Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Machiavelli]

Hello again, Machiavelli! I already addressed your point about Rinaldi's measurements not being challenged adequately, so let me omit that parts of your post.

(..)

Yes I think you addressed but .. not challenged the point adequately.

 

[Malkmus]

Where are those sources?
Where was this parade? There is nothing about a parade, about anything deviating from what is expected as professional behaviour, except Candace Dempsey personal interpretetation.

Anyone not familiar with the case reading any of the non-Dempsey articles would get the impression that the three suspects were paraded - or flaunted - in front of the town. When transporting a convict, the following acts would widely be regarded as either unprofessional or foolish considering that these people should be regarded as innocent until proven guilty:

1. "they extend their arms through the open windows and wave their fists in triumph at the crowd."

2. "They were celebrating, saying: "Look at us, look at what we have achieved."

3. "officers gave the crowds outside a triumphant thumbs-up sign"

4. Announcing "Case closed" before any trial had taken place.

The police's behavior, in light of Patrick's innocence reminds me of videos like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-k1mYkXYaA

 

[Chris C]

Machiavelli,

It seems members of PMF, including those of high standing, are now implying that Knox has two LESBIAN friends in Italy to help her through this. Whats your take on this. Is it now your opinion and that of PMF that Knox's female friends are Lesbians? I thought PMF was left-wing. Are we now to believe they are left wing that hate gay people also?

 

[Katody Matrass]

Yes I think you addressed but .. not challenged the point adequately.

Hi, Machiavelli

I was hoping that you would stand up to the challenge of that question of Katody Matrass instead of dismissing it :

Rinaldi was off in his initial measurements of the tile by 7 mm. Vinci was correct from the beginning about it, again. So Rinaldi had to correct his 7 mm too long error.
I cannot understand how finding that the reference he used was in fact 7 mm shorter than he thought could have resulted in lengthening of the print he measured by that reference from 227 mm to 244 mm ?

Rinaldi apparently was unable to explain it, too.

Do you understand it? Can you help?​

 

[Onofarar]

I don't buy into this whole probability when trying to apply math to human behavior.

We once had a discussion in college about how to build a better artificial intelligence. The problem came down to 1's and 0's. Basicly the human brain doesn't work on 1's and 0's. It works on 2's, 1's, and 0's. Yes, No and Maybe. So when trying to add probabilites to human behavior your ignoring maybe. So when you try to reason probabilites of any given action happening on any given day you neglect maybe.

I agree human behavior is much more complex that 1 or 0, T or F or Yes or No. Where I think probability & statistics can be applied is to outcomes or events. The Massei report is a plethora of conflicting outcomes where the prosecution postulates one outcome or interpretation of a known outcome and the defense disputes the outcome or the interpretation. Almost w/o exception the Massei report after describing equal or near equal opposite outcomes comes down on the side of guilt (prosecution). Statistically this borders on the impossible - except as explained by bias toward guilt.
As I presented on another forum 10 equally probable events ALL determined to the benefit of one side - i.e. guilt, has a probability of 0.1% - that's right one-tenth of one percent. Using Kevin Lowe's more generous to the guilt side - 60% probability per event improves the odds to 0.6%.
That is why most of the inmnocentisti believe AK and RS are innocent not just not guilty.

 

[Machiavelli]

Machiavelli,

It seems members of PMF, including those of high standing, are now implying that Knox has two LESBIAN friends in Italy to help her through this. Whats your take on this. Is it now your opinion and that of PMF that Knox's female friends are Lesbians?

What kind of question is that?
That's not my buisness.
The only situation in which I could care to know if Madison is a lesbian, is if we happen find ourselves together alone in a bedroom in Perugia.

 

[katy_did]

What kind of question is that?
That's not my buisness.
The only situation in which I could care to know if Madison is a lesbian, is if we happen find ourselves together alone in a bedroom in Perugia.

OK, that was a good answer.

 

[Machiavelli]

Anyone not familiar with the case reading any of the non-Dempsey articles would get the impression that the three suspects were paraded - or flaunted - in front of the town. When transporting a convict, the following acts would widely be regarded as either unprofessional or foolish considering that these people should be regarded as innocent until proven guilty:

1. "they extend their arms through the open windows and wave their fists in triumph at the crowd."

2. "They were celebrating, saying: "Look at us, look at what we have achieved."

3. "officers gave the crowds outside a triumphant thumbs-up sign"

4. Announcing "Case closed" before any trial had taken place.

The police's behavior, in light of Patrick's innocence reminds me of videos like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-k1mYkXYaA

If you want to look for excuses for authors making up facts, go on. The "impression" hasn't a source claiming a fact, up to now. You may not like signs or fists to the camera, but telling about a parade that didn't take place is simply a matter of bad informtion.

 

[Chris C]

I agree human behavior is much more complex that 1 or 0, T or F or Yes or No. Where I think probability & statistics can be applied is to outcomes or events. The Massei report is a plethora of conflicting outcomes where the prosecution postulates one outcome or interpretation of a known outcome and the defense disputes the outcome or the interpretation. Almost w/o exception the Massei report after describing equal or near equal opposite outcomes comes down on the side of guilt (prosecution). Statistically this borders on the impossible - except as explained by bias toward guilt.
As I presented on another forum 10 equally probable events ALL determined to the benefit of one side - i.e. guilt, has a probability of 0.1% - that's right one-tenth of one percent. Using Kevin Lowe's more generous to the guilt side - 60% probability per event improves the odds to 0.6%.
That is why most of the inmnocentisti believe AK and RS are innocent not just not guilty.

Yet the problem with adding probability to human events is crazy. I'll give you a simple example.

1. Jack walks down the street turns left at the corner.
2. Jack turns right at the next corner.
3. Jack turns left at the next corner.
4. Jack turns right at the next corner.
5. Jack stops at the next corner and kills someone.

Now you base your probabilty that this event happens according to each turn. This is how probability works, Yet what happens if Jack would have turned right at the first corner? The whole theory falls apart. When basing guilt on human behavior probability this is the problem you run into. This is not like forecasting a hurricane track where a hurricane can meander through a large forcast cone and still land within the most likely landfall point.

 

[Chris C]

What kind of question is that?
That's not my buisness.
The only situation in which I could care to know if Madison is a lesbian, is if we happen find ourselves together alone in a bedroom in Perugia.

So you have been reading my posts. Though it does pose a question of integrity when citing sources from a website that would judge someone for their sexual preference.

Where is your response to the extra dna on the bra clasp. Is it contamination or not?

 

[Katody Matrass]

I quite disagree, because the left footprint is definitely protruding into a portion of screen at a larger scale, whilst the other one is protruding into a portion with a lesser scale.

Yes that could account for a milimetere or two here or there. but not 2 cm.

Bear in mind that the units (105 pixel or 50 mm) are meraly fictional, they are not units, they are not a linear, not a succession of equally distant unites. But this doesn't matter at all, because the footprint on the left is actually not part of the measurements and not a reference. It doesn't matter how different they are in scale in fact, since measurements are considered only from one of them, the right footprint. The fact is that you cannot asert that 227 mm is good based on the reference point of measurement (50mm), the real size must be necessarily bigger, and an idea of the difference could be roughly assessed by calculating the angle of the floor to the camera. If the size gain after correction is only 3%, the growth would be from 227 to 234. But the degree of correction depends from the angle a on a ratio roughly about C (corrected) = A (apparent)/(cos a). If the angle is 20°, the corrected size would be around 242mm.

Yes, of course I'm not taking your measurement for granted. Actually taking into account the directional blur my measurements are closer to 21 cm.
Even a few percents of correction definitely wouldn't make it into Rinaldi's 244 mm.

And you're unable to explain how Rinaldi got the print bigger by scaling it down.

 

[Machiavelli]

The PMF translators are not native speakers? Perhaps you should ask Machiavelli for a translation?

About the issue of Raffaele's word - "stain"/"a lot" ("macchia"/"mucchio"), our problem was it was simple not clearly distinguishable 100% in the audio recording. He says also "macchie" just before, the plural, as far as I can remember, this helped to identify the other as "macchia".
But the journalist who edited the video subtitled it as "mucchio" ("a lot").

 

[Machiavelli]

(..)

And you're unable to explain how Rinaldi got the print bigger by scaling it down.

No, I think there is no scale down: there is a correction based on the calculation of the angle, there is an augment of distances in proportion as to cos a => 1.

I obviously don't know what Rinaldi did exactly, just as I don't know what Vinci did.

But I think the prespective correction is a very simple concept: a grid is build along the tile lines, the angle is then corrected until the floor tiles lines are orthogonal, and all reference points on the grid are measured again.And the measurement (227 => 244) is nothing unexpected, from my measurements this is roughly what you expect if the angle a is around 20°.

 

[Malkmus]

If you want to look for excuses for authors making up facts, go on. The "impression" hasn't a source claiming a fact, up to now. You may not like signs or fists to the camera, but telling about a parade that didn't take place is simply a matter of bad informtion.

Machiavelli, my problem is in you and others trying to argue that the transport of Amanda, Raffaele and Patrick was strictly professional when it clearly was not. You want to argue that Candace Dempsey wrote of a parade. Now I don't see where she used the word parade in her description, but even if she had I would see no problem with that as the treatment of the three suspects by all accounts was a parade of sorts, as in they were being flaunted by their captors in a way that prematurely displayed them as convicted criminals or at the least as people who had were without question guilty.

Once the doors slammed on the last prisoner, a celebration began. Police wanted to send a message, to the townspeople that they had the killers in custody, detectives had finally solved the Meredith mystery, and Perugia could finally sleep well again. So they lined up the vehicles, switched on the headlights, and honked the horns in jubiliation. Instead of driving directly to prison, they headed uphill into the old town, horns blaring. ’I have seen police behave like this only once before, and that was when they arrested one of the country’s most notorious mafia dons,’ a startled local told the Daily Mail.

The only part of Dempsey's account that isn't listed in the other sources is the taking of the scenic route through town. But I don't think that's as damning as the other actions I listed. Machiavelli, when you read those articles are you unable to tell that the descriptions of the police's actions are not regarded as professional or at the least that they are considered premature and unwarranted by the authors?

 

[Katody Matrass]

No, I think there is no scale down: there is a correction based on the calculation of the angle, there is an augment of distances in proportion as to cos a => 1.

No, the correction was of a reference length that Rinaldi measured wrongly as 16,9 cm instead of correct 16,2.

Edit: Let's not forget that Vinci got it correctly on the first try .

I obviously don't know what Rinaldi did exactly, just as I don't know what Vinci did.

But I think the prespective correction is a very simple concept: a grid is build along the tile lines, the angle is then corrected until the floor tiles lines are orthogonal, and all reference points on the grid are measured again.And the measurement (227 => 244) is nothing unexpected, from my measurements this is roughly what you expect if the angle a is around 20°.

You need to be strict if you want to make a valid argument. Which is that angle of 20°? What does cos a => 1 mean to you?

 

[Machiavelli]

So you have been reading my posts. Though it does pose a question of integrity when citing sources from a website that would judge someone for their sexual preference.

Where is your response to the extra dna on the bra clasp. Is it contamination or not?

But, what do you mean exactly by contamination? There is actually no reason to assume it is from a contamination of the scene after the murder, since the bra clasp is an item that could well have carried residual traces since before, or could have been touched or got dirty before the murder or during, or after the murder in the room, without implying a contamination in laboratory or by forensics. And there might be no need of external contributors in order to produce the peaks in question. If the same allele is found also in any profile (Meredith, Amanda, etc.) there is not even a reason to think about an unknown profile.
But even in the abstract case that some peaks are a trace of "contamination", this doesn't really have any implication. The fact that an item is contaminated doesn't really mean anything, this works as a magic word only for Amanda and Raffaele supporters. In practical life, many DNA samples are "contaminated" by other profiles, they may be found years later and carry also other traces, but contamination doesn't make DNA samples automatically decay from evidence status.

 

[Machiavelli]

No, the correction was of a reference length that Rinaldi measured wrongly as 16,9 cm instead of correct 16,2.

Edit: Let's not forget that Vinci got it correctly on the first try .

But Rinaldi could have well got it wrong 20 times, this doesn't change the point that Vinci did not challenge Rinaldi's measurement.
One thing is saying Rinaldi made peripheral mistakes here and there so he is not reliable, that he was not able to explain what exactly he didt. Those are complaints, they are not a challeng on the argument.
One other thing would have been takig the same picture, perform a perspective correction, perform the measurement and show that the accurate result is different from Rinaldi's.
This was not done.
And this is an outstanding point. Whatever objection Vinci brings on Rinaldi's correction, his objections are indirect, he doesn't give any alternative result about the correction. Even if just the angle, and consequent correction, is rather easy to calculate compared to his operations.

The angle a is obviously the one formed by the floor plan and the CMOS of the camera. I am considering only the horizontal component of the angle by now, assuming this is the most relevant one. I assumed this could be around 20° but just considered this possible by the naked eye. It is possible to calculate it accurately by measuring the deformation of the grid at the floor level (the reference are the tiles borders).

 

[Chris C]

But, what do you mean exactly by contamination? There is actually no reason to assume it is from a contamination of the scene after the murder, since the bra clasp is an item that could well have carried residual traces since before, or could have been touched or got dirty before the murder or during, or after the murder in the room, without implying a contamination in laboratory or by forensics. And there might be no need of external contributors in order to produce the peaks in question. If the same allele is found also in any profile (Meredith, Amanda, etc.) there is not even a reason to think about an unknown profile.
But even in the abstract case that some peaks are a trace of "contamination", this doesn't really have any implication. The fact that an item is contaminated doesn't really mean anything, this works as a magic word only for Amanda and Raffaele supporters. In practical life, many DNA samples are "contaminated" by other profiles, they may be found years later and carry also other traces, but contamination doesn't make DNA samples automatically decay from evidence status.

So your reasoning to explain the DNA is to use, "Matrix reasoning". There is no spoon so therefore there is no DNA. Yet no amount imagining is going to magicly erase the unknown DNA.

So you go on to further explain that 3 other people could have touched her bra prior to her getting murdered, or that she could have taken off her bra prior to the murder and it gotten contaminated, then she put it back on.

So your reasoning on the bra clasp is there is NO DNA.
Your back up plan is that 3 other people could have taken off Meredith's bra earlier that night without leaving any traces of dna on the rest of her bra and then Meredith put the bra back on before getting murdered.

I'm glad you have finally told us your opinion on the Bra Clasp. Its so much clearer now that we know why you think Knox/Sollecito were involved.

 

[Katody Matrass]

This has already been explained to you. They went to her apartment so she could get a change of clothes for the next mornings planned trip to Gubbio.

Hello Alt+F4, I'm very happy seeing you're further detailing your scenario.

I'd say between 8:30 and 9:00.

Would 21:10 be okay for you? So they could finish watching "Amelie"?
Or even better 21:25, so they could show up on time on Piazza Grimana exactly on 21:28 to begin lingering there? I still don't know if you trust that Curatolo "saw what he saw".

Two other things in your story bother me:

1. You said they showed up at the cottage "high as kites". Were they already that high when they left Raffaele's? Was the decision to go out to bring things and prepare for the trip a sober one?

2. Did they took the knife with them or not?

 

[Machiavelli]

(..)

The only part of Dempsey's account that isn't listed in the other sources is the taking of the scenic route through town. But I don't think that's as damning as the other actions I listed. Machiavelli, when you read those articles are you unable to tell that the descriptions of the police's actions are not regarded as professional or at the least that they are considered premature and unwarranted by the authors?

No but, what I only care about is the author style and accuracy. The fact is Dempsey is obviously making up a colourful detail. She is inventing a story. Something that didn't happen, for which there is no source, and this reveals in fact a narrative mechanism of putting a fictional line in her report of facts.
Remind, innocentisti are regarding Candace Dempsey as a source. They place far more weight and importance in a source, their knowledge of facts depends on the accuray of this kind information, while my opinion instead doesn't depend on the professional style of Perugia police officers. To me the police didn't do anything that was unexpected professionally, meaning thy did nothing different and nothing more than what they were expected to do with the suspects. They did not parade them through the old city as an "extra" tour. Given there were 39 police cars out in the convoy in that moment, it is absolutely possible that officers on patrols made triumphant signs. Maybe those officers didn't even know who the suspects were, some just learnt it on the patrol radio.

I comes now to my mind a very recent video I watched on Wikileaks, in which a US helicopter pilot killed two famous iraqui photographers and several innocents, shot two children, making extremely disturbing and cynical comments on his savage action. However, his behaviour was later deemed professionally correct. And this is probably true. All this is not morally justifiable, but this doesn't constitute a logical argument for misbehaviour against the personnel who was following their praxis.