Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Matthew Best]

not sure what you mean. the bruising is either consistent with restraint from more than one person or not?

You mean you don't know? I assumed from your previous post

The bruises indicate restraint by multiple attackers. not because of the frequency but because of the positioning. come on now!

that you had some degree of confidence in your opinion. It's good to see that I was mistaken in this, but I think you can see how I may have been led to this belief by your own words.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

bruising and DNA

thanks lj. will have a read of that again. I agree the knife issues have always been spurious which i feel is unfortunate for prosecution and defence. are you aware thatThe bruising can be light but still consistent with a grip from restraint and that spotted correctly can even be used to show details about the restraint and/or restrainer. as far as injuries to the chest and abdomen, there is no particular reason why there should be any that i can think of.

lxxx

s_pepys,

If there were (noticeable) bruising near Meredith's wrist or in other parts of her body that were not covered with blood, then ILE should have swabbed those areas for DNA. Although such swabbing is not guaranteed to produce profiles from the attacker, it might do so. Odeed and I had a long debate about this point roughly seven months ago, and the citations would be there. If the bruises were later covered with blood, then I would not expect that this approach would work.

 

[s_pepys]

You mean you don't know? I assumed from your previous post



that you had some degree of confidence in your opinion. It's good to see that I was mistaken in this, but I think you can see how I may have been led to this belief by your own words.

the snarky "wonder why" bit i am reffering too. and you know it!

 

[simper]

If we assume that its inevitable that 5% of people in jail are innocent victims then we should not be discussing whether AK is innocent or guilty but whether there is a 95% chance that she is guilty. If you think Knox should spend the rest of her life in prison then you should believe that there is a less then 5% chance that she is innocent.

I dont know the extent of her involvelment in this murder but only the seriously deluded can believe there is enough evidence to convict her beyond reasonable doubt.

 

[Matthew Best]

the snarky "wonder why" bit i am reffering too. and you know it!

Apologies if you misconstrued my intention. I was actually wondering why you seemed so certain that the bruising indicated multiple attackers, and was rather hoping you would elucidate.

 

[lionking]

If we assume that its inevitable that 5% of people in jail are innocent victims then we should not be discussing whether AK is innocent or guilty but whether there is a 95% chance that she is guilty. If you think Knox should spend the rest of her life in prison then you should believe that there is a less then 5% chance that she is innocent.

I dont know the extent of her involvelment in this murder but only the seriously deluded can believe there is enough evidence to convict her beyond reasonable doubt.

I don't understand the first paragraph at all. Would you mind rephrasing?

 

[komponisto]

An expert witness for the defense? That's supposed to settle things?

(1) Given that you're the one who goes around saying that the opinions of (non-expert!) judges and jurors should settle things, and thus apparently places a high value on the opinions of socially recognized "authorities", it's utterly hypocritical of you to now suggest that we should believe Giancarlo Massei's interpretation of pathological data over that of Carlo Torre. Here's Torre's CV, for whatever it's worth.

(2) It should be obvious that whether things are "settled" or not depends on what the witness actually says. Torre was unequivocal:

io non ho alcun elemento che mi suggerisca anche solo
remotamente l’intervento di più di una persona … Gliel’ho detto non
vedo tracce di altre persone (AK's appeal, p. 102)

I don't have any evidence that even remotely suggests to me the intervention of more than one person....I've told you, I don't see indications of other people.

(3) You may worry that Torre is being paid by the defense, and may have an incentive to come to a certain conclusion. But if you actually think about this for a few seconds, instead of just automatically categorizing it under some standard narrative of "one side says this, the other side says that", you'll realize that someone of Torre's prestige level is highly unlikely to risk his professional credibility among his colleagues by making a statement as categorical as the above in a situation where there was in fact evidence that would convince a neutral pathologist of multiple attackers. And if you think that expert witnesses will just automatically say whatever would be good for their side, even if it's manifestly false, then why bother having them testify at all?

(4) If you worry that Torre's testimony was somehow the result of a filtering process by the defense, wherein they interviewed experts until they could find someone to say what they wanted, here (see 8:08) is a video explaining that Torre got involved on his own initiative, after being told about the case by a journalist.

ETA: I'd like to add by the way that Torre's testimony alone -- the inability of the prosecution to convince a leading pathologist that there was more than one attacker -- constitutes reasonable doubt and grounds for acquittal, which just shows how far people are from intuitively understanding what "beyond reasonable doubt" actually means.

 

[Katody Matrass]

I don't understand the first paragraph at all. Would you mind rephrasing?

Hi, lionking, it would be very interesting to see some answer of yours to this post. halides1 took effort to respond to you. Did you miss it or do you silently concede?

 

[simper]

I don't understand the first paragraph at all. Would you mind rephrasing?

Any justice system has a margin of error so I think its not unreasonable to think the best that we can hope for is that 5% of people convicted are actually innocent. Therefore the question should be how certain are we that Knox was involved in the murder rather than the rather simplistic question of "did she do it". If I was on the jury and 90% certain that she was guilty then I would have no choice but to give a not-guilty verdict.

 

[Katody Matrass]

NO!

they are not consistent with a single assailant. thats the whole point. The bruises indicate restraint by multiple attackers. not because of the frequency but because of the positioning. come on now!

lxxx

This is news.
Which of the bruises are not consistent with single attacker? Could you elaborate?

 

[lionking]

Any justice system has a margin of error so I think its not unreasonable to think the best that we can hope for is that 5% of people convicted are actually innocent. Therefore the question should be how certain are we that Knox was involved in the murder rather than the rather simplistic question of "did she do it". If I was on the jury and 90% certain that she was guilty then I would have no choice but to give a not-guilty verdict.

Still don't quite get it, but 90% certainty to me is beyond reasonable doubt.

 

[Poppy1016]

I may be wrong but it seems as though those believing in guilt do not use a common sense, well thought out reason for their belief. I started following this case with no preconceived notions about guilt or innocense. The more i learned, the more obvious it became that at the very least there was plenty of reasonable doubt. I have listened to both sides of the argument and not guilty by reasonable doubt is my opinion.

 

[Justinian2]

Still don't quite get it, but 90% certainty to me is beyond reasonable doubt.

Not if it is you going to jail after spending every thing you had and every ounce of your energy for a year to defend yourself.

Anyway, I think it is 99% certain that Amanda is innocent. She reminds me too much of the 5% that are innocent and in jail.

 

[simper]

Still don't quite get it, but 90% certainty to me is beyond reasonable doubt.

I make a living betting on results which have a 3-10% chance of happening so I have a different perspective. If you were to randomly put 1% of your money on every 1-10 shot offered by bookmakers then it would only take a few weeks for you to lose everthing you have. Bookmakers make a large part of their profits from backing against outcomes which punters see as being 90%+ shots.

 

[komponisto]

Still don't quite get it, but 90% certainty to me is beyond reasonable doubt.

This is very telling, and confirms my suspicions both about you personally and about juries and general.

If you think that 90% certainty is beyond reasonable doubt, then that means that you don't have a problem with an error rate of 10%: that is, 10% of all convictions being wrongful.

Are you aware of the sheer number of innocent people you would be locking up with that kind of error rate?

It also means that if I were on a jury and said "I'm going to vote to acquit, because if I voted to convict under these circumstances, I'd be wrong ten times out of a hundred", you would think I was being unreasonable.

I've long held the suspicion that jurors will often convict simply if they think it's more likely than not (>50%) that the defendant is guilty, just because they're not capable of the kind of abstract thinking required to consider acquitting a defendant they believe is likely guilty.

And indeed, it's also very telling that you "still don't quite get it", which suggests to me that you're not used to thinking this way (i.e. in terms of the mathematics of probability theory).

Of course, most of the above is actually somewhat beside the point here, because I don't believe Knox and Sollecito should be acquitted because they're only 90% likely to be guilty; rather, I think they should be acquitted because they're around 99.9% likely to be innocent.

 

[Chris C]

How can you possibly assert that the knife wasn't cleaned at either the cottage or RS's flat?

Cleaned how? Cleaned where? We know ONE knife was wiped off in the bedroom, but that knife wasn't the kitchen knife. There bloody knife trail in the room. None of the sinks or showers at Sollecito's had traces of blood in them. The knife didn't have traces of blood on it. So that leaves the bathroom where there was blood found.

I dont know if you have ever cut an animals throat that was wounded when hunting but I have. You get blood on your hands and on the knife. Hair also. Yet the only handprint in blood is Rudy's. So if they where to wash all the traces of blood off a knife that had been used to saw through someones throat, it would take some scrubbing. Which means when cleaning the knife you would also get your hands clean in the process. Now the amount of water used to remove all traces of blood from that knife would leave no visible traces of blood in the sink used. Yet the only sink that had traces of blood, had visible traces of blood. I don't know if you realize it, but for that Knife to have been used as a murder weapon. You would have had to clean it with something that removed any trace of blood and left dna.

I mean think of the double standard presented by the prosecution. They claim the luminol prints on the floor are made from blood, eventhough there is no dna of the victim. Then they claim that a knife that was once covered in blood was the murder weapon. Eventhough there is no trace of blood and a speck of dna that can never be retested.

 

[lionking]

This is very telling, and confirms my suspicions both about you personally and about juries and general.

If you think that 90% certainty is beyond reasonable doubt, then that means that you don't have a problem with an error rate of 10%: that is, 10% of all convictions being wrongful.

Complete and utter straw man.

What percentage certainty do you believe constitutes beyond reasonable doubt?

And the slur about your "suspicions about me" is noted. Would you mind elaborating.

 

[simper]

If you think that 90% certainty is beyond reasonable doubt, then that means that you don't have a problem with an error rate of 10%: that is, 10% of all convictions being wrongful.

I suspect the vast majority of people on a jury dont understand this point. They think in absolute terms of either "he/she did it" or "he/she didnt do it".

 

[RoseMontague]

Originally Posted by snook1 View Post
What part did you miss when it was stated that there is a need to re examine the DNA evidence to remove the reasonable doubt?

No part! I just never, in my wildest dreams, would have thought that anybody would interpret it that way.

Why would we not interpret it that way. It is part of the judges written order for the new testing:

Yesterday at the appeal hearing of Perugia for the death of Meredith Kercher has happened something banal and extraordinary together.It happened that the Court, even after an hour of deliberation, decided to grant the request of the defense of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito because genetic evaluations are made new. The jury wrote in its motivation: "Respect for the rule laid down in Article 533 (imposition of sentence only if the accused is guilty of the offense complained of beyond a reasonable doubt) does not fully share the Court's decisions d 'Assizes of the first degree ...

http://translate.googleusercontent....le.com&usg=ALkJrhjdWJCno4l7lTj4aPx5pXMah_ir1g

 

[Chris C]

While forcibly restraining the victim and using at least 2 different knives?

So you believe like Mignini, that Sollecito and Guede restrained meredith. While Knox walked up to her with 2 knives, one in each hand and killed her using both knives.