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

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Even if there was DNA from Meredith found on a knife in Raffyell's kitchen. This evidence would only have been found after Mignini decided that Amanda & Raffele were the perpetrators.
The question then is how would they know to look for evidence in Raffale's kitchen?
The prosecution of AR+RS had to have started when the psychic told Mignini what he saw in his vision. The other stuff that was used as evidence was used to help convince the jury what Mignini's knowledge from the psychic is true.
Rudy took the real murder weapon away, and then did something that would prevent it from being found intact.
Perhaps the guilters believe that a Psychic helped Mignini solve the case, but they can't say that to the skeptics, because the skeptics will say they are crazy.
 
I see now that you are correct. Great!

Looks like Quennell's got the wrong end of the stick too, only of course he thinks it's to his advantage:

We are being told that the entire defense crowd seem to be experiencing a episode of mass forgetting.

Hello?!! Meredith’s DNA is now more than ever firmly proven to be on the blade, because the identical technique (not questioned by Massei or Cassation or the defense observers) was just used by the Carabinieri.


Hello?!! Peter??!!!!! The Carabinieri used the same methodology as Vecchiotti, NOT not-a-real-doctor Stefanoni. You know: the same methodology whereby C&V concluded that it cannot be stated with any reliability or credibility that Meredith Kercher's DNA was ever actually present on the knife at the time it was seized by the police. THAT methodology, Pete :D
 
Ah no: The "Perugia experts" referred to here most categorically are NOT not-a-real-doctor Stefanoni and her band of incompetents. Rather, the term "Perugia experts" refers to the experts retained by the appeal court in Perugia - in other words Conti & Vecchiotti.

And C&V most assuredly found that the attribution of Meredith's DNA to the knife was unreliable and of zero evidential value.
Futhermore, the C&V report and presumably the RIS report are thoroughly documented with respect to procedures, analysis, controls, and steps taken to avoid contamination -- and all of this is backed up by raw data. All we have from Stefanoni are egrams, hastily scribbled lab notes, and vague testimony about how she may have obtained her results. Another set of professional-grade results will only further highlight her incompetence.
 
Machiavelli's post described a hypothetical situation whereby a rapist, terrorist, etc. could be considered innocent because of physical abuse during the questioning.

In the U.S., it is true that if a case hinged on only a confession and that confession was discovered to have been the result of an illegal interrogation (e.g. abuse, lack of Miranda, etc.) the perp may very well be declared 'not guilty' because the confession would not be admissible. Those are the rules; I really don't know how else to phrase it. Again, it was a hypothetical situation and not specifically in reference to this case.

Yes, I understand your point. Truthful confessions are sometimes excluded from evidence because of a technicality. But the problem with the statements in this particular case is that they simply are not truthful.
 
So why is this knife still relevant at trial? It seems they really DID randomly pick a knife for no other reason than.....

..... what? Most certainly not to solve a horrible murder, six years less a day ago.

There's still an argument to be had over whether or not Meredith's DNA ever was on that knife at the time it was collected by police from Sollecito's apartment. If the court ends up believing that to be true, then most surely they will consider that the knife played at least a part in the murder.

But C&V - and a host of other independent DNA experts - have clearly stated that there as several fundamental reasons why the alleged presence of Meredith's DNA on the knife cannot be relied upon as credible or of evidential value. In brief, the knife was collected, transported and stored in ways that are totally contrary to agreed best practice (and thus open the door to contamination), and the laboratory procedures adopted by not-a-real-doctor Stefanoni were so far in breach of the required protocol for low-template DNA work that it almost defies belief.

Therefore, if the new appeal court takes a measured, logical, rational and dispassionate approach to the knife, it ought (in my strong opinion) to conclude that the alleged presence of Meredith's DNA on it is of no probative value, and thus the knife itself is of no probative value.
 
Futhermore, the C&V report and presumably the RIS report are thoroughly documented with respect to procedures, analysis, controls, and steps taken to avoid contamination -- and all of this is backed up by raw data. All we have from Stefanoni are egrams, hastily scribbled lab notes, and vague testimony about how she may have obtained her results. Another set of professional-grade results will only further highlight her incompetence.


Exactly. And while it is my understanding that the remit of the Carabinieri was only to DNA-test sample 36I (and to report on the results of that test), it will be interesting indeed if the Carabinieri's report also contains some commentary on the original forensics work conducted by not-a-real-doctor Stefanoni. If there is such a commentary, I have a sneaking feeling that it will be... shall we say... less than complimentary towards Stefanoni.
 
Oh, puhhhhleeeease Machiavelli, you would spin anything. The hit on the back of the head is just another sign of coercion during the interrogation. It has little to do with Amanda's guilt or innocence, Let's face it, there isn't any physical evidence of their guilt. (Not that you would admit that.) The only thing the prosecution has really, is the statements Amanda made during the interrogation. What is sad, is that the prosecution didn't video record the interrogation...or they did but won't produce them.

What you guys fail to see is that "real confessions" that are recorded really are extremely persuasive. But of course that wasn't a real confession...now was it?

You don't have to answer...we know what you will say.

First of all it's not true that "real confessions" are really persuasive when you look at them in video, neither that false confessions or coerced ones are "unconvicing". Even if you watch a coerced confession/testimony in video (and I saw two of them, one was the Garbatella rape case) you may not have a clue that the confession is coerced, and you may not perceive that from the video. It's quite the contrary: when you have a video camera you can construct a coerced confession which looks spontaneous.
But that's not the point.

The point is: it is absolutely not true that the only thing the prosecution has, about Knox's lies, is the false report she gave during a questioning.

Unfortunately this is a key logical mistake, and if you make this wrong assumption from the beginning you deny facts, you make a basically false assumption so it becomes impossible to go forward in a reasoning.

The truth is that what Knox said in the interrogation (which lasted from 22:40 to 1:45, three hours overall) is not the main part of what the prosecution has.
First, there are her previous lies (which are lies, but you don't acknowledge this).
But then, there is her 'spontaneous statement' she gave to Mignini and signed at 5:45.
Third, there is her hand written note, where she does repeat a false testimony placing evidence against an innocent person (albeit people here like to deny this), and which IS incriminating on multiple ground (albeit still, her supporters would deny this). This is a manipulative and false statement and includes even the 'blood on hands' thing (which I do consider itself further evidence of her intent, albeit still you folks deny this).
Her statements (the interrogation, the 05.45 statement, her hand written note) don't have just a 'situation', as you would put it, they have a content. Their content - its intrnsic properties - itself is evidence that she fabricates stories, that she is a liar, that she is consciously attempting to muddy waters. But I already said these things and it's not the time to explein them again. Btw, in this memoir she also declares "the thruth is that I don't know what the truth is" (statements like this one have a bit of a consequence on your credibility); and "there are things I remember and things that are confused" and one thing she remembers is that she had lunch "very late" (the only thing she is sure about is proven false); and also that "she stands by" what she remembers about patrick Lumumba, and all this is the "best truth" she can remember.
Then there is also a fourth statement, in which - among several other things - she states that she "did not lie" in the previous statements. She doesn't say something she remembers, what is truth and what is not; however, while maintaining she has only confused memories (or false memories, or no memories at all), instead she only offers a (lucid) indication about how her previous (false) testimony should be considered, how "it seems to her" (not the most likely).

So, as you see, even when you only speak about her false accusation, her interrogation is the smallest element the prosecution has. The rest, all what she said around it, is much worse.
But it's not finished.

And then, after her written and oral statements, the moment comes when she is before a judge, and there is a recording. What does she do? She remains silent. She refuses to clarify anything. She does not report even a tiny element usable to exculpate or to explain herself.

Another thing the prosecution has - which was a prominent argument in the prosecution's speech of 2008 (this indeed was a topic for the prosecution, not rituals or satanic things) - is her subsequent interrogation of Dec. 17., a disastrous interrogation for the defence, in which Knox invoked her right to remain silent at a certain point, and the last thing she said was that she justified her false accusation of Lumumba: at the question "why did you accuse Lumumba?", she answered "Because it could be true".

Words are important. She could have said "because I was scared of the police", or "because I only wanted to end the interrogation" (but there was none, recall, at 05.45), or "because I really had this memory (and still have?) and I really believed that my memory was the truth"; or "because I thought (I believed) it was true". Or "because I remembered it".
Instead she said "because it could be true".
What does the verb "could" mean?
If you say "I told you this because I thought this could be true", this is logically equivalent of saying "I told you this because I thought you whould believe it".
"It could be true" is a logical equivalent of "it's believable"; "they would believe it".
Amanda Knox said "I accused Patrick Lumumba because I thought they would belive it".
I picked her last statement, just as an example to show how I deal logically with things. These are the things Knox's statements actually say.

Then, this is still not all. There is Knox's defensive theory; that is: she suffered from a false memory syndrome.
Now, when her books comes out, everybody in her supporters crowd are capable of rationalizing about that she was captured by a tribe of savages and thus she could not express herself in any way, this is why she only tells "her story" after years, etc. But in the true world, stories told after years of variating previous versions, are false; and apart from these wild rationalizations, Knox's line, her defensive position - what she told in her court statement - was that she was not coerced. She explained she suffered a false memory.
Her defence even called a psychiatrist - I think Dr. Caltagirone - to testify about her suffering from a false memory syndrome.
Not only that: it glares to you that in Knox's testimony and statements she always made throughout the investigation, preliminary hearing and trial, she never reports absolutely no factual event which would somehow explain, show or describe a situation of coercion.
She does not say that in her court statement of 2008 (where she does not even talk about an interrogation, she only talks about her "statement").

And all this, is something of what Knox has aganst her, still just about the false accusation, which is only one element in the evidence set.
 
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I don't think I'm optimistic. Remember that a key plank of C/V's argument for not DNA-testing 36I was that any results would be essentially meaningless. That's because they already knew there were only super-low-template quantities of DNA on that sample, and the knife had already been mishandled enough for any super-low-template DNA testing to be rendered worthless on account of potential contamination.

The SC argument was: if it can be tested, let's have it tested. But even though it's shown Knox's DNA in minute quantities on the very edge of detection limits - and is thus of no value to the prosecution in any case - it's still intellectually correct to argue that the result is unreliable and of no evidential worth. Which is what C&V thought in the first place. And, for the same reason, the alleged extra-low-template quantity of Meredith's DNA on 36B should also be excluded - as indeed C/V concluded.

C&V had no authority to take any decision based on their assessment of the final value/use of the evidence, they are supposed to obey and just accomplish the task they were ordered. If they think the result is unreliable or has little value, they are supposed to argue that afterwards, in court.

But also their assessment in the merit, of alleged unreliability, and even Vecchiotti's own testimony (in which she stated the false, as she declared she found an overall amount of 5 picograms), are contradicted by the RIS findings, since they deem the profile they found is a reliable result.
 
C&V had no authority to take any decision based on their assessment of the final value/use of the evidence, they are supposed to obey and just accomplish the task they were ordered. If they think the result is unreliable or has little value, they are supposed to argue that afterwards, in court.

But also their assessment in the merit, of alleged unreliability, and even Vecchiotti's own testimony (in which she stated the false, as she declared she found an overall amount of 5 picograms), are contradicted by the RIS findings, since they deem the profile they found is a reliable result.


Oh, you've seen the RIS report then, have you?
 
So, let me understand, you catch a murderer, or let's say a terrorist, a rapist, a mobster, a tax evader. The perp is hit at the back of the head. Then, the prosecution and conviction becomes illegitimate and the perp becomes... innocent.

It's not me the one with a blind deference or racism: you attribute a real super-power to the Italian police: they hit a guy at the back of the head, and the guy - whatever terrorist or perp he is - becomes innocent!
They have a kind of power of 'revirgination', they donate a palingenesis of innocence.

Try to focus on what I have said. A criminal does not become innocent simply because the police have hit him. However, the information that the police have obtained by violating the prisoners right becomes unusable. Otherwise, the police would be rewarded for violating the persons rights. If the evidence from the illegal interrogation is thus excluded, guilt can still be established with other evidence, obtained legally.

There is one situation where a person would be made innocent as a consequence of the police misconduct, and that is the case where the evidence against the person is solely a result of the authorities' illegal conduct. Indeed, this is the situation with the callunia charge against Knox. She is completely innocent because the police illegally hit her.
 
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First of all it's not true that "real confessions" are really persuasive when you look at them in video, neither that false confessions or coerced ones are "unconvicing". Even if you watch a coerced confession/testimony in video (and I saw two of them, one was the Garbatella rape case) you may not have a clue that the confession is coerced, and you may not perceive that from the video. It's quite the contrary: when you have a video camera you can construct a coerced confession which looks spontaneous.
But that's not the point.

The point is: it is absolutely not true that the only thing the prosecution has, about Knox's lies, is the false report she gave during a questioning.

Unfortunately this is a key logical mistake, and if you make this wrong assumption from the beginning you deny facts, you make a basically false assumption so it becomes impossible to go forward in a reasoning.

The truth is that what Knox said in the interrogation (which lasted from 22:40 to 1:45, three hours overall) is not the main part of what the prosecution has.
First, there are her previous lies (which are lies, but you don't acknowledge this).
But then, there is her 'spontaneous statement' she gave to Mignini and signed at 5:45.
Third, there is her hand written note, where she does repeat a false testimony placing evidence against an innocent person (albeit people here like to deny this), and which IS incriminating on multiple ground (albeit still, her supporters would deny this). This is a manipulative and false statement and includes even the 'blood on hands' thing (which I do consider itself further evidence of her intent, albeit still you folks deny this).
Her statements (the interrogation, the 05.45 statement, her hand written note) don't have just a 'situation', as you would put it, they have a content. Their content - its intrnsic properties - itself is evidence that she fabricates stories, that she is a liar, that she is consciously attempting to muddy waters. But I already said these things and it's not the time to explein them again. Btw, in this memoir she also declares "the thruth is that I don't know what the truth is" (statements like this one have a bit of a consequence on your credibility); and "there are things I remember and things that are confused" and one thing she remembers is that she had lunch "very late" (the only thing she is sure about is proven false); and also that "she stands by" what she remembers about patrick Lumumba, and all this is the "best truth" she can remember.
Then there is also a fourth statement, in which - among several other things - she states that she "did not lie" in the previous statements. She doesn't say something she remembers, what is truth and what is not; however, while maintaining she has only confused memories (or false memories, or no memories at all), instead she only offers a (lucid) indication about how her previous (false) testimony should be considered, how "it seems to her" (not the most likely).

So, as you see, even when you only speak about her false accusation, her interrogation is the smallest element the prosecution has. The rest, all what she said around it, is much worse.
But it's not finished.

And then, after her written and oral statements, the moment comes when she is before a judge, and there is a recording. What does she do? She remains silent. She refuses to clarify anything. She does not report even a tiny element usable to exculpate or to explain herself.

Another thing the prosecution has - which was a prominent argument in the prosecution's speech of 2008 (this indeed was a topic for the prosecution, not rituals or satanic things) - is her subsequent interrogation of Dec. 17., a disastrous interrogation for the defence, in which Knox invoked her right to remain silent at a certain point, and the last thing she said was that she justified her false accusation of Lumumba: at the question "why did you accuse Lumumba?", she answered "Because it could be true".

Words are important. She could have said "because I was scared of the police", or "because I only wanted to end the interrogation" (but there was none, recall, at 05.45), or "because I really had this memory (and still have?) and I really believed that my memory was the truth"; or "because I thought (I believed) it was true". Or "because I remembered it".
Instead she said "because it could be true".
What does the verb "could" mean?
If you say "I told you this because I thought this could be true", this is logically equivalent of saying "I told you this because I thought you whould believe it".
"It could be true" is a logical equivalent of "it's believable"; "they would believe it".
Amanda Knox said "I accused Patrick Lumumba because I thought they would belive it".
I picked her last statement, just as an example to show how I deal logically with things. These are the things Knox's statements actually say.

Then, this is still not all. There is Knox's defensive theory; that is: she suffered from a false memory syndrome.
Now, when her books come out, everybody in her supporters croud are able to rationalize that she was captured by a tribe of savages and thus she could not express herself in any way. But apart from these wild rationalizations, Knox's line - what she told in her court statement - was that she was not coerced. She explained she suffered a false memory.
Her defence even called a psychiatrist - I think Dr. Caltagirone - to testify about her suffering from a false memory syndrome.
Not only that: it glares to you that in Knox's testimony and statements she always made throughout the investigation, preliminary hearing and trial, she never reports absolutely no factual event which would somehow explain, show or describe a situation of coercion.
She does not say that in her court statement of 2008 (where she does not even talk about an interrogation, she only talks about her "statement").

And all this, is something of what Knox has aganst her, still just about the false accusation, which is only one element in the evidence set.

You simply don't know what you are talking about Machiavelli. Interrogations in the US are regularly recorded, both audio and video. The news documentary shows like Dateline and 48 hours show them regularly. Video recorded interrogations show so much including demeanor.

As for Amanda's interrogation. Even Mignini admitted that they the detectives were using the "Reid" interrogation technique which far too easily produces false confessions, especially with children and young people. The use of the Reid technique on youth is prohibited in several European countries because of the incidence of false confessions and wrongful convictions that result.

In Canada, a Provincial Court Judge ruled in 2012 that "stripped to its bare essentials, the Reid Technique is a guilt-presumptive, confrontational, psychologically manipulative procedure whose purpose is to extract a confession."[6] John E. Reid and Associates maintains that "it’s not the technique that causes false or coerced confessions but police detectives who apply improper interrogation procedures."

Like it or not, this technique is coercive and manipulative. Did the detectives water board Amanda to get her to confess? No, but they utilized a very manipulative technique that is notorious for creating false statements.

What we do know is that the detectives used a process of sleep deprivation and suggestion to get them to say what they wanted to hear. They got her "to buckle" until she told them what they already knew.

But the part get's fuzzy, when the police got her to say that Patrick did it.
 
C&V had no authority to take any decision based on their assessment of the final value/use of the evidence, they are supposed to obey and just accomplish the task they were ordered. If they think the result is unreliable or has little value, they are supposed to argue that afterwards, in court.

But also their assessment in the merit, of alleged unreliability, and even Vecchiotti's own testimony (in which she stated the false, as she declared she found an overall amount of 5 picograms), are contradicted by the RIS findings, since they deem the profile they found is a reliable result.

LOL. 5 picograms per uL is what you mean.

But there were 25 uL.
 
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So what does the report say, in detail, then?

In detail...? You should read it. You'll have time to do so. Knox will make it available to you.
If people don't find the report, someone will post it here over the next days.

In summary, the trace has extremely high probability of being Knox's profile (practical certainty) and extremely low probability (basically zero) of being from one of the other three individuals.
The fact that the profile extraction was non-repeateble was not a problem for the RIS: just like Novelli, they made a bio-statystical probability calculation on the single result.
The total amount still available for the RIS was in the magnitude of 80-100 picograms (they called correct the quantization made by Vecchiotti in her report, of 5 picograms per microlitre - which is not what she said in her testimony, however, as she spoke of 5 picograms as overall amount).

There is nothing more to add actually.
If there is anything else to say (about Vecchiotti, Novelli, ecc), Berti and Barni will say that in their testimony.
 
In detail...? You should read it. You'll have time to do so. Knox will make it available to you.
If people don't find the report, someone will post it here over the next days.

In summary, the trace has extremely high probability of being Knox's profile (practical certainty) and extremely low probability (basically zero) of being from one of the other three individuals.
The fact that the profile extraction was non-repeateble was not a problem for the RIS: just like Novelli, they made a bio-statystical probability calculation on the single result.
The total amount still available for the RIS was in the magnitude of 80-100 picograms (they called correct the quantization made by Vecchiotti in her report, of 5 picograms per microlitre - which is not what she said in her testimony, however, as she spoke of 5 picograms as overall amount).

There is nothing more to add actually.
If there is anything else to say (about Vecchiotti, Novelli, ecc), Berti and Barni will say that in their testimony.

Fascinating. Repeatabiliy is no concern whatsoever in Italy. La dolce vita, I guess.
 
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As for Amanda's interrogation. Even Mignini admitted that they the detectives were using the "Reid" interrogation technique which far too easily produces false confessions, (...)

Bs. Mignini admitted ... ? Total crap.
The truth:
1) Amanda Knox's interrogation lasted less than three hours (Saul Kassin thinks she was questioned for 14 hours).
2) she delivered her spontaneous statement without any interrogation, without any questioning.
3) Anna Donnino witnessed to both the interrogation and the statement.
4) Knox wrote her hand written memoirs without any questioning, voluntarily, and on her own initiative.
5) She never claimed a coerced confession, always a false memory syndrome.
6) She told a load of crap of different kinds outside any interrogation, before her interrogation and after, unrelated to any question and unrelated to any pressure, just purely manipulative and deceptive, as I mentioned.
 
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