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

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davefoc said:
With respect LJ (and I do mean respect, your posts have been some of the most informed and interesting in this thread), I think you were a little tough on Nadeau if we are to judge by this article alone. It looked like a pretty reasonable update on the case to me.

Your objection seems to be that she reported the detail about the judge threatening to hold Vedova with contempt without additional reporting about Vedova's questions? Maybe, but threatening to hold Vedova in contempt seems like an interesting event to me and briefly mentioning in an overview article like this aimed at a general audience and not an audience steeped in Kercher murder trial minutia seemed OK to me.
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To any objective observer, there was only one development of real note in today's hearing. Granted, one has to draw inferences to realise the important point, but it was *ahem* fairly well-telegraphed.

It's the fact that the Carabinieri experts testified that no low-template DNA typing is valid unless at least two tests (with separate amplifications) have been conducted on the same sample.

And this has huge relevance to the trial because it's a fact that Stefanoni only conducted one amplification + test on 36B, on which she alleges she discovered Meredith's DNA.

Put these two together and you get the inferred conclusion: in the opinion of the Carabinieri experts, the finding of Meredith's DNA on the knife was invalid and inadmissible.

Frankly, nothing that Sollecito said was real news at all, in that no new information was imparted and nothing new was learned. Likewise, the fact that Dalla Vedova was censured by the judge was of fleeting interest (and some here may already know what I think of Dalla Vedova's performance as a criminal defence court lawyer), but it was by some enormous margin NOT the story of the day.

Sorry, but only one important new thing came to light today (given that we already knew about the Carabinieri test results). And Nadeau failed to include it at all in her report. I don't care whether her report was or was not "sympathetic" to Sollecito - that's not the point.
 
LondonJohn said:
Nadeau manifestly does not understand the significance of the RIS experts' evidence in court today:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/06/the-nightmare-end-to-amanda-knox-s-fairy-tale.html

I'm hardly surprised, I suppose, given her low intellect and dreadful reasoning skills. Instead, predictably, she homes in on Dalla Vedova being told off by Nencini, and the flowerier aspects of Sollecito's statement. I suppose that these are the things that she can actually understand......
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LondonJohn said:
And meanwhile, back over in "denial-and-ex-post-facto-rationalisation-r-us", one latest theory is that Hellmann deliberately forbade the DNA testing of 36I because he thought it might contain Meredith's DNA (and therefore scupper his "goal" of acquittals).

This same master-thinker then goes on to suggest that the 36I sample was stored incorrectly (deliberately, perhaps...), and that this in turn leaves open the possibility that Meredith's DNA actually WAS present on 36I originally, but that it has now degraded owing to the "poor storage".

I really shouldn't pay lip service to this sort of arrant nonsense, but I suppose it's somewhat instructive of the increasingly-desperate and increasingly-ludicrous rationalisations that are being clutched at by members of the pro-guilt commentator group. It's all rather embarrassing and demeaning to observe.
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It's hard to know what to say.

The bit about rationalizing Hellmann's denial of testing 36i, on the presumed grounds it may interfere with his gerrymandered acquittal.... is, well, just dumb.

Like I say, it's hard to know what to say.

Barbie Nadeau has a self interest in keeping this story "unsolved" because of the film rights to her book are sold.... the film could slip into "development hell", if the Nencini court issues the same verdict on Jan 10, 2014, as Hellman issued on Oct 3, 2011.

No one will be interested then. They've cast Kate Beckins-what's-her-name as Barbie... it seems even Frank has some magazine-ad cutout of an actor playing him.....

If this case is that Rudy Guede horribly murdered a British student in 2007 during a botched robbery.... then what are they going to make a film about....

..... is the theme going to be how Barbie herself tried to sluttify what was a very straightforward, albeit gruesome and horrible, murder? Is it going to be how the latest issue of the Daily Mail....

...... while burying the story that now the knife, in Nov 2013, is not a murder weapon at al....

.... reports on a 2+ year old letter from Knox to Raffaele in jail? I mean, that letter is not really slutti-fiedly friendly to begin with. So why's the Dail Mail, and Nick Pisa, leading with that?

Is this the kind of reporter that sent this off the rails to begin with? Is this who Barbie Nadeau is in league with as she continues to try to monetize this story - where she's cognizant that unless some cruise chip captain runs another cruise ship onto the rocks, she may never report on anything again?

And with all this - all the guilters have is that Hellmann did not allow testing of 36i because Hellmann might have feared something?

Hasn't Machiavelli already cut that one off at the pass? I mean, if the Masons have paid off Hellmann, what's to fear from testing 36i?

If you put 100 of the best crime fiction-writers in the world into the same room, and gave them the broad outline of a horrible murder in a student town filled with foreign students.....

... they would never dare to write any of this for the sake of trampling over suspension of disbelief....
 
halides1 said:
So Meredith's DNA was selectively degraded but not Amanda's?! That is science fiction.

Perhaps the commenter has confused this with the bra clasp, which was stored in a closed tube in the presence of an aqueous solution, namely the extraction buffer. That did lead to degradation of this piece of evidence. I would liken this to storing a cassette tape next to a 11.4 Tesla magnet.
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Yes, and for the sake of completion (obviously I know you know this, as do most others, but a few might not), we're talking here about Stefanoni's chosen method of storage (or, in this case, destruction) for the bra clasp, as opposed to anything done by Vecchiotti.
 
kwill said:
I finally gave in yesterday and got a copy of Angel Face, just to experience BN's work for myself. All I can say is, she's not a good person. Her willingness to publish irrelevant trivia about the sexual habits of three random college students is disturbing, but what's really appalling is to see absolute falsehoods in print.

Here's a thought: I believe I'll write a novel (a la Cartwheel) that tells the story of a not-too-bright journalist with a secret sick sexual fascination who becomes the unwitting dupe of a ruthless prosecutor.

I'm not entirely kidding. There's a good narrative here about BN and others, and how their silliness, prudishness, and self-interest led to a cruel injustice being done right in front of our eyes.
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That would make a far, far more interesting film, too. It would be kind of a Monty Python version of "All The President's Men."
 
halides1 said:
So Meredith's DNA was selectively degraded but not Amanda's?! That is science fiction.
Perhaps the commenter has confused this with the bra clasp, which was stored in a closed tube in the presence of an aqueous solution, namely the extraction buffer. That did lead to degradation of this piece of evidence. I would liken this to storing a cassette tape next to a 11.4 Tesla magnet.
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I thought exactly the same thing Chris. I'm not a scientist like you, but I think that is Logic 101.
 
Barbie Nadeau probably regards herself as THE journalist in the Amanda Knox saga. After all, they are making a movie based on her book. She can write what she wants and how she wants.

Not.

Today, PGP's actions reminded me of 2011.
 
katy_did said:
To be fair, I would say that "at least two" implies "preferably more, but two at a minimum". IIRC the recommended standard for LCN is three, but because that's often not practical due to the material being very scarce, two tests are accepted instead.
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Lol, this discussion reminds me of a discussion about how many pieces of flair wait staff should wear in the movie Office Space

http://youtu.be/U5YClmS3umk
 
LondonJohn said:
To any objective observer, there was only one development of real note in today's hearing. Granted, one has to draw inferences to realise the important point, but it was *ahem* fairly well-telegraphed.

It's the fact that the Carabinieri experts testified that no low-template DNA typing is valid unless at least two tests (with separate amplifications) have been conducted on the same sample.

And this has huge relevance to the trial because it's a fact that Stefanoni only conducted one amplification + test on 36B, on which she alleges she discovered Meredith's DNA.

Put these two together and you get the inferred conclusion: in the opinion of the Carabinieri experts, the finding of Meredith's DNA on the knife was invalid and inadmissible.

Frankly, nothing that Sollecito said was real news at all, in that no new information was imparted and nothing new was learned. Likewise, the fact that Dalla Vedova was censured by the judge was of fleeting interest (and some here may already know what I think of Dalla Vedova's performance as a criminal defence court lawyer), but it was by some enormous margin NOT the story of the day.

Sorry, but only one important new thing came to light today (given that we already knew about the Carabinieri test results). And Nadeau failed to include it at all in her report. I don't care whether her report was or was not "sympathetic" to Sollecito - that's not the point.
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While all of your post is true, the real relevant question is today's testimony lost upon this jury? Does it matter? Or were they sleeping through it like the Massei jury?
 
Oh dear.

I really should stop looking (it's a bit like the aching-tooth syndrome), but there's now a claim among the pro-guilt community that everything's OK with 36I because the Carabinieri experts might have mentioned "at least two" in relation to amplifications, as opposed to "tests", and 36B was amplified several times by Stefanoni (but was only tested once).

This particular dunce (and those who endorsed his view) doesn't understand the critical difference between serial amplifications and parallel amplifications. What the Carabinieri experts were explaining is that you need at least two tests, each with its own separate amplification of the source DNA.

In other words, it's no good to first amplify the source DNA, and only then to split the amplified sample and do two (or more) tests. The whole point is that each test must be conducted on a separately-amplified portion of the source DNA.

So in a very real sense, you need multiple tests of multiple amplifications, but - critically - with a different amplification for each test. The fact that Stefanoni amplified her source sample several times in a serial fashion, then tested the final product only once, means that she did not have separate amplifications run in parallel from the original source DNA.

I honestly don't think I've ever witnessed so much distortion/deception/ignorance in pursuit of rationalisation as I have among the pro-guilt commentator group today, in their attempts to wish away the undeniable truth that - in the view of the Carabinieri experts - Stefanoni's "finding" of Meredith's DNA on 36B is unreliable and worthless.
 
LondonJohn said:
Yes, and for the sake of completion (obviously I know you know this, as do most others, but a few might not), we're talking here about Stefanoni's chosen method of storage (or, in this case, destruction) for the bra clasp, as opposed to anything done by Vecchiotti.
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I have to ask if Stefanoni might have deliberately stored the bra clasp in liquid in order to degrade it so as to prevent further testing?
 
LondonJohn said:
I honestly don't think I've ever witnessed so much distortion/deception/ignorance in pursuit of rationalisation as I have among the pro-guilt commentator group today, in their attempts to wish away the undeniable truth that - in the view of the Carabinieri experts - Stefanoni's "finding" of Meredith's DNA on 36B is unreliable and worthless.
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Yes, it is painfully obvious that they are willfully shutting their eyes to this. I was being objective up to this point and really attempting to be neutral; but it is beginning to remind of their obfuscations prior to the Hellman ruling. It will be a glad day when the verdict comes and this will all be over.
 
snook1 said:
Barbie Nadeau probably regards herself as THE journalist in the Amanda Knox saga. After all, they are making a movie based on her book. She can write what she wants and how she wants.

Not.

Today, PGP's actions reminded me of 2011.
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Yes, 2011 did come to mind.
 
acbytesla said:
While all of your post is true, the real relevant question is today's testimony lost upon this jury? Does it matter? Or were they sleeping through it like the Massei jury?
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That's a very important point.

Here in UK, there's a constant problem in complex fraud trials that the evidence of guilt is simply so complex (and, in many cases, also so easy for the defence to deliberately bamboozle and confuse) that juries return acquittals when the evidence strongly supports a conviction. There are occasional calls for "expert juries" to hear such cases, but these calls tend to fail against the "jury of your peers" argument. It's still a very real problem though.

And it's easy to see how the same sort of thing might happen in a complex murder trial, where much of the evidence involves fairly complex science. That's why I think it's absolutely imperative that the defence teams try as hard as they can to focus away from arcane, detailed discussions of the science, and instead concentrate on distilling everything down into a small number of very simple messages to the judicial panel.

In the case of the knife, for example, I would have thought it would suffice to say something like this:

"You've heard from the Carabinieri experts that at least two separate tests are always necessary to validate DNA matching, in order to be able to tell true matches from the amplification of background noise. This was also the expert opinion of the two independent experts in the Hellmann trial. However, the State Police's forensic scientist only conducted one test on a crucial sample - 36B - on which it is alleged that a tiny bit of Meredith Kercher's DNA was identified. You've heard from two different, respected sources that one test simply is not enough when one is working with such small quantities of DNA. And for this reason, in and of itself, you should conclude that the alleged finding of Meredith's DNA on the blade of the Sollecito kitchen knife is not reliable and should be disregarded. In short, you should conclude that there is nothing reliable linking Meredith Kercher to that knife."
 
LondonJohn said:
Oh dear.

I really should stop looking (it's a bit like the aching-tooth syndrome), but there's now a claim among the pro-guilt community that everything's OK with 36I because the Carabinieri experts might have mentioned "at least two" in relation to amplifications, as opposed to "tests", and 36B was amplified several times by Stefanoni (but was only tested once).

This particular dunce (and those who endorsed his view) doesn't understand the critical difference between serial amplifications and parallel amplifications.

<......... sinister deletia ..........>

I honestly don't think I've ever witnessed so much distortion/deception/ignorance in pursuit of rationalisation as I have among the pro-guilt commentator group today, in their attempts to wish away the undeniable truth that - in the view of the Carabinieri experts - Stefanoni's "finding" of Meredith's DNA on 36B is unreliable and worthless.
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But how do they rationalize the Carabinieri experts conclusions?

The conclusions are these. If 36i belongs to anyone, it is Knox. Also that there is severe doubt, the Carabinieri experts concluded, that 36b was ever Meredith's....

..... and for the purposes of proving something at trial, simply and utterly inadequate to convict anyone over.

So why are the pro-guilt people now trying to redo the Carabinieri's work? Because they don't like the conclusions?

In the war where both sides claim the other is confirmation-biased.... I'm just saying......
 
LondonJohn said:
That's a very important point.

Here in UK, there's a constant problem in complex fraud trials that the evidence of guilt is simply so complex (and, in many cases, also so easy for the defence to deliberately bamboozle and confuse) that juries return acquittals when the evidence strongly supports a conviction. There are occasional calls for "expert juries" to hear such cases, but these calls tend to fail against the "jury of your peers" argument. It's still a very real problem though.

And it's easy to see how the same sort of thing might happen in a complex murder trial, where much of the evidence involves fairly complex science. That's why I think it's absolutely imperative that the defence teams try as hard as they can to focus away from arcane, detailed discussions of the science, and instead concentrate on distilling everything down into a small number of very simple messages to the judicial panel.

In the case of the knife, for example, I would have thought it would suffice to say something like this:

"You've heard from the Carabinieri experts that at least two separate tests are always necessary to validate DNA matching, in order to be able to tell true matches from the amplification of background noise. This was also the expert opinion of the two independent experts in the Hellmann trial. However, the State Police's forensic scientist only conducted one test on a crucial sample - 36B - on which it is alleged that a tiny bit of Meredith Kercher's DNA was identified. You've heard from two different, respected sources that one test simply is not enough when one is working with such small quantities of DNA. And for this reason, in and of itself, you should conclude that the alleged finding of Meredith's DNA on the blade of the Sollecito kitchen knife is not reliable and should be disregarded. In short, you should conclude that there is nothing reliable linking Meredith Kercher to that knife."
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We've seen the same thing in the US with the corporate malfeasance or fraud cases. The government lawyers are almost always out manned and out gunned and the high priced Defense attorneys need to do is turn the trial into a mass of minutiae and then blame all of it on the complexity and simple misunderstanding...and then the super rich defendant walks out the door to go screw some other schmuck.
 
Bill Williams said:
]

Nadeau behaves herself when on CNN. And with a film coming out, she may even be successful in making this whole dreadful affair, "all about her!"
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Like I said, I think the truly interesting narrative is about how sick and stupid she has shown herself to be. That would be fine psychological study. The Woman Whose Gutter Mind and Nonexistent Ethics Ruined Three Families.
 
kwill said:
Like I said, I think the truly interesting narrative is about how sick and stupid she has shown herself to be. That would be fine psychological study. The Woman Whose Gutter Mind and Nonexistent Ethics Ruined Three Families.
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I wish I had assembled it at the time, but with the stuff that is out there about her on YouTube and her book, she seemed fascinated by student three-somes....
 
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