Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

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Again thank you for sharing...

You know the traditional response... We all know Guede violently attacked her, but there wasn't terribly much of him in the room either.
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Shuttlt,

there was a whole lot more than Amanda and Raffaele's combined. One could almost say 100 times more, but that's just one's opinion.

Although it is interesting (and correct me if I'm wrong) that it's reasonable to believe that Raffaele and Amanda left no DNA due to chance, but it's not equally reasonable to believe that the smallest amount of someone's DNA profile found on the smallest part of the bra couldn't possibly be due to chance contamination.

Just interesting,

Dave
 
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You know the traditional response... We all know Guede violently attacked her, but there wasn't terribly much of him in the room either.
Just the hand print alone is a whole lot more than a scanty statistical outlier of a now independently deemed unscientific reading of Raffaele's DNA on a brasp clasp with a chain of custody issue. No doubt for Rudy and independently confirmed doubt for Raffaele. Game over.
 
I think if the Hellmann court thinks as we do, it's a slam dunk; Amanda and Raffaele will be released at the end of the month.

On the other hand, if the jury has a box of crayons (to use Bruce Fisher's expression), and has been drawing pictures during the testimony, then PMF and TJMK will get their heart's desire - further suffering for the innocent. Perhaps they have been playing "hangman" like our fiends at TJMK and PMF.

The tide has turned. It will lift Amanda and Raffaele's boats and Amanda can sail home to her country and live happily ever after.

You overlooked the "third path" - the "Solomonic" choice to "split the baby" by reducing her (and Raf's) sentence.
BTW - I don't read Hellmann as inclined to follow that path.
 
So you think the contamination was airborne? With the technicians working there every day, other samples from other cases and so forth and allegedly 6 days since the previous Meredith sample was tested it just seems like astonishingly bad luck to me. We clearly differ on this and I'm not going to push it. It's the bra clasp all over again. To me it's surprising that of all the dust in the house Raffaele's dust should make up such a large proportion of the contamination (assuming we go with the dust theory), other people aren't surprised in the least.

Really, if LCN levels DNA was floating about in the way you seem to be describing no LCN DNA analysis would be possible. The knife would already have been hopelessly contaminated with Raffaele's DNA from the air in his flat.
46 days of lack of floor cleaning. Have you ever not swept or vacuumed your house for more than a month? It moved - who knows how it was moved across the floor? There is a picture of the front door wide open while the crime scene was supposedly sealed... wind just blowing in, stirring it up.
There's a picture of a Raffaele's mop being handled near the collection of the bra clasp!
 
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Justinian. Is there any need to be so aggressive and patronizing? The worst thing about this debate is how unnecessarily confrontational and partisan everybody is. I am well aware of all everything in your post.

Patrizia Stefanoni's pseudo scientific methods remind me of ghost hunters that look for ghosts with a tape recorder. After a recording, they turn up the gain and listen to the noise.

Patrizia Stefanoni turned up the gain on her instrument and looked at the noise to determine that MK's DNA could have been present on the knife or some of the lab containers. In a lab with billions of copies of MK's DNA, finding a part of a Strand is not only NOT amazing, it must be expected!
 
Link here. "Concomitant with the ability to amplify minute quantities of material is the increased likelihood of contamination being detected and of artefacts of the amplification process being increased due to stochastic effects....Contamination is a crucial issue in the analysis and interpretation of trace DNA. Contaminant DNA may appear as either the major or minor sample within a mixture or, alternatively, may overwhelm the target DNA completely."

Do you know if in a mixture sample if it is easier to obtain profiles when the contributors of the mixture are female rather than if the contributors of the mixture are female and male?
 
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Shuttlt,

there was a whole lot more than Amanda and Raffaele's combined. One could almost say 100 times more, but that's just one's opinion.

Although it is interesting (and correct me if I'm wrong) that it's reasonable to believe that Raffaele and Amanda left no DNA due to chance, but it's not equally reasonable to believe that the smallest amount of someone's DNA profile found on the smallest part of the bra couldn't possibly be due to chance contamination.

Just interesting,

Dave
It could speak to the roles that may have had in the murder.

Also, I think it would require some thought to compare the two probabilities. Say there were 100 opportunities for Guede to leave DNA and he left four detectable samples. If Amanda and Raffaele had 25 opportunities I don't think it would be so stunning that nothing was found. The less of a role one supposes they had in the murder the less surprising it becomes. If one wanted to push a scenario where Guede had a minor role and Amanda and Raffaele had a major role wrestling Meredith across the room, then it would be suprising.

If most of the dust in the room is Merediths, a tiny bit is from other housemates, and a tiny tiny bit of that tiny bit is from Raffaele, it's a surprise that it's his that comes through strongly and theirs that comes through weakly.
 
Patrizia Stefanoni's pseudo scientific methods remind me of ghost hunters that look for ghosts with a tape recorder. After a recording, they turn up the gain and listen to the noise.

Patrizia Stefanoni turned up the gain on her instrument and looked at the noise to determine that MK's DNA could have been present on the knife or some of the lab containers. In a lab with billions of copies of MK's DNA, finding a part of a Strand is not only NOT amazing, it must be expected!
Sure, so long as you keep discarding DNA of lab techs, other cases and random amplified fuzz until you get the right contaminant. If you expect things to be hopelessly contaminate by the DNA of the local environment, where is Raffaele and Amanda's DNA in the LCN amplification from the time the knife spent at his apartment? Where is Stefanoni's and the other lab techs who must surely have been shedding DNA in the lab for years. Why do we expect Meredith's DNA, but not expect Raffaele's?
 
dust

I prefer that to the house dust explanation.
shuttlt,

I don't think anyone here is offering the dust explanation as the sole possibility. I don't consider it the most likely explanation for all of the alleles, but it certainly could be responsible for some of the alleles. I think it is interesting that both the Van Oorshot review aritlcle I just cited and the Conti-Vecchiotti report cite the 2008 Toothman paper, which is the first paper of which I am aware to discuss household dust in the context of forensic DNA analysis.

I would be interested in hearing your theory of how the DNA came to be on the knife and bra clasp.
 
The point of course is that there are any number of possible explanations for the presence of the DNA, most, if not all, of which could have been eliminated by the forensics people if only they had done their job properly.

They didn't.
 
Has anybody considered the possibility that the judges of the appeal will aim at a compromise? Is there any possibility at all that we will get a verdict like in the Casey Anthony case, and that Knox and Sollecito willl be found guilty of lying to police, Calunnia and staging a break in, but that there is unsufficient proof they did any actual killing? That way they will be set free with time served, but the authorities will not lose all face. Can that be an outcome in accordance with Italian law?

I am interested in the calunnia charge, which has not been the subject of much scrutiny of late. It seems obvious to me, that if you first conclude that Knox was guilty of the murder, that you would also conclude that she should be punished for trying to deflect attention by falsely accusing Lumumba.

But, what if you approach from the perspective that Knox is innocent in the murder? Then the question becomes, how exactly did the cops get an innocent girl to make a false accusation? An interesting question, and we have Knox testifying that she was mistreated, we have Giobbi saying that she was yelling, we have the cops writing down that she was hitting her head, we have Knox saying that the cops hit her head, and we have a lengthy, late night interrogation with many participants.

Knox's defense to the colunnia charge is that she did not make the false accusation voluntarily, because she was coerced. Given the amount of objective evidence out there on the issue of voluntariness/coercion, it does not seem impossible to me that the Court concludes that there is reasonable doubt as to whether this innocent girl voluntarily falsely accused Lumumba.

That said, if I am Hellmann, I'm thinking:

1) if I find her guilty on this relatively minor charge, then it won't look so bad that we locked her up for four years on the murder. This is good for Italy, but bad for Knox.

2) if I am inclined to acquit, then I would be looking hard to see if there is a technicality (admissibility issue?) that I can use to get rid of this charge, because if I find her innocent on the merits, it gets really messy for the authorities. This is good for the authorities and for Knox.

3) if I think the authorities deserve some trouble, then I acquit on the merits, which would basically highlight the issue of police misconduct and also blow up the collateral collunia charges that the authorities have leveled at Knox and her family. This is good for Knox, but bad for the authorities.

It all comes down to who Hellmann wants to protect and who he thinks should be punished.
 
You might have a point...

It could speak to the roles that may have had in the murder.

Also, I think it would require some thought to compare the two probabilities. Say there were 100 opportunities for Guede to leave DNA and he left four detectable samples. If Amanda and Raffaele had 25 opportunities I don't think it would be so stunning that nothing was found. The less of a role one supposes they had in the murder the less surprising it becomes. If one wanted to push a scenario where Guede had a minor role and Amanda and Raffaele had a major role wrestling Meredith across the room, then it would be suprising.

If most of the dust in the room is Merediths, a tiny bit is from other housemates, and a tiny tiny bit of that tiny bit is from Raffaele, it's a surprise that it's his that comes through strongly and theirs that comes through weakly.
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Shuttlt,

if there was any proof supporting your scenarios, but since there is no real proof that any of your scenarios are accurate, it's disingenuous to use them as proof that one claim is reasonable (lack of DNA is due to chance) but the other (chance contamination) isn't reasonable, especially when you consider the collection video and the evidence of other mixed profiles (one of which could be Filomena's) on the smallest part of the bra clasp,

Dave

ETA: although you do make a good point and one that has nagged me also. If Raffaele's DNA was a result of dust contamination, why wasn't it found in more places, especially the murder room and in the knife draw in his house? Good point Shuttlt.
 
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I would be interested in hearing your theory of how the DNA came to be on the knife and bra clasp.
Well, ignoring the during the murder theory... it could have gotten there in a lot of ways. All of them seem to me very unlikely. Once you've excluded the "during the murder" one, one of the other possibilities must be it. I would go with somebody having been stupid, in a way that we aren't yet and probably will never be aware of, and contaminated them or contaminated them on purpose. Crazier and more unlikely things than airborne transmission happen every day.
 
The question of reduction

Has anybody considered the possibility that the judges of the appeal will aim at a compromise? Is there any possibility at all that we will get a verdict like in the Casey Anthony case, and that Knox and Sollecito willl be found guilty of lying to police, Calunnia and staging a break in, but that there is unsufficient proof they did any actual killing? That way they will be set free with time served, but the authorities will not lose all face. Can that be an outcome in accordance with Italian law?

I cannot imagine that they will be found gulity of murder now, with the DNA-evidence discredited beyond belief and no credible witness to put them at the scene of the crime. Reasonable doubt have been established and it's clear the judges cannot think otherwise.

Staging - definitely cannot see it. There is no evidence, and if the court were to accept the staging they have to follow with further charges.

Lying to police, callunia - no danger for Raffaele, as for Amanda, it all depends on the judge. There are good reasons to drop the callunia, too. So, either acquittal or time served. They definitely don't want to keep her in jail for callunia if they acquit of murder.
 
dropout

Do you know if in a mixture sample if it is easier to obtain profiles when the contributors of the mixture are female rather than if the contributors of the mixture are female and male?
christianahannah,

I am not certain. However, I think that it would be marginally easier with a male and female mixed sample, assuming no dropout.
 
So you think the contamination was airborne? With the technicians working there every day, other samples from other cases and so forth and allegedly 6 days since the previous Meredith sample was tested it just seems like astonishingly bad luck to me. We clearly differ on this and I'm not going to push it. It's the bra clasp all over again. To me it's surprising that of all the dust in the house Raffaele's dust should make up such a large proportion of the contamination (assuming we go with the dust theory), other people aren't surprised in the least.

Really, if LCN levels DNA was floating about in the way you seem to be describing no LCN DNA analysis would be possible. The knife would already have been hopelessly contaminated with Raffaele's DNA from the air in his flat.

That's why special materials and special labs are needed to handle Low Template analysis, and why standards have to be employed so that things like this don't happen. Stefanoni's results were never legitimate, that's what the neutral independent, qualified, court-appointed experts actually said. If you came to a different conclusion, you were listening to the wrong people and choosing the wrong information in which to base your decision. Just because the prosecution disputes the fact they were caught cheating doesn't mean that fact is legitimately in dispute! Especially since it was dismissed as irrelevant or untrue. Did you actually expect them to fess up? Or does their previous behavior suggest they're more likely to misdirect, obfuscate and accuse? Why would they be honest if they made a mistake when there's no penalty for lying and anyone suggesting misconduct may be jailed or sued?

It appears to me you started from your conclusion and worked backwards. That the bra-clasp and knife were legitimate, thus anything else had to be proven. In actuality those pieces of 'evidence' were so absurd a cursory inquiry might have suggested to you a different tack. Evidence of four or more contributors, which is easily determinable by perusing the source material, is highly suggestive of illegitimacy on many levels. That it is considered evidence in an Italian court is an indictment of that court, not the analysis. That knife is so ridiculous on so many levels, it by itself implies a disingenuous prosecution. Entry level forensics and science don't change from place to place, thus they're a handy barometer in instances like this.

So try starting from the only assumption that is valid at this point, that the knife has to be proven to have been part of the murder. Not that it's the murder weapon until proven otherwise, because it appears that has caused you to get lost in a decaying faulty logic loop. Now let us say you're looking at it under the assumption that you have Stefanoni's results, why not take a look at what those promoting forensic LCN/LT DNA say about the standards imposed and procedures that must be employed to ensure proper results? Here's something of a primer on forensic DNA work to start with so you might have an idea WTF they're talking about in the first one.

Then stop and think about the falsifiers and indications it wasn't involved in the murder. No blood traces, not matching the wounds--and why it doesn't--that it was supposedly the only trace of Amanda that could be connected to the murder room, that there were no wounds on Amanda, nor anything on her body or clothes found suggesting participation in a violent death struggle.

Now think about the fact that a bright guy like you can simply assume it's the murder weapon because they say so, that the prosecutor can produce whatever he damn well wants to in court as 'evidence. ' Add in the fact that the jury of an Italian trial of the first instance can be populated by those without high school educations and might be even more prone to just assuming because the prosecution says so it must be true, and the defense must conclusively disprove any dispute the prosecution makes to their rebuttal, but they don't have to actually prove anything and can jail or fine anyone who suggests impropriety.

Why, under those conditions they could probably propose anything they wanted as 'evidence' of murder and get away with it, couldn't they? So why not start from the beginning and evaluate their contentions on the basis of logic, science and forensics? Maybe even employ some common sense as well? Here's something that might be very helpful in determining the status of the knife and bra clasp, if you find you have to violate it to a ridiculous degree to determine it was the murder weapon--if you can even do so by starting at the beginning--then perhaps the better explanation is that it wasn't used in the murder, and the fact they even proposed it as such goes a long way towards explaining this? :)
 
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