activity with the phone suggests a random pushing of buttons. We know how Massei has worked all that out... she was playing with her phone, the bum in the park is more reliable than the pathology report, etc. But the truth is that Guede was in the house when she got home, and he blitzed her almost immediately. She was dead well before 10 pm.