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

[Machiavelli]

Having a positive reaction with luminol and a negative reaction with TMB is a sticky problem. The difficulty is that these tests rely on basically the same initial reaction to release oxygen from hydrogen peroxide that then oxidizes the indicator.

It is indeed as sticky problem. And it's in fact a difficulty for Knox's defence. The problem has an easy solution, which is blood dilution.
Those who decide to ignore the issue of finding substance that reacts with luminol and not to TMB, or any likely alternative substance, or any alternative explanation for the event that produced the prints, are just deciding to give up logic.

One difference that has bee pointed out is that if there is an oxidizing agent present it will directly cause the luminol to glow. This will be detected by a premature color change of the TMB. Unless Stef has her nomenclature reversed, the luminol footprints did not give a premature indication.

The oxidizing agent might cause the luminol to glow when it gets mixed with peroxide and luminol, but the known oxidizing agents (such as bleach) they do not last, they would decompose rather quickly when exposed to the air. And there was no premature color change of TMB.

Digging in deeper, let's look at the differences between the application of the two tests. Luminol is applied to a surface to be tested. The luminol mixture already contains both the indicator and the peroxide. When the peroxide contacts the catalyst, an oxygen is released which combines with the luminol molecule and causes the release of a photon. TMB is a two part test. A swab is used to pick up part of the stain. The TMB is applied to the swab to test for oxidizing agents. Then peroxide is applied and again when the peroxide contacts the catalizing agent, oxygen is released which combines with the TMB and causes a color change.

This procedure might detect some strong oxidizing agents such as bleach; but they were not detected (and literature anyway rules out that bleaches could be active after 46 days)..

What happens if the stain cannot be picked up by the swab? It's an invisible stain that only showed up with the aid of the Luminol so there would be no way to know if the stain was being picked up by the swab. In the case where there had been blood in the shoe print at marker #2, the blood was picked up by the swab and the TMB showed a positive result. But if the stain is very old and is chemically bound to the floor tiles, swabbing is not going to pick it up.

It might be rather the opposite. The swab might pick up material from an old blood stain. But might fail to pick up enough traces from a diluted stain.

Can we tell what the stain is? Probably not. It could be very old blood that has degraded leaving behind the iron that subsequently formed a chemical bond with the tile. It could be iron or copper or some other metal from a cleaning or beauty product. There is practically no way to tell and it doesn't really matter since the testing has shown the important fact that the stain was not recent blood from the time of the murder.

The testing did not show that at all.
It only showed that, at the moment when it was picked up, the sample from stain had a too weak dilution to trigger a reaction with TMB within 60 seconds.

 

[charlatan]

Glad you enjoyed it. Not sure you understood the reference. PIP sources have mostly been wrong about what would be ruled and what actually is happening in the court.

That's a rather unspecific and extravagant claim.

So since you were tuned in, exactly what did the RIS say about Stef's work?

Surely you can piece it together from the sources I mentioned. Unless you're after something specific I don't see the need to rehash the totality of the coverage here.

 

[Dan O.]

Certainly it's possible. I don't think it's a slam-dunk by any means. Police get a lot of luminol red herrings. I don't know how many of them are footprints.

ETA: My feeling has always been that if the footprints were residual blood, from the bathmat or anything, they would have seen this from the TMB, which is a whole lot better than Machiavelli claims or else they wouldn't bother with it. Also, Meredith's profile would have shown up on at least some of the DNA swabs. If it was really blood, it would have added a lot to their case. They would have taken pains to prove it was blood, which they could have done. Instead they brought it to court as "could be blood, you decide."

Your feeling is correct, read my previous post. It can't be recent blood or the TMB would have caught it. The Luminol footprints must be very old stains in which whatever material might have been picked up by swabbing had already been wiped away over the years of regular moppings.

 

[Dan O.]

The testing did not show that at all.
It only showed that, at the moment when it was picked up, the sample from stain had a too weak dilution to trigger a reaction with TMB within 60 seconds.

It's your argument that is weak. The footprints showed a strong reaction to Luminol which eliminates the possibility of blood being too dilute to react to TMB.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

modern confirmatory tests for blood

It's your argument that is weak. The footprints showed a strong reaction to Luminol which eliminates the possibility of blood being too dilute to react to TMB.

At least as serious a problem as the lack of reaction with TMB is the failure to do a confirmatory test. Modern confirmatory testing has a limit of detection that is greater than one millionfold. That is in the same ballpark as luminol. There is no excuse whatsoever not to have done it. Or perhaps Stefanoni did it and had an understandable lapse of memory about the results.

 

[xinonix]

"My best friend is a Seattle police officer and so is his sister, and his brother in law. His sister is a detective. They both joke about how unrealistic the shows are and how the public expects real police work to be like it is in the movies, when it never really is.My best friend is a Seattle police officer and so is his sister, and his brother in law. His sister is a detective. They both joke about how unrealistic the shows are and how the public expects real police work to be like it is in the movies, when it never really is."

Lifetime made a movie for TV about Ms Kerchers murder. Being as it was just a movie and the producers needed the use of a real Italian courtroom to film the most important scenes in, they made a deal where if they put in a scene where Amanda was in their house while Ms Kercher was killed and heard the screams, they would be given the use of a courtroom for as long as they needed to film the scenes.
Many people who saw that movie got confused and now they believe that Amanda was in the house and she told the cops she was, then she changed her story, and now she says she was at Raffale's flat all night long.
AK+RS will go through life as a couple that many people believe were into drugs and ultra-kinky sex and Meridith died as a result of the sex game gone wrong.

 

[charlatan]

Certainly it's possible. I don't think it's a slam-dunk by any means. Police get a lot of luminol red herrings. I don't know how many of them are footprints.

ETA: My feeling has always been that if the footprints were residual blood, from the bathmat or anything, they would have seen this from the TMB, which is a whole lot better than Machiavelli claims or else they wouldn't bother with it. Also, Meredith's profile would have shown up on at least some of the DNA swabs. If it was really blood, it would have added a lot to their case. They would have taken pains to prove it was blood, which they could have done. Instead they brought it to court as "could be blood, you decide."

Exactly. PLE want credit for doing the work when they haven't actually done the work. They know they haven't followed any sort of reasonable standards here but they're asking us to pretty please make an exception in this special case. What's the point of having standards at all if you're just going to ignore them when they become inconvenient? Why bother with detailed 90-page forensics reports if you're just going to take Stefanoni at her word? As someone mentioned awhile back, this case is a textbook example of the perils of normalized deviance.

 

[acbytesla]

It is indeed as sticky problem. And it's in fact a difficulty for Knox's defence. The problem has an easy solution, which is blood dilution.
Those who decide to ignore the issue of finding substance that reacts with luminol and not to TMB, or any likely alternative substance, or any alternative explanation for the event that produced the prints, are just deciding to give up logic.

No, not really at all.

In fact it is the person willing to ignore the negative TMB test is the one giving up on logic and scientific protocol.

The simple fact is an unknown substance was subjected to TWO PRESUMPTIVE tests for blood in which the second test was NEGATIVE. and a total of ZERO CONFIRMATORY tests. This is the very definition of a a NEGATIVE result for blood.

And the real truth is that these blobs mean nothing. There is no way to identify who or what made them. It is a joke just to assume that they were made by Amanda on the night of the murder.

 

[acbytesla]

"My best friend is a Seattle police officer and so is his sister, and his brother in law. His sister is a detective. They both joke about how unrealistic the shows are and how the public expects real police work to be like it is in the movies, when it never really is.My best friend is a Seattle police officer and so is his sister, and his brother in law. His sister is a detective. They both joke about how unrealistic the shows are and how the public expects real police work to be like it is in the movies, when it never really is."

Lifetime made a movie for TV about Ms Kerchers murder. Being as it was just a movie and the producers needed the use of a real Italian courtroom to film the most important scenes in, they made a deal where if they put in a scene where Amanda was in their house while Ms Kercher was killed and heard the screams, they would be given the use of a courtroom for as long as they needed to film the scenes.
Many people who saw that movie got confused and now they believe that Amanda was in the house and she told the cops she was, then she changed her story, and now she says she was at Raffale's flat all night long.
AK+RS will go through life as a couple that many people believe were into drugs and ultra-kinky sex and Meridith died as a result of the sex game gone wrong.

I was unaware that this deal was made. Pretty said if the Italians made that as a prerequisite.

 

[Machiavelli]

I'll answer here to this old post by Kaosium.
Here you were talking about Vecchiotti saying you 'know' that she did not obtain what she asked from Stefanoni.

It could be I know more than you think...

Then you explain you were basically refering to the negative controls.

I understand that, it would not surprise me that the Polizia di Stato Squadra Mobile in Perugia was also not forthcoming, but that does not exonerate the Polizia Scientifica--or at least their little lab tech known as Patrizia Stefanoni. More on that later!

I remind you that she is a molecular biologist; that she is also the author of scientific articles that went in the top-list of international forensic litarature, and that, albeit you never investigated that, in al likeliness, she also has a PhD. (these are facts not opinions).

I don't know the context of that quote, it could mean quite a few different things depending on the words around it.

The newspaper quote does not leave any room for a different interpretation, if reported correctly. It does not depend on the words around it. Otherwise, you should claim that it is a wrong report.

I am also quite curious as to how anyone could report that Vecchiotti said she'd 'received all what she requested' when in fact the negative controls were missing as I pointed out in my last post. I wonder if the person who wrote that article just took the part where Vecchiotti complained about not getting the information she did until too late as her having said she'd received all she needed?
(...)
What I do know is that not having received the negative controls is incongruous with her having said she'd received everything she needed, and as their final report would detail the former, odds are there's something wrong with the latter.

Of course she needed the negative control data! What do you think she wanted from Stefanoni, more electropherograms that looked like they were scribbled in black crayon? I can see you've never followed the link I've posted a half-dozen times to the FBI report on Jacqueline Blake getting caught gundecking her negative controls. (...)

The topic of the link appears to mas not having any merit to this case. But that's not important anyway, since we are talking about a specific factual point: you assert that Vecchiotti did not obtain what she requested from Stafanoni. I quoted a news report. Which you decide not to believe, saying:

So says that little blurb, I've reason to be skeptical of that report.

But as a basis for you asserting 'knowledge' or believing that Vecchiotti did not obtain what she requested, you basically mention the negative controls.
Your reasoning is openly circular: you assume that Vecchiotti is telling the truth, based on the assumption that she is telling the truth, or that there is anyway a merit in what she says.
You say that Vecchiotti must have asked the negative controls, and that Stefanoni must have refused to turn them over, because Vecchiotti did not have them.

In fact you repeat it all along:

However her (later!) report indicates she didn't receive all that was requested, as I thoughtfully quoted and linked for you in my last post. Thus my skepticism as to the accuracy of that account.

But, at this point, you see - and this is why I am very perplexed when I look at these innocentisti reasonings - it comes to my mind that other people complained about me always mentioning my understanding of Italian as a pretext for accusing people of being wrong because they can't understand the language... but think about what an Italian person, like me, would look at, in the first place, in making his opinion about an issue like what did Vecchiotti request?
The very obvious kind of things that - by my astonishment - people like you apparently miss, is what the document says. First of all, Vecchiotti herself admitted to not having requested the negative controls.
It is obvious that there is no mention of any such request nor any failur to fulfill requests in the C&V report. This absence is obvious and it is glaring, so I can't see how you could miss it. But then Vecchiotti, under cross questioning by Manuela Comodi, as she was cornered, she admitted that she did not make any specific request to have the negative controls.
Not only that: what also comes out from in the same cross questioning, is that the negative controls had been already deposited at the chancellery of the Preliminary Judge in 2008.

It is possible, but when the subject of her inquiry is hiding the requisite data for her to perform her analysis it's more likely that the real liar and cheater is Stefanoni. Her efforts to hide the data behind the electropherograms is pronounced and she didn't even turn over a version that included peak areas until Conti and Vecchiotti's commission was almost up.

To me, it is apparent that she did not make any effort to hide anything.
It is instead obvious that Vecchiotti made up false data, and that she did that on purpose, following an agenda.

So, yes, we'll be needing to see that transcript and don't think that I didn't notice that you didn't address that in your reply! )) I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing some more 'approximate reporting' of that court appearance and it wouldn't surprise me at all if whoever wrote that report got that version from a police source, or someone associated with them in this case.

You can 'win' one here, Machiavelli, show me that transcript and you can dance in the streets all night long about how wrong I was. Isn't that incentive enough?

I think I have another concept of 'winning'. At the moment I don't have the transcript of that day but I think I will have it, I will seek to do so. But meanwhile, let's look at what I have: let's look at Vecchiotti admitting that she did not ask for negative controls (ore refusing to admit that she did) and let's look at the explanation about the negative controls which actually turned out in the courtroom.
Btw you can also appreciate Vecchiotti's style of rambling and dancing around the question: she speaks exaclty like a criminal, the cheating style of criminals revealed by a pattern of incosistency ("nobody has ever shown them to us, we didn’t even see them"), or where she jumps away from a topic to an unrelated argument ("I'll even tell you something more"), strange statements ("they should know this" => who are "they"?).

VECCHIOTTI C. - Per esempio nelle indagini del DNA nel laboratorio è noto ed è descritto in tutti i kit che vanno inseriti dei controlli negativi al fine di verificare o meno se risultino negativi oppure no.
PUBBLICO MINISTERO – E lei li ha chiesti i controlli negativi alla dottoressa Stefanoni?
VECCHIOTTI C. - Io ho chiesto alla dottoressa Stefanoni più volte e lei sa che me li ha mandati più volte i file relativi agli esami che aveva fatto, era ovvio che ci dovessero essere e non c'erano.
PUBBLICO MINISTERO – Perché era ovvio?
VECCHIOTTI C. - Perché si inserisce il controllo negativo, in un caso poi tra l'altro così delicato in cui si sa che si parla di contaminazione non vedo perché non lo debba avere inserito.
PUBBLICO MINISTERO – Ma i controlli negativi infatti erano già inseriti agli atti del procedimento, lei afferma che i controlli negati non ci sono?
VECCHIOTTI C. - No guardi che a me, io ho chiesto direttamente alla dottoressa e ho qua tutte quante...
PUBBLICO MINISTERO – No non li ha chiesti.
VECCHIOTTI C. - No scusi, io ho chiesto alla dottoressa...
PUBBLICO MINISTERO – No professoressa, no.
VECCHIOTTI C. - Allora noi abbiamo le mail...
PRESIDENTE – Ma Pubblico Ministero, lei non c'era scusi.
VECCHIOTTI C. - Scusi, io le mail anche.
PUBBLICO MINISTERO – No Presidente ma ho letto le mail.
PRESIDENTE – Abbia pazienza...
VECCHIOTTI C. - Anche io ho letto le mail nelle quali si dice di... Allora, quando nella mail io chiedo più volte e anche mi manda il cd e mi manda via mail, perché è corretto che me l'ha mandato ed è stata collaborante, io questo lo debbo dire e lo ribadisco, manda gli elettroferogrammi do per scontato, lo chiedo la prima volta, lo chiedo la seconda volta, le dico anche di più i consulenti dell'altra parte chiedono i Rodata, chiedono incomprensibile), chiedono tutto e di più, è chiaro che me lo doveva mandare, voglio dire si allega quanto meno per far vedere che tutti i reagenti, che tutto quanto era negativo, questo è uno dei motivi.
PUBBLICO MINISTERO – Ma lei esclude... comunque voi mi portate sempre ad accelerare, agli step successivi a quelli che mi ero programmata in testa comunque, lei esclude che la Stefanoni non glieli abbia mandati perché i controlli negativi erano già inseriti agli atti del procedimento?
VECCHIOTTI C. - Ma io non li ho mai visti negli atti del procedimento, io li ho cercati, se lei ce l'ha e non ci sono stati esibiti questa è un'altra cosa, cioè io apprendo adesso che erano allegati, non lo so, dovrebbero saperlo.
DIFESA AVV. BONGIORNO – Non ci sono, non ci sono.
PUBBLICO MINISTERO – Sono stati depositati l'8 ottobre 2008 nel corso dell'udienza GUP.
VECCHIOTTI C. - Scusi, tutte qua... e ci sono i negativi? Allora non ci sono stati mandati perché io ho qua le mail.
PUBBLICO MINISTERO – Ma mandati, ovviamente la dottoressa le ha mandato quello che non era già agli atti e che lei ha specificamente richiesto in quanto non presenti agli atti.
VECCHIOTTI C. - Be' quelli allora dell'8 nessuno ce li ha mai esibiti, neanche li abbiamo visti.

Translation:

Vecchiotti C. - For example, on DNA laboratory investigation it is known and it is described in all kits that negative controls should be included in order to verify or less [sic] if they are negative or not.
Prosecutor (Comodi) - And did you ask Dr. Stefanoni for negative controls ?
Vecchiotti C. - I asked Dr. Stefanoni several times and she knows she sent them to me several times the files about the laboratory test he had performed, it was obvious that they should have been there and were not there.
PROSECUTOR - Why was it obvious?
Vecchiotti C. – Because you include the negative control, in such a delicate case moreover, in which among other things you know that we are speaking about contamination, I do not see why should it have been be not included.
PROSEUTOR - But the negative controls were in fact already included in the proceedings file , are you stating that the negative controls are not there?
Vecchiotti C. - No look, to me they… I asked doctor [Stefanoni] directly and I have all of them here the...
PROSECUTOR - No you did not ask.
Vecchiotti C. – No, sorry , I have asked Dr. ...
PROSECUTOR - No Professor , you did not.
Vecchiotti C. - Then we have the email ...
President JUDGE Claudio Pratillo Hellmann - But excuse me prosecutor , you were not there...
Vecchiotti C. - Excuse me, I have the e-mails .
PROSECUTOR [to the judge]- No Mr. President , but I have read the emails.
President JUDGE Claudio Pratillo Hellmann - Please ...
Vecchiotti C. - I have read the emails too, in which we were saying about ... So when I ask in the mail several times and she even sends me the CD and sends me through emails, because it was correct on her part to send them and she was cooperative, I owe to say this and I repeat it, she sends the electropherograms and I give it for granted, I ask the first time, I ask a second time, I'll tell you even something more, the other party consultants they even ask for the raw data, they ask [inaudible], they ask about everything and even more , it is clear that she should have sent it to me , I mean one would attach it at least just to show that all reagents , that everything was negative, this is one of the reasons.
PROSECUTOR - But you rule out ... Anyway you always make me run forward [with the arguments], into the steps following the ones that I was planning to follow in my mind, however, you rule out the possibility that Stefanoni did not send them to you, just because the negative controls were already included to the proceedings file?
Vecchiotti C. - But I 've never seen them in the files of the proceedings, I have searched for them, if you have them and they were not shown to us, that's another thing, I mean I am learning just now that they were included, I don’t know, they should know this .
Defense attorney GIULIA BONGIORNO – They are not there, they are not there.
PROSECUTOR – They were deposited on October 8. 2008 during the course of the Preliminary hearing .
Vecchiotti C. - Excuse me, all of them here ... and the are negatives there? Then they were not sent to us because here I have the emails .
PROSECUTOR – But ‘sent them’… of course, Dr. [Stefanoni] has sent what was not already included in the case file, and which you requested specifically as being something not present in the file .
Vecchiotti C. – Well, so then those of October 8. nobody has ever shown them to us, we didn’t even see them.

 

[Machiavelli]

(...)
The simple fact is an unknown substance was subjected to TWO PRESUMPTIVE tests for blood in which the second test was NEGATIVE. and a total of ZERO CONFIRMATORY tests. This is the very definition of a a NEGATIVE result for blood.

No. Logic is based on alternatives. Do you know the word 'alternative'?
The Supreme Court (in a 2008 ruling) makes clear that in order to have a doubt, or to challenge the concept of confirmation, what matters is the existence of a plausible alternative. You must draw an alternative scenario.
There is no "negative" or "positive", there is scenario A and scenario B.
You don't like explanation A. Ok. You must tell me what explanation B is.
THEN, only after that, if explanation B is equally plausible or anyway strong enough, you can say there is no indication to assume explanation A.
This evidentiary kind of reasoning is called a contrario.

 

[Machiavelli]

At least as serious a problem as the lack of reaction with TMB is the failure to do a confirmatory test. Modern confirmatory testing has a limit of detection that is greater than one millionfold. That is in the same ballpark as luminol. There is no excuse whatsoever not to have done it. Or perhaps Stefanoni did it and had an understandable lapse of memory about the results.

You perfectly know that confrmatory tests do not have even remotely the sensitivity of presumptive tests. Therefore, they would be expected to turn out negative.
And you also know that Stefanoni instead chose to use the samples to perform DNA tests, which are in fact more sensitive, and therefore they had a chance of turning a positive result.

 

[Bill Williams]

You perfectly know that confrmatory tests do not have even remotely the sensitivity of presumptive tests. Therefore, they would be expected to turn out negative.And you also know that Stefanoni instead chose to use the samples to perform DNA tests, which are in fact more sensitive, and therefore they had a chance of turning a positive result.

What a completely whacky thing to claim.... are you quite all right?

 

[acbytesla]

No. Logic is based on alternatives. Do you know the word 'alternative'?
The Supreme Court (in a 2008 ruling) makes clear that in order to have a doubt, or to challenge the concept of confirmation, what matters is the existence of a plausible alternative. You must draw an alternative scenario.
There is no "negative" or "positive", there is scenario A and scenario B.
You don't like explanation A. Ok. You must tell me what explanation B is.
THEN, only after that, if explanation B is equally plausible or anyway strong enough, you can say there is no indication to assume explanation A.
This evidentiary kind of reasoning is called a contrario.

Only in an Italian courtroom is there no negative or positive.

The simple fact is that no one has any idea what substance created a positive luminol reaction and a negative TMB reaction. A scientist answer would be that there is no way to know what it is but given the negative TMB we must assume that it isn't blood since we have no reason to assume that that the negative TMB result is false.

It is NOT reasonable to guess that a very legitimate and accurate test for blood is false without a definitive confirmatory test. A test which was available to Stefanoni but she chose not to perform, performed and got a negative result and hid this test just as she has been hiding the EDFs.

 

[moodstream]

No. Logic is based on alternatives. Do you know the word 'alternative'?
The Supreme Court (in a 2008 ruling) makes clear that in order to have a doubt, or to challenge the concept of confirmation, what matters is the existence of a plausible alternative. You must draw an alternative scenario.
There is no "negative" or "positive", there is scenario A and scenario B.
You don't like explanation A. Ok. You must tell me what explanation B is.
THEN, only after that, if explanation B is equally plausible or anyway strong enough, you can say there is no indication to assume explanation A.
This evidentiary kind of reasoning is called a contrario.

It calls up an image of Bocaccio's Decameron. Everyone sitting in a circle making up fables until they get the one they like best.

 

[Machiavelli]

Only in an Italian courtroom is there no negative or positive.

No, it's like a theorem of existence in mathematics: in order to conclude an that alternative "B" (= "non A") is true (or, as in this case, probably true), you need to actually previously prove that a "non-A" alternative exists (in other words, you need to prove that a logical dicothomy, the sheer theoretical possibility, actually exists, before dealing with deciding about it).

The simple fact is that no one has any idea what substance created a positive luminol reaction and a negative TMB reaction.

There is a reason why nobody has an idea what substance could create a positive reation to luminol and a negative reaction to TMB: because no such substance exists, not as a known substance, or even less as a known and plausible substance.

(...)

It is NOT reasonable to guess that a very legitimate and accurate test for blood is false without a definitive confirmatory test. (...)

What does it mean "very legitimate"? Scientifically? And what is "very accurate" (when we know it has a sensitivity far lower and specificity also lower than luminol).

A test which was available to Stefanoni but she chose not to perform (...)

It makes no sense to perform a confirmatory test if the sample is below the threshold of detection of a presumptive test. This is not a 'blood stain' but a latent stain.
And you can see yourself there are obvious likely blood stains that were not detected by TMB on this very same case; even the blood drop from Amanda's ear on her pillowcase turned a "non-positive" result from a TMB test. And everybody in the pro-Knox field considers that to be Amanda's blood.

 

[Bill Williams]

There is no "negative" or "positive", there is scenario A and scenario B.
You don't like explanation A. Ok. You must tell me what explanation B is.THEN, only after that, if explanation B is equally plausible or anyway strong enough, you can say there is no indication to assume explanation A.

Only in an Italian courtroom is there no negative or positive.

The simple fact is that no one has any idea what substance created a positive luminol reaction and a negative TMB reaction. A scientist answer would be that there is no way to know what it is but given the negative TMB we must assume that it isn't blood since we have no reason to assume that that the negative TMB result is false.

It is NOT reasonable to guess that a very legitimate and accurate test for blood is false without a definitive confirmatory test. A test which was available to Stefanoni but she chose not to perform, performed and got a negative result and hid this test just as she has been hiding the EDFs.

Acbytesla - you are either a saint for engaging Machiavelli in his dietrology, or.....

....... you won't like it.

If Machiavelli's reasoning is representative of Italian law.... then......

....... he won't like it.

What he is saying is this. To establish the identity of something one needs to do two tests... first a presumptory test, then a confirmatory test.

This is what he's saying:

- If you do a presumptory test, and the test turns out negative, the negative result is because you do not like it, not because the indicator said "negative". (Read the above... he actually said that)

- Because you do not "like" the negative result is, you must tell him what the positive result would look like! (Presumably, saying that the litmus paper - or whatever they used - turned red for negative, means that if you don't say, "It would have turned blue for positive", completely negates the negative result.)

- it's only after you tell him that the "blue for positive" result was equally probable to the one which actually came up, "red for negative", will he he claim there is, "no indication to assume explanation A". (I've read that four or five times, and honestly cannot figure out what he's talking about. Can you?)​

Without being too mean to Machiavelli.... he's admitted to having sleep issues. He's also said that Amanda Knox, similarly, could choose not to sleep and be immune from harmful side effects. (This was his reasoning for saying that Knox was lucid and fresh at interrogation, so couldn't have possibly been confused or disorientated....)

I would submit that Machiavelli's postings, here at about 3 am his time (or so) is proof that disorientation and confusion can result from sleep issues.

Apologies to Machiavelli for having to say it. Yet, this is germane in that he's applying that reasoning to why Knox should have been coherent and nonconfused at interrogation.....

 

[xinonix]

Remaking the lifetime movie

[FONT
The Kerchers sued Lifetime. Hey they did show a re-enactment of their daughter's murder as entertainment.
The result was that this movie only aired once.
They could re-edit this movie, remove the murder scene and add some new stuff, and make a much better movie.
I think we can all agree that it would be great if Hayden Paniettierre filmed a new scene that shows us what happened when Amanda took a shower and walked down the hall doing that trick where she used the bath mat as a slippers.
This way we could see the bathroom before it was tinted with luminol.
They should also tell the story from Rudy's point of view.

 

[acbytesla]

I have a big problem with the declaration that something is probably blood in a court of law after negative presumptive tests. It's not that we know absolutely 100 percent that something isn't blood, but that we don't and never will know what it is.

And for a scientist to ignore the results of her own testing procedures and standard forensic protocol and testify this way in a courtroom makes her a disgrace to her profession. At minimum, Stefanoni needs to be fired over something like this.

Stefanoni has proved herself to be a shill and extremely unprofessional.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

Translation:

Vecchiotti C. - For example, on DNA laboratory investigation it is known and it is described in all kits that negative controls should be included in order to verify or less [sic] if they are negative or not.
Prosecutor (Comodi) - And did you ask Dr. Stefanoni for negative controls ?
Vecchiotti C. - I asked Dr. Stefanoni several times and she knows she sent them to me several times the files about the laboratory test he had performed, it was obvious that they should have been there and were not there.
PROSECUTOR - Why was it obvious?
Vecchiotti C. – Because you include the negative control, in such a delicate case moreover, in which among other things you know that we are speaking about contamination, I do not see why should it have been be not included.
PROSEUTOR - But the negative controls were in fact already included in the proceedings file , are you stating that the negative controls are not there?
Vecchiotti C. - No look, to me they… I asked doctor [Stefanoni] directly and I have all of them here the...
PROSECUTOR - No you did not ask.
Vecchiotti C. – No, sorry , I have asked Dr. ...
PROSECUTOR - No Professor , you did not.
Vecchiotti C. - Then we have the email ...
President JUDGE Claudio Pratillo Hellmann - But excuse me prosecutor , you were not there...
Vecchiotti C. - Excuse me, I have the e-mails .
PROSECUTOR [to the judge]- No Mr. President , but I have read the emails.
President JUDGE Claudio Pratillo Hellmann - Please ...
Vecchiotti C. - I have read the emails too, in which we were saying about ... So when I ask in the mail several times and she even sends me the CD and sends me through emails, because it was correct on her part to send them and she was cooperative, I owe to say this and I repeat it, she sends the electropherograms and I give it for granted, I ask the first time, I ask a second time, I'll tell you even something more, the other party consultants they even ask for the raw data, they ask [inaudible], they ask about everything and even more , it is clear that she should have sent it to me , I mean one would attach it at least just to show that all reagents , that everything was negative, this is one of the reasons.
PROSECUTOR - But you rule out ... Anyway you always make me run forward [with the arguments], into the steps following the ones that I was planning to follow in my mind, however, you rule out the possibility that Stefanoni did not send them to you, just because the negative controls were already included to the proceedings file?
Vecchiotti C. - But I 've never seen them in the files of the proceedings, I have searched for them, if you have them and they were not shown to us, that's another thing, I mean I am learning just now that they were included, I don’t know, they should know this .
Defense attorney GIULIA BONGIORNO – They are not there, they are not there.
PROSECUTOR – They were deposited on October 8. 2008 during the course of the Preliminary hearing .
Vecchiotti C. - Excuse me, all of them here ... and the are negatives there? Then they were not sent to us because here I have the emails .
PROSECUTOR – But ‘sent them’… of course, Dr. [Stefanoni] has sent what was not already included in the case file, and which you requested specifically as being something not present in the file .
Vecchiotti C. – Well, so then those of October 8. nobody has ever shown them to us, we didn’t even see them.

I actually think this supports the fact that she didn't have them. Clearly she emailed asking for them several times. Why didn't someone respond telling her they were in the file? The prosector asserts they were in the file but no one has seen them there. Did he put on a witness who confirmed they were in the file since 2008... or ever?

And honestly, he is just as confusing or dancing around as she is, if not more. This doesn't do much for your argument they were available, IMO.