Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[loverofzion]

Amanda wasn't a convicted murderer when the knife was found. The prosecution used what they claimed to have found on the knife to convict her. If they couldn't find blood on the knife, then the knife was probably not the murder weapon.

We don't use the outcome of a trial to explain the evidence. And the entire purpose of forensics is to guard against assumptions.

The prosecution had loads more on which to convict her than the double DNA knife.
She would have gone down as hard even without the police having discovered it.

Why do you suppose Amanda was taped saying to Edda,"I'm worried about the knife" while in prison?

Another police conspiracy against Americans?

 

[loverofzion]

Amanda wasn't a convicted murderer when the knife was found. The prosecution used what they claimed to have found on the knife to convict her. If they couldn't find blood on the knife, then the knife was probably not the murder weapon.

We don't use the outcome of a trial to explain the evidence. And the entire purpose of forensics is to guard against assumptions.

Let me amend that to the accused murderer.

 

[loverofzion]

It could have. But loverofzion claimed it was blood.

No, I amended that it was the GENETIC PROFILE of the victim.
The assumption , seeing as she was stabbed to death and the accused's DNA was on the handle and the vicitm's DNA on the blade, is that it was blood.

What else would you suggest it was?

 

[loverofzion]

What is your scientific education if I might ask?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

No, I amended that it was the GENETIC PROFILE of the victim.
The assumption , seeing as she was stabbed to death and the accused's DNA was on the handle and the vicitm's DNA on the blade, is that it was blood.

What else would you suggest it was?

It's a problem, isn't it?

We know it's not blood.

Nobody has any idea what it might be if it isn't blood, or why it should have survived the cleaning with bleach that the prosecution claimed occurred when absolutely no blood did.

One hypothesis is that it was just a bit of grot on the blade with no DNA in it at all, and that some of Meredith's DNA that was already present in the lab contaminated Stefanoni's test run creating the illusion that it was tissue from Meredith.

Another is that an officer who had picked up some of Meredith's skin cells at the murder house contaminated the knife when they picked it up - secondary transfer is a known phenomenon, so this too breaks no laws of physics or biology.

Another is that Stefanoni decided to mock up a good result and chucked some of Meredith's DNA into the final run since nobody from the defence was looking.

Another is that it's a chunk of skin or something from Meredith that miraculously clung to the knife after every trace of blood had been washed away with bleach. This theory is even less likely that the previous three, especially given that the knife was almost certainly sitting in its drawer in Raffaele's house when Meredith was murdered by Rudy, because at that time Amanda and Raffaele were almost certainly right there in Raffaele's house with it.

 

[Withnail1969]

This post #7228?

Nothing much there but conjecture and rationalization.

I did find the part she chose to single out in bold from the quote she cited in that post to be interesting in view of recent conversation. Thanks for pointing it out.


Mary_H might want to powwow with Withnail1969, since there seems to be some discrepancy about the knife supply at the girls' place. Just a little while ago we were given this assurance.



Somebody's chasing the wrong rabbit.

I've seen a photograph of the knives at the girls' place in which there seemed to be a plethora of sharp-looking potential murder weapons in a variety of sizes.

 

[RoseMontague]

"In your opinion" there was no DNA on the knife??
Come on surely you can do better than that.

That is the opinion of the experts quoted in that post showing the quotes that Frank provided as well as the four quotes from the appeals I posted previously that indicate the very real possibility that there was no DNA on the knife blade.
Perhaps you should ask these experts your question.

 

[loverofzion]

The inspector violated some basic principles of science when he plucked the knife from the drawer. As Steve Moore has pointed out, when evidence is collected from a crime scene, it is important to gather up everything at the scene, instead of picking and choosing what looks interesting.

In the case of the kitchen knife, the entire drawer should have been removed and taken to the lab. Every utensil in the drawer, as well as the drawer itself, should have been analyzed for DNA. Under those circumstances, if more of Meredith's DNA had been found, it would raise questions about whether her DNA was in the drawer for reasons other than that the drawer contained the murder weapon.

What if Meredith's DNA had been found on a spoon? Would that make the spoon the murder weapon? What if Filomena's and Laura's DNA had been found in the drawer? Would that make them murder victims, too?

Without all the possible evidence offered by the environment in which the knife was found, no valid conclusions can be drawn about any individual item from that environment. Along the same lines, it makes no sense that inspectors didn't confiscate every knife in Raffaele's house and take them to the lab for testing.

They actually did test other knives in the drawer; none had any evidence of the victim's DNA.

Also in case it escaped your attention, the police officers at the scene said clearly there wsa a strong smell of bleach coming from the apartment. The knife in question drew their attention as it looked like it had been vigorously scrubbed.

As for Mr. Moore, nothing in his background qualifies him to make any grand declarations regarding forensic scientific evidence.

 

[RoseMontague]

In addition I believe the knife sample is the only sample where Stefanoni used her unique "LCN" analysis method of cranking up the number of replications without using additional precautions to avoid contamination. So contamination that might have gone unnoticed in less-amplified samples might have been detectable in the knife sample.

Halides1 is better at this stuff than I am and will no doubt correct any errors I may have made.

I believe Stefanoni's method was turning up the knob (electric field voltage past the manufacturer's recommended levels). A good analogy is driving while listening to an AM station, eventually you get to the point that you start to lose the signal. Turning up the volume only works to a certain point until you get more and more static the higher you go. She got many too low readings to show anything and she kept cranking it up until she got 3 readings, 2 of which were just random noise and 1 that she said was a "match". She used the standard 28 cycles PCR rather than the 34 normally used in LCN testing.

 

[loverofzion]

Actually tests showed that whatever is was, it was not blood.

So what was it, if it wasn't contamination from the lab? Nobody has any remotely convincing explanation, any more than they have a remotely convincing explanation of how t(lag) can be five hours or more in a normal, healthy young woman eating a small-to-moderate meal of pizza with no alcohol, stress or other confounding factors.

Again, read the report.
Stefanoni said there was not a sufficient sample to test for blood.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

They actually did test other knives in the drawer; none had any evidence of the victim's DNA.

Also in case it escaped your attention, the police officers at the scene said clearly there wsa a strong smell of bleach coming from the apartment. The knife in question drew their attention as it looked like it had been vigorously scrubbed.

If the knife was vigorously scrubbed with bleach, then there definitely wasn't any of Meredith's DNA on it. That would just leave contamination or falsification.

As for Mr. Moore, nothing in his background qualifies him to make any grand declarations regarding forensic scientific evidence.

You know that Moore is far from the most qualified person who has criticised the DNA evidence in this case.

 

[loverofzion]

Alas for me.




According to Judge Massei, there were other knives in the drawer (Motivaziones, page 106, page 264).




How dare you take the name of Horatio Caine in vain?

Can anyone here explain why the police went to Raffaele's apartment on November 6th (Motivaziones, page 106) and seized a large knife from his kitchen drawer? Raffaele had been arrested the night before, and Amanda was arrested that day. Three days later, on November 9th, Judge Claudia Matteini released her report that said, “.... [Meredith] was then threatened with a knife, the knife which Sollecito generally carried with him and which was used to strike Meredith in the neck." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2843350.ece

Why would the police go looking for a kitchen knife when they were already pinning the crime on Raffaele's flick knife?




The point is not how it would have gotten there (although that is certainly worthy of speculation), the point is the investigators could not rule out, with scientific validity, that more of Meredith's DNA was in the drawer. It's basic control group stuff -- you can't set the "murder weapon" apart from the other knives unless you test the other knives.




It appears to the guilters that Raffaele lied. It appears to the innocenters that he was trying to figure out some possible explanation for why the police would have found Meredith's DNA on a knife from his kitchen. Which raises another interesting question -- why did the investigators find Amanda's DNA on a knife in Raffaele's kitchen but they didn't find Raffaele's DNA on it?




First they would have to prove it was a lie. Then, let's hope, they would throw some actually substantial evidence into the mix.




You might want to read his prison diary.

They went looking for a larger knife because the smaller knife was not a match for all the wounds.

And incidentally, yes Raffaelo DID say that maybe he had pricked Meredith with the knife while cooking.

As it turned out she had never been to his apt.

How do you account for that lie?
More coercion perhaps.

 

[colonelhall]

Rose: "In my opinion, there was no DNA on the knife "

Is the defence team calling you to give your opinion at the appeal?

If so, and if they call up Steve Moore, in whose opinion there are those who believe that police fabricated evidence, and also Kev, who has an opinion on everything. They must be unbeatable!

 

[colonelhall]

Kev: "If the knife was vigorously scrubbed with bleach, then there definitely wasn't any of Meredith's DNA on it."

No chance that they missed a bit, in your opinion?

 

[RoseMontague]

They actually did test other knives in the drawer; none had any evidence of the victim's DNA.

Also in case it escaped your attention, the police officers at the scene said clearly there wsa a strong smell of bleach coming from the apartment. The knife in question drew their attention as it looked like it had been vigorously scrubbed.

As for Mr. Moore, nothing in his background qualifies him to make any grand declarations regarding forensic scientific evidence.

The other knives tested were from Raffaele's personal collection, if I remember this correctly. No control samples tested from the tray or other utensils in that drawer.

 

[RoseMontague]

Rose: "In my opinion, there was no DNA on the knife "

Is the defence team calling you to give your opinion at the appeal?

If so, and if they call up Steve Moore, in whose opinion there are those who believe that police fabricated evidence, and also Kev, who has an opinion on everything. They must be unbeatable!

I provided four quotes from the appeal regarding this as well as some quotes from Frank relating testimony regarding this issue. I agree with those opinions that there is a real possibility that there was no DNA on the knife blade.

 

[loverofzion]

Treehorn, I take it that you don't know what a control is with regard to DNA testing. Yes, a spoon would have been a suitable substrate control to show if Meredith's DNA was uniquely on the knife or generally in the environment of the drawer.

Of course, very few believe that any of Meredith's DNA was in that drawer on either knives or spoons. The most probable source of the DNA is contamination in the lab which has neither the equipment nor the procedures to properly handle LCN DNA testing.


And you haven't apparently done your homework with regard to Raffaele's statement about the knife. If you had you would have known that the statement was not made to the police.

Are you here in a search for the truth or just to spread rumors?

"Very few believe that Meredith's DNA was on the knife"??

Where do you get your numbers from, FOA census takers?

 

[RoseMontague]

Again, read the report.
Stefanoni said there was not a sufficient sample to test for blood.

Actually, on the knife blade, she said it was not blood and I gave you the quote from her testimony. Did you even read my post?

 

[Withnail1969]

They actually did test other knives in the drawer; none had any evidence of the victim's DNA.

Also in case it escaped your attention, the police officers at the scene said clearly there wsa a strong smell of bleach coming from the apartment. The knife in question drew their attention as it looked like it had been vigorously scrubbed.

As for Mr. Moore, nothing in his background qualifies him to make any grand declarations regarding forensic scientific evidence.

The knife 'looked like it had been vigorously scrubbed' - not just clean, but vigorously scrubbed.

'A strong smell of bleach coming from the apartment'. How would that work, exactly, assuming the knife was 'vigorously scrubbed' on the night of the murder? Bleach has a rather pungent smell, so I often open a window after using it. That way I don't have to inhale the unpleasant odour.

 

[loverofzion]

Aye - you can behave as you see fit, and I made no statements to the effect that you cannot.

I spoke merely about how one should behave, a very different thing indeed.



I see this form of arguing past the point frequently from posters from the USA, interestingly enough. When criticised for something they said, they respond by defending on Constitutional grounds their right to say it, which was never contested and was never the point in the first place.



We don't do censorship here - we merely robustly criticize foolish arguments and ill-founded opinions based on unscientific or anti-scientific nonsense.



I have seen this and similar claims made by yourself and other guilters, but never properly backed up.



On certain forums of their own guilters collaborate enthusiastically to caricature anyone who disagrees with them. As an argument, or rather as a substitute for an argument, I find this reflective of a fairly low level of intellectual and moral development.

I guess it serves a purpose as a form of community bonding, where they can unite in an in-joke that denigrates and trivialises outsiders, and gives otherwise worthless ad hominem arguments a kind of faux acceptability through social reinforcement.

I'd prefer it if this substitute for an argument did not pollute these forums, but as you have so clearly asserted we cannot stop you bringing that sort of intellectual toxic waste here. We can merely label it as such and then move on.

Excuse me, what "intellectual toxic waste" are you referring to?
Can you cite where you think this may have occurred?

That is a loaded slur; can you back up what the polite poster has ever posted that would deserve from you such a snide, ANTI intellectual statement?