Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[LondonJohn]

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"?

I think what Dan O was insinuating (via his use of the words "early on") is that the judicial panel might have (to at least some degree) pre-supposed Knox's and Sollecito's guilt, and that then they might then have viewed the evidence presented in court through a somewhat clouded lens: agreeing with the incriminating evidence and disagreeing with the exculpatory evidence, in order to support their prior assumption.

 

[katy_did]

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.

Thanks for that Charlie, didn't realize PMF had used the term as well. Weirdly I just searched google and a bunch of articles turned up using the term thanatochronological which I swear weren't there the other day (though admittedly one of them was for this thread, and another said "The google hits for thanatochronological are not convincing and you should use a simpler term"!). Plus a Spanish term, "tanatocronodiagnóstico". Lord knows what I'll do if the Italian equivalent of that turns up (what am I saying, it'd be "thanatochronodiagnostic". Obviously).

Yes, it looks like all four of the experts said no more than four hours after the last meal. No doubt the prosecution got them to say that it could be longer under certain circumstances, and Massei jumped on that possibility (however remote). But for the entirety of the meal she'd eaten to still be in her stomach at 23.30, when Massei says she died, would seem to be very unlikely.

 

[RoseMontague]

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"?

I agree with Dan O. on this one. The Massei report shows a pattern of bias, in my opinion. Amanda and Raffaele did not receive a fair judgment from the court. This is puzzling, because rendering a fair judgment is the purpose of the court.

 

[RoseMontague]

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!

I have a question for you LJ, since you seem to have researched this issue. It appears the court is making a big issue of 11:30 being the midpoint of the time of death range which just so happens to fit in with the THEORY. Is the midpoint something special or is this just another smoke and mirrors argument?

 

[Justinian2]

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.

Good analysis! Good to be in a forum that appreciates fact and logic.

I would like to see that analysis. However, like I said, when I walked into my kitchen and thought I saw an intruder, I didn't even scream like a little baby. I'm embarassed to say that a hoarse "get the heck out of here" was all I could muster. Nobody else in the apartment building reported hearing my "blood curdling" scream except my girlfriend who was the imagined intruder. She wasn't even totally terrified. She said: "You scared me."

Anyway, I hope this post appears in real time.

 

[Mary_H]

Good analysis! Good to be in a forum that appreciates fact and logic.

I would like to see that analysis. However, like I said, when I walked into my kitchen and thought I saw an intruder, I didn't even scream like a little baby. I'm embarassed to say that a hoarse "get the heck out of here" was all I could muster. Nobody else in the apartment building reported hearing my "blood curdling" scream except my girlfriend who was the imagined intruder. She wasn't even totally terrified. She said: "You scared me."

Anyway, I hope this post appears in real time.

Justinian, according to many nightmares I've had over the years, my response would be very much like yours -- hoarse to the point of silence!

Meredith knew Rudy. If she had time to react to seeing him unexpectedly in her house, her reaction would probably have been like your girlfriend's -- "You scared me." I said the same thing to a neighbor who once came in my back door without knocking.

The scenario Charlie describes, of Rudy aggressively grabbing Meredith from behind and pushing her face into the floor, is more likely. And, as other poster have pointed out, if Meredith had the time or phsyical capacity to scream, no one would have heard her.

 

[Chris C]

Good analysis! Good to be in a forum that appreciates fact and logic.

I would like to see that analysis. However, like I said, when I walked into my kitchen and thought I saw an intruder, I didn't even scream like a little baby. I'm embarassed to say that a hoarse "get the heck out of here" was all I could muster. Nobody else in the apartment building reported hearing my "blood curdling" scream except my girlfriend who was the imagined intruder. She wasn't even totally terrified. She said: "You scared me."

Anyway, I hope this post appears in real time.

Actually yall have brought up a good point. To go further on that scream. Meredith received 40 plus bruises. There is no way she could have screamed loud enough for her scream to be heard, through the apartment walls, traveled the distance it traveled, and then be heard inside Nara's home after receiving those bruises. Now to even use the adjective blood curdling is an oxymoron. Because if her neck was cut she wouldn't be able to scream.

So if Mignini claims the ToD is 11:30 Meredith would have had to have screamed before 11:30. Which means she would have had to scream before getting all those bruises and getting her neck cut. You would also have to subtract the bleed out time from the ToD.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

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.

///

Yes, this is what I have read in a dozen or more books. The time frame I see most often is that a meal remains in the stomach for 2-3 hours. If anyone can find a reputable source that says otherwise, I will be very interested.

I didn't realize that Meredith's dinner was still in her stomach. I had assumed it was not, because if she ate at six and was killed at 9:30, her stomach might have been empty or nearly so.

This is analagous to the luminol stains - it doesn't matter that the TMB test was negative in every case, and it doesn't matter that none of the bare footprints showed any trace of Meredith's DNA. Massei doesn't care about the facts. All he cares about is protecting the reputations of his colleagues, no matter what lies he has to tell or who suffers because of it.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

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.

Yep. Amanda is completely innocent, and so is Raffaele. The authorities went public with a bogus theory, and everything they have done since then is an attempt to save face at the expense of two innocent people.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I have a question for you LJ, since you seem to have researched this issue. It appears the court is making a big issue of 11:30 being the midpoint of the time of death range which just so happens to fit in with the THEORY. Is the midpoint something special or is this just another smoke and mirrors argument?

I think they are basing that on body temperature, which in this case was not measured until more than 24 hours after the murder.

There is no way she could have had pizza from 6 pm still in her stomach if she was alive at 11:30. As LJ points out, no pathologist would ever say that. I think there are specific circumstances, like severe hypothermia or a drug overdose, that can slow digestion or stop it completely before death, but none of those factors would apply in this case.

 

[JREF2010]

No I think Mary's right - bit of a random video but if you go to 0:56 you can see the back of the same phone that Meredith has, and it has a camera on it like the one she's holding in the picture:
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=555&pictureid=3535[/qimg]

You are right, thats some amazing attention to detail.

 

[quadraginta]

I agree with Dan O. on this one. The Massei report shows a pattern of bias, in my opinion. Amanda and Raffaele did not receive a fair judgment from the court. This is puzzling, because rendering a fair judgment is the purpose of the court.

Bias is in the eye of the beholder. Since you are convinced of Knox's innocence it is unsurprising that you disagree with the verdict, and thus the court did not render fair judgment. QED.

Others do not share your certainty. If the case is viewed from a perspective which does not begin with a conclusion of innocence and develop from that stance then the "pattern of bias" in the Massei Report is less a given.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

__________________

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.

Those facts don't support that conclusion.

To begin with, even if you take the latest possible guess you can find about when Meredith ate pizza (you count it as 7pm when most sources I have seen place it at 6pm) and then take the longest possible time to digest that pizza (you take 4 hours as the upper limit when other sources say 2 1/2 to 3) then you've only pushed the time of death back to 11pm, which is equally disastrous for the prosecution case.

At 11pm there were witnesses outside and absolutely no sign of any activity in the house. No lights, no bloodcurdling scream, nothing. That's why the prosecution's urban myth has the time of death even later, once those witnesses have cleared off.

Further, the anomalous ping from Meredith's phone shows that the murderer had left before 10:13pm. Even ignoring stomach contents completely you can't push the murder back any later than 10:00pm or so, and that's assuming a really, really speedy subsequent clean-up and exit.

If you want to save the prosecution story you need to reconcile the stomach contents with a time of death six hours after her last meal, and explain the anomalous ping as well, and neither seems amenable to explanation.

 

[LiamG.]

"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.

Yes, I have the opinion, that Quintavalle gave his detailled testimony with the intention that he thought it would be cool to see at least one "innocent" person rot in jail for 30 years due to his testiomony

 

[RoseMontague]

Yes, this is what I have read in a dozen or more books. The time frame I see most often is that a meal remains in the stomach for 2-3 hours. If anyone can find a reputable source that says otherwise, I will be very interested.

I didn't realize that Meredith's dinner was still in her stomach. I had assumed it was not, because if she ate at six and was killed at 9:30, her stomach might have been empty or nearly so.

This is analagous to the luminol stains - it doesn't matter that the TMB test was negative in every case, and it doesn't matter that none of the bare footprints showed any trace of Meredith's DNA. Massei doesn't care about the facts. All he cares about is protecting the reputations of his colleagues, no matter what lies he has to tell or who suffers because of it.

"Come, Ahab’s compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents’ beds, unerringly I rush! Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!"
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville

 

[RoseMontague]

Bias is in the eye of the beholder. Since you are convinced of Knox's innocence it is unsurprising that you disagree with the verdict, and thus the court did not render fair judgment. QED.

Others do not share your certainty. If the case is viewed from a perspective which does not begin with a conclusion of innocence and develop from that stance then the "pattern of bias" in the Massei Report is less a given.

That would make sense except for the fact that I was leaning towards guilt until I read the Massei report and came to the conclusion that it was extremely biased and one-sided. Reading the appeal documents I became even more convinced it was biased and also incorrect in some of the reasoning presented. You seem to be undecided or possibly leaning towards guilt as I was. I have admired the logic of your posts and have enjoyed our discussion and debate. I would be interested in hearing if you have moved some in either direction after reading the PMF translation and if so, what caused you to do so?

 

[Alt+F4]

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'm sure many people have been in this situation: you can't find your cell phone so you use the house phone to call your phone then follow the ring.

Amanda writes in her email back home that she was so panicked about Meredith she was pounding on the door and screaming her name. Why the heck didn't she just call her phones again and listen outside the door for the ring?

 

[Antony]

(msg #4377)

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.

Probably not significant. It was Amanda and Raffaele's bad luck (if I understand correctly) that they were in the flat when the crime was discovered, and were the first people the police spoke to. This, perhaps combined with the fact that they were able to obtain the name of a black man from Amanda, was all the police needed.

Police approaches to tackling serious crimes are of 2 types: either they work from the evidence to find a suspect, or they work from a suspect to find the "evidence". This case is the latter type, and it makes little difference who is selected to be a soft target. If Sophie Purton had been the unlucky one, then her plainness would have counted against her just as Amanda's "foxieness" has in the event.

 

[LondonJohn]

I have a question for you LJ, since you seem to have researched this issue. It appears the court is making a big issue of 11:30 being the midpoint of the time of death range which just so happens to fit in with the THEORY. Is the midpoint something special or is this just another smoke and mirrors argument?

Hey Rose! Sorry for the late reply - I spent yesterday (Saturday) taking my mother to Bach Day* at the Proms......nice!

I think the prosecution (and indeed Massei et al) have seized upon the degree of variability introduced by the prosecution expert witnesses, and used it to obfuscate. As far as I know (and, as I've said before, I'm not new to the subject of gastro-intestinal function), three hours is the absolute upper limit for a moderate-sized meal to remain totally in the stomach. This talk of midpoints is (in my view) misleading in the context of there having been no chyme matter in Meredith's duodenum.

I truly think it should be an incredibly strong defence point on appeal that Meredith's gastro-intestinal function must have stopped** within three hours of her consumption of the pizza meal - i.e. by 9.30pm. This implies that Meredith's fatal wounds were inflicted at some point between 9.00pm and 9.20pm.

Whichever way on chooses to look at it, it is completely out of the question that Meredith was stabbed at around 11.30pm (per the "scream"), or even 11.00pm, or even, for that matter, 10.30pm. The stomach/intestine contents completely rule out a time of death later than 10.00pm. I strongly believe that if the defence can get its ducks in a row on this particular issue, the prosecution's case against Knox and Sollecito will completely fall apart. I can't put it any clearer than that.

*"Bach Day" = a day devoted to JS Bach music!

** As previously discussed, in Meredith's case, gastro-intestinal function would have probably stopped some 10-15 minutes before total brain death, owing to the nature of her injuries.

 

[Kestrel]

Yes, I have the opinion, that Quintavalle gave his detailled testimony with the intention that he thought it would be cool to see at least one "innocent" person rot in jail for 30 years due to his testiomony

My opinion is that Qunitavalle was certain that Knox was guilty and felt that telling a story to assure she was convicted was the right thing to do.