Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

less is more

Halides,

I'm glad you brought up lesswrong. I tried to enter into the discussion on that site ages ago, but it seemed to be unspeakably slow. I recall my impression at the time was that the argument was hopelessly flawed. If you're interested in discussing it, I'll refresh my memory. It is at least a somewhat new line of discussion on this thread I think.

shuttlt,

Here is another quote from the same article, "The impression one gets is that Massei and Cristiani thought, on some level, that all they needed to do was make the fake-burglary hypothesis sound coherent -- and that if they did so, that would count as a few points against Knox and Sollecito. They could then do the same thing with regard to the other pieces of evidence in the case, each time coming up with an explanation of the facts in terms of an assumption that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, and each time thereby scoring a few more points against them -- points which would presumably add up to a substantial number by the end of the report."

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Now you're being silly. They might have watched it, they might not.

Perhaps I was somewhat flippant, but it's worth keeping in the forefront of your mind that there is absolutely no motive for this crime, and that has to present a problem for any rational person who believes in the guilt of Amanda and Raffaele.

Massei and Mignini got around this by postulating a drug-fuelled sex party that went wrong (after Mignini's original Satanic rite theory got canned), which if you believe that Drugs Are Bad and Sex Is Bad might be plausible to you.

However if your theory requires Amanda and Raffaele to jump off the couch or out of bed at 21:26 just after opening a Naruto file for no reason, grab a kitchen knife, walk briskly to Amanda's house to get there within the very tail end of the conceivable range of times of death and then stab her within minutes of arrival there is no time for a four-way sex and drug party to get out of hand. So what motivated them to pitch in with Rudy, someone Amanda barely knew and Raffaele was a total stranger to, in a three-way murder plot in the space of minutes? People very, very rarely if ever do that.

That's why I've said in the past that there is no coherent prosecution narrative consistent with the facts as we now know them.

It's weird that this isn't resolvable. I'm sure I've read that you can open up the disk, scan the magnetic field and infer the previous states of the bits. That was, so I thought, why all those data erasing programs write random bits over your data multiple times. I wonder whether this is in fact too costly, or in some other way impractical.

The defence asked that the disks be sent to the manufacturer to be repaired so the data could be accessed. The court refused. There's absolutely no technical reason that anyone here is aware of why it should be impossible for the disks to be repaired without needing any fancy opening and scanning, which I believe is a very expensive process.

The court's reasoning, which I found very curious, was that since the contents of the disks was unknown it had a 50/50 chance of helping either the prosecution or the defence to repair them, and since it had a 50/50 chance of helping either then there was no reason to do it at all. Apart from the fact that more information is always better, a principle that you would think professionals in the justice system to understand, it seems intuitively obvious to me that there was a non-zero probability the police destroyed the computer evidence deliberately, and thus a >50% chance that their repair would assist the defence.

 

[TomCH]

Is this based on an observation of the shutter hinges, or shutter hinges in general?

My personal familiarity with Italian shutters (and how easily they break).

 

[Dan O.]

This argument is not enough. It is the interest of the accused to discuss the points brought up by the public minister. The public minister makes the agenda and topics of discussion, not Vinci. If the expert doesn't look at the measurements using the same picture, everybody would notice he is not effective in defending that specific point. You can't prevent the trial to discuss that specific picture and that measurment brought in by Rinaldi, to say just change topic and discuss something else, it doesn't work. Rinaldi didn't discuss Vinci, but what makes people go to prison is Rinaldi's point of accusation and not Vinci's data. If Vinci's measurement is wrong that has no relevant consequence, but the measurement brought by Rinaldi is the relavant topic that makse the accusation.

Are you claiming that a measurement of one tile is not equivalent to measuring any other tile in the cottage? If so, how do you justify using the tile measurement to subsequently measure the footprints?

 

[el buscador]

_________________

Charlie,

I was addressing the issue of climbing the wall below Filomena's window. Not swinging to her window. Here's a photograph of the wall you would have Rudy swing across, with his hands on the roof tiles, swinging till his feet come to rest on the window ledge, the window ledge twelve feet above the ground. Even if this action is do-able, what sane person would attempt this, before first trying to kick in the front door? Did Rudy have suicidal tendancies?

[qimg]http://www.perugiamurderfile.org/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&album_id=21&image_id=1305[/qimg]

///

Was the security gate on the front door locked into place the night of the murder?

 

[shuttlt]

I'm afraid quotes won't help Halides, my impression on reading it was that the argument that runs through the the article you are quoting is a terrible misuse of statistics. I'll reread it shortly and get back to you. Perhaps my opinion will have changed.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Katody,

Thanks for the clarification. Whether a proof of the staged burglary is important depends on how you weigh up the case.

Incidentally, the staged breaking is connected in my mind with the DNA evidence in Meredith's bedroom. One of the conclusions I drew from my reading about the bedroom was that one leaves far fewer traces of DNA than I had at assumed. If it's possible to climb up the side of the house, through the window, etc.. without leaving a trace, I don't see that it should be impossible to have been involved in the murder in some capacity and left no trace.

A few comments on these ideas:

Firstly, the police can only find evidence they look for. We know from photographs of the scene that the police looked right at a hole in the wall with fresh brickwork showing, multiple marks on the wall that might or might not be scuff marks, and white powder in Filomena's room that might or might not have been whitewash from the wall Rudy might or might not have climbed, and purported to conclude that there was no evidence someone climbed in. So arguing that because the police didn't find DNA along the entry path is a bit odd because so far as I am aware they didn't check.

Secondly, Rudy could perfectly well have worn gloves for this phase of the crime, and removed them later, perhaps when he went to the toilet. This is mildly speculative but certainly well within the reasonable range of actions burglars might take to minimize the risk of leaving fingerprints or injuring themselves effecting entry. If so there is no reason at all to expect him to leave DNA on the wall, window or contents of Filomena's room.

Whereas the Massei/Mignini narrative has Raffaele and Amanda murdering Meredith while in the nude, since all of their clothes were accounted for and none showed any signs of having been worn during a bloody murder. Wrestling someone and then murdering them while naked is a somewhat different kettle of fish to breaking into a room while clothed and gloved and seems substantially more likely to leave DNA on the victim.

(That's actually a pair of dots I hadn't joined before - in modified scenarios that accept a pre-22:00 time of death and try to get Amanda and Raffaele to the murder house in time to possibly have murdered Meredith, they also have to nude up for the kill within minutes of entering the house. So change "high-five Rudy and stab Meredith" to "high-five Rudy, strip naked and stab Meredith", since the total lack of blood on any of their clothes is inconsistent with them murdering Meredith clothed).

If "in some capacity" is meant to cover scenarios where Rudy does all the heavy lifting and Amanda and Raffaele just jump in at the end to murder Meredith, firstly I can come up with no narrative where this makes sense and secondly if that's the standard of proof required then I would have difficulty proving that I couldn't have been involved in Meredith's murder myself "in some capacity".

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Wait.

In Milano he reportedly had a glass hammer, so why on earth would he carry a large rock while free climbing a wall, instead of just having a glass hammer in his pocket?

My recollection, which may be wrong, was that the Milan police didn't let him keep his glass hammer, and even if he really liked glass hammers he might not have been able to obtain one in time between his return to Perugia and the burglary.

In addition, this experience might have alerted him to the downsides of carrying implements on his person that could be interpreted as tools of the burglar's trade. You have much greater scope to plausibly deny that you broke a window if the window was broken with a found rock, than if the window was broken with a specialised implement similar to one found on your person.

I don't see it as being a huge problem for the lone wolf theory that he didn't use a glass hammer.

 

[shuttlt]

Kevin,

Personally I've always assumed that, if all three of them were involved, Rudy did indeed do the heavy lifting... mainly on the basis of the DNA in Meredith's room. Coming up with a coherent theory of the crime isn't really my focus though and the timing didn't seem to be such an issue when I came to this conclusion.

 

[shuttlt]

Secondly, Rudy could perfectly well have worn gloves for this phase of the crime, and removed them later, perhaps when he went to the toilet. This is mildly speculative but certainly well within the reasonable range of actions burglars might take to minimize the risk of leaving fingerprints or injuring themselves effecting entry. If so there is no reason at all to expect him to leave DNA on the wall, window or contents of Filomena's room.

I just meant that this would make the climbing, or at least the wilder swinging about by his fingertips, trickier. As for the DNA yes, of course the glass is sharp and it might still be difficult to get through without injury.

He must be kicking himself for taking the gloves off once he was in the apartment. That doesn't seem like a clever thing for a house breaker to do.

 

[shuttlt]

Halides,

I see that the lesswrong article is a new one. The one I thought you quoted from was Bayesian analysis of the case. I'll read this new article and get back to you.

 

[Kestrel]

Because, one would obviously toss it from the outside of the glass, and the rock would hit the interior shutters!

Simple, to do, just open the window, and throw the rock from within the room at the window!

Breaking the window in that position doesn't explain the pattern of glass in the room, or the pattern of glass on the window sill that indicates that window was closed when it was broken broken.

You do realize that the windows (and interior shutters) open inward, don't you?

Certainly. In fact the window is shown open in some of the photos I have posted here on JREF. The problem is that breaking the window in an open position would result in glass falling in a different pattern than observed.

 

[shuttlt]

Halides,

there is a comment on the discussion after the article you linked to that I agree with:

I think part of the problem we see is people either unfamiliar with or incapable of reasoning probabilistically. Yes the fundamental error the prosecutors are making applies to a deductive interpretation of their position- but my sense is the prosecutors (and probably most people involved) don't realize that a convincing arguments for a guilty verdict could begin by showing that the probability of a staged break in was say, 1/3, independent of all the other evidence. Saying that doesn't even sound like a point in favor of guilt. But of course 1/3 is well above a reasonable prior and requires a fair amount of evidence. And given enough additional evidence against Knox and Sollecito that estimate can go up to the .999 you want it at. But traditional rationality doesn't give people a good way of thinking about how low-probability sub-hypotheses can provide evidence for high probability hypotheses.

I've more to say, but that sums up one reaction I have to these statistical arguments.

[Edit -> The article does flag up one of the problems with the way the prosecution case is necessarily presented. No prosecutor (surely?) in their right mind will, even if it is technically correct, admit that the odds of the elements of their scenario are, when viewed in isolation, less that 50% probable. I'd be happy with odds of 30%, say that the burglary was staged based, if we restrict our calculations purely to issues of the burglary and ignore the murder.]

 

[shuttlt]

Certainly. In fact the window is shown open in some of the photos I have posted here on JREF. The problem is that breaking the window in an open position would result in glass falling in a different pattern than observed.

Seems like a cheap and easy thing to demonstrate. You could have an OJ and the glove moment in court, showing clips of where the glass ends up.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

On what planet does an open window shutter get in the way of a thrown rock?

Remember that the shutter on Filomena's window didn't close properly and could not be latched. Filomena wasn't even certain she had closed that shutter. Even if it had been closed, it would not have been hard for someone to open it again.

You need to do some research first before you can make a claim like 'On what planet ...'
He didn't know about the INSIDE shutters on the window......to say the least.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Because, one would obviously toss it from the outside of the glass, and the rock would hit the interior shutters!

Simple, to do, just open the window, and throw the rock from within the room at the window!

You do realize that the windows (and interior shutters) open inward, don't you?

He doesn't realize there are interior shutters....

 

[Chris_Halkides]

citation, please

He doesn't realize there are interior shutters....

Sherlock,

Do you have a citation to that effect?

 

[shuttlt]

Here's an unimpeachably pro-Knox site with a bunch of pictures of the window:

http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/window.html

 

[shuttlt]

I would be very surprised if Kestrel doesn't have the picture of the window burned into his/her brain this many months in.

 

[Kestrel]

You need to do some research first before you can make a claim like 'On what planet ...'
He didn't know about the INSIDE shutters on the window......to say the least.

I have heard you make such claims, but you don't bother providing any actual evidence.

I am calling you a liar. Go ahead and prove that you are not.