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Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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christianahannah said:
The police officer's name is Gubbiotti and there are several mentions of the transfer of the knife to him in the motivations. One such on page 264:

Quote:
In turn, Superintendent Gubbiotti, who had participated in the search of the house on via della Pergola on that same date of November 6, stated that he was given the knife by Finzi when he returned to Police Headquarters and that it was inside a new and well-sealed envelope. Gubbiotti furthermore declared that when he collected [Note from the translator: the Italian word used here can also mean catalogued or indexed] the knife in question, he was wearing new gloves that had never been used before, which he had taken from the office. It was with these gloves that he took the knife from the bag and put it inside a box that he sealed with scotch tape and sent with the other evidence to the Forensic Police in Rome, where it underwent analysis as stated by Dr. Stefanoni.


I don't have the Italian motivations to compare with the English translation so I am not sure if anything is lost in translation. I haven't checked out the English translation for all references to Gubbiotti but will try to do so later.
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___________________

Thanks Christianahannah. That was fast.

I was mistaken. So Gubbiotti had been to the cottage that day and he did handle the knife.

Still..., as Massei describes it, this "handling," would seem to exclude contamination from the cottage.

///
 
christianahannah said:
The police officer's name is Gubbiotti and there are several mentions of the transfer of the knife to him in the motivations. One such on page 264:
<snip>
I don't have the Italian motivations to compare with the English translation so I am not sure if anything is lost in translation. I haven't checked out the English translation for all references to Gubbiotti but will try to do so later.
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Hello ChristianaHannah,
Do you know if there is video available of the police officers collecting this knife at Raffaele Sollecito's apartment?
I do not recall ever seeing one, and with the video of the theatrical collection of the bra clasp still ingrained in my brain, well, I would luv to see how the knife was handled.
Thanks,
RWVBWL
 
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contamination responsibilities

bucketoftea said:
I didn't realise I was in a queue. :( I'm still waiting on where anyone proposes the alleged contamination occurred. Not from shoebox, not from disposable *tweezers*, pipettes, gloves, cuvettes etc
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bucketoftea,

It is the responsibility of the lab to use disposable tweezers (forceps), change gloves between samples, and to abide by the guidelines written to minimize the chances of contamination. It is also incumbent upon the lab to perform and to report control experiments done under comparable conditions to the experiments in question. The lab did not do the former. We are still waiting after three years for evidence that they did the latter. Asking for the defense to prove contamination (as many have done on this and the previous thread) makes no sense to me.

shuttlt,

Just to be clear, I think that contamination of the knife might have occurred outside of the lab, as well as inside, based on the removal of the knife from its collection bag and the fact that the second officer to handle it (Gubbiotti?) had just been to the girls' flat. In addition, I think that you underestimated the sensitivity of the TMB test in some of your calculations. I have hear that its sensitivity may be as high as 1 part in 1 million for dilute blood.
 
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key question

shuttlt said:
At lower quantities. Whether the absolute quantities and the difference in quantity is significant is something for the experts to argue in court. Assuming that the two very weak profiles look like they might be compatible with them, what would it prove? There seems to be quite a bit of opinion that the Amanda profile is too weak and garbled to be considered a match. Presumably this goes double for the two other claimed profiles.


Is there a reason to suppose this can be done? Halides? I thought the weakest two were very much weaker than Raffaele's supposed profile.
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shuttlt,

I presume that you have not been reading all of my comments over the last two days. Calling anything on the clasp Amanda's profile is extremely misleading, IMHO. The unknown alleles are only slightly weaker than the average of Raffaele's putative profile, and the highest peak is higher than the weakest of Raffaele's.

If the unknown alleles arrived on the clasp innocently, how can anyone be certain that Raffaele's did not? That is the key question, and I have been waiting for the pro-guilt commenters to supply an answer for about a year now.
 
can we make the hypothesis more specific?

bucketoftea said:
I think many would disagree that there is no evidence that the mixed feminine fragments belonged to the flatmates. They all shared laundry facilities.
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bucketoftea,

That is a testable hypothesis, and the way to falsify it would require obtaining the reference profiles of the other flatmates, which was not done. Can you cite an example where DNA was transferred because of shared laundry facilities? Can you be more specific about what exactly would bring about this potential transfer of DNA?
 
perp walk redux

Kestrel said:
The officer is assuring the prisoner enters the room with a minimum of personal dignity.
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Kestrel and RoseMontague,

It looks like another perp walk to me. If ILE is treating prisoners in this manner, then shame on them.
 
a separate building is recommended for LCN work

LondonJohn said:
It wasn't adequately equipped in 2007, as far as I know. And I believe that the procedures that should be adhered to for LCN-range analysis include additional sterilisation precautions for equipment and clothing, clean air handling (including positive-pressure ventilation in the testing area), and at least two (and preferably three) separate amplification/test/interpret runs (in order to properly corroborate the result). I don't believe that Stefanoni followed any of these additional procedures.

As a caveat, though, I'm not a DNA lab scientist - so someone like Chris would definitely be able to put more flesh on the bones of this answer.
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LondonJohn,

Mark Waterbury posted a list of some of the precautions at his site. UV lighting is used to degrade unwanted DNA. Some recommend doing the testing in a dedicated building, away from tranditional DNA profiling. It is a little unclear what Dr. Stefanoni did and did not do, since she did not release the laboratory's standard protocols. I would say that there is no reason to believe that she took any special precautions. She did not do 34 cycles of PCR, indicating that she did not anticipate that the sample was in the low template region.
 
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It's rainin' alot in L.A. and I've been ranting a bit about Antonio Curatolo recently.
Here's a bit more...

So Mr. Curatolo, he with a brilliant mind and memory, he who doesn't like to sleep indoors but enjoys a nice hard bench year in and year out, he who likes treasure hunting in garbage cans, did not tell the police that he saw a guy and girl,
who he believes without a doubt to be Raffaele Sollecito and his girlfriend of a few days, Amanda Knox,
hanging around outside at 9:27pm on the cold night when Miss Kercher was stabbed to her death.

Why not?

The next day, the police are investigating this most brutal murder.
What were other folks reactions? Surely the local neighborhood residents must have been aghast that this had occurred where they live. Wasn't everyone wrackin' their brains trying to help the cops? Surely people were forthcoming with tips?

The police must surely have been asking all of the residental neighbors if they heard anything or saw something suspicious. They must surely have asked anybody, everybody. Were they also hitting up the local drug dealers? The police informers?

What about Antonio Curatolo, the guy who, they must know, always sleeps outside and had helped them before win a murder conviction a few years back. Surely someone thought to scour the neighborhood and ask him, he who helps convict, if he had seen anything the night before.
Don't you think?

If not, surely they went looking for him the next day, or the next?
Don't you think?

Antonio Curatolo did not come forward on that 1st day of the police investigation into the brutal murder of Miss Meredith Kercher.
Why didn't he do so on the 2nd day? or the 3rd, or the 4th?
Did he go somewhere? Head to another part of town for better pickin's in the rich folks garbage?
Or did he stay in the same area, observing the police investigation?

With all the manpower on the streets, surely at least 1 cop saw Antonio Curatolo wandering around in his neighborhood or the local garbage bins and, thinking fast, took it upon himself/herself to ask the local park bench bum, the same one who must have been a "local legend" after having helped them nab a murderer before, if he saw anything or heard anything that cold night Meredith Kercher was stabbed to her death.
Don't you think?

I do.

And I find it very strange how sooo many very intelligent people actually believe Antonio Curatolo's 9:27pm testimony,
-(NOT 9:15ish, NOT 9:30ish, BUT 9:27pm exactly!), when this same guy could not even remember to find the police and help them by sharing this very important information during the initial stage of their investigation.
Before Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox were even suspects,
who we all know afterwards had their mugs all over the newspapers,
which don't forget, Antonio Curatolo liked to read late at night before tucking himself in for a good nights sleep on a hard park bench...

RWVBWL
 
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Butt....

halides1 said:
bucketoftea,

That is a testable hypothesis, and the way to falsify it would require obtaining the reference profiles of the other flatmates, which was not done. Can you cite an example where DNA was transferred because of shared laundry facilities? Can you be more specific about what exactly would bring about this potential transfer of DNA?
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_____________________

Halides,

Diastole may have already answered this question, obliquely, upstream a few pages .

All the cottage girls smoked cannabis. Spit is rich in DNA. When smoking a cannabis joint, one grips it between the index finger and thumb. One releases a bra clasp, and connects a bra clasp, using index finger and thumb.

///
 
Fine said:
_____________________

Halides,

Diastole may have already answered this question, obliquely, upstream a few pages .

All the cottage girls smoked cannabis. Spit is rich in DNA. When smoking a cannabis joint, one grips it between the index finger and thumb. One releases a bra clasp, and connects a bra clasp, using index finger and thumb.

///
Click to expand...

Are you suggesting Sollecito was sharing spit with 3 more people at the apartment that night?
 
Chris C said:
Are you suggesting Sollecito was sharing spit with 3 more people at the apartment that night?
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DNA doesn't come with a time stamp.

If a magical fairy appeared and told us that we could have absolute certainty that this was indeed the mechanism by which the various DNA traces arrived on the bra clasp all that we could say for sure is that someone who touched that bra clasp touched a joint with the spit of Raffaele and three other people on it at some time. That someone could as easily be Meredith as Raffaele, and the hypothesis that it was Raffaele has a huge probabilistic barrier to overcome in that it's much more likely that Meredith shared a joint with some friends than it is that Raffaele murdered someone. One is a perfectly mundane event, the other incredibly unusual and contra-indicated by strong and objective evidence. It could also be an investigator wearing dirty gloves.
 
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christianahannah said:
The police officer's name is Gubbiotti and there are several mentions of the transfer of the knife to him in the motivations. One such on page 264:

Quote:
Superintendent Gubbiotti, who had participated in the search of the house on via della Pergola on that same date of November 6, stated that he was given the knife by Finzi when he returned to Police Headquarters and that it was inside a new and well-sealed envelope.

Gubbiotti declared that when he collected the knife, he was wearing new gloves that had never been used before. It was with these gloves that he took the knife from the bag and put it inside a box that he sealed with scotch tape and sent with the other evidence to the Forensic Police in Rome.
Click to expand...


This episode remains a minor mystery to me. Does it make sense to you?

New and well sealed envelope? - Is that the english translation of a sterile evidence bag? IIRC in Massei the description of the taking of the knife refers to one.

What is the purpose of opening the envelope? Is this ordinary procedure? Is it normal in serious cases for evidence to be handled within the police offices in non standard ways?

Maybe it has no significance, but it elevates my curiosity.


Edit: - whoops - reading back I see you made a similar comment at post #22241
 
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christianahannah said:
Is the lab in Rome equipped to do LCN testing/analysis? Do you know what procedures and protocols Stefanoni did not adhere to specifically?
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from: Amanda Knox's appeal rests on jailhouse letters, challenges to DNA evidence By ANDREA VOGT 12/06/2010

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/431257_knox06.html?source=mypi

The amount of Kercher's DNA found on the blade was such a trace amount it registered with a "too low" reading when analyzed.

A top geneticist at one of Europe's top forensic labs at the University of Salzburg confirmed in an interview with seattlepi.com that it is possible to amplify such a small amount of DNA, as Stefanoni did, until DNA can be identified.

But the expert added that it would not be allowable unless the result could be reproduced, something police biologist Stefanoni said under cross-examination could not be done.

The Salzburg geneticist, who does forensic testing for police agencies in neighboring Austria, said that in the university's certified lab (which has the highest certification available in Germany and Austria) different operators are required to handle suspect and victim DNA and that the various phases of DNA analysis happen in different labs along a "one-way street" to avoid the possibility of contamination.

Such protocols were not in place in Rome. In fact, Italy is noted for being behind on international forensic standards. For example, it is one of the last (and only) European countries to have not yet become part of the Prum convention, which sets basic guidelines for sharing of DNA data and other security information.
 
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Kevin_Lowe said:
DNA doesn't come with a time stamp.

If a magical fairy appeared and told us that we could have absolute certainty that this was indeed the mechanism by which the various DNA traces arrived on the bra clasp all that we could say for sure is that someone who touched that bra clasp touched a joint with the spit of Raffaele and three other people on it at some time. That someone could as easily be Meredith as Raffaele, and the hypothesis that it was Raffaele has a huge probabilistic barrier to overcome in that it's much more likely that Meredith shared a joint with some friends than it is that Raffaele murdered someone. One is a perfectly mundane event, the other incredibly unusual and contra-indicated by strong and objective evidence. It could also be an investigator wearing dirty gloves.
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________________

Kevin,

Permit me to clarify my point. I'm not suggesting that Raffaele's spit got on Meredith's fingers, and then her bra. On the contrary. Here's the broad question raised by Halides, that I'm answering:
___________________________________________
Halides: If the unknown alleles arrived on the clasp innocently, how can anyone be certain that Raffaele's did not? That is the key question, and I have been waiting for the pro-guilt commenters to supply an answer for about a year now. ---
___________________________________________

The cottage girls shared joints for---what?---seven weeks before Meredith's murder. So this is a plausible method of innocent DNA transfer to the bra clasp, via spit, and suggested to me by Diastole. Whereas Raffaele is not known to have ever shared a joint with Meredith. So the spit theory explains the unknown alleles but won't explain Raffaele's alleles. Q.E.D.

///
 
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halides1 said:
LondonJohn,

Mark Waterbury posted a list of some of the precautions at his site. UV lighting is used to degrade unwanted DNA. Some recommend doing the testing in a dedicated building, away from tranditional DNA profiling. It is a little unclear what Dr. Stefanoni did and did not do, since she did not release the laboratory's standard protocols. I would say that there is no reason to believe that she took any special precautions. She did not do 34 cycles of PCR, indicating that she did not anticipate that the sample was in the low template region.
Click to expand...


Chris, you ask the impossible. Stefanoni's lab failed in their initial attempt to get certification because they lacked written documentation of their procedures. They can't just make these procedUres up after the fact to satisfy some defense request.
 
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shuttlt said:
By the way, did anybody get back to me on where I went wrong on whether Stefanoni could or couldn't have seen the material in the scratch?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6678856&postcount=22089

I read back the past few pages and I couldn't see a response.
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At the hearing of September 19, 2009 the experts appointed by the judge (GIP) at the sitting of the preliminary hearing were heard … Professor Mario Cingolani, … :


The measurements of the confiscated knife, Exhibit 36, indicated on page 18 of the expert report, were recalled; "along the knife irregularities in the form of thin reeding were observed, respectively at 2.2 centimetres from the point and in continuity with it, and at 11.4 centimetres from the point" (page 136). He specified that these irregularities were "on both sides ... on one side of the blade and also on the other" (page 135) and that these irregularities were present on the edge of the blade. He stated that on the face of the blade he had not noticed any reeding or any particular sign, except for the impression indicating the brand of the knife. (P 148 + 152 PMF Translation)

I believe the ‘reeding’ refers to the edge of the blade itself, not the sides of the blade, because the information is used to try to argue that the largest wound is not the result of multiple stabs.
Thus one prosecution witness who examined the knife could not even find the scratch. I believe elsewhere in Massei expert witness also struggle and fail to find the scratch.
 
Fine said:
________________

Kevin,

Permit me to clarify my point. I'm not suggesting that Raffaele's spit got on Meredith's fingers, and then her bra. On the contrary. Here's the broad question raised by Halides, that I'm answering:
___________________________________________
Halides: If the unknown alleles arrived on the clasp innocently, how can anyone be certain that Raffaele's did not? That is the key question, and I have been waiting for the pro-guilt commenters to supply an answer for about a year now. ---
___________________________________________

The cottage girls shared joints for---what?---seven weeks before Meredith's murder. So this is a plausible method of innocent DNA transfer to the bra clasp, via spit, and suggested to me by Diastole. Whereas Raffaele is not known to have ever shared a joint with Meredith. So the spit theory explains the unknown alleles but won't explain Raffaele's alleles. Q.E.D.
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Is he known not to have done so?

I am not asserting that spliff-sharing was the mechanism for Raffaele's DNA getting on the bra clasp - we don't even have certainty that his DNA is really on the bra clasp at all, let alone that it got there by any particular means. However I don't follow the logic by which you rule it out, given that the argument presented looks a lot like the argument from ignorance - "We do not know if Raffaele ever shared a spliff with Meredith, therefore we can rule out the possibility that he did so".

Contamination from a dirty glove, deliberate contamination at the lab or confirmation bias causing Stefanoni to see a match where one was never there all still seem like plausible explanations to me, so it's not as if much hangs on the spliff theory anyway.
 
billyryan said:
Raffaele has consistantly said he used his computer that night,the postal police computer tecnician erased all evidence,or so he thought,new evidence is to be presented at the appeal,how can you be so certain that without hearing the evidence that proof of Raffaele computer activity cannot be provided,just by looking at Raffaele body language alone in his last few appearances in public shows he has grown strong in prison and looks like a man who is confident his innocence can be proven
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If this is the case, then it would back up his story about Knox being out from 9:00 until 1:00. He had excused his previous story thus:

"In my previous statement I told a load of rubbish because Amanda had convinced me of her version of the facts and I didn’t think about the inconsistencies."

He has never changed this story.
 
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