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Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Juror said:
Massei does not cite as one of his reasons for believing the break-in was staged the inability of an intruder to make the ascent and climb through the window.
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I agree, but there are some folks that find it hard to believe, that is why I had to see for myself.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
With regard to fingerprints, they did get reference prints from the other housemates and from Meredith's boyfriend, and they are all marked on a fingerprint map, available at the following URL:

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/cottage_fingerprint_map.gif
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I'm always a little intrigued by this fingerprint map. In Meredith's room there are plenty of her fingerprints, especially on the wardrobe which she would have accessed many times getting dressed every day, two of Giacomo and ONE only of Rudy Guede. In Laura's room there are plenty of Laura's prints and one of Raffaele on the back of her door (how did that get there???). In Amanda's room there are none of her own prints and in Filomena's there are only two of her own and nothing else not even on her window which she opened and closed many times (and supposedly Rudy climbed through), perhaps as much as Laura who many left fingerprints on hers, as did Meredith on hers.
I just find it interesting, not for any particular motive, just in and of itself. I would have expected more unattributed really.
 
colonelhall said:
[London John:
"Have you read the London Evening Standard article today, and the predictable comments section? "

Yes, one would have predicted that many people would have been outraged at such a disgraceful piece of gutter journalism. How editors allow such nonsense to be published is beyond me. This really is sickening!
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Well, there most certainly were a lot of predictable comments, as LondonJohn pointed out. Some people can be most repetitive. Boringly so, to be honest.
 
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More on the bathroom photos

halides1 said:
In this presumptive test for blood, phenolphthalein is first reduced to phenolphthalin. When two molecules of hydrogen peroxide react, they form a molecule of water and a molecule of oxygen. Hemoglobin catalyzes (speeds up) this reaction; this is what people mean by the pseudoperoxidase activity of hemoglobin. The KM test is done under basic conditions. Therefore, when the oxygen oxidizes phenolphathalin back to phenolphthalein, the latter compound turns pink.

This discussion is intended only as background information to help understand what the police did or did not do. Did the police simply spray the bathroom with phenolphthalein? If so, they might have just been detecting an alkaline environment, as Kevin_Lowe suggested.
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To all,

I would like to follow-up my comments on the photograph of the bathroom that showed a pink color. At another site, a commenter wrote, “It was used in the bathroom because that's where they figured they'd have the highest chance of finding DNA from the perps, since the visible blood had shown someone had gone in there to clean up. Phenolphthalein is established not to cause damage to DNA.”

Although it is plausible that the forensic team was attempting to detect blood, it is premature to draw this conclusion without a reliable source of information, IMO. I have not yet found a statement that indicates whether phenolphthalein was applied or phenolphthalin plus hydrogen peroxide (Kastle-Meyer test) was applied. I searched in the Massei report and did not see any mention of phenolphthalein or the Kastle-Meyer test. The difference between phenolphthalein and the Kastle-Meyer reagent plus peroxide is critical to interpreting the photograph. If the former were used, it is just detecting an alkaline pH. If the latter were used, it is a presumptive test for blood, as I discussed earlier.

One final note: The use of luminol does not preclude DNA profiling, either; therefore, the anonymous commenter quoted above has not explained himself or herself very clearly.
 
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Was the phenolphthalin misapplied?

To all,

I found this comment from Dan_O. He makes an excellent point. If the phenolphathin were allowed to react with oxygen from the atmosphere (which would happen if the time were allowed to go beyond 30 seconds), it would render the test meaningless. Is it possible that the test was not done correctly, and that is the reason Massei does not mention it?
 
Originally Posted by platonov

MrsColumbo

.....................................
...........................................

Do you also do english - english translations ; some posters are claiming not to understand the Q.
Between you and me the jury looks with disdain on this suggestion. Even Old Foss is rolling his eyes.


Mrs.Columbo said:
.........................................


B) sorry, no - as I am neither english nor italian speaker
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(SIGH) OK so english - english translations are not available.
MrsColumbo - I am disappointed (and frustrated and confused)

I have been accused of lacking clarity - it appears we are at an impasse.

Is there anybody who can translate my Q from english to english.
I am starting to appreciate what AK must have gone thru - and RG & RS ; italian-italian is probably more difficult even with the aid of an assistant.
 
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piktor said:
The pro-innocence side will have none of that.

The investigators were wrong, the prosecution was wrong, the defense was wrong, the judges were wrong.

Two defendants were either "under pressure", "beaten", "being themselves", coming down from a pot trip, whatever.

This whole exercise has been a project from hell for two defendants.

Nobody here was in Perugia to see, hear and investigate first hand. Nonetheless, over there, everyone directly involved was wrong, the Italian judiciary, Italian scientific police, Italian expert witnesses, Italian defense lawyers, everybody was wrong and two defendants whose credibility is completely shot by their own obfuscations are absolutely innocent.

So the google sez.
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This is a very flat mole, but obviously not flat enough.

Miscarriages of justice happen from time to time. People not present figure this out from time to time.

This does not prove that the conviction of Knox and Sollecito was a miscarriage of justice, of course. (I mention this merely as a pre-emptive strike on a related mole). It merely shows that it's not inherently unreasonable to re-evaluate and/or criticise the verdict despite not being there.

For example, whether or not a t(lag) of five hours or more for a healthy young woman eating a small-to-moderate sized meal of pizza with no alcohol, stress or other known confounding factors does not depend on whether one was in a particular Perugia courtroom or not. Nor does the existence of independently verifiable computer records showing that someone watched Naruto on Raffaele's computer at 21:26 on the night of the murder.

As I have said before, if guilters really believed this mole they would replace all of their blogs and forums with a big sign saying "The court decided it, we believe it, that settles it" and they would all go home. The fact is they do very much believe that they can have an informed opinion on this case, and they express their opinions at every opportunity. They only start proclaiming the inherent fallibility of everyone who wasn't present in court at the time when they hit evidence they cannot explain away, which proves beyond reasonable doubt that the conviction was unsound. Then it's all "None of us can know, we weren't there, stop talking about it!".
 
halides1 said:
To all,

I found this comment from Dan_O. He makes an excellent point. If the phenolphathin were allowed to react with oxygen from the atmosphere (which would happen if the time were allowed to go beyond 30 seconds), it would render the test meaningless. Is it possible that the test was not done correctly, and that is the reason Massei does not mention it?
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Aha! Thanks for the detective work. This explanation makes much more sense. Cheers.
 
This is from the Massei report, page 217:

She subsequently emphasised that both in the bidet and in the sink, the traces were not separate, but presented themselves as physically united, without any break in continuity, and thus each one appeared to constitute a unicum, "a trace that I needed to analyse and consider in toto during the analyses...as from their visible aspect they were very diluted, really very, very diluted blood, I made sure that everything was taken that was possible to take, from the top towards the bottom", she explained (pages 13-14).

It gives a visual of an almost scraping motion in collecting the specimen for testing. It just struck me as maximizing the area in which AK's DNA could have existed and ended up included on the swab/disc thingy (technical name for DNA collection media!)
 
PDiGirolamo said:
This is from the Massei report, page 217:

She subsequently emphasised that both in the bidet and in the sink, the traces were not separate, but presented themselves as physically united, without any break in continuity, and thus each one appeared to constitute a unicum, "a trace that I needed to analyse and consider in toto during the analyses...as from their visible aspect they were very diluted, really very, very diluted blood, I made sure that everything was taken that was possible to take, from the top towards the bottom", she explained (pages 13-14).

It gives a visual of an almost scraping motion in collecting the specimen for testing. It just struck me as maximizing the area in which AK's DNA could have existed and ended up included on the swab/disc thingy (technical name for DNA collection media!)
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Actually, Tagliabracci pretty much states this a little later in the report.

I really have read this whole report - I guess it's hard to absorb it all without going back through it over and over.
 
LondonJohn said:
If only we could hear an audio recording of the December interrogation.................. :rolleyes:
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Indeed, or a transcription or an idea of at what point the session was ended ??? (and by who ???) and why ???

Of course there are still the translation problems.:)
 
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PDiGirolamo said:
This is from the Massei report, page 217:

She subsequently emphasised that both in the bidet and in the sink, the traces were not separate, but presented themselves as physically united, without any break in continuity, and thus each one appeared to constitute a unicum, "a trace that I needed to analyse and consider in toto during the analyses...as from their visible aspect they were very diluted, really very, very diluted blood, I made sure that everything was taken that was possible to take, from the top towards the bottom", she explained (pages 13-14).

It gives a visual of an almost scraping motion in collecting the specimen for testing. It just struck me as maximizing the area in which AK's DNA could have existed and ended up included on the swab/disc thingy (technical name for DNA collection media!)
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Indeed. If you swab the whole sink, then if Amanda's DNA was anywhere in the sink (say because she rinsed her mouth out after brushing her teeth and spat the water into that sink) then you can find it on your swab. If there is blood from Meredith anywhere in the sink, then you can find a mixture of Amanda's DNA and Meredith's blood on your swab.

How Massei got to the conclusion that this was evidence of anything is not clear to me.
 
PDiGirolamo said:
3) I am interested in knowing what you think are the 2 or 3 best pieces of evidence for the other side of the argument (e.g. if you are convinced of guilt, what 2-3 things indicates possible innocence and the other way around.)
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1. The E-mail she sent.

2. The lack of Rudy's DNA in the room with the broken window.

3. That Mignini hasn't gotten the meathook, and our State Department doesn't seem to care.

The first really gave me a pause, it did not look good to me at all. Of course that's not really evidence of anything, but it definitely made me more suspicious as I came across it early in my reading. However I saw it in the context of someone applying pseudo-psychological methods that claimed that seven or whatever it was mentions of the word 'shower' suggested she was sex-crazed. That kind of blunted the impact, and further reading about her interrogation ordeal caused me to put it that context.

I do find it curious that no trace of Rudy could be found in Filomena's room. Granted they weren't looking for it, and it would have impugned their theory, but you'd still think that something would have been found. This is the only part that makes the staged break-in theory plausible to me.

Lastly I can't help but wonder why someone hasn't retired the prosecutor yet, the job he did on this case is laughable. I know this sounds somewhat absurd, but I wonder if someone knows something that none of us or even the court never found out about. Something that allowed this to go forward and to continue even though it's tough to reconcile the prosecutions' case with reality sometimes. I never had anything but a positive view of Italy before this, I know their political situation is sometimes a circus, they get porn stars in their parliament, the government has fallen God knows how many times since WWII; but I never really cared as it's their country and if they want entertainment from their government they can have it. However this guy pressing the slander charge against Amanda, indicting her parents and others that criticize him for things said overseas and not only does no one sack him but he's allowed to continue on the appeal...well that just makes me wonder...
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
Indeed. If you swab the whole sink, then if Amanda's DNA was anywhere in the sink (say because she rinsed her mouth out after brushing her teeth and spat the water into that sink) then you can find it on your swab. If there is blood from Meredith anywhere in the sink, then you can find a mixture of Amanda's DNA and Meredith's blood on your swab.

How Massei got to the conclusion that this was evidence of anything is not clear to me.
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I suspect it was so people could say 'Amanda's DNA was found mixed with Meridith's blood' in X number of locations!' It sounds damning when you first hear it, I suspect this is part of the reason the Jury convicted. Early in my reading I was perusing a site where this was expounded upon over and over, and never once did anyone post out the truth, which caused me to wonder eventually 'waitaminnit, she lived there, of course her blood would be mixed with Meredith's, wouldn't it? Why isn't anyone pointing this out, am I totally wrong about how this all works?'

Then I found out the whole story, and let us just say it totally discredited in my mind the site I was reading, that not a single person would point out that DNA-mixed blood was not found at the actual murder site, but in a shared bathroom.
 
halides1 said:
To all,

I would like to follow-up my comments on the photograph of the bathroom that showed a pink color. At another site, a commenter wrote, “It was used in the bathroom because that's where they figured they'd have the highest chance of finding DNA from the perps, since the visible blood had shown someone had gone in there to clean up. Phenolphthalein is established not to cause damage to DNA.”

Although it is plausible that the forensic team was attempting to detect blood, it is premature to draw this conclusion without a reliable source of information, IMO. I have not yet found a statement that indicates whether phenolphthalein was applied or phenolphthalin plus hydrogen peroxide (Kastle-Meyer test) was applied. I searched in the Massei report and did not see any mention of phenolphthalein or the Kastle-Meyer test. The difference between phenolphthalein and the Kastle-Meyer reagent plus peroxide is critical to interpreting the photograph. If the former were used, it is just detecting an alkaline pH. If the latter were used, it is a presumptive test for blood, as I discussed earlier.

One final note: The use of luminol does not preclude DNA profiling, either; therefore, the anonymous commenter quoted above has not explained himself or herself very clearly.
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Yes. If indeed the bright pink colouration in the bathroom photo is from phenolphthalein testing, then not only is it a flagrant misuse of phph (it's typically applied to small samples, either on swabs or filter paper, rather than sprayed around a large area), but the "explanation" offered by that commenter is utterly bogus. As you said, Luminol would have been a far more appropriate test to use, and would also have allowed for confirmatory blood tests and DNA tests. It looks to me as if the "crack" forensics team might have got a bit too excited about using all the toys in the toybox.
 
platonov said:
Indeed, or a transcription or an idea of at what point the session was ended ??? (and by who ???) and why ???

Of course there are still the translation problems.:)
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Mignini did the interrogation. If there was something Amanda said that was incriminating he would have used it. Why do you think it is important?
 
Kaosium said:
Could it possibly be "I see the light! I see the light!" in the ironic sense? In that case it would be an idiom for someone pretending they'd had a conversion.
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Why not take the words as they were spoken?

when she says - I see the flash - she means 'flash' and not 'light'

Flash is the term for Video clip



(english-english /Platonov)
 
Platonov - 07 Dec.

Sorry, I did not read your post exactly and mixed 07th Dec with 17th Dec.
**

Did some research, but could not find anything about Ms.Knox on this day,

5th = Report of the Corte di Riesame
6th = Interrogation of Raffaele (in prison) - at his demand, but then he
decided to keep silent and refused to answer
7th = arrival Rudy Hermannn Guede from Germany

**
can you give me a hint what you are looking for on that specific date?


(about english-english = the problem is between the keyboard and the Computer)
 
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