my thought as well
Interesting, complicated stuff. Does anyone know where the C&V report stands in terms of evidence? The pro-guilt guy at the other forum claims its now completely worthless as is the Hellman report because of the Supreme Court (or whatever the italian court is called) threw out/over ruled Hellmans verdict.
Stefanoni testifying before Massei that storing DNA items in plastic would degrade their usefulness and then when the bra-clasp was supposed to be re-tested it was found stored in plastic which had destroyed its usefulness is not that complicated really.
Regarding C&V and Hellmanns Report I do not know, I imagine it depends on what the Supreme Court's motivations for quashing the acquittal say. We know the Hellmann
verdict has been rendered void, as for the evidence gathered that probably has to wait for the SC report, due at the latest sometime in late June. Conti and Vecchiotti were
independent court experts, asked not by the defense or prosecution but by the court to render a determination of the validity of the DNA evidence, and to a lesser extent the whole forensic case. As their conclusions were perfectly in line with the literature and standard forensic procedures not only in Italy but worldwide (which they included voluminous support for) regardless of whether the SC agreed with some technicality the prosecution advanced it's still
in reality good evidence of the competence and integrity of the prosecution.
Noted, the pro-guilt claim is that Meredith never went to Raf's apartment. Is there any evidence this is true or false?
I couldn't tell you for sure, but I doubt she did. Why would it matter? He's talking about when he cooked over at the cottage, which is where the cigarette butt came from. That's pretty clear from the fact
that happened, that the context is shortly after Tiziano suggested Amanda might have taken it to the cottage to cook with, and that the girls lived in a 'house' (cottage) and Raffaele in an apartment.
yeah, my head hurts on this one because I've read lengthy arguments that the clock was ten minutes fast and that some expert testified he tested the clock on the camera and confirmed this and it was apparently presented at trial (sorry I don't have the source for this). The pro innocence reply in that thread was that the expert made a mistake but I find it hard to believe that someone tasked with such a simple exercise would make such a basic mistake.
I'm unsure what you're referring to as regards an 'expert' but I can guess where that might have come from. The Postal police arrived at ~12:47, but wrote down that it was 12:30 in their book. When the got there they putzed around for about 12 minutes before getting to the cottage, either doing paperwork, smoking, or they (like the carabinieri later) had trouble figuring out which address was which. Remember these guys are just there to return phones and know nothing about the murder at this juncture.
However it can be determined from the arrival of the
carabinieri, whose arrival was preceded by calling for directions (which gives an absolutely certain time from the cell phone records) that the garage camera time was ~11 minutes
slow. So it shows the postal police getting there (in their car) at 12:36 but its really ~12:47, and then it shows them entering the driveway at 12:48 (really ~12:59 PM). While the shot of them crossing the street only shows the bottom half of their legs, if you look at a birds-eye view
here you can see there's only one place to go crossing that street there, (note they have a long driveway and it lets out at the top left of that picture) into the driveway of the cottage. This is not the only reason to think the Postal Police arrived about 1:00 PM, it's just the one with visual evidence. There's a number of other reasons, one of which Massei found so convincing (that at no point did anyone--including the postal police who were right there--ever note Raffaele calling the
carabinieri after the arrival of the postal police) he dismissed the prosecution contention in passing in the passage I cited. As noted by Massei the conversation with the
caribinieri was not brief and the time of that is definitely known, 12:51 PM.
I'm not taking sides on this one, I'm merely saying I am confused by all the noise and can't tell what the truth was in this regard
I was as well! I found it
fascinating reading through it at night during my vacation.
Perhaps I am naive, but I would think an independent, non biased third party in charge of taking samples would do so and simply report what was found and not leave off parties that are not on trial.
There are a number of samples of that nature in the evidence, my point was more along the lines that the prosecution isn't making a case against anyone else and wasn't exactly forthcoming with information that they 'didn't need to make their case.' They also had no reason to look in a number of places where that sort of thing would be found, most all the mixed DNA samples are from the bathroom Amanda and Meredith shared, and swabbing that sink, bidet and cotton box for DNA (
especially the way they did it) they're almost certainly going to get Amanda's (trace) DNA from normal use.
I would think DNA of all flatmates should be found and listed much like four male DNA samples were found on the bra strap. I don't know how important it is that we know who the other three males were but its relevant in my opinion to know that it wasn't only Raf's DNA as the multiple DNA found seems to lend credence to the argument that contamination could have occurred on the bra strap. In the same way, finding DNA from Filomena, etc along with Amanda's would go a long way towards making the argument that Amanda's DNA that was found mixed with Meredeths blood was simply the result of all of these people living together.
Yes, I agree. However the latter isn't an 'argument' it's basic forensic DNA science,
especially dealing with trace DNA. Have you read any of the papers posted, or would you like more?
Note that initially not even the prosecution tried to pretend there was anything all that relevant regarding mixed DNA, they made the case that the luminol hits were blood, but that took a hit late in the case when it was discovered they'd hadn't released the negative blood tests (TMB) to the defense and for the rest of them not even Massei couldt accept that mixed DNA in blood equals mixed blood because it
doesn't and once the anyone sees what they did to get the 'mixed DNA' it becomes pretty damned obvious they could hardly
avoid it.
Lemme put it this way, if you knew that a police officer doing an investigation had taken a sample of the victim's blood and rubbed it in the sink of the accused and then presented it as 'mixed DNA' and claimed from there it must be 'mixed blood' even though it was known that there were no wounds on the accused and that person had been
meticulously examined four-five days after the murder, what would you think?
That's effectively what happened, though it was more incompetence on the part of the forensic technicians (or they
knew that anything found there couldn't be used against a resident and thus wanted a big sample in hopes of finding someone else) and then amplified by Mignini's lack of integrity and Stefanoni's willingness to present his 'hypothesis' in court, even though she also testified that it was impossible to determine.
I admit I may be merely seeing things in the photo in the same way people can see faces in the clouds and if I was at the crime scene and had better photos, I might not see what I think I see. The fact that no prosecutor pointed out what I think I see makes me think I'm probably seeing the texture of the tile look like the heel. Here's the photo I am getting this impression from:
[qimg]http://imageshack.us/a/img163/740/mattfoot.jpg[/qimg]
Ah, OK, I cannot see much of anything there. It was my understanding that the bathmat was moved, and I didn't know there was anyone who ever contended otherwise. I thought it originally was outside the shower and ended up in front of the sink, though I'm not sure how certain that ever was, it just made sense that the bathmat was originally in front of the shower as that's where they often are.