Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kevin_Lowe]

LJ's posts are a matter of record. It isn't speculation, it is extrapolation, based on the "actual evidence" of his posting history.

I don't understand what "actual evidence" of looking under the window for glass you feel should be presented that would change anything here. That was the whole point of that exchange, in case you missed it. If the police said they looked there, and someone chooses to disbelieve them, then anything more will just be met with further disbelief. And yes, we have "evidence" of that sort of behavior here.

How about providing some "actual evidence" that they didn't look.

Shifting the burden of proof if not an argument, and your opinion that other posters are not open to reasonable arguments is still a very poor excuse for not posting any reasonable arguments. Consider, if you will, that to everyone outside your own head a poster who claims to have intelligent arguments but who finds an excuse not to post them is completely indistinguishable from a poster who has no intelligent arguments and is merely bluffing.

 

[RoseMontague]

Halkides and RoseMontague have addressed topics about which we will be talking.

Thanks, I look forward to hearing your opinion on that topic.

 

[Justinian2]

This is the thread where
the prosecution was wrong,
the police was wrong,
the judges were wrong
and
the defense was wrong.

What was right:
the other guy did it. ​

If this wasn't true, you would have never heard about this case.
There are 20 million arrests in the USA each year. There must be quite a few in Italy as well. Don't you think the prosecution, police, and judges ever make mistakes?

The first policeman ever to assault and batter me wasn't even a policeman when he did so; he was 17 and I was 14. He, due to his C average in highschool, became chief of police. These aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. Ever hear of a policeman that went to MIT or Harvard?

 

[loverofzion]

Guede wore a 46, Sollecito a 42.

 

[loverofzion]

If this wasn't true, you would have never heard about this case.
There are 20 million arrests in the USA each year. There must be quite a few in Italy as well. Don't you think the prosecution, police, and judges ever make mistakes?

The first policeman ever to assault and batter me wasn't even a policeman when he did so; he was 17 and I was 14. He, due to his C average in highschool, became chief of police. These aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. Ever hear of a policeman that went to MIT or Harvard?

Yes but there were no less than 19 judges who sifted through the evidence of the almost one year long trial.
Those guys are actually sharp knives.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Guede wore a 46, Sollecito a 42.

Page 348 of the Massei report. Read it. Their footprints differ in size by 3mm, despite their shoe sizes.

Please do not pop this mole up again. This is not a matter of opinion. This is not something rational people can differ about. There is absolutely no ambiguity about this issue, or scope to argue both ways. Their footprints differ in size by 3mm.

There are issues we can argue about. There are issues which are still undecided. This is not one of them.

 

[loverofzion]

No, Raffaele might really have meant he pricked Amanda, as Kevin_Lowe has argued here on many occasions. It is not an argument that I happen to accept, but I wanted to cover all ground.

Nonsense. He used Meredith at the beginning of the sentence; then proceeded IN THE SAME SENTENCE to say "She". He was responding to how Meredith's DNA happened to be on the BLADE of his kitchen knife (Amanda's was on the handle), saying he had accidentally "Pricked her while cooking".
Turned out Meredith had never been in his apt.

So stop your chicanery. The prosecutors aren't that stupid.
You guys are NOT serving her cause by serving up this nonsense.

 

[loverofzion]

Interesting, that it is not what he said in court or during an interview by a judge or the police. Wasn't it something he scribbled in his diary while sitting in jail in shaky mental state, having what was it? Tachycardia, panic attacks?

I'm not sure I would convict someone based on this.

No he said it very clearly.
"I pricked her (Meredith) while cooking".
Turned out he WAS lying; Meredith had NEVER been to his apt.

so stop this chicanery.

 

[loverofzion]

Maybe you should read my post and see who made that claim before you get all bent out of shape.

Then you may want to consider less rudeness and more civility in your posts.

I read your post and responded to your claims.
Lies and distortions demand to be refuted .

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Lies and distortions demand to be refuted .

So what's the size difference between the footprints of Rudy Guede and Raffaele Sollecito again?

You can look it up on page 348 of the Massei report.

Funnily enough, Fulcanelli had exactly the same problem looking this up as you do.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

footprint falsehood

The size discrepancy between the two defendants' foot size and shape was clearly stated by experts. There is no doubt the foot print belongs to Sollecito. It is compatible with Sollecito, only. Not with Guede, not with Knox.

This evidence was presented, the experts presented their conclusions and a judgement was made. The bathmat foot print was ascribed to Sollecito. If it was a faulty judgement, the defense will prove the verdict wrong on appeal. Simple as that.

Piktor,

Dr. Vinci made it plain that the bathmat print was compatible with Guede, but he ruled out Sollecito and the girls. Vinci, you may recall, was correct with respect to the number of circles in the shoeprint. To say that there is no doubt it belongs to Sollecito is false.

 

[Mary_H]

Wow, things were quite lively here today. Welcome to new posters. Nice to see my old friend colonelhall in this venue.

No. Some people here have concluded all accusations and against Guede are right and all accusations and evidence against the other two defendants are wrong.

The same investigation that put Guede in jail was used to put the two other defendants in jail.

Somehow if it all points to Guede, there is no problem.

If there is no trace of Guede in Filomena's room, that's ok. He WAS in that room and left no traces.

Knox/Sollecito left no traces in Meredith's room, so, they WERE NOT there.

There are traces of Knox mixed with Meredith's blood in Filomena's room but Knox WAS NOT there.

There are no traces of Guede in the small bathroom and the bloody foot print on the bathmat is too small for his foot size but IT IS his, although measurements describe Sollecito's foot but it IS NOT Sollecito's. And on and on.

piktor, one correction -- interrogations put Amanda and Raffaele in jail. Rudy was the only defendant put in jail as the result of an investigation.

You know, it is absolutely all right with me if there are no traces of Rudy in Filomena's room or the small bathroom. I don't care if Rudy broke in and I don't care if he washed up. To me, those rooms say little that is useful about the crime; they are only diversions.

Rudy had a history of criminal behavior, he needed money, his DNA was found inside the victim, his bloody hand prints were at the scene and his bloody footprints trail off down the hall toward the front door. If that is not enough to pin the crime on Rudy, that's okay with me, too. Rudy is not my problem.

I am perfectly fine with allowing the prosecutor to try to prove that Amanda and Raffaele were involved in the crime, without including Rudy -- black, white, green or purple -- as part of the equation.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

waiting is the hardest part

I read your post and responded to your claims.
Lies and distortions demand to be refuted .

I have more than half a dozen comments directed your way, and Matthew_Best pointed you toward many more. Part of engaging in civil discourse is to respond when one is addressed. I await your replies eagerly.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Do NOT even try to use that as if it's some sort of equivalent. The Willingham case is near and dear to my heart, so I take that pretty personally. The reason he lied was because he was ashamed that he did not go in and try to save them. Plus, in his eyes, it was not a murder investigation, it was an accident. Which it was. The lying that Amanda and Raffaele did are lies of someone trying to cover up the evidence that points them to the murder.

Solange305,

The Cameron Todd Willingham case moved me enough to blog on it twice. I agree with the notion that one ought not to force one case to fit the mold of another. However, if one learns about the Willingham, Duke lacrosse, or Patricia Stallings cases and never puts that knowledge to use, what is the point in acquiring it?

I think people often lie to save face, as Willingham did. As you know I believe Sollecito is innocent, and for the sake of argument, I will assume he lied. I think he believed that his imprisonment was a big mistake and that he would be out in a few weeks when he wrote his diary. I strongly doubt he thought it would be used against him, even in the court of public opinion.

 

[Mary_H]

Solange305,

The Cameron Todd Willingham case moved me enough to blog on it twice. I agree with the notion that one ought not to force one case to fit the mold of another. However, if one learns about the Willingham, Duke lacrosse, or Patricia Stallings cases and never puts that knowledge to use, what is the point in acquiring it?

I think people often lie to save face, as Willingham did. As you know I believe Sollecito is innocent, and for the sake of argument, I will assume he lied. I think he believed that his imprisonment was a big mistake and that he would be out in a few weeks when he wrote his diary. I strongly doubt he thought it would be used against him, even in the court of public opinion.

The thrust of Raffaele's diary is that he was not involved in the crime. To seize on one sentence at the expense of the big picture is to do what Charlie Wilkes described earlier:

"You're systematically rejecting the most likely explanation for the evidence in favor of a theoretical possibility that favors your bias."

 

[Chris_Halkides]

contamination is less unlikely

"If you think an argument is foolish, spell out why."

I guess that we can agree that he didn't prick Meredith. Then you are saying that because he said that he did, he must have been mistaken. He may have confused Meredith with Amanda and so on.

It's just one more example of you expecting everyone to accept the least likely explanation for something. You can get away with it once, but not on every single point.
Reasonable people are not going to buy it.

colonelhall,

I surmise you think that contamination is the least likely explanation for Meredith’s DNA being on the knife. I beg to differ. Contamination is unlikely, in the sense that it happens less frequently than it does not happen. But the lack of blood is very telling, in the professional opinions of the authors and cosigners of the Johnson/Hampikian open letter of 19 November 2009.

Some believe that the knife was cleaned with bleach, and there was still a residue of bleach on the knife. If that were true, finding DNA on the blade would stoke Douglas Adams’ improbability drive for at least six months. Bleach is so potent that when it is diluted to 3% of its commercial strength and used to clean lab equipment of unwanted DNA, failure to rinse it away thoroughly can allow the residue to destroy the DNA of interest in a subsequent experiment, according to a technical bulletin provided by Promega Corp. IMO Contamination is the least unlikely explanation.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

The thrust of Raffaele's diary is that he was not involved in the crime. To seize on one sentence at the expense of the big picture is to do what Charlie Wilkes described earlier:

"You're systematically rejecting the most likely explanation for the evidence in favor of a theoretical possibility that favors your bias."

It's looking like this is just a systemic problem with the guilter narrative.

It's theoretically possible that the break-in was staged, despite the marks on the wall and the complete lack of any positive evidence of staging. It's just not supported.

It's theoretically possible that Amanda and Raffaele knew enough about Rudy's criminal past to frame him with exactly the M.O. that he'd been linked to in the past. There's just absolutely no positive evidence they knew him as more than a face and a name, so it's not supported.

It's theoretically possible that something heretofore unknown to science slowed down Meredith's digestion so much that t(lag) in her case was five to five and a half hours, a time literally unheard of in a healthy young woman having eaten a small to moderate meal with no alcohol. It's just that there's absolutely no evidence at all for any such unknown something.

It's theoretically possible that Amanda and Raffaele were in the murder room but didn't leave a single trace, there's just no evidence of a clean-up nor any other reason why that room shouldn't contain ample traces of their presence if that were the case.

It's theoretically possible that they premeditated the crime, and set up Raffaele's computer to open a Naruto file while they were out. It's theoretically possible that they had psychic powers and knew that the police were going to destroy the Stardust file metadata so it was safe to use that as their alibi for the prosecution's time of death... well, no, actually that last one is pretty stupid.

In large part they've switched from arguing that the Massei narrative makes a strong case for their guilt, to arguing that they haven't successfully proved themselves innocent beyond all doubt.

Also it looks like I might have spooked loverofzion. I wonder what it was I said?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

the sharpest tools in the shed?

Yes but there were no less than 19 judges who sifted through the evidence of the almost one year long trial.
Those guys are actually sharp knives.

Massei provided two reasons for preferring Stefanoni's interpretation of about six loci of the DNA profile of the bra clasp over Tagliabracci's. One of them is to say in effect, well Stefanoni says one thing and Tagliabracci says another, and I will go with Stefanoni. The other argument is one that I doubt any forensic geneticist anywhere could support, as I have discussed at length in previous comments. If that is being a sharp tool, I shudder to think what it means to be a dull one.

 

[Chris C]

No. Some people here have concluded all accusations and against Guede are right and all accusations and evidence against the other two defendants are wrong.

Actually If you looked at the evidence. Guede's story that meredith was killed while he was sitting on the toilet explains the evidence better than the Prosecutions 3 way drug fueled/rape/murder theory. If I actually had to choose between the 2 theories I'd choose Guede.

Now that being said, I think the evidence supports Guede as a lone wolf attacker. However, he wasn't prosecuted on that theory. So luckily for Guede, his fate is tied with Knox's/Sollecito's and if they get off so will he.

 

[Dan O.]

Aside from the stadium full of straw men which have been created to distort this particular topic, I doubt it.

Now if you had asked,

"Does anybody really think it is terribly difficult to enter the window without leaving any evidence of having done so?"

then the response might be somewhat different.

What evidence would you expect to find from such an entry?