Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[loverofzion]

Another theory! The prosecution needs more than theories! They are the ones that have to have a theory that can't be shaken. The game isn't to shake the theory that shakes the theory!

The prosecution has a theory that relies on a chain of events. If the defense breaks any link in that theory, the prosecution's case is smashed.

When would Amanda and Raffaele have time to stage and clean up everything without being observed?

You and I could be suspects too, but for absence of evidence - like the absence of airline tickets to Perugia.

Amanda and raf had the entire night and into the next day at mid day to do the cleaning up.
Lack of time was never a factor there.
No one was home remember? The boys downstairs and the two Italian roommates were gone that night.
Plenty of time to stage and clean up unobserved.

So far the prosecution has a very, very strong case.

 

[loverofzion]

I wonder where they threw them?

I saw on the news the other day that the police in Bristol are searching through some 100 tons of rubbish (garbage) in an attempt to find a missing pizza (and its packaging) which they think may be linked to the murder of Joanna Yeates, together with any other potential evidence linked to the crime.

I wonder how many tons of waste (from skips, city rubbish bins or municipal dumps/landfills the Perugia police searched through in November 2007 in an attempt to find blood-stained clothing that might have been worn that night, or for the knives or keys? I've got a funny feeling that I know the answer to this question already.

You just answered your own question.
Threw them into the bins of course!

 

[Chris_Halkides]

that dog won't hunt

This has been discussed fully. I followed the discussion and agreed with the original poster, who explained his use of the word quite clearly. Other arguments held no weight, as far as i was concerned.

Your contention is false, twice over. Treehorn only said he used the legal definition; he did not specify a country. Even if Italy were to class marijuana as a narcotic legally, the question would remain, "Why use the legal, not the medical, definition?"

 

[loverofzion]

Your contention is false, twice over. Treehorn only said he used the legal definition; he did not specify a country. Even if Italy were to class marijuana as a narcotic legally, the question would remain, "Why use the legal, not the medical, definition?"

Because this is a matter of law.
How would it be classified in a medical definition?

 

[loverofzion]

loverofzion,

Fulcanelli was a major proponent of the shared laundry facility argument to explain how unidentified DNA came to be in the clasp. Do you think his argument was ignorant?

I would answer if I saw his argument and didn't only hear it from you.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

documentation and controls

The prosecution needs no more proof if the laboratory was a legitimate, approved one which subscribed to the scientific standards.

You don't sem to understand at all how things work in the scientific community. Assuming an exception is possible does not require either side to provide further explanation.

loverofzion,

The laboratory failed to document any controls that they might or might not have done. These include negative controls that test for contamination. They also failed to turn over critical documentation to the defense, which runs contrary to international norms, as noted by Professor Dan Krane. You must have also missed the discussion of laboratory standards last month.

 

[katy_did]

Why nitpick?
amanda herself offered freely that she had smoked with him on at least one occasion, had met him at the pub and in all probablility had seen him on the basketball court where he was a regular fixture- on a daily basis.
That establishes their prior acquaintanceship.
Whether they smoked together once, twice or three times is not the point here.

I'm not nitpicking, only clarifying. However, personally I think there is a bit of a difference between on the one hand Amanda recognizing Rudy by sight and exchanging a few words with him, and on the other Meredith, Rudy and Amanda all hanging out together on several occasions at the boys' house to smoke pot.

 

[komponisto]

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?

Inference -- including judgements under uncertainty -- is governed by strict mathematical rules, whether you're intuitively aware of it or not. You can call this "logical processes of deduction" if you like, because Bayes' theorem is as "logical" as any other mathematical result.

You do not need to argue for the existence of beliefs that are generated by processes that don't tend to produce accurate beliefs; what you do need to argue is that any of Kevin's or my beliefs about this case actually fall into that category.

I am saying that mindset and preconceptions are inevitable parts of our thinking... I further haven't said that one persons instinct, preconceptions, or whatever are as good as anothers.

You are clearly trying to imply that (e.g.) Kevin's beliefs are overconfident; you don't think that Kevin and other strong innocence believers have adequate justification for their (our) level of confidence. That's what it comes down to. Yet, the only arguments that you've provided for this conclusion are that (1) a bunch of other people believe differently, and (2) there aren't scientific studies specifically covering the exact situations involved in the case. Both of these arguments are irrelevant: (1) is irrelevant because we don't think guilters' opinions are worth much as evidence, for reasons that we could go into but should frankly be obvious from their posts; and (2) is irrelevant because we are able to offer specific arguments both for our conclusions and for our level of confidence in our conclusions, and hence if you want to object you have to object to our arguments, rather than demanding a specific kind of support (scientific studies on whatever narrow situation we're talking about) that we don't believe is necessary in the first place.

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.

Then you should be explaining what you find plausible and why.

And yes, you do indeed have sufficient knowledge to provide such a list. If you have an opinion on the case (which, by the way, includes things like "0.1% probability of guilt is too low"), then you have reasons for that opinion. I'd like to know what those reasons are.

 

[RoseMontague]

Put the mop up where?
Fact remains they were there, sitting with the mop and pail when the postal police arived.
Suspicious in a house where one's roommate lay dead behind a door that had never been closed the whole time she was in Italy, no?

No, they were not sitting there with the mop and pail in hand when the police arrived.

 

[shuttlt]

Actually they put the mop up when they arrived at the cottage, well before the arrival of the police.

There really was a mop moving between the apartments? I had thought that that was a myth.

 

[loverofzion]

Quite. And just to be clear, I think it's entirely proper that the police took a look at Meredith's entire circle of friends and acquaintances, and that they took an especially close look at her housemates. And if they'd found that one of Meredith's housemates was demonstrably jealous of Meredith's new relationship with her Italian boyfriend (especially if that housemate were single and had little success with men herself), or even if they'd perhaps found that one of the housemates had been involved in a heated argument with Meredith - maybe in the course of which Meredith might have inflicted some sort of perceived humiliation upon the housemate - then these would have served as clear pointers towards that particular housemate.

Instead, they found clear evidence of four housemates who got on perfectly fine - with the very limited caveat of the niggling annoyances that are almost always present when four strangers live together in a small house. All four were in seemingly happy and contented (and, by all accounts, sexually-fulfilling) relationships, with no signs or indicators of jealousy or heightened sexual tension.

Well not quite that sunny with the 4 girls.
Meredith's friends all testified that Meredith and they found amanda to be irritating, bringing home strange men to the cottage, not cleaning her share, etc etc. It is known that Merdith chose not to respond to amanda's invite to spend Halloween night together.

 

[loverofzion]

There really was a mop moving between the apartments? I had thought that that was a myth.

Check out how much emphasis was put on that mop in amanda's storytelling.
It obviously had some strong component in the case; it has been theorized that amanda bought or switched mop heads after they pair had cleaned up the murder scene.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

shared laundry facilities

I would answer if I saw his argument and didn't only hear it from you.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5593396&postcount=3148

 

[Chris_Halkides]

another strikeout

Well not quite that sunny with the 4 girls.
Meredith's friends all testified that Meredith and they found amanda to be irritating, bringing home strange men to the cottage, not cleaning her share, etc etc. It is known that Merdith chose not to respond to amanda's invite to spend Halloween night together.

loverofzion,

False. Meredith thought one man that Amanda invited over was strange, but both Amanda and the man (his nickname was shaky, IIRC) are clear that he was a friend, not a boyfriend. I hope your batting average improves.

 

[LondonJohn]

You just answered your own question.
Threw them into the bins of course!

Unfortunately, if the Perugia police didn't bother to search thoroughly enough for evidence such as blood-stained clothing, knives or keys, then that doesn't give them (or you) a free pass to suggest that Knox and Sollecito dumped some or all of these items in city refuse. This would indeed be a whole new paradigm: "Absence of evidence is evidence of presence of evidence"

 

[loverofzion]

The "Bra string theory" that the prosecution sold as "fact" has several plausible breaks in addition to what I have just posted. The gloves or test vessels in the lab could have been contaminated. This DNA test showed LCN DNA so there are many ways that contamination could have happened. The "evidence" was on the floor of the bedroom for weeks and perhaps swept across the floor a time or two. An employee, under pressure from a senior, could have contributed a molecule of Raffaele's DNA.

Perhaps Raffaele was behind Meredith and sneezed or patted her on the back or put his hand on her back to gently motion her to one side or say 'hello'.

The proscecution needs to prove that this key evidence is solid, otherwise nobody should believe them.

Patted her on the back or put his hand on her back to gently motion her??!
Are you for real.
He would have had to put his hand on her BRA in order for his DNA to stick.
That, at leat has never been presented as plausible by any of the defense team.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

definition of a naracotic

Because this is a matter of law.
How would it be classified in a medical definition?

loverofzion,

It is a matter of Italian law. Here is a medical definition.

narcotic (narc)
[narkot′ik]
Etymology: Gk, narkotikos, benumbing
1 adj, pertaining to a substance that produces insensibility or stupor.
2 n, a narcotic drug. Narcotic analgesics, derived from opium or produced synthetically, alter perception of pain; induce euphoria, mood changes, mental clouding, and deep sleep; depress respiration and the cough reflex; constrict the pupils and cause smooth muscle spasm, decreased peristalsis, emesis, and nausea. Repeated use of narcotics may result in physical and psychologic dependence. Among the narcotic drugs administered clinically for relief of pain are butorphanol tartrate, hydromorphone hydrochloride, morphine sulfate, pentazocine lactate, and meperidine hydrochloride. These drugs act by binding to opiate receptors in the central nervous system; narcotic antagonists such as naloxone hydrochloride, which is used in treating narcotic overdosage, apparently displace opiates from receptor sites. The term is now often used to refer to any illicit drug, and its use is therefore discouraged in medical settings. Opioid is now the preferred term.
Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. © 2009, Elsevier.

 

[loverofzion]

The "Bra string theory" that the prosecution sold as "fact" has several plausible breaks in addition to what I have just posted. The gloves or test vessels in the lab could have been contaminated. This DNA test showed LCN DNA so there are many ways that contamination could have happened. The "evidence" was on the floor of the bedroom for weeks and perhaps swept across the floor a time or two. An employee, under pressure from a senior, could have contributed a molecule of Raffaele's DNA.

Perhaps Raffaele was behind Meredith and sneezed or patted her on the back or put his hand on her back to gently motion her to one side or say 'hello'.

The proscecution needs to prove that this key evidence is solid, otherwise nobody should believe them.

Patted her on the back or put his hand on her back to gently motion her??!
Are you for real.
He would have had to put his hand on her BRA in order for his DNA to stick.
That, at least has never been presented as plausible by any of the defense team.

 

[katy_did]

Check out how much emphasis was put on that mop in amanda's storytelling.
It obviously had some strong component in the case; it has been theorized that amanda bought or switched mop heads after they pair had cleaned up the murder scene.

Aren't you kinda starting out with the presumption of guilt, there, and then using that presumption as evidence of guilt? If they're not guilty, Amanda is probably just telling the truth about the mop (what she says is supported by the leak in the pipes at Raffaele's place, after all). It certainly makes little sense in a pro-guilt narrative, which is why implausible mop-switching theories have to be invented to explain it.

 

[loverofzion]

loverofzion,

It is a matter of Italian law. Here is a medical definition.

narcotic (narc)
[narkot′ik]
Etymology: Gk, narkotikos, benumbing
1 adj, pertaining to a substance that produces insensibility or stupor.
2 n, a narcotic drug. Narcotic analgesics, derived from opium or produced synthetically, alter perception of pain; induce euphoria, mood changes, mental clouding, and deep sleep; depress respiration and the cough reflex; constrict the pupils and cause smooth muscle spasm, decreased peristalsis, emesis, and nausea. Repeated use of narcotics may result in physical and psychologic dependence. Among the narcotic drugs administered clinically for relief of pain are butorphanol tartrate, hydromorphone hydrochloride, morphine sulfate, pentazocine lactate, and meperidine hydrochloride. These drugs act by binding to opiate receptors in the central nervous system; narcotic antagonists such as naloxone hydrochloride, which is used in treating narcotic overdosage, apparently displace opiates from receptor sites. The term is now often used to refer to any illicit drug, and its use is therefore discouraged in medical settings. Opioid is now the preferred term.
Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. © 2009, Elsevier.

And this medical definition helps amanda- how?