Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

Piktor,

You have a fondness for the concept of narrative. For me to have a higher confidence in the prosecution's narrative, they would have had to have found Raffaele's DNA on more of the bra itself (as his lawyer's pointed out in 2008) or on Meredith's wrists (for example) or both. On the other hand many other narratives can account for Raffaele's DNA, such as his DNA being on the towels that Rudi brought into Meredith's room. If the towel covered the clasp and was stepped on (accounting for its deformation), then the DNA would have arrived via overall secondary transfer, as Katy_did suggested long ago.

 

[Katody Matrass]

"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."

Exactly, there's where the weakness is regarding both the clasp and the knife. Even before independent review it was clear that the evidence is invalid, because no inference to connect those findings to the crime can be reasonably made.

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?

What was definitely preventable (if not unexpected) was the mess that have been created after the crime by the police trashing and trampling the scene and by scientifica geniuses giving a group massage with dirty gloves to that bra clasp.

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.

Again, spot on! There is no coherent narrative for the knife, when you have to concede that the wounds and the bloody imprint were done with another blade, when you have to introduce crazy theories to explain how the knife got there at all and why and how it got back to the drawer with starch where the blood was expected.

There's even less chance to piece together a story for the clasp - when the only DNA on the bra itself belonged to the victim and Guede, when there is not a single trace of anyone else there and heaps of evidence for Guede's presence. More so, you can't come up with anything resembling a coherent narrative putting the two together with Guede there. You cannot even place AK and RS there because they have alibi for the only reasonable ToD.

Contamination is to be expected in a violent assault and murder.

Contamination is also to be expected when cops trash the scene for a month and a half, and then pull out circus with walking a gift wrapped mop around and fondling the evidence wit their dirty fingers. So if we add to it the expected contamination from before and during the crime, what is it that is left?

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?

Cynics will say that it is completely expected, given that he's already arrested with a "caso chiuso" triumphantly announced and suddenly the only piece of evidence against him is no longer there, prompting a desperate excursion extraordinaire to get something new to keep him in jail.

Fortunately for all, contamination with his DNA is also expected and cannot be excluded during every stage of the forensic cabaret that we witnessed from the simple fact that the cottage, the lab and the questura had plenty of his DNA throughout those 46 days the clasp "went missing".

 

[Katody Matrass]

Stefanoni's defensive strategy outlined in the Guardian article is interesting.
Basically she admits she won't tackle the report on it's scientific merits or lack of.
She's going to dig out some old dirt about C&V to attack them personally and she's going to sue them instead.
Finally she's going to prove that while Arizona Highway Patrol guidelines are against gift wrapping mops or massaging evidence with dirty gloves by many excited "specialists", in fact the superior guidelines that she follows advise it as a standard operating procedure.

It's going to be fun when it comes to discussing the guidelines and standards.

 

[piktor]

Lies R Us

Piktor,

You have a fondness for the concept of narrative. For me to have a higher confidence in the prosecution's narrative, they would have had to have found Raffaele's DNA on more of the bra itself (as his lawyer's pointed out in 2008) or on Meredith's wrists (for example) or both. On the other hand many other narratives can account for Raffaele's DNA, such as his DNA being on the towels that Rudi brought into Meredith's room. If the towel covered the clasp and was stepped on (accounting for its deformation), then the DNA would have arrived via overall secondary transfer, as Katy_did suggested long ago.

Halides,

There is no accounting for credible scenarios. The state presented a narrative that gave judges reason to find guilt at the first trial. The two defendants have what- 5, 6, 7 or more versions of a quiet night watching movies.

I find it truly amazing Sollecito would say to investigators his first version of that night was rubbish because Knox told him to say it.

You do not lie in a murder investigation and then expect to get away with it.

The evidence, as presented, points to guilt. The best evidence comes from the defendants themselves.

 

[snook1]

I'm seriously worried about tomorrow.

Stefanoni is so annoying in the Guardian article and she's as low as one would expect.

I'm anxious about what will happen and how it will go for Amanda and Raffaele. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for them and that the defense along with C&V will be well prepared, beacuse apparently there will be lots of arguing in the perugian court tomorrow.

BTW, did the defense ever pointed out on the trial the "map wrapping"?

 

[Diocletus]

Halides,

There is no accounting for credible scenarios. The state presented a narrative that gave judges reason to find guilt at the first trial. The two defendants have what- 5, 6, 7 or more versions of a quiet night watching movies.

I find it truly amazing Sollecito would say to investigators his first version of that night was rubbish because Knox told him to say it.

You do not lie in a murder investigation and then expect to get away with it.

The evidence, as presented, points to guilt. The best evidence comes from the defendants themselves.

How many of these alleged "5, 6, 7 or more versions" are actually admissible/admitted in this proceeding?

 

[Diocletus]

Stefanoni's defensive strategy outlined in the Guardian article is interesting.
Basically she admits she won't tackle the report on it's scientific merits or lack of.
She's going to dig out some old dirt about C&V to attack them personally and she's going to sue them instead.
Finally she's going to prove that while Arizona Highway Patrol guidelines are against gift wrapping mops or massaging evidence with dirty gloves by many excited "specialists", in fact the superior guidelines that she follows advise it as a standard operating procedure.

It's going to be fun when it comes to discussing the guidelines and standards.

It will be interesting.

If I were defense counsel, I would be looking for ways to drive a wedge between the various prosecution factions. Once the infighting starts, the jig will be up for the prosecution's case. One easy way to help the infighting along would be, in questioning Stefanoni, to offer her plenty of opportunities to blame the police for the poor evidence handling (even though Stefanoni is guilty of that, too). She's likely to take the bait, as it appears that she is desperate to protect her reputation.

Another thing I would do is to make sure that I remind the judges about how she never produced the electronic files to the defense and disingenuously tried to withhold them from the court's experts. I would also probably throw in a reference to the TMB lie if I could find the right opportunity. These items would be damaging to her credibility, and it would be very interesting if she indicated that she was being advised by, say, Commodi, on these issues.

 

[Poppy1016]

I have two questions. First, If some claim that RS can be identified on the clasp, why can't others be identified?
Additionally, why has it not been brought up that it is extremely difficult to touch a clasp without touching the fabric of the bra. Now, who was it that handled the clasp only?

 

[Poppy1016]

Another point that Halides1 made. If others are identified on the clasp innocently, why would RS being identified on the clasp, be an automatic sign of guilt? Replies by those believing in guilt are welcome.

 

[Kaosium]

Another thing I would do is to make sure that I remind the judges about how she never produced the electronic files to the defense and disingenuously tried to withhold them from the court's experts. I would also probably throw in a reference to the TMB lie if I could find the right opportunity. These items would be damaging to her credibility, and it would be very interesting if she indicated that she was being advised by, say, Commodi, on these issues.

This would be especially intriguing, as I've been under the assumption it was Commodi who might have been 'advised' by Stefanoni in order to produce the 'turnip juice' line. Those luminol footprints were taken by Stafanoni herself, were they not? They tested negative for blood with TMB, all the footprints negative for DNA, and never subjected to a confirmatory test. That's the sort of thing I would think the forensics specialist would have to be deep in on in order to keep it hidden as long as they did, and who might advise the prosecutor of the 'initial 'positive' for blood, but 'left out' the rest.

 

[Kaosium]

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.

I found this especially interesting:

My tests are real –Stefanoni writes to Perugia Shock– the results don’t come from mistakes. I will defend them for the sake of justice.
It will be an interesting debate. Interesting and useless in our perspective since, as we have seen, Meredith’s DNA and Raffaele’s DNA CAN’T be there. And the tests can never be 100% certain.

It could be Frank is acting as a 'reporter' in this instance, and perhaps has been for a while, in 'representing' Stefanoni's point of view. Like you, I've noticed he seems to focus in on the Squadra Mobile--the 'heroes' of November 6th--and tends to excuse the actions of others, such as Stefanoni and Mignini.

I would feel silly 'defending' Stefanoni's work being as I've no real difference of opinion with you on it, I may even be less impressed than you if that is possible, however it's not something I'd necessarily say to her face, nor write about it in such terms if I knew she was reading my blog...

He does have a point on one thing: the buck doesn't stop with her. It stops with the 'independent' verification of her boss Biondi, and ultimately Mignini and Massei for relying on such suspect work with so little oversight...

 

[Kaosium]

Halides,

There is no accounting for credible scenarios. The state presented a narrative that gave judges reason to find guilt at the first trial. The two defendants have what- 5, 6, 7 or more versions of a quiet night watching movies.

They are undergoing an automatic appeal process in which the conviction based upon dubious evidence and outlandish conjecture has been widely ridiculed. As that 'narrative' is based upon a looney-tune smack dealer and addict who was up for charges that he is now serving time for when he testified in his third murder trial it now being apparent he was talking about a different night, and the 'evidence' found of the accused at the scene discredited, their version of sitting at home watching movies and fooling around as befits college students becomes even more credible, regardless of whether they remember rightly when they had dinner on a night they were both admittedly stoned.

I find it truly amazing Sollecito would say to investigators his first version of that night was rubbish because Knox told him to say it.

Did he actually say this? I've seen different translations of what he supposedly signed, some indicating it was more along the lines of 'influence from the girl' suggesting not as much that she told him to 'lie' but that he just agreed with her regarding what night that was and didn't think about the 'contradictions.' At any rate, regardless of what he signed, he was stoned that night and denied a lawyer, thus it was thrown out by the Supreme Court of Italy, which ought to tell you why they did that: like elsewhere Italy has found that suspects interrogated without lawyers and cameras in the middle of the night might sign just about anything to get themselves out of the situation, thus courts must provide oversight of such corrupt police practices.

You do not lie in a murder investigation and then expect to get away with it.

What if it turns out the cops lied, as can be proven they did already? What should be the penalty for a policeman lying about evidence to the press, or in court in order to provide bogus evidence or a provably untrue sequence of events such as the testimony of Napoleoni, Ficarra and Zugarini?

The evidence, as presented, points to guilt. The best evidence comes from the defendants themselves.

You have a couple of college students that behaved silly after a murder, it doesn't mean they murdered anyone and frankly the police force that succumbed to such inane 'theories' instead of actually catching the murderer, ought to be ashamed of themselves, and those actively involved disciplined.

 

[Kaosium]

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?

What's most telling is where that 'line' comes from...

It comes from the same place that 'procured' an 'expert' for Andrea Vogt two years ago to call defense claims of contamination "groundless." They aren't looking particularly "groundless" now, are they? Perhaps that should have been an indicator that 'source' wasn't especially reliable, or the 'analysis' very foresighted...

Barbie, you got snookered. No use blaming anyone else for being 'mean' about it, or searching for comfort amongst the afflicted, you just got played. Enlightenment begins when you embrace the notion that the police and prosecution just didn't tell you the truth, and you ignored everyone trying to tell you differently because you were sold a bill of goods that those saying so were part of 'conspiracy' against the prosecutor.

 

[Diocletus]

This would be especially intriguing, as I've been under the assumption it was Commodi who might have been 'advised' by Stefanoni in order to produce the 'turnip juice' line. Those luminol footprints were taken by Stafanoni herself, were they not? They tested negative for blood with TMB, all the footprints negative for DNA, and never subjected to a confirmatory test. That's the sort of thing I would think the forensics specialist would have to be deep in on in order to keep it hidden as long as they did, and who might advise the prosecutor of the 'initial 'positive' for blood, but 'left out' the rest.

Somehow, a call was affirmatively made to withhold the electronic data files and to hide the TMB results. My sense is that it would ordinarily be the lawyer who would make such a call. Mignini in one of his recent interviews said that Commodi was the one handling all of the DNA issues, so I'm guessing that there was a strong Commodi-Stefanoni relationship at play here. It does seem that Stefanoni would have had to have fed the turnip juice line to Commodi, but likely in the context of a discussion about how the prosecution would avoid disclosing the TMB results.

 

[RandyN]

Tomorrow we may see how according to slime lawyer Maresca the world is taught a lesson by Italy in DNA analysis.

I think not.

Tomorrow I expect will be anti climatic. The expert report will be read and admitted and the day will be over except to schedule defense argument and prosecution argument for the next two trial days.

Italy doesn’t hold the record for number of Human Rights Violations for nothing. The right to a speedy trial is their biggest violation. The right to a fair trial is their second most numerous violation. Even though Italy is 15 times more likely to violate your Human Rights in a court of law then say a country like Russia which is also tracked… Italy seems immune to any and all sanctions laid out by the European Court Of Human Rights who tracks these violations. How proud the Italians must be of their judiciary.

 

[Rolfe]

Is it actually possible to post in this thread?

I will be very interested to see how it pans out tomorrow, I have to say.

Rolfe.

 

[RoseMontague]

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.

Interesting, that's a complicated and convoluted theory. I have heard several arguments along the lines that if the evidence was planted it would be stronger than the two very weak pieces under discussion. This would seem to be an answer to that one if she deliberately planted very weak evidence. LOL.

It is a real stretch. What is clear to me is that she is in the pocket of the prosecution and her testing and testimony is biased.

 

[Paninaro]

I have a very hard time imagining that the court will see the infamous bra clasp and knife as evidence of any sort against Knox and Sollecito after the independent experts report. Stefanoni can defend herself any way she likes, but reasonable doubt has been established and as circumstancial evidence they will now count for very, very little. Call me an optimist, but I think this is already over. There is no way the judges can come to a guilty verdict now, with the kind of doubt that has been cast over most of the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher and its results.

 

[RoseMontague]

I have a very hard time imagining that the court will see the infamous bra clasp and knife as evidence of any sort against Knox and Sollecito after the independent experts report. Stefanoni can defend herself any way she likes, but reasonable doubt has been established and as circumstancial evidence they will now count for very, very little. Call me an optimist, but I think this is already over. There is no way the judges can come to a guilty verdict now, with the kind of doubt that has been cast over most of the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher and its results.

I hope you are right but there has been hope before that was dashed by reality.

The prosecution will have a strategy in place. I think the suggestions earlier that Maresca is the one to lead the attack on the experts is a good one. Still, the prosecution knows this evidence is either gone or very doubtful so they will focus on things like the so called "mixed blood" and the bathmat print if the case continues past the DNA discussion. The defense will push for new expert opinions on the computer and bathmat print.

 

[RoseMontague]

Any predictions out there?

I predicted way back in December that first Curatolo and then Stefi would be thrown under the bus. I am sticking with that one.