Continuation Part 3 - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[Grinder]

It clearly does not say that only 11% think they are innocent. t clearly says only 11% always thought they were innocent which IIRC is what polls in Italy showed back in 08.

Will you now agree with everything Rose has and does say? If so, I'll give any read you want on the poll, which as I have said is basically worthless anyway.

ETA: Do you now agree that Hellmann declared them innocent rather than not guilty?

Did you get the timing of Amanda saying she was hit cleared up over at home base?

 

[pilot padron]

I was waiting for the inevitable carry back to here

It clearly does not say that only 11% think they are innocent. t clearly says only 11% always thought they were innocent which IIRC is what polls in Italy showed back in 08.

Will you now agree with everything Rose has and does say? If so, I'll give any read you want on the poll, which as I have said is basically worthless anyway.

ETA: Do you now agree that Hellmann declared them innocent rather than not guilty?

Did you get the timing of Amanda saying she was hit cleared up over at home base?

The idiots and morons and haters over there might take a while for the full resolution to that argument.
But, really glad you are following it so closely. (again)
There is soooo much good information that eventually comes out there.

But, certainly, the inevitable...errrr.... 'critiques'..... here of everything said by them will be much more beneficial when it gets back here anyway.
Won't it ?

 

[LondonJohn]

It tells us that it was not Guede.

A cleanup cannot be applied to Guede, because Guede obviously didn't care of cleaning up his traces in the other bathroom nor anywhere else.
Walking around without leaving tracks or prints or stains back to Meredith's room also is not consistent with Guede's style in his movements in the house, given that he leaves a trail of visible bloody shoeprints;

Is that the trail of "visible" bloody shoeprints that were so "visible" that the police investigators managed not only not to notice them for a good few hours after arriving at the cottage, but also to trample repeatedly all over them as they used the hallway?! Isn't it possible (or, ummmm, likely) that Guede himself didn;t realise that he'd deposited this rather damning evidence in the hallway?

nor that is consistent with his desire to be clean (nor consistent with Nara's testimony who hears someone walking out of on the gravel path within two minutes).

Capezzali either heard something totally unconnected to the crime, or she's honestly mistaken, or she's a liar. Either way, her "recollections" are of no value whatsoever to the investigation, and are utterly irrelevant. Meredith Kercher died long before 10pm. You might understand that more when you read the Hellmann report. Or you might want to ask Comodi for a prosecution update on ToD in the face of unarguable evidence that destroys their risible ToD from the Massei farce....

His "dirty" way of moving around would be even more visible if he had wet bloody trousers on: thoug, she doesn't leave drops around.

Ermmmm...... he dabbed his trouser leg with a towel until the majority of the residual water had gone? Imagine going to a shower with your trousers on, and washing down your trouser leg extensively with the shower hose. Now, if you just stepped straight out and started walking around, then of course your trouser leg would drip water. But imagine if....you grabbed a towel and dried off your trousers while standing in the shower, up to the point where your trouser leg was still damp (inevitably), but not so saturated as to drip water. Not, in my world, a particularly difficult - or improbable - scenario to imagine....

Moroever, I see no explanation for how he could rinse his trousers: was he still wearing them? If yes, how did he pour water on them? If he used a towel, it should be a partly clean towel.

*SIGH* What if he took the towel that he'd used to clean/dry his trouser leg, and subsequently used it to mop up blood in Meredith's room? Wouldn't this produce towels inexactly the condition in which they were found in Meredith's room the following day?

If he pulled his trousers off to rinse them, thus didn't need to place his foot in water to rinse them, how did it happen that he immerged his foot in blood, and why did he do so?

How about if he left his trousers on to rinse them? And he never "immersed his foot in blood" - that's a strawman. He stepped in a pool of dilute blood - probably on the floor of the shower cubicle - that was there as a result of him rinsing the blood off the front of his trousers. It's simple really.

And after that, how it happened that he only left bloody prints on the bathmat and nowhere else? And, where is the footprint's heel?

There was either a towel on the floor between the shower cubicle and the edge of the bath mat, or Guede merely put the weight of the front of his foot onto the mat as he reached out for a towel (which may have been resting on the edge of the sink). Try it yourself: lay a thick bath mat or rug onto the floor, and step onto it in the same way as the partial print was left on the Perugia bath mat. You'll see that it's extremely easy to make an impression onto the bath mat or rug in exactly the same way as happened on the Perugia bath mat - yet the rear half of the foot can comfortably remain suspended above the floor.

This scenario is uterrly inconsistent on any logical passage, it makes no sense. You say my reasoning is flawed, but you only state that, not prove it; you're unable to say why.

Huh?

If you just want me to take in account the declarations that incriminate Knox and Sollecito...

There is no clean up in Guede's story, and that would make no sense.

You've not read Guede's story properly then. He himself says that he washed blood off the front of his trousers, and that he wiped up blood in Meredith's room.

On the other hand, there is Amanda Knox's blood in the bathroom, showing she was there that night (albeit her staunch supporters will always attempt to maintain that it is not evidence).

There's a spot of Knox's blood on the tap of the sink. It's totally dried and totally different in appearance and consistency from every other piece of blood evidence in the bathroom. There is not a single other drop of Knox's blood anywhere in the cottage. It's in fact likely that this one drop of blood was associated with Knox's poor effort to multi-pierce her ear a couple of days earlier. The spot/smear is so small as to be virtually unnoticeable under the normal bathroom lighting.

This spot of blood most certainly does not show that Knox was "there that night". Oh, and as a slight aside, one does not have to be a "staunch supporter" of Knox to reach this conclusion (O wouldn't count myself in this category, for example) - one merely has to be rational, intelligent and objective. Again, Hellmann's motivations report might make things a little clearer for you.

There is also other mixed DNA traces of Knox and Meredith where they should not be (such as in Filomena's room, on a stain that had been cleaned and enhanced by luminol). Alll innocentisti folks deliberately decide that these finding have zero value.

That one spot in Filomena's room (which was virtually invisible to the naked eye) is far, far more likely to have been tracked into the room by one of the multiple people who were moving around the crime scene in the days after the murder with absolutely no discipline for changing their protective footwear in between rooms.

It is false, there is a footprint on the bathmat that only matches Raffaele and not Guede: the bloody footprint is not compatible with Guede.
There are also other luminol footrpints matching Sollecito.

That's simply incorrect. Again, Hellmann's report may help educate you.

Absolutely not. There is nothing that implicates Rudy in Filomena's room, where the alleged break in and searching for values should have taken place (there are instead traces implicating Knox mixed with Meredith's DNA). Nothing in the small bathroom.

Apart from the black hair on the broken window's frame and the blood smear that were apparently "lost", you mean?

If "clearly resembles" is the scientific level of your observation, I'll just answer that I can proof, and can show the well grounded reasons, why the footprint is not compatible with Guede and matches Sollecito.

I'm looking forward to this one! The bath mat print analysis performed by Rinaldi was bogus pseudoscience, and on top of that it was performed using an utterly unscientific, suspect-centric method. I can't think that your attempt will be any better. After all, if your really could prove that the print was definitely incompatible with Guede and matched Sollecito, you should have written to the fine, upstanding Mignini and Comodi with your revelations

I'm not at your service. I gave a very articulate answer to the first part of LashL post, and never received any feedback. It is not the first time: whenever I give explanations, various people who demended for it don't answer to the arguments or suddenly disappear. After a while, they come back with the same complaints.

That's not what I see. I see you making grandiose, sweeping claims that you say you'll "prove", but which then appear to be quietly dropped when held up to the light by others. I wonder why that approach sounds somehow familiar....?

I stated that I have reasons. I also posted them elsewhere in the past. Now, I decided to wait before explaining a point again. Be more respectful in drawing conclusions on other posters.

"I'll answer when I'm good and ready - not before"

Lovely stuff!

 

[LondonJohn]

#2) "Guilty without evidence" is absolutely not in any way shape or form what Judge Hellmann said when he had those TV cameras he himself approved on him as he delivered his verdict ??
You make a l-o-n-g stretch to infer that people so voting "feel Judge Hellman made the right decision"

How/why can you possibly argue that Judge Hellmann ruled/said "guilty without evidence"

He said more like what was immediately and incessantly crowed about here ever since....not guilty, innocent, no evidence, full acquittal etcccccccccc...

An outstanding debater and later very successful Lawyer once told me that it is self defeating to try and argue each and ever minor point when trying to convince others.
Much more effective and adult like to give in or ignore the weakest.

Rose originally brought the interesting poll to light.
To her credit, she did so knowing the poll was in contrast to her always well documented beliefs.
Rose subsequently observed this about such attempts as your argument above to "spin" the poll to favor innocence:


You did catch that didn't you ? ?
But please do continue to "parse", spin, and try to defend the indefensible weakest arguments about innocence.
It all counts toward 75,000.

This totally unscientific and inherently flawed poll would have been meaningless and unworthy of serious discussion regardless of what its self-selecting respondents has said. I would have made this point whether the overwhelming "button-press" response favoured guilt or innocence. And that's the nub of it really. It's a total irrelevance that has no value to either "side" in this debate.

Of slightly more value - arguably - would be a properly-conducted poll that questioned a randomised representative sample of the population (of Perugia or Italy or wherever), and where the poll questions were properly constructed. Such a poll could tell us - within a margin of error - what the real public mood was about this case. But, as I also wrote before, even a proper gauge of public feeling is of limited use when it comes to a complex legal case in which large swathes of the population are almost certainly uninformed and/or pre-judgemental towards the case.

PS: Has Stint7 ever counted the total number of posts on .org and sought to use the number as some sort of derogatory "argument" as to how that site is "going round in circles"? You should have a word with him: I feel pretty confident that .org has more posts than the sum of posts on the cumulative main Knox threads here. What does that tell you about .org.......?!

 

[LondonJohn]

Glad you were able to find amusement in my post.
Some might even say your concluding sentence adorned with emoticons was purposely demeaning.

Many might wonder how anything in your argument related in any way to what I said in my post.
I simply wondered how with about 1000 posts another poster could be criticized for not remembering DanO's.
Eh ????

Is that somehow related to what you responded, or was the main purpose of your argument to just demean with the concluding "skeptic" reference ??.

No, the main purpose of my post was to point out that the length of time and attention devoted to this issue here on JREF appears to have borne fruit (again), in that it came up with the right conclusions. Moreover, this issue was examined in sufficient detail, and with sufficient objectivity, that the conclusions are robust and defensible. I then pointed out that it appears that Hellmann's court's conclusions on this issue dovetailed closely with those reached here. Had we spent such a large amount of time and reached a biased, unsupportable conclusion (now where does that happen on a regular basis...?), then I'd agree that it would have been a collossal waste of time.

And I had amusing visions of Lloyd Bentsen's withering put-down to Dan Quale in the 1988 Vice-Presidential debate: "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy"

 

[Osterwelle]

Because they did not manipulate and not lie, they fought for justice and revealed the truth on this as well as on other cases, investigated and indicted two people whom I consider guilty not innocent: the suspects are two liars guilty of murder in my opinion, and Knox was also found guilty of calunnia and condemned to pay trial expenses.

It's really facinating to see how your mind works. Disturbing, but facinating.

Fortunately, your opinion* counts for nothing in this case and Hellmann corrected at least the most hideous wrongdoings so maybe not all hope is lost for Italy's justice system.

^*Yeah, yeah, I know. Mine as well...

-
Osterwelle

 

[Machiavelli]

OK, I read somewhere that Moldavian woman's case was unusual for a murder case, in that she was firstly acquitted and then convicted. So you're saying that's not unusual at all? Would that mean roughly half of all murder cases that aren't fast-tracked are the result of the prosecution having appealed and won a conviction after an acquittal? Does the prosecution appeal every acquittal? I got the impression even that was unusual.

Well, let’s say: the most usual way things go, is that there are two convictions. I repeat that I don’t have stats, but I feel the wide majority of murder trials (maybe like 70% or so) are simply a sequence of convictions with no significant change. In fact only about 15% of verdicts are significantly reversed in the merits (like innocent to guilty or vice versa).
So it is the reversal that itself is rather unusual. This is because most cases are simple and usually evidence is obvious. However, as we consider only difficult or complicate cases, stats seem to change dramatically.

I try to recall by memory a list of some high-profile cases:

The Nicholas Green murder: Nicholas Green was a child, and a US citizen; his alleged killers were acquitted on first instance, then convicted on appeal (no physical evidence, only mafia witnesses).
The DAMS murder: a lover’s murder in Bologna, acquitted in the first instance, convicted in the appeal.
The Cogne murder: this was probably the highest profile case in Italy, short track trial, convicted in first instance, acquitted in appeal, then acquittal reversed at the supreme court, then convicted on a new appeal, then finally conviction confirmed at the supreme court.
Pacciani and the Monster of Florence: not a fast track murder, the three main suspects were convicted in first instance, then acquitted on appeal; then supreme court reversed (annulled) the verdicts, and on the new appeal the suspects were convicted (meanwhile Pacciani had died).
Giulio Andreotti: this was an unusual case, probably related to the very high profile of the defendant; not a fast track trial, he was acquitted of murder on first instance then convicted on appeal, but the conviction reversed by the supreme court with a definitive acquittal (but very powerful politicians may have friends at the supreme court).

The cases I recall seem to have a slight prevalence of conviction on appeal after first instance acquittal, but not prevalent to the point of considering the reverse order as an exception.

How about the Supreme Court striking down an acquittal in a murder case and remanding it for retrial? Or can the Supreme Court of Cassation convict Amanda and Raffaele without another trial?

What they can do is only the first option, they can only remand to a new trial. They cannot actually convict without another trial. Because a conviction on the nullity of appeal would trigger the right to a second appeal. This is about the murder case, on which the prosecution has appealed. But about the calunnia, the defence has to appeal, thus this depends on if the defense decides to appeal the conviction. Because if the defence doesn’t appeal the conviction for calunnia, the latter will become automatically definitive within 45 days after the issue of the motivations report. I think the defense of Knox will likely submit an appeal for the calunnia conviction, but they haven't expressed this intent by now.

 

[Antony]

It tells us that it was not Guede.



A cleanup cannot be applied to Guede, because Guede obviously didn't care of cleaning up his traces in the other bathroom nor anywhere else.

Are you serious? Because Guede didn't clean up in the other bathroom or in the murder room, it proves he didn't clean up in the bathroom? Nobody who doesn't share your conclusion-driven thinking is going to be convinced by this argument from incredulity.

The killer was in a hurry and a state of agitation at the enormity of what he had done (never having murdered anybody before). He cleaned the blood off his own clothes as best he could, mopped up the immediate signs of having done this using the towels that were to hand, but overlooked his own footprint in blood and water on the bathmat. He dumped the towels in the murder room and locked the door, but in the frenzy of the events, forgot about his own faeces in the unflushed toilet in the other bathroom. There is absolutely no contradiction between his hasty clean-up in the bathroom, and the uncleaned traces elsewhere in the flat.

Walking around without leaving tracks or prints or stains back to Meredith's room also is not consistent with Guede's style in his movements in the house, given that he leaves a trail of visible bloody shoeprints; nor that is consistent with his desire to be clean (nor consistent with Nara's testimony who hears someone walking out of on the gravel path within two minutes). His "dirty" way of moving around would be even more visible if he had wet bloody trousers on: thoug, she doesn't leave drops around.
Moroever, I see no explanation for how he could rinse his trousers: was he still wearing them? If yes, how did he pour water on them? If he used a towel, it should be a partly clean towel.
If he pulled his trousers off to rinse them, thus didn't need to place his foot in water to rinse them, how did it happen that he immerged his foot in blood, and why did he do so?
And after that, how it happened that he only left bloody prints on the bathmat and nowhere else? And, where is the footprint's heel?
This scenario is uterrly inconsistent on any logical passage, it makes no sense. You say my reasoning is flawed, but you only state that, not prove it; you're unable to say why.

All of your questions have been adequately answered by others in this forum, and in any case are just as cogent in the case where the footprint is attributed to Raffaele. The fact that you can't see this simply shows that you are not looking at this objectively.

If you just want me to take in account the declarations that incriminate Knox and Sollecito...



There is no clean up in Guede's story, and that would make no sense.

You are missing the point. Guede's story is only truthful in as much as it covers him for the traces he knows that he left at the murder scene. The element of his story where he admits going to the bathroom is included because he knows, or suspects, that he left traces in the bathroom. He owns up to his movements because they can be verified by forensic tests, but gives false reasons for them.

And of course, his accusation against Amanda and Raffaele is a complete lie, because he has every incentive to blame the crime on someone else.

On the other hand, there is Amanda Knox's blood in the bathroom, showing she was there that night (albeit her staunch supporters will always attempt to maintain that it is not evidence).
There is also other mixed DNA traces of Knox and Meredith where they should not be (such as in Filomena's room, on a stain that had been cleaned and enhanced by luminol). Alll innocentisti folks deliberately decide that these finding have zero value.

They have zero value for the simple reason that traces of Amanda in the house where she was living need have no connection to the crime. This is obvious.

It is false, there is a footprint on the bathmat that only matches Raffaele and not Guede: the bloody footprint is not compatible with Guede.
There are also other luminol footrpints matching Sollecito.



Absolutely not. There is nothing that implicates Rudy in Filomena's room, where the alleged break in and searching for values should have taken place (there are instead traces implicating Knox mixed with Meredith's DNA). Nothing in the small bathroom.



If "clearly resembles" is the scientific level of your observation, I'll just answer that I can proof, and can show the well grounded reasons, why the footprint is not compatible with Guede and matches Sollecito.

If you had proof and well-grounded reasons, then you would say what they are. However it is a pattern in your posting that you make reference to unspecified proofs to support your assertions, without ever substantiating them. This continues to be the case with your claims to have "proof" that the break-in was supposedly "staged".

If you are referring to the Rinaldi report in the Massei trial, then I will say that this piece of pseudo-science is the worst instance of investigator bias in the whole case. The width measurement for the big toe, obtained by including an extraneous blob at the tip, so as to match the width at the base of Raff's big toe, is simply outright dishonesty.

My "clearly resembles" is more scientific than that. The accounts of this piece of evidence are on the page http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/footprints-03.html. Setting aside anything you think about the analysis presented on that page, do you agree that the 3 images towards the bottom of the page, of the bathmat print, "Rudy's footprint" and "Raffale's footprint" are correctly attributed? The shape of the big toe on the print corresponds closely to Rudy Guede, and is quite different from Raffaele. In the face of these images, your assertion of the opposite has no credibility.

I'm not at your service. I gave a very articulate answer to the first part of LashL post, and never received any feedback. It is not the first time: whenever I give explanations, various people who demended for it don't answer to the arguments or suddenly disappear. After a while, they come back with the same complaints.



I stated that I have reasons. I also posted them elsewhere in the past. Now, I decided to wait before explaining a point again. Be more respectful in drawing conclusions on other posters.

I saw your response to LashL, and was not impressed. It was a list of discredited prosecution claims, irrelevant personal attacks, and meaningless details of Amanda and Raffaele's personal habits. It's not for you to declare your responses "articulate" - others will be the judge of that. In particular, it did not include any justification for claiming the break-in was "staged". Now you tell me to "be more respectful". You will gain respect by stating what your reasons are for making this claim, not by making further unspecified allusions to having "proof".

 

[Machiavelli]

It's really facinating to see how your mind works. Disturbing, but facinating.

Fortunately, your opinion* counts for nothing in this case and Hellmann corrected at least the most hideous wrongdoings so maybe not all hope is lost for Italy's justice system.
...

facinating? the thing I recall is that Hellmann said - his literal words - the prosecutors made no mistakes in this case.
These are Hellmann's word. He added, he would have done exactly the same as they did.
I wonder, what place may this Hellmann's stance take in the innocentisti's mind: does Hellmann too have an inverted view of reality, as he sees Mignini and Comodi as blameless?

 

[RoseMontague]

This totally unscientific and inherently flawed poll would have been meaningless and unworthy of serious discussion regardless of what its self-selecting respondents has said. I would have made this point whether the overwhelming "button-press" response favoured guilt or innocence. And that's the nub of it really. It's a total irrelevance that has no value to either "side" in this debate.

My interest in the poll was one of the possible motivation of the responders, not so much the accuracy of the results. However, it has been interesting seeing one side claim one thing and the other side something completely different regarding those results. That part of it is also worth noting.

This case is so full of fantasy and it is difficult to tell truth from fiction, sincerity from mendacity. Snook1/Donnie's comments about his conversations with the PMF crowd has me asking if people actually believe their own stated position on guilt or innocence.

Posters on one side are eager to shoot down something that really means little and posters on the other are jumping to prop up a silly poll. I am just going to pretend everyone else has missed the point of my questions, otherwise it is me who just doesn't get it.

 

[LondonJohn]

My interest in the poll was one of the possible motivation of the responders, not so much the accuracy of the results. However, it has been interesting seeing one side claim one thing and the other side something completely different regarding those results. That part of it is also worth noting.

This case is so full of fantasy and it is difficult to tell truth from fiction, sincerity from mendaciousness. Snook1/Donnie's comments about his conversations with the PMF crowd has me asking if people actually believe their own stated position on guilt or innocence.

Posters on one side are eager to shoot down something that really means little and posters on the other are jumping to prop up a silly poll. I am just going to pretend everyone else has missed the point of my questions, otherwise it is me who just doesn't get it.

No, no, I completely understand - and agree with - your argument regarding this poll. I also think that the respondents who selected themselves to the extent that they elected to respond to the poll by clicking on a particular option were very likely biased towards a reflexive defence of Italian justice (and Perugia/Umbria justice in particular).

Instead, my posts have been specifically aimed at criticising those who a) choose to take the poll results at raw face value, and b) think it's intellectually appropriate to use this poll as some sort of defence of a view of guilt in this case. As so often, polls such as this are only useful as an insight into 1) the sort of people who respond to these sorts of polls, and 2) the sort of people who place stock in these sorts of polls.

 

[js202]

facinating? the thing I recall is that Hellmann said - his literal words - the prosecutors made no mistakes in this case.
These are Hellmann's word. He added, he would have done exactly the same as they did.
I wonder, what place may this Hellmann's stance take in the innocentisti's mind: does Hellmann too have an inverted view of reality, as he sees Mignini and Comodi as blameless?

And then Hellmann proceeded to overturn the entire heart and soul of their case. As always, your "logic" makes perfect sense... in Bizarro World or Wonderland, that is.

With regard to Mignini, Hellmann does not need to state the obvious. Only a truly perverse sensibility would judge as "blameless" a man who has been convicted of abuse of office in his own trial of first instance. Just as you and the entire guilter tribe judged AK and RS blameless, right?

I have every faith that Hellmann's motivation report will handily trump any courtroom niceties he issued in Mignini, et al.'s general direction. I have equal faith that you yourself will intently unpack the document for slivers of data you can use in your favor, while, hypocritically and irrationally, disagreeing with the conclusions on the whole.

 

[RoseMontague]

facinating? the thing I recall is that Hellmann said - his literal words - the prosecutors made no mistakes in this case.
These are Hellmann's word. He added, he would have done exactly the same as they did.
I wonder, what place may this Hellmann's stance take in the innocentisti's mind: does Hellmann too have an inverted view of reality, as he sees Mignini and Comodi as blameless?

That's what the man said, no error on their part. He also said the evidence was contradictory and unsatisfactory to arrive at a conviction. He also said the genetic expertise was a key factor. From this it seems the "blame" he is putting is on Massei and Stefi.

http://www3.lastampa.it/cronache/sezioni/articolo/lstp/423553/

 

[LondonJohn]

facinating? the thing I recall is that Hellmann said - his literal words - the prosecutors made no mistakes in this case.
These are Hellmann's word. He added, he would have done exactly the same as they did.
I wonder, what place may this Hellmann's stance take in the innocentisti's mind: does Hellmann too have an inverted view of reality, as he sees Mignini and Comodi as blameless?

No, what Hellmann was clearly trying to insinuate here is that it's not the job of prosecutors in Italy to judge whether there is a case to answer*. It's entirely the job of the various judges who are tasked with evaluating the case. He was answering a specific question about whether it was Mignini's/Comodi's fault that the case ever even got to trial in the first place: his answer was entirely correct in that it's not their decision to make.

In effect, Hellmann was criticising many (most) of the judges involved in this case, by implying that their judgement in allowing the case to proceed to trial (and beyond) was flawed and unjust. He chose an elegant way of criticising his judicial colleagues by stating that it wasn't the prosecutors' job to decide whether or not the case should proceed.

Personally, I think Hellmann will be highly critical of both the police and the prosecutors in this case when it comes to the incompetence and malpractice they both clearly demonstrated in their investigation and the gathering and collating of evidence (or non-evidence). But that only makes it more extraordinary that the various judges attached to this case were not able to see what Hellmann himself (and anyone with a rational, objective viewpoint) could see. The murder charges against Knox and Sollecito should have been thrown out by mid-2008 at the very latest. That much is obvious.


* And in this respect Italy is very different from countries such as the US or UK, where prosecutors (the District Attorney's office in the US, or the Crown Prosecution Service in the UK) are specifically tasked with conducting an initial evaluation of the evidence and deciding whether a prosecution is a) in the public interest and b) reasonably likely to result in conviction.

 

[LondonJohn]

And then Hellmann proceeded to overturn the entire heart and soul of their case. As always, your "logic" makes perfect sense... in Bizarro World or Wonderland, that is.

With regard to Mignini, Hellmann does not need to state the obvious. Only a truly perverse sensibility would judge as "blameless" a man who has been convicted of abuse of office in his own trial of first instance. Just as you and the entire guilter tribe judged AK and RS blameless, right?

I have every faith that Hellmann's motivation report will handily trump any courtroom niceties he issued in Mignini, et al.'s general direction. I have equal faith that you yourself will intently unpack the document for slivers of data you can use in your favor, while, hypocritically and irrationally, disagreeing with the conclusions on the whole.

Well, to be fair, Mignini's gross malpractice related to another case should not automatically count against him in the Knox/Sollecito case. However, in my opinion he's committed more than enough egregious wrongdoings in the latter case to warrant a separate investigation in and of itself, to sit alongside his ongoing legal difficulties. I wonder if a second prison sentence would also be suspended.......?

 

[js202]

Well, to be fair, Mignini's gross malpractice related to another case should not automatically count against him in the Knox/Sollecito case. However, in my opinion he's committed more than enough egregious wrongdoings in the latter case to warrant a separate investigation in and of itself, to sit alongside his ongoing legal difficulties. I wonder if a second prison sentence would also be suspended.......?

Fair enough, but I am interested in the use of the term "blameless." Clearly, Mignini is not a blameless individual.

Even though I always believed that AK and RS were not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and likely were entirely innocent, I would never call them blameless. In fact, they had been blamed very seriously and severely.

 

[Dan O.]

With all due respect, counting just posts here, and those copied and/or commented on from PMF, as well as the pho-shopped/mis labeled horizontal/vertical axis from IIP itself, I suspect the bathmat footprint issue approached about one thousand posts.

But of course *I* also should recall exactly what *you* argued.

Machiavelli claimed that "Only a cleanup is a plausible explanation for the isolated prints on the stained bathmat." Do you also support that statement? Can you not see that there are alternative explanations? The theory I have put forward on a number of occasions still stands and serves to tie together the known evidence instead of requiring magic cleaning that has no other supporting evidence. Machiavelli is wrong. We will now watch as he tries to run away instead of confronting his error.

 

[Machiavelli]

Are you serious? Because Guede didn't clean up in the other bathroom or in the murder room, it proves he didn't clean up in the bathroom? Nobody who doesn't share your conclusion-driven thinking is going to be convinced by this argument from incredulity.

No, my thinking is not conclusion-driven; it is driven by consistence.
I require logical tightness between elements. Logical continuity. A series of many likely details that follow as natural course, not a series of disconnected answers, each one of them intrinsically unlikely.
I don’t accept a defence build of series of explanations of the kind “Amanda didn’t realize that he had a blood loss in the bathroom the day before and that she got blood on her finger and left blood stains on and near the faucet, and just got it wrong as she testified the blood stain was not there the night of nov.5 because didn’t notice the blood stain albeit it was already there”. This is a weak explanation. It is intrinsically (extremely) unlikely. Because most people know if they bleed the day before, and most people notice or recall if they saw a blood stain on a faucet the night before.
I may accept one point like this, incidentally slipping into a consistent explanation. But I cannot accept a scenario that is built of a whole series elements more or less like this, which are unlikely or weak, or inconsistent and unrelated by logical links, and unsupported.

The killer was in a hurry and a state of agitation at the enormity of what he had done (never having murdered anybody before). He cleaned the blood off his own clothes as best he could, mopped up the immediate signs of having done this using the towels that were to hand, but overlooked his own footprint in blood and water on the bathmat. He dumped the towels in the murder room and locked the door, but in the frenzy of the events, forgot about his own faeces in the unflushed toilet in the other bathroom. There is absolutely no contradiction between his hasty clean-up in the bathroom, and the uncleaned traces elsewhere in the flat.

This is not reasonable: it’s just totally inconsistent. This one is indeed a rickety concocted conclusion-driven scenario, made of unrelated bits, each unlikely unsupported and unconnected. It is not driven by tightness of logical binding.

I would question: did he remove his trousers or not? Did he use a towel to rinse his trousers or not? Why and when did he remove his shoe, and when he put it back on? Why did he put a bare foot in a pool of blood or bloody water? Why did he clean the floor in the bathroom and instead not flush the feces in the other bathroom, nor cleaned his bloody handprints and shoeprints, and how did he overlook the bathmat but had enough coldness to clean completely the bathroom floor? And the traces leading to Meredith’s room.
Where consistence in explanation behind this scenario? There is no logical course, there is no tightness. All these question have no likely anwser.

This explanation thus is nonsense. The elements do not converge towards it, they are forced together, and there is a pre-emptive giving up of logic as background assumption. Actions are unrelated, illogic, gratuitous and unexplained, and the explanation is full of holes. So it is totally weak: there is simply no scenario in such an alternative explanation. This crumbles if you have a logical explanation like, another person did the clean up and left the footprint.

And btw, where is the frenzy of events if you think the assault occurred at 21:00, and he was still near the cottage at 22.13. That’s about one hour. You can take a dozen showers in an hour.
Moreover Nara heared the scream and someone leaving the house at a distance of a minute or so.

All of your questions have been adequately answered by others in this forum, and in any case are just as cogent in the case where the footprint is attributed to Raffaele. The fact that you can't see this simply shows that you are not looking at this objectively.

None of my questions has been answered. Objectively, there is no plausible answer.
There is a simple point to make: if there is a cleanup, itself this element alone is evidence against Knox.

First, a cleanup always indicates the murder is an insider living in the house or very frequent visitor.
Second, burglars in particular don’t have an interest in a cleanup.
Third, this specific burglar gives further demonstration of his having no interest in cleaning up.
Fourth, this “burglar” leaves clear traces of what he did and of his style of moving around.
This is called evidence against Knox. It’s a very simple point.

Moreover, there is no chance to discredit Nara Capezzali.

You are missing the point. Guede's story is only truthful in as much as it covers him for the traces he knows that he left at the murder scene. The element of his story where he admits going to the bathroom is included because he knows, or suspects, that he left traces in the bathroom. He owns up to his movements because they can be verified by forensic tests, but gives false reasons for them.

No, he includes the towels story only later on in his latest accounts, after he learns about the towels in the murder room. Not before. But anyway, that is not because he wants to explain his being in the small bathroom, instead he wants to claim having handled the towels. It is the towels he is interested in, not the bathroom.

On the other hand, there is Amanda Knox's blood in the bathroom, showing she was there that night (albeit her staunch supporters will always attempt to maintain that it is not evidence).
There is also other mixed DNA traces of Knox and Meredith where they should not be (such as in Filomena's room, on a stain that had been cleaned and enhanced by luminol). Alll innocentisti folks deliberately decide that these finding have zero value.

They have zero value for the simple reason that traces of Amanda in the house where she was living need have no connection to the crime. This is obvious.

They do have value: living in the house is not enough as an explanation for blood and for mixed DNA stains. These findings don't have any plausible explanation. There are blood stains which, by her testimony, were not there the night before, and for which she failed to provide plausible explanation. These blood stains are mixed in the same context with Meredith’s blood.

There are other luminol stains on which mixed DNA from Knox and Meredith was collected: two of them are in Filomena’s room, where no DNA of Knox and Meredith is expected to be, and all alternative explanations to how it got there are intrinsically unlikely.

The same mixed profiles were collected from luminol stains in the corridor. And nowhere else in the 25+ negative samples from the floor.

As you see, there is a series of unlikely coincidences needed to provide an alternative explanation. There is a series of things for which the defence proposes have remote, unlikely and unsupported alternative explanations. This is called evidence.

If you had proof and well-grounded reasons, then you would say what they are. However it is a pattern in your posting that you make reference to unspecified proofs to support your assertions, without ever substantiating them. This continues to be the case with your claims to have "proof" that the break-in was supposedly "staged".

If you are referring to the Rinaldi report in the Massei trial, then I will say that this piece of pseudo-science is the worst instance of investigator bias in the whole case. The width measurement for the big toe, obtained by including an extraneous blob at the tip, so as to match the width at the base of Raff's big toe, is simply outright dishonesty.

My "clearly resembles" is more scientific than that. The accounts of this piece of evidence are on the page http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/footprints-03.html. Setting aside anything you think about the analysis presented on that page, do you agree that the 3 images towards the bottom of the page, of the bathmat print, "Rudy's footprint" and "Raffale's footprint" are correctly attributed? ....

Just to start, the pictures pasted in that paste are at a different scale. In order to make a reasoning, you should start from setting measurements and images at the same scale. This very first passage is totally missing.
There is absolutely nothing resembling a reasoning in the iip page.

I saw your response to LashL, and was not impressed. It was a list of discredited prosecution claims, irrelevant personal attacks, and meaningless details of Amanda and Raffaele's personal habits. It's not for you to declare your responses "articulate" - others will be the judge of that. In particular, it did not include any justification for claiming the break-in was "staged". Now you tell me to "be more respectful". You will gain respect by stating what your reasons are for making this claim, not by making further unspecified allusions to having "proof".

The others did not declare or discuss anything, in the specific case. Someone puts a lot of questions, someone else gives a lot of answers. Whether they are good or bad articulate or not, politness and discussion consists in acknowledging that answers are given, not just sit and claim you want others. If you didn't think any reasoning of a person is meaningful, you should not ask questions to that person.

About the proof, I did not make allusions: I stated, and explained (on this forum) that I have made a research on the bathmat print, a visual analysis, but did not post my results. And I am not going to post it on this forum. However I will make it available elsewhere soon or later.

You are not respectful for a specific reason: because you dare to make unsupported judgements about others. You state that you "know" why a person does or does not a certain thing, and what would do if. This is not correct because it's making statements on things you don't know, you shall just be humble about what you don't know concerning any person (not just me) and just assume that you don't know the personal reasons why people do or don't do something. There are people who are intrusive and provocative in their "guessing" about others.

 

[Machiavelli]

Machiavelli claimed that "Only a cleanup is a plausible explanation for the isolated prints on the stained bathmat." Do you also support that statement? Can you not see that there are alternative explanations? The theory I have put forward on a number of occasions still stands and serves to tie together the known evidence instead of requiring magic cleaning that has no other supporting evidence. Machiavelli is wrong. We will now watch as he tries to run away instead of confronting his error.

Note that I don't run away, but I just can't follow a discussion with a dozen posters (not even with three of four). It's impossible. You can't expect a person alone to run after each one of your arguments (btw each of them old and discussed). My role here is only to give information that people might not know, like Kaosium's latest question.

 

[Machiavelli]

No, what Hellmann was clearly trying to insinuate here is that it's not the job of prosecutors in Italy to judge whether there is a case to answer*. It's entirely the job of the various judges who are tasked with evaluating the case. He was answering a specific question about whether it was Mignini's/Comodi's fault that the case ever even got to trial in the first place: his answer was entirely correct in that it's not their decision to make.

....

I'll skip details, you already gave your theory many posts ago and I didn't find the time to answer. (I have to, in order to answer to your idea about the 530.1 condition).
But the idea you had about the prosecution being an extension of the police is, well, delusional, in the reality of the Italian system. Your rationalization of Hellmann's words, as you attempt to decline them into your picture of things, is just very telling.
Hellmann (he gave a series of interview) said absolutely, explicitly, that he would have done the same, and they did no mistakes.
There is no room really for your rationalization, there is no insinuation in Hellmann's words. They are just incompatible with any thought that the prosecution did something wrong. Hellmann agrees with the prosecution's management of the case. And never spoke about anything such as the "fault that the case ever got to trial", and also would make no sense to speak in these terms then blaming the judges and not the prosecution. You seem to not realize how nonsense this is.