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

[rcfieldz]

Italian things

Wow I have on idea what started this thread but my DNA could be found lots of places. And once I told a murderer he was making people nervous in the bar(this was in America and he had been recently profiled on AMW.). Thank goodness he didn't knock off anyone there or my skin cells could get me in trouble.

 

[Antony]

However, the biggest problem with the clasp is that there are so many other contributors to it. The second biggest is the lateness with which it was collected, coupled with the poor quality of the actual collection itself. Finally, with the recent information from Vecchiotti's article that the clasp was stored in the presence of extraction buffer, the odds that the clasp was initially tampered with rose in my estimation.

Add to that the fact that it wouldn't mean anything even if it was genuine. There are any number of ways Raff's DNA could have got on the clasp, and taking part in the murder is the least likely of all of them.

 

[Bill Williams]

You believe that Amanda is innocent beyond a shadow of a doubt. Therefore Vogt believing in the prosecution case and interpretations of laws makes her a poor journalist. However, CD taking the FOA stand and repeating their talking points causes you no stress because CD is on the right side of the case.

While I firmly believe that the ILE did not make their case, I think that in law the prosecution has won most of the legal technical battles as well as the war at the ISC.

I think that Vogt destroyed her standing much more by interviewing Laura Wray as a DNA expert than by believing the prosecution case.

I don't see why pounding on this possible relationship of Vogt and Mach is helpful and significant.

ETA - Does CD report or promote? Do you have a problem with her?

First of all, apologies for being annoying. Well, not really.

Second if I have left you with the assumption you make above, then I have completely failed with posting. I most certainly do not believe Amanda Knox and Raffaele to be innocent beyond all doubt. I join many mere on my side of the fence in saying that if it could be shown that there is evidence of their participation, I'd be so saying.... as I did when I was (wrongly) convinced 18 months ago of Knox's guilt re: calunnia.

So your first statement is wrong - at least as how I see myself. And the linking of that to the second statement, "Therefore Vogt believing in the prosecution case and interpretations of laws makes her a poor journalist," is a non sequitor - at least as to how I see it.

Her own (quite rare actually) postings about this don't make her a "poor" journalist, what they make her is a PR agent for Mr. Mignini. There is a sub-group of guilters on this planet who believe Mr. Mignini got it right the first time.... indeed if one traces back to the things Ms. Vogt regards as important, what one finds is her simply recounting what Mignini advanced at trial.

That she STILL advances it as if nothing has happened judicially since mid- to later-2009 (when the bulk of the prosecution case had been presented) to me at least means the only person whom see listens to is the man who sincerely believes he got it right first time - Mr. Mignini.

Even Massei's court does not believe that. Massei's motivations is a complete rewriting of Mignini's theories.

Proof, for me at least, is Vogt's latest opinion that McCall's Wiki is the last word on the subject of this horrible murder. Does that opinion make Ms. Vogt a "poor" journalist? I'll let others decide.

The only other internet presence who does this is Machiavelli/Yummi. As to the formal dots which can or should be connected all that will be seen.

But it is not about Machiavelli, whoever the heck he/she is. I just know of no other source, other than these two, who are so lock-step in stride with Mr. Mignini's view of things.

For those who are annoyed about this theory, perhaps you might provide another. Who else provides legal "interpretations", presented as if factual - in the same manner an opposing attorney would do in court, when that interpretation is presented as-if-the-only-interpretation possible?

I mean, is that not what opposing attorneys do? Machiavelli is acting as if one of those opposing attorneys who thinks the other side is idiotic...

.... it is one thing for some ethereal internet presence known as Machiavelli/Yummi to do that.... it is quite another for a journalist, poor or not, to do it.

I happen to regard journalists in high esteem, enough really to want to call out Ms. Vogt for being essentially a mouthpiece for a prosecution that is obviously wrongful

The comparison with Candace Dempsey is a bit of a canard. Candace Dempsey is a completely open book about this. Ms. Vogt continues the charade of objectivity while pointing to McCall's site, which is simply a restatement of Mr. Mignini's obviously flawed prosecution.....

I mean, even Massei's court found aspects of Mignini's prosecution flawed, even in convicting the pair. Massei, for instance, rejected Mignini's reasoning(s) about motive. And all those other things which people find annoying when I repost.

Do make me! The point is, no guilter I know represents Massei's motivations report.... the few who remain (wanting to afrgue the case) simply re-argue Mignini, and not Massei.

Both Machiavelli and Ms. Vogt are two fairly near the centre of Miginini's universe - make note of how Ms. Vogt says that she just happened to call Mr. Mignini for his thoughts....

You may not connect the dots the way I do, so obviously your mileage varies. It may also not matter to you that Andrea Vogt is a PR person for Mignini. It may not matter to you that she was one of the originator's in the public mind of the "I was there," misstatement of where Knox said she was on the night of Nov 1. Vogt has done more than report on this story, she has promoted one side of it, and still portrays herself as objective.

 

[NancyS]

Didn't Raffeale, Amanda and Meredith spend some time together earlier that day and Raffaele had visited the flat a number of times - and as Amanda was having sex with Raffaele she must have been coming back to the flat and potentially transferring small amounts of his DNA? There are so many potential ways for Raffaele's DNA being found on Meredith's clothing and if anything I'm surprised more traces weren't found

 

[Bill Williams]

Didn't Raffeale, Amanda and Meredith spend some time together earlier that day and Raffaele had visited the flat a number of times - and as Amanda was having sex with Raffaele she must have been coming back to the flat and potentially transferring small amounts of his DNA? There are so many potential ways for Raffaele's DNA being found on Meredith's clothing and if anything I'm surprised more traces weren't found

It's not just this... it's that the demand now seems to be from the Supreme Court that this contamination must be proved! It's not just good enough anymore in Italy for the prosecution of any case which relies on DNA to demonstrate that proper anti-contamination protocols are followed... which most of the world accepts, Massei and the ISC seem to be demanding that you, yourself, have some sort of video camera PROVING that contamination happened this way.

Of run into case where ALL anticontamination protocols have been followed, and yet contamination happens. At that point the technician simply concedes that contamination happens even with the best efforts by qualified professionals.

And the strange thing about more accurate DNA identification protocols, is that the better the accuracy the MORE stringent the anti-contamination protocols need to be, not less.

 

[Bill Williams]

Machiavelli - apparently you were in court.... were you in court when Nencini said: "We are going to analyze something we do not know whether it exists." "You must consider the possibility that there are no traces of the DNA of Meredith.."

I'd be interested in your view on whether this is an accurate translation, and what perhaps Andrea Vogt will make of it when she publishes next?

 

[NancyS]

It's not just this... it's that the demand now seems to be from the Supreme Court that this contamination must be proved! It's not just good enough anymore in Italy for the prosecution of any case which relies on DNA to demonstrate that proper anti-contamination protocols are followed... which most of the world accepts, Massei and the ISC seem to be demanding that you, yourself, have some sort of video camera PROVING that contamination happened this way.

Of run into case where ALL anticontamination protocols have been followed, and yet contamination happens. At that point the technician simply concedes that contamination happens even with the best efforts by qualified professionals.

And the strange thing about more accurate DNA identification protocols, is that the better the accuracy the MORE stringent the anti-contamination protocols need to be, not less.

It's all crazy - however, regardless of what happened during the investigation, how can small amounts of DNA be indicative of anything? How can tiny amounts of DNA being found in the house where you live or visited mean anything?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

more on touch DNA and documentation concerning contamination

Wow I have on idea what started this thread but my DNA could be found lots of places. And once I told a murderer he was making people nervous in the bar(this was in America and he had been recently profiled on AMW.). Thank goodness he didn't knock off anyone there or my skin cells could get me in trouble.

"On one occasion, I swabbed my own hand after handshakes at a social function to determine the presence of other epithelial cells. The laboratory was able to obtain a mixture of my DNA as well as two other individuals."

From the same article: "The Quality Assurance Standards for Forensic DNA Testing Laboratories addresses DNA contamination in Standard 9.7. In the discussion section it states, 'A laboratory shall have and follow a documented policy for detecting and controlling contamination. This policy should include the procedures used by a laboratory for monitoring, decontaminating, and detecting contamination. In addition, a laboratory shall have and follow policies and/or procedures for interpreting data potentially affected by contamination.'2"

Let's see this documentation from the Rome lab. We have waited almost six years.

 

[Bill Williams]

It's not just this... it's that the demand now seems to be from the Supreme Court that this contamination must be proved! It's not just good enough anymore in Italy for the prosecution of any case which relies on DNA to demonstrate that proper anti-contamination protocols are followed... which most of the world accepts, Massei and the ISC seem to be demanding that you, yourself, have some sort of video camera PROVING that contamination happened this way.

Of run into case where ALL anticontamination protocols have been followed, and yet contamination happens. At that point the technician simply concedes that contamination happens even with the best efforts by qualified professionals.

And the strange thing about more accurate DNA identification protocols, is that the better the accuracy the MORE stringent the anti-contamination protocols need to be, not less.

It's all crazy - however, regardless of what happened during the investigation, how can small amounts of DNA be indicative of anything? How can tiny amounts of DNA being found in the house where you live or visited mean anything?

It's helpful to recreate Massei's own discussion, in his motivations report, of 36B (I hope I have that reference right), the speck which was alleged to have been Meredith's on the knife.

There are two separate tests, one which id's what the substance is, and the other which id's who it belongs to. I am not an expert at all on this, far from it - but this how the non-expert Judge who makes the decision on its relevance puts it....

Regardless of what anyone thinks of Stefanoni's qualifications, she (or anyone else) would have a choice to make. The substance was so small, that either of these tests would simply destroy it. So the "tester" has to decide:

1) Do I want to know what it is?, or:
2) Do I want to know who it belongs to?​

So this is something that Stefanoni got right, in my opinion. Faced with this either/or choice, it is simply better to know who it belongs to.

Stefanoni said it belonged to Meredith. Someone else, some other expert said it was rye grain. (Is finding a trace of rye grain strange when on a knife known to be used for cooking?)

The point is that this is it. There's no blood at all on the knife, unless they can recover some from when/if the handle is taken apart. (Why they didn't do this at either of the first two trials is beyond me. That some blame the defence for this is also beyond me, when the judge could have simply ordered it....)

So, even if Stefanoni's tale is true, and this is Meredith's..... the issue is, so what?

It might be suspicious of "something" to have Meredith's non-blood DNA on a knife at some remote location..... but given the strangeness of that scenario, one is inclined to speculate more about contamination than that this somehow proves this as the murder weapon.

Add to this that the knife itself matches nothing in the murder room, any of the wounds or the outline in blood on the sheet - the absolute best that can be said is that that knife cannot be ruled out as making the fatal wound, but even that is strange because it would require delicate finesse by the criminal who wielded it.

All of this is more that reasonable doubt. It's not just as you so rightly point out, NancyS, that such tiny amounts are in play here, it's that even the worse case sceario as maintained by Judge Massei, really doesn't point anywhere.

And as for contamination, all Judge Massei says on that subject is that Stefanoni assured him that there had been none, and that was good enough for him.

That's the origin of it being, "it's up to the defence to prove contamination" silliness.

 

[davefoc]

Dave, I don't give any credence to what was found on the clasp because the way the bra was removed makes it unlikely that the clasp was ever touched durring Meredith's murder.

The first clue is that contrary to the prosecutions claim that the clasp was cut off with a knife, it is visibly apparent in the original crime scene photos that the bra was ripped apart at the stitches. We find copious DNA from Rudy Guede at the point on the band where a strong pull would cause the bra to tear apart the way it did. This in conjunction with the blood on the inside handle to Meredith's door indicates that Rudy was alone with Meredith when he killed her and ripped off the bra so Raffaele's DNA could not get on the clasp durring the murder.

Rudy's bloody palm print and his shoe prints on the pillow found under the pelvis of Meredith's naked body says that it was Rudy that moved Meredith onto the pillow.

The bra clasp was found under the pillow so there is no chance for Raffaele's DNA to get onto the clasp after Meredith's murder.

I agree that it is very unlikely that Raffaele's DNA got on the clasp during the murder, so I am not asking questions about this issue because I think that the clasp DNA is good evidence of Raffaele's guilt, but to a person that is unfamiliar with DNA testing and procedures it still seems an unexpected result.

Besides outright fraud (which I doubt because I think the forensic examiner would have just outright faked evidence if that was her intent), three possibilities have been put forth that seem like they might be reasonably likely to me:
1. The person that collected the evidence got Raffale's DNA on his gloves, perhaps when he operated the door handle that RS is known to have touched and transferred it to the clasp.
2. Kercher herself transferred it to the clasp, perhaps after she had touched something that RS had touched or she might have even shaken his hand.
3. Contamination during the storage or testing phase.

However, I'm not completely satisfied by any of these possibilities because the amount of RS's DNA is still considerably greater than anybody else's.

Possibility 1: A lot of people had touched stuff all over that apartment. Why isn't there more of everybody else's DNA on the clasp if it got there by transfer from somebody that collected it or touched it? It strikes me as strange that transferring this DNA is so easy and yet almost nobody else's DNA got transferred to the clasp except that of RS, an individual that had rarely been in the apartment. Maybe the person collecting the clasp had on fairly clean gloves and just before the clasp was recovered they had touched something that had RS DNA on it?

Possibility 2: Maybe, but Kercher probably touched a lot of people during her day and she touched a lot of stuff that had been touched by a lot of people during her day and yet almost none of their DNA showed up but the RS DNA did and we don't know that Kercher even touched RS in any way that day. Maybe Kercher touched something RS had touched? OK, except once again there undoubtedly was DNA all over that apartment from lots of people and she just happened to touch something that had been touched by RS and almost none of the DNA from any of the other places she touched showed up on the clasp.

Possibility 3. Maybe this is the most likely possibility. The clasp got thrown into an evidence bag that already had items from RS in it? Maybe improper procedures were used during the test phase that led to an error?

I am not disputing that the clasp evidence against RS is weak or that there seems to be numerous innocent possibilities as to how it got there. But I would feel more comfortable with discounting the clasp evidence completely if the various possibilities that have been put forth seemed more likely to me.

 

[RoseMontague]

Besides outright fraud (which I doubt because I think the forensic examiner would have just outright faked evidence if that was her intent), three possibilities have been put forth that seem like they might be reasonably likely to me:
1. The person that collected the evidence got Raffale's DNA on his gloves, perhaps when he operated the door handle that RS is known to have touched and transferred it to the clasp.
2. Kercher herself transferred it to the clasp, perhaps after she had touched something that RS had touched or she might have even shaken his hand.
3. Contamination during the storage or testing phase.

Dave, the more I watch the video of the bra clasp collection, the more I become convinced it is outright fraud. Just my opinion.

 

[js202]

Dave, the more I watch the video of the bra clasp collection, the more I become convinced it is outright fraud. Just my opinion.

I concur.

The preposterous show they make of producing and parading it for the camera - after it had languished on the floor for a month - to me strongly suggests the fix was in. Frustrated by the shoe print coming up for Guede rather than RS, they "fitted" the incrimination of RS to the evidence.

 

[Grinder]

You may not connect the dots the way I do, so obviously your mileage varies. It may also not matter to you that Andrea Vogt is a PR person for Mignini. It may not matter to you that she was one of the originator's in the public mind of the "I was there," misstatement of where Knox said she was on the night of Nov 1. Vogt has done more than report on this story, she has promoted one side of it, and still portrays herself as objective.

I think you are promoting a fog of nonsense.

How did Vogt originate "I was there" anymore than all the journalists reporting?

CD didn't say she was doing PR for Amanda but it sure looked that way. Vogt is obviously pro guilt but that doesn't make her not a journalist. I don't like her or her reporting but that make her not a journalist.

You really should find the SBS Dateline show.

 

[Bill Williams]

You may not connect the dots the way I do, so obviously your mileage varies. It may also not matter to you that Andrea Vogt is a PR person for Mignini. It may not matter to you that she was one of the originator's in the public mind of the "I was there," misstatement of where Knox said she was on the night of Nov 1. Vogt has done more than report on this story, she has promoted one side of it, and still portrays herself as objective.

I think you are promoting a fog of nonsense.
How did Vogt originate "I was there" anymore than all the journalists reporting?

CD didn't say she was doing PR for Amanda but it sure looked that way. Vogt is obviously pro guilt but that doesn't make her not a journalist. I don't like her or her reporting but that make her not a journalist.

You really should find the SBS Dateline show.

Vogt made mention of it in a piece in a Seattle newspaper, and as Machiavelli himself has correctly stated, he should know, it was not so much a problem in the text of what she wrote, but in the choice of headline (which rarely belongs to the writer of the piece). Still it is something Vogt believes, and Machiavelli still argues that "I was there" still is a de facto confession from Knox that she was involved in the murder. So does Mignini, so does Vogt.

I very well could be off track here... I do not think I am. What I am certain of is that the comparison of Vogt with Dempsey is an invalid one. As Dempsey's writing has changed through the years (she was originally a firm guilter), she has reported what she has discovered, she's changed with what she has discovered and has never shied away from it. Whatever Dempsey's sins, she has been transparent and assessable. Her book is most certainly not "passing on the party line", it was the first book which spoke honestly of the mistakes made by Knox (at 20 years old in a foreign land, but mistakes none-the-less....) and told it like it was.

For example, Dempsey was the first to report in popular form that Knox HAD lied - albeit about the soft-drug use in the cottage, just like Sophie had lied.... similarly both Sophie and Knox downplayed Meredith's sex-life, both believing it too personal & disrespectful to Meredith to talk about. Dempsey, in short, told it like it was.

(If John Follain, in comparison, said something critical of the PLE, his face would fall off. It earned Follain a well-deserved exemption from defamation when Curt and Edda were charged by Mignini.)

The last blog posting of Vogt's is simply a restatement of Mignini.... such a restatement that doesn't match the findings of Massei's motivations report. And her endorsement of McCall's wiki (specifically) is proof - for me at least - that she has lost her way, while still claiming the objectivity of a journalist.

Please also note - I do not consider "objectivity" to be the same as simply adopting a middle position. Consider, though, that Andrea Vogt has not changed much from the position Mignini himself adopted just before going into the first trial and from the case he presented at the first trial. She keeps passing it on as if Mignini will one day be vindicated as getting it right the first time.

Does that make a difference? For you, no. For me, yes.

 

[davefoc]

Dave, the more I watch the video of the bra clasp collection, the more I become convinced it is outright fraud. Just my opinion.

The possibility of fraud seemed unlikely to me because if fraud was involved the perpetrator would not have produced such an equivocal piece of evidence.

But this kind of argument is never completely compelling. Committing fraud and getting away with it can be difficult and a more clear piece of evidence might have raised red flags so the perpetrator might have gone for a less clear but easier to get away with effort. Or maybe given the resources and opportunities of the person that committed the fraud this was the best they could do.

Did you have any theories as to who perpetrated the fraud? Could it be somebody that collected the evidence that brushed the clasp against something he knew would have RS DNA on it?

Maybe an argument for fraud is that the way the clasp materialized so long after most of the investigation was complete and it just happened to have RS DNA on it? They had done DNA testing for six weeks without a trace of RS DNA being found and it just happens that they go back to the scene and come up with this clasp out of all the other stuff that they might have tested in the room? Does anybody know what stuff they tested when they tested the clasp? If it wasn't a lot, it would be very suspicious, since given the complete failure to find RS DNA in the room previously the notion that they could just pick up a few things and find RS DNA seems very unlikely.

 

[Bill Williams]

Dave, the more I watch the video of the bra clasp collection, the more I become convinced it is outright fraud. Just my opinion.

I concur.

The preposterous show they make of producing and parading it for the camera - after it had languished on the floor for a month - to me strongly suggests the fix was in. Frustrated by the shoe print coming up for Guede rather than RS, they "fitted" the incrimination of RS to the evidence.

I agree with davefoc.... if there'd been a deliberate attempt to plant evidence, they simply would have done a better job than contaminating the bra-clasp with evidence which could point to half the male population of Perugia!

Also, as a bit of an aside, some guilters actually blame the defence for the non-collection for 47 days of the bra-clasp. As others have pointed out, though, the two students didn't even have lawyers until the 8th, almost a full week AFTER the first forensic sweep.

Then again, if the bra-hook DNA had been a plant, the PLE are more incompetent as framers than they are as Scientific police.... and that's saying something.

 

[RoseMontague]

I agree with davefoc.... if there'd been a deliberate attempt to plant evidence, they simply would have done a better job than contaminating the bra-clasp with evidence which could point to half the male population of Perugia!

Also, as a bit of an aside, some guilters actually blame the defence for the non-collection for 47 days of the bra-clasp. As others have pointed out, though, the two students didn't even have lawyers until the 8th, almost a full week AFTER the first forensic sweep.

Then again, if the bra-hook DNA had been a plant, the PLE are more incompetent as framers than they are as Scientific police.... and that's saying something.

She has to have an out. Knowing they are innocent, give yourself some wiggle room if positive proof he was not there came out (which may yet happen with the computer evidence). She can always say, must have been contamination after all. LOL.

 

[davefoc]

... if there'd been a deliberate attempt to plant evidence, they simply would have done a better job than contaminating the bra-clasp with evidence which could point to half the male population of Perugia!

....

I hadn't thought to ask about this but, how solid was the match? Without the raw test data perhaps this can't be assessed but were there possible problems with the test results either because the DNA sequence tested was too short so there were actually many possible donors or was the "match" based on some subjective guess work on interpretation of the raw results?

Based on answers from earlier posts it sounds like there was a substantial amount of DNA available for analysis so that errors that might arise out of a small sample size seem unlikely? But this conflicts with the idea that there wasn't enough DNA to run tests to determine what the nature of the cells was that the DNA originated in. I think Kaosium was the one that said that amount of DNA found on the clasp was in the neighbor hood of a thousand time more than the test could be done on.

When was the knife collected? That is another suspicious piece of evidence with regards to how it was found and tested. There was no particular reason to choose the knife that was tested and yet they found Kercher DNA on it. Would they have found Kercher DNA on the rest of the knives in RS's kitchen?

Does the discovery of two pieces of evidence of suspicious origin suggest that fraud was involved or does it just show that the Perugia police were honest enough to record both facts supportive and not supportive of thir case?

 

[js202]

I agree with davefoc.... if there'd been a deliberate attempt to plant evidence, they simply would have done a better job than contaminating the bra-clasp with evidence which could point to half the male population of Perugia!

Also, as a bit of an aside, some guilters actually blame the defence for the non-collection for 47 days of the bra-clasp. As others have pointed out, though, the two students didn't even have lawyers until the 8th, almost a full week AFTER the first forensic sweep.

Then again, if the bra-hook DNA had been a plant, the PLE are more incompetent as framers than they are as Scientific police.... and that's saying something.

Your last paragraph indirectly sums up my position. Given what incompetent boobs they were at evidence collection, why should one expect them to display greater mastery as framers?

 

[js202]

The possibility of fraud seemed unlikely to me because if fraud was involved the perpetrator would not have produced such an equivocal piece of evidence.

My sense is that fraud and incompetence are intertwined and then so deeply woven into the fabric of that system, it would be a very great anomaly, indeed, for them to have produced a masterfully unequivocal piece. The timing of the production of the bra class is far too suspicious - way too convenient for both ILE and Mignini's case - to be merely an Inspector Clouseau sort of bumbling into the incriminating evidence that, er, closes the case.