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

[Dan O.]

If we treat the knife as a negative control for which it qualifies being that there was nothing at the time of it's collection that linked it to the crime, Stefanoni's own testing has proven contamination.

 

[Mary_H]

That's just what I was wondering. This gets more and more bizarre. He seems to be saying a presumptive blood test is more accurate than a confirmatory test.

The transcript about the negative controls is weird too. Does he read that as Vecchiotti's acknowledging that she got them? I don't see it.

I feel like I'm watching cognitive dissonance erupt into full-blown psychosis.

And think of a roomful of a sovereign nation's highest legal minds going through the same process. That's why this is taking so long.

Because of the way the knife and the bra were collected, neither of them would have been admissible as evidence in rational courtrooms. The footprints are essentially irrelevant, too, because once the killer left bloody footprints around the house, blood could have been tracked anywhere by anyone, for example, by someone in her bare feet walking through them outside a steamy bathroom.

Discussions of the knife, the bra clasp and the footprints are slippery slopes that serve little purpose other than to illustrate that PIP have enough respect for ILE and PGP to listen, consider the evidence, and respond. Too much respect.

 

[moodstream]

The process of sampling, extraction, amplification and then testing may have something to say about why more tests aren't generated when there is one positive result. By the time the results are known, the knife would have long ago been repackaged and sealed away. There are also many more items to be processed.

Check out this article. It is really good!

UNDERSTANDING THE INDEPENDENT DNA EXPERTS’ REPORT IN THE AMANDA KNOX CASE (PART I)

 

[acbytesla]

If we treat the knife as a negative control for which it qualifies being that there was nothing at the time of it's collection that linked it to the crime, Stefanoni's own testing has proven contamination.

This is so logically true. Everything about the knife does not pass the smell test. It is a cooking instrument, not a murder weapon.

Even if Meredith Kercher's DNA was found on this knife, it still wouldn't be the murder weapon. This is what the guilters refuse to acknowledge. To consider this to be the murder weapon, one must be an idiot.

1. The murder weapon matches the bloody stain on Meredith's bed sheet. This cooking knife does not.
2. The murder weapon is something people would carry with them. NOBODY carries a 10 inch cooking knife. NOBODY CARRIES A 10" COOKING KNIFE..NOBODY!!!
3. The killer is not going to wipe the floor of all their traces as the guilters claim and then keep the knife to a homicide.

 

[RandyN]

now that's not right ! RFLMAO

This just in...video of the accused has appeared. He appears to be buying thong underwear and giggling about having wild sex or something like that.

Sales clerk Quintinvale can describe a tramp stamp on his back side that he happened to notice with a sideways glance....even after a year.

The thong apparently had skid marks which seems to defy logic; but in Italy this is not a problem...it is admissible anyway under rule BR549 sub 90210.

 

[LondonJohn]

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).

Oh right. She has a PhD then. That's a fact, according to you. Didn't know that.

Have you got a link to her dissertation? Which university awarded her PhD, and in what year? Can you also provide a link to any time where she has, on the record, been referred to (or referred to herself) as "Dottoressa di Ricerca"?

Thanks in advance

ETA: Having read your parenthetical definitive statement -"These are facts, not opinions", I understandably neglected to see your prefacing words about not-a-real-doctor Stefanoni's PhD....

So what you're saying is this: "It's likely that she has a PhD. And that's a fact."

L.O.L.

While I have to admire your chutzpah in engineering such a weasely get-out clause in the same breath as an assertion of factual certainty, I'd still like to see the evidence I asked for above.

Somehow, I don't think an informative answer will be forthcoming...

 

[acbytesla]

Check out this article. It is really good!

UNDERSTANDING THE INDEPENDENT DNA EXPERTS’ REPORT IN THE AMANDA KNOX CASE (PART I)

That is an excellent article moodstream. I haven't read it in a long time. So it's nice to go back and read something that provides such excellent detail. So thanks for reminding us.

 

[snook1]

This is so logically true. Everything about the knife does not pass the smell test. It is a cooking instrument, not a murder weapon.

Even if Meredith Kercher's DNA was found on this knife, it still wouldn't be the murder weapon. This is what the guilters refuse to acknowledge. To consider this to be the murder weapon, one must be an idiot.

1. The murder weapon matches the bloody stain on Meredith's bed sheet. This cooking knife does not.
2. The murder weapon is something people would carry with them. NOBODY carries a 10 inch cooking knife. NOBODY CARRIES A 10" COOKING KNIFE..NOBODY!!!
3. The killer is not going to wipe the floor of all their traces as the guilters claim and then keep the knife to a homicide.

I cannot bring my mind around the fact that a killer would take a large kitchen knife out of his own kitchen drawer(or kitchen drawer of a boyfriendfor that matter), then kill someone with it, then bring it back to the kitchen drawer.

How do you do that? How do you carry a large kitchen knife back to your own apartment after you murdered someone? What for? Why bring it in the first place? This is so illogical, it always was. Not to mention that the knife does not match the wounds or inprint on the bed. It's SO not the murder weapon.

 

[snook1]

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).

Doesn't mean she didn't lie, she did. Doesn't mean her work wasn't at best sloppy, it was. Doesn't mean her report wasn't completely discredited by independent forensic experts (btw, as Vogt confirmed, their report stands in Florence trial), it was. Doesn't mean there wasn't further confirmation by RIS that she didn't follow scientific standards. There was.

 

[Wildhorses]

So I just read Mach's court transcript.

Obviously, it does not say what he thinks it says (let alone show Vecchiotti speaking "exactly like a criminal"). But leaving aside the obvious, I have a question about how this testimony fits into the bigger picture.

IF the negative controls had been in file of the proceedings -- which is where the prosecutor says they were -- then WHY did Stefanoni show up in court with control documentation that had the wrong date and serial number?

And once it was discovered she was trying to palm off false documentation, WHY did she claim she couldn't find the documentation, then later find it in her garage?

I mean if all the right stuff was sitting in the file of the proceedings, you'd think she wouldn't have any trouble producing it. Wouldn't you?

 

[Diocletus]

Translation:

Quote:
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.

This proves one thing for sure: Commodi is a weasel. Look what she does:

1. she claims that Vecciotti didn't ask for the negative controls,

2. Then, she states that the negative controls are already in the case file

3. Then, she tries to imply that the reason that Stefanoni didn't send the controls to Vecciotti is because the controls are already on the record

The basic argument appears to be that Vecchiotti requested only the data that was not already of record, the negative controls were filed on October 8, and therefore Vecciotti's request didn't include negative controls.

What's clear to me (highlighted) is that both Vecchiotti and the parties did request the negative controls, along with all other relevant data, and Stefanoni did not send the controls to Vecchiotti along with the other information that she did send. There is no evidence whatsoever, beyond Comodi's claims, that the negative controls for the amplifications and electrophoresis in question were in fact filed on October 8, and I'm sure that they weren't, otherwise, we would see Stefanoni saying so and not Comodi, and furthermore, we wouldn't be seeing this argument that the reason the controls weren't requested is because they are somewhere in "the file": they would have been shown to Hellmann.

This is all just obfuscation. Produce the negative controls. Even now, it's not too late.

 

[Wildhorses]

This proves one thing for sure: Commodi is a weasel. Look what she does:

1. she claims that Vecciotti didn't ask for the negative controls,

2. Then, she states that the negative controls are already in the case file

3. Then, she tries to imply that the reason that Stefanoni didn't send the controls to Vecciotti is because the controls are already on the record

The basic argument appears to be that Vecchiotti requested only the data that was not already of record, the negative controls were filed on October 8, and therefore Vecciotti's request didn't include negative controls.

What's clear to me (highlighted) is that both Vecchiotti and the parties did request the negative controls, along with all other relevant data, and Stefanoni did not send the controls to Vecchiotti along with the other information that she did send. There is no evidence whatsoever, beyond Comodi's claims, that the negative controls for the amplifications and electrophoresis in question were in fact filed on October 8, and I'm sure that they weren't, otherwise, we would see Stefanoni saying so and not Comodi, and furthermore, we wouldn't be seeing this argument that the reason the controls weren't requested is because they are somewhere in "the file": they would have been shown to Hellmann.

This is all just obfuscation. Produce the negative controls. Even now, it's not too late.

It is a revealing snippet. Just those few lines show the problem with letting the prosecution control access to data.

The prosecutor is basically gaslighting Vecchiotti.

I'd LOVE to see those emails. LOVE to hear Stefanoni argue she acted in good faith... then see her carted off to jail.

 

[snook1]

It is a revealing snippet. Just those few lines show the problem with letting the prosecution control access to data.

The prosecutor is basically gaslighting Vecchiotti.

I'd LOVE to see those emails. LOVE to hear Stefanoni argue she acted in good faith... then see her carted off to jail.

I dreamed about it. No, really, I did.

 

[Wildhorses]

I cannot bring my mind around the fact that a killer would take a large kitchen knife out of his own kitchen drawer(or kitchen drawer of a boyfriendfor that matter), then kill someone with it, then bring it back to the kitchen drawer.

How do you do that? How do you carry a large kitchen knife back to your own apartment after you murdered someone? What for? Why bring it in the first place? This is so illogical, it always was. Not to mention that the knife does not match the wounds or inprint on the bed. It SO not the murder weapon.

Well see, Knox had a spacious handbag. That makes it all plausible. And if it's plausible, it's likely. And if it's likely, it's rock solid evidence.

Ya gotta use osmotic logic.

 

[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?

That's just what I was wondering. This gets more and more bizarre. He seems to be saying a presumptive blood test is more accurate than a confirmatory test.

The transcript about the negative controls is weird too. Does he read that as Vecchiotti's acknowledging that she got them? I don't see it.

I feel like I'm watching cognitive dissonance erupt into full-blown psychosis.

As much as it's probably inappropriate to bring up sleep disorders... this is proof, for me at least, that such things produce confusion.

Imagine the kind of things that come from someone who's had a housemate brutally murdered, and for three nights had no sleep.... THEN dragged into an all night interrogation where one is called a stupid liar and hit on the back of the head....

....... then the interpreter, acting as a mediator (as Anna Donnino said she did), suggests to you that you've had a lapse of memory because of trauma.

I don't really mean to pick on Machiavelli here... but we are reading such confusing dietrology in this thread. Although he will deny it, he has mentioned that his "expertise" in diagnosing Knox's sleep disorders (which no one else in the world has diagnosed!) is because of his own personal experience in the subject.

 

[Bill Williams]

I cannot bring my mind around the fact that a killer would take a large kitchen knife out of his own kitchen drawer(or kitchen drawer of a boyfriendfor that matter), then kill someone with it, then bring it back to the kitchen drawer.

How do you do that? How do you carry a large kitchen knife back to your own apartment after you murdered someone? What for? Why bring it in the first place? This is so illogical, it always was. Not to mention that the knife does not match the wounds or inprint on the bed. It SO not the murder weapon.

Well see, Knox had a spacious handbag. That makes it all plausible. And if it's plausible, it's likely. And if it's likely, it's rock solid evidence.

Ya gotta use osmotic logic.

Add to all this what Massei faced in writing his motivations, released Spring 2010.

.......... That the knife is inextricably tied to motive.

And Massei ruled that Raffaele and Knox had no motive, they basically joined in at the last second when they heard things go wrong between Meredith and Rudy in the next bedroom.

So Massei, in this incredibly sloppy reconstruction which defies belief, needs to now invent an innocent reason for Knox to be carrying that kitchen knife.

And so one more step in that, "And if it's plausible, it's likely. And if it's likely, it's rock solid evidence," thought process needs to be added, Wildhorses. It now has to be also.....

And if I can think it up and invent a scenario, it's plausible. And if it's plausible, it's likely. And if it's likely, it's rock solid evidence.

That's the story of the case against Sollecito and Knox.

Then in Nov 2013 the RIS Carabinieri come back saying that there's actually no reason, really, to even suspect that knife went anywhere.

Who are you going to believe? Machiavelli, or your lying eyes? Sheesh, even Andrea Vogt has now caved in with regard to the C&V report's admissibility with Nencini.

Hey Machiavelli: does that now make Vogt "an approximate reporter"?

 

[LondonJohn]

Doesn't mean she didn't lie, she did. Doesn't mean her work wasn't at best sloppy, it was. Doesn't mean her report wasn't completely discredited by independent forensic experts (btw, as Vogt confirmed, their report stands in Florence trial), it was. Doesn't mean there wasn't further confirmation by RIS that she didn't follow scientific standards. There was.

Exactly. In many ways, the discussion of Stefanoni's academic credentials (or, more accurately, her lack of them) is moot. Even Nobel laureates and Emeritus professors can make - and have made in the past - dreadful scientific errors, including those related to incompetence, incorrect methods, negligence and dissembling about results.

As you say, regardless of Stefanoni's academic rank, it's demonstrably true that she made an entire catalogue of shocking errors in the Kercher case. They were errors of incompetence, malpractice, obfuscation, omission and sophistry.

(Oh, and she's not a real doctor outside the fantasy world of Italian academia, just for the record )

 

[LondonJohn]

This is all just obfuscation. Produce the negative controls. Even now, it's not too late.

There are no documented negative controls. I think we can be fairly certain of that. Either Stefanoni did do negative controls and lost the properly-documented results, or she did them and scribbled the results down on a piece of scrap paper (and lost that too), or she never did them at all. All my money is on the third of those options.

ETA: Actually, I'd say that about 10% of my money is on option 2. The other 90% is on option 3.

 

[LondonJohn]

It is a revealing snippet. Just those few lines show the problem with letting the prosecution control access to data.

The prosecutor is basically gaslighting Vecchiotti.

I'd LOVE to see those emails. LOVE to hear Stefanoni argue she acted in good faith... then see her carted off to jail.

While I share your disgust at Stefanoni's conduct and actions in this case, I don't think they necessarily amount to criminal acts (unless they can find proof beyond a reasonable doubt of willful mendacity and/or corruption in public office).

My best hope is that Stefanoni will be properly investigated after this charade is all over,and that after due process she will be found guilty of professional misconduct, sacked, and be prevented from working in public service again.

I don't say that because I in any gloat at the prospect, nor because I feel any personal need to "get" Stefanoni. I say it because I objectively feel that people in her position should be held fully accountable for their actions, especially when the human cost of malpractice is so significant. And we're not talking about a few minor lapses here. What Stefanoni did - and didn't do - is about as bad as it gets, short of outright invention of results or willful planting of DNA (I am assuming for now that neither of these things took place in this case).

 

[snook1]

Exactly. In many ways, the discussion of Stefanoni's academic credentials (or, more accurately, her lack of them) is moot. Even Nobel laureates and Emeritus professors can make - and have made in the past - dreadful scientific errors, including those related to incompetence, incorrect methods, negligence and dissembling about results.

As you say, regardless of Stefanoni's academic rank, it's demonstrably true that she made an entire catalogue of shocking errors in the Kercher case. They were errors of incompetence, malpractice, obfuscation, omission and sophistry.

(Oh, and she's not a real doctor outside the fantasy world of Italian academia, just for the record )

Actually, I would be willing to cut her some slack, given that she's not a real doctor, but since Macchiavelli insist on her being a real doctor after all, I think it's important not to get deconcentrated and regard Stefanoni as the next best thing to a doctor in scientific field. Therefore, we can assume she's almost a doctor and, boy, she messed up this case. I don't know though if the reason behind it was her lack of education(and not being a real doctor) or her malpractice and feeling that she just had to save her own butt, didn't really matter that the kids may actually go to jail.