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

[Chris_Halkides]

Take a poll of forensic scientists

This whole line of argument--that somehow Stefanoni's tests are now incontestable because the defendants did not register specific objections at the time of testing--is a specious and disingenuous invention of the prosecution, which was lapped up by the half-wit perverts on the Italian supreme court.

Well said. As one hundred DNA scientists which they would rather have, the ability to see the tests being done or access to the EDFs and other data. The vote will be 100 to 0 in favor of full disclosure of the files.

 

[Grinder]

Going on and on about Frank and Candace is one thing; but trying to use it to cast doubt on well known information is quite another. Grinder is allowed to have his personal difficulties with these two people - but the material they write about, in the main, is now basically unimpeachable.

Bill I don't have "personal difficulties" with either. CD is just a fraud as a reporter and Frank has some issues that need more clarification in order to judge the accuracy of some of his blogging.

I think you have met with both of these people. I'm under the impression that you drove Frank from the border into Canada and at a minimum you communicate directly with CD and not just FB.

In the main they report what everybody reports, but that's not what you cheer them for. CD is a cheerleader for the PIP crowd and Frank is the cheerleader for the hate Mignini crowd.

You are one of a few here that have personal relationships with these people and it is my belief that you should make that clear more frequently.

 

[Grinder]

My hope is that Andrea is not eliminating it as the murder weapon on the basis of now accepting C&V, but then turning around and simply assuming it is the murder weapon, well... just because.

What is interesting is that Machiavelli is starting to post again, and all this goes uncommented upon.

My bet is that Machiavelli does not call Andrea an "approximate reporter", and he just does not deal with some issues again. Maybe Mach 2 can be more helpful....

Bill is alloweed to have his personal issues with Andrea and Barbie as well as any reporter he disagrees with.

 

[Bill Williams]

Bill is alloweed to have his personal issues with Andrea and Barbie as well as any reporter he disagrees with.

Thanks! I feel better already.

 

[Myriad]

It sounds like you are claiming that a spread spectrum radio signal can exist in an area at one time sufficient to establish a connection and not exist in that same area at other times being as if your phone was turned off. But you didn't turn your phone off did you. Here you insist that it's the signal but elsewhere you insist the person must have turned their phone off. It's like a different set of rules apply to yourself.

Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But let this happen in such a way that no one become aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand to be produced immediately.

 

[Diocletus]

From their work it comes out that in fact the impact and meaning of this procedure, it's something that would actually depend on the quality of the profiles themselves. In other words, low template samples could render profiles that are more like blurred photos because of increased stocastic phenomenons, but in practice, it's not that they are necessarily, always blurred and uncertain; when you extract a DNA profile sequence, in fact you may immediately notice if the sequence is a clear photo or a blurred one, which would require crossing with further amplification in order to extract a certain profile.

That's interesting. So, to summarize, Carabinieri advocate conviction on the basis of an effectively unquantified, blood-negative sample, as to which no amplification or control records have been disclosed, which registers below standard RFU cut-offs and exhibits stochastic effects, which is irreproducible, and about which the lab technician lied in her report and sworn testimony?

Is such a result common in Italy? Has it ever happened before?

 

[davefoc]

Machiavelli, I am sorry you have not gotten much sleep in the last few days. I hope you are able to rest well tonight

I note you have not developed illusions or false memories. But I would like to point out several things:Your housemate/friend was not brutally murdered by a stanger (of which you are innocent). You are not trying to function in a language in which you have elementary communication skills. You are not in an interrogation room with manipulative adult police detectives telling you you are a liar, or that a friend has changed his account and says you were not where you said/believed you were 3 nights ago. You do not have shouting police holding your cell phone in your face claiming that you did meet with the person and are lying about it. You do not have police shouting at you that "he is the one. He is the killer!" You do not have shouting police tell you that if you won't tell the truth you will go to prison for 30 years and never see your family again. You do not have an older woman translator tell you that you were there but are traumatized and just don't remember it, but you were there. You don't have a policewoman standing in back of you hitting you from behind.

Very nicely stated response on an issue that goes to the heart of one of the main divisions of belief in this case. For at least 30 years I have been aware of the power of the police to obtain false confessions. Many cases involving false confessions obtained with harsh police interrogation have been mentioned in this thread. It is also a common theme in American crime dramas. For me, it is on this issue that Machiavelli's views are the most difficult to understand.

Machiavelli functions mostly as a pure advocate for a particular point of view in this thread and as such it is difficult to know what his actual thought process is on any particular issue, but is Machiavelli, the person, really incapable of understanding the problems with deriving any conclusions about this crime from the ambiguous statement made by Knox under significant duress?

 

[Bill Williams]

Do Italian courts often accept that spots are proven to be blood when they are luminol-positive but TMB negative?

Or, do we think that this might possibly be the first case in the world where TMB-negative spots are determined to be bloody footprints?

This is the point, isn't it.....

.... In a tour of comments sections of news pieces, ones which now almost universally say variations on, "Knife ruled out as murder weapon," people who still insist on guilt comment on all this other stuff....

.... including, "What about the bloody footprints out in the hall?"

This is why I follow JREF, really, because I am NOT one who can wade my way through this angle on the forensics... I have to stop and think and really, really parse what the halides1, 2, and 3 are saying, what the Diocletus's, LondonJohn's, and Kaosiums are on about....

because once the penny does drop... and it eventually does, the issue of the "bloody footprints out in the hall" that internet comments-bombers talk about is really this....

..... and Machiavelli either doesn't get it, or is purposely distorting things (I go with the former, increasingly so... I am far, far less conspiratorial towards the man when he posts his own meltdowns here...)

It comes down to this...... When all one has is a single negative presumptive test, the lack of a positive confirmatory test means that the court is obliged to accept the negative... regardless of whether it is false negative or true-negative..... Why? Because in the absence of a second test what can you in reasonableness conclude?

Have I got that correct?

I think I now understand this after 1,000s of posts on the subject. I'm a slow read. (My spelling is also poor....)

What is left is some sort of psychological-sociological study on why people continue to carpet-bomb comments sections with stuff they either know not to be true, or that they post with no ability, really, to parse it...

I don't know why I say this. Machiavelli appears to have the engine power to parse these things.... every once in a while, though, he posts something that is so, so, so off the wall that I get the feeling there's something else going on here, other than a wilfullness to post obvious and blatant falsehoods, and the odd post that literally makes no sense whatsoever.

We may be reading the results of sleep deprivation. I don't really mean to pick on him about what is a serious issue (I truly hope he finds a remedy, because it cannot be pleasant).... but what other explanation other than sleep deprivation does one have for this sort of nonsense....

My friend, evidence is an a contrario logical process. It does not proceed in one way, it proceeds in two directions.
You have no authority to establish any causal order, whan you don't actually have any scenario. If you have "no idea", there is no probable or usual scenario.
The rest of the logical links and the evidence, analogies coincidences etc., you are just swweeping everything under the carpet.
You have no argument.



Ridiculous. A presumptive test becomes "authority" and should replace human intelligence...

To me it sounds as disjointed and confused as one of the early interrogation memorandums prepared for Amanda Knox.

 

[Diocletus]

I have been sleeping 5 hours over the last 72 hours.
Side effects do not include a repeated redaction and adjustment of multiple false testimonies accusing innocents.

They do, however, include psychosis.

You should get some rest before you develop a second personality.

 

[Diocletus]

I bet the Missouri State Police Patrol manual had just no previous citation in any academic work, by year 2011.

You will never find a citation of this stuff in an academic publication. This is not scientific literature.
Scientific literature is authored research, peer reviewed, specific and cited.

I don't know. What I do know is that if the Missouri state police have figured it out, and wrote it down in their manual, I would damn well have expected the head scientific lab in Rome to have it figured out.

They used to live in sod houses in Missouri.

 

[Grinder]

I have a question about luminol and the TMB. Aren't the chances that every single tmb test would come back negative if the lumiol was decting blood extraordinarily low? And, if the TMB doesn't register the blood because it is so incredibly diluted, isn't it almost certain to be from a single source, deposited in just one walk? And, if this is so, isn't the most likely source by far the bathroom, where after showering Knox may have stepped on the bathmat and picked up trace amounts of blood?

Are there alternatives to these choices?

If the blood is presumed to be incredibly dilute, perhaps one of the sexually active young occupants/visitors had a mild case of urethritis and sprinkled when they tinkled

The blood if diluted enough could light up under luminol and test negative with TMB.

Someone long before the murder night could have had a diluted water and blood mixture from the bidet or shower on their foot and walked around a little.

Blood is very hard to completely remove. Blood can be found long after a crime and even if a cleaning was attempted.

The blood source could be a cut, a nose bleed or something else.

 

[Grinder]

Interesting event from the last court session:

The Court of Appeal of Florence decided to forward the deposition of the witness Luciano Aviello, made during the previous hearing in the new trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher, to the Prosecutor's Office of the Tuscan capital. "The transmission of documents - said the President of the Court, Alessandro Nencini - is a necessary act in order to allow the prosecutor to assess any elements of crime present in the statements made by Aviello, in particular to the pressure received by the magistrates of Perugia".

http://www.umbria24.it/meredith-sollecito...

Having lied so easily in this case themselves, Mignini and Comodi,and have gotten so many more to tell lies,Curatolo,Quintavalle,Napoleoni,Rudy Guede and Stefanoni,its only a matter of time before they become trapped by their lies

Man that would be nice.

 

[Bill Williams]

Interesting event from the last court session:

The Court of Appeal of Florence decided to forward the deposition of the witness Luciano Aviello, made during the previous hearing in the new trial for the murder of Meredith Kercher, to the Prosecutor's Office of the Tuscan capital. "The transmission of documents - said the President of the Court, Alessandro Nencini - is a necessary act in order to allow the prosecutor to assess any elements of crime present in the statements made by Aviello, in particular to the pressure received by the magistrates of Perugia".

http://www.umbria24.it/meredith-sollecito...

Having lied so easily in this case themselves, Mignini and Comodi,and have gotten so many more to tell lies,Curatolo,Quintavalle,Napoleoni,Rudy Guede and Stefanoni,its only a matter of time before they become trapped by their lies

Every once in a while, these teasers get some press time. The trouble with my own conspiratorializing about this, is that it's actually hard to keep the secret confined within a small circle of these people, even with a powerful incentive to keep the secret. The longer the assumed- and claimed-secret stays confined, the more one can perhaps say there'd never been a conspiracy to begin with....

However, if the conspiratorializing be true (sometimes it actually IS a conspiracy!) what it takes is a sense of imminent accountability, and the walls come tumbling down. Admiral Poindexter and Col. Oliver North come to mind, people willing to take a bullet for the head-cheese.

So, which of these will take a bullet for Mignini? My guess is Napoleoni.... and can the interrogation tapes be far behind?

 

[Diocletus]

Man that would be nice.

There's no way Mignini/Comodi are getting in trouble for tampering with Aviello. Their system doesn't have the integrity or legitimacy to even investigate the issue properly.

 

[Sergei Walankov]

However, if the conspiratorializing be true (sometimes it actually IS a conspiracy!) what it takes is a sense of imminent accountability, and the walls come tumbling down.

As a relative newcomer in all this, I'll hazard a guess that optimistic speculation of this sort has been doing the rounds for a long time now, without having produced any result so far. I read someone at IIP suggest that it might be to do with Aviello libelling Mignini, which strikes me as being rather more likely. Besides which, isn't the source for all this a garbled Google translation of an Italian newspaper report?

 

[snook1]

I think they will investigate Aviello's statements with the intention to come up with a calunia charge against him, not the other way around.

As to Vogt (and Macchiavelli) and her latest piece - maybe now PGP's will believe what LondonJohn and others said all along, that C&V stands in this trial. People at IIP provided PGP's quotes in which they are discussing SC's words that the trace 36B was a finding with strong objections and they are admitting that Stefanoni's work regarding the knife might be thrown out after all. If that's the case, then all the other tests she performed will be in danger also, as her credibility, once again, will be shaken. This time Nencini and his jurors will be the witnesses and it's a good thing.

I sincerely believe that 36B will be thrown out by Nencini.

 

[Bill Williams]

However, if the conspiratorializing be true (sometimes it actually IS a conspiracy!) what it takes is a sense of imminent accountability, and the walls come tumbling down.

As a relative newcomer in all this, I'll hazard a guess that optimistic speculation of this sort has been doing the rounds for a long time now, without having produced any result so far. I read someone at IIP suggest that it might be to do with Aviello libelling Mignini, which strikes me as being rather more likely. Besides which, isn't the source for all this a garbled Google translation of an Italian newspaper report?

Given my own track record of predicting things, it would be wise to take what I claim and expect the opposite.

It's good to have a fresh pair of eyes, which is a way of saying, you could be right.

 

[Grinder]

Thanks! I feel better already.

In that you badger Mach about Vogt and Mignini all the time, specifically about the relationships they have, why won'y you come clean about your friendship with Frank and connections to CD?

You accuse me falsely of having some past issue with CD, which I have addressed in no uncertain terms. I have no past with her. I just see that she has been more of a shill than a reporter and give examples. Yet you make the accusations again and again.

Did you drive Frank to his host's house in Canada? Yes or No.

Did you talk immigration into letting Frank into Canada? Yes or No.

 

[moodstream]

Do Italian courts often accept that spots are proven to be blood when they are luminol-positive but TMB negative?

Or, do we think that this might possibly be the first case in the world where TMB-negative spots are determined to be bloody footprints?

I would like to add on to this. Did Stefanoni have a history of field testing blood only by sight? Did she typically get a + Lminol/-TMB prior and then presuming blood, skip the confirmatory test? If so, why did she run the TMB test? Did she instruct her staff to do this? Is it common?

I would think a technician would do this once and only once in their career, and might still have a career only if it was their very first assignment. Certainly the defense and even the judges would jump all over this because it fails to establish a body of evidence, even if the technician's judgement is correct.

Since, as you are pointing out, Italy wasn't born yesterday, I would think the question of proper evidence collection and testing procedure would already have been tried into the dust, and a clear mandatory standard would already exist.

Is this not the case? It would be in the US, I believe.

 

[Bill Williams]

In that you badger Mach about Vogt and Mignini all the time, specifically about the relationships they have, why won'y you come clean about your friendship with Frank and connections to CD?

You accuse me falsely of having some past issue with CD, which I have addressed in no uncertain terms. I have no past with her. I just see that she has been more of a shill than a reporter and give examples. Yet you make the accusations again and again.

Did you drive Frank to his host's house in Canada? Yes or No.

Did you talk immigration into letting Frank into Canada? Yes or No.

Grinder - who are you!?

Wow. I "accused" you "falsely of having some past issue with CD?" Wow. Please at least do me the courtesy of rereading... my wondering was if she'd cut you off in traffic... and you've made a federal case out of that "accusation".

What is truly amusing here is that you have me as some sort of "somebody" here. You demand to know things about me, and it is positively amusing to read your "yes or no" demands. I don't think I've chuckled so hard, really.

I "badger" Mach and Andrea? You may not have got the memo, but Machiavelli was in court on the 6th, tweeting furiously, and the tweeting stopped as soon as it became clear what the RIS Carabinieri were saying. Machiavelli THEN made some lame excuse about the WiFi in the courtroom.

Andrea Vogt who was part of the "I was There" fiasco when the media were all lined up against Amanda Knox, herself is perhaps one of the last journalists who say anything positive about Mr. Mignini, who she even often admits is her sole source for her pieces.

Machiavelli comes out of the blue on two occasions, both times to defend Andrea Vogt. Both Andrea and Machiavelli demonize Knox and Sollecito, they throw Barbie Nadeau under a bus (with the "approximate reporter" comment)....

..... and all you can say is that I badger them with their relationships?

You may not have got the memo, but Andrea was once one of perhaps five go-to journalists on this case, and is now perhaps the last guilter-journalist, particulary perhaps the last journalist who goes to Mignini as a source.

Machiavelli/Yummi is perhaps the most virulent of internet folk on the guilter side, with the possible exception of Harry Rag, Peter Q., Peggy G., and BRMull.

And you equate me..... wee little old me.... as having some sort of influence on this comparable to them?

Grinder - who the heck are you!? Please come clean.... did Candace Dempsey once cut you off in traffic? (I'm now getting the feeling I once cut you off in traffic!)