1 I notice now that in the paragraph above there is a translation mistake. In the statement:
(…) potrebbe fornire un esito del tutto irrilevante anche ad ammettere la natura spermatica delle macchie medesime (…)
the expression “anche ad ammettere” means “even if we admit”. The statement properly translated: “[the test] could yield a completely irrelevant result even if we admit the the spermatic nature of the same stains (…)”.
The statement is an “even if” statement, a concessive secondary statement not a final secondary statement; it does not indicate a purpose (“to admit”) but “despite a condition”.
I have never noticed this translation mistake before.
2 The inference by Bill Williams that Massei reasoning would imply admitting a consensual intercourse between Guede and Meredith on at another time based on this text, is wrong and false.
The question is not a dissection of what is explicit or implicit in Massei’s text, neither it is simply about points of law: what Bill Williams says is simply false in logic. His inference and interpretation is just wrong based on the logical content of the text.
Massei says:
The problem with Bill’s reading of Massei –
and maybe with a bad writing style of Massei himself - is that Bill’s interpretation looks like as if Massei only provides one reason for its irrelevance, which is the impossibility to date it.
But in fact Massei gives
two reasons, independent from each other:
1 the stain could not be dated (which would make it be irrelevant IF it’s Silenzi’s semen).
2 because –
besides the first reason - it may be [still] completely irrelevant, even if it is semen [and thus, implicitly, even if it is semen from someone else, not from Silenzi].
TWO reasons, not one. I see that Massei could have expressed them better than that. But I clearly see two, not one.
Bill Williams instead sees a logical link as if #2 was directly depending from #1, thus he thinks that Massei offered only one reason after all, the impossibility to date the stain.
But Bill WIlliams is wrong, and this is a false reading.
The last part of the Massei-Cristiani report is badly written, this paragraph included (and the translation mistake is a symptom of that), however the statement above is structured around the connector “
oltre a” ("besides that", "in addition to") and this leaves no doubt that the person writing intends to address two separate reasons, not just one. It's not the repeatition of one reason twice. And these two reasons are independent.
So the fact that the stain is “irrelevant” is a statement to beconsidered something in addition to the fact that it could not be dated.
This means: Massei finds the semen stain may yield a result that is irrelevant,
not just insofar it could be from Giacomo Silenzi and because it could not be dated, but also on some further, additional grounds; thus independently from the issue of its dating. So my reading: Massei says the stain may be irrelevant also on independent reason; it may be irrelevant not only in the event that it’s attributed to Silenzi (in that event, the reason would be that it could not be dated) but it would be irrelevant even if it was found to be attributable to Guede or to Sollecito. This for other independent reasons,
besides the fact that it can’t be dated.
So Bill Willman's inference it's wrong. It's not that Masseiì's reasoning would imply considering any “consensual” intercourse with Guede on a previous time, it won’t. No, the stain would be irrelevant as pice of evidence even in the event that the stain was related to the crime: the implicit meaning of the word “irrelevant” by Massei here is: it would be meaningless even if it belongs to Guede or Sollecito, because t
here is already enough evidence to convict Guede (actually, convicted elsewhere and not under trial) as well as enough evidence to convict Sollecito.
The implication of Massei decision is not that there may have been a consensual sex between Guede and Meredith, but instead that there is already enough evidence against both Guede and Sollecito. This is the reason why a test would be only “
explorative” and not “
absolutely necessary”.
