Hrm. It appears this innocent post of mine attracted some attention...and misunderstandings. Allow me to clarify in my response:
Hrm. It appears my attempt at clarification was unsuccessful, it only served to confuse
some further, thus allow me to reiterate:
The reason I said Vanessa Sollecito wouldn't have participated in this laughable attempt was because she was a police officer and would know instantly it wouldn't work, not because she was a police officer and would never do such a thing. In fact I implied the opposite with:
...thus were she to attempt to suborn perjury to help save her innocent brother, she'd have done a whole lot better than finding some clown who has been convicted of slander seven or eight times for testimony in court to produce an easily falsifiable story. She was a police officer, she'd do it a whole lot better than that!
Now, I don't actually think she would do such a thing, but I also don't think it
impossible. That means it is
possible but certainly not
probable, those two words don't instantly follow each other in my world, one being 'argument' or 'proof' of the other, that's the silliest damn thing I've ever heard of from a judge. She obviously cares deeply for her brother, as I recall she offered to break a finger to get leave to help him, and I have a vague memory from somewhere that there were angry words about a jailbreak, but I cannot recall if that was something she or her father actually said when their phones were tapped or something someone else said about it, and I have no idea where I'd find it now. At any rate I do think it not impossible she might go beyond the bounds of propriety to try to help Raffaele.
My (actual) point was she'd have nothing to do with
this attempt because it had a zero percent chance of success, was high risk, and she would obviously
know that having been a police officer. She'd know instantly that someone with seven or so (I can't recall if his
calunnia charge in this appeal was his eighth or he had eight coming in and I don't care enough to check) convictions for lying in court would have dubious credibility, that the story would have to check out, and that the Court would obviously verify to see if there was any truth to it, like they did. Thus why would anyone bother with such an attempt?
Incidentally, were something like this tried, it wouldn't have to
solve the crime merely raise the spectre of reasonable doubt. Thus Meredith's DNA wouldn't have to be present, just the knife matching the wounds that tested positive for blood and the knife kept in an environment where blood traces would still be plausible but DNA unlikely, which isn't that difficult to conceive of. Thus the court would hear a story of someone claiming they knew who was involved who'd fled the country and where they hid the murder knife. The knife would be recovered, test positive for blood, be shown to match the wounds, and it be said that the conditions prevented DNA recovery. Think underwater if you're having trouble imagining this possibility.
I must say I especially like this quote:
So this is the increasingly desperate way we justify the imposing double standards. The prosecution can be corrupt and admit corrupt evidence because the court is also corrupt and won't ask any questions. Pathetic!
That pretty much sums it up! Right down to the 'pathetic' designation!
However I would add that the Court isn't necessarily
inherently corrupt, simply that it easily corruptible for this reason. There are stringent rules of admissibility and what evidence jurors are allowed to consider in their deliberations most places, not so in Italy. The prosecution can basically introduce just about anything it wants, and the defense may rebut--however if it's only the word of the prosecution against the word of the defense there might be a problem. As an Italian forensic expert put
it:
Legal experts also share concerns about Italy's bar for admissibility. Il Giornale, a conservative newspaper, for instance, recently published an interview with Marco Morin, a Venice-based firearms expert who declared he no longer wanted to work in Italian courts. "In the United States, federal judges must study a 637-page manual in order to be able to evaluate [forensic] evidence," he told the newspaper. "Here, they accept everything without questioning, as long as it comes from the institutional laboratory."
Introducing luminol stains that tested negative for blood with TMB, negative for DNA, were never subjected to a confirmatory test, and all this information hidden from the defense and not discovered until by accident, but the prosecution can still stand up and say something to the effect of 'it could be blood or turnip juice, you decide' and have the judge sign off on that is atrocious. Not doing the confirmatory test but pretending that means she can lie and say they 'didn't test negative for blood'--despite the negative TMB test--is such an appalling mendacity it beggars belief! For most samples there's
no point doing a confirmatory test if they test negative with TMB, because TMB gives false
positives not false
negatives except in rare circumstances not present in this case, namely interference by acids or reduction agents, very old stains, and highly diluted ones.
You can pretty much eliminate the possibility there was interference by acid or reduction agents, being as there's luminol footprints right next to Rudy Guede's shoeprints that tested positive for blood with TMB in the hall. Obviously the age of the stains producing a false negative would preclude them as relevant in this case, being as if they were years old they couldn't have had anything to do with the murder. Stains so highly diluted they couldn't be picked up by TMB wouldn't have given off the chemiluminescent glow that was described and photographed, and there's just no way stains that diluted would have had anything to do with the murder, though (some of them) might have been the result of Amanda taking a shower the next morning.
If they pretended they were blood due to an initial luminol hit, with a negative TMB, and didn't do a confirmatory test, that's about as dishonest as you can get in 'proving' for blood. Massei's attempt to fit them into the crime is vague and laughable, as he has Amanda presumably flying over the numerous areas necessary to traverse to get from one set of prints to the other. One thing that should be kept in mind is he
had to try to fit what evidence was produced into the crime when writing his report, though sometimes he differed with their interpretation such as the mixed DNA traces, as long as he thought it was still
possible, he just made it
probable. Fitting datum into post-hoc rationalizations isn't any sort of standard of evidence, it's something the judge has to do in Italy as it's his job, where that oversight of evidence mattered was when
the jury was hearing it and deciding if it was an indication of guilt.
