Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

recent Daily Mail article

May I suggest we leave off speculating about the Kerchers unless it relates to the facts of the case. Mr Kercher's daughter is dead. If he feels he needs to get legal representation then let him. Otherwise we'll just end up in tit for tat posting about the Knox PR efforts and so on and so forth.

shuttit,

I think that Mr. Kercher's recent Daily Mail article is tangential to the main issue of this thread, which is the legal and factual innocence or guilt of Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito, as I see it. On those grounds, I would prefer to refrain from discussing his article. The actions of Mr. Maresca in court and his statements to the press fall well within the purview of this thread, IMO.

 

[platonov]

shuttit,

I have previously suggested that people ask physicians, especially surgeons and anesthesiologists, whom they know, "How long does it take for the stomach to start and to finish emptying." I did.

halides1

Well, I see CW ? claims to have a link to the family/FOAK - perhaps on his advice they will fly you (and KL & LJ ) out to replace the likes of Prof Introna etc and your 'my doctor told me' anecdotes will make a better impression on the court.

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[Chris_Halkides]

Do the defense teams have the file or ot?

Finally, it seems the only source for this claim is Gregory Hampikian.
But I cannot consider Hampikian a source on this point of law in the trial: the request exists if there is a lawyer's documents reporting the request and if there is a document of the refusal.
You talk about a "request" and a "refusal" without any legal arena, without any place this request and refusal to take place. But this request and refusal is something formal, it is a trial documentation, and this documentation does not appear in the files that should report it, which are the sentencing report and appeal documents.

Machiavelli,

Do you claim that the defense teams presently have the electronic data files and other DNA forensic files? If so, what is the basis for your claim?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

fact finding

halides1

Well, I see CW ? claims to have a link to the family - perhaps on his advice they will fly you (and KL & LJ ) out to replace the likes of Prof Introna etc and your 'my doctor told me' anecdotes will make a better impression on the court.

.

platonov,

I read that PM Mignini moved the TOD an hour later in his closing remarks. For the court to accept this in the close is debatable in any case. However, PM Mignini had an extra eleven months (November 2007 to October 2008) to gather evidence in this case before even charging Amanda and Raffaele. Why could he not use all of this time to figure out the TOD by the time the trial started? It makes no sense to me.

My suggestion was that interested parties could gather preliminary information in this way to augment the literature citations provided by London John and Kevin_Lowe. Rose Montague indicated that your representation of Professor Introna's position was misleading. What is your response?

 

[LondonJohn]

That argument was certainly around before I wandered off the thread.

Well one reason may have been that the prosecution shifted their time of death back substantially during the trial, including - amazingly - during the final summations. And the court allowed it. Another reason may have been that the defence simply didn't recognise the significance of ToD - after all, their own expert knew himself that Meredith must have died within 2-3 hours of eating her last meal, meaning that she was dead by 9.30. I've suggested before that the defence teams in the first trial were far from the "dream teams" or "best that money can buy" that some people would like to have us believe.

There are plenty of people on this thread and on other forums who are unprepared to engage in sensible discussions in this area. They will try to obfuscate or claim that this area is open to extraordinary levels of uncertainty. And that's simply not the case. Two things can be said with high degrees of confidence: Meredith Kercher almost certainly died within 3 hours (maximum) of consuming her final meal - i.e. by 9.30pm; and Meredith Kercher almost certainly didn't die any later than 10pm, let alone the 11.45 time that the court accepted.

Woah - we've got the Aussies on the rack in the 2nd Ashes test! Three wickets down after 15 minutes! Get in!

 

[platonov]

That argument was certainly around before I wandered off the thread.

And what do you make of that argument ?

See for example katy did's post at the top of page 455 (for ease of reference) on Introna's ToD range & contrast that with LJ's 95% probability for before 9.20.

Somebody doesn't know what there talking about

And bear in mind Introna's emphasis is on supporting the defence case - he uses 3* (not 4 hrs) and takes 6.30 as the meal start time (when there is conflicting testimony on when the meal began)

the time of death must lie between 21:30 pm (three hours after 18:30) and 22:30 pm (four hours after 18:30), and that this timing agreed with the less rigid data provided by the analysis of the hypostasis, of the rigor mortis and of the body temperature, considering the uncertainty of the body weight which was guessed without weighing the body.

* perhaps this is the usual formula ? - I dont claim any expertise.

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[shuttlt]

Well one reason may have been that the prosecution shifted their time of death back substantially during the trial, including - amazingly - during the final summations. And the court allowed it. Another reason may have been that the defence simply didn't recognise the significance of ToD - after all, their own expert knew himself that Meredith must have died within 2-3 hours of eating her last meal, meaning that she was dead by 9.30. I've suggested before that the defence teams in the first trial were far from the "dream teams" or "best that money can buy" that some people would like to have us believe.

Presumably the Knox clan are well aware of the arguments that the defence failed to make and will make sure the new defence team don't make the same mistake. In another bunch of months when the appeal is over we will know more.

 

[LondonJohn]

platonov,

I read that PM Mignini moved the TOD an hour later in his closing remarks. For the court to accept this in the close is debatable in any case. However, PM Mignini had an extra eleven months (November 2007 to October 2008) to gather evidence in this case before even charging Amanda and Raffaele. Why could he not use all of this time to figure out the TOD by the time the trial started? It makes no sense to me.

My suggestion was that interested parties could gather preliminary information in this way to augment the literature citations provided by London John and Kevin_Lowe. Rose Montague indicated that your representation of Professor Introna's position was misleading. What is your response?

I would imagine that the defence teams are far more aware of a) the importance and b) the "provability" of this issue than they were at the time of the first trial. Facetious remarks such as those by Platonov that the defence teams should fly people like us over to be their new "experts" indicate to me that Platonov either doesn't understand the science here, or (s)he is in denial of it.

I suspect that the defence teams will have instructed one or more internationally-respected forensic pathologists to testify that Meredith almost certainly died by 9.30pm, and certainly before 10pm. I have little doubt that they will be able to back up their personal professional opinions with all the available research literature. If that's the case, we will then see how the new prosecutor chooses to reconcile this with all the other parts of the prosecution's original case. I'm guessing that he won't find that task very easy...

 

[Mary_H]

Antonella Monacchia is a very reliable witness. She admitted she didn't come out until she was searched out by private investigators, since she didn't feel like being a witness at all. Just as many witness do. It was the same in this town where it took years before starting to find wintesses for the Aldrovandi case. And it is perfectly believable Monacchia didn't think her testimony could be important in the context of the Kercher murder. What information she has to give? Try to see it from the point of view of a person who doesn't know the details about the case. She doesn't think that her testiony is needed, she thinks they could do without, so she tries to avoid getting involved as a witness.
What you call "loud shout/cry" is in fact called by MOnachia un urlo fortissimo (a very loud scream). Urlo unequivocally indicates a human scream.
She heared no sound of steps on the gravel path. But she also has her window facing the other side of the cottage.

I believe Antonella Monacchia is a sincere witness, but I don't believe she is a reliable one. People are woken up all the time by their dreams, only to find out nobody else heard what the dreamer thought she heard. I addressed other problems with her testimony in an earlier post:

"Ms. Monacchia, on the other hand, says she went to bed around 11:00 and doesn't know what time she woke up. She said, "I looked at the clock and it was late; after, I can’t say the precise time, I woke up hearing two people arguing in an animated way, a man and a woman in Italian; after which I heard an extremely loud scream and, seized by anxiety, I opened the window and looked to see if there was someone outside, but I couldn’t see anything and I closed the window." (page 97)

"The easiest time for Ms. Monacchia to have been awakened by the argument would have been when she was in REM sleep, which is the lightest stage, but that would put her waking up around 12:30, not 11:30. She could have been awakened by arguing during deep sleep, if it were really loud, but she also says the man and the woman were arguing in Italian, and Amanda wasn't fluent in Italian at that time, so it's unlikely that's who she heard."

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6393312&postcount=8331

 

[platonov]

platonov,

I read that PM Mignini moved the TOD an hour later in his closing remarks. For the court to accept this in the close is debatable in any case. However, PM Mignini had an extra eleven months (November 2007 to October 2008) to gather evidence in this case before even charging Amanda and Raffaele. Why could he not use all of this time to figure out the TOD by the time the trial started? It makes no sense to me.

My suggestion was that interested parties could gather preliminary information in this way to augment the literature citations provided by London John and Kevin_Lowe. Rose Montague indicated that your representation of Professor Introna's position was misleading. What is your response?

I take it that's a NO (on anecdotes, or internet ramblings, replacing expert witness testimony)

My response is very simple - you are confusing me with another poster

.

 

[shuttlt]

And what do you make of that argument ?

I'm not particularly comfortable with assuming the defence are fools unless I have to. Presumably they will have given some consideration to these issues and come to different conclusions to the Internet as to the best strategy. But then again, maybe they are fools after all.

See for example katy did's post at the top of page 455 (for ease of reference) on Introna's ToD range & contrast that with LJ's 95% probability for before 9.20.

Somebody doesn't know what there talking about

I need time to think it through. 95% probabilities don't worry me though. The odds of the contamination of the knife and bra clasp turning up as they did (unless it was deliberate of course) must surely be low odds events. A lot of stuff in this case rests on the unlikely happening I think.

 

[LondonJohn]

Presumably the Knox clan are well aware of the arguments that the defence failed to make and will make sure the new defence team don't make the same mistake. In another bunch of months when the appeal is over we will know more.

It's been a common refrain of mine for some time now (and not always a popular angle on both sides of the debate, interestingly) that Knox and Sollecito may well have received inadequate defences in the first trial. Neither Knox's nor Sollecito's lead attorney was experienced in defending murder cases - and Knox's lead attorney (Dalla Vedova) was - incredibly - a corporate lawyer by trade and had never acted in a criminal trial of any sort. The second lawyer on Knox's team (Ghirga) was a local lawyer who came across as somewhat bumbling and disorganised at times.

Sollecito's lead lawyer (Bongiorno) appears to have been chosen by Sollecito's father based on her fame and reputation - she was part of Prime Minister Andreotti's successful defence against charges of Mafia corruption. But Bongiorno's legal reputation was built on defending cases in the areas of fraud and corruption - not murder or sex crimes. And in addition to her lack of directly relevant experience, she was (and is) a full-time member of parliament and a member of important parliamentary committees. Even though the court worked restricted hours to accommodate her primary job, she simply can't have been able to devote the adequate amount of time or energy to defending Sollecito in the first trial.

 

[shuttlt]

I suspect that the defence teams will have instructed one or more internationally-respected forensic pathologists to testify that Meredith almost certainly died by 9.30pm, and certainly before 10pm. I have little doubt that they will be able to back up their personal professional opinions with all the available research literature. If that's the case, we will then see how the new prosecutor chooses to reconcile this with all the other parts of the prosecution's original case. I'm guessing that he won't find that task very easy...

If the folks from the Innocence Project, or similar do turn up to testify it would settle a lot of my doubts about their reliability.

By the way, is there still all sorts of secretive nonsense about the Innocence Project and how it was they came to write their petition? That got very odd.

 

[Mary_H]

Well if you are a judge you are supposed to be neutral. As a judge you are not free to decide a witness is not credible just when you want.
A court would follow a praxis to understand if there are reasons to think the witness is not credible. An array of questions is put to the witness by several partis and assessment is given on his/her performance and on the testimony consistency.
When the court thinks a witness lies, there are usually specific reasons for they have this perception. If the witness is imprecise, could be still a good witness. If instead is inconsistent, the testimony gets under closer scrutiny.
The court "tests" the witness for consistency and credibility, however without assuming that credibility has to be "proven".

The array of questions put to Nara Capezzali revealed she was unsure of the actual date on which she allegedly heard the scream. Witnesses can be both credible and mistaken. For that reason, the judge should have concluded that her testimony was unreliable.

 

[Mary_H]

<snip>
Repetition seems to be the recurring theme of this thread.<snip>

.

For once we agree. Although I would change "the" to "a."

 

[Machiavelli]

Did she either write down or tell anyone in the day (or even days) following the murder what she'd heard? What exactly did she tell her parents, and why weren't they called to testify? Why didn't they hear the same thing (there's no mention that she went so far as to wake her parents up)? Surely contemporaneous corroboration of Ms Monacchia's testimony would be critical, given that she only came forward and gave a formal statement a year later.

She did not come forward, she was dragged into court. Maybe corroboration by others would be critical to you, since you start from a position of distrust towards the witness. But why do you put all these questions to me? You should instead explain reasons why you are convicned she is not credible. Why do you think she needs special corroboration more than normal witnesses. The reason you bring seems to be she testified too late. This is not a very good reason in my view. Following this logic the Aldrovandi case wouldn't be solved. Again there is no reason to dismiss the testimony of Antonella Monacchia.

 

[LondonJohn]

I'm not particularly comfortable with assuming the defence are fools unless I have to. Presumably they will have given some consideration to these issues and come to different conclusions to the Internet as to the best strategy. But then again, maybe they are fools after all.


I need time to think it through. 95% probabilities don't worry me though. The odds of the contamination of the knife and bra clasp turning up as they did (unless it was deliberate of course) must surely be low odds events. A lot of stuff in this case rests on the unlikely happening I think.

On the assigning of probabilities, I too would not want to use the percentages I quoted as absolutes in and of themselves. They are merely a tool to illustrate how much more probable it was that Meredith died before 9.20pm than after 9.20pm. And they also illustrate how wildly improbable it is that Meredith died any later than 10pm, and how it's beyond all known medical knowledge that she died at 11.45pm (which is the time the prosecution needed in the first trial to reconcile the "witness" testimonies of Curatolo, Capezzali and Monacchia, and the inconvenient (to the prosecution) presence of the broken-down car outside the dark and deserted murder house between 10.30 and 11.40pm.

The academic literature (which contains statistically significant research studies) is clear in charting the normal curves for the time at which the stomach starts to discharge its contents to the duodenum in a healthy adult whose eaten a moderate solid meal with no alcohol. And this body of knowledge tells us clearly that it's virtually unheard of for this time to be any longer than three hours. I can only imagine that the expert witnesses (on both sides) were not as confident in this area as they might have been, and that's explainable because it's comparatively rare to use the condition of the stomach/intestines as an indicator of time of death. In this specific instance, however, we are in luck because we know Meredith was already well above average for stomach emptying times - since we know she was alive at just before 9pm. So rather than saying that Meredith died between 45 mins and 3 hours after eating her pizza meal (which is a very large 2 1/4 hour spread), we can instead say that Meredith died between 2.5 and 3 hours after eating her last meal.

I notice that Platonov's latest attempt to further obfuscate is to cast doubt on 6.30pm as being the time when Meredith's last meal was started. Interesting, since this time is coincident with the memories and testimony of the friends with whom Meredith shared that pizza meal (some of whose constituent elements were still recognisable in Meredith's stomach at autopsy). I wonder what time (or time range, if he prefers) Platonov thinks Meredith ate this pizza meal, and why all her friends are so mistaken?

 

[shuttlt]

On the assigning of probabilities, I too would not want to use the percentages I quoted as absolutes in and of themselves. They are merely a tool to illustrate how much more probable it was that Meredith died before 9.20pm than after 9.20pm. And they also illustrate how wildly improbable it is that Meredith died any later than 10pm, and how it's beyond all known medical knowledge that she died at 11.45pm (which is the time the prosecution needed in the first trial to reconcile the "witness" testimonies of Curatolo, Capezzali and Monacchia, and the inconvenient (to the prosecution) presence of the broken-down car outside the dark and deserted murder house between 10.30 and 11.40pm.

Fine, but it would be wrong to think the odds purely relating to these issues of time of death can be translated directly and simply into odds of guilt or innocence.

 

[platonov]

I'm not particularly comfortable with assuming the defence are fools unless I have to. Presumably they will have given some consideration to these issues and come to different conclusions to the Internet as to the best strategy. But then again, maybe they are fools after all.


I need time to think it through. 95% probabilities don't worry me though. The odds of the contamination of the knife and bra clasp turning up as they did (unless it was deliberate of course) must surely be low odds events. A lot of stuff in this case rests on the unlikely happening I think.

Indeed and experts have been known to make mistakes.

However, based on other 'arguments' they have presented on simpler issues I'm very happy to take any theories (pertaining to this case) originating from LJ or KL as likely to be nonsense - they might not be complete nonsense obviously [they need to be 'examined' on their merits] but its a fair starting point for a skeptic to take.

It that's ad hom* so be it. So far in these matters this approach has proven accurate.

* I don't believe it is - past form has to count for something.
Nor is it the 'internet' - its a couple of posters on this thread whose record speaks for itself. See the 'broken window' perplexity, the bathroom 'hokey-cokey', the 'screensaver' logs misunderstanding, the Macavity problem etc etc etc and various examples of selective quotation, refusal to answer direct [perhaps leading] Q's and incredulous interpretations.

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[LondonJohn]

She did not come forward, she was dragged into court. Maybe corroboration by others would be critical to you, since you start from a position of distrust towards the witness. But why do you put all these questions to me? You should instead explain reasons why you are convicned she is not credible. Why do you think she needs special corroboration more than normal witnesses. The reason you bring seems to be she testified too late. This is not a very good reason in my view. Following this logic the Aldrovandi case wouldn't be solved. Again there is no reason to dismiss the testimony of Antonella Monacchia.

1) Imprecision on timing

2) The fact that she says she woke up to hear the arguing and the scream - leading to the very real possibility (as Mary pointed out) that this could all be the artifact of a dream

3) The fact that she says two people were arguing loudly in Italian before the "scream" - either she or Capezzali (or both) are mistaken, since Capezzali's account claims very precise hearing skills yet makes no mention of this pre-scream loud arguing

4) The fact that the prosecution apparently did not obtain testimony from her parents as witnesses - people whom Monacchia apparently went to question about the "scream" immediately afterwards, who would possibly be the only people able to provide contemporaneous corroboration of Monacchia's story

5) Yes, the sheer time in between her hearing this and her testifying in any way, shape or form about it. Even with the best will in the world, a person's mental ability to remember in detail something whih happened a year previously is subject to all sorts of errors and post-hoc revisionism.

Other than that, I agree she's a most excellent witness. But not quite up there in Mignini's "Superwitness" category like Curatolo, Quintavalle and Kokomani, I grant you...