I did contribute but not to the final edit (I'm not sure that this is court translation, though). But we've put a disclaimer on the document, saying the Italian text is what matters, talking referring to a translation is pointless.
And it's here that you reveal your dishonesty.
First, you perfectly know you are not quoting Massei's findings, but instead you are quoting Massei's reporting about a defence argument. Because you don't have anything else, you decide to emply the "Bill Wiliams" logical method, which consists in deducing the existence of something from a non-existence. Because there isn't a Massei's rebuttal, you deduce there must be a statement by Stefanoni.
Aha, I think I get it now, you're saying that Stefanoni didn't say in the RTIGF or in court that they
didn't perform those tests, they just performed those tests, got the negatives and then just never mentioned anything about it?
Fair enough. As I pointed out before that's damning enough, they just hid the fact what they were claiming was blood had gotten a negative with TMB. In fact if you think about it that's even
worse. Instead of saying they didn't do the tests they actually did them and hid the negatives that would have holed their contention below the waterline.
I must say that defending their
outright and brazen dishonesty by accusing
me of the same because of that little pedantic point is
downright adorable. Perhaps you missed your calling in life, you should have worked in American politics?
Yes, exactly, in real-time camera connection and - pay attention - audio connection. Yes, prof. Potenza would have known perfectly if there was a test being performed. It's obvious. No reasonable person could assume that experts observing and interacting with the forensics were unaware about what they were doing. You can't wince your mind in attempting to believe such a twisted scenario, and be considered rational.
No one can see what's happening
off camera, that's what I'm getting at. Having viewed only a small portion of that video and being perplexed at times by what I could see and could not, I do not think it unlikely that those tests might have been performed while the camera was on something else. Also you'd need close ups on the
results (the vial or the strip) otherwise no one knows how the tests came out, was this included in the video?
However let us assume that they diligently recorded them doing the tests with the camera and yet still failed to mention that the stains tested negative for blood in both the technical report and in court while they contended the stains were blood. What kind of fundamental dishonesty would that suggest considering the fight the defense had to go through to get the raw data that recorded the results of those tests?
Incidentally, all I've ever seen of that second trip was the few minutes of footage, where is the rest of that video? I read something in passing suggesting the defense wanted some video evidence, could that possibly be in reference to the rest of the video from the second trip?
You are making a claim. Can you back it? You say there is a law providing that these document should have been ‘offered’(?) to the defence from the outset of the trial. What law/jurisprudence is that? Are you sure it exists?
I tell you something: there is nothing that Stefanoni or the prosecution “should have done”. It is true instead, that the defence could have done a lot of things. They could have attended the tests, objected to the tests, submitted requests and access the laboratories during the 8-month investigation, submitted requests during the preliminary hearing and after. They could have done many things which they did not do. I do not want to investigate the possible reason why they chose to not do so. I can tell you that no prosecution office in Italy – ever, at least in 2007 – would deposits the SALs at the clerk’s office. Nor the raw data files nor other laboratory data.
Is that perhaps because the technical report is expected to be an objective summary of the forensic work that was done? If that's the case there wouldn't be any need to view the SALs or the rest of the boring paperwork.
Now if I understand correctly, you are suggesting that the police competently recorded the application of the tests in that video yet failed to mention it in their technical report? Isn't it
obvious why those raw records were required? Were they hoping the defense would forget? Why did it take until July 30th for those records to be revealed and why were some missing? Here's more from the Massei Report on how some of those records were
never made available to the defense:
Massei PMF 255 said:
Indications making it possible to verify whether the standards and protocols were followed were also missing. Work status report [SAL] cards were not even found for certain samples.
At any rate anything from that 'second trip' to the crime scene was of no value anyway other that to show how desperate the cops were when they realized they had no real evidence against the two they had mistakenly arrested and had not yet released like they should have. The idea that that scene
especially that hallway contained forensic value regarding the
murder is
ludicrous. Watch those videos, that hallway is where they laid down the luminol six weeks later after those technicians had been in and out of the murder room, Filomena's room, Amanda's room and laid their equipment all over.
Anything they found was compromised because the last event which took place at the cottage was the (original and only valid)
forensic investigation, not the murder. How could one expect detailed forensic indications from an event that lasted minutes to survive
hours of the investigators walking all over it? The
real polizia scientifica were done with that hallway when they did all that, they processed Rudy's bloody shoeprints, cleaned them up and then continued with their investigation. I understand that completely, they had to do their work. However for the police in Perugia to come back six weeks later and pretend that scene had not been compromised by the
hours of walking around the
polizia scientifica did, taking things like the body and the mattress out the door and down the hallway, using that hallway as a staging point for the rest of the investigation in Amanda, Meredith and Filomena's room--walking in and out of each one
without taking care to change their booties and gloves as required is utterly absurd.
Ever wonder where the bra clasp is watching those videos I (conveniently for your perusal!) linked?
(Ironically, in the case in which Vecchiotti became “famous” as a consultant in the early nineties (the Peruzzi case), Vecchiotti released only limited documentation to the other party’s consultant. This limitation was her main tool by which she lead the other consultant into a DNA interpretation error. But these are old stories.)
Being as the last 'story' I heard about Vecchiotti (from Comodi in court) turned out to be a dishonest misrepresentation of what happened I am inclined to be
skeptical of those trying to impugn her integrity. You remember that one? There was a sample that was split up and Vecchiotti didn't get the part that included the DNA (it was a sheet or something wasn't it?) and got no results, which is exactly what she should have gotten, but it turned out on another section of that sample there was indeed DNA which was found by further testing. Comodi used that to imply that Vecchiotti hadn't discovered DNA that another scientist had found and she was too careful (or incompetent) and shouldn't be criticizing Stefanoni's work.
You should care about what someone did and if he/she did it, if you assert that he/she did something. Stefanoni was the witness from the forensic team who performed the tests, she is the only one who could have said things about the topic, and she is the only testimony the defence arguments refer to (a the one that they wanted to be disallowed).
Fair enough, I understand what you're saying and I actually agree. If Stefanoni just failed to mention the negative blood tests while she was pretending the luminol hits were still blood but didn't say they'd never done them then it's important to be accurate about it. We now know she
did have the information about the negative blood tests and
still tried to pretend they were blood and hide the fact the blood tests had been performed until forced to reveal the records that your posts suggest she would never have expected to have to turn over.
As you've probably noticed when referring to the 'second trip' to the crime scene I now generally refer to the ones who conducted that as 'clowns in bunny suits' as opposed to the
polizia scientifica. That's because going from what I've read--and Mignini said in the CNN interview--the
polizia scientifica had completed their investigation and the ones who went out to the site the second time was not the regular forensic team, though there might have been some (like Stefanoni?) who were present with
polizia scientifica experience at some level. I also know they weren't very competent and even Garofano criticized their competence laying down the luminol.
Now as you are unable to back your assertion, your claim apparently changes and Stefanoni is no longer guilty of lying by asserting anything, but of just “not offering that information” while she was claiming to the court those footprints “were blood”. Now, you may well dislike the “not offering” of information (or better, the not offering of that information “spontaneously and unrequested”, since she offered it when requested); you are however progressively drifting away from the law towards your personal ‘moral’ expectations, and you are also freely ‘adding’ your personal ‘suspicious’ interpretation to things. This won’t make your personal interpretation - unattached to the law - become the “truth”: the assertion that someone is lying or cheating is simply not backed by anything substantial, except this personal interpretation of yours (which imho is largely based on your personal logical deduction about what a “presumed” test should imply – and such deduction is wrong). Anyway, your statement still is factually incorrect: Stefanoni did not claim that the footprints were blood; she said they were presumed blood. It seems you lost the word ‘presume’ along the way.
You don't get to 'presume' blood after that 'hypothesis' has been falsified. Had she any (
legitimate) reason to suspect it still might be blood she could have done another test like she did with the knife when she got a negative TMB test.
To wit:
C&V said:
The SAL shows that the generic test for blood was performed on the samples indicated with the letters B-C-E-G (samples taken from the knife blade), using the tetramethylbenzidine test (TMB).
The aforementioned method, widely recognized in forensics, is numbered amongst the preliminary methods for the identification of blood; if positive, further tests (known as ‘confirmatory’) are needed in order to correctly identify blood.
The summary tables of the tests carried out on the samples and the results obtained are reproduced below, as shown on pages 77-78 of the RTIGF:
(
here)
Summary tables of tests performed on the samples and results obtained
From the above tables, it is clear that the blood tests carried out on the samples indicated by the letters B-C-E-G (knife blade) were negative for the presence of blood.
The “species-specific” test was performed on the aforementioned samples, and also tested negative for the human species.
Conversely, the tetramethylbenzidine test was not performed on the samples indicated by the letters A-D-F (samples taken from the knife handle).
(highlighting mine)
If she was going to contend that the luminol hits might still be blood then why did she fail to do another test like she did when the TMB test failed on the knife? It's a longshot at any rate, if it tested negative with TMB there's very few reasons to suspect it might still be blood, but I do know some of those 'species specific' tests will pick up just about
anything that's human blood because they use human blood anti-bodies that have been harvested from animals (bunnies!) that have been injected with human blood and those anti-bodies have no other purpose in their existence other than to find human blood and track it down. If you get a reaction from
that you know you're dealing with human blood, if you don't then you know you're not.
Machiavelli, why didn't Stefanoni do a 'species specific' (confirmatory) blood test on the luminol samples? Or did she do them and withold that information as well and that's part of the SALs that were missing?
This word is a key point, and it is elicited through questions. The defence could have asked which presumption tests they had dome, for example. Stefanoni also took part to a confrontation where she faced questions directly from the defence experts, without going through defence lawyers.
Though, after all this, you still wish to claim that she “lied” or that she “did not disclose” something. In this process, you do not even consider the obvious contradiction in your argument caused by the fact that it was Stefanoni herself who deposited the SAL carrying that information that the defence did not previously ask. Still, you decide to consider this a lying, a cheating. She presumes blood, and your argument against her rests entirely on your personal belief that a negative TMB test should not allow her to presume blood. The whole core of your argument is your belief (erroneous) about significance of a TMB test. In your opinion, if there is a negative TMB test, this should be necessarily held as an information of relevant importance in the argument and should necessarily lead to not presume that something is blood. Of course, this is your opinion.
Why did she still presume they were blood despite the negative TMBs and not ever doing another test, or at least never revealing that she did another test? When caught she came up with that 'hypothesis' but that sort of thing can be done on
any test that fails, that most certainly doesn't make the results of the test wrong
especially if there's no other attempt to establish that.
Yes, I linked them, and they say exactly what I say. TMB itself – used ‘directly’ – is at least 10 times less sensitive than luminol; but TMB is not used directly, it is not used on the latent stain but on a sample taken from a moist swab and then further diluted. Moreover, a previous test with luminol itself causes a dilution which does influence the subsequent tests.
Just curious, did you see these tapes? I never have, but what you describe is not the Hemastix test which doesn't require further dilution. That's curious as one of the arguments used for the lack of DNA was that the TMB test had inhibited the collection of DNA, and
this paper employed to support that contention. Unfortunately I don't recall if it was a bunny quoting Stefanoni or it was just Bunnyforce google-fu. At any rate, if they did it the way you describe then why didn't they apply that swab to a Hemastix swab instead if they were worried about further diluting the sample, which is the proper way of conducting that test as smearing the Hemastix strip over the entire luminol hit might inhibit DNA recovery due to the other (non-TMB) chemicals used in that strip (and the very act of the smearing) as that paper details?
Maybe it's because those luminol hits glowed so bright and pretty for the cameras (like the photographs show!) thus there was no reason to think when they did the TMB tests that the substance that reacted to the luminol was so diluted the TMB test couldn't pick it up? 
I bolded that for a reason, can you guess what it is?
But TMB is actually positive mostly to the same kinds of substances to which luminol reacts. In fact it works the same way. But moreover, there is no known substance that is known of having the property of being positive to luminol while not positive to TMB, at the same concentration (at least no common substance).
Now, the presumtpion that a trace is blood is not just the application of a generic scientific rule, buti t is the consequence of inferences from the specific context (as Stefanoni and other experts explained). In other words it’s the cnsequence of alternatives. There is no reasonable alternative explanation but that the ‘not positive’ result to TMB is the consequence of dilution, because no reasonable alternative substance exists.
Machiavelli, you're mistaken, the links you have posted on this subject belie what you just said, as does the fact ILE (and the FBI and many other organizations) even
use TMB after a luminol hit. They
do not react the exact same way and there's numerous substances that luminol gives false positives to that TMB doesn't, and there's substances that react with TMB that don't give false positives with luminol. While it's the hemoglobin in blood that triggers the reaction in both presumptive tests, there's no hemoglobin in many of the other substances that give false positives with either the chemical (TMB) test or the chemiluminescent luminol test, but there are other substances that simulate that and while they sometimes overlap they are
not identical.
It seemed from my first reading that anything further down I'd just be repeating what I have just said, (and I'm running short of time!) but if you think anything down there deserves
special attention )) feel free to re-post it and I'll be happy to consider it.
