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Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Onofarar said:
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.
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No, she still would have to face the calunnia trial, and if the prosecution were to appeal, they could demand she be held awaiting the appeal.
 
TomCH said:
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.
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It can happen anywhere:

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/murder-mystery-killed-wayne-sharmon-stock/story?id=11523512

This is a case Ron Hendry brought to my attention, and you can watch the whole 20-20 segment at the link above.

I would strongly encourage everyone interested in the Meredith Kercher case to do so. It shows the fundamental similarity in how public authorities behave when they stand to look bad, whether they are in Perugia or Nebraska.

Did the star detective plant the DNA evidence, or was it a case of contamination?

We will never know for sure. But we do know that the suspects incriminated by that evidence are absolutely innocent.
 
TomCH said:
No, she still would have to face the calunnia trial, and if the prosecution were to appeal, they could demand she be held awaiting the appeal.
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In your fantasies perhaps. The reality is that Amanda will be going home if the appeal succeeds.
 
Withnail1969 said:
In your fantasies perhaps. The reality is that Amanda will be going home if the appeal succeeds.
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Well, if for some reason the appeal succeeds (unlikely) and she loses the callunia trial (likely), they could always just give her time served, and then she could go home.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
It can happen anywhere:

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/murder-mystery-killed-wayne-sharmon-stock/story?id=11523512

This is a case Ron Hendry brought to my attention, and you can watch the whole 20-20 segment at the link above.

I would strongly encourage everyone interested in the Meredith Kercher case to do so. It shows the fundamental similarity in how public authorities behave when they stand to look bad, whether they are in Perugia or Nebraska.

Did the star detective plant the DNA evidence, or was it a case of contamination?

We will never know for sure. But we do know that the suspects incriminated by that evidence are absolutely innocent.
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Presumably this isn't the way it always goes? Also of course, the corruption/incompetence is, to a considerable degree, independent of the guilt or innocence of the suspects.
 
shuttlt said:
Presumably this isn't the way it always goes? Also of course, the corruption/incompetence is, to a considerable degree, independent of the guilt or innocence of the suspects.
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It's not at all independent, because it is the incompetent cops who jump to conclusions before they really understand what they are dealing with. Then they are in a position where they stand to look like fools if the truth comes out. That is why, in the Stock case, they mounted a full-court press to get the girl to incriminate the people they had already charged, even when she insisted they were not involved. They weren't interested in the truth. All they cared about was saving face - not having to admit they were wrong.

It was the same way in the Nicarico case. Even after they had Dugan's confession, and his DNA in a semen swab from the victim's body, they tried to make the case that two other guys had acted as his accomplices. Ditto the Norfolk Four - the police railroaded them all, even after Omar Ballard confessed and told them he acted alone, and DNA evidence tied him to the crime.

I have followed a lot of these cases, which is why I realized, a long time ago, that the same thing is going on in Perugia. Guede left the DNA, and he left the bloody fingerprints. He did it by himself. But the cops won't admit that, because if they do, they look like bungling fools.
 
Onofarar said:
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.
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around 10 nanometers material becomes invisible to the naked eye. we do depositions and begin to see materials at 30nanometers, just holding the product in the hand and visually seeing the color change.

pico would not be seen by the naked eye. "naked" is just slang for someone looking at using only light. , no magnification, no microscopes.
 
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shuttlt said:
Presumably this isn't the way it always goes? Also of course, the corruption/incompetence is, to a considerable degree, independent of the guilt or innocence of the suspects.
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always? I thought we were discussing probabilities. I would say it shows that where the police targeted the wrong people, there is much stronger probability of "not genuine" evidence emerging.

That case has striking similarities. Cops zero-in on a wrong guy. They got a false confession and a false accusation, but no evidence. They order another search and voila - a miracle happens and evidence is found. In the meantime true perpetrators are traced. What the cops do? They contrive a theory that they may not even know each other but all of them did it together. They do everything to not admit the mistake.
But in the end truth prevails.

The guys on which evidence was found only after they were arrested are innocent, and those who were in the meantime traced by the genuine evidence did it.
There is some similarity to the Perugian case, isn't it?
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
It's not at all independent, because it is the incompetent cops who jump to conclusions before they really understand what they are dealing with.
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Was the cops jumping to conclusions a cause of Amanda et al being involved in the murder (or not), or was them being involved (or not), a cause of the cops jumping to conclusions? I'm not sure what you mean by "not at all independent".

Charlie Wilkes said:
Then they are in a position where they stand to look like fools if the truth comes out. That is why, in the Stock case, they mounted a full-court press to get the girl to incriminate the people they had already charged, even when she insisted they were not involved. They weren't interested in the truth. All they cared about was saving face - not having to admit they were wrong.

It was the same way in the Nicarico case. Even after they had Dugan's confession, and his DNA in a semen swab from the victim's body, they tried to make the case that two other guys had acted as his accomplices. Ditto the Norfolk Four - the police railroaded them all, even after Omar Ballard confessed and told them he acted alone, and DNA evidence tied him to the crime.
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There are certainly a cases where everyone eventually accepts that the people the state had claimed were definately guilty were in fact innocent. Presumably this doesn't happen very often or the justice system would collapse. Whether or not this is down to the difficulty in proving that the state is wrong, or the rareness of the state mucking things up this badly is another question.

Charlie Wilkes said:
I have followed a lot of these cases, which is why I realized, a long time ago, that the same thing is going on in Perugia. Guede left the DNA, and he left the bloody fingerprints. He did it by himself. But the cops won't admit that, because if they do, they look like bungling fools.
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Just because it would make the authorities in Perugia look horrible if they had got it wrong is not an argument that they did indeed get it wrong.
 
Katody Matrass said:
always? I thought we were discussing probabilities. I would say it shows that where the police targeted the wrong people, there is much stronger probability of "not genuine" evidence emerging.
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Are we dealing with a case where the cops targeted the wrong people?

Katody Matrass said:
That case has striking similarities. Cops zero-in on a wrong guy. They got a false confession and a false accusation, but no evidence. They order another search and voila - a miracle happens and evidence is found. In the meantime true perpetrators are traced. What the cops do? They contrive a theory that they may not even know each other but all of them did it together. They do everything to not admit the mistake.
But in the end truth prevails.
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But, finding a case that is like this case, assuming Amanda and Raffaele are innocent, doesn't tell you much in and of itself about the likelihood of Amanda and Raffaele being innocent. Perhaps this case is actually much more like a case where the cops zero in on the right guy/girl etc.

Katody Matrass said:
The guys on which evidence was found only after they were arrested are innocent, and those who were in the meantime traced by the genuine evidence did it.
There is some similarity to the Perugian case, isn't it?
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Only if they are innocent. If they aren't innocent it's a lot less similar.
 
shuttlt said:
Was the cops jumping to conclusions a cause of Amanda et al being involved in the murder (or not), or was them being involved (or not), a cause of the cops jumping to conclusions? I'm not sure what you mean by "not at all independent".
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If the police had waited until they had the results of their forensic work before announcing they had solved the case, Amanda, Raffaele and Patrick would never have been arrested in the first place.
 
A good example of how to do it right is the Annie Le murder at Yale. The cops "knew" who did it from day one because the guy had to swipe a card every time he entered a given room, and it documented an unusual pattern of activity. They were getting complaints that they weren't being open enough, the public needs to know if a murderer is running loose, etc. It's easy to yield to that pressure. But they didn't. They watched the guy so he couldn't flee or commit any further crimes, and they waited until they had the forensic results. Then they arrested him and made the announcement.
 
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Charlie Wilkes said:
If the police had waited until they had the results of their forensic work before announcing they had solved the case, Amanda, Raffaele and Patrick would never have been arrested in the first place.
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But that's a very different claim. The police jumping to conclusions and being keen to make a quick arrest may very well not be independent of them being arrested. Whether or not they are genuinely innocent or guilty has nothing to do with this though. Guilty people can get arrested be over keen police just as easily as innocent people.
 
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