Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[LondonJohn]

No, she leaked it herself, by writing it in her prison diary.
Anything a person in cautional custody does or keeps in their cell is not private.
After it got seized, anyone from the prison personnel, or the private prosecution lawyers entourage (like Pacelli) could have given it to Fiorenza Sarzanini.



You state arbitrarily of medical/ethical guidelines with no backing. You have no clue to say anything was incorrect, even less to say it was against medical deontology (which is not the same thing as guidelines by the way, and this further shows your ignorance). She was given a false positive. For what we know, this could be a correct result delivered by following fully correct and ethical medical procedure.



Obviously I have the strongest doubts about this reconstruction, which seems to me quite made up, and looks more like a fictional travesty of what actually happens in such an occurrence. The patient is never asked to “write down the names of sexual partners”, even less to write all this information into a diary with full explanation. The patient only is suggested to contact previous partners at risk in order to communicate the warning.

The Capanne prison has a medical personnel of three appointed doctors and thirteen doctors working around 24/h in shifts, plus 9 paramedics. The names of all those doctors are known. If anyone of them ever orchestrated a deception or violated the patient’s rights this could have been easily addressed an found out: the doctor is known. And the doctor is a professional, there are organisms who could sanction any violation. Nobody had doubt on the doctor as far as I know and nobody (nor lawyer nor Amanda) ever complained with those organisms or about this doctor. Who are you to issue verdicts?

But even if the list were the result of a deception orchestrated with a conspiracy of police and doctors, even in this – absurd – case, still there would be no reason to think this could be done in order to produce a leakage. The only reason would have been investigative, to identify the names of Amanda’s lovers in the convincement that one of them was the murderer. Surely the compelling reason for such a conspiracy, for an investigator, could be only one: to secretly obtain names, not to leak them. The leakage could not possibly be the motive for the police to have these names, their interest would be obviously oriented toward Amanda’s partners to investigate them themselves, not to give them to the press.

That the list found its way into Italian media because it was part of a text in a diary speaking about her case, and everything like a diary written by a person in custody and under investigation in Italy always would find the way to the media. This is the rule, it is structural, with guilty, with innocents, this is just a factual media priviledge in investigations, this is no prosecution’s decision and has nothing to do with prosecution's nor investigators strategies.

Deontology is a philosophical approach to ethics based on adherence to rules - I'm not sure what it has to do with recommended ethical approaches to delivering HIV test results, but thanks for calling me ignorant anyhow

Plenty of information has been posted here before about ethical practices for delivering HIV test results. But here are some links. the first is a WHO paper on HIV testing and counselling in prisons and other closed settings:

http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/idu/tc_prison_tech_paper.pdf

It has some interesting things to say about confidentiality and counselling.

Here's what the US Center for Disease Control has to say about HIV testing and communication of results:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5514a1.htm

Typically, two separate tests are done for the presence of HIV - ELISA and Western Blot. The ELISA test can throw up false positives, but the Western Blot test has a calculated false positive frequency of around 0.0004% in the general low-risk population:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/280/12/1080

So another question is how and why Knox was told she was HIV positive in the first place, given that in fact she was not. Standard practice is to inform people of HIV-positive tests results only after the ELISA positive is confirmed by the Western Blot positive. So what happened in Knox's case?

So far as being asked to list sexual partners is concerned, I believe that Knox herself wrote that she was asked to do this by the prison's medical staff. Furthermore, it's in the UNAIDS guidelines on what to do if you are tested HIV-positive:

http://data.unaids.org/pub/FactSheet/2008/20080527_fastfacts_testing_en.pdf

which states that the person who is HIV-positive should try to "follow-up with HIV testing and counselling for partners and children". Obviously, a first step in this process would be to list previous sexual partners, together with whether "safe sex" was practised with these people, in order to determine which of Knox's previous partners might be at risk of being HIV-positive themselves. I would imagine that there might be an even greater need for Knox to write this information down for the authorities, since she was incarcerated and would not therefore be in a good position to contact these people herself.

And lastly, I'm not suggesting a "conspiracy" amongst medical doctors, prison officers and prosecutors, and nor am I stating anything with "certainty". What I am saying is that it appears Knox was given the devastating - but false - news that she was HIV-positive, and that this should not have happened owing to the extraordinarily low false positive rate for the Western Blot test in low-risk adults. And secondly, I'm saying that Knox's diary ended up in the media, and there had to be a mechanism for that to happen.

 

[LondonJohn]

Perhaps because of the nature of the holiday weekend; there was no school and there was no work apparently.

But how is that relevant to whether Filomena might return to the girls' cottage at any time during the morning? If anything, the lack of work would increase the chances of Filomena showing up at he own house during what would otherwise be working hours, don't you think?

 

[Malkmus]

Maybe the pair needed a new mophead?

They both certainly seemed to go out of their way to go on about the mop's importance in that bloody night.

I've seen this talking point stated over and over but fail to see the mop story being given any special treatment by Amanda or Raf, other than it being a part of recounting the night and next morning's events. Could you elaborate on how "they went out of their way to go on about the mop's importance"?

 

[Machiavelli]

Do you think Amanda was informed that the diary might go public? Do you think there is any truth to the rumors that the defendants' lawyers instructed them to keep prison diaries?


But why was she being tested for HIV? Did she give informed consent to being tested?

Why are you making those questions?
They have nothing to do with the theory that a prosecutor may have orchestrated a fake test and a leak of sexually-related material in order to influence the public.

Inmates are tested for HIV for obvious reasons. Of course she was gives informed consent, otherwise the doctor cannot take her blood, consent is not specifically related to HIV, only blood test in general.
I have no idea of Amanda’s information about writings nor of her lawyers instructions.

This is good information to have. Why do you think the doctor(s) stood by and let the information be released, without publicly protesting a violation of Amanda's right to medical privacy?

The doctor “stood by” ?!!
What are you talking about? The doctor has nothing to do with that. The doctor has no responsibility over Amanda’s sensitive data in her possession. Amanda is the only person legally entitled to complain for this kind of violation.

How can it be a rule while also having nothing to do with strategies? What is the goal of the rule?

This rule in particular has a cause, not a goal. The cause is the structure of the judicial system, in which too many powers and actors are involved and have access to investigation files. It is a paradox effect of transparency in a beaurocratized investigation process. The main goal is obviously a form of democratic transparency, of which witnesses and suspects in custody may pay the price: the public and the other judges want to see the ongoing work of prosecutors and judges, see what they investigate and why, the material they search and collect, how they motivate their decisions. A rule doesn't have a goal slanted in only one direction and never has only one side, a rule is a rule, you are supposed to know in advance how it works in the place where you are. If you know the rules you can better serve your interests, regardless who you are. Not knowing of rules, praxis and cultures always creates a disadvantage.

 

[Machiavelli]

Deontology is a philosophical approach to ethics based on adherence to rules - I'm not sure what it has to do with recommended ethical approaches to delivering HIV test results, but thanks for calling me ignorant anyhow

Yes but "medical guidelines" is, in medicine, something different. Deontology is ethical rules, while guidelines are technical indications by medical societies.

 

[LondonJohn]

Yes but "medical guidelines" is, in medicine, something different. Deontology is ethical rules, while guidelines are technical indications by medical societies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_guideline

 

[Machiavelli]

So another question is how and why Knox was told she was HIV positive in the first place, given that in fact she was not. Standard practice is to inform people of HIV-positive tests results only after the ELISA positive is confirmed by the Western Blot positive. So what happened in Knox's case?

I definitley rule out there could be a rule that prevents a doctor to communicate to the patione the result of a test, whatever test is that.
Obviously we cannot know what result was Amanda's test yelding technically, because that's known only to her. She wrote something, but obviously she doesn't understand much of medicine and we don't know what that meant exactly and technically.
One thing appears to me very likely: a quite obvious reason why the test was positive was that Amanda had an ongoing infection from Herpes Simplex.

 

[Machiavelli]

But did you acknowledge the differeence between medical guidelines and medical deontology (ethical code)?

Do you acknowledge that guiedelines are not legal codes, while deontology is?

Do you acknowledge they are written by different authorities?

 

[Chris C]

I can see from this that you haven't read the appeals. You are not required to do so of course, but it would make it easier to understand where some of the arguments are coming from. The two witnesses describe complete different screams under completely different circumstances both before and after the scream. Nara's first statements indicated she thought it was a road accident and it is only later that this evolves into that horrifying descriptive. In her statements she even indicates she could tell this scream came from Meredith's flat (a true miracle ear with that one). The next morning she says she got up the same time she always got up (around 11am) and saw the police already at Meredith's and Amanda and Raffaele with the police gathered in an area they never gathered in that day. So we know she not only has date problems she has time problems and exaggeration problems as well as a faulty memory. Antonella describes a couple have a loud argument in Italian followed by a very short scream, which is a point I brought up to you in my previous post on this subject. Do you really think that couple included Amanda, Raffaele, or Meredith? Antonella also opened her window immediately after this brief short scream and did not hear the things Nara described (including the sound of leaves that Nara heard with her double glazed windows closed). There are other witnesses in an even better position to hear a scream at the time and they heard no scream.

BTW, you indicated you were going to address a question I asked you when you first posted. have you had a chance to take a look at that one yet?

Not only that but if she could hear people running on leaves and gravel, she should have been able to hear that car that was parked in the drive when it left. Also why would Knox/Sollecito run by a car that wasn't theirs or committ a murder when there is a strange car parked in their driveway. Wouldn't you assume that someone was downstairs if there was a car in the driveway.

 

[Machiavelli]

So far as being asked to list sexual partners is concerned, I believe that Knox herself wrote that she was asked to do this by the prison's medical staff. Furthermore, it's in the UNAIDS guidelines on what to do if you are tested HIV-positive:

You have a lot of beliefs. Certainly Knox was not asked to write down and give them names and information about those people, because it makes no sense in the medical practice. Medical staff has no need and no use for names and addresses, this information is useless to the doctor for medical purposes. If the doctor said to make a list and contact them, they gave them the correct advice in terms of security. But:

I would imagine that there might be an even greater need for Knox to write this information down for the authorities, since she was incarcerated and would not therefore be in a good position to contact these people herself.

This is not true. Because Amanda could have made a separate list with no explicit information and could have submitted it to her attorneys, and provided personal information only in the privileged communication with attorneys in order to contact the people through their channel. In fact this is the only way to contact these people, because authorities would never contact them nor deliver such information.

 

[Chris C]

I noticed that nobody here has addressed the questions I put forward in the post, although a few have tried that at the Shock.

Why would Amanda be carrying this large kitchen knife around in the first place? Why would they clean it and return it to the kitchen drawer if it was used as a murder weapon? Why would no blood show up in the testing of the knife, and how was the blood cleaned off, leaving the phantom DNA on the blade? Why did Stefanoni proceed to test this after she got a too low reading after she had followed standards and protocols on numerous previous items by not going any further on anything that was "too low" for quantification? Why did Stefanoni withhold the "too low" information until she was forced to give that to the defense halfway through the trial? Why did the court find this untested and unproven method of testing used by Stefanoni as reliable? Why did the court refuse defense requests for additional expertise on this piece of evidence and the method of testing used by Stefanoni?

Just makes no sense to me.

Dont forget to add, why didn't any of the other utensils in the drawer have dna or blood on them?

 

[Chris C]

It seems that Amanda, Laura, and Meredith all had male company stay over at some point. I am not sure what is the issue here unless the bed squeaks were keeping Nara up at night.

The real question they should be asking themselves is whether or not all the other residents had slept with more men/women than Knox.

 

[Chris C]

I just don't see why Amanda's in any way unusual for bringing a few guys back to sleep with, or why it was wrong for her to do so. Surely as students we've all done plenty of this sort of thing?

Rudy and Raffaele weren't technically strange men to Meredith, she had already met both of them.

Amanda never slept with Rudy.

 

[Chris C]

Well, if part of that character is Amanda being loose, she did that to herself. Unless the media wrote that email on her behalf, where she claimed to have slept with a stranger on a train. I also assume that you aren't claiming that the media made up the fact that Amanda slept with Raff the first night after meeting him?

How many people had you slept with by Knox's age?

 

[Chris C]

This is just too reminiscent of the attempts to pin blame on Sophie for not walking Meredith to her door.

Did they use 12 interrogators to question Nara or Sophie?

 

[Chris C]

No it's not. Why did Ms Capezzali go to Italian TV rather than the police? And if she says she heard a "scream of death" that night, and says she saw the police activity outside the girls' house the following day, why didn't she come forward there and then?

Didn't the shop owner originally say he didn't see knox that morning, then a year later change his story in front of the media.

 

[Chris C]

as though she would have been buying bleach when Raffaele, IIRC, had 2 full bottles at his apartment. I mean that's just what you want to do when about to clean up a crime scene, buy some bleach at the only shop in town that's open.

Maybe Knox was out buying Bleach(manga).

 

[loverofzion]

But how is that relevant to whether Filomena might return to the girls' cottage at any time during the morning? If anything, the lack of work would increase the chances of Filomena showing up at he own house during what would otherwise be working hours, don't you think?

Well they did get up at 6 AM and Amanda was there bright and early at the shop at 7:45...so yes I would say they were aware that she might come back at any time that morning.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

These are some of the unanswered questions

Which questions are those?

loverofzion,

Here is a partial list of comments from me: 6954, 6943, 5984, 5701, 5663, 5646, 5630, 5448, 5340, 5309, 5288, and 5284. Mary H was kind enough to collect some others in comment 5342, as Matthew Best told you in 6956.

If you search on your own name, you will find many posts addressed to you. Please cite sources in your replies.

 

[Dan O.]

This is not true. Because Amanda could have made a separate list with no explicit information and could have submitted it to her attorneys, and provided personal information only in the privileged communication with attorneys in order to contact the people through their channel. In fact this is the only way to contact these people, because authorities would never contact them nor deliver such information.

Why does this appear to contradict what you had said earlier?