Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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halides1 said:
komponisto,

Most of Novelli's papers concern medical genetics, rather than forensics, and the forensics papers deal with single nucleotide polymorphisms, not short tandem repeats, the bread and butter of most forensic work. Nevertheless, he should know that contamination in PCR can come from a variety of sources. Pointing at dust is a little like crying "turnip juice." It's a good sound bite, but it is most unhelpful to the debate.
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Sound bites have lingered in peoples memories longer than they existed as proof. They have been devastating to the image of Amanda and Raffaele.


* Amanda was caught on CCTV returning to the cottage before Meredith arrived. A time she said she was at Raffaele's

* The police found bleach receipts at the apt of Raffaele Sollecito.

* The Harry Potter book Amanda claimed to be reading at her boyfriends was found in her own cottage.

* Amanda Knox said 'she was there'

* Amanda's DNA was found on the handle and Meredith's on the blade!


Many of these didn't last long but I still see them mentioned in comments on articles. Usually written with a great deal of authority. :/
 
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bolint said:
That is a clean photo.
You can see the dirty photo either at PMF or at IIP in their galleries.

The text was from the new, correct translation of the diary, by Clander, who is Italian.

Here are the immortal words of Raffaele in the original:
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You seem to be reading a lot into the faeces. Wasn't the explanation for their appearance/disappearance that they were originally a lot more visible but had slid downwards, and weren't visible to a quick glance? (and I can't imagine anyone wanting to take a more in-depth look).

Couldn't it simply be that Amanda had been rather graphic in describing them to Raffaele, then saw that they seemed to have disappeared, and Raffaele - leaning over to get a quick glimpse, but naturally not wanting to get too close - saw the reflection from the water but not the faeces? Seeing apparently clean water and a bit of toilet paper would certainly be a bit of an anticlimax (if that's the right word - probably not) if he'd been expecting something as in your face as Amanda had probably described to him.
 
katy_did said:
You seem to be reading a lot into the faeces. Wasn't the explanation for their appearance/disappearance that they were originally a lot more visible but had slid downwards, and weren't visible to a quick glance? (and I can't imagine anyone wanting to take a more in-depth look).

Couldn't it simply be that Amanda had been rather graphic in describing them to Raffaele, then saw that they seemed to have disappeared, and Raffaele - leaning over to get a quick glimpse, but naturally not wanting to get too close - saw the reflection from the water but not the faeces? Seeing apparently clean water and a bit of toilet paper would certainly be a bit of an anticlimax (if that's the right word - probably not) if he'd been expecting something as in your face as Amanda had probably described to him.
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Having seen the photo I don't see how it would be possible to miss it unless they did not go all the way to the toilet. I see no reason to lie about it. If they were trying to protect Rudy why not just flush the toilet?
 
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Bolint,
could you try to come up with an idea how Raffaele's DNA got on the bra clasp and why it was found only on that one tiny metal thing and nowhere else in the entire murder room? Could it possibly mean that he touched only that one metal hook and nothing else ?

Why there's such a contrast between Guede's DNA/fingerprints/footprints and Raffaele's DNA? Why there's such a contrast between Guede's DNA and Amanda's DNA in the murder room?

Could you come up with a plausible scenario of what happend during the murder?

I'm asking all of this not without a reason.

So far, after almost 4 years, no one, including Massei, came up with a narrative that would fit the evidence and prove Amanda Knox's and Raffaele Sollecito's guilt. No one. Ever.

That's the main problem with this case.

After Saturday I felt that it's not that great looking anymore for A and R. Not beacuse the report is about to " be destroyed" by Stefanoni, but beacuse the police officers will do anything and everything to save the their faces. However, given the evidence, the report that will STAND and testimony, I think they both will be freed. There's no other way.
 
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komponisto said:
Charlie Wilkes has drawn my attention to quoting Giuseppe Novelli, the esteemed geneticist, as follows:



I notice that I am confused.

I had previously said that I did not expect Novelli to defend Stefanoni in court. Even though this is not a statement from testimony (no one but Conti and Vecchiotti testified yesterday, as far as I know), I think it still counts as a significant surprise with respect to that expectation.

My probability of Knox and Sollecito's guilt has just gone up by a factor of 2 (from "below 1/1000" to merely "below 1/500"). If Novelli gives testimony defending Stefanoni, it could go up by an order of magnitude, potentially reaching 1/100. My probability of Knox and Sollecito's acquittal by the Hellmann court, meanwhile, has gone down from 80% (after reading Sfarzo's latest) to 70%, where it currently sits. (As you can see, I have -- or rather had! -- slightly more respect for Novelli than I expect the court to: my odds[/URL] of innocence were cut in half, but my acquittal odds were multiplied by a factor of 7/12.)
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Huh? Wouldn't that mean the odds of acquittal would now be at 137.2%? I don't understand how you can have a multiplier when you have a decrease, is that not a divisor? However, math is not my forte.
 
mdana said:
Huh? Wouldn't that mean the odds of acquittal would now be at 137.2%? I don't understand how you can have a multiplier when you have a decrease, is that not a divisor? However, math is not my forte.
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Never mind you wrote percentages, and I read those as odds. You were stating 1-4 to 1-2.33
 
mdana said:
Huh? Wouldn't that mean the odds of acquittal would now be at 137.2%? I don't understand how you can have a multiplier when you have a decrease, is that not a divisor? However, math is not my forte.
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(1) Multiplication will result in decrease if the "multiplier" is less than 1. (As 7/12 is, for example.)

(2) Be careful not to confuse probability and odds. A probability of 70% corresponds to an odds ratio of 7/3; 80% probability corresponds to an odds ratio of 8/2, or 4/1. And 7/3 divided by 4/1 is 7/12. Hence my 4/1 odds ratio (80% probability) was multiplied by 7/12 to obtain 7/3 (70% probability).
 
halides1 said:
komponisto,

Most of Novelli's papers concern medical genetics, rather than forensics, and the forensics papers deal with single nucleotide polymorphisms, not short tandem repeats, the bread and butter of most forensic work. Nevertheless, he should know that contamination in PCR can come from a variety of sources. Pointing at dust is a little like crying "turnip juice." It's a good sound bite, but it is most unhelpful to the debate.
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Since Novelli is a research scientist and not a law enforcement type (in contrast to someone like Garofano, for example), I assumed his inclination would be to uphold scientific rigor. I would have expected him to know better than most people how easy contamination is if proper care is not taken.
 
RoseMontague said:
Umbria24 also thought Hellmann's words on the negative controls possibly had some special meaning (or maybe not) as did Frank.



http://www.umbria24.it/meredith-il-...della-corte-nessun-accordo-sul-dna/53359.html
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From the article it appears Comodi lied again:

«Sa in quante tracce repertate in via della Pergola è stato trovato il dna di Sollecito?» chiede Comodi, «Controllo» risponde Vecchiotti, «Solo sul gancetto» precisa il magistrato. «Come può essere stato contaminato dunque?»« Non lo so – risponde il perito – io vedo solo il guanto sporco»
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She conveniently forgets about Raffaele's DNA in the kitchen.
 
Funny that Comodi cannot see what I think is clear to Hellmann - contamination on those two and only those pieces of evidence, pieces that share the peculiar quality of making completely no sense in the narrative of the crime, means only one thing - evidence tampering.
 
Katody Matrass said:
Funny that Comodi cannot see what I think is clear to Hellmann - contamination on those two and only those pieces of evidence, pieces that share the peculiar quality of making completely no sense in the narrative of the crime, means only one thing - evidence tampering.
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Actually, I think Comodi along with others from the prosecution, knows very well that these two pieces of evidence were contaminated or at least, weren't collected and tested in a proper way. Now, she's trying to defend the police, no matter what, she's trying to defend the prosecution's case, even if there's no plausible narrative where the knife and the bra clasp evidence play any role whatsoever.

I'm interested in this case for almost three years now and to date I didn't see a single plausible narrative of that crime that involves Rudy Guede, Amanda and Raffaele.
 
katy_did said:
You seem to be reading a lot into the faeces. Wasn't the explanation for their appearance/disappearance that they were originally a lot more visible but had slid downwards, and weren't visible to a quick glance? (and I can't imagine anyone wanting to take a more in-depth look).
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Monica Napoleoni is the one that invented the sliding down theory. A close examination will show that some sliding likely took place and is probably where Monica got that idea. However, I have shown that it is not necessary for sliding to have occurred between the initial discovery and the subsequent view, especially when Amanda says that the later view was from the doorway, for her to think that the bowl was clean.


Couldn't it simply be that Amanda had been rather graphic in describing them to Raffaele, then saw that they seemed to have disappeared, and Raffaele - leaning over to get a quick glimpse, but naturally not wanting to get too close - saw the reflection from the water but not the faeces? Seeing apparently clean water and a bit of toilet paper would certainly be a bit of an anticlimax (if that's the right word - probably not) if he'd been expecting something as in your face as Amanda had probably described to him.
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There is still little evidence that Raffaele ever looked or even said he looked into that toilet. The accounts of both Amanda and Monica both agree that it was Amanda that did all the looking and only the one inconclusive statement in Raffaele's diary that some interpret as Raffaele claiming he looked and so they claim that he is lying about it.
 
bolint said:
Raffaele's diary:
"We look around [facciamo un giro] the house and Amanda is terrified and jumps on me because she tells me that the faeces were no longer in the toilet since presumably before, when she was taking a shower, she had seen that there were faeces in the bathroom and nobody had flushed the toilet. I have a look and leaning over I see the reflection of the water and, not seeing any faeces, I believe what Amanda had told [diceva] me."


No way that someone who had ever had a look at that toilet would speak about the "reflection of the water and not seeing any faeces".

I don't see how this is not a lie.
He clearly has never seen it.
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So why did Knox and Sollecito lie about this, in your opinion? I agree that it seems very strange that they said the faeces was gone, but what was the point of lying?
 
Katody Matrass said:
Funny that Comodi cannot see what I think is clear to Hellmann - contamination on those two and only those pieces of evidence, pieces that share the peculiar quality of making completely no sense in the narrative of the crime, means only one thing - evidence tampering.
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the knife's going to be tossed out, isn't it?
Even if they give the prosecution allowance on the knife, there was some pico-spec of DNA before and now its missing, it wasn't from a bloody knife used in a murder.

Knife wasn't cleaned, there's no blood, and the retesting even in other areas of the knife, by the neutral experts, came up with nothing....er.except Starch.


For me, what little I know about the DNA tool, the magnified DNA of the knife is possibly tool-contamination, residual very faint garbage/noise the tool sees. Thats how I see it. Tool residue, in that tiny capillary tube, is why controls and purges are to be done everytime, in addition to ignoring the "garbage" range of rfu values. Contamination from the tube, I read, can produce the low RFU range peaks.
Then there are no controls to see the machine was clean.
Anyway, the RFU values are so low they should never have been allowed. (I find this very dishonest, they changed the Y Axis on the chart to make the 20rfu peak look the same size as a 1200 peak. and then to show it to untrained jurors....very dishonest. I know its legally ok and all the scientists understand these details, but for a layjudge I wonder how well they explained ti for them.)



This was an interesting interview from someone inside the courtroom.

http://www.westseattleherald.com/2011/07/30/news/update-2-final-hearing-amanda-knox-today-not-so-f

"Comodi asked the experts how can they prove there is contamination (on the DNA from the collected evidence) and the experts said the standard process is you have negative controls in place to disprove the testing machinery, and the machinery gave a positive reading for contamination."

Mellas explained that Comodi countered that details proving the prosecution's original DNA results were in the case files and should be discussed in court, and that she had access to the files.

"The judge said, 'OK. There will be a 30 minute recess to find those files'. When court resumed Comodi said the files could not be found. The judge said, 'You've been shown to not be forthcoming, and honestly, it wouldn't change the outcome because we now have their report so I won't allow it (in the future.)
 
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I think Hellmann thought from the beginning that there is reasonable doubt to overcome. Now the prosecution irritated him so much, with all the data withholding, circus with Curatolo, and now attacking his own experts and dragging the whole thing without any sense, that the case is simply over.
 
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