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Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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katy_did said:
I think the distinction here is a very tricky one, because clearly, in the course of obtaining this statement, the prosecutor and police (and even the interpreter) would be asking questions. It seems to me that it's very difficult to make a distinction between questions asked in the course of an 'interrogation', and questions asked in the course of obtaining a 'voluntary statement'.
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You must know that there are no questions asked in a course of a voluntary statement. Had there been questions - expecially the interrogation type questions, which tend to clarify ambiguous points - the defence would have complained about it at some early stage of the proceeding. There has been no claim of this. The interpreter "question" (and the police questions) are refeered to by Amanda as happpening before she told about Patrick, so in the during the previous 01:45 interrogation.

Moreover, the resulting statement appears very different from would come out from an interrogation. Amanda's 05:45 lacks basic features of a story obtained through interogation. All details that would be present in a questioning are missing. The story lacks verification details always present in a questioning. On the other hand, contains details that are genuine Amanda's embellishemt and cannot be obtained through questioning. It doesn't have
structure and order of an interrogation. It is not grammatically Italian, it is not an Italian pattern of speech, nor a police style. It contains one point of junction at the end, a paragraph added afterwards, something typical indicating the document was read by Amanda at the end (the end was at that point), then she decided there was something more to add, maybe because forgotten or appearing not said clearly enough: this doesn't happen in a questioning, especially if the purpose of the interrogation is to obtain information for the arrest of a third person.

It seems to me that you latest "interpretation" though undermines the basic claims of "brainwashing" made by Amanda and her defence, of stress and pressure. There is a great difference by the pressure made in an interrogation and what can be your vague interpretation of spontaneous statement. An interrogation puts pressure because it is an interrogation, where the witness has to face details and objections by the interrogator and is asked repeatedly to match things and checked for consistence. Nothing of this kind happened here, so it was not an interrogation not even on the practical side, in a non legal common use of the term. An interrogation is something tough, thorough, precise, where the suspect or witnss is tested. The mere presence of questions (not proven any was put) is not equivalent to an interrogation.
 
halides1 said:
Machiavelli,

TMB is only slightly less sensitive than luminol;therefore, a positive luminol result would have had to come at the lower end its detection limit.
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Really? I am tempted to do something I usually never do, ask for your documentation.
I ask instead: do you know the difference between different kinds of TMB testing? Do you know of the diference in their sensitiveness?
Do you also know how a result is assessed "negative" in a TMB test?
(Do you know - for example - that the lable "positive" is an assessment based on the velocity of the reaction, and after 8 minutes a "negative" colorimetric TMB test sample can be identical to a positive one?)

halides1 said:
Machiavelli Moreover, you have not addressed why the DNA results should be negative. Luminol does not prevent one from collecting a DNA profile, as I have previously documented. One cannot turn a presumptive test for blood into a conclusive one without positive evidence from another test.
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But I have never written the DNA tests should be negative. The question is rather if they shouldn't. There is however a number of known blood stains that are tested for DNA and results turn out to be not useful, in normal practice. It is in fact perfectly all consistent with a low dilution of blood: DNA test requires a much higher amount of biological matter, also because blood - on the contrary of other tissues - has a quite a low concentration of DNA compared to its mass. You require a concentration of tens of thousands blood cells per microliter to hope to collect a microliter with some useful DNA, while you require only a few dozen of red cells to have a positive luminol reaction.
 
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halides1 said:
Machiavelli,
documented. One cannot turn a presumptive test for blood into a conclusive one without positive evidence from another test.
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And, in fact, this is a conclusive wrong statement. In fact one can conclude that a stain is originated by blood without any conclusive chemical test. I don't know where you found this principle in criminal law, that blood cannot be blood unless it is proven chemically. This is assessment that takes place in a criminal trial, not within the field of biological chemistry. Evidence is not biology nor science: evidence is information. Many other disciplines and arguments, different from biology and chemistry, can equally contribute to information and to the conclusion.
 
By now a number of you are aware that we were quite serious about this.
Darat said:
Thread off [Moderated Thread] status. Be aware any Member posting a post (after this Moderator Box warning) that has to be moderated for breaches of the Membership Agreement will be suspended with no further warnings.

If you can't discuss this topic without breaching your Membership Agreement DO NOT POST.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Darat
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If you thought that it meant you would just turn down the incivility to a lower level, you have now discovered that you were wrong. Essentially, anything that would not be approved in a moderated thread, including minor snarkiness, will get you suspended. I am sorry it has come to this, but we have revisited this thread far too many times to try to keep it from become a mudslinging pit. If the only way to keep you civil is draconian penalties, then I'm afraid that will have to be it.

All of you who escaped the scythe this time and all of you who will be waiting a week before posting again, please pay heed this time.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Tricky
 
Machiavelli said:
You must know that there are no questions asked in a course of a voluntary statement. Had there been questions - expecially the interrogation type questions, which tend to clarify ambiguous points - the defence would have complained about it at some early stage of the proceeding. There has been no claim of this. The interpreter "question" (and the police questions) are refeered to by Amanda as happpening before she told about Patrick, so in the during the previous 01:45 interrogation.
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Here are some statements from Amanda's testimony about the process behind the obtaining of that second statement:

AK: They asked me what Patrick was like. Was he violent? I said no, he's not violent. But are you scared of him? And I said yes, because thinking that he was the person who killed her, I was scared. Also because in those days I was thinking generally that there was a murderer, and I was frightened.

CP: Why didn't you say this to the police in the statement of 1:45?

AK: Say what?

CP: That you were afraid of Patrick.

AK: Because they hadn't asked me yet.
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GCM: It seems to me that the defense lawyer is asking whether you, during your spontaneous declaration of Nov 6 at 5:45, you made reference to a scream of Meredith that you heard. The pubblico ministero asked how you could refer to this scream.

AK: They asked me if I heard a scream from Meredith. I said no. They asked me "How could you not have heard her scream while she was killed?" I don't know why they asked me that, but I answered that I hadn't, and they said "How could that be?" and I said "Maybe my ears were covered." And that's it.
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AK: [...] But when I made that declaration, also the PM was one of the people who said to me, "So, you did this, you followed this person, you heard this, but why?" That's how it was.

CP: So it was the pubblico ministero who put the words "I heard thuds" into your mouth?
[...]
AK: He wanted to know why I hadn't heard Meredith. I was confused, and I was trying to imagine things that I had supposedly forgotten.

CP: Listen, in the statement of Nov 6 at 5:45, you declared to the police that you met Patrick in the morning of Nov 5, in front of the Universita per Stranieri.

AK: Yes.

CP: My question is the following: was this also suggested to you by the pubblico ministero?

AK: They asked me when was the last time I had seen Patrick, so I told them it was on that morning.
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AK: So when I was with the police, they asked if I heard Meredith's scream. I said no. They said "But if you were there, how could you not hear her scream? If you were there?" I said "Look, I don't know, maybe I had my ears covered." So they said "Fine, we'll write that down. Fine."
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CP: You declared that you remained in the house in via della Pergola, in the kitchen. Were you in the kitchen when Meredith died?

AK: No.

CP: Who told you? Who suggested that to you?

AK: I kept following their suggestions. They asked me if I was in her room when she was killed. I said no. They said but where were you? I said I don't know. They said, maybe you were in the kitchen. I said, fine.
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It seems odd that the judge and the prosecution didn't object that all this was impossible, since questions aren't asked during voluntary statements...
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
They were on a desperate quest for anything they could use to support their claim.
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Why?

They didn't bother to investigate whose blood was on the tissues in the driveway outside the cottage. They didn't try to figure out whose DNA was on the cigarette butts in the ashtray. All they cared about was finding evidence against Amanda and Raffaele.
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Why?
 
halides1 said:
What is your explanation for samples 89 and 96?
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One was Knox and the other was mixed on (or in) a pair rubber gloves.

I do not think it should be a surprise that the flat was found to have both Knox and Sollecito's DNA, either mixed or individually, in different rooms, as they were having sex at the flat, and bodily fluids are a significant source of DNA.

I believe at least one of studies on strangulation you reference at your own blog, discusses finding DNA from saliva on the neck and face area from the partner of the volunteers, and you already covered secondary and tertiary transfer on your own blog some months to explain how it may have got to different areas/objects.
 
RoseMontague said:
Yes. I believe I also told Fulcanelli that I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. LOL. Not sure if anyone understood that one either. But hey.
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:D I think that's brilliant, Rose. Now I'm ashamed it didn't register with me earlier (especially as I did my MA thesis on E.L. Doctorow and wrote a whole chapter on The March, which included a bunch of references to Civil War literature, all of which I read and should have recognized. LOL. Perhaps I just emptied my brain of it all after I finished).

Now I know you're cleverly incorporating American literature references in your posts, I'll read more carefully. Time to reclaim the thread from the science buffs, in an engagingly subtle and non-confrontational way.
 
Katody Matrass said:
All of the forensic evidence against the two is contested...
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Of course it is, the case is on appeal.

...and in fact for all of it there is a probable innocent explanation.
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What is the "innocent explanation"? If it is so innocent, why was it rejected by the court?

But it's also a fact that the evidence allows a much simpler and much probable narrative of Rudy being the single killer. Intellectual honesty and Ockham's razor directs us to choose the latter.
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What is that narrative?

Massei worked very hard in the motivation to undermine that straightforward and reasonable narrative but he failed.
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I've yet to read a straightforward and reasonable narrative that puts Rudy as the lone killer while explaining all the evidence. Take the footprint on the bathmat for example. I've heard that it was Rudy's, I've also heard it's Amanda's. I've heard that Rudy wore his sneakers into the bathroom, I've also heard that he was barefoot.

Amanda said that Filomena's door was closed, Raffelle said it was open. And that's just two examples that show there is no straightforward and reasonable narrative.
 
odeed said:
One was Knox and the other was mixed on (or in) a pair rubber gloves.

I do not think it should be a surprise that the flat was found to have both Knox and Sollecito's DNA, either mixed or individually, in different rooms, as they were having sex at the flat, and bodily fluids are a significant source of DNA.
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What in the name of all that is holy were they doing with the rubber gloves?
 
odeed said:
I do not think it should be a surprise that the flat was found to have both Knox and Sollecito's DNA, either mixed or individually, in different rooms, as they were having sex at the flat, and bodily fluids are a significant source of DNA.
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Do you have any evidence that in the six days they knew each other before the murder they ever had sex in her apartment?

They met on October 25 and the murder was on November 1.
 
katy_did said:
:D I think that's brilliant, Rose. Now I'm ashamed it didn't register with me earlier (especially as I did my MA thesis on E.L. Doctorow and wrote a whole chapter on The March, which included a bunch of references to Civil War literature, all of which I read and should have recognized. LOL. Perhaps I just emptied my brain of it all after I finished).

Now I know you're cleverly incorporating American literature references in your posts, I'll read more carefully. Time to reclaim the thread from the science buffs, in an engagingly subtle and non-confrontational way.
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Could someone explain to me what's Rose's quote from "A Street Car Named Desire" has to do with either the American Civil War or this case?
 
RoseMontague said:
Yes. I believe I also told Fulcanelli that I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. LOL. Not sure if anyone understood that one either. But hey.
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I caught the reference but understood it to refer to the context in which the original statement was made.
It seemed to make sense that way - assuming you were being self-deprecating, naturally.:):)
 
on DNA deposition

I sometimes encounter erroneous thinking about how commonly we shed DNA. Here are a few comments from Dr. Leslie Pray, “We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go. Forensic scientists use DNA left behind on cigarette butts, phones, handles, keyboards, cups, and numerous other objects, not to mention the genetic content found in drops of bodily fluid, like blood and semen (Van Oorschot & Jones, 1997). In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold mine of this sort of material.”

I would point out that keyboards, phones, and other items such as these are not usually held in vise-like grips. Dan Krane commented to me that each fingerprint has about 100 cells associated with it. That translates to a considerable amount of DNA.
 
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