Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[RoseMontague]

I think you're tilting at windmills here.
Does anyone really said that Marriott company is not involved/hired? Isn't it a public knowledge?

Unless you agree with some that Marriott hires bloggers to write about it and spam fora 24/7.

I am still having problems seeing what is exactly the problem with a public relations firm or what is the problem with hiring one. Neither one is illegal and I see nothing immoral or unethical about it. It is a legitimate business. Why do people act like it is something slithy?

 

[katy_did]

I would guess these same circumstances would also apply to Meredith's cell phone traffic and cell towers.

Yes, it's certainly true that the phone could still have been at the cottage during the 22:13 connection. What the defence are challenging, I think, is Massei's conclusion that it was still in the cottage at that time ("Up until 22:13:19 at least, the phone was in the student’s [=Meredith’s] house") - as you note, a mistaken conclusion, given the variability of cell phone connections etc. They point out that although technically it could have been in the cottage, it could also have been on the way to the garden, and in fact the signal is strongest there. I don't think anyone is suggesting the cell phone ping is absolute proof the phone was out of the cottage at that time.

On its own, the anomalous connection on Meredith's cell phone would mean little. It has to be taken together with all the other evidence: the aborted 20:56 call (which judging from recent estimates of distances in Perugia, I think must have been made after she arrived home, since it sounds like it would have taken her only a minute or two to arrive back); the fact the killer stole her cell phones (making any anomalous cell phone activity important); the stomach content evidence; the people outside the cottage from 22:30-23:30 who saw and heard nothing; Guede's own account of when he was there (something he has little reason to lie about, and which is supported by the CCTV footage alleged to show him); and the fact Meredith did not take her washing from the machine, use her computer, or make any normal cell phone calls or texts that evening. In this context, the 22:13 connection becomes important, although as you say, it's certainly not conclusive evidence.

 

[bucketoftea]

You mean this



hmmm...

That is how I always understood it. Too many variables, with an enormous degree of variability within each.

 

[RoseMontague]

Yes, it's certainly true that the phone could still have been at the cottage during the 22:13 connection. What the defence are challenging, I think, is Massei's conclusion that it was still in the cottage at that time (as you note, a mistaken conclusion, given the variability of cell phone connections etc); they point out that although technically it could have been in the cottage, it could also have been on the way to the garden, and in fact the signal is strongest there. I don't think anyone is suggesting the cell phone ping is absolute proof the phone was out of the cottage at that time.

On its own, the anomalous connection on Meredith's cell phone would mean little. It has to be taken together with all the other evidence: the aborted 20:56 call (which judging from recent estimates of distances in Perugia, I think must have been made after she arrived home, since it sounds like it would have taken her only a minute or two to arrive back); the fact the killer stole her cell phones (making any anomalous cell phone activity important), the stomach content evidence, the people outside the cottage from 22:30-23:30 who saw and heard nothing, Guede's own account of when he was there (something he has little reason to lie about, and which is supported by the CCTV footage alleged to show him), and the fact Meredith did not take her washing from the machine, use her computer, or make any normal cell phone calls or texts that evening. In this context, the 22:13 connection becomes important, although as you say, it's certainly not conclusive evidence.

That is a convincing argument katy_did. I think it comes right up to the line of conclusive while not quite crossing over. Certainly within the realms of reasonable doubt according to me.

 

[bucketoftea]

I beg your pardon. This is the part I meant to quote:



..." Using it as a guide to the time of death, however, is theoretically unsound and presents many practical difficulties, although it may have limited applicability in some exceptional instances. Generally, using stomach contents as a guide to time of death involves an unacceptable degree of imprecision and is thus liable to mislead the investigator and the court."

That is how I always understood it. Too many variables, with an enormous degree of variability within each.

 

[RoseMontague]

That is how I always understood it. Too many variables, with an enormous degree of variability within each.

I believe an exception circumstance would cover knowing the time of the last meal and the stomach contents not beginning to empty before death occurred.

 

[bucketoftea]

I believe an exception circumstance would cover knowing the time of the last meal and the stomach contents not beginning to empty before death occurred.

No, I think you're wrong. Too many variables.An exception would be if someone had been missing for days and the remains of the last meal could give them a better supported time frame.

 

[RoseMontague]

No, I think you're wrong. Too many variables.An exception would be if someone had been missing for days and the remains of the last meal could give them a better supported time frame.

I see many more variables in your scenario.

 

[Katody Matrass]

No, I think you're wrong. Too many variables.An exception would be if someone had been missing for days and the remains of the last meal could give them a better supported time frame.

I think Rose is right. Duodenum still empty 3 hours after the start of the meal is an exception. It is clearly enough to exclude the ToD of 23:30. And while you can argue it is not enough to pinpoint the ToD on its own, it is compatible with and it strengthens the ToD indicated by other evidence, listed above by katy_did.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

observing the DNA testing vs. having the electronic data files

A commenter at another site asked about the open letter on the DNA evidence, “Did any of the signers of these signatures have access to the actual evidence or witness any of the procedures in person of the collecting of evidence or the study of it in the Rome lab? If not, I would imagine that their signatures and opinions on the matter mean [nothing].”

This is one of the more serious misconceptions about the forensics in this case. For one thing, Dr. Tagliabracci and Dr. Hampikian were not associated with the case when the testing was performed; therefore, they could not have been there. But more fundamentally, it misunderstands the nature of forensic DNA typing.

I asked Professor Dan Krane of Forensic Bioinformatics and a cosigner of the open letter whether it would be far more useful to have access to the electronic data files than to observe the testing. Here is a portion of his response:

“You absolutely have that right. Having the electronic data for review is enormously important. Having the opportunity to witness the testing of samples is of marginal utility at best. Reviews of the underlying data for DNA tests often reveals alternative interpretations of the evidence samples, especially in circumstances were small amounts of DNA are involved and it is difficult to distinguish between signal, noise, and technical artifacts. Observing testing rarely provides any more insights than what should be possible from a review of contemporaneous notes that should be part of a lab's case file. Witnessing testing is far from a cure-all. Problems such as contamination of samples can easily arise before a sample arrives in a laboratory yet could not be detected by an expert observing the testing process itself.”

Dr. Krane has been quoted in a paper on DNA forensics that appeared in Nature earlier this year, and he is the coauthor of a textbook on bioinformatics. Is there someone with equal professional standing who disagrees with his assessment?

 

[RWVBWL]

RWVBWL,

InjusticeInPerugia lists Luca Maori as one of the people whom Mignini sued. Interestingly, the next four names on the list are journalists:

7. Luca Maori, an attorney for Raffaele Sollecito

8. Giangavino Sulas, journalist for Oggi magazine

9. The director and editor of Oggi magazine

10. Mario Spezi: Italian journalist who co-wrote The Monster of Florence with journalist and author Doug Preston. Mignini continues to torment Spezi for simply disagreeing with him.

11. Francesca Bene, an Italian reporter, said Knox had, in her opinion, advanced her cause by making clear what police had not previously conceded , that Knox thought she was being a helpful witness when in fact police were targeting her as a suspect and should have told her so. Mignini didn't like hearing the truth from Bene.

In comment 8821 i quoted the Committee to Protect Journalists. Sounds as if this committee is a full-time job if the journalists' beat happens to include Mignini.

Greetings halides1,
Thanks for that bit of information.
It does seem 1 has to walk a very fine line in Perugia, especially when PM Mignini is around.

I've been re-reading "Angel Face" by author Barbie Nadeau and found this interesting tidbit about Patrick Lumumba on page 104+105:
"But a Swiss professor named Roman Mero came forward to say that he had been at Patrick's bar the night of the murder, giving him an ironclad alibi, and the police eventually let the bar owner go. But for months, they tormented Patrick, auditing his books and checking his financial and residential status. In an attempt to save face - and to avoid a false imprisonment suit - the police had hoped to charge Lumumba with something, but they never could."

I bet that is another possible reason that Patrick Lumumba's bar Le Chic closed doors. Reading of this harrassment afterwards, I can easily see Mr. Lumumba quickly changing his story that he was never hit by the police to get them off his back, so to speak. But if it did not happen, why didn't he ever bring a lawsuit against the Daily Mail or others. I bet, as LondonJohn has mentioned, there probably are audio tapes of that interview. I wonder...

And with all of this in mind I wonder, (as it seems that Christiana on PS does too),
how careful does a guy named Frank Sfarzo of Perugia Shock have to be as he reports on this brutal murder case and its aftermath?
It would not suprise me to read 1 day that he too has been arrested or sued by PM Mignini.
Hmmm...
RWVBWL

 

[Chris_Halkides]

letter in response

No, I think you're wrong. Too many variables.An exception would be if someone had been missing for days and the remains of the last meal could give them a better supported time frame.

bucketoftea,

This letter was written in response to the article from which you quoted. I found even the first sentence helpful. In my reading the author feels gastric emptying time is helpful to support other information.

 

[christianahannah]

I am still having problems seeing what is exactly the problem with a public relations firm or what is the problem with hiring one. Neither one is illegal and I see nothing immoral or unethical about it. It is a legitimate business. Why do people act like it is something slithy?

The slithiness factor could have to do with a PR firm possibly affecting the outcome of a case based on spin rather than evidence.

A positive affect of a PR firm could be that of balancing the scales for a defendant versus the rather large resources of the judicial system.

 

[pilot padron]

I am still having problems seeing what is exactly the problem with a public relations firm or what is the problem with hiring one. Neither one is illegal and I see nothing immoral or unethical about it. It is a legitimate business. Why do people act like it is something slithy?

Hi Rose, and top of day to you.

Please understand the motivation for my post is not an appeal to anyone's baser instincts seeking tabloid type tidbits.
Excuse my naivety if my interpretation of your closing 'clincher' question is off.

My motivations are well above the minor, but frequently encountered depravities you allude to.
PS 'slithy' is my new. never before encountered wiktionary word for the day..Thanks

You are absolutely correct also that there can be no problem in a Family expending (limited) resources for a (pretty BIG) PR program.

This despite however:
1) Frequent claims from Family themselves on US TV of just how limited those Family funds are
2) Actual widespread Fund Raising Appeals and events for additional funds
3) A widely shared belief that this use of funds to influence a Judiciary in a Foreign land has a distinctly unfavorable Risk-Reward Ratio for Amanda.

Now, my motivation and problem is the pretty unequivocal statements by L,J that he does not believe Marriott is involved in 4 specific activities.

As a newbie, very gently and courteously lectured by Mary "that attention to detail is so important here", and definitely less than gently about "evidenced based/orientation" of this distinguished body by 'others' just yesterday, I choose to not let "ever so blatant and obvious errors go unheeded

Regards to you, and sincere wishes that *as a newbie* I am not 'off base' with these motivations and subsequent actions

 

[Katody Matrass]

The slithiness factor could have to do with a PR firm possibly affecting the outcome of a case based on spin rather than evidence.

A positive affect of a PR firm could be that of balancing the scales for a defendant versus the rather large resources of the judicial system.

You're right, when the case is based on spin rather than evidence it's a reasonable move to hire a PR firm. Unfortunately the prosecution side not only had a head start but had the initiative in releasing leaks. All the defense could do was to react and control the damage. The prosecution also found powerful natural allies in the tabloids which embraced the contrived sex-game murder narrative.

I was reading recently about the Chamberlains' case which has eerie similarities. It took quite a long time before the witch hunt climate cooled off and voices of reason prevailed.
We'll see how long will it take this time.

 

[RWVBWL]

You are absolutely correct also that there can be no problem in a Family expending (limited) resources for a (pretty BIG) PR program.

This despite however:
1) Frequent claims from Family themselves on US TV of just how limited those Family funds are

_________________________________________________________________

Greetings pilot padron,
When I read of what you wrote, it made me wonder:
How can a family afford to have a PR firm helping plead the case for their innocent - (in my opinion and many others too) - daughter,
locked up in jail in a far away country for a crime she had nothing to do with?

And then something I had read in Barbie Nadeau's book "Angel Face" popped into mind, from page 107:
"Valter Biscotti also dashed to Germany to offer Rudy legal services, free of charge;
he is always eager to insert himself into headline-making cases."

So maybe the "Family expending (limited) resources for a (pretty BIG) PR program", as you write, isn't really doing so.
Or if they are, maybe they are gettin' a reduced fee rate, for maybe someone else believes that there has been an injustice in Perugia...

Take it easy,
RWVBWL

 

[pilot padron]

HI RW

Your post contains excellent premises, and it was such a pleasure to follow them thru such impeccable logic to your conclusion.

With the evidence based/oriented objective admonishment still *scarred* in my memory, however, I guess I would be forgiven for initially wondering about "cites"

However, I hasten to deduce that my claims of expenditure of limited resources is supported by nothing more than common sense thinking that few firms would (or could) finance internally (pro bono) such a large undertaking and for so very lengthy a time span (coming on 3 years in a week)

Yours is no less supported by common practice of Firms often internally financing worthwhile causes, and in fact supported, albeit only somewhat, by the example you do cite.

Yours may well also be supported by the Hometown upper crust fraternity's familiarity, frequent associations and tendency to help each other's pet projects by 'movers and (Seattle) shakers, of which Mr Marriott and Firm are a definite potent quantity.

And you are also definitely correct that others may believe an injustice is uncorrected and wish to help, particularly if the convicted incarcerated person is not only of the same Hometown, but is in fact a close acquaintance of some of the above mentioned 'movers and shakers'

I may speak more about the latter on another subject.

PS:
Pardon me for confirming my previously admitted and bemoaned self esteem issues, but my name here is Pilot Padron
.

 

[LondonJohn]

That is how I always understood it. Too many variables, with an enormous degree of variability within each.

There is absolutely a wide level of imprecision in estimating ToD from stomach/duodenum contents. But, for about the 23rd time, in this particular instance most of that imprecision has been eradicated by solid evidence that Meredith was in fact alive during most of the "variability window". So in this particular instance it's possible (I believe) to say that Meredith very likely died before 9.30pm, and definitely before 10.00pm.

I know you would like this to be bogus science, and I will be very happy to accept that I am wrong, the moment I am directed to a credible scientific/medical source which quotes a T(lag) of over 4.5 hours under any circumstances in a healthy adult human who is known to have not drunk alcohol with the meal and who is sedentary for the first two hours following the meal. PLEASE - someone find such a reference for me, then I'll admit that I was wrong and stop talking about stomach evidence, I promise!

And by the way, the levels of calcium, aluminium or magnesium salts in antacid indigestion remedies far, far outweigh the levels which would be found in normal foods. That's why antacids work as stomach acid buffers. That's science.

 

[christianahannah]

_________________________________________________________________

Greetings pilot padron,
When I read of what you wrote, it made me wonder:
How can a family afford to have a PR firm helping plead the case for their innocent - (in my opinion and many others too) - daughter,
locked up in jail in a far away country for a crime she had nothing to do with?

And then something I had read in Barbie Nadeau's book "Angel Face" popped into mind, from page 107:
"Valter Biscotti also dashed to Germany to offer Rudy legal services, free of charge;
he is always eager to insert himself into headline-making cases."

So maybe the "Family expending (limited) resources for a (pretty BIG) PR program", as you write, isn't really doing so.
Or if they are, maybe they are gettin' a reduced fee rate, for maybe someone else believes that there has been an injustice in Perugia...

Take it easy,
RWVBWL

Even if the family was expending (limited) resources for a (pretty BIG) PR program who could find fault with that? Amanda is their daughter, who they believe has been falsely imprisoned for a crime she didn't commit. If I was a parent there'd be no limit to the amount of money I would spend to help my child.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I think you owe an apology to Meredith and to yourself for having denied an offence to her name by denying the obvious Raffaele's lie. In regard to literature search I am not accusing you of being disingenuous, I am accusing you of a lack of intellectual humilty. I think you are in good faith in your choice among what to research, I don't think there is a conscious aim to deceive in your assessmnt on what topic to research among the pertaining scientific literature, nonetheless your choice on what to read and search and what to consider pertinent, is a choice. Not all scientists would agree with your choice.

So you're not accusing me of deliberately cherry-picking the literature, but you are accusing me of accidentally cherry-picking the literature?

That too is a very serious accusation.

So I suggest you back it up by citing one or more papers that you believe some scientists would have chosen to cite, which support a t(lag) of five hours or more in the case of a small-to-moderate sized meal eaten by a healthy adult woman under normal circumstances with no alcohol, or retract it.

If no such papers exist, or no such papers exist that you know of, on what possible basis can you accuse me of not doing my research properly?

Well, I think it's not schoolchild-level maths, I think you need some medical culture or assessment to make equivalences and state definition, and I think you don't have the statements of the relevant witnsses. Moreover, for sure you don't have all statements of relevant witnesses.

You need "medical culture or assessment" to subtract the movie's running time from the time at which witnesses say they left? Why on Earth do you think you need such a thing?

What more information do you think the witnesses could have given that could be hidden from us, that could change these calculations? It looks to me like you are just appealing to a generalised kind of ignorance - "We can never know everything, so we can never know anything, so we know Knox is guilty!".

For example, Robin and Sophie rendered three accounts each to the police in the previous days of investigation, containing variations on timings, corrections and caveats on their memories. You may research that the starting of meal is important to start the measurement of fime in stomach content, but may well do a research and find out that the subsequent assuption of food, or subsequent assumption of alcohol, is also important in its ability to influence the timings of stomach emptying.

If you have a citation to show that it's plausible we might see a t(lag) of five hours or more in the case of a small-to-moderate sized meal eaten by a healthy adult woman under normal circumstances with no alcohol, then cite the relevant paper.

Otherwise this is simply the same kind of nonsense Fiona toyed with: "I see that while most people are under 1.8m tall, some people are as tall as 2.7m. I therefore see no reason why a 4m tall person couldn't have done it".

It is not enough to show that some factors can affect t(lag) to some degree - that was never contested. You need to show that we might see a t(lag) of five hours or more in the case of a small-to-moderate sized meal eaten by a healthy adult woman under normal circumstances with no alcohol, and you need a citation from the literature to show that.

But the main aspect in the they have more information argument, is that the information on the case doesn't consist in an assessment on the time of death and does not onsist in stomach emptying. They have more information because they have more information on the case.

It seems to me that you are just repeating yourself.

In some ways they were better informed, yes. In some ways they were worse informed, and those ways are vital to understanding the case. Deferring to people who were ignorant of vital, relevant facts when they made their decision is not rational.

I note that you yourself are happy to ignore the views of these nineteen judges when it suits you - specifically, you claim to think Meredith was murdered around 22:00 not at 23:30. Do they not have better information than you too, or are you claiming that you have some privileged access to information that puts you on a higher plane even than the "nineteen judges"?