Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Kevin_Lowe]

The judges who support this idea are Gennaro Francione and Ferdinando Imposimato. They are in minority. They oppose the law regulating the assessment of circumstantial evidence, a rule called processo indiziario. But they also acknowledged that the judges in the Meredith case applied this rule correctly.

It is not a meaningful defence of a criticism about the logic of the prosecution to say "Oh well, even if it's stupid it's still the way Italian courts do things".

If the Italian courts employ illogical methods, that's a strike against the courts. It does not make it even a tiny bit more likely that Amanda and Raffaele actually did it.

Whether or not Italian courts agree, you can't get to proof beyond reasonable doubt by chaining together any number of individual items about which there is reasonable doubt, each of which depends on all of the others.

You earlier used the analogy of multiple cheap compasses all pointing in the same direction, but that's not quite a good analogy. A better one would be a chain made of cheap links, all of which are known to be likely to snap.

If the "staged break-in" link snaps, they didn't do it. If the "double DNA knife" link snaps, there is no decent evidence against Amanda. If the "bra clasp DNA" link snaps, there is no decent case against Raffaele. If the "time of death" link snaps there is no possible narrative that makes sense of the killing and has Amanda and Raffaele involved. If the log file plays out the way I think it will, then every single link in the prosecution's chain will have been run over by a steamroller.

 

[RoseMontague]

It is not a meaningful defence of a criticism about the logic of the prosecution to say "Oh well, even if it's stupid it's still the way Italian courts do things".

If the Italian courts employ illogical methods, that's a strike against the courts. It does not make it even a tiny bit more likely that Amanda and Raffaele actually did it.

Whether or not Italian courts agree, you can't get to proof beyond reasonable doubt by chaining together any number of individual items about which there is reasonable doubt, each of which depends on all of the others.

You earlier used the analogy of multiple cheap compasses all pointing in the same direction, but that's not quite a good analogy. A better one would be a chain made of cheap links, all of which are known to be likely to snap.

If the "staged break-in" link snaps, they didn't do it. If the "double DNA knife" link snaps, there is no decent evidence against Amanda. If the "bra clasp DNA" link snaps, there is no decent case against Raffaele. If the "time of death" link snaps there is no possible narrative that makes sense of the killing and has Amanda and Raffaele involved. If the log file plays out the way I think it will, then every single link in the prosecution's chain will have been run over by a steamroller.

Nice post, Kevin. I agree with what you said.

One comment on Machiavelli's point on testing the procedure. That is also an excellent point and I am surprised that this has not been done either independently or by one of the parties involved. If the appeal court allows an independent review of the DNA forensics, it would make sense to test the procedure for accuracy.

ETA,
I do recall there being a question of not knowing the settings of the machine on all these readings (the many too lows, followed by 1 good result and 1 bad). That might make it difficult to recreate. Perhaps that information will be forthcoming along with the FSA files.

 

[Machiavelli]

(...)


[*]it would have to be brought from Raffaele's flat to the cottage for no conceivable reason;

There is more than one conceivable reason.
One of them is to finish Meredith off. Or, it could be a prank, something in the stile like Sollecito’s picture of himself brandishing a cleaver. Very stupid things and meaningless, like this picture, are not difficult to conceive and not obvious to guess, and they are possible as the picture shows. We can easily think a non conceivable event happened that lead to this murder, as this murder itself is an action very difficult to conceive rationally.

[*]it would have to be cleaned and returned to Raffaele's flat when the imperative would be to dispose of it;

If it is the murder weapon, its presence in Sollecito’s apartment is strange. Bringing it back is quite a strange thing to do, if it is bloody.
But also something else strange occurred: Sollecito told a lie on this knife, telling this lie is something I found also a very strange thing to do.

[*]the cleaning process would have to remove every trace of blood but still leave detectable DNA;

This is not impossible. Given that not all DNA comes from blood. And blood is not always that much detectable as many people think after all, despite their faith in tetramethylbenzidine. Not necessarily we have to find blood, not necessarily this has to be the weapon used for the stabbing as I said.

[*]the police would have to have had psychic powers to be pick out this particular knife, rather than all the knives at the cottage which were not tested;

I don’t think so. The police seized and tested a lot of stuff which yielded no results. And if they left anything back, the forgotten evidence doesn’t become evidence in favour.

[*]Stefanoni would have to have had psychic powers to pick the one spot on the knife blade for testing that held Meredith's DNA.

I think Stefanoni had an optical microscope. But I don’t express myself on this, my competence is insufficient
[/LIST]

Real evidence doesn't consist of isolated facts with no relation to each other, like in the mish-mash of dubious results that make up this part and the rest of the prosecution case.

I agree with Massei on one point: where he defines the evidence a “picture with no holes”. I think a huge number of pieces of evidence with independent origin are all in agreement, connected forming the same picture, and they all corroborate each other. Obviously you may be unsatisfied by the narrative the Assise Court was able to write. But this is a different question.

 

[RoseMontague]

I think Stefanoni had an optical microscope. But I don’t express myself on this, my competence is insufficient
[/LIST]

My recollection is that Stefanoni testified she didn't use a microscope, she saw something if she held the knife in a certain way in a certain light, something that nobody else could see in the photo's.

 

[Machiavelli]

It is not a meaningful defence of a criticism about the logic of the prosecution to say "Oh well, even if it's stupid it's still the way Italian courts do things".

If the Italian courts employ illogical methods, that's a strike against the courts. It does not make it even a tiny bit more likely that Amanda and Raffaele actually did it.

I think the majority of judges have logical reasons to keep their position. On the other hand, you should read te position of the minority judges to understand what they actually say. They don't exactly think Amanda is innocent. The problems they bring forward are also of a different nature.

Whether or not Italian courts agree, you can't get to proof beyond reasonable doubt by chaining together any number of individual items about which there is reasonable doubt, each of which depends on all of the others.

I disagree, and I think at the opposite.
The logic paradigm I trust is the theory of systems (L. Von Beralanffy). The concept of system is the necessary idea, a concept for which the total is more than the sum of the parts. This paradigm was theorized phislosiophically in Italian jurisprudence by prof. Pagano, more than a century before the mathematic concept.
The way how the sum of parts work is a property itself more powerful than the propery of single parts. In a strict definition, an item does not depend on all of the others, it is independent but its value depends - partlly - on the whole of the others.

(..)

If the "staged break-in" link snaps, they didn't do it. If the "double DNA knife" link snaps, there is no decent evidence against Amanda. If the "bra clasp DNA" link snaps, there is no decent case against Raffaele. If the "time of death" link snaps there is no possible narrative that makes sense of the killing and has Amanda and Raffaele involved. If the log file plays out the way I think it will, then every single link in the prosecution's chain will have been run over by a steamroller.

Yes. (about the brake in) But what does "snaps" mean? It means somebody is able to prove the brake in was not staged. The mere claim that the proof is incomplete doesn't produce any snap. To eliminate the staged brake in evidence, somebody at least has to show the break is likely to be not staged. And the judges - who mostly ave worked as professional investigators or detectives - will never see this as something that looks like a real break in. There are too many important inconsistencies with the findings you need and you expect to find in a real break in (for example no soil on the floor, etc).

 

[RoseMontague]

I disagree, and I think at the opposite.
The logic paradigm I trust is the theory of systems (L. Von Beralanffy). The concept of system is the necessary idea, a concept for which the total is more than the sum of the parts. This paradigm was theorized phislosiophically in Italian jurisprudence by prof. Pagano, more than a century before the mathematic concept.
The way how the sum of parts work is a property itself more powerful than the propery of single parts. In a strict definition, an item does not depend on all of the others, it is independent but its value depends - partlly - on the whole of the others.

(..)

Sounds like it is in need of some serious updating this paradigm of jurisprudence developed by Prof Pagano, more than a century ago. Perhaps the chaos theory would not be too radical of a change. Or better yet, a theory of common sense. Nope, too complicated that one is.

 

[Machiavelli]

Sounds like it is in need of some serious updating this paradigm of jurisprudence developed by Prof Pagano, more than a century ago. Perhaps the chaos theory would not be too radical of a change. Or better yet, a theory of common sense. Nope, too complicated that one is.

Sorry, I can't resist temptation, but common sense is walking in coffee/ turnip juice/ copper sulfate and jump in the corridoor in leaps, with a bare foot, leaving footprints at two meters form each other. And in Amanda's bedroom, a bit in Filomena's room too. Together with another person who had a different shoe number.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I think the majority of judges have logical reasons to keep their position. On the other hand, you should read te position of the minority judges to understand what they actually say. They don't exactly think Amanda is innocent. The problems they bring forward are also of a different nature.

Have I at any stage been the least bit inconsistent about my stance with regard to the opinions of the Perugia judiciary? I don't care what they concluded from the evidence. I care about the evidence and I'll make my own judgment based on it.

I disagree, and I think at the opposite.
The logic paradigm I trust is the theory of systems (L. Von Beralanffy). The concept of system is the necessary idea, a concept for which the total is more than the sum of the parts. This paradigm was theorized phislosiophically in Italian jurisprudence by prof. Pagano, more than a century before the mathematic concept.
The way how the sum of parts work is a property itself more powerful than the propery of single parts. In a strict definition, an item does not depend on all of the others, it is independent but its value depends - partlly - on the whole of the others.

The proof that this "paradigm" is nonsense is played out every day in every casino in the world. You can't chain together sequential non-certainties and arrive at certainty, any more than you can break the bank at Monte Carlo by making a succession of bets each of which has negative expectation.

Yes. (about the brake in) But what does "snaps" mean? It means somebody is able to prove the brake in was not staged. The mere claim that the proof is incomplete doesn't produce any snap. To eliminate the staged brake in evidence, somebody at least has to show the break is likely to be not staged. And the judges - who mostly ave worked as professional investigators or detectives - will never see this as something that looks like a real break in. There are too many important inconsistencies with the findings you need and you expect to find in a real break in (for example no soil on the floor, etc).

No, not at all.

If you are 60% sure the break-in was staged and 60% sure that the DNA evidence was correctly obtained and 60% sure that the time of death was 23:30 instead of 21:05 then that adds up to 21.6% certainty that they did it, not 180%.

I'd put those odds at more like 0.01%, 20% and 0% myself of course based on a rational examination of the relevant evidence and science. I'm just using possible guilter numbers to illustrate the point.

You cannot chain clues, each of which should rationally be regarded with reasonable doubt, into a structure which supports proof beyond reasonable doubt, any more than you can add a bunch negative numbers together and get a positive result.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Common sense isn't common

Sorry, I can't resist temptation, but common sense is walking in coffee/ turnip juice/ copper sulfate and jump in the corridoor in leaps, with a bare foot, leaving footprints at two meters form each other. And in Amanda's bedroom, a bit in Filomena's room too. Together with another person who had a different shoe number.

Common sense is doing the confirmatory testing after doing the presumptive testing.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Sorry, I can't resist temptation, but common sense is walking in coffee/ turnip juice/ copper sulfate and jump in the corridoor in leaps, with a bare foot, leaving footprints at two meters form each other. And in Amanda's bedroom, a bit in Filomena's room too. Together with another person who had a different shoe number.

You're addressing the heart of the problem. These footprints are random artifacts. They got there somehow, but we don't know how. Nothing links them to the murder, but the prosecutor has made that linkage because he lacks real evidence. And the reason he lacks real evidence is because he is prosecuting two completely innocent people.

 

[pilot padron]

Calling all (both) pro-guilt advocates..do you hear me

We were talking about it earlier but the pro-guilt advocates here didn't engage with it in any intelligent way so it kind of dropped off the radar.

Per chance *both* of the 'pro-guilt advocates' who are still left here decided that point was not worth addressing..... "in an intelligent way".

Or per chance maybe the two remaining pro-guilt advocates did not want to interrupt the ever so meaningful "arguments and skepticism" that the large remaining cabal of pro-innocent advocates engage in among themselves, complete with ever so relevant autobiographical essays.

 

[Kaosium]

Great post, Antony.


This in particular I've never understood. It seems that they confiscated the knives, but AFAIK never tested them for DNA. Given that when Rudy was caught in the nursery, he had a kitchen knife stolen from the kitchen in his backpack, wouldn't it have made sense for the investigators to check out the possibility that he might have done the same here? Granted, if he'd stolen a knife he might well have taken it with him when he left and disposed of it, but it's still possible he didn't want to be caught carrying it and so wiped his prints off and put it back. It's also possible he handled the other knives, and so even if he left with the murder weapon, he may still have left DNA traces in the knife drawer.

So why didn't they check those knives for DNA? Is it that they weren't looking for evidence of a lone killer, they were only looking for evidence that Amanda and Raffaele were involved? And finding Amanda and Meredith's DNA on a kitchen knife in the cottage would be pretty useless from that perspective.

My suspicion is that this knife is related to Raffaele saying he 'pricked' Meredith with a knife. Thus they didn't take that knife randomly, but went looking for it as it matched the description of the knife they thought Raffaele admitted to 'pricking' Meredith with.

They believed their own lie. They fed Raffaele a lie about his and Amanda'a prints/DNA being on the 'murder weapon' and Raffaele tried to think about how that was possible and came up with the idea he might have pricked Meredith with a cooking knife that Amanda had also used. Of course he didn't, but police didn't realize that until they couldn't find Meredith's DNA on the knife, which led to the ridiculous unrepeatable LCN data that they wouldn't show the results of.

Speculation to be sure, but it seems to make more sense to me than the random grab theory, that makes them look beyond stupid.

 

[Withnail1969]

Sorry, I can't resist temptation, but common sense is walking in coffee/ turnip juice/ copper sulfate and jump in the corridoor in leaps, with a bare foot, leaving footprints at two meters form each other. And in Amanda's bedroom, a bit in Filomena's room too. Together with another person who had a different shoe number.

It sounds like you have evidence of a cleanup. It just didn't take place on the night of the murder.

 

[Kaosium]

I've asked before....don't expect an answer. If you do get one, it will be something like "It's in the Massei Report...go read it" or "I don't have time to list it all".

I know, I've asked plenty of times myself. I think I know why that is for some. Anyone who goes through the actual evidence piece by piece finally figures out how weak the case is, and unless they have a faith-based inclination that Amanda and Raffaele must be guilty, it's pretty obvious what actually occurred here and who is guilty of what.

Two college-aged kids return to a house broken into and summon the police inside when they arrive to return a pair of cellphones that were stolen and left nearby. At the behest of one of the inhabitants they break down the door and discover a girl has been murdered.

To go from there to the idea that the break-in had to be staged so the two college kids who called the police could be involved with a man they barely knew to murder a girl because of a satantic rite/rape-prank/hash and comic book inspired mayhem/ no reason at all requires an elevated burden of proof to begin with. The whole idea was preposterous from the beginning, and the author of that 'theory' should be especially suspect when the evidence actually points to a far more mundane explanation.

You can't think about these things and hold onto a belief in guilt, which is why the ones to whom it's very important that Amanda and Raffaele be considered guilty can't talk about them very often.

 

[Rhea]

hi,

3. Standards and protocols help lessen false results.

Yes they help.
Also other evidence helps. For example the finding of other clues against the defendants.

That's dangerous thinking, you have to look at the result itself. That's exactly how people get wrongly convicted; all kinds of unreliable results are accepted because people think there are so many clues against the defendant, so the results don't have to be that reliable. Typically for a wrong conviction, in this case there are only unreliable results …

4. Contamination becomes highly more probable dealing with LCN DNA. I can direct you to links on this as well.

False. I can direct you on Sarah Gino and the Massei report.

Contamination and Spurious Alleles
The increase in sensitivity of LCN analysis permits the detection of low levels of extraneous DNA contamination that, while often present, is not normally seen with standard 28 cycle STR analysis.17 Thus alleles may show up in the profile that do not originate from the principal DNA donor(s) (see Figure) and, in control experiments, have been shown to occur with known single donor samples. Such allelic drop-in is more-often-than-not of unknown origin but could be due to DNA from a variety of intra-laboratory sources including consumable items and personnel. As a result LCN analysis should only be conducted in sterile laboratory facilities that have in place suitable engineering controls, akin to those employed for mtDNA analysis.

source: www.nfstc.org/pdi/Subject09/pdi_s09_m01_03_b.htm

There is no bad result.
There are only results. Some are more significant, and some are less significant. Some are more reliable, and some are less realiable.
No result is 100% reliable.
What can we say? We disagree on this. The jurisprudence says pieces of evidence with a lower quality become of high quility when put together. I don't see pieces of evidence as a pile of pieces resting one over another. I see pieces of evidence as the orientations of compass needles to find a magnet. One low quality compass can be wrong, but seven different compasses are not wrong if they indicate the same point.

That's really semantics, an unreliable result is a bad result in my eyes.

 

[Rhea]

it would have to be brought from Raffaele's flat to the cottage for no conceivable reason;

There is more than one conceivable reason.
One of them is to finish Meredith off. Or, it could be a prank, something in the stile like Sollecito’s picture of himself brandishing a cleaver. Very stupid things and meaningless, like this picture, are not difficult to conceive and not obvious to guess, and they are possible as the picture shows. We can easily think a non conceivable event happened that lead to this murder, as this murder itself is an action very difficult to conceive rationally.

probably because it didn't happen the way you have it in your mind …

It's not that difficult to conceive; Rudy breaks in, Meredith comes home and he attacks her, something that tragically happens every day on this planet, whereas the other scenario, prefered by some is quite unheard of …

it would have to be cleaned and returned to Raffaele's flat when the imperative would be to dispose of it;

If it is the murder weapon, its presence in Sollecito’s apartment is strange. Bringing it back is quite a strange thing to do, if it is bloody.
But also something else strange occurred: Sollecito told a lie on this knife, telling this lie is something I found also a very strange thing to do.

probably because it isn't the murder weapon … just a simple kitchen knife …

I don't think it's a strange thing to lie if there is such "evidence", yet you know you're innocent. Innocent people don't just sit in jail and think "of course I will be found innocent", there often actually really scared. There are innocent people who fake alibis and do other "strange" things out of their panic. And they're right to be panicked, innocent people do get sent to prison, it happens again and again. Of course these actions then aren't intelligent at all … yet very human …

But in the end, this way of thinking is a factor in getting innocent people into prison; "but … an innocent person would never do this or that, confess to murder, fake an alibi, plead guilty. Yet there are thousands of cases where people did just that, so it's a scientific fact, that indeed, innocent people do "lie", fake alibis, plead guilty, confess to murder, accuse other innocent people …

the cleaning process would have to remove every trace of blood but still leave detectable DNA;

This is not impossible. Given that not all DNA comes from blood. And blood is not always that much detectable as many people think after all, despite their faith in tetramethylbenzidine. Not necessarily we have to find blood, not necessarily this has to be the weapon used for the stabbing as I said.

It was presented as "the murder weapon" and was one of their strongest pieces of evidence. What does it say about the case that you're not even sure it is the murder weapon?

I agree with Massei on one point: where he defines the evidence a “picture with no holes”. I think a huge number of pieces of evidence with independent origin are all in agreement, connected forming the same picture, and they all corroborate each other. Obviously you may be unsatisfied by the narrative the Assise Court was able to write. But this is a different question.

No holes? You're not even sure the murder weapon is the murder weapon!

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

There is more than one conceivable reason.
One of them is to finish Meredith off.

I see. Do you agree with your esteemed colleague who thinks Amanda used a Harry Potter book as a "make-do knife sheath"?

 

[Chris C]

No, I'm saying that his fleeing shouldn't be an indication of his guilty. A black man knows he's more likely to been seen as a suspect.

So your saying that black people in Italy are more likely to be a suspect than a white person?

 

[Kaosium]

So your saying that black people in Italy are more likely to be a suspect than a white person?

They sure seemed to zero in on Patrick Lumumba, and then wouldn't let him go for three weeks despite the fact that several people came forward to provide an ironclad alibi within days of his arrest.

That kind of suggests Perugia is a bad place to be black when the police come looking for suspects. It brings to mind that of the four people arrested all were 'outsiders' from the perspective of locals.

 

[moodstream]

The logic paradigm I trust is the theory of systems (L. Von Beralanffy). The concept of system is the necessary idea, a concept for which the total is more than the sum of the parts. This paradigm was theorized phislosiophically in Italian jurisprudence by prof. Pagano, more than a century before the mathematic concept.
The way how the sum of parts work is a property itself more powerful than the propery of single parts. In a strict definition, an item does not depend on all of the others, it is independent but its value depends - partlly - on the whole of the others.

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that while a single indicator may give a false reading, a lot of indicators in agreement will make it very unlikely that any individual indicator is false. It sounds nice, but I don’t consider it to be proof. For example, if you have a known random environment and a large amount of known random occurrences, and you measure a few, and it appears that those few are behaving non randomly, it may be that a change has occurred such that the system is no longer random, or it may be that a non random pattern is appearing in a random way. However, you cannot say for sure based on your incomplete information.

If you have a set of compasses, and they all point in one direction, they may all be pointing north, or there may be a powerful magnet around nearby.

In Perugia, the bias may have been supplied by the prosecutor’s office and the media storm preceding the trial, so that the jurors uniformly read into flawed evidence the conclusion of guilt they wanted to see.

If the DNA found on the knife reasonably could be, but could not be the victims, and the footprints could/could not be Knox’s/Sollecito’s, and the quality of witnesses could/or could be considered valid to be able to render accurate judgments, then the best you can say is that the crime could have been committed by Knox/Sollecito, or it could not have been.

You could reply that this is true of every trial, and yes it is. The point is, it is the quality of the evidence that makes the difference, and it does not need repeating that the quality of evidence in this case is very low, and the point is also that it does not matter how much low quality evidence you sweep together, it does nothing to diminish the degree of doubt.