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

[MiloMinderbinder]

I understand it to a certain degree. Clearly Halides and Charles Wilkes understands it better. I think there are nuances for example of reading an egram. Is that peak part of the profile or stutter? How do the negative controls effect that interpretation? How do substrate control effect the results? And when it comes to the odds, are they using the world population as a whole? Or does the fact that a specific region with a more homogeneous environment make a significant difference?

Do you really think Milo, that juries actually understand all of this?

I think it can depend on the quality of the expert witness and defense team, but I do think that DNA can evidence can be explained fairly.

 

[MiloMinderbinder]

Milo,

No, acbytesla and Diocletus are absolutely correct to discuss the indefensible lack of discovery of this case, as I have been doing for over three years. If you read just one article about the problems of DNA in court cases in general, read "Tarnish on the Gold Standard," by William C. Thompson. If you want to understand how wrapped around the axle some cases get because of DNA evidence, google "Phantom of Heilbronn," "Jaidyn Leskie," "Gary Leiterman," or more recently "Lukis Anderson."

My biggest issue with the random match probability is not that it is necessarily calculated incorrectly (although it sometimes is), or that it is misinterpreted (which it sometimes is), but that it does not take into account the chances of contamination or sample mislabeling, both of which have occurred on multiple occasions.

That's not at all what I was getting at.

For the record, I do believe DNA has a legitimate and very useful role in criminal cases. But, it has to be used wisely and fairly in order to be meaningful. The problem, as I see it, isn't with DNA, but with attorneys who will use it and anything else in order to win a case. It's one thing when defense attorneys do it, but it's beyond shameful when prosecutors will lie, cheat, and steal in the name of 'justice.'

 

[RoseMontague]

The video is not new and it may or may not be Rudy.

 

[Bill Williams]

The video is not new and it may or may not be Rudy.

Do you know why Oggi made such a big deal about it in March 2012? Is it pro-innocence sensationalism the way this thing has been plagued with pro-guilt sensationalism?

 

[acbytesla]

I think it can depend on the quality of the expert witness and defense team, but I do think that DNA can evidence can be explained fairly.

I wish I had as much confidence as you do. I'm a science junkie Milo and I have been studying the processes involved in DNA testing and I seriously doubt that most jury members have the patience to fully understand the nuances beyond being told that the suspect is or isn't a match to a DNA profile.

 

[Mary_H]

I wish I had as much confidence as you do. I'm a science junkie Milo and I have been studying the processes involved in DNA testing and I seriously doubt that most jury members have the patience to fully understand the nuances beyond being told that the suspect is or isn't a match to a DNA profile.

I agree, acby. That's why I am more in favor of a macro strategy than a micro one. Focus on the prosecution's incompetence and lack of credibility, not on the science.

We are in a land where Claudia Matteini told Amanda that the fact she hadn't left town in the five days after the murder didn't mean she wasn't a flight risk. A land where the Supreme Court said Amanda's statements should not have been used in the case, and then used them to prove "the scream."

There is no science, there is no logic, there are only feelings and aspersions.

 

[acbytesla]

I agree, acby. That's why I am more in favor of a macro strategy than a micro one. Focus on the prosecution's incompetence and lack of credibility, not on the science.

We are in a land where Claudia Matteini told Amanda that the fact she hadn't left town in the five days after the murder didn't mean she wasn't a flight risk. A land where the Supreme Court said Amanda's statements should not have been used in the case, and then used them to prove "the scream."

There is no science, there is no logic, there are only feelings and aspersions.

Well, what bothers me most about the Italian system is the 2 professional jurists. I believe that if the their courts were entirely of lay people, I'd feel more comfortable with the outcome.

 

[Bill Williams]

I agree, acby. That's why I am more in favor of a macro strategy than a micro one. Focus on the prosecution's incompetence and lack of credibility, not on the science.

We are in a land where Claudia Matteini told Amanda that the fact she hadn't left town in the five days after the murder didn't mean she wasn't a flight risk. A land where the Supreme Court said Amanda's statements should not have been used in the case, and then used them to prove "the scream."

There is no science, there is no logic, there are only feelings and aspersions.

Also where Judge Massei can write, presumably without smiling, that since DNA cannot be time/date-stamped, that Stefanoni was right not to test the presumed semen stain even to i.d. its composition or its owner....

... but that presumably Amanda's "biological material" can be time/date-stamped, in the very cottage which she resided and shared a bathroom with Meredith.

Also that Massei is sure that there'd been a clean-up in the cottage - and this clean-up he talks about is ONLY in the short distance between Meredith's room and the bathmat where the bloody footprint was - because there was no forensics whatsoever between those two place. No footprints. So what was his reasoning, even when no one, no forensic person ever, said there'd even been an indication of swirls or whatsoever, and even he admitted that the cottage had no bleach smell.....

...... the reasoning was, "If there had not been a clean-up, then I'm at a loss to say why those intervening footprints are not there."

Mary_H.... you forgot to include "assertions" in your list of what the authorities in this case said there was "plenty of". The greatest assertion is the "sex game gone wrong" when no one, no prosecutor and no police forensic person (other than a sole waxen pumpkin candle) offered ANY evidence in court, which supported the assertion.

And.... even Judge Massei didn't buy THAT assertion. Massei's motivations report says there was no motive for Knox and Sollecito to have been involved in this, "momentary choice for evil." And to top it all off, in overturning Hellmann's acquittals... the ISC bypasses not only Hellmann, but also Massei, turning the clock back on him too.

Can they do that? Can they simply lay out as factual something that two fact-finding lower courts found as unfactual? I thought the ISC was supposed to rule on law or procedure.....

 

[RWVBWL]

Fibre? or Hair?

I wonder how Ergon was 'able to confirm' the loss of this hair? Was he given access to police records? Hmm. Not sure I buy that one. I will look this up in my copy of Barbie's book later. I have also read that what is photographed in her hand is not a hair but a fibre of some kind. It really does seem astonishing that it could have been lost. How? Presumably it was tagged, numbered and bagged. What happened next? There will be a break in the chain of custody somewhere and that would isolate when, where and perhaps by whom this item was lost.

Hiya Anglolawyer,
Look, I believe that Amanda+Raff are innocent of any participation or cover-up regarding Miss Kercher's terrible murder.

With that said,
I do like to look at both sides of the story,
as I too, like ACbyTesla, would be a a bastard of a juror.

Keep in mind that I have shared with the old regular posters here my own civil rape trial, (which I won, by the way), and stories of life growin' up in crazy Venice Beach...

Maybe Ergon, Fulcannelli, and Mach, who still posts here sometimes, do have an inside connection to the Prosecutions side of the story,
as we have Charlie Wilkes and others posting from the defence side.

Good.
I wanna hear about it!

With that said,
I am gonna "borrow" a copy of that image from PMF.net and post it here for discussion.



Here's the link:
http://www.perugiamurderfile.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=437

In the photograph above
what is in Meredith Kercher's left hand does not appear to me, whatsoever, to be a fibre, as you and others have written.

Look at it closely.
Is that a hair from someones head or a fibre from someones jacket, or t-shirt.

That is a single strand of hair.

It ain't Rudy Guede's.
Was it Amanda's, Raffaele's, Kokomani's, or someone else?
I don't know.

BUT if the police lost it, that frigging sucks!
1 more tragic goof-up by the cops in Perugia,
and yet, the higher-ups gave award medals to some of these officers for a job well done.

Right.



PS-I wish The Mods here at The JREF would allow Fulcanelli back,
it'd be fun to continue discussing this case with him and hear more of the other side.
My opinion only.

 

[codyjuneau]

.
DNA, the clairvoyant cop's dream come true. So easy to plant, so judge and jury proof.

Isn't it amazing, that the police found the only evidence against Raf, that little bit of DNA, on that little missing bra clasp, five weeks after he was charged.
.

 

[codyjuneau]

.
Does anyone know if there are official phone records, the night of the murder, for Meredith's Italian phone, the one with Filomena's SIM?

Thanks
.

 

[RandyN]

Hiya Anglolawyer,
Look, I believe that Amanda+Raff are innocent of any participation or cover-up regarding Miss Kercher's terrible murder.

With that said,
I do like to look at both sides of the story,
as I too, like ACbyTesla, would be a a bastard of a juror.

Keep in mind that I have shared with the old regular posters here my own civil rape trial, (which I won, by the way), and stories of life growin' up in crazy Venice Beach...

Maybe Ergon, Fulcannelli, and Mach, who still posts here sometimes, do have an inside connection to the Prosecutions side of the story,
as we have Charlie Wilkes and others posting from the defence side.

Good.
I wanna hear about it!

With that said,
I am gonna "borrow" a copy of that image from PMF.net and post it here for discussion.

[qimg]http://imageshack.us/a/img443/9554/07yz.jpg[/qimg]

Here's the link:
http://www.perugiamurderfile.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=437

In the photograph above
what is in Meredith Kercher's left hand does not appear to me, whatsoever, to be a fibre, as you and others have written.

Look at it closely.
Is that a hair from someones head or a fibre from someones jacket, or t-shirt.
That is a single strand of hair.

It ain't Rudy Guede's.
Was it Amanda's, Raffaele's, Kokomani's, or someone else?
I don't know.

BUT if the police lost it, that frigging sucks!1 more tragic goof-up by the cops in Perugia,
and yet, the higher-ups gave award medals to some of these officers for a job well done.

Right.



PS-I wish The Mods here at The JREF would allow Fulcanelli back,it'd be fun to continue discussing this case with him and hear more of the other side.
My opinion only.

Sure its a hair. It even appears to be a blonde hair. This hair has been discussed and speculated on. Since it is missing along with the fingernail scraping btw...its pointless to speculate. PGP are certain its a hair from AK. Due to the unknown resolution and lighting its actually impossible to determine the color. Some think its simply a lighter hair from MK own head. But no matter. Its gone! Stupidity or corruption? Who cares. It is irrelevant as evidence just as the non repeatable DNA tests are. Scientific data and tests demand that the test be repeatable or else it is invalid. I am fairly confident that the prosecution in this case actually uses all these "missing" yet notable items and situations as the backbone to his weak as water case.
If you cant dazzle them with evidence then baffle them with impossible to confirm speculation. Meanwhile no one seems bothered that this hair and tons of other evidence (interrogation tapes, burned hard drives, missing cctv data, lost fingernail scrapings,Mignini order to deny access to lawyers...etc) All apparently gone forever...probably with those control data test sheets Stefanoni and Comodi claimed were in the court files.

Yes they gave themselves medals...fired Lali (but not for losing any evidence) changed TOD 3 or 4 times, changed motive 3 or 4 times...ran out of money to record and yet had plenty to make 187 thousand Euro cartoon and enough to pay for 30 thousand plus wire tapped phone calls of RS family. They got Lumumba to deny his story published in the DM about his police abuse claims, illegal arrest, illegal interrogation...but no one thinks to ask the police on the stand why exactly they kept Lumumbas bar closed for months. This are dirty rotten corrupt officials. And Italy seems particularly interested in keeping them protected. I feel sorry for RS since he is stuck in Italy for now and his countries citizens seem to be unconcerned about the huge amount of specious activity on the part of police and prosecutors and even judges in regards to this case.


If you want to talk to Michael (****inelli) go to his stolen site PMF dot nut on Tuesdays and I am sure he will engage you. As for me I find talking to him or Yummi/Mac et al fruitless. He has failed to provide the receipt for bleach he said he has...along with a thousand other absurd claims. Besides I have no doubt ****aneli is clever enough digitally to be able to easily return as some reincarnation of his former abusive self.

I see he and his BFF Pervert Quinell are fighting....or at least snipping at each other. Ergon is all busy notifying the PMF nuts about the recent outing several of them are currently undergoing by some site the name of which has slipped my mind at the moment...Watching guilters or something like that.

Id love someone to come with one piece of solid evidence that proves guilt of the innocent accused but I would take a discussion of the enormous amount of irregular and suspicious conjecture pawned off as evidence for 99.99% of the prosecution case.

The CCTV of RG...its old although the time stamp was often hidden by some logo as I recall. Its Guede and he even tells us he goes to the cottage...leaves and then returns...although it appears he returned by a different route. Dont forget to add 10 minutes IIRC to the time stamp for the actual times. Notably missing are CCTV from anyplace between RS apartment and the cottage that show either AK or RS. Strange that! Oh wait...normal in Perugia Italy.

 

[RandyN]

The difference between Barbie Nadeau and other guilters is subtle.
When Barbie Nadeau trumpets out, "Amanda Knox is not telling us everything she knows about the murder," she just leaves it as that as one of those unanswerable questions. It leaves her readers/viewers thinking that it actually might be true, that Knox knows something she's not letting on about. But Barbie never tells us - ok, what is it that Knox is withholding.

Other guilters actually do us a favour. One can immediately see why Barbie does not fill in the blanks because when others do, it turns out to be cockamamie. My favourite "fill in the blank," was when one guilter said, "Amanda Knox is not telling us everything she knows about the murder," and then actually did say something the Knox was (presumably) withholding, it was - "She never talks about how the knife got from Raffaele's to the cottage, and why she would later use that knife for cooking! That just proves how depraved she is."

Ten points to the first person who spots the logical error in the way that's phrased.

What I'd like to know about the guilters or about Nadeau is - why aren't they asking: "Giuliano Mignini is not telling us everything he knows about how he framed Knox and Sollecito." I mean, everything that was supposed to have been known was known on Nov 6, 2007, wasn't it? That was the day the case was closed.

Why isn't Mignini telling us what HE knows about why that turned out not to close the case. So far he's being telling us that it's because Amanda Knox is a diabolical witch. Or at least he's stood by while Lumumba's lawyer said it for him. Has Mignini ever confirmed or denied Lumumba's lawyer's take on why the case was not, in fact, closed?

What is Mignini not telling us? One thing I'd like him to say is why he's abandoned 3 motives he's advanced, and settled on the "she did it for no reason at all" motive. Why is Mignini not telling us why he's shifted gears on this?

See? It works both ways.

I cant pass up a chance to call out Nadeau for the yellow journalist whore that she is. She will say anything to promote her fictional take on this case. Its already laid out as the complete FU of the case in her book...the book so bad it had to have two names...Now they are going to make a movie based on that book which confirms to me that Hollywood or wherever... are truly out of frigging ideas. She will now continue her campaign to promote her interests all in the name of slut journalism. Her boss Tina drove Newsweek into the ground ...not her first rodeo btw...

Damn shame no one outs Nadeau for the fraud she actually is. Both her and Vogt get far more mileage than they ever deserved based on their reporting skills. Unless lying and cheating in the new news is now how its done...oh wait!

 

[anglolawyer]

I agree, acby. That's why I am more in favor of a macro strategy than a micro one. Focus on the prosecution's incompetence and lack of credibility, not on the science.

We are in a land where Claudia Matteini told Amanda that the fact she hadn't left town in the five days after the murder didn't mean she wasn't a flight risk. A land where the Supreme Court said Amanda's statements should not have been used in the case, and then used them to prove "the scream."
There is no science, there is no logic, there are only feelings and aspersions.

Great point.

 

[MichaelB]

Do you know why Oggi made such a big deal about it in March 2012? Is it pro-innocence sensationalism the way this thing has been plagued with pro-guilt sensationalism?

Rudy's German diary page 17

As I arrived in front of the cottage, I noticed a white car with headlights on.

How could he know about the parked car if it's not him in the video walking across the street to the car?

 

[Dan O.]

Is rudy talking about the car in the driveway from his own memory? Or has his memory been altered by news coverage or a visit from his lawyer?

 

[MichaelB]

Is rudy talking about the car in the driveway from his own memory? Or has his memory been altered by news coverage or a visit from his lawyer?

I think he had to include the parked car in his story because he knew he'd been seen and didn't know what Kokomani would say. It's gotta be Kokomani's car otherwise there's a witness out there who's never been identified.

 

[acbytesla]

.
Does anyone know if there are official phone records, the night of the murder, for Meredith's Italian phone, the one with Filomena's SIM?

Thanks
.

There is a phone gif of Raffaele's Amanda's and both of Meredith's phones that have the calls of October 31, Nov. 1 and Nov 2 2007 at IA. It isn't official. But I thought it was comprehensive. But who knows?

 

[GreyFox]

mixed drinks/dna

Even with dried blood I find the idea that a flake held on to a bootie and let go in a spot where Amanda's dna was located in Filomena's room implausible, If Amanda's was tracked from elsewhere a trail fron the bootie would be left. Like the DNA transfer to the clasp a believable path hasn't been demonstrated.

Who's to say the girls weren't drinking one night and Merideth didn't spill her drink in Filomenia's room. Lot's of drinks have some sort of fruit juice in them. Amanda could have stepped in it or like Chris said sneezed etc. Would these be live cells ? Either way I don't think guilters should be posting in comment sections telling readers that it's blood but they do just to get people who don't know any better on their side. Dirty pool just like the PLE and the pink photo.

 

[GreyFox]

I cant pass up a chance to call out Nadeau for the yellow journalist whore that she is. She will say anything to promote her fictional take on this case. Its already laid out as the complete FU of the case in her book...the book so bad it had to have two names...Now they are going to make a movie based on that book which confirms to me that Hollywood or wherever... are truly out of frigging ideas. She will now continue her campaign to promote her interests all in the name of slut journalism. Her boss Tina drove Newsweek into the ground ...not her first rodeo btw...

Damn shame no one outs Nadeau for the fraud she actually is. Both her and Vogt get far more mileage than they ever deserved based on their reporting skills. Unless lying and cheating in the new news is now how its done...oh wait!

She looked nervous after the acquittals like she was afraid that she might be exposed for her role in making two innocent people lose a part of their lives in prison. Making money off of Merideth's death and being imbedded with the police dept. for her own personnel gain. What a piece of trash !!! I wish I could get her around the ol campfire and explain to her the bigger story here is blowing the whistle on the PLE as well as the corrupt courts .She could do the right thing here if she had the courage that Frank has shown. Here's an Italian that wants a better country and is willing to fight for justice !!! It's truly a much bigger story than what Barbie's seeing.