Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Katody Matrass]

In most cases though, the DNA on the bra clasp would be that of the killer, but then we are back into the realm of conditional probabilities again.

Conditional probabilities indeed. Assessing probability of Raffaele's DNA landing on the clasp despite the fact he didn't touch it we should take into account also ILE's motivation and their state of minds.

People's instincts about a case and assessment of the evidence can certainly be wrong.

True, especially when they invested much into it. We should treat their assessments with special caution if they also have motivation and means to affect the outcome of the case.

It's a bit of an exaggeration to say that ALL the evidence and witnesses were gathered after they said "case closed". Quite a bit of interviewing of other housemates and so on had been done. I'm being a picky arse though and you probably don't really mean ALL.

Yes, you're nitpicking. I meant serious evidence of course. e.g. the knife, the clasp, the 3 witnesses. Nothing they had before the arrest would convict them.

As for all the rest of it, I'm sure it falls quite a long way short of what police work should be. Has anything new turned up to show a conspiracy? When I left there was nothing that anybody found particularly convincing who didn't already believe Amanda was innocent.

I don't know what conspiracy you mean. They were just good, medal-worthy cops doing their job. And in this job sometimes you must get your hands a bit dirty. This is something understood without words.

And I'm not saying it happened such or such way. What I'm saying is the cops showed they can lie repeatedly, they showed they are unprofessional and lack morals. We know they have means and motivation to mess with the evidence and affect the investigation. Considering that we must look at the provided evidence with suspicion, unless the process of collecting and testing it is transparent and impeccable. When it comes to the bra clasp we know that it was moved in an undocumented way and we've seen how unprofessionally it was collected.

 

[tsig]

I corrected this kind of misuse of statistics earlier in this thread but I'm happy to do it again.

If someone is looking out the window and saying "Hey, I think I see an albino pigeon!" it is not rational to respond by saying "What are the odds of any given, randomly-selected pigeon being an albino? If the chances are only 0.6% then I'm not going to get up and look at it, I'll just assume that you are mistaken and that it is not an albino pigeon".

Firstly, a rational person would get up an look at the specific case rather than taking a guess from their armchair based on generalities.

Secondly, we are looking at this particular pigeon because it looks like an albino pigeon. It has not been randomly selected from the whole pigeon population.

If you absolutely insisted on trying to fix a belief based on maths from your armchair rather than examining the specific case, the question you should ask in the case of the pigeon is "What percentage of cases where someone thinks they have seen an albino pigeon turn out to be caused by an actual albino pigeon?". Or in the Kercher murder case, "What percentage of cases where there is a strong case for contamination turn out to involve contamination?".

Saying there's a strong case for contamination is begging the question as to whether there is contamination.

 

[Dan O.]

I love the way guilters systematically dismiss every possibility that contamination was the cause of Raffaele's profile showing up when the bra clasp was analyzed. We should encourage this.

Once contamination has been eliminated as a possibility and the presence of Raffaele at the scene is eliminated by the computer logs, what option (however improbable) is going to remain to explain the DNA result?

I await the inevitable denials that such an outcome is even possible.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Saying there's a strong case for contamination is begging the question as to whether there is contamination.

What a strange thing to say.

We can see the clasp being unnecessarily handled with dirty gloves, and being picked up and put down again. We know it was in a pile of junk for weeks and somehow moved around the room while only police were supposed to have access, so unless the leprechauns did it then it had additional scope when it was moved to come into contact with gloves or other objects in the room.

In forensics it's the job of the police to gather and preserve the evidence in such a way that contamination is excluded, which they manifestly failed to do.

That's ignoring the fact that the police had nailed their colours to the mast at that point, and had just had their sole decent-looking piece of evidence for Sollecito's guilt held up to ridicule when it turned out that their "footprint expert" couldn't count, which is more of an argument for deliberate tampering rather than mere accidental contamination.

 

[Dan O.]

Is there video of finding the clasp the first time, after the body and pillow were moved? If there is, what did this video show? That the forensic guy picked it up off the floor and then set it right back down?

Yes, there is. In the Crime scene video at time index 01:22:23 on Nov 3, the bra is collected and bagged. In the process, one of the investigators points out the missing clasp.

One hour later at 02:24:41, the clasp itself is videotaped and photographed on the floor beneath the pillow. Nobody picks it up at this time. But it is obvious in the high resolution photo that the clasp is not in the position where it spent the night of the murder.

 

[keale]

Holy crap this thread has 446 pages!!!!!! I didnt think this chick was that popular

 

[lionking]

Holy crap this thread has 446 pages!!!!!! I didnt think this chick was that popular

Keale, this is part 2. There is an earlier thread.

 

[Dan O.]

Specifically, the first 15000 posts are here. And don't forget all the posts in AAH (on second thought, maybe they should be forgotten).

 

[Kaosium]

When I left this

Greetings shuttlt, I came to this debate long after you left, but I found your mark on the archives here and elsewhere conducive to a better understanding of this issue, especially in regards to the interrogation on another site. Unfortunately it appears to me progress in defining what actually occurred there hasn't advanced much in your absence.

I think the calculation was that you'd have needed to drag it through the equivalent of a couple of metres of standard density house dust to get as much DNA as was found belonging to Raffaele on the clasp. Almost all of that DNA would belong to Meredith as most of the dust was presumably hers and Raffaele had never been in her room, so house dust was an unlikely source. Perhaps somebody can correct my recollection, or update me if things have changed.

The absence of Raffaele on other samples in the room and more generally in the apartment, surely show that contamination of the clasp with Raffaele's DNA wasn't a very likely occurrence, if that is what happened. Assuming we know how unlikely it is, it still doesn't really help. What one would need is the odds of this turning up given that Raffaele is the killer and the odds given that he isn't.

Indeed I agree, however that selfsame observation would make the likelihood of that DNA being deposited during or after the murder even more remote. Absence of evidence may be evidence of absence in this case. Especially when you have a small confined place, blood everywhere, a violent struggle, and the bloody footprints of one person, and one person only, all over the floor. No fingerprints, no footprints of Raffaele, no trace of Raffaele on Meredith's body or anywhere near it--nothing.

It's not like they didn't look hard enough either, they tore apart that room trying to find some evidence of Raffaele at the site, they went over it twice with plenty of manpower and equipment. It strikes me as pretty evident that of all the possibilities of how that DNA ended up on the bra clasp, the one that has been effectively eliminated is that it happened during or after the murder. What other possibility has such effort gone into trying to find some corroboration, under conditions where it would seem probable that there'd be some found?

 

[Kaosium]

As for all the rest of it, I'm sure it falls quite a long way short of what police work should be. Has anything new turned up to show a conspiracy? When I left there was nothing that anybody found particularly convincing who didn't already believe Amanda was innocent.

I go by the adage 'never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be explained by sheer incompetence.' There's evidence of a lot of incompetence but I don't think that can fully explain what happened either, though I don't think they deliberately framed them either. That would have been far easier and much less obvious than what actually happened in my view.

I think a tragedy of errors occurred and it was later compounded by some desperate face-saving and covering of asses, but I doubt there was anything that could actually be called 'conspiracy.'

 

[Onofarar]

No, it would be up to the prosecutor. And he does have the right to appeal.

Any opinion on what point of law the prosecutor would base an appeal? The Supreme Court appeal is NOT another rehearing of the case. And AK would be long gone back in the USA.

 

[Onofarar]

Yes, they would be entitled to the standard 20 or 30 Euros/day spent in jail, that's it.

Oh I think there is much more to be won than that. If Patrick can take his case to the ECHR and demand 1/2 million Euros then AK and RS stand to ask for substantially more. I wouldn't want to be a taxpayer in Perugia.
BTW - that maybe a misnomer "taxpayer in Perugia"

 

[Kaosium]

Holy crap this thread has 446 pages!!!!!! I didnt think this chick was that popular

Oh, it's not the chick, she's a cutie but there's lots of those in the world.

Let me set the scene: A house is broken into and a girl killed with evidence of one attacker at the scene. Police decide that it was really a faked break-in to hide the conspiracy of three people who barely knew each other to murder a girl for ridiculous reasons (satanic orgies hinted at!) or no reason at all.

It's got sex, drugs, rock and roll, and that's the tame part compared to what the British tabloids created: 'Foxy Knoxy'--The Sex Monster of Seattle who enslaves men with a wiggle in her walk and orders them to murder on command! Or whatever it was, I missed this part.

They get a conviction.

 

[Onofarar]

Halides1 - one thing I am not clear about is the amount of material on the Double DNA knife. Was the total sample size 10 picograms or less or was that just the amount of DNA material in the sample? Or is this one of those unknowns along with the fsa files, control and contamination logs? I would assume 10 picograms would be invisible to the human eye no matter the quality of the lighting. Any opinion on how much material (in grams) would be necessary for it to be visible to the naked eye. Thanks in advance for your help.
BTW - This is somewhat hypothetical since I think it is 50/50 that Mary H is right and this "evidence" was just made up.

 

[Dan O.]

10 pico-grams is on the order of the mass of the DNA in a single human cell (one site calculates the mass at 7.11 pico-grams). I thought the knife blade DNA was around 50 pico-grams or in the ballpark of 5-10 cells worth.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Hi Amazer,
What if it was you yourself or that cute lil' kid in your avatar who was sitting in jail,
convicted of a crime you or the lil' kid did not commit,
found guilty due, in large part, to contaminated DNA results?

Would you feel differently about that 0.6% then?
I wonder...
Peace,
RWVBWL

I don't have statistics, but it is more than 0.6 percent. I have read about lots of cases where the cops had unidentified DNA or fingerprints that they thought were relevant, but eventually were matched to a paramedic or someone who had visited the crime scene before the crime took place. Usually they don't regard these incidents as forensic blunders so much as random events.

I have posted one classic example - Donnah Winger's DNA found on Roger Harrington's clothing. How did it get there if Mark Winger ambushed and shot Harrington after he had already killed his wife? Who knows? It just did.

http://www.friendsofamanda.org/winger_case_fluke_dna.gif

 

[TomCH]

The 40 Euros a day is automatic. They will literally get additionaly sued if Knox/Sollecito are set free. That 40 Euros a day wont pay the lawyer fees that have nearly bankrupted both families.

I don't think that you can sue for that in Italy.

 

[TomCH]

Such cases may be rare in advanced countries like the UK, USA and Australia, but unfortunately in countries like Italy corruption and faking results is sadly all too common.

That's nonsense. And xenophobic.

Where do you get the idea that the US is advanced compared to Italy?

I'd take my chances in Italy over the US ANY day.

 

[TomCH]

what a corupt and dangerous place Perugia is,to be avoided by all freedom lovers like the plague

You've obviously never been there.

 

[TomCH]

the presence of Raffaele at the scene is eliminated by the computer logs

That is VERY unlikely to be the case.