Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[lionking]

Are you going to discuss the issue or are you just going to keep restating the fact that you don't share my opinion?

As I have said to Kevin and others, I'll post on this forum exactly how I'll choose in line with the MA.

 

[shuttlt]

Women share clothes. Why not share a bra? (Raffaele's DNA would be expected on Amanda's bra or a bra that Amanda once borrowed from Meredith)

The prosecution didn't provide evidence that the bra was never borrowed. Absence of evidence is...

All of which relates to anything I have been posting about how?

 

[colonelhall]

Justinian 2: "The prosecution didn't provide evidence that the bra was never borrowed. Absence of evidence is..."

Did Knox ever claim that bras were shared?

This seems to be yet another example where people are claiming motives on the murderer's behalf, in spite of the fact that she has never made such claims herself.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Kevin,

maybe it would be better if the bra-clasp contamination was the example of gut instinct rather than whether Amanda would have called the cops. The second one seems to muddled up in previous discussions we've had.

Okay. I have you the link to my discussion of that issue earlier, so I'm sure you can find it.

Before you get around to writing your response to that earlier post though, please get it clear that his "gut instinct" meme needs to die. There is no such animal. There are only more-or-less informed convictions about the facts of the universe.

You cannot get out of showing your work, which means showing the evidentiary basis for your convictions, by trying to declare that your convictions are the result of "gut instinct" and that you are excused from defending "gut instinct".

Nor can you discredit other people's factually informed views by declaring them "gut instinct", and hence no better and no worse than any other person's more poorly informed "gut instinct".

You need to explain what you think is probable, and why you think it is probable.

It might be more productive for both of us, actually, if instead of talking about the bra clasp you tried to answer Komponisto's question, the one that tsig, Quadraginta and lionking predictably ducked, which I will reproduce for you:

- For any who believe that Knox and Sollecito are guilty: why? I mean this in a very specific sense: what is your ranking of the various pieces of evidence against them, in order from strongest to weakest? How much does each item move your opinion? What is the "tipping point", i.e. the smallest subset of evidence that nudges your probability of guilt over 50%? (Subset need not be unique, of course -- I'd just like an example of a minimal set of evidence that causes you to say "Okay, now that I know this, I think it's more likely than not that they were involved".)

If you can answer that one without needing to handwave anything away as "gut instinct" I think we could make some real progress.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

You generally get what you expect.

It's true, I do.

On the other hand, I also do try to keep the hope alive that one or more of the pro-guilt posters here will exceed my expectations.

 

[quadraginta]

I think you need to check the statements made by her parents. Casey's mother was the one who reported Caylee missing, but that wasn't why she called. She called because she wanted the police to arrest Caylee for stealing her car and racking up fraudulent charges on her credit cards. Here are the 911 calls:

http://blogs.discovery.com/criminal_report/files/caylee911orlando.mp3
http://investigation.discovery.com/blogs/criminal-report/audio/01CayleeAnthony911.mp3
http://investigation.discovery.com/blogs/criminal-report/audio/02CayleeAnthony911.mp3

Casey also stole a checkbook and a credit card from a "friend" and went on a spending spree shortly before she was arrested in connection with Caylee. Virtually everyone who knows her describes her as a pathological liar and a low-life who cannot be trusted and is best avoided.

I'm more than familiar with the 911 calls., and with Anthony's other transgressions. Your use of the qualifier "virtually" is all that makes your assertion of "everybody" utterly mistaken. It isn't difficult to find statements by friends of Casey who were stunned that she would be believed to be capable of such a crime.

That is moot though, because all I addressed was her parents' statements about her behavior as a mother. If you dig some more, though, you will actually find that even those are somewhat dubious, since there is reason to believe that at one time her mother had contemplated taking legal action to get custody of Caylee. But that is an entirely different story.

Add to that the fact that in most cases where a young child is murdered, a parent is responsible. Casey is exactly the type who commits this particular type of homicide - immature, self-centered, unable to handle responsibility.

I know what the stats are. I've discussed this subject in these threads in the past. That is the reason I pointed out earlier in this exchange that LE has an entirely different expectation about filicide than the general public. I'm surprised that this escaped you.

This has a certain relevance to the Knox case. Unlike the perceptions of the general public, when LE is confronted with a home attack their first instincts are not to suspect a stranger, because the culprit is most often ... by a huge margin ... someone who is close to the victim. Apparent evidence of a break-in does not override this instinct. Attempts to shift suspicion are also far from uncommon. If those attempts are not persuasive then they properly return to the procedures that experience has shown to be most successful.

We frequently read in these threads about Knox advocates' puzzlement that Knox would be in the sights of the ILE at all, much less at the onset. We need look no further than this for an explanation. Any competent investigator would first be looking carefully at her, the other roommates, and Meredith's close friends.

 

[Amazer]

Women share clothes. Why not share a bra? (Raffaele's DNA would be expected on Amanda's bra or a bra that Amanda once borrowed from Meredith)

The prosecution didn't provide evidence that the bra was never borrowed. Absence of evidence is...

Do you share underwear with your buddies too?

 

[quadraginta]

<snip>

We're not doing that, though. Everything we are offering is plausible, is not fabricated and is likely. Bringing up examples from the Casey Anthony case is a way of illustrating that, not of missing your point.

Of course it is.

How could I have possibly overlooked that?

 

[Kaosium]

How is he mistaken?!

Read the evidence I've posted above, especially Amanda's own testimony.

She was introduced at a party, she spent her time with Meredith, a spinello was smoked at the party. Maybe she saw him at Le Chic once, no contact implied.

'Barely knew' suffices for me.

PS This is the point in an argument where a rational person would concede that they've made an egregious error.

Yes, now we're waiting.

Your contention was they'd been bong buddies on numerous occasions, was it not? Your claim crashed and burned with its evidence.

 

[Justinian2]

Originally Posted by Justinian2

Women share clothes. Why not share a bra? (Raffaele's DNA would be expected on Amanda's bra or a bra that Amanda once borrowed from Meredith)

The prosecution didn't provide evidence that the bra was never borrowed. Absence of evidence is...​

Do you share underwear with your buddies too?

No, but I also don't share my perfume, fashion magazines, or shoes. I also don't go to the bathroom all the time with them.

Ever hear the expression "Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue"?

 

[shuttlt]

Okay. I have you the link to my discussion of that issue earlier, so I'm sure you can find it.

Before you get around to writing your response to that earlier post though, please get it clear that his "gut instinct" meme needs to die. There is no such animal. There are only more-or-less informed convictions about the facts of the universe.

Do I really need to argue for the existence of beliefs and thoughts that we post-hoc put rationalized stories around and are really not the result of logical processes of deduction?

You cannot get out of showing your work, which means showing the evidentiary basis for your convictions, by trying to declare that your convictions are the result of "gut instinct" and that you are excused from defending "gut instinct".

I am in this conversation responding to the following:

The persuasiveness of the argument should be based on whether the argument is logical, rational and valid. Someone who is truly interested in listening dispassionately will be persuaded by logic, reason and facts -- mindset and preconceptions be damned.

I will defend my own views on the case in other posts. It is too confusing to do both.

Nor can you discredit other people's factually informed views by declaring them "gut instinct", and hence no better and no worse than any other person's more poorly informed "gut instinct".

I'm not doing that. I am saying that mindset and preconceptions are inevitable parts of our thinking. This isn't an argument to discredit peoples views. Incidentally, saying "factually informed by" appeares to be scope creep from the position I originally attacked. I further haven't said that one persons instinct, preconceptions, or whatever are as good as anothers. You are projecting this claim onto me.

You need to explain what you think is probable, and why you think it is probable.

In another post. Not now.

It might be more productive for both of us, actually, if instead of talking about the bra clasp you tried to answer Komponisto's question, the one that tsig, Quadraginta and lionking predictably ducked, which I will reproduce for you:

If you can answer that one without needing to handwave anything away as "gut instinct" I think we could make some real progress.

I don't have sufficient knowledge to provide such a list. To restrict the question further, I'm not sure that I would trust myself to commit to a range of two orders of magnitude on the odds of the bra clasp/Raffaele's DNA thing being down to contamination. 90%-0.9% is insufficient to cover my level of intellectual uncertainty. If I was pushed, I would say that I don't think it is down to contamination. I see no way that isn't based on what I happen to find plausible for being more certain on this. If I worked in the field of DNA evidence, perhaps I would be able to make a reliable judgement, but I don't and I don't think I can. Perhaps if I had been in court I would have found I had confidence in one set of experts and not in the other.

All this though is a digression from the original post that I was responding to. I've no idea why the issue has been blown out to so many long posts. Claiming that arguments for guilt or innocence do not implicitly involve preconceptions and assumptions about the mindset of the person they are supposed to convince is clearly wrong, isn't it? It's not as if anybody has actually offered a logical proof of anything relating to the case. Why is this being disputed? It's not as if saying that not every aspect of a debate is founded in logic and fact means that debate is impossible. I throw an example about you to challenge your preconceptions, you throw one at me to challenge mine.

 

[Justinian2]

Justinian 2: "The prosecution didn't provide evidence that the bra was never borrowed. Absence of evidence is..."

Did Knox ever claim that bras were shared?

This seems to be yet another example where people are claiming motives on the murderer's behalf, in spite of the fact that she has never made such claims herself.

The prosecution has a theory that the DNA is on the bra because Raffele put it there while he was helping Guede murder Meredith.

All theories are disproved by finding one instance where they are wrong. That's all, just one condition where the theory is wrong and "poof" the theory is invalid.

There are many ways that the prosecution theory that their bra clasp evidence could be incorrect. The prosecution hasn't covered ANY of the reasons why their most precious theory could be invalid.

Precious...

 

[Amazer]

Originally Posted by Justinian2

Women share clothes. Why not share a bra? (Raffaele's DNA would be expected on Amanda's bra or a bra that Amanda once borrowed from Meredith)

The prosecution didn't provide evidence that the bra was never borrowed. Absence of evidence is...​

No, but I also don't share my perfume, fashion magazines, or shoes. I also don't go to the bathroom all the time with them.

Ever hear the expression "Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue"?

Perhaps you should talk to a couple of your female friends... find out how often they have shared underwear with their other female friends.

 

[quadraginta]

Women share clothes. Why not share a bra? (Raffaele's DNA would be expected on Amanda's bra or a bra that Amanda once borrowed from Meredith)

The prosecution didn't provide evidence that the bra was never borrowed. Absence of evidence is...

Wow. It's been a while since this one came around.

 

[shuttlt]

The prosecution has a theory that the DNA on the bra because Raffele put it there while he was helping Guede murder Meredith.

All theories are disproved by finding one instance where they are wrong. That's all, just one condition where the theory is wrong and "poof" the theory is invalid.

There are many ways that the prosecution theory that their bra clasp evidence could be incorrect. The prosecution hasn't covered ANY of the reasons why their most precious theory could be invalid.

Precious...

Let me get this straight. You live in a world where the prosecution need to prove that Amanda and Meredith didn't swap bras, regardless of whether it is claimed by the defence, otherwise the prosecution theory should be thrown in the bin?

 

[LondonJohn]

Anthony's defense has argued this. Anthony's defense continues to argue this. It was Anthony's original story, and she has not deviated or wavered from it. The woman who was first uncovered by LE as a Zenaida Gonzales(the nanny) was not ID'd by Casey as the nanny. That Zenaida has a defamation suit going against Casey, and the primary defense against that suit is based on Casey having said , after some waffling, that she was not the right Zenaida Gonzales.

So, to answer your questions ... Yes Anthony and her defense are arguing that the nanny did it, and LE has not proven that there was no nanny, only that the person they first picked out as a possible turned out not to be the one.

Many people, myself among them, believe that the nanny story is implausible. It has not been proven to be impossible.

Reasonable doubt, eh?

To that, I'd say firstly that many things can be put forward as possible in the widest definition of the term, but the more important hurdle is whether they are a reasonable possibility.

And secondly, and most importantly, there has to be a reasonable alternative possibility for every significant piece of evidence in order to introduce the possibility of reasonable doubt into the case as a whole. In this case, I don't think there's a reasonable alternative explanation for a mother taking a month to report her very young daughter as missing. And I'd count that as one of the most serious pieces of evidence pointing to her culpability. QED.

 

[Justinian2]

Perhaps you should talk to a couple of your female friends... find out how often they have shared underwear with their other female friends.

Women don't wear underwear or T-shirts. They wear panties and bras.

Women borrow stuff.

College men steal panties and bras from dorm rooms.

Things get mixed up in the laundry.

There are all types of ways the bras could have been mixed up.

The myth that the bra clasp DNA was put there by Raffaele while he was helping Guede kill Meredith is busted until the prosecution can answer every challenge to their theory.

 

[Dan O.]

Do you share underwear with your buddies too?

Apparently some people aren't as squeamish as yourself.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...father-passionate-attack-cult-Foxy-Knoxy.html

two years after her death, we were told that we could finally take Meredith's possessions home with us. I expected a large suitcase full of her belongings, which we could all cherish.

We've seen that large suitcase being stuffed with Meredith's clothes. How many of Meredith's bras and undies do we see being stuffed in there?


I don't claim to be a woman so I really have no basis to judge if a woman would be willing to wear a bra that another woman had previously worn. But I do know one non-subjective way to find out. I will stop at a second hand store and see if they sell used bras.

 

[Justinian2]

Let me get this straight. You live in a world where the prosecution need to prove that Amanda and Meredith didn't swap bras, regardless of whether it is claimed by the defence, otherwise the prosecution theory should be thrown in the bin?

That's how it works in the scientific community. When a new theory is published (like string theory) the theorist has to defend his theory against the entire scientific community.

Call Magnini's theory "The Bra string theory".

Nobody knows how or when that DNA got into the forensic lab test vessel - unless they are psychic.

 

[shuttlt]

Women don't wear underwear or T-shirts. They wear panties and bras.

Women borrow stuff.

College men steal panties and bras from dorm rooms.

Things get mixed up in the laundry.

There are all types of ways the bras could have been mixed up.

The myth that the bra clasp DNA was put there by Raffaele while he was helping Guede kill Meredith is busted until the prosecution can answer every challenge to their theory.

I call shenanigans. Either you're joking, or you're Nando Ronteltap.