But you are not a convicted goat molester. You are someone who made a series of illogical points of reasoning in this very same debate. You are mistaken if you take my personal attack as an argument of authority. To me it is a point of logic. On the basis of your logical processes and your cognitive modus operandi, I consider debate with you is not an interesting goal.
Yet oddly enough you haven't been able to satisfactorily attack any of my conclusions, let alone present a coherent narrative of the crime that explains the facts. You do realise, I hope, that hiding in the PMF forums and congratulating each other on how you are winning an argument doesn't actually win any arguments? It is merely a psychological defence mechanism to shut out unwelcome reality.
On the contrary, your argument about "taking seriously" the poster (me) who doesn't "back up his claims with literature", was actually an argument of authority. What you consider skepticism, i consider it a concealed argument of authority: "I won't believe you unless you prove it, and I assert what you say is false unless you bring a literature". This is an argument about authority, although you may see it differently. You start from the premise that what I say is false
We can add to the long list of things you have misrepresented in the course of this discussion that you either do not understand or deliberately misrepresent what the "argument from authority" is. Or for that matter what "skepticism" is.
Skepticism means proportioning your beliefs to the best available evidence.
The argument from authority could perhaps better be described as the "argument from
personal authority". I make no claims to personal authority beyond being scientifically literate, educated, rational and able to read a scientific paper.
Of course there would be a very real problem if it turned out that internet guilters were a self-selecting group of people who lacked those qualities. If that were the case it would not mean that I was necessarily right and that they were necessarily wrong (although that would sure be the way to bet), but it would mean that nobody on the pro-guilt side would have the intellectual chops to make a coherent, science-based, pro-guilt case on a forum like this.
That is a different problem to the argument from authority, however. It's a practical impediment to an intelligent discussion, not evidence either side is right or wrong.
I already said the scenario I am more favourable about sets the time of death between 22:00 and 22:30. This is the time of death I consider more likely.
Well, we can stop right there then. There is absolutely no positive evidence worth a damn for time of death that late, and there is reasonable medical certainty that Meredith died earlier than that based on the autopsy evidence.
Next time try to find a horse that can get over the first hurdle.
Not to mention that Curatolo claimed he saw them at this time and so either they can be in two places at once, or Curatolo is unreliable in which case there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever to challenge their alibi with.
I do not consider an interaction on Sollecito's computer at 21:26 as an alibi. I do not even consider Sollecito's apartment and the via della Pergola cottage as actually two separate and unrelated locations. Sollecito's apartment is only 380 meters distant from the cottage front door (I am talking of the cottage door, not the cottage gate). This means, in a very slow relaxed walk (80 meters/minute = 2.9 mph) it would take 4minutes 45 seconds to walk from one place to the other. A bit hasty walk (110 meters/minute = 4.3 mph) would take 3 minutes 25 seconds.
Yet there has to be a
reason why they left Raffaele's house, if indeed they did so. There has to be a
reason why they opened a Naruto file at 21:26, and for that matter a
reason why they claimed that they were watching the movie Stardust at home that night
before they knew that the police had destroyed that evidence. (One might also wonder if there was a reason why the police destroyed that evidence
after they knew it was Raffaele and Amanda's alibi).
You can make up vague, cloudy theories about an unspecified "prank" at an unspecified time for unspecified reasons, but it looks to me that your theory is a flag of convenience. You hold it as an article of religious faith that Amanda and Raffaele murdered Meredith, and your theory is just "they did it in whatever time and fashion has not yet been proven to be impossible". We prove that 23:30 is absurd, you retreat to 22:00 and try to defend that, and so on. The problem with this methodology is exactly the same as that the God of the Gaps has: not only is it unfalsifiable and hence uninteresting, but it deflates over time like a balloon with the knot untied until almost nothing is left. It's a sort of Guilt of the Gaps, in fact.
On the specific point of ToD, I don't think this is satisfactorily proven to be false. I disagree, for example, on the simplistic dismissal of Lalli's doubts about the ligatures of duodenum in autopsy and the sure claims by the defence (and yourself) that all stomach cotent was for sure still all in the stomach. I don't think you could make a definitive statement on ligatures of all handles just on heresay. I disagree on claims of no alcohol consumption. And so on, only examples of my thoughts on this point. I don't see any need to consider the Massei ToD as the correct one, but I do not see any ground to assert it was disproven, just on the basis of reading defence documents and selecting gastroenterology studies.
"Selecting"? Not this dishonest tripe again?
The articles we have cited for you were not cherry-picked to support a predefined conclusion. You and every other pro-guilt speaker have comprehensively failed to find a single paper showing evidence for any other conclusion than the one we have established: That Meredith almost certainly died very shortly after she arrived home. The scientific literature is unanimous on this point.
Lalli expressed no doubts about the competence of his autopsy, as far as I am aware. I think you are misstating the facts again -
Ronchi made up a very tenuous fairy story that said that if Lalli had botched the autopsy by not using ligatures then that could in theory reconcile the stomach contents evidence with the prosecution's time of death. (The obvious corollary, that the prosecution's expert implicitly establishes that in the absence of such a miraculous lapse on Lalli's part the prosecution's time of death cannot be correct, is one that pro-guilt speakers seem to have great difficulty absorbing).
Lalli, of course, did not botch the autopsy. Massei just decided that he could ignore all the expert testimony and jam together his own hybrid fairy story about "incorrectly tied ligatures", based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever, as a license to ignore the stomach contents evidence and embrace a 23:30 time of death.