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

[Mary_H]

<snip>On selective-view shaky-cam? Did they see every single thing the clowns in bunny suits were doing that night? Or was it more like the footage we have seen of that event where one can't really see much of anything outside what the camera is currently focused on and it isn't pointed exactly where it needed to be at all moments?<snip>

 

[JREF2010]

"Contamination is the unintentional introduction of outside DNA into a crime scene or laboratory sample. Contaminant DNA may appear as background DNA, the major or minor profile within a mixture, a single source DNA profile, or all of the above. When can this occur? Before the commission of the crime, after the crime and before the crime scene is discovered/secured, during the crime scene investigation, and within the crime laboratory or DNA laboratory. (Figure 1) In today’s world of touch DNA, a crime scene has to be approached in a way to minimize contamination since one cannot see or test for touch DNA." link.

and the fact is the total opposite occurred in the cottage, there were hoards of people tromping through the cottage unknowingly stepping on Rudys faint bloody prints, and carrying it all from room to room.

to consider this, then magnify 46 more days, then find the bra clasp (with the prosecution hell bent to find evidence against Raffaele to replace the tennis shoe circles) .

I like Dan O. point, if Stefonani had applied the 100RFU rule to the bra clasp, like she did most all the other tests there would be no bra clasp in this trial.

 

[RandyN]

Sorry Mary but I think that's horse pucky. Candace not being paid doesn't mean she has free reign to write anything she wants. She went to work almost immediately to make money on the coverage by a book.



She was never pro guilt and it was very shortly that she began her pro Knox crusade. You say realistic view and Vogt has PR driven view or worse. Look at the knife quote from 11-10.

If you read on (http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/page/24/) you can see Candace being influenced by the insanity of the pro-guilt faction, who came in hard and heavy after her very first post about the case. As moije2 just wrote here: And for those people new to the case it may also have the same effect on them as me - the best way to convince of innocence is to read the guilters' sites, as long as they have just a little bit of time.

Why did they come in hard against a neutral blogger?



Mike and Anne as well as others. She hooked with Frank early on and always seemed a mouthpiece for the FOA. I couldn't read her stuff after a while because it was so stilted and she started promoting her book.



Watch the SU forum. She has been pro innocence forever.

By lead, I meant the first speaker.

From her first post you linked - An odd remark considering Knox is the only American in the trio and nobody is claiming she pulled the knife (in fact it belonged to her Italian boyfriend). The owner doesn’t call Americans rich and spoiled, but that’s the stereotype in Italy. (Update: That knife was found not to be the murder weapon. The true weapon has still not been identified.)

I'm sorry but I think she is an idiot and on 11-10-2007 how does she know "the knife was found not to be the murder weapon" - now where would that info come from? To me she has been the mercenary of all, even Barbie.
When I search the PI with "Candace Dempsey" many of her posts are missing including some you have links for above.

How do you think she found Preston? Do you think he reached out to a food blogger?

And it really makes me sad every time this comes up because her one non Amanda post is about sweet Nick Gallo who died far too early and with no warning. RIP Nick.

First highlighted point...Do you think it takes a certain level of genius to understand BS when you see it and how long do you consider it should take to start understanding that something is rotten in Denmark with this case...

I happen to have started out in this case as a semi interested PGP who usually expects that the police can be trusted to get it right most times. That said...early on I was hearing things that just didn't add up. And after a time these things started looking like stuff that made my BS meter go off.

You are entitled to your opinion about CD but to compare or even disparage her by stating that she is worse than Barbie is unfair IMHO.

Perhaps I misunderstand the word mercenary when comparing her to Barbie who wrote the book titled what was it again? AK student killer something or another...(I have this book but please dont make me look for it) None the less Barbie could be found whoring her book constantly...and she never gave anything close to a balanced take on anything...and Barbie was the one who was certain that college life involved only sexual depravity and in fact one of her scoops was that MK had a Bazillion wax job...OMG...

To put CD in this category or even worse than Barbie seems unfair. What exactly do you find problematic with her take in hindsight? And what do you find particularly admirable with Barbies work over time?

The honest truth IMO is that mainstream media has totally missed the importance of what is actually going on with this case. The Italians take 100 dumb unsubstantiated things and add them up as if that makes them more worthy. Then they turn their heads as 50 suspicious official activities proceed unquestioned; meanwhile the press is spoon fed salacious lies w/pics.

I wonder if the reporter who spoke with the detective from Rome would have a follow up question to the "we don't need evidence" statement in the first 48 Hours show? That BTW was one of my first "huh" moments. Also Mignini in the same show cant stop talking about poor Lumumba being falsely accused,meanwhile I am just studying the fact that the police and/or Mignini have been keeping his bar closed for months...also a "huh" moment for me.

How long do you expect it would take a investigative reporter to find enough about this case to come to a reasonable conclusion about its absurdity and how much more would one need to start showing the high probability of official corruption or is it incompetence? Personally I think it was incompetence first followed by corrupt efforts to cover up the stupid mistakes. Like the recent education show I watched...a young man was taken to principles office suspected of using drugs...and then he started talking...well I walked by some guys smoking weed and passed thru the second hand smoke and therefore blah blah...lol. How do you think that worked out for him? Parents were called and they heard the same story and after rolling their eyes they took him home...The dad took him to the doctor who gave him a piss test and after failing the dad gave him a errr spanking. And this foolish story is about as reasonable as what Mignini has presented so far and so I wonder why you are having such a hard time with the people who may have figured this out before you or at least before you feel it is appropriate? Worse than Barbie? Gimme a break please.

How did she know it wasn't the knife? Good guesser perhaps? Did someone leak to her that the knife didn't match the bed sheet prints or any of the wounds? I know you want cites from her but you could ask that of the 10 or 12 other book authors as well. I expect that Frank was the "inside source" and as far as I know most of what Frank wrote is as truthful as any other source I have read so far. YMMV.

Vogt, Pisa and Nedeau go into a bar...wait that's no joke...its true and what a memorable performance it was. I don't recall CD being there....that puts her up a level right there. Food blogger? Now you sound like Michael.

 

[RandyN]

Well Italy is in the real world. To become a 'pathologist' you need a 5-year study course (NOT 8 years). To get a II level degree you need 5 years (not 6). (We distinguish 'master degree' (which we also call 'II level degree') from 'masters', which you take after that).
For all that, a 'phatologist' like Vecchiotti is not a biologist. Not in the real world. All this makes your assertion that "Stefanoni is not a biologist", a lie.
Moreover, Vecchiotti's laboratory is not a member of ENFSI, while Stefanoni is. And Vecchiotti has no forensic training, while Stefanoni has. But hte main point is about your spreading falsehoods, not about who Stefanoni or Vecchiotti are.
You don't like how Stefanoni deals with mops. Someone might recall you how Vecchiotti deals with DNA items on cases like the Olgiata case (in the words of the victim's lawyer Marazzita, Vecchiotti's professional conduct was the "worst possible", probably in the history of DNA forensic analysis in Italy).
Or how she deals when shee needs to avoid finding a broken vertebrae in a body (she notices just the x-ray of the intact ones, like in the Cucchi case)...

Well then it is improper to call V a pathologist. And BTW a MD takes 8 years and then a pathologist another 8 for a total of 16 years of doctoral level study.

Still odd that a doctor would fail to study biology. Not a doctor I would want even looking at my dead body. What benefit would it be for someone not trained in biology to bother doing so?

As for V conduct...so typically Italian then?

 

[Wildhorses]

Well then it is improper to call V a pathologist. And BTW a MD takes 8 years and then a pathologist another 8 for a total of 16 years of doctoral level study.

Still odd that a doctor would fail to study biology. Not a doctor I would want even looking at my dead body. What benefit would it be for someone not trained in biology to bother doing so?

As for V conduct...so typically Italian then?

To become a board-certified pathologist:
4 years of college
4 years of medical school
4 year pathology residency

Most do a one or two year post-residency fellowship.

So it's a total of four to six years post MD. I can't make sense of your numbers. I think you're counting medical school twice.

 

[LondonJohn]

RoseMontague,

The fact that the forensic police stored it with extraction buffer may not have been accidental. It is a little like storing a cassette tape next to a strong bar magnet. It is possible that the initial profile was merely the result of contamination, but the way in which it was stored was deliberately intended to preclude retesting.

Yes. It's certainly hard to explain how a competent forensic specialist could ever have chosen to store the bra clasp in extraction buffer fluid, in a plastic container. It would have been an incompetent enough choice if it was the fabric of the clasp that had contained the alleged evidence. But the fact that it was the metal hook of the clasp that was of most evidential importance makes the choice of storage even more grotesquely wrong.

Let's not also forget that the blood-soaked towels were also not allowed to dry out, and therefore became mouldy and useless for analysis. This is a basic and massive error in relation to one of the primary potential sources of forensic evidence in this case.

The way in which the towels and the bra clasp were stored is unforgivable. It can only be the product of one of two causes: a) extreme incompetence and malpractice, or b) deliberate misconduct with a deliberate aim of destroying evidence. Personally, I still tend towards the former option - but either option is severely damning of Stefanoni and her "crack" department of idiots.

 

[LondonJohn]

Well Italy is in the real world. To become a 'pathologist' you need a 5-year study course (NOT 8 years). To get a II level degree you need 5 years (not 6). (We distinguish 'master degree' (which we also call 'II level degree') from 'masters', which you take after that).
For all that, a 'phatologist' like Vecchiotti is not a biologist. Not in the real world. All this makes your assertion that "Stefanoni is not a biologist", a lie.
Moreover, Vecchiotti's laboratory is not a member of ENFSI, while Stefanoni is. And Vecchiotti has no forensic training, while Stefanoni has. But hte main point is about your spreading falsehoods, not about who Stefanoni or Vecchiotti are.
You don't like how Stefanoni deals with mops. Someone might recall you how Vecchiotti deals with DNA items on cases like the Olgiata case (in the words of the victim's lawyer Marazzita, Vecchiotti's professional conduct was the "worst possible", probably in the history of DNA forensic analysis in Italy).
Or how she deals when shee needs to avoid finding a broken vertebrae in a body (she notices just the x-ray of the intact ones, like in the Cucchi case)...

Perhaps Machiavelli could point out exactly what errors Conti and/or Vecchiotti made in THIS case.

And while he's at it, he might have a crack at explaining just how/why "expert" biologist Stefanoni chose to store crucial evidence items in this case in such an incompetent manner that they rotted/rusted and became worthless for further examination (for ANY examination in the case of the towels....), and why she chose to wrap a potentially important mop in gift wrap paper found at the site of the murder?

Oh, and why she was happy to head a team that collected DNA by smearing a swab around a large area rather than spotting it in the proper fashion. And why her team trampled repeatedly (and undocumented) through the entire cottage wearing the same shoe covers, thus presenting the very real risk of transferring blood-based evidence from one part of the floor to another. And why her team manifestly failed to change gloves at properly-specified intervals, thus clearly increasing the risk of secondary contamination. And why her team passed the bra clasp around themselves hand-to-hand like they were admiring someone's Christmas present, instead of picking it up carefully with sterile tweezers and placing in an appropriate bag.

And that's before we even get to the issue of "expert" Stefanoni's astonishingly inept labwork, or her dissembling behaviour over disclosure....

 

[RoseMontague]

Yes. It's certainly hard to explain how a competent forensic specialist could ever have chosen to store the bra clasp in extraction buffer fluid, in a plastic container. It would have been an incompetent enough choice if it was the fabric of the clasp that had contained the alleged evidence. But the fact that it was the metal hook of the clasp that was of most evidential importance makes the choice of storage even more grotesquely wrong.

Let's not also forget that the blood-soaked towels were also not allowed to dry out, and therefore became mouldy and useless for analysis. This is a basic and massive error in relation to one of the primary potential sources of forensic evidence in this case.

The way in which the towels and the bra clasp were stored is unforgivable. It can only be the product of one of two causes: a) extreme incompetence and malpractice, or b) deliberate misconduct with a deliberate aim of destroying evidence. Personally, I still tend towards the former option - but either option is severely damning of Stefanoni and her "crack" department of idiots.

I believe we went through her qualifications a couple of years ago. I still find it hard to believe she is in charge of that lab. I think this interview shows she felt she needed more study as well.

 

[tsig]

Look Grinder,
I too have read much of this case since waaaay back when. Read alotta the Pro guilt and the Pro innocence points of view.
Esh, aren't you the dude that does not even read any of the published books on this brutal murder we discuss?

I've also read a bunch of the early posts on whatever the heck that name of the blog was,
True Crime or whatever it was called by Steve who-ever he is or was...
Interesting stuff.

You should know this already, but for the newcomers who have been participating,
well Candace, Michael and Peggy were all friendly back then.
Heck Peggy even used to HELP Frank Sfarzo translate his Perugia Shock blog, in the early days, IIRC.
Ain't that right Grinder? Sure it is...
Can you actually believe that?!?

It was only when Candace and Frank,
like most here at The JREF, studied the evidence publicly available and realized that the evidence points out that Miss Knox + Mr. Sollecito DID NOT murder nor help participate in Miss Kercher's horrible bloody murder that Mikey the bird watcher and Peggy the translater turned against CD and FS...

Everyone needs a paycheck, Grinder,
believe what ya want, but I believe that what CD and FS have written
to help lay out the real facts and to then inform the public have been immensely important in this brutal murder case.

And it might be my opinion only,
but I feel your thoughts regarding FS and CD reportin' are,
what'd you say, oh ya, horse pucky.

My opinion only.



Pss-
TSIG,
I apologize for confusing, I believe,
you with member Lionking, for I then asked you to give a personal opinion here.
I was mistaken.
RW

Accepted.

 

[Welshman]

Perhaps Machiavelli could point out exactly what errors Conti and/or Vecchiotti made in THIS case.

And while he's at it, he might have a crack at explaining just how/why "expert" biologist Stefanoni chose to store crucial evidence items in this case in such an incompetent manner that they rotted/rusted and became worthless for further examination (for ANY examination in the case of the towels....), and why she chose to wrap a potentially important mop in gift wrap paper found at the site of the murder?

Oh, and why she was happy to head a team that collected DNA by smearing a swab around a large area rather than spotting it in the proper fashion. And why her team trampled repeatedly (and undocumented) through the entire cottage wearing the same shoe covers, thus presenting the very real risk of transferring blood-based evidence from one part of the floor to another. And why her team manifestly failed to change gloves at properly-specified intervals, thus clearly increasing the risk of secondary contamination. And why her team passed the bra clasp around themselves hand-to-hand like they were admiring someone's Christmas present, instead of picking it up carefully with sterile tweezers and placing in an appropriate bag.

And that's before we even get to the issue of "expert" Stefanoni's astonishingly inept labwork, or her dissembling behaviour over disclosure....

This is a good point. Machiavelli is always going on about how incompetent and unqualified C and V were but has he written a detailed rebuttal of the CV report.

 

[Grinder]

Not me. It was the police chief and buckled. It would be rare but noT unheard of

? What does that mean?

When I read that the police chief said that they had questioned her until she buckled and told them what they knew to be correct I became skeptical about their case. The rare part referred to someone with her profile doing a heinous crime.

I think she was arguing with the media opinion that Seattle is a dark place where evil things are constantly happening. Of course Candace was aware of Ted Bundy -- she mentioned him herself, and Ann Rule is her favorite author.

As I said I misinterpreted her remark about the 43,000 and only one suspect.

Actually, lots of pathology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy

Yes I know the stories but at the time of his arrest his alleged (stories differ) pathology wasn't know. At first people were doing the nice, smart guy next door routine. My only comparison was meant to be at the very beginning in terms of how people thought of him.

That is true. However, I think it was insightful of Candace to recognize there was some danger of ILE profiling Amanda as someone diametrically opposed to how American law enforcement would profile her.

If that was the case, I would make it more of a case of even a blind squirrel.

I think that the name of her blog would make most people think it was going to be about food. She hasn't done much but the case since Nick and moved as fast as possible to cash in and then promote her book. I don't like Barbie doing it or CD.

On the knife she was reporting from your link - An odd remark considering Knox is the only American in the trio and nobody is claiming she pulled the knife (in fact it belonged to her Italian boyfriend). The owner doesn’t call Americans rich and spoiled, but that’s the stereotype in Italy. (Update: That knife was found not to be the murder weapon. The true weapon has still not been identified.)

On November 10th how would she know from Seattle if someone were claiming that she pulled the knife (whatever that means) and since she was with "her Italian boyfriend" why would knife ownership be key? You are correct on the update but what a sloppy job not dating it when made or at least at some time later when she should have noticed how it read.

To someone that made the point that I don't read these true crime novels, I have read sections of her book online both as samples and what people have posted. I also read her approach which clearly was to write a screenplay, which I'm sure she is still pitching.

She was still getting things wrong during the SU forum that she led off by summarizing the case.

I don't like her reporting or Barbie's or Vogt's. Pisa, Popham and Squires were marginally better for me.

 

[Grinder]

Amanda Knox Update: Would $139,000 have helped stack the odds in favor of Knox in new trial?

Really why didn't they pay Patrick off and keep him and her "confession" out of this trial?

 

[RoseMontague]

Amanda Knox Update: Would $139,000 have helped stack the odds in favor of Knox in new trial?

Really why didn't they pay Patrick off and keep him and her "confession" out of this trial?

I really don't understand allowing him in this appeal. Has not this part of the sentence already been confirmed? Allowing him in when he no longer has an interest in the decision? I don't get this. Sounds a bit unfair to me.

 

[Skind]

Well Italy is in the real world. To become a 'pathologist' you need a 5-year study course (NOT 8 years).

Then Italy is miles behind the rest of 'the real world'.

In the rest of the real world, 5-years of study wouldn't even qualify you to apply to become a pathlogist. You may be thinking of biomedical scientist.

For all that, a 'phatologist' like Vecchiotti is not a biologist.

All pathologist are medical specialists and need to have studied biology extensively. To say they are not biologists is pedantically correct, but to use it to argue that they have no training in biology is both factually incorrect and laughable.

Not in the real world. All this makes your assertion that "Stefanoni is not a biologist", a lie.

And it's a lie you've just repeated. If a pathologist is not a biologist, then a forensic technician is not one too. That's the rules YOU laid out.

You can't even be consistent withint the same post.

Moreover, Vecchiotti's laboratory is not a member of ENFSI, while Stefanoni is.

Stefanoni isn't, the lab she works at is.

And Vecchiotti has no forensic training, while Stefanoni has.

Vecchiotti has 3 forensic qualifications.

Someone might recall you how Vecchiotti deals with DNA items on cases like the Olgiata case (in the words of the victim's lawyer Marazzita, Vecchiotti's professional conduct was the "worst possible", probably in the history of DNA forensic analysis in Italy).

And as people pointed out, in the Olgiata case, Vecchiotti was unlucky enough to have been ordered to only test some samples.

There was no concern with her collection or processing of the sample. The 'mess-up' was entirely the fault of the prosecutor who ordered the limitations on sampling.

 

[Bill Williams]

I misspoke. I should have said they came in after her second post about the case; Candace reports the reaction in her third post and every post thereafter. E.g.: http://blog.seattlepi.com/dempsey/2007/12/27/amanda-knox-trial-by-trollarazzi/

They came in hard against anybody who was not vilifying Amanda, just as they continue to do now. It was much worse then -- so many people calling Amanda a bitch, a whore, a tramp, a murderer, before any of the facts were known. Read the first three posts again -- Candace does not speak in Amanda's defense in them, except theoretically.

This one is more reminiscent to the one I am searching for... Dempsey had said something that sounded like she presumed the police would not go after someone unless there was good cause (therefore conceded the American could very well be guilty), but....

.... also went off on the dual vein of:

1) Let's at least wait for a trial before we convict her, and
2) why does on get swamped with vitriol by anonymous poster simply for speaking in her defence even if on theoretically - esp. around concepts such as, "innocent until proven guilty."​

I do not remember Dempsey, then, going into a full for analysis of this being like a medieval witch trial; my memory of that early stuff was Demspey's comment mainly on the tidal wave of sexified vitriol aimed at ANYONE who even suggested that we wait for a trial.

So where are we?

My thing these days is that there are very few people who are primary sources who continue to offer PR support to the originator of all this - Giuliano Mignini. Please note, I said "continue" as in, offer new stuff and commentary, which I believe emanates from Mignini himself.

The anonymous poster Harry Rag/The Machine does not count because he's been cutting and pasted the same comments for 4 years now, comment-bombing every comments section of every article he can find.

Peter Qyennell doesn't count because he offers ridiculous theories like, "The Defence was responsible for the 47 day delay in collecting the bra-clasp." PQ ignores that until Raffaele and Amanda first appeared in a courtroom on Nov 8, 2007, there WAS no defence! PQ then offers some lame regulation from the Scientific police that something that was marked as "collectable" counts as evidence even though it is collected 47 days later. PQ just invents lies on the fly.

What I am talking about are two unique individuals who continue to pass on, PR style, commentary in defence of Giuliano Mignini, all with the purpose of mitigating his responsibility for creating this mess through a botched investigation, a stubbornness about Amanda Knox, and cycling through theories of her involvement like Mcdonald's goes through hamburgers. It started with ritualistic-based theories of day-of-the-dead sacrifices, all the way through sex games gone wrong, eventually settling on to the wrose motive that Giulliano Mignini could dream up out of them all - that they had no motive: and therefore deserved life in prison and long terms of solitude.

Who spends hours sifting through Amanda's and Raffaele's books looking for inconsistencies, and suggests that understandable inconsistencies be seen as "lies"? Read Andrea Vogy's latest blog.

Dempsey's sin early on was presuming that Knox probably was fuilty, but she was going to reserve judgement until the non-lurid evidence cam in. And when she blogged about that, a tsunami of vitriol descended upon her to! Just for suggesting that we actually first have a trial before burning the witch at the stake.

Unlike Machiavelli and Andrea Vogt, there still are many who want to participate in pure online slut-shaming, with very little evidence really that warrants it - if it is ever warranted.

Machiavelli wants to get a little more sophisticated. He wants to write at length, in 2013, of how he discerned from Knox's 2007 writings that she could choose NOT to sleep in stressful situations and therefore was immune from fatigue or disorientation issues. Andrea Vogt wants to point to McCall's 2013 Wiki as an authoritative source, all the while still trying to suggest that inconsistencies equate to lies told in 2013.

The biggest difference between Dempsey and Vogt is that the latter has acted and still does act as if a PR conduit for Mignini and the case he brought that was pretty much debumed at the Massei trial in 2009, even as Massei convicted.

Dempsey waited for actual evidence to come out and commented mainly on the internet slut-shaming going on, even before evidence was presented. To my way of thinking, her early writings were not "home team" defences of Amanda Knox - at best her protestations were only on, as Mary_H says, theoretical innocent based on the rule of law.

Some people still cannot resist talking about an organized PR effort on the side of FOA. People who argue this way are misrepresenting how a divers, unconnected group of people actually found each other - others of similar viewpoint.

Contrast this to Machiavelli and Andrea Vogt. Their pipeline is clear. And the rest of the guilters mainly pass it on.

 

[Bill Williams]

Amanda Knox Update: Would $139,000 have helped stack the odds in favor of Knox in new trial?

Really why didn't they pay Patrick off and keep him and her "confession" out of this trial?

I really don't understand allowing him in this appeal. Has not this part of the sentence already been confirmed? Allowing him in when he no longer has an interest in the decision? I don't get this. Sounds a bit unfair to me.

Grinder's source is not talking about the morality or fairness of this, Grinder's source is talking about a strategy for keeping Lumumba out of the courtroom.

Rightly or wrongly, I tend to agree that it would have been a good strategy. But it also speaks to how the Sollecito/Knox side actually does want to play fair. Besides, there's no guarantee that playing these sorts of strategic games WOULD have kept Lumumba out anyway.

All the other evidence against Knox and Sollecito is vapourware... and as someone said, even when you assemble 150 items of vapourware and look at them "osmotically" it's still simply a large collection of vapourware....

But the one things which HAS stuck is the interrogation - the unvideotaped interrogation which is all that is left from this otherwise straightforward case of wrongful prosecution. It's been thrown out as inadmissible at trial, but there's this backdoor which the prosecution MUST take advantage of, or else there's just..... vapourware.

 

[RoseMontague]

I really don't understand allowing him in this appeal. Has not this part of the sentence already been confirmed? Allowing him in when he no longer has an interest in the decision? I don't get this. Sounds a bit unfair to me.

Grinder's source is not talking about the morality or fairness of this, Grinder's source is talking about a strategy for keeping Lumumba out of the courtroom.

Rightly or wrongly, I tend to agree that it would have been a good strategy. But it also speaks to how the Sollecito/Knox side actually does want to play fair. Besides, there's no guarantee that playing these sorts of strategic games WOULD have kept Lumumba out anyway.

All the other evidence against Knox and Sollecito is vapourware... and as someone said, even when you assemble 150 items of vapourware and look at them "osmotically" it's still simply a large collection of vapourware....

But the one things which HAS stuck is the interrogation - the unvideotaped interrogation which is all that is left from this otherwise straightforward case of wrongful prosecution. It's been thrown out as inadmissible at trial, but there's this backdoor which the prosecution MUST take advantage of, or else there's just..... vapourware.

It's another party allowed to argue for guilt. A party that no longer has an interest in the decision of the court (from what I have been told).

 

[LondonJohn]

I really don't understand allowing him in this appeal. Has not this part of the sentence already been confirmed? Allowing him in when he no longer has an interest in the decision? I don't get this. Sounds a bit unfair to me.

I would imagine that Knox's and Sollecito's lawyers would wish to use these sorts of judicial process issues as one of the strong grounds of appeal to the ECHR in the event of ultimate convictions. It's quite obviously unjust to have Lumumba agitating around the appeal trial, as it was grievously unjust to have the Lumumba calunnia charge tried concurrently with the murder charges in the first place. Massei made a massive error in ruling that the calunnia and murder charges were in continuance: they should have been tried separately, in front of totally separate triers of fact. Ideally, the calunnia trial should have been held first, in camera, with its outcome withheld pending the outcome of the murder trials.

I suspect that Knox intends to take the calunnia conviction to the ECHR in any case, regardless of whether or not she is ultimately convicted on the murder charges. If that's so, then this would provide an obvious reason as to why she has not paid Lumumba. If she is acquitted on the murder charges, then I think she would still have a strong case in the ECHR on the calunnia conviction, owing to the same joint-trial malpractice issues (i.e. she can argue that any judicial panel hearing the calunnia charge should not also have been hearing the murder charges).

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Don't blame the rain for Bundy

I wasn't comparing because I was responding to her stupid remark that the UW has 43000 students and only one murder suspect. I suppose she was saying that at this moment when she was writing it she thought there were no other murder suspects on campus. I thought it to mean that we had had only one murder suspect ever. I doubt Candace had any idea if there might be a second suspect for some other murder. But she's just a blogger so she write whatever.

The thing about Bundy was that he was just a nice guy, active in politics and a great student that no motive or pathology to kill young women but he did. I wasn't thinking that earlier but you made me think about it. I've always thought the motive, good kid and no pathology arguments were bogus and I think Bundy does supports that.

I interpret those words as Candace saying that blaming UW or the rain in Seattle (as some were apparently doing) was silly. I agree. BTW, I don't believe that Candace had anything to do with organizing the event at which she spoke. Didn't we go through this once before? With respect to Bundy, I just read John Douglas's book, and he mentioned a number of early warning signs including criminal activity. A quick perusal of the wikipedia entry on Bundy tends to confirm it. Bundy's juvenile record was expunged when he turned eighteen.

 

[platonov]

The protocols remain hidden.

They are doing exactly what the ISC told them to. You will not see the relative positions of the three or their roles in the murder until the Motivation is written.

I am convinced the fix is in. I don't agree with LJ or katy on this one. I think the strategy of Amanda's team will now be almost all PR and political pressure. Raffaele is in a tough spot and at this point it really doesn't matter what his team does or says.

Who is behind this fix – the ‘dark’ forces referred to by Supernaut, Mary H, Kevin Lowe and others?

What – no reply on who is behind the fix. Some of the finest minds on the net have uncovered the greatest conspiracy since the trial of Jesus Christ or the holohoax or whatever and keep quiet about it.

Such reticence is puzzling but we should be grateful perhaps, were it not for this ‘admirable restraint’ the cartwheel threads might instead consist of 100k posts of inane gibberish.