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Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Can Sollecito, Sr. indict Mignini?

To quote Machiavelli: "But the members of the judiciary are also related to a separate power, the CSM, an independent entity. Nobody else - no hierarchy nor court - has power over the single magistrates or the CSM."

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6553060&postcount=14948


See my reply to London John above...

I doubt most suspects in Italian cases can whistle up the likes of Bongiorno & co

Look into the details of the case against him & see if he is 'David'.

The unfortunate reality might be that if this were not such a high profile case - 'David' might have pulled it off - - but that's admittedly just speculation.

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We've talked about it many times on this thread, probably before you joined. For me, it boils down to a question of probability. How likely is it that a police officer walks into a kitchen, opens the silverware drawer and pulls out the murder weapon? Not only is it unlikely to begin with, but when you add in the extenuating circumstances -- that the police had no reason to be looking for a knife on November 6th, that they had no reason to be looking for a kitchen knife, and that the DNA test on the knife could not be repeated, etc. -- it is so blatantly absurd that no sober judge should NOT question it.

The same for the bra clasp -- of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world of all the millions of places in the house Raffaele's DNA could be found, it is found only on the bra clasp? Come on. The odds against it are astronomical.

No, I don't think there is nothing unlikely in picking up that knife in particular from the drawer and test it for the DNA. That was the only knife suitable for attacking a human being that was found in that drawer. There were only two big kitchen knife in the apartment, and one is a bread knife. A second knife was seized from Raffaele's apartment and also tested for DNA, this second was not a kitchen knife. No I don't see anything incredible in this.

For the bra clasp, I already expressed myself on this point. I don't see an oddity neither. On the other plate of the scale, I don't see a conspiracy as consistent, not even the finding of only one piece of evidence: if I thought of a conspiracy, it would be strange to me that only one piece of evidence was fabricated. Why not two? Why not ten? Why not more DNA and why not two DNA spots on the bra clasp instead of one, or why not two or more items, why not also a tiny DNA stain on the materass, on a purse strap, on a paper sheet, on a piece of cloth. I don't see a conspiracy as anything consistent under any other point of view, like motives, practical organiziation, perpetrators, etc. But not even the element that you consider suspicious.
I don't see this astronomical odds. I don't see any oddity at all in finding only one piece of DNA.

So the question the judges should be curious about is how such high odds were defied -- TWICE. They don't even have to accuse anyone of tampering; they could just say, "Sorry, we're not buying it," the way they do to Amanda and Raffaele, with no truly valid theory on which to challenge them.

I think what you say is utterly illogical. Amanda and Raffaele were clearly accused of tampering and clear explanations can be given as for why they were tampering at each stage, for me the explanation is not limited at "we're not buying".
 
See my reply to London John above...

I doubt most suspects in Italian cases can whistle up the likes of Bongiorno & co

Look into the details of the case against him & see if he is 'David'.

The unfortunate reality might be that if this were not such a high profile case - 'David' might have pulled it off - - but that's admittedly just speculation.

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Before I get sucked any deeper into this vortex, I want to clarify that my comment about the nature of your skepticism was not intended to be specifically about Sollecito, Sr., but to be about your tendency as a rule to be skeptical of the defendants but not of law enforcement or the judiciary.
 
No, I don't think there is nothing unlikely in picking up that knife in particular from the drawer and test it for the DNA. That was the only knife suitable for attacking a human being that was found in that drawer. There were only two big kitchen knife in the apartment, and one is a bread knife. A second knife was seized from Raffaele's apartment and also tested for DNA, this second was not a kitchen knife. No I don't see anything incredible in this.

For the bra clasp, I already expressed myself on this point. I don't see an oddity neither. On the other plate of the scale, I don't see a conspiracy as consistent, not even the finding of only one piece of evidence: if I thought of a conspiracy, it would be strange to me that only one piece of evidence was fabricated. Why not two? Why not ten? Why not more DNA and why not two DNA spots on the bra clasp instead of one, or why not two or more items, why not also a tiny DNA stain on the materass, on a purse strap, on a paper sheet, on a piece of cloth. I don't see a conspiracy as anything consistent under any other point of view, like motives, practical organiziation, perpetrators, etc. But not even the element that you consider suspicious.
I don't see this astronomical odds. I don't see any oddity at all in finding only one piece of DNA.<snip>


These are all reasonable objections. I use the same logic when people doubt Amanda's story of being cuffed twice on the head. Why not three times, or six times? Why not smacks or hair-pulling instead of cuffs? And so on.

If I am correct that the evidence was fabricated, I would have to speculate that the team came up with only one piece of evidence per defendant because they thought that was all they would need; they were not expecting to be questioned.
 
This is not authoritative as nobody else can access the relevant document at the link you posted. In future, please do not post links others cannot access.

No. This is not Wikipedia and we do not limit ourselves to whatever Joe Public can Google. The scientific literature is the gold standard here whether or not everyone personally access it from their lounge room.

Some of us have no trouble getting access to the scientific literature, and appreciate relevant citations - we can verify the contents if necessary.

If it were so unlikely that rust or coffee could give a false positive result, then why would the New Scientist article Rose quoted mention it as being a problem?

That's simply not clear from the information at hand.

Now New Scientist is, frankly, a bit sloppy sometimes. However it's overall pretty good, especially when it's quoting relevant experts rather than putting things in its own words. So it's fairly likely that coffee is a problem under some circumstances.

The Creamer et. al. paper (A comprehensive experimental study of industrial, domestic and environmental interferences with the forensic luminol test for blood) lists as a sub-5% reacting substance "coffee stain". Unfortunately it gives us no details at all about exactly what "coffee stain" means in terms of quantity or origin.

Maybe instant coffee reacts strongly but not filter coffee, or vice versa. Maybe an espresso (also known as a short black) reacts strongly but not weaker coffee. Maybe ground coffee beans react strongly, so if you spill ground coffee it can create a reaction, but brewed, liquid coffee does not. All of these seem possible based on the limited information we have currently seen. I just don't know, and I don't think anyone else here does.

I notice that furniture polish is way up there in the paper linked to by Rose as a substance causing a major Luminol reaction. Furniture polish, floor polish - probably pretty similiar.

Why are we talking about all this anyway since i understood that the Luminol footprints in the cottage definitely didn't contain blood? Am i wrong on that?

From a rationalist perspective, the sole reason to talk about this is to hammer the luminol footprint mole even flatter. We've demonstrated that the luminol footprints cannot be shown to belong to Amanda and Raffaele, cannot be shown to be blood, and cannot be shown to have been deposited on the night of the murder therefore there's more reasonable doubt about their evidentiary value than you can shake a Satanic doorstop at.

It would be nice to be able to point to a specific substance that probably made the deposit that the luminol reacted to. While the Creamer et. al. paper specifies that vinyl floor polish does not react with luminol, that is the only mention of it so floor polishes of other sorts might well react, and in addition there's no fundamental reason why furniture polish couldn't spill or drip on to the floor. So I suppose it's a candidate. Coffee might be too depending on what exact form of coffee causes a strong reaction, or water with rust in it. However the bottom line is that there are multiple candidates, it was a long time ago, none of know for sure what it was but the one thing we do know is that it tested negative for blood, so blood's probably the least likely of the available candidate substances.

ETA: It's also worth bearing in mind that the guilter pretence that ordinary households don't have substances on the floors that react with luminol was falsified in this very investigation, since there were multiple luminol reactions in Raffaele's house that are not claimed by anyone to be evidence of anything. While it's interesting to poke around trying to figure out exactly what the substance in Amanda's house was, the bottom line is that anyone claiming it has to be blood is not only ignorant of scientific facts but also ignorant of the facts pertaining to this very case.
 
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Before I get sucked any deeper into this vortex, I want to clarify that my comment about the nature of your skepticism was not intended to be specifically about Sollecito, Sr., but to be about your tendency as a rule to be skeptical of the defendants but not of law enforcement or the judiciary.


Not at all, I'm highly skeptical of law enforcement & the judiciary in any jurisdiction I'm familiar with (and by implication all others ?) but not to the extent of letting killers and rapists walk free because they are not the 'type' of people who commit crimes of this nature.

I'm even more skeptical of such arguments and those that follow on from this starting point.

PS You brought up D & G w.r.t. wiretaps of Sollecito Snr. & co. - I simply point out such an analogy is not applicable here.

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I can't help thinking that this suggestion, if taken up, would help solve the problem platonov is himself complaining about.


Given that this thread was at ~ 26,000 posts before I started posting and had been on moderation status etc & long abandoned by most JREF posters, what you can't help thinking does not seem to accord with the evidence.

This thread in a nutshell maybe.:)

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Not at all, I'm highly skeptical of law enforcement & the judiciary in any jurisdiction I'm familiar with (and by implication all others ?) but not to the extent of letting killers and rapists walk free because they are not the 'type' of people who commit crimes of this nature.

I'm even more skeptical of such arguments and those that follow on from this starting point.


I'm not sure that was the starting point of anyone here. Personally, I believed the story when it first came out, because truth is often stranger than fiction and people are unpredictable. My starting point, however, was the fact that there is no evidence against them.

Do you think criminal profiling has any validity?
 
I'm not sure that was the starting point of anyone here. Personally, I believed the story when it first came out, because truth is often stranger than fiction and people are unpredictable. My starting point, however, was the fact that there is no evidence against them.

Do you think criminal profiling has any validity?


What was strange about yet another sordid case of sexual assault & murder.
Do you find RG's involvement strange ?? It seems not.
Presumably you have moved on from your media inspired ? 'no evidence' starting point ?

Generally no, it seems to work as postdiction and be of little use in actual investigations (as opposed to TV)
& certainly not as its being practiced on this thread.
I fail to see its relevance to this case - other than informing 'opinion' surrounding it.

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What was strange about yet another sordid case of sexual assault & murder.
It wasn't that strange. It caught my attention because it was in my newspaper and Amanda is from my city.
Do you find RG's involvement strange ?? It seems not.
I don't care about Rudy.
Presumably you have moved on from your media inspired ? 'no evidence' starting point ?
Since when did the media say there is no evidence against them?
Generally no, it seems to work as postdiction and be of little use in actual investigations (as opposed to TV)
& certainly not as its being practiced on this thread.
I fail to see its relevance to this case - other than informing 'opinion' surrounding it.

It's not necessarily prejudiced or inaccurate to say someone with Amanda's background would not have been involved in this crime. Any involvement on her part is statistically improbable.
 
secondary chemiluminescence

It is possible that the caffeine in coffee causes a phenomenon called secondary chemiluminescence. I will not have time to look into this for a few days at least.

Secondary chemiluminescence emission of the luminol-ferricyanide
system induced by reducing agents
Baoxin Li, Qingwen Deng, Lili Guo, Zhujun Zhang
Microchim Acta (2008) 162: 189–198
DOI 10.1007/s00604-007-0859-z
http://www.springerlink.com/content/53435321266q0000/
 
Presumably you have moved on from your media inspired ? 'no evidence' starting point ?
Since when did the media say there is no evidence against them?


Really, FOAkers have repeated this mantra in the media (as you just did here). So where did you get your ? .....

My starting point, however, was the fact that there is no evidence against them.


Revelation ??
And do you still hold to this 'no evidence' ?


Generally no, it seems to work as postdiction and be of little use in actual investigations (as opposed to TV)
& certainly not as its being practiced on this thread.
I fail to see its relevance to this case - other than informing 'opinion' surrounding it.

It's not necessarily prejudiced or inaccurate to say someone with Amanda's background would not have been involved in this crime. Any involvement on her part is statistically improbable.



There we have it in a nutshell .. You seem to want to acquit AK on the basis of her background & ignore all the evidence, post crime.

Is that what 'criminal profiling' means ?
Is it all white women or just white women from Seattle or do they also have to go to certain schools to receive this get out of jail card ?

It might be 'statistically improbable' that I will fill an inside straight but if I do you lose your money.
Complaining afterwards on the basis of probability [or that it was a jack of spades I drew ] wont cut it.

And what happened to your ......

because truth is often stranger than fiction and people are unpredictable

does this not throw the stats off ??

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There is anyway something more to say about Mignini's conviction and those who think his conviction in some way affects his credibility or makes him seem corrupt. I find this conclusion very arguable. The judgements I read about Mignini's abuse of power seem to me very partial, only focused on one part of the truth, and fail to see the picture in the perspective based on the Italian reality.

If an Italian judge says it's so, then it's so... unless the Italian judge is saying that Mignini was in a delirium and making crazy accusations about Satanic conspiracies he couldn't back up. Then you can just ignore them completely.

If an Italian court says you are guilty you are guilty... unless the Italian court is convicting Mignini for blatantly illegal abuse of his prosecutorial powers to harass his critics. Then you can just ignore them completely.

When it's Mignini, you can just say "Oh that's disputed, that's hearsay, it's all really complicated, let's not talk about it, let's move on as fast as we possibly can and get back to trying to psychoanalyse Amanda Knox. Now there's someone who is clearly a narcissistic and conscienceless person wildly out of touch with reality! Ha ha!".

It does look very much as if you have no real faith in Italian judges or legal processes at all, unless at that very moment they are saying something that makes Knox sound guilty.
 
I have seen that study many times and it remains the one most quoted and often contradicted by things like the 2 articles I linked to today. As I said, very confusing. Then you have the fact that they would mention coffee and cherry soda in the same context with bleach and rust. If it were not possible to confuse these things why are substances like these used as examples?

If people think the luminol footprints at the cottage were composed of Meredith's blood, despite the negative TMB and DNA tests, I would like to hear an explanation of what activity caused them to be deposited in the locations and positions where they were found, as follows:

- one between the bathroom door and Meredith's door, with the toes pointed toward Meredith's door (attributed to Amanda)
- two (both right footprints) side by side outside Amanda's door, with the toes pointed toward the kitchen (one attributed to Raffaele)
- one in Amanda's room (attributed to Amanda)

Bonus points for explaining why no bare footprints were found inside the room where Meredith was killed.
 
Really, FOAkers have repeated this mantra in the media (as you just did here). So where did you get your ? .....

Revelation ??
And do you still hold to this 'no evidence' ?


No mainstream media source has ever said there is no evidence against Amanda and Raffaele, except in op-ed pieces and in personal interviews with commentators like Steve Moore. The conclusions the innocentisti promote are the result of a lot of research and analysis.

For example, on evidence like the knife, we might learn from the first week of coverage by The London Times that Raffaele's flick knife was originally named as the murder weapon, but that it tested clean for DNA. During the trial, we might find out from the Seattle P-I the circumstances under which the kitchen knife was found, and that the detective testified that he picked it out of the drawer because it was "clean, shiny and on top."

From Perugia Shock we could learn about how far out of bounds Patrizia Stefanoni went when she tested the DNA sample, and that she destroyed it so it could not be tested again. From another source, we see a picture of the kitchen knife, and reflect on how much better it would work in Mignini's image of Amanda standing in front of Meredith poking her with a knife than it would actually work for the purpose of slashing someone's throat.

We take the pieces and put them together, further informed by what we have learned about Mignini's proclivities and the many other suspicious events in the case. We may be skeptics, but we're not habitual doubters, cynics or paranoiacs. All of the facts listed above should raise questions in any intelligent person's mind.

There we have it in a nutshell .. You seem to want to acquit AK on the basis of her background & ignore all the evidence, post crime.


If there were any evidence, I wouldn't ignore it.

Is that what 'criminal profiling' means ?
Is it all white women or just white women from Seattle or do they also have to go to certain schools to receive this get out of jail card ?


I don't know from schools. The craigslist killer was a medical student at Boston University. Bill Gates could have graduated from Harvard but he had better things to do. Macht nichts.

It might be 'statistically improbable' that I will fill an inside straight but if I do you lose your money.
Complaining afterwards on the basis of probability [or that it was a jack of spades I drew ] wont cut it.

And what happened to your ......"because truth is often stranger than fiction and people are unpredictable."

does this not throw the stats off ??


It can, and at times it does, but not this time.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that anyone who is guided by the mantra that a good little white girl couldn't have done this would have stopped there, and not be bothered to do any further research or analysis; they wouldn't be here, armed with citations and skills. Look at all the posters on all the blogs who write, "She's guilty," and leave it at that, because they are not interested in thinking any more deeply than that.

Tell me this -- on the off chance, in your eyes, that Amanda turned out to be innocent, and a bunch of people recognized that and worked for her acquittal and release, what do you think that movement would look like?
 
ETA: It's also worth bearing in mind that the guilter pretence that ordinary households don't have substances on the floors that react with luminol was falsified in this very investigation, since there were multiple luminol reactions in Raffaele's house that are not claimed by anyone to be evidence of anything.

Machiavelli claims the Luminol reactions in Raffaele's house were blood. You'd have to ask him why, but my guess is because he wants every other Luminol reaction to be blood.
 
Machiavelli claims the Luminol reactions in Raffaele's house were blood. You'd have to ask him why, but my guess is because he wants every other Luminol reaction to be blood.

I have a vision of Amanda and Raffaele walking home so drenched in Meredith's blood that they left big patches of it all over the floor of Raffaele's place. It's not very plausible in my mind's eye.
 
I have a vision of Amanda and Raffaele walking home so drenched in Meredith's blood that they left big patches of it all over the floor of Raffaele's place. It's not very plausible in my mind's eye.

Were the Luminol reactions at Raffaele's actually tested to establish if they were blood? If they weren't, I'm confused as to why they sprayed Luminol around.
 
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