Continuation Part 2 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Onofarar]

Those links are irrelevant as I don't think that Amanda was in the room when the murder happened.
In my version Rudy is the murderer, Amanda not in the room, Raffaele likely not even in the cottage at the moment of the murder.

Absolutely! You wouldn't want any new facts to affect your predetermined view.

 

[Kaosium]

Every cell phone I have had has the time set by the cell phone company. The call times are recorded by the company time, in any case. It is not based on the internal clock of the cell phone in question.

Do I have this wrong then? I was under the impression the call at 8:56 was recovered from the cell phone memory and the signal never connected with the tower, thus there is no record of it. It has been my experience as well that the tower automatically sets the clock, but it that necessarily true in Italy? Katody posted the cell phone memory times and they didn't seem to match with the tower records, thus I was thinking it possible the cell phone time was off.

Come to think of it, I've never taken a cell phone to a foreign country. Perhaps it is not the same type of signal to automatically reset the time on the phone? Does anyone know if there is a universal standard for this?

 

[shuttlt]

I don't believe I know anyone who hasn't lied about something. I don't believe they killed anybody however. Personally, I think the more pressure you undergo the greater the chance is that you will lie. Were the cops under some pressure as well?

Some people look at Amanda and Raffaele's actions around the interrogation and see a couple of people who tried to ******** a murder inquiry and have never given an honest account of why they did it. I would put myself in that category. Clearly other people don't see it that way. I don't think whether somebody strikes you as dishonest is something that can easily be reduced to evidence and logic. We just need to empathize with people who perceive them differently. Presumably the court in the first trial took the view that they were liars. If the second court take that view as well things may still not go how people expect if they reason from a starting point of Amanda and Raffaele being honest and good.

Even if the TOD stuff clears them, the people who have thought they did it will probably still think that they tried to ******** the murder inquiry all that time ago and that Knox and her family have been lying about it ever since.

[the profanity filter seems to have made my post a little illegible. "********" should say "deceive"]

 

[Katody Matrass]

Those links are irrelevant as I don't think that Amanda was in the room when the murder happened.
In my version Rudy is the murderer, Amanda not in the room, Raffaele likely not even in the cottage at the moment of the murder.

Why didn't she and Raffaele tell the truth then?
They'll be out already with time served, just like that guy who killed Sarah Scazzi, as they are not guilty of murder.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

those pesky electronic data files

shuttlt,

Thank you for your very kind words. I have only a little bit of time today, but I concur with LondonJohn that it is unlikely that the Rome experts could have done their analysis without the EDFs. When one scales an electropherogram so that large peaks are on scale, small peaks are very difficult to see, and that is the case with the bra clasp DNA. With the EDFs and the appropriate software, one can zoom in on the small peaks more easily and see how tall they are, whether they look like blobs or real peaks and whatnot. I think if Dan Krane had obtained the EDFs, he would have written a report that is similar to the one written by Conti and Vecchiotti.

 

[ForTruth]

Looking at the dramatic turn of events today in the Domonique Strauss-Kahn case is a reminder that many of Americans do acknowledge that investigators and prosecutors often get overzealous in cases there as well.
The difference in this case (and not all American cases!) is that the prosecution seems to be heading down the path of dropping charges.
I can't yet post links, but see the top story on MSNBC "STRAUSS-KAHN CASE ON VERGE OF COLLAPSE, SOURCES SAY"
The interviewed defense attorney makes a good point about guilty until proven innocent.

My point related to this case is that this is a reminder/lesson for the police and prosecution in Perugia on what should have happened in December of 2007 when they dug in on the idea and Amanda and Raffaele were guilty and went back to the cottage to "find" more evidence.

 

[bolint]

Why didn't she and Raffaele tell the truth then?
They'll be out already with time served, just like that guy who killed Sarah Scazzi, as they are not guilty of murder.

Because all their families and lawyers told them and tell them "Be strong, we get you out".
And it is not sure that they would have been let out like Misseri, because of the US citizenship of Amanda.

that guy who killed Sarah Scazzi

Did he kill her?

 

[komponisto]

Those links are irrelevant as I don't think that Amanda was in the room when the murder happened.
In my version Rudy is the murderer, Amanda not in the room, Raffaele likely not even in the cottage at the moment of the murder.

No, they are not irrelevant, and there is frankly no way that you could have read them all and digested their contents in that amount of time. Read them! They contain information that you didn't know or weren't taking into account.

Read them in reverse order. Start with the one on "entanglement". Make sure you understand the principle that in order for event X to be evidence of event Y, there has to be a physical trail leading from Y to X. Spell out the causal chain of events that you think led from Amanda's supposed presence at the cottage to her statements at the police station. Be prepared to compare the likelihood of that scenario with alternative scenarios leading to the same result.

Then proceed to the one on the affect heuristic. Understand that your reaction of "Ugh! I am appalled by Amanda Knox's behavior!" does not constitute significant evidence that she killed Meredith Kercher (unless you can specifically link the behavior to the crime in a logical fashion, as per the above discussion of entanglement).

Finally, read the comment I made earlier, and put all this together. We have physical evidence about what happened in the room. We know that Guede was there. We have an adequate explanation for Meredith's death. By Occam's Razor, we should not postulate any more guilt to go around without a compelling reason. Now, in view of what we know from many other cases about coercive interrogations, false confessions, and -- most importantly -- the general fallibity of human memory and the fact that people are very easily manipulated -- ask yourself whether you think that whatever scenario you came up with in the first step above is so vastly more likely than any alternative that it requires us to assume that a 20-year-old female college student with no criminal history is somehow complicit in the murder of a roommate with whom she had nothing but friendly relations by a man whose name she did not know, whose language she could hardly speak, and whom she had seen perhaps twice in her life.

If you think your scenario truly is that much more likely than the alternative of "Knox's statements are complete nonsense uttered with no malice or intent to deceive, produced by aggressive, coercive, and manipulative police interrogation", then I would really like to hear your reasoning, because if you're correct I would expect to have a learning experience on the sort of scale that only occurs once or twice in a lifetime.

 

[Kestrel]

Is the flat the only place somebody walking by this garage in that direction will go? Maybe I am just not understanding this if somebody could help me?

Yes, the cottage is the only reasonable destination for someone heading in that direction. Someone could decide to walk down the road in a traffic lane, but if a car shows up there is no place to get out of the way. If I recall correctly, there is a sign telling pedestrians to go up the parking lot ramp.

Given the time, it's almost certainly Meredith. She leaves Sophie at 8:55, and attempts to call her mother one minute later. But at that time, she is on a narrow street and her phone doesn't connect to the tower. From where she left Sophie, it's about 500 meters to the cottage. She does not take the shortcut, a dark tunnel to the upper parking lot deck, so the walk home takes a bit longer. (The CCTV image shows her coming from the right direction for the longer route). She passes in front of the CCTV between 9:01 and 9:03 and heads down the driveway to the cottage. Rudy Guede is already inside.

 

[Kaosium]

Kaosium, I have fooled around with those prints many, many times in various software programs, tracing the outlines while zoomed in and overlaying them on the bathmat print. I could not get either print to be a conclusive match based on these photographs and decided it was not possible to positively attribute them to either suspect. I would have liked to analyze the actual bathmat with transparent overlays of the two actual footprints to make a determination either way but of course that's not possible. Perhaps an unknown accomplice made it?

I think perhaps a partial print that might not have been made with uniform pressure isn't necessarily going to line up perfectly anyway. I think it looks a bit more like Rudy's, but I also see portions that don't line up like you also note. I don't see how it could definitively matched to anyone, but less so Raffaele than Rudy. I think the corroborating evidence suggests it is his, but even that is somewhat anomalous for reasons we've discussed.

As for an unknown accomplice, that is possible as there are vague suggestions on the periphery of this case someone else might be involved, however nothing has ever been released indicating another presence in the murder room itself, which is where you'd figure all that blood on the foot must have come from. I don't see a source outside that room that could have produced enough blood to make that stain. You'd think they'd be required to disclose whether there were additional DNA traces in the murder room to the defense, like they did the .fsa files, the TMB negatives...oh wait.

 

[Katody Matrass]

shuttlt,

Thank you for your very kind words. I have only a little bit of time today, but I concur with LondonJohn that it is unlikely that the Rome experts could have done their analysis without the EDFs. When one scales an electropherogram so that large peaks are on scale, small peaks are very difficult to see, and that is the case with the bra clasp DNA. With the EDFs and the appropriate software, one can zoom in on the small peaks more easily and see how tall they are, whether they look like blobs or real peaks and whatnot. I think if Dan Krane had obtained the EDFs, he would have written a report that is similar to the one written by Conti and Vecchiotti.

Interestingly the experts emphasize (with some satisfaction I think) the dates on which they received particular pieces of data. For example much of it they received on 11th of May 2011 and 29th of April 2011.

If you recall, judge Hellmann ordered Patrizia to finally release her data in a letter dated April 14, 2011.

 

[Katody Matrass]

Because all their families and lawyers told them and tell them "Be strong, we get you out".
And it is not sure that they would have been let out like Misseri, because of the US citizenship of Amanda.

IIRC He served his time already for "hiding the body" or whatever.

Did he kill her?

Naah, of course not, it's his wife and daughter who are witches.



Anyway, what exactly are AK and RS guilty of in your version?

 

[bolint]

IIRC He served his time already for "hiding the body" or whatever.

No. Only the remand time for that crime expired. He is waiting for the trial yet to come. He'll get a few years.

"Naah, of course not, it's his wife and daughter who are witches."

Mignini rides again, this time in Avetrana?

Anyway, what exactly are AK and RS guilty of in your version

I don't know the right legal category.
Minimally of not helping, not reporting, some clean up, perjury, false accusation, obstructing justice, etc.
But not murder.
Amanda more involved than Raffaele.

 

[Katody Matrass]

No. Only the remand time for that crime expired. He is waiting for the trial yet to come. He'll get a few years.

Mignini rides again, this time in Avetrana?

In a sense. I guess we can say it like this, but let's not go OT.

I don't know the right legal category.
Minimally of not helping, not reporting, some clean up, perjury, false accusation, obstructing justice, etc.
But not murder.
Amanda more involved than Raffaele.

Let's not mix up everything, I was asking about the feral night of course. You mean Amanda witnessed a rape and murder and didn't help, and then Raffaele get to know and didn't report it? Right?

 

[Dan O.]

Do I have this wrong then? I was under the impression the call at 8:56 was recovered from the cell phone memory and the signal never connected with the tower, thus there is no record of it. It has been my experience as well that the tower automatically sets the clock, but it that necessarily true in Italy? Katody posted the cell phone memory times and they didn't seem to match with the tower records, thus I was thinking it possible the cell phone time was off.

You need only to find one event that was recorded both in the phones memory and by the network to establish the accuracy of the clock in the phone. This information would be available to the police examining the records and I believe it is covered in Massei.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Scientific American blog on the forensics of this case

CSI effect discussed here. The article is slanted, but the references look interesting.

 

[bolint]

Let's not mix up everything, I was asking about the feral night of course. You mean Amanda witnessed a rape and murder and didn't help, and then Raffaele get to know and didn't report it? Right?

Yes, added that on the same night or next morning there was some clean up and cover up.

 

[komponisto]

CSI effect is good

CSI effect discussed here. The article is slanted, but the references look interesting.

My ire is always raised when people speak about the "CSI effect" with the implication that juries are somehow excessively skeptical of prosecution cases. On the contrary -- and as the Knox case and the way people talk about it amply shows -- people's natural inclination is to give far too much weight to psychological and behavioral "evidence", often convicting defendants because of witness testimony (notoriously unreliable) or because the defendant did not behave the way others thought they "should". If anything there isn't enough of a "CSI effect". As a commenter on my Less Wrong post put it,

Given the number of convicted people who were later exonerated by DNA evidence it isn't obvious to me that juries expecting physical evidence is a bad thing. One thing entailed by komponisto's discussion of the emphasis humans put social and mental facts is that the pre-CSI judicial system assigned too much weight to such facts and likely imprisoned innocent people. And it turns out they really did imprison innocent people. So maybe it is the judicial system's bias, not komponisto's...

I myself, by the way, have never seen the show CSI.

I have not followed the Casey Anthony case, but the other day I tuned into a discussion on a news show that discusses such things (in the vain hope there would be a mention of the Conti/Vecchiotti news). I immediately noticed that all of the discussion was about things such as whether the defendant had shown adequate "grief" (with the host of the show scoffing at an apparent defense implication that "jurors need to have it explained to them what grief is"), and the fact that she was seen repetitively clicking her pen while seated in the courtroom.

So much for the "CSI effect".

 

[shuttlt]

I don't see that the "lies" at the police station need much of an explanation. I've known enough people who lie routinely to get out of trouble. Nobody keeps a record of exactly what they said, or compares notes so they get away with it because on the surface they appear so nice. Put somebody like that under pressure in a police station where what they say is checked and they might be stupid enough to try and charm their way out of it and tell a bunch of lies. A small lie, needs a bigger lie to support it and the whole thing gets out of control. Or something else could have happened... Anyway, I don't see that there needs to be much of a thought through reason behind any lie.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The CSI effect can work against the defense, as well as for it

Komponisto,

I agree with you about forensic versus behavioral evidence. I would only like to add that the Scientific American article implies that the CSI effect only runs in one direction. This is false, and the present case is a good illustration of the problem. When they hear that the prosecutor has DNA evidence, some defense attorneys say they start looking to make a plea deal. This ignores the fact that many DNA profiles are partials, and many samples show a mixture of two or more persons’ DNA. Moreover, DNA does not carry a time stamp, nor a message saying whether it was deposited via primary or secondary transfer, or even from contamination. The presence of DNA evidence is not a permission slip to the jury to check their brains at the courthouse door.

If nothing else, this case teaches us that rules requiring the discovery of the electronic data files in cases where DNA evidence is introduced, is absolutely essential to a fair trial; without them, it is questionable whether or not Conti and Vecchiotti could have produced the detailed analysis that they did.

This article also had a picture of a bloody knife as a graphic at the top of the page. Sollecito’s ordinary kitchen knife tested negative for blood. It is very unlikely that a knife that was used in a murder would be cleaned in such a way that blood would be removed but that DNA from the crime would remain.