Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

Stardust links

Sorry for overlooking your post, indeed Frank mentions Stardust repeatedly as early as November 2007 (!). No wonder Massei feels the need to explain this one.

If you have links or quotes handy, would you post them? Thanks.

 

[Alt+F4]

Reporters embellish or simplify at times. Actually, reporters embellish or simplify all the time. It is likely Steve Moore told Linda Byron he had looked at the translated reports, and Linda jumped to the conclusion he had had them translated himself. It's not that big an issue, since, as you point out, the records are publicly available and anyone can check them against what Steve said, if they feel the need to verify.

I am giving him the benefit of the doubt because it was the reporter, not himself personally, that said he had the documents translated.

"Serious trouble?" You sound like Peter Quennell. Trust me, none of these empty threats elicit anything but amusement from their targets.

I don't agree with Quennell in his assertation that Moore is faking being a retired FBI agent. But let me ask you Mary, do you work for the government? I do (municipal) and yes, you can get in serious trouble if you use government resources for personal pursuits. It's not a threat, it's a fact.

 

[Mary_H]

I am giving him the benefit of the doubt because it was the reporter, not himself personally, that said he had the documents translated.

I appreciate that, Alt+F4.

I don't agree with Quennell in his assertation that Moore is faking being a retired FBI agent. But let me ask you Mary, do you work for the government? I do (municipal) and yes, you can get in serious trouble if you use government resources for personal pursuits. It's not a threat, it's a fact.

I appreciate that, too. You are right about it being ill-advised.

For Peter Q., though, based on how he has used that type of language in the past, I think it is intended to look like a threat. It's an attempt to intimidate, but comes across as kind of a desperate, last-resort attempt to regain the standing he senses he has lost in the face of other people's credibility.

I think it's a little out of touch with reality to believe you can threaten someone with connections to the FBI and come out ahead.

 

[Chris C]

Didn't Sollecito usually play his downloaded torrents on the VLC Media Player rather than iTunes? Also, does Mac OS (Sollecito's OS) control media programs in a different way than Windows?

By-the-by, I also find it extremely strange that the "crack" Postal Police computer team chose to open the Stardust file - of all the files they could have chosen (not that they should have been opening any files in the first place). It's doubly strange because presumably Sollecito would have accessed many more movie files in the days between the murder and his arrest, so it's unlikely that Stardust was even sitting as the last played file on his laptop.

i dont know exactly how VLC Media Player works. Does it close it down afterwards or does it have to be manually closed down. Was the Opening and Closing of the file the length of the Animated Cartoon? Media Player dont close down upon completion.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I think it's a little out of touch with reality to believe you can threaten someone with connections to the FBI and come out ahead.

It's only a threat if Steve is not who he says he is. If Steve is who he says he is, it's merely wishful thinking. And Steve is exactly who and what he says he is.

When an honest cop gets wind of a railroad job, the railroaders can end up with a pit bull clamped onto their ass.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I am giving him the benefit of the doubt because it was the reporter, not himself personally, that said he had the documents translated.

She might have been thinking of the Motivation when she said that.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

i dont know exactly how VLC Media Player works. Does it close it down afterwards or does it have to be manually closed down.

My version automatically closes the window shortly after the video is done. I do not know if earlier versions behave the same way but it seems a reasonable assumption that they do, and a quick look at the preferences menu shows no means to modify this behaviour.

Was the Opening and Closing of the file the length of the Animated Cartoon

I don't know. My source of information is Raffaele's appeal and I already posted all the relevant text I know of.

 

[Malkmus]

According to the report, "he says he obtained the Italian trial transcripts, police and autopsy reports and had them translated into English." The shot in story then shows the reporter flipping though maybe a hundred pages when we know all the paperwork is probably close to 50,000 pages.

Alt, when I watched that part of the video segment I realized that
what the reporter was holding in her hands was not at all the translated documents. The main reason being that the interview with Moore was done via satellite, meaning the part where the reporter in some other part of the country "holds the documents" was staged simply for visual emphasis (she could have been holding a stack of receipts for all we know). I'm a television producer, so I'm used to pulling such tricks myself at work on a regular basis.

 

[RoseMontague]

I accept Steve Moore as an expert, however that does not mean I accept everything he has to say. There were many experts at the trial that obviously don't agree on everything either. My main criticism of his articles are his tendency to both overstate and oversimplify his points. I thought his article on the Interrogation was his best. I was very critical of his first few articles but I don't see any value in these personal attacks against him even if you don't happen to agree with him. Is it just too difficult for some people to imagine a man of his background believing in innocence?

 

[Antony]

(msg #4969)

Is it just too difficult for some people to imagine a man of his background believing in innocence?

It's difficult enough for me to believe it, and I've never changed my opinion from the moment I heard that Amanda and Raffaele were at the cottage when the murder was discovered by police. Cops rarely side with the little people in cases like these.

(msg #4965)

When an honest cop gets wind of a railroad job, the railroaders can end up with a pit bull clamped onto their ass.

I'm not holding my breath. This is what happens in TV dramas in those rare episodes when improper police conduct is even acknowledged. If Steve Moore were talking about a US case, I doubt somehow that he'd be so ready to go public; and if he did, we'd soon see a closing of ranks against him.

None of this reflects on the merits of the Knox/Sollecito appeals, but let's see him take up the case of Linda Carty, facing imminent execution in Texas on the word of 3 plea-bargaining thugs.

 

[Justinian2]

The room temperature for calculating TOD (13 C if I recall correctly) was measured around midnight, when the room had probably cooled down a bit. If the average room temperature was 1 or 2 degrees warmer, the center of the TOD estimate would have moved up by at least 2 or 3 hours.

If you are curious, I would suggest experimenting with this TOD applet.

Great applet!

It is incomprehensible that anybody that earns a living in forensic investigations would estimate the body weight. Evidently they knew what Tod was needed to create a case and fudged the data to get the results they wanted.

"Black Magic", the discredited forensic 'expert' at the Oklahoma forensic lab, did stuff like this deliberately to help the police get convictions.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Stardust alibi

If you have links or quotes handy, would you post them? Thanks.

Here's an early post from Frank Sfarzo

perugia-shock.blogspot.com/2007/11/alibi-di-raffaele-provatoalibi-di.html

It seems Stardust was pointed out by Raffaele's lawyers from the very beginning.

 

[Katody Matrass]

I just stumbled upon an interesting interview with Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld:
slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/08/17/reasonable-doubt-innocence-project-co-founder-peter-neufeld-on-being-wrong.aspx

The familiarities in the Deskovic case he uses as an example are striking:

We took a deposition last week of a guy who was the lead detective in the prosecution of a young man named Jeffrey Deskovic. Jeff Deskovic was a 16-year-old white kid in Peekskill, N.Y., with no criminal record, when a 15-year-old girl was raped and murdered on her way home from school. This was in 1990. Jeffrey went to the police and said, "I knew her, I liked her, is there's anything I can do to help you solve this crime?" Well, the detective he spoke to had been told by somebody in the police academy that people who commit crimes often come forward offering to help. So this guy locked his sights on Jeffrey and after multiple encounters, the kid confesses. They then did DNA testing on the semen recovered from the girl, and Jeffrey was excluded. But [the prosecutors] never disclosed that; they simply dropped the rape charge and argued at trial that she must have had consensual sex with somebody else and Jeffrey was the murderer. Twenty-five years later, we took that DNA profile and ran it through the convinced felons database, and the profile of the semen matched a serial rape-murderer who was serving life in prison for attacking and killing another teenage girl in another town in Westchester a year and a half after the victim in Jeff's case was killed.

Given that factual backdrop, you'd think that people would say, "You're right, we made a terrible, terrible error, we investigated the case incorrectly, and it led to this tragic result." But no. Even with the DNA evidence, even though the serial murder-rapist gave a full, detailed confession and provided all kinds of details that no one knew, but the real perpetrator could know, this detective just last week said, "I'm sorry, that's ridiculous, Jeffrey Deskovic is guilty. The only false confession in this whole matter is the false confession given by the serial rape-murderer."

That detective guy leaves me marveling at the mysteries of human mind.

 

[Supernaut]

What is this supposed to prove? Is it contamination or another person's DNA (Stefanoni's?). Even Raffaele's appeal can't come up with a definitive answer.

Contamination, someone else's DNA - entirely moot.

Watch the video those stills were taken from (again?). Wearing the contaminated gloves she had manifestly been wearing for some time, Stefanoni picks the clasp up and (unbelievably) rubs it, passes it to a colleage and manages to drop it back on the floor before finally bagging it.

You're presumably familiar by now with procedures for the collection and handling of potential DNA evidence, as mandated by various authorities (I believe both Charlie Wilkes and Bruce Fisher have provided links and quotes from appropriate sources on this forum) - are you saying you honestly can't see why the test results Stefanoni then obtained should have been dismissed out-of-hand as "evidence"?

 

[Supernaut]

I just stumbled upon an interesting interview with Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld:
slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/08/17/reasonable-doubt-innocence-project-co-founder-peter-neufeld-on-being-wrong.aspx

The familiarities in the Deskovic case he uses as an example are striking:

We took a deposition last week of a guy who was the lead detective in the prosecution of a young man named Jeffrey Deskovic. Jeff Deskovic was a 16-year-old white kid in Peekskill, N.Y., with no criminal record, when a 15-year-old girl was raped and murdered on her way home from school. This was in 1990. Jeffrey went to the police and said, "I knew her, I liked her, is there's anything I can do to help you solve this crime?" Well, the detective he spoke to had been told by somebody in the police academy that people who commit crimes often come forward offering to help. So this guy locked his sights on Jeffrey and after multiple encounters, the kid confesses. They then did DNA testing on the semen recovered from the girl, and Jeffrey was excluded. But [the prosecutors] never disclosed that; they simply dropped the rape charge and argued at trial that she must have had consensual sex with somebody else and Jeffrey was the murderer. Twenty-five years later, we took that DNA profile and ran it through the convinced felons database, and the profile of the semen matched a serial rape-murderer who was serving life in prison for attacking and killing another teenage girl in another town in Westchester a year and a half after the victim in Jeff's case was killed.

Given that factual backdrop, you'd think that people would say, "You're right, we made a terrible, terrible error, we investigated the case incorrectly, and it led to this tragic result." But no. Even with the DNA evidence, even though the serial murder-rapist gave a full, detailed confession and provided all kinds of details that no one knew, but the real perpetrator could know, this detective just last week said, "I'm sorry, that's ridiculous, Jeffrey Deskovic is guilty. The only false confession in this whole matter is the false confession given by the serial rape-murderer."

That detective guy leaves me marveling at the mysteries of human mind.

you couldn't make this stuff up! (which applies equally to the antics of Mignini, Giobbi, Commodi, Stefanoni et al).

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Massie's magical thinking

Massei’s reasoning on the clasp looks worse and worse each time I read it. He wrote, “Moreover, they [note: Stefanoni’s explanations and answers] were also considered acceptable by the defendants’ defence teams themselves for the greater part of the results which the Forensics biologist had obtained. This refers in particular to all the traces, but not just those, of Rudy Guede, the results of which were fully accepted and in relation to which the defence teams had insisted on the theory of Rudy Guede’s responsibility and, it must be added, Dr. Stefanoni (in examining specimen 165B) did not change either the methodology or the interpretive criteria.”

The first problem with his argument is that it ignores that the clasp was a mixture, unlike many of the other samples, and mixtures are more subjective in interpretation. The second problem is that Dr. Tagliabracci is not Rudy Guede’s expert witness and may never have seen the electropherograms related to his trial. I cannot speak for Dr. Tagliabracci, but I accept the DNA forensics evidence provisionally because I have never seen it myself; if it were as flawed as the clasp profile, then the DNA evidence against him would be equally weak.

More generally, the pro-guilt advocates and Barbie Nadeau have an argument that runs something like the one offered by Massei: You accept the (DNA, shoeprint, footprint) evidence against Guede, yet the same forensics team that collected evidence against him collected evidence against Knox and Sollecito. Therefore, you are being inconsistent in rejecting the latter evidence. The errors in this forensic fallacy ought to be made explicit: First, it ignores when the evidence was collected. The forensic data made Guede a suspect, but Sollecito and Knox were already suspects by the time the forensic data were interpreted. Thus cognitive bias could only come into play for Knox and Sollecito, but not for Guede. Second, the pro-guilt argument pretends that all forensic evidence is equal in quality, but we know that this is not the case with the bra clasp or the knife profile. Third, this argument could be extended to pieces of evidence that was initially contested, but no longer are. For example, the prosecution could have said to the defense that the defense accepts that Guede’s shoes made the prints in the hallway; therefore, it should accept that Sollecito’s shoe and Amanda’s shoe each made a print in Meredith’s room. Yet it is now clear that all of the prints belong to Guede; even Massei does not definitively attribute to Sollecito the shoe print ILE formerly did.

The fallacy becomes more obvious when one considers the converse. One could argue with equal validity that ILE’s forensics team was wrong about the shoe prints; therefore, they are automatically wrong about everything concerning Knox and Sollecito. If that argument does not make sense, then neither does Massei’s.

 

[Rhea]

I just stumbled upon an interesting interview with Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld:
slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/08/17/reasonable-doubt-innocence-project-co-founder-peter-neufeld-on-being-wrong.aspx

The familiarities in the Deskovic case he uses as an example are striking:

Quote:
We took a deposition last week of a guy who was the lead detective in the prosecution of a young man named Jeffrey Deskovic. Jeff Deskovic was a 16-year-old white kid in Peekskill, N.Y., with no criminal record, when a 15-year-old girl was raped and murdered on her way home from school. This was in 1990. Jeffrey went to the police and said, "I knew her, I liked her, is there's anything I can do to help you solve this crime?" Well, the detective he spoke to had been told by somebody in the police academy that people who commit crimes often come forward offering to help. So this guy locked his sights on Jeffrey and after multiple encounters, the kid confesses. They then did DNA testing on the semen recovered from the girl, and Jeffrey was excluded. But [the prosecutors] never disclosed that; they simply dropped the rape charge and argued at trial that she must have had consensual sex with somebody else and Jeffrey was the murderer. Twenty-five years later, we took that DNA profile and ran it through the convinced felons database, and the profile of the semen matched a serial rape-murderer who was serving life in prison for attacking and killing another teenage girl in another town in Westchester a year and a half after the victim in Jeff's case was killed.

Given that factual backdrop, you'd think that people would say, "You're right, we made a terrible, terrible error, we investigated the case incorrectly, and it led to this tragic result." But no. Even with the DNA evidence, even though the serial murder-rapist gave a full, detailed confession and provided all kinds of details that no one knew, but the real perpetrator could know, this detective just last week said, "I'm sorry, that's ridiculous, Jeffrey Deskovic is guilty. The only false confession in this whole matter is the false confession given by the serial rape-murderer."

That detective guy leaves me marveling at the mysteries of human mind.

Oh my god, that's massive. The poor serial rape murderer gave a false confession. Doesn't get any weirder then that …

The Marty Tankleff case is similar too, he got convicted for killing his parents because he appeared emotionless after the murder and was tricked / coerced into a false confession.

Now he's freed but the sheriff still thinks the man who appearently instigated their killing couldn't hurt a fly and Marty is the real killer of his parents.

 

[RoseMontague]

Sorry if I am still hung up on this phone calls from Amanda to Meredith's phones and Filomena thing. I just think the court is a little disingenuous regarding this matter. On page 387 PMF translation:

Reassured, therefore, also on the aspect which was most important to Amanda and Raffaele, Amanda called Romanelli, to whom she started to detail what she had noticed in the house (without, however, telling her a single word about the unanswered call made to Meredith, despite the question expressly put to her by Romanelli)

From reading this one would naturally assume that Filomena asked Amanda if she had called Meredith and Amanda denied it. That is not the case. The question asked was not the question implied by the court. PMF translation Massei report page 29:

Around midday, at ten past twelve, when they had not yet arrived at the car park of the Fair, and she was in the car with her friend Paola Grande, she received a phone call: it was Amanda letting her know that there was something strange.

She had arrived and had found the door open: she had had a shower and it had seemed to her that there was some blood; moreover she said that she was going [17] to Raffaele’s place (declarations of Romanelli page 31, hearing of February 7, 2009). To her (Filomena’s) question about where Meredith was, she had answered that she did not know.

Filomena Romanelli knew that Meredith was never without her Ericsson mobile phone, the one for calling England, since she used it to be constantly informed about the condition of her mother’s health, which was not good.

Notice how in the following quote (also PMT translation Massei report) the confirmation is implied that again the question asked was not if Amanda had called Meredith already, but simply that Amanda omitted telling Filomena about the call:

324 It is strange that Amanda did not say a word to Filomena about the phone call to their flatmate, when the call, not having been answered, would normally have caused anxiety and posed some questions as to why Meredith did not answer the phone at such an advanced hour of the day.

When Amanda testified on this in court her answer was not questioned or contradicted: (thoughtful translation trial audio AK testimony)

AK: Filomena was worried. She asked me if I had called Meredith, and I said I had already called but she wasn't answering. I told her what I had seen, and she said "OK, when you've finished, go to the house and check everything that happened and call me back."

In my opinion the court is being very deceptive in that statement on page 387. I had previously documented the problems that Filomena and Amanda had communicating with each other, so much so that both thoughtful and the court translator had a difficult time translating what either one of them were saying to each other in an intercepted phone call between the two of them. It would not surprise me that Amanda told Filomena that she had already tried to call Meredith and she did not understand what she was saying.

 

[RoseMontague]

Massei’s reasoning on the clasp looks worse and worse each time I read it. He wrote, “Moreover, they [note: Stefanoni’s explanations and answers] were also considered acceptable by the defendants’ defence teams themselves for the greater part of the results which the Forensics biologist had obtained. This refers in particular to all the traces, but not just those, of Rudy Guede, the results of which were fully accepted and in relation to which the defence teams had insisted on the theory of Rudy Guede’s responsibility and, it must be added, Dr. Stefanoni (in examining specimen 165B) did not change either the methodology or the interpretive criteria.”

The first problem with his argument is that it ignores that the clasp was a mixture, unlike many of the other samples, and mixtures are more subjective in interpretation. The second problem is that Dr. Tagliabracci is not Rudy Guede’s expert witness and may never have seen the electropherograms related to his trial. I cannot speak for Dr. Tagliabracci, but I accept the DNA forensics evidence provisionally because I have never seen it myself; if it were as flawed as the clasp profile, then the DNA evidence against him would be equally weak.

More generally, the pro-guilt advocates and Barbie Nadeau have an argument that runs something like the one offered by Massei: You accept the (DNA, shoeprint, footprint) evidence against Guede, yet the same forensics team that collected evidence against him collected evidence against Knox and Sollecito. Therefore, you are being inconsistent in rejecting the latter evidence. The errors in this forensic fallacy ought to be made explicit: First, it ignores when the evidence was collected. The forensic data made Guede a suspect, but Sollecito and Knox were already suspects by the time the forensic data were interpreted. Thus cognitive bias could only come into play for Knox and Sollecito, but not for Guede. Second, the pro-guilt argument pretends that all forensic evidence is equal in quality, but we know that this is not the case with the bra clasp or the knife profile. Third, this argument could be extended to pieces of evidence that was initially contested, but no longer are. For example, the prosecution could have said to the defense that the defense accepts that Guede’s shoes made the prints in the hallway; therefore, it should accept that Sollecito’s shoe and Amanda’s shoe each made a print in Meredith’s room. Yet it is now clear that all of the prints belong to Guede; even Massei does not definitively attribute to Sollecito the shoe print ILE formerly did.

The fallacy becomes more obvious when one considers the converse. One could argue with equal validity that ILE’s forensics team was wrong about the shoe prints; therefore, they are automatically wrong about everything concerning Knox and Sollecito. If that argument does not make sense, then neither does Massei’s.

An excellent point Chris. I could also argue that Stefanoni had a large bag.

 

[katy_did]

Sorry if I am still hung up on this phone calls from Amanda to Meredith's phones and Filomena thing. I just think the court is a little disingenuous regarding this matter. On page 387 PMF translation:

From reading this one would naturally assume that Filomena asked Amanda if she had called Meredith and Amanda denied it. That is not the case. The question asked was not the question implied by the court. PMF translation Massei report page 29:

Notice how in the following quote (also PMT translation Massei report) the confirmation is implied that again the question asked was not if Amanda had called Meredith already, but simply that Amanda omitted telling Filomena about the call:

When Amanda testified on this in court her answer was not questioned or contradicted: (thoughtful translation trial audio AK testimony)

In my opinion the court is being very deceptive in that statement on page 387. I had previously documented the problems that Filomena and Amanda had communicating with each other, so much so that both thoughtful and the court translator had a difficult time translating what either one of them were saying to each other in an intercepted phone call between the two of them. It would not surprise me that Amanda told Filomena that she had already tried to call Meredith and she did not understand what she was saying.

I completely agree, Rose. Sorry, I meant to reply to your earlier post about the phone calls but then wasn't on the forum for a few days and got behind with the posts.

Massei implies that Filomena directly asked Amanda whether she'd called Meredith (he says something about 'despite the direct question') but he never quotes Filomena saying she asked Amanda whether she called Meredith; from direct quotes from Filomena's testimony from newspaper reports, it sounds like she said, "But where's Meredith?" It wouldn't surprise me at all if, in response, Amanda said "I tried to call her but she wasn't answering", or "I tried to get a-hold of her but couldn't", or something along those lines, and Filomena simply didn't understand her. So Filomena remembered asking where Meredith was (but nothing about asking whether Amanda had phoned her) while Amanda remembers mentioning the phone call (which she quite likely did, but Filomena didn't understand her).

Given how difficult it was for the two of them to communicate (as you showed in your other post) I can't see how Massei can interpret this as damning evidence against Amanda. The same goes for any of the other very subjective interpretations of behaviour, especially when they involve possible language difficulties. That the sentencing report has to rely on such weak 'evidence' is quite telling. It's what almost makes me wonder if it was done deliberately, in order that the verdict could be overturned - why create an argument that's so very easy to attack?