Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

Continued from here (which continued from here which was a continuation from here), with the last page of posts transferred over to the new thread.

All the many warnings made in that thread still apply. Nobody wants to see this thread set back to Moderated Status, or summarily closed. Please - everyone - ensure that your posts remain civil, on topic, and in accordance with the terms of your Membership Agreement.

Posted By: Locknar

John: is it your belief that chain of custody of the evidence was violated or broken?

If so, did the Knox legal team raise that objection.

If so, what was the ruling?

If not, what have you done to alert her legal team of this issue in her appeal process?

If nothing, why not?

(If you have, tip of the cap).

I continue to note the usual BFA nature of this discussion. http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7397095&postcount=227

Darth Rotor,

Some of us send the defense information in addition to posting here. The forensic team did not change gloves frequently, did not use disposable tweezers, and did handle the clasp too much. It was dusty when it was retrieved, which may have added to its DNA content. Judge Massei thought that the forensic evidence was unassailable and did not grant the defense things that he should have, IMO.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

halides,

You actually think the judges are going to "study" the lesser peaks.

Conti and Vecchiotti were given months on end to study the clasp information and the only concrete finding is confirmation that the victim and Sollecito's traces are on the clasp. Plus "minor contributors" with a Y-haplotype. And these minor contributors are indefinite alleles.

C&V say the clasp reading is "unreliable" because of an academic disagreement over "stutter" as Stefanoni says or sure as sin them things ain't stutter but "alleles" as C&V say.

Suddenly the judges are instant "scientists" wise in the ways of the peaks, alleles, stutters, Y-haplotypes, secondary and tertiary transfer?

The judges will be looking at Sollecito's stuff on the clasp. The rest is scientific opinion in a manner of degree, not substance.

Piktor,

Do you mean that the alleles are not atttributed to a particular individual? The question is how they got there. If they got there by secondary transfer or contamination then so could Sollecito's. Stefanoni's calling certain peaks stutter is very strange. If Conti and Vecchiotti are able to make that point to Judge Hellmann clearly, the bra clasp becomes almost worthless as evidence against Sollecito. MOO.

 

[LondonJohn]

Hi everyone,
Babie Nadeau has a new article out, and she writes of this:


Link:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...t&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_source=SNS.analytics

Does Barbie Nadeau know something that you nor I do not?
Rudy Guede left ample quantity of his semen in Meredith Kercher's bedroom?

Hmmmm,
RWVBWL

By the way, Latza Nadeau also still doesn't understand the definitions of "direct evidence" and "circumstantial evidence". She writes this:

Without the knife and the bra clasp, all the remaining evidence linking Knox to the crime is circumstantial.

But the knife and the bra clasp are also circumstantial evidence. As a reminder, the only evidence which is "direct evidence" is evidence which, in and of itself, directly proves the criminal charge if it (the evidence) is shown to be true. Therefore, in practice, direct evidence only consists of properly-obtained confessions, testimony of witnesses to the actual crime in progress, or video/photographic recordings of the crime in progress.

Everything else is circumstantial evidence. And that includes all fingerprint evidence, all DNA evidence ("professional defence lawyers" - or paralegals - take note!), all witness testimony where the witness didn't see the crime in progress, any ballistics evidence (where applicable), all autopsy findings, all blood/semen/hair evidence, all footprint evidence........ basically everything except the very narrowly-defined range of evidence which can be defined as "direct".

 

[JREF2010]

For me it does look more like a dismissal:

Relative to Item 165B (bra clasps), we find that the technical analysis is not reliable for the following reasons:

Pretty simple and clear statement on their findings.

I wasn't aware their findings are up for debate or attacks by Maresca and Stefonani.

No one needs to hear from them. Its their data that was being reviewed.
They already spoke.

Same for the Defense, because we already know they think the work is all bad, we dont need to hear from them either. Right?

So is it my incorrect or correct, the Judge Hellman experts very purpose was to study the DNA and become the "neutral party" who settles the dispute between the prosecution and defense?

 

[Draca]

Hi everyone,
Babie Nadeau has a new article out, and she writes of this:


Link:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...t&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_source=SNS.analytics

Does Barbie Nadeau know something that you nor I do not?
Rudy Guede left ample quantity of his semen in Meredith Kercher's bedroom?

Hmmmm,
RWVBWL

One of the Flying Thug Squad or Mignini probably told her when they went out for drinks. Wouldn't surprise me if it was tested and found to be Guede's.

 

[JREF2010]

One of the Flying Thug Squad or Mignini probably told her when they went out for drinks. Wouldn't surprise me if it was tested and found to be Guede's.

Looks like another person for Stefanoni to sue, I imagine Maresca will take the case.

The jury will hear for the first time just how badly the Italian forensic team mishandled this case- Barbie Latza Nadeau

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Conti and Vecchiotti

I continue to note the usual BFA nature of this discussion. http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7397095&postcount=227

Darth Rotor,

You were one of the earliest commenters on this subject. Has any recent information, such as the Conti Vecchiotti report, changed your opinions about this case, and if so, how? If not, then what would change your opinion?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

One of the Flying Thug Squad or Mignini probably told her when they went out for drinks. Wouldn't surprise me if it was tested and found to be Guede's.

It wouldn't surprise me either - nothing would surprise me about the incompetence, corruption or simple disregard for basic human decency of the prosecution team at this stage given all we know already - but it would be an incredibly serious ethical breach if the police had forensic data in hand to show that the putative semen stain was a real semen stain which had been tied to Rudy and they concealed this from the court.

It would also mean that they had done Rudy a huge favour by concealing this evidence at his trial, since knock-down evidence that he had sexually assaulted Meredith after she was fatally wounded until he climaxed would (you would think) count as an aggravating circumstance that would have gotten him the maximum 30-year sentence instead of the lighter 24-year sentence he got (reduced to 16 by the fast-track mechanism).

However such a serious accusation really needs to be backed up by something more than the word of Barbie Nadeau in my view. The allegation should be investigated, to be sure, but Barbie's sloppy enough that she could easily have just gotten confused.

 

[komponisto]

Where does she get the temerity?

The chutzpah of Barbie Nadeau is breathtaking:

This could easily be Knox’s last birthday behind bars—a notion nearly unimaginable just a few months ago

Unimaginable a few months ago? Only perhaps in the mind of an ostrich like her, whose head has been buried so deeply into the sand that she has managed to completely miss the point of what has been going on in that Perugia courtroom despite being physically present there, and who for all this time has done nothing but disdain the large movement of people who have raised serious criticisms of the case against Knox and Sollecito.

And now she has the gall to "inform" the rest of us that Knox has a strong appeal case, as if it were breaking news?

True to form, she tops her audacity off with a dash of self-contradictory incoherence:

This could easily be Knox’s last birthday behind bars—a notion nearly unimaginable just a few months ago. Yet now there is a very good chance that she will be released this fall. The Italian legal system allows all convicts an automatic appeal, and Knox’s is proving to be a game changer. On Monday, independent experts will present a report to Knox’s appellate judges, questioning the credibility of key evidence used against her. No one knows for sure what the two appellate judges and six-layperson jury will do when they deliberate her case at the end of September, but in Italy, 50 percent of all criminal cases change on appeal—usually to the benefit of the convicted—and that means Knox’s bid for freedom is a very real possibility.

If 50% of cases change on appeal, then it wasn't "unimaginable" to begin with. To say nothing of the numerous specific reasons for thinking that the prosecution case is weak, which somehow are only now beginning to come to the attention of Ms. Nadeau despite having been loudly trumpeted by innocentisti from almost the very beginning.

Is this "unimaginable" business the closest we're going to get to an admission from Nadeau that she was wrong? That the entire body of her reporting on this case up to this point has been fundamentally misleading, with the narrative it presented stemming from her own misjudgement of the evidence, a misjudgement not shared by numerous people to whom she has displayed nothing but contempt?

 

[RoseMontague]

Frank Sfarzo in his recent blogpsot wrote
How about suing Conti & Vecchiotti, too?

Well, it seems his insight is not failing him:

Forensic scientist threatens to sue after her work on Meredith Kercher murder is attacked in Amanda Knox appeal report

Somehow I don't think Hellmann is going to appreciate his hand-picked independent experts being threatened. Attacking the experts integrity is going to backfire, in my opinion.

 

[Antony]

It wouldn't surprise me either - nothing would surprise me about the incompetence, corruption or simple disregard for basic human decency of the prosecution team at this stage given all we know already - but it would be an incredibly serious ethical breach if the police had forensic data in hand to show that the putative semen stain was a real semen stain which had been tied to Rudy and they concealed this from the court.

That's true, but is it any more believable that they didn't test the semen stain, than that they didn't record the crucial all-night interrogation session on Nov 5-6?

It would also mean that they had done Rudy a huge favour by concealing this evidence at his trial, since knock-down evidence that he had sexually assaulted Meredith after she was fatally wounded until he climaxed would (you would think) count as an aggravating circumstance that would have gotten him the maximum 30-year sentence instead of the lighter 24-year sentence he got (reduced to 16 by the fast-track mechanism).

The behaviour of the investigation team throughout indicates that they were focussing on finding, and making public, "evidence" against Amanda and Raff, and not against Guede. The fact that they filmed themselves histrionically "finding" the bra-clasp, which miraculously yielded Raff's DNA, is a very strong sign that they already knew that the stain on the pillow would not help them.

However such a serious accusation really needs to be backed up by something more than the word of Barbie Nadeau in my view. The allegation should be investigated, to be sure, but Barbie's sloppy enough that she could easily have just gotten confused.

This latest article by BLN seems to show a sea-change in her attitude to the case.

 

[RoseMontague]

A very informative post from Frank:

http://perugiashock.com/2011/07/23/the-war-over-dna/

He is predicting a DNA war. Nice information on the importance of the once missing raw data as well.

 

[LondonJohn]

A very informative post from Frank:

http://perugiashock.com/2011/07/23/the-war-over-dna/

He is predicting a DNA war. Nice information on the importance of the once missing raw data as well.

Reading this post of Frank's, together with his responses to comments, I am coming to a very odd conclusion: I think that Frank actually believes that Stefanoni deliberately messed up the testing/interpretation of the knife and bra clasp! I think that Frank's reasoning is something along the following lines:

1) Stefanoni suspected that the entire case against Knox/Sollecito was invalid.

2) Furthermore, she knew that the knife and bra clasp were of little or no probative value in the case.

3) However, she knew that she needed to "appear" to support the prosecution case - by ostensibly showing that the knife and clasp were strong evidence against Knox and Sollecito.

4) But here comes the "clever" part: she deliberately made errors in the testing and interpretation procedures (no positive/negative controls, no low-template special testing environment/protocols, incorrect and inappropriate interpretation of the raw data).

5) By doing so, Stefanoni reasoned that the first trial would declare her results invalid - thereby getting her the ultimate "result" that she was looking for, while still making it appear that she was doing the prosecutors' bidding!

6) Imagine Stefanoni's surprise when Massei's court accepted her results completely at face value! Her dastardly plot was foiled! But thank goodness for the appeal trial and the independent DNA report: now her plan has finally come to fruition......

If the above is anywhere near to Frank's reasoning, I really don't understand why he is getting himself into such far-fetched thinking and near-incredibility. I think that Frank has formulated an overarching view of who's to blame for the miscarriage of justice: the Perugia Flying Squad. And everyone else - Mignini, Comodi, Stefanoni et al - is either an unwitting victim of the Flying Squad's duplicitous behaviour, or has a strategy that will culminate in his/her own exoneration and Knox's/Sollecito's acquittals.

Regarding Stefanoni, it should be entirely clear to anyone with any powers of logic and reasoning that she was incompetent and obstructive in this case. It beggars belief, frankly (no pun intended), that she would have deliberately chosen to be exposed as incompetent and obstructive - purely in order to perpetuate a pretence that she was doing all she could to help the prosecutors and her fellow police. I think that Frank is now starting to expose himself in an attempt to defend a prior hypothesis ("it's all the fault of the Perugia Flying Squad"). He needs to accept that the fault lies in many different areas of the Italian law enforcement community.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Ms. Nadeau wrote, "It has been a career maker for many more—anonymous bloggers are now book authors, and lawyers affiliated with the case have become some of the most sought-after in the country." Neither Mark Waterbury nor Bruce Fisher are anonymous. To whom does she refer? Or is Nadeau not her real name?

 

[Kaosium]

Wrong link on the Stefanoni threatening to sue. Here ya go: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/24/amanda-knox-dna-appeal-threat.

The experts quote numerous US police and FBI experts on the risk of low DNA results and poor evidence handling, prompting one Italian police source to claim they were being fed information by Knox's defence team.

This is interesting, I wonder who this 'police source' could be? The whole article is about Stefanoni, there's little evidence any one else was interviewed, I wonder if this was 'off the record?'

Three days of hearings! I thought it originally was just the 25th, when did this change?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

RoseMontague,

The figures in Frank's post are quite helpful. The peaks that Stefanoni apparently marked as stutters do not make any sense to me. Stutters almost always appear one repeat unit shorter than the main peak (to the left of the main peak in an electropherogram). I also found the information about Dr. Novelli helpful.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

more on the phenomenono of stutter

The figures in Frank Sfarzo's post are quite helpful. The peaks that Stefanoni apparently marked as stutters do not make any sense to me. Stutters almost always appear one repeat unit shorter than the main peak (to the left of the main peak in an electropherogram). Stutter varies from one locus to the next and is larger for larger alleles within a locus:

“It is clear that, within a locus, as the repeat cluster grows in length, the average stutter value increases, as observed in other studies (5,10). A case could be made that allele specific stutter % thresholds should be used, but for uncommon alleles, too few data points are available to establish statistically relevant median and SD values.”

Benoˆıt Leclair Ph.D.; Chantal J. Fr´egeau Ph.D.; Kathy L. Bowen, B.Sc.; and Ron M. Fourney, Ph.D., Systematic Analysis of Stutter Percentages and Allele Peak Height and Peak Area Ratios at Heterozygous STR Loci for Forensic Casework and Database Samples,” Journal of Forensic Science, Sept. 2004, Vol. 49, No. 5

 

[Kaosium]

Well, well, well. So La Stefanoni has chosen the "come out fighting" approach. She will live to regret that choice, in my view.

Here's something interesting from the Guardian article (my bolding):




How curious it is to see Stefanoni making such claims. After all, the Conti/Vecchiotti report makes explicit reference to the European Crime Scene Management Good Practice Manual - issued by..... you've guessed it...... the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI)! The DNA report states that Stefanoni (and her "crack" team) failed to follow numerous standard procedures and protocols from this manual (and all the others they referenced) in their identification, collection, handling, transportation, storage and testing of the knife and bra clasp.

This attempt by Stefanoni to defend herself against Conti's/Vecchiotti's allegations is a near-farcical turn of events, and certainly one worthy of a Greek tragedy. My prediction is that Stefanoni will go down in flames over this whole issue, and I further predict that the prosecution/police will start to turn on each other in last-ditch efforts to salvage their reputations. Aside from the main outcome of the appeal process - the entirely correct acquittals of Knox and Sollecito - I think there could be a somewhat entertaining (if ultimately tragic) sideshow.

I think Stefanoni is about to find out why those 'standards' or 'protocols' she now decries exist: to prevent anyone from doing precisely what she did in the case of the bra clasp. It is especially amusing to see her plant her flag upon the ideals of the ENFCI, I wonder what an auditor from that organization would think of her methods, if she can't even follow their manual with anything approaching understanding...

 

[piktor]

She says stutter, she says allele

Piktor,

Do you mean that the alleles are not atttributed to a particular individual? The question is how they got there. If they got there by secondary transfer or contamination then so could Sollecito's. Stefanoni's calling certain peaks stutter is very strange. If Conti and Vecchiotti are able to make that point to Judge Hellmann clearly, the bra clasp becomes almost worthless as evidence against Sollecito. MOO.

Halides,

"Circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact."

"Forensic evidence supplied by an expert witness is usually circumstantial evidence."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstantial_evidence

With this in mind, what are the judges expecting in a violent assault and murder- pristine, ideal, sterile lab conditions or are they expecting a mess and a search for clues amidst this contaminated mess?

Things happened as they did, inside a not a pretty or scientifically controlled picture, or under rigorous lab conditions. The key in a case like this is the different elements found by investigators and later testimony in court, including corroborating experts, working to a coherent narrative that explains the victim's death and who is responsible.

Contamination is to be expected in a violent assault and murder. The problem for Sollecito is just how it fits within the narrative. Is it completely unexpected that Sollecito's traces appear on the clasp or not?

The "allele" versus "stutter" discussion will mean "contamination" to the judges ears. The judges are not scientists to determine if one expert's explanation is more accurate than the other's. The judges will use their common sense and call it a draw.

The only reality is the clasp, the findings on it and the experts on all sides of the argument agreeing Sollecito's traces are on it.

 

[JREF2010]

I read the Stefanoni bits, its interesting she uses the "Italy Police are a member of...." as her shield.

Her approach is that because the country of Italy has the police forces who are a member of a distinguished group, that she should not be questioned at all because she is a member of this group.

Because I am a member, I am perfect.

an elitist attitude?