Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Katody Matrass said:
I never could understand how one can take seriously DNA evidence in the situation when all of the involved people are connected in the way that we have here.

1) Amanda lived in the cottage. Amanda's DNA is expected to be found there - simple as that.

2) For a week or so Amanda is basically living at Raffaele's but comes regularly to the cottage where she uses bathroom and kitchen that she shares with Meredith, eats, changes clothes etc. Raffaele comes to the cottage a few times, too.

Is it completely unexpected to find Meredith's DNA at Raffaele's or Raffaele's DNA at the cottage? No. In fact it's not unreasonable to think a transfer could have occurred.

And this is just one factor, without considering the doubtful actions of cops and Scientifica.
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You think it's to be expected that Amanda would track back Meredith's DNA to Raffaele's so that it leaves as clean a sample as we have in this case? It strikes me as something that is a question for the experts in the case rather than people's expectations, but to me it seems like this.... Think of all the things Amanda would have touched in the course of the day. None of them make it onto the knife, somehow it's a Meredith's DNA. It's just like the bra clasp, it boggles my mind that this seems like the expected result to people.
 
Mary_H said:
What's surprising is that Mignini is so childish he thought he could get people to believe the defendants' DNA had been found in only two places, and that those two places just happened to be more incriminating than just about any other places the DNA could have been found.

What's even more surprising is the number of people who actually did believe it.
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How much more of their DNA was found in Meredith's room? Was it more or less than the other housemates?
 
platonov said:
From the PoV of the 'forensics' doing the 'retest' - sure.

From the PoV of the 'court' - they have RS's [repeated ?] lie to explain its presence.
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If it was a lie, then how does it explain the presence of the DNA?
 
shuttlt said:
How much more of their DNA was found in Meredith's room? Was it more or less than the other housemates?
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We wonder whether the investigators were actually looking for DNA in Meredith's room, since they seem to have found it only in the most obvious spots -- the victim's body, its immediate environment, and her purse. Have they ever reported finding any unidentified DNA in Meredith's room, of which there should have been plenty?
 
pilot padron said:
<snip>2) halides1 has been one of the most vocal in championing the charade that Marriott does nothing more than act as a scheduler for the Edda and Curt 'acts' on US TV.
Many others acknowledge that Marriott is indeed an impenetrable gate guard for any and all media family access, and in fact does *lots* more.
In fact Marriott 'showcases' the 'lots more' he himself does for Knox on his self promotional sales oriented web page.<snip>
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PMF, TJMK and other guilter commentators are alive and well. Doesn't that refute the claim that Marriott has some special powers over the information that is accessible?
 
shuttlt said:
I don't see that this would prevent the police and the prosecutor from corruptly manipulating the evidence if they wanted to. It would make it harder, sure, but they could still do it, particularly if they were working with the lab. Planting the evidence is never going to be ruled out.
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Having the police, prosecution and lab working together as is apparent in this case is asking for problems. It doesn't need to rise to the level of a conspiracy but simple confirmation bias when one "knows" what the results are supposed to be.

Timely collection and securing of the evidence goes a long way to eliminating the window for planting evidence. If the evidence is bagged before anyone has an opportunity to assess who could be a suspect, then there is a high probability that planted evidence will conflict with the fingered suspects alibi which would point a very damning finger back at whoever had the opportunity to do such planting. In this case however, we have a knife unpacked and repackaged in the police station after the suspects had been interrogated and arrested and the bra clasp that was discovered the day after the crime was supposedly not collected until 47 days later after all the other evidence failed to link Raffaele to the scene.


If the bra and knife DNA evidence are upheld and the possibility of contamination is rejected and the computer evidence proves Raffaele could not have left his apartment that night, what is left to explain the existence of the evidence?
 
My personal view of Sollecito's diary entry is the same as it was in the first thread we had here. He was told something he could not comprehend (Kercher's DNA on a knife in his house) and consequently made up a story to explain it away. In other words, yes, it was a lie.
 
Dan O. said:
Having the police, prosecution and lab working together as is apparent in this case is asking for problems. It doesn't need to rise to the level of a conspiracy but simple confirmation bias when one "knows" what the results are supposed to be.

Timely collection and securing of the evidence goes a long way to eliminating the window for planting evidence. If the evidence is bagged before anyone has an opportunity to assess who could be a suspect, then there is a high probability that planted evidence will conflict with the fingered suspects alibi which would point a very damning finger back at whoever had the opportunity to do such planting. In this case however, we have a knife unpacked and repackaged in the police station after the suspects had been interrogated and arrested and the bra clasp that was discovered the day after the crime was supposedly not collected until 47 days later after all the other evidence failed to link Raffaele to the scene.


If the bra and knife DNA evidence are upheld and the possibility of contamination is rejected and the computer evidence proves Raffaele could not have left his apartment that night, what is left to explain the existence of the evidence?
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If
 
shuttlt said:
You think it's to be expected that Amanda would track back Meredith's DNA to Raffaele's so that it leaves as clean a sample as we have in this case? It strikes me as something that is a question for the experts in the case rather than people's expectations, but to me it seems like this.... Think of all the things Amanda would have touched in the course of the day. None of them make it onto the knife, somehow it's a Meredith's DNA. It's just like the bra clasp, it boggles my mind that this seems like the expected result to people.
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No, I didn't say I expected it. I say I cannot exclude it beyond reasonable doubt and it's just one factor to consider about the knife. I don't know how clean that sample was, but from all accounts it was extremely small.

To make a full argument about the knife you have to consider two hypotheses explaining the lab result
1) because knife was the weapon
2) all the other possible reasons

now for 1) we must take into account: the wounds it didn't fit, the imprint it didn't match, negative test for blood, improbability of the "two knives" and the "knife transported to the cottage and back to the drawer" theory, the questionable circumstances of lab testing etc.

for 2) we must consider a sum of possibilities - transfer by AK or RS before or after the murder occured, transfer by investigators on the spot or at the questura, tampering with evidence, contamination or other error at the lab, etc.

Now answer yourself which of it has higher subjective probability to you and if you can exclude 2) beyond reasonable doubt.
 
Katody Matrass said:
Now answer yourself which of it has higher subjective probability to you and if you can exclude 2) beyond reasonable doubt.
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I don't know, but if it got there via accidental contamination, my money is on the lab. All this tracking it back to Raffaele's on her hands seems like nonsense to me.
 
shuttlt said:
I don't know, but if it got there via accidental contamination, my money is on the lab. All this tracking it back to Raffaele's on her hands seems like nonsense to me.
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Touch DNA transfer is definitely an existing and proven phenomenon but yes we cannot exclude the lab, given that Stefanoni:
- had tested lots of Meredith's DNA samples already
- herself shuttled between the murder room in the cottage and her lab
 
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