Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[quadraginta]

<snip>

============================

All of which is irrelevant to my question to Mary_H.

Do you concur with her assertion that "... as far as most of us know, most knife-killers dispose of their murder weapons after use."? Can you provide some data to support it?

I ask this because, quite frankly, I don't know, and was rather surprised to see such a claim made as an argument in defense of Knox and Sollecito. It may well be true, but I have not run across such an assertion before.

You really don't know, quadraginta? Do you really want to go there?

Out of the somewhat limited knowledge of the sum total of knife murders contained in the brains of the posters on this thread, you want to establish a measure of whether more of them are aware of weapons being kept or being tossed after murders? Okay, take a survey.

I will be happy to change my claim to, "as far as I know...," if that will make you happy.

Can you spell pedantry?

You made an assertion, that most knife murderers dispose of the murder weapon, in defense of a position you were espousing.

It is not pedantry to question that assertion.

You offered the suggestion that this is some sort of common knowledge. It is not common to me, so I asked if you had some support for such a claim.

This is not pedantry.

If you are choosing, now, to rephrase your position to, "I (Mary_H) believe that most knife murderers dispose of their weapon." then I would have to ask,

"Why do you believe that?"

I am quite honestly curious. I have no idea if there is even any data accumulated on the subject, but nothing in my informal knowledge of the subject of violent crimes has given me any reason to suspect it to be the case.

I thought perhaps you might actually be in possession of some support for your assertion.

That is not pedantry. It is curiosity.

 

[platonov]

Does nobody trust AK ?

You start with the wrong premise, p, which is no doubt what LJ is getting at by asking you for a citation.

Amanda did not tell her mother Patrick was innocent.

And Kaosium is right. Nobody cared what Amanda OR her mother would have to say about Patrick at that time.

If they had, all they would have to do was listen to the taped conversation.

You sure about that Mary H - maybe I am guessing again

Or do you also not accept even AK's own word on the fact that it happened.

.

 

[LondonJohn]

Why didn't the forensics team take the bra clasp on their first visit to the house in early November? But, given that this didn't happen, did they recognise that the main part of the bra (which they did take on their first visit) was missing the hook side of its clasp? And did they realise that this was a potentially pretty important piece of evidence that they'd overlooked? And did they then look at their crime scene videos from the first visit and notice the clasp lying on the floor?

My point is that by mid-December, the police should have well known that they'd left a potentially important piece of evidence - the bra clasp - inside the house. Therefore, when they re-entered the house, they should have been primed to locate and preserve the bra clasp. They should therefore have located it, photographed it where it was found, and placed it - using sterile tweezers - straight into a sterile evidence collection bag.

The totally haphazard way in which the police actually did handle the clasp when they located it in that second visit indicates that they either didn't realise its significance (which, given what I wrote in the previous paragraph, is an indictment in itself), or they did realise its significance but though it was appropriate to pass it round, rub it, and place it back onto a different (and totally arbitrary) part of the floor.

Any way you look at it, the way the forensics police dealt with the bra clasp is a disgrace. And they quite clearly introduced all kinds of routes to contamination (or worse). Of course, this also applied to Meredith's jacket, shoes and handbag. Why on Earth weren't these important items also collected during the first visit to the house?

As a footnote, some people try to claim that those who doubt the safety of the Knox/Sollecito convictions are eager to talk about misconduct and contamination etc for those parts of evidence which concern Knox and Sollecito, but that "the same rules don't apply" to those bits of evidence which concern Guede. Specifically, they will say things like: "So the bra strap with Sollecito's DNA is invalid because it was left at the crime scene for 46 days, but seemingly the handbag and the jacket are valid pieces of evidence because only Guede's DNA was found upon them".

However, there are important differences. The most important difference, of course, is that there is other - much stronger - evidence placing Guede in the murder room, such as his fingerprint in blood, his DNA on and inside the victim, and his own firm and incessant admission to having been at the scene. I have no idea whether the DNA match to Guede from the jacket or the handbag were valid or not - I haven't seen where they were found on that second visit, and how they were handled by the forensics team. But in essence I don't care, since there's already ample evidence - not least from his own mouth - to place Guede at the scene.

In contrast, the bra clasp is the solitary piece of physical evidence connecting Sollecito to the murder, and as such it should come under far more scrutiny. If it's removed, then there's no physical evidence whatsoever against Sollecito. The same cannot be said if one removes the handbag or jacket as evidence against Guede - there's still more than enough other very strong evidence to connect him to the crime.

 

[Machiavelli]

Thank you for your considerate answer Machiavelli!

I compared your exegesis with the relevant, but unfortunately short and cryptic paragraph of The Massei. Unless the PMF translation is completely wrong, and the original differs substantially from it, I think you would agree that what you wrote is much more of a guesswork than direct paraphrase of Massei.

Actually Massei wrote something that is in contradiction to your understanding. Massei clearly implied, that Vinci based his analysis on some of Rinaldi's incorrect data:

Why is this absurd? Let's see:

What was this uncorrected data? Rinaldi made an error when measuring a tile on a picture taken at angle.
But wasn't it Vinci who pointed out Rinaldi's error? Vinci made his own measurement, and got the correct result independently from Rinaldi. Moreover, he conducted the perspective correction not by some unspecified Photoshop tinkering like Rinaldi, but using a sophisticated specialized software.

Massei rejects Vinci's findings on completely illogical grounds. He is very brief doing so. It resembles other problematic parts of the Motivation - when accepting against logic Quintavalle's testimony he skips over the problem with a similar swift and wide leap of absurd faith .

Well the relevant snippet is this: (p.381)

Un aspetto infine della relazione non appare condivisibile.
Si tratta del momento in cui il Prof. Vinci, pur prendendo atto che la consulenza del dr. Rinaldi ha operato la correzione prospettica della mattonella, illustrata alla udienza del 9.05.09 facendo ottenere una maggiore lunghezza dell'impronta luminol -positìva (conteggiata in mm. 245, dove l'orma del Sollecito misura mm.246), conclude come se fossero attuali e immodificati i dati della precedente relazione.
Tutto ciò porta il c.t.p. a considerare l'impronta lunga appena 215 mm (il che
non è) con la conseguenza di ricondurre un piede di siffatta lunghezza, più corto di tre centimetri rispetto al piede dell'imputato, ad una misura di scarpa
tra il numero 36 e il 37.

I don't have many problems in deducing why Vinci's measurement was rejected: because he didn't operate a perspective correction.
The uncorrected data, obviously, here does not refer to the lenght of the tile, which appears not to the relevant point for the court.
It is also said by Massei here that Rinaldi presented correct data on the hearing of 9.05.09, and thus, it is Rinaldi who corrects himself, while Vinci takes note (prende atto) of the correction (of the perspective correction). But Vinci also "corrects" again Rinaldi - as for what the court says - as ignoring that Rinaldi has already corrected errors and modified data: thus, apparently Vinci corrects "old data". But besides this, what seems more important here is that Vinci din't deal with the issue of perspective correction, that he skims this part (the main part related to the issue of data correction).

I think there is no doubt about this conclusion by the court. Albeit this set of corrections by Rinaldi (and Vinci) is not detailed in the Massei report and the motivation report can be considered hasty by some on this point, the point of disagreement is quite obvious.
Even if I translated this part, I don't know what is the precise reference, the detailed set of reference of the pronoun "tutto ciò" ("everything about this", "all of this", "all that"). Is it referred to the whole working procedure of Vinci, or to the issue of skimming the correction of sets of data, or the lack perspective correction..? It is anyway obvious the court addresses the point of a lack of perspective correction, not the wrong assessment of a tile lenght, and addresses the problem in relation to second Rinaldi's report and testimony, the one discussed in may, not his first measurement.

 

[Kaosium]

Cite

I have already reminded you of how her own testimony completely contradicts your post -where's the gratitude ??


Why don't you correct your post in light of her testimony and you may be able to figure it out in the process - or do you not accept even AK's own word on the fact that it happened.

You guys really are more skeptical of her than Perugia PD were.
.

If the cops arrested her for murder why would they take her word for Patrick not being involved if she wasn't admitting to being involved and already told them she didn't think those 'repressed memories' were real?

 

[LondonJohn]

The police arrested Lumumba, after telling Amanda they had 'hard evidence' of him being at the murder scene. They aren't about to release him on her say-so either. Twenty year-old girls don't really manipulate the arrests and releases of murder suspects, especially when that information comes from being interrogated by a minimum of twelve police officers wanting to get her 'repressed memories' of the murder.

The police bear the responsibility of the arrest of Patrick Lumumba and the delay of his release, long after numerous witnesses corroborated his alibi. The scapegoating of Amanda over this is yet another strike against the Perugian police and belies the credulity of the people who believed it.

And at this point, let us all earnestly (and with perfectly straight faces) repeat the mantra that the reason why the police kept Lumumba's bar closed for months after they released him was because it was a "crime scene"...

 

[LondonJohn]

Cite

I have already reminded you of how her own testimony completely contradicts your post -where's the gratitude ??


Why don't you correct your post in light of her testimony and you may be able to figure it out in the process - or do you not accept even AK's own word on the fact that it happened.

You guys really are more skeptical of her than Perugia PD were.
.

What exactly did Knox tell her mother in the bugged prison conversation of 10th November regarding Lumumba's innocence?

 

[Mary_H]

Uhhhhh, Mary, may I observe...

Unlike USA trials, Judge Massei 'cared enough' to spend 3 months writing 427 pages to tell you and the rest of the world precisely how and why the Jurors unanimously concluded that 'they did it'.

Fully cognizant of how much of the current 'arguing' here has been reduced to only 'innocenters' offering 'atta boys' to each other, never the less, your argument above is unusually not only inaccurate and disrespectful, but absolutely illogical.

With all due respect to you, my friend pilot padron, I disagree. It is common knowledge that Mignini went through a number of possible scenarios before settling on the "You-act-like-such-a-saint-now-you-are-going-to-have-sex-with-us" script. Then Massei comes out with an entirely different scenario/script altogether!

Massei's report is much like Matteini's, in that it often makes statements such as, "Meredith was already there, or maybe she came later, we're not sure." Would that be good enough for you if you were on trial?

The point is, if they can't establish how the crime happened, and they don't have any evidence of two of the defendants at the crime scene, then how do they know those two defendants participated in the crime? The very idea is absurd -- it's like the quintessential, archetypal example of a court's bias against defendants.

All they did was hammer a square peg into a round hole as hard as they could until it "sort of" fit.

 

[Katody Matrass]

I was just reading through the two Rinaldi reports, and I think they must have been written before the police were aware that the photo of the tile they were using was distorted, as they give the height measurement of the tile as 169mm. The photo of the luminol print is very obviously a lot shorter than Raffaele's foot, and even 127mm is pretty generous - they must've measured right to the end of the smudged luminol glow, not to where the big toe appears to end.

Hi, katy_did!
227 mm not 127
When you look at the blowup, the one with arrows and mm measurements (rinaldi2.pdf IIRC) there is an arrow signed as 189 mm. Extending it to the end of the pictured print would give roughly 230 mm. So Rinaldi measured the print without the additional smears.

But he made another obvious error - not taking into account the huge directional blur of the photo. If you look closely, you see that every discrete point of light is blurred into almost 2 cm long line, almost parallel to the track. If you measure the track from end to end you'll get it too long by around 1,5 cm (in Rinaldi's centimeters ). That's why Machiavelli's result (23 cm) differs from Vinci's correct 21,5 cm.

How on earth by reducing the scale Rinaldi got the print to grow is beyond me. Machiavelli is unconvincing about it.

 

[Chris C]

Personal authority and appeals to sources are absent in my post, so you are wrong on this point.
The argument put by Chris is indeed purely semantic, and deserves a purely semantic definition as response.

The relevant fact about Sollecito's DNA is there is no explanation about why Sollecito's DNA was on the bra clasp. Those who give a reasoned explanations are those who claim it was planted. Ths agument itself is consistent, it is a logically substantiated reason, but it is unsupported, in conflict with reality, and will be always defeated.

But questioning whether "there was contamination or not" is, in the first instance, a concealed appeal to authority (logically it is just a kind of reverse appeal to authority, an appeal to a doctrine about concepts of authority, trust and burden*), merely the proposed point consists in just a semantic lable, to be used as a tool in an argument.

(*note by the way, also that "contamination" itself is defined by Halides not just as a fact, but on the concept of "custody", which is a principle in the scope of philosophy of law, related to concepts like "responsability", "possess", "consequence" etc., so a legal and doctrine-related word)

Its one thing to find 5 peoples DNA on the entire body, or in the entire room, or in the entire apartment. Its totally different when you are talking about finding 5 partial DNA profiles on one spot as small as that bra clasp. The unrelated alleles are just as strong as the disputed partial profile of Sollecito's. Massei even reduces the amount of allele markers attributed to Sollecito.

Now apparently, The reduced partial profile of Sollecito is being held to a different standard then the rest of the dna on that bra clasp. Machiavell, guilters want to claim that Sollecito somehow managed to deposit his dna on the bra clasp but can't give a logical reason as to how he could do it without leaving dna anywhere else on the bra. To top that off, the rest of the dna on the clasp doesn't count because its not Knox's, Sollecito's, or Guede's. Yet the most logical way that they unidentified dna got there was the same way the disputed profile of Sollecito's got there. Since none of that dna is anywhere else in the room either.

So stop playing both sides. If sollecito's dna got on the clasp by him touching it, then the other dna thats of the same quality should be held to the same standard. Therefore then 3 other people also touched the clasp. This is how you reason the credibility of evidence.
What if they could generate another person profile from the remaining dna markers. Would you consider the owner of the new dna profile a suspect?

 

[platonov]

What exactly did Knox tell her mother in the bugged prison conversation of 10th November regarding Lumumba's innocence?

Remember Some Alibis advice about not making it obvious when your argument takes a hit

It was good advice.

But if you wish to continue in this vein, post AK's testimony on this issue and prove me wrong in one fell swoop.

PS where's the gratitude ??

.

 

[Kaosium]

And at this point, let us all earnestly (and with perfectly straight faces) repeat the mantra that the reason why the police kept Lumumba's bar closed for months after they released him was because it was a "crime scene"...

When I was talking about movies it occurred to me the best way to do it might be as a black comedy. I mean, who could believe this stuff really happened? Who could believe they'd ever be stupid enough to think they could get away with it?

 

[Machiavelli]

You chose the easier argument and forgot about the other possibility.

It is possible and in fact probable that the DNA was transferred either during the 18 Dec investigators revisit or during the trashing of the room at some unspecified time earlier.
e.g. there was Raffaele's DNA in other parts of the house, it was tracked into the room and the bra clasp was trampled or kicked around with contaminated shoes.

Transferred from where? How?
This spot of DNA source must be very rare: Sollecito didn't live inside the room nor inside the house, the only DNA of Sollecito was found on a cigarette butt in the kitchen, his activities in the hous were minimal and had little occasion to transfer DNA on items: in fact no DNA from him was found.
And how likely and how possible is it, is it to transfer a flake of skin cells from one microscopic location, to another microscopic location, just randomly, and with a kick?

Katody you are the one who accepts believing all blood stains and the bloody heel left on the bathroom floor disappeared completely just by acident, as Amanda dragged the rug and cleaned them. You also believe the blood mark by the big toe on the bloody print was left by a second toe that shifted from expected location and merged with the big toe due to some dynamic process. So I understand you may be prone to very unlikely explanations.

 

[katy_did]

Well the relevant snippet is this: (p.381)

Un aspetto infine della relazione non appare condivisibile.
Si tratta del momento in cui il Prof. Vinci, pur prendendo atto che la consulenza del dr. Rinaldi ha operato la correzione prospettica della mattonella, illustrata alla udienza del 9.05.09 facendo ottenere una maggiore lunghezza dell'impronta luminol -positìva (conteggiata in mm. 245, dove l'orma del Sollecito misura mm.246), conclude come se fossero attuali e immodificati i dati della precedente relazione.
Tutto ciò porta il c.t.p. a considerare l'impronta lunga appena 215 mm (il che
non è) con la conseguenza di ricondurre un piede di siffatta lunghezza, più corto di tre centimetri rispetto al piede dell'imputato, ad una misura di scarpa
tra il numero 36 e il 37.

I don't have many problems in deducing why Vinci's measurement was rejected: because he didn't operate a perspective correction.
The uncorrected data, obviously, here does not refer to the lenght of the tile, which appears not to the relevant point for the court.

I think, though, that the 'perspective correction' was carried out on the tile - that is, the photo the police used to calculate the tile measurements, taken from a daylight photo which had a metric reference - something Vinci didn't need to do, since he used a different photo. The tile measurements were then used to calculate the footprint measurements, hence alteration of the tile directly influenced the footprint measurements. That's my understanding of it, anyway (I could be mistaken).

 

[LondonJohn]

Remember Some Alibis advice about not making it obvious when your argument takes a hit

It was good advice.

But if you wish to continue in this vein, post AK's testimony on this issue and prove me wrong in one fell swoop.

PS where's the gratitude ??

.

Ah lovely stuff. You were the one who claimed that Knox had told her mother that Lumumba was innocent in the 10th November prison conversation. Should I take it that you can't back up this assertion with any form of cite or reference? Or should I take it that Knox didn't in fact tell her mother in that conversation that Lumumba was innocent, and that you were inventing something? Please let me know which of these two is correct.

 

[katy_did]

Hi, katy_did!
227 mm not 127
When you look at the blowup, the one with arrows and mm measurements (rinaldi2.pdf IIRC) there is an arrow signed as 189 mm. Extending it to the end of the pictured print would give roughly 230 mm. So Rinaldi measured the print without the additional smears.

But he made another obvious error - not taking into account the huge directional blur of the photo. If you look closely, you see that every discrete point of light is blurred into almost 2 cm long line, almost parallel to the track. If you measure the track from end to end you'll get it too long by around 1,5 cm (in Rinaldi's centimeters ). That's why Machiavelli's result (23 cm) differs from Vinci's correct 21,5 cm.

How on earth by reducing the scale Rinaldi got the print to grow is beyond me. Machiavelli is unconvincing about it.

Ah yes, sorry, 227mm. (I'm tired). About the length of the print, I played around with the 29.8mm measurement in Photoshop, and when I added it to the 189mm measurement it came to just beyond where I'd measure the big toe to (where the toe appears to curve round, rather than the narrower extended part of it, which looks to me like a smudge). So for me the print looked like less than 220mm (erm, quickly re-checks calculation in view of tiredness ), but perhaps we were just measuring to different points.

Very good point about the blur of the photo.

I'm still very puzzled too about how reducing the height of the tile can somehow increase the size of the footprint, and by nearly 2cm at that. It makes no sense...

 

[Machiavelli]

Its one thing to find 5 peoples DNA on the entire body, or in the entire room, or in the entire apartment. Its totally different when you are talking about finding 5 partial DNA profiles on one spot as small as that bra clasp. The unrelated alleles are just as strong as the disputed partial profile of Sollecito's. Massei even reduces the amount of allele markers attributed to Sollecito.

(..)

What do you mean by strong? Generic traces of DNA are very easy to create. The alleles are very easy to create. They can be residual from before, can be contextual (from Amanda, Meredith) or created by subsequent deposit, or can be artifacts and derive from DNA degradation after exposure to agents (like bacteria).
But an entire profile coincident with Sollecito's, including 17 loci from a y-haplotype, is not easy to create. It is not possible to produce this DNA profile without cells from Raffaele Sollecito. Several dozens of skinn cells. They are there, and they are there, they are information, whatever else you look for o f you find and on the bra, this fact won't change the datum, they won't make more explainable or more innocent the fact that there is no explanation for Sollecito's DNA to be ther: the profile is there, why is it there?

 

[Katody Matrass]

Well the relevant snippet is this: (p.381)

So there is nothing more then in the translation. Massei's absurd assumption that Vinci based his work on Rinaldi's findings is really there.

I don't have many problems in deducing why Vinci's measurement was rejected: because he didn't operate a perspective correction.

The problem is that you have to deduce it at all. In the appeal it is stated very clearly that he performed the correction.

The uncorrected data, obviously, here does not refer to the lenght of the tile, which appears not to the relevant point for the court.

I believe you're mistaken again.
Here's what was corrected by Rinaldi:

Photographic finding 5 thus allowed the floor-tile to be measured: the first measurement obtained was 169.3 mm (height) x 336 mm (base) which a further study carried out in view of the hearing on 09.05.09 (summarized in the report on ‚perspective correction‛) resulted in a re-evaluation of the height of the floor-tile, which was reduced to 162mm.​

It is also said by Massei here that Rinaldi presented correct data on the hearing of 9.05.09, and thus, it is Rinaldi who corrects himself, while Vinci takes note (prende atto) of the correction (of the perspective correction).

Why do you think Rinaldi had to make his homework again? Who pointed him his errors initially? Was it Mignini? Massei? Comodi?

But Vinci also "corrects" again Rinaldi - as for what the court says - as ignoring that Rinaldi has already corrected errors and modified data: thus, apparently Vinci corrects "old data".

I cannot see anything like it in the text. Is it deduction? Vinci presented his own measurements.
Vinci corrects "old data" - what do you mean by that?

But besides this, what seems more important here is that Vinci din't deal with the issue of perspective correction, that he skims this part (the main part related to the issue of data correction).

Wrong, he obviously did, which is pointed out in the appeal. I think you misunderstood it.

 

[platonov]

Ah lovely stuff. You were the one who claimed that Knox had told her mother that Lumumba was innocent in the 10th November prison conversation. Should I take it that you can't back up this assertion with any form of cite or reference? Or should I take it that Knox didn't in fact tell her mother in that conversation that Lumumba was innocent, and that you were inventing something? Please let me know which of these two is correct.

No I firstly claimed this issue was dealt with during the trial and your post was completely wrong on this point - this argument you have not responded to.

So we shall take it you have no rebuttal, but dont want to admit the error or accept the correction.



But to the main point iself ............

CP: Okay, let's talk about your conversation on November 10 with your mother.AK: Yes.
CP: Did you ever tell your mother, in English, that you felt horrible because Patrick was in prison because of your fault?
AK: Yes, so many times.
CP: Did you say it on November 10?
AK: I don't remember the dates, but I talked about it with my mother, yes.
CP: So if you were perfectly aware that Patrick was in prison by your fault, that he was innocent, why didn't you tell the penitentiary police?
AK: Well, it's true that after several days in prison, I did come to realize that what I had imagined was nothing but imagination, not a confusion of reality. So I realized that he wasn't guilty of these things, and I felt really really bad that he had been arrested.
CP: Why didn't you tell the penetentiary police?

At this stage LG interrupts

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

GCM: Excuse me, avvocato. To just return to this question. The defense is expressing his perplexity and we also feel it. You are saying: "I didn't know if Patrick was innocent or not." This is on the 6th and the 7th. But on the 10th, you essentially say that he's innocent. So what the defense lawyer is asking is, what happened in between to make you change your mind?To change your conviction about the role of Patrick? It's this.

AK: Well, yes. I knew he was in prison uniquely because of my words. At first I didn't know this. I thought the police somehow knew whether he was guilty or not. Since I didn't know, I was confused. But in the following days I realized that he was in prison only because of what I had said, and I felt guilty.

 

[Machiavelli]

I think, though, that the 'perspective correction' was carried out on the tile - that is, the photo the police used to calculate the tile measurements, taken from a daylight photo which had a metric reference - something Vinci didn't need to do, since he used a different photo. The tile measurements were then used to calculate the footprint measurements, hence alteration of the tile directly influenced the footprint measurements. That is my understanding of it, anyway.

The perspective correction is obviously based on the tiles, as I also showed in the example of my picture, as the tiles are the reference points for the grid.
But it is not directly related to the measurement of the lenght of the tile. The tile lenght only defines the scale of the picture. The perspective correction is a modification of shapes, proportions and angles, not a modification of a measurement. A modification of a measurement of the lenght of the tile can be also included as effect in the process of the perspective correction, but it is not the basis for the perspective correction. The perspective correctin is the transformation of the reference system from a non-linear grid to a linear grid. Some objects or lenghts become "smaller" while ogher become "bigger", but there is no direct linear implication between the modification of any one datum and another one.