Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Grinder]

Much of what Shuttlt says about how the DNA came to be on the knife and bra makes sense. The bra clasp was reported by the only independent experts to have a reading so unclear that interpretation could put everyone present in the court present in Meredith's room at the time of the murder. Every expert had reported that there was DNA from multiple sources on it. The police need to explain how all the DNA ended up on it, not the defense.

It would be very unlucky if a cell or two of Meredith's was floating in the lab and ended up on the knife. Exactly how the LCN was read isn't perfectly clear to me, but IIRC there was some significant questions as whether it was a good read. But more importantly, does the DNA make any sense on that particular knife. The list: didn't match any wound was only compatible with one, could have produced the hilt bruise, didn't match the bloody silhouette on the sheet, didn't match the initial police description and there was no evidence of it being transportation.

If the police had brought in a knife that couldn't fit any of wounds would people still believe that the DNA makes sense?

As for the amount of Rudy's DNA found, perhaps there was much more and they missed it. They didn't collect clothing MK was wearing until the December round. They didn't store the towel that Rudy claimed to used to stop the bleeding. They found his shoe prints. They found his palm print. They found nothing of Amanda's or of Raffaele's in the room except the two very questionable pieces, not just questionable because of the DNA work.

 

[RoseMontague]

Somebody needs to let FBN know about this. I'll have to check <Dr Stefis bibliography.

 

[Kaosium]

The problem as I see it is that 'DNA forensics' is becoming something of a game for the scientists - they are showing off.

If traces of identifiable tissue or fluid (blood, saliva, skin, whatever) are are able to provide repeatable, uniquivocable results (a full profile and hence identification of the donor), then you have what I would call evidence.

Where invisible traces of unidentifiable tissue or fluid have yielded a partial profile, mixed with others, this should not be used as evidence - let alone proof - of anything, given the ease with which DNA can be transferred from object to object.

I'm saying that I don't believe 'LCN' DNA amplification should have any place in courts of law, period.

I'm swiftly coming to that same conclusion having started out tentatively on the other side of the issue. The number of people who--to this very day--still think that the knife and bra clasp were actually evidence of murder because of those minute trillionths of a gram 'found' on those two unlikely items astounds me. It's like all of a sudden it becomes automatic 'proof' either were in the murder room the night of the murder hacking away, when one was found in a drawer and the other on an item not inherent to the room. If Novelli was the expert chosen he might have 'confirmed' the DNA on those items and majority of the world would think Raffaele and Amanda had committed murder when the least likely explanation for those traces being there was that they were involved in the murder due to the balance of the evidence.

Curatolo, and the DNA 'evidence' were the weakest elements of the case, just in the most important spots, the 'evidence' of them in the murder room, the 'murder weapon' and the 'witness' that broke the alibi.

Do you know another thing I'm starting to think might have little place in a court of law? 'Lies.' They're just too easy to elicit, and too easy to 'spin,' and once someone is branded a 'liar' it seems to some people they're automatically guilty regardless of evidence.

 

[zeb]

It down to the fine point of what freedom of speech is

This sounds more like the Fairness in Reporting act that was repealed by Ronald Reagan in the 80s. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2053
I am not sure if this was allowed during the act, but I often hear that because of this we (in the USA) get guys like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann spouting very one-sided BS all the time in the USA in TV and Radio programs.

I would think the 1st amendment interpretation of the scenario of TJMK and PMF would be that they are allowed to use their own sites to express whatever opinion, popular or not, however they like. These are their sites, and they can control what people post on them. Just like a newspaper can publish whatever article they like and have whatever slant. TJMK or PMF are not violating my freedom of speech when they delete my postings. They piss me off and they lose credibility, but they can do that all day long for eternity under the current laws in the USA.

If Peter Quennell marched on Washington with a bunch of guilters and said, picketed - "don't let Amanda Knox go free" and the police arrested them because of this message, that would be a violation. In the aftermath of 9/11, it was a very unpopular "non-american" view to dissent about the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq. Had someone been arrested for expressing this view, that would have been a violation.

Then there is defamation which people talk a lot about regarding PMF, TJMK, Barbie, Andrea, and the Daily Mail/Nick Pisa/Sky News. It seems you'd have to prove that the information they published was known by the publisher to be wrong and damaging to a person for any chance of success in a case like that.

Note RL and KO are always shouting, but each of them always bring in the name that they are shouting at, so all in all that the freedem of speech.
M Moore when he makes his report, he always report what the other side is saying, that is freedom of speech.
Even the great Bill O on fox news even though he cuts off the sound of who ever, that is freedom of speech.
Even the tea party on thier web site will say this is web site is only for the people that wants smaller goverment.
And the list goes on and on.
That is the main point, there are two sides to the coin, and PQ and PG are only let one side of the story through, with out telling people that their web sites are only for the people who think AK and RS is guilty.
That warning should have been up front, so people would know what the web site was about.

 

[Matthew Best]

.

It will not be knox going from court to court, it will be her lawers.
That will happen in the EU, and and In America.
So lets call it a day on that one.
And have nice one

To be clear, I'm not saying she can't do it, just that she won't want to. But I could be wrong - time will tell, I guess.

 

[Diocletus]

Somebody needs to let FBN know about this. I'll have to check <Dr Stefis bibliography.

I'd love to see his rationalization for this one.

I'd also love to see the look on his ugly face when she gets acquitted. What a tool.

ETA: The one thing this proves is that--shockingly--Stefanoni and the defence pay no attention whatsoever to what FBN and his fellow haters have to say.

 

[Diocletus]

To be clear, I'm not saying she can't do it, just that she won't want to. But I could be wrong - time will tell, I guess.

Agreed. She'll be on the first plane home. I wouldn't really be surprised if she never came back to Italy given what they've done to her.

If I were her, I would want a little revenge. Maybe in my interviews or book . . .

 

[Matthew Best]

Note RL and KO are always shouting, but each of them always bring in the name that they are shouting at, so all in all that the freedem of speech.
M Moore when he makes his report, he always report what the other side is saying, that is freedom of speech.
Even the great Bill O on fox news even though he cuts off the sound of who ever, that is freedom of speech.
Even the tea party on thier web site will say this is web site is only for the people that wants smaller goverment.
And the list goes on and on.
That is the main point, there are two sides to the coin, and PQ and PG are only let one side of the story through, with out telling people that their web sites are only for the people who think AK and RS is guilty.
That warning should have been up front, so people would know what the web site was about.

Once again, I don't think you have an accurate understanding of what the First Amendment is all about. "Freedom of speech" has nothing to do with websites providing two sides to every story (for a start, who says there are only two sides?).

 

[Kaosium]

Kaosium,

for the 1001'th time I'm not convinced about the knife or the clasp. I'm not interested in being convinced. Some of the arguments about them interest me. I don't mean to take this stance as a trick, or a trap. It's how I feel. People keep arguing with me as if actually I really did think the knife was the murder weapon. None the less I think airborne contamination is surprising for the reasons I've stated. I'm not sure that there is much I can add.

Fair enough, as I understand it you wonder how come not everyone's DNA ended up on the clasp and knife? I think Justinian has the best answer, those links would also have provided it. This would have too, which is perhaps why some have been wondering!

 

[Dougm]

To be clear, I'm not saying she can't do it, just that she won't want to. But I could be wrong - time will tell, I guess.

I agree with you, Matthew. I have no inside knowledge of the Knox family, but just from what I have learned about Amanda (what she is really like) and a common sense guess, I think that being in the center of this huge confrontation with people, especially over a murder, has been hell for her. The only reason I can think of that she or her family will want to have their legal adventure continue is because they have had to bankrupt the family to defend her, so they are going to need money. On that front, it seems she is more likely to write a book, or do something else to make money, vs. spending the next decade engaged in legal action against various people.

My guess is, if the Knox family was to pursue any legal action after an aquittal, it would be against some of the papers in the UK that published blatant lies against her. That would probably be a sympathetic action in public opinion, and also might result in out of court settlements.

All of this is an educated guess by me. Could be totally wrong, I don't know them.

 

[Dan O.]

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.

As I said before: Confirmation bias. Of all the noise at the bottom of all those "too low" charts, the one that happened to be caused by contamination from just a few of Meredith's cells was kept and all the others were thrown out. If I am wrong, you can easily prove it by showing that there is no contamination on any of the other traces. This would be trivial to do given access to the digital files that were produced by the profiler. So where are those digital files?

What is the contamination level in <Dr Patrizia Stefanoni's DNA lab? Every other DNA lab in the world knows that they have contamination and that results below a certain level cannot be trusted. Stefanoni told us earlier that her lab has never had contamination. Do you believe that?

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.

Would it? Where's your proof? LCN DNA analysis exists. You can look it up on the web. LCN DNA requires special facilities for processing to reduce the contamination levels in the lab. You can look that up too.


If you choose to reject the accidental contamination explanation, what is left?

Raffaele was at home on his computer all night. Raffaele provides an alibi for Amanda all night until after he went to sleep after 6am. These two cannot have been involved in Meredith's murder so what is the explanation for the DNA evidence or their involvement that was found. If you rule out the possibility of contamination, that pretty much only leaves deliberate planting by the prosecution or ILE.

 

[christianahannah]

An article about Amanda concerning an interview given to Il Messaggero.

http://www.libero-news.it/news/818162/Le-confessioni-di-Amanda-Avevo-paura-giudici-ostili.html

I haven't located the complete interview, however, the Libero-News account is pretty good.

 

[Dougm]

Once again, I don't think you have an accurate understanding of what the First Amendment is all about. "Freedom of speech" has nothing to do with websites providing two sides to every story (for a start, who says there are only two sides?).

I don't think that PMF or any other sites are a 1st Amendment issue. I agree with the above, each site does not have to publish all points of view, there just needs to be, in US society, the freedom for them to publish their POV.

However, writing an opinion on a website is different than making publicly defamatory statements about someone with no proof, (like saying Amanda was a Coke addict, etc.), and definately different than doing things like writing letters to someone's employer to get them fired or threatening them in some other way. If any of the people involved in this debate can be proven to have done things of that sort, that is a whole other issue, that has no relevence to 1st Ammendment.

 

[christianahannah]

An English version of Amanda's interview:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...lieve-me-over-murder-of-Meredith-Kercher.html

 

[shuttlt]

As I said before: Confirmation bias. Of all the noise at the bottom of all those "too low" charts, the one that happened to be caused by contamination from just a few of Meredith's cells was kept and all the others were thrown out. If I am wrong, you can easily prove it by showing that there is no contamination on any of the other traces. This would be trivial to do given access to the digital files that were produced by the profiler. So where are those digital files?

I don't think you are saying that she did a bunch of LCN tests and discarded the ones with her DNA, or DNA from some otehr case on. That being the case it still feels like jolly bad luck that the one sample she chooses to amplify in that way should have had Merediths DNA flat onto it.

What is the contamination level in <Dr Patrizia Stefanoni's DNA lab? Every other DNA lab in the world knows that they have contamination and that results below a certain level cannot be trusted. Stefanoni told us earlier that her lab has never had contamination. Do you believe that?

My view on it being jolly bad luck is unaffected even if she was amplifying below the level where there was a serious risk of amplifying lab contaminants. It's just not my expectation that that much of the ambient DNA would be Meredith's. Certainly not after 6 days (assuming it was). Perhaps I'm wrong in this expectation. I don't see that this expectation can be dismissed as obviously wrong though.

Would it? Where's your proof? LCN DNA analysis exists. You can look it up on the web. LCN DNA requires special facilities for processing to reduce the contamination levels in the lab. You can look that up too.

I have.

If you choose to reject the accidental contamination explanation, what is left?

I've explicitly said today that I don't reject this.

Raffaele was at home on his computer all night. Raffaele provides an alibi for Amanda all night until after he went to sleep after 6am. These two cannot have been involved in Meredith's murder so what is the explanation for the DNA evidence or their involvement that was found. If you rule out the possibility of contamination, that pretty much only leaves deliberate planting by the prosecution or ILE.

I don't want to discuss the alibi.

 

[shuttlt]

Would it? Where's your proof? LCN DNA analysis exists. You can look it up on the web. LCN DNA requires special facilities for processing to reduce the contamination levels in the lab. You can look that up too.

I just wanted to clarify my objection here. As I understand it your expectation is that LCN DNA floats about all over the place and if you left the knife exposed to the air in the lab for an hour?, a day? your natural expectation should be that any analysis will be worthless due to contamination. That being the case, everything would be permanently covered in LCN levels of DNA and analysis would tell you little except what the contaminant levels looked like in the environments it had been in.

I'm not saying that there isn't a reason for all these precautions. I'm not arguing that that isn't how the DNA got on the knife.

Surely the argument with the knife is that the levels of DNA are such that there is an uncomfortable risk of contamination, which if you are unlucky, might be genetic material relating to the case?

 

[zeb]

Once again, I don't think you have an accurate understanding of what the First Amendment is all about. "Freedom of speech" has nothing to do with websites providing two sides to every story (for a start, who says there are only two sides?).

There is nothing more to say about this.
You have your view and I have mine.
So lets call it a day.
And have a nice one

 

[Kaosium]

Well you know I don't subscribe to cheated, fudged(?) or otherwise tried something fishy to any side in this case. People can be innocent without these things happening.

Of course they can, however why would you ignore evidence simply because it doesn't have to be true or even is seldom true? People die far more often from natural causes than murder, and each death could occur naturally, been an accident or have been self-inflicted. Does that mean if I don't 'subscribe' to murder, as each death could happen differently, that there's no murder?

Incidentally, what did you think of the withholding of the TMB negatives, the claim they were never done, and then the rationalization that they weren't lying because they didn't do confirmatory tests when those results were discovered?

 

[RoseMontague]

An English version of Amanda's interview:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...lieve-me-over-murder-of-Meredith-Kercher.html

She sounds pretty confident. Thanks for the link, Christiana.

 

[Dougm]

I just wanted to clarify my objection here. As I understand it your expectation is that LCN DNA floats about all over the place and if you left the knife exposed to the air in the lab for an hour?, a day? your natural expectation should be that any analysis will be worthless due to contamination. That being the case, everything would be permanently covered in LCN levels of DNA and analysis would tell you little except what the contaminant levels looked like in the environments it had been in.

I'm not saying that there isn't a reason for all these precautions. I'm not arguing that that isn't how the DNA got on the knife.

Surely the argument with the knife is that the levels of DNA are such that there is an uncomfortable risk of contamination, which if you are unlucky, might be genetic material relating to the case?

I have been reading the back and forth on this DNA evidence, and the speculation about what it means. I feel that it needs to be said that any discussion of how the knife or bra clasp got contaminated is really irrelevent to the case. The point of DNA evidence is that it is a very scientific process that has to be done in a very specific way, or any number of things can turn up, for reasons unknown. It simply cannot be used to prove anything unless it is done correctly. When we are talking about the LCN version (knife) that concept gets multiplied, because the process is so open to contamination it needs to be done exactly right.

Speculating about how things got contaminated is really missing the point. It doesn't matter, and can never be known. The idea is that in order for this DNA to be proof of anything it needs to have been done in a way that is clear of doubt. Finding 3, or 12, or however many alleles of Raffaele on an item that was not collected correctly or tested in the proper manner is not proof of anything -- there are so many ways that it could be incorrect that it doesn't matter how. The knife is the same thing. How did Meredith's DNA get on there?? Was it even ever there?? No one knows, and it doesn't matter. It should have been done correctly, and if it wasn't, the results reported by Stephanoni could have been because of contamination, in the lab or before, or because she turned up the instrument, or because she read the results in a suspect centric way. It could be any of these things, or something else. The reason there are standards is because this process is not like finding a finger print, it is taking a specific biological finding out of the enviornment, and all of our DNA is floating all over the place, and the profiles, if changes just an iota, indicate the DNA of another person.

The point is, if there is any reason to indicate possible contamination, the results are bogus. And there are huge reasons to suspect possible contamination here, so the exact method is irrelevent.