Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Ammonitida]

It's still unclear to me as to whether there exists a DNA profile that matches the profile of Meredith on the knife blade. At yesterday's questioning, Comodi got one of the neutral experts to concede that the knife profile *could* be a match to Meredith's profile. They also conceded that it was a complete genetic profile -- meaning 13 or more Loci (ok, I don't know much about DNA). So if the knife had a full genetic profile, then shouldn't it be easy science to include or exclude Meredith's profile? Why then all the fuzz that it "could be"? Before this I was under the impression that the genetic profile on the knife was incomplete and as such was only a partial match to Meredith's (thus not reliable).

 

[Ammonitida]

From the article it appears Comodi lied again:



She conveniently forgets about Raffaele's DNA in the kitchen.

You mean the DNA on the cigarette butt?

 

[PhantomWolf]

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?

I think the answer is stunningly obvious when you take the entry in context, but bolint doesn't want to accept it.

Look at what Raff wrote.

when she was taking a shower, she had seen that there were faeces in the bathroom and nobody had flushed the toilet.

How could she have seen the faeces when she was taking a shower? She couldn't. It's simple, he assumed that it was in the small bathroom, where she had showered, so he went and looked in the wrong tiolet.

 

[Katody Matrass]

You mean the DNA on the cigarette butt?

Yes!

 

[katy_did]

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?

Yeah, I've been lucky enough to see it too - since it's taken directly from above, it would be a very different angle to that Amanda and Raffaele would've seen as they walked into the bathroom. I think Dan O's picture showed that taking a quick look from another angle they might not have seen anything (Amanda's e-mail of course says that she was "looking really quickly" and that she was in a "panic").

Sorry to butt in, but why does fecal matter?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

knife profile problems

It's still unclear to me as to whether there exists a DNA profile that matches the profile of Meredith on the knife blade. At yesterday's questioning, Comodi got one of the neutral experts to concede that the knife profile *could* be a match to Meredith's profile. They also conceded that it was a complete genetic profile -- meaning 13 or more Loci (ok, I don't know much about DNA). So if the knife had a full genetic profile, then shouldn't it be easy science to include or exclude Meredith's profile? Why then all the fuzz that it "could be"? Before this I was under the impression that the genetic profile on the knife was incomplete and as such was only a partial match to Meredith's (thus not reliable).

Ammonitida,

Every question has an answer that is simple, clear, and wrong. If one sets a threshold at 40 or 50 RFU, then it is definitely a partial profile. If one sets the threshold to 10 RFU (this is a way of measuring how high the peaks are on the y-axis) then it is a full profile. Also, it is only Meredith's profile if one accepts a great deal of peak height imbalance between peaks in one allele. The fact that the two peaks are generally not the same size is one indication that the DNA sample is in the low template range. Stefanoni made up a new protocol to deal with low template DNA wthout ever validating it and without reporting proper control experiments.

These two problems (the peaks being small and the sample falling into the low template region) incline me toward saying that the profile probably arose from Meredith's DNA but does not deserve to be called her profile in a legal sense. More importantly, the lack of blood, and to a lesser degree the presence of starch, indicate that Meredith's DNA got onto the knife through contamination, secondary transfer, or tampering.

 

[Katody Matrass]

It's still unclear to me as to whether there exists a DNA profile that matches the profile of Meredith on the knife blade. At yesterday's questioning, Comodi got one of the neutral experts to concede that the knife profile *could* be a match to Meredith's profile. They also conceded that it was a complete genetic profile -- meaning 13 or more Loci (ok, I don't know much about DNA). So if the knife had a full genetic profile, then shouldn't it be easy science to include or exclude Meredith's profile? Why then all the fuzz that it "could be"? Before this I was under the impression that the genetic profile on the knife was incomplete and as such was only a partial match to Meredith's (thus not reliable).

I guess it's because in LCN testing only the alleles that show up repeatedly in two or three runs are accepted while the ones popping in and out are rejected. Steffi says she did only one test.

 

[Ammonitida]

We discussed the DNA before the appeal. I was 100 percent sure of Amanda's innocence before the appeal started and I'm 100 percent sure now. Finding starch on the blade rather than blood strengthens the argument that the knife is not the murder weapon.

What mystifies me still is:
1.) Why others think the knife is the murder weapon.

From what I understand about this case, no one has been able to demonstrate that Raffaele's knife inflicted any of the wounds on the victim. In fact, on some of them, that knife has been excluded 100%. My questions are -- just how many wounds were found on Meredith and how many of them could not have come from his knife?

 

[katy_did]

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.

Well, I guess Monica's theory would explain why Amanda didn't see it, so there's no reason why she couldn't have been right. But as you say, your pictures show that it wouldn't have been necessary anyway, especially if Amanda only looked quickly.

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.

The way I read the diary quote is that he caught a "glimpse" of the reflection from the water, couldn't see anything else and so assumed Amanda was right. In other words that he took a very quick look, understandably not wanting to go more in-depth...

This is just another of the door always/sometimes locked topics, where a whole lot of guilt is being elaborately read into something for which there are simpler and more straightforward explanations!

 

[LondonJohn]

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.

The pro-guilt commentaries are sounding more and more like Brezhnev-era Pravda news stories! "Wheat Production At Record Levels: People Give Thanks To Supreme Soviet For World Leadership In Agricultural Productivity". (Note the capitalisation of every word hehe)

This is over. As I said before, I don't really care one way or the other from an emotional point of view, but I do trust my own judgement. And my judgement is that acquittals will ensue for both Knox and Sollecito by the end of October. I certainly care that the imperfect Italian criminal justice system will have seen two ultimately-acquitted people languish in prison for four whole years, in the prime of their lives. And it's been an incredibly interesting study in over-zealous prosecutors and pliable judges (and the perils of selecting inappropriate defence lawyers).

But now, finally, justice will be done. Contrary to what you might read elsewhere, the independent DNA report is essentially inviolable in its reliability. Of course it's correct to say that its importance will be weighed in Hellmann's court, and that it's not automatically accepted by the court. But every indication (including yesterday's debate) indicates that the opinions of Conti and Vecchiotti are robust and accurate. Most of the pro-guilt crowd don't understand (or don't want to understand) that the prosecution arguments on how/why the DNA got onto the knife and clasp are not rendered impossible by the report - but that's not the point. The point is that there were so many massive errors in the forensic process that numerous other possibilities are eminently feasible. In other words, the knife and clasp are unreliable, and therefore inadmissible. And that - I believe - is how Hellmann's court will rule in its deliberations.

I also think that the defence lawyers will - this time around - be able to put forward compelling arguments regarding every other piece of potentially-incriminating evidence (mixed DNA in bathroom, "staged" break-in, bathmat partial print, Quintavalle, etc). And I think that Hellmann has already indicated that he is capable of decent logical reasoning, in the way that Massei self-evidently was not. For all these reasons, I am now highly confident that Hellmann's court will make the correct decision in a few months' time - and that decision will be to acquit Knox and Sollecito of all charges.

 

[RoseMontague]

It's still unclear to me as to whether there exists a DNA profile that matches the profile of Meredith on the knife blade. At yesterday's questioning, Comodi got one of the neutral experts to concede that the knife profile *could* be a match to Meredith's profile. They also conceded that it was a complete genetic profile -- meaning 13 or more Loci (ok, I don't know much about DNA). So if the knife had a full genetic profile, then shouldn't it be easy science to include or exclude Meredith's profile? Why then all the fuzz that it "could be"? Before this I was under the impression that the genetic profile on the knife was incomplete and as such was only a partial match to Meredith's (thus not reliable).

To me it is the equivalent of calling a shadow of a person a real person. The fact is there was not enough material on the knife to test and steffi cranked the knob up 10 times to finally get a reading then ran a second run on the same amplication and got a somewhat different reading. The results indicated a LCN quantity (less than 10 picograms) in direct contradiction to her stated testimony of a few hundred picograms, no positive or negative controls were run, all of the alleles are less than the minumun reliable threshold of 50, and a second test on a different amplication was not run. Proper collection techniques for LCN were not done and the testing itself was not proper for a LCN test. Not only are the results unreliable, it is known it was not blood and no testing was done to determine if it was other human material.

The result could easily be the result of contamination either in the collection of the evidence or the handling storage and testing of the evidence, either on the knife, equipment used or the machine itself. Problems of contamination increase considerably when dealing with a LCN quantity and even the standards for collecting and testing normal amounts of DNA were not followed.

 

[LondonJohn]

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.)

And this has been independently reported elsewhere too. If true, it suggests only two possibilities:

1) the Perugia court system is incapable of accurately archiving and/or retrieving documentation submitted to the court by law enforcement officials - a situation which would have potentially serious repercussions.

2) Comodi was being.....economical with the truth...... when she claimed that the negative control charts had been lodged with the courts.

I wonder which one of the two it could be.............

 

[davefoc]

For me, the failure to document the controls was huge. And then the farce of the prosecution claiming that they existed and not having them in their hand. Huh, a cornerstone of your case is the reliability of the DNA testing and you decide to come to court without copies of the documentation of the control experiments and then when the documentation is produced it is not the documentation for the test in question? So an outside observer needs to choose between wildly incompetent prosecutors or just dishonest prosecutors?

And a small issue that might seem more important to me than it actually is. Stefanoni threatened to sue the experts that criticized her. Huh, on what planet does that make sense? That suggests that Stefanoni might not be the brightest bulb. If expert witnesses can be easily sued because they criticize the prosecution's case then where are you going to find expert witnesses to ever challenge prosecution evidence? Unless she has evidence of significant malfeasance by the people that critiqued her actions and findings the threat of a lawsuit sounds like childish junior high blather to me, which would tend to indicate that she has a position that exceeds her capabilities and talents.

Negative evidence as I understand it.
1. False accusation - Sounds like coercion and perhaps language difficulties easily explains this. Testimony taken after forty hours of questioning might be useful as an investigation tool, but it should never be allowed into court without corroboration and it doesn't sound like there was any.

2. DNA on the knife
This sounds like it was completely shot down by C & V. So much so that it isn't even a useful piece of evidence in a preponderance of the evidence kind of case.

3. DNA on the bra clasp
Even after the C & V testimony it sounds like the evidence can not be completely discounted at least in a preponderance of evidence case. The mishandling of the clasp which conceivably could have led to cross contamination, the difficulty of correlating the evidence with the rest of the crime scene and the problematic nature of some of the police scientist's procedures easily makes it too suspect for me to be of value in a case to be decided based on a beyond a reasonable doubt criteria.

4. Other evidence
I am still trying to figure out exactly what of significance is left. I am just now finding some pro-guilt writing that seems to believe that there was a lot more evidence against Knox than the three issues I listed above. I need to work at understanding what they are before I know what to make of them.

 

[Paninaro]

Excerpts from Nina Burleighs The Fatal Gifts of Beaty I don't know if she has got her facts straight, but she seems to be a really good writer.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61065704/The-Fatal-Gift-of-Beauty-by-Nina-Burleigh-Excerpt

These words from Mignini has probably been discussed somewhere along the line, but I don't think I heard about it before.

Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini got in a few final words: “I have been observing the defendants through the trial, trying to determineif violent acts are in accordance with their characters. I have had agraphologist look at their handwriting, and that man confirmed that Amanda Knox is aggressive, narcissistic, manipulative, transgressive,and has no empathy; she likes dominating people, she doesn’t like peo-ple to disagree with her, and she’s very negligent overall. Her behavior in the police station proved this. As for Sollecito, the graphologist sayshis handwriting indicates that he is a person who seeks approval fromothers.” As if in despair, he burst out, “If these kids were innocent, how couldthey sit here and bear listening to this?

Somehow I don't think Mignini ever will sign up for JREF. He doesn't appear to be the sceptic type. Graphology...

Did he really said that in a closing argument? I guess what all this really points to is that deciding guilt from anyone's behaviour is closely related to graphology, clairvoyance or just guessing.

Much can be said about lies of the defendent used as evidence. The typical lie that constitutes good circumstancial evidence is the murderer who denies being at the scene of the crime until facing irrefutable proof that he was. He then changes his story, saying he was there, but some other unknown guys did the deed.

In my opinion, Knox' and Sollecitos lies are a long way from that. On the other hand, the prosecution and police in this case gave Guede a free ticket to use the oldest murderers excuse in the book, described above.

To the police and judges Guede said that Knox and Sollecito were those other guys. To his cellmate Alessi he told the other guys were som other guy(s). He using the oldest excuse in the book and in reality he acted alone.

 

[Dan O.]

____________________

Dan,

I'm not convinced, though I concede this is an ambiguous video. In your first image, what you see as the bra clasp I see as the thumb, which does eclipse the "SCIENTIFICA" lettering.

WOW! let's go with that. The idiot handling the clasp allowed the thumb on the glove that he has been holding the hooks of the clasp by to get so soiled that it is visibly darker than the rest of the glove.


No Fine. you are seeing only what you expect to see. You play that flash video again and again and each time you see the same thing. That's the way the mind works. It isn't going to reinterpret what it has already decoded. You have to find a different perspective to get new data so a fresh interpretation can be formed. That is why I downloaded the video and stepped through that piece one frame at a time. There is no "err maybe an artifact" about it. The clasp is seen in each and every frame from when the light of the flashlight is upon it to where it is placed on the floor next to the "Y" marker (except for the few frames where another person is bending down in front of the camera probably to place that "Y" marker on the floor).

I'm not asking you to believe me. I'm telling you what I know and how I know it. It's up to you to confirm or disprove it if you wish. Simply denying it will not lead to a further understanding of the truth.

 

[Rolfe]

Dan O, when this is all over, will you come back to the Lockerbie tag team?

That is, of my current initiative doesn't get the conviction overturned, and I'd put that possibility at least into double figures....

Rolfe.

 

[LondonJohn]

Dan O, when this is all over, will you come back to the Lockerbie tag team?

That is, of my current initiative doesn't get the conviction overturned, and I'd put that possibility at least into double figures....

Rolfe.

I would definitely like to discuss Lockerbie in more depth - it's very interesting, and I peripherally know one of the AAIB inspectors who was an RAF colleague of my father's - I therefore know a small number of interesting inside things about the investigation, including interpersonal conflicts in the investigation, the way in which the FBI muscled in on things, and the nature of the "discovery" of the tiny piece of circuit board.

But merely reading what's being written about the Knox/Sollecito case - let alone posting - is as much as I can stretch to right now. However, since things are bound to get very quiet here over the next six weeks or so, I might take the opportunity to get more up to speed on Lockerbie.

 

[RoseMontague]

Excerpts from Nina Burleighs The Fatal Gifts of Beaty I don't know if she has got her facts straight, but she seems to be a really good writer.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61065704/The-Fatal-Gift-of-Beauty-by-Nina-Burleigh-Excerpt

These words from Mignini has probably been discussed somewhere along the line, but I don't think I heard about it before.

Quote:
Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini got in a few final words: “I have been observing the defendants through the trial, trying to determineif violent acts are in accordance with their characters. I have had agraphologist look at their handwriting, and that man confirmed that Amanda Knox is aggressive, narcissistic, manipulative, transgressive,and has no empathy; she likes dominating people, she doesn’t like peo-ple to disagree with her, and she’s very negligent overall. Her behavior in the police station proved this. As for Sollecito, the graphologist sayshis handwriting indicates that he is a person who seeks approval fromothers.” As if in despair, he burst out, “If these kids were innocent, how couldthey sit here and bear listening to this?

Somehow I don't think Mignini ever will sign up for JREF. He doesn't appear to be the sceptic type. Graphology...

Did he really said that in a closing argument? I guess what all this really points to is that deciding guilt from anyone's behaviour is closely related to graphology, clairvoyance or just guessing.

My computer does not like those scrib docs, does it really quote Mignini saying this?

LOL. If he only had Statement Analysis dude and the Astrology God who knows what he would have said.

 

[Rolfe]

I would definitely like to discuss Lockerbie in more depth - it's very interesting, and I peripherally know one of the AAIB inspectors who was an RAF colleague of my father's - I therefore know a small number of interesting inside things about the investigation, including interpersonal conflicts in the investigation, the way in which the FBI muscled in on things, and the nature of the "discovery" of the tiny piece of circuit board.

But merely reading what's being written about the Knox/Sollecito case - let alone posting - is as much as I can stretch to right now. However, since things are bound to get very quiet here over the next six weeks or so, I might take the opportunity to get more up to speed on Lockerbie.

Oh, that would be good. There are very few of us in these threads. Though a select few, I have to say! "Guilters" seem to be an endangered species, if not entirely extinct. Unfortunately the USA is threatening to kidnap Megrahi from Tripoli (despite the fact that he looks like death insufficiently warmed over) and haul him off to the USA to "pay for his crimes". So it's not all sweetness and light.

Which circuit board? The bit of the radio that Peter Claiden found in January? That would be good!

Rolfe.

 

[davefoc]

WOW! let's go with that. The idiot handling the clasp allowed the thumb on the glove that he has been holding the hooks of the clasp by to get so soiled that it is visibly darker than the rest of the glove.


No Fine. you are seeing only what you expect to see. You play that flash video again and again and each time you see the same thing. That's the way the mind works. It isn't going to reinterpret what it has already decoded. You have to find a different perspective to get new data so a fresh interpretation can be formed. That is why I downloaded the video and stepped through that piece one frame at a time. There is no "err maybe an artifact" about it. The clasp is seen in each and every frame from when the light of the flashlight is upon it to where it is placed on the floor next to the "Y" marker (except for the few frames where another person is bending down in front of the camera probably to place that "Y" marker on the floor).

I'm not asking you to believe me. I'm telling you what I know and how I know it. It's up to you to confirm or disprove it if you wish. Simply denying it will not lead to a further understanding of the truth.

I just stepped slowly through the video using the youtube viewer. It might be possible to come up with an absolutely definitive answer if the video was uploaded and reviewed with a more sophisticated viewer but even without that unless the guy was doing a magic act it looks like it is extremely likely that he dropped it.

In one frame the clasp is between his two fingers and in the next it is missing. The eyes of the person standing beside the man who presumably dropped the clasp seem to follow the clasp to the floor.

The incredible thing about the clip was the excess handling of the clasp. Even if one weren't worried about contaminating the clasp or removing trace evidence from the clasp one might have considered the possibility that the trace evidence rubbed from the clasp might be moved to some place else.

There's another issue here that I'm sure has been brought up, but if there was any doubt about the DNA match on the clasp then all that would be necessary was to test the bra itself for DNA. If one couldn't corroborate a shaky DNA test with a more reliable test on an area where the alleged handler of the clasps would almost certainly have had to touch then the reliability of the clasp DNA results should probably be completely discounted given the unlikelihood that the clasp was touched but the rest of the bra wasn't.

Question:
What's going on with the hard drive evidence? What efforts have been made to recover the data from it?