Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[RWVBWL]

Luv and Protection.

Hi all,
Patrick Lumumba once ran a cool joint called Le Chic, and was well known in his town and well liked.

I used to run a surfsop in a place known as DogTown,
and am kinda well known, -(but I don't know about well liked, hahaha)
around my part of town with the crew who surf, and also sk8.
As such, I have a lot of customer friends, aquaintances, and some really cool close friends.

I luv my friends.
I've loaned 'em money, given 'em a ride to the airport if they need it to catch a flight to Hawaii, let 'em crash over night if they've had to much to drink.
And I've sometimes even give 'em a condom or 2, guys and gals,
for I luv 'em and care about 'em and want to protect 'em too.

Amanda Knox gave her friend Meredith Kercher condoms. She must have luved Mez enough to care about her health and safety, and wanted to help protect her, as she went and had her fun.

There is no way that a person who cares enough about another close friend that she would give them a condom to go and have fun and stay safe, would, days later, take a huuuge kitchen knife and repeatedly stab her friend to death in the throat.

Where is the hate? The anger?

All I see is luv...
Peace,
RW

 

[Diocletus]

Did Ms Camodi state these times from memory, after looking at the records, or did she deliberately falsify the records to agree with her statement?

That would make a difference would it not?

The same for any witness for the prosecution. Did they not give testimony based on their recall.

It seems that the pro acquittal side want to have different standards of evidence for the prosecution and defence.

There is a different standard. A fact witness testifies. A prosecutor does not testify.

Things that a prosecutor suggests to a witness or to the court should be based on argument or on verifiable facts that are of record in the case. Comodi violated this standard in her statement about time, where she suggested as fact something that was demonstrably untrue. I'll be interested to learn whether she also violated this standard in her statement about the "6 day delay". I think she did.

 

[Paninaro]

Did Ms Camodi state these times from memory, after looking at the records, or did she deliberately falsify the records to agree with her statement?

That would make a difference would it not?

The same for any witness for the prosecution. Did they not give testimony based on their recall.

It seems that the pro acquittal side want to have different standards of evidence for the prosecution and defence.

According to the pro acquittal side, the prosecution have zero evidence against Sollecito and Knox. Given the outcome of the first trial, this sounds strange and certainly would give rise to suspicion of conspiracy.

In the first trial there was an eyewitness, Curatolo, to break their alibi - meaning they lied about the alibi - and put them very near the scene of the crime precisely at the time the judges then believed Kercher was murdered. There was also strong technical evidence in the form of DNA that put them in the room where the murder took place. The judges filled the rest of the gaps in the strange story with some weak reasoning about what could have happened, must have happened.

Now both the eyewitness and the DNA evidence is discredited well beyond reasonable doubt and hopefully the appeal has showed the judges in a convincing fashion that the time of death must have been earlier than described in the Massei report.

And that is enough to conclude that it's possible Knox and Sollecito didn't participate in the murder of Meredith Kercher. Even if the judges strongly suspect that they lied when questioned by the police, that the break-in probably was staged and so on.

 

[Draca]

Thank God, three pages later, someone finally uses Amanda's testimony to answer bolint's question about the toilet. It was not that Meredith complained about Amanda not flushing. It was that Amanda told the court that Meredith had once explained to her about using the brush.

Sqwinty, it was not because Amanda wasn't used to flushing the toilet, it was because she didn't want to use a brush to clean up someone else's poop. LJ, when Raffaele arrived, he looked in the right toilet, but the feces had slipped down by that time, so he didn't see them; the cops looked more carefully and found them.

Amanda may have been startled by the condition of the toilet not only because, as she said, no one in the apartment would leave it like that, but also because she knew that the girls who used that bathroom were out of town.

The idea that the feces slipped down in the toilet never made sense to me. This would be after all 14 hours later. The feces would be well settled by that amount of time. Also, looking at the photo there isn't any water in the toilet. The feces are just sitting there.

I believe Dan O. is right and that in a panic Amanda took a quick look and didn't see them from the angle she looked. The police suggested they had slipped lower to explain why she didn't see them but the feces were always in the same position. I also think Phantomwolf is correct that it sounds like Raffaele looked in the wrong toilet.

http://www.perugiamurderfile.org/gallery/image_page.php?album_id=21&image_id=3430

 

[Chris_Halkides]

There's no such thing as a free pass

Did Ms Camodi state these times from memory, after looking at the records, or did she deliberately falsify the records to agree with her statement?

That would make a difference would it not?

The same for any witness for the prosecution. Did they not give testimony based on their recall.

It seems that the pro acquittal side want to have different standards of evidence for the prosecution and defence.

According to the pro acquittal side, the prosecution have zero evidence against Sollecito and Knox. Given the outcome of the first trial, this sounds strange and certainly would give rise to suspicion of conspiracy.

Skwinty,

I don't see how it would be possible to falsify the phone records, and that was not what I meant. The incident happened when Ms. Comodi was cross-examining Ms. Knox. I cannot get into Ms. Comodi's head; maybe she made a mistake, in which case she is not very good at her job (as Frank Sfarzo would say). The point is that Ms. Comodi's misstatement of the time of the phone call to a time that was about 1 hour 45 minutes earlier put Amanda into a bad light. It implied that Amanda had called her mother before there was a serious matter at hand and at a time when most people are sleeping.

Even if I give ILE this mistake as a freebie, there are still all the other falsehoods that Charlie Wilkes listed a year ago and to which I have added and linked several times. And how did Amanda's list of sexual partners get into the hands of the press? This list was written in response to a false positive on a HIV test, I will add. I have no intention of giving ILE a free pass for all of their misstatements. I hope that South Africa has better subjudice rules than Italy apparently does, based on this case.
EDT
I think that there has been some low level collusion and a spirit of "to get along, go along" within ILE, rather than a grand conspiracy. I don't think that there is strictly no evidence against Amanda and Raffaele; I think that the evidence that they have was never very good and keeps getting worse as the trial of the second instance (appeal) goes forward.

I don't want two separate standards of evidence. However, there has been almost four years of talk about all the supposed lies told by Amanda and Raffaele (confusion about what Amanda said with respect to the circumstances under which Meredith locked her door is a good example). I think there should be equal time given to the misstatements of ILE, some of which are more clearly false than Amanda's or Raffaele's supposed lies. The latest attempt to pass off some faded, faxed photocopies as the actual control experiments should be viewed through the lens of the prior misstatements. MOO.

 

[Skwinty]

I hope that South Africa has better subjudice rules than Italy apparently does, based on this case.

The justice system in South Africa has many problems.

Justice depends on how well wealthy and connected you are.

Always best to keep your nose clean here.

 

[RoseMontague]

Is everything about the prosecution a lie?

I am sure there is something they have claimed that is true. If I can think of what that might be, I will let you know.

 

[Diocletus]

It is being stated on PMF that "Stefanoni stated in court that 'the knife blade sample was run somewhere in the middle of a group of 50 to 60 samples of Meredith's DNA.'" This appears to be consistent with the the fact that the review of a large batch of evidence commenced on Nov. 11 and the knife blade was run on Nov. 13.

Comodi has now suggested in Court that there were 6 days between the knife blade run and prior case-related runs. This appears inconsistent with what is given above as Stefanoni's prior testimony.

This scenario above, if the cited testimony is accurate, raises significant risks for the prosecution. Here are the possibilities as I see it:

1. Comodi got it wrong, and Stef's prior testimony is accurate. In this case, Comodi will lose credibility for having attempted to "trick" the Judge's indepenent experts with a hypotehtical that assumes facts contrary to the evidence.

2. Comodi is right and Stef's prior testimony (if, as given above) was inaccurate/misleading. In this case, I think there is a real possibility that the Court could preclude the prosecution from proving the "6 days." In order to do so, the prosecution would need to introduce new evidence of testing dates, and the Court, commenting on the prosecution's failure to be "forthcoming," has already rejected one attempt by the prosecution to produce records that were deemed previously to have been withheld.

In scenario no. 1, Comodi's credibility is undermined. In scenario no. 2, Stef's credibility is undermined. Both situations are very dangerous for the prosecution.

ETA: There is a third possibility, and that is that both Comodi and Stef are accurate, with Stef's alleged testimony referring to the first knife run (11/13) and Comodi referring to the second knife run (12/17). This would be viewed as attempted trickery by Comodi (for failing to reference the first run) and would highlight the risk of contamination associated with the first run that Comodi was trying to obscure.

 

[RoseMontague]

It is being stated on PMF that "Stefanoni stated in court that 'the knife blade sample was run somewhere in the middle of a group of 50 to 60 samples of Meredith's DNA.'" This appears to be consistent with the the fact that the review of a large batch of evidence commenced on Nov. 11 and the knife blade was run on Nov. 13.

Comodi has now suggested in Court that there were 6 days between the knife blade run and prior case-related runs. This appears inconsistent with what is given above as Stefanoni's prior testimony.

This scenario above, if the cited testimony is accurate, raises significant risks for the prosecution. Here are the possibilities as I see it:

1. Comodi got it wrong, and Stef's prior testimony is accurate. In this case, Comodi will lose credibility for having attempted to "trick" the Judge's indepenent experts with a hypotehtical that assumes facts contrary to the evidence.

2. Comodi is right and Stef's prior testimony (if, as given above) was inaccurate/misleading. In this case, I think there is a real possibility that the Court could preclude the prosecution from proving the "6 days." In order to do so, the prosecution would need to introduce new evidence of testing dates, and the Court, commenting on the prosecution's failure to be "forthcoming," has already rejected one attempt by the prosecution to produce records that were deemed previously to have been withheld.

In scenario no. 1, Comodi's credibility is undermined. In scenario no. 2, Stef's credibility is undermined. Both situations are very dangerous for the prosecution.

Comodi is trying to be tricky with this one. From the C&V report (I notice the translation has been completed-thanks komponisto and katy_did):

The Work Status Report (SAL) shows that:

* the extraction of DNA from samples A-B-C was performed on 13.11.07;
* the extraction of DNA from samples D-E-F-G was performed on 17.12.07.

Sample B is the one in question but Comodi is probably talking about the 17 December testing of the D through G samples.

 

[Onofarar]

<snip>In scenario no. 1, Comodi's credibility is undermined. In scenario no. 2, Stef's credibility is undermined. Both situations are very dangerous for the prosecution.

ETA: There is a third possibility, and that is that both Comodi and Stef are accurate, with Stef's alleged testimony referring to the first knife run (11/13) and Comodi referring to the second knife run (12/17). This would be viewed as attempted trickery by Comodi (for failing to reference the first run) and would highlight the risk of contamination associated with the first run that Comodi was trying to obscure.

I totally agree except tthat I think the situations are not dangerous for the prosecution but rather ominous for the prosecution.

BTW - If your third possibility is what Comodi was referring - then this is why I consider her far more dangerous - she is a far better litagator than Mignini - his attempts to make the defendants or experts look bad are fairly amatuerish - like his effort to portray AK as having a criminal record by citing her "noise ticket" violation - using as his source the Daily Mail article - even Massei was not amused and told him to move on. Comodi however is much more subtle and is totally amoral in court. 3 quick examples - (1) the 2 hour error in the first phone call to Seattle (2) the claim with falsified docuents that the negative controls had ben submitted to the court in 2008 and (3) the 6 day story noted above. These are either deliberate efforts to mislead and deceive the court (95% probability) or she, as Frank says, can't do her job (5%).

 

[christianahannah]

It is being stated on PMF that "Stefanoni stated in court that 'the knife blade sample was run somewhere in the middle of a group of 50 to 60 samples of Meredith's DNA.'" This appears to be consistent with the the fact that the review of a large batch of evidence commenced on Nov. 11 and the knife blade was run on Nov. 13.

Comodi has now suggested in Court that there were 6 days between the knife blade run and prior case-related runs. This appears inconsistent with what is given above as Stefanoni's prior testimony.

This scenario above, if the cited testimony is accurate, raises significant risks for the prosecution. Here are the possibilities as I see it:

1. Comodi got it wrong, and Stef's prior testimony is accurate. In this case, Comodi will lose credibility for having attempted to "trick" the Judge's indepenent experts with a hypotehtical that assumes facts contrary to the evidence.

2. Comodi is right and Stef's prior testimony (if, as given above) was inaccurate/misleading. In this case, I think there is a real possibility that the Court could preclude the prosecution from proving the "6 days." In order to do so, the prosecution would need to introduce new evidence of testing dates, and the Court, commenting on the prosecution's failure to be "forthcoming," has already rejected one attempt by the prosecution to produce records that were deemed previously to have been withheld.

In scenario no. 1, Comodi's credibility is undermined. In scenario no. 2, Stef's credibility is undermined. Both situations are very dangerous for the prosecution.

ETA: There is a third possibility, and that is that both Comodi and Stef are accurate, with Stef's alleged testimony referring to the first knife run (11/13) and Comodi referring to the second knife run (12/17). This would be viewed as attempted trickery by Comodi (for failing to reference the first run) and would highlight the risk of contamination associated with the first run that Comodi was trying to obscure.

There were two runs on those dates on the knife but I do not see evidence of a run of any samples on November 11. Do you know what samples were run on that date?

 

[RoseMontague]

There were two runs on those dates on the knife but I do not see evidence of a run of any samples on November 11. Do you know what samples were run on that date?

According to the C&V report Samples A B and C were run on 13 November.

ETA, You are asking about other tests run before the 13th? SAL reports are missing a lot of dates, unless I am blind.

 

[christianahannah]

According to the C&V report Samples A B and C were run on 13 November.

Yes, they were, however, I was speaking of any run of samples from November 6 (or 7) and November 13 to break the 6 days of no samples run.

btw - Good job on translation of the experts' report by komponisto and katy_did. Thank you for your time and effort.

 

[RoseMontague]

Yes, they were, however, I was speaking of any run of samples from November 6 (or 7) and November 13 to break the 6 days of no samples run.

btw - Good job on translation of the experts' report by komponisto and katy_did. Thank you for your time and effort.

Sorry yes. I believe I recall Gino complaining about tests missing a lot of dates as well.

 

[Diocletus]

According to the C&V report Samples A B and C were run on 13 November.

Yes. So, there was a single extraction and amplification. There was a quanification (without noted quantity = null) and run on 11/13. There was a second quanification ("too low") and run on 12/17.

Perhaps the performance of the second run is explained by the fact that Stef., having run the first egram and believing it to be Kercher DNA, realized that her quanification was null and/or suspected that she had a questionable LCN result. In other words, the test was no good even though it gave her the evidence she was looking for.

So then she runs the second quantification/egram on the same amplification. The second egram does not match the first one.

So, since the "6 days" appears to refer to the second run, what Comodi appears to want us to do is forget the first run. In essence, she's saying, "well, there might have been some sort of contamination or other difficulty on the 'null quantification' run, but we fixed that when we did the 'too low' run. So just never mind the first one and let's focus on the second."

She wants a mulligan on the first run. Hmmm.

 

[RoseMontague]

Yes. So, there was a single extraction and amplification. There was a quanification (without noted quantity = null) and run on 11/13. There was a second quanification ("too low") and run on 12/17.

Perhaps the performance of the second run is explained by the fact that Stef., having run the first egram and believing it to be Kercher DNA, realized that her quanification was null and/or suspected that she had a questionable LCN result. In other words, the test was no good even though it gave her the evidence she was looking for.

So then she runs the second quantification/egram on the same amplification. The second egram does not match the first one.

So, since the "6 days" appears to refer to the second run, what Comodi appears to want us to do is forget the first run. In essence, she's saying, "well, there might have been some sort of contamination or other difficulty on the 'null quantification' run, but we fixed that when we did the 'too low' run. So just never mind the first one and let's focus on the second."

She wants a mulligan on the first run. Hmmm.

It's a theory, but Christiana is on the right track. We need the dates other items were tested. A quick look at the test results shows a lot of missing dates. I know investigators collected some evidence on 7 November including the clothes in the washing machine but I don't think they were "officially" back in the flat after that until the bra clasp collection.

The downside of the theory is what other stuff were they still testing 6 days prior in December? Very confusing. I would also like to see that quote of Stefanoni's about testing it in a group of other items.

 

[komponisto]

It's a theory, but Christiana is on the right track. We need the dates other items were tested. A quick look at the test results shows a lot of missing dates. I know investigators collected some evidence on 7 November including the clothes in the washing machine but I don't think they were "officially" back in the flat after that until the bra clasp collection.

The downside of the theory is what other stuff were they still testing 6 days prior in December? Very confusing. I would also like to see that quote of Stefanoni's about testing it in a group of other items.

It's quoted in Conti-Vecchiotti:

“Well, the knife was tested as one item in the course of 50 samples attributed to the victim, some were before the tests on the knife naturally, and others after, so of these 50…I don’t know the knife was placed, now I don’t know, at a fourth, a third of this series of tests, but in any case even if the knife was analyzed at the end of these 50, 60 samples, in any case this wouldn’t affect the validity of the results, because each sample is tested separately, it is absolutely impossible to mix one sample with another, also because the Kercher file is just one of many files we dealt with simultaneously in the laboratory, it’s not as if the Scientific Police Service stopped to deal with the Kercher file…”).

 

[RoseMontague]

It's quoted in Conti-Vecchiotti:

Well, the knife was tested as one item in the course of 50 samples attributed to the victim, some were before the tests on the knife naturally, and others after, so of these 50…I don’t know the knife was placed, now I don’t know, at a fourth, a third of this series of tests, but in any case even if the knife was analyzed at the end of these 50, 60 samples, in any case this wouldn’t affect the validity of the results, because each sample is tested separately, it is absolutely impossible to mix one sample with another, also because the Kercher file is just one of many files we dealt with simultaneously in the laboratory, it’s not as if the Scientific Police Service stopped to deal with the Kercher file…”).

Nice to have the electronic data files, and thank you again for the translation. Here is a quote from Halkides on Maudy's blog:

What Sarah Gino complained about was not knowing such basic things as the dates on which certain items were tested (David Muir, ABC News, 28 September 2009; Ann Wise, ABC News, 26 September 2009). The dates are critical “because they would tell us what samples were tested together on the same day, which might indicate if some of them could have been contaminated.” This also indirectly shows that the electronic data files were not released to the defense, because those dates are part of the EDFs.

We know the experts finally got the files in question. I wonder if the defense got them.

 

[komponisto]

C-V translation complete

As Rose has noted, the translation of the Conti-Vecchiotti report is now complete.

For those curious, the "inner" portion ("Forensic Science 101", and knife section, pp. 30-105) was translated by katy_did, and the "outer" portions (C&V's attempted retesting, and bra clasp section, pp. 1-30 and pp. 106-145 respectively) were done by yours truly.

We'll still be polishing and proofreading, but nevertheless, as of now, the complete thoughts of the independent experts as expressed in their report are now available in English.

Thanks to katy_did for collaborating with me on this, and thanks to everybody for the encouragement!

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Did Ms Camodi state these times from memory, after looking at the records, or did she deliberately falsify the records to agree with her statement?

That would make a difference would it not?

The same for any witness for the prosecution. Did they not give testimony based on their recall.

It seems that the pro acquittal side want to have different standards of evidence for the prosecution and defence.

According to the pro acquittal side, the prosecution have zero evidence against Sollecito and Knox. Given the outcome of the first trial, this sounds strange and certainly would give rise to suspicion of conspiracy.

This is a convenient way for pro-guilt posters to have it both ways, or that's how it seems to me.

If they point to a pile of evidence and some of it can't be satisfactorily rebutted from an evidence-based point of view, woohoo! They win!

If they point to a pile of evidence and it all turns out to be rubbish under examination, then they can say "isn't it revealing that they say all the evidence is rubbish?" or "this evidence can't all be rubbish so you must be pushing a conspiracy theory!".

I don't think there was an organised conspiracy to frame Knox, and as I have said more than once in the past I think that if there was a conspiracy to frame Knox they could have done a much, much better job.

However so much of the evidence in this case is dodgy, and there is such a pattern of convenient police claims that fall to pieces under examination, that I think that a culture of cargo cult police work had taken over in Perugia. Everyone from Mignini on down was doing things that looked like police work, but only superficially. Once Mignini had decided that Knox and Sollecito were guilty multiple different people all pitched in to do cargo-cult police stuff and help make the case.

So Ms. Stefanoni gift-wrapped a mop while her team wandered around with their suits open, police testified that there was glass on Filomena's stuff and no glass outside the window, any witness that said something they could use was uncritically elevated to "superwitness" status, Amanda's HIV test results were released unethically at best and outright falsified at worst and so on. I don't think there was ever a meeting where everyone wore robes and plaster horns and chanted "death to the luciferina!", just a defective police culture where most of them were doing police things in a monkey-see, monkey-do kind of way.

Before someone goes "OMG, you Italy-basher" I think the institutionalised corruption which was thoroughly documented in the Queensland police force in the Bjelke-Petersen era was worse from a moral perspective than the Perugian incompetence this case has exposed. Police forces do go bad sometimes, here and overseas, and you don't necessarily find out about it until circumstances drag it into the open.