Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[el buscador]

Sounds like a plan... Don't do any J walking, lest you get tangled up with the cops !!!

If you decide to drive and not walk be sure to watch for the signs designating if, when and/or where you can drive in many of the city/town centers else you might get a ticket nine months after your visit for a couple of hundred Euros.

 

[Matthew Best]

Its not the walk that bothers me, it'll be the swim........

I might be wrong, but I thought London John was making a joke based on the misspelling of Perugia in your post.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Thanks for the warning, and as a gesture of good will, I would like to offer you one in return. If you don't want people questioning (or joking) about your qualifications (as they did in the post you mention), you may want to refrain from trying to appear as if you are an expert in certain matters. In particular, quotes such as these:



tend to make people want to question if you have the expertise you oh-so-subtly claim to have. Which is what they did in that post; which did not contain your email, phone number, address, or any other information that anyone could use to harass you. If it embarrassed you, I can understand, but I don't think it falls under the level of harassment that you are referring to. So feel free to make baseless claims against me and people at PMF all you like, but they won't go unchallenged.

Solange305,

Kevin_Lowe was not claiming expertise in the quote you used; he was claiming that he read the papers which he cited. Your criticism of him is off-target.

 

[Justinian2]

Who would have thought that Donald Trump had an opinion... I'm sure everyone in Italy is suddenly realizing the true nature of Mignini now that Donald Trump has declared his opinion.

I'd suggest that you tone it down a notch, cute little diatribes like the one above really don't do anything to bolster your arguments.

I'm signing up for the MDC and predict that Justinian will completely disregard the suggestion and instead will continue to spew his vitriol.

The truth is that opposing opinions never result in a change in anyone's mind. (Except, perhaps, for the mind of a fool.)

One fact will change my mind and the minds of most sane and intelligent people.

Conclusion: It sometimes seems that a million intelligent people can type on an infinite number of keyboards for an infinite number of years and never change the mind of a fool. But an infinite number of fools can probably jump on a few keyboards for awhile and probably convince all the fools.

[Does the "Hidden Mind" control the thinking of some?]

Conclusion #2: If something looks like a fact, don't ignore it.

 

[LondonJohn]

5'11 or round about there isn't tall by any stretch of the imagination. For Holland it would actually be a bit below average height i believe.

But for Papua New Guinea it would be quite a bit above average height.

Just thought I'd add that in, since it seems about as relevant as the average male height in the Netherlands.......

 

[daydreamer]

Measuring it in google gives a distance of 430m.
So for a standard 5km/h walking speed a 5 minutes is a good estimate (excluding all the preparations, putting on shoes and coats, locking the doors etc.)

20 minutes for walking only, would be a veeeery relaxed stroll.
On the other side walking it in under 2 minutes would be probably possible for a world class competitive walker. An average person would have to run.

yes, I would agree with that, I think most of the time would be in the preparations and getting to the street, and then possibly traffic issues.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Was the rock in F's room ever swiped for dna? Handling such an item must surely have left evidence behind by scraping off skin cells, and even more so if it had actually been tossed. I don't remember anything on this point.

In fact it was, but the tests were negative.

 

[Trigood]

No, Ronchi didn't say that; that's just a bit of distortion from Massei. What Ronchi did was to base his observations on the assumption ligatures were not made, which would (so his argument goes) have allowed food to pass from the duodenum through 5 metres of the small intestine. But Massei knew ligatures had been made, because the film of the autopsy was shown in Court. So what he does instead is to speculate about "an imperfect appositioning of the ligatures", something for which he has no evidence, and then attributes that argument falsely to Ronchi.

Your words above in bold are demonstrably false.

I quote again from Massei pp 178-9 (I'm always going to use the PMF English translation, so I'm not going to repeat that every time):

Besides this, the alimentary remnants in the small intestine must also be considered, and thus, as hypothesised by Professor Umani Ronchi, it would be possible to think that these remnants could have been found in the duodenum either because of an imperfect apposition of the ligatures, or because of an apposition of the ligatures that took place with such manner and timing as to make it impossible to avoid a sliding
[179]
of material from the duodenum to the small intestine. The fact [that the] duodenum [is] empty is not [necessarily] fully reliable.

What I'm reading here is that Dr. Ronchi did say this.

Ronchi did not say, as you claim Katy, that the ligatures were not made, only that they were made imperfectly.

That is the plain meaning of the report.

If you have further documentation of Ronchi's exact words that contradict Massei here, please post the info.

I would presume you haven't viewed the autopsy report, and cannot comment yourself on whether the ligatures were made perfectly or imperfectly.

I would presume that Dr. Ronchi probably did see the autopsy tape, and is giving his expert opinion.

Note to others who have responded to me: I'm sorry I haven't answered you yet. I haven't had much "extra" time lately. I'm also trying to finish reading the Massei Report, which is, I think, of paramount importance to discussions here. I only have about 100 pages left!!!

 

[Trigood]

"As hypothesised", would be "possible", "could have"....

Yep, I'm convinced now. Of what I'm not quite sure....

Do you have something to add here?

Katy_Did made a demonstrably false assertion about the Massei report; I refuted it, using that report.

Yes, experts use words like "hypothesize" and so forth in their testimony.

Yet what Dr. Ronchi "hypothesized" was the exact opposite of what Katy_Did said he "hypothesized."

Once again, I ask, do you have anything to add here? Proof that Ronchi didn't see the autopsy tape?

We know that Massei saw the autopsy tape, as it was presented in court. I presume he knows whether or not ligatures were made (apparently they were). Massei is only repeating what Dr. Ronchi said.

Again, do you or Katy have proof that Ronchi did not say such?

If not, Katy needs to go back and read the Massei Report again, and stop misquoting it.

 

[Justinian2]

What are the reasons the DNA evidence on the knife were not valid?

I know there was a LCN (low copy number) and that the lab was not super clean as would be required for a LCN, but I don't know the other details.

Wasn't there something about only a partial DNA match? What does that mean?

Can someone reply with a link to a previous post on this matter?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I've read here that Sollecito and Guede supposedly had close shoe sizes. But I also read how someone (cant remember where) described Sollecito as being alot shorter than he looks in pictures, and it makes me wonder,can someone as short and small looking as Sollecito really have almost the same foot size as a tall basketball player?

I have posted Rinaldi's documentation here:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/rinaldi1.pdf
http://www.friendsofamanda.org/rinaldi2.pdf

It contains the reference footprints for both Sollecito and Guede with dimensions marked. Note that this documentation contains one significant measurement error, which I discuss here:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/footprint_measurements.html

 

[Mary_H]

From this morning's AP report on Amanda Knox's appearance at court this morning for the slander charges:

[SNIP] Of the 12 police officials listed on the official request for trial, only eight decided to go forward with civil and criminal charges. Two detectives and two interpreters originally listed on the request have dropped out of the case, which Judge Claudia Matteini decided Friday will be argued on Nov. 8. [SNIP]

Hmmm. How many interpreters were there in total, during the whole night's events?

How refreshing. Sounds like a few people grew a conscience and some guts, at last.

 

[lane99]

Yes, both.

The concept of "guilty" has here the meaning of who can be assigned the legal responsability of something. Amanda and Raffaele are both equally reponsible as long as they "cover" each other or the murderer.

Hmm, if Miss Kercher was attacked at her home at 21:10, and at that time Knox and/or her boyfriend were at his home using the computer, you would still hold that both of them were guilty of murder. Correct?

Interesting point of view. To say the least.

 

[LondonJohn]

In fact it was, but the tests were negative.

And this is interesting in its own right. Many here (including me) have speculated that if the break-in were real (as opposed to staged), then it's far from unlikely that the intruder would have chosen to wear gloves. This would have helped the intruder to avoid hurting himself on entry with broken glass around, as well as virtually eliminating the chances of leaving fingerprint or DNA evidence at the scene.

And of course if the rock was thrown by someone wearing gloves, then there would almost certainly have been no evidence deposited on the rock - and no such evidence was found. Conversely, though, if Knox and/or Sollecito had staged the break-in, they would probably have had to have the wherewithal to wear gloves, in order to avoid leaving DNA traces on the rough surface of the rock. Such foresight by Knox/Sollecito is entirely possible of course, but again this points to a level of criminal sophistication that simply doesn't tally with them leaving "Sollecito's" blood/water footprint on the bathmat.

 

[Antony]

Now why would the police spontaneously think NOT to look for the truth?
Where do you get this a priori assumption that this is their modus operandi?

Several reasons: it's much easier, and safer, for police to investigate someone with a random connection to the murder scene than to do proper detective work that might lead to them to tangling with the real culprit - who might well be a desperate, and dangerous individual. Regrettably, police have little incentive to establish the truth in cases like this - their incentives are simply to get the jury to convict the person (or people) they put in the dock.

The fact that police attention focussed on the 2 people who called them to the scene (let's not repeat the tale based on their falsified arrival time) is the first indication that this was a stitch-up.

As for their "modus operandi", this is no "a priori assumption" on my part. Apart from their strategy of targeting their investigation against their 2 primary witnesses, they appear to have taken a decision to treat the break-in as allegedly faked without even having investigated it; there are the circumstances and nature of the overnight interrogation of Amanda that led to her coerced statement; their evidence-free arrest of Raffaele; their reckless treatment of Patrick Lumumba; their retrospective manufacture of "evidence" to support public statements made in the first days of the investigation - the list goes on and on.

Every part of this case is covered with flashing red lights, and it's frustrating for me that there should be people trying to shore it up as some kind of ideological crusade.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

How refreshing. Sounds like a few people grew a conscience and some guts, at last.

It's also possible that this was a strategic move, getting rid of people whose testimony or conduct in other cases might be problematic.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

________________

I think you are confused about this katy_did, and that is why you think Massei's logic is "garbage." There is nothing wrong with Massei's logic here. Massei never recognized---even for the purpose of discussion---that those six loci "don't match," as you understand what it is not to match. He was only willing to recognize---for the purpose of discussion--- that it hasn't been confirmed that the loci match. But in that case, it would not have been confirmed whether the loci match or not match. That's why those loci are called "disputed" loci.

This is what Machiavelli was trying to say in discussing the lottery ticket mis-analogy. In order for the lottery ticket example to be genuinely parallel to the Raffaele DNA case, some of the numerals on the lottery ticket would have to be missing or obscured in some manner. NOT a case in which some of the numerals on the lottery ticket "don't match" the numerals in the winning number, but a case in which it can't be confirmed whether those "disputed" numerals match, or don't match.

And understood in this way, Massei is right in thinking that more than six loci used in a test is preferable to using only six.....even if some loci remain disputed.

///

Fine,

A smudged lottery ticket would correspond to a partial profile. Neither Dr. Stefanoni nor Judge Massei ever referred to a partial profile with respect to Raffaele's presumed DNA on the clasp. For this reason I don't think your argument is valid.

 

[Antony]

(msg #8379, p210)
Great catch Antony It's really a very precise summary of the investigation and the court proceedings. I think it will be a beautiful specimen in my little gallery.

Thanks for the kind words, Katody. I can't really compete with the likes of Kevin Lowe in bringing hard facts to the discussion, but I can at least highlight the elements that convince me that Amanda and Raffaele are innocent.

I know enough about miscarriages of justice to spot that police arresting the people nearest to hand is a recurring theme.

 

[colonelhall]

"I can't really compete with the likes of Kevin Lowe in bringing hard facts to the discussion,"

Who can? That's why it will be a tragedy for Mandy if Philosopher Ken is not part of her defence team at the appeal.

 

[Mary_H]

It's also possible that this was a strategic move, getting rid of people whose testimony or conduct in other cases might be problematic.

Either way, it shows the prosecution's case has weaknesses.