Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Someone please expalin (not a typo) this reasoning to me. From the PMF translation of the Massei report:

I read this as speculation designed to make Quintavalle's testimony relevant to the crime. Massei doesn't mention the cleaning supplies that were already available at the cottage, as documented in police photos. Nor does he offer any evidence that Amanda purchased cleaning supplies.
 
Hello!

I'm new to this forum. I have been thrown off six other forums in which I've presented my arguments on the Amanda Knox case. It seems that the way most of the world handles free speech is to lock the thread or your member name.

Anyway, I've just finished "Murder in Italy" by Candace Dempsey. Candace gave a very complete discussion of the case and I am starting to feel that Amanda's innocence is 100%. There is no way she could be guilty. Ok, a fact in the book might possibly be wrong, but that seems unlikely. What is absolutely certain is that Amanda got very bad justice. Extremely bad justice.

I started reading the translation of the Massei Report. I was asking how Meridith could have screamed while being strangled and suffocated with a knife wound in her neck when I was thrown off my last forum. They explained that she got off one scream before this happened. I said that a recent report on Yahoo said that drowning victims are never heard since people don't scream loudly when terrified. Indeed, when I thought I encountered an intruder in my apartment, my scream - meant to terrify the intruder - was more like a hoarse whisper.

Then my membership in another forum bit the dust. Probably because if there was no scream, then Amanda's confession was entirely incorrect and merely the result of police "questioning".

Oh yeah, I was also talking about the Murder Hot Line in Boston MA. The minute a person is charged with murder, lawyers trained in murder cases are instantly assigned to the accused. The result is that no person in Boston would ever get harrassed the way Amanda was. Amanda would never have gone to court in Boston.

Anyway, I've been thrown out of six forums talking this way. Hope this forum really does believe in freedom of speech.

Welcome Justinian.
You must have missed the fact that this is a moderated discussion, meaning everything you say has to be approved prior to it being posted. There is only limited freedom here. As far as the disputed "scream" goes it would appear to be a simple matter to test to see if it is even possible that the scream could be heard under the circumstances described. One would think that if the prosecution and judges were so confident in this evidence it would allow such a test to take place. Despite the many contradictions involving the "scream" testimony this test was denied by the court. Go figure.

I do think it would be nice that the moderated status could be lifted, perhaps the moderators will consider this again.
 
I believe the bolded element of your post is very interesting and could actually fit in with a possible scenario I have just run through my mind...

It has been well documented that Rudy stated that he drunk from an orange carton, which was in the refrigerator - why was he so concerned to point that out...was he worried that evidence would place him in the kitchen, which is WHERE HE INITIALLY GRABBED MEREDITH?!? If this hypothesis is correct, could that explain why the mushroom (if that is what it was) was found in Meredith's oesophagus? It also fits in with the proposals put forward by many to suggest an earlier T.O.D. in fitting with the attack happening very soon after Meredith arrived home.

It's possible that he accosted her in the kitchen and she ran back to her room, but the crime scene photos show that the attack took place in the corner of her room, in front of her wardrobe. He grabbed her from behind, put his left hand over her mouth, threw her to the floor, and stabbed her while she was down on all fours with a knife held in his right hand.
 
Hello!

I'm new to this forum. I have been thrown off six other forums in which I've presented my arguments on the Amanda Knox case. It seems that the way most of the world handles free speech is to lock the thread or your member name.

Anyway, I've just finished "Murder in Italy" by Candace Dempsey. Candace gave a very complete discussion of the case and I am starting to feel that Amanda's innocence is 100%. There is no way she could be guilty. Ok, a fact in the book might possibly be wrong, but that seems unlikely. What is absolutely certain is that Amanda got very bad justice. Extremely bad justice.

I started reading the translation of the Massei Report. I was asking how Meridith could have screamed while being strangled and suffocated with a knife wound in her neck when I was thrown off my last forum. They explained that she got off one scream before this happened. I said that a recent report on Yahoo said that drowning victims are never heard since people don't scream loudly when terrified. Indeed, when I thought I encountered an intruder in my apartment, my scream - meant to terrify the intruder - was more like a hoarse whisper.

Then my membership in another forum bit the dust. Probably because if there was no scream, then Amanda's confession was entirely incorrect and merely the result of police "questioning".

Oh yeah, I was also talking about the Murder Hot Line in Boston MA. The minute a person is charged with murder, lawyers trained in murder cases are instantly assigned to the accused. The result is that no person in Boston would ever get harrassed the way Amanda was. Amanda would never have gone to court in Boston.

Anyway, I've been thrown out of six forums talking this way. Hope this forum really does believe in freedom of speech.

Hi Justinian,

Welcome to JREF. I think I can safely say that you can make any argument you like on this thread without fear of being asked to leave - and nobody here will ever brush you off with little platitudes such as "thanks for stopping by".

Your argument about screaming is interesting and valid, but probably not even applicable in this instant. I think there are two things about the "scream" that bear analysis. The first is that Meredith would almost certainly have been situated in her room at the time of making any alleged "blood-curdling" screams. Meredith's room was at the back of the house, and its window faced directly away from the road (and all other accommodations) overlooking a deep ravine. For a scream to be heard by anybody in an apartment across the road, it would have had to first transmit through most of the house - down corridors and through stone walls. I believe that the defence should have asked (and maybe still could ask) for sound pressure measurements - placing a sound source at a dB level equivalent to a loud scream in Meredith's room, and measuring the audible sound received at various points outside the house (including, of course, inside Nara Capezzali's apartment). I think these measurements might be very instructive in trying to determine exactly what Capezzali might have heard, and comparing that with what she thought she heard.

The second point about the scream is the sheer timing of it, and the fact that this "blood-curdling" sound was apparently only heard by a maximum of two people in a residential neighbourhood. It's pretty indisputable, for example, that the people in the broken-down car directly opposite the house would have heard the same scream reported by Capezzali if they had been there at the time, and they were there between around 10.30pm and 11.20-11.30pm. The prosecution (and the court) therefore have to reason that the "scream" did not occur during that time window, and they know that 10.30pm is too early for Capezzali's recollection. So they place the scream at 11.30pm, and rationalise an 11.30pm time of death from that. And even if the "scream" was at around 11.30, why did nobody else in a residential neighbourhood hear it? None of it makes sense.
 
Here's some information from Raffaele's appeal on the 'time of death' issue, and what the defence are arguing:

Quote:
...all the consultants of the prosecution and the experts, whilst acknowledging the interpretive difficulty of using the gastric contents for thanato-chronological* purposes, identified the time of death with respect to the typology and quantity of gastric contents and to the composition of the last known meal as follows:

* Dr. Lalli: at a distance of not more than 2-3 hours from the consumption of the last meal (see errate corrige [Latin: correction of error] on 15.2.2008, acquired during the trial hearing, and p. 47 of the stenotyped record from the hearing of 3.4.09);
* Prof. Bacci and Dr. Liviero: at a distance of 2-3/3-4 hours from the last meal which was consumed in a discontinuous way from 18.00 and ended at about 20.00 on 1.11.07, as demonstrated by the fact that the stomach was full and the duodenum empty, indicating that gastric emptying had not yet begun (p. 64 hearing 4.4.09; p. 32 hearing 18.4.09);
* Prof. Umani Ronchi: at a distance of 3-4 hours from the last meal (p. 30 hearing 19.9.09).

On the basis of these specifications it can be stated that, even taking into account the widest range indicated by the majority of the consultants, the time of death would be no later than 22.50 on 1.11.2007.

However, it is possible from a scientific point of view to further restrict such a range using the gastric contents, in terms of size (500 cc.) and composition (pastry, mozzarella, vegetables, apple slices), and comparing this with the last meal eaten by the victim as reported by witnesses: the time of death would in this way be placed, based on forensic criteria of maximum reliability (on account of the individual and converging viewpoints of the various consultant and experts), at a distance of 2-3/3-4 hours from the start of the consumption of the last known meal (18.30-19.00 on 1.11.2007) and thus at about 21.30-22.00.

The identification of the time of death as 21.30-22.00 on 1.11.2007 finds confirmation:

* in the correspondence, in terms of quantity (500 cc. or about a kilo of food) and quality (pizza with mozzarella and vegetables, and apple slices), between food consumed during the last meal on 1.11.2007, and the stomach contents of the body;
* in the absence in Meredith’s stomach of fragments of food different to those described by her friends as having been consumed during the meal on 1.11.2007;
* in the empty duodenum, which (having been properly closed by ligation as can be seen in the autopsy) is indicative of the fact gastric emptying had not yet started;
* in the uncertainty about the nature of the vegetable fragment found in the distal third of the oesophagus, never subject to product analysis and which can reasonably be assumed to be a slice of apple.


* Does anyone know if there's an English term for 'things relating to time of death' or 'study of the time of death'? The Italian term is 'tanatocronologici', which I think must be a combination of 'thanatological' (to do with death) and 'chronological' (to do with time), thus meaning WTTE of 'determination of time of death'. I can't find an English equivalent, so just coined the word 'thanato-chronological'...

PMF used thanato-chronological as well. "For purposes of post-mortem chronology" would also work. An American would write "for determining time of death." But given the controversy surrounding this subject, the most conservative and literal translation may be the best route, even if it makes the text harder to read.

It is fascinating to read how Massei seizes on caveats in the expert testimony as an excuse for rejecting the evidence altogether. I didn't realize until I read this document that her 6 pm meal was still in her stomach. That pretty cut-and-dried. You can ~maybe~ roll TOD forward to 10 pm, but not 11 pm. No amount of Italian legal verbiage will reverse the basic tenets of forensic pathology.
 
Absolutely amazing. Let's go through that logic bit by bit:

"It should therefore be considered that the taking of the telephones and the locking of the door of Meredith’s room were aimed at preventing someone [415] from prematurely entering the English student’s room and discovering what had happened in there, and this, probably, because of the need to check for possible compromising traces left behind, and the necessity, in that case, of eliminating these traces."

So Massei reasons that Meredith's door was locked so that Knox and Sollecito could go back later and clean up the murder room which contained "compromising traces" of the murderers. Only, there's no evidence of a clean-up whatsoever in Meredith's room itself.

"A plan which, as has been said, is confirmed by the testimony of Quintavalle: entering the shop which also sold cleaning products at opening time, shows an unquestionable urgency which is easily explained by the objective indicated, [and] all the more so because that going into [the shop] and at such an early hour, was denied by the defendant Amanda Knox."

The fact that Knox denied going into the shop at that early hour on that day is indicative to Massei of there having been nefarious reasons for her being there at all. Never mind that the prosecution's witness in this regard did not remember Knox's presence when asked about it by the police some two weeks after the murder, yet remembered tiny details of Knox's visit over a year later.


"This action of checking and cleaning was carried out, therefore, in the very early hours of the morning of 2 November. And also this circumstance constitutes a clue to the charge of both defendants: of both because it must have been a common [joint] decision, taken at the time the mobile phones were taken and Meredith’s room was locked; carrying out [the task of going to the store] was entrusted to Amanda alone since, if they had been together, and someone had seen them at that time of the morning, they would have been far more noticeable and if they had met anyone who knew them, they would have most likely have had to give an explanation."

Massei firstly reasons - somehow - that the decision to buy necessary cleaning fluids at the store must have been taken before midnight on the 1st. Then he makes the extraordinary logical deduction that they decided that Knox alone should go to the store, since two people going shopping together in the early morning are much more noticeable (to Massei) than one, and two people together would have to give an "explanation" (according to Massei) of why they were in the shop - whereas apparently Knox alone would not have had to give such an "explanation" had she been recognised.


"That this action of cleaning could have been carried out the same night, immediately after the murder, seems difficult to hypothesise. To linger on in the house where Meredith’s body lay could have been risky. On the contrary, returning in the morning would have allowed [them] to do the cleaning under better conditions and with more time available;"

So Massei reckons that it would have been unacceptably risky for Knox and Sollecito to conduct the clean-up during the night hours, whereas they would have had "more time"(?!!!) if they started the clean-up at 8am, and it would also - according to Massei's logic - have been less risky for them to conduct the clean-up at this time. Riiiiiight.........


"....it is also possible that more cleaning products were needed, as the visit to Quintavalle’s shop leads us to believe."

Except that it's almost certain that no cleaning products were bought that morning even if Knox were there (and in fact it's more likely that Knox wasn't in the shop at all).


"Furthermore, once the mobile phones had been taken, and the door had been locked, there would have been no compelling reason not to put off the cleaning until early the next morning. If anyone had arrived at the house (Silenzi, for example) the closed door would have convinced him or her that Meredith was not in her room, and the impossibility of hearing Meredith’s phones ring would not have given rise to any suspicion."

No commentary needed here. Arrant nonsense.

Many thanks for confirming what I suspected was the reasoning on this LJ. It is definitely another Cap'n Ahab moment.
 

Welcome to the forum, Justinian2.

I started reading the translation of the Massei Report. I was asking how Meridith could have screamed while being strangled and suffocated with a knife wound in her neck when I was thrown off my last forum. They explained that she got off one scream before this happened. I said that a recent report on Yahoo said that drowning victims are never heard since people don't scream loudly when terrified. Indeed, when I thought I encountered an intruder in my apartment, my scream - meant to terrify the intruder - was more like a hoarse whisper.

While your anecdote is interesting, it doesn't really help in determining whether or not Meredith actually screamed I'm afraid. [/quote]

Anyway, I've been thrown out of six forums talking this way. Hope this forum really does believe in freedom of speech.

It does.
 
Hey Justinian, welcome to JREF. Such a lovely, warm, and tolerant lot they are over on PMF, aren't they? Can't think why you didn't stay. :p

The number of people that don't want to hear any fact or theory contridictory to that of the prosecutions' fairy tale astounds me.

When I was reading the book "Murder in Italy" I got so upset during the summation of the prosecutor's closing fairy tale that I had to go for a walk and calm down before continuing the book. Not only was the summation pure fantasy, but most of it had entirely been proven wrong.

If the main facts in that book are correct - I can't find any weaknesses - then Amanda is completely innocent.

And the people that supported the prosecution are completely guilty.
 
Amanda informed the police herself that she had turned off her phone after texting Patrick at 8:35 p.m. on Nov. 1. On page 323 of the report, however, where Amanda's phone activity for November 2nd is listed, there is not even a claim that Amanda turned her cell phone back on around 6 a.m. on the morning of 11/02/07. The first record is of her first call to Meredith, at 12:07 p.m.

A quick look at Amanda's phone records confirms that there was no activity between the text to Patrick at 8:35 PM and the attempt to call Meredith at 12:07 PM the next day.
 
I think the computer activity was at 22.26, and it was a 20 minute media file (hence the 22.46 time). Doesn't prove they watched it of course, though it seems odd that someone would start a 20 minute film to give them an alibi (you'd put the Lord of the Rings omnibus or something on instead, wouldn't you?).

If the video began at 10:26 it's not an alibi at all, they could have easily been back to his apartment by this time.
 
It's possible that he accosted her in the kitchen and she ran back to her room, but the crime scene photos show that the attack took place in the corner of her room, in front of her wardrobe. He grabbed her from behind, put his left hand over her mouth, threw her to the floor, and stabbed her while she was down on all fours with a knife held in his right hand.

Rudy's original story included a fight with the bushy haired strangers in the kitchen and hallway of the cottage. Rudy probably expected the investigators to find signs of a struggle in these places. It's a clue that his attack on Meredith started in the kitchen.

What Rudy didn't realize was that eight people were in the cottage and walking all over any evidence of this struggle, before Meredith's body was discovered.
 
The lesson. This method of calculating time of death for Meredith is too imprecise to be relevant to who killed her.///

Everything I've ever read says otherwise. Perhaps you can point us to a citation other than Massei's motivation.
 
Welcome Justinian.
You must have missed the fact that this is a moderated discussion, meaning everything you say has to be approved prior to it being posted. There is only limited freedom here.


I don't believe there is any moderation of on topic content here. The moderation is primarily to preserve civility. It's tough to respond to the same moles popping up again and again without taking the attack to the hand manipulating the mole. But that's exactly the lesson we need to learn to keep the discussion moving forward in this thread and to maintain civil discussions in general. I am grateful for the penance that the moderators subject themselves to so that we may learn to communicate.


And, Welcome to the JREF forums Justinian2. This thread is only a small and mostly ignored fragment of the vast JREF community. While you are here, take some time to browse through the many other lively discussions.



As far as the disputed "scream" goes it would appear to be a simple matter to test to see if it is even possible that the scream could be heard under the circumstances described. One would think that if the prosecution and judges were so confident in this evidence it would allow such a test to take place. Despite the many contradictions involving the "scream" testimony this test was denied by the court. Go figure.


It does appear that the court is only interested in finding evidence that upholds the verdict that they had arrived at early on. They show many instances where they choose the interpretation that leads to confirmation of the conviction and ignore or brush aside the contrary evidence.
 
The number of people that don't want to hear any fact or theory contridictory to that of the prosecutions' fairy tale astounds me.

Interestingly, we used to have many more posters who were, for want of a better word, "guilters" here. But for the most part (with a few exceptions) they've disappeared, perhaps because they prefer posting at a forum where the opposing viewpoint is not allowed. :rolleyes:
 
<snip>

It does appear that the court is only interested in finding evidence that upholds the verdict that they had arrived at early on. They show many instances where they choose the interpretation that leads to confirmation of the conviction and ignore or brush aside the contrary evidence.


You seem to be finding fault with the report because it is a summary of why the court arrived at the verdict that it did. This is puzzling, because that is the purpose of the report.

If it's purpose was to challenge the verdict of the court it would probably be called something else.

Maybe they could call that an "appeal"?
 
Its not that I suspect her. Im showing that the police zeroed in on Knox eventhough, there is a better suspect [Sophie Purton] for Mignini's crazy theory....

Sophie Purton is, shall we say, no oil painting - she just didn't catch Miginini's, Giobbi's or any of the crack Perugian cops' eye the way AK did.;)
 
__________________

Nope. And Raffaele's attorneys don't agree either. Quoting from their APPEAL (posted by kaky-did, post #4335):

"However, it is possible from a scientific point of view to further restrict such a range using the gastric contents,... and comparing this with the last meal eaten by the victim as reported by witnesses: the time of death would in this way be placed, based on forensic criteria of maximum reliability.... at a distance of 2-3/3-4 hours from the start of the consumption of the last known meal (18.30-19.00 on 1.11.2007) and thus at about 21.30-22.00."

And note also that the "normal" time of transit for these lawyers is not LondonJohn's 2 1/2 hours but 3 hours. It gets worse. The lawyers recognize that the transit time can vary between 2 and 4 hours, so the time of death could be as late as 10:30 -11:00 PM (22:30 -23:00). And, as I pointed out in my last post, this time might instead be the time the assault began---retarding the transit time--- in which case time of death would be even later.

The lesson. This method of calculating time of death for Meredith is too imprecise to be relevant to who killed her.

///

I'm sorry - you're just plain wrong. None of the medical experts can come close to correlating the prosecution's time of death with the stomach/intestinal contents. The prosecution essentially claims that Meredith was STABBED at around 11.30pm - the time of the "piercing scream". This would put her actual time of death (at the brain stem) at a good 20-25 minutes later, given the nature of the wounds and the cause of death.

So, the time of the stabbing (if the prosecution is to be believed) was around 5 hours after the start of Meredith's pizza meal. Yet there was no matter in Meredith's duodenum. I guarantee that you will not find a competent forensic pathologist or gastro-intestinal specialist who would agree that a meal of this type and size would still be 100% within the stomach (and indeed not yet fully broken down into chyme) more than three hours after consumption. It's true that it can take up to 4-5 hours for the stomach to empty completely after a meal such as this - and if there had been matter in Meredith's duodenum then this indeed would have blurred the time of death significantly. But Meredith's duodenum was empty.

So, three hours after 6.30pm takes us to 9.30pm - and this is the outer time limit of established medical knowledge on when the stomach starts to pass a digested meal through to the duodenum in a healthy young adult who consumes a moderate-sized meal, followed by a normal, calm, relatively sedentary period.

Therefore....in order for the prosecution's case to stand up to the stomach/intestines evidence, two things have to essentially be true:

1) Meredith was confronted by around 9.30pm, but was not fatally stabbed until 11.30pm (the time of the "scream");

2) Meredith was in such extreme terror between the 9.30pm confrontation and the 11.30pm stabbing that her gastro-intestinal function ground to a complete halt during that entire time period (not merely slowed down, but essentially completely stopped).

Unfortunately, neither of these two conditions makes sense at all, and I sincerely hope that the defence bring in a couple of internationally-renowned medical experts to spell all this out in front of the appeal judges. As the defence already point out in Sollecito's appeal documents, even taking the most extreme range of the times presented in court in the first trial, the 11.30pm "scream" is totally invalidated.

I think there is scope to be very confident indeed that 10.00pm is the very outside estimate for time of death, and in fact I still think that this is being generous on timings - I think there are very many eminent people in this field who would be more than willing to stake their professional reputations on putting 9.30pm as the upper limit for ToD. Bit whether it's 9.30pm or 10.00pm, this ToD clarification will drive a coach and horses through the prosecution's (and the first court's) entire theory of the murder.

///
 
If the video began at 10:26 it's not an alibi at all, they could have easily been back to his apartment by this time.

I believe that this is a slip by Katy - I think she means to say 21.26 and 21.46, rather than 22.26 and 22.46 (but correct me if I've misrepresented you, Katy!).
 
Oh - I've just realised that all four medical expert witnesses whose time of death estimates were quoted in the Sollecito appeal documents (Lalli, Bacci, Liviero and Umani-Ronchi) were witnesses for the prosecution. And, between the four of them, not one of them could support the prosecution's time of death from an analysis of the stomach contents!
 
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