Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Charlie Wilkes]

So if Meredith arrived home at 21:00, what is a reasonable probability that t(lag) was > 2.5 hours and no food had moved out of the stomach? My research suggests that t(lag) is < 90 minutes to high probability.

According to your math, Meredith is most likely to have died before she reached home, while she was watching a movie with friends. The math doesn't work for you either.

It seems like the stomach evidence is impossible either way, so perhaps it should be disregarded completely.

[1] "Lag Phase in Solid Gastric Emptying: Comparison of Quantification by Physiological and Mathematical Definitions "
http://jnm.snmjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/34/10/1701

You need to factor in a dessert eaten around 8 pm, which would have slowed her digestion, but not enough to move the time of death forward to 10 pm or later.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

imaging hard drives

It is interesting that the consultant's report basically sweeps the problem under the rug. He picks up the story at the point where the professor swaps the circuit boards. He doesn't inquire as to what happened to damage them in the first place. At the end of his report, he exonerates everyone, saying he found no evidence that anyone did anything wrong or inappropriate.

It's the kind of exercise that typifies how this case has been handled from start to finish - a lot of fancy verbiage to hide the fact that the people in charge of this case are bungling idiots.

Charlie,

The IT person for our building, who is quite sharp, said that imaging the drives was the first thing he would have done. Were the police trying to image the drives when they damaged them?

 

[Dan O.]

Actually, there is 0 proof that was Meredith that walked by the CCTV camera. Though I personally believe it was Meredith, there still is no proof. After all there was a car parked in that driveway. It could have been someone in that car. Someone from that car either walked in front of that camera or they where in fact in the apartment.

There is actually no proof that the purported video came from that night. Has anybody seen the full frame of that segment with the timestamps? One of the TV stations produced a simulation of what the camera would have seen. Could the clip we are supposed to believe is Meredith/Amanda crossing the road have also been a simulation? Could ILE have lied about there being video in the first place?


Another question surrounding this video, why did the camera turn on at the time Meredith (or whoever) was crossing the street. It was stated that this camera was activated by motion and that traffic or pedestrians in the street would not activate it. Does the full clip show a car entering the garage?

 

[Dan O.]

Charlie,

The IT person for our building, who is quite sharp, said that imaging the drives was the first thing he would have done. Were the police trying to image the drives when they damaged them?

Yes.

 

[bobc]

If you try to hypothesize Meredith's death before 21:00, you suddenly have to deal with a conspiracy between Meredith's English friends and Rudy Guede. (or that one of the English girls dressed as Meredith walking past the CCTV camera to establish that Meredith was walking home alone ran into Rudy in front of the cottage and invited him inside.)

Conspiracy theories are for some reason a forbidden topic so nobody is willing to explore this possibility. Therefore we take it as given that Meredith died after 21:00.

Or that the autopsy evidence is incorrect.

 

[LondonJohn]

Rational people would address my point, and not instead attack a strawman, with a few ad homs thrown in.

It is your argument that a probability of the actual events can be derived from stomach emptying times, are you now denying this?

Also you seem to be selectively believing the autopsy evidence. If the police investigation is "unethical and incompetent" as you put it, why would you believe the part that is convenient to your argument? Also YOU re-raised the stomach evidence, not me.
The maximum t(lag) found by experiment, is less than 90 minutes. Your conclusion is therefore unsupported.

What? Which research paper do you have that suggests this?

Oh, and do you understand probability distribution curves? The MEDIAN may be at around 81-82 minutes, but people's t(lag) varies either side of this median, according to a fairly well-defined bell curve.

Let me refer you to an analogy with human height. Similar research produces a bell curve for adult male height. It shows that the median height is around 5ft8.5. But I'm pretty confident that you know adult males who are both taller and shorter than this - often by significant amounts. This is what the distribution curve tells us. To say that since the research shows the median t(lag) to be 82 minutes means that Meredith should have died 82 minutes after eating is as silly as saying that if I tell you I just met a new adult male colleague at work you would express incredulity if I told you he was 6ft2 tall. "Surely he should be 5ft8.5" you would tell me, "since that's the statistical median value"......

If you study the t(lag) prob distribution curve, you'll find that it suggests that maybe 2% of people have a t(lag) of 150 minutes or over. But extending the curve further out shows that of this 2%, fewer than 0.1% have a t(lag) greater than 170 minutes, and fewer than 0.005% - fewer than 1 in 20,000 - have a t(lag) greater than 240 minutes.

Now, we know that Meredith started her last meal at around 6.30pm*, so 150 minutes later corresponds to 9pm - the time she arrived home. Therefore, by definition, Meredith already had a well above average t(lag) - anything above 150 minutes would put her in the top 2% of the population. Unusual, yes, but not to a ridiculous degree. One in every 50 people would have a t(lag) of 150min or over. To use the height analogy, the corresponding probability distribution for adult males shows that around 1 in 50 men is 6ft2 or taller. Most of us know a man who is at least 6ft2 tall.

But, as with human height, there are practical upper limits for t(lag). Just as you probably don't count a man who is 6ft8 or above amongst your friends, and you've probably never seen a man of 7ft6 or higher (except for in a circus or on a basketball court), so there are very very few people with a t(lag) of over 170min, and virtually none (fewer than 1 per 20,000) with a t(lag) of over 240min. And having a t(lag) of some 315 minutes - corresponding to the 11.45pm ToD accepted by the first court - is roughly analogous to seeing an 8ft tall man**. There might be one or two in the world, but they are so rare as to be for all practical purposes non-existent.

* And it's the start of the meal that is used for measuring t(lag) - this is further corroborated by the fact that recognisable constituents of the pizza were found in Meredith's partially-digested stomach contents.

** Note that for height purposes, the man would have to have no underlying disorders (which for height abnormalities are usually massive hormonal imbalances), just as for t(lag) calculations the subject should have no other underlying digestive system problems or other serious health problems. If I told you that my new male work colleague was 8ft tall (from natural growth only), you'd be perfectly correct to express extreme incredulity.

 

[bobc]

I've rearranged your post to make it more comprehensible. People keen to see the original can scroll up or click on the little arrow.

Let me guess, you've cherry-picked one study where the highest t(lag) value was 90m and you're presenting this as evidence that the highest t(lag) value ever known to science was 90m? Do I really need to explain to you the error here?

We've cited multiple studies to back up our case. A t(lag) of 150m is highly unlikely but not unheard of. A t(lag) of 300m is crazy.



This argument is also pretty strange if you think about it. It's the prosecution's job to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt. I don't think you can rescue proof-beyond-reasonable-doubt by arguing that yes the prosecution evidence proves that the defendant is innocent if the prosecution evidence is any good, but that since the prosecution evidence might be rubbish that there is proof beyond reasonable doubt anyway.

Also, review The Fallacy of Composition.



My point is merely that we've seen the Chewbacca Defence used repeatedly to try to discredit the stomach contents evidence in the past, and no matter how many times you guys try it, it's still just the Chewbacca Defence.

So not then a cause for reasonable doubt.

I might be interested in discussing it further with you if you could maintain a civil tone, but you appear incapable of that.

 

[LondonJohn]

Or that the autopsy evidence is incorrect.

If you tie off the subject's intestines correctly (as Lalli was seen to do in the autposy video), then it's pretty hard to misreport what you find.

There was either chyme (broken down food matter) in Meredith's duodenum and jejenum or there wasn't. Lalli found that there wasn't.

And there was either a stomach full of semi-solid chyme or there wasn't. Lalli found 500ml of such matter in Meredith's stomach - consistent with a smallish amount of pizza, plus a small serving of apple crumble, plus the added volume of digestive juices.

And there were either recognisable semi-digested cheese pieces and vegetable fibres among the stomach contents or there weren't. Lalli identified them and reported them.

Unless Lalli is either incompetent beyond all comprehension or he was part of a conspiracy to deceive (a DEFENCE conspiracy, at that!), then his report on the stomach contents has to be accurate. These things were either there or they weren't - it's a very black and white issue. He certainly made mistakes in other areas of the autopsy (not weighing the body was a pretty big one), but errors of omission are a different order of magnitude from seeing things that aren't there, or vice versa.

 

[Dan O.]

Or that the autopsy evidence is incorrect.

That part of the autopsy evidence can be reexamined since it was videotaped and the content of the stomach and the last turn of the intestine were preserved. Maybe this will happen later in the appeal.

 

[LondonJohn]

You need to factor in a dessert eaten around 8 pm, which would have slowed her digestion, but not enough to move the time of death forward to 10 pm or later.

The human stomach doesn't work like this. Charlie. It's capable of processing food eaten at different times in parallel, using different areas of the stomach (it's an amazingly complicated and finely-controlled organ, and very far indeed from an inert "bag"). The pizza part of the meal would have processed through towards the pylorus area of the stomach while the apple crumble was being handled back in the cardia and fundus. The t(lag) for the pizza would therefore have been virtually unaffected by the later ingestion of the apple crumble.

 

[Antony]

I was thinking about the Bayesian approach, and begun to wonder what the actual rate of wrongful convictions is. Without considering the facts of the particular case, it seems sensible to set the a priori probability of the guilt of a defendant for a specific case at the general rate of reliable convictions.

I imagined the rate of wrongful convictions might be something like 5 in 1000 cases. After doing some research the answer I found surprised me.

So I'd like to ask,

1) what is your unresearched view of the wrongful conviction rate?
2) According to research, what is the best estimate for wrongful conviction rate? We would need to take into the type of crime, as well as the jurisdiction, but there must be some numbers to get a reasonable estimate.

I would be extremely surprised if it's anything like as low as 0.5%. I'm afraid my study of miscarriages of justice isn't sufficiently systematic to put a figure on it; but I would certainly say that what I know of such cases shows such a shallow, blowing-in-the-wind level of thinking that it's a wonder to me that they ever get it right.

Obviously there are some cases where the evidence is so clear-cut that there can only be one verdict; but sadly the high-profile cases are too often ones where there can be only one verdict for an entirely different reason: pressure of public opinion. In the UK that was certainly the case in the notorious Guildford and Birmingham pub bombing cases of the 1970s, and the Broadwater Farm case in 1989 (if I remember right), in which a policeman had been hacked to death by a mob.

More recently there was another high-profile case: the murder of Jill Dando, in which a local oddball (Barry George) was convicted because of a crumb of gunpowder allegedly found in his jacket pocket. In spite of clear indications that he was not mentally capable of planning, carrying out or concealing the crime, he was convicted in a tide of public outrage against him. When the verdict was announced I remember saying to friends: "British justice screws up again!" If it was so obvious to me at the time, why can't professional judges see it?

Very soon, journalists were pointing out that the circumstances of the killing bore hallmarks of an assassination by agents of Slobodan Milosevic, and that it occurred in the aftermath of the NATO bombing of the Belgrade TV station, in which civilian broadcasters were killed. The conclusion that it was a revenge killing (Jill Dando was a well-known TV presenter in the UK) is a reasonable one. Barry George's lawyers presented an appeal making very much the points that were public knowledge at the time of the verdict: that the prosecution case that he converted a replica pistol into the murder weapon was not even plausible, given the poor chap's extremely limited mental capacity. He was cleared of the crime after several years in prison.

Unlike Amanda and Raffaele, Barry George is typical of the sort of inadequate character who very easily suffer wrongful convictions. Like them, though, he became the target for police suspicions for wholly the wrong reasons, in which the police were under pressure of public opinion following a high-profile murder.

 

[LondonJohn]

By the way, if I recall correctly, the appeal court hearing next Saturday (postponed from today) is merely to swear in the scientists who will be conducting the DNA review. I don't believe therefore that any results from any re-testing will be presented next Saturday - I believe the court will only expect to receive those findings in March/April.

But what do I know in comparison to the real internet experts on this case, eh...?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

So not then a cause for reasonable doubt.

It depends what the reasonable doubt is about.

It's more than cause for reasonable doubt that Meredith died at 23:30. I'd say it's cause to point at that claim, laugh at it and kick it into the nearest dustbin.

I suppose you could argue that it's cause for reasonable doubt in the honesty of Meredith's friend who claimed to have been with her until 21:00. Maybe you might want to try your hand at some conspiracy theory where Sophie cut Meredith's throat on the way home and dragged her body back to Meredith's place? Or maybe Rudy and Sophie were secret cocaine buddies and they ambushed her on the street?

I'm not finding it very convincing but you could workshop it a bit. It's still better than the Massei narrative though, because at least it's physically possible.

 

[CDHost]

Being Framed

Yeah, it makes me laugh too. How long has the guilter community placed all that weight on St. Curatolo's testimony.
Now the sudden opinions from the guilter community is:
That his testimony is not needed
He is the victim because he is being charged with selling heroin.
He is being framed.
He still saw them, is reliable and Knox/Sollecito killed Meredith, eventhough he saw masked people, the wrong busses, is a heroin dealer, was reading the newspaper in the dark, his story was found in the gossip newspaper and the times he saw them gives Knox/Sollecito an alibi for not murdering Meredith.

Of course what I love about the "being framed" is we have constantly here what a paradigm of perfection the Italian system is. How it has none of the problems of the US system. How we can and should have absolute trust and faith in all their officials as virtual saints. That to even think of the Italian system as being as badly screwed as the USA's is nothing but xenophobia.

Further, there is no way they would do anything like take out frustration regarding not even being able to get the Italian government to request extradition in the Imam Rapito affair much less put Berlusconi's people who were involved in renditions on the stand. Senator Cantwell was badly misinformed in her charge, she didn't know what she was talking about....

 

[Chris C]

Or that the autopsy evidence is incorrect.

The prosecution never disputed the stomach contents in relation to the time of death or that Dr. Lalli's calculations were wrong. Instead the prosecution put a witness on the stand that didn't review the autopsy tapes and they talked about what would happen if the autopsy was done incorrectly. Why was the prosecution unable to find a witness to dispute the stomach content results? The only person they could find to testify against the results of the stomach content evidence is someone who didn't review the autopsy.

 

[CDHost]

The information I have about this is on the FOA site:

I think the story is as follows: The BIOS to which they refer is not the BIOS on the motherboard, but the ROM flashed onto the drive controller board, which determines how data is organized on the disk. They swapped controller boards and the replacement board on Amanda's drive was close enough to the original so it spun up the drive, but it had a different BIOS, so it screwed up the file table on the disk. Now the data is beyond recovery using ordinary methods. The other drives were recoverable because the replacement controller boards did not work at all, and thus did not corrupt the data.

I have tried to fry a couple of old laptop drives by hooking them up incorrectly to an external IDE caddy. I could not destroy so much as a single byte of data. I have no idea what these idiots over there did, but it wasn't pretty.

The thing is that drive manufacturers will give you the layouts. They don't consider this a trade secret. I can imagine scrambling stuff like that, but unscrambling it is really not that hard. Especially if you are law enforcement and this is a murder case.

Putting long lists of stuff in order based on a list is the task that computers are really really good at. We know the file system they were using, its fully documented. We can the actual chips sets so we can read serial numbers. There is no reason for them not to cooperate. This sounds like the sort of project that should take a dedicated day or two at worst.

I believe 100% that the lawyers are getting this "we don't feel like doing some actual work that requires more than pressing a few buttons" answers from their vendors. But come on. This is what dd is for, treat the hard drive like a large tape drive pulling block after block after block....

I don't know NTFS otherwise I'd offer to just do this myself.

 

[moodstream]

“It also doesn't make sense to borrow the lamp to clean up, when there was no sign of a clean up.”

Apparently there was not one iota of DNA from Knox, so there must have been a clean up.


“If Raffaele and Amanda are guilty of murdering Meredith and locking her inside the room with her own key, then if they needed to get back in to retrieve a lamp they had left in there, they would have just unlocked the door and gotten it. Why would they try to break it down?”

Have you considered that they had made a half-hearted attempt in order to make it look as I f they were breaking down the door in order to find Meredith?

Once again, this pre-supposes that the attempt at knocking down the door was not a ruse.

I have to agree with you on that. Nothing else makes sense, well, except of course that they are innocent and their story is true.

If they are guilty, there are some facts beyond dispute:
They murdered Meredith; 2) took her keys; 3) locked Meredith’s door with the key; 4) and called the Carabinieri before the Postal Police arrived; 5) The Postal Police arrived unexpected.

Let’s say they really want that lamp, and they decide to break the door down to get it. What’s to stop them? They have all day. They are not expecting the Postal Police. Sollecito is not limited to the feeble attempts he is reported to have made, attempts seeming to reflect an ambivalent state of mind about breaking down the door.

For this story to be true,1) K/S must be guilty, 2) took the keys yet do not have them (and cannot get them) , 3)must really want a lamp that does not seem out of place in Meredith’s room, and most significantly 4)could not break down the door no matter how hard they tried. Yet the damage on the door does not reflect a great effort to break it down.

Therefore they did not attempt to break down the door to retrieve the lamp.

If K/S are guilty, locking the door and then breaking it down is a good idea, because it allows them to contaminate the murder room innocently while being shocked at the discovery of the body. It’s odd that the idea never occurred to them, given the trouble they went to clean up the room and then the thoughts they must have had that lead to the decision to lock the door. But then, why even lock it? Why not just check in on Meredith, discover the body, tramp all of the room in ‘panicked’ horror, call the police, and explain with dismay how your shoeprints, even bloody fingerprints, not only in the murder room but all over the house, are the results of your panic at the time of the discovery?

I cannot guess for them, but breaking down the door would be an act in contradiction to whatever reason they chose to lock it in the first place. Perhaps they feared their own discovery of the body would lead suspicion to them ( although as per above making it much harder to prove), and they wanted the police to discover the body for themselves. When all was ready they locked the door, threw away the keys, and to add one more element of believability, they lightly kicked at the door (hoping it would not open of course) to show the police yes they are concerned about Meredith, they even tried to kick open the door.

My question to you is, how could a pair that acted with such careful deliberation show up for the interrogation so completely unprepared? They did not have a unified story, vague but not disprovable, that they stuck with until they abandoned it to simply squeal for an attorney, nor did they have an attorney lined up. How could they put so much thought into the deception at the cottage, but so little into the interrogation?

 

[billyryan]

By the way, if I recall correctly, the appeal court hearing next Saturday (postponed from today) is merely to swear in the scientists who will be conducting the DNA review. I don't believe therefore that any results from any re-testing will be presented next Saturday - I believe the court will only expect to receive those findings in March/April.

But what do I know in comparison to the real internet experts on this case, eh...?

That is correct LJ the scientists will be sworn in next Saturday,will be interesting to see if the scientists make a request for the FSA files,the electronic data that underlies the DNA test results

I am wondering if the appeal will then be postponed until the DNA test results are presented as Hellmann has reserved his judgement on whether or not to test the pillow case stains,the computer hard drives the hearing test,all of these decisions seem dependent on the results of the review of the knife and the bra clasp

According to Curt Knox the results of the review of the bra clasp and the knife could take until as late as JULY

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

The human stomach doesn't work like this. Charlie. It's capable of processing food eaten at different times in parallel, using different areas of the stomach (it's an amazingly complicated and finely-controlled organ, and very far indeed from an inert "bag"). The pizza part of the meal would have processed through towards the pylorus area of the stomach while the apple crumble was being handled back in the cardia and fundus. The t(lag) for the pizza would therefore have been virtually unaffected by the later ingestion of the apple crumble.

You know more about it than I do, but I've seen a couple of references that say the consumption of additional food slows digestion.

 

[CDHost]

Ate again

Kevin --

This sounds like a very strong argument. But dow do we rule out she ate some food when she got home? That the food in her stomach was not from the 6:30 meal but from a later meal?