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

[anglolawyer]

Nobody asked? What are you talking about? Raffaele Sollecito invoked his right not to speak on December 5. 2007. He had requested to be interrogated by the PM; but then he changed idea and he invoked his right not to speak.
He never requested to be heard again.

And do you complain about qustion that were not asked to Knox? But that's a crazy claim; the defence could put her all the qustion they wanted. She could make all statements she wanted.

I think there may be a cultural divide here. In common law systems there is generally a duty of confrontation: you have to put your case to opposing witnesses in all matters of material difference. That would entail putting some kind of case to Amanda e.g. that she spent the evening in the Piazza before going on to commit murder, questions about the murder, the clean up etc I surmise that no such duty exists in Italy. One disadvantage of the Italian system, apart from the obvious one of depriving the witness of an opportunity to rebut allegations, is that it allows the prosecutor the freedom not to formulate a crime theory based on the evidence and put it to the accused. That freedom was used here to compile and present the cartoon as part of Mignini's reconstruction of the crime.

I can't think of any advantages.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

problems with Stefanoni's interpretation of the clasp

Am I right in thinking Stefanoni saw fit not to mention these alleles at first instance? I gather this inter alia from the recent Balding article but I think it's in C-V as well. IIUC she selected the peaks referable to the victim and Raffaele only, choosing to ignore other peaks the existence of which was teased out of her (like pulling teeth) by C-V backed by Hellman.

I would be very interested to know what Sherlock makes of this unscientific conduct. Sherlock are you troubled in any way? Do you even understand WTH I am talking about?

Stefanoni tried to explain away peaks that were not part of Raffaele's profile, but I have some issues with her interpretations.
EDT
A previous comment of mine quoted the Conti-Vecchiotti report on this subject.

 

[Mary_H]

Nobody asked? What are you talking about? Raffaele Sollecito invoked his right not to speak on December 5. 2007. He had requested to be interrogated by the PM; but then he changed idea and he invoked his right not to speak.
He never requested to be heard again.

And do you complain about qustion that were not asked to Knox? But that's a crazy claim; the defence could put her all the qustion they wanted. She could make all statements she wanted.

You are bringing this discussion of completeness vs. incompleteness in from the Supreme Court's motivations, where there are many references to the concepts, for example, on page 57:

"So once again, the Court's assessment was based on a platform of data absolutely incomplete, leading to conclusions without adequate logical support, and above all conflicting with other available evidence, incompleteness and inconsistency that must be overcome in the (new) Trial Court, in reference to this crucial point of the reconstruction, which concerns the presence or absence of the two young defendants in the house on Via della Pergola, to whom obviously Guede was added."

Do you believe the Court of First Instance made its decisions based on evidence that was complete? It was a very small amount of evidence, and very much subject to reasonable doubt. I wonder if the Supreme Court judges are subtly suggesting that the evidence from the first trial was so incomplete that the Court of Second Instance would have been well advised to reject all of it out of hand.

 

[Bill Williams]

No, it doesn't. The piece of information must be relevant to the discussion and the parties are suposed to argue its relevance.
Actually, as I told you, there was never a formal request to obtain EDF from DNA tests. The defence and the judge appointed experts simply obtained all what they asked.
The truth is the defence regarded the EDF as irrelevant and only raised them as a pretext years later in an attempt to dismiss previous findings, but only once and then they dropped the point (they never requested them not even at the SC).
The defence themselves, at the preliminary hearing, they impliticly admitted they were irrelevant. Their late use is a pretext. They are important only as a propaganda ploy, especially by the innocentisti on the internet.

I suppose there is something in this in that the DNA evidence was dismantled without the EDFs. Still, it would be interesting to see the full picture. I can think of no legitimate reason to make this a line in the sand between the two sides. None of the following seem to be an adequate reason for suppressing the material, which should be released as a matter of course anyway:

1 the court file is already big enough (Comodi)
2 the defence already has what it needs (Comodi and Stefanoni)
3 the defence has not asked for the EDFs (Mach)
4 the defence has asked but only as a delaying tactic (Mach)​

Not really, Machiavelli. The issue of disclosure is a fundamental aspect of law, at least in adversarial systems. I agree, Italy does not have a pure adversarial system. You should read Massei's own rationale for agreeing with Stefanoni, that the rest of the DNA file did not need to be released. (I'd say that it would shock you, Mach, but knowing you you'd find a way to justify it. I just hope that interested others would take neither of our words for it, and just read Maseei's own osmotic evaluation of the evidence, and the osmotic weight even a judge like Massei puts on each.)

We have had cases here in my own jurisdiction where the charges have been dropped on this issue alone. One prosecutor was faced with a defence complaint that a file had not been turned over. The court ordered that the file be turned over, and gave a timeline. When the timeline passed, the prosecutor was asked why it had not been turned over. The prosecutor said (I am not making this up): "I dreamt I had turned it over."

The case was dismissed. It seems Italy has different osmotic standards.

 

[Mary_H]

I think there may be a cultural divide here. In common law systems there is generally a duty of confrontation: you have to put your case to opposing witnesses in all matters of material difference. That would entail putting some kind of case to Amanda e.g. that she spent the evening in the Piazza before going on to commit murder, questions about the murder, the clean up etc I surmise that no such duty exists in Italy. One disadvantage of the Italian system, apart from the obvious one of depriving the witness of an opportunity to rebut allegations, is that it allows the prosecutor the freedom not to formulate a crime theory based on the evidence and put it to the accused. That freedom was used here to compile and present the cartoon as part of Mignini's reconstruction of the crime.

I can't think of any advantages.

This is true. Before this case, it would have been hard to imagine a trial in which the defendant would not be questioned about having committed the crime.

 

[Dan O.]

7. - Failure to evaluate the content of the final judgment against Rudy Guede –

after properly considering that the judgment was not binding, it has completely "snubbed" the content of the same

We need to restore the title of the original thread because the Italian Supreme Court is turning cartwheels to say that the defendants are subject to findings of a court in which they were not entitled to representation.

 

[Grinder]

Not really, Machiavelli. The issue of disclosure is a fundamental aspect of law, at least in adversarial systems. I agree, Italy does not have a pure adversarial system. You should read Massei's own rationale for agreeing with Stefanoni, that the rest of the DNA file did not need to be released.

You've made this point before but neglected to provide the actual quotes from Massei. I couldn't find the "quotes" you attributed to Massei. Please just provide the actual quotes.

ETA - In particular, a medico-legal expert report was requested, with the aim of ascertaining in terms of greater practicability in respect of the indications furnished: the time of death of Meredith Kercher (once a time band narrower than that indicated by the technical consultants of the Prosecutor or of the panel of experts under the preliminary investigations judge [the GIP], it would be possible to verify whether Raffaele Sollecito had interacted with his PC within a more precisely defined timeframe); the dynamics of the action of the murder, also in reference to the infallibility of the presence, or otherwise, of a number of agents; the repetition of the genetic investigations, or at least the revaluation of the traces with reference to Exhibits 165B and 36, the procedures/methodology of the gathering of the exhibits undertaken by the genetics expert of the Scientific Police, Dr Stefanoni, who carried out the verifications, having been questioned; an expert audiometric test was sought, to be undertaken to establish whether the witness Nara Capezzali, on the premise of the presence in her dwelling of double-glazed windows, was able to hear the noises and the screams of which she had given an account in her deposition; an expert report on the computers of the accused was requested, the memories of which were found to have been damaged at the time of the analysis of the supports carried out by the Postal Police, such that the hard drives could not be duplicated/cloned for subsequent examination.
The Court disallowed all the requests, on the grounds that the additional expert reports requested did not appear necessary, since the very ample dialectic contribution from the expert witnesses of the private parties offered sufficient material to take a position without additional expertise
I don't believe that the quote provided above verifies your contention that Massei said he just believed Stefanoni.

 

[Grinder]

This is true. Before this case, it would have been hard to imagine a trial in which the defendant would not be questioned about having committed the crime.

I don't quite understand this. Here if the police are questioning someone they have the right to stop answering and demand a lawyer who will object to questions and may tell his client to invoke the fifth amendment.

In court here no defendant can be called by the prosecution only the defense.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Full disclosure in cases involving DNA forensics

Here is a comment from a practicing forensic scientist about discovery: "Typical DNA discovery in the U.S. includes the analyst’s hand written notes, sketches, photographs, instrument printouts, and raw electronic data from capillary electrophoresis. For instrumental procedures, there are absolutely printouts with dates, times, sample names, etc. There are often handwritten notes complementing and summarizing instrumental printouts."

 

[Mary_H]

Where is the part of the ISC report that states that Hellman breached procedure or legal codes?

I really would like to know. I haven't had a chance to look through it in English translation, but none of the reports I've seen give any clue about criticism of Hellman on procedural grounds.

It's in many parts, Antony. It's 74 pages long. You will have to look it over to find all the references.

 

[platonov]

Using terms from a foreign langauge to mock someone looks really stupid if those terms are totally misspelled. Using a german term to make a thinly veiled implication of racism makes it look extremely stupid.

Greetings,

Chris

No sir – you misunderstand, surprise surprise.

I wouldn’t trivialize the original term ‘sonderbehandlung’ which is very well known to non german speakers by applying it to racist arguments user by defenders of a convicted killer in a sordid rape/murder case.
So I came up a new contraction for special treatment – why such an anti Semitic association suggested itself to me on the Knox thread I will leave to your own research.

I should have checked on google first [I wish I had] as I see a holocaust survivors site uses the term but its probably a typo in that case.

To any lurkers who were genuinely offended by any inferred trivialization (I doubt there are any on a thread of this nature) I apologize.
On reflection I probably shouldn’t have used the term even in its bastardized form.

 

[platonov]

JAQing off

@Platonov
In the link above Rose provided what were calling "Cassazione no. 990/08, dated 4-01-2008 " and it mentions something about anal bruising ? Now I'm not a doctor like the rest of Italy but could you take a crack at explaining that one ? Is this something that occured from Rudy's 1st date with the victim since you tend to go his way and think he might not be so bad ? Honestly, I'm not 100% on what that means...So how do you perceive it ?

...over dead women.

So you want to discuss in graphic detail the sexual assault that occurred during the murder of Miss Kercher.

I’m not the man for that (others have asked before you) but you may find a few takers among the fans of Amanda.

You will have to do better than just ask questions [JAQ] to stand out from the crowd though - The bar is pretty high here. We have had a long graphic description of an imagined sexual assault carried out by RG on the victim interspersed with multiple posts from others showing the victims bloodied underwear etc posted on the anniversary of her death. All the better to understand the railroad job against Amanda you understand.

So you will have to top that – perhaps some of the pro Knox sites have photos of her dead body you could use.

 

[acbytesla]

You've made this point before but neglected to provide the actual quotes from Massei. I couldn't find the "quotes" you attributed to Massei. Please just provide the actual quotes.

ETA - In particular, a medico-legal expert report was requested, with the aim of ascertaining in terms of greater practicability in respect of the indications furnished: the time of death of Meredith Kercher (once a time band narrower than that indicated by the technical consultants of the Prosecutor or of the panel of experts under the preliminary investigations judge [the GIP], it would be possible to verify whether Raffaele Sollecito had interacted with his PC within a more precisely defined timeframe); the dynamics of the action of the murder, also in reference to the infallibility of the presence, or otherwise, of a number of agents; the repetition of the genetic investigations, or at least the revaluation of the traces with reference to Exhibits 165B and 36, the procedures/methodology of the gathering of the exhibits undertaken by the genetics expert of the Scientific Police, Dr Stefanoni, who carried out the verifications, having been questioned; an expert audiometric test was sought, to be undertaken to establish whether the witness Nara Capezzali, on the premise of the presence in her dwelling of double-glazed windows, was able to hear the noises and the screams of which she had given an account in her deposition; an expert report on the computers of the accused was requested, the memories of which were found to have been damaged at the time of the analysis of the supports carried out by the Postal Police, such that the hard drives could not be duplicated/cloned for subsequent examination.
The Court disallowed all the requests, on the grounds that the additional expert reports requested did not appear necessary, since the very ample dialectic contribution from the expert witnesses of the private parties offered sufficient material to take a position without additional expertise
I don't believe that the quote provided above verifies your contention that Massei said he just believed Stefanoni.

Can't you read between the lines Grinder?

The court disallowed all the requests....... on the grounds that additional expert reports did not appear necessary

. In other words, the court has heard enough from the Defense...lock them up.

 

[Mary_H]

I don't quite understand this. Here if the police are questioning someone they have the right to stop answering and demand a lawyer who will object to questions and may tell his client to invoke the fifth amendment.

In court here no defendant can be called by the prosecution only the defense.

(First, you need to separate questioning by police from questioning at trial -- two different situations.)

At the trial, regardless of who called Amanda to the stand (if anyone), she was questioned by all the attorneys -- her own, the prosecution's, the Kercher family's and Patrick's. I assume they all had the right to question her about anything they wanted.

Almost all of the testimony is about the interrogations and the day she discovered the crime. Reading the transcript, one gets a sense there was tacit agreement that Amanda wasn't really at the murder. It's never even brought up. Yet, she was convicted, on no more evidence than a knife found a mile away.

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=165

 

[Mary_H]

...over dead women.

So you want to discuss in graphic detail the sexual assault that occurred during the murder of Miss Kercher.

I’m not the man for that (others have asked before you) but you may find a few takers among the fans of Amanda.

You will have to do better than just ask questions [JAQ] to stand out from the crowd though - The bar is pretty high here. We have had a long graphic description of an imagined sexual assault carried out by RG on the victim interspersed with multiple posts from others showing the victims bloodied underwear etc posted on the anniversary of her death. All the better to understand the railroad job against Amanda you understand.

So you will have to top that – perhaps some of the pro Knox sites have photos of her dead body you could use.

Is it necessary to be so crude and misogynistic? If you are trying to express your respect for the murder victim, you are doing a poor job of it.

 

[Grinder]

The use of the witnesses to substantiate the case against A & R is hardly a half step above just making up dialog. When I read the PGP drawing on Quintavalle, Nara and Curatolo it's hard not to laugh. They write so confidently about them when at best they should only use their testimony with a grain of salt.

Then there is the concentration on the days after and the years after. When Amanda writes that she made two calls to Edda instead of the one they have records for this is a great point for guilt? And the purse through the keyhole, whoa!

 

[Grinder]

(First, you need to separate questioning by police from questioning at trial -- two different situations.)

At the trial, regardless of who called Amanda to the stand (if anyone), she was questioned by all the attorneys -- her own, the prosecution's, the Kercher family's and Patrick's. I assume they all had the right to question her about anything they wanted.

Almost all of the testimony is about the interrogations and the day she discovered the crime. Reading the transcript, one gets a sense there was tacit agreement that Amanda wasn't really at the murder. It's never even brought up. Yet, she was convicted, on no more evidence than a knife found a mile away.

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=165

Yes I know that the police and court questioning are not the same.

My first examples were for police questioning and then I addressed in court situations.

Here when a witness is crossed he can only be asked about those things he was asked about in direct, or at least that's my impression, Anglo?

 

[Grinder]

Can't you read between the lines Grinder? . In other words, the court has heard enough from the Defense...lock them up.

Can't you read the lines?

The fact is that Massei didn't say that if Stefanoni says so, it's true. They listened to many experts and by Italian law the court needed to make the decision. As witnessed at the appeal after C&V reported the prosecution wanted another bite at the apple and had that been granted and come back in the prosecution's favor the defense would have ask for yet another evaluation.

I think that Massei made the wrong decision on the DNA from the testimony given without additional experts, don't you?

You still haven't admitted that you were spreading misinformation about the kiosk owners contradicting Curatolo.

 

[Dan O.]

No, it doesn't. The piece of information must be relevant to the discussion and the parties are suposed to argue its relevance.
Actually, as I told you, there was never a formal request to obtain EDF from DNA tests. The defence and the judge appointed experts simply obtained all what they asked.
The truth is the defence regarded the EDF as irrelevant and only raised them as a pretext years later in an attempt to dismiss previous findings, but only once and then they dropped the point (they never requested them not even at the SC).
The defence themselves, at the preliminary hearing, they impliticly admitted they were irrelevant. Their late use is a pretext. They are important only as a propaganda ploy, especially by the innocentisti on the internet.

Here we see Machiavelli being a proper mouthpiece for the prosecution or the guiltier courts. As reported by Fiona in the original thread, "All files relating to the forensic test were requested by the defence team before the court broke for the summer recess in June or July and the prosecution agreed to that."

Can we agree that the Electronic Data Files or .fsa files are in fact files and are in fact related to the forensic tests.

 

[Dan O.]

Nobody asked? What are you talking about? Raffaele Sollecito invoked his right not to speak on December 5. 2007. He had requested to be interrogated by the PM; but then he changed idea and he invoked his right not to speak.
He never requested to be heard again.

And do you complain about qustion that were not asked to Knox? But that's a crazy claim; the defence could put her all the qustion they wanted. She could make all statements she wanted.

Now we see the illogic inherent in the system.