Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Alt+F4]

I believe your previous claim on this was that the defense delayed the return and you were still looking for a cite for this one?

Ah yes Rose, you're right I couldn't find one. It appears the defense asked to return to the apartment to search for further evidence and the prosecution/police agreed.

 

[LondonJohn]

Well, then, you're probably familiar with the Americanism "lie down with dogs and you wake up with fleas." Are you quite sure that, since coming here, you haven't felt the occasional itch?

"Knox and Sollecito were likely not to have had anything to do with the murder . . ." Might one inquire what, specifically, causes you to express yourself so cautiously on this point?

Oh, it's simply that I am unwilling currently to assert with any level of certainty that Knox and/or Sollecito definitely weren't involved in some way or other with Meredith's murder. But I am willing to assert with a high level of confidence that Knox and Sollecito should never have been convicted of any crime related to the murder of Meredith Kercher. Perhaps if and when the computer evidence get an airing in the appeal, I might shift to a belief in Knox's/Sollecito's total innocence.

Let me illustrate all this again by reference to an example I posted a few weeks ago. Suppose I shared a house with three acquaintances, two of whom I got on with well with, and the third of whom I had a poor relationship with. Suppose that I left my wallet with £100 in it in the shared kitchen overnight one night (when all four of us were at home), and the following morning the £100 had been taken. If nobody else had been in the house overnight, then I'd be able to correctly assume that one of the three other housemates had taken the money. I might immediately suspect the one housemate with whom I didn't get along, and I might (if I were feeling angry) even accuse him of taking the money. And he might reply "no I didn't". The onus is then ENTIRELY upon me to prove that it was he who took the money. There's no requirement for him to positively PROVE to me that he didn't take the money - and indeed it would be near impossible for him to be able to supply this proof.

So if a neutral bystander was watching all this play out, (s)he would rightly assume that unless I could prove that this particular flatmate had taken my money, my accusation against him would be baseless - in which case it should be assumed that he didn't take the money. And this is completely analogous to the burden of proof in a criminal case. The defendant doesn't have to prove that he or she is innocent (and often, it's actually impossible for the defendant to prove this, unless perhaps he or she has a cast-iron alibi). Instead, the entire burden of proof lies with those making the accusation.

We bystanders may therefore never be able to say with absolute certainty that Knox and Sollecito didn't participate in the murder of Meredith Kercher. But we could perhaps say that the accusation that they participated in the murder was without merit, and that they should therefore be considered innocent in the eyes of the law.

 

[Alt+F4]

The forensics team should have identified and collected ALL the relevant forensic evidence from the girls' cottage between 2nd and 5th November. That's just obvious. Even the Luminol testing could and should have been done on about 5th November, as one of the last tests to be carried out.

They didn't. So why is returning to the apartment to gather more evidence, "unnecessary and unprofessional"?

The suggestion from Prof Potenza was for the police to test the rock and the rock fragments for DNA. The suggestion wasn't for the police to do a second search. You should instead be asking yourself why the defence had to suggest that the police test a rock which must have been handled (either by the person who broke in, or by Knox and/or Sollecito during the alleged staging of the break-in), when such a test should have been a blindingly obvious thing to do. And, BTW, the fact that the tests on the rock came back negative suggests that whoever handled the rock might have been wearing gloves. Logical for a burglar, perhaps less logical for a stager?

You should be asking yourself why the police allowed the defense expert to return to the house at all? Why would the police allow this?

I don't believe Rudy wore gloves at any of the other crimes he's accussed of committing, why the change in his MO now? His MO did however include stealing computers, yet no effort to even pick up Filomena's laptop or digital camera. It makes it seem like he busted in there for one reason only - to use the bathroom.

 

[RoseMontague]

Ah yes Rose, you're right I couldn't find one. It appears the defense asked to return to the apartment to search for further evidence and the prosecution/police agreed.

Well at least this is a change of pace and with a cite, albeit not a very convincing one. Would you be upset if I asked if you had one that was perhaps a bit more clear than the one you provided?

 

[Alt+F4]

Yes I have pointed this out before, both in regard to her statements on the shutters and the conversation she had with Amanda. Also in her statement about the glass on top of the clothes. I used the words cherry picking and disingenuous rather than "incorrect". In any case, I don't believe Massei is correct in his use of her statements as he uses only certain portions of them to make incorrect conclusions, in my opinion.

Personally, I don't think anything can be derived from the placement of the glass as many people messed with it. Which conversation between Amanda and Meredith are you referring to? November 1 or November 2?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Raf's fingerprints

The door to Meredith's room is one item I will not believe was not subject to exhaustive testing. There was blood on the handle and side of the door and if Raffaele's DNA were anywhere on that door it would have been found.

Danceme,

Raffaele's fingerprints were on the door, if I am not mistaken, and I have documented that DNA can be extracted from fingerprints. It seems reasonable to conclude that Raffaele's DNA was on the door.

 

[Alt+F4]

Well at least this is a change of pace and with a cite, albeit not a very convincing one. Would you be upset if I asked if you had one that was perhaps a bit more clear than the one you provided?

Massei Report, page 193:

During the second search, on the suggestion of the defence’s technical consultant Professor Saverio Potenza, the large rock and two fragments found on the floor of the room were tested, but they yielded negative results.

The cigarette butts were also taken into custody at that time. It appears nothing else of significance was discovered.

 

[RoseMontague]

Personally, I don't think anything can be derived from the placement of the glass as many people messed with it. Which conversation between Amanda and Meredith are you referring to? November 1 or November 2?

I believe this is my most recent post on this subject. I had a previous post or two discussing the communication problems the two of them had and quoting from an intercepted phone call.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6288040&postcount=4978

 

[Chris_Halkides]

cash versus goods

They didn't. So why is returning to the apartment to gather more evidence, "unnecessary and unprofessional"?



You should be asking yourself why the police allowed the defense expert to return to the house at all? Why would the police allow this?

I don't believe Rudy wore gloves at any of the other crimes he's accussed of committing, why the change in his MO now? His MO did however include stealing computers, yet no effort to even pick up Filomena's laptop or digital camera. It makes it seem like he busted in there for one reason only - to use the bathroom.

Alt+F4,

Given Rudi's previous lack of success with stolen goods, I suspect he was looking for cash. He must have suspected that the occupants would have rent money stashed somewhere, what with rent coming due shortly.

 

[RoseMontague]

Massei Report, page 193:

Quote:
During the second search, on the suggestion of the defence’s technical consultant Professor Saverio Potenza, the large rock and two fragments found on the floor of the room were tested, but they yielded negative results.

The cigarette butts were also taken into custody at that time. It appears nothing else of significance was discovered.

This indicates the defense suggested they test the rock since they were going out there, not that the defense actually requested the second visit.

 

[shuttlt]

I'm sure we are a self-selecting group, almost certainly an irregular mixture of anti-authoritarians, irrational sympathisers with a pretty girl in trouble, and rational and scientific thinkers capable of analyzing a complex problem.

As to whether we're blinded by bias and group-think, I'm not sure that's not the case in the same kind of way that I'm not sure that I am not Descartes being deceived by an evil demon into thinking that I'm an Australian in 2011. For that matter I'm not sure I am not in the Matrix.

True, but one of other self-selected group is wrong and what caused me to comment was a member of one self-selected group criticising the other self-selected group for being self-selected.

However as I may have said earlier I originally entered into this discussion because I noticed that the pro-guilt arguments being put forward were simply irrational.

Same reasons, sides reversed.

At that point I had no previous biases whatsoever with regard to Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, Rudy Guede, Meredith Kercher, Giuliano Mignini or any of the other members of the cast we all now know. I just recognised that the forms of the arguments being put forward by one side of the debate were consistently fallacious, and in large part they still are.

Ditto, though I wouldn't necessarily describe any sides argument as consistently fallacious. Some posters, sure. For the rest it varies from issue to issue as far as I can see.

That's not a matter of opinion reasonable people can differ about. Fallacious arguments are fallacious.

Sure, we can often agree that a given argument is fallacious, but since nobody relies entirely on one argument or one fact, or at leasts not for long, nobody has to admit defeat.

Then it became manifestly clear that most of the facts the pro-guilt posters at that time were putting forward were factually false as well.

Many wrong facts have been put out by both sides. Since the original claim was being made by the innocent camp I first became aware of those errors. Doubtless there are lists on TrueJustice, or some such place of things the innocence camp have got wrong.

That's not something reasonable people can differ about either. There were no bleach receipts,

That does seem to be wrong.

Nara never heard Meredith's death scream, Curatolo didn't see Amanda and Raffaele on the night of the murder, I agree that there are reasons why one may have doubts about these, but to say that they have been proved false is surely an overstatement. Meredith's wounds could have been inflicted by one person using one knife, there was no evidence of staging and no evidence of a clean-up, the bloody footprint on the bathmat wasn't any more like Sollecitos than Guede's, the luminol footprints had no evident connection to the crime at all and so on and on.

I'm certainly not certain that all of these things are universally agreed to be false. In any case, it's not as if there haven't been pro-innocent talking points that have been proved to be false. If we take the pro-innocent camp list of facts about the case then Amanda and Raffaele are certainly innocent.

Again these aren't things that rational people can disagree about. These were core pro-guilt claims, repeated often, that turned out to be pure hogwash.

Are they admitted to be false by loyal opposition?

I'm 99.9...9% sure that the Massei narrative and the currently popular pro-guilt attempts at a narrative are pure garbage. That's not something I think there is any but the very remotest possibility that I could be mistaken about - false facts are false and fallacious arguments are fallacious.

I'm sure if we went over to PMF and asked Michael he would say much the same thing, sides reversed.

I'm at least 99% sure that Amanda and Raffaele had nothing to do with the murder of Meredith Kercher, and I don't think I can possibly be mistaken that this is the rational view to take.

I'm sure Michael doesn't think he's wrong either.

 

[nopoirot]

Why the hedging, Londonjohn? "Didn't participate in" doesn't equate to "didn't have anything to do with." The "eyes of the law" will be fixed on the former issue, but that is hardly the be-all and end-all. Unless, of course, one wants to run with a pack.

But let me be less subtle: recanted "declarations" aside, you you believe everything Knox and Sollecito have had to say about this affair?

 

[Dan O.]

... among other facts not yet publicized.

How do you know of thes facts? Were you there?!

 

[Chris_Halkides]

controls and alternate hypotheses

You've asked me this before and I've answered you.


OK. In that case, do I have you right that you believe it would have been standard practice to gather other items (spoons etc) from the drawer that Raffaele's kitchen knife was removed from? I don't mean to bang on about this, in fact I'd forgotten the discussion until you brought it up, but people keep discounting the knife in part because such controls were not done. As discussed I've seen no citations indicating this is how the police normally behave anywhere, just Steve Moore saying that in a different location they should have gathered up every knife.

shuttlt,

It seems to me that you are approaching this issue incorrectly. You are asking whether something is standard procedure, when you should be asking whether it makes good scientific sense to do so.

Let us consider the knife first. Mark Waterbury wrote, “Perhaps even more important for the knife DNA, no control experiments were run to follow the handling of the item from the field through to the laboratory. That is, to see if other, random objects retrieved from the same drawer and handled in the same, unprofessional way, might also appear to have DNA on them.” To put it another way, finding Meredith’s DNA on any other object in the drawer falsifies the hypothesis that Meredith’s cells were on the kitchen knife prior to its collection.

Take the bra clasp, for another example. Mark Waterbury wrote, “Control experiments to check for this would have been simple. The clasp was retrieved from a pile of debris, shown in the picture, left by the fastidious investigators in Meredith’s room. Testing a few other items from that pile to see if they, too, had picked up DNA dust from the floor would tell us whether there was anything special about the clasp. Of course, that wasn’t done.”

Finally let us turn to the luminol footprints. Mark Waterbury wrote, “Amanda’s DNA was said to be found in one of these footprints. Did they also test a meter away from the footprints, to see if her DNA was all over the apartment where she lived?” Of course, the forensic police missed another important experiment with respect to the luminol-positive areas; specificly, they failed to report any confirmatory tests for blood.

Do these experiments make sense from a scientific standpoint? I believe that they do. Let me end with a quote I have probably given before. It comes from Norah Rudin’s and Keith Inman’s list of the ten top ways to improve forensic science.

“1. Pose alternate hypotheses! Ask the right question!
Forensic scientists should aggressively pose alternate hypotheses. Hypothesis testing and comparison is the very core of science. The forensic scientist should actively assist the client to ask the right question(s) in the context of the case. The most brilliant answer to the wrong question will be irrelevant!” The whole list is well worth one’s time to digest.

You did answer the question about new evidence before but your answer veered off into a different direction than the one I imagined its taking.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Hi and welcome komponisto! The more intelligent, polite and open-minded people the better I'm sure your posts will add much value to the discussion and help keep it's level up.



As a new year vow I'm unignoring all from my list. Now to the catching up, this time witnessing the thread in it's full gory glory Maybe a sensible pro-guilt crime theory emerged that I missed?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

lists

T
Many wrong facts have been put out by both sides. Since the original claim was being made by the innocent camp I first became aware of those errors. Doubtless there are lists on TrueJustice, or some such place of things the innocence camp have got wrong.

shuttlt,

My commenters and I examined a list of 18 supposed lies told by Edda Mellas, as posted at True Justice. We found that all 18 were either wrong or misleading. Has True Justice ever put out a retraction or clarification? If the positions were reversed, I would have. Sorry, but I don't take lists written by The Machine or Harry Rag as being worth much, based on this experience and others.

 

[Malkmus]

Meredith only locked her door when she went home to England.
All 3 flatmates testified to that same thing.
This lie helped amanda as it bought her more time to stage the scene at the cottage, i.e., to make it look as if a burglar had been there. It is speculated that she wanted Filomena to be the one to walk in aand discover the body.
The pair was caught by surprise by the Postal Police, who described their reaction to them as surprise and embarrassed.
Lastly,of course amanda's behavior was different from the other girls; the others were all deeply distressed and grieving; amanda and her boyfriend were kissing and laughing- to the extent that one friend of Meredith thought that "maybe she was involved" in Meredith's murder.

Lover,

It is ridiculous to assume that at the moment where the police were in the cottage with Filomena and her friends that Amanda was trying to get them to go away so that she could do more "staging".
Of course they were "surprised" by the postal police, they showed up immediately after they called the carabinieri and they came holding Meredith's phones. I'm sure it was confusing for all of them.
The quote I posted from Meredith's friend Helen does not share the same viewpoint as the other girls. She does not describe Amanda as being careless or rude.

 

[Malkmus]

Alt+F4,

You left out the part where Filomena disturbed the crime scene and then lawyered up. Look, I don't think she had anything to do with the crime, but her actions still make an interesting comparison and contrast to Amanda's.

And the part where Filomena's testimony is contradicted by Paola re the phone call to Amanda and telling her to call the police.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Lover,

It is ridiculous to assume that at the moment where the police were in the cottage with Filomena and her friends that Amanda was trying to get them to go away so that she could do more "staging".
Of course they were "surprised" by the postal police, they showed up immediately after they called the carabinieri and they came holding Meredith's phones. I'm sure it was confusing for all of them.
The quote I posted from Meredith's friend Helen does not share the same viewpoint as the other girls. She does not describe Amanda as being careless or rude.

It's interesting that finally what's left from the pro-guilt argument are easily debunkable curiosities like this one, or the one SomeAlibi popped up before ( how would she now this or that if she didn't do it herself ). All of this spiced up with the "statement analysis" nonsense and "emotional intelligence".

 

[RWVBWL]

RE the bra clasp

Welcome Komponisto.
Regarding the bra clasp, the first question should be if it is Raffaele's DNA on the clasp and then the question becomes how did it get there. The appeal points out that the first question is still in dispute. If you make the assumption that it is Raffaele's DNA then I see several possibilities.

1. The police theory of him handling the bra clasp is correct despite the fact that it makes no sense for him to even touch that piece of metal in normal removal or cutting it off and none of his DNA was found anywhere else on the bra, her clothes, on her, or in the room. I guess they seem to think that Raffaele is somehow assisting Rudy in the sexual part of the assault, for some strange reason that I still do not understand.

2. The DNA got there through contamination at the scene. This seems to be a good possibility based on the dirty gloves and of course dirty feet that they came in with from other parts of the flat (I believe they put their white foot covers on in the kitchen/living room area and then walked into Meredith's room, stepping several times on the area where they proceeded to drop the clasp before picking it up again). The fact that the clasp was left in there 44 days before retrieval and somehow moved from one spot to another next to a lot of other discarded items seems telling as well from the standpoint of possible contamination. The presence of other partial DNA profiles on the clasp is also significant from a possible contamination standpoint.

3. The DNA got there through contamination at the lab. This seems less likely than the supposed DNA on the knife blade.

4. The DNA was planted on the clasp, on top of the already existent DNA of Meredith and other unidentified partial profiles. After viewing the video of this bra clasp collection, they seem to me to act like they have made a great discovery and can even see Raffaele's DNA through close examination. Every time I watch this video I get the feeling that they somehow know in advance how important this piece of evidence is. The fact that it came on the heels of the discovery that the only piece of evidence they had that they thought was Raffaele's in Meredith's room (the bloody shoe-print on the pillow) turned out to be Rudy's instead is also suspicious.

Hi RoseMontague and others,
The bra clasp is the only item in Meredith Kercher's bedroom that has Raffaele Sollecito's DNA on it.
And as we all know, DNA doesn't fly.
After watching the video of the collection of this bra clasp more than a few times, I tend believe that the bra clasp was contaminated by accident or most likely, on purpose to further the possibility of conviction.

The court, I believe, seems to think that this bra clasp was removed by Raffaele Sollecito during a sexual assault. But they do not seem to want to test a possible stain found in the same general area that might be semen.

What if they did test this stain and it was found to come from Raffaele Sollecito?
Would it not bolster the bra clasp theory, that Raffale is the person who removed it.
Wouldn't that completely convince everyone of his guilt?

What is the reasoning again that there is no need to test this stain?
It might simply be vaseline?
It might be an old semen stain from Giacomo Silenzi?
It might be a semen stain from Rudy Guede?
BUT what if it wasn't any of the above,
BUT a semen stain from the other convicted male in this sexual assault+murder, Raffaele Sollecito!

I find it very strange that still the court does not order tests on this stain!
Hmmm...
RWVBWL