Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Chris_Halkides]

Thanks, I been looking at that a lot today....didnt know it was your work. Very good article and fairly easy for a novice.
http://forensicdnaconsulting.wordpr...perts’-report-in-the-amanda-knox-case-part-i/

The translation of the C&V report is up for a re-read too, though its very technical.
http://knoxdnareport.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/welcome/#comments

JREF2010,

I was a little unclear. The forensicdnaconsulting blog is not mine. You can find one of my entries here.

 

[LondonJohn]

We've reviewed Massei's argument that the break-in was staged and really, it's terribly weak.

The claim that the window was broken from the inside is totally unsupported, and the expert opinion saying that it was broken from the outside was dismissed arbitrarily. In this case the weight of expert testimony clearly favoured the view that the window was broken from outside and Massei/Christiani ignored this.

The police claimed that there was a suspicious lack of glass shards on the ground outside the window, but this seems likely to be post hoc improvisation seeing as they did absolutely nothing to document this claim at the time and that there is no reason to expect anything other than a fine spray of very tiny, easily-missed fragments anyway.

The claim that there was a clean-up is not only totally unsupported, it's outright contradicted by the available evidence. There is literally no sign of smearing, wiping or bleach use shown up by the luminol tests or any other forensic test.

That's the complete extent of the case for any kind of staging.



As I believe I said just a moment ago, what guilters tend to forget is that people make mistakes all the time. They aren't necessarily deliberate lies and they aren't evidence they murdered someone.

Now if Knox and Sollecito lied about something that actually mattered to the case, as opposed to utter trivia like what order they called non-responsive phones in or when they saw poo in a toilet it might be evidence.

The police made all kinds of far more serious misstatements of fact in the course of this case than Knox and Sollecito did. That doesn't mean the police murdered Meredith Kercher.



There is no evidence this was a three-handed murder.

The wounds Meredith suffered are consistent with multiple attackers, and also consistent with a single attacker. Which is a fancy way of saying there's no evidence either way.

The fact that Rudy Guede left handprints and DNA all over the scene of the struggle yet nothing was found to show anyone else was there indicates to me that nobody else was there.

For me, bucketoftea's "arguing" approach is akin to that of the idiots who claim that the moon landings were faked because the flags swayed around and shadows in the photos were not parallel. No matter that logical observers can easily demonstrate that flags will flutter from sheer momentum/inertia, without any "wind" or other atmospheric pressure being present, or that it's entirely normal for shadows cast by a distant single source (i.e. the Sun) to appear to fall in non-parallel lines. You'll still get the same people cropping up again and again, saying "Ah, but the flags swayed around when they were planted, so this proves that there was air pressure present!" and "Ah, but the shadows weren't parallel, so it was an artificial light source placed in close proximity to the staged landing site!". Oh, and add in a "ha ha ha" for good measure

 

[Rolfe]

No: that was the bit that linked to the PFLP Toshiba bombs, right? I'm talking about the timer fragment (which ultimately provided one of the links back to Libya). I have some very interesting info on its provenance and the circumstances of its discovery.......

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153971

If you have anything that hasn't been dissected to death about that, I'll be hanging on your every word. You may prefer to skip the early pages of the thread though.

See you in the thread.

But OT ALERT!!! Must insert something about the Knox/Kercher case!! How about: What time of the evening do you think that Meredith Kercher died, and how do you come to that conclusion?

Very soon after she returned to the cottage, whatever time that would be from eyewitness, phone and CCTV records.

Because even by the last time she was known to be alive, we're already on the far edge of the point when ingesta from a meal begun no later than 6.30 at the outside, would already have begun to transit to the duodenum. And because there's no evidence of her having lived in the cottage for any time after she returned.

Will that do?

Rolfe.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

For me, bucketoftea's "arguing" approach is akin to that of the idiots who claim that the moon landings were faked because the flags swayed around and shadows in the photos were not parallel. No matter that logical observers can easily demonstrate that flags will flutter from sheer momentum/inertia, without any "wind" or other atmospheric pressure being present, or that it's entirely normal for shadows cast by a distant single source (i.e. the Sun) to appear to fall in non-parallel lines. You'll still get the same people cropping up again and again, saying "Ah, but the flags swayed around when they were planted, so this proves that there was air pressure present!" and "Ah, but the shadows weren't parallel, so it was an artificial light source placed in close proximity to the staged landing site!". Oh, and add in a "ha ha ha" for good measure

That said, I think we should give bucketoftea a reasonable chance to engage rationally with the evidence before we slag off at them.

 

[LondonJohn]

That said, I think we should give bucketoftea a reasonable chance to engage rationally with the evidence before we slag off at them.

Well, I agree up to a point. But coming in and making bald unsupported statements, and throwing in a couple of derisory "ha ha ha"s to boot, is not in my book indicative of a willingness to debate logically, reasonably, or in good faith. Perhaps bucketoftea would like to engage in a more reasoned and civilised manner if (s)he seriously wants to participate in the debate?

 

[Diocletus]

That said, I think we should give bucketoftea a reasonable chance to engage rationally with the evidence before we slag off at them.

Edited by kmortis: 

Removed personal comment

 

[Dan O.]

1) Patently faked break-in which benefitted no one except Knox

I don't think anyone has patented any form of "Break-In" let alone a faked one. And to go so far as patenting the process of faking a break and enter by having an athletic black dude pitch a large rock through a second floor window then scramble up the wall and climb through the window when that same dude is already known for using exactly that act in real break-ins is patently absurd.

 

[JREF2010]

I was surprised no one asked whether any tests were done on items linked to Meredith on the same day as the knife, never mind the six days before that. Ordinarily you'd assume not, since that would make the six days claim meaningless, but then this is Manuela "12 p.m. phone call" Comodi we're talking about. Perhaps they only tested items from Raffaele's flat on that day, but I reckon I'd still be double-checking if I were the defence!

i was just looking at the cell logs, and then the first one Amanda calls her mom, and there is a video of Edda talking about what was said. In addition to court docs.

Its like so many other issues in this case, was it a innocent mistake or evil intentional lie. Like the ruined hardrives, the bra clasp, the luminol prints not being tested for blood, and recently the Controls....

I think Judge Hellman used the word for Commodi as "not very forthcoming".

I was just reviewing this, because its things like these that might have a bigger impact on some layjudges.

The call was made 12:47:23 from Amanda to Edda.
In Eddas vinterview she said Amanda called stating I think someone has been in the cottage etc.. nothing about "the foot" . I think..

then at 13:24 and another at 13:27...after the door was kicked in.

What opened my eyes to this Nov 2 event, is that for some 20yr olds to remember seconds is idiotic to imagine. The entire Nov 2 morning was only a few minutes, 20 to 30 minutes of chaos.
No one was taking notes, add in different languages, with the intensity of the polizia there.

Amandas cell log was already at 10 calls by 13:27. To recite perfectly every word in every call is unfair.

The Forensic Team, professionals in the art, can't even do this. They ruin bra clasp/critical evidence, they can't remember if they did controls or if they logged them correctly, they can't find logsheets for the controls that have been discussed since 2007, and especially since 2009, but they still have trouble finding their Control data after taking so long to find the RAW data...

but if Raffaele, for example, forgets if he ate before or after some web surfing, he's a liar murderer?

if Amanda can't remember exactly verbatim her words, on which of three she made, during the 25 minutes of chaos...for the Perfect Ones, who never make mistakes, its proof of murder?

scary part is its seemed to work so far for Mignini and Co.

 

[Diocletus]

I don't think anyone has patented any form of "Break-In" let alone a faked one. And to go so far as patenting the process of faking a break and enter by having an athletic black dude pitch a large rock through a second floor window then scramble up the wall and climb through the window when that same dude is already known for using exactly that act in real break-ins is patently absurd.

Good point. Such a patent application would be disallowed under the doctrine of obviousness.

Perhaps the "patently faked" reference refers to Rudy's shoes. Did he wear faux patent leather shoes to scale the wall?

 

[Diocletus]

I think Judge Hellman used the word for Commodi as "not very forthcoming".

BTW. If you have a judge saying in open court that the prosecutor is "not very forthcoming" that is a BIG BIG deal. To put it in simple terms, this means that the prosecutor is lying. In fact, the prosecution has built itself a terrible record with this judge:

First, there was non-production and attempted obfuscation of the lab records (see Stef's letter), which Hellmann summarily quashed.

Second, there was the police DVD raid on the experts, resulting in the involvement of the judge.

Third, there is this claim of "control records" being previously produced, but the records proffered (i) are for a different code and (ii) can't be found.

You might get one strike on something like this, but no judge is going to tolerate a pattern of practice like this, particularly where the victim is none other than the judge's hand-picked experts. And, you can bet that there will be more to be heard about Nos. 1 and 3 next month when the defense gets a chance to cross-examine Stef, if only for the purpose of reminding the judge about this dishonesty.

These prosecutors are very foolish to have played these games with this judge.

 

[JREF2010]

double deleted

 

[JREF2010]

but then this is Manuela "12 p.m. phone call" Comodi we're talking about. Perhaps they only tested items from Raffaele's flat on that day, but I reckon I'd still be double-checking if I were the defence!

the point here is Commodi was completely wrong in her "nothing had happened yet statement, when she more than likely knew the truth but instead in court chose to use trickery/lies. Why?

some more..

12:47:23 Amanda, Nov 2 to Mom Via della Pergola 7

The first phone call she said I know it's early but she called because she felt someone had been in her house. She had spent the night at Raf’s. She came back to have a shower and the main door was open. She thought it was odd but it has a funny lock and it did not close well.
She went to have a shower and when she came out she noticed some blood but she thought maybe someone had her menstrual cycle and did not clean when. She then went to her room and then went to the other bathroom to dry her hair and saw there was feces in the bathroom. Thought that was strange because normally girls flushed the bathroom. She went back to Raf’s and told him about the things she found strange. Sometime later she got hold of one of the other roommates.
She tried to call Meredith several times but there was no answer.
They came back to the house and she showed Raf what she found and then they also noticed the broken window.
And now they were pounding on Meredith’s room trying to wake her. All this in the first call? Yes very quickly. I told her to call the police. She said Raf was finishing a call with his sister and then was going to call police (12:50:34). This was the first call.

(<Raffaele calls police/ 112 at 12:51:40 for 169 seconds and 12:54:00 for 57 seconds> Massei agrees Raffaele called before the Postals arrived because the Postal Police were with them the whole time and did not note them making calls or being away.)


13:24:18 1:24 PM Amanda, Nov 2 to > Mom/Edda Via dellaPergola 7
The second phone call was that people were yelling and they found a foot in the room. She was very upset. It was disturbing. I said Oh my God. She couldn’t understand, only the foot. Then we hung up. That was the second phone call. I don’t know the exact time.
13:27:32 1:27 PM Amanda, Nov 2 to >Mom/Edda Via della Pergola 7
And the third one. The third call was she called me to say it was not just a foot but in Meredith’s room they found a person. And all she could understand is that it was a person and there was a closet. She was very upset.
She had to hang up the phone because I could hear shouting and the police was calling her. Did she ever say she was worried about Mez? Yes, when they could not get hold of her on the phone and also when she heard there was someone in the room.

 

[JREF2010]

BTW. If you have a judge saying in open court that the prosecutor is "not very forthcoming" that is a BIG BIG deal. To put it in simple terms, this means that the prosecutor is lying. In fact, the prosecution has built itself a terrible record with this judge:

First, there was non-production and attempted obfuscation of the lab records (see Stef's letter), which Hellmann summarily quashed.

Second, there was the police DVD raid on the experts, resulting in the involvement of the judge.

Third, there is this claim of "control records" being previously produced, but the records proffered (i) are for a different code and (ii) can't be found.

You might get one strike on something like this, but no judge is going to tolerate a pattern of practice like this, particularly where the victim is none other than the judge's hand-picked experts. And, you can bet that there will be more to be heard about Nos. 1 and 3 next month when the defense gets a chance to cross-examine Stef, if only for the purpose of reminding the judge about this dishonesty.

These prosecutors are very foolish to have played these games with this judge.

I would think so too.

However their "game" has worked for the Matteini and Massei trials.

This was probably a first time, in this very public trial, the courts have shown discipline to the prosecution.

I try to be a mindset of a juror/layjudge. In all fairness the Massei jurors had to vote using what was known at that time. (the knife)

Would they have voted differently had this knife information been present?
I would think so. It has changed my perspective greatly.

With what we now know of the knife, think of the Massei trial then without the big climatic movie, the continous media attack that Amanda was the murderer and they have the murder weapon with her DNA on it..etc.

I would think a totally different verdict would have been the outcome in the Massei trial.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

right events, wrong times

Hmm... Hmm...

After the Micheli verdict (from Damiano's blog, translation of Raffaele's answers to questions by the newspaper Il Messaggero)

bolint,

I don't think our positions on this are very far apart. My impression of his appearance before Judge Matteini is that he described the events at the wrong times. I don't put any significance on his getting the times wrong.

 

[JREF2010]

First she asked each to list their qualifications and published works. They both reeled off a long list of titles and publications, while Comodi waved a lacy fan at her face and smiled. After they were done, she asked them to list their on-site forensic experience but the judge interjected, saying that even if they had lots of experience they could still make mistakes. "Exactly," she said, smugly.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/amanda-knox-prosector-blasts-dna-report/story?id=14195630

Commodi doesn't get it, it went right over her head.

Hellman was preceding her attack and in short said, people with a lot of on-site experience can make mistakes too.

so much for the Perfect Ones, who only attack with fiction.

 

[Poppy1016]

I was wondering how many here think AK and RS are totally innocent, as opposed to not guilty by reasonable doubt. At first I thought them to be guilty. As the case progressed, I changed my belief to not guilty by reasonable doubt. I am now on the verge of believing in their total innocence.

 

[Rolfe]

The diametrically-opposed interpretations of Saturday's events between here and the PMF are a fascinating sociological study.

Rolfe.

 

[davefoc]

The lack of a believable narrative for the murder involving those three is another important clue too. It's case-defining...

I would make it one of the most important points in this whole mess.

This is an important point, that until recently I hadn't thought that much about. Weird things happen and people continue to do things outside what I thought humans might do. However, in this case the prosecution proposes that two people without any prior documented signs of criminal, violent or sexually weird behavior who had only known each other a brief time came together with a previously unknown criminal to assist in a rape and murder. It is a very unlikely scenario, but if a credible prosecutor brought charges like that I would tend to believe that it might have happened. However, as time has gone on significant evidence has come out that the weirdness in this case may be driven more by a prosecutor with outlier ideas than the defendants.

I was wondering how many here think AK and RS are totally innocent, as opposed to not guilty by reasonable doubt. At first I thought them to be guilty. As the case progressed, I changed my belief to not guilty by reasonable doubt. I am now on the verge of believing in their total innocence.

I've wondered the same thing. In my case I have some concern that my biases and selective reading have led me to an incorrect conclusion but right now I think it is at least more likely that they are innocent than guilty.

As I see it now, the principle evidence that they are guilty is that an established prosecutor working with an established police department have prosecuted them and a jury thought the evidence against them was strong enough to convict them. However, one of the things that I have noticed is that prosecutors and police departments can develop very strong confirmation and group biases about the guilt of individuals which approach non-falsifiable beliefs. Given the low quality of the evidence in this case I think it is likely that this has happened in this case.

 

[Rolfe]

I was wondering how many here think AK and RS are totally innocent, as opposed to not guilty by reasonable doubt. At first I thought them to be guilty. As the case progressed, I changed my belief to not guilty by reasonable doubt. I am now on the verge of believing in their total innocence.

I didn't know a lot about it when these threads started, but I noticed those arguing for innocence being piled in on as conspiracy theorists. It all seemed kinda complicated but I had more or less an open mind.

I noticed that Fiona, whose opinion I generally valued, believed Knox and Sollecito were guilty. This, I fear, swayed my uniniformed view. I noted that Dan O., who had done some very good work on the Lockerbie case before he jumped ship, was for innocence, and being derided as a conspiracy freak. I didn't really know what to think.

Now, having seen the relative strength of evidence on both sides, I don't think they had anything to so with it. I think they were a couple of idiots, but that's a different matter. I also think a couple of idiots couldn't have managed the alleged "partial clean-up" - in fact I don't think anyone could. The way the story unfolded, with the cops deciding they were guilty on the basis of hunch, then finding this weak and contradictory evidence, is quite a factor, too.

Also, what is alleged to have happened is so bizarre, I think it would require some fairly good evidence to make me believe it had happened. A real smoking gun. There's nothing. And the way the prosecution story keeps changing isn't a good sign either.

And since it seems quite clear that Meredith died very soon after returning home, then if it's correct that Knox and Sollecito have an alibi for that time, it all comes together fairly clearly.

Rolfe.

 

[Kaosium]

I was wondering how many here think AK and RS are totally innocent, as opposed to not guilty by reasonable doubt. At first I thought them to be guilty. As the case progressed, I changed my belief to not guilty by reasonable doubt. I am now on the verge of believing in their total innocence.

Let me put it this way: how do we know Patrick Lumumba was not involved?

Perhaps no one else noticed, but when Mignini moved the ToD back to 11:30 in his closing statement to account for Curatolo's rambling, (and Massei pushed it further to 11:40) Patrick Lumumba lost his alibi, which was only good through 11:00 PM. There's no evidence he was at the cottage, but there's those two other 'profiles' on the y-halotype, how do we know it wasn't his? There's zero evidence Amanda was in the murder room, and nothing of Raffaele even in the cottage outside that curious clasp and the cigarette butt, it's hardly 'inconceivable' (by those rules!) Patrick could have managed much the same feat.

We know he's a 'liar,' both about his history as a relative to a Congolese politician (or prince?) and about the case as well. The 'soulless' Daily Mail article includes untrue information about Amanda as well as his actions in relation to her. Also--much like Amanda--he claims the cops weren't nice to him at all when they interrogated him, there's no cupcakes and tea in his account in that same Mail piece, there's beatings off camera and denials of his rights. Why is he 'lying' about the cops?

There's even an 'accusation' against him from someone the police have 'proven' in court was there! Mignini himself has said he still believes part of the statements Amanda signed were 'true'--why not this part as well? He sure seems interested in the results of the trial, is he 'managing' it like some think Amanda did the crime scene?

He has about as much proven contact with Rudy Guede as Amanda does, and less than Raffaele, plus it is easier to infer he might have more that has not become public, as he was a considered a leader in the African community in Perugia and someone who would go to people in trouble and try to help and someone people could go to. Rudy had all sorts of trouble, especially being essentially disowned by his foster family and on the verge of being evicted.

Even if you assume a more rational time of death, he could still have been 'involved,' as his alibi begins at 9:00 PM, and he's not far from the cottage anyway, and the Swiss guy might have been off by fifteen minutes or so, giving him enough time to stab Meredith, then race back to Le Chic and open it up for business. As a matter of fact, with the discrediting of Curatolo, there's now more evidence that he was in the vicinity of the cottage than there is Raffaele and Amanda due to the SIM card data, it was his alibi that made his 'story' of changing it when he went to work accepted--according to the Massei ToD he doesn't have an alibi anymore!

On November 8th, the cops produced a litany of crap before Judge Matteini that Patrick, Amanda and Raffaele had raped and murdered Meredith Kercher. Nothing they presented turned out to be true or verifiable about any of the suspects, and they let Patrick go on the 20th when they captured Rudy on the basis of the alibi given to him through eleven PM. At that time they had gotten the knife on Amanda and thought that Raffaele's shoes produced Rudy's bloody shoeprints. Both of those items have now been conclusively dis-proven as 'evidence'

Everything produced afterward reeks of the cops just taking anything they could possibly find and twisting it so it casts 'suspicion' upon Raffaele and Amanda, and all of it upon further inspection turns out to have been either utterly disingenuous, discredited, or a more plausible explanation is completely innocent or irrelevant. You can do that with just about anything or anyone. If that sort of 'evidence' is all one can assemble, then I have to say Raffaele and Amanda have been more or less vetted far better than anyone else involved in this case. I think one could put together a better circumstantial case against a number of police and Mignini than I've seen against Raffaele and Amanda.