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

[anglolawyer]

Please don't take offense anglo, but you're a lawyer. You don't think like a lay person. I agree that there is and should be a presumption of innocence built into the system. Maybe amoral is not the right word, but it is a different kind of morality.

Machiavelli practices and demonstrates it on this forum almost in every post.

The truth is sacrificed not for the greater good of society, but as a professional requirement. When a lawyer uses his skill to confuse, obfuscate and hide the truth, in my book that is not only amoral, it is immoral. And lawyers do that all the time. The goal is to win, not to achieve justice.

I know it's not that simple, so it seems a bit unfair. There is a lot more to consider I know. The right of every defendant to get a spirited and competent legal representation. The importance of keeping "the state and the system in check.

Lawyers are absolutely needed and just like rodents, vultures and bacteria, they play an important role.

You forgot crocodiles and sharks

I take no offence at all, I assure you. There is nothing you could say about lawyers I haven't heard before and some of it I agree with. Mach can fool some of us all of the time and all of us some of the time but not all of us all of the time. A great lawyer said that.

 

[acbytesla]

You forgot crocodiles and sharks

I take no offence at all, I assure you. There is nothing you could say about lawyers I haven't heard before and some of it I agree with. Mach can fool some of us all of the time and all of us some of the time but not all of us all of the time. A great lawyer said that.

Who?? You??

This line of discussion started as something more academic than something philosophical. I digressed. Sorry.

The real question is does knowing in your gut that your client or clients are innocent of a heinous crime as opposed to having serious reservations about their innocence change your approach? At all??

 

[Grinder]

My source is Burleigh. She might have made it up for all I know but it does seem a rather fanciful thing to invent. I shall ask her her source and, if she is good enough to reply, I'll tell you what she says.

I wasn't necessarily challenging the veracity but rather the frustrating aspect of things in this case that surface but are so hard to nail down. If this and Curatolo's three murder trials are true why haven't some media outlets covered it more in depth?

 

[Grinder]

I thought Rudy was a foreigner.

I should have said visitor or tourist. Rudi was a resident alien IIRC.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Anglo perhaps you could expand on this whistle-blower letter a bit. It is very hard to read as is.

The gist of it is that the labs do sloppy work, and they skew their tests to come up with whatever the cops want.

Given the endless series of crime lab scandals in the US, I'm not surprised that Italy has the same problem.

But Americans at least accept that the problems are real and significant, even if they are slow to correct them. Italians seem to respond by flatly denying the obvious, insisting that bad procedure is in fact sound procedure.

I would be interested to hear Stefanoni's discourse in which she explains why it is hard to keep a steel bra fastener from rusting.

 

[anglolawyer]

The gist of it is that the labs do sloppy work, and they skew their tests to come up with whatever the cops want.

Given the endless series of crime lab scandals in the US, I'm not surprised that Italy has the same problem.

But Americans at least accept that the problems are real and significant, even if they are slow to correct them. Italians seem to respond by flatly denying the obvious, insisting that bad procedure is in fact sound procedure.

I would be interested to hear Stefanoni's discourse in which she explains why it is hard to keep a steel bra fastener from rusting.

Turns out Mach is now a leading expert in this field too. He has been holding forth at IIP anyways. Mach is to the PGPs what Hitler was to the Nazis - basically the whole shooting match (leader, theoretician, propagandist, historian etc). He could use back up.

 

[anglolawyer]

I wasn't necessarily challenging the veracity but rather the frustrating aspect of things in this case that surface but are so hard to nail down. If this and Curatolo's three murder trials are true why haven't some media outlets covered it more in depth?

What possible reason could there be for all this stuff remaining murky?

 

[Grinder]

The gist of it is that the labs do sloppy work, and they skew their tests to come up with whatever the cops want.

Given the endless series of crime lab scandals in the US, I'm not surprised that Italy has the same problem.

But Americans at least accept that the problems are real and significant, even if they are slow to correct them. Italians seem to respond by flatly denying the obvious, insisting that bad procedure is in fact sound procedure.

I got the gist but wondered why this was more significant than a post here.

I would be interested to hear Stefanoni's discourse in which she explains why it is hard to keep a steel bra fastener from rusting.

It would be more interesting to find out how she got it to rust. It didn't rust in 47 days under a rug in an unheated house. I doubt that anyone here has ever seen a rusted clasp and most people wash them regularly.

 

[Grinder]

What possible reason could there be for all this stuff remaining murky?

I'm anticipating that I will be heel clicking soon, but I really don't know why more coverage wasn't given the issues mentioned and others.

 

[acbytesla]

Turns out Mach is now a leading expert in this field too. He has been holding forth at IIP anyways. Mach is to the PGPs what Hitler was to the Nazis - basically the whole shooting match (leader, theoretician, propagandist, historian etc). He could use back up.

I personally think of Mach to be more like Goebbels than Hitler.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

Turns out Mach is now a leading expert in this field too. He has been holding forth at IIP anyways. Mach is to the PGPs what Hitler was to the Nazis - basically the whole shooting match (leader, theoretician, propagandist, historian etc). He could use back up.

What thread contains this discussion?

I think Baghdad Bob is a better analogy, if the premise is that it is difficult or impossible to keep something from rusting in storage.

 

[anglolawyer]

Just reminding myself what Burleigh wrote, the law office burglar used a first floor window grill to climb up, just like the one beneath F's window. The old lady whose apartment was burned said she used to see Rudy, whom she knew, outside his apartment on his cell phone. I thought we were always told he didn't have one. Both times the burglar made himself at home. The fire was caused by leaving a cloth over a lamp. The dates are interesting too:

13 Oct law office (laptop, mobile, portable printer, USB sticks stolen)
23 Oct old lady burglary (lady's gold watch stolen)
27 Oct Milan school (lady's gold watch, lawyer's laptop and mobile recovered)
01 Nov lone wolf burglary and murder.

 

[anglolawyer]

What thread contains this discussion?

I think Baghdad Bob is a better analogy, if the premise is that it is difficult or impossible to keep something from rusting in storage.

The thread discussing the SC motivation. Do you mean Comical Ali?

 

[Antony]

First, I said the test was non-repeateble (not that the item was "non-retainable).
Second, I said the police force are authorized to dispose of pieces of evidence - actually there was also law project that would make that procedure more systematic - not that they are obligated to do so.

I stand corrected, having wasted a 1/2 hour of my life hunting out your original quote. You've still made it up with no legal basis. No reputable justice system would allow evidence like this to be destroyed.

What you find believable has no importance.

Close to an ad hominem. Kindly explain why anyone would find it believable. Maybe if you cite the article of Italian law and demonstrate exactly why it substantiates your claim of the bra-clasp being "legally non-repeatable" then it would have more credibility.

Stefanoni explained in her testimony why it wouldn't be easy for them to preserve it from rusting.

Do tell. Also indicate why it should be that I am able to dry clothes in my own house, without any fasteners rusting, yet it's not possible in a police laboratory.

I answered to some people who made the absurd claim that it should be kept in an "isolated" environment in a paper bag. For the rest, I don't need to add anything myself to what Stefanoni explained. You just need to read the testimony.

No doubt along with citing your Italian law, you can quote Stefanoni's testimony and where it occurs in the Hellman trial. Then we can all have a good laugh.

I did actually did not claim it - I think proved it. I had detailed the thing with law articles and precise information.

I don't think you've ever cited Italian law in support of your peculiar interpretation.

But whatever you think about the proof of it, the claim that he should have been arrested is pure nonsense, this is obvious for any Italian who has a basic grasp of legal practice.

This was that the police could not arrest Guede for having a stolen knife in a nursery after having broken in. Yet you say they could arrest Raffaele for having a pocket knife while in a police station. You never answered my question: is it illegal to carry a pocket knife in a public place in Italy, but legal to carry a knife in a nursery school while an intruder?

You really do not have any credibility on this, Mach. Others have pointed out the long list of Guede's crimes to which the Perugian police turned a blind eye.

You don't believe me? Your buisness. Go an follow Frank Sfarzo.



No. The Supremce Court assesses legitimacy, not 'procedure'.

This is known as a "tautology". The SC assesses legitimacy according to whether the lower court applied the law correctly and followed the correct procedures. It is no part of their role to criticise the lower courts interpretation of the evidence. Is this not so?

It is obvious that you never read a SC ruling from the Italian Cassazione before; it is also obvious that you don't have any knowledge about Italian criminal procedure, nor about what a lower court's judge's work is.
In other words: your statements are delusion.

I don't claim to be an expert. If you want to make me or anyone believe that you have knowledge of the Italian legal system, then you have to respond with specific answers to the questions. Instead, what we get from you is evasion, obfuscation and claims that are not seriously credible.

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

The thread discussing the SC motivation. Do you mean Comical Ali?

I guess. The guy on the rooftop emphatically denying plain facts. I thought people called him Baghdad Bob.

ETA: I don't see his explanation of the rusty bra fastener in that thread. But I see him trying to argue that Chiriboga corroborated Quintavalle's testimony. He's quite a piece of work.

 

[Antony]

I got the gist but wondered why this was more significant than a post here.



It would be more interesting to find out how she got it to rust. It didn't rust in 47 days under a rug in an unheated house. I doubt that anyone here has ever seen a rusted clasp and most people wash them regularly.

Wasn't it by the simple expedient of sealing it in a plastic tube, in a damp condition? This was presumably sometime after December 2007, and by the summer of 2011 when C&V wanted to re-test it was no longer possible.

Are you suggesting that some additional help was needed, beyond 3 years in a sealed damp space?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

I got the gist but wondered why this was more significant than a post here.



It would be more interesting to find out how she got it to rust. It didn't rust in 47 days under a rug in an unheated house. I doubt that anyone here has ever seen a rusted clasp and most people wash them regularly.

I have managed to rust fishing tackle by storing it in a plastic bag after exposing it to a marine environment, so I know it can be done.

 

[Grinder]

Wasn't it by the simple expedient of sealing it in a plastic tube, in a damp condition? This was presumably sometime after December 2007, and by the summer of 2011 when C&V wanted to re-test it was no longer possible.

Are you suggesting that some additional help was needed, beyond 3 years in a sealed damp space?

I'm sure that storing wet steel in a plastic would work. I was addressing an assertion that it would be common for steel to rust when stored as evidence, by you know who. I was also pointing out that the clasp was "stored" for 47 days in a damp environment and didn't rust or have the DNA destroyed.

I have managed to rust fishing tackle by storing it in a plastic bag after exposing it to a marine environment, so I know it can be done.

 

[Mary_H]

Please don't take offense anglo, but you're a lawyer. You don't think like a lay person. I agree that there is and should be a presumption of innocence built into the system. Maybe amoral is not the right word, but it is a different kind of morality.

Machiavelli practices and demonstrates it on this forum almost in every post.
The truth is sacrificed not for the greater good of society, but as a professional requirement. When a lawyer uses his skill to confuse, obfuscate and hide the truth, in my book that is not only amoral, it is immoral. And lawyers do that all the time. The goal is to win, not to achieve justice.<snip>

I agree, acbytesla.

 

[anglolawyer]

Nina Burleigh kindly volunteered that she herself dug up the story about the apartment fire.