Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Matthew Best]

If you are trying to intimate that they are likely then you should offer some comparison of relative frequency. Are you suggesting that they are more likely than true ones? Should we add confessions to the list of "things which must be discounted in a court of law", along with DNA evidence, and any presumption of competence or honesty by anyone involved with any aspect of the trial which might reflect badly on the defendant's case?

A "confession", to be of any use, should reveal facts about the crime that would not be known to someone who didn't actually do it. A confession that fails to do that is of little value. However, false confessions are frequently given enormous value by police and jurors.

I am not aware that Knox's statement revealed facts about the crime that were previously unknown, and the fact that police failed to record their questioning of her makes it impossible to know what she told them and what they told her anyway.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make about statistics.

 

[Matthew Best]

She never made a confession, false or otherwise.

Thank you for that Alt+F4.

Now all the two of us have to do is persuade everyone else!

(It may be difficult - putting "Amanda Knox confession" into Google gives 147,000 results!)

 

[RoseMontague]

The luminol footprints are not irrelevant. Where are the studies that normal households without any sort of blood on the floor reveals footprints through the application of luminol? What logical substance made the footprints? If this could be shown I'd tend to agree with you.

I have searched for this as well and found one person that tested their house and found nothing. I did see several examples of testing done on old crime scenes where luminol positive reactions remained after decades. Who knows when those prints were made or who made them? If Amanda's DNA was present in many of the samples but not Meredith's doesn't that argue against cleaning and also argue against the presumption by the prosecution that it was Meredith's blood that caused the reaction? There is way beyond a reasonable doubt on this but the court takes it as a matter of course. I found it very interesting that the second testing (TMB) was held back from the discovery for over 2 years and only provided by order of the judge. Stefafoni does not seem the type to get a positive luminol test then get a negative on the TMB and stop there. It leads me to wonder if she tried a more specific test for blood after the negative TMB tests.

 

[JREF2010]

Rose, I check in for the answer to this question too. It seems a simple question.

I assume, somewhere, someone has sprayed Luminol in a non-crime scene and can answer if it glows or not.

 

[Alt+F4]

Thank you for that Alt+F4.

Now all the two of us have to do is persuade everyone else!

(It may be difficult - putting "Amanda Knox confession" into Google gives 147,000 results!)

I don't think a million hits with that phrase is going to make any difference. If half the United States thought Amanda Knox is innocent it still doesn't matter. What Americans do on the Internet is going to have no pull in that Italian courtroom on November 24.

 

[RoseMontague]

A "confession", to be of any use, should reveal facts about the crime that would not be known to someone who didn't actually do it. A confession that fails to do that is of little value. However, false confessions are frequently given enormous value by police and jurors.

I am not aware that Knox's statement revealed facts about the crime that were previously unknown, and the fact that police failed to record their questioning of her makes it impossible to know what she told them and what they told her anyway.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make about statistics.

I agree Matthew. Her false accusation or whatever you want to call it obviously contained some major errors, and things that did not happen. The only connection is a scream. I had previously posted a link to a study of 40 false confessions many of which contained transcripts, testimony, and interviews. Some of the confirmatory information on details was shown to have been fed to the suspect during interrogation. I don't think statistics or these examples would prove that her statement was coerced, you have to look at the statement itself in light of the evidence to see if it was truthful or not. Taking one or two things from her statement that you think are true (being present at the time or a scream) and ignoring the rest does not prove anything either other than the police were either very gullible or really, really wanted to believe anything they coerced out of her. Those two true things are not the kind of details you need to determine a truthful statement.

 

[Matthew Best]

I don't think a million hits with that phrase is going to make any difference. If half the United States thought Amanda Knox is innocent it still doesn't matter. What Americans do on the Internet is going to have no pull in that Italian courtroom on November 24.

You appear to be having a discussion with a voice in your head. What you just wrote has no bearing on what I wrote.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

false confessions overturned by DNA evidence

Can you direct us to a similarly exhaustive list of people convicted (or acquitted) after having made true confessions?

The one is of very little use without the other, unless your only point is to defend the premise that false confessions are indeed made from time to time.

That would seem to be a remarkably useless endeavor, since I don't believe anyone is seriously questioning that they do.

SNIP

Pony up some numbers, here. Then you've got a basis for intelligent discussion.

Quadraginta,

“In a battle between DNA and confession evidence, I'll lay odds on confession evidence every time. Especially, as here, where the identity of the DNA is unknown. All prosecutors would have had to do was say that the DNA belonged to an unnamed accomplice. And they probably would have won. This is not to take anything away from the brilliant work of the defense attorneys in this case. But jurors have a hard time believing that anyone would ever confess to something they didn't do and an even harder time thinking a person would falsely confess to murder.”

Perhaps your view of jurors is more optimistic than the writers of the Bluhm blog. The Innocence Project looked into the reasons for 183 erroneous convictions that were overturned by DNA evidence, and in this study, false confessions emerged in about 24% of the cases.

 

[Alt+F4]

You appear to be having a discussion with a voice in your head. What you just wrote has no bearing on what I wrote.

Let me try this then: what difference does it make how many hits "Amanda Knox confession" gets on Google?

 

[Matthew Best]

Let me try this then: what difference does it make how many hits "Amanda Knox confession" gets on Google?

It demonstrates that not everybody shares your conviction that Knox did not confess.

 

[Dan O.]

Alt+F4's claim is that "She never confessed to murdering Meredith". As I understand it, being witness to a crime and not reporting it makes one culpable for that crime under Italian law. Did Amanda make a confession in the Nov. 5/6th interrogations that she was witness to Patrick murdering Meredith which led to her being arrested? If you accept that this is true and it is also true that Amanda was not at the cottage when Meredith was murdered then you have a confession to a crime that is false.

 

[Alt+F4]

As I understand it, being witness to a crime and not reporting it makes one culpable for that crime under Italian law.

Really? So if I was walking down a street in Rome, saw a bank robbery and didn't report it I would be charged with robbing that bank?

 

[quadraginta]

A "confession", to be of any use, should reveal facts about the crime that would not be known to someone who didn't actually do it. A confession that fails to do that is of little value. However, false confessions are frequently given enormous value by police and jurors.

Truism.

Why bother to make a statement which is intended to be self-evident? "The sun will appear on the eastern horizon in the morning." Big deal.

To be accurate, though, your statement should reflect that a confession should reveal facts which someone who didn't actually do it had not had an opportunity to learn. This is a more stringent condition than yours.

It is also wrong. This is a condition which makes a confession less assailable, but it is not a necessary one. If all the details of a particular crime are generally known it cannot be satisfied. The willingness of a particular individual to admit to the act itself cannot always be evaluated solely on that premise. Confirmed, maybe, but not eliminated.

I am not aware that Knox's statement revealed facts about the crime that were previously unknown, and the fact that police failed to record their questioning of her makes it impossible to know what she told them and what they told her anyway.

I thought that Knox's statement, or "confession" (or whatever we choose to call it ) placed her at the scene of the crime during its execution. This is in direct contradiction to her earlier statements. True or false, voluntary or "induced" that would make any discussion of facts "that would not be known to someone who didn't actually do it." utterly irrelevant.

I don't understand the point you're trying to make about statistics.

This is very evident. You appear to be in good company here in that regard, or a lot of it, at any rate. Whether this failure to comprehend is willful or not I do not know.

I cannot reduce the concept to terms any more simple than I have in this and earlier conversations on the same topic. An anecdote is not evidence. "The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'evidence'." "Anecdote" is not a pejorative. It is a description of a datum, one instance to include in a data set. Of itself or even in aggregate it provides no evidence for conclusion, only for hypothesis ... at best. You and others here incessantly bring forward examples of false confession with the sinister insinuation that it is commonplace or perhaps even more common than not. For this to constitute anything beyond mere insinuation you have to provide some evidence of likelihood as well as some evidence of causality. This has not been offered, either in general or in relation to the Knox case in particular.

What percentage of all confessions are false, or "induced", or otherwise erroneous or misleading to the detriment of an innocent defendant? Can you answer this question? Can you provide some evidence from some reviewable authority? Is it 1%, or 10%, or 90%, or 0.0000001%?

Without such data for comparison no litany of tragic error or deliberate malfeasance, no matter how long the list may be, is anything other than a blatant appeal to emotion.

 

[Matthew Best]

What percentage of all confessions are false, or "induced", or otherwise erroneous or misleading to the detriment of an innocent defendant? Can you answer this question? Can you provide some evidence from some reviewable authority? Is it 1%, or 10%, or 90%, or 0.0000001%?.

I fail to see what difference it would make. The fact of whether Knox's "confession" is false is unaffected by the number of other false confessions there may be.

 

[Matthew Best]

I thought that Knox's statement, or "confession" (or whatever we choose to call it ) placed her at the scene of the crime during its execution. This is in direct contradiction to her earlier statements. True or false, voluntary or "induced" that would make any discussion of facts "that would not be known to someone who didn't actually do it." utterly irrelevant.

Why? If she were present at the scene of the crime when it was being committed she would probably have knowledge of the scene that an innocent person would or could not have. Did she demonstrate such knowledge in her confession or not? If she did, that would show that the confession was true and she was at the scene when the crime was committed. Of course, the absence of such information in a confession does not prove that it is false. It is just one extra piece of information to take into account when evaluating the "confession".

 

[Danceme]

There were multiple, meaningless luminol results in Raffaele's house, mostly in the bathroom - I guess either he washed himself with turnip juice, he had a whole lot of nosebleeds, or commonly found substances other than blood and turnip juice (some commonly found in bathrooms) give positive luminol results.

<snip>

So we've got some footprints that could be blood or could be something else, that could belong to Amanda and Raffaele but could belong to someone else, that could have been made on the night of the murder or the subsequent morning but could have been made earlier, that did not test positive for Meredith's DNA or for blood, and which don't lead anywhere or tell us anything useful from their position.

That's not evidence of anything. You are saying "This could be evidence, can you prove that it's not?". No, we can't. We don't have to though. You have to prove that it is evidence, not merely that it could be.

The luminol results in Raffaele's bathroom could certainly be made with substances commonly found in a bathroom, the blood in urine as well as fecal matter both react with luminol. Other substances could be Amanda's menstrual blood, there was a box of tampons in Raffael's bathroom so we know she was on her period at some time over their time together, and she conceivably could have dripped blood walking naked to the bathroom or anything like that. These are believable to me and I'd readily accept these explanations as to why luminol results were obtained.

The footprints in the cottage however were made by people stepping in something and carrying it around on their feet. It wasn't bleach from prior floor cleanings because it would have dissipated or even if it didn't the entire floor would glow which it didn't. Justinian's proposal of rust is somewhat believable, as is the copper ions from copper piping I proposed once before, but if this were the case the entire shower floor would likely have glowed and possibly any surface ever cleaned with water from these old (or new) pipes. Maybe it did but I've not read anything ever to suggest it did.

""In these test only 9 kinds of substrates or compounds were reported to give strong enough CL to be easy mistaken for blood. These were preparations of turnip, parsnip, horseradish, bleaches (hypochlorite), copper
metal, enamel paint, certain spray paints, furniture polish and interior fabrics in motor vehicles."

http://www.imprimus.net/PDF Files/D...ood - Interference and Effect on Analysis.pdf

The fact that we are still discussing this shows how tenaciously people will cling to a false belief, even after it has been thoroughly debunked.

It has not been debunked. I don't get how you can say such things when it's not been conclusively proven it wasn't blood. The only thing proven was that the TMB tests for blood came back negative but much literature exists to say that luminol can alter the effects of TMB and PT, resulting in negative results.

"Four of the surfaces which gave positive results with the TMB test before luminol treatment gave negative results after treatment (both wet and dry), and one of the surfaces which gave positive results before luminol treatment and after luminol treatment (wet) gave negative results once the surface had
dried."

http://projects.nfstc.org/workshops...ffect of Luminol on Presumptive Tests and.pdf

DNA was extracted from these prints which can make it believable they were made in blood, unless you think an incredibly uniform shedding of skin cells from the bottom of the feet produced the results.

If Amanda's DNA was present in many of the samples but not Meredith's doesn't that argue against cleaning and also argue against the presumption by the prosecution that it was Meredith's blood that caused the reaction? There is way beyond a reasonable doubt on this but the court takes it as a matter of course. I found it very interesting that the second testing (TMB) was held back from the discovery for over 2 years and only provided by order of the judge. Stefafoni does not seem the type to get a positive luminol test then get a negative on the TMB and stop there. It leads me to wonder if she tried a more specific test for blood after the negative TMB tests.

Speculation - Amanda's DNA could have come from menstrual blood if she were on her period when she took her shower although I've never heard anyone claim she was. (or maybe she peed in the shower).

It appears luminol can result in false negatives in the TMB test, see above.

 

[quadraginta]

I fail to see what difference it would make. The fact of whether Knox's "confession" is false is unaffected by the number of other false confessions there may be.

I have no contest with what you say here. It is, in fact, another perspective on the very point I was making.

So I have to accept this as a concurrence on your part that all the many citations of false confession we have been offered in these threads are completely irrelevant to the Knox case, and serve no purpose beyond appeal to emotion.

 

[quadraginta]

Why? If she were present at the scene of the crime when it was being committed she would probably have knowledge of the scene that an innocent person would or could not have. Did she demonstrate such knowledge in her confession or not? If she did, that would show that the confession was true and she was at the scene when the crime was committed. Of course, the absence of such information in a confession does not prove that it is false. It is just one extra piece of information to take into account when evaluating the "confession".

Except for your rather coy evasion of Knox's complete reversal of her prior statements when she placed herself at the scene after days of denying any involvement you seem to be agreeing with what I said.

 

[Matthew Best]

So I have to accept this as a concurrence on your part that all the many citations of false confession we have been offered in these threads are completely irrelevant to the Knox case, and serve no purpose beyond appeal to emotion.

I don't know what emotion you think is being appealed to.

What emotion do you feel when you hear about false confessions?

 

[Alt+F4]

Other substances could be Amanda's menstrual blood, there was a box of tampons in Raffael's bathroom so we know she was on her period at some time over their time together, and she conceivably could have dripped blood walking naked to the bathroom or anything like that.

Let me take a wild guess here Dance, you're not a woman, right?

A box of tampons is in no way indicative that a particular person is having her period. How do you know those tampons weren't left there by the previous tenant?