Continuation Part 5: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[Chris_Halkides]

witless identification

Chapter 13 of the book "Race to Injustice" is by Gary L. Wells, Brian L. Cutler, and LIsa E. Hartel and is entitled, "The Duke Lacrosse Investigation: How not to do Eyewitness Identification Procedures." In this chapter pp. 313-14 the authors give six generalizations about good practices:

A lineup should have only one suspect, with the other members being fillers.
There should be at least five fillers for every subject.
Fillers should match the general description that the eyewitness gave of the culprit, and lineup administrators should take any other measures that will ensure the suspect will not stand out.
Witnesses should be warned that the perpetrator may not be in the lineup and told not to guess.
Lineup administrators should take measures to avoid influencing the witness. [some recommendations explicitly state that the lineup procedure should be double blind]
The lineup administrator should record a clear statement of the witness’ certainty at the time of the identification.

How many of these criteria were met with respect to Curatolo and the other witnesses?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

anglolawyer,

Hemoglobin catalyzes a chemical reaction like its distant cousins, peroxidases. That is the basis for presumptive blood tests. Red blood cells are basically bags filled with hemoglobin and a small proportion of a few enzymes. Some confirmatory tests for blood use antibodies directed against biomolecules found in blood; however, (depending on the specific one used) might detect hemoglobin or might detect some other biomolecule found in blood.

 

[Rolfe]

Thanks Rolfe. So leucocyte = white blood cell and erythrocyte = red blood cell.

If what you say is correct there should have been 5 or 6 white cells and 5 or 6 thousand red ones. That sounds like a large quantity of material to me. How come nothing was left of these 6,006 cells in 'the scratch'? Also, is it normal to not bother to identify which cells you are talking about? Nothing in Stefanoni's evidence nor in C-V's discussion of it suggests the presence of thousands of cells in the sample. And doesn't at least one of the tests for blood involve a reaction with the oxygen carried by red cells? If she sampled 6,006 blood cells how could she get a negative reaction to a blood test? She did two blood tests I believe. Both negative. How come?

The normal human red cell count is around 5 x 10¹²/litre. That's a 12 in that superscript.

Rolfe.

 

[Kaosium]

I have a question. Probably a dumb question. Stefanoni found a few cells on the knife blade. 5 or 6 they say. Supposedly, these were blood cells. Most blood cells are red and contain no DNA. Only 1 in a thousand are white cells. The odds against a sample of 5 or 6 blood cells including any DNA-bearing white cells must be not much above 1 in a thousand. If Stefanoni got lucky we have no way of knowing as she did not look at the sample to see what she got.

Does this make it even less likely she sampled any DNA-bearing material from the blade or have I missed something blindingly obvious?

There's no evidence Stefanoni found any cells on the knife blade. Remember, she skipped that step and avoided Real Time DNA sequencing with those samples, and those samples alone. The only record of what was in that sample is the same one would get with nothing but water, 'too low.'

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Idaho Innocence Project

Greg Hampikian interviewed. "That the DNA used to convict Amanda and Raffaele was not reliable, likely a contamination, so she was acquitted."

 

[Dan O.]

I would assume she meant she found 5 or 6 leucocytes. You just wouldn't even mention the erythrocytes in this context.

Rolfe.

Where are we getting this 5 or 6 anything from? It seems that the truth is that nothing was ever measured but some notes were back filled in the testimony to be compatible RFU levels on the chart.

 

[Bill Williams]

Certainly an interesting article and there might be more judges with similar views, but he walked not only that he’s talked publicly I don’t get the impression that dissent against the judiciary goes down to well; ultimately we have the decision it will be interesting to see their reasoning.

I would imagine Mori and Hellmann will be ignored, well at least publicly.

For us in the countries we live in, it is hard to come up with a parallel analogy. Here, it would be unheard of to have judges even commenting. If a judge here got sick of what they saw, there'd never be any comment at all.

Perhaps the one lesson to draw on this is how much more "political" the judiciary is in Italy than in systems derived from English judicial practise.

But c'mon CoulsdonUK.... you'd expect the likes of me to at least post this and make the best out of it!!! True?

 

[anglolawyer]

There's no evidence Stefanoni found any cells on the knife blade. Remember, she skipped that step and avoided Real Time DNA sequencing with those samples, and those samples alone. The only record of what was in that sample is the same one would get with nothing but water, 'too low.'

I know, I know Kaosium. I have been desperately trying to keep abreast of you sciency folks for long enough to have got that and I am firmly of the opinion she sampled nothing and is a liar. The point of my question was to expose the lie. If she found 5 or 6 white blood cells then she must have found some thousands of red cells. Now, I know, thanks to Rolfe, that even several thousand red cells might well be a tiny amount, but not to you guys once you crank up your electron microscopes and spectrometers or whatever. If LCN profiling can work with as few as just one human cell, then 6,000 cells including 6 white ones must be a real bonanza! Would I be wrong in thinking you could look at them under a microscope readily enough or that some of them might have been left on the blade, available for sampling later, or that one or other of the presumptive tests would have yielded a reaction?

 

[anglolawyer]

Where are we getting this 5 or 6 anything from? It seems that the truth is that nothing was ever measured but some notes were back filled in the testimony to be compatible RFU levels on the chart.

I may be misremembering her testimony. I am sure I have seen something but I'll come back when I find it. If I find it.

I still think the point holds good. If she had enough white cells to extract DNA then she must have had a lot more red ones, and plasma too.

 

[Bill Williams]

I know, I know Kaosium. I have been desperately trying to keep abreast of you sciency folks for long enough to have got that and I am firmly of the opinion she sampled nothing and is a liar. The point of my question was to expose the lie. If she found 5 or 6 white blood cells then she must have found some thousands of red cells. Now, I know, thanks to Rolfe, that even several thousand red cells might well be a tiny amount, but not to you guys once you crank up your electron microscopes and spectrometers or whatever. If LCN profiling can work with as few as just one human cell, then 6,000 cells including 6 white ones must be a real bonanza! Would I be wrong in thinking you could look at them under a microscope readily enough or that some of them might have been left on the blade, available for sampling later, or that one or other of the presumptive tests would have yielded a reaction?

I'm reminded of what The Machine said, when he got the closest to addressing "Massei ruled as factual that there was no mixed blood at the cottage." The Machine retreated to saying that Massei was not the DNA expert here, and we all should be listening to Patrizia Stefanoni and the conclusions drawn from the prosecution about "mixed blood".

Aside from the fact that it is interesting the places The Machine needs to attack Judge Massei's credibility (I guess we all do it, don't we!?) it still does not get Massei, or ANY judge in his position, from ruling on the factuality of stuff he might not understand as if a Ph.D.-trained expert.

I also have a Ph.D. trained expert friend who gives a lot of testimony (for hire) in court, and his point is that at the end of the day all the technical stuff he does has to be explainable to lay-folk anyways, esp. for its implications in every-day life, if there are any implications.

Guilt or innocence might be considered one of those implications!

Anyway.... back to the barricades!

 

[Chris_Halkides]

I don't think that anything regarding possible cell type was proven

I may be misremembering her testimony. I am sure I have seen something but I'll come back when I find it. If I find it.

I still think the point holds good. If she had enough white cells to extract DNA then she must have had a lot more red ones, and plasma too.

I think that the only defense that a PG-commenter has here is to say that the cells need not have been blood. I don't have a citation handy, but I seem to recall that one criticism of working in the low template region of DNA forensics is that not all tissue testing can be done at equal sensitivity. There are other problems with claiming that the cells may be not blood, but I will have to defer a discussion of this until later.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

For us in the countries we live in, it is hard to come up with a parallel analogy. Here, it would be unheard of to have judges even commenting. If a judge here got sick of what they saw, there'd never be any comment at all.

Perhaps the one lesson to draw on this is how much more "political" the judiciary is in Italy than in systems derived from English judicial practise.

But c'mon CoulsdonUK.... you'd expect the likes of me to at least post this and make the best out of it!!! True?

I agree internal politics rage in most institutions, I am just not sure this helps or hinders Raffaele and Amanda especially if their case is caught in the crossfire of warring factions.

 

[anglolawyer]

I think that the only defense that a PG-commenter has here is to say that the cells need not have been blood. I don't have a citation handy, but I seem to recall that one criticism of working in the low template region of DNA forensics is that not all tissue testing can be done at equal sensitivity. There are other problems with claiming that the cells may be not blood, but I will have to defer a discussion of this until later.

Cell type was not proven. Correct. I mean, that's what I understand too. No cytomorphological examination of 'the sample' was conducted. But she wrote 'presumed haematic substance' and if you stick a knife in someone's throat you get blood on it, maybe along with other stuff but certainly that. So it should have been blood and if it wasn't blood, say it was exfoliated skin or sweat, or cell-free DNA then how does the knife get to be regarded as the murder weapon? It might just have got exfoliated skin cells through innocent transfer. Blood it must have been in order to mean anything at all.

 

[Dan O.]

With the elapsed time it's getting harder to track down the source material for this case.

My notes say that it was about 50 picograms of DNA which would represent all of the DNA in less than 10 whole cells. The cells themselves were never found. Nothing was seen visually and the test for cellular material was skipped or came back negative. (Chapter 11 of Hellmann gives the details). The original report from ms not-a-doctor should be in the case file. If anything further is found, it needs to go into the wiki for future reference.

 

[GWCarver]

Over at IIP, dirac_delta posted a portion of a post by "Yummi" at PMF. Yummi says Hellmann was paid and is part of an international plot that included Perugian Masonry.

 

[Dan O.]

Somebody's going to lose their bonus. What's the point of having a super secret untraceable contingency fund if some armachair detective on a web site can blab to the world how it was used to pay off judges that are already blood-bound to perform for the organization?!

 

[anglolawyer]

Over at IIP, dirac_delta posted a portion of a post by "Yummi" at PMF. Yummi says Hellmann was paid and is part of an international plot that included Perugian Masonry.

Calunnia!! (Italian for lunacy)

 

[Bill Williams]

Over at IIP, dirac_delta posted a portion of a post by "Yummi" at PMF. Yummi says Hellmann was paid and is part of an international plot that included Perugian Masonry.

Every once in a while, someone from that side of the fence pulls back the curtain on what this is really about.

Mignini himself said all his troubles started with the Narducci case. In that case he cited a Masonic conspiracy.

So connect the dots. "Someone" from that side of the fence seems to think what Hellmann did was part of the conspiracy, even though it is completely independent of the Narducci matter except for it being the same prosecutor.

Am I being silly here? I think at the end of the day what ALL this is about is Mignini's career. There IS no evidence that either Raffaele or Amanda participated in the Nov 1 2007 murder of Meredith.... but SOMEONE is making a big fuss that the Masons are behind all this....

 

[Bill Williams]

I agree internal politics rage in most institutions, I am just not sure this helps or hinders Raffaele and Amanda especially if their case is caught in the crossfire of warring factions.

My guess is that it hinders Raffaele's and Amanda's "case". I now think there's a case to be made that some want them convicted regardless of the evidence. The last thing a country wants, really, is to have confidence lost in "the system".

I'll ask you this CoulsdonUK: how confident can the Kercher's be that if R and A are acquitted, that they have been acquitted justly? Similarly, that if convicted, they are convicted justly?

Me, I am forever grateful for Lyle Kercher's gracious comment following the now quashed acquittal.... "We certainly do not want the wrong people going to jail."

For what it's worth, even in our system here, I am certain "behind the scenes politics" rage. But I have seen judges removed from cases because they were the friend of a hairdresser who's son once went to school with the cousin of one of the participants at trial.

If judges within the system are now speaking out, what are the Kerchers to think? No one, no one blames them for wanting justice out of this.

 

[Rolfe]

I now think there's a case to be made that some want them convicted regardless of the evidence. The last thing a country wants, really, is to have confidence lost in "the system".

Oh my God, tell me about it!!!
/off topic

Rolfe.