Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

DNA tests

As I said, the TMB test can only be used to rulke in the presence of blood, not rule it out (as agreed to even by the defence expert). The DNA test was LCN, die to the small size of the traces involved...LCN testing will not tell you the origin of the DNA (what type of cell it came from).

DNA tests, LCN or not, will tell you what type of cells the DNA came from. It may be helpful to realize that LCN and standard DNA profiling differ in the number of polymerase chain reaction cycles that they use, but both use the PCR technique.

 

[Chris C]

As I said, the TMB test can only be used to rulke in the presence of blood, not rule it out (as agreed to even by the defence expert). The DNA test was LCN, die to the small size of the traces involved...LCN testing will not tell you the origin of the DNA (what type of cell it came from).

Luminol is a presumptive test. It can only tell you its possible its blood. However, DNA tests can tell you if what the luminol is reacting with is blood or not. Since they where unable to find DNA its not blood. There is no proof its blood.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

So basically, are you saying that all the experts who testified just don't keep up with their continuing education and are spouting knowledge learned way back when in school?

Until one of you guys (yourself, Fulcanelli and Sherlock) cites this amazingly authoritative source you all seem to have read that overrules the peer-reviwed scientific literature, or you find a source in such literature that says t(lag) for a normal, healthy young woman eating a small to moderate meal of pizza with no alcohol can be five hours, then yes. Absolutely. Any prosecution "expert" claiming that t(lag) in such a case can plausibly be five hours is wrong.

You find a couple of articles to say what you want to believe and you want us to believe the experts testifying at trial have kept up with nothing within their own fields.

Yes. That is how science works.

Sorry Kevin, but you have no way of knowing the so called 'trade' literature these people read on a regular basis

Yes I bloody do, it's called the peer-reviewed scientific literature and it's called a library. I have access to both.

and it's extraordinarily presumptuous of you to think they read nothing. In fact this presumption defies belief.

Actually what defies belief is the blinkered cherry-picking that goes into supporting the asinine belief that t(lag) in such a case can be five hours.

You ignore every hard number ever cited, you ignore the cited evidence from Rudy's trial where all agreed that t(lag) was two to three hours at most, and you even ignore your treasured Massei report when it comes to Professor Ronchi's statement that a TOD of 23:30 is only conceivable if somehow matter was removed from Meredith's duodenum.

Then you grasp on to the vaguest statements you can find from abstracts or lecture notes, rip them out of their context where it's amply clear they mean "t(lag) can be as much as three hours in a normal, healthy person although it's very highly unlikely... maybe even just conceivably four" and take them to mean "t(lag) can be any damn thing we guilters please, it's all equally likely, I don't know why scientists even study this at all, I mean, I it's just a total waste of time".

Heck, you even ignore the discussion section of the very article from whose abstract you cherry-pick the bits you like, and ignore the statement from the lecture notes you cherry-pick that show we can have reasonable medical certainty Meredith died before 21:30, 22:30 at the latest..

It's completely intellectually bankrupt.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

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?

Is it okay to say "I have no fricking idea, what did it, I think it was probably fairies?".

Because as far as I can tell that's the guilter position on the stomach evidence. You guys are convinced something threw t(lag) for a loop, you've just haven't got one single remotely plausible idea about what that magic something was.

The difference is that Amanda and Raffaele might still be innocent if the luminol footprints were made by bloody water. Whereas there's no way in hell they are guilty if Meredith died at 21:05 or shortly afterwards.

So how about we agree to ban appeals to fairies, and we agree that the luminol footprints were made in bloody water and Meredith died at 21:05 or so?

 

[Justinian2]

1) False. Below is a picture from Raffaele's cutlery drawer after the kitchen knife had been removed. Unless you are suggesting the police should also have supposed Meredith might have been murdered with a butter knife or a bread knife. Photo from Perugia Murder File:

[qimg]http://www.perugiamurderfile.org/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&album_id=21&image_id=669[/qimg]


2) The prosecution never used the term "sex orgy", that was a media invented term.

3) Actually, they used the 'evidence' to establish TOD.

The data to which I refer comes from the Massei report, for example from page 264 of the Massei report translation:

The knife was taken by Inspector Finzi, who testified that he had clean, new gloves and that, having opened the drawer where the tableware was kept, the first thing he saw was a large knife that was extremely clean. There were other knives in the drawer, but he took [only] this one, which became Exhibit 36. This knife was the first object he touched and it was located on top of all the tableware.

Using the same techniques, I could go into your kitchen and find knives with both your DNA and MK's DNA. The prosecutor's joke is that they can prove everybody guilty, even you. The innocent just take a little longer.

Ya, I'd get a hair from your head when I pretended to slap you on the head. I'd put that hair in the bag with the knife. I mean anything that is possible has happened.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Like I said, I would not find someone guilty for their actions, so I find your "lynch them" comment to be a little hurtful, I hope you didn't mean that was what I was trying to do. Although I know you are answering my questions like I asked, some of the answers Im getting either dont match up with what Ive read,

I'd avoid taking as factual anything asserted on guilter forums. Those people are a self-selecting group of the deliberately ignorant. They have a lot of beliefs about the case, and very little knowledge.

or are in essence saying "Well, actions shouldn't matter, because there is no evidence..." From my point of view and the court's point of view thus far, there is evidence...

Logic involves reasoning from established facts to inevitable conclusions. The established facts about the TOD and the computer evidence show inescapably that the Massei narrative is rubbish and Amanda and Raffaele almost certainly had absolutely nothing to do with Meredith's death.

Once you realise that, any amount of inconclusive "evidence" based on armchair psychology is completely irrelevant.

Also, Raffaele's diary was translated word for word if I'm not mistaken, so I'm pretty sure he meant Meredith and wasn't at all ambiguous. Unless there is a problem with the translation, or the diary is a forgery, I'm going to have to stick to my original opinion at this time.

Whatever. I have lead you to water. Drink, or don't.

 

[Dan O.]

Luminol is a presumptive test. It can only tell you its possible its blood. However, DNA tests can tell you if what the luminol is reacting with is blood or not. Since they where unable to find DNA its not blood. There is no proof its blood.

Sorry Chris, you've been getting this bit wrong. DNA tests can tell you about genetic factors from is it human down to a specific individual. But DNA tests cannot differentiate between cells types because all cells from an individual share the same genetic information (except of course, red blood cells don't contain genetic information).


You may be confusing DNA test with the TMB test that is another presumptive blood test but reacts to different things.

Here is a site with some basic easy to read information: http://www.wavesignal.com/Forensics/Blood.html

 

[Chris C]

Sorry Chris, you've been getting this bit wrong. DNA tests can tell you about genetic factors from is it human down to a specific individual. But DNA tests cannot differentiate between cells types because all cells from an individual share the same genetic information (except of course, red blood cells don't contain genetic information).


You may be confusing DNA test with the TMB test that is another presumptive blood test but reacts to different things.

Here is a site with some basic easy to read information: http://www.wavesignal.com/Forensics/Blood.html

You misunderstand what i was trying to say, and I can understand it from the way I worded it. I worded it poorly.

So I will try and explain what I meant. If you have a positive result with luminol and you then test what the luminol reacted with using LCN testing. You will then know if its possible what it reacted to is blood. Not because LCN can tell the difference between blood, but because in this instance there was No DNA. As so many guilters go to great lengths to point out. You only need 1 cell of dna. If there is that much blood evidence using luminol how is there no DNA. Anything that would destroy evidence of dna would destroy the evidence of blood. If there is blood, there must be dna. Since there is no dna, its not blood. Thus the dna testing can prove its not blood, since there is no DNA. Red blood cells are not the only thing in blood. However, in the instance of the footprints, TMB and Dna tests where performed. TMB didn't react to any blood and the dna tests didn't find any dna. It talks in that very article about how luminol doesn't effect dna tests.

 

[stilicho]

Heck, you even ignore the discussion section of the very article from whose abstract you cherry-pick the bits you like, and ignore the statement from the lecture notes you cherry-pick that show we can have reasonable medical certainty Meredith died before 21:30, 22:30 at the latest.

You must realise, of course, that even if you were able to convince the court to accept time of death based on your research, that you would still not rule out Sollecito and Knox as two of the three killers.

Your job is to argue their innocence and not simply to demonstrate they could have murdered Meredith earlier, which is what you're attempting to do here. This is exactly why the appeals are not nearly as obsessed by this issue as you are. Their lawyers have chosen a scattergun approach against a whole mountain of evidence against the pair. Why do you suppose they haven't introduced the paper you found using your Google-Fu? Are they, too, scientifically illiterate?

The constantly changing stories alone would be sufficient to secure a conviction. These details made an indelible impression on the court in their first trial and will continue to do so as the process continues and they finally have to accept their long prison terms are not going to go away.

The latest book, written by one of Knox's former cellmates, concludes that the convicted murderer has likely accepted that her punishment for murder is not going to magically dissolve.

 

[Antony]

(msg #6535, p164)
So I know this all doesn't make a difference, but I just want to really get the point across that I am not naive to the way police sometimes abuse their power and protect there own, believe me.

You have my sympathy for a bad experience with the police, but Amanda's report of physical and procedural abuse during her questioning wasn't my main point - I mentioned it during my previous post #6293 (p158), but not in #6323 (p159) to which you are replying here.

What I am saying is that the entire history of this case is one of manipulation and falsification of the facts by the Perugia police, and lack of impartiality by the court which heard the case. The argument, as far as I can see, is between those who take the authorities' story at face value, and those who actually try to say, "no, it doesn't match the evidence of the crime, and the known sequence of the investigation."

Much of the discussion here has actually centred not around the established facts of the case, but around Amanda and Raffaele's trustworthiness and how their behaviour conforms, or not, to a perceived pattern of innocence. The trouble is that almost everything that is said against them stems either from statements attributed to them by police, or from their reaction to police manipulation - and the police have shown themselves not to be trustworthy in this case. The rest of the negative stuff is just meaningless gossip.

Im just not convinced that it happened in this case, and if it did, I'm not convinced it proves Amanda and Raffaele innocent...

Nobody should have to prove their innocence unless there is credible evidence that they were involved in the crime, and in this case all the prosecution evidence is blatantly flawed - this is why the pro-guilt faction spend so much time talking about things like Amanda's character and whether they (allegedly) "lied".

In any case, they are pretty much proved innocent by the fact that Meredith's undigested pizza meal shows that she was attacked not later then 9:30pm, and they were seen at Raffaele's flat at 8:40pm, with computer activity recorded over the next hour.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You must realise, of course, that even if you were able to convince the court to accept time of death based on your research, that you would still not rule out Sollecito and Knox as two of the three killers.

That alone wouldn't do it, no.

However whether you believe Amanda and Raffaele's story that they were at home watching Naruto at 21:26, or whether you believe the cherry-picked bits of Curatolo's testimony that say they were out and about at 21:30, either way their location is nailed down to somewhere other than the murder house at the vital time.

If they weren't there, they didn't do it.

Your job is to argue their innocence and not simply to demonstrate they could have murdered Meredith earlier, which is what you're attempting to do here. This is exactly why the appeals are not nearly as obsessed by this issue as you are. Their lawyers have chosen a scattergun approach against a whole mountain of evidence against the pair. Why do you suppose they haven't introduced the paper you found using your Google-Fu? Are they, too, scientifically illiterate?

Could be. That or they don't have enough faith in the logical powers of the judge to stick to a single conclusive argument. Or they get paid by the hour. I don't know and neither do you.

 

[katy_did]

Your job is to argue their innocence and not simply to demonstrate they could have murdered Meredith earlier, which is what you're attempting to do here. This is exactly why the appeals are not nearly as obsessed by this issue as you are. Their lawyers have chosen a scattergun approach against a whole mountain of evidence against the pair. Why do you suppose they haven't introduced the paper you found using your Google-Fu? Are they, too, scientifically illiterate?

The appeals are very focused on moving the T.O.D. earlier with a lot of different arguments: the 22:13 connection on Meredith's phone connecting with a different cell phone tower; the absence of any normal activity on her phone that night, contrasting with her usual habits; the stomach contents; the people outside the cottage between 22:30 and 23:30 who saw nothing; discrediting the witnesses the Court relied on to place the T.O.D. later; and bringing up a connection made on Sollecito's computer at 21:26. The stomach contents are part of an overall argument by which the lawyers are trying to get the Court to accept Meredith probably died before 10. The appeals might not be relying on stomach contents alone to argue for an earlier time of death, but the earlier T.O.D. is extremely important, maybe even the central theme of the appeals (RS's, anyway).

So the 'scattergun' approach you talk about is all focused on the same aim: getting the Court to accept an earlier time of death, knowing that this makes Knox and Sollecito's involvement very implausible.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

The appeals are very focused on moving the T.O.D. earlier with a lot of different arguments: the 22:13 connection on Meredith's phone connecting with a different cell phone tower; the absence of any normal activity on her phone that night, contrasting with her usual habits; the stomach contents; the people outside the cottage between 22:30 and 23:30 who saw nothing; discrediting the witnesses the Court relied on to place the T.O.D. later; and bringing up a connection made on Sollecito's computer at 21:26. The stomach contents are part of an overall argument by which the lawyers are trying to get the Court to accept Meredith probably died before 10. The appeals might not be relying on stomach contents alone to argue for an earlier time of death, but the earlier T.O.D. is extremely important, maybe even the central theme of the appeals (RS's, anyway).

So the 'scattergun' approach you talk about is all focused on the same aim: getting the Court to accept an earlier time of death, knowing that this makes Knox and Sollecito's involvement very implausible.

Thanks, Katy_Did. I assumed in my previous answer that Stilicho's statements about the appeal had some remote basis in fact, and that may reflect poorly on my own critical thinking skills.

 

[RoseMontague]

The appeals are very focused on moving the T.O.D. earlier with a lot of different arguments: the 22:13 connection on Meredith's phone connecting with a different cell phone tower; the absence of any normal activity on her phone that night, contrasting with her usual habits; the stomach contents; the people outside the cottage between 22:30 and 23:30 who saw nothing; discrediting the witnesses the Court relied on to place the T.O.D. later; and bringing up a connection made on Sollecito's computer at 21:26. The stomach contents are part of an overall argument by which the lawyers are trying to get the Court to accept Meredith probably died before 10. The appeals might not be relying on stomach contents alone to argue for an earlier time of death, but the earlier T.O.D. is extremely important, maybe even the central theme of the appeals (RS's, anyway).

So the 'scattergun' approach you talk about is all focused on the same aim: getting the Court to accept an earlier time of death, knowing that this makes Knox and Sollecito's involvement very implausible.

Nice post. That is the critical argument on the evidence and the DNA on the bra clasp is the other main point of focus on the evidence (RS appeal). I think the central theme is more along the lines of the lack of (or type of) reasoning used in the Massei report.

 

[Mary_H]

Originally Posted by Kestrel:
Yet again you are ignoring the interrogation that resulted in the 5:45 AM statement.

No, I'm not...that wasn't an interrogation.

A statement isn't an interrogation.

According to Amanda's court testimony, the 5:45 a.m. statement appears to have followed an interrogation with PM (pubblico ministero) Mignini.

CP? Excuse me, Presidente, but this objection is really "peregrina" [bizarre]. The interrogation of November 6 at 1:45 and the interrogation of November 6 at 5:45 have both been acquired...

CDV: --if a reference is made to the facts of that night, there is no arguing [nulla quaestio]. We are in agreement, and our client is ready to answer. But I do not agree with specific references to the interrogation of 5:45

CP: In the interrogation of November 6, 2007, at 5:45, you declared..."

CDV: This interrogation has been disallowed except for the slander case. It seems to me that it is the Kercher's defense lawyer who is asking the question.
FM: Yes.
CDV: So, we oppose this. Because all of this was reconfirmed in the following one.
AK: So, should I answer?
GCM: In what following?
CDV: The 5:45 one.
FM: [simultaneously] The 5:45 one. Yes.

CDV:...One thing is, that the declarations -- the sommarie informazioni testimoniali of 1:45 given without the pubblico ministero, and the spontaneous declarations of 5:45 with the pubblico ministero,...

CP: A clarification about the scream. If I understood correctly, you said a little while ago that it was the police etc. But at 5:45, in your statement of 5:45, you made this declaration in front of the pubblico ministero:

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=165

 

[Mary_H]

Witnesses, suspects and lawyers

This excerpt from Amanda's court testimony is lengthy, but it is very helpful in understanding how many procedures Amanda went through without a lawyer. She didn't sign her arrest warrant until around mid-day November 6th, before which she had already made the 1:45 and 5:45 statements.

Italian law provides that suspects cannot waive their right to an attorney. This law is in place to protect the rights of the accused. By their negligence in obtaining a lawyer for Amanda until after she was locked in a jail cell, the police and the prosecutor were guilty of disrespecting, if not violating, the law.

LG: Then you stayed in the Questura?
AK: Yes.
LG: Then, at midday, or one o'clock, we don't know exactly, they brought you a paper called an arrest warrant. When they served you this warrant, it must have been around twelve, one o'clock. Do you remember?
AK: So, all papers they brought me to sign, at that point, they were all the same to me, so I can't even say what I had to sign, arrest warrant, declarations, whatever, because at a certain point, I just wanted to sign and go home.
LG: Right. But instead?
AK: Instead, no. After a while they told me I had to stay in the uestura, so I had to stay, and I rolled up in a fetal position to try to sleep, on a chair, and I fell asleep, then I woke up, and I was there thinking and some people were going in and out, and during this period of time, I was telling them: "Look, I am really confused, these things don't seem like what I remember, I remember something else." And they said "No no no no no, you just stay quiet, you will remember it all later. So just stay quiet and wait, wait, wait, because we have to check some things." And at that point I just didn't understand anything. I even lost my sense of time.
LG: And I wanted to ask you after how long they took you to prison. At some point there was a car, a police wagon that took you to prison. After how much time was that? You don't know?
AK: Well, I can't say, but what I can say is that I stayed a while in the
Questura, and during that time I kept trying to explain to the police that
what I had said was not certain, and they took my shoes during that time and they took some pictures, they undressed me to take the pictures, and so it seemed like a long time.
LG: So it was between this time and the time you went to prison that you wrote the memorial?
AK: Yes. I wrote it there because, I asked to do it because I was telling them "Listen, you're not hearing me, give me a piece of paper, and I'll write this down in English to be sure you understand what I'm saying." But I couldn't really say that. I just said "Look, I'll give you a present." [Laughs.]
It was because I wasn't really able to speak or understand then. So I wrote
that, but after I wrote the first pages, I was in the middle of writing this
memorandum, they suddenly said "Hurry up, hurry up, finish because we have to take you to prison." I stayed there like...I didn't expect to go to prison,
I thought maybe I hadn't understood. I asked the policemen, the people who were around me, there, "But Why? I haven't done anything." And they said "No, it's just bureaucracy. At least that's what I understood.
LG: All right Amanda, okay. Thank you. So you went to prison and spent the night. When did you write the second memorial?
AK: So in prison I again asked for paper, because that's how I'm used to expressing myself, the way I succeed best, also to organize my thoughts, I needed to write them down. I needed to reorganize all my thoughts, because at that point I was still confused, I still had these images in my memory that finally I understood were a mixture of real images in my memory from other days mixed with imagination. So I needed those pieces of paper, so I could take everything and put it in order.
LG: All right, I've finished the subject of the night in the Questura. When you made your first declaration, it was without the pubblico ministero. Then he came. Can you tell us if there was some discussion about a lawyer? If you remember, and whatever you remember.
AK: So, before they asked me to make further declarations--I really can't tell you what time it was, I was lost after hours and hours of the same thing--but at one point I asked if I shouldn't have a lawyer? I thought that, well, I didn't know, but I've seen things like this on television. When people do things like this they have lawyer. They told me, at least one of them told me that it would be worse for me because it would prove that I didn't want to collaborate with the police. So they told me no.

It is obvious from her testimony that Amanda had no idea she had been named a suspect, or even that she was under arrest. She was completely surprised that she was to be taken to jail. Once in jail, the police accepted yet another statement from her without providing the guidance of an attorney. They appear to have been oblivious to the legal protections she was entitled to under suspect-friendly Italian law.

 

[katy_did]

Nice post. That is the critical argument on the evidence and the DNA on the bra clasp is the other main point of focus on the evidence (RS appeal). I think the central theme is more along the lines of the lack of (or type of) reasoning used in the Massei report.

Yes, I think you're right there: on the one hand they attack the forensic evidence, on the other, with much of the other evidence they focus on pushing back the T.O.D. to before 10 (as well as bringing forward the time up to which Knox and Sollecito were known to have been in his apartment). And as you say, the central theme for both is Massei's failure to explain how he reaches the conclusions he does. Perhaps a secondary theme is the 'phenomenology' of the 'mass media trial', even relating to Massei's reasoning and his 'simulacrum of a motive', heh.

I don't think it's a 'scattergun approach' at all, actually, as Stilicho suggested; it's all really carefully put together.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Yes, I think you're right there: on the one hand they attack the forensic evidence, on the other, with much of the other evidence they focus on pushing back the T.O.D. to before 10 (as well as bringing forward the time up to which Knox and Sollecito were known to have been in his apartment).

So the defence is running exactly the same line of argument we've put together here?

Well what do you know? It's almost as if we've independently identified the biggest problems with the Massei narrative.

While I don't find the trial process as interesting as the puzzle, I think it's nigh guaranteed that the defence are going to bring in expert witnesses to testify about what the current state of scientific knowledge is with regard to t(lag) at some point. I'm looking forward to that a good deal, as I think you might understand.

 

[katy_did]

So the defence is running exactly the same line of argument we've put together here?

Well what do you know? It's almost as if we've independently identified the biggest problems with the Massei narrative.

While I don't find the trial process as interesting as the puzzle, I think it's nigh guaranteed that the defence are going to bring in expert witnesses to testify about what the current state of scientific knowledge is with regard to t(lag) at some point. I'm looking forward to that a good deal, as I think you might understand.

Yep, pretty much! They obviously recognize that it will be very difficult for a court to accept that Knox and Sollecito grabbed the kitchen knife and ran to the cottage - stopping somewhere to pick up Guede on the way - went inside and assaulted and stabbed Meredith, all within a 30 minute window (or a 20 minute window for the actual assault/murder, which would need to have begun as soon as they stepped inside the cottage...). And all that without drink/drugs, which the first Court had to introduce to try and make its narrative even remotely plausible (though whether it succeeds or not is another matter).

The discussion in the appeal about the gastric emptying times will certainly be very interesting. I notice there are still no cites to papers contradicting what you and LondonJohn have been saying - it seems it's still a case of handwaving the whole issue away rather than providing anything to challenge what's been stated...

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Also, Fulcanelli, what's the actual difference in length between the footprints of Rudy Guede and Raffaele Sollecito again?

It's on page 348 of the Massei report.

Also, Fulcanelli, what's the actual difference in length between the footprints of Rudy Guede and Raffaele Sollecito again?

It's on page 348 of the Massei report.