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

[Grinder]

Maybe this Football, or Futbol score is better
Luminol 1
TMB 1

Dr. Karl Reich, who holds a degree in molecular biology from the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard University, was prepared to testify that ... a negative TMB test strongly suggests that there is no blood in the area tested."

Do you comprehend the difference between "strongly suggests" and proves?

As I have been saying a negative TMB test does not prove there was no blood present.

 

[LondonJohn]

I should have added that on the specific issue of "proving" contamination, the defence should - as Chris pointed out - try to reference specific prior judicial rulings that demonstrate no requirement to "prove" contamination in order to declare a given piece of forensic evidence unreliable.

As I see it, the judicial rule-of-thumb on this issue is along the following lines: if the investigating police and forensic scientists take all reasonable steps to minimise the chances of contamination - chiefly by adhering to well-documented and internationally-agreed protocols and processes - then the defence cannot claim contamination unless they CAN prove exactly where and when such contamination must have occurred.

But if these reasonable steps to minimise contamination are NOT followed, then provided that the defence can offer a reasonable and plausible mechanism of contamination, this alone is sufficient to render the evidence unreliable.

As a sort-of analogy, all police interviews with suspects in England/Wales are tape recorded and transcribed. Suppose, however, a suspect was on trial, and a police officer stood in court and reported that the defendant had made a particular incriminating statement in a formal interview under caution, but that the police had failed to record or notate it. I guarantee that this alleged statement would automatically be rendered inadmissible (unless there was an extraordinary reason for the police not to have recorded it properly). It's not necessarily that the court would assume that the police officer was lying (let alone "prove" that he was lying) - it's merely enough to show that the required procedures were not followed, and that this therefore opens the door to misrepresentation and corruption.

 

[Grinder]

I really do not think the Kercher family were asking that much and the combination of Raffaele ignoring Meredith’s family public statements and his Father bizarre need to make the visit public demonstrates a serious lack empathy, it should not have been about Raffaele wishes or feelings but one of respecting the families wishes.

If he had a need, he could have done it privately. There was no reason to make it public, I agree.

 

[LondonJohn]

That just isn't true. TMB can have a negative result on blood. It has to do with sensitivity. TMB doesn't pick up blood in the same dilution that luminol does.

Would you bet a yacht that a blood solution never tests negatively with TMB?

You're correct.

BUT...... TMB is still an extremely sensitive test (in both senses of the term). It's not quite as capable as Luminol at detecting blood at ultra-high dilutions, but a negative TMB test is highly unlikely to be a false negative for blood.

So while you're absolutely correct to say that the statement "TMB can never give a false negative for blood" is wrong (how many nested negatives are there here?!), the correct expression would be "TMB almost never gives a false negative for blood" - or the equivalent expression "TMB almost always gives a positive for blood if blood is present".

 

[Grinder]

It could be said that the Kercher family show a bizarre lack of respect for two people declared innocent by an Italian court of the murder of their family member. Most recent is John Kercher declaring he had heard all Amanda's rubbish before, and previously Stephanie Kercher declaring we don't read these books, those of Amanda and Raffaele truthfully and laboriously telling everything they knew about the case.

We don't know what they are being told by Maresca and the prosecution. It must be a very difficult situation and very difficult to know what is true.

 

[Grinder]

Amanda and Raffaele were Meredith's friends.

Raf hardly spend more time with Meredith than Rudy spent with Amanda. In one case they are friends but in the other they only met once.

The Kerchers are being protected by the public's attitude that they suffered such a great loss that everyone must pussyfoot around them and allow them to be irrational. It's not doing them any favors.

I think you are a little tough on them.

Maybe Raffaele's father thinks this should be about respecting the wishes of his family. And so it should. The Kerchers have no more right to want to control Amanda and Raffaele's behavior than the Mellases, Knoxes and Sollecitos have to want to control the Kerchers' behavior.

I object to the anti-gay people showing up at funerals of military dead and I think that the wishes of the family concerning the grave of a loved one trumps the wishes of others. At least they didn't need to make it public.

 

[LondonJohn]

We don't know what they are being told by Maresca and the prosecution. It must be a very difficult situation and very difficult to know what is true.

Yes, I agree.

While I definitely cannot presume to second-guess the Kerchers' thought processes - and I also definitely cannot put myself in their shoes - I suspect that a reasonable possibility is that they put their faith and trust in the prosecutors and their own lawyer. When both these parties told them unequivocally that Knox, Sollecito and Guede acted in concert to assault and kill Meredith, and when that version of events was endorsed by the Massei court, I suspect that the three-perpetrator "truth" might have become deeply embedded in their consciousnesses.

If that was the case, then the subsequent reversal by Hellmann's court, followed by the SC ruling, can only have served to set off cognitive dissonance. Again, if that was the case, then I suspect that the easiest path to resolution of this dissonance was to revert to the original embedded "truth", and to decide that everything contrary to this "truth" was either incorrect or mendaciously partisan to Knox and Sollecito.

If and when Knox and Sollecito are finally cleared of any involvement in this crime, I truly hope that the Kerchers can ultimately find peace and comfort in the outcome, and some small crumb of relief that the correct perpetrator - Rudy Guede - was at least caught and brought to justice. I hope that Maresca will waive some or all of his fees too, but I fear that may be a forlorn hope.....

 

[Bill Williams]

Do you also disagree with LondonJohn’s post which I was responding to or is it just mine, if so why?
ETA: For context I have put the 3 post covering Raffaele’s apparent visit to Meredith’s grave.

I mildly disagree with both C-UK as well as LJ. The problem is making the visits public. If one needs to have a visit, go. But keep it private, making sure, of course, that there are no paparazzi around.

The issue isn't the visit, IFAIAC, it's that someone made it public. That's the mistake.

And please also consider Amanda's was a request that she'd hope would be appropriate for the Kerchers one day. She wasn't demanding a visit or seeing it as an entitlement.

 

[Grinder]

I am hoping - perhaps even expecting - that the defence lawyers will use tomorrow's appearance by the Carabinieri forensic scientists to question them on the wider issues of low-template contamination, and perhaps even get them to give an expert opinion on Stefanoni's work.

So do I. They should be questioned on the collection techniques although using technique is a stretch.

I think it's vital that both defence teams convince the court that the alleged Meredith DNA on the knife and the alleged Sollecito DNA on the bra clasp are both unreliable and inadmissible. It's obvious to anyone with a little scientific knowledge and an ounce of logic that Stefanoni's work was so egregiously sloppy and incompetent that contamination (or worse...) is a very real possibility. Indeed, in the case of Meredith's DNA on the knife, I think it's arguable that contamination is a probability, given the amount of Meredith's DNA that had been in and around the testing equipment in Stefanoni's laboratory, and her proven failures to follow low-template cleaning protocols.

I'd like them to be asked about the lab they use for LCN work. Although I never thought either piece qualified for court, it is bad luck that the one speck of DNA was Meredith's.

In my view, if the defence teams cannot convince the courts on this crucial issue, convictions will follow. I think this also applies to a firm discrediting of the alleged Sollecito match to the bathmat partial print, to the discrediting of the "staged break-in" theory, and to a forceful demonstration that the evidence is wholly compatible with a sole assailant - Guede.

Agreed but I think that the false accusation needs to be exposed. I think the statements about PL are more important than the "staged" break-in.

I think the defense should use Dan O's footprint test.

 

[Grinder]

They did ask her, but she is under no obligation to respect their wishes. I am sure she will, though, because that's the way she is.

Dr. Sollecito, on the other hand, strikes me as the kind of person who is used to having a lot of power in his life, and who may put less store in other people's opinions of his behavior. He may be able to cause just the kind of discomfort that would be helpful in snapping some people out of their delusions.

How do you think the Kerchers would feel is they expressed a desire to come to Seattle, and Amanda's family asked them not to out of respect for what Amanda had been through?

You are still looking at this as if the Kerchers have more rights than the defendants' families -- that is, as if the defendants and their families had something to do with the Kerchers' loss. Keep in mind, their beliefs (and apparently yours) are not based on the evidence.

Visiting a city is different than visiting the grave of a murdered loved one.

 

[Mary_H]

Raf hardly spend more time with Meredith than Rudy spent with Amanda. In one case they are friends but in the other they only met once.

Different circumstances and attitudes, but I will give you that one.

I think you are a little tough on them.

Well, here's the thing. I'm defending Amanda and Raffaele against people who would harm them, regardless of who it is.

I object to the anti-gay people showing up at funerals of military dead and I think that the wishes of the family concerning the grave of a loved one trumps the wishes of others.

COMPLETELY different circumstances and attitudes, and I will not give you that one. (ETA: Not that I disagree, just that it doesn't belong in this conversation.)

At least they didn't need to make it public.

No, they didn't need to make it public, but the Kerchers don't need to make their beliefs about Amanda and Raffaele's guilt public, either.

It's hard to see, but the Kerchers do not have more rights than the defendants.

 

[Bill Williams]

Yes, I agree.

While I definitely cannot presume to second-guess the Kerchers' thought processes - and I also definitely cannot put myself in their shoes - I suspect that a reasonable possibility is that they put their faith and trust in the prosecutors and their own lawyer. When both these parties told them unequivocally that Knox, Sollecito and Guede acted in concert to assault and kill Meredith, and when that version of events was endorsed by the Massei court, I suspect that the three-perpetrator "truth" might have become deeply embedded in their consciousnesses.

If that was the case, then the subsequent reversal by Hellmann's court, followed by the SC ruling, can only have served to set off cognitive dissonance. Again, if that was the case, then I suspect that the easiest path to resolution of this dissonance was to revert to the original embedded "truth", and to decide that everything contrary to this "truth" was either incorrect or mendaciously partisan to Knox and Sollecito.

If and when Knox and Sollecito are finally cleared of any involvement in this crime, I truly hope that the Kerchers can ultimately find peace and comfort in the outcome, and some small crumb of relief that the correct perpetrator - Rudy Guede - was at least caught and brought to justice. I hope that Maresca will waive some or all of his fees too, but I fear that may be a forlorn hope.....

The Kerchers had every right to believe Maresca.... the pair were, in fact, convicted in 2009. Until the release of the Massei motivations report, Maresca would be free - indeed it would be his job! - to interpret the convictions to the Kerchers. Everyone was flying blind as to the reasons for conviction until the motivations report is released.

Point is... up until the subtle questions and doubts and rearrangement of the prosecution's case... as I've listed here ad nauseum .....

The Kerchers would have begun a kind of healing process of sorts. The trouble - the conviction was built on a house of cards; which are coming apart and have ever since the 1st appeal's trial... and I would say, ever since the release of Massei's report.

None of that is the Kercher's fault.

 

[Bill Williams]

No, they didn't need to make it public, but the Kerchers don't need to make their beliefs about Amanda and Raffaele's guilt public, either.

It's hard to see, but the Kerchers do not have more rights than the defendants.

This is tricky.

 

[Onofarar]

He and Rudy happened to own the same brand, but Rudy's foot was a different size, so the print left in Meredith's blood could be shown definitively not to belong to a shoe that fit Raffaele.

This is absolutely incorrect - the actual reason the shoe was not evidence of Sollecito's involvement in the murder is more basic than different shoe sizes THEY WERE DIFFERENT SHOE BRANDS! IIRC Raffelle wore Adidas while Rudy wore Nike (and the pair he was known to wear has never been seen since the day of the murder). Both shoes had soles with a pattern of concentric circles under the ball of the foot area of the sole. The Sollecito family went on Italian TV to point out the shoes worn by Raffealle had a DIFFERENT number of concentric circles in their pattern (7 vs 9 or 9 vs 7 AIR) and the spacing between the circles was different.

This one aspect of the case alone shows the complete incompetence of the Perugian Police Force and should have been a HUGE wakeup call to the media following the case about the hogwash they were being fed by their friends and sources in ILE.

Unfortunately this example is not an outlier. The case is marked by incompetence or worse on almost every point of relevant evidence and by most of the eye/ear witnesses.

 

[Grinder]

You're correct.

BUT...... TMB is still an extremely sensitive test (in both senses of the term). It's not quite as capable as Luminol at detecting blood at ultra-high dilutions, but a negative TMB test is highly unlikely to be a false negative for blood.

So while you're absolutely correct to say that the statement "TMB can never give a false negative for blood" is wrong (how many nested negatives are there here?!), the correct expression would be "TMB almost never gives a false negative for blood" - or the equivalent expression "TMB almost always gives a positive for blood if blood is present".

No, Thank you

LJ of course there is less probability it was blood as a result of the negative TMB test and Stefanoni should have volunteered that from the beginning.

One reason that I have stood firm on this is that I believe that it is possible that the prints were from some very dilute blood left long before the murder. Some tenant could have a cut foot that she washed in the bidet and then walked to her room. The cut being on the top of the foot so no worry about walking on it.

I'm not saying that's a for sure but a possible.

 

[Mary_H]

Visiting a city is different than visiting the grave of a murdered loved one.

That's not the point. The point is everyone assumes the Kerchers have a right to make requests, even when their requests are based on the presumption of guilt, as well as on disrespect for the defendants.

As far as I know, the defendants' families have not asked the Kerchers to stop saying mean things about their children, but they have just as much right to do so.

 

[Dan O.]

Here's another view of the possible key rack inside the entrance of the cottage. This confirms my suspicion that what was visible in the crime scene photo was only the top edge of whatever was there.

 

[Mary_H]

This is tricky.

Yes, it is. And if Amanda and Raffaele had done one thing to bring this on themselves, there might be an argument.

 

[LondonJohn]

I mildly disagree with both C-UK as well as LJ. The problem is making the visits public. If one needs to have a visit, go. But keep it private, making sure, of course, that there are no paparazzi around.

The issue isn't the visit, IFAIAC, it's that someone made it public. That's the mistake.

And please also consider Amanda's was a request that she'd hope would be appropriate for the Kerchers one day. She wasn't demanding a visit or seeing it as an entitlement.

All things considered, my personal belief, as I said, is that Sollecito should have refrained from any visit to the grave - private or not, disclosed or not - until/unless he is ultimately cleared of involvement in the murder. At this point in the process, no matter how much Sollecito had felt a wish or need to visit the grave, he should have understood the situation more appropriately: he's still on trial for the murder of the woman whose grave he wants to visit!

In the circumstances, I think that a visit was inappropriate and inconsiderate. I would proffer that view even if Sollecito had told me privately and in confidence that he had made the visit.

Apart from the very principle of the thing, there were practical considerations too: what if someone else present in the cemetery at the same time had taken photographs of Sollecito at the grave site and published them? What if one of Meredith's family or close friends had happened to visit the grave at the same time?

 

[Grinder]

That's not the point. The point is everyone assumes the Kerchers have a right to make requests, even when their requests are based on the presumption of guilt, as well as on disrespect for the defendants.

As far as I know, the defendants' families have not asked the Kerchers to stop saying mean things about their children, but they have just as much right to do so.

Mary with all due respect (this time I really mean it), I think you are over the top and beyond the pale on this.

I am speaking about their request that people other than friends and family stay away from Meredith's grave, specifically.

I would prefer that victim's family would stay away from the proceedings until a verdict is final.