Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Onofarar]

Of course it didn't. So why is Hellmann giving them 90 days to ponder the obvious, and fudging on the question of whether they can take the damn thing apart?

Any doubts I had about Hellmann were resolved with yesterday's hearing.

Charlie,
Add this to your file to collect the $1 million from the RandiFoundation.
I would add a smiley except this is not funny in any way.

 

[CDHost]

RS was over 18 when these events took place. Any lawsuits against him have nothing to do with his father. RS is responsible for them, not his father. Same thing with Amanda.

Yeah and at some point he is going to die and RS might inherit. Which is not at all unlikely a quarter century more from now. This was a discussion about attackable assets in an inheritance, Seriously, you need to start reading the thread and not just grabbing lines out of context.

 

[Chris C]

Of course it didn't. So why is Hellmann giving them 90 days to ponder the obvious, and fudging on the question of whether they can take the damn thing apart?

Any doubts I had about Hellmann were resolved with yesterday's hearing.

It could be something just as simple as asking them to send in the paperwork so he can approve it. He didn't deny the request just asked them to follow the proper channels.

 

[Onofarar]

LondonJohn, you've raised this point in a few prior posts. I'm in no position to refute your appraisal from any kind of informed perspective, but couldn't an argument be made that the defense teams, veterans of the Italian system, could see the first trial for what it was - legal theatre, whose first act was intended to show approbation of the police and magistracy, with a foregone outcome? Do you think there is any evidence which the defense could have presented that would have changed Massei's verdict? Perhaps the defense was wise to reserve their most telling arguments for the appeal, where a new judge, more inclined to acquit, could use this "new" evidence as a convenient reason for reversal.

Hopefully, Act 2 of this fiasco will have a happier ending.

I attribute the defense lawyers poor performance in the original trial to two things:
1.) Inexperience - CDV was a corporate attorney who had never handled a criminal case let alone a murder trial - he was chosen because of his ability to speak English. The parlimentarian who was RS's lead attorney had likewise never defended in a murder trial and had relatively little trail experience - she was a politician. The USA equivalent would be the Loughner family having Harry Reid (Democrat) Senator and minority leader in the US Senate to represent their son.
2.) Quality/Ability (at criminal law) - Ghirga - while well known in Perugia has been referred to on many sites as a panel lawyer. I have never gotten a good answer what a "panel" lawyer is. My guess/gut feeling is panel lawyers are the USA equivalent of lawyers who post their names and phone numbers with the local bar association and get referred to clients who call in to the bar association office looking for a lawyer. Not the best option in my opinion. For an important criminal trial you want the best - someone who is already too busy - in the USA Gerry Spence would be that man.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

carnival

Charlie,
Add this to your file to collect the $1 million from the RandiFoundation.
I would add a smiley except this is not funny in any way.

Onofarrar,

It is not to Ms. Comodi's or Mr. Maresca's credit that they opposed opening the knife. However, I am really watching the new court-appointed experts. If they do not ask for the electronic data files and other files but still give a thumbs-up to the results, then we can be certain that the carnival is still in town.

post script
For a lawyer, I would go with Joseph Cheshire. He is sharp, and he already handled a case like this.

 

[Onofarar]

Indeed there were. Maresca did not merely oppose the idea of dismantling the knife. He opposed new testing of the bra as well.

Obviously, this is the position defense attorneys almost always take. They don't want further tests that might add to the weight of evidence against their client. But in this case, the defense is agreeable to any and all further testing the consultants may wish to perform. It is the attorney who represents the family of a murder victim - a party that has every interest in learning the truth about what happened to their loved one - pleading with the court not to test forensic evidence.

Yes, the media took note of this.

Of course he opposed it - AK and RS are his "meal ticket" without them guilty there is only Rudy to pay the $5 million Euro (plus) judgement. Good luck collecting any money from him. (Plus I would suspect the book he plans to write won't be quite so lucrative. The man is scum.

 

[Onofarar]

I recommend checking out Perugia Shock for new photos of The Knife. It turns out The Knife is actually quite dirty, therefore it has not been cleaned, therefore it is not the murder weapon.

Gee maybe the same guys who wanted to watch a movie down at the police station who "borrowed" Raffaele's computer to do so (and wiped out the previous metadata that stored the last time Stardust was accessed - and therefore destroyed part of the support for RS & AK's alibi needed a knife to cut some pizza or sandwiches or steaks or what ever and "borrowed" the Knife to do so?

 

[Alt+F4]

Yeah and at some point he is going to die and RS might inherit. Which is not at all unlikely a quarter century more from now. This was a discussion about attackable assets in an inheritance, Seriously, you need to start reading the thread and not just grabbing lines out of context.

You really should learn how wealthy people protect their assets and I doubt the doctor is wealthy anyway (especially after all this). No one who sues RS or AK is gonna see one dollar, pound or euro.

 

[Onofarar]

The depth of the large cut in Meredith's neck was only about half the length of the kitchen knife blade. If it was the murder weapon, one would not necessarily expect to find blood under the handle, because the handle would not have been in direct contact with the victim.

But, if that is the case, then the attacker drew a three-inch cut through cartilage and muscle by holding the knife so that only half the blade penetrated the wound. And in doing so, the attacker perfectly simulated the kind of wound that could more easily be inflicted with a small knife plunged in up to the hilt.

Charlie - I thought Prof. Torre testified that there were bruises on Meredith's neck consistent with a knife hilt striking the tissues because it WAS plunged to the hilt.

 

[Onofarar]

Previously, I wondered about the defense's competence (especially Knox's lawyers -- apparently Dalla Vedova had never tried a criminal case before!), but now, having read both appeal briefs as well as Massei/Cristiani, I have to take exception to the view you express here. The fact is that the defense put on an extremely strong case; the "woefully substandard job" was the one done by the Massei court in evaluating it.

The testimony of the defense's expert witnesses should have been more than enough to secure acquittal. Francesco Pasquali's experiments should have been the end of the staged-burglary nonsense, and Carlo Torre's analysis the end of the multiple-attacker theory. Even from reading Massei/Cristiani you can tell that Sarah Gino and Adriano Tagliabracci had no trouble pointing out the problems with the knife and bra clasp, as if Comodi's favored "common sense" weren't enough.

Giulia Bongiorno is an excellent lawyer, and Sollecito's appeal brief (which one really gets the sense was written largely by her) shows it. One thing that was really eye-opening was how much stronger the arguments sound coming from the lawyers themselves than coming from journalists reporting on what they said in court -- a discovery which, I have to say, really angered me, because it revealed in retrospect just how poor the reporting on the trial was. The same arguments you heard about are there (including, for example, Bongiorno's famous "Amélie" argument regarding Amanda), but they're much more powerful than what you read in the newspapers.

So when you evaluate how good of a job the defense did in presenting its case during the first trial, you have to take into account that you were hearing about it through the filter of not-particularly-interested-or-competent journalists, on whom important nuances, subtleties, and frankly most details of the arguments are simply lost.

Thank you for all your great contributions to the discussion here.
AK's family hired Ted Simon a noted international law expet from Philly to join the defense team - he does not sit at the defense table in court but probably helped draft AK's appeal.

Does anyone know if he attends the trial in an unofficial capacity? Charlie?

 

[Alt+F4]

AK's family hired Ted Simon a noted international law expet from Philly to join the defense team - he does not sit at the defense table in court but probably helped draft AK's appeal?

Yeah, he was the lawyer that told Good Morning America that:

There’s brand new information presented as part of Amanda’s appeal by another person that states for the first time that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were not present or were not involved

Perhaps it was his idea to include the psycho who killed a baby with a shovel as a defense witness. He makes Curatolo seem like a saint.

 

[Onofarar]

You really should learn how wealthy people protect their assets and I doubt the doctor is wealthy anyway (especially after all this). No one who sues RS or AK is gonna see one dollar, pound or euro.

What about the ability of the Kerchers' to enforce their judgement against any royalties from book sales in Europe?

 

[Alt+F4]

I wonder what will happen if the new testing results in a split decision, the knife is thrown out, the bra clasp stays in.

 

[Alt+F4]

What about the ability of the Kerchers' to enforce their judgement against any royalties from book sales in Europe?

If they are found not guilty in the appeal they might be able to get the judgement reversed. If they are found guilty again and try to write a book from behind bars well I don't know, does the EU have a "son of sam" law?

 

[Danceme]

And for that he needed gloves?

It's situations like this where those mysterious bold bracketed numbers come in handy. They lead back to the original italian page. I've interleaved the italian with Google's unbiased translation.
<snip>

Yes, I agree with what you quoted and translated. It was placed in a bag and then removed from the bag using new gloves, then placed in the box. That is how it reads when you see the original Italian.

After viewing the rather gruesome photo I must agree with Hendry. The bra was not cut, but torn with brutal force.

All three straps are broken. Both of the shoulder straps, and the back one. It's interesting to notice where are their points of failure: All of them failed at the seams. If Rudy was to cut all of the straps, how plausible is it that he would be careful enough to cut at the seam every time?

Ron Hendry did an excellent job of analyzing the bra and clasp. When you look closely you will see that the clasp was not cut from the bra. The thread failed at the seam joining the clasp and the bra. This would have been the result of brute force.

No, this is plain wrong. I still cannot agree the fabric was torn and not just cut with a not so very sharp blade, causing a small amount of fraying and exposing the bit of batting used inside the seam for comfort. Just try to cut layered over fabric with a knife and you'll see what I mean. Then go look at a few bras, as I take it you're both men. It would be impossible to pull the bra with enough force to tear off the clasp area in a straight line without leaving significant marks on Meredith's skin and alot more ragged fraying than shown.

A bra clasp is not a separate piece sewn onto a backstrap. It contains the end of the backstrap, folded in, and additional reinforcing fabric containing the hooks then sewn over it. The top and bottom edges of the backstrap also have hems and there is additional fabric at the top of a backstrap as well. This cannot be torn while she's wearing it without significant force, highly unlikely to result in a straight line, and would almost certainly leave evidence of doing so on Meredith's skin. The hooks would have deformed sufficiently to come apart long before this fabric would tear.

On the other hand, the shoulder straps on a bra can commonly come apart at the join with the plastic rings after it's been owned and worn for quite a while. I've repaired many myself, just refolding over the ring and sewing back together. These could most definitely be forced without too much trouble on any bra and the photo shows this is exactly what happened to the shoulder strap, imo. These gave way to the force of trying to pull the bra, however he had to resort to sawing at the strap with the knife.

Here's a pic that will illustrate the way the backstrap and clasp of a bra is constructed. You can see the reverse side of the hook section here.

http://tinyurl.com/backstrap

 

[Chris C]

Perhaps it was his idea to include the psycho who killed a baby with a shovel as a defense witness. He makes Curatolo seem like a saint.

Its called strategy. They don't want to call Rudy to the stand, because they will have to stick with what he testifies. Anything he says, will be the defense adding the testimony to the court. Where as if they are allowed to call the baby killer to the stand, then the prosecution would be forced to call Rudy to the stand to dispute the claims. Thus allowing the defense to cross examine him without calling him to the stand. If Rudy slips and is caught in a lie then the baby killer has more credibility.

 

[Chris C]

I wonder what will happen if the new testing results in a split decision, the knife is thrown out, the bra clasp stays in.

I have thought about that. It would be a monster blow to the scientifica lab's credibility and the investigators credibility. The knife would be considered contaminated.

 

[babycondor]

<snip>

I still cannot agree the fabric was torn and not just cut with a not so very sharp blade, causing a small amount of fraying and exposing the bit of batting used inside the seam for comfort. <snip>...

Your argument is convincing.

So then, assuming the bra was cut at the clasp, was the knife bloody when the cut was made (based on the pictures we have seen)?

When I look at the picture of the bra on the floor of MK's room, I see no sign of blood on the large part of the backstrap, in the region of the assumed cutting. Other parts of the bra appear to be soaked in blood.

When I look at the picture of the clasp, I see something that could be blood in the frayed batting material at the edge of the clasp. Or it could just be dirt from being on the floor, pushed around, stepped on, handled with dirty gloves, etc.

Personally I think the pictures are inconclusive either way because the bra was both pulled and cut. But the cut was not made with a very bloody knife. And she was wearing the bra when her throat was cut. Hmmmm.

 

[CDHost]

As long as the knife were not cleaned, there might be DNA.

Then I'm unclear here. Assuming that Meredith's DNA were on the knife and blood is not why wouldn't saliva have been a standard operating assumption during the analysis?

 

[Mrs.Columbo]

New in the sense that we haven't seen it before. And why didn't we see it before? Perhaps because it shows that the prosecution's claim that The Knife had been thoroughly cleaned is a lie.

But I have seen many photos of that knife, clean and shiny, wrapped in plastic. This photo is all over the net. That's why I am confused now with Frank's photo.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...is-accused-of-murdering-Meredith-Kercher.html