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

[Samson]

Classy. And it's gone pages without comment. When AK and RS supporters scramble towards the moral high ground and rabbit on about hate sites, I think of comments like this and others denigrating Meredith's family.

Kercher senior shunned Amanda's request to tell her own story to them, saying I have heard this rubbish before. This was at a time when two Italian high court judges had declared her innocent. I find this to be extremely offensive. She made the huge effort to write a factual 400 page book. The Kercher daughter said we don't read these books. I find that to be a shunning of the truth she mendaciously claims to be seeking.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

David Balding's view of DNA contamination

BBC link here. Balding said, "'Every crime sample that was ever collected was contaminated. Even in the most pristine conditions in a laboratory, you cannot have a DNA-free environment,' he says.

"The point is you have to allow for that to do a correct evaluation of the evidence; all of that kind of contamination just isn't a problem, as it's not going to match. The only contamination that matters is something that would have got the suspect's DNA.'"

I agree that environmental DNA exists and can be a problem. Yet there are several major problems with this position. The first is that not every electropherogram has an equal number of unassigned peaks. The second is that DNA cannot be interrogated. One cannot tell just by looking at the peaks which ones do or do not come from environmental DNA. Dr. Jason Gilder wrote to me several years ago, “One of the standard axioms of DNA typing is, the presence of a DNA profile says nothing about the time frame or the circumstances under which DNA was transferred to that item. Contamination falls into is one such instance of an issue that cannot be identified by the electropherogram alone (unless you are dealing with a control sample or other known profile).”

The third problem is that his argument leads to some odd conclusions. It seems as if the suspect must be identified before the DNA is analyzed. Only that way would we know which is the suspect's DNA and which is not. But where does that leave us when we don't know who the suspects are when we do the analysis. Does that mean that all of the DNA we find must be from the environment. A second problem situation is when a suspect is incarcerated and then a DNA test is run and points to another person. Does Balding's position imply that the other person's DNA must be environmental because the other person was not a suspect at the time? That would eliminate the possibility of a DNA-based exoneration.

Let us assume that the given piece of evidence has a mixture of two people's DNA (Mr. A and Mr. B). And let us assume that the one of them (A) was already a suspect and that the other one (B) can be excluded as a suspect on some gronds. Balding's position could be taken to mean that the DNA evidence has now strengthened the case against the suspect, Mr.A. What this ignores is the fact that both individuals DNA ended up on the item. If Mr. B's DNA came there by means other than the commission of a crime, how does one know that Mr. A's did not arrive by an equivalent route?

Let us consider the Jane Mixer murder, originally thought to be the work of a serial killer? Gary Leiterman's DNA was found when some items of evidence were tested many years later. Let us grant that Leiterman should now be a suspect, even though it is unclear from Balding's position that we should. John Ruelas's DNA was also found, yet he was only four years old at the time and living in a different city from Ms. Mixer; therefore, he was not a suspect. Should we ignore Ruelas's DNA and just conclude that Leiterman did it? That would be absurd.

 

[Bill Williams]

Does anyone have any information on whether judge Crini has been suspended pending further investigations or is he still working on the motivations?

Is the 90 day clock for publication of motivations still ticking?

AFAIK Judge Nencini.... Crini is the prosecutor who thought pooh in the toilet triggered all this.... has not been suspended, and is still on the 90 day clock to produce a motivations report.

His comments about Raffaele seem to have been what triggered a unanimous vote to investigate whether his remarks showed prejudice. What's at stake is whether or not he implied that if Raffaele had ratted out Amanda, he would have gone free or been treated more leniently. I thought "the evidence" convicted Raffaele, not his unwillingness to deprive Knox of an alibi.

 

[Bill Williams]

I must admit I haven’t been pursuing the thread as much so missed the comment, I agree; but really are you surprised by the lack of censure? I’m not.

Watch the tsunami response now.

What's the point of commenting on classless comments?

<tsunami mode, off>

 

[Grinder]

Classy. And it's gone pages without comment. When AK and RS supporters scramble towards the moral high ground and rabbit on about hate sites, I think of comments like this and others denigrating Meredith's family.

The attacks on Amanda, family, friends and supporters on the PG sites outnumber anything towards the Kerchers by 100 to 1.

I don't like it in either direction and don't think you find I've attacked anybody but a few of the most extreme PG people.

It is somewhat baffling that the release of the one person that unquestionably was involved in Meredith's murder doesn't elicit (thanks to whomever it was that corrected my use before ) any comment from the family.

I saw the remark you are now commenting on and thought it best to let it go away but now that you have brought it up to feature it again, I will say that I found it disgusting and serving of no purpose.

Perhaps you could make a comment about Amanda having sex with Obama's dog.

 

[Diocletus]

People within ABC are unhappy too, but they can't do anything because Abrams is a big shot. Abrams has been advised of numerous factual errors, he has been presented with documentation that proves the errors, and he refuses to allow any changes. The most he would allow was removal of the bogus quotes he attributed to Amanda.

Everyone who cares about this should flame ABC hard.

Big shot? I though he was Nancy Grace's pool boy?

 

[Mary_H]

Classy. And it's gone pages without comment. When AK and RS supporters scramble towards the moral high ground and rabbit on about hate sites, I think of comments like this and others denigrating Meredith's family.

The difference is that on the hate sites you don't have to go pages to find comments like this and others denigrating people's families.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

Kercher senior shunned Amanda's request to tell her own story to them, saying I have heard this rubbish before. This was at a time when two Italian high court judges had declared her innocent. I find this to be extremely offensive. She made the huge effort to write a factual 400 page book. The Kercher daughter said we don't read these books. I find that to be a shunning of the truth she mendaciously claims to be seeking.

Really? Kind of strikes me as an unsurprising response from the murder victims family, like it or not, agree with it or not, they accept the prosecution’s case.

 

[Diocletus]

Really? Kind of strikes me as an unsurprising response from the murder victims family, like it or not, agree with it or not, they accept the prosecution’s case.

So if your loved one is killed, then you are absolved from responsibility for actually using your brain? How curious.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

So if your loved one is killed, then you are absolved from responsibility for actually using your brain? How curious.

Sorry did you miss this bit from my post?

Really? Kind of strikes me as an unsurprising response from the murder victims family, like it or not, agree with it or not, they accept the prosecution’s case.

 

[Diocletus]

Sorry did you miss this bit from my post?

I did not. The fact that some prosecutor proposes something does not mean that someone else should act like a complete dumbass. See, e.g., Duke Lacrosse Case.

 

[js202]

I did not. The fact that some prosecutor proposes something does not mean that someone else should act like a complete dumbass. See, e.g., Duke Lacrosse Case.

Pithily and succinctly expressed. Sums up the entire business, really. Kudos.

 

[CoulsdonUK]

I did not. The fact that some prosecutor proposes something does not mean that someone else should act like a complete dumbass. See, e.g., Duke Lacrosse Case.

Well in the context of Amanda we will have to wait and see how the American government of the day handles extradition. Duke Lacrosse case, whereabouts in Italy was that case? Dumbass, what do you mean?

 

[Samson]

Really? Kind of strikes me as an unsurprising response from the murder victims family, like it or not, agree with it or not, they accept the prosecution’s case.

So it is completely irrelevant in seeking the truth that two judges spent a year listening to the evidence and declared them innocent of carrying a knife, murdering, stealing and staging a break in. This is the elephant in the room, the truth was supposedly annulled.
Do you believe the break in was staged for example? I don't and neither do high court judges. It behoves the Kercher family to not just believe this, but to study with diligence greater than anyone here the distribution of glass, the possibility of the entry, the shutter damage and deeply impaled glass shard in hard wood that could arise only with great velocity, and all other hotly contested evidential items before seeking the destruction of these two lives on all these charges. This is not an attack, but a suggestion they have a profound obligation. They joined the prosecution. No one else here did. Most here would believe the position they hold is completely irreconcilable with intensive study of the evidence. There is much said about this case but little about whether the third trial would have proceeded without their encouragement.

 

[Kaosium]

Brilliant lawyer Alan Dershowitz says there is plenty of evidence that twice-convicted murderer Amanda Knox is a murderer http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2014/01/31/ctw-meredith-kercher-amanda-knox-retrial-verdict-dershowitz.cnn.html

Sorry CTers.

Did you listen to what he said? It's a pretty piss-poor case for guilt and some of what he said wasn't even true. Let's start with his claim that they 'found forensically' that multiple people must have committed the crime. That's not true, in Amanda and Raffaele's trial even the prosecution experts had to admit that from the point of view of forensic science they couldn't rule out that a single person had murdered Meredith, to wit:

The consultants and forensic scientists have asserted that from the point of view of forensic science, it cannot be ruled out that the author of the injuries could have been a single attacker, because the bruises and the wounds from a pointed and cutting weapon are not in themselves incompatible with the action of a single person. With regard to this, it is nevertheless observed that the contribution of each discipline is specifically in the domain of the specific competence of that discipline, and in fact the consultants and forensic experts concentrated their attention on the aspects specifically belonging to forensic science: time of death, cause of death, elements indicating sexual violence, the injuries present on the body of the victim, and the causes and descriptions of these. The answer given above concerning the possibility of their being inflicted by the action of a single person or by more than one was given in relation to these specific duties and questions, which belong precisely to the domain of forensic science, and the meaning of this answer was thus that there are no scientific elements arising directly from forensic science which could rule out the injuries having been caused by the action of a single person.

No, the reasons that Massei gives are not foresnic but speculative that because Meredith was awake and not drunk, had played soccer, took karate once and boxed on one occasion and her sister thought she was very strong indicated to him that there should have been more cuts on her hands, of which there were only a few. Plus he finds it impossible to imagine that one person could have removed her clothes, forgetting to take into account that some of those clothes were removed after she'd been stabbed, and that a man with a knife might intimidate her or she might be dazed by having her throat grabbed and her head smashed into the wall.

The other thing he might be referring to is that the Rudy Guede trial determined that there were multiple attackers. That was simply because his defense was that he was there (he couldn't deny that) but someone else did it in his ever-changing story (but he couldn't actually identify them) and Mignini was holding two people in jail without charges he also wanted to prosecute for the crime so he only advanced a theory that multiple people were there. As seen above that didn't survive forensic scrutiny even by the prosecution experts.

Rudy Guede never testified against Amanda and Raffaele at their trial, here's Massei on that:

The co-accused, separately tried, Rudy Hermann Guede, examined at the hearing of April 4, 2009 pursuant to Article 210 paragraph 1 of the Criminal Procedure Code with the assistance of his defenders, availed himself of the right to not respond.

What he did do in Raffaele and Amanda's appeal is answer about a letter he'd written after Mario Alessi and three others wrote the court to say Rudy had told them in prison that Raffaele and Amanda weren't involved, it was some fat drunk guy who'd fled to England. Guede wrote a letter himself mostly saying what a horrible person Alessi was (he killed a toddler with a shovel) and ended it by saying he was innocent and everyone should blame Amanda and Raffaele. In the Hellmann court he was asked to respond to Alessi as the previous week Alessi and two others testified to what Guede had said (the third demurred when the prosecution threatened them all with more prison time before they testified) and answered questions about the letter but refused to testify about the murder.

Let us remember that Rudy Guede left his traces inside Meredith, on her shirt, her bra, her purse, a handprint in her blood on the pillow found beneath her body and his shoeprints in her blood in multiple places in her room. He then fled to Germany. His story was originally he was taking a dump and heard Meredith scream and a left-handed Italian rushed past him when he got out with his pants down and said in non-accented Italian, 'black man found, black man guilty.' He also originally said to his friend (who unbeknownst to Rudy had gone to the police and the call was being monitored) that Amanda was not there, but maybe Raffaele (he was following the news of the case from Germany) who'd been arrested was the Italian.

Then after his arrest (and in his own trial) he added a bit about Meredith saying to him when he first got there that she was missing money and that Meredith called Amanda 'a whore of a doper' and that he hated her now or somesuch and while he in the bathroom he heard Meredith arguing with some girl about money in Italian and then came out and was pushed down by the Italian male whose face he couldn't see but was maybe Raffaele and he then went to the window and saw a silhouette of what he thought might be Amanda. At this point he claims all the evidence of him at the scene is because he tried to save Meredith, but gave up and fled instead.

That summary is necessary to understand what he said before the Hellmann Court. He cannot positively ID either Raffaele or Amanda (his story precludes seeing them closely enough) and by his own account cannot say who murdered Meredith because he didn't witness it. Therefore, as he puts it, "It’s not up to me to decide who it is that killed Meredith" but that someone else was there and when he wrote the letter he decided to "let it out" and say he thought it was Raffaele and Amanda too, like the judges decided. That works out so nicely for him, what doesn't work out so well is that Raffaele and Amanda still have an alibi for when he claims this occurred and everyone else that testified, including ones who think Amanda guilty, said they'd never heard Meredith say anything about hating Amanda (most said the opposite one--Butterworth--said she 'sensed some strain') missing money or Amanda stealing it and Amanda had 5k euros in her European account and more at home, whereas Guede managed to get to Germany and survive despite the fact he was jobless and facing eviction.

As for the 'accusing an innocent man' that abortion is before the ECHR and being as she was held without a lawyer, said the same day she couldn't be used as "testimone" and the following day recanted completely and anyone who reads those Statements ought to be able to see they're neither definite in any 'accusation' ("confusedly") nor coherent. As for 'evidence placing herself at the scene' I don't know what Alan Dershowitz could be talking about, even the Italian Supreme Court ruled those statements couldn't be used against Amanda in the murder trial, just against Patrick (which never came to pass) and Amanda in the calunnia trial, there's nothing anywhere in Massei (or anywhere else I know of) about those statements 'placing her at the scene.'

I have no idea what he could mean by 'creating a false alibi.' Is that some bunnyhole dropping they've constructed and are mailing out to their dupes? Is there something in Italian law about saying you weren't there that gives you additional charges if you're found guilty? What on earth could that mean?

The next time he claims there's 'thousands in prison in the US on less evidence' someone ought to ask him to name three, then point out what he claimed was evidence against Amanda wouldn't be allowed in American court. Guede was never cross-examined and couldn't be used on his insinuations, especially the ones that take place while she still has an alibi. The calunnia charge doesn't exist and her statements signed without a lawyer in a language she could barely read in the middle of the night would have been more thoroughly disallowed than they were in Italy. American courts don't allow 'findings' on evidence from another trial to be used against someone else. However, I'd like to hear just who he thinks has been convicted on less evidence, it may be those are miscarriages of justice too and claiming that because that happens here we ought not care is not compelling. He'll probably also find many of those who think Amanda and Raffaele innocent think them innocent too and some are even working to free them too.

I couldn't help but chuckle when he argued that because these other countries denied extradition on Polanski, Kim Dot Com, or Assange that means we cannot deny extradition on Amanda Knox. How stupid is that? Did he even think that all the way through before he said it?

I also wonder if he's aware that an obscene number of prison inmates in Italy are foreign born, much higher than the United States? If there's anyone more vulnerable than someone who may not speak the language well nor know the customs and laws it's someone born elsewhere. Maybe their practice of taking people who can barely speak the language into back room in the middle of the night and threatening, harassing and hitting them until they sign a statement has something to do with that? Especially when the judicial system doesn't seem to care much about convicting them on what they signed for anything they can regardless of circumstances or how dubious the statement and how rapidly they recanted it?

We'll see what the ECHR has to say about that, in the meantime Alan Dershowitz can argue on the side of the abusers of basic human rights like the oft-overturned Italian judiciary and the intellectual filth.

 

[Grinder]

Really? Kind of strikes me as an unsurprising response from the murder victims family, like it or not, agree with it or not, they accept the prosecution’s case.

At this time she is no more convicted of murder than she was found innocent after the Hellmann verdict.

After the Hellmann verdict I think many felt the case was over just as many think the case is over now.

In the early days much was made of the fact that the Mellas and Knox family had not contacted the Kerchers. At that time they said they would wait for resolution and did act after the Hellmann verdict.

Now if by some twist the ISC overturns the Nencini verdict and the case is dropped or goes for yet another appeal level trial where they are found not guilty and the ISC affirms that verdict is it still okay for the Kerchers to accept the prosecution's case?

I really think that victim's families should not be given a spot at the table during the trial only at a sentencing hearing and even then I don't know why. Now, when we get to a point where a convicted person such as Rudy is given early release, that would be the time for comment.

For those that strongly feel this case has been a miscarriage of justice, I can see that the Kerchers' comments look like seeking vengeance not justice.

 

[Diocletus]

Well in the context of Amanda we will have to wait and see how the American government of the day handles extradition. Duke Lacrosse case, whereabouts in Italy was that case? Dumbass, what do you mean?

Extradition? What does the ECHR have to say about its member states requesting the extradition of people who have been illegally convicted?

I believe in your dialect a "dumbass" is a "bloody idiot".

 

[CoulsdonUK]

So it is completely irrelevant in seeking the truth that two judges spent a year listening to the evidence and declared them innocent of carrying a knife, murdering, stealing and staging a break in. This is the elephant in the room, the truth was supposedly annulled.
Do you believe the break in was staged for example? I don't and neither do high court judges. It behoves the Kercher family to not just believe this, but to study with diligence greater than anyone here the distribution of glass, the possibility of the entry, the shutter damage and deeply impaled glass shard in hard wood that could arise only with great velocity, and all other hotly contested evidential items before seeking the destruction of these two lives on all these charges. This is not an attack, but a suggestion they have a profound obligation. They joined the prosecution. No one else here did. Most here would believe the position they hold is completely irreconcilable with intensive study of the evidence. There is much said about this case but little about whether the third trial would have proceeded without their encouragement.

As ever the original point now gets lost or simple ignored, making jokes about the murder victim is okay here now, because some other non JREF member, on some other site has made crass comments about Raffaele or Amanda. Yeah, win hearts and minds.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander

If there was so much evidence against Amanda and Raffaele why did the prosecution have to resort to suppressing evidence and lying?

Welshman,

That is a good question. And if Amanda and Raffaele should suffer reduced credibility for their false statements (which are quite small in number, as Bill Williams pointed out), shouldn't the police and prosecution suffer reduced credibility for their many documented false statements and half-truths. Has Professor Dershowitz never defended someone who was the victim of police coercion, police lies, or prosecution stonewalling on discovery?

 

[Grinder]

http://www.repubblica.it/2007/11/sezioni/cronaca/perugia-uccisa/in-questura/in-questura.html

"Likely the sexual motive" . During a press conference which was held in the police station, the superintendent of Perugia, Arturo De Felice, called "likely the sexual motive." At the moment, he added, "we can not say more, only that all three took part to the fact that there is shared responsibility, and that the young Meredith was morally unimpeachable" are not in fact been found traces of drugs or of alcohol. "It 's been a victim, and that's it," said the superintendent. ​

Very strange that the chief would say no alcohol was found when the coroner did find alcohol and one early result was a huge amount in her system. This was a report from Nov. 6th. Why did the chief feel the need to say she was "morally unimpeachable"? How could he know that on the 6th?

The story on the 3rd and 4th was that a british party girl was murdered after a sex game went wrong. They said the sex was consensual.

It is very curious that the chief would make a point to deny any alcohol was involved when the coroner said there was a full drink in her system. In fact, IIRC at that time there was a report of 2.72.

He then went on to detail the outcome of the alcohol level test. He recalled that the level of alcohol found in Perugia at the Institute of Forensic Medicine was 0.43 grams per litre; the [level] that had been [152] detected in the blood, however, at the headquarters of the expert report commissioned for the pre-trial hearing [incidente probatorio] was 2.72 grams per litre.​

If the test hadn't been completed that doesn't explain why he felt the need at the press conference.