Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kevin_Lowe]

From the Massei report, 5 separate experts, varying conclusions, as is expected when trying to pinpoint a definite time of death based on analysis of stomach contents. It is simply not reliable and does not tell us exactly when Meredith was so brutally and viciously murdered.

Lalli - death 2nd or 3rd hour after eating
Bacci - meal eaten 3 or 4 hours before death due to advanced stage of digestion, TOD between 21:00/21:30 and 23:00 to 24:00
Norelli - concluded this method could not indicate TOD which would be late, very late into Nov 1 or early hours of Nov 2
Introna - 21:30 and 22:30 TOD - emptying occurs 3 to 4 hours after eating, meal was between 18:30 and 20:30
Ronchi - farinaceous meal needs 6 to 7 hours for emptying to occur, TOD can be midnight or later

However, nevermind what any of these guys said. Somebody found an article....therefore it must be definitive.

I think you have your hierarchy of relative evidentiary value backwards.

Hard numbers published in a peer-reviewed journal should be taken as far more significant than non-peer-reviewed "expert" opinions proffered in court by people with real or potential vested interests in massaging the facts. If the two conflict, and I have no way of resolving the conflict, I'm going to believe the hard numbers in the peer-reviewed journal every time.

Dismissing such data as "somebody found an article" indicates profound misunderstandings about how science works. It's the job of the "expert" to make sure their statements conform with the known and published facts, not the other way around.

 

[Chris C]

It's not even logical to say that.





From the Massei report, 5 separate experts, varying conclusions, as is expected when trying to pinpoint a definite time of death based on analysis of stomach contents. It is simply not reliable and does not tell us exactly when Meredith was so brutally and viciously murdered.

Lalli - death 2nd or 3rd hour after eating
Bacci - meal eaten 3 or 4 hours before death due to advanced stage of digestion, TOD between 21:00/21:30 and 23:00 to 24:00
Norelli - concluded this method could not indicate TOD which would be late, very late into Nov 1 or early hours of Nov 2
Introna - 21:30 and 22:30 TOD - emptying occurs 3 to 4 hours after eating, meal was between 18:30 and 20:30
Ronchi - farinaceous meal needs 6 to 7 hours for emptying to occur, TOD can be midnight or later

However, nevermind what any of these guys said. Somebody found an article....therefore it must be definitive.

Using these statements and add in meal was eaten between 6 and 6.30
Lalli's ToD = 2000hrs to 2130hrs
Bacci's 2100 hrs to 2230hrs
Norelli = what exact method is Norelli talking about.
Introna = ? to 2130hrs Emptying hadn't started
Ronchi = ? Emptying never started

So based on this message. Lalli and Bacci testified on level of digestion on stomach and combining their ToD you get 2000hrs to 2230hrs.

Introna and Ronchi testified on the empting of the stomach which had not started. So their testimony doesn't really count towards the ToD because emptying had not started.

That leaves 1 witness that says this method couldn't indicate ToD? So Norelli is saying the rest of the doctors that have studied how the stomach works, is full of crap. So we are not suppose to believe the other 2 doctors because?

Yet we are suppose to believe a guy that says knox had gaps in her teeth tried to kill him with a knife.
Or believe a guy that tells the police that he didn't see knox on the morning after the murder, but suddenly remembers seeing her a year later when he is talking to the press.
Or maybe we are suppose to believe that sollecito pulled off the bra clasp without touching the rest of the bra and and 3 other unidentified people helped him because there is no way that clasp is contaminated.
Or maybe we are suppose to believe that a lady woke up but couldn't remember the time heard a blood curdling scream that 2 people standing outside couldn't hear.
Or believe a guy that saw people wearing masks and costumes, buses driving around, and saw both knox/sollecito together from 2130 until midnight, which gives them an alibi. We are suppose to believe him but not the times he saw them.
Or believe the prosecution didn't test the semen stain when they are charging 3 people with sexual assault.

We are suppose to believe all that crap. Yet when we try and believe that the coroner was accurate when it was determined that Meredith died 2 to 3 hours after eating, we are told that determining ToD on that method is unreliable. The one fact that has been studied over and over. You dont believe me, if anyone goes to see a doctor for heartburn or ulcer ask them, "How long does it take your stomach to digest food in your stomach?" See what their answer is.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I have been reading up on stomach contents as a means of determining time of death. There is indeed a lot of controversy surrounding the subject, with some experts asserting that it is too inaccurate to be of value. The most instructive and detailed link I found is this google book excerpt:

http://tinyurl.com/2fsfd3q

I have read lots of crime books where stomach content analysis was presented as an reliable evidence of when a person was killed. But, I've also seen lip prints and shoe prints and all kinds of crap used to put people away. My browsing tonight suggests that stomach contents are a fairly reliable indicator in the Meredith Kercher case, and certainly the most accurate one available. Her duodenum was essentially empty, suggesting that her stomach had not even begun to empty. All sources seem to agree that this process usually begins within two or three hours after a meal. But I will concede to Danceme that the subject is not as cut-and-dried as the testimony in murder trials often suggests.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I did a bit more digging about what the defence were talking about in terms of computer activity in the vital 21:00 to 22:00 period, leading me to this section from Raffaele's appeal document (taken from RoseMontague's docstoc page)"

5. No mention of a media file att CALLS Opening Naruto
episode 101 "on Thursday, 1 November 2007 at 21:26.
Obviously, that method, if a file is not found during
initial selection (ie if three dates are not in the interest period), it
is excluded from the search results later restricted, even if he has a
the other two dates during the period of interest.
30
Following further investigation made by defense counsel,
after the definition of first instance, using for the first
Once a system and built the same version as the one used by Raffaele
Dunning, ie Mac OS X 10.4.10 (Build 8R2232), it was possible to obtain
correct data display key information acquiring
importance for the decision.
Like to point out, in fact, that the judgment placed at 21:10:32
the last operation performed by Raffaele Sollecito in the day of 1
November 2007.
Indeed, searching with Spotlight in version 10.4.10 was
detected at least one file "Naruto ep 101.avi" which is not present in
advice of the police post, but whose date of last opening is Thursday
1 November 2007 at 21:26 (ie in the period examined by the police
Postal: 1st November 2007 18:00 - November 2, 2007 8:00 am).

Since episodes of Naruto seem to be around 23 minutes long, that would fit with reports that the defence thinks there is evidence (that the judge ignored) that Raffaele was watching cartoons until 21:49.

(If this is the source of the claim, then the claim that someone opened and closed a file at 21:49 or thereabouts would seem to be a distortion of what the defence actually claimed, which is just that someone opened a video file at 21:26 which would have lasted 23 minutes or so).

Of course it's possible that he started the cartoon running and then ran off to murder Meredith, but that would imply either murderous and improbable ADHD or premeditation.

If he actually watched the Naruto episode, that puts him safely at home right up until 21:49, and with the travel time involved in getting to Amanda's house that would absolutely exclude him from being involved in Meredith's murder given what we now know from the stomach evidence.

 

[LondonJohn]

It's not even logical to say that.

From the Massei report, 5 separate experts, varying conclusions, as is expected when trying to pinpoint a definite time of death based on analysis of stomach contents. It is simply not reliable and does not tell us exactly when Meredith was so brutally and viciously murdered.

Lalli - death 2nd or 3rd hour after eating
Bacci - meal eaten 3 or 4 hours before death due to advanced stage of digestion, TOD between 21:00/21:30 and 23:00 to 24:00
Norelli - concluded this method could not indicate TOD which would be late, very late into Nov 1 or early hours of Nov 2
Introna - 21:30 and 22:30 TOD - emptying occurs 3 to 4 hours after eating, meal was between 18:30 and 20:30
Ronchi - farinaceous meal needs 6 to 7 hours for emptying to occur, TOD can be midnight or later

However, nevermind what any of these guys said. Somebody found an article....therefore it must be definitive.

*ahem*

Lalli: Prosecution expert
Bacci: Prosecution expert
Norelli: Victim's family's expert
Umani Ronchi (his actual surname, by the way): Prosecution expert

As the phrase goes: "just sayin'"

As for Introna, I don't know where you've got your information from. He was called by Sollecito's defence team, but mainly - it appears - to testify about the nature of the knife wounds. However, he did also give his expert opinion on the time of death, and guess what? He put it at 9.30pm:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/US/story?id=7909793

"Last week, Francesco Introna, a coroner called as a consultant for Sollecito, told the court he believes Kercher died at 9:30 p.m."

Oh what a tangled web we weave.....................

 

[LondonJohn]

As a follow-up to my previous post here's what Introna is quoted as saying in the Massei report (my emphasis):

"He (Introna) recalled the reports by Dr. Lalli and the other experts stating that under macroscopic examination, the stomach contents revealed a piece of apple and floury fragments which might have been from the crumble or from the pizza. He also recalled that the emptying of the stomach under standard conditions starts around three and a half hours after the start of a meal, say between three and four hours after, and that the term "emptying" indicates the stomach emptying its contents (into the duodenum). He asserted that "knowing that Meredith's meal started at 18:30 pm, knowing that there were about 500 cc of stomach contents, and knowing from the autopsy that there was no pathology of the stomach...which could slow down digestion, and above all", as reported by Dr. Lalli, knowing that the duodenum was still empty "because the stomach had not even begun to empty itself" (page 19 of the transcripts), the time of death must lie between 21:30 pm (three hours after 18:30) and 22:30 pm (four hours after 18:30), and that this timing agreed with the less rigid data provided by the analysis of the hypostasis, of the rigor mortis and of the body temperature, considering the uncertainty of the body weight which was guessed without weighing the body."

I actually think that Introna is overestimating the T(lag) time - and I believe that this is a significant lapse by the defence. His T(lag) time of "between three and four hours" is about an hour longer than any credible evidence I've found (academic research etc). I think in the appeal the defence can - and should - introduce a wealth of evidence (both from published medical research and from expert witnesses) which places T(lag) very much in the 90-180 minute range. Even so, Introna's professional estimate of Meredith's ToD range still makes a mockery of the prosecution's (and court's) proposition of an 11.30pm-11.50pm ToD.

Incidentally, the very end of the above quote also highlights another egregious error made by Lalli during the autopsy - the failure to weigh Meredith's body. It would have been very easy to weigh her body post-mortem, and to add to that weight the estimated amount of blood lost (probably between 1 and 2 litres = approx 1-2kg) to give her living body weight. Inexplicably, he failed to do this, and merely made an "estimate" of her normal weight. This, in turn, had an impact upon his estimates of ToD based upon rectal body temperature readings. The large effect of even a small revision in body weight upon Henssge's nomogram (the formula used for estimating ToD from body temperature) is explained by Introna - quoted in the Massei report - as follows (my emphasis):

"He (Introna) also observed that "two kilos more or two kilos less usually escape attention altogether", but they have a significant effect in the use of Henssge's nomogram. He added that Meredith Kercher was not a weak, thin girl, and if Dr. Lalli had guessed her weight as 57 kilos rather than 55 kilos, the centre of the Gaussian curve indicating the probable time of death would have been at 21:50 pm, and if he had entered the value of 56 kilos, it would have been at 22:20 pm; for 54 kilos it would have been at 23:20 pm."

In other words, a 3kg difference in body weight in this instance results in a change in the midpoint of the Hennsge nomogram curve from 9.50pm to 11.50pm - a full two-hour difference. Lalli's failure to accurately record Meredith's normal body weight is a significant error on his part.

 

[RoseMontague]

It's not even logical to say that.





From the Massei report, 5 separate experts, varying conclusions, as is expected when trying to pinpoint a definite time of death based on analysis of stomach contents. It is simply not reliable and does not tell us exactly when Meredith was so brutally and viciously murdered.

Lalli - death 2nd or 3rd hour after eating
Bacci - meal eaten 3 or 4 hours before death due to advanced stage of digestion, TOD between 21:00/21:30 and 23:00 to 24:00
Norelli - concluded this method could not indicate TOD which would be late, very late into Nov 1 or early hours of Nov 2
Introna - 21:30 and 22:30 TOD - emptying occurs 3 to 4 hours after eating, meal was between 18:30 and 20:30
Ronchi - farinaceous meal needs 6 to 7 hours for emptying to occur, TOD can be midnight or later

However, nevermind what any of these guys said. Somebody found an article....therefore it must be definitive.

Introna does not appear to be using the start of the meal as a defined time despite the testimony of 6PM or even earlier. This is similar to the reasoning in Rudy's motivation I quoted from earlier.

Ronchi also stated 3-4 hours as pointed out in Raffaele's appeal (Google translation):

The minutes of hearing on 19.9.2009, it is noted that Prof. Umani Ronchi indicated as long as is necessary for gastric emptying, 3:00 to 4:00 hours rather than four to five hours (p. 3 ud. 09/19/2009: "so they can be three, four hours may be four, five, but in short, yes, three, four hours
limit, of course), the same as stated on page 38, where he stated that
After three to four hours after eating the stomach must be empty ("normally
after three, four hours dall.assunzione meal of the stomach should be
vacuum, right? Expert: E. empty? Should ").

 

[katy_did]

There was only an apparent difference between your estimated time Meredith ate her pizza and Raffaele's attorneys' estimated time. That was due to a translation error in the text posted by Katy_did (#4335). The proper translation should read "...from the last known meal consumed..." ("...a distanza di 2-3/3-4 ore dall’inizio dell’assunzione dell’ultimo pasto noto (ore 18:30-19:00 dell’1.11.2007) e quindi intorno alle ore 21:30-22:00.")

Thanks for that, Fine - can you clarify what the error is there? I had translated "dall'inizio" as from the start, from the beginning; hence "dall'inizio dell'assunzione dell'ultimo pasto noto", "from the start of the consumption of the last known meal".

Are you saying that it should rather be interpreted as "the start of the meal having been consumed" - in the sense of after it had been so - rather than "the start of the consumption of the meal"?

 

[Dan O.]

It's not even logical to say that.

How can you begin to talk about logic when you show a total disregard for the facts? Lalli's autopsy report says the stomach was full, it had not even begun to empty, the constituents were still recognizable. Your devoted quest to find evidence that supports the prosecution forces you to ignore the facts and post totally irrelevant times for when the stomach has finished emptying it's contents into the small intestines. Remember that Lalli's report said there was nothing in the small intestine except for a small amount in the last turn.


The prosecution had to cast doubt on their own autopsy report. They brought in multiple experts that all gave different answers. When multiple expert witnesses give conflicting testimony, how do you sort out which ones are telling the truth?

 

[katy_did]

Norelli = what exact method is Norelli talking about.

Here's what Norelli actually says (or what Massei reports him as saying):

With regard to the gastric contents, he stressed that this finding could not be used conveniently to establish the time of death, due to the variability of digestion times, both from the physiological point of view and because of situations which may cause variability of these [digestion] times; above all, because of the impossibility of ascertaining when a meal was actually consumed ‚because it is clear that if I know for certain when the meal was consumed, then the situation can have significance with reference to the time of death, but if I don’t know with certainty that the meal was consumed at a given time or what [kind of] meal was consumed at that time, it is obvious that I can say very little on the basis of the digestive datum‛.

So his statement that it's unreliable seems to be based mostly on him not knowing exactly when a meal is consumed - but in this case, since they do know exactly when Meredith ate the meal (more or less) and what it consisted of, then presumably it should be more accurate...

 

[katy_did]

Incidentally, the very end of the above quote also highlights another egregious error made by Lalli during the autopsy - the failure to weigh Meredith's body. It would have been very easy to weigh her body post-mortem, and to add to that weight the estimated amount of blood lost (probably between 1 and 2 litres = approx 1-2kg) to give her living body weight. Inexplicably, he failed to do this, and merely made an "estimate" of her normal weight. This, in turn, had an impact upon his estimates of ToD based upon rectal body temperature readings. The large effect of even a small revision in body weight upon Henssge's nomogram (the formula used for estimating ToD from body temperature) is explained by Introna - quoted in the Massei report - as follows (my emphasis):

"He (Introna) also observed that "two kilos more or two kilos less usually escape attention altogether", but they have a significant effect in the use of Henssge's nomogram. He added that Meredith Kercher was not a weak, thin girl, and if Dr. Lalli had guessed her weight as 57 kilos rather than 55 kilos, the centre of the Gaussian curve indicating the probable time of death would have been at 21:50 pm, and if he had entered the value of 56 kilos, it would have been at 22:20 pm; for 54 kilos it would have been at 23:20 pm."

I think Lalli's initial estimate of Meredith's weight was only about 50kg (measured "by eye") which always seemed extremely light to me for someone of Meredith's height and build; actually it's bordering on underweight, giving a BMI of 18.6, whilst underweight is <18.5 (I'm the same height and similar build and about 56kg).

 

[Chris C]

As a follow-up to my previous post here's what Introna is quoted as saying in the Massei report (my emphasis):

"He (Introna) recalled the reports by Dr. Lalli and the other experts stating that under macroscopic examination, the stomach contents revealed a piece of apple and floury fragments which might have been from the crumble or from the pizza. He also recalled that the emptying of the stomach under standard conditions starts around three and a half hours after the start of a meal, say between three and four hours after, and that the term "emptying" indicates the stomach emptying its contents (into the duodenum). He asserted that "knowing that Meredith's meal started at 18:30 pm, knowing that there were about 500 cc of stomach contents, and knowing from the autopsy that there was no pathology of the stomach...which could slow down digestion, and above all", as reported by Dr. Lalli, knowing that the duodenum was still empty "because the stomach had not even begun to empty itself" (page 19 of the transcripts), the time of death must lie between 21:30 pm (three hours after 18:30) and 22:30 pm (four hours after 18:30), and that this timing agreed with the less rigid data provided by the analysis of the hypostasis, of the rigor mortis and of the body temperature, considering the uncertainty of the body weight which was guessed without weighing the body."

I actually think that Introna is overestimating the T(lag) time - and I believe that this is a significant lapse by the defence. His T(lag) time of "between three and four hours" is about an hour longer than any credible evidence I've found (academic research etc). I think in the appeal the defence can - and should - introduce a wealth of evidence (both from published medical research and from expert witnesses) which places T(lag) very much in the 90-180 minute range. Even so, Introna's professional estimate of Meredith's ToD range still makes a mockery of the prosecution's (and court's) proposition of an 11.30pm-11.50pm ToD.

Incidentally, the very end of the above quote also highlights another egregious error made by Lalli during the autopsy - the failure to weigh Meredith's body. It would have been very easy to weigh her body post-mortem, and to add to that weight the estimated amount of blood lost (probably between 1 and 2 litres = approx 1-2kg) to give her living body weight. Inexplicably, he failed to do this, and merely made an "estimate" of her normal weight. This, in turn, had an impact upon his estimates of ToD based upon rectal body temperature readings. The large effect of even a small revision in body weight upon Henssge's nomogram (the formula used for estimating ToD from body temperature) is explained by Introna - quoted in the Massei report - as follows (my emphasis):

"He (Introna) also observed that "two kilos more or two kilos less usually escape attention altogether", but they have a significant effect in the use of Henssge's nomogram. He added that Meredith Kercher was not a weak, thin girl, and if Dr. Lalli had guessed her weight as 57 kilos rather than 55 kilos, the centre of the Gaussian curve indicating the probable time of death would have been at 21:50 pm, and if he had entered the value of 56 kilos, it would have been at 22:20 pm; for 54 kilos it would have been at 23:20 pm."

In other words, a 3kg difference in body weight in this instance results in a change in the midpoint of the Hennsge nomogram curve from 9.50pm to 11.50pm - a full two-hour difference. Lalli's failure to accurately record Meredith's normal body weight is a significant error on his part.

Actually blood loss before death shouldn't be added into body weight, because it was no longer part of the body mass when death occurred. You would actually want the weight of the body after death.

 

[LondonJohn]

In other words, a 3kg difference in body weight in this instance results in a change in the midpoint of the Hennsge nomogram curve from 9.50pm to 11.50pm - a full two-hour difference. Lalli's failure to accurately record Meredith's normal body weight is a significant error on his part.

A mistake from me here - I erroneously put "11.50pm" instead of the correct "11.20pm". It's still a 1.5-hour difference for a 3kg difference in body weight though, and still of course means that an accurate measure of body weight would have been very helpful in trying to estimate ToD using the Hennsge nomogram.

 

[LondonJohn]

________________

LondonJohn,

Thank you for your thoughtful and well-researched response. I couldn't ask for a more explicit---and relevant--- quote from Robyn Butterworth's court testimony. And since Robyn was speaking English, no translation problems here.

There was only an apparent difference between your estimated time Meredith ate her pizza and Raffaele's attorneys' estimated time. That was due to a translation error in the text posted by Katy_did (#4335). The proper translation should read "...from the last known meal consumed..." ("...a distanza di 2-3/3-4 ore dall’inizio dell’assunzione dell’ultimo pasto noto (ore 18:30-19:00 dell’1.11.2007) e quindi intorno alle ore 21:30-22:00.")

But as you can see, Raffaele's attorneys ---in opposition to your position--- still leave open the time of death as between 8:30 pm-9:00 pm and 10:30 pm-11:00 pm., using what the attorneys call "criteria of maximum reliability." And if the "time of death" is, instead, the "time of onset of terror," the attorneys' argument hardly precludes the lovebirds' participation in the murder.

A question. How does the one-hour-later consumption of the apple cake (with ice cream) alter the formula for calculating time of death? Doesn't it depend on the ratio of mass for the pizza meal/ mass for the cake meal? Intuitively, this makes sense. But was the autopsy able to measure this ratio? Is there any research on digestion time for back-to-back meals?

///

1) Yes, I disagree with Sollecito's own defence witness on T(lag) times. And so does all the academic literature and expert opinion that is available online. As I've said before, I think the defence made an error in not examining this area far more strongly in the first trial, and I think they should (and will) present much stronger evidence in the appeal linking Meredith's stomach/duodenum contents with a ToD well before 10.00pm.

2) No, the dessert of apple crumble* - consumed around an hour after the pizza - would not have had any impact upon the action of the stomach on the pizza. The stomach is not a homogeneous single large "bag" - in fact it has separate areas which allow for the processing of food eaten at different times. The pizza meal would have been processed by the stomach separately from the apple crumble dessert, and the T(lag) calculations can be applied to the pizza completely autonomously.

3) Please don't use the term "lovebirds". It's pejorative and unnecessary.

* it's not "apple cake", even though that's how the double translation has rendered it - it's an English sweet pudding consisting of sliced apples, sugar and spices in a deep dish, topped with a "crumble" made of flour, sugar and butter rubbed together, then cooked in the oven until the apples stew down and the crumble top goes crisp.

///

 

[LondonJohn]

Actually blood loss before death shouldn't be added into body weight, because it was no longer part of the body mass when death occurred. You would actually want the weight of the body after death.

It's not quite as simple as that. The Henssge nomogram uses a combination of mass and body surface area (which is derived from the mass variable via the known relationship factor between body mass and body surface area). The surface area of the body would not have been affected by the blood loss, so pre-injury body weight would be needed for the surface area calculations.

I suspect that there might be an adjustment factor for the Henssge nomogram to take account of blood loss, but the adjustment factor is likely to be small.

In the case of Meredith Kercher, in any case, it's likely that she only lost around 1 litre of blood out of her body before death (= approx 1kg in mass). This is because she asphyxiated rather than dying from blood loss per se. Meredith's body likely contained around 4.5 litres of blood (based on her gender and size), so a 1 litre loss equates to over one fifth of her total blood volume. Bear in mind that blood loss would have ceased quickly after Meredith's heart stopped pumping (at that point, the blood begins to pool in the lowest lying parts of the body).

As others have pointed out above, photos of Meredith, coupled with her known height, suggest that her actual body weight was nearer to 56kg than the initial 50kg estimate by Lalli. The fact remains that Lalli failed to conduct one of the most basic measurements taken in any autopsy (whether a forensic autopsy or a regular autopsy) - weighing the body. Why not???

 

[piktor]

As others have pointed out above, photos of Meredith, coupled with her known height, suggest that her actual body weight was nearer to 56kg than the initial 50kg estimate by Lalli. The fact remains that Lalli failed to conduct one of the most basic measurements taken in any autopsy (whether a forensic autopsy or a regular autopsy) - weighing the body. Why not???

Because Lalli needed to move the body and it would have interfered with evidence gathering. There would be no precise number for blood loss, anyway.

Your "56" kg. is a guess. The blood loss number is a guess. The time of ingestion is a guess.

A long trail of guesswork, based on... guessing.

The judges are not trained hematologists or gastroenterologists. They will use their common sense and the available evidence and testimony to reach a conclusion.

 

[LiamG.]

I think it is the court that ignores the testimony of these two witnesses. Both showed they can't get dates and times correct and this was demonstrated to a degree through examination and testimony that any reasonable court should not ignore. The witnesses that absolutely had documented times (broken car/tow truck) heard and saw nothing. This was ignored by the court as well, in favor of demonstrably unreliable witnesses. The pile of rubbish is the court's fantasy, in my opinion.

They both testified, that they heard the scream the night before they were told, that "a dead girl was found". Do you think, that hearing a harrowing scream a half hour before midnight, then hearing about a murder, that had taken place in your neighbourhod at a time, that (obviously) corresponds to your hearing of the scream, the next day, doesn`t leave a significant impact on you? Do you want to tell me, that two independent people both heard a scream, and both people didn`t give the time, when that scream occured, much credit, so that they couldn`t be 100% sure, that it was on the night of 1 November at the said time, although this scream (obviously) was related to such a serious matter and the time gap, between both witnesses "thought" they heard the scream and the news of the dead girl was only less than 20 hours?
And if this wasn`t unbelievable enough, there are even two more witnesses, whose testimonies are consistent with one of the said witnesses.

Please don't try to personalise this. It's not my personal knowledge of the stomach evidence, it's hard scientific fact. It's available for anyone to examine. The scientific fact is that Meredith's stomach contents are only just compatible with a time of death shortly after 9pm, and any substantially later time of death defies what we know of reality.

If it`s such a hard scientific fact, that MK lost her life shortly after 21:00, why the hell didn`t the court accept it?
Were the defense experts incompetent?
Was the pathologist incompetent?
Was the court out to get AK?
Is Massei just plain-stupid?

By the way, as I understand it, the estimation of the time of death is of statistical nature. This implies, that for the estimation of the distribution-function of the random-variable ToD, you need input parameters, which are linked to ToD through a formula, i.e.: ToD(body temperature; time of meal, which has begun to digest; percentage of digestion; ...) = ..., and which are highly defective ( body temperature for example)
). So, in conclusion, you have an estimated (this is not the real distribution of the random-variable ToD, as for the two parameters, which define the normal-distribution (variance, mean-value) you would need an infinetly big control sample of input parameters, which aren`t allowed to be defective) defective distribution-function, that only gives you the probability of an event (ToD), and not, as you ridiculously claim, a ceratinity of the happening of the event shortly after 21:00.

I think Massei got it right, when he took into account, that these imprecise statistical estimations from various experts of ToD didn`t all significantly differ from the witness testimony of ToD and thus concluded, that indeed ToD was at about 22:30-23:30.

 

[Danceme]

I think you have your hierarchy of relative evidentiary value backwards.

Hard numbers published in a peer-reviewed journal should be taken as far more significant than non-peer-reviewed "expert" opinions proffered in court by people with real or potential vested interests in massaging the facts. If the two conflict, and I have no way of resolving the conflict, I'm going to believe the hard numbers in the peer-reviewed journal every time.

Dismissing such data as "somebody found an article" indicates profound misunderstandings about how science works. It's the job of the "expert" to make sure their statements conform with the known and published facts, not the other way around.

Ok, there's been so much faith placed in the article you are referring to would you mind posting the link or providing full quotations, thanks.

As for people with "real or vested interests in massaging the facts" that's actually how I view paid defense experts.

________________
A question. How does the one-hour-later consumption of the apple cake (with ice cream) alter the formula for calculating time of death? Doesn't it depend on the ratio of mass for the pizza meal/ mass for the cake meal? Intuitively, this makes sense. But was the autopsy able to measure this ratio? Is there any research on digestion time for back-to-back meals?

///

That's a good question. Did the consumption of more food a short while later alter the time frame of the digestion of the pizza? Does digestion slow down in this case to allow the other meal to 'catch up' so to speak.

*ahem*

Lalli: Prosecution expert
Bacci: Prosecution expert
Norelli: Victim's family's expert
Umani Ronchi (his actual surname, by the way): Prosecution expert

As the phrase goes: "just sayin'"

As for Introna, I don't know where you've got your information from. He was called by Sollecito's defence team, but mainly - it appears - to testify about the nature of the knife wounds. However, he did also give his expert opinion on the time of death, and guess what? He put it at 9.30pm:

Not quite correct LJ, he put the time of death between 9:30 and 10:30 when he testified to stomach content and 10:50 when he testified to body temperature, and all my information was from the Massei Report.

WRT body temperature:
"Professor Introna ended his discussion on this subject by stating that since the actual weight was not known, the application of Henssge's nomogram pointed at around 22:50 pm as the most probable time of death."
WRT stomach content:
"He asserted that "knowing that Meredith's meal started at 18:30 pm, knowing that there were about 500 cc of stomach contents, and knowing from the autopsy that there was no pathology of the stomach...which could slow down digestion, and above all", as reported by Dr. Lalli, knowing that the duodenum was still empty "because the stomach had not even begun to empty itself" (page 19 of the transcripts), the time of death must lie between 21:30 pm (three hours after 18:30) and 22:30 pm (four hours after 18:30)"

When multiple expert witnesses give conflicting testimony, how do you sort out which ones are telling the truth?

Maybe you start by figuring out which ones were paid the big bucks to say what they did and which ones weren't.

 

[LondonJohn]

Because Lalli needed to move the body and it would have interfered with evidence gathering. There would be no precise number for blood loss, anyway.

Your "56" kg. is a guess. The blood loss number is a guess. The time of ingestion is a guess.

A long trail of guesswork, based on... guessing.

The judges are not trained hematologists or gastroenterologists. They will use their common sense and the available evidence and testimony to reach a conclusion.

In my view, the entire contents of your post are nonsensical.

1) Lalli didn't even weigh the body when it was lying on his mortuary table. And a trained pathologist such as he would have had little trouble estimating Meredith's lost blood volume. And in any case, since it's unlikely that Meredith lost more than 1 litre of blood (= c. 1kg), he could have used Meredith's post-mortem weight for the temperature ToD calculations. Instead - incredibly, and completely inexplicably - he "eyeballed" her weight just from looking at her. Unbelievable.

2) OF COURSE my 56kg is a guess. That's exactly the point! Nobody should be having to guess. lalli should have weighed Meredith's body at the start of the autopsy. Full. Stop.

3) The time of ingestion is not a guess. Robyn Butterworth gave fairly explicit testimony, both in her initial police statements in November 2007 and in the courtroom in February 2009. We can know to within 30 minutes when Meredith consumed the pizza meal.

4) Who has suggested that the judges are trained in medical matters, or that they should be? The role of the judges is to listen to the evidence of medical experts, and to use that expert testimony in the course of weighing their judgement. In the case of Meredith's stomach/intestine contents and the time of death, my assertion is that the judges did not properly weigh the medical evidence (coupled with a suggestion that the defence may not have been assertive enough in this area in the first trial), and in not doing so they erroneously bought into the prosecution's 11.30-11.50 ToD.

You seem to be seizing upon this whole "uncertainty" and "guesswork" argument to try to completely negate the way that the autopsy clues point strongly to a time of death long before 10pm. I wonder why?

 

[LondonJohn]

They both testified, that they heard the scream the night before they were told, that "a dead girl was found". Do you think, that hearing a harrowing scream a half hour before midnight, then hearing about a murder, that had taken place in your neighbourhod at a time, that (obviously) corresponds to your hearing of the scream, the next day, doesn`t leave a significant impact on you? Do you want to tell me, that two independent people both heard a scream, and both people didn`t give the time, when that scream occured, much credit, so that they couldn`t be 100% sure, that it was on the night of 1 November at the said time, although this scream (obviously) was related to such a serious matter and the time gap, between both witnesses "thought" they heard the scream and the news of the dead girl was only less than 20 hours?
And if this wasn`t unbelievable enough, there are even two more witnesses, whose testimonies are consistent with one of the said witnesses.



If it`s such a hard scientific fact, that MK lost her life shortly after 21:00, why the hell didn`t the court accept it?
Were the defense experts incompetent?
Was the pathologist incompetent?
Was the court out to get AK?
Is Massei just plain-stupid?

By the way, as I understand it, the estimation of the time of death is of statistical nature. This implies, that for the estimation of the distribution-function of the random-variable ToD, you need input parameters, which are linked to ToD through a formula, i.e.: ToD(body temperature; time of meal, which has begun to digest; percentage of digestion; ...) = ..., and which are highly defective ( body temperature for example)
). So, in conclusion, you have an estimated (this is not the real distribution of the random-variable ToD, as for the two parameters, which define the normal-distribution (variance, mean-value) you would need an infinetly big control sample of input parameters, which aren`t allowed to be defective) defective distribution-function, that only gives you the probability of an event (ToD), and not, as you ridiculously claim, a ceratinity of the happening of the event shortly after 21:00.

I think Massei got it right, when he took into account, that these imprecise statistical estimations from various experts of ToD didn`t all significantly differ from the witness testimony of ToD and thus concluded, that indeed ToD was at about 22:30-23:30.

I don't even know where to start with all this.

I will, however, make the following short observations, since I'm on my way out:

1) People often think that they hear things which they haven't actually heard. Particularly when they learn about a brutal murder in their vicinity the previous night.

2) The defence experts may have been lacking in certain areas (well, that's my opinion); the pathologist certainly was incompetent in certain areas of the autopsy; the court was seemingly in thrall to Mignini, who was out to get Knox and Sollecito; the more I read of Massei's reasoning the more I'm concerned that he meets your description.

3) You have conflated and confused methods of working out time of death. Estimating ToD from residual body temperature does indeed involve complex formulae, which include variables such as body weight (which the autopsy pathologist didn't bother to measure), ambient temperature (which, again, was only guessed at), and state of insulation of the body. Estimating ToD based on stomach/intestinal contents, on the other hand, only relies on known medical information on stomach emptying times and times of passage through the intestines. And the state of Meredith's stomach/duodenum contents, coupled with the known time of her last food intake, indicates a ToD between around 8.00pm and 9.30pm. Since it's known with certainty that Meredith was still alive just before 9.00pm, the ToD can be narrowed down to 9.00-9.30pm. This is not "ridiculous", as you claim. What IS ridiculous is to correlate Meredith's stomach/duodenum contents with the prosecution's ToD of 11.30-11.50pm. This is more than ridiculous in fact, it's medically practically impossible.