Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[katy_did]

What were they doing between 1:45 and 5:45, playing Chutes and Ladders? "Murder in Italy" makes it clear it was more of the same abusive interrogation tactics.

Halides, I think you've forgotten about the chamomile tea and cookies (to accompany the Chutes and Ladders, probably).

 

[Fulcanelli]

Thoughtful is not the first person to photograph the wall. The wall would have been no challenge for Rudy Guede.

So demonstrate it.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

luminol is a presumptive test, not a conclusive one

Most of the things luminol react with you won't find in someone's private home. Most of the rest you would not find on the floor or on the soles of someone's feet. Bleach has been ruled outso what other candidate can it be and can you offer a plausible explanation of how it coated the soles of Raffaele and Amanda's bare feet...without them even knowing about it?

Fulcanelli,

I have rebutted some of Yummi's arguments about luminol previously. The burden of proof should fall on the prosecution to show that a substance is blood, not on the defense to prove it is something else.

 

[Chris C]

The "testing of evidence" takes place in court, in a trial. There was a trial, in court. The evidence was tested.

If you where up for trial on murder and rape(sexual assault). There is evidence at the scene of possible semen. Are they getting a fair trial for not testing the possible semen stain? However, Evidence is not tested in court, its judged. You can't judge the evidence if its withheld or not tested.

 

[Fulcanelli]

So after the window was broken from the inside, the glass was placed back up on the sill? That's not a very logical conclusion is it?

Take another look at the window and see how much of the sill is actually free from glass. Rudy had plenty of surface to work with. There is a good possibility that Rudy did cut his hand on the glass but I think it is more likely that his hand ran up on the blade of his knife when he was committing murder.

When the window was broken from the inside the glass fell onto the sill. The closed shutters prevented it from falling to the ground below. The space on the sill is on completely the opposite side to the broken window...he needed to get his arm right in that broken window, hence he'd have needed to clamber over the glass. The window is also very narrow...the whole sill would have been only slightly wider then Rudy.

Regarding the cuts on Rudy's hands which you assert took place during the crime, either via window or knife while attacking Meredith...again, where is his blood?

I don't think so.

 

[katy_did]

No it didn't. Herr questioning began informally in the waiting room at midnight and ended at 1:45 am. That's an hour and 45 minutes. Some all nighter!

Evidence? Her lawyer puts the start of the questioning after her phone call to Filomena at approximately 22:30, when she ended the call by saying "someone wants to talk to me". The interpreter was called and asked to come in between 23.00 and 23:30, somewhat strange if even the 'informal' questioning didn't start till midnight. No evidence I've seen suggests the interrogation was halted until she (the interpreter) arrived; indeed, given that it had informally started before she arrived, that seems unlikely. And the interpreter's own words indicate she arrived mid-interrogation, since she says that shortly after she arrived Amanda accused Patrick by saying "He did it, he's bad".

Do you have evidence for this arbitrary start time of midnight?

 

[Fulcanelli]

You should use this same logic when you talk about Meredith playing with her phone. She was not a child, there is no way she was playing with her phone as suggested by Massei.

You don't think adults play with their phones??? Only children play with phones??? Come on!

 

[katy_did]

So demonstrate it.

No need: not one of the judges has argued it would be impossible to climb up to the window, quite the opposite in fact (to paraphrase Micheli, it wouldn't take a Spiderman to climb up there; just someone who was fit and agile, as thieves who enter people's houses at night generally are, and as Rudy Guede certainly is).

 

[Fulcanelli]

None of the housemates attended the vigil. My understanding is they were advised to avoid the press.

And again, what evidence do you have that they didn't attend the vigil? I've been asking for evidence they didn't attend for months. One day, someone might give me some. However, I doubt it. It's just another of those baseless assertions.

Amanda testified to the effect that she would have had to clean the toilet with a brush in order to flush it completely. I can understand why she would not want to do that.

No she didn't! What you are referring to was her talking about HER OWN poo and why sometimes she didn't flush the toilet after herself when she went to the toilet. Her excuse was, that "sometimes" it's not enough to flush but you also had to use the brush which she sometimes forgot to do.

And nobody has ever suggested she should of attacked Rudy's poo with a brush. All she needed to do was flush. How hard is that?

She did that because she was 20 years old, living in a college town and used to young people coming and going without malice. I mentioned a long time ago on this board that I had a job that took me into high schools, and when I used the restrooms there, I saw a lot of blood. While it was not pleasant, there was nothing alarming about it because I "knew" what it was from. Amanda may have felt the same way.

Yeah, standard behaviour of 20 year old girls to strip naked and take a shower in a house where they've found the door open and blood over the bathroom.

 

[Chris C]

Pathetic. You flush the toilet.

Hey maybe it was pathetic, petty, and childish to not flush and clean the toilet. However, being pathetic, petty, and childish doesn't make you a murderer. It just makes you pathetic, petty, and childish.

 

[Fulcanelli]

The substance on the pillow can be dated. The substance is smeared in Rudy's shoe print made on the night of the murder. Photographic evidence confirms this. If the substance is semen and it points to Rudy Guede, the court's entire theory falls apart. This is a possible semen stain at the scene of a brutal murder and it wasn't tested. This is completely unacceptable. There is no defense for this negligence.

It dates only the print, not when the substance was deposited.

How does everything fall apart if it's semen and it's Rudy's?

If the defence really wanted it tested, then perhaps they should have brought it up long before the the very last week of a year long trial!

 

[Fulcanelli]

Originally Posted by Fulcanelli:
"You're forgetting the bit about Raffaele also dropping her alibi."




Raffaele "dropped Amanda's alibi" by agreeing with the police that he could not know where she was while he was sleeping. In other words, the two could have been separated for awhile, with Raffaele asleep in bed and Amanda at the crime scene. The police use this possible scenario to add to a suspicion of guilt against Amanda, and to "help" her statement along.

Then they arrest Raffaele. On what evidence?

No he didn't say that at all. See my previous post a few posts above.

 

[Chris C]

It dates only the print, not when the substance was deposited.

How does everything fall apart if it's semen and it's Rudy's?

If the defence really wanted it tested, then perhaps they should have brought it up long before the the very last week of a year long trial!

Thats not an excuse to not test it. They tested plenty of dna evidence that couldn't be dated.

 

[Fulcanelli]

The police asked her to do cartwheels???? Are sure certain of this?

No, this was a lie told to Steve Shay by Chris Mellas and repeated by her supporters in a lame and dishonest attempt to excuse her actions, Amanda's step father.

No policeman told her to do cartwheels. Amanda admitted she did cartwheels for her own reasons. on the stand during the trial. You can read her trial testimony on the stand here: AMANDA KNOX TRIAL TESTIMONY

It's a good read

 

[Fulcanelli]

I saw two pretty girls and a guy doing cartwheels on the lawn the other day. They were attractive and athletic young teenagers. So I looked and enjoyed watching the free show. I believe that Amanda thought the way to men's hearts was in doing cartwheels. She was a child. She was a child. What I can't understand is why people would read anything negative into this.

I don't get ANY of the Italian/English side. I have TOTAL IRRECONCILABLE Culture Shock!

My daughter looks a little like AK. She was treated rudely in Italy about two years ago. She is partly Italian, but was treated with respect in England, France, and Ireland where they thought she was one of them. In Italy, she was treated kind of the way Muslims are supposed to treat their women in Afghanistan.

I like the Italians. Most of my early friends were Italian Americans. They treated me with respect. What is going on? Is there anti Americanism in Italy? (Although this subject matter may have been part of the "Hidden Mind" that influenced Italy and as influential as evidence, it might be considered off-topic to some...

Do they also turn cartwheels down police stations during murder investigations? Is that a norm in America?

 

[Fulcanelli]

Dan, do you know if we have any documentation of this anywhere -- that investigators had the phone records by the second?

Also, someone wrote somewhere recently that Patrick was one of the people who had set up the memorial for Meredith? Has anyone heard that before? If true, it certainly would increase the mystery around why the police did not question Patrick before they arrested him.

Of course he doesn't because they didn't.

Yes, Patrick was one of the organisers of the vigil. Why should the police go after him for that...why is that incriminating?

 

[Fulcanelli]

Quadraginta,

By implication you are setting up false alternatives with respect to forensic bias: Either do nothing to fix the problem of forensic bias, or give up on using forensic information altogether. This problem did not start with the Knox case; I again offer the Patricia Stallings case as just one example. Moreover, thoughtful individuals have contributed ideas for reform. “CSI for real,” by Roger Koppl is an eye-opening read. Gritsforbreakfast has so much thoughtful commentary that it is difficult to pick just one article, but this one makes some broadly applicable points.

Dr. Stefanoni had to apply for permission to be allowed to be on both the collection team and the analysis team. Dr. Biondo was an unpaid consultant for the prosecution. Because he is Dr. Stefanoni’s direct supervisor, it is difficult to see how this constitutes an independent evaluation of her work, in the way that an expert from an unrelated branch of ILE would be. However, I do not know who Dr. Biondo’s superior is nor how their job performances are evaluated, and I agree with your implication that would be helpful to know these sorts of things better to evaluate their independence from the prosecution. I have instead focused on Dr. Stefanoni’s actions that raise doubts on their own merits, without reference to how independent she is. There has never been a shortage of these.

Dr Biondo wasn't a consultant for the prosecution. He was a witness.

 

[Fulcanelli]

I think there is a persistent problem here with scientific literacy and a lack of basic understanding about how science works.

Professionals keep their information current by reading articles exactly like the ones we have been citing for you. They are not privy to some ethereal realm of pure scientific information which they and only they can apprehend directly like mystics communing with the spirits. They are not taught some arcane and secret code in medical school by which they can decipher the secret meaning of phrases like "mean t(lag) is 80 minutes", which turn out to really secretly mean "mean t(lag) is 240 minutes".

The reason they are experts is because at any given time they retain the knowledge of lots of individual papers, plus various other skills to do with putting their knowledge to use.

If all you need to know to solve a problem is one particular fact, and you can find that fact via the literature, then yes, you are exactly as good for the purposes of solving that problem as someone with a relevant degree.

By the same token, if an expert's "expert opinion" contradicts the literature on a matter of plain fact then the expert is wrong. That's an end to the matter. The job of an expert is to keep current on the literature. It is not the literature's job to keep current with whatever came out of the mouth of some "expert".

I think this really is an argument of last resort for the desperate: "Never mind what the literature is saying! Ask instead who is saying that the literature says that!". It just doesn't matter who is saying the literature says that.

All that matters is what the literature says.

 

[Fulcanelli]

I have posted extensively on this and what is clear about Filomena's many different statements on the shutters is that saying the shutters were closed with any certainty at all is not correct.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6306406&postcount=5363

All of which the court (including the defence and the judges) possessed. She was cross examined on the stand and the truth of her meaning was reached. That's how courts work.

You also fail to consider that she was talking about the inside shutters. During the trial she stated she was unsure whether she'd closed the inside shutters, but was sure she'd closed the outside shutters.

 

[quadraginta]

Quadraginta,

By implication you are setting up false alternatives with respect to forensic bias: Either do nothing to fix the problem of forensic bias, or give up on using forensic information altogether.

I'm not setting up anything. I'm highlighting the irrelevance and insincerity of the constant stream of examples of such transgressions and failures of justice which are presented here as if they offer some sort of evidence germane to this particular case. The implications are not mine. They are implicit in any reasonable extension of such bogus arguments being presented in the first place.

Perhaps I needed to include some sort of irony smilies. I didn't realize I was being over-subtle.

The real irony is that the examples cited, in addition to being excellent samples of a spotlight effect, are also usually examples of instances where such failures of justice are being detected and addressed. "Fixed", in other words.

So it seems that the very act of addressing the faults in the system becomes evidence that the system does not work. At least that is certainly an impression which one could take away from this discussion.

Tough audience. "Damned if ya do. Damned if ya don't."

<snip>

I agree with your implication that would be helpful to know these sorts of things better to evaluate their independence from the prosecution. I have instead focused on Dr. Stefanoni’s actions that raise doubts on their own merits, without reference to how independent she is. There has never been a shortage of these.

I know you have, and to the extent that you have I respect you for that.

Your restraint in this does not seem to be shared by many of the more enthusiastic Knox defenders.